DM Note: Just Allan and Derek this session, though Lynien was played as fully there..| DM Note: Just Allan and Derek this session, though Lynien was played as fully there.. |
As they gathered the corpses and concealed them, the shaking of the tower intensified, and the companions could feel it through their feet as the ground moved beneath them. If they were going to do anything more in the tower, time was getting short!
They explored the ground floor, finding that this was where the mechanics of the Academy took place; kitchens, stores, meeting halls, stables and so on. The stables were half-filled with hysterical, panicked horses, and Eloy freed them, though Gorfang felt the chances of them surviving out in the furnace of the city with dozens of dragons who'd worked up an appetite were slender. The wine cellars were a happy find, and they marked these for later plunder if the chance arose.
As they passed a wall near the stables, Bereloth startled Eloy by advising him that there was a concealed entrance in the wall. Anything hidden behind a secret door must be worth a look, they thought, and Lynien checked it over and disarmed two traps before the three descended cautiously into a narrow, dank corridor. Churning water and the slow movement of some kind of mechanism could be heard to the right, while faint cries for help came from ahead of them. Curious, they followed the cries for help into a cell block. Eloy cocked his head; the voice sounded elvish to him. Ideas began to occur to him.
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Gorfang peered into the cell from which the calls were coming. The inhabitant was up against the door and saw the approach of potential rescue before he recognized the rescuer. "Oh, hells - it's you!" he gasped. Gorfang grinned. The elf in the cell was the thief who'd robbed Gorfang in Vorsand the previous month. Gorfang snorted and moved on to the next cell, leaving the elf where he was. Eloy, always alert for information on elves, turned Leon's accent over in his mind. Probably a wood elf, he thought.
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The next occupied cell had a battered, scruffy, seedy-looking middle-aged human with a sharp eye in it. "What are you in here for?" asked Eloy. "I'm a forger, my name's Shadwell," said the man. Gorfang casually smashed his door. "You're free to go," he said off-handedly. Shadwell glanced at the stairs, where dust was sifting down as the tower was battered apart. "What, out there?" he asked fearfully. "Can't I stay with you?" Gorfang grunted in vague agreement. "What about Leon?" Shadwell asked nervously. "Who?" demanded Gorfang. Shadwell nodded at the cell with the elf in it. "We got talking, decent bloke for an elf, they're not what were were told they were, are you letting him go as well?" "Shut up," said Gorfang pleasantly, "or I'll kill you." The forger shrank back and said no more as he followed the three down the cell block.
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At the end was a cell occupied by a young woman. They almost missed her, because unlike the others she wasn't calling for help but sitting quite quietly. She seemed far more self-possessed and to have coped far better with imprisonment. Quite calmly she told them that she was condemmed to death for witchcraft - an achievement in this city of magic. Unlike the other two she seemed quite ready to take her chances in the wreck of Vorsand, and headed for the door as soon as Eloy freed her. Gorfang had already lost interest and was off to explore the mechanical noises - he had a good guess as to what they meant - but Eloy stopped the young witch and asked her name. "Sashia," she answered. Eloy bent close. "Go to Lossal," he said quietly, "seek the House of Sabath and ask for Crastinuc. May the Powers of Darkness protect you." She looked at him gratefully and smiled, then headed for the stairs and was gone.
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Meanwhile, Gorfang had followed the sounds of moving water to a door at the end of another corridor, which opened into a large room. He stood for a moment on the threshold feasting his eyes. His father had been an expert torturer, and here was a torture chamber such as his father and grandfather had only dreamed of.
Flowing water provided power to a wide range of heavy engines of excruciation, racks and wheels and crushers. Smaller tools of the trade were present in profusion, knives, gouges, screws, boots and so on. As Eloy came up behind him, Gorfang was looking at a huge water-powered engine designed to stretch and twist the human body in more simultaneous vectors than seemed possible, and his eyes were dancing. The orc glanced at Eloy and his thoughts were transparent; Eloy shuddered. Then an idea occurred to Gorfang. "The elf." he said with satisfaction.
