Game Date: 01/05/2007 (Happy Birthday, Cat!!!)
In-Game Date: Mansday, Disander 13, early – mid-morning.
The week of Horfang.
While Grumble dreams of torture, and Rowan is dreaming of Potter’s brain getting extracted, Audric and Badger finish their midair make-out session and return to the Shield and Shingle. In the low light of the dying fire in the common room, the two make out the forms of two human males and a Halfling female. Badger recognizes the Halfling as the one who tried to pickpocket her the day before yesterday.
Greeting the two gnomes, the strangers introduce themselves as Arch and Thos, co-owners of the Gold Tabard Merchant Company, based in the Eastgate district. Their associate (the Halfling) is named Thelva, who gives them a bawdy wink. Arch compliments her on the picking of the “unpickable” lock, and has heard other favorable tales of her exploits. Badger realizes, as Arch is talking, that he is idly tracing the sigil of the thieves guild on the table top with a bit of spilled ale. Badger, eyes narrowing, wonders aloud what any of this has to do with her.
Arch calmly and cordially replies that first, they appreciate her handling of the unfortunate pick-pocketing incident. The city guard is a bit edgy of late, and have been treating criminals much more roughly. Secondly, when Arch learned of the relationship between the thugs who’ve been extorting businesses in Brindinsford and the infestation of wererats, he put two and two together, thinking of the bell tower rumored to be crawling with rats. He sent a few men to the tower to investigate this past morning, and the men haven't been seen since. These men were quite capable, Arch assures her. So consider this a fair warning for anyone thinking of heading into the tower.
Badger thanks him coolly and bids the three of them good-night. Thelva gives Audric a resounding smack on his butt on her way out. Badger grinds her teeth, barely restraining herself from sinking a kukri between the little rogue’s departing shoulder blades. Muttering darkly under her breath, she stomps upstairs to bed.
“What?” calls Audric. “So we both got our asses spanked today. Big deal.” The door to their room slams in response.
Meanwhile, Nialia has entered her meditative trance under the naked boughs of the old oak tree in Amrauthlin’s grove. Clearing her mind of the day’s trials, she sighs in pleasure, feeling the tree’s slow pulse beneath her. Suddenly an image springs to her mind, unbidden. She sees the party struggling and screaming, dimly lit by a fiery red glow. The scene flashes to another, as if jumping forward in time by a few seconds, then jumps again. Then there is a pearly bright glow that fills her vision, then nothing, only crying, as if heard from a long way off.
Nialia’s eyes snap open. Coming out of her trance, she feels a pull towards the tree. Just like the night before, she steps through the tree and emerges into the silent darkness of the
Araven’s eyes grow wide. “You’ve had a vision? Such are not unheard of. Your visits to the forest might have sparked them. We see things in our minds; sometimes things long past, some things that happening now. Some are things that have yet to be. I had a vision, years ago, of you. I saw myself giving you the ceremony that awakened you Lythari blood. I saw Burn…” and here Araven trails off, and a look of resignation flashes across her face like a wisp of cloud over a full moon. “Well, I have seen other things as well,” the wolf queen finishes.
“Will this vision come to pass?” asks Nialia
Araven steps close to Nialia and takes her hand. “I have had visions of calamity before,” she says softly. “Some I have been able to circumvent. Other times fate runs its course despite my strivings.”
Nialia nods. Araven smiles, releasing her hand and stepping back. “I have more pleasant news for you, my young cub. There is someone wants to see you.” Across the clearing steps Bristle! Nialia squeals with joy, and Bristle trots over and nuzzles Nialia’s head with his own, snorting happily.
Bristle has been hunting down the last of the twig blights with the Bear Clan. They are fairly certain they’ve gotten the last of them; none have been sighted in the forest in over a week. He tells Nialia that he has been missing his druid companion, Kinna, but that he has also been thinking much of her. Lythari and unicorn walk together through the woods, until the eastern sky brightens and the birds begin to sing to the first rosy hints of dawn. Reluctantly Nialia goes back to the oak tree and heads into the beckoning portal. Once more she emerges in Amrauthlen’s grove. Amrauthlen greets her, and the two eat breakfast together before Nialia heads for the inn.
