God damn, another one not written up… here are my game notes, from which I’ll reconstruct the story…

A few hardy sheep and goatherds maintain lonely outposts on the moors within a few miles of the ruins, but no nearer and always within sight of the rugged track that serves as the only real road across the heathland. The group will approach one of these as they near the site of Nirokilon, to find a grizzled older man, and two younger but equally hard-looking younger men on the porch. They claim to be a sheep herder and his sons, but if the PCs make their Awareness Rolls, they will note subtle clues that this is a lie: it’s mid-day, and sheep can be seen on nearby hillsides, but no one seems to be watching them; all three men have the distinctive calluses on their hands of trained fighters; the “father” seems oddly articulate for a peasant shepard; and if all else fails, the glint of chainmail will be glimpsed beneath the homespun clothes of one of the “sons” (they all seem over-dressed for a warm day).

They are in fact a Fire Knight of the Order of the Iron Claw and two Flame Warriors, left to guard this nearest habitation to the abandoned city. The Korönians murdered the actual shepard and his one son, whose bodies were dumped in a nearby bog (trackers will find the drag marks if they look). Once the Knight percieves that their ruse has been discovered, he will give the command to attack, drawing his own mace from its hiding place on the porch, attacking either Erol or Devrik, whoever is closest. The two younger men will reveal their gladius’ and go for the other one and for Toran.

All Fire Knights have a limited immunity to fire-based magics, including Fire Nerves, via the standard amulets they wear and the brutal training they undergo; the Flame Warriors have only thier own toughness, but that’s enough to keep them on their feet after a blast from Mariala – they lose a turn, and can only block if attacked, but they don’t go down! A second attack causes them to lose two turns (but they can still block), and a third will bring them down. The Knight only loses a single turn, no matter how much he’s Fire Nerved.

If any of the Korönians survive the fight, they won’t be easy to make talk… no amount of physical pain will do it, but maybe the PCs can come up with something psychological…

In any case, they should be able to figure out that the others have gone into the sinking city. They should realize that they would be visible in their approach to any watcher on the Observatory, the tallest remaining structure.

But there is enough cover (stone walls, ruined building, low scrub) to make stealth possible. Trackers should have little trouble following the tracks into the ruins.

The group will have to fight another Knight and two Warriors on the steps to the only entrance to the ruined Observatory; they didn’t post a lookout on the roof due to the sever instability of the eastern half of that level.

Once passed the door guards, the group will have to move stealthily through the ruined building, where three Warriors are scouring the remains, looking for anythign useful to their Order. They will be found in the Library, assuming the PCs don’t make any suspicious nosies as they approach.

The leader of the band, along with the Third Fire Knight and two more Flame Warriors, have discovered Koltorin’s private rooms, and the hidden passage beneath the rotted rug that leads to what they seek… they gave the bedroom itself only a cursory look, before descending. They gave the ruined antechambers even less of a look, or they might have realized that the large black chair in the southern room, covered as it is in mud, debris and slime, is made of solid onyx…

The passage beneatht the rug is a shaft crudely lined with brick, and rusting iron handholds, that descends ten meters, debouching into a slightly larger chamber of weeping dirt, braced with rotting wood. To the west is a break-in to a tunnel lined with the psudeostone of the Ancients – apparently naturally shifting forces cracked the almost indestructible material, which allowed someone (Koltorin? The Khundari?) to widen an opening .

The passage ends in a flight of stairs going down another three meters, and a blank wall of psuedostone. Water trickles down the gently sloping hall, and down the stairs, forming a pool about 50 centimetrs deep. But mud stains on the walls would indicate that the water level has been as high as half a meter above the top of the stairs.

The only way to open the secret door is to place a hand in the center of the wall and simply will it open – like a great many Ancient devices, it is psionically activated.

Inside the room revelaed when the door slides silently open, is a low platform around a central column of black stone that seems to absorb all light. As with most Ancient facilities, a diffuse pearly glow seems to emenate from the very air in the chamber. The four men standing before the pillar (it’s hard to tell if it’s round or square due to the intense nature of its light absorbtion) have their backs to the door, and if the group is quiet may not notice them for a moment.

They are all intently focused on a crystal globe that one of them is holding… about the size of a large coconut, it glows with a pulsing purple light that’s almost beyond the visible spectrum for humans. Once the Korönians do notice the intruders, the Knight will lead the two Warriors into battle against them, while the Knight Commander continues attuning himself to the Ancient artifact.

About the time the first of his men goes down he will shout in triumph, raising the globe toward the black pillar, screaming that the unbelievers will be the first to die under Koltorin’s weapon! For a moment nothing happens, then the column of blackness begins to dissapate, like a fog slowly blowing away into nothingness. What’s  revealed seems to take even the Commander aback – it’s a ginormous spider body, with the upper body of a man in place of its own upper thorax. The humanoid part is of jet black skin, with white hair, glowing faceted red eyes and a large mouth full of razor sharp teeth. The spider body is black with a white gray-spotted underbelly, the legs white, fading to blood red at the claws.

It wields a trident and a long knife, as well as its two forward claws. Each turn it gets two attacks, plus any TA it may gain. Attacks can be any combination of it’s weapons, but only once for each one (except claws, which can be used twice). It also casts a psychic “web” that attmepts to ensnare and put its prey to sleep. Each time a victim fails a mental roll, he/she accrues 10 (MF) or 20 (CF) Fatigue Points.

While the demon has strong armour, it is particularly vulnerable to fire, which it hates and fears. If it takes real damage, and particularly fire damage, it will attempt to bound past the humans and flee up the passage. It moves very fast, and if it makes it into the passage it will elude any pursuit, escaping onto the moors. If this happens, it probably won’t be the last we hear of it, as it begins a reign of night-time terror in the surrounding region.

The Korönians will fight beside the PCs, once they relaize they have no control over the creature – the orb only freed it. Which is why even the insane Koltorin didn’t try to relase and use the void-spawned monster. If the Grandmaster had bothered to read Koltorin’s journal, which was mouldering but readable on his desk in the bedroom, he would have learned that the Mad Astrologer had come to belive it took four people to properly control whatever was held in the “black stasis column.” He didn’t know what it was, only that it was immensely powerful, powerful enough to frighten even the Ancients who imprisoned it.

If Grandmaster Yoridar is killed, it will have a certain impact on the Darikazi civil war; and if he is taken alive and held by the Arushali authorities, it could have even more unexpected consequences!

Besides some fine weapons on the Darikazi, there are several valuable books in readable condition, and several new spells for the magic-weilding PCs, perhaps a religious treatise for Vulk, as well. Amongst the gold and gems in Koltorin’s chest will be a Matrix Crystal attuned to Yalva – roll 2 + 1d10 to determine how much of a benefit Devrik will get from it once he attunes himself to it.

The Arushali Crown will confiscate most of the 150,00 gp in actual treasure,  however, leaving the Hand with a 10% “finders fee.” The Star Council will, of course, take over the Ancient site, sealing it off as too dangerous for further exploration.

Yet another re0cap that will have to wait on some free time… >sigh<

But it was really cool – pirates, a great sea battle, a devastating Kraken attack, shipwreck, an underwater battle with shark-men, and a new undersea warship of the Tritani!

The story of the retrieval of the Princess, her subsequent capture by enemy forces, the revelation that the enemy was the Earl of Yorma (apparently under the control of, or replaced by, the Vortex), and the eventual “rescue” and escape from Kar Urkonis will be forthcoming, when the chronicler has a spare hour or two.

In the meantime, look to Erol’s journal entry, under the “Private Lives” category, for one Kildoran, ex-gladiator, ex-pirate, hardened warrior’s take on the events…

In the days following their meeting with the King and the bestowing of their new estates, the Hand of Fortune became immersed in exploring and furnishing their new digs, studying the condition of their rental properties, as well as learning the names and occupations of their tenants.

The morning after they had moved their possessions from the Earl of Kinen’s townhouse to their own new homes (were they looked meager indeed, in all that space), the group met outside the Green Tower. Looming 25 meters into the sky, the ancient black stonework was covered in a riot of growing, green plants, many of which currently bore blooms in a rainbow of spring colors, beginning about four meters above the ground.

Mariala led her friends on a tour of the premises, right up to the wide expanse of the rooftop, where they enjoyed a panoramic view of the city. While the Tower may not have all the modern conveniences of newer homes, it did seem to suite the needs of a solitary mage quite nicely. And in any case, Mariala was bursting with ideas for imporvements…

The rest of the morning and early afternoon was spent touring the decadent opulence of Vulk’s Krendan House, the stately comfort of Devrik’s Twin Gables, the fortress-like security of Erol’s Ironstone, and the dark grandeur of Korwin’s Safewell House. The last visit of the day was to Khundari House, a large edifice as yet empty of all furnishings.

Along the way, they met many of the denizens of their new neighborhood, most of whom turned out to be renters of one or the other of the companions –  many of the homes and businesses in New District were owned by the six estates.

Among the colorful citizens they chatted with that day were:

Rezik Khordam is a rather elderly but still hale alchemist/apothecary. The apothecary side of things is not his real interest, but he maintains the business both out of a sense of responsibility to the neighborhood, and as auxiliary support for his true passion, alchemical research. He seems a good-hearted man, and he warns the companions of the Zalik-mal influence in the district.

“Though they’ve learned not to try their tricks on me,” he said with a dry chuckle. “Not after a few nasty skin rashes, anyway.”

Alessa Dorind is a plump, middle aged woman who runs a very popular bakery just south of the Green Tower. Her green tower cakes are famous even beyond the city, and popular with visitors coming to see the amazing vertical garden, and she insisted on feeding the friends several when they visited her shop. They were, indeed, quite good.

Bartum Hosath a tall, thin, ascetic man of around 45, is a scribe and seller of boths inks and papers, from the mundane to the exotic, including a red-gold ink of his own creation that is in great demand by the nobility as well as manuscript artists. He also dealt in the illicit Lyrin Oil trade, Mariala noted when she deciphered certain hieroglyphics chalked on his countertop…

Old Belos is a large, good humored man of indeterminate age, who runs a popular cook shop in the Flames Court Market. His bulk belies his tremendous strength, and he is known far and wide for his delicious pot-boil. Indeed, Korwin, once he tasted a bowlful, couldn’t shut up about it!

Brandis Nayfal is a bluff, friendly man of middle years. He is a well-off money changer and usurer. The twin towers of his home/office are well known to all as one of the most secure places in the city – not least because of his twin body guards, Tarim and Karim, exotic ebony warriors from the far southern jungles of mysterious Koruik. One is always with him, and the other always on guard at his home.

Jebin Holdar is a young man who has just recently inherited his family’s candle making business. He keeps the high-end, fancy candles for sale in his own small shop, although most of his regular output is sold to the local chandler. Mariala and Vulk both buy several fancy scented candles.

Raldan Porfur is a middle aged man, bald as a stone, who runs the local chandlery, essentially a one-stop shopping emporium where you pay for the convenience of finding most of the items on your list in one place. A quiet man, but very, very sharp when it comes to business.

Harkem Dhal is a small, ferret faced man in his thirties, he runs a large pawn shop in the area. Not especially popular, his neighbors grudgingly agree that he is honest in his dealings, if personally unpleasant.

Rena Cleftin is a matronly woman in her 50s who runs a largish cook shop on Onyx Street, and is a friendly rival of Old Belos. Rumor has it that the two are secret lovers of many years…

Merik Blezdan is a tall, well muscled man in his forties, rumored to have been a gladiator in the Republic in his youth. Today he owns and operates the local sporting venue, Rekka’s Arena. Although the Taruthani Games are illegal in Nolkior, tourney-like contests are permitted (not to the death, though of course accidents do happen), as are fights between wild animals and between animals and warriors. Merik is friendly and straight-forward, and lives a pleasant bachelor life, taking most his meals at Belos’ cook shop. He invited Devrik and Erol to feel free to use his facilities for sparring, when the venue isn’t open… and the others too, of course, he hastened to add at Vulk and Korwin’s sharp look.

Arlin Peltoz is a man in his late 50s who is the proprietor of the Swans Sorrow Inn, the largest and fanciest drinking and lodging establishment in the district. Home of the infamously potent Swantini, they have nightly entertainment of music, dancing or literary readings on the small stage in the main room. Private rooms for drinking, eating and meeting are available. They met him while strolling the booths of the Flames Court Market, where he invited them to a welcoming bash he was throwing that evening in honor of the new Margarve.

“Everyone who’s anyone in the district will be there,” he assured Mariala, kissing her handing true genteel fashion. “And a great many others, too.”

Seria Holdar is a tall, stately woman in her late 30s, proprietress of the Rolling Rock Public House, the main rival to the Swan’s Sorrow, although they have no rooms for over night guests. It is a rowdier crowd, less sophisticated, who patronize her place, although she allows no fights and discourages overtly illegal activity.

The day’s tour ended with a visit to the opulent Blue Lotus Baths, one of the most popular in the city. The manager, Methos Dorukal, is plump, effete and a famous epicurean, and he fawned shamelessly over group, especially Mariala, who was rather shy about the whole thing at first. Devrik tried to make a suit of armor out towels, as protection against Methos’ leers, while Vulk and Korwin took to the sybaritic luxury instantly, and Erol just took it all in stride. Toran spend most of his time in the scraping room and avoiding the water.

It was late afternoon before they all made it back to their new homes, relaxed and mellow, to rest up before the party at the Swan’s Sorrow at sundown. Toran, who was staying at Vulk’s until he could acquire furniture for Khundari House, was the only one who didn’t take a nap, instead using his free time to oil his crossbow.

The Hand of Fortune arrived at the Swan’s Sorrow 15 minutes after sundown, fashionably late, as both Vulk and Korwin had insisted they must be. This allowed Mariala to make “an entrance,” and all heads turned to look as she entered the room. As their host greeted her, there was applause from the other guests, and soon everyone had a drink in their hand and the mingling began.

Several drinks later, as Mariala was chatting gaily with young Jebin Holdar, she was shocked to find the drink she had just been handed dashed from her hand, even as she raised it to her lip! She looked in surprise into the strained, concerned face of Brandis Nayfal. Behind him loomed his muscle-slabbed bodyguard, face as impassive as ever.

“My most sincere apologies, Lady Mariala,” he said quietly, leaning in and turning her away from young Jebin, who just looked bewildered. “I had to act, I fear your life was at stake… a few moments ago, Tarim drew my attention to the bar, where several cups were waiting to be picked up. The servant who gathered them onto his serving tray paused and emptied something from a small a small packet into one of the cups, a very suspicious act I thought. But when I saw him hand you that very cup, m’lady, I knew I had to act! Again, I apologize for such a melodramatic action, but I feared I wouldn’t reach you through this crowd in time…”

Mariala was more than a little buzzed, and she frowned at her rescuer. “But why would anyone try to poison me? and… where is that waiter…””

Again, Nayfal leaned in and lowered his voice. “I’m afraid I lost the man in the crowd in my haste to reach you, m’lady. As for the why… in my line of work I have, of necessity, my eyes and ears in the underworld of the city – the best way to forestall attacks on my interests. But just today I heard some faint rumors that the Zalik-mal is wroth with you, over this recent contretemps of the Royal Regalia. No more than hints, that they planned to pay you back, but I had thought to bring them to your attention this evening when the opportunity presented itself. I never dreamed they would move so quickly, nor so publicly…”

With a distracted thank you, and a promise of an appropriate reward for his vigilance, Mariala turned to seek out her friends. As she made her way to the bar, where Devrik and Erol were drinking, she cast Deana’s Perception. The emotional tenor of the room revealed itself to her inner eye, but the cacophony of emotions was overwhelming. Happiness, attraction, anger, lust, envy, sympathy – they all made it impossible to pinpoint the one flash of sharp hostility she sensed, briefly.

By the time she was able to explain what was going on to her friends, and they were able to extract Vulk from the private room where he’d been entertaining a new friend, the trail was too cold to follow. The group spent the rest of the party in close proximity, not drinking and watching as surreptitiously as possible for any further attacks. But everything seemed normal, and eventually the party began to wind down. It was after midnight when the friends finally made their way out of the inn.

As they stood in the circle of light cast by the inn’s great entrance lamp, discussing whether or not they should all stay in one house that night, the sudden twang of a crossbow split the air, followed almost instantly by a thunk as a bolt embedded itself in a post less than an inch from Vulk’s right ear. Everyone ducked – too little, too late.

But the would-be assassin apparently had no desire to try again, with the element of surprise gone.

“There!” Toran cried, pointing to a dark shape that flitted into the shadows across the street. They all took off in hot pursuit, Toran, with his dark-adapted eyes, leading the way. They chased the bowman down several alleys, until Toran had a clear shot – a throwing star flew from his hand, and the fleeing man went down with a cry, clutching his left thigh. His crossbow clattered to the pavement, and he ignored it as he stumbled to his feet and limped on.

Toran grabbed the dropped weapon in passing, along with his bloodied throwing star. They were gaining on the fugitive now, and they saw him turn into the shadowy doorway of one of the entrances to Rekka’s Arena. They pelted to a stop before the door, pausing before plunging in.

“This is a trap, of course,” Devrik said. No one disagreed. “And we’re going in anyway, of course.” Again, no one disagreed, although only Devrik was really armed, if you didn’t count daggers and throwing stars, and a crossbow with only the one bolt Vulk had pulled from the post.

Inside the faint light shed by the three-quarters of the lesser moon that hung low in the sky did little to illuminate their surroundings, which seemed to be some sort of training room. But the open door on the far side of the chamber, where the pale rose moonlight shone on the sands of the arena, made it pretty clear where they were supposed to go. Devrik muttered a few words and his sword flickered into fiery life, while Vulk summoned his holy armor and Korwin cast his Frost Blade. And as his friends stepped out onto the arena floor, Erol headed for a door at the back of the room…

The arena was a square space about 15 meters on a side, and once the group reached the middle, there was a sudden flare of light to their right as several torches were lit in the stands above them. Revealed in the flickering light were about a dozen men, all in dark clothes and with masks over their faces, all except their apparent leader. This man, like the Hand, was dressed in party clothes and he wore no mask. Devrik recognized him as one of the guests at the party… owner of a… produce warehouse, he wanted to say?

“I don’t think I caught your name at the party,” Devrik grated out, making no attempt, for once, to modulate the frightening timbre of his ravaged voice.

“No, I made sure of that, you witless oaf,” the man snarled down at him, his own voice a very pleasant tenor, if laced with rage just now. “I am Jerin Kervisan, and you bastards, with your bitch queen leader there, killed my brother. Along with a lot of good men. And now you’re going to learn what it means to cross the the pale rose light! You and your precious new king! I may not be able to touch him – yet – but he’ll find it hard to come by new agents when the city hears the story of your deaths!”

He raised his hand, and two panels in the wall below him, directly in front of the Hand, rose up and from the black holes came low growls. Slowly, two shadows seemed to separate from the darkness, and slink onto the rose-tinted white sands of the arena. They quickly resolved into two huge black cats, panthers of the southern rain forests, whose eyes seemed to glow green. They caught sight of the party, and caught their scent, and crouched down, preparing to leap…

Toran jammed the one bolt into the crossbow, and took careful aim… as the first cat leaped, he fired, and the bolt took the cat in the thigh, spinning it around with a yowl of pain and rage. The second cat was caught in the side by a thrown javelin from the shadows, and also crashed to the ground, thrashing and biting at the pain in its side. Erol stepped out of the shadows with an armload of weapons.

“I stopped by the armory,” he explained. “Thought we might need these.”

With a clatter he dropped the pile of weapons near his friends, holding onto only a trident. Devrik dashed past Erol to put the panther he’d had wounded out of its misery, while Vulk was busy fending off the other one with his staff. Toran tossed aside the now-uelsess crossbow and darted over to the weapons cache, coming up with a lovely battle axe.. a bit lighter than he liked, but it would do!

Mariala cast Resistence on herself, as Korwin stood back and began to marshal his arcane resources to cast Breath of Arandu, while Erol strode over to Vulk and caught the cat he was struggling with a nasty blow to its haunches.

