Post by Dead Greyhawk on Jul 14, 2008 21:19:48 GMT -5
Winthrop and Otto confer about the events of the recent weeks and decide that the search for the Druid of the Dreadwood is probably the most important thing the Company could take up. Since it is the most important, it is also the least likely, and so Winthrop comes up with an elaborate plan to scry on Karmuk's Tower. The Bergheim Mercenaries are the nearest enemy that the Company has personal knowledge of and thus the most likely target for the Company's attention.
It has been many days since the hippogryph and his rider were seen keeping post off of Castle Crag, and Otto is concerned that the mercenaries have made their plan to attack the castle. "Why else would they have stopped their surveillance?" he asks. No one has a good answer for him. Otto begins planning how he and Grizela will fend off multiple aerial attackers, but the prospects are not good.
To Winthrop's mind, whether or not the Bergheim Mercenaries are marching is easy enough to determine. Winthrop enlists Hugh's help in preparing to cast his vision the long miles into Karmuk's tower. Hugh layers enchantments and benisons on the mage while Winthrop takes on the form of a strange man, similar in height, weight, and posture to San, the mage whose path crossed Winthrop's long ago. Then, and only then, does Winthrop cast his gaze across the miles.
Karmuk's Tower stands tall and proud, overseeing the low hills surrounding it. The moat around the tower is partially full and roils with strange floating algal creatures. The drawbridge is up though, and no creatures or army invest the tower. Winthrop blinks several times and then sends his vision within the tower.
The inside of the tower is not the staid scene seen from without. Blood and gore coat the walls and orcs and men lie twisted and torn, looks of horror and fear contorting their dead faces. Winthrop is shocked at the butchery filling his eyes, but he continues his search for information. The dead seem to all be of the mercenary band. All wear the characteristic insignia of the group, the stylized mountain with the small square of a keep embroidered on its side. Whatever has killed them, it has frightened them nigh on to death first.
Winthrop retracts and then sends his gaze higher up in the tower. Here, the dead are fewer and the damage less, as if the main fight took place on the ground level. "Something fought its way in," muses Winthrop, "and killed all that came. Sounds like us on our good days." Recalling the hippogryphs maintained by the Bergheim Mercenaries, he searches the roof for sign of them, but sees nothing. "Fled their home," he concludes.
An odd thought crosses Winthrop's mind, and he savors its flavor. With a quirked eyebrow, he casts his vision one last time in the tower, to where the meeting room with the great chairs was. Sitting on the largest of them, as if on a throne, is a skeletal warrior, armed with a great zweihander and armored in flanged, baroque armor. Its winged boots firmly on the ground, it sits motionless on the throne, its vacant eye sockets staring into space. It slowly turns its head to meet Winthrop's intangible gaze, its face a grinning rictus. Facing directly at Winthrop, it rises from the throne and walks towards him, bloody writing adorning the back of the throne. "Your allies flee you as I walk in their homes," the writing says. "Soon I will have what is mine, my circlet and your head, Dell."
Winthrop closes his eyes and when he reopens them he sees Hugh and Otto looking at him with concern. Winthrop is very pale, almost ashen, and he lurches a bit as he rises. "Dell has a big problem," he says.
"Get that shaman out of the dirt!" yells Dell at Pfiffwin. "We need someone to interrogate, and where is Antonus? We need eyes in the sky! Antonus!"
Antonus, soaring high above the Javan, takes a moment to cloak himself in invisibility, reflecting and refracting the light around him. Dell's voice is small and tinny in the distance. The orcs, on their raft and in the Company's boat, are angling downstream towards a strange fog bank that seems spherical in shape. The fog hovers on the bank of the river, not flowing with the breeze or thinning and thickening over time. Antonus arrows down the river, trying to catch up with the swiftly moving boats. The orcs simultaneously rummage through the boat and paddle quickly along with the current.
"Damn apprentice, never around when you need him," grumbles Dell as Raven and the others stagger over to him. "We need to get down the river fast, any ideas?"