Rowan wakes from her nightmare feeling sick with dread. At first light, she throws on her clothes and heads out into the frosty pre-dawn air. She rounds on the first person she sees, stopping just short of grabbing them by the collar and shaking the hapless fellow.
“A silver if you can tell me where I can get a scrying done!”
“Ah… have ye tried the university? The wizards there do powerful magicks, I hear tell,” he stammers.
Rowan flips him the promised coin as she sets off in the pointed direction. She arrives at the librarium to find the lights on, but the great front door locked. She paces impatiently for perhaps ten minutes or so before she sees Kartharine approaching the steps of the library, a steaming mug of some liquid in her hands.
“Can we help, you, miss?” Kartharine enquires. Rowan explains who she is and what she needs.
“Rowan Liadon…” the loremaster repeats. “Your father is Larren Liadon? Hmm. I never met him, but I know of him. Follow me.”
She takes Rowan across the courtyard and into another building. They enter a large room that is part classroom, part wizards’ lab. Rowan has Potter’s letter to her to give Kartharine as a focus for the spell. Kartharine steps up to a crystal mirror and performs the incantation. The surface clouds up, and Rowan nearly pushes Kartharine aside to get a look as the cloudiness fades to reveal…
Potter rising from a bath, his skin steaming in the morning air. As Kartharine’s eyebrows arch, Rowan blushes furiously. “Uh. Sorry. Yeah. He looks fine.”
Kartharine’s demeanor cracks slightly as the corners of her mouth twitch upwards. “Yes, I should think so.” She watches Rowan’s discomfiture with amusement for a few more seconds, then breaks the spell, and the mirror returns to reflecting normally. Rowan, still apologizing, thanks the loremaster for her help, and prepares to leave, relief and embarrassment fighting for domination over her face.
“If you see your dwarven companion,” says Kartharine, “tell him I have found information that he may find useful.” Rowan encounters Nialia on her way back to the inn, and the two of them fall silently into step with each other, both lost in their thoughts.
Audric and Badger are downstairs plowing through a hearty breakfast and wondering where the heck their companions are. Grumble comes down the stairs as if in a trance and begins to eat in stony silence. The gnomes stare at him. He ignores them.
“Sleep well?” asks Badger brightly.
“No, and I don’t want to talk about it,” says Grumble. Audric’s eyes narrow slightly. He stares intently at Grumble, then nods to himself.
“I got some errands. You guys hanging around?” asks the dwarf.
“I’ll be here, at least,” says Audric. “Toreal may need further healing.”
“Fine,” barks Grumble, and leaves.
He walks past Rowan and Nialia on his way out.
“Hey Grumble,” calls the ranger, “Kartharine has some information for you!”
“Whatever,” replies the dwarf without slowing or turning his head. Heading to the moneylender’s guild for some of his savings, he then heads to Shooma’s for an enchantment on the silver waraxe he purchased. Shooma tells him to come back in an hour. Grumble heads to the library, but on the way asks a few likely suspects who might know what to do with a redcap’s tooth. He encounters a strange old man with a bulging eye and a crooked cane who claims to have been a mighty hunter of the fey in his youth. He tells Grumble that a redcap’s tooth can either be used to make the fey more amenable to you when dealing with them, or it can be ground up and used in powder form. Alchemists usually pay good money for them, due to the fact that killing redcaps is a risky proposition at best.
Thanking the weird old man, Grumble heads to the librarium.
Kartharine smiles at Grumble. “I did some research last night. Apparently, the last Goldenaxe’s weapon had a large topaz in the center of the blade. The fact that your axe does not would seem to lend credence to the theory that it’s an enchanted replica.”
“Yeah,” says Grumble, “I know about the topaz. I watched the Goldenaxe put it into my axe, then I dreamed about an orc cleric ramming the gem into my skull. I think it killed me with it.” He laughs. “I’ve had a rough night.”
Kartharine studies him for a moment. “Come with me,” she orders, and leads Grumble to the room where she led Rowan. This time she lays a circle on the floor and has Grumble stand in the center. “Now,” she commands, “tell me what happened.”
