Seeing the plant was already on fire, Charles drew his shortsword and went to strike at the plant.
Charles eyes widened as he saw Drot'ook become enraged and his eyes burn red. He struck a moment after the frenzied Orc, though he had no words for Drot'ook at the moment. He'd never seen this before.
Barlog tries to heal Drot, but the wounds do not close. Something is wrong. Magical healing is not working on Drot.
Drot is surprised by the plants coming to attack him. He strikes quickly and then backs away to the room to get away. Knowing that magical healing doesn't work, he's much more cautious than he would otherwise be.
Fast.
PCs:
Barlog tries to hide behind the pews near the stairs. He looks for what's int he room - long benches, chairs, books, candles, and other typical items found in a temple or place of worship.
Drot casts some magical darts and hits the creature Charles is fighting.
Tesswyn goes in for the strike, hurting it even more, but it's still alive!
Enemies:
The plant Tesswyn just attacked strikes back. But before it does so, the fire burns it more.
It lashes out at Tesswyn:
The plant's sharpened thorns slash across Tesswyn's armor, but fail to hurt her.
The other plant attacks Charles!
Barlog looks above to see if there is something hanging from the ceiling he can cause to fall on the enemies.
Drot takes out the torch Barlog gave him, lights it and throws it in an attempt to light the other plant on fire as well!
Tesswyn smashes the plant once more!
Hoping to finish it off, Tesswyn casts a spell for a flash of insight and attacks again!
Barlog heads for the stairs, staying low to avoid detection. He carefully heads up the stairs listening for any signs of life above.
"Aaagh!" Charles retreated back getting away from the all too dangerous plant as fast as he could.
He wasn't sure he could survive getting thrashed like that from those vines again.
Fast:
PCs:
Drot throws his torch, hitting the plant square and lighting it on fire!
Tesswyn kills the first plant and attacks the second.
Charles retreats back to safety.
Enemies:
The plant thing strikes at Tesswyn.
Slow:
Barlog heads up the stairs.
Everyone up! Fast or slow init!
Tesswyn screams in pain as the barbed tentacles tear into her flesh. "Take this f#&*er down!" she gasps, redoubling her efforts to kill the monstrous plant!
The rogue attacks again!
Between the fire and Tesswyn's staff, the Violator falls still. The fire continues to consume the plant, leaving nothing but sounds of crackling.
As the adrenaline fades from her body, Tesswyn falls to her knees, panting with exertion. Blood drips from the deep cuts across her arms, legs, and face.
"F~#~," she groans and looks around at her equally battered companions. "We're all beat to s%*#. And this was just the first floor! We need to fall back, heal, and regroup, or we're all going to die."
"Indeed. There is a door up here that can stay closed until we've recovered."
Barlog returns to the group.
Shallow and staggered breathing suggests Drot's condition is bad and not getting better. The wounds from previous fights are fresh as ever and he looks sickly. He stares at his companions, one after another without saying anything; something is seriously wrong with the hulking Orc. He motions to the exit then the direction of the barracks.
"The living quarters, were the women were...Are... That might be our safest bet. Narrow doors and furthest from the tower."
He waits a moment in case anyone has a better idea, takes a deep breath and begins a slow shuffle to his much needed respite.
Charles breathes heavily, feeling some semblance of recovery after healing himself.
"That's not a bad idea, Drot. But I'm worried about resting here in the middle of this plant field. We should get the wagon, get the two women we've saved, load up the oxen and leave this accursed place while shutting the doors. I don't want to wake up tomorrow... or in the middle of the night to find a half dozen of those devil plants along with whoever made them waiting outside our doors. I feel terrible for anyone who might still have been alive but we can't go back in there right now."
Drot's wounds do not heal, nor does the Faith Healing ability seem to work on him.
"I agree with Charles. Whoever is here chose to be. This is their fate and burden to bear. While I have compassion for the agony they are likely experiencing, it is of their own doing."
Barlog will help fill the cart and yoke the oxen.
"It's better that we burn this place to the ground forever."