Raven digs in his backpack and pulls out a flask. "Converts you into something else," he says as he wags it one hand. "Al drinks it, turns into something that flies, and he gives Adrienne and Pfiffwin, the lightest folks, a ride down there. You alright with that?" Both Dell and Al nod, and Al quaffs the potion.
The dwarf's body shimmers with a bright light, and then it contorts and expands. Al grows wings and his arms extend until he takes a form that Winthrop has taken numerous times before, a hippogryph! Adrienne and Pfiffwin, who has been busy undigging the dirt that collapsed onto the orc shaman, run over and clamber on. With a greater wobble than normally seen with Winthrop, Al flaps up into the air and begins to fly down and across the Javan. Before him, the fog banks begins to dissipate, slowly revealing the outlines of the boat and raft jammed into the mouth of a small stream.
Antonus hovers invisibly over the fog bank, loathe to enter into it. First, he thinks, the fog will reveal him, as a great bubble will be visible. Second, the orcs might be able to surprise him in the fog. Better to wait for the others to arrive. By the time that Adrienne and Pfiffwin arrive riding a hippogryph, several minutes have passed. The thinning fog bank shows the orcs fleeing into the trackless marshes, each heading a different direction. Several smaller and one large form swim up the stream, while other larger forms dive deep into the Javan. Other boats, sunk at the mouth of the stream, are visible from this height, their wrecks likely lairs for the larger swimming forms.
The Company's belongings lie strewn along the bottom of the boat and the raft, sacks torn open and backpacks gaping. Some backpacks and sacks are missing, an unpleasant realization. "My spellbooks!" moans Antonus, seeing the sack containing his precious books not there. Al and Antonus chase after the orcs, but it is futile trying to find them in the swampy terrain. Antonus is able to swoop down and capture one of them by causing him to slumber, but the orc does not carry any of Antonus's books.
Raven and Jasper, both heavily wounded from the fight on and below the river, attempt to staunch the bleeding from their wounds, while Dell and Perrin watch the sputtering, struggling shaman. The shaman slowly frees himself from the dirt and begins to claw at the sides of the pit, trying to reach his way to the top. "Stop that," says Dell, menacingly. The orc pauses and looks at the two of them. Squinting, he grabs hold of a grizzled, dried thing dangling from his headdress and shouts a prayer in orcish. Both Dell and Perrin feel the fell hand of the orc god try, and fail, to grip them in power.
Perrin summons Phaulkon's might and causes all sound in the area to be muted, but Dell's response is more direct. He throws a dagger into the shaman. The orc mouths words and gestures crudely while scrabbling at the wall of the pit. Dell, reading the orc's lips and gestures, continues to throw daggers into the shaman while Perrin, seeing Dell's attack, joins him in doing so. Perrin swings the heavy mace taken from Hanuman down onto the shaman's hands and limbs whenever the shaman appears to get a grip on the side of the pit. In a surprisingly short period of time, the shaman falls broken and pierced to the bottom of the pit, dead.
Raven taps Dell on the shoulder and mouths angrily at him. Frustrated, he drags Dell and Perrin away from the corpse in the pit. "Guard! I said guard! Not kill, pincushion or bludgeon! How are we supposed to get information from him now?" he yells. "Plus you do it where I can't hear you? What were you thinking?"
"He cast his curses on us," replies Perrin. "We were defending ourselves."
"Defending yourself against an orc in a pit!" bellows Raven. "Don't get me started."
"Adrienne can talk to his soul," says Dell calmly. "We'll find out what we need to know."
Antonus and Al return to the others, dragging the boat with Adrienne, Pfiffwin, and their prisoner upstream. "The bog goblins took our valuable stuff," moans Antonus. "It's all gone." The others look shocked at events and paw through the remains of their sacks and backpacks. Some common items, rope and whatnot, are still present, but none of the spellbooks or magical equipment that was left in the boat are there.
"I have no idea when they had time to go through everyone's backpacks and take only valuable items," says Pfiffwin. "Tony was following them from above and didn't see them going through the bags. Then they go into a smoke bank for a minute. When they come out everything has been divided." The others look at Pfiffwin and think, "Tony?"