Mariala then attempted a Fire Nerves spell on the massed thieves in the stands above her, but exhaustion, alcohol and fatigue caused it to sputter out ineffectually. Devrik, calculating where the real danger lay, had also decided to take out the men above, and attempted to send a fireball their way, only to have it fizz out in his hand. And to no one’s surprise, Koriwn’s attempt at a killing blast of frost failed yet again…

Freed up now, Vulk considered their position… unarmored, dressed in fancy clothes, and without their usual weapons. Erol’s raiding of the arena’s armory had helped, but they were all tired, a little drunk, and generally not at their best. Fatigue was taking its toll, and at least a dozen armed thieves waited and watched – there was no doubt at all that they would attack if there seemed the least chance that the Hand might escape.

They needed an edge.

Vulk stepped back and composed his mind in prayer, invoking the Goddess’s blessing on all in the arena, and beseeching her to allow his own gift to heal and restore them all to full vigor. He felt the power move within him, and for a moment that seemed to last a lifetime there was perfect stillness. Then a golden light seemed to flare out from his heart in all directions, a ripple in the pond of reality. No one else saw any light, or anything else for that matter, but they all felt the sudden surge of energy, the sharpening of thought and sight, the abrupt lash of clarity.

In retrospect, Vulk thought to himself as he saw the wounded panther Erol was fighting suddenly stop limping, I might have worded that a little more precisely…

Fortunately, Erol was able to take advantage of the big cat’s momentary confusion at its own sudden well-being to quickly put an end to it. As the beast lay twitching in the sand, silence fell over the arena.

Kervisan raised his hand again, and again the sound of a wooden panel being raised echoed off the walls. This time a monstrous Gül-Hovguvai of enormous proportions strode out of the shadows into the moon-and-torch-light. It swung a great iron battle axe before it as it advanced on the group of humans, the hiss of its passage as it sliced the air evil and ominous…

In a sudden blur of motion, Toran ducked under the lumbering creature’s weapon, leaped up it’s body using an outthrust knee as a foot rest, and swung his own axe. The razor edge of the blade met the beast-man’s throat in a crimson arc that sent blood splashing to the sand 3 meters away. With a gurgle the huge form toppled backwards as Toran kicked off against its chest, flipping in midair to land in a crouch, axe ready to go.

This time the silence was… profound.

Kervisan slammed his fist down hard on the stone balustrade before him, and growled out a low-voiced command to one of his lieutenants, who hurried away. For a moment, nothing happened. Devrik was just considering another fireball attempt, while Mariala pondered having another go at frying some nerves, when the ground lurched beneath their feet. Behind the group the sand suddenly bulged upward, and they all backed away, toward the stands and the watching thieves.

Suddenly something massive, purple and with too many teeth and horns burst through the ground, rearing up, and up and up…

“Jhuka-var!”shouted Toran, in fascinated horror. “A Death Worm!”

He had only ever seen rather small ones, in captivity, used for teaching… but he’d heard the stories. One of the hazards of subterranean life, the Death Worms are large, armored worms that burrow through not only soil but solid rock (although the latter takes considerably more time, he recalled).

They derive most of their sustenance from minerals in the dirt and rock that their acid dissolves, but they do require animal protein occasionally, which is why they are known to attack us Khundari, Toran thought. And the Gülvini and any other beings with underground dwellings.

He recalled that they range in color from a pale violet, in their youth, through a deep eggplant color in old age, with a cream-colored underbelly that glows with a faint phosphorecent light. They have an average life span of 20 years. This one looked the color of a nicely ripe aubergine, and must be 12 meters long or more… hard to be sure, since its lower half was still underground, but at least four meters seemed be swaying above them…

Their segmented armor makes them difficult to kill, Toran thought desperately, although they do vulerable points – what were they, damn it? Yes! A a spot just under the “chin,” and between plate segments… although the latter points are only vulnerable when the creature is in a sharp flexing position.

They attack with swinging head butts, bites, the two horns that protude from each side fo the head, and with an acid spit. This last, while relatively short range, can be devestating to both armor and flesh, Toran knew. Which is why he was ready for it when the monster turned its almost-blind head in his direction (they have an amazing sense of smell, and know the scent of Khundari quite well), and was able to leap aside as a wad of acid phlegm sizzled into the sand were he had been.

As stunning as the unexpected sight of an immense armored worm was, both Mariala and Devrik remained focused on the longer term threat. As Erol leaped to forward in a blur to attack the beast, they turned and gestured toward the watching men, who were grinning now in anticipation of a nice blood bath. For eight of the thieves, those grins turned into agonized rictus’ as a particularly potent Fire Nerves spell (perhaps fueled by an adrenaline rush caused by the sight of the Death Worm) sent them to the ground in paroxysms of pain.

Even as their remaining comrades turned in shock towards the fallen, Devrik’s Orb of Vorol flew past Kervisan, who dodged it, and exploded in fiery sphere of sparks. The rest of the thieves, including their leader went down, singed and dazed… all but one rather young-looking fellow (if his size and over-large hands and feet were any indication). For a moment he just stood there, paralyzed with shock and fear. And then he bolted for the exit…

While all this was going on, Korwin had tried to cast Effluvium, to encase the worm’s head in a sphere of magical water, and when that had failed, he’d fallen back on Breath of Arandu. Sadly that, too, had fizzled out without so much as a snowflake. By the time he was ready to try an third spell, there was no point…

For Erol, the world slowed as he moved in to attack the great worm, giving him that special high of clarity and calmness that he loved. Toran, having dogged the creature’s acid spit, swung his axe at its belly, only to have it bounce off without even leaving a mark. From a long way away, Erol could hear the Khundari yelling about vulnerable spots between the armor segments and under the chin, and without much conscious thought his hand shifted the angle of the trident even as it speared toward that glowing white belly.

It slid between the plates, and he felt it bite deep into soft flesh. The trident was almost ripped from his grasp as the beast reared up, with  cry of pain that was almost ultrasonic, but he managed to wrench it out and plunge it right back in between two other segments of armor, while himself in mid-air. Erol came down, knees bent, weapon whipped around and ready for action.

At that moment Mariala, hot off her success with the thieves, threw another Fire Nerves spell, this time at the worm. It’s screams went entirely beyond the range of human hearing, and it began to tear up great chances of dirt as it thrash wildly in agony. Dark violet blood was oozing from the two wounds Erol had inflicted.

Devrik dove in to attack, dodging the whipping head that tried to smash him, but his blow glanced off the monster’s armor.

“Under the chin,” he heard Toran yelling, and even as the creature hurled a wad of burning spit towards him, Devrik hurled himself forward, under the acid ball, and drove his flaming sword into the vulnerable spot with a horrendous crunch of cartilage and bone. The weapon was whipped from his grip as the Death Worm convulsed in its own death agonies, and he himself was thrown over two meters to land in the sand with a thump.

When the monster was at last still, after giving one final shudder, Devrik put one foot on the great head and pulled his sword out with no little effort. As he turned towards the stands, ready now to take on whatever Zalik-mal that might still have any fight in them, he saw Vulk approach the spot directly blow Jerin Kervisan, who was staggering to his feet and patting at his singed hair, putting out a few last sparks. Several others were also beginning to rise.

“Here,” Vulk called out in  loud voice. “Catch!”

And he threw his staff up toward the head thief.

Still perhaps a bit stunned form the Orb, the man reached out to grasp the rod, and was horrified as he felt it shift beneath his hand, turing into a living, writhing snake that instantly began to twine itself around him. In seconds Jerin was in the same position as his late brother had been, completely immobilized and barely able to breath.

Whether or not the remaining thieves would have turned on the Hand, or fled into the night, will never be known, for at that moment a large group of torch and pitchfork wielding citizens poured up the stairs behind them, led by an enraged Merik Blezdan. The man was furious at having his establishment hijacked by the Thieves Guild for its own murderous purposes, and had come to put a stop to it.

But his anger was, at least momentarily, abated as he gazed down into his arena. The dead panthers and giant gül hardly registered next to the immense bulk of the dead worm, whose dark violet blood was soaking into an ever widening circle of sand. His followers fell suddenly silent as they took in the sight, as well… and the Zalik-mal took that moment to make a break for it, which broke the awed spell.

Some of the thieves did make it through the mob, but at least half of them, including Kervisan’s lieutenants were captured and restrained. Kervisan himself was unable to escape the coils of Vulk’s snake, and was beginning to turn blue before the cantor finally released him into the waiting arms of Erol and Devrik and some handy rope supplied by Merik Blezdan.

♦ ♦ ♦

Down on the arena floor, Toran stood looking at the corpse of the Death Worm, Korwin beside him.

“You know,” he the dwarf said thoughtfully to the water mage, “their acid sacs are quite highly prized by alchemists, apothecaries… and the weaponcrafters and metalworkers of my people. We use the liquid to temper metals to a hardness that is difficult to achieve by other methods… well, dragon blood, of course, but that’s really rare… anyway, it’s one of the secrets of Khundari armor and weapons…”

Korwin raised an eyebrow. “Should you be telling me this?”

“Eh, there are secrets, and then there are secrets,” Toran shrugged. “This more in the way of being a little-known-fact, really. You’re not the first Umantari to hear it, and in any case I’m sure I can trust your discretion in not bandying it about in public. Right?” He looked blandly up at his companion.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the mage answered rather absently. “But tell me more about the monetization prospects for this corpse,,, and how do we get these acid sacks you speak of out?”

♦ ♦ ♦

The next day, with the captured Zalik-mal securely locked in Mariala’s dungeon, and the story of their latest adventure burning like wildfire throughout the city, the Hand met to discuss what to do with the prisoners. As Margrave, Mariala had the right of Low Justice in the district, but the attempted assassination of a noble was a capital offense, and would have to eventually be turned over to the King’s Justice.

“Doesn’t mean we can’t interrogate them a bit first,” Erol pointed out. “Find out what we should expect next, if this “Thieves Guild” is really  prepared to go to war over this…”

“Yes, that’s part of the reason I asked you all over here today,” Mariala said, lifting a sheet of parchment from the table in front of her. “This came early this morning, delivered by young street urchin. It’s a letter from the Guild Master of the Zalik-mal in Shalara.”

Everyone looked surprised at that, and listened attentively as Vulk took the letter and read it aloud. It ran thusly:

My dearest Margrave,

I warned my captain not to seek such a foolish revenge, there being nothing for our Guild in it… but his one great quality was always loyalty to his family, and I am afraid his brother’s death quite overwhelmed his good sense.

As I expected, you and your valiant companions had little trouble in dispatching poor Jerin – I hope the quiet word I had put about concerning his plans helped put you on guard? Although I did not know the specifics, of course, or else I might have been able to stop last evenings bloody performance before it went so far…

And now, my Lady, I offer you and your friends a truce. You have eliminated two of my best captains, and decimated their organizations. But please believe me when I say that you have barely scratched the surface of our organization.

As I told Jerin, revenge is bad for business, and I would prefer to move on from this whole unfortunate affair (whatever did possess that fool Hardel to try and steal the Royal Regalia, I wonder?). But if you insist on pressing the matter, I have a great many resources yet that could be brought to bear.

Our beloved monarch, in his years as Constable both of Kolosür and this city, failed to do more than inconvinience us, and with far more resources than you possess. So, you go on about your business, and I will go on about mine, and I promise you we shall have no cause to cross swords again, upon my word.

And while you may look down on the word of such as I, in my line a man must be known to keep his word, or else control becomes ever so much more difficult. If you desist, than so shall we.

I remain your affectionate servant,

The Guildmaster

After taking a minute to digest this, the debate began in earnest…

There was no question, of course, of refusing the King-elect’s request. Leaving their brunch untouched, the friends followed their royal patron, once again in mufti, back to Kar Landsar. With the castle in a chaos of activity in preparation for the upcoming coronation, they had no trouble reaching the royal quarters, where Maldan resumed his normal appearance.

He immediately led the group, accompanied by Ser Mirad Alkinil, the Treasurer Royal and two of his most trusted guards, to the dungeons beneath the great castle. The two men who had been on sentry duty outside the Royal Treasury the previous night were being held in separate cells. They had been disarmed, of course, and thoroughly searched, but had not been placed in chains or otherwise subjected to humiliation or torture… yet.

In an attempt to “soften them up,” Korwin cast a subtle spell of gloom and despair, affecting all those whom his shadow touched. Unfortunately, in a torch-filled underground chamber, that included his everyone around him, including the King-elect. On the plus side, only his comrades recognized what was going on, shooting him looks of annoyance, while the royal party simply assumed it was the dire situation that led to these feelings of doom and ennui.

In a somewhat more practical vein, Mariala used her Truth Sense, while Vulk summoned the awe-inspiring power of Abon’s Authority, to assist Maldan he interrogated the hapless guards. These maintained not only their own innocence in the theft of the Royal Regalia, but in the absolute impossibility of anyone having been able to get past them – no unauthorized breaks, no distractions, no food or drink consumed that might have drugged them…

And Mariala was quite sure they were telling the absolute truth.

“Could anyone have gated into the Treasury?” Korwin asked in the face of the King-elect’s growing frustration. “We should examine the area for magical residue–”

“It’s impossible,” Maldan replied gruffly. “Or so all our esoteric experts have claimed for decades. Ever since the Sword of Tarthin was stolen, in the reign of my grandfather, wards and seals have been in place to prevent any magical intrusion into the vaults.

“Still, there can be no harm in having you examine the place yourselves; perhaps you will discover some clue we have missed…”

At that point Ser Mirad returned to the dungeon, having absented himself when it became obvious the interrogation was yielding nothing. Now, he leaned in to whisper into his liege’s ear, gesturing to a cask of ironwood and gold that a servant carried. At Maldan’s nod, he turned to address Mariala.

“A thought has occurred to me, Dame Mariala,” the small, fussy little man explained, “that you might be able to use a certain artifact of which I know – I have seen the Mistress of Esoterica use it once before, and have managed to retrieve it from her chambers without her knowledge.”

He opened the cask and drew out a cube of opaque bluish crystal, perhaps 25 cm on a side. The cube was pierced through the center of two opposing faces by a rod of silver, the ends of which were carved in the shape of entwined snakes.

“Ah, a Memory Crystal!” Mariala exclaimed. “I have heard of such artifacts, although I’ve never actually seen one… still, I understand the theory well enough. I should be able to make use of this.”

Taking the cube up, she moved over toward the first guard, Rozin. Holding one of the silver handles, she motioned him to grasp the other one. Seeing his fear and uncertainty, she smiled and assured him it was perfectly safe.

“If you are truly innocent, this will prove it. It will allow us to see your memories as if with your own mind’s eye. I will guide the process, no harm can come to you.”

Reluctantly, the man grasped the silver snakes, and instantly his eyes took on a glazed look. Mariala focused her mental energies on drawing his mind into a link with the cube and herself, guiding him to recall the events of his guard shift last night.

The cube began to glow, and in each of its six faces the same images slowly began to form. In moments everyone gathered around could see the events of last night, as seen through Rozin’s eyes, played out before them…

Even moving with dream-like speed through the long hours of the watch, it was a singularly boring play they watched… events proceeded just as the guards had said, with nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary. Until about the fourth hour after midnight.

At that point, Rozin turned away from his fellow guard, Gildor, as if something had caught his attention – and then there was nothing. After about ten minutes of apparent time, suddenly the memories returned, and the night went on as before, uneventful and boring.

Gildor, taking the silver handle next, had the same memories as his comrade, including the mysterious gap. Some human agency was clearly behind the theft, using some sort of esoteric power to erase the relevant memories from the guards’ minds.

“It could have been an artifact of some sort,” Mariala mused after the cube had been returned to its cask. “I’ve read of such things, though they are rare and valuable… a spell is more difficult, but not impossible… or a very rare psionic talent, perhaps…”

“However rare, and whichever it was, it proves a mortal agency was behind this,” Maldan smiled grimly. “Not that I really believed the Immortals would have done this, but it’s good to be sure…”

The Hand’s next step was to examine the vaults of the Royal Treasury. No arcane energies could be deteted, either in the vaults or in the hallway where the guards had stood watch. But minute traces of dirt within the chamber revealed that someone had been within.

Korwin made a great show of trying to glean something from the small clods of dirt using his vaunted psychometry powers, to no result. It was Erol, fingering one of the samples and sniffing it, who sardonically suggested the stables would be a good place to start.

“I’ve smelled enough horse shit and seen enough muddy straw to connect those dots,” he said, handling the bit back to Korwin.

Confident that his agents were now on a viable track, the King-elect returned to the pressing business of both war and coronation planning, while the Hand headed for the nearest stables, the Royal Stables that lay within the grounds of the castle itself.

Along the way, the group debated what their cover story should be as the investigation progressed… Mariala suggested a scavenger hunt, while Korwin was of the opinion that they should claim to be hunting a stolen shipment of wine meant for the celebration. Neither idea met with much enthusiasm from the others.

Careful questioning at the stables revealed that a man, wearing the livery of Ser Corwan Landsar, had been seen in the predawn hours entering the stables caring a sack of a size and bulk that could certainly have contained the Regalia. No one could identify the fellow, however, and no one could recall seeing him again after he entered.

This lead to a thorough search of the building, and eventually the discovery of a grate leading down to the sewers. Traces indicated that it had very recently been lifted and replaced, with fresh muck to been seen (and smelled) on the rusty iron rungs set into the stone wall leading down into darkness.

With Grover the war ferret on his shoulder, Erol followed Devrik into the hole, scouting it out before the others joined them. A small circular chamber at the foot of the ladder opened, across a corroded iron grate, into the city’s main sewer system.

Once everyone was down, and torches lit, it became obvious there was only one direction to go – to the left there was no path, only a large chamber of murky, noisome water, while on the right a narrow ledge led northward along the line of a large sewer tunnel.

After several hundred feet an iron gate barred their progress. Obviously of an age with the surrounding stonework, the lock upon it was equally clearly of much more recent vintage. Korwin, again exercising his psychometry, was able to divine only that an old locksmith named Gepeto had made the lock, and it had been installed by a member of the Zalik-mal, the so-called “Thieves Guild.”

Toran was able to unlock the gate using his locksmithing skills, and the group continued onward, Grover sniffing ahead. After several other locked gates (some of which had to be smashed open when they proved beyond Toran’s ability), they found themselves in a small chamber off a junction of two sewer lines.

Vulk had been sure he’d heard voices shortly before, and there were signs that someone had recently occupied the area, probably as a lookout. It seemed likely that he (or she) were Zalik-mal, although they were known to be just one of the many groups using Shalara’s vast network of sewers, tunnels and crypts for their sub-legal activities. But were they associated with the theft of the Regalia, or merely lurking about on unrelated business?

It was Grover who sniffed out the hidden passage in the northwest wall of the chamber, a rough, crude and rather narrow passage that led slightly upward into darkness. Toran took the lead, as the group wound its way slowly up the dank tunnel to an apparent dead-end.

But it took the Khundari only a moment to find the mechanism that opened the hidden door, which lead out into an older, larger, and generally better built tunnel. Unfortunately, they had little time to appreciate the handiwork of long-dead demon cultists, or whomever, because from out of the shadows two lithe, fast-moving shapes were suddenly upon them, blades flashing in the flickering torch light.

Despite his ninja reflexes, Toran was taken by surpise, and barely deflected the longknife aimed at his throat, and failed completely in avoiding the other blade that plunged into his side. Staggering back, his head slammed into the wall, and he was down!

As Devrik leapt over his dwarven friend’s unconscious form, Vulk rushed forward to tend to his wounds. While the cantor sent his healing power into the bleeding wound, mentally stitching together the damaged tissue, Devrik applied his more physical abilities to the would-be assassin.

The man screamed in shock as his weapon, and the hand that held it, clattered (and thumped) to the ground. He staggered backward, dropping his longknife and clutching at his spurting stump. Devrik moved forward to finish him off, but with another step back the man suddenly disappeared with a quickly diminishing shriek.

Erol, meanwhile, had pushed past Vulk and Toran and had engaged the second Zalik-mal sentry, blocking the man’s thrusts with his trident, disarming him with a second sweeping motion, and pinning him to the wall, through his shoulder, with a third move.

As the others gathered around, Toran was groggily standing up, shaking his head. His wound had closed, and aside from the occasional painful twinge, seemed not to bother him much. His head still throbbed, however…

Devrik peered down into the darkness of the 10’ wide pit that blocked the passage and had swallowed the wounded sentry-thief, shrugged, and turned back to his friends. Erol was pressing their prisoner for answers, but was getting nothing but surly, if pain-filled, grunts in response.

