"As long as we defeat Jorsal's forces, we will be able to rescue the prisoners. Since ignoring his forces is not an option, we will achieve that goal in all cases except abandoning the Icerift entirely. Throwing the wikkawaks at Jorsal and infiltrating the tower while they draw his attention is an effective means of whittling down both of them. Should they survive the battle, then we can direct the remainder to the canyon."
"Splitting up when there may be stone golems and abominations in the tower is a serious risk. We cannot confront both the tower's defenses and Jorsal directly without going in well prepared and with all our tricks. We know little of what his other abominations are, but it is clear he has Nabasu abominations along with the others we encountered. Being split up or ill prepared could result in deaths. For instance, would we do if Valaria and you had left for elsewhere and we were confronted with a Hezrou abomination? Or something worse even?"
When Xanderghul agrees with Hinagiku, it causes Ary to pause for a moment. "We have to help them because it's the right thing to do, Xander." she says simply. "If you were in their situation would you want to be left out here to freeze, starve, or be eaten?" Ary asks, shrugging off the question in a classically 'good' way without dealing with the actual details of what made it right to risk others to protect people who ostensibly may never recover or may die anyway.
"I think our primary goal is to leave each of the evils weaker, no matter what we do. We can't leave any of them established or we'll simply run the risk of either group gaining a foothold to do more evil. So I definitely support pitting them directly against one another. If we can send an animal messenger, I'd suggest we definitely ask Ehren not to leave our forces behind. If we don't leave anyone in charge, no one there can readily kill those in charge to show how strong they are, leaving them in a weaker position. We already took out the demons, and apparently the braver - or perhaps more cowardly - ones fled into the night. So leaving them with food and water and their own oversight just seems best to me. Thoughts?"
Hinagiku takes time to register what the others have said, but ends up agreeing with Isilme and Ary:
"Yes... with Jorsal's forces gone we should have more freedom to liberate the prisoners... and, I'm not sure forces are needed in Mantarin, with all the snow, no one could truly escape."
17 Lamashan 4713
The heroes rest in the ice caves below the castle - the shack the menhir is in is simply too cold to rest well in. The wikkawaks leave them well alone as they rest in Ugmitok's former quarters.
Animal Messenger
Endure Elements
Intruder's End [Counter]
Swallow Your Fear [Counter]
Tactical Strike [Strike]
Silver Crane's Blessing [Boost]
Ary rises and makes her usual preparations, donning her armor, praying, and performing her katas. She really didn't care for all this cold business. Luckily, the delay in her use to protect herself from frostbite had made it less terrible.
3rd - dispel magic, major image, beast shape i, force punch, displacement (2)
2nd - see invisibility, raven's flight, minor image, burst of radiance, mirror image (2)
1st - handy grapnel, ear-piercing scream, enlarge person, endure elements, hydraulic push, shadow trap, vanish (2)
0 - detect magic, flare, ghost sound, prestidigitation
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When it seems that everyone has agreed on tomorrow’s plan, Hinagiku returns to her meditation next to the stone.
For the next hours, Hinagiku goes through multiple iterations of her meditation choreography, slowly and gracefully moving, breathing out whatever was polluting her ki, and breathing in serenity. Only once the sun goes down does she switch to the remaining part of her daily ritual: reading the few books she had brought with her.
When the others start awaking, they find Hinagiku sitting in the lotus position, relaxing, and awaiting for them.
”Good morning.” she softly says.
Ehren wakes up early as usual and spends the first hour of his day ruminating on the aspects of nature.
As the army prepares to depart from Mantarin, he convenes with Irabeth one last time before setting off as a gyrfalcon, intending to meet back up with the others.
3rd (4+1/day)-aqueous orb (DC 19),
stone shape
2nd (4+1/day)-burst of radiance (2, DC 17), soften earth and stone, wood shape, empty slot
1st (6+1/day)-
0 (at will)-create water, detect magic, light, read magic
With all that can be sorted out for the next day done, Isilme heads down into the lower levels to rest. Having already spent time writing for the evening she decides to retire immediately, finding the closest thing she can find to a comfortable spot in Ugmitok's lair and adjusting her fur cloak to function both as padding and a blanket.