"Let's go through what we recovered and see what's still missing," says Raven. "Then we'll figure out what to do, and what questions to ask our orc friend here." The Company buckles down and starts going through their belongings. Most of what is missing are books of spells, Antonus's and Pfiffwin's, including those new arcane magics purchased in Hochoch, and Al's iron horn of Northman summoning.
The captive orc is remarkably affable and willing to speak. Calling himself Org Bugeater, he is one of many orcish warriors that make up Gripgore's Raiders. Unsurprisingly, Gripgore is the band's leader, and he has been raiding through the Oytwood for months.
Under careful questioning from Dell and Antonus, a story emerges. Gripgore and his men seem to have been paid by Hanuman to be a general nuisance in the Oytwood, raiding the settlements of the sylvan folk and harassing river traffic. A ruined tower, a remnant from the Keoish Empire's better days, serves as their base several miles into the forest. After several months of joyous destruction, Gripgore led his raiders to the Javan River, where he met with other fearsome creatures of the deep. A sea giantess of ferocious mien named Kaluta controlled the motley water-dwellers, and she and Gripgore came to an agreement.
Each day Gripgore sent men to the river's edge to see if Kaluta had need of air-breathers. If so, Gripgore's Raiders aided her. If not, the orcs went on their way to harass and despoil the forest further. Most days they were not needed, but whenever Kaluta required them to stay, ships would sail downstream into the chain looped across the Javan. The bottom of the river is now clogged with the success of their efforts.
Org Bugeater seems to have little loyalty to Gripgore. When asked, he provides details regarding Gripgore's base (a ruined two-story tower), men (orcs, perhaps two dozen or so), and advisors (two, a shaman and his apprentice, the latter now dead). Al thinks this is too good to be true, but Dell is confident in Org's goodwill. Org is clearly a survivor, and the only way to survive now is to make the Company happy.
Seeing that the others are preparing to go, Al takes action. Hiking down to where the boat and the raft lie ashore, he brings them both to the Oytwood side of the Javan river. After firmly affixing the boat to the shore, he deals great blows to the raft with his axe. Wood flies and ropes snap, and soon the raft is no more than a series of logs floating downstream. Al nods to himself in satisfaction.
It has been many days since the hippogryph and his rider were seen keeping post off of Castle Crag, and Otto is concerned that the mercenaries have made their plan to attack the castle. "Why else would they have stopped their surveillance?" he asks. No one has a good answer for him. Otto begins planning how he and Grizela will fend off multiple aerial attackers, but the prospects are not good.
To Winthrop's mind, whether or not the Bergheim Mercenaries are marching is easy enough to determine. Winthrop enlists Hugh's help in preparing to cast his vision the long miles into Karmuk's tower. Hugh layers enchantments and benisons on the mage while Winthrop takes on the form of a strange man, similar in height, weight, and posture to San, the mage whose path crossed Winthrop's long ago. Then, and only then, does Winthrop cast his gaze across the miles.
Karmuk's Tower stands tall and proud, overseeing the low hills surrounding it. The moat around the tower is partially full and roils with strange floating algal creatures. The drawbridge is up though, and no creatures or army invest the tower. Winthrop blinks several times and then sends his vision within the tower.
The inside of the tower is not the staid scene seen from without. Blood and gore coat the walls and orcs and men lie twisted and torn, looks of horror and fear contorting their dead faces. Winthrop is shocked at the butchery filling his eyes, but he continues his search for information. The dead seem to all be of the mercenary band. All wear the characteristic insignia of the group, the stylized mountain with the small square of a keep embroidered on its side. Whatever has killed them, it has frightened them nigh on to death first.
Winthrop retracts and then sends his gaze higher up in the tower. Here, the dead are fewer and the damage less, as if the main fight took place on the ground level. "Something fought its way in," muses Winthrop, "and killed all that came. Sounds like us on our good days." Recalling the hippogryphs maintained by the Bergheim Mercenaries, he searches the roof for sign of them, but sees nothing. "Fled their home," he concludes.