While Vulk and Mariala argued about various esoteric methods of extracting information from the man, Erol dragged him over to the edge of the pit and leaned him backwards over it. The man’s feet scrabbled for purchase at the edge, as Erol grasped his tunic tightly about the neck, holding him suspended over the inky depths.

“I’m only going to ask you one more time,” he said quietly. “Where do we find your friends and the… items… they stole?”

The thief stared defiantly back into Erol’s eyes, and tried to spit, despite a very dry mouth. “I’ll never betray the Brotherhood! You’ll never make me talk!”

“I believe you,” Erol said after a moment. And let go of the man’s tunic.

With a shriek that was almost as much surprise as terror, the second thief vanished into the darkness. It was several seconds before Erol thought he heard a faint thump…

“Erol, goddess curse you, what did you do?!” “Erol, we needed him!” Vulk and Mariala’s outraged cries tumbled over each other as they rushed over and peered into the pit.

“Eh, he was never going to talk,” Erol shrugged, slinging his trident over his shoulder. “You learn to read men in the arena, if you want to survive, and I could read it in his eyes.”

“What’s done is done,” Devrtik interrupted before Vulk or Mariala could pursue the argument. “The question now is how do we get across this chasm?”

After studying the problem for a moment, Korwin suggested maybe a running start would let them leap it. An irritated noise from Toran and an annoyed glare from Mariala quickly shut down that idea.

In fact, it took Toran only a few minutes to find a semi-hidden mechanism in a dark recess in the wall of one of the sentry alcoves. Pulling the metal grip and twisting it caused a sudden grinding noise to fill the passage as a metal catwalk extended from beneath the near lip of the pit. It slowly ratcheted its way across the gulf, locking into place at the far side with a loud ‘snick.’

With shake of his head as he passed Korwin, Toran led the way across, the others following in various degrees of vertiginous panic. Everyone made it without stumbling to a nasty death, and the party continued up the curving tunnel.

About 30 meters along, the passage turned sharply to the left, while on the right it opened into a circular chamber some 6 meters across. A quick examination of the chamber revealed a stone and iron ladder set into the wall, leading up through a hole in the rough-hewn ceiling.

It was decided that Toran and Korwin would remain below while the others investigated above. Toran wonders what he’d done to piss off the others…

Erol went first, and after a few minutes called softly down that it seemed to open in to a passage in a building. Devrik, Vulk and Mariala quickly headed up the ladder.

With the others gone, Korwin decided it would be a good idea to scout ahead themselves, and set off down the tunnel. Toran was of the mind that sentry duty meant staying put, but realized he’d better stick with his bumbling companion – Gheas knew what trouble he’d get into on his own!

In point of fact, without the critical gaze of the two professional warriors, the Oceanic mage proved almost adept when two more sentry-thieves leapt out at them from another dark alcove. True, he was surprised at first, and if not for Toran (who had expected exactly this sort of thing), he might have died then and there.

But after the dwarf took the first man’s left leg off at the knee with a powerful swing of his battle-axe, while Korwin dodged, the water mage did manage to draw his cutlass. He parried the second minion’s attack, and the man leaped back to avoid Toran’s next blow. Then, in a bit of battle ballet that surprised them both, Toran feinted, the thief dodged, and Kowrin cut him down with slashing blow across the belly.

“Not bad,” Toran told his companion as they cleaned their weapons on the clothes of the dead men. “Why don’t you do that more often?”

♦ ♦ ♦

Meanwhile, above them, Erol, Devrik, Vulk and Mariala were enjoying a confused encounter with several acolytes of Kalura, Goddess of Love. It seems the hidden trap door at the head of the ladder was located in the basement of the Kaluran temple, near the dormitory of the male acolytes.

Passing into the refectory, they had run into a very beautiful woman and a staggeringly handsome man, dressed in the translucent silks of mid-level cantors (as Vulk had quietly informed the others). The couple were already annoyed, as a short time before a grubby street urchin had appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and raced through the living quarters area, up into the temple, and out the main doors, causing quite a kerfluffle.

Now these heavily armed intruders had appeared, also apparently from thin air, and started asking questions. It was too much! The cantors fled back the way they’d come, calling for the Temple Guards, and the Hand decided that discretion seemed wisest, especially when Mariala recalled that she had an old friend who was an acolyte there. They really didn’t need to be recognized!

It seemed obvious that, if there were any connection between the temple and the Thieves Guild, these people knew nothing of it! Scrambling back down the ladder, they left a pretty mystery for the Kalurans to puzzle over…

♦ ♦ ♦

Reunited, the group continued on, crossing another pit and entering back into the sewer system. A few picked and/or smashed gates later, they discovered yet another hidden doorway, this one rather more cunningly concealed in the stonework of the sewer.  Another ladder led upward into darkness…

It was decided that this time Mariala would scout ahead, having cast her Wallflower enchantment on herself, causing others to ignore her, as long as she was quiet and unobtrusive. Korwin attempted to cast his own stealth spell, Klordia’s Shadow, but failed… perhaps it’s just performance anxiety, Toran thought to himself as he watched the frustrated mage glance around to see if anyone had noticed…

When Mariala eventually summoned the rest of the group to follow her, they found themselves in a very narrow passageway, apparently within the walls of… a warehouse? Clumped together as best they could at the far end of the passage, where a secret door and a spy hole allowed them to hear what was going on in the large room beyond, they listened intently…

Only to immediately hear a door bang open, the sound of running feet, and a piping young voice that gasped out a warning to the gathered men.

“The King’s men… are in… the tunnels… looking for… you… sir!”

A growl went up from the men, and one commanding voice began issuing orders to send a force down to ambush and stop these “King’s men.”

Devrik knew a cue when he heard one, and before the men could begin to act on their leader’s orders he had kicked the door open and leapt to the attack, his great sword glittering wickedly in the dim light of the warehouse. The others were right behind him, Vulk calling up his mystical armor and Korwin summoning his Frost Blade.

There were a dozen men, and one youth, in the large open room, along with great piles of barrels, sacks, lumber and stone along the walls and around the support pillars. Shocked to be suddenly attacked from their own hidden entrance, nonetheless the “guildsmen” reacted swiftly, and a tremendous battle ensued.

Perhaps inspired by Devrik’s earlier fight in the tunnels, Toran quickly took first blood by loping off the hand of the man who rushed at him, sword drawn. Erol traded buffets with a hulking brute, and both men went down, while the leader of the pack snarled at Devrik and aimed a blow at his head, which was barely blocked.

The Zalik-mal captain was clearly a skilled swordsman, and he seemed fueled by rage at being surprised in his own lair. Devrik was suddenly forced back on the defensive, parrying a hail of swift, darting attacks but unable to land any of his own.

Erol was back on his feet and laying about him with his trident, while Toran and Korwin hacked and slashed at the horde surging around them. Korwin’s icy blade took out two of the thieves, while Toran’s bloody axe dispatched another two in quick succession.

Mariala, staying back near the hidden door, surveyed the melee and looked for her chance. She found it as the leader was suddenly in her line of sight, blocking another of Devrik’s powerful blows – she raised her hand and focused her mind.

The leader of the thieves screamed and staggered forward as every nerve in his body suddenly seemed to be on fire. But before Devrik could take advantage of the man’s distraction, two minions attacked from either side, and he was hard pressed to defend himself.

Seeing the leader down but not out, Vulk threw down his staff, uttering the word of Command as he did. As it struck the floor the staff was suddenly a large constricting snake, which slithered determinedly toward the writhing man. As the captain staggered to his feet, his sword still clutched in his hand and blood in his eye, he found himself suddenly wrapped in the tightening coils. He struggled frantically, but to no avail, and was soon on the floor again, writhing this time in the crushing grip of the snake.

Mariala, meanwhile, Fire Nerved a whole swath of angry thieves, sending eight men screaming to the floor where here companions dispatched them between blows with the few still standing. In less than a minute the fight was over.

But even as the last man fell, with a trident in his thigh severing his femoral artery, he managed to deal a savage blow to Erol, who went down like a puppet with its strings cut.

While Vulk rushed to see to Erol’s injury, Mariala was scanning the shadows of the warehouse, looking for the most important piece of this puzzle.

“Where is Lady Ethalyn?” she called out to the others. “Did anyone see which way she went?”

“What are you talking about?” Devrik said as he extracted the thieves leader from the coils of Vulk’s snake and bound him securely with the rope that Toran handed him. “What’s that old harpy got to do with anything?”

Mariala stared at her friend in disbelief…

♦ ♦ ♦

Mariala had experienced a rather different prelude to the fight than her friends had. As they had gathered behind the crowded secret door, the group had listened intently to a fierce argument going on in what appeared to be a warehouse. The spy hole failed to give a decent view of the participants, but their raised voices came through clearly:

“I tell you I want those damn things out of here!” said an angry male voice.

“What, even the gold and gems?” replied a throaty, sardonic female voice.

“Hardly, that’s our payment for doing you this “little” favor… but now the heat looks to be coming down, and I don’t want to be found with anything identifiable!” the angry male voice grated.

“Nor can I afford to be found with the Regalia… I’m sure I’m high on the list of suspects that muscle-brained oaf is putting together – that’s why I’m allowing you to keep such a huge sum for yourself – you keep the Regalia hidden until I need it!” the woman purred, steel covered in velvet.

“It’s well hidden, but I still want it out of here, and out of my hands! I’ve heard rumors about these “Hand” jokers our new king has called in, and I’m not taking any chances, you bitch,” said angry male, finality in his tone.

“Watch your tongue, you vile little worm! You know what I can do, and if I have to –”  the now equally furious female voice broke off suddenly as the youth had dashed in to announce that the “King’s men” were in the tunnels.

As her companions had burst form their hiding place and attacked the gathering of thieves, Mariala had seen the owner of that sardonic and angry voice as she turned to stare in shock at the sudden intrusion – it was the elder Lady Ethalyn Landsar, the King’s cousin and, along with her daughter Ethalyn the Younger, a potential heir to the throne, before Maldan had been elected.

As the woman had pulled up the hood of her great cloak to hide her face, Mariala had felt a sudden… tug was the only way she could describe it later… in her head, and felt her mental defenses snap down automatically. In that brief moment of confusion she had lost sight of the royal traitor, however, and then the battle was upon her….

Now, as she explained all this to her friends, it became obvious they truly had no memory of anything to do with Lady Ethalyn the Elder. And questioning of the few surviving Zalik-mal, including the leader, Hadrel Kervisan, revealed that they, too, recalled nothing of a lady of any sort being present.

“What are you babbling about?” Kervisan had snarled in confusion at Mariala’s insistent questioning. “There was no woman here, I was… I was talking to my men… then the boy ran in…” Vulk confirmed that the man was telling the truth, or at least believed he was.

Eventually, the Hand was forced to shelve the question of the woman no one remembered except Mariala, as it was imperative that the Royal Regalia be found quickly. No amount of persuasion could compel the guild captain to reveal his hiding spot, but in the end they didn’t need him.

In a locked inner room they discovered a dozen barrels of Kaluran wine, the good stuff they never sold and which was rumored to have some amazing aphrodisiacal effects… a close examination soon revealed one barrel that didn’t make quite the same sound as the others when thumped.

When the barrel was opened, sure enough, there was the sack and within it the glittering gems and metal of the Regalia, unharmed and beautiful.

As an added bonus to their general success, carting the obviously stolen wine back to the Kar Landsar allowed the Hand to smuggle the Regalia back in under a perfect cover that actually matched Korwin’s absurd story about searching for stolen wine.

And if the stuff was served at the Coronation, Mariala considered with an inward grin as they sought out the King, nine months from now the midwives of Shalara are going to be busy…

It was a two day ride from Dor Dür to where the Army of the North was encamped near Noneth Bridge. They spent the first night at the great castle of Vinkara, seat of Lord Clarin, the Earl Kinen, where they were graciously welcomed by Earl’s lady wife, who was only recently returned from her convalescence at Rivona Abbey. She expressed her gratitude to the role the Hand had played not only in her own recovery, but in the rescue of her daughter, the Maid Carissa during that unfortunate incident in Shalara. She was disappointed that Ser Draik was not with the group, as she especially wanted to thank him for the marvelous elixir that had restored her shattered health, and continued to help with her on-going recovery.

Mariala was disappointed herself, as she had hoped to catch up with her one-time charge, Carissa. But the Lady Lania revealed that her daughter had joined the Alean healers behind the front lines, as a lay acolyte caring for wounded soldiers. And much to her father’s chagrin! The Earl had resisted the idea at first, but when his beloved and newly-restored to him wife had sided with the girl, he had eventually yielded. But now, with these mysterious disappearances from the army, Lady Lania was having second thoughts herself.

When the Hand departed Vinkara the next morning, she pressed a small packet into Mariala’s hands.

“A letter to my daughter,” she explained. “And a small amulet I purchased from the temple, to help keep her from harm.”

Mariala assured her that she would personally deliver it into the girl’s hands. And that evening, as the group settled into the pavilion assigned to them outside Dor Endol, the fortified keep a few miles south of Noneth Bridge where the Prince and Earl had established their headquarters, she did just that. Carissa was thrilled to see her, and Mariala was impressed with the changes that aiding the wounded had made in the – no longer a girl, but a young woman. They had only a few minutes to catch up before Mariala had to join the others for their meeting with the Earl and Prince Maldan, but they promised to find more time once the current crisis was resolved.

“I’m sure if anyone can figure out what’s going on, it’s you and your friends,” Carissa said as she hugged her friend goodbye. “It’s very frightening… just yesterday one of our cantors vanished during his night rounds, and there is no way a healer of Alea would abandon his charges willingly!”

♦ ♦ ♦

And that was the sentiment expressed by the Prince and the Earl about many of the men who had gone missing in the last tenday.

“Some of my best men,” the Prince said angrily. “Loyal men, many of whom have been with me for years and been well found in battle. Not men to dessert, not in the face of battle and certainly not after a great victory!”

A solid, well-muscled man of middle years, with silver just beginning to frost his chestnut brown hair at the temples, his hazel eyes were clear and penetrating. During the initial introductions he had clearly been sizing up what seemed to him a rather unimpressive group – except perhaps for that short red-haired fellow, obviously a fighting man, and a hard one. The others…

“I understand you met my father, last year,” he went on after a moment. “He was impressed enough to mention you to me… but the King is a rather, um, cerebral, man, and his basis for judging men… and women… differs from my own. But he is no fool, to be sure, while Lord Clarin also makes great claims for your abilities… and he is a more worldly man, like myself.

“So, we will take a throw of the dice, and see if you can live up to your reputation!” He nodded decisively and pulled several maps to the center of the table they were gathered around. “This is where the trouble has been most acute…”

Half an hour later it had been decided that the Hand of Fortune would leave the next morning for the tiny hamlet of Riven’s Forge, on the edge of the Kotaran Marsh. It was from this base where the Prince’s best mounted scouting unit, led by a veteran fighter named Gastar Loban, had vanished the day of the battle – six men and their horses gone without a trace. If an attack through the wetlands had followed it could be chalked up to an ambush and the fortunes of war, but no such attack had come. The barbarians came straight on, trying to force the fords of the Noneth River as well as the bridge, with no flank attack from the west, and been slaughtered.

And there was the fact that, both before and after the battle, more than 40 other soldiers, camp followers and civilians had likewise disappeared without a trace.

So it was into the little settlement of Riven’s Forge the group rode late in the morning the next day, the first of Metisto. The hamlet was a collection of about a dozen buildings huddled together in a large clearing in the eastern fringes of the Forest of Valdrun, centered around a large stone well and two trees – a cherry tree just coming into bloom, and a great oak, tree itself newly spring green. The three largest buildings were the rustic Eldaran church, the blacksmith’s home/workshop/stable, and the local petty lord’s manor house.

The tiny fief was the sole possession of Ser Lendel Khordon, a petty lord indeed. Portly, red faced and rather pompous, a widower of late middle years, the man was clearly a knight (and gentleman) by title only. He had the martial air of a panicked rabbit, and did not seem glad to see more newcomers invading his sleepy domain. When he made it clear, amidst his loud assurances that he had had nothing to do with the soldiers disappearance, that he would be “unable” to put up the group in his own home, the blacksmith stepped forward and offered his own home to the gentle visitors.

Hardol Rhevan was a large man, with fiery red hair and arms like – well, like a blacksmith’s. Perhaps because of their shared hair color, or maybe because they were both powerful, strong men, Devrik and Hardol hit it off immediately. The blacksmith was also a widower, with two sons aged 13 and 8, an apprentice of 17 years, as well as an elderly father. The latter’s domain was apparently the attached stable, which housed the hamlet’s two horses. It was a much larger stable than the needs of Riven’s Forge called for, apparently a folly of a previous generation who had harbored dreams of an inn in this unlikely spot, so there was room for the group’s mounts, as well as a loft for Cris to sleep in.

The bulk of the day was spent questioning the denizens if the tiny settlement and scouring the forest around them for any sign of the lost patrol. Neither endeavor yielded any significant result, nor did Korwin’s attempts to psychically “read” the few personal possessions left behind by the missing men. Mariala attempted a reading of the cards, which produced an ambiguous result at best – a sense of a duality, of something or someone who was both one thing and another. Suspicion fell quickly on the hapless Ser Lendel, but a quick truth sense readung by both Vulk and Mariala proved him to be exactly hwat he appeared to be… maybe less.

Devrik was somewhat more successful in casting his Flames of Xydona spell – gazing into the fireplace in the late afternoon, he eventually tuned in on what he believed to be the missing scout captain, Gastar Loban. Unfortunately, what he heard via the flames was the sound of a man screaming in extreme pain. The flames transmitted the sounds with great fidelity through whatever source of fire was near to the man, and from the echoes it sounded as if he was in a stone chamber of some sort. Given the horrible cries, Devrik’s mind had no trouble filling in the lurid details, but in truth he could not say if the room was above ground or below ground, or even really a room… it might be a stone cave or grotto…

The day ended in a bust, leaving the group frustrated and tired. After a quiet meal with the blacksmith and his household, and, at Mariala’s insistence, a drink to celebrate the Shalaran holiday the Féte of Wisdom, they retired for the evening, uncertain what course to pursue next. Perhaps a foray into the marsh itself, a couple of miles to the northwest…

♦ ♦ ♦

Mariala woke with a start from a vivid dream of shimmering, esoteric lights and patterns of pure thought, a dream of the sort she often had after a dose of Lyrin oil. She’d slipped the dose into her wine for the toast to Shala, earlier… now, as her mind cleared, she realized the screams that had awoken her weren’t part of her dream, but cries of terror coming from outside…

The rest of the household had also been roused by the commotion, and Hardol had to restrain his sons and apprentice, who were anxious to rush out and see what was happening. But with his noble guests in residence, he saw no need to allow them into danger… and indeed, Devrik and Vulk rushed past him, weapons drawn, and into the night, followed almost immediately by Korwin and Mariala.

Both moons were full and only just beginning to sink into the west, and by their light the friends could see that the hamlet was under attack. At first it seemed that it was small band of gülvini attempting to batter down doors and claw their way in windows, but the nearest creature turned at the arrival of easier victims and it was instantly obvious this was no ordinary gül. It shambled forward, rotting fur and flesh hanging on its bones, eyes milky white and unseeing, fingers scraped down to boney claws… an undead monstrosity, a mindless puppet of the Shadow, zamora!

Vulk felt his blood run cold as he realized what they faced. He had been touched by the Shadow once, felt his soul being drained away, and he never wanted to face that horror again. It was why he had recently consecrated his Herald’s Baton, the symbol of his goddess and a bulwark against such abominations – a shield that now lay under his pillow, upstairs in the house he had just foolishly run out of!

While all this was flashing through the cantor’s mind and he was considering the virtues of panic, Devrik was facing three zamori, and feeling nothing but the rush of excitement that battle always brought. True, he’d rather not be fighting in his night clothes, sans any armor at all, but against these shambling brutes he doubted he’d need it. But to be on the safe side, he summoned Renik’s Shield to provide some forward protection. Which saved him from physical harm as the nearest zamora lunged forward, with surprising speed, to claw at him. But it did nothing to ward off the freezing black emptiness of the Shadow that tried to engulf him… his mind instantly threw up a shield of fiery mental resistance, and the shadow was deflected.