"We'll light that field of plants on fire before we leave, Flamebeard."
After Charles magic failed to visibly heal Drot'ook, his eyes widened in concern.
"Wait, what? That should have worked."
The Orcs earlier words echoed in his mind and he focused again, trying to cure the Orc a second time. When nothing happened for the third time, a dawning realization hit him.
"What's going on?! Drot'ook I... I can't heal you. Why? Did something happen to you? Maybe the day Lemagrag died? I think my spells have healed you before but why don't they work now?" Charles was getting visibly upset.
"Aye, burn it all and let the gods sort things out. This isn't our fight. I don't want to die here," Tesswyn says emphatically.
The oxen are ready and the cart is set. You pull it outside the commune proper, ready to light the place on fire.
After taking a moment to calm down and think Charles shook his head. "No, no wait. I did heal you just a little bit ago with that burst of healing magic. So that couldn't have been it. Agh, there's something I'm missing but there's just not enough time to think about it right now.
Your right. Let's burn as much of these plants down as we can. We'll burn the vine growing on the side of the tower. We'll burn the fields where we were attacked earlier. Then we'll burn the plants coming from those graves out in front of the area. After we do that we'll seal the tunnel you found earlier, Tesswyn. We'll set up camp and take watches where we're far enough away to watch the gate but not close enough for it to pose an immediate danger.
Alright, Flamebeard. Let's get a few more torches made."
As the group discussed their plans and Charles expressed his confusion, Drot nodded along dismissively. His mind, though in a haze from the pain, began to enter a state of extreme focus. There was nothing else he could possibly worry about at this moment then how he was going to survive this. He staggered to the cart in question, while the ox were getting strapped in, and laaid across the driver's seat. His breathing was still ragged as he clutched his stomach, his skin began to take on more a more grey color instead of his usual pale and faded green.
"Charles... Charles... Charles!!!" He begins to call the priest over with urgency, though he remains prone with his eyes closed.
Drot is able to figure out that he has a seed in him from the Kourne Octe plant. But unlike Charles and Barlog, the purification spell doesn't work. The paladin's ability only works on those of pure heart, and Drot had corruption inside of him. Not only from the corruption manifested in him as an orc (his ancestors used dark magic to create the orcs and that darkness lingers on in their descendents).
Barlog realizes that it's the seed which prevents Drot from healing.
And with that, the mystery has been solved.
"I'm sorry Drot'ook. But it looks like you're going to have to hold out until tomorrow. But you can do this. I've never seen anything like what you did back there in the tower. Hopefully you can do that again. If you're truly worried about it, although these are far from anything resembling ideal conditions, we could try to remove the seed directly using the skills we learned from Paul."
Barlog prepares some torches and hands them out. He then goes to the field of Kourne Octe and lights them on fire. It takes a while, but he's able to get it done. He discovers that behind the crops were several bodies. One had something wriggling inside of it and he lit it on fire before anything could jump out. Another had their own hand stuffed down their throat, trying to get something out. The corners of their mouth were ripped apart, and they seem to have choked on their own hand.
Charles lights the flowering plants outside the tower on fire.
Everyone leaves, the two rescued women placed in the cart. Once outside, Charles sets the grave-plants on fire.
As you sit and watch, the smoke pours into the sky rising high up before the wind grabs it and drifts it lazily southwards. Within an hour, the fires still haven't settled and you realize the buildings have caught on fire as well. The tower was somewhat predicable, but the buildings surrounding it weren't. Perhaps the vines from the outside crept further in than you realized.
You start to hear screams from the tower. Listening carefully, you actually hear different screams. Some have a bleat mixed in. At least one is a woman's. There is nothing you can do about it now; going back to reached anyone inside would he a suicide mission. The last of the screams die off after an hour.
The sounds of the dying burrow into Barlog's mind and heart. To steel his resolve he tells himself again and again that his judgment was correct: they chose to be here. With a silent invocation to the Old Gods he sends their souls to the beyond.