When she wakes up the next morning she starts to feel the cold of the room affecting her, signifying the ending of the magic. Gathering her things and putting her cloak about her. "Would it be possible to get another endure elements for today?" she asks as she finishes readying her pack and adjusting her scabbard for her rapier.
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Xanderghul spends the remainder of the night scribing in his spellbook, continuing his work on new spells. He pulls out Brae-Hagen's book and copies another two spells from it, intent on collecting the largest collection of spells possible. He mutters quietly to himself all night, either about the situation or about the work he's doing, but doesn't talk to anyone.
When the time comes to go to bed, he reaches into the main pocket of his haversack and pulls out a sleeping pad and a blanket, feeling somewhat sorry for Isilme. He takes a moment to take the canteen of Ugmitok's blood and shove it into a little ice-hole he gouges with his dagger, though he is somewhat troubled and hesitant while he does so.
In the morning, Xanderghul quietly packs his things up, spending the requisite hour memorizing pages from his spellbook. He makes sure to memorize four of his five new spells - experimenting with how effective new magic is is critical to the process of wizardry, after all. When he is done, he gets up, goes to the flask with Ugmitok's blood, and goes outside with it. He stands there alone for a minute, contemplating for a last time before uncapping it and pouring it out into the snow. He uses prestidigitation to clean out the inside before filling it with snow and putting it back in his haversack. A leap of faith. He heads back into the ice cave, says good morning to everyone, and nonchalantly taps Isilme on the shoulder when she asks, warding her with endure elements.
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Ary takes a moment after preparing her spells to kneel down with her book of celestial learning and carefully scrawl out a quick note. She takes a few moments to think over the most probable paths they'd take through the region, and double checks with Xanderghul and Isilme; if they were leaving first thing in the morning, they'd likely not get the bird messenger otherwise. They'd need an obvious landmark that the bird could recognize from the sky that their allies were likely to pass by. If all of that is successful, she colors the back of the parchment with some of her colored chalks to make it stand out, before tearing it out and folding it multiple times. She winces at the destruction she's caused to her notebook, but it's a worthy sacrifice. She hopes the eagle-eyed of her army will notice the rainbow scroll even if they misjudge the distances.
Jorsal's position is guarded by dwarven traps and a stone golem. Clearly able to bypass; ask Nurah how to circumvent if she knows. Found lots of shinies while you were gone. Attacking with Ewoks soon. Hoping something scribbled out they die clean deaths.
Afterwards, Ary pulls out some more of her trail rations from her pack and digs out the seeds once more. They were one of the better parts, too... she moves upstairs, pilfering some of the seeds as she goes, and waits until she sees a Rock Ptarmigan, before using her spell. Rocky seemed to like those, so he'd likely notice it more easily. She casts her spell and waits, once it comes, she feeds it gently and gives it the bird's eye view of where she wants it to go and ties the message around its little leg.
Ehren doesn't wait for the army to finish preparing to march - he needs to meet up back with his friends. As he leaves, Anevia waves at him from atop her horse - calling, "Be careful! Don't do anything I would do!"
Ehren's magic, combined with his shapeshifted form, allows him to outpace the army he leaves behind. As a result, however, he isn't around to intercept Ary's little messenger. He covers the distance in a little over an hour - he is aware that on foot, through the snow, the army will take four times that amount of time.
Valaria foregoes giving the wikkawaks another speech - but she doesn't really need to - the bloodthirsty wikkawaks head down the mountain towards the dwarven gatehouse come sunrise on their own. Unlike the crusader army, which marches in organized rows in sync, the wikkawaks barrel down the snow as an enormous, unorganized mass. It is difficult for the heroes to keep up as they trudge through the heavy snow, but once they reach close to the bottom they see that a heavy fog has settled into the mountain valley, obscuring the gatehouse and the surrounding buildings from sight. The top of the stone tower juts out from the fog, and a small dark shape can be seen circling it lazily in the air.
The wikkawaks have amassed further up the mountain. They are babbling to themselves in goblin, appearing fearful of heading straight into the fog against enemies unknown. Farther away, the flying black creature vanishes from sight.
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Val's up a bit early, filling in her journal and getting her things together for the march out to the gatehouse.
