AAR [8M]: VIsions of Destruction (2022-02-15 @ 2359 GMT)

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Sharkforce
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Re: AAR [8M]: VIsions of Destruction (2022-02-15 @ 2359 GMT)

Post by Sharkforce » Thu Feb 17, 2022 3:59 am

Orlam Rolfsom, Journal Entry # 18: Visions of Destruction

Strange things seem to be afoot in Clear Creek Crossing. Upon returning from a conference on the microecology of the Greater Servos Northern Spotted Dung Beetle, a very nicely made letter written on embroidered cloth was waiting for me - an unusual sort of thing, I should say. It was written by Strorbout Cragbringer, a Dwarf Questor of Chorollis known to have spent years restoring and enhancing a pre-scourge shrine to Chorollis in Clear Creek Crossing, which of course is a crossroads for a number of different trade routes.

The invitation was a little vague, but as Cragbringer was promising payment and publishing new research is expensive I figured I'd show up and see what was what - after all, it isn't that far and I can catch up on the latest almanacs. Incidentally, I got my research in just under the wire and was able to get into this one just ahead of that oaf Kelricson, who had been trying to horn in on my research relating to 3 new species found in the Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah liferock region since the scourge receded, all showing signs of adapting from the scourge environment to a post-scourge environment. There is more work yet to be done! But I digress.

Anyways, on my way to the Crossing I was interested to come across some of my fellow Adepts - Strata, Truck, R'edtarian and Elisen specifically. It seems they also had received invitations from Cragbringer, on differently-coloured cloth and containing slightly different messages. How curious. A caravan travelling the opposite direction from us mentioned seeing more travelers with the appearance of Adepts ahead of us as well. We split up when we reached the town and started looking for Cragbringer, who it turns out was in the local inn (Elisen found him... I confess I got distracted by a market stall displaying a variety of stationery when I noticed I was down to my last 2 reams of paper, and they had a new interesting variety out of Irondelve that is said to be unusually sturdy, although it requires a special ink as well - a fine investment if I do say so myself).

In due course of time it came out that a local seer, Elder Mirium, had foreseen great destruction coming to the settlement and Cragbringer was attempting to buy his way out of the problem (as you would expect from a devout follower of Chorollis) by hiring as many Adepts as he could get his hands on... 24 in total it seems had answered his call, although he had sent to many more. I should ask him where he got that fancy embroidered cloth paper, I bet it would make my publications stand out in a crowd. Oh right, I suppose I should add that the Elder had advised that the hastily-constructed palisades the locals were building should be facing inwards (to be honest, I probably wouldn't have noticed they were facing the wrong direction if R'edtarian hadn't mentioned it).

Elder Mirium was also a local apothecary it seems and so it was easy to strike up a conversation with her that would not arouse suspiscion (this was necessary because Cragbringer didn't want to trigger a general panic at their impending doom). When nobody else was in the shop, we were able to discuss her visions and Strata spoke to Earth and was able to get a glimpse himself. Teeth swiftly flying about sounded like a symbol of some sort of gnasher to me (as they devour anything), but Truck suggested a different variety of horror, something called a wingflayer. I expect with a Name like that, Windlings would be more likely to know about them after all. Also, before that there would be tentacles (which doesn't narrow things down very much, horror-wise), and after them a bright light and some sort of powerful being.

Around this time, I also noticed that the Astral in the region was unusually polluted for a Namegiver settlement, extending even into the restored shrine to Chorollis strangely enough. I decided to take some time and attempt to really zero in on the centre of the corruption (it was obviously somewhere in the central market square), but there was not enough time left in the day before night fell and we had to prepare for a potential invasion. While I was doing that, I believe the others arranged with Cragbringer to get the villagers out of the area that was likely to be threatened by horror invasion, I believe with a story about some sort of outdoor festival that they were going to hold.

We had just assigned watches and I was just about preparing to get some rest when the first watch already spotted something - piles of rubbish that had previously either not been there or avoided notice were turning into some sort of creeping, tentacled plant things. I am uncertain what they are called (it is outside my area of specialization, though I have been thinking to myself lately that perhaps I should broaden my horizons a little more since the horrors most definitely don't seem to be entirely gone, but in any event Truck said they looked like Qural’lotectica, more commonly found in the Servos), but fortunately we were more than a match for them and our more martially inclined party members made short work of them. More concerningly, we could hear sounds suggesting the same was happening elsewhere, and that the other groups of Adepts assigned to protect other areas of the town might not be doing as well as us.

Just as we were cleaning up the last of those foul horrorspawn Strata plugged the well just in time to slow down the escape of several large-ish flying mouths attached to sharp claws everywhere, followed by him slowing down the escape of a cloud of fast-moving shards of metal. As it turns out, my speculation about gnashers was right - the Gyre variety, I am told - and so was Truck's speculation about a Wingflayer. They all looked like a nasty piece of business, but in the end were no match for our brave little group. I was pleased to be able to take down the Wingflayer after it had been severely weakened by our warriors, and as had been predicted by Truck it did indeed seem quite vulnerable to air magic and was struck down collapsing in a shower of metal bits when struck.

Yet another shock awaited us as the shrine of Chorollis started to glow brighter and revealed itself to be a disguised crystal entity. I feel quite embarrassed to have missed such a thing, but I suppose at least I didn't spend the last who-knows-how-long not noticing it. The first thing it did was to attack Elisen and their mount Jacint with sleep magic, knocking them down on top of it (they had been hovering over the roof). This proved to be unfortunate for the pair, as Strata and Truck bludgeoned the accursed thing to death and they fell several yards with the rubble, crashing into the unforgiving earth.

Having dealt with every horror fool enough to show its face (or nearest equivalent) in our vicinity, we rushed off to help the other Adept groups who were also defending the town. All but one made it out alive, a fellow Elementalist by the name of... well, I just copied this down, Sperethiel is also not one of my strongest points, but "Duouquirai Svlaniculcor" was apparently his name. Perhaps Elisen will compose a song or story about him, I'll have to listen in some time. Around morning, the villagers and Cragbringer returned and were devastated to find their shrine destroyed.

They were quite taken aback to discover that it had been taken over by a crystal entity (this explains why the spread of the corruption was not hindered by the shrine of a Passion, though), which incidentally is entirely at fault for the destruction of the shrine I should like to point out. Everything that was ruined was already ruined before we even entered the town, contrary to the grumbling I heard from some of the locals (and most appallingly the Elder who in my opinion should be setting a better example). I'm not sure what they wanted us to do - just leave the crystal entity to rip them open with crystalline spikes and turn their corpses into horrorspawn, I suppose?

This still leaves the question of how a crystal entity was able to so thoroughly infiltrate the town and particularly the shrine, which one would think should be under the protection of the Passion Chorollis. I should think it wise to also put some time into investigating the well, from which a number of horrors sprung, to ensure that it has not been poisoning the locals or slowly corrupting them.

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