Wamblee Init:
Samen Init:
Marianne Init:
Samoon Init:
baddies
Marianne charges out of the plume of dust easily. "Magic it is," she murmurs. Far-off storms echo in her falcon's-eye pupils as her bow crackles with blue lightning.
Samen activates his flying power, more at ease with the motion than previously. Getting out of the dust, he flies toward the first mephit he sees, getting ready to strike.
Samoon quickly dodges through the gritty air. He ends up adjacent to his sister.
Samoon throw a fire bomb at the northern mephit.
The bat-maggot dodges out of the way with skitter-limbed speed. (touch AC of 14)
Wamblee is blind; his world is reduced to sound with no picture. There is nothing to do but center oneself and wait.
The mephits dive as one into the drifting dust.
Wamblee, you feel sharp, clever paws, like those of a giant rat, reach into your pockets and pouches. You sightlessly dodge and juke away from them before they can get a grip on you.
Samen lines up a swing at the foul creature as it dives past him.
Samoon drinks an extract and hustles around to the other side of the dust cloud.
Emulating his old master's techniques, Wamblee lashes out at the mocking, grasping entities, despite lacking sight for now.
His ki-infused fists and elbows will speak volumes for him.
Of course they dive right into the dust cloud.
Samen casts magic weapon and moves around the cloud to be by Samoon.
Marianne holds her action, knowing the mephits have to come out eventually.
Samoon drinks his potion.
Samen enchants his weapon.
Despite--or because of?--his blindness, Wamblee lashes out with more speed than he thought himself capable of. His feet remain absolutely rooted in place, but the rest of his body - torso, shoulders, arms - moves with uncanny aplomb as he attacks, weaves, attacks, but-
you did not hear the third one; the claws and slavering bites of the other two momentarily seized your attention. A quick little tug on your pack, barely felt, and you know immediately that its clever claws have taken the crystal.
The mephits launch into air simultaneously.
Marianne's arrow hits the fleeing mephit--thwok!--in the left thigh. A steady stream of sand pours from the wound. It falters, flaps a few more times, then falls to the ground with a saw-dust thump.
Marianne moves west, to gain line if sight on the southwestern mephit.
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Wamblee does his best to focus, and speeds up considerably.
He charges down the trail of the mephit he believes is the thief, and tries to stun it!
Samen frowns and gives up the fight, his siblings seeming to have things under control. He swoops back into the dust cloud to retrieve the woodcut, not caring if his burning hands damage the thing.
Samoon follows Marianne, the two naturally working together despite having spent years apart. The alchemist follows the archer's arrow with one of his fulminations:
The smoking mixture of chemicals goes right into the mephit's boarish maw. It clamps down, swallows, and-
the body is completely obliterated. Oddly enough, the head seems to have been transformed into ash, but it still retains the features of the mephit, screaming its last moment. It looks like a very surprised pig.
Wamblee, the mephit falls over bonelessly. It twitches and breathes shallowly, like a sick dog panting. Your crystal falls to the ground with a small chime, completely impervious to any rocks or roots it lands on. The only other sound is the settling of the dust cloud, like dirty rainfall.
Samen, absolutely nothing from the woodcut. Just a faint impression of...patience.
"Tie it up, Wamblee. Any chance of answers is good. Although it will probably peel its face off like a plantain and reveal Erret for the thousandth time," says Samoon.
Samen settles down and turns off the flying and the flame as he exits the dust. "Better be quick about it. This breed tends to last about as long as the cloud of dust they emerge from. On the other hand, this is the second agent who tried to walk off with your turtle-friend with no regard for the rest, so best of luck."
As if to emphasize Samen's point, the mephit's legs begin to crumble like dry sand. It drags itself pitifully toward Samoon, reaching for the cross staff. In a barely-recognizable, bleating Common, it says, ""food. fooooood!"
Its arms crumble. It tries to propel its torso forward with its chin, but to no avail. Crumble. Dust. Gone.