We found the demons set up in some old gatehouse guarding the pass up to Icerift. Bypassing that was easy enough when you’ve got as many nature-y, magic-y types as we do. Then we found out that Icerift isn’t quite as abandoned as we thought it would be. As it turns out, a tribe of wikkawaks had settled into the castle a while back and were less than happy with the demons trying to move in to their home. And by that I mean they were putting up one hell of a fight. The demons had magic and Jorsal’s patchwork abominations on their side, but the wikkawaks had the terrain advantage and a lot of savage determination. Getting ourselves involved was probably a bad idea, but then Ehren’ went scouting and discovered that the wikkawaks had a bunch of prisoners who were very likely going to become dinner if we didn’t do something.
So of course we did something. We climbed up the back of a gods damned mountain, snuck into their fortress, and fought our way through a literal army of wikkawaks to get into the keep. That’s about when we decided to kill their leader and hope it broke their ranks so we could get the hell out with the prisoners without being run down by a horde of angry bugbears. On the way through, we found the menhir stone that was supposed to be installed in the castle and we learned quite a lot thanks to Ehren and Daisy. As it turns out, the wikkawaks were worshiping some sort of giant super wendigo. Given our luck, I’m amazed that we weren’t expected to find some way to kill the thing in single combat.
Instead, we had to delve deep into their fortress, kill their leader, and recover an ancient Kellid artifact that had sealed the damn super wendigo away until their shaman corrupted the thing. Then Ehren had to use his special leyline powers to destroy it for good and banish the wendigo back from wherever it came. All in all, I’m slightly surprised that it worked out half as well as it did. In the end, we killed a very large amount of wikkawaks, searched most of the fort, and then got into a fight with another druid type who seemed to take a perverse glee in summoning ice storms on top of us while flying around out of reach. At least we finally managed to kill her. Then Ehren blew the relic sky high and we threw together one of our ridiculously convoluted plans that has absolutely no right to work that of course worked perfectly because we’re unbelievably lucky.
A few illusions and some translations from Xan managed to get them convinced that we now controlled their god and that I’d killed their leader in single combat. I had to kill a bit more to get them under control, but now I’ve got my own band of crazy wikkawaks at my beck and call. Now I just need to find a way to get rid of them before they kill more people.
Val's actually a little glad that the wikkawaks are so eager to jump in and go straight for the fighting. It will make recklessly throwing them at the gatehouse all the easier. The sight of the valley filled with fog brings a frown to her face. "I smell a trap. This is too convenient and Jorsal has magic at his disposal. This is the kind of time when I'd love to have some wind spells."
Xanderghul squints into the fog, sure that it was the nabasu-creature that they had just seen. While he himself had no fear of such creatures, that didn't stop them from being extremely dangerous, and so they had to keep an eye on it. "What do you guys want to do?" he asks, "Us or them first? We should be able to sneak pretty easily in this fog, if we stay quiet and stay close to one another, which means having a definite plan before we head in."
His breath steams in the chilly air. It was bracing to be out in the cold at this kind of altitude, as long as "bracing" means "lethal".
"Val is right, it is likely a trap. I would not expect the fog to provide us cover for our advance. The ideal thing would be for Ehren to provide us with wind to clear the path entirely." she says to Xanderghul as he suggests they approach stealthily. "Or if this fan token could somehow be coaxed into believing it was over water..." she adds with a sigh, pulling out the fan feather token they had which seemed almost entirely useless due to the fact it somehow demanded water to function.
"If we must go in, an illusion might prove handy in taking advantage of the fog for walking directly into their trap."
Xanderghul purses his lips. "A trap for what?" he sighs. It is probably better to be more cautious than to not be cautious at all. "I can make an illusion of mist, and then if, say, they have someone with fogcutters' lenses or something, they won't see us. Just another fog-bank that we can see through ourselves."
Just to double-check, Xanderghul casts detect magic, to see if the fog is magical in nature. He hypothesizes that it's probably just weather, but again, it doesn't hurt.
"I'd be more worried about the possibility of a fireball or the like." Ary shares. "The fog is inviting because it allows us to move in unseen... but there's nothing that clears out fog quite like a burst of heat. And the Demons wouldn't be affected overall, then we're injured and in the middle of the enemy army." she says, tapping her foot. "What can you tell us of Jorsal's capabilities, Xander?"
