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ADVENTURE XVI (I) COUNCIL OF THE WYRMS
Erbocto was once again summoned to the chambers of the master of his order, Voxaminer, likely for some quest that the old wizard so regularly had for the adventurers. Oddly, the sage only wished Daisy and Isi to accompany him to the meeting.
Upon their arrival, Voxaminer spoke of desiring entry into the fabled Council of Wyrms, a group of metallic dragons who met under the best interests of goings on in the area. Entry by a non-dragon into the group was almost unheard of, but Voxaminer has arranged a meeting with the group to consider his admission. Unfortunately, the previous wounding of the Gaia spirit had left her wounded, creating a great famine across the land. This life and death situation of the people kept Voxaminer from being able to attending the meeting, and so he wished the three from the party to go in his stead. He knew only that he was to cross the mountains to the east, but not what to do when he arrived there.
Wishing to make haste, the three decided upon teleportation, though they knew not where they were headed. Voxaminer described in detail a settlement on the far side of the mountains along the river by name of Blanau Garok, which the exiles had begun trading relations with. With the description, the three hoped it was sufficient, and attempted the teleport successfully.
Isi, Daisy, and Erbocto materialized near the town, on the homestead of a local villager, who was quite friendly. The group asked the man, Obrek, about the council of wyrms, which he knew little about. Still, Obrek had heard of the wise sage Voxaminer, and wished to help the party. He knew of a rumored draconic settlement to the north, populated by Silver Dragons and their kin. Asking around further, the party found the stories of the place quite varied, some just thinking it an ancient legend. With nothing else to go on, the party headed northwards nevertheless.
The party arrived at the fabled city, and it's structure was clearly that to accommodate the great size of dragon kind. The guards on the walls bore the silver luster of their heritage, and the party was hopeful they had found the right place. The guards spoke of trouble in the city, Dracandin, and urged the party to seek out the acting mayor, Drastim. Drastim was unfamiliar with a modern incarnation of the council, only that it met in ages past. Still, he had his own problems to deal with, an ancient artifact of the town, a powerful orb that produced rays of fire to ward off white dragons, had been stolen by a Frost Giant sorceress. Their heroic spirits in full swing, the party agreed to attempt to recover the orb from this Queen Nimbri, from her fortress high in the mountains.
Along the way, the party faced an enormous Roc, but defeated it handily, Isi reincarnated the great beast, not wanting it to pass on only due to its great hunger. The party arrived at the citadel to the throwing stones of frost giants. The party battled through the structure, facing giants and even a massive frost Wyrm. A group of giant children was allowed to leave the fortress unharmed, upon the condition that they were to flee without their weapons. Finally, the party faced off with the sorceress, and obtained her surrender. She was to leave and never return, and the party assured her that they would know if she did.
The orb recovered, the party returned to Dracandin. They returned the artifiact, and provided the mayor with a means by which to communicate to the party if the sorceress every returned. There was one more hurdle facing the mayor though, the magic bracing which held the orb had been destroyed as well, and would cost a great deal to repair, more than the party had recovered for their efforts against the giant. Isi surrendered her share of the treasure, while Daisy's financial responsibilities were elsewhere, and Erbocto wished not to surrender his reward to these strangers. As Isi began to suspect some trickery involved in the cost, Nimbri returned to the city, this time flanked by far more powerful Cloud Giants. The party prepared to fight, though it appeared that the giants wished to speak. The giantess identified herself and Nymbryxion, a great silver wyrm, member of the Council of Wyrms, who desired her hoard back. The party was shocked and offended to learn that they had been tricked the whole time, that the giants were simply dragons in diguise, testing the character of the group. Isi and Daisy reluctantly accepted the situation, though Erbocto was less forgiving, demanding the favor of the dragon in return for the portion of it's horde they had acquired.
Still, the dragon was satisfied, and provided the party with a platinum staff, an artifact of Bahamut, to be delivered to Voxaminer to symbolize his entry into the council.