He drew his battle sword clean through the side of the second undead beast, and had a sudden thought. As he recalled, fire was a most effective weapon against the undead… he smiled a very toothy smile, and if they had had eyes to see with, or a brain to think with, the remaining zamora might have turned back then.

Vulk, however, was much less confident of his friend’s ability to survive this fight in his pajamas, and it was that fear for his friend that momentarily squelched the panic… he had to do something, and he knew just what! Stepping up behind his friend, he reached out to touch Devrik’s shoulder and murmur the ritual words that would summon the holy armor of the goddess. Even as the undead closed in, a shimmering golden glow flared around Devrik before fading into an almost invisible flicker.

There, Vulk thought, now let him start whipping that sword around, and pretty quick I won’t have to worry about getting my soul sucked out of me again. Or Devrik’s out of him, of course.

Which would no doubt have been the course of events if the fire mage had not decided to try a newish spell, his first opportunity to really use Arkel’s Fiery Ribbons in battle. Sword in his left hand, he raised his right and called out the incantation to summons the fiery ribbons of colored flame that would turn these undead bastards into ash – but magic is a tricky thing. Whether it was the adrenaline rush from being awakened suddenly, residual fogginess from sleep, or just random luck, as he released the energy into the mental Form he sensed the flaw in that form, too late to stop it!

The flames that leapt form his hand twisted like manic, demented snakes, and managing to avoid his targets completely, instead blasted into the roof of the blacksmith’s house… and the house next to it… and the old oak tree near the well…

All three burst into multi-hued flames with a tremendous whoosh! As the combustible materials caught, the flames turned to a more normal reddish-orange…

For a moment Devrik could only stare in horror as the nightmare of his youth came flooding back to him. The Mad God might have cured his crippling fear of using fire magic, but this was the root of that fear, grounded in the reality that his power had almost killed his stepmother and infant half-brother. Now it was happening again – but he had saved them then, and he would do it now, too… without a further thought he whirled around and rushed past Vulk and into the blacksmith’s burning house.

“Wait!” Vulk cried in horror. “What the fuck –?!”

The zamora shambled forward, oblivious to everything but the living auras before them…

♦ ♦ ♦

Meanwhile, Toran was ambling on through the night on his sturdy mountain pony, in an effort to catch up to his friends. He had returned from his debriefing in Dürkon the day after the Hand had left for the northern frontier, and had been playing catch-up ever since. He would have caught up with them earlier today, he thought grumpily, in the obscure little bump in the road they were headed for, Ribbon’s Ford or something, if he hadn’t taken that wrong turn off the main road this morning. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to the details when the Prince’s major domo was explaining the route…

It had taken him half a day to realize his mistake, and it was only his native Khundari stubbornness that kept him riding now. But the light of the two full moons was more than enough for his dark-adapted eyes to keep the track underfoot, and he was determined to rejoin his companions before they got into the thick of whatever was going down in this rustic backwater…

It was at that point that a sudden reddish glow lit the sky behind the black silhouette of the trees before him. It was as if someone had just lit a huge bonfire… riding forward at a gallop, in less than a minute the young Shadow Warrior burst into a large clearing and onto the most surreal scene of his life so far.

It seemed that half the tiny hamlet that filled the clearing was in flames, the nearest building a large stone and wood structure to his left. And in front of that building were his friends, in various states of undress, battling a number of lurching, clawing undead gülvini by the light of the flames. Just at that moment Cris dashed out of what appeared to be a stable, a torch in one hand and sword in the other.

“Cris,” Toran called as he leapt from the back of his rearing, panicked pony and drew his battle axe from it’s holder. “What the Void is going on here?!”

“Master Toran?” the youth replied, his bewildered stare torn between the battle and the new arrival. “What are you doing here? I don’t know what’s happening – I heard screams, and then fighting –”

Realizing the lad was at least as confused as himself, and seeing that Mariala was being menaced by two zamora, Toran whirled into action. In two bounds he was beside his friend, and his flashing axe had taken one of the hideous creatures in the chest, cleaving it almost in half. With a high-pitched howl, the thing crumbled instantly into dust, and the Khundari warrior turned to block the crasping claws of the second creature, which Mariala had just Moted… it suddenly turned and wandered off towards Cris. Toran sighed and went after it, slicing its legs clean off.

Mariala was surprised to see their Khundari compatriot suddenly appear out of the dark, but not at all displeased. She had been at somewhat of a loss in the first confusing moments of this unexpected fight. She had cast a spell of Resistence on herself, but her usual combat spells that set nerves aflame or caused confusion in her enemies where singularly useless against the undead, who possessed neither a working nervous system to feel pain nor a brain to be confused with. And her dagger, however finely crafted, seemed scant protection against those boney claws, to which scraps of flesh clung…

As Toran dispatched the immediate threat, Mariala was able to look around and try to access the situation. More zamora seemed to be staggering from the shadows into the light of the burning houses and tree, coming from the other buildings of the hamlet… why? she wondered, since they had no senses in the usual meaning of the word – and then it hit her. The undead were attracted to the aura of living beings, and in this little backwater, it was unlikely that anyone had stronger auras than the Hand! Certainly not stronger than her own, Korwin’s and Devrik’s… which would make them the preferred targets, she suddenly realized.

It was at that moment she caught sight of something in the shadows of a cottage off to her right – a larger figure than the undead gülvini, one that stood tall and seemed intent on watching the battle. Watching with living eyes – she was sure it was one of the Great Güls, the hovguvai! The creature suddenly seemed to become aware of the human’s scrutiny, and in an instant it had melted back into the shadows.

♦ ♦ ♦

Korwin had started to summon the Breath of Arandu as soon as he had realized what was happening, even as he dodged the grasping claws of one of the zamora. But the shock of Devrik’s spell gone so badly awry caused him to abort the spell. Instead, as the shingles of the blacksmith’s house began to burn, Korwin focused his esoteric energies on summoning as much ethereal water as he was capable of… within seconds a torrent of water gushed forth into being from his hands, and cascaded over the charring wooden roof, extinguishing the flames with a hiss. The top of the house disappeared in a swirling cloud of white steam, even as two zamora lunged for the water mage.

Fortunately Vulk was there, and the glittering light of his holy armor encased Korwin, giving him time to draw his cutlass. With his first blow he managed to sever the arm of one of the monstrosities, although that barely slowed it down.

OK, no more time before we leave on vacation; but here’s the final section and a hint at how the next session will begin (and Davey’s always amusing notes follow, for those who want the blow-by-blow):

♦ ♦ ♦

Meanwhile, Erol and Jeb were following close behind their friends, Erol using his newly acquired tracking skills to spot the subtle clues the group had left behind, once they exited the crude tunnel…

They had arrived back at Dor Dür just a day after Toran had departed, having been successfully rescued a childhood friend from bandits in the mountains. Unfortunately, his friend had been wounded in the escape, and it was only by luck (and the ferocity of Grover the war ferret) that a band of Ethmoniri tribesmen had taken them in.  It had taken a long time for his friend to heal enough to travel again, and Erol ws forced to abandon his journey to learn what was going on in the Republic. But he had not returned to Dor Dür empty handed of news of the Vortex…

Now, leaving his friend in the care of Ser Alakor, Erol and Jeb had set off to catch up with the rest of the Hand as soon as they heard what was afoot, and had arrived at Dor Endol just six hours after Toran had departed. They once again wasted no time before setting off in pursuit, but had become somewhat turned around on the road to this hole-in-the-wall hamlet, Robin’s Barge or some such. In the end they had been forced to take shelter for the night in the cottage of a humble forester, who pointed them in the right direction early the next morning. Perhaps, Erol thought, he should have paid more attention to the details when the Prince’s major domo was explaining the route…

Arriving in the hamlet by mid-morning, it was obvious, at least to Jeb, that the Hand had been there – several buildings were singed and still smoking, one was a gutted, smouldering ruin, and an old oak tree near a well had been charred to a skeleton. There were also a great many piles of fetid, greasy ash and bone scattered about the settlement, and several new graves being dug. The residents were quick to explain what had happened the night before, and to speed these latest visitors on their way after their friends, with loud assurances of respect and amity for those brave adventurers…

Leaving their horses with the others, in the care of the blacksmith’s father, they were now afoot as they entered into the swamp proper. Ahead, visible through and over the moss-draped scrub trees, loomed a large fern and lichen covered stone structure. It was set on a patch of slightly drier land that rose a few feet above the marshy water, and appeared to be quite old. An ancient temple, no doubt, or perhaps a palace?

“I suspect that THAT is were we will find the others,” Erol said with a grin, but before Jeb could reply there came the faint sound of battle cries and the ring of steel on steel.

“Not even noon, and they’re at it already,” Jeb sighed, as Erol hefted his trident and dashed toward the sound of fighting. Wondering, and not for the first time, if he should have stuck to farming, Jeb nocked an arrow to his bow and followed after…

To be continued…

 

We’re going to need a bigger boat.

Northern barbarians are restless but repellent

Dark undertones

Northern forests have bad reputation

Ardunne gone 600 years

Soldiers gone missing at night

Headed north to army camps

Met with Prince

40 men disapeered

Loyal unit gone missing at Ribbon forge by marsh

Vulk uses his golden tongue to “good” effect

We go to Ribbon’s Edge

 

The Village Idiots

We all try to find out stuff

Mariala Tarrots reveals a “duality” effect

Korwin Psycometry left objects to no effect

Devrik Fire whispers and gets an impression of a active torture chamber

Sleep interrupted by screams

Zombie Guls

Grapple at Devrik he wrestles with shadow

Mariala attempts resistance

Devrik casts Rennik’s shield

Korwin starts Breath or Arandu

Vulk gropes Devrik giving him armor then whimpers away like a scared girl

Korwin attacked he dodges

Zombie attacks Devrik gets counterstruck

Devrik attacks a second Zombie for a grievous wound

Mariala Motes a zombie who confused shuffles toward Cris

Devrik unveils Fiery Ribbons

Critical Failure !!!

 

Destroy the Village to Save the Village

Devrik lights the village on fire

Korwin Breath fails

Toran arrives to save the day

He delegs the zombie headed toward to Cris

Vulk cast armor no surprise

Zombie attacks Devrik and loses an arm to a counterstrike

Mariala sees a big Gul

Devrik runs away

Toran kills another zombie

Korwin casts effluvium dosing the flames on the blacksmiths house

Devrik runs out the blacksmith house and heads the wrong way

Vulk armors Mariala

Zombies come after Korwin he dodges both

Vulk gets attack a wash

 

Zombies, Zombies, Zombies

Toran attack, a wash

Mariala motes another zombie

Devrik watches a dear little old lady’s house go up in flames

Korwin doesn’t have an epileptic fit, he cutlasses a zombie killing it

Vulk Armors Korwin

Toran kills a zombie

Mariala mote fails

Devrik attacks

Korwin cutlasses no effect, Resists two encounters with the Shadow barely saving

Vulk whimpers and hides after blessing Toran

Zombies attack Devrik Shadow him for 2 aura

Korwin attacked, counterstrikes takes out one

Korwin beats shadow again

 

It’s good to be Zombie

Toran takes out another zombie

Mariala motes

Devrik takes out a zombie but loses another Aura point

Korwin disembowels a zombie but it keeps crawling

Vulk waffles then runs away after Mariala’s “gul”

Zombie attacks Devrik, Devrik counterstrikes to victory

Korwin takes out crawling zombie with a counterstrike

Toaran evades a soul suck

Toran tripped over self and dropped battleaxe

Mariala runs after Vulk

Devrik slays a zombie

Korwin casts Azure hand, frostbiting a zombie

Vulk searches for his dignity

 

Won’t these undead bastards ever die! 

Korwin avoids shadow again

Devrik returns to battle area

Toran dodges and retrieves his axe

Mariala runs after Vulk

Devrik takes out a zombie

Korwin attacks, no effect

Zombies attack

Toran counters and destroys

Devrik counters and destroyed

Korwin evades and fails

Mariala motes the the zombie that wandered toward Vulk

Toran attacks takes out confused zombie

Devrik takes out last zombie

 

Now we can start the Adventure

Next morning we find a tunnel in the root cellar

Into the tunnel and out to the swamp and an ancient temple

Korwin Klordia Shadows Devrik

Toran and Devrik sneaks into temple, More Zombies?!?!

Devrik and Toran take on zombies

Devrik downs one

Toran takes out a zombie

Big gul comes out of shadows

The rest of us come into temple

Devrik takes out gul and Toran takes out a zombie but takes a wound to face

Vulk attempts to heal Toran’s face

Korwin searches gul and finds a ring, an amulet and a brazier

Mariala determines amulet has magical properties

She covets it

We have a discussion on profit sharing and and why does Mariala get everything

 

After giving an explanation of the ambush and diabolical trap to which they had fallen prey, as hurriedly and succinctly as Lekorm and the Prince would allow, the group was relieved to learn that no word had come from Dor Dür of any trouble. Lekorm’s agents’ last report had come only the day before, and confirmed that Raven was still pregnant (and increasingly irritable). Recognizing the futility of trying to restrain Devrik, the Prince granted them all leave to depart immediately, with the promise of a fuller report after Raven and the unborn child’s safety was assured.

But his companions convinced Devrik, once Mariala had used her enchanted paper to let their friends and relatives in Dür know they were alive and to confirm their own well-being, that a good nights sleep and an early start would serve his cause better.

“I’ll never be able to sleep,” he muttered, but assented to the delay. Recognizing the truth of his words, and his agitated state, and knowing they might soon need to rely on his strength and clarity of thought, Mariala surreptitiously cast a small cantrip as she left his room. In just a few moments Devrik was sound asleep, snoring deeply, and he slept through the night.

At dawn the next morning, 10 Margas,  the Hand rode out from the gates of Dürkon at a gallop, Devrik in the lead, into the towering clouds of a gathering storm. But the fire mage had no intention of letting mere weather slow him down. He set a punishing pace, and when the storm finally struck a few hours later, the group simply lowered their heads and rode on through the howling winds and driving rains, into a day that never got lighter than dusk. Even using the remounts supplied by Lekorm Darkeye, it was a ragged and exhausted group of humans and horses that staggered into the village of Dür in the wee hours of the morning of 11 Margas. Although the rain had long since stopped, they were all damp and the horses steamed.

Stopping first at Draik’s apothecary shop, they found it dark and the man himself not at home. His sleepy cousin/apprentice, once roused from his bed, informed them that Draik had been in attendance at the keep since late afternoon, summoned when the Lady Raven had gone into labor. The words were hardly out of the lad’s mouth before Devrik was back on his horse and galloping up the hill to the keep’s main gate. His friends scrambled to follow, and caught up with him in time to keep him from slaying the guards who attempted to stop him from entering. Identities were quickly confirmed, and in a matter of minutes the group was ushered into the solarium, where Ser Alakor and his brother Draik sat nodding in comfortable chairs, while Black Hawk paced nervously before the fireplace.

“My wife,” Devrik rumbled, after perfunctory greetings were exchanged. “Where is she?”

“She’s about three meters below your feet, my friend,” Alakor said, smiling tiredly. “I gave her my own chambers for the lying in. We took your warnings about this Kirdik Hanol very seriously, and that’s the most secure room in the keep.”

“And we were with her until a few hours ago,” Draik added, pouring some wine into a goblet and handing it to Devrik. “Until that old battle-axe of a midwife forced all of us superfluous males out of the room at last… she never liked us being there in the first place, but Raven had insisted. Once the heavy labor began –”

“Well, she’d best not think to keep me from my wife’s side,” Devrik growled, draining the cup in a single gulp and slamming it down on the table. “Come!”

He lead the way back down one floor, to the door to Alakor’s rooms, where two men-at-arms stood guard and three annoyed looking women milled uncertainly in the hallway. The women turned out to be the apprentice midwives, who had themselves just been shunted out of the room by their senior, somewhat to their confusion. Devrik brushed aside their protests as he flung open the door, and and at a gesture from the Constable the guards stood down.

The large main room was comfortably, but not opulently, furnished, and lit by several crystal-and-brass lamps, most placed strategically around the large bed. But Devrik saw nothing but his wife, sweat-soaked and pale, her face twisted in pain as a contraction wracked her body.

“About time you got here,” Raven gasped as the contraction waned, reaching out for his hand. The midwife, a stern, hatchet-faced woman of middle years, turned to berate the intruders for the interruption, but one look at Devrik’s grim face silenced her, and she vented no more than a muffled “harrumph” before turning back to her patient.

“It’s almost here, m’lady,” she assured the panting woman. Raven’s grip on her husband’s hand tightened as the next contraction came, to the point he felt bones grinding together, but he only grinned at her.

Seeing his grin as the contraction receded, she said “If you think you’re every going to touch me again,think again, you bastard!” But the faint smile she managed belied the words… and with the next contraction the baby crowned.

Devrik’s grin disappeared and he turned an interesting combination of pale and green as the midwife pushed down on Raven’s belly and his son shot bloodily into the world.

The apprentice midwives crowded around at that point, pushing the unresisting new father to one side, as the infant was wiped off and the umbilical cord was cut and tied off. But even as the midwife took the baby over to a small table near the door to Alakor’s study, leaving the others to attend to the exhausted new mother, two guards burst into the room.

The new arrivals made straight for their lord, with Erol close on their heels. He had been on guard at the head of the stairs, but had let the men-at-arms through when he’d heard their news.

“Sir, the village is under attack,” one of the men gasped out, breathless after running up three flights of stairs. And even as all eyes turned to the messenger, the sounds of conflict could be heard coming faintly from the open window.

“Gülvini,” the man continued. “Two score or more… they just appeared from the Elven Wood… the garrison is arming, m’lord…”

Before Ser Alakor could reply, one of the assistant midwives cried out in alarm. “She’s bleeding! Something is wrong!”

The room erupted in confusion. Alakor, with his duty clear, turned reluctantly from the birthing crisis to deal with deal with the external attack. He didn’t dream of asking Devrik for help – the man was focused in pale intensity on his wife from directly behind the women who huddle around her – but Erol and Toran immediately prepared to follow him to the fight. Draik rushed to the bed, pulling vials from his scrip, with Mariala and Vulk in his wake, while Korwin stood torn between the two crises. It was that indecision that caused him to notice something odd…

“What are you doing with the baby?” he called out suspiciously – perhaps the only words that could have drawn Devrik’s attention away from his now unconscious wife. He looked up and across the room at the second of the guards who had brought word of the attack. Instead of moving to follow Alakor and the other fighters toward the door, he had quietly moved to where the midwife stood holding the newly swaddled baby, and had just taken it from her unresisting arms.

Devrik’s eyes widened in shocked recognition as the guard smiled triumphantly at him,  his features shifting and melting into – the face of Kirdik Hanol!

Even as Devrik gave an inarticulate roar of rage and leapt over the blood-soaked bed, drawing his sword, Kirdik and the now-grinning “midwife” slipped through the doorway into the study, slamming the door and barring it behind them. The enraged warrior rammed his massive shoulder into the solid oak and iron door… and bounced off.

“There’s another door from that room,” Alakor cried out, arrested in his departure by this new drama.

“Rally the troops, I’ll join you shortly,” he order the true guards. “You two follow me,” he added to Erol and Toran as he dashed from the room and down the hallway to the back door to his study. “We’ll cut them off before they can reach the stairs!”

But they encountered no one before reaching the door at the end of a narrow hallway.

“They could not have made it past us,” Alakor muttered. “But why would they barricade themselves in a dead end…”

He thrust the door open suddenly and leapt into the room just in time to see a section of stone wall sliding back into place – a hidden door that he had known nothing of!

Erol moved to unbar the other door, which Devrik continued to batter from the other side, and soon the entire group was crowded into the study, save for Vulk, who remained with Draik at Raven’s side, desperately working to save her life.

” I must go and lead the fight against these invaders,” Alakor said, after showing Devrik the section of wall behind which lay the hidden passage. “Obviously a diversion, but not one I can ignore. I must leave you to find a way to open this door and follow the bastard!”