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Ten minutes later they had Leon the elf strapped into the machine. A punch from Gorfang had rendered him unconcious for this process but as soon as the orc began to apply pressure he woke up and began screaming with some enthusiasm. Gorfang was in raptures. The machine was so beautifully made that, despite his only having had a basic training in his father's profession, it responded perfectly to his every intention like a finely tuned musical instrument. In no time at all, Leon had confessed his real purpose in being in Vorsand - and indeed his attempted 'robbery' of Gorfang. It was all to try and get him within arm's reach of Skufruss ... for Leon was no footpad but an assassin sent by the elves to slay Skufruss if he could.
Eloy was interested. "How good are you?" he asked, "who have you inhumed?" The elf, sweat pouring down his agonized face, reeled off a list of names, none of which meant anything at all to the three adventurers. Gorfang grinned mirthlessly at him. "Skufruss is fled," he informed the man, "his sceptre is broken - by us - and his dragons are tearing the city apart as we speak." Leon stared at him, his pain almost forgotten. "Then my mission is accomplished," he said urgently, "and we are on the same side! We should be working together - " he broke off as Gorfang lunged snarling for several of the more ominous levers of the device he was strapped to. Eloy stopped him. "Gorfang; a word in private?" he said quietly. Grumbling, the orc went off a little way and they talked.
"I can use this guy," he said urgently. "He's no threat or challenge, and you've seen how the machine works." He cast a quiet Detect Law, getting a positive result, and added, "He'll likely keep his word if he promises to do what I tell him." Gorfang shrugged and Eloy went back to the elf, slacking some of the ropes a little. "I'm offering you a lifeline here," he said. "We are inadvertently on the same side, and I think I can persuade him to let you go - but you will owe me. I will require you to go to my temple in Lossal and wait there; at some future time you will guide me into Belamir, having taught me all you can about the place. I assure you, this is not a course of action that will bring harm to the elvish people." Leon grimaced. "What choice have I?" he commented. "Yes, I agree." Eloy freed the assassin, and gave him a scroll of Teleport from his stock. "I will find you when I need you." The elf nodded, and siezed Shadwell by the shoulder. The forger was numb with terror now, and didn't move as Leon read the scroll. The pair of them vanished and Eloy turned back to Gorfang and Lynien.
Lynien went back to the forehall to retrieve the loot from Rinlan, the Boggart and Zanjalla, while Eloy began stacking the torture equipment Gorfang had chosen around the machine he'd been using, then went across the cellars to the wine-cellar and added some of what appeared the best of the wine - including some bottles that were clearly magical - to the heap.
Gorfang climbed back up the centre tower to the Garden of Death, and moving slowly and carefully, harvested the very best of the poison plants he could scoop up. All the time he was doing this, the shaking was getting worse, and at one point a large piece of masonry crashed into one of the acid lakes, splashing corrosive fluid onto the wall next to Gorfang. The fumes released as it burned its' way into the stone made the orc cough and he headed back to the stairs. As he did so, he passed a place where a dragon was smashing its way in, and reached the windows looking north to the North Tower. Which was moving.
Gorfang took a couple of involuntary steps to the window, and looked out at the tottering tower. Slowly, it leaned over towards the cliff-wall behind the Dark Tower, the speed of its' movement accelerating as it began to disintegrate. Great slabs seperated from the mass as it struck the cliff wall, rebounded, and plunged down into the courtyard below. A mighty bellow of triumph from the dragons outside marked its' fall. Time to leave! thought Gorfang, and descended again. Swiftly adding his poisons to the pile of plunder, he used his Ring of Slow Teleport to send it all to Gadûhvrás. Then he shouldered a beer barrel that had been too big to add and the three headed for the exit.
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Reaching the massive front doors of the central tower, they looked out across the courtyard of the Tower. It was strewn with rubble, especially close to the towers themselves, but not enough to block their progress. In the courtyard itself stood the Elf Hammer, calmly scanning the sky. As they watched, a comparatively small red dragon stooped down and blew a wash of flames over its metallic surface. Completely unaffected, the Hammer reached out as the dragon passed and siezed it in one massive hand. Ignoring the mighty lizard's frantic flapping and twisting, it drew the dragon down and took it in both hands before wringing its' neck like a chicken's. It dropped the twitching corpse with a crash into the courtyard, and the companions saw now that three or four other draconic corpses lay there.
Using the moment when the Elf Hammer dropped the dead dragon, another swooped down, but remained out of range as it cast a spell. Instantly, most of the courtyard liquified, and the Elf Hammer sank into the mud to its' knees. The dragon reversed the spell, trapping the mighty construct in place, but the companions were not watching any more.