”A trap… or simply a dangerous situation, one in which we are blind.” Hinagiku starts, echoing Ary's words while surveying the foggy expanse laying below them ”But, perfect for half of our plan…”
"Jorsal is a warrior. He's made countless missions into the Worldwound to catalogue the geography, delve into Sarkorian ruins, and recover Abyssal artifacts. Nothing too unexpected, although as a Venture-Captain and a veteran, he should be expected to be very good at what he does, which is adventuring. If we're assuming he's possessed by a shadow demon, well, they can conjure shadows and use shadow-illusion magic as I do, so he may well be able to as well."
The fog cloud is much too far for detect magic to reach from where you are standing, which only has a 60' range.
On his way back to Icerift, and even as the others discuss the possibility of the fog being laid down as an enemy trap, Ehren observes the sky, discerning what course the weather might take over the next few days. He was fairly confident that the fog was a natural phenomena, just as Xanderghul suggested. Even so, that did not exclude the possibility of Jorsal's army using it to their advantage. Using weather conditions to their advantage was key to capturing Mantarin, after all.
"I did not prepare any wind spells today, unfortunately," he says, looking back down and in the direction of the watchtower. "Even if I had, none that I am capable of casting could disperse such a large blanket of fog. That would require directly influencing the weather."
"I think we should rely more on the chaos of battle for concealment than on this fog. And we should deal with that nabasu before even attempting to enter the tower... wherever it went. An army of ghouls is the last thing we need."
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Xanderghul smacks himself on the forehead and casts see invisibility. It should last more than long enough that there was no danger of losing it laterand they needed to make sure that nabasu wouldn't just sneak up on them. He asks, "So... nobody has a solid plan? Because if we don't, you can all follow me. I'll create some fake mist to hide us in, or fake allies to distract the enemies, and we just... go up to the tower. We tell the wikkawaks to charge in on the signal, which I can do using another figment - perhaps even a giant illusory wikkawak in the sky, charging, with the words, 'go now' below it? Anyway, we sneak in there, we open up the gates and try to disable the enemy traps, and see what happens from there."
"That would be the best bet then, let us go with illusions to aid us and expect the Nabasu. The rest we will adjust to on the fly," she says. Without any means of dispelling the fog, after all, there was nothing else they could really do.
Taking a moment, she reaches over and prepares Valaria by imbuing her with a rune-enhanced heroism. "There you go Val, no sense waiting," she says with a smile. She follows that spell up with non-enhanced versions of heroism for both Ary and Hinagiku, as it was likely they might find themselves in the thick of an army battle despite their intent to infiltrate the tower. Isilme takes another moment to secure the crossbow she'd borrowed on her back where she could easily retrieve it, and then looks to the others. "I am prepared," she says.
Looking down at the tower and the fog that surrounds it, she wonders what awaits them in the fog. No doubt they will find out soon, and she finds it quite unlikely that Jorsal does not intend to use it to his advantage.
Xanderghul hands Isilme his fourteen bolts - five steel, nine cold iron. He then stretches out his fingers and calls to the anxious-looking wikkawaks. "Daan dech huun ac drerakaan daan dac dar dhorakhaal o rhaakluugaan, ac dech terlach daac ar an delkaan dhuur o duun rhec akaaraagaal kokakhec oc duuraan dar duuch dalaan or muulkaan."
When everyone is ready, Xanderghul will cast minor image to create a copy of himself, flying supernaturally above the fog, taking notes, talking to himself, and generally scouting about.
"That's about as good of a plan as we're going to get I suppose."
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"Nothing to do but do." Ary agrees with a shrug. "Might as well walk face-first into whatever traps they've set. They'd never expect that." she says, polishing her shield with her red cape, then pausing and simply twisting her ring, 'I will shine in her legion.'
With a smile, slightly more apparent than her usual ones, Hinagiku welcomes Ehren’s return. She patiently waits as she transforms back into his human form and salute the others before purposefully approaching him, tail flailing gently at the air behind her.
”I am glad you’re back. I suppose everything went well?” she pauses, feeling her question to be quite lame, he ear twitches a bit ”Ready for another long day.” she finishes, inviting him to follow the rest of the group.