You have been traveling four mostly uneventful days. You have avoided a herd of clay elephants, and scared off the small pack of granite wolves that were slinking half a mile behind. While in some ways the scenery is always different - a twisted branch here, a rotting stump there - in truth it is always the same. The dozen or so species of tree, mostly deciduous, have but a few leaves remaining.
You are traveling eastward now, roughly parallel with the Horned Mountains far off to your right. The path has been slightly elevated two solid days - you are making your way up a particularly large foothill in the shadow of the Horns. During that time, an icy wind has been blowing from the north, an unwelcome gift from laughing Winter.
Wamblee tries to seize the fallen mephit, but as it turns to dust, he knows it is a futile effort.
He stows the crystal away safely. In the same pouch.
At camp, Wamblee announces quietly.
"I will attempt again to commune with the spirit. It definitely recognised the name Hotah."
Wamblee sits as he did before, and dwells on the crystal as he did before.
Spirit? Are you awake? I am Wamblee. Who are you?
In this higher altitude, the trees are shorter, then shorter still, then suddenly they are scrub bushes. Away from the trees now, your view clears, and you see it for the first time - the Branch monastery known as Uluru.
Arrayed at the top of the foothill is a smattering of high plateaus, looking like a graveyard for the anvils of giants. The naked rock shows narrow bands of red, orange, yellow, and brown. In the distance, you see tiny elenoid figures, walking down a winding set of stairs on the tallest plateau of all. It is difficult to estimate how many times the stairs loop around the huge plateau - twenty? thirty? Mist hangs around the upper reaches of the stone, obscuring how tall it truly is.
As you gradually get closer to the base, you see a few oreads, camped on leather bedrolls or just lying on the ground. A middle-aged el says, "If you are looking to go up, my friends, you have a wait on your hands. Today is a down day." He beckons all of you over to a large cauldron of warmed rocks that is serving as a communal dinner for the group of oreads.
Wamblee, the crystal is contentedly snoring.
"That's fine. It's been a series of Darkspawn days," says Samoon casually. "Seen any of those? We seem to be under attack. Constantly. I don't suppose the gate-keepers can bend protocol a bit?"
He shakes his head at the mention of darkspawn. "Nothing but rumors my friend, and I assume most of those are false."
The el shrugs at his second question. "You would have to ask the monks I suppose. I will tell you this for free though, my friend- you and the girl could just climb up the sides and not have to wait. I have seen sylphs do it before." He waves his hand to Wamblee and Samen. "Though climbing is not an option for els like us, eh?"
Samen scans the cliffs and nods. "Yeah, you're probably right, flying would be a better choice. How much do you weigh, Wamblee?"
Wamblee decides to leave the spirit alone for now.
***************
"Hail. As my elder brother says, Darkspawn abound. Root has been abandoned after an assault by them."
He turns to Samen and chuckles.
"It has been some time since I tried to weigh myself, little brother. But I suspect you would manage anyway."
The oread laughs at Samen and Wamblee - not unkindly, just sharing a joke. "Right! I will spout wings and fly as well, so I can make my trades a day early, and get home to my wife a day early. Ha ha, I should have thought of it myself!"
Marianne rolls her eyes at the chortling oread. "Let's go, if for no other reason than to stop his laughter." She continues toward the base of the plateau. Calling from behind her shoulder, she scolds Wamblee, "And hold on tight, you're not allowed to fall!"
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"I shall grip hard, but not my utmost. That would crush stone.", Wamblee replies, deadpan. But with a twinkle in his eyes.
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Samen grins. "It'll be the best hug I've ever gotten."
With Wamblee secured, he salutes genially at the merchant. "Give my regards to your wife!" Then he takes off up after his siblings.
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Samoon rolls his eyes, scowls, and climbs after Marianne.