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With no warning, their perceptions seemed to recede into the distance. Sight dimmed, hearing was muffled, scents vanished. Strangely, they felt no concern at this; in some deep way, the sensation was benign. Each heard a different voice in their head; Eloy, the sly, cunning purr of Sabath; Gorfang, the brave, brisk, comradely commander's voice of Hektis; Lynien, the voice of Nebekeshut that was like the lead-slab footfalls of inescapable doom. Each voice, though said exactly the same words; "LEAVE THE CITY NOW BY THE QUICKEST MEANS." As reality rushed back onto all three of them, each was in no doubt that this was exactly what they should do. Eloy and Gorfang slipped on their Rings of Flying, while Lynien donned the wings Ohmdalz had loaned her. All three took to the air, and even in these straits the two males observed with relish the effect of the wings' rapid movement on their female comrade's chest.
As they lifted from the ground, the sun lifted over the eastern cliffs and dawn broke over Vorsand - and everything changed forever.
A vast figure flickered into place over the Dark Tower. The Elf Hammer was huge, but this dwarfed it, soaring above the cliffs and gazing out impassively as the dragons roiled and banked away in shock. It appeared to be Skufruss, hundreds of feet tall, and transparent, and as they watched he spoke in a thunderous voice that rolled down the valley, swamped all other sound, battered back and forth from the cliffs, reached every dragon, every survivor huddled in the city, ringing in their ears like a knell of doom.
"YOU HAVE DESTROYED MY CITY AND MY TOWER, REPTILES! NOW... YOU SHALL TASTE MY VENGEANCE!"
Gorfang, Eloy and Lynien looked at each other, and there was no need to say the words, Let's get out of here! They soared into the air, keeping close to the western cliffs, heading upwards as fast as their assorted flight magics could carry them. "The fire-heights!" cried Gorfang, and they headed for these.
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Skufruss - or the projection of Skufruss - extended his arms, hands open and palms up, and raised them slowly as if lifting something. With a grinding, grating rumble, the ground split open in a myriad places all across the city, and tendrils, shoots, roots, branches began to grow with terrifying speed, shouldering buildings aside. At first, it looked like vegetation, but as the growths grew bigger they glinted and clinked against stones, walls and each other, revealing their true nature. They were made of metal.
Nothing could resist the iron tendrils. They pushed between stones, splitting walls and crumbling them, they drilled through stone, they lifted the ground to topple structures in ruins. Anything living caught on the ground was doomed. The three adventurers saw three dragons who had landed to feast or plunder pierced through and through and lifted dead into the air as the iron jungle continued to grow, entangled and riddled. The survivors of the city's population fared no better. None escaped. Only the airborne dragons were out of reach of the iron jungle.
Only the Dark Tower and its' precincts were undamaged by the growth. The jungle reached the battered and breached walls of the courtyard and twined and twisted around them, clinging to the stone and climbing. Elsewhere in the city, the jungle levelled off at around ten feet high, but the tendrils coninued to climb the remains of Dark Tower until it was completely enwrapped. Only the Elf Hammer, still embedded in the rock of the courtyard, remained exposed, its mighty head swivelling as it looked from side to side.
Skufruss was not finished. His image lifted its hands to the sky, and then brought them down slowly. The un-natural clouds piled up by the dragons' attack dissipated, but rain began to fall once more. Each drop kindled in the air as it fell until the sky was filled with falling drops of burning fire. Flame rained onto the wracked city of Vorsand.
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The three adventurers scrambled for the caves where the dragons of Vorsand had once lived, just in time as flaming droplets spattered across the rock outside. Looking out, they saw the dragons beneath the rain of fire were mostly unworried as it approached. Most were fire dragons and didn't fear heat. Underestimating the might of Skufruss' magic, however proved to be a fatal mistake. As the droplets struck each dragon, they sizzled into the leathery hides, coils of smoke arising as reptilian flesh was burned. In that instant, the dragons' attack on Vorsand disintegrated. With roars of rage which spiralled into screams of agony, the monsters scattered, flying as fast as possible to get out of range and away from the city. Only Saryn Darrath appeared less affected, and he looked around at the city he had planned to make his own with a snarl before winging upwards and southwards.