Devrik, still in a red rage, was of little use in finding the hidden latch to the secret door, alternating between pacing the small room and attacking the wall with the pommel of his sword, sending sparks and stone chips flying. The others methodically set about searching for the trigger, and it was Toran who found it after  a few minutes. Just as he called out his triumph and activated the switch, causing the stone wall to slide silently open, Vulk stepped in from the bedroom, wiping his bloody hands on a rag.

Devrik, poised to rush through the door, turned suddenly pale as he stared at his friend. “Is she…” he couldn’t finish the question.

“She lives, Devrik,” Vulk assured him, looking grim. “She’s lost a great deal of blood, and if it wasn’t for Draik’s Baylorium and the blessings of Kasira, we would’ve lost her. But she will recover, in time, although she’ll be unconscious for some time yet…”

“I… I have to… I have to go after the child,” Devrik seemed suddenly uncertain. “But…”

“Of course we go after the child,” Vulk barked. “Do you think Raven would want you to do anything else? Draik and Black Hawk will keep watch over her, and you can do nothing to help with her healing – but I can think of nothing better for her than to return her child to her arms when she wakes up, can you?”

The indecision was gone from Devrik’s face in an instant, and without another word he turned to plunge down the dark, narrow stairs  the secret door had revealed. His companions were on his heels, weapons drawn and arcane energies gathering.

♦ ♦ ♦

The passage led through the core of the keep, finally ending in an antechamber of the subterranean Great Hall. From there no one had a doubt where the fugitives had gone – into the secret passage in the room behind the dais that lead down into the ancient Khundari mine-cave system. Once into the caves the occasional trace of blood and mucous from the infant’s umbilical cord proved enough to confirm what they all believed – they were headed for the Nitaran Vortex at the heart of the Elven Wood. They raced on without pause.

Bursting out of the cave entrance into the night shadows of the wood, they encountered several Gülvini standing guard, wicked looking and surprisingly well-made weapons at the ready, feral red eyes gleaming int the light of Devrik’s now-flaming sword.

Devrik slew them all without even slowing down – Vulk wasn’t sure he had even really noticed them, for several dozen yards ahead he could see the backs of Kirdik and his accomplice, hurrying up the hill toward the summit and escape.

As Devrik reached the hilltop he could see his old enemy holding his child in one arm and gesturing with the other, seeking to open the portal. But between them stood a mass of Gülvini, armed and hungry for blood, having been held back from the attack on the village. And these were the larger güls, the gül-Hovgavui. How many exactly it was hard to say in the waning hours of the night, with both moons down, but enough to stop even Devrik’s rage-blinded rush to burst through them. A slash across the face from a Gülvini mang finally woke him to the fact that he would have  to stand and fight.

Toran and Erol leapt to their friend’s side, hacking at the beastmen, while Vulk summoned the power of Abon’s Authority, and called out in the Voice for Kirdik to stop and stand down. The other cantor shuddered briefly, but never paused in his gesturing, laughing as he shrugged off his opponent’s power.

Mariala stood back from the fray and focused her arcane energies on the pair at the hill’s crest, releasing a blast of searing Fire Nerves toward them, her effort bolstered by Vulk’s prayers. She dared not risk hitting the baby, but that bitch of a midwife…

At that point, several things happened at once – the false midwife fell to the ground, screaming and writhing in pain, Erol threw his net into the face of his nearest opponent and leaped past the creature to race the last few yards up the hill… and Kirdik succeeded in opening the portal. With no more than a glance at his shrieking companion, he stepped forward and vanished.

Devrik slashed down the last of the güls directly in front of him, and with a scream of rage bounded up the hill and vanished in turn.

Korwin, having made an end run around the fight, raced to follow him.

“Erol’s power must be holding open the gate! Hurry!” he yelled over his shoulder as he also disappeared into the invisible vortex.

Vulk, Toran and Erol were all still engaged with the surviving Gülvini, who were holding their own until Erol hurled his trident straight into the face of their leader. This allowed the others to press forward and disarm their opponents, who wisely decided they had other places to be. As the beastmen fled into the dark, Erol grabbed the still pain-wracked “midwife” in passing and they both vanished through the portal. Mariala was on their heels, with Toran and Vulk bringing up the rear.

♦ ♦ ♦

Orange-red light, stifling heat and a subsonic roar more felt than heard. Those were the  first impressions of the group as they each arrived… someplace familiar.

It took Vulk, the last one through, a moment to realize why – splashing magma, frozen now to rock, had somewhat changed the contours of the place, but they were in the ancient Khundari cult’s ritual chamber beneath the city of Dürkon!

And Kirdik Hanol, looking confused but trying to hide it, was standing on the great pier of stone that jutted out into the magma lake, just where his compatriot, Arlun Parek, had met his interdimensional fate many months earlier. The lava fall behind him seemed even larger than it had the last time they were here, the deep roar even more overwhelming, and the heat more oppressive.

Devrik stood at the foot of the pier, rooted in place as his nemesis threatened his son, Toran and Erol  at his side and back a pace. Erol still held the false midwife in his grip, his blade to her throat, a threat at which Kirdik just laughed.

“Just stay where you are, you lumbering ape,” the Korönian yelled over the deep thrumming roar of the lava fall. “And your little friends, too… if I feel I’m in danger of losing the child to you, I’ll make sure neither of us will have him!”

“What of your prophecy, false cleric?” Devrik rumbled, his already low voice almost drowned out in the pulsing harmonics of the magma chamber. “How will he free your Chained God if he is dead?”

Farther behind him and to either side,  Mariala and Korwin were each unobtrusively preparing arcane attacks.

“Prophecy is a tricky thing,” Kirdik shrugged distractedly. “It also implies the child might help bind the God for another thousand years… if I can’t be sure of the one, I can at least prevent the other.”

He suddenly smiled. “But I have no intention of losing!”

His free hand flashed up suddenly as he reflected Mariala’s Fire Nerve spell  back at her, and she fell to the floor in burning agony.  “I think not my dear,” he laughed. “This is between me and–”

His words were suddenly choked off as a sphere of ethereal water suddenly materialized around his head, and his laugh turned to a surprised gurgle.

Korwin had managed to overcome the handicap of performing water magic in the heart of a fire sanctum, and had cast Effluvium on their enemy. He could feel Kirdik resisting the spell, as their wills met and locked… but he soon sensed the cantor’s will slipping.

Devrik leapt forward, dropping his sword to reach for his son, just as Kirdik pierced the bubble around his head with his free hand, palm outward – and the ethereal water blew away in a ball of very real steam. Devrik was momentarily blinded, and when he was able to see again both cantor and infant were gone.

“He managed to open another vortex,” Vulk called, rushing to Mariala’s side. “I think he has an amulet or talisman he’s using. Erol–”

“Yes, I can feel the surge, my power has amplified his again… the gate is still open – there, just beyond the edge of the pier!”

Without a backward glance, Devrik scooped up his sword and plunged over the lip of the pier, vanishing as he did so. Helping a still dazed and wincing Mariala to her feet, Vulk this time lead the rest of the group through the new portal –

♦ ♦ ♦

– and into another cavern. This at first appear much smaller, and was certainly less oppressively hot, than the magma chamber they had just left. And quieter. But down a rocky slope in front of the them was an opening into a larger cavern, where a pulsing light glowed yellow-orange and voices could be heard.

“Kirdik, what are you doing here?” a melodious, yet somehow… unnatural voice called out.It was impossible to tell if it was the voice of a cultured man or a strong woman. “How did you learn of this place? And why do you have a child – you fool! Have you been wasting our time and resources on your obsession with the Fire Prophecy again?! Were you not warned –”

“Master,” Kirdik interrupted, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain and even – frightened? “I– I have used only my own temple resources –”

“All resources at your disposal ARE our resources,” the voice went on, never raising its volume, yet overriding the cantor. “You know this, you swore an oath to put the Vortex before all else… and in so doing, knowing you would eventually gain all you wished for.”

“I saw an opportunity, Master… and- and I seized it! Here, take the child. This will not harm our larger plans, I swear–”

“And yet here you are, where you should not be, interrupting plans you know nothing of… ah, and you have brought unwelcome guests, too, I perceive…”

When Kirdik had made as if to offer the infant to his mysterious “master,” Devrik had stepped out of the small entrance cave and into the much larger chamber beyond, followed by his friends. Their eyes widened at the sight before them.

They stood in the lower right corner of a cavern roughly 70 meters from side-to-side and slightly longer front-to-back, with a jagged ceiling some 20 meters high. The floor was paved in stones of muted earth and fire colors, and in the center of the space was an eight-sided pedestal of intricately carved black stone from which a column of granite rose to a height of 5 meters. Atop this pillar sat a sphere of crystal, polished smooth and radiating a pulsing deep yellow light that filled the space. The whole affair was surrounded by a hemisphere of shimmering yellow light. Two meters in front of the pedestal was a rectangular stone pit, 20 meters long and 10 meters wide, from which came the reddish glow of slow-moving magma. Stone steps rose up from either side to a rusted iron catwalk that spanned the pit lengthwise, and on this platform stood a striking figure.

Dressed in flowing, high-collared robes of midnight blue, trimmed with a flame pattern of reddish-gold, it was impossible to say if the figure was male or female. A skullcap of red leather, sporting horns of ornate gold spirals, covered the head, while the face was concealed behind a mask of mirror-polished gold, whose eyes glowed white. The hands and as much of the forearms as could be seen were wrapped in strips of cloth-of-gold, and the left hand held an ebony walking stick/staff, its golden head topped with a massive ruby of deep, blood red.

But as striking as this mysterious figure was, what truly arrested the eye were the four Summoning Circles set in two-thirds of an arc around the pivot of the central pillar. Two mages stood outside each 7-meter circle, concentrating intently on what lay within –  massive, towering winged shapes of black, shot through with glowing red cracks, barely contained within their prisons. By the colors and ornamentation of their garb, each pair of mages consisted of a Fire mage and an Earth mage, and they seemed to have worked together to summon fire and earth elementals and merge them into – some sort of magma elemental? In any case, the mages seemed oblivious to anything else going on in the chamber.

At the fifth point of the circle that would have closed the arc of Summoning Circles instead lay an inset stone pentagram of deepest jade, incised with various arcane runes and sporting meter-tall black candles at the corresponding points, with flickering blue flames burning. A paper-strewn table, flanked by two braziers, lay against the far wall, beyond the pentagram. The floor was littered with long sections of massive chains, each link of which was larger than a big man’s hand.

In contrast to all this, the four hulking Gülvini guards at either end of the magma pit seemed quite homey and normal, Mariala thought dazedly – until she realized they were of a sort she had never seen before, larger and even more monstrous looking that the Hovguvai.

For a moment they were all frozen in this tableau, Kirdik holding the baby up as if to hand it to the figure on the catwalk above him, the figure impassive and still, the Hand stunned by what they saw.

“My friends,” the figure in the golden mask began, holding out its hands towards the newcomers. “I’m sure we can–”

But before any more could be said, Devrik had raised his sword, which burst once again into flame, and leaped to the attack. Whether from sheer surprise or simple confusion over Devrik’s intended target, the figure on the catwalk raised a hand in a sudden sharp gesture, and one of the massive chains on the floor leaped into the air, whirling and whipping about like a thing alive. Before Devrik could close on Kirdik, his true target, the chain had whipped across his torso, spinning him around and hurling him into the wall. He collapsed to the floor, bloody and unconscious.

While most of the others were momentarily stunned by this shocking turn of events, Toran had leaped suddenly from the shadows where he had concealed himself, and landed a flying kick to Kirdik’s back. At the same moment Erol hurled his net at the cantors legs, entangling them and bringing the man to his knees. In one whirling motion Toran seized the baby and landed another flying kick, to the head this time, leaping away before the dazed Kirdik could respond.

Thus wide open, Erol  moved in, trident raised, when a sudden cry of pain diverted his attention. In the sudden confusion, his prisoner, Kirdik’s catspaw, the false midwife, had been forgotten. With everyone’s attention focused elsewhere, she had pulled a hidden blade from her bodice and had moved to plunge it into Mariala’s back. Some sense of movement had alerted her victim, however, who turned just in time – instead of a lethal blow to the back, the knife instead took her in the left side.

The midwife pulled back for a second blow as Mariala staggered against the wall, clutching her bleeding side with one hand. Fortunately the other hand had drawn her own dagger, a longer and better blade than the small punch-knife her adversary wielded, and she blocked the second blow, with a grunt of pain.

Kirdik had used Erol’s moment of distraction to kick free of the net, gesture with both hands, and burst into ethereal flame. Erol realized his advantage was lost, and that Mariala was weakening fast. He made his decision, and with a sharp twist of his trident he forced Kirdik to drop the mace he had drawn, then leaped away towards Mariala and the false midwife. Bringing the trident around as he sprinted forward, he took the snarling woman in the side, lifting her up and pinning her to the wall. Her expression slid from feral rage to shocked disbelief, and then relaxed into the glazed stare of death.

Meanwhile, Vulk had rushed to Devrik’s side, lifting his friend up and examining his injuries. Serious, and possibly fatal if not dealt with immediately. But in the middle of a fight… he took a moment and composed himself, and then began the ritual of the Herald’s Peace, an invocation that would cause combatants to ignore him and anyone within his small circle of protection, as long as no one within that circle took aggressive action.

With this protection in place, he let awareness of the battle around him fade, and he focused his healing talents on the most serious of Devrik’s injuries, the blow to the head and the broken ribs. Thus he was unaware of the two of strange Gülvini guards who started to move toward him, only to suddenly turn aside and instead join seek other prey. One of whom was Korwin.

Korwin, like the other mages in the group, had immediately figured out that some sort of massive elemental demonic summoning was going on here. He didn’t know to what purpose, but he was sure that interrupting it would be a good thing. And the nearest likely way to do that, he thought, was the pentagram.

Golden Boy, as he thought of the figure on the platform, seemed focused on whipping chains around the room trying to hit Toran, who managed to jink and dodge each attack, bawling baby in his arms. This was the time… but as he moved toward the carved sigil, with the intent to kick over and snuff those candles, he was intercepted by one of the monstrous new Gülvini, forcing him to draw his saber and defend himself.

Jinking and dodging himself, he managed to avoid the creature’s blows and lop the nearest candle in half, toppling the pieces to the floor and extinguishing the blue flame. He looked eagerly about for some sign of effect on the summoning circles, but was disappointed. No one seemed to have even noticed. Continuing his saber dance with the hulking Gül, Korwin one by one snuffed the rest of the candles, knocking many out of the pentagram altogether.

Still no apparent effect, but now someone had apparently noticed… he never saw the chain coming until the last second. And he almost dodged it, leaping high as the massive links whipped by beneath him. But the chain kinked suddenly upward, catching his left foot, to spin him up and then down, hard, into the floor. That it also took out one of his Gülvini opponents was small consolation, as the last thing Korwin saw as the world went black was the slavering grin of the other Gülvini, moving in for the kill.

Toran, once he had grabbed Devrik’s son from that crazed cleric (and they hadn’t even had time to name the kid yet, he thought), spent the next several minutes dodging the whirling chains Captain Chaos kept whipping at him (don’t really know his name either, he also thought). He was certainly getting a workout of his acrobatic combat skills, but burdened with a squalling, squirming infant, a few of those chains were coming too close… and had the little guy…? Yes, he had… although how he could pee when he hadn’t even experienced his mother’s nipple yet, he didn’t know.

Seeing that Vulk seemed undisturbed as he knelt over Devrik, who had finally sat up and was holding his head, Toran decided that was the place for the kid. Using all his Shadow Warrior skills, he managed to lose himself in the shadows long enough to make it into the cantor’s little bubble of quiet.

“Here’s the kid,” he said shoving the squirming, disheveled and smelly bundle into Vulk’s arms. He’d been going to give him to Devrik, but on closer inspection the big fighter didn’t look so good…

“Gotta go,” he added before either man could say anything.”Korwin’s in trouble!”

With that he was gone, leaping across the room to block a Gülvini’s killing blow, spinning around over Korwin’s prone form and driving his axe into the creature’s chest.

Vulk looked at the bawling infant in his arms and tried to hand him to Devrik. But the fighter shook his head, as he staggered to his feet,

“No Vulk,” he said, reaching for his sword. “Even if I trusted myself to open a portal, I can’t leave until Hanol is dead. Otherwise my family will never be safe! So you must take my son and flee. Get him to his mother if I fail to rejoin you…”

With that he swallowed the vial of Baylorium the cantor had handed him just before Toran’s sudden arrival, and strode out of the circle of protection to confront his oldest enemy.

Recognizing the necessity, but hating it nonetheless, Vulk turned from his friends, fighting for their lives, and moved as stealthily as possible for the portal cave.

As he did so, Devrik did his best to draw all eyes to himself, roaring out a challenge to Kirdik, who was again locked in battle with Erol and the surviving Gülvini. The latter seemed equally happy to attack both men, and roared in apparent delight at this new element to the fight.

Kirdik, still wreathed in ethereal flame, had set his mace to flaming mode as well, and once again Devrik summoned up the fire on his own sword. When the two weapons met there was a flare of green flame, and a hiss like a burning snake.

A three-way fight now ensued, Kirdik against Devrik and Erol and the two surviving Gülvini against all. Mariala, her wound staunched, hovered near the cave wall, and considered following Vulk, but decided she would be more use here. Unfortunately, her attempts to put Kirdik to sleep and to Mote him failed, no doubt due to the severity of the wound in her side.

Toran, having killed the beastman who had threatened Korwin, had revived the fallen water mage and was eager to rejoin the fight. But he realized that taking out the leader of the Vortex (for he was sure that was exactly who Captain Chaos was, standing above the fray, observing it all in seeming disinterest) might be the wiser move . He couldn’t reach the bastard, up on his perch, without being seen, but perhaps… he drew out his best throwing knife, and taking aim at the back of the neck, hurled it with all his strength.

Without even turning, the figure on the catwalk raised one gold-wrapped hand, and the knife turned suddenly red, then white, melting and warping and finally disappearing in a spray of molten droplets less than a foot from its target. Another gesture, this time with the walking stick, and Toran was again dodging the whirling chains of death.

Meanwhile, as Erol held off the Gülvini, with a Fire Nerve assist from Mariala, Devrik and Kirdik hacked away at one another, locked in a furious dance of hate and pain, neither one able to land a decisive blow and neither one inclined to surrender. Both were bloody and staggering, when Kirdik’s putative master apparently had enough.

“You have become a liability, Kirdik,” the melodious voice wafted down from above, serene and perhaps a bit bored. “I have vital work to do hear, and it’s time you – and your friends – left us.”

With that he whipped his right hand forward, spreading his fingers wide, and a spark hurtled toward Kirdik’s head, growing larger as it flew, until it was a fireball that engulfed not only Kirdik, but Devrik, Erol and the last Gülvini as well. Devrik attempted to use his pyrokinetic ability to shield himself and Erol, and though he no longer feared the fire, he was exhausted, wounded and enraged. He failed, and the flames seared them both. But Kirdik took the brunt of the attack, and his ethereal flame absorbed much of the damage; though they were all injured, only the Gül was killed (to no one’s regret).

In a rage at this base betrayal, Kirdik turned on his former master, calling forth the full powers of his god, and prepared to hurl them at the shining, untouched and unmoved figure above them. But his rage, and the fates, betrayed him – in focusing on the Golden One he forgot his first enemy. Even as Kirdik unleashed his final invocation, whatever it was, Devrik staggered to his feet behind him and drew his blade, cold steel once again, across the cantor’s throat.

As his life’s blood pumped out him, so too did the eldricht energies spew forth, uncontrolled now by will… and were met with Erol’s own poorly controlled, barely understood ability. Suddenly the eight fire and earth mages, who had until then ignored the conflict in the room, screamed out as one. The glowing circles that imprisoned the enraged chimera elementals flickered… and went out.

With howls of inhuman joy the magma elementals stretched up to their full height, shadowy wings unfurled, and unleashed their rage on their former captors/tormentors, who burned like torches and died. And the earth shook.

On the high platform, the Golden One staggered and clutched at a railing, at last shaken from that bubble of indifferent superiority. The melodious voice was now twisted with rage, and fear.