"Your God does a lot for you and for us all, Charles, but there is an evil inside of me that has been ostracized by even the most giving of celestials for longer then man has lived. To help me would be perpetuating everything they fight against. I do not blame them, nor our mutual ancestors. We'll get past this, like you say, thank you for all you do, friend."
With that Drot falls into a light resting state, too weak to do more then lay there, though he sits up and drives the cart when they are ready to leave.
As the fires blazed and the screams drifted across the plains Drot's mind was caught between the waking world and the void. His mind began flashing with images of people, animals and demons; burning, crying and laughing. His heart felt heavy with the lives of the people that they selfishly failed to even consider. Though he didn't seriously weigh in on the decision to burn the place down, he also didn't say anything to stop it. At the same time, to continue on would have surely been a death sentence and to leave the fort standing was allowing the evil plants to spread into the forest and subsequently the world. He'll remember to come back and have a memorial placed for those lost.
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Charles looked at the Orc he could also now call friend.
"Perhaps that's what the gods think but I've seen you act more heroically than many who call themselves true worshipers, even a few crusaders I've met. We'll find a way to cleanse this evil you say you have, Drot'ook. Who knows, friend, maybe when we do we'll be able to convince all of the Orcs its possible to cleanse their souls and make amends for past mistakes."
Perhaps he'd been too focused on getting everyone out of the tower safely to realize it. Perhaps he'd been too slow to realize everything that was going to happen. He'd made plans and they were wrong.
Charles watched the rising smoke with a growing amount of concern. He kept wondering why the fires had not died down and then the first of the screams had sounded from inside the walled structure. His eyes widened in horror as it dawned on him they were coming from within the tower. The tower they had ran away from. The tower he'd planned on returning to on the following morning to seek out and destroy whatever evil remained.
Instead, he'd caused the burning of a building with lives he'd been too afraid to seek out and save.
"No! No, no, no! " he started to run in the direction of the burning tower. He'd been too afraid to progress further on. It was his fault that those people died. Not even the screaming Formor deserved a death like that. Were they innocent? He didn't know. What if they'd been in just the next room. Being kept in cages. Infected with plants but otherwise left to wait until their untimely fate took them. What if Charles could have intervened as he'd already proven able to do.
He'd made it to the gates, breathing hard by this point, when another round of screams came. He forced aside the small barricade they'd made and opened part of the gate. Inside he saw the tower was completely lit with flames of an inferno, embers of which visibly trailed into the darkened sky. The sounds made his heart ache. He fell to his knees, knowing that he could not take his actions back and as the inky black smoke rose to darken the sky, so too did something upon his soul.
Tesswyn scowls as the cries and screams reach her ears. Memories of the say her father died return unbidden, of her hiding while people were slaughtered all around her. But this time it was bad people and monsters who were dying. Maybe some innocents got caught in the blaze... But it was better them than her and her companions. They did what they had to do, no question about it.
She curses when Charles runs back towards the commune. As he falls to his knees and weeps, she grabs him by the shoulder. "Come on. We have to go! Don't be a pussy!"
The rogue drags the priest if necessary, ready to be rid of this accursed place once and for all.
"Come now Tess, you can't think that this is a sign of weakness or frailty. You can at least understand why this priest would be upset... We all could use a little more compassion in our lives..."
Drot says this as he stares forward, not really looking at anything, save for the void. As the two settle back into the cart he urges the oxen on, heading back to the fort.
"There will be time for tears when we're far away from this charnel house. I don't want to die,"
As he is pulled back by Tesswyn, Charles sadness and anger combined and gritted his teeth as he looked at her.
"Damn it Tesswyn! Let go of me!" he said as he wrenched his hand free of her.
"I'm not an idiot, I know there's nothing I can do for them now but... but those were people we just killed, maybe some of them were cultists, maybe they were prisoners. In the end we killed them when we lit those torches and burned the plants. Can't you have any remorse for them?!"
"Better them than us," Tesswyn shoots back, giving voice to her earlier thoughts.
