AAR: [5M EVENT] The Sound and the Fury (2020-05-01 2300 GMT)

[Montaugh]

My name is William Carver and I am a Forth Circle Scout, Third Circle Thief

Six weeks have passed since the events of Bamor and the nightmares have not stopped. I left Throal shortly after the events of Bamor. The nightmares that I was having were so bad that I was scaring my family who I was still living with at the time. They woke me up once and I nearly attacked them out of instinct... thief training has left me jumpy at times. My family worries about me, and I couldn't talk about what I had seen and what had happened to the people of Bamor. How can you tell your family about other families that killed themselves and their loved ones. The babies that littered the ground, the people that killed themselves in their beds and the actual horror that we had seen and greeted us like an old friend returning home. My cabin is close enough to Throal that I can return there should I be in danger or am needed, but far enough from Throal that I have a quiet place to sort through my feelings about with what happened at Bamor and to bond more with Charlie and Trym. The city isn't the best area for a huttawa and a baby elephant.

I was in my cabin when Semyon Tagarlig contacted Karl Tomsson, Dubhan Goronich, Norg, and myself about a threat to the cloister of silence. We contacted Jael and headed up to the cloister. Once there we found out that the cloister was going to be attacked in a few days. We scouted the location of the advancing group, our initial estimated put them at 35-40 in number and slowly growing in size as more of them gathered. We saw cadaverous people, animals that were corrupted, and some others that looked to be guiding them. We worked to remove some of the numbers that we would encounter over the course of a few hours. After the groups merged and started making their way up to the cloister we numbered them at 60-75. We set up some tracks and built some defenses along with the others that were located at the cloister, and soon the battle was met.

There was a horrible clashing of armies, we broke up into reserves, support and frontline fighters, I quickly lost track of the others in the chaos of the battle and can only accurately report as to what I was doing during the battle. My first task was to counter any stealth until that they had so I counter spying calling out people trying to sneak through our lines. Later in the day I was scouting the enemy lines and saw what was causing our troops to become fearful.. massive boars that were nothing but tusks and they traveled with giant apes of some sort. During a brief break in the fighting we adepts were able to find each other, Jael had also seen the creatures that I had seen and as a group we decided to remove them from the field.

The battle with the boars and apes was fast a brutal. The boars had some sort of ability to heal themselves and the Apes could resist an incredible amount of damage. We were able to defeat them and retreat back to our lines and take up positions in the army once more.

The night was falling and one last clash between the armies was begining, our side had the advantage, as my various instructors have taught me.. press your advantage. I went on the offensive and hunted targets that I could in the enemies reserves, I saw a massive troll that looked to be the leader. He was wielding two axes, I could not get a clear engagement on him and even had I done so I do not think attacking one on one I would be able to defeat the troll leader. As the enemy's lines began to collapse our lines surged forward and the battle was won. What enemies were not destroyed retreated towards a newly founded city of Grakor.

We were exhausted when tragedy struck Semyon's husband was nearly killed. He was preparing some wards should things go south as a last defense of the cloister. Lyrlian a nice old windling lady who acted as our quartermaster was not a windling at all. She did something that broke Semyon's husband's arms in horrific ways and then folded his skull back on itself.. I though that the horrors in Bamor were horrific but I do not know how anyone survives such an attack.

Semyon thanked us for our service and reward us with some items that had been in his family. Norg was given a suit of armor, Karl was given an item and I got a very interesting hooded cloak. He also informed us that training would be provided at a reduced cost should we wish to pursuit that course of action.

There was nothing more we could do here, so we returned to Throal. I returned to my cabin with more nightmares to fill my dreams and thoughts of yet another city of potential horrors Grakor...

[Aegharan]

I received message from Semiyon Targalik the Scholar. He wrote that the Cloister anticipates urgent danger. Dubhan, William, and Norg also got a message. While prepping to leave we met Jael who also came along with his pets Fang and Ebony.

On the end of the way to the Cloister we saw the ghostly, dancing childen again. Arriving at the Cloister we again noticed all sounds being muffled again. However we did see a lot of increased Activity. There were a lot of campfires, and a Palisade blocking the entrance path. Semiyon immediately greeted us and ushered us in.

He told us that Scouts reported "many different groups converging on the cloister", from the West. Some groups of disfigured animals, some groups of armed namegivers, and also some undead creatures.
We were also introduced to Guard Captain 'Zedi Rorana'. She asked us to take notes, and gave us a messenger bat to report back in case we don't return in the expected timeframe.
We also talked shortly with the Balding Dwarf where the temporary wall is built, seemed to be the lead engineer, the grandmotherly Windling Lillian, and Renrik, the husband of Semiyon, who cast protective spells around the meditating monks.