An old friend of Felim's father named Gralim Visited Felim to tell him of some foul dealings near his father's burial a barrow mound which held the order of the boar, an adventuring party in the region of the former generation. Following Gralim's lead the Felim, Ænlic and Rook traveled to Llanwenog and learnt some disconcerting rumors about nocturnal raids on the villages. Many of the victims of these attacks were later found partially eaten on the outskirt of the Llanwenog region. Following the leads the Felim, Rook and Ænlic took off to the Vale of the Departed, a Lonic graveyard full of barrow mounds, and there found a veritable undead horde amidst the mounds. In a cairn stone crested barrow the party discovered a terrible vampire and his necromancer servants masterminding the operations. This opening battle of the cleansing was quite brutal, the Vampire though half Felim's size was clearly a masterful wrestler
and managed to drain a dangerous amount of the troll's blood before he was freed by Rook's magic. Unable to leave the barrow due to the bright daylight
outside the vampire was shortly dispatched from afar. Upon closer inspection it was discerned that The vampire coffin bore an Athalish crest. Furthermore he held a note which itself was marked with the wax seal of the athalish navy.
the note read:
Continue with Forestry, Gaia is to be made to suffer. An army must be raised to do away with the banished ones forever. Don't disappoint me as Corris did.
Rook noticed almost at once that the handwriting was very familiar, upon comparison it seems utterly identical to the similar note found in Corris's desk in the bugbear steeps.
The other barrows proved less dangerous that the first but were a draining challenge in their own right. The party came across more necromancers, Ba'tezzu Osyluth (Bone Devils), and vicious Ghast dervishes armed with axes. The party was quite relieved to find that the Barrow of the Order of the Boar, the adventuring party that included Felim's human father, was not disturbed owing in large part to the formidable defenses placed upon the entranceway. Two puzzles, one involving sticks and a word puzzle written in Druidic were both solved quite ingeniously by Ænlic and Rook. Despite their ingenuity the party was ultimately thwarted by a permanent Prismatic wall which will require a number of powerful spells to bypass.
Felim has assured the party that in addition to being a burial the Much of the Order of the Boar's equipment is stored here for another generation of adventurers and feels quite confident that the party would be worth of such treasures.
After being summoned by Voxaminer the party returned to Middlefort. To the party's surprise an improved gnome drilling machine was spotted in middle of town. Apparently an alliance was forming between the exiles and the dwarven nation of the underworld, who have great sympathy with the exiles due to the large number of highly influential gnomish exiles in their own city of the Deepinghome including Lord Farik, husband to the dwarven queen. The exiles new allies however were quite embattled in wrapping up an age old conflict with the goblins they were set upon my Drow raids. One stipulation of the new alliance was that the party was to help with the war against the Drow. Farik sent the party along with a gnomish illusionist named Callad von ash badger, who was able to cloak the party as Drow in order for us to infiltrate the Drow city Masanthlin. Masanthlin is a Drow city built in rift, like a great subterranean gorge, much of its floor is occupied by a stagnant subterranean lake. The party teleported to the upscale slums, adjacent the lake. While the party was getting a bearing of the place Isi bought seven dwarves slaves. During a days attempt to gather information we found out very little about the intricate web of Drow politics save that there were three head noble houses:
Draetok, Lamost, Kendrasm.
Any war between two of them would ensure the third's power. Thus a tense stalemate ensued that the mightiest Drow houses of the city were looking outside their walls for sport and conquest, in short the stalemate was the bane of the dwarves. Each house had large armies. So a direct attack by the party would practically be suicide. Draetok is the highest house but it has the smallest army. Ænlic that night woke up screaming "Lothrlist"! She had been bitten by a spider and had a poison/spell induced dream filled with terrible images. With a small amount more investigation the party discerned that “Lothrist” was in fact one of the lower houses with some connection to house Draemtok. Among other things Lothrist, though a house at the very floor of the city was home to a small cadre of formidable soldiers and boasted one of the best exotic combat arenas in the known world. Daisy and party then approached the house of Lothrlist to participate in the Gladiator battles and investigate. Before the party entered they were approached by what they thought was a prostitute. She was later revealed to be an avatar of Lolth bent on using the party to destroy a blasphemous obstacle to her much beloved chaos and carnage. It was because of her that Ænlic had the dream. After getting some information from her regarding some kind of perversion within House Lothrist the party entered the battles. Kelkana, lady of the house, ushered the party in after we won whereupon Ænlic went off to scout the house. She overheard some mention of the Matron and her sister. Ænlic also managed to steal a spell book.