The rain of fire sealed the doom of Vorsand. Any living thing that had somehow escaped the iron jungle was caught in the fiery torrent and burned. Anything flammable remaining was ignited, and the city became a sea of fire. Wood flamed like paper, metal ran like water, flesh erupted into vapour. Only the iron tendrils, the Dark Tower and the Elf Hammer appeared unaffected. Skufruss' image turned its head slowly, looking up and down the holocaust it had invoked with satisfaction, and vanished.
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Safe in the dragon-lair where they had taken refuge, the three settled back to wait for the flaming rain to end, and occupied the time by plundering the previous owner's hoard. They rather expected the fiery rain to peter out in ten minutes or so, but hour after hour it went on, searing all traces of life from the ruins of the city of Vorsand. It struck Gorfang that Shamlakh the warg was somewhere under that. Even the harsh brutal orc cared for someone, and that someone was Shamlakh. He was quite grateful, therefore, when Eloy offered to scry for the missing wolf, though neither were optimistic about his chances.
Amazingly, though, Shamlakh was alive. The warg had somehow managed to cram himself into a tiny cavity between the outer face of the northern city wall and the cliffside, where the falling fire couldn't quite reach him - as long as he didn't move. Blood and ash streaked his coarse fur; Shamlakh was badly wounded.
Eloy unpacked and read out a scroll of Anti-Magic Field, As the dullness of an unmagical environment settled over them, Gorfang poised the Opener of the Way and cut a hole through into the back of the crevice the warg was hiding in. Both of them felt an instability in the results; Eloy's spell nearly failed, and the opening Gorfang carved oscillated and fluctuated in size. The massive discharge of epic magic required to inflict Skufruss' vengeance on his city must have distorted the arcanosphere over a wide area. Shamlakh tumbled into the cave in a rush of bloodstained fur, and Gorfang closed the hole. The warg was in serious pain, but very pleased to be rescued. His experiences seemed to have changed him somehow; he seemed more aware of the conversation around him than he had been. As Eloy wielded his healing wand, the warg glanced around at the sorted and piled treasure in the cave and chuckled throatily. "You and your sharp shiney stuff," he commented dryly.
Still the rain of flame showed no signs of relenting. With a combination of the remaining duration of the Anti-Magic, Gorfang's Slow Teleport ring and Eloy's Dimension Door spell, they broke through into eight more of the dragon lairs while they waited, amassing a sizable heap of valuable and enchanted items. The hoards were not as big as the dragons owning them would normally accumulate; their owners had not been free to roam and pillage as they naturally would - and the nearest source of magical treasure, the Dark Tower, was off-limits to them. Nonetheless, it was an impressive haul. They even managed to catch a liitle sleep, secure in their cave.
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Twenty hours after it began, the rain of fire dwindled and stopped as the stupendously powerful spell finally ended. Emerging carefully, the companions looked down into the valley of the Versate pass upon a scene utterly changed from the city they had known. The north and south walls were largely intact, though there were great rents where the attacking dragons had smashed down groups of defenders, and the battered, punctured central and south towers of the Dark Tower itself stood untouched. Lonely on the west cliff, Gozan's Tomb still perched above the city in silent vigilance. The city itself had vanished; in its place the metal branches, creepers and saw-edged leaves of the iron jungle filled the valley from side to side. The ground beneath the metal tangle, and around the edges, was utterly dead, every scrap of life scoured from it by the dark fire that had rained down on it, only grey ash remaining. It was familiar; with a shudder, the watchers realized that it strongly resembled that of the Desolation. Clearly, Skufruss had inherited more than a city from his late unlamented father....
A movement caught Eloy's eye, and he looked up, to see a distant winged form crossing the valley high in the sky. A dragon, probably scouting for the end of the holocaust. It circled a couple of times and then banked away and vanished into the north. "Time to go," said Gorfang. Lynien was still gazing down into the scourged city. "There's one thing," she commented, "everyone will think we died in that."
With the aid of Gorfang's Slow Teleport, the companions faded slowly from the wrack of Vorsand into the pleasant leafy grounds of Gorfang's manor outside Lossal. The simple sight of living trees and grass, and the sound of birds, was a relief after the unremitting devastation they had just left, and all three relaxed as they walked into the house.
