Daridos and Rengol Provinces, New Tellare, 22nd July 1655Gathering their equipment and mounts, the party set out again. As they rode, Gorfang heard Eloy mutter some words of thanks to Sabath for his continued survival. He chuckled; "Got any followers yet?" he asked pointedly. "Yes," replied Eloy cheerfully. Gorfang remembered the human's conversations with his budding subjects back in Gadûhvrás, and frowned. Maybe it was time Hektis had a proper cleric, he thought.
Daridos and Rengol Provinces, New Tellare, 22nd July 1655This was one of those days when bold adventurers wonder why they do this to themselves. Ceaseless, cold, invasive rain drummed down on them as they rode across country, heading due south. The fertile, civilized countryside passed them in a wet blur, farms and villages falling slowly behind them.
They crossed the border into Rengol and finally camped on the banks of Lake Hogdona. Normally the lake would have been a pleasant place to stop, a chance to bathe and fish, but all they were interested in after a day of damp was shelter in a spinney of trees.
The next day the rain stopped, thankfully, and the pervasive smell of wet orc dwindled during the morning. Around noon, they crested a rise and saw an odd sight in the dip beyond. Two prone figures were lying sprawled on the grass about two hundred feet from a small wood. Next to one, a horse was standing quietly, its reins having fallen over its head to hang down when - presumably - the rider fell off.
A less suspicious group of travellers would have gone down to investigate immediately, but the scattered bodies were probably one such group. Gorfang, Lynien and Eloy sat their mounts on the ridge and watched carefully. Gorfang quietly uncased his bow and readied it while they did. After a few moments, a movement was visible in the trees opposite the fallen figures. Gorfang whipped his bow up, drew, and loosed. The arrow vanished from view across the dip, and into the trees. The branches moved convulsively, and then a third figure staggered out, clutching his chest wherein the arrow had sunk. He collapsed into a seated position as Gorfang nudged Shamlakh into a run towards him. Lynien followed just behind him, but Eloy slid off his horse and went invisible, flanking the area in case the man was not alone.
As Gorfang rode past the two fallen forms he glanced at them. Both seemed to be breathing, and neither had obvious wounds. He carried on and dismounted in front of the man he'd shot, who'd just drunk a potion but didn't look as if it had done him any good. Behind him, Lynien stopped at the two prone figures. First she picked up the reins of the loose horse and secured it, then she went through the casualties' pockets. This revealed that a) they were indeed apparently unharmed, and b) they'd already been robbed.
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Gorfang regarded the man. He was well-dressed - very well-dressed, almost certainly noble-born. A well-made sword hung at his hip, but he'd made no move to draw it. He'd been carrying a very strange weapon, a long wooden staff-like object, thicker than a lance at one end and tapering to a flat end the diameter of a coin, tipped with a teardrop-shaped piece of filigree metal. It had no visible grips or attachments at the handle end. He'd laid it on the grass to search for his potion, but as Gorfang came up he laid his hand on it again. "What the hell is going on here?" he demanded in educated but strained tones. "I came to assist these poor fallen people, and someone shot me!" Gorfang grinned nastily. "Yes," he said, "me." The man proved his noble birth and lack of sense with his next statement. "Why did you do that, you fool?" he demanded angrily. Gorfang's smile vanished and he drew his weapons. The man siezed the wooden object convulsively, but fear flared in his eyes. Gorfang paused - he wasn't any challenge or threat in this state. "Care to reconsider those words?" he offered. The man froze. "uh, sorry," he said hesitantly, "but why did you shoot me?" Lynien came up to them at this point, just as Gorfang reached down and pulled his arrow out of the wounded man. The victim's eyes rolled up in his head and he keeled over sideways, coughing and bubbling as his lungs filled with blood, clearly dying. Lynien looked down on him in mild perplexity. "Are you injured somewhere else?" she asked the oblivious man.
No-one seemed inclined to try and save the man, so Eloy knelt at his side. He'd been studying the cult of Sabath for some time, and had reached the point where he was able to channel the small remaining amount of power left to his near-vanished god into divine magic. He cast a healing spell, hauling the unfortunate man back over the brink of death to merely critically wounded. Gorfang raised an eyebrow appreciatively; Eloy's healing had been tuned to leave a permanent scar, not a normal thing for priests though absolutely standard for orcs. The Master of Weapons turned back to the prisoner.
