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"Would you PLEASE kill this thing already!!"
"This fight HAS to be over soon"
Marinda declines to act right now. Surely the Water witch must be on her last legs by now!!
The fatal wound leaves Essessol shocked for a moment. She looks at herself and blinks, and a moment after she dissolves in a cloud of ink, splashing in the water. The flood recedes, washing out in the courtyard, and only leaving behind a musty scent. The tannery is free.
Touching down once the water recedes, Edda complains vociferously.
"That was unpleasant!"
She then checks on the others...
Niklos empties his boots, and then struts back into the tannery. "Good job!"
He then starts going over the room, looking for valuables.
Hrain coughs and splutters.
"Lightly drowned but nothing serious! Where to next?"
On the ground lie two platinum wedding bands, one marked with a ruby and one with a sapphire. Other than that, it's mostly leatherworking equipment, including a few well-made armors. A staircase rises from this room, mirroring the temple on the other side, and there is a side door.
Algon tries to drz the water from his hair, clothes and armor. "Ha! More vanquished servants of evil! The way forward is paved with glory!"
Niklos snatches the wedding bands, quietly pocketing them when Algon is not looking.
"Yes, sir, excellently done!" he says to the knight, bowing and scraping. "Shall we see what lurks above?"
"Thanking you." Hrain nods at Edda as his wounds close.
Edda winks at Hrain and taps one of his larger arm muscles.
"Let's just say you owe me one and leave it at that for now my good Hrain. Where to next?"
The staircase up from the tannery leads to a bedchamber, half charred and half waterlogged, evidently the bedroom of the two genies. There is nothing much remarkable. Climbing again, Niklos finds himself in a room divided by iron bars. On one side there are tables with handles and chains, anatomy diagrams for the most common sentient races, and several intricate tools with the evident purpose of torturing people. On the other side, a half-starved, short and balding human sits slumped in a corner, and his eyes light up as the rogue enters the room. He's not a storykin. "Ah! Finally, someone real in this accursed place! Or are you another of her tricks? Go away, hallucination! No, wait, stay. Please. But only if you are real. Are you?"
Edda steps up and heals the man.
"We are as real as you are my friend."
Niklos squints at the man, looking as if he is trying to remember something.
"Oh, right!" he finally says, snapping his fingers. "You don't happen to be Meloigne Garracy, by any chance?"
"No dear, we're real. Or most of us are anyway. We're hoping to soon be leaving this place. Who are you dear, and how did you end up here?"
"Yes- yes, that's me! At your service, well, in the limits of what little I can do. But I have some money, back home, in Taldor, it's yours if you bring me back! Oh, this horrible place. Where are we, anyhow? I remember a flash of light, then three big crows brought me here and..."
The scholar shivers at the recollection of the genies' work.
Edda waves a hand in the air rapidly and dismissively.
"It's complicated. A long story. Can you accept you are in another...reality...and the laws that govern our world do not fully govern this one? Suffice it to say you are the 'damsel in distress' and we still need to defeat the dragon to save you."
"We cannot take you home yet, as we are stuck here with you, but we can free you from your binds!"
With that, Hrain frees the man (depending on how he's tied up Hrain will sunder with his terbutje or untie him).
Niklos nods along with the others, smiling. "Sure, you can come along..."
"...and us two can have a nice, long talk afterwards—preferrably with fewer paladins around."
The simple lock on the iron doors is quickly cut open, and after his binds are cut Garracy gingerly steps out. "Uh, I'm not fighter" he stammers, rubbing at his wrists. "I'll follow you at a bit of a distance, eh?"
Walking through one of the unexplored flights of stairs brings you in a moldy kitchen, with equipment and unwashed pots lying around. Some muffins are on the table, but a quick check reveals that there is not a single edible ingredient making them up: there is concrete in place of flour, sand instead of sugar, and you feel like you don't want to know what stands for the eggs.
The other flight leads to the barracks, which have six ogre-sized beds and a gnome-sized one.