“No! What have you done, you fools? It’s too soon, too soon…” With a cry of anguish and rage, and one last look toward the surviving heroes (they all wondered what expression lay beneath that shining mask), hands traced a strange pattern though the air, and a golden nimbus engulfed the figure. When it faded away, the catwalk was empty.

But the room was not empty. Having so quickly dispatched their captors, the magma elementals seemed bent on turning their rage on everything around them – the floor shook, and cracked, and magma leaped up from both the pit and the new fissures. And glowing, eyeless faces turned toward the remaining mortals…

“It’s time to get out of here!” Mariala screamed, and they all ran for the portal cave. Devrik doubted he had the strength to open a vortex, but he would die trying. At least his son was safe. Vulk – was standing there waiting for them. Devrik was torn between fury and hope, and Vulk gave him no time to pick one.

“Hurry, I’ve been holding this open, go, go, go!”

Devrik grabbed him by the arm and pulled him through the portal, the others close behind. When the last person was through Vulk shoved the baby at its father and focused on sealing the portal behind them. Only when he was sure it was closed did he look up to see where they had landed.

The battered, burned and bloody group stood an a high upland moor, overlooking a long lake that stretched far to east and west. Across the lake rugged foothills piled up to a great snowcapped mountain, which rose up into the blue sky of early morning, tinged pink by the light of the rising sun. Directly below them, on the shores of the lake, was a large cluster of stone buildings, with red slate roofs and carved timber end beams.

“I know where we are,” Mariala said dazedly. “That’s my old chantry down there, where I studied… and that’s Dragon Lake, with Mount Katai there in the –”

But before she could finish the sentence, the top of the distant mountain suddenly bulged upward and out, and then exploded in a black cloud of ash, smoke and pulverized stone, shot through with lightening and lit from beneath by an orange glow, all in perfect silence. And then the sound hit them, like a wall of solid air, and knocked everyone off their feet. Then the ground bucked and jumped beneath them, and at the chantry the wall of one of the buildings crumbled to rubble, and the smooth surface of the lake was suddenly filled with whitecaps…

♦ ♦ ♦

 

Below, for your enjoyment, are Davy’s cliff notes from the game of the above adventure. I always enjoy them so much, I thought you guys should too!

A Fire Mage Ate Your Baby!

Morning Comes

We Ride

Surprisingly Uninterrupted

Big Storm

Drake’s is dark

Keep is Dark

Raven in Labor Mid Afternoon

A birthin’ going on

It’s a……Boy!

Oh No!

Midwife took the baby

Devrik recognizes Kirdik

Who let him in, Erol Blows it

After Them

Follow the umbilical cord

Through the tunnels, caves and out to the Elvin Wood

 

Vulk tries Abon’s Authority to halt Kirdik

Guls in the way

Toran, no effect, takes a slight injury to forearm

Erol trie to net a gul, he misses then runs past

Mariala attempts fire nerves, Vulk adds 20 piety

Fake midwife goes down

Vortex opens, He’s gone

Devrik gets beat on by guls as he charges thru

Minor wound to face

Devrik hit again

 

Into the Portal!

Devrik into Portal

Korwin into Portal

Vulk attacks gul, blocked

Toran attacks, gul counterattacks no effect

Erol throws trident, into the head gul dead

Toran disarms gul

Erol grabs fallen crony and into the portal

Gul fails to pick up weapon decides to flee

Mariala into the portal

Toran & Vulk into the portal

 

…Moving to other map…

Magma, Liquid Hot Magma

Back to the fire sacrifice pit?

Kirdik is confused

Korwin starts effluvium

Mariala starts fire nerves

Kirdik blocks fire nerves and sets them on Mariala.

Down goes Mariala

Effluvium forms around Kirdik it becomes a test of wills, Korwin succeeds

Kirdik explodes effluvium ball into steam and disappears

 

Into the Other Portal!

Devrik disappears

We go through

Into a Volcano

“That’s some What the Fuckness”

Fire Demons!

Golden Boy, Captain Chaos, Cabbage Head, Mr. Scratch, Aurum Caput , Cabeza de Oro

Golden Boy whips battleship chain at Devrik taking him out

Toran kicks Kirdik

Erol entangles Kirdik in net

Korwin goes to pentagram

Vulk goes to heal Devrik using Herald’s Peace

Erol’s prisoner attacks Mariala, stabbing her in the side

Kirdik bursts into ethereal fire

Toran grabs the baby

Erol tridents Kirdik forcing him to drop his mace

Erol attacks again, no effect

Mariala evades a dagger thrust, Erol comes to her aid

Korwin attempts to extinguish candles and gets attacked by a gul

 

Let’s Just Interrupt a Bigger Dark Ritual

Korwin successfully dodges and extinguishes some candles, no effect

Vulk psionically heals Devrik

Chains attack Toran, he dodges and passes Jack Jack to Vulk

Erol finally takes out fake midwife

Mariala Fire Nerves a Gul

Kirdik Flames on his Broadsword

Korwin makes a wish and extinguishes the rest of the candles

Devrik attacks Kirdik forces him stumble

Vulk and Jack Jack make it to vortex point

Golden Boy directs chain at Korwin, hitting him in the foot and sending him unconscious

Chain also hits gul

Toran rushes to Korwin’s aid by taking out gul

Erol attacks Kirdik, minor damage

Kirdik and Devrik trade blows

Mariala attemps to put Kirdik to sleep

He saves

Gul attacks Devrik he takes some damage

Devrik attacks Devrik hits for 2d6

Korwin whimpers

Vulk starts to open a portal

Chain attacks Toran, he dodges

Toran throws his knife at Golden boy, loses knife in liquid hot magma

Erol attack Kirdik, no effect

Lirdik attacks Devrik, wash

Mariala attempts to mote Kirdik

Devrik hits Kirdik for 2d6

Gul attacks Devrik, he blocks

Vulk opens gate

Golden Boy fireballs Kirdik engulfing Gul, Devrik and Erol as well

 

Now we get to take on Golden Boy

Devrik fails pyrokinesis

All fire balled take damage

Kirdik attemps a spell that backfires

Fire Demon released!

“It’s too soon”

Fire Demon Free for All

Golden Boy Retreats

Mariala Mote fails

Devrik attacks Kirdik slicing his throat

Marines we are out of here

Portal to ???

The preparations for travel were made hurriedly and in unusual silence. Devrik rejoined his companions after seeing messages off to both his wife and to her two guardians, Ser Alakor, Constable of Dür, and her brother Black Hawk, alerting them to be especially alert for any attempts from their enemies.

“This whole thing has the smell of a trap or feint,” was all he would say to Vulk as they loaded their packs. “But if a feint, to leave Raven and my unborn child unprotected, they will find find her far from so… unless they send an army, in which case even my sword would be of little more aid…”

That last sounded more like Devrik trying to convince himself, but Vulk wisely said nothing, merely making affirming noises and assuring his friend that they would all be back at Raven’s side in half a tenday or less.

An hour before noon the group rendezvoused at the entrance to the Western Deepway with Toran and his two men-at-arms, Khorez and Dembhor. The Khundari soldiers were older men, taciturn and uncommunicative beyond a polite but laconic “yes m’am” or “no sir” in response to direct questions or requests. They seemed competent enough though, and, Mariala sensed, mildly amused at Toran’s obvious nervousness about commanding older and more experienced men.

Cris, bitterly disappointed at being left behind to oversee the group’s affairs, and especially their horses, waved the group off as they entered the dimly lit tunnel. Toran and Devrik led the way, with Mariala, Vulk and Korwin immediately behind, followed by Erol and Jeb, with the two Khundari guards bringing up the rear.

At this eastern terminus, the Western Deepway was still in good repair – twelve meters wide, the walls smooth stone that arched overhead to a ceiling six meters high, and intricately carved pillars and arches every 20 meters or so. The floor was smoothed gray rock, with a an inset of paved flagstones of a mellow, golden sandstone running down the middle, three meters wide. Occasionally the road would come to a small river and arch up over the rushing black waters in a graceful curve of stone, beautifully carved in traditional Khundari patterns.

Every ten meters, midway between the pillars on alternating sides, the crystal panels of glowstones cast pools of rich yellow light. Although dim by surface standards, they gave more than enough light for even the humans to see well enough to maintain a brisk pace. Even so, Vulk and Erol each carried a lit torch just to be sure. Toran explained how cunningly designed vents allowed air to move down from the surface, causing the slight, fresh breeze that made the flames dance.

After several kilometers the nature of the passage began to change… while the overall dimensions remained the same, as did the smooth sandstone pathway, the walls became rougher, the verges of stone floor more uneven, the evidence of artifice more utilitarian. The lights remained steady, but the natural effects of water and time began to be seen, stalactites and stalagmites sometimes narrowing the passageway, slowly covering up the work of the ancient Khundari.

After several hours of steady traveling, Korwin decided to break out his flute and lighten the grim mood with a sprightly tune of the Shattered Sea. To everyone’s surprise, he was actually quite good, but what was really shocking was his success in cajoling the morose (and usually monosyllabic) Devrik into singing! Devrik’s singing, sadly, was no more appealing than his speaking voice, and Vulk quickly put an end to the musical interlude by pointing out that they didn’t want to attract the attention of whatever might be living in these depths, like bears or what have you…

“I hardly think there are bears down here,” Korwin sniffed, as he grudgingly put away his flute.

“Actually –” Toran began, but Korwin plowed on.

“But that does put me in mind of the tragic tale of the wreck of the Sea Princess and the fate of Captain Ratclif Mastborn…”

Korwin was barely launched on his story, however, when the air was suddenly rent with a tremendous roar. Out of the darkness to their right, a huge form lumbered into sight, an enormous bulk that growled menacingly as it towered up on two legs. Up and up and up…

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Korwin squeaked as the giant bear, all four meters of him, loomed over them and let loose another deafening roar.

Vulk, heart pounding, leapt forward with his torch, waving it frantically in front of the great creature, dancing about and yelling incoherently. Rather than fleeing, or even pausing, the bear turned its massive head toward him and lashed out with a great razor-clawed paw.

“That won’t do any good,” Toran yelled as the cantor leaped back. “It’s a cave bear, it’s completely blind!”

“You might have said so sooner!” Vulk muttered as he dropped the torch and reached for his sword.

Toran wasted no breath pointing out there had hardly been a sooner, instead swinging his battle axe in a two-handed blow that met the bear’s left shoulder as it came back to all fours. It was a mighty blow, but the bear seemed to shrug it off, responding with a backhanded blow that Toran neatly dodged.

Devrik’s own battlesword was out and whirling in a deadly flash of light on steel, and the bear turned its rage on him now. But neither opponent did any damage to the other as they gavoted around one another. Erol rushed forward from the back of the group, hefting his trident, as Mariala attempted to cast a sleep enchantment on the monstrous ursine and Korwin summoned up his frost blade. Vulk could be heard praying up his holy armor.

The bear took another lunging swipe at Toran, who again nimbly ducked under the lethal blow, but was unable to connect with his own weapon. His attack did distract the bear long enough for Erol to stab with his trident, driving the triple points into the beast’s paw. It reared back with a roar that seemed as much surprise as pain, almost wrenching the weapon from Erol’s hands.

After a tense moment of stillness, as everyone paused to catch their breath, the cave bear apparently decided it just wasn’t worth the effort. With a last rumbling growl it turned and loped off into the shadows, back to whatever hidden lair it had emerged from.

“Not a music loving bear, apparently,” Vulk said at last, when it was clear the creature had truly departed.

“Nonsense,” Korwin snorted shakily. “It wasn’t my flute that enraged the beast, it was obviously Devrik’s singing!”

This got a general laugh and even Devrik smiled, saying, “Everybody’s a critic.”

“It’s about time to call a halt for the night, in any case,” Toran said, once the laughter had quieted and everyone’s nerves had settled. “The first of the old Deepway Inns is just a short way ahead, that should give us a secure camp.”

The place he spoke of was the first of three long-abandoned hostelries that had once served this underground road between Dürkon and Khorakas. A few minutes more brisk march brought them to the first branching that yet seen in the central pathway of the road, off to the left. This led to an elaborately carved archway set into the tunnel wall, without door or gate. Passing through, the group found themselves in the “front porch,” a rectangular area of paved stone 20 meters wide and seven meters deep, with a fluted vault ceiling. Six glowstones had once lit the space, but now only three provided a dim illumination.

Two more archways were set in the rear wall at either end of the porch, with steep stairs leading up into darkness. Taking the torches, Toran and Devrik led the way, with Erol and Jeb bringing up the rear, lighting two more torches. The inn itself was dark and cold, it’s oak floors and walls black and hard as iron with age. They decided to camp together in the common room, rather than try to light, heat and guard the upstairs sleeping rooms. They were probably as stripped of furniture and fixtures as this lower floor, in any case…

With a fire going in the great fireplace, a hot meal inside them, and time on their hands, Korwin decided to try his hand at magically turning some of their water into beer. This was an abject failure, however, and he was relieved when Mariala pulled out her Tarot deck to query their course, which drew everyone’s attention.

The Three of Coins, the King of Swords, the Seven of Cups atop the Three of Swords, covering the Ace of Swords… while Mariala felt this was somewhat ambiguous, Korwin was quite certain it all fit together, that they were certainly on the right track!

Devrik remained dubious of his father’s involvement with the Vortex, and opened up somewhat to his friends around the fire that night. He talked of his sometimes difficult childhood, a distant but still respected father, the assumption that he would be recognized and made heir one day, until the birth of his half-brother…

“He was always a man of integrity,” Devrik summed up. “Which never made him an easy man, or a particularly kind one. But always an honest one.”

•••

The next “morning,” as their Khundari companions assured them it was, the group set out again at the steady, kilometers-eating pace they had set the day before.

“At this rate we should arrive in Khorakas around the evening bell,” Toran assured them. But around midday, as they passed the second of the abandoned inns, which marked the halfway point, their plans were suddenly altered.

Ahead of them, out of a darkness where several glowstones seemed to have been destroyed or removed, there was a sense of movement, a rustle of cloth and creak of leather armor… and moving into the light was a mass of Gülvini! Practiced eyes told the warriors in the group that there were 15 of the smaller güls, five of the great black güls, and… was that? Yes, towering over them all, at the rear, was an enormous cave troll!

“I thought those things were extinct in this part of the world,” Toran muttered as he readied his battle axe. Vulk was already chanting to raise his holy armor of the goddess.

“Back the way we came,” Devrik called, drawing his own weapon. But as they turned to flee, the sound of boots on stone rang out behind them. Another group of Gülvini had somehow appeared behind them, and was closing fast. And they, too, were accompanied by a massive cave troll…

“Damn!” Erol cried. “Devrik, the hostel, we have to get inside, we can hold off an army there!”

The dark arch of the front porch was just behind them and to the right, and as they made a mad dash for its shelter a massive, gleeful howl went up from the throats of forty or more bloodthirsty gülvini, counterpointed by the deeper roar of the two cave trolls. One of the last under the arch, Erol saw one of the four-meter tall monsters twirling two great stone axes about its head, before the walls blocked his view.

As Erol and the two Khundari soldiers held the narrow passage against the horde, the others briefly debated the best course – try and hold this single entry, or retreat up the twin stairs, where there were at least solid oak and iron doors to bar the way? But as the rear guard was forced back, step by step, it was clear that, with the trolls to contend with, they would have to retreat eventually. Best do it now, while still in some semblance of control…

With the bodies of several of their comrades momentarily blocking the passageway to the Gülvini, Erol and his Khundari companions disengaged, and the group split in two, retreating up the dark staircases behind them. Devrik, Toran, Korwin and Dembhor dashed up the lefthand way, while Erol led Vulk, Mariala, Jeb and Khorez up the righthand stair.

Kowrin attempted to send a blast of ice across the stairs behind him, but his concentration was too divided, and the spell sputtered out to no effect. Mariala, on the other staircase, had better luck with one of her remaining light grenades, tossing it into the pack ravening up behind her. The whirling explosion of solid light blades whirled out in a scything sphere, taking out several of their pursuers… two would never rise again, and the others were bloodied and dazed.

Korwin, muttering to himself to pull it together, frowned in concentration and tried again – and this time a blast of white mist leapt from his outstretched hands, aimed straight down the stairs, which suddenly became coated in a crust of shining, slippery ice! As the maddened güls tried to mount, their feet could find no grip and they stumbled and fell in a writhing mass. Those behind began to climb over the prone forms of the fallen…

But it gave Devrik enough time to slam the great door shut – only to find that it was not the solid bulwark they had expected. Unlike the inn they had spent the previous night in, this one was a burned out shell, a great empty space 30 meters square and eight meters high, with nothing but a few smoke-blackened stone support walls around the edges, and charred timbers on the floor. The doors themselves were half burned through, and the on on the left had several gaps in the weakened wood.

“Toran,” Devrik called over his shoulder as he pushed against the door, slashing at the clawed hands poking sharp things through the gaps. “There must be a back way out of here, right?”

“Yes, there should be,” the young dwarf replied. “I think I know where to look…” With that, he dashed off into the darkness outside the circle of shifting light cast by the group’s torches.

Swords, tridents and spells kept the gül at bay – Mariala’s Fire Nerve spell and Erol’s trident slowing the fight on the right, while Devrik’s sword taught the left some caution… although his attempt at a Fireball fizzled out, it being tough to fight and cast at the same time, even behind a door. Behind him Korwin gathered his concentration and prepared to try the Breath of Arandu once again…

Suddenly, there was a lull in the attack, a restless silence from beyond the damaged, splintering doors… and then they shook, boomed, and bulged as the a cave trolls took stone axes to each one! Toran returned at that moment, with bad news.

“It’s no good,” he grated furiously. “The rear exit is blocked with rubble; if we had half a day, I could clear it, perhaps, but –”

“These doors aren’t going to hold another half a minute,” Devrik growled, “much less half a –”

At that point, both doors blew inward in a shower of charred splinters, and the two cave trolls lumbered triumphantly into room as the defenders reeled back. A few of the more daring güls darted in around them, although Erol spearing one with his trident, and the sight of its guts slithering to the floor, briefly slowed its companions… but the trolls took no notice, roaring and swinging their two great stone axes.

Devrik, with a roar of his own, leapt at the troll before him, his great battle sword flashing a lethal arc, and met the downward force of an axe – which went flying, along with two troll fingers. This just seemed to enrage creature, which roared in fury and moved in to bear its smaller opponent down with shear mass… only to be hit by a blast of icy air that knocked it back and to its knees. Two of the güls near him were also caught in Korwin’s freezing cone, and dropped like frozen stones.

At the other door, Vulk swung his broadsword at one of the great black güls that had slipped past the troll in the doorway, but was blocked, while Jeb’s arrow was simply knocked from the air by the troll itself. It then lunged forward to swing an axe at Erol, who blocked and dodged aside. Toran leapt up beside Vulk and saved him from a savage blow from the gül.

At this point both of Erol’s psionic talents kicked in – time seemed to slow for him, and Mariala’s latest Fire Nerve spell was amplified tremendously. A swath of Gülvini in the righthand doorway and on the stairs went down in a mass of writhing agony, while Erol launched a flurry of attacks on the troll, the last of which ripped a chunk from the creature’s thigh, bringing it to one knee. But even as it staggered it landed a blow that drove Erol back, dazed and bleeding.

But before it could take advantage of this momentary respite, Mariala gestured toward the creature with both hands, and felt the power within her – the form was perfect, the power channeled properly – and suddenly every nerve the cave troll had was burning with a terrible fire. It collapsed to the floor, helpless in its agony, and Erol was able to dispatch it with a thrust through the neck.

Meanwhile, Devrik had counter-struck his own troll, dazing the beast and driving it to the ground. But before he could finish off the creature, there was a commotion at the door and his attention was riveted as a lone human pushed past the now-cowering Gülvini to stand just inside the room. Dark haired, sallow, pale skin that seemed never to have seen the light of day, face like a weasel, dressed in red and black – Devrik would never forget Kirdik Hanol!

Cantor of Korön, the Chained God of Fire, young Devrik’s nemesis from childhood, when the man had attempted to seduce him to the cult, for the sake of the boy’s natural affinity for fire. The man who had kidnapped Raven in an attempt to gain control of both Devrik and his unborn child, for the sake of some insane prophecy, in the name of freeing his dark god. The man he had sworn to kill at the earliest opportunity!