The party then decided to attack the house of Lothrist. After defeating the Matron they learned that she is a male who was wearing a sex charge ring, a significant blasphemy in the matriarchal society of the Drow. Daisy decided to put on the ring, however the rest of the party could not see any noticeable change. After further exploring the house they learned the three secretes of the Lorthrlist house: As mentioned before, the Matron was a male named Kostr\, furthermore he had an incest relationship with his sister before his death, and lastly he enjoyed such power over his sibling due to her own dark secret. Jovinia Lothrist had failed a sorcerous test and was cursed by Lolth to forever roam the underworld as a hideous tauric cross bread between row and giant spider, a loathsome drider. Such creatures are usually hated and killed on sight even by their own vile kin. It Jovinia's nature, the last of the three deadly secrets of the house, which had been divined by a savvy mage in Draemtok. Using this secret as blackmail the Upper house could freely rely on the minor house Lothrist to maintain the balance of power for the otherwise waning house of Draemtok.
After disabling Jovinia, despite her dangerous mind bending spells the party became trapped. Thousands of Drow from House Draemtok had surrounded the stairs to which the party came down. After talking to Jovinia they learned of a secret exit, however that was also blocked as the Drow monitored their movement from above, During this time Jovinia tired of hatred abuse and murder revealed that she wanted to come with them tot eh surface. Teleportation was ruled out on account of a powerful forbiddance spell covering the entire basement. Soon after the Avatar came in and spoke of killing everyone. However in her arrogance the party managed to pus past her and teleported out quickly thereafter. Voxaminer and two others mages covered the party's retreat Taking on half the house army of Drametok for a few moments. The two other Mages were Initiate Undulin, a transmutation master and warrior whom the party first witnessed in the heat of battle in his assumed form of an augmented pit fiend. The second mage, seemingly fragile in comparison, was a skilled elven Abjurer named Eldasius who managed to save the party's collective hides by thwarting a deadly Drow necromancy a heartbeat before it would have reduced the heroes to corpses. The party arrived back in Middlefort all safe and sound and Voxaminer and others appeared shortly thereafter.
INTERLUDE: THE FATE OF MASANTHLIN
As the trio of battle weary mages teleported out of the fell city of Masanthlin the battle therein had barely begun. News spread like wildfire of the blasphemies of House Lothrist and a rage spread about their knowing allies is House Draemtok. Before the armies of Draemtok had time to recover from their taxing firefight with the mages they found themselves set upon by the entire community bent on their utter destruction. In the power vacuum left in Draemtok's demise Kendrasm' young matriarch Jomae plotted quickly against Arinste Lamost the invalid leader of the Lamost faction. The resultant reversal was stunning. Upon the invasion of the walls of Lamost Jomae and her finest warriors found the halls deserted and littered with deadly runes and other perils. Fleeing from the deathtrap they found their own house cloaked in a deathly darkness as Arinste after years of utter inactivity proved her ability to lead the warriors of Lamost to victory by slaughtering the remnant of Kendrasm. Their own house and loved ones destroyed and their enemies a trackless phantom the warriors of Kendrasm met their ends alone in the dark alleys and backwaters of the city to the weapons of ruthless assassins.
