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by Anoush » Sun Sep 27, 2020 4:43 am
Bloodbeat’s Journal:
One fine morning in Throal, I was spending time at the nearby weaponsmith’s shop, having my armor forged. The process fascinated me, the fire, the strength of the smith, the way the hammer blows moved the metal. I was surprised that he didn’t quench worked metal in blood, but in mundane oil. That seems like a missing step.
Mid-morning, the weaponsmith grew impatient with my questions and presence, so I departed for a local tavern for a snack. Some ale and pastry were a nice pick-me-upper after the hot forge. Just as I was finishing the ale, Nib fluttered in and sped directly to my table. “Come quick, Bloodbeat! There’s something going on at the gates and we may need some magical help.” He needn’t say more. I paid my tab and together we quickly headed to the gates of Throal.
Nib explained that a Corporal of the City Guard had come asking for help with a stranger who didn’t speak Throalic or any of the common languages. As we neared the gates, we saw Stromboll, the Captain of the City Guards, in heated discussion with someone. We caught the words “monster,” “home” and “hunted,” as we waved and hurried past. At the gates, we met up with Mal, the elven archer, who Nib had also alerted.
At the gates, there was a middle-aged man dressed in wizards robes babbling in words that no one could make out. As we listened, we could make the occasional word that seemed familiar. For me, in t’skrang, for Nib in windling, and for Mal in sperethiel. With hand gestures, the best we could discern was that the man had traveled here from the east side of the Throal Mountains an area near Killian’s Life Rock at Grannagroth. The man was insistent about returning home. His clothing was odd, old-fashioned. The last time I’d seen anything like it was before the Scourge. Could he be from a newly opened Kaer that needed help?
Nib checked the astral and to our dismay he found it corrupted. What?! This doesn’t happen, not in Throal. Studying the astral more closely, Nib realized that the corruption emanated from the man himself; the further away from the man you got, the weaker the corruption was, until it finally faded. The guards had no idea how to handle the problem. So the three of us stepped in and volunteered to escort the man back to his home, wherever that might be.
About this time, Killian arrived back in Throal from his Life Rock Grannagroth. We filled him in on the situation and he was eager to help. We decided that we’d take the long way around and stop in Sosonopa first to collect Redsun who was working as an investigator there. So we headed north. T
he trip was uneventful, although traveling with this stranger was decidedly odd. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t get more information out him. The first time Nib tried to learn his Name, he answered “human.” Eventually we learned that his Name was “Archaeceliozome.” A real mouthful. We called him “Archie.”
We found Redsun without trouble, but it was hard to restrain Archie. He kept moving forward, along the path to, presumably, his home. He walked right onto a fireship without paying. I know they had coins and commerce before the Sourge. No one could be this confused, could they? We paid for the passage and traveled on it downstream about three days. Along the way, Archie kept pointing into the mountains.
Once we disembarked, Archie led us directly into the mountains. He obviously knew this route very well. After about a half day of travel, we came to a glen with a hut, or building, constructed in the mountainside. As we paused, we saw a group of five ogres near the hut. Archie began striding directly toward them, or perhaps toward the hut. We had no choice but to follow. We called out to the ogres, but all they wanted was to fight. So we obliged.
It was a tough, tough battle. Killian fell unconscious and was close to death after having been surrounded by four of the ogres at once. The ogres didn’t always hit, but when they did, they did a lot of damage. Nib checked the astral and found that there were two more creatures present astrally. To start these astral creatures just watched. But when first one, then a second ogre fell down unconscious or dead, the astral creatures popped into the physical plane, taking their fallen comrades places. The astral ogres were identical to the ogres they replaced. Archie demonstrated that he was a wizard during the battle — trying to cast “Mind Dagger” according to Nib — but not a very good one. He kept trying to weave threads, but failed horribly. Again and again. At one point, he retreated from them and hid behind me. Who was this guy?
Finally we defeated the ogres. But both Redsun and Mal were hurt, and Killian was unconscious, nearly dead. We revived Killian somewhat and did what healing we could. The hut seemed the perfect place to spend the night (or more) and recover.
Archie entered the hut with a stride of ownership, as if he belonged him, or the hut belonged to him. He went through the building, checking each room. Looking for more ogres we assumed, but found none. We also checked; in addition the large main hall, we found a total of five rooms, three on the north, and two on the south. Even though the astral was corrupted, we made plans to spend the night and set up watches. There were two bedrooms, each with a comfortable-looking bed, along with a bath (running water but no towels or soap), a library and an armory full of ancient weapons.
The main hall contained an assortment of furniture, including four large thrones at the far end. Three of the thrones held a humanoid skeleton, while the fourth contained an obsidiman, dead, or so we thought. The humanoids were all different races: an elf, a windling and a troll. I used the Experience Death spell on the obsidiman and discovered that he wasn’t dead. Well, who can tell the difference between a dead obsidiman and a sleeping one, eh? We were unable to wake him up.