Even as Devrik lunged forward, over the unconscious form of the cave troll, sword dripping black blood and aimed at his enemy’s neck, Kirdik just smirked at him, pulling a small device from his sleeve. He seemed to press the face of the small rectangle of metal with his thumb – and he was gone! Before Devrik could fully absorb this, he cam e to a bone-jarring halt as he slammed into… solid air? He staggered back, stunned, his nose bleeding.

Not only Kirdik had vanished, the group quickly realized. Aside from the two cave trolls and a few scattered Gülvini bodies in the room itself, the horde of bloodthirsty gül were gone, apparently vanished into thin air! Before anyone could do more than stare in shocked bewilderment, Toran stepped over to the downed troll at Devrik’s feet, and dispatched it with a single blow from his battle axe.

“Better safe than sorry,” he said as he cleaned his blade.

“What the Void just happened?” Devrik said at last, wiping the blood from his face. He moved cautiously forward, hands out, until he met the resistance in the air again. It was neither warm nor cold, and not exactly hard… he could press into it a bit, but only so far, then his hand was stopped as if by stone. The others moved forward themselves, tentatively feeling their way, and soon discovered that the barrier, whatever it was, seemed to define the arc of a circle that almost filled the large room. And no amount of force could penetrate it, neither slow and steady nor fast and sharp, as Jeb’s arrows proved.

The arc also happened to bisect the body of the troll Devrik had fought, and when they tried to pull the body away, it proved immovable, wedged in place by the… whatever it was. Korwin was able to determine that it was in fact a squashed hemisphere – circular in horizontal cross-section, but not in height.

“Given the angles I can feel by climbing the ruined walls,” he said after finishing his calculations, “I’d say the apex just brushes the center of the ceiling.”

As everyone stared up at the ceiling, Mariala noticed something odd… all of the stone work in the room, and most especially the ceiling, was blackened with soot from the fire that had gutted the old inn – except for a roughly circular patch about a meter across in the center of the ceiling. No one could quite figure out what this area of sootless stone might mean, and after some minutes of debate they went back to trying to move through the barrier.

Erol, with the help of the Khundari guards, heaved the dead troll on his side of the room up and against the barrier, and they attempted to push it through. But even with Devrik and Toran lending their strength, it would go no more than a few centimeters before stopping dead. So to speak.

Korwin suggested burrowing through the body of the troll divided by the barrier, to disgusted noises from the others. But it was at this point that they noticed another strange fact – the part of the troll’s body that lay outside the barrier seemed to be decaying. Seriously decaying…

“It’s like it’s been dead for a tenday or more,” Korwin mused, getting as close as he could. And that’s when the hammer finally dropped, and they realized they must be trapped within some sort of temporal bubble, where time moved much more slowly than without. Vulk was particularly freaked out by this revelation, and kept denying it could possibly be true! But as the minutes passed and the troll’s lower half decayed more and more, there could be little doubt.

Now everyone, but most especially Devrik, was frantic to escape this trap. How much time had already been lost? Was Raven safe, or was this some part of a plot to seize her? Did she think them all dead? And what of their other allies?

They unscorched stones on the ceiling being their only clue, Korwin attempted to move or dislodge one with both his telekinesis and the spell Magic Hand, but while he knew they had both been successful, nothing had happened. They attempted to combine the mages’ powers and dispell any magic, but to no effect.

Mariala suggested physically poking the stones, so Vulk mounted the shoulders of Devrik and Toran, using his staff to prod the ceiling – only to see the staff pass through the stones as if they weren’t there!

“An illusion,” Mariala cried triumphantly. “I thought so!”

But what did it mean? Grappling hooks on rope, arrows shot into the area, nothing seemed to have any effect on the barrier. Finally, with Vulk summoning the blessing of Kasira, they built a human pyramid, with Mariala on top, allowing her to poke her head throughout the illusionary stone. There she was able to see a disc of smooth white – glass? But it was very, very hard – set into a metal ring embedded in the stone.

Unable to break it, the group decided to try a fireball, immediately followed by an ice blast – after a false start, Devrik managed to fireball the area, to no apparent effect, and Korwin was called on to use his Breath of Arandu spell to freeze the object. Unfortunately, nerves, exhaustion and tension led to a critical misfire of the powerful spell, and everyone in the room was engulfed in a sudden storm of icy, bitterly cold air.

Every inch of exposed skin suffered minor frostbite, to everyone’s annoyance and discomfort, but luckily the blast reached the hidden disc as well, and it proved to not be immune to sudden drastic temperature changes. With a sharp crack, the disc shattered, and suddenly the barrier was gone!

But how much time had passed, that was the critical question they now had to answer…

“Are there any portals along this road?” Devrik demanded of Toran.

“None, I’m sorry,” the Khundari replied grimly. “I’m afraid the quickest way out is either ahead to our destination – or back to Dürkon. We’re pretty much half-way between the two…”

“There’s no point in going on,” Devrik growled, pacing restlessly as he thought out the ramifications. “As we suspected, my father’s name was almost certainly a ruse to lure us into this trap. Kirdik want’s my unborn son… and he wants me to suffer, knowing he has him, I think. I think he planned to come back for us once he achieved his goal…

“But has he achieved it yet? How much time has passed?!”

There being no sure way of answering that without contacting the outside world, the group hurriedly set out back down the Deepway, towards Dürkon. Devrik set a brutal pace, and would have continued without stop, alone if need be, if Vulk had not eventually convinced him that there was little point in arriving too exhausted to take effective action. He allowed four hours for sleep, then drove his friends onward.

They arrived back in the Khundari city at mid-day, and brushing aside the amazed exclamations of “You’re all alive!” from the guards at the exit from the Deepway, Devrik seized one by the shoulders and shook him to shut him up.

“Never mind that, time for stories later – what day is it? HOW LONG HAVE WE BEEN GONE?!”

“A-a-a month, sir! It’s the 10th of  Margas, you’ve been missing almost a month!”

“Then there should be time,” Devrik muttered, turning to Mariala. “All the signs, and the midwife, pointed to the 15th as the likely birthdate, right?”

“Yes, Devrik,” she replied cautiously. “But these things are never exact, it could be off by a tenday, especially with a first child –”

“We need to hear the latest news,” Vulk interrupted. “There’s no point in standing here guessing, let’s find Lekorm Darkeye and see what he can tell us. If anyone knows how Raven is doing, surely it will be him.”

“Of course, you’re right,” Devrik agreed. “Jeb, find Cris and have our horses made ready. Whatever the news, we ride as soon as we can!”

It was a short ride to the hamlet of Kadail, a moderately prosperous manor tucked into a small valley surrounded by gently rolling hills. Like most manors in these northern mountains, its lord kept a fair-sized flock of sheep to supplement the agricultural output, and the brilliant green hillsides were dotted with sparks of white. Many of the beasts were greatly pregnant, Vulk noted as they rode down the last stretch of rutted track to the manor house … it made him think of Raven, who would be dropping her own lamb around the same time as these ewes, this upcoming spring.

As bucolic as the sheep on winter-green hillsides were, they were instantly forgotten as the Hand entered the small valley and saw the great Common field before them, to the left of the road. The vibrant green of the grass was barely visible beneath a blanket of winterstar, whose thousands of small, brilliant white blossoms made the sun-dappled sheep seem grey in comparison. The group stopped for a moment in sheer delight as the shifting patterns of sun and shadow from the scudding clouds turned the field into a shimmering sea of stars fallen to earth.

But the day was cool and windy, and there was business to see to, so after a few moments they nudged their horses into movement and continued on into the open yard of the manor house. The usual late winter routine of the manor village was clearly disrupted, with groups of men arriving and departing from and to various quarters of the fief, obviously search parties. A distracted beadle pulled away from one such group to greet the new arrivals.

“We’re grateful for any assistance, m’lords, lady,” he said after Vulk had explained their mission. “We’ve searched every inch of the fief, with no trace of the lad… it seems he might be a runaway after all, despite what his parents say…”

“Tell us the particulars, and then we’d like to speak with the parents,” Vulk said as grooms led their horses to the stables. “Start with the last time the missing boy was seen.”

With several other villagers offering corrections and comments, the story that unfolded seemed simple enough: the 16-year-old son of a prominent villein family, Karl Vesson, was last seen at the bonfire party on the night of Kristala Va. The next morning his younger brother, 14-year-old Lernan, woke to find the pallet next to his empty. The father, Selad Vesson, began an angry search, assuming his son was goofing off, trying to avoid his chores, but by mid-morning had come to realize the boy was really gone. Most telling to the increasingly frantic mother was the fact that he was apparently still wearing his good holiday clothes, a fine blue wool tunic and white leggings.

Most of the villagers were disinclined to get too excited, at first – Selad Vesson was not the most beloved man on the manor, though well enough respected for his hard work, and his sons were seemingly universally disliked as bullies and mean-spirited pranksters. But when the boy had not shown up by nightfall, even the most cynical had come to believe something was wrong, although most seemed to feel Karl was likely a run-away; only a minority thought he might be the victim of an accident or foul play.

Fearful of the attention from their overlords that a fleeing serf would bring on the manor, the next day the search was begun in earnest. While the men formed search parties and the women gathered to console the increasingly hysterical mother (apparently the only person who actually liked the missing boy), a runner was sent to Dor Dür to inform the Constable.

“I’d like to speak with the family,” Mariala said after this tale wound down, and the beadle led the way to the largest of the villein’s crofts. There the local women were shooed outside while the Hand stepped inside. Selad Vesson was a large man, with rough, strong hands and a thick head of shaggy brown hair, just beginning to be streaked with gray. His wife was a short, raw-boned woman, rangy, with auburn hair now gone almost totally gray, her eyes and nose red from crying. The younger son, Lernan, seemed to be big for his age, obviously taking after his father, and sat quiet and sullen in a dark corner, eyes locked on the floor, perhaps as much to avoid his mother’s hysterics as anything.

Questioning merely reiterated what had already been learned, until Mariala spoke to Lernan. He seemed shy and hesitant, but she sensed that he knew something. With Vulk’s rhetorical eloquence they were able to convince the boy’s clinging mother to let him out of her sight for a few minutes, and once away from his parents the lad slowly began to open up under their persistent questioning.

“We got in a wrasslin’ match that night, after the bonfires,” he finally admitted, with a sheepish look. “I’m bigger than Karl now, even though he’s older, and I thrashed him… I might’ve been… I gave him a hard time, I guess, he was madder than anything. He slugged me in the gut and took off… that’s the last I saw him, I swear… I don’t think he run off, though, he wants the farm after Da is gone…”

“Do you have any idea where your brother might have gone,” Mariala prodded, giving the boy a sympathetic smile and touching his shoulder. He blushed, and stammered a bit, then looked thoughtful.

“I… maybe… we had a dare, for a long time now, about proving who was braver… we never actually did it, but we talked about it…”

“What?” Vulk demanded. “What dare?”

“Going into the Moaning Mouth Cave…”

Murmurs from the beadle and his cronies, when told this information and asked about the cave, were shocked and horrified.

“Oh no, m’lord,” the disturbed beadle assured Vulk when pressed. “Surely the boy was not so mad as to do that! Everyone knows that place is haunted by the spirits of the restless dead… you can hear them moaning and calling out for the warmth of the living, we’ve all heard it. The children might dare themselves to go near enough to hear the ghosts, I did it as a lad, we all have…. but no one would actually go in there!”

“Has anyone searched the cave, or even the area around it?” Erol asked dryly, unimpressed with talk of ghosts and hauntings.

“No, no, m’lord,” the man replied, looking shocked. “No one would go near, even if they thought… no, no he couldn’t have gone there.”

“Has anyone else gone missing recently?” Erol changed tack, deciding he wasn’t going to get anything useful about the cave from this superstitious lot of peasants.

“No, no one –” the beadle began, only to be interrupted by one of his cronies.

“Well, what about old Tarvo?” the graybeard said. “That was a bit odd, though I hadn’t thought it’d anything to do with the Vesson boy.”

“Well, yes,” the beadle admitted, frowning. “That was a bit odd, but as you say what could it have to do with the missing boy?” At the impatient looks from his noble visitors, the man hastily explained what they were talking about.

“Towards late winter every year an old peddler, Tarvo Arken, makes his rounds in the hundred, selling small goods, sharpening knives and especially selling winter oats. He showed up early this year, no doubt this mild winter encouraged him… it was a tenday ago he arrived, just as the sun was setting… several people saw him setting his tent up on the Common. I think a few spoke to him that evening, but he seemed crankier than usual, and said he’d deal in the morning.

“But come the morning he was gone, pack, wares and all… well, except for his tent. We thought it odd, but then he always was a bit… strange. And he’s not one of ours, so not much thought was given to the matter, except a s a curiosity. The holiday, and then the missing boy, well, they just drove it right out of  mind…”

“You didn’t find it suspicious that he left his tent?” Korwin asked, frowning.

“Well, it did seem odd, as I’ve said m’lord, but it was an old and patchy tent, with more than one hole… perhaps he decided it was more trouble than it was worth to take down and pack.” The beadle looked troubled though, as he considered the matter more carefully. “But I still don’t see –”

“No, obviously not,” Erol interrupted. “But we will. Can you take us to the spot where he’d pitched his tent. And do you still have the tent itself?”

They did and they could. While several men went off to fetch the tent, the beadle led the Hand to a spot on the winterstar-bestrewn Common, near the western edge. A close examination of the sight showed where four iron spikes had been driven into the ground. Or rather three spike holes, and a long, shallow stretch of disturbed earth where the fourth would have been. It had been covered back over, but Erol was quickly able to determine that a shallow trench had been dug up, maybe half a meter long, 100 cm wide and 150 cm deep.

“Interesting,” he said after he had dug out the loosened dirt and they all stared down at the dark scar amidst the brilliant flowers and grass. “I wonder what the old peddler uncovered that night, as he was pitching his tent?”

But no one had an answer to that, and examination of the tent, its ropes and its spikes revealed nothing of interest. It seemed the only line of inquiry left to the group was to check out the mysterious Moaning Mouth Cave.

The beadle reluctantly assigned two of the village youths (none were willing to do it alone) to lead the party to the area of the cave, with repeated pleas that it was unnecessary and foolish, though he couched the latter sentiment very carefully…

Leaving Cris and Jeb to tend the horses and watch over their saddlebags, the group followed their nervous guide into the thick wood of winter-bare trees west of the manor’s fields. A half hour walk brought them to a short bluff, crowned with overhanging oaks. As they neared the spot, a low, eerie moaning could be heard over the sloughing of the wind through the branches of the trees. The sound got louder and more unnerving, seeming to grate on the nerves, until they stood at the foot of the steep slope of scree that led up to a small dark opening some 3 meters up the face of the bluff.

“That’s it, m’lords,” one of the native guides mumbled nervously, gesturing to the cave mouth. Before anyone could reply, both youths had turned tail and dashed off back toward home.

The climb up to the cave mouth was treacherous, but everyone made it without mishap, and the group soon stood on the narrow shelf before the black opening. About 2 meters wide and 1.5 high, it had an uninviting look, and the low moaning emanating from it, which did indeed sound like the cries of lost souls, didn’t help the matter.

“It’s just the wind, blowing through cracks in the damn rocks,” Korwin pointed out.

“Yes, we know,” Vulk replied testily. “But you can see why the ignorant might fear the place. Do we really think the boy went in here, at night, whatever the provocation to his manhood?”

“If it was a calm night, with no wind, there’d have been no moaning,” Mariala pointed out. “That might have been enough for him to work up the nerve…”

With a collective sigh, the group lit torches and bent to enter the cave. A long narrow passage wound into the hillside for about 6 meters before opening into a wider chamber. Stepping into this larger space they immediately noticed two things: the moaning had died to almost nothing here, and the stench was terrible. They soon discovered the stench was due to a large colony of bats in the NW corner of the space, when, disturbed by the noise and light, they swirled around the adventurers in a mad dash for the exit.

The floor of the cavern was uneven, with several large depressions, including one especially large one with a pool of fetid water at the bottom , and strewn with rocky debris that made footing treacherous. It was cold and dank, and the flickering torches only served to make the place more spooky…

The northern exit from the chamber was narrow, as was the southern one – both so narrow that everyone except Mariala would need to remove their armor before they could squeeze through. Fortunately for the group, Erol’s sharp eye caught the  signs of the mornoga fungus colony that occupied the SW corner of the cavern before anyone stepped into it and died a horrible acid death. Unfortunately, their first clue, a thread of bright blue wool caught on a rock near the southern exit, forced them to tread carefully past the deadly mushrooms… but there were no slips, and after several minutes of removing armor everyone squeezed through the narrow opening.

They debouched onto a narrow ledge that ran around a large, sloping pit, at the bottom of which could be seen another pool of dark water. Unfortunately the footing was no less treacherous here, but with less margin for error – Mariala was the first to lose her footing and tumble and slide down the steep slope, but was soon followed by Korwin and Vulk. None were seriously injured, just a few bruises, but the water in boots and soaking trousers made the dank, cold air even more unpleasant. Toran skipped lightly along the rocky shelf, of course, and Erol, while not as nimble, also avoided a fall.

The northern portion of this cavern was flatter and less rubble-strewn, and after re-armoring, they searched it carefully. A southern exit led to a steep slope down, and the northern one was far to narrow for even Mariala to get through. This left the middle passage as the most likely path Karl might have taken, and the charred remains of a crude torch, a meter down the passage, and Korwin’s psychometry, confirmed it. Unfortunately, the entrance was low and the passage beyond sloped sharply upward, which meant no weapon much longer than a meter could be taken through. Erol was forced to leave his spears behind, leaning against a nearby wall, and Korwin was barely able to manage his new Khundari-made cutlass.

From here the passage again sloped downward before opening into a small chamber with several possible exits. But before the group could even begin to ponder which one they should explore first, a sudden and horribly familiar chittering brought them to sudden alert. Even as they turned, a toloxta leaped towards Toran’s face, attempting to live up to its moniker, the Eater of Eyes. But the Khundari’s well-trained reflexes were faster, and his battle-axe clove the beast in two, midair.

Erol was not so lucky as several more of the monstrous little beasts leaped out of the dark, and he took a nasty, raking claw wound to the face and neck. Mariala and Korwin insantly began spells of confusion and drunkenness, as Toran missed his swing at a second beast. Erol’s own second attack took out a creature confused by Mariala’s spell, while Vulk attempted to raise his holy armor, to no avail.

A confusing, fierce battle ensued

It was little more than an hour past dawn, on 10 Glacia, that the Hand of Fortune was summoned by a servant of Lekorm Darkeye to attend upon himself and the Prince in the High Dungeons. The cells, high in the face of the cliffs that overlooked the Outer City, had stunning views of the freedom denied to their occupants, and were freezing. Fortunately, two large braziers were burning brightly in the interrogation room to which the servitor led them, over one of which Prince Rhoghûn was warming his hands. Nearby Captain Darkeye stood silently, his axe drawn and his eyes firmly on the iron-bound prisoner at his feet.

This was a pathetic figure, a wet, shivering and terrified-looking gül-kobal, whose amber, cat-like eyes darted continuously from his guard to the Prince, and now to this group of (mostly) humans who stared down in surprise at him. He was small, not much more than a meter tall, but wiry and strong-looking, with white fur, streaked with tawny bands around his weasal-like face. His fur and leather clothes were soaked, and he had been relieved of any weapons when he had been chained hand and foot. The Captain nudged him with his boot, and addressed the newcomers.

“He arrived at the Third Upper Gate an hour ago, waving the blue spruce branch of truce. It was a near thing with the gate watch, but they didn’t put a bolt through his eye immediately. Instead, they brought him to me. When I heard his story, I sent word at once to his Highness…”

The Prince nodded and took up the story himself. “Normally I’d have the mewling thing strangled and thrown from the Rock… we have no interest in any gülvini, save that they should die!

“But this one tells an entertaining story, I’ll admit… it seems that a gül-hovgavu female, one of the so-called “Queen’s Guard,” slew the ”king” of her tribe this summer, when he tried to rape her… she’s apparently quite large and strong, even for her breed… she and her fellow female “guards” then killed all the other males in the hive… and the “queen” too, seemingly out of pure spite!