Hinagiku nods gently in agreement with the others, they had their plan, and that was enough for her. She would trust then, and keep her senses sharp to make sure they were not taken by surprise.
"Alright, I am right behind you Ary." she says, surveying the landscape.
"There were a few escapees... spellcasters, Irabeth thinks. But otherwise, everything is going well at Mantarin. And at Silvershore, if what Nurah said is any indication." He chuckles quietly at her last remark. "As long as yesterday? I should hope not."
He glances back in the direction he flew from. "The army won't be here for another four, maybe five hours. Let's see about finishing this before then."
Ehren nods in agreement. While it was not their most elaborately formulated plan, it was the best they could do given what they knew about their situation. As always, improvisation would be key. Still, there was a little more he could do to better prepare everyone for what lied ahead.
Murmuring in Druidic, Ehren starts to clasp everyone's shoulders one after the other, bestowing them with some of the blessings he had prepared that morning. Everyone feels their footsteps lighten, and though they could not see them, they were each enveloped by shells of life-preserving ley energy.
"All right. Let's get going."
The fog is mundane, caused by moisture in the air settling down into the mountain valley. Given current wind conditions, it will probably clear of its own within a few hours.
Tomorrow you expect clear weather, warmer than normal, because of winds blowing in warmer air from the south, with moderate winds.
The day after that will likewise be clear weather, with moderate winds.
The day after that will probably be the end of the warm front, and things will get cooler. There is no evidence that there will be any sort of precipitation, given the current cloud formations. It will likely be less windy.
Variska frowns. "Wait, what? I thought you guys said there were... what... a hundred or so demons in there? So we're just gonna waltz in, like that?"
Ayavah shrugs. "If we can't see them, they can't see us.... right?"
The group trudges down the mountain towards the gatehouse, their footsteps light as Ehren's magic prevents them from sinking into the almost knee-deep snow. Once they are about 800 or so feet away, Xanderghul casts a minor image of himself floating above the fog... before the group disappears into the fog itself.
Ayavah clutches the back of Valaria's arm tightly as the world around them suddenly vanishes... they can only see five feet around them, so the heroes are unable to even see their entire team. Looking up, they can see the nabasu flying high overhead on its leathery bat-like wings, though the fog makes it so that it cannot see them. It beelines straight for Xanderghul's illusion, extending a claw out and firing a black ray of energy at the flying wizard... it snarls as the energy blasts straight through the figment.
The heroes hear its voice in their heads, snarling in Abyssal, "Hi nil i'li krushi, nal ugh Kenabres. Dezg nushi il am ashi? Kugral nurzeshul gu thrili krushi agriti... i throshizg kragi kishukhum... i hat bi krushi, gigi."
Nevertheless, the heroes trudge forwards - the fact that they can see the stone watchtower soaring above the fog makes it an easy landmark to move to. It is roughly 300' away. They come upon the rear gates of the small encampment - a stone wall lines the perimeter of the base. The gates have been torn apart - crude wikkawak weapons jut out from the doors, evidence of some siege waged here long ago. Great boulders and debris from the mountain above litters the street.
But the heroes can hear footsteps in the snow through the fog... and just as they clear the gates they suddenly find themselves surrounded on all sides by leering dretches!
Initiative!
Initiative Order!
1. Ehren
2. Xanderghul
3. Ayavah, Dretch Troop
4. Ary
5. Isilme
6. Hinagiku
7. Variska
Ehren and Xanderghul are up!
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We're off to a good start, Ehren thinks wryly, already weaving a spell as the dretches start to pour around them. He tosses his hand outward, evoking a flash of searing white light, anathema to the wicked and corrupt.
;
Ehren's ability to target his spell is hindered by the thick fog all around him - knowing that his allies are just ahead, he aims behind them... but this unfortunately catches himself and Hinagiku in his blinding spell. The spell has its intended effect on the dretches, however: the one closest to the epicenter of the blast is ripped apart in a wave of holy light, while the rest are singed and dazzled by the display.
Valaria and Xanderghul are up!
The instant he realizes what he is about to do, Ehren squeezes his eyes shut, shielding them from the worst of the flash. He sheepishly mutters an apology as he opens his eyes again, finding that his vision is a little spotty.