Grumble does, telling her of the dream and the fight, and the fact that he’s been seeing Augur every morning for a week now, and how Auger turned out to be an “echo” of the Goldenaxe Aukraugrimmer. Kartharine is silent except for a few pointed questions for clarification. Grumble concludes his story, telling Kartharine that he thinks the soul of the last Goldenaxe is trapped in the axe somehow.
Kartharine fetches a comrade of hers, a small, stooped gnomish wizard. Together they cast several spells over Grumble’s axe. After a few long minutes of careful study, they pronounce the axe to be soul-free by all means of detection they possess. The gnome leaves, and Kartharine sighs and sits down on a nearby bench.
“If your dream was a true sending,” she says slowly, “then I don’t think the soul is trapped in the axe, but in the gem, the family jewel of Aukraugrimmer’s family. Let me tell you another tale I came across. This comes from from the reign of Goldenaxe Angbahar. He was only Goldenaxe ever assassinated, poisoned by his enemies. He was resurrected the next day later by dwarven clerics of Moradin.
“Even though he had been dead for close to a day, his weapon did not disappear.
According to the accounts, Angbahar claims that when he came before the Hall of Valuation (the dwarven pearly gates), he was denied entrance by a figure shrouded in wisps of smoke. Angbahar insisted that he was worthy to enter the great hall below, where the valorous dwelt forever. The figure responded that Angbahar’s soul would not yet be allowed to rest, for there were those calling it back to the world above.
“Thus did Angbahar awake, still tightly gripping his weapon. When he did die, some 85 years later, his weapon disappeared in a few scant moments. The next night, his grandson, Angramman, underwent his vigil, and emerged with a new weapon as the next Goldenaxe.”
“I believe there is but one weapon in many forms, and each time it is released when the soul of the Goldenaxe reaches its spiritual rest after death. It is entirely possibly that you are the first dwarf to hold the axe in thousands of years. The gods alone know how the weapon got from the clutches of those evil clerics to that druid you killed1.”
Grumble, his head spinning, picks his weapon up from Shooma and heads back to the inn. The enormity of the quest that seems to be unraveling before him sits on his chest like a weight.
Meanwhile, Toreal awakes just after Rowan and Nialia arrive. They fill the druid in on everything that happened last night. Toreal is impatient to be off to the bookstore. As Grumble does not return, Toreal’s restlessness spreads among the others. Finally, Toreal heads off to her shrine to prepare to “investigate” the bookstore, telling the others to meet her at her shrine in a little less than an hour.
The time crawls by, and still no Grumble. Everyone but Audric heads to the shrine. Audric waits in the common room for another half hour before Grumble returns. Audric fills Grumble in on the plan. Grumble was all set to bust some were-rat heads, but really just wants to hit something hard.
En route to the shrine, Grumble decides to test his newly enchanted weapon. “Check this out,” says the dwarf, and whack’s Audric in the butt with the flat of the axeblade. Audric flies forward, sprawling facedown on the pavement.
“Ow.” Rubbing his backside, Audric stands up gingerly. “Grumble?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you enchant that axe to be magically damaging to shapechangers?”
“Yeah!”
“Well, that’ll come in handy. Come on, we’re late.”
They arrive at the shrine to find everyone there waiting for them. Toreal is practically foaming at the mouth. It is a tense walk to the Reality Wrinkle bookstore.
The Reality Wrinkle is a fairly non-descript store, much like those around it. The first floor is stone, and atop that sit two more stories made primarily of wood. Upon arriving at the store, it is decided that Grumble and Toreal, the two people who would look very, very conspicuous in a bookstore, should remain outside until a signal is given. The rest of the party heads in to “browse”.
In the store, waves of disorientation sweep over everyone. Nialia realizes that the sensations of wrongness she’s been feeling are focused here in this place. Everyone else feels varying degrees of unease. A pallid, spindly man with a badly-shaved head approaches them. His eyes are filmy, and he all but drools as he asks them if he can be of assistance. The party distracts the shopkeeper while Badger sneaks behind the counter and investigates the back room. She finds another man sitting at a table, and staircases leading up and down.
Back in the store area, the shopkeeper displays a surprising amount of wherewithal as he notices the gnome’s disappearance. He looks at them suspiciously. Out of the corner of his mouth, Audric whispers to Rowan, “when I give the signal, ask the guy where they took the Paladin.” Rowan raises her eyebrows, but agrees.