For a short time relative peace settled on Masanthlin but more retribution lurked nearby. Exercising their alliance for the first time the exilic mages and the dwarves of the Deepinghome embarked on a daring plan. Using an older burrowing machine, shielded from divination by the mages, the dwarves dug a long tunnel over top of the Masanthlin's cavernous rift. The project had reached a late stage before the Drow noticed the incursion. The Drow made a further mistake of assuming that the tunnel was to be used to invade the upper houses. As they charged in they met only the sight of a full-scale evacuation of the dwarves and countless piles of a strange black powder. The Drow elites, thanks to their innate resistance to magic, were initially unharmed by the single firebolt lobed down the corridor at them in the last heartbeat of the engagement. The explosion that the bolt precipitated hgowever, as it ignited the smoke powder, however was impossible to ignore. The resultant blast was heard as far off as dragondale and was manifested on the surface by the partial collapse of one of the mountains overhead near the Iled valley. Underground the carnage was terrible. Fully half the city was buried in an avalanche and many of the houses built into the roof were entirely incinerated.
Out of the cataclysm there arose a terrible loathing and hatred for their attackers. Unified by their vision of the mages and the Deepinghome burning the Drow, under Arinste Lamost, set forth a terrible counter attack. This alliance between all the Drow of Masanthlin to rid Karalon of dwarves and exiles alike was nearly unheard of in the entire scope of drow history. The army that marched on middlefort that fortnight was beyond reckoning. Fifty thousand formidable Drow, unified in hatred, unstoppable, guided by the iron will of Arinte Lamost set forth on a campaign that no army could hope to set them aside from.
That night, in the fields of Ba'elf, within sight of the walls of Middlefort a battle was waged that will last for generations in the runes of the dwarves, the songs of Dragons and the bedside tales of human children. They record how the great dragon Nymbrixion who had for many weeks lived the life of Arinste Lamost set the Drow upon themselves only moments before they were ambushed by the combined weight of their enemies. With Nymbrixion's guidance Voxaminer set the armies of both the humans and dwarves perfectly to receive the dark onslaught. The midnight sky was lit as bright as day by gnomish flares as the shining knights of Angelique shattered the front line of the Drow ranks. Those Drow who managed, by intellect or chance, to appose their true enemies were still a force to be reckoned with, shrugging off evocations from the Middlefort guild mages which could incinerate any common man. As their lines closed the mighty muskets of the dwarves spoke out and silenced countless Drow. But the muskets, spells and inturigue of the alliance fell short of sundering the ruthless wave of Drow and although diminished they cleaved into the alliance lines with such fury that a massacre seemed inevitable. As the formations of the alliance began to route their reinforcements entered the field in force.
The dragons of the council of the wyrms descended on the engaged Drow. Entire houses succumb to fire as the gold dragons of the south exacted their revenge for their enslaved young. The silver claws of the northern dragons answered in kind and a lightning storm from their local bronze kin cut down the retreating Drow en mass. The day belonged to the alliance but not without cost. Nearly four thousand lay dead on the alliance front, these included prominent names such as Lord Anthome of the gnomes, Inquisitor Jemlan of Kortesa, and Initiate Black of Middlefort. Tragically three metallic dragons were killed at Ba'elf as well, Simbrion of the northern silvers, Weinli of the southern golds, and the local bronze defender of the village of New Providence, Carnindryn. Despite losses the Alliance remains resolute, now freed of the Drow menace sights are being set on rebuilding and readying for future hostilities with Athalin.
It is said by many that after the Drow the Athalites can pose little resistance but voices of caution temper such optimism. Voxaminer has observed that ambushing an enemy in disarray on one's home territory is quite distinct from setting out on an invasion of distant soil which is foreign to many of the exile's allies. The Athalites are both heavily fortified and likely specifically readied to repel a foreign invasion. Nevertheless this day will ring as a victory for all good peoples for generations to come.
With the death of Carnindryn the people of New Providence faced a difficult choice between abandoning their homes to face starvation in Middlefort or to face hobgoblin raids during the upcoming winter. Regent Eldasius, the Abjuration master of the Guild was installing wards for the town and during his time there Rook was visited by stranger from the south, and acolyte of Ludimar named Hasik.