"What's the stick?" he demanded. "Oh, uh, it detects evil, yes, and undead," said the man, and it didn't take an expert to hear the feeble lie in his voice. Gorfang picked it up and turned it over in his hands. If he held it by the narrow end instead, he could conceivably hit someone with it - but it would probably break. Eloy used one of the powers Skufruss had added to Bereloth for him and cast an Indentify on the thing. "It's an Invigilator," he reported. This meant nothing to any of them. Lynien tried talking to him for a while to see if she could get any further.
Eloy now moved around behind the man, and unhooked the Murderblade from his belt. This weapon, which he'd carrried for four months without any idea what it was until Skufruss told him, was something he'd been wanting to test for some time. Now he planned to test it to see if it had any effect on his assassin training. Unbeknownst to him, Gorfang had moved around behind him, and was experimentally pointing the Invigilator at him, trying different words to see if he could get it to work.
Several seconds passed. Eloy felt the moment had come, his inner balance was set and the wounded man's weak point was there where he could see it. He struck like lightning, burying the bright blade of his axe in the man's shoulder, killing him instantly. At the same moment, Gorfang succeded in making the correct mental picture and triggering the Invigilator. A beam of pale violet light connected it to Eloy's back, and he staggered as he felt his muscles go weak. His first thought was that it had been a side-effect of the use of the Murderblade; but as he wheeled around and saw Gorfang holding the Invigilator and stifling a laugh he realized the truth. Cursing the orc, he shakily shed his backpack as he discoverered it was now too heavy for him. Lynien knelt among the small heap of loot from the three people and watched with interest.
Eloy wanted to kill the two victims as well, but Gorfang appeared to have other ideas, and strapped them across the one remaining horse as the party rode on for a while before camping just east of Rhorien.
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The two victims of the highwayman had come round. Some questioning found them to be Dorian and Weira - travellers, adventurers like themselves, newly set out from Rhorien to seek their fortunes in the ruins of the Desolation when they were shot off their horses. It was their first adventure, and Gorfang privately thought their chances of coming back were minimal. "Why not sign on with us instead?" he suggested, "we could use some henchmen." Lynien spoke softly in Selasht which there was no chance of them understanding. "Why?" she said simply. Gorfang grinned his terrifying toothy grin. "When we get to the Hammer," he said, "there'll be digging involved. Also, if the elves give us trouble, there's two more targets that won't be one of us." Lynien nodded in understanding, and turned to the two. "You can come, but you'll need to pay for your own share of the food, plus a bit for being rescued and of course rental of the horse." Weira's expression showed she knew it was her horse in the first place, but a glance at Gorfang, sitting whetting his weapons, showed argument was unwise. It was a moot point, for neither of them had any money - Lynien had it all, though they didn't know that...
 DM Note: I know I said 2 days at the table - but there wasn't a scale on the map and I had to guess. It's further than that. So a few more days' travlleing have been added. |
Seven days later, the travellers reached the edges of the Desolation. There was no border as such; no sudden change. Rather, over about thirty miles of travel, the neat farmlands and tidy villages of southern New Tellare dwindled away, replaced by grass and scrublands, which thinned, struggling plants replacing healthy ones as they moved further south. Finally, patches of grey ash became bigger and bigger and the vegetation disappeared completely, and they were into the edges of the Desolation.
After two day's travel through it, the progression reversed itself, and they began to see grass again, and then trees. They were come to the marches of Belamir, the leading edge of the reclamation of the elven lands from the scourge of the Desolation. Not regarded as part of Belamir proper, further in where the forests started, these lands were recovering, and would one day become part of the elven homeland for real. At the moment, they were a mix of grasslands and light woods, with grass and trees that became healthier as the travellers continued south. Birds began to sing, and small animals were visible from time to time. The place had an air of arboreal peace, that unique feeling of light and rich wholesomeness that marked any place where the Fair Folk had their abode.
The party hated it.
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The directions they'd been given were good. The road that led between Lomegor, thirty miles west of them, to Lantalaure in the east, passed close to the place they were making for. After a while, they could see the gap in the trees where the road was, and an hour or so later broke out of the trees into sight of their goal. The road skirted the edge of a clearing perhaps three hundred yards across, smooth and grassy. In the centre was a roughly circular patch of bare earth about a hundred yards in diameter, and in the centre of that was an earthern mound, about a hundred and fifty feet across and thirty feet high. The air was still, and there was no-one visible; but there was still a sense of threat in the air for some reason.