Fearing that someone may have gone back behind the counter, the shopkeeper becomes increasingly agitated. Audric nods at Rowan, and shuts his eyes as she asks the question.
The shopkeeper glares at them. “I think you all better leave,” he slurs in a growl.
Audric’s eyes snap open. “They have him downstairs!” he yells, sliding his mace from its holder. Toreal charges up the steps and bursts through the wooden doors of the shop. Grumble comes in and clocks the shopkeeper in the head, knocking the poor man against a far wall. Toreal charges over the counter and rips aside the curtain that separates the bookstore from the back room. Unfortunately, this was what the man in the back room had been waiting for, and he zaps Toreal with a spell. Badger slips down the staircase in the confusion and tumult, noting with some displeasure that the feelings of disorientation are worsening as she enters the basement. Also, she can hear a strange gibbering that is really, really getting on her nerves. Finding no one in the immediate area of the first basement room, she sets to picking the lock on the only door in the basement. The disorientation affects her lockpicking skills, and it takes her several tries to succeed. By this time, the party upstairs has taken down the magic user in the back room and has followed in Badger’s footsteps down the steps. They crowd around the door, ready for anything. Badger throws open the door.
The source of the gibbering becomes horribly apparent, as a grayish mass of seething, amorphous eyes and mouths sways between two chanting men. In the far corner of the room lies a partially armored man, curled in a ball, covering his ears and rocking back and forth. This would seem to be Alaine.
The sorcerers attack the newcomers as they enter the room, and the aberration between them assaults the minds of the party with its confusion effect. Oh, and it spits acid at everyone’s eyes.
The room itself is an affront to the very nature of reality. Space is not what it seems in this room, angles that should not exist clearly do, and everything seems to be spinning in several directions at once, at different speeds.
The magic users don’t seem to be hampered by these effects, and fight desperately against the party. Toreal seems especially susceptible to the gibbering madness of the aberration on the floor. Half of the fight the young paladin’s squire is reduced to babbling incoherently herself. Even Badger is overcome for a moment and starts to flee out of the bookstore before the effect wears off and she rejoins the fight.
Evidently the sorcerers saw the gnome flee and gave her no more thought. This proves to be a costly error, for when she returns, she creeps up behind each sorcerer in turn and takes them both down with cunning sneak attacks.
Grumble finds himself fighting off the advances (and more acid spittle) of the aberration. Slashing weapons seem to do it little damage, and poison seems to have no effect at all. But together the party does manage to hurt it, and it retreats back towards a corner (for a given, non-Euclidean definition of “corner”), softening the ground around it into a morass akin to quicksand. Grumble, Audric and Badger are forced back away from the thing in order to avoid being sucked into the mire. Toreal, however, charges in, unaware of the treacherous footing. She trips, plunges into the morass, falls to one side and knocks herself senseless against a bookshelf. The aberration eagerly envelops the poor paladin in training, and the party looks on in horror, unsure that they can strike at the thing without hitting Toreal.
Finally, Audric sighs, and sticks a glove hand into one of the things questing mouths. He winces with the pain as it bites him, but with his free hand he casts a powerful inflict spell, bursting the thing open like the skin on soup that’s been left uncovered for a day or so. The thing is clearly dead, and they pull the paladin out from it’s innards.
Taking the two paladins with them, the party is only too happy to go back upstairs to where the laws of physics don’t seem to be so grossly violated. Rowan has broken her wrist in the fight and was hit by a ray of enfeeblement, so Audric sets to work curing all these conditions.
The party eyes the stairs up to the next level with trepidation. Alaine and Toreal aren’t going to be fit for fighting, but they can at least serve as a rear guard to warn the party if someone tries to get up the stairs after them. The party realizes that none of the sorcerers they’ve fought so far have been women, so their primary foe has yet to be encountered. The heroes rest for as long as they dare, then, with the blessings of Alaine, they make ready to head up the stairs to the two floors above…
1though it makes you wonder if Belak knew what the axe was, considering his promise of making Grumble a king among dwarves. Creepy how the GM ties all this stuff together, huh?
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