An odd thought crosses Winthrop's mind, and he savors its flavor. With a quirked eyebrow, he casts his vision one last time in the tower, to where the meeting room with the great chairs was. Sitting on the largest of them, as if on a throne, is a skeletal warrior, armed with a great zweihander and armored in flanged, baroque armor. Its winged boots firmly on the ground, it sits motionless on the throne, its vacant eye sockets staring into space. It slowly turns its head to meet Winthrop's intangible gaze, its face a grinning rictus. Facing directly at Winthrop, it rises from the throne and walks towards him, bloody writing adorning the back of the throne. "Your allies flee you as I walk in their homes," the writing says. "Soon I will have what is mine, my circlet and your head, Dell."
Winthrop closes his eyes and when he reopens them he sees Hugh and Otto looking at him with concern. Winthrop is very pale, almost ashen, and he lurches a bit as he rises. "Dell has a big problem," he says.
"Get that shaman out of the dirt!" yells Dell at Pfiffwin. "We need someone to interrogate, and where is Antonus? We need eyes in the sky! Antonus!"
Antonus, soaring high above the Javan, takes a moment to cloak himself in invisibility, reflecting and refracting the light around him. Dell's voice is small and tinny in the distance. The orcs, on their raft and in the Company's boat, are angling downstream towards a strange fog bank that seems spherical in shape. The fog hovers on the bank of the river, not flowing with the breeze or thinning and thickening over time. Antonus arrows down the river, trying to catch up with the swiftly moving boats. The orcs simultaneously rummage through the boat and paddle quickly along with the current.
"Damn apprentice, never around when you need him," grumbles Dell as Raven and the others stagger over to him. "We need to get down the river fast, any ideas?"
Raven digs in his backpack and pulls out a flask. "Converts you into something else," he says as he wags it one hand. "Al drinks it, turns into something that flies, and he gives Adrienne and Pfiffwin, the lightest folks, a ride down there. You alright with that?" Both Dell and Al nod, and Al quaffs the potion.
The dwarf's body shimmers with a bright light, and then it contorts and expands. Al grows wings and his arms extend until he takes a form that Winthrop has taken numerous times before, a hippogryph! Adrienne and Pfiffwin, who has been busy undigging the dirt that collapsed onto the orc shaman, run over and clamber on. With a greater wobble than normally seen with Winthrop, Al flaps up into the air and begins to fly down and across the Javan. Before him, the fog banks begins to dissipate, slowly revealing the outlines of the boat and raft jammed into the mouth of a small stream.
Antonus hovers invisibly over the fog bank, loathe to enter into it. First, he thinks, the fog will reveal him, as a great bubble will be visible. Second, the orcs might be able to surprise him in the fog. Better to wait for the others to arrive. By the time that Adrienne and Pfiffwin arrive riding a hippogryph, several minutes have passed. The thinning fog bank shows the orcs fleeing into the trackless marshes, each heading a different direction. Several smaller and one large form swim up the stream, while other larger forms dive deep into the Javan. Other boats, sunk at the mouth of the stream, are visible from this height, their wrecks likely lairs for the larger swimming forms.
The Company's belongings lie strewn along the bottom of the boat and the raft, sacks torn open and backpacks gaping. Some backpacks and sacks are missing, an unpleasant realization. "My spellbooks!" moans Antonus, seeing the sack containing his precious books not there. Al and Antonus chase after the orcs, but it is futile trying to find them in the swampy terrain. Antonus is able to swoop down and capture one of them by causing him to slumber, but the orc does not carry any of Antonus's books.
Raven and Jasper, both heavily wounded from the fight on and below the river, attempt to staunch the bleeding from their wounds, while Dell and Perrin watch the sputtering, struggling shaman. The shaman slowly frees himself from the dirt and begins to claw at the sides of the pit, trying to reach his way to the top. "Stop that," says Dell, menacingly. The orc pauses and looks at the two of them. Squinting, he grabs hold of a grizzled, dried thing dangling from his headdress and shouts a prayer in orcish. Both Dell and Perrin feel the fell hand of the orc god try, and fail, to grip them in power.