Over the next couple of hours they sorted through and tallied the loot before stashing it. I may need to add a vault to this place, it's going to become a target, thought Gorfang as they mounted up for the ride to Lossal.
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On their arrival in Lossal, Eloy announced that he had business to take care of and would meet the others later. Lynien merely nodded, but Gorfang's eyes lit up with mischief, and when the assassin headed off towards his developing temple, Gorfang attempted to shadow him. Perhaps the fact that the orc had been pestering him to reveal the location of this structure for most of the ride over had alerted Eloy to Gorfang's desire to find and presumably interfere with the Temple of Sabath made him suspicious, for he was aware of being followed almost immediately he had set out. Resolving to go nowhere near his temple with Gorfang on his tail, he rode in circles until the orc got the message and peeled off towards the palace, at which point Eloy fell in beside him radiating innocence.
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Gorfang was actually intending to try and wheedle any information about new temples in the city out of their old acquaintance Cordwin. However, as he marched up to the well-guarded doors he saw the guards' eyes widen, and one ejaculated; "Oh! He's here! Please go on in, Lord, he's expecting you." and gestured towards the doors. This reaction continued as they progressed through the palace, until they were finally shown into one of the smaller audience halls.
This had been comprehensively stripped of its finer furnishings and refitted as a war room. Maps covered walls and tables, and a mixture of courtiers and military men stood around the Governor of Lossal, Alael Linril, who was clearly the hub of activity, directing, deciding. Gorfang stumped across to him, and Linril looked up and smiled tiredly. "Excellent!" he said briskly, "I was hoping you would make it." Gorfang glowered at him, remembering that this had once been his job, but returned to his earlier thinking. "Any new churches in the city?" he demanded. Linril eyed him, hoping that a moment's reflection would make this statement make sense, but somehow it didn't. He strove to drag the conversation back on track. "Vorsand is gone -" he began. "We know," interrupted Gorfang. "We were there." Linril's jaw dropped. "And you survived?" he blurted. "Hey, I'm invincible," shot back Gorfang. He went on to relate the significant events of the last twenty-four hours, the breaking of the sceptre, the dragon assault, the abandoned city, the vengeance of Skuffrus and the desolation that remained - without aluding in too much detail to their own parts in some of these happenings.
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The governor sat down with a sigh. "So, now we are on our own," he said. "The capital and the Lord of Dragons are gone, and soon things will crumble. We must prepare; we may be attacked from any angle. Dalaghendor, Tellare, the Kordasa, all may see this as an opportunity to add to their territory. Other governors and lords of Tellare may decide to try and grab it all. Myself, I am governor of Pepterus and of Lossal within it, and I will protect and care for what has been entrusted to me."
Gorfang smiled reassuringly. "Relax; rest assured, we are here, and we will defend this city with his life," pointing at Eloy, "but where's his temple?" Linril looked from one to another of them. "I suggest you talk to each other," he said acidly, "I can't think of anyone else more likely to know the answer." Gorfang huffed. "Which do you want on your walls when the attack comes," he demanded, "me or a lot of puffy priests?" Linril looked him squarely in the eye, not giving an inch. "I expect both," he said in a steely voice. "How large an army have you ever commanded, yourself, in person?" Gorfang's lack of an answer was evocative. "No, but I have; command and organization, the strategic, are my field. Battle, mayhem and tactics are yours. Each of us can contribute what we are best at." Gorfang snorted. "Why should I defend this place anyway?" he grumbled. "Because you were governor, and it remains your home to some extent. You have rank, position and land here. This city observes 'Gorfang Day'. Those things need defending - and Gorfang Deathdrinker never walks away from a fight." Gorfang was beginning to understand why this man was considered a skilled politician. Eloy slid a typically weaselly argument in; "Governor, you have here the greatest warrior in the world. Why not make him your warlord?" Linril and Gorfang looked at each other, considering this....
And beyond the walls of Lossal, the pulse of Northern Alair's mightiest nation was stumbling to a halt, slain by the deathblow of its' capital's destruction. The habits and functions of law, order and process continued, for the moment, but the control and strength of the centre was gone, and the mortification was creeping through the veins of the body politic, weakening its cohesion, laying it open to forces both within and without that, once unchecked, would pull it this way and that until it disintegrated, bleeding its' people and culture and economy into plunder, bloodshed, ambition and chaos. Tarlanor had fallen.
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