Marianne has a bit of a headstart, but she slows so that she and Samoon take the climb up side by side. She grins at you, one hurting sibling to another. The view goes from grand, to sweeping, to mildly terrifying. The rock surface is cut with a hundred thousand thin scars all in parallel - the long kiss of the wind.
To your right, you see the Horns, crouched in arrogant cragged majesty. To your left, you see only rolling hills of forest, stretching into the fine mist of distance. Forty miles or more away, you see one enormous tree--the type of colossal presence that beggar's an elen's imagination, and ego--dominating the final treeline.
Samoon counts, if only subconsciously: the stairs wrap around the wide plateau exactly fifty-one times. Even climbing as quickly as a sylph can, it takes the two of you five minutes of steady, vertical climbing to reach the top.
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The oread furrows his brow at you as Wamblee does indeed lock his arms around his brother as one might do to an unfriendly earth elemental. As Samen proceeds to fly into the air, the oread's mouth gapes open in surprise, absently waving in response to the salute. On this day, perhaps unique to written history, two bulky oreads climb into the air faster than two sylphs can.
Wamblee maintains his grip. No harder that what he requires.
And grins when the pair of oreads pass the sylphs.
The first impression of Branch is a big heap of stones, with a copper candelbra on top. After a moment, your vision resolves, and you realize the enormous scale of the thing. The plateau is roughly square, about the length of a brutbreve field on each side. The monastery, shaped like a large dome, sits in the middle, leaving only ten feet or so for elens to make their way around.
The dome is made of millions, perhaps tens of millions, of stones: some pumpkin-sized, some barrel-sized, and a rare few boulders here and there. It rises up the height of ten or more elen. At the peak, a tree of shining copper erupts from the roof, opening into a hundred branches. You see razor-thin metallic leaves. The copper oak towers another fifty feet above the dome.
You realize that each of these stones must have been carried up by elens of the ancient past. What were those oreads like, two thousand years ago, hauling endless stones up to a lonely plateau?
Samoon tests the air and listens for sentries.
Samoon is mostly enthralled with the view - as you walk sinistral around the edges of the plateau, you see Great Forest to the east, north, and west. A large arched entrance faces north, seeming to point directly toward at the distant Quiet Elder. It is dark inside.
To the left of the arch are two stools. One stool is occupied by an oread ele who is undeniably a librarian, graying willowy hair tied in a bun. For a heart-stopping moment, Samen mistakes her for the librarian from Forge, but her expression is too serene. She is making notes in an over-sized tome that rests on her knees.
The second stool is empty. She looks up at all of you and smiles. "Sign in please. Name and reason for visiting." She holds the tome open to you, which is full of lines, all filled with different signatures in wildly varied handwriting and several different languages.
As one of you are about to say something, a group of four sylph scholars emerge, dressed in the solid colors of magi from the School of the Woven Spirit. Red, blue, white, and gold, the calm robes glide under the archway. Their dark hair is cut short, shorn in sharp swoops that call hawks to mind.
The librarian--gatekeeper?--waves you back, shushing. "It's a down day," she says briskly. "Exits take precedence." Each sylph writes down a brief sentence or two, ending with a signature. The gold-robed one goes last, and takes the longest. While he writes, the other three, red green and white, eye the four of you with bland equanimity.
"Hello. Root is overrun with Darkspawn and is lost. I don't suppose you can forego protocol just this once?" Samoon addresses the sylphs exiting Branch, rather than the librarian.
Samen waits passively for the encounter to resolve itself. Paperwork is more his wheelhouse than anything else he's dealt with recently, and he understands the value of waiting quietly.
The gold-robed sylph cracks a smile. Speaking in Sylph, he says, "Alchemists think they know everything." The three others laugh, the ele in red particularly shrill. Gold takes another minute or two to finish his entry, then casually stands up. He goes toward the top of the long, winding staircase. Red, Blue, and White follow him.
The librarian shrugs, uninterested in the foibles of the elens who come and go from Uluru. She holds the book open to the first of you to take it.