Ongoing Objectives: Safeguard Ameiko and the Amatatsu Seal | Get to Minkai! | Cross the Crown of the World!
Immediate Objectives: Deal with Morozkos | Stop Sitthud from entering the Material Plane!
Land of the Linnorm Kings |The Crown of the World - Aganhei Path | Boreal Expanse | Storm Tower
Storm Tower - Week 4
Mode: Storm Tower Encounter!
The group descends the Storm Tower, leaving Tunuak to deal with the orb. Since the disappearance of the portal, the old man had seated himself cross-legged on the chamber floor, communing with the spirits to gather his strength. Eventually, the crystal panel resets and a platform is conjured to carry the group down to the main floor. As the tower's platform of force lowers, Tunuak is last seen flying up to and through the open ceiling where his body is almost immediately whisked away by the raging Morozkos outside! Like riding the inside of a tornado, the old shaman is glimpsed being practically flung around the pulsing orb, riding an inescapable vortex! Bright flashes of blue light soon emanate from the orb as Tunuak focuses his magic to begin hurling chunks of ice at the center of the storm!
Three hundred feet below, Spivey is waiting curled up into a ball on the northside of the Storm Tower's entrance. The tiny lyrakien is overjoyed to see the party returning, practically springing to her feet but soon apologies for having not returned to the caravan. She confesses to being too scared to head out into those winds on her own! Seeing some of the wounds that had been inflicted, she calls upon Desna's graces to erase those blemishes and restore everyone to their full health.
Suddenly, the very walls of the tower shake and the entire area is awash in blinding light! A deafening boom and powerful shockwave follow filling the lower chamber as, just a fraction of the energy just expelled above, is violently ejected down the central shaft and out of the main entrance narrowly missing the party!
Outside, the Morozkos rapidly dissipates; howling winds die to still air, clouds evaporate and the stars emerge in the heavens. Even the temperature seems to warm to a more tolerable cold that, while still below freezing, has lost its life threatening bite. Gazing high above, most of the third level chamber has been blown away! Given the size of the blast, there is no doubting the fate of the old man - no one would have been able to survive! (Fluff)
A minute later, a thunderous roar breaks the silence left by the vanquished Morozkos! Huge talons the size of Draeven, loosen debris from the remains of the upper chamber as an immense form comes into view. Pieces of the tower fall to the ground, as a pair of monstrous white leathery wings unfold. Standing atop of the broken tower is a white dragon the size of a modest house! The huge wyrm steps onto the remains of the chambers's walls, cries again, then takes flight heading away from the Storm Tower to disappear into the night.
Retracing your steps back to the caravan, the group has no difficulty crossing the 'moat' or traversing the icy plain where less than an hour ago dozens of skeletons had menaced the party. Half way to the caravan however, tragedy lays. It is the frozen remains of Ulf, his body caught up by the Morozkos then left bloodied and broken on the boreal floor.
A bit of a lame ending, but I wanted to put this chapter to bed. The short of it is, the makers of the Storm Tower had, through the mysteries of their crystalline magic infused throughout the tower, transformed the heart and essence of a white dragon hundreds of years ago into the blue pulsing crystal orb. Set as a focal point above the tower, the orb gave the makers wide control over the weather across the Crown of the World. With such power over the elements it was not hard for the tower to be weaponized. When the makers disappeared, the unattended Storm Tower would periodically unleash a storm so power, it would take on a life of its own. The natives called these storms, Morozkos and learned to hide from it's deadly, unpredictable rampages. Hundreds of years later, some of the secrets of the Storm Tower's potential become known to an obscure cult of Sitthud. Drawn to the Storm Tower by the power of the Morozkos and a desire to one day call their lord into this realm, the cult plunged into the region digging up all they could. When the half fiend Katiyana is born, her father, a devout follower of Sitthud, imparted all he knew so that she might one day see the cult's work completed. Katiyana discovers a way to summon Morozkoz through enchanted nodes of basalt columns. She spends years constructing more of these columns to act as focal points of control capable of summoning a Morozkos to that area. She left her victims, travelers on the Path of Aganhei turned undead, as guards. Although she was able to summon a Morozkos to one point, this was not enough. She needed to be able to summon more, create a cascade of storms that would feed off of eat other. The cult believed the potential destructive force of a multitude of Morozkos would be enough to empower the ritual to call Sitthud. Iqaliat stood in her way however. The Shaman who lived there had devised a way of countering the Morozkos and she believed it necessary to destroy the village. She was in the process of tormenting Iqaliat when the party arrived. She was not able to fully corrupt their Shaman, Tunuak, but had managed to blind him enough to sew the distrust and chaos there that she was sure would please Sitthud. Upon her death, her obsession with the Storm Tower and need to summon her lord trapped her to the tower. When Tunuak ventured near, she captured him but his torment did little to harness the Storm Tower's power. As a ghost, she discovered she was better able to interact with the Storm Tower's strange power and, leaving the old man to the resident hag and last remaining member of the old cult, eventually activated all of her nodes. The resulting Morozkos covered all of the Crown and opened the way to finally conduct the ritual. Destroying the crystals on the top level, not only interfered with the ritual, but also injured Katiyana and lead to her final demise. Destroying the last orb at the top of the tower, has released the dragon imprisoned there so long ago and ended the threat of Morozkos. This dragon however, is a new threat to the Crown of the World. Fortunately, it is far enough from the Path of Aganhei to be of little consequence to travelers...for now.