Heading out, after a day we find a large group of around 30-40 humanoid shapes. Several are cadaverous, namegivers and animals. Some living Animals have Rats attached to their necks, that we identify as Leech Rats. These seem to use pheromones to get their hosts to kill food for them. From all over the place there are small groups joining the main group.
We maneuver around the main group and make out a couple of small groups that we attack before they can join. In the corpses' pockets we find berries and some bark. My Botany Powers instantly tell me these are Thelesa Berries from the Wyrm Wood. They're a mild halucinogen that young T'Skrangs like to ingest. Some mild varieties cause cramps and recktal bleeding, so we didn't try them.
The bark is Narishma Treebark, from the Servos Jungle, a highly toxic contact poison causing pain, rash, blisters and a whole lot of pain.

Afterwards we made our way back to the Cloister, conferred with the hired Mercenaries and Miss Rorana, to then head out and prepare a couple of rock slides and rolling traps, that we trigger during their ascend to further reduce their numbers.

After falling back to the Cloister we strengthened our hold and got into position at the Palisade. I took the high ground on a ledge above our enemies, looking for soft targets. I spotted the disfigured bats that we had fought earlier at the cloister and manage to shoot some down. They tried to get at me, but flying straight made easy targets to dodge and kill. Jael and Norg took position right at the front, with Jael focussing on some corrupted boars making harsh, horrendous, Squeeling Sounds and frightening the libraries troops. He did manage to halt their shrieking, but didn't pay attention and was wounded by the most severe blow of a crooked, rusted axe I have ever seen. Norg striked fiercely at every enemy foolish enough to set foot on the wall. William scouted for soft targets for our archers and his Troll Sling, and Dubhan let chaos erupt behind the wall, sending stones and metal balls fly around in a flurry of motion, damaging several enemies.

William spotted a path where several of these boars were guarded by only a small number of cadaverous looking Apes. We quickly slay them, after Norg is catapulted into the air by one of the Boars, however he took minimal damage from the tusks or the fall. Jael and his Preces wer hit much more viciously. Through a combined effort of analyzing their behavior and pattern, Dubhan Jinxing them and William and I being able to get their Blindsides, we got very superior positioning and brought the boars and Apes down efficiently.

We got back into the stands and fought back the attack. William snuck around the enemy lines and harried the attacking forces command structure. Dubhan kept spells going on most of our troops. Norg stood like a bastion of calm, and I took shots at every soft target we could make out in their lines. Together we successfully thwarted the attack.

Right when the last couple dozen attackers started to turn and run away, we noticed the grandmotherly windling Quartermaster approaching Semiyons husband, Renrik, whose arms shattered in an unnatural pattern. As the windling noticed us approaching, she turned around and fled.
Her Skin was sagging, weirdly proportioned around her body, flew away giggling, headed straight to the newly founded town of Grakor.
We also were not able to kill the great Troll who wielded two giant cleavers, seemingly the Commander of the forces. William was able to track him too, he also left tracks to Grakor.

I've heard unsettling news about this town and activity regarding people with tattoos showing Raggok's Insignia. We definitely have to look into that.

[ottdmk]

From the Journal of Dubhan Goronich:

So. That's what war must feel like, at least on a small scale.

I (and as it turns out, a few colleagues) received a communication from Semiyon Targalik that it looked likely that a horde of different enemies would descend upon the Cloister of Silence, that odd Kaer with its formidable defenses anchored by silent, unmoving, immortal monks. I joined forces once more with William, Karl, and Dvarim, who had been with me at the Cloister before... and for good measure Jael accompanied us with a couple of his formidable animals.

After consulting with Semiyon and his guard Captain, Zedi Rorana, we decided to scout out the enemy and if at all possible hamper their efforts. It soon became obvious that the Cloister was indeed the horde's target, and we were able to whittle down their numbers without being detected by the main body.

Returning to the Cloister, we set about defending. For the first while, I focused on hitting the enemy with Juggler's Touch. Given the numbers, it seemed appropriate. Then, Jael managed to cut out some of the more formidable animals, and we focused our efforts on eliminating them. Those animals were fairly frightening. Despite all my advances in skill and power it seems there will always be more formidable animals, corrupted and otherwise, out there to threaten me.

Returning to the fight, I focused more on enhancing our allies with my spells, and the horde at last broke. Then, to our surprise, the Windling physician, Lyrlian, revealed herself as some sort of Horror Construct, and attacked Semiyon's husband, a Nethermancer who was maintaining Life Circles around the guardian monks. Fortunately, we reacted quickly before she could kill the man. Regrettably, she escaped, as did a Troll who seemed to be leading the horde.