Then I used Experience Death on the elf skeleton. I saw the elf at the doorway to this building, with a fierce blizzard outside and some furry humanoid shapes approaching from out of the whiteness. An obsidiman was trying to shut the door, with a troll close at hand, and almost succeeded. At the last moment, the furry creatures pushed the door inwards and melee ensued. One of the furry creatures attacked the elf and the last thing the elf knew was the creature snapping his neck with a fearsome bite. In the vision, the elf’s clothing was similar to Archie’s, old fashioned robes. The creatures that broke through were furry and humanoid, but there shapes seemed to shift, at first appearing more human-like, then more oak-like, etc. They might have been Name-givers.
Once Nib found the library, he was ecstatic and obsessed. You’d think he’d never seen a book before. The books were on a variety of subject, some were obviously pre-Scourge, while others were modern. He also found some maps of various places in Barsaive, some old, some new. Taken together, the maps and their notes seemed to indicate that someone was planning on invasion, perhaps of Throal, perhaps of another part of Barsaive. For the new maps, the parchment seemed 50 to 70 years old. The materials for the pre-Scourge books seemed about 300 to 400 years old, so about right.
The armory contained a lot of old weapons, many in need of repair. If Killian had been feeling better — he was still barely staying conscious — he’d have spent hours there studying and repairing them.
We spent over an hour exploring the building and exclaiming about our discoveries to the others. Gathering back together in the main hall, we realized that Archie was gone. We searched everywhere, but he was indeed gone. And the front door was locked. When did that happen?
Still puzzling, we realized it was late and we were all exhausted. We set up watches, letting Killian sleep through the night. During the night, the guards noticed some things — creatures? — skittering across the floor. Just a few times, but it was unsettling. These things were roughly dwarf-sized.
IN the morning, Killian had not gotten good rest, but had been plagued by nightmares. Most of stared at each other and said, “Kreescra?” In recollection of a recent shared adventure in Kohldur. That was a disturbing thought. I had nearly died while fighting the kreescra and wasn’t looking forward to a rematch.
We began looking for a secret door in earnest, to either find a way out or to figure out where Archie had disappeared to. But we found nothing. There was still one unopened, locked door in the hall. I used Viewpoint to look into the room and found a horrific kitchen. There was a large oven, a table arrayed with butcher’s knives, a large trough containing a stew in which various organs bobbed, a pile of dead bodies and body parts in one corner. And amid all this, there were four “cooks,” all about dwarf-size, but with the slender limbs of an elf and a stumpy tail, with dog-like heads. After my description, someone concluded that they were pangoli (plural for pangolus). Nasty creatures.
As we discussed how to handle this, we noticed that the dining table was set with full, hot meals for all five of us. Thinking back to the trough of stew, my stomach turned (a rare enough thing to happen to a nethermancer) and decided that I’d stick to my boring, but known rations.
In an attempt to keep the pangoli bottled up in the kitchen, I inscribed a series of concentric Life Circles of One at its door. But my skills deserted me in the effort, and weren’t able to block much of anything.
Nevertheless, we went to the front door and Killian began knocking it down. As he started, the kitchen door opened and the pangoli poured out, surrounding poor Nib who’d been standing there to keep an eye on it. Melee began and Nib stood his ground against this nasty creatures. Has he become a warrior and didn’t tell us? Suddenly, Archie was back again and attacking us. Yes, turning on us and trying to kill us. In that series of attacks, he tried hitting me several times, but my defenses proved more than able to fend him off. Yet, he hurt some of my companions, even stealing some of their karma. But we finally killed all the pangoli and Archie.
As we were recovering from the battle, the non-dead obsidiman woke up as a result of Nib’s Dispel Magic. He immediately went to the library and returned with a book, which he handed to Nib. The book was a very basic primer to his language, the one Archie had been speaking, which turned out to be an ancient version of obsidiman. This language is the base language for all the modern languages we speak now. Nib sped read his way through the book, and meanwhile, the obsidiman, a wizard, learned to speak Throalic via Speak Language.
The obsidiman’s first question was “Is the Scourge over?” We assured him it was and explained that Throal had re-opened a few years before Then the obsidiman explained that this was where he and his friends — the elf, the troll and the windling — had planned to spend the Scourge. But they were late in closing their door to the long night. As they were closing it, creatures — doppelgängers — approached trying to get in, and succeeded. All his friends were killed, and the obsidiman — Named “Archaeceliozome”, really — knocked into a deep dreaming.
The real Archie was from the Gannagroth Life Rock, the same one as Killian. As a reward for waking him and avenging his friends, Archie offered us some money they’d saved and any of the books we wanted. Nib selected several (too many) books from the collection, along with the maps, to take to the Great Library. He mainly chose books on pre-Scourge history and lore to help fill in gaps in knowledge. Plus there was one book not in any known language.
Killian and Archie set out across the mountains to Gannagroth, while the rest of us hailed a fireboat and sailed to Sosonopa and then returned overland to Throal.