In the small mattress are concealed some valuable possessions: two potions of cure serious wounds, four potions of energy resistance (electricity), and a necklace of fireballs (type II).
Beyond the large doors in the courtyard is a pool of crystalline water. The smell of ozone alerts you to massive amounts of electrical charge being stored in the pool, which you guess acts as a reservoir of energy for moving the whole fortress. Two staircases climb to the next floor. To the sides you find sputtering iron and copper engines, steaming and chuffing at the pace of the Fortress' steps. These appears to be the devices moving the legs of the itinerant castle, and the room at the back end is evidently a control apparatus, albeit a very complex one, with plenty of unmarked levers, pulleys and gears.
Niklos—obviously keen on robbing the castle of everything that is not nailed down—peers under the gnome-sized mattress in the barracks, revealing a cache of magical knick-knacks.
"A-ha!" he exclaims. "Finally, somethin' useful..."
"Let us be steady, squires!" proclaims Algon, when you get to the room with the pool. "Atop these staircases I can feel the nefarious presence of our foe! Let us take a moment to remind ourselves of the righteousness of our quest, and then we shall go vanquish the oppressor!"
Edda puts on her new necklace nodding and sighing.
"Yes...squires...Can we at least not walk in through the front door in a straight line? I would rather NOT perform suicidal maneuvers just yet."
"For glory!"
Wraparound stairways give way to an immense library and observatory. Shelves stuffed to bursting with tomes, scrolls, and loose scraps of paper line every surface, while bottles and obscure tools crowd tabletops. Towering stacks of books reach to the ceiling like parchment columns. In the center of the library, aimed into a tattered and torn silk tapestry, sits an immense golden telescope.
In the middle of the room sits a huge, blue dragon, looking more realistic than any storykin you have seen, but still not quite complete enough. His skin is a nightmarish patchwork, scales and hide taking on some quality of different creatures in every patch. It would take further examination to be sure, but you have a gut feeling that those skins once belonged to sentient creatures, who met their violent end in this Realm.
Zassrion, the Patchwork Lord, is peering through an ancient scroll when Algon is the first to cross the threshold of the library. The eyes of the dragon are crazed and wild, but there is some ferine satisfaction on his face.
"Foul Zassrion!" exclaims the paladin. "By my hand, today you fall!"
"Algon, the Ever-Seeking, tragic hero of an unfinished tale!" replies the dragon. "Never would I have thought you would reach me, you inconsequential lout! Not you I want, but flesh-and-blood next to you, one of too few but just enough, to make me whole! Know you your destiny, titanic fool?"
The conventions of the confrontation between a hero and a villain bind Algon to trade monologues with Zassrion before a fight. Such conventions, however, don't bind you.
Her first action as she enters the lair is to activate her flying hex and silently fly upward while drawing a Harrow card!
Marinda will start things by putting an Evil Eye hex on the Dragon.
-4 to its AC.
Moderately irrelevant will save (DC 19) or -4 on its AC
"Drake! You have terrorised this land for too long! We stand against you!" Hrain stands beside Algon, brandishing his weaponry and trusting in his dragon-scale armour.
Niklos crouches in the northern stairway, awaiting the sounds of a battle being joined.
Marinda's hex slides off the dragon's hide, and Zassrion doesn't even seem to consider her. Instead, he listens to Hrain, and replies with a chuckle, as Algon seems to be at a loss for words.
"The Ever-Seeking fool at your side, half-orcish one, is responsible for death and grief as well. The Harrowed Realm is stained with the blood of those visitors he slew because they were unwilling to be at his service. And not just storykin! What a waste of an immortality, his, straying away from his path little by little, never realizing how much he had fallen to evil..."
"You lie, fiend!" shouts Algon, but the defiance in his voice is strained and unnatural. "All I did, it was to be strong enough- for the greater good!"