“Ever since, this Khana, as the litle shit-eater names her, has been cutting a bloody swath through the gülvini tribes of the northern mountains. They attack a hive-nest, killing or castrating and enslaving the males and recruiting the strongest females to her service. She always kills the ”queens,” however… apparently she wants no competition, and seeks a male worthy to be her consort!”

The Prince shook his head in amused wonderment at the thought of his peoples hated enemy so decimating themselves. “Well, it is ever so with these creatures, they turn their murderous violence on themselves when no other enemy is available. I’ve not heard of anything like this before, though it is said the females are often even more vicious fighters than the males. Apparently true, ha!”

Looking down now with a frown on the bound prisoner, he continued “Now this band of gül-kobali have lived high in the valley of the Darl River, in the foothills of Mt. Muntursk, for several years now; my father was content to ignore them, as they kept away from our shepherds and charcoalers. Although there has long been a sentiment amongst my people that we should destroy them, or at least drive them out, as long as they caused me no trouble I was willing to leave them in peace.

“Not so this Khana creature, however! Yesterday she and a band of her female warriors attacked the kobali nest, apparently seeking scout-slaves for her growing band. This cringing rat, who claims a name… what was it Captain? Oh yes, Metotha… along with two of his fellows, escaped the carnage and apparently thought they would find help here.” He barked a laugh. “A fools hope! No Khundari would lift a finger to save any of the deathspawn, and I am no exception, whatever some of the stone-brains amongst my enemies believe. But…

“It was his description of the weapon this she-demon wields that gave me pause…” he began to pace a short trajectory between the two braziers. “It just may be the Axe of Arghün, a great artifact of my house, lost many years ago when my foolish older brother fell into a trap set by a cunning chieftan of the gül-Hovgavu of Zherin. He lost his head and the axe, and we have sought in vain to learn of its whereabouts ever since. Now it seems it might be within my grasp!

“But I must be sure, before I send my troops… the poitical situation in the city is still fragile… so I would ask you to investigate this for me. This worm claims she has only a score of warriors, surely no match for your skills, should it come to a fight. But if you can confirm that this Khana does, in fact, possess my family’s Axe, then I will send my Shadow Guard to burn out this nest to recover it if need be!”

The group readily agreed to help their host in this matter, the more readily because the fighters, at least, were beginning to grow weary of inactivity, despite the hours of training with the Shadow Warriors. A little outside air and some real fighting might be just the thing! Captain Darkeye hauled the gül, Metotha, to his feet and frog-marched him from the room.

“I’ll have him at the Third Upper Gate when you’re ready,” he said to Devrik. “He and his… friends… can guide you to their nest. Since they want our help, I doubt they’ll pose you any threat, at least on the road… but don’t turn your back on them!”

Once the gül had been removed, with many anxious looks over its shoulder, the Prince visibly relaxed.

“It takes all I have not to slay such beasts on the spot,” he growled. “But the possibility of regaining the Axe is too important to allow reflexes to rule me. And if I can regain the Axe of my ancestors… well, it will help calm the fears of some of my more reactionary subjects, I do believe.

“Now, before you go, there is somethings you should know about this great weapon… the Axe of Arghün is a battle axe of outstanding beauty, bronze hardened to the strength of steel, shaped and engraved into the likeness of the great Khundari warrior Arghün Gülsbane, who died after repulsing three waves of a gülvini army before the gates of Zakiruth. Though the city later fell to the armies of the Necromancer, his bravey was remembered and the first ruling Prince of Dürkon, my great-great grandfather, commissioned the greatest weaponsmith of his day, Kharat Ironbinder, to create a weapon in Arghün’s honor.

“It is a Great Artifact, possessing its own kind of intelligence, in the manner of the great artificers. It is said, and I have seen it myself, in my youth, that the Axe will cause intense dread in any who oppose its wielder, often causing them to quail and even faint. But if it is wielded by a Khundari warrior against gülvini foes, it causes those beasts to cower and even flee in outright terror. To think that it might be used by one of the damned monsters is an affront! It makes my blood boil! It must not be allowed!”

After a moment the Prince, who had grown quite red in the face, took a deep breath and smiled ruefully at his guests. “My apologies, but this touches me deeply… my brother…

“Well, never mind, what’s past is past. If you can return this great treasure to my House, or even confirm that it is, indeed, in the hands of this Khana, I will owe you yet another debt of gratitude.

“In any case, when you have no further use for the kobali who will guide you, I would appreciate it if you could dispatch them. And any others you might come across. With their hive-nest already decimated, I see no need to allow them a chance to rebuild, eh?”

Mariala and Devrik frowned at this last request, called out as they were leaving the room, but said nothing just then.

♦  ♦  ♦

It took less than an hour for the Hand to prepare for their mission, and they were soon at the Third Upper Gate, with Cris and Jeb in tow. The youngsters were excited and nervous, especially Jeb, who kept checking and rechecking his bow. Captain Darkeye and two of his soldiers waited for them, and a few meters off huddled Metotha and his two companions, watching the Dwarves warily. It was overcast and cold, with a foot of snow on the ground and blanketing the trees of the forest, but a new snowfall didn’t seem likely anytime soon.

The group planed to travel first to the Khundari outpost nearest the kobali hive-nest, where they would find four soldiers on duty. Toran had been given tokens of authority by which the group could command these fighters, should they need to. From there they would approach more cautiously the current lair of this gülvini she-demon…

Along the way they learned something of the three kobali who guided them. Metotha was a hunter/scout for his tribe, as were his tow companions, Ghek and Hurjen. They had been just returning from a night hunt, with several others, when they came across the massacre in front of their nest. Hovgavu females were tearing through the kobali, little more than half their size, with ferocious abandon, killing and castrating without even trying to take slaves!

They had heard rumors of Khana for months now, but had not quite believed them, nor realized she might be so close. Some of their companions leapt into the fight, but Metotha saw that is was hopeless, and convinced his two friends that they would only die if they did the same. Recognizing Khana from her size and the weapon she wielded, and knowing the axe to be of Khundari make, he conceived the idea of seeking help from their traditional enemies… after all, they had lived for many years now in proximity without conflict… Ghek and Hurjen were dubious, but in the end they agreed, as long as he was the one to approach the dwarves…

While the gülvini were clearly nervous about their companions, especially Toran, they also tried to be obsequiously nice, praising them for aiding their people and offering up crude jokes in their broken but intelligible Yashpari. Toran tended to ignore them, but the others, to one degree or another, were willing to interact with the little beastmen. It was the first time most of them had experienced any gül outside of combat, or at least potential combat.

While still more than an hour out from the outpost, by Toran’s estimation, they caught flashes of lights thhrough the snow-covered firs around them.

“It’s the heliograph at the outpost,” Toran explained. “Sending some message back to the City… I’m afraid I can’t make it out clearly, through the trees. Something about Gülvini… doesn’t seem urgent, though.”

“Perhaps they’ve had word of last night’s attack,” Mariala suggested. “They may have heard the battle…”

“Hmmm, perhaps,” the dwarf agreed. “But I think we should pick up the pace…”

♦  ♦  ♦

On arriving at the outpost, which was  built into a stoney hill that rose sharply above the surrounding forest, they found everything quiet. No sign of combat or activity, save for a mish-mash of bootprints in the snow around the hidden entrance Toran lead them too. The tracks headed off in the direction that Metotha said his hive-nest lay. It was decided that the güls should remain outside, under the eves of the forest, while the Hand met with the watchmen. No sense in complicating things more than necessary.

Toran located the hidden lever than would alert the watchers within that visitors awaited. It took almost ten minutes, but eventually the door swung open, and they were greeted by an elderly Khundari who identified himself as Hemdan, caretaker of the outpost. Seemingly out of breath, he motioned them to follow, and they ascended a spiral staircase carved from the living stone, up to the outpost’s main chamber.

“I was surprised to hear you out there,” he wheezed as they entered the large circular room, whose eight windows looked out in every direction. They could be opened at need, but were currently sealed by thick glass panes set in iron frames. “We sent the message to the City not three turns of the glass past!”

“We were already on our way,” Toran replied. “What was the message you sent?”

“About the gülvini attack on the charcoaler and his family,” the old man replied, sinking into what was obviously his usual well padded chair. “I’ve said for years we should burn out that nest of vipers, that they were just lulling us… and now here we are, young Estavas and his family taken off, to be eaten no doubt, unless Sgt. Jhundar and the men get there on time…”

It took a few minute to get the story from the querulous old dwarf, but it became clearer when a young human boy suddenly poked his head up from a pile of sleeping furs where he had been dozing, exhausted. His name was Benet, he was 12 years old, and he had been out at the henhouse gathering eggs when his family’s small home had been attacked by “hugh monsters.” He had fled in terror, and then watched from the edge of the forest as his parents and two sisters were dragged out, roped to gather, and marched off into the early morning mists. When the cottage began to burn, he ran for the Khundari outpost – they were subject of the Prince of Dürkon, his soldiers would rescue his family…

And the guard sergeant had leapt into action, although he had dismissed the boy’s description of the culprits as the exaggerated fears of a terrified child; clearly this outrage was the work of the soulless gül-Kobali who had been allowed to fester nearby for far too long! But he knew the shortest way to their stinking den, and he would cut them off before they could reach it, by Gheas!

When the Hand had explained their mission to the elderly caretaker, and revealed that the attackers had almost certainly been gül-Hovgavu, not kobali, he became deeply concerned… Jhundar was not expecting to walk into such a situation…

The group wasted no more time, as speed was now of the essence if they had any hope of saving the human family from becoming supper for Khana and her amazon horde. Leaving Hemdan and Benet safely locked into the outpost, they regrouped with the Kobali outside and began a steady, sustainable jog towards the nest of contention.

As they came near to the entrance to the hive-nest, Metotha indicated they should take cover, as they were close to where sentries might be expected. From the cover of a thick stand of snow-laden evergreens they peered out into the cleared area around the hole in the ground they could see numerous corpses of mutilated kobali, thier blood already pale beneath new snow… and not far from their cover was the severely hacked up and mutilated body of what had to be one of the Khundari outpost guards. Mariala shuddered as the image of the bright red blood on the white snow brought back memories of the killings at Eldora Abbey, almost a year ago…

Closer to the opening in the ground another body could be seen, also a dwarven soldier, apparently, and equally dead. It was Jeb who spotted the gülvini lurking in the branches of a tree almost directly over the entrance. He didn’t think it (she?) had seen them yet, and he motioned to Erol, who nodded. They both nocked arrows into their bows, and stepped from their cover to loose them. Erol’s flew wide of the mark, but Jeb’s arrow pierced the creature’s chest almost dead center, and the gül fell almost silently from its perch.

The group moved cautiously forward, warned by Metotha of the ruins of a small tower nearby, where his own tribe was wont to post a guard. As Vulk and the others checked on the fallen sentry, still alive but unconscious, Erol moved past them towards the tower. Bet even as he drew near, there was a sudden blur of movement as the second sentry leapt from behind a crumbling, snow-capped wall onto him. He whirled, bringing his trident up, and the hovgavu nearly impaled herself on its tines. With a twist of the wrist Erol ripped his weapon from her side in a gush of blood, and the creature collapsed in the snow at his feet.

Toran had followed Erol towards the ruined wall, and as he started to say something he caught a movement from the corner of his eye. A third hovgavu sentry was running up from the cover of the forest behind him, mang raised, and he turned to meet the charge, his own battle axe at the ready. But his foot slipped in the snow as he did so, and he staggered, trying to regain his balance… the gül’s blade slid past his guard and bit sharply into his neck.

Even as Toran went down, Erol was leaping forward. Before the deathspawn could move in for a killing blow, his trident had taken her in the gut, and he lifted her off her feet, hurling her body aside with a grunt. The creature was dead before it hit the ground. He knelt at his friend’s side and tried to stop the bleeding, calling as quietly, but urgently, as he could for Vulk.

After a quick examination, Vulk was relieved to see the blade had missed the jugular, if not by much. His healing touch soon staunched the flow of blood to a trickle, and he reached into his scrip to pull out a blue-green ceramic vial.

“It’s Kasira’s own luck that I brought back Draik’s latest Baylorium potion from my last visit to Dür,” he said as he unstoppered the bottle. The yellowish, viscous fluid poured into the wound. “It’s supposed to be particularly good at healing open wounds and blood loss…”

Indeed, even as he watched, the bleeding stopped altogether and the edges of the cut began to move pull in. In less than a turn of the glass the wound had become nothing more than an angry red weal, still a bit tender to the touch, but nothing the grateful Khundari couldn’t live with. He thanked Vulk sincerely, and the cantor just grinned that charming grin of his and said he should really thank Draik!

While Vulk had been tending to the recovery of Toran, the others had secured the area around the entrance to the gülvini hive-nest, and tried to question the two wounded, but now conscious, hovgavu sentries. Unfortunately, they could get nothing more than grunts and hisses around the gags they were forced to use to keep them quiet, and in the end Devrik simply put them out of everyone’s misery. The kobali seemed very pleased at that.

They were less pleased, apparently, during the discussion over their next course of action – when it was suggested a frontal assault didn’t seem too wise, the three kobali erupted in a fierce, but quiet, dispute in the chirps, grunts and hand gestures of their own language. After a moment Metotha silenced the others and sidled up to the humans.

“There a back door,” he admitted. “But not so good… goes right into King’s Chamber… very crowded, probably…” He then proceeded to draw a very rough diagram of the hive-nest in the snow.

This began a spirited debate about splitting the group and investigating the gülvini dispositions from two sides. Toran volunteered to use the illusion charm he’d taken from Arlun Parek to disguise himself as a gül, as much as the thought repelled him, but in the end it was decided that it made more sense for Vulk to attempt the charade. He could use his ritual of tongues to communicate, should that need arise, and he would take Toran and Metotha with him, as his “prisoners;” if it went south, they could all attack if need be.

Vulk studied the face of the dead sentry who had been in the tree, then invoked the amulet… everyone agreed the illusion was uncanny! Everyone except the Kobali, who rolled around on the ground laughing. Metotha was finally able to explain that he wouldn’t fool anyone inside, because he smelled like food, er, that is, an Umantari. Even after Vulk had pulled the dead gül’s clothing on over his own, and rubbed her greasy hair all over himself, the kobali remained dubious that he could fool anyone up close. Maybe from a distance…

In the end they decided they had to risk it, and Vulk lead Toran and Metotha, loosely bound with rope at the wrists and on a leash, into the gülvini nest…  The entrance was little more than a large hole in the ground, leading to a narrow shelf of stone that curved down and to the left over a rushing underground stream. This shelf soon opened into a larger chamber, the cleverly named Entrance Chamber, according to Metotha.

 

From this point on I’m just doing an outline of what I remember, so read it over and e-mail me ASAP, filling in the details you remember… please!

 

They find a lone hovgavu on sentry duty, although she’s occupied looting a dead kobali and doesn’t notice her guests right away.

Vulk lures her closer, she’s suspicious as to why “she” apparently abandoned her post outside, but seems to buy the story of capturing another Khundari spy and a run-away kobali. She gets suspicious again when she’s close and can smell something wrong…

At this point I can’t recall exactly how she was dispatched, only that she drew her weapon and was eventually done in, then the rest of the group came on down… did it require outside help to put down the sentry? I know Korwin cast his shadow spell at some point, so he could be stealthy…

Once everyone was together again the group headed out the southwest exit, following the crude map to the cell where Metotha thinks the captured humans would be.

Vulk creeps forward to check the cell, potentially visible to the three kitchen workers nearby… Toran picked the lock on the cell… I seem to remember Jeb (and Erol?) coming forward and shooting an arrow or two, but I’m fuzzy on the sequence of battle that took out the hovgavu and two kobali females in the kitchen… I know the group preventing anyone from raising the alarm.

Jeb and Cris were then detailed to take the traumatized captives (sans the already butchered husband/father) to the surface and safety, while the Hand continued deeper into the lair.

The group chose the more northern route towards the living areas of the nest, and Korwin went north to the Warrior’s Chamber to see what was up there, and discovered three hovgavu looting the dead kobali’s meagre possessions…

To the south you heard the roar of combat and cheering from the King’s Chamber, and I think it was Vulk who moved forward in his disguise to see the two kobali females being pitted against one another for the amusement of about 15 hovgavu; no sign of Khana. Devrik forced to remind everyone that his fireball is only 10′ in diameter, he can’t take out the whole room!

Vulk (?) checked out the lightly concealed passage leading to the Queen’s Chamber, where he was able to glimpse Khana and hear that she was speaking to at least one other “person.”

With Vulk blocking any view form the larger room, the group snuck into the passage leading to the Queens Chamber, Korwin cast his misty fog spell to obscure vision and muffle sound, and Mariala was left at the entrance to keep an eye on events in the King’s Chamber.

The party leapt to the attack, finding the amazon gül leader with just two of her lieutenants amidst the mostly shattered eggs of the now-dead queen. Again, the precise order of events is fuzzy… I know Vulk manages to slip past Khana and engage one of the lieutenants, doing some damage but not taking her out immediately… Toran and Devrik attack Khana, Erol attacks the remaining gül?

Khana invokes the Axe’s dread power, and somebody (Toran?) faints, while Devrik is unmanned and forced to retreat to the farthest point in the chamber… Khana takes the opportunity to try and flee, Erol tries to stop her, but she again invokes the Axe, and while he isn’t sent fleeing, the dread makes him able to only defend… Korwin attacks as she moves past, with his cutlass, which is broken in half…

Erol recovers quickly (?) and pursues Khana, with Toran close behind… Khana slams into Mariala in the mist… does Mariala block a passing blow, or is it Erol’s immediate arrival that saves her?

Erol & Khana parry blows, she makes it out into the King’s Chamber, Erol still in pursuit, Toran right behind. While all this is going on Vulk is STILL trying to put down his opponent, who refuses to fall despite numerous wounds, and Korwin (?) is attempting to snap Devrik out of his artifact-induced funk…

Eventually they succeed and follow the others out into the Kings Chamber, where Khana has rallied her troops… Erol and Toran are surrounded, trying to get at the leader, Mariala stands back, looking for an opening…

Devrik arrives and cast a fireball into the melee in an attempt to kill or at least wound as many hovgavu as he can; his aim is a bit off and it actually hits Khanna in the back of the head. She takes some damage, as do 5-6 others, only one of which is killed outright by a freak chance (yeah, yeah, I rolled wrong, but what the heck – it was Kasira taking a hand, right?)

The battle rages, Mariala tries her Fire Nerves spell and has a critical failure (or was that earlier, elsewhere?). In any case, she eventually gets off a successful blast at Khanna, taking her down for 7 seconds of screaming agony, and she drops the Axe.

Once she recovers, Khana tries to retrieve the Axe, but fails, and seeing the tide turning, the smoking, pain-wracked leader abandons her troops and heads for the rear entrance. Toran tries to grab the Axe, but fails, and then Erol tries and succeeds. Once it’s in his hands he tosses it to Toran, who invokes it’s fear power against the gals. Two flee after Khana in terror, one or two are only able to defend and can’t attack Toran.

Vulk and Korwin head back north, through the kitchen area, to come in from the south and so behind the remaining hovagvu battling their friends. They meet the two fleeing kobali, who had exited as soon as the hovgavui attention was focused on the invaders – still under his illusion, Vulk sends them running on, avoiding combat; presumably they failed to note the sitll-shadowy Korwin. They come into the battle, Korwin with his frost blade and Vulk sowing confusion looking like the gül’s comrade.

As the battle is winding down the three hovgavu who had been looting in the Warrior’s Chamber try to enter the fray, but are mostly stopped by Metotha, Ghek and Hurjen, who are killed in the attempt. But they take two of the females with them, so only one comes up behind Mariala, who’s in trouble at this point. She draws her dagger (blocks a first blow?), and is save when Devrik (?) leaps to her defense and dispatches the creature.

At this point the few remaining hovgavu are dispatched, the group is spared the moral dilemma of killing Metotha & Co., and the looting begins. The main item of note is a Matrix Crystal attuned to the Yalva convocation, which allows Devrik a +5 bonus to his fire spells.