For long minutes, the group stood at the edge of the trees watching the clearing. Elves hiding in the woods on their own territory should have been utterly invisible; but the three adventurers had training and experience from all sorts of unlikely places. After a few minutes, they became aware that the clearing was being watched. Slowly, their eyes began to pick up the observers. Here, a slender body followed the line of a tree-trunk precisely; there, a curved arm and bowstave matched the angles of the branches around them to blend in with them. At least twenty elves were concealed around the clearing, hidden from all but the best scrutiny, alert for any intruders.
After some consideration and calculation, it was concluded that they'd estimated their journey time fairly accurately; Skufruss was due to scry them the next day. They decided to cross the clearing by the road and camp on the other side to wait for the Lord of Dragons to tell them what to do next, and moved through the trees to pick up the road, then rode past the mound and out of the other side of the clearing, before making camp a few hundred yards further on.
While the others settled to erecting tents, carefully gathering undeniably dead wood and starting a cookfire, Gorfang wandered back up the road to the mound. After a moment, Lynien and Eloy followed along, leaving Bog, Dorian and Weira to set up camp. Taking care to project an ignorant curiosity, Gorfang approached the mound, his red eyes taking in everything. As he reached a point about a dozen feet from it, ten long arrows appeared in front of him like magic, forming a ruler-straight line across his path. He sneered and walked over them, crushing several. A clear, musical voice called out; a voice that sounded constantly on the edge of song, though in this case stern - an elvish voice. "Return to your camp. This is a dangerous place, and no-one is permitted here." Gorfang paused. "Is is because I is green?" he asked sarcastically. "No," replied the elvish voice. "All are welcome to travel the road in peace, but the Mound is forbidden."
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Gorfang stepped forward again, but Eloy and Lynien stayed behind the row of arrows, poised for the trouble that seemed inevitable. The voice spoke again. "Please, turn back," it said. "We don't want to have to spill blood here." Gorfang laughed. "So, you are aware of the danger," he commented, and turned back. "Come out," he suggested, "and let's talk."
Three figures detached themselves from the trees and came into the clearing, though no closer than the edge of the bare earth. They were elves, of course, clad in light, flexible armour and adorned with camouflage colours. Each carried a sword and a bow. The leader was an elfwoman of arresting beauty.
As they emerged, Eloy quietly worked one of his spells and subtly changed his appearance about half-way towards that of an elf, achieving the effect of a half-elf. He almost chuckled as Milani half-turned and spoke in Elvish to one of her followers, who withdrew into the forest for a moment to pass instructions on. The ta'nara power he'd gained from Thykon's blood meant that he now spoke flawless elvish - though with a wood-elf dialect. He murmured quietly in Selasht to Gorfang as the latter approached, warning him that he might say some odd things, and asking the orc to play along. Gorfang, preferring mayhem to machination, rolled his mental eyes but nodded fractionally.
Eloy spoke up as soon as the two groups met, in the elventongue, and he laid on the diplomacy with a shovel. He apologized for his companions' lack of knowledge of the mound, portraying them as innocently curious about the thing as well as subtly distancing himself from them a little. Milani's face softened a little. Sabath's Eyes, thought Eloy, she's beautiful! "You have some elvish blood in you," she commented approvingly, "yet it is a pleasant surprise to find our language spoken so well by one who has." She switched to Low Erlyid, the common lingua franca spoken across most of Alair. "My apologies for our arrows; it is for your own protection. A great evil is pinioned beneath it." Eloy acknowledged the apology with a courteous sweep of his hand. "Come and join our fire, and we can tell tales," he offered. This was more diplomacy, because it was obvious the elves had orders to watch anyone this close to the Mound; he'd tacitly acknowledged this and offered a way to make it easier.
Gorfang, playing his part, stomped off into the forest muttering to himself. Crashing around in a seemingly random pattern, he managed to do a fairly accurate recce of the area as well as gauging the skills of the elvish guardians of the mound.
About an hour later, Milani and four other elves joined the campfire, and spent a convivial evening telling tales, singing songs, and listening with polite tolerance to Eloy's attempts to play tunes in return on his golden flute (interrupted by a bellow of "what a racket!" from Gorfang still lurking in the forest). Despite this musical faux pas, Eloy seemed to do quite well in his attempts to begin a seduction of the gorgeous elfmaid.
While all this was going on, Lynien also made some tests of the Marchwardens' skills, tuning herself to the forest environment until she was finally able to sneak up behind one of the archers and steal a potion from her belt without being caught. It was tough work, though, and her respect for their abilities rose.
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