"I found the draft end of your tale, fool. I know you can't comprehend your own existence, you aren't a Conspirator. Still..." Zassrion's voice turns into that of an elderly woman, melodious as an opera singer. There is some quality in it that reminds you of Bernaditi's.
"His sword was raised against his nemesis, but it was not the blade that fell, not the hand, not the arm. It was Algon's heart which wavered, as the realization struck. More and more, he had strayed towards evil, and only now he finally felt the weight of his deeds. For the path of the righteous is that where it is never said that the end justifies the means."
It's not flashy to see Algon Fall. There is no light, no sound. He just drops to his knees, and in that moment he's suddenly less. With a flap of his wings, the Patchwork Lord is upon him. His jaws close across Algon's torso while he's too stunned to defend himself, and the ex-Paladin is thrown across the room like a ragdoll.
Not caring a whit about the paladin's death...or whatever it was...Edda immediately starts casting one of her more potent spells as she hovers above the dragon! With her drawn Harrow card wrapped with a red and green nimbus, she throws for the creature's broad back...
Hrain is dismayed, then realises the truth. He cannot save Algon, but perhaps Algon can save himself, with a little narrative push.
"No, Sir Algon! Stand with me! Recognise your flaws and confront them, and become greater than that which you were! This is the climax of the piece, do you not see?!"
As he is shouting this, Hrain bulls forward to stand between the dragon and the fallen knight, attempting to slam it in the side with his shield and terbutje.
->
->
Niklos runs up the stairs and into the library, dashing from cover to cover as he makes his way across the length of the chamber. Though he has no pretensions of being able to sneak up on a dragon, he certainly does not intend to take it on directly, either—or taunt it prematurely, for that matter. He slides into cover behind a desk and pulls a card out of his sleeve, tossing it out on the tabletop.
Marinda cackles to maintain the first Evil Eye while casting a second one. This time to subtract -4 from the dragons attacks
Again, a fairly irrelevant will save (I love cackle) to reduce the duration to 1 round
Edda's card and Hrain's weapons all find a target in the huge beast, who doesn't seem fazed, for the moment. With fangs longer than daggers dripping ink, his neck snaps twice at the two closest targets for vicious bites. His claws follow up on Hrain, one of them drawing a large amount of blood, and as he turns towards his mark, the tail crashes violently into Marinda.
A supernatural awe strikes you as you witness this display of brutality and ferocity: born of tales or not, a dragon is one of the most fearsome opponents that can ever be fought.
Grimacing at the attacks on her friends, Edda tries one of her most powerful spells on the Dragon, drawing three Harrow cards while she does it!
- The Queen Mother(Wis)= +1 Caster Level
- The Owl(Wis)= +1 Caster Level
- The Theatre (Cha)= +1DC
"Face me you sorry excuse of a patchwork Quilt!"
As the wave of supernatural fear washes over him, the Sczarni retreats back under the table he is using for cover, his eyes flashing towards the exit.
"No. There's no other exit. This is it, you miserable sod! Do or die..."
Gritting his teeth, Niklos slides over the table and cartwheels into position, stabbing at the beast's hindquarters as it lays into Hrain and Marinda.
"Ow"
Marinda continues to cackle to maintain the hexes. She then throws a largish channel as her standard action (excluding the dragon)
She then 5ft steps down the stairs
Hrain rocks back as the creature rips into him, but roars in defiance as he attempts to give back as good as he got.
->
->
Niklos' assault comes to an abrupt end as Zassrion's tail whips around, sweeping the floor. His feline reflexes protect him from grievous harm, but the momentum of the attack is lost.
While Hrain draws blood again from the beast, Edda's spell resonates across the library as the dull clang of a leaden bell. The dragon shakes his head in a fit of pain, although its fortitude seems to have shielded him from the worst.
"In a moment, witch. First I deal with these fleas."
The wind blast from the Patchwork Lord's wings is powerful enough to raise a small storm of loose papers littering the ground. A roar resonates, amplified by the excellent acoustics, and lightning follows in a white-blue flash, aiming for rogue and paladin alike.