Hasik explained that a fellowship of Ludimarites to the south had experienced acute prosecution at the hands of the Clergy of Valalique. The Ludamarite fellowship has been banished from their village of Milborah and is slowly starving to death. The leader of the group, brother Malok, had sent out a request for aid.
The party quickly gathered and departed for the jungles of Mazavi where Milboroh was located, upon their arrival they found the commune in dire straights. A race of lizard creatures names Sarkrith were attacking the town and had already killed Brother Malok. The party conducted a quick tour of the commune under the invitation of the acting leader Brother Drost. They found an active onyx mine and hastily built defenses which couldn't hope to be completed in time. Additionally they found a gnomish printing press which was being used to mass produce a single religious tract called the tome of Ludimar.
The Tome of Ludimar
This dour apocalyptic tome lays out the basic tenets of the Ludimar faith. It is exceptionally well written however, a work of staggering literary genius. It is unrelenting in its message of inevitable doom of all creatures. Dogmatically it asserts that the cessation of existence is the only thing in existence that will never cease to be. Death is the only true thing in the universe that is immortal. Ludimar through the text is portrayed as the keeper of unwanted souls and the final entity to inhabit the universe once the full weight of eternity has taken its toll. Much of the early text is devoted to clear defense of the ever-present nature of Ludimar despite the relatively recent rise to prominence of his church. After a lengthy doctrinal excursion the text ends with some vague and highly disturbing prophesy. Though the timeframe is uncertain it is made clear that the injustice of a tyrant gives rise some kind of chosen one. During this episode the deaths of three unnamed deities are predicted along with great suffering on the part of the nature spirit who is cast as the chosen one's counterpart or even sister.
It seems that much of the turmoil predicted in the tome originates in a terrible force, either divine or mortal, named Niadirem named the betrayer and enemy of truth.
The party received two copies of the tome and raised Malok from the dead before facing the Sarkrith.The lizard creatures attacked at dusk, snipping off commune members from afar under a general barrage of flame arrows, Brother Drost suffered an instantly fatal wound to the chest early in the battle. Soon after, with the party's help, the aggressors were either dead or fleeing. And the party found a critical piece of evidence pertaining to the motives behind the attack, a note was found on the Sarkrith leaders corpse:
Your young spelleater is safe with us for the moment, return to the cathedral with proof of the destruction of the necromancers and she will be returned to you.
Traveling to Milborah the party came in contact with Prelate Jorius the leader of church affairs of the city itself. He greeted the party coldly and in discussion revealed that he was responsible for the exile of the Ludimarites from the city. Another prelate named Mendal, a member of the very closed minded Shadowbane order was separately responsible for affairs in the surrounding countryside. When the Sarkrith were mentioned he explained that there had been skirmishes with the tribe in recent days. He allowed the party to go to speak with Prelate Mendal in the cathedral.
The party journeyed down into the dungeon of the church where Mendal waited. They found their Way blocked by a force field surrounding a statue of a female Paladin carrying a flaming sword. Bypassing the statue with teleportion placed the party in dire peril as they encountered Mirror images of themselves when giving into a cursed mirror while trying to solve a puzzle. At the same moment the statue, a fire wielding golem, attacked. The party kept the golem at bay with a wall of force while they destroyed duplicates of Felim, Ænlic, Rook and Daisy. Dealing with the golem fatigued the party greatly but they pressed on to deal with Brother Mendal in an concealed passage beyond the mirror as revealed in the puzzle. Mendal raved about the dangerous nature of the Ludamarite cult and demanded that the party betray Rook to prove their righteousness. He further mentioned an intent to summon the aid of Naidirem. He refused categorically to return the Sarkrith spelleater previously captured. Talks soon became hostile as and Mendal after wounding Rook was killed. The fallout from these events it likely to be significant as Prelate Jorius, now up in arms wants to see the party stand trial for Murder. The clerics of Ludimar have moved to New Providence to avoid further persecution.