William managed to track them both though. They headed for Grakor, a newly founded town nearby. I'm sure we have not seen the last of those two, and I hope we can finish it when next we meet.

[sigfriedmcwild]

From "Notes on the world outside the kaers" as penned by Norg

Shortly after the events in Tamerlan's laboratory, Semyon contacted me again this time by sending a messenger bat to my new home in the little village some of us Trolls were building up just above the gates. He asked for assistance at the first gate of the Cloister of Silence, to keep things quiet but to bring extra help if possible, something that definitely piqued my interest.

It turned out that he'd sent similar messages to Karl, Dubhan, and William, who'd all been on the first trip there a few months before. Our combined efforts at gathering more support yielded only Jael and his menagerie. The trip to the cloister was short and uneventful but we had time to explain what we knew of the cloister to Jael. Once we got there we found a fortified camp, with about thirty people between scholars and guards.

Semyon greeted us and explained that he had reason to believe the camp would come under attack in the next few days: scouts had been going missing but some had reported an "army" coming from the plains. He didn't have much information about this threat other than it was unlikely to be connected to the horror sieging the cloister. After meeting Zeddy Rorana the camps guard captain, we decided to send a bat to Sosanopa to warn them of the nearby threat and to scout out the "army" to determine their intentions and possibly origin. Meanwhile the camp would continue to prepare both physical and mystical defences.

The next day we reached a ridge looking over the Serpent and spotted the "army" to the west. Well it was more of a horde of fifty or so creatures, including cadavermen, walking corpses, animals and so on. As we got closer Karl and William spotted Leech Rats controlling some of the living animals. We also spotted several smaller groups moving to join the main host.

The first thing we did was to eliminate a few of the smaller groups before they could reach the safety of the horde, before returning to the cloister to help with preparations. As we examined the bodies of the enemies we took down, we found hallucinogenic Telesa berries and some poisonous Nerishman bark. As we climbed back into the mountains the horde seemed to have swelled to about seventy people and we spotted a group of five trolls in their midst.

The next day was spent preparing even more defences, Karl and William rigged ways to trigger more landslides on the "landslide path", while Dubhan and I set up boulders to drop on the "safe path" and Jael found good ambush spots for his pets.

The next dawn found us manning an improvised wall in one of the chockepoints on the path as the horde approached. The traps had definitely taken a toll on their numbers but not enough to stop them and to make matter worse some manner of horror constructs was flying above them. Soon the battle was engaged, the lines held well through the morning even if Jael took some nasty wounds and had to move back to recover. As the afternoon rolled around things were still going well and William found a small path that would let us intercept a group of monstrous boars and apes that had been a major problem earlier.

We took the chance and engaged the creatures in an arduous fight. The apes we dangerous and almost took out Jael's shadow bunny, but the boars were the real threat, their charges hit like avalanches and they seemed to have some form of fireblood. Eventually we prevailed and rejoined the main fight as evening fell. At this point the fight was turning in our favour and we gave the horde no quarter, Dubhan empowered our troops to keep fighting, William tried to take out their leaders, Jael commanded their living animals to leave, and I took position as part of the wall itself plugging a breach. In just a few hours more we'd taken them down almost to the last namegiver, but their troll leader fled before we could reach him.

Just as we were about to call it a victory, something felt wrong and we turned to see the old windling lady who'd served as quartermaster and healer for the camp use some magic in an attempt to murder Renrick, Semyon's husband and nethermancer who was warding the monks outside the cloister. Noticing that she was spotted, the old lady flew away shedding the her illusory windling form and turning into a bloated caricature of herself.

William estimated she was flying towards Grakkor, while I moved towards Renrick's body to try and put it back in some semblance of dwarf shape, but thankfully he was still alive, so I opted for shoving a healing potion in his mouth and calling for a medic. Dubhan was the first physician to arrive and managed to help him some more, hopefully preventing too much permanent injury.

At this point we turned back to cleanup of the battlefield. We spotted some large worms crawling out of some of the corpses, but William didn't think they were mindworms. He also estimated that the troll leader was also making for Grakkor.

Semyon thanked us profusely and offered some treasures from his family vault in recompense on top of a large amount of coin. William received a cloak, Karl took a package without revealing the contents and I was handed the most massive crystal plate suit I've ever seen. Semyon also revealed that, based on his understanding of the ritual protecting the cloister, repelling the attack may have actually strengthened the defences.

The cloister of silence endures and in enduring grows strong.