Perrin summons Phaulkon's might and causes all sound in the area to be muted, but Dell's response is more direct. He throws a dagger into the shaman. The orc mouths words and gestures crudely while scrabbling at the wall of the pit. Dell, reading the orc's lips and gestures, continues to throw daggers into the shaman while Perrin, seeing Dell's attack, joins him in doing so. Perrin swings the heavy mace taken from Hanuman down onto the shaman's hands and limbs whenever the shaman appears to get a grip on the side of the pit. In a surprisingly short period of time, the shaman falls broken and pierced to the bottom of the pit, dead.
Raven taps Dell on the shoulder and mouths angrily at him. Frustrated, he drags Dell and Perrin away from the corpse in the pit. "Guard! I said guard! Not kill, pincushion or bludgeon! How are we supposed to get information from him now?" he yells. "Plus you do it where I can't hear you? What were you thinking?"
"He cast his curses on us," replies Perrin. "We were defending ourselves."
"Defending yourself against an orc in a pit!" bellows Raven. "Don't get me started."
"Adrienne can talk to his soul," says Dell calmly. "We'll find out what we need to know."
Antonus and Al return to the others, dragging the boat with Adrienne, Pfiffwin, and their prisoner upstream. "The bog goblins took our valuable stuff," moans Antonus. "It's all gone." The others look shocked at events and paw through the remains of their sacks and backpacks. Some common items, rope and whatnot, are still present, but none of the spellbooks or magical equipment that was left in the boat are there.
"I have no idea when they had time to go through everyone's backpacks and take only valuable items," says Pfiffwin. "Tony was following them from above and didn't see them going through the bags. Then they go into a smoke bank for a minute. When they come out everything has been divided." The others look at Pfiffwin and think, "Tony?"
"Let's go through what we recovered and see what's still missing," says Raven. "Then we'll figure out what to do, and what questions to ask our orc friend here." The Company buckles down and starts going through their belongings. Most of what is missing are books of spells, Antonus's and Pfiffwin's, including those new arcane magics purchased in Hochoch, and Al's iron horn of Northman summoning.
The captive orc is remarkably affable and willing to speak. Calling himself Org Bugeater, he is one of many orcish warriors that make up Gripgore's Raiders. Unsurprisingly, Gripgore is the band's leader, and he has been raiding through the Oytwood for months.
Under careful questioning from Dell and Antonus, a story emerges. Gripgore and his men seem to have been paid by Hanuman to be a general nuisance in the Oytwood, raiding the settlements of the sylvan folk and harassing river traffic. A ruined tower, a remnant from the Keoish Empire's better days, serves as their base several miles into the forest. After several months of joyous destruction, Gripgore led his raiders to the Javan River, where he met with other fearsome creatures of the deep. A sea giantess of ferocious mien named Kaluta controlled the motley water-dwellers, and she and Gripgore came to an agreement.
Each day Gripgore sent men to the river's edge to see if Kaluta had need of air-breathers. If so, Gripgore's Raiders aided her. If not, the orcs went on their way to harass and despoil the forest further. Most days they were not needed, but whenever Kaluta required them to stay, ships would sail downstream into the chain looped across the Javan. The bottom of the river is now clogged with the success of their efforts.
Org Bugeater seems to have little loyalty to Gripgore. When asked, he provides details regarding Gripgore's base (a ruined two-story tower), men (orcs, perhaps two dozen or so), and advisors (two, a shaman and his apprentice, the latter now dead). Al thinks this is too good to be true, but Dell is confident in Org's goodwill. Org is clearly a survivor, and the only way to survive now is to make the Company happy.
Seeing that the others are preparing to go, Al takes action. Hiking down to where the boat and the raft lie ashore, he brings them both to the Oytwood side of the Javan river. After firmly affixing the boat to the shore, he deals great blows to the raft with his axe. Wood flies and ropes snap, and soon the raft is no more than a series of logs floating downstream. Al nods to himself in satisfaction.