Her words hit him like a slap to the face and Charles fell silent. As the oxen trudged forward through the forest he thought of a handful of responses he could have said but none of them were forthcoming.
He was tired now. The weight of his actions hung over his shoulders heavily and he just wanted to rest now. It was different than before. He'd seen people die, he'd fought and slain monsters, but he'd never killed anyone before.
He let his thoughts drift as he stared out into the forest. An indeterminate amount of time later he glanced back over to his companions.
What did he really know about them?
Flamebeard? Is that his real name? We just met him recently, makes sense I guess. But Drot'ook and Tesswyn? How long has it been? 2 years. No, almost 3 now.
Drot'ook had belied his expectations and completely thrown what he thought he knew about Orcs out of proportion, especially recently. Then Tesswyn, she had proven to be far colder than he'd expected.
I still don't really know either of them.
He let the thoughts carry him into an uneasy sleep through the bumpy ride.
The ride back to the keep was fairly uneventful.
Drot doesn't feel any better, nor does he feel any worse. But when Charles casts his Cure spell, the discomfort inside of Drot vanishes. Further spells close his wounds.
The two women wake up after a long rest. One is still covered in scars. Despite that, she seems to be more or less sound of mind. The other keeps curled up in a ball; she seems to have difficulty processing what happened. Neither of them speak; their tongues have been cut out.
It's a day and a half back to the keep, and the sight of you brings a cheer to the soldiers on watch.
The scarred face of Commander Rabi greats you. Thank you for bringing the supplies. What did you find? What happened to the people there? Who are these girls you've brought?
"It was a s&~+show. The people there were weird cultists who were cultivating monstrous plants and implanting their seeds into themselves and others. We saved these two before the infection could kill them. We burned everything else to the ground."
The commander seems a bit taken aback by the news. Wow. Umm.. wow. I never suspected. I mean, I knew theyvwere reclusive. You say you rescued those women? What did they have to say on the matter?
She walks with you as you tell tye story for what happened. When you finish, she thanks you and says, As promised, I can give you guys fresh clothing, weapons, and armor. You can take your pick of what we have here.
We're going to need another source of supplies. If you have any leads, it would he appreciated. If you can secure something, I'll give you ten gold crowns.
Tesswyn points to the women's missing tongues. "They didn't have a lot to say," she observes dryly.
"We'll try to find more supplies for you."
Charles was quiet for the most part on the return journey. He healed wounds and spoke when it was required but otherwise said little.
Upon arriving at the fort, his spirits seemed to lift some.
Tesswyn took the lead on explaining exactly what happened. Although he did clarify.
"The people from that settlement had their tongues cut out as part of some sort of insular religion. They can almost certainly read and write though. I don't think it had been there long though. Or at least whoever was in charge there kept it contained. But something changed along the way. No more than a year or two ago, I'd say."
He blinked after a few moments remembering something as watch commander Rabi mentioned coin.
"Oh right." he said heading to their wagon and pulling out a gruesome and foul smelling cloth sack. "Heads, we slew five wolf Fomor on our way there. Seems they were planning to attack the settlement as they didn't know what was there. Still have that bounty, right?"
He then thought about it. "We know of a small farming village some few days away. They took us and some other refugees in when we needed it. Good folks.
We helped them a bit with the first fomor trouble they had. They certainly knew of you and directed us your way. I don't know for certain but they seemed worried about the distance between them and you. Rightly so, given what happened to us on our way here. They don't seem to have much in the way of militia.
The two women we saved seemed to be part of some sort of militia force of their own, I think. Maybe we could see about speaking to the mayor and creating a new trade route of supplies in return for training to create one."
Wolf Fomor, huh? Haven't heard that one before. We call them Wargs. Nasty fellows. And five of them? That's an extra two and a half silver for ya.
You gather your earning and head back to the farm to negotiate a deal. One or more of you may write a story about this, if you wish. It will be an automatic success, as the farmers will welcome the business.
Six months pass. Write a story about what happens to you during that time. Please include the information in the spoiler for your PC.
Every one level up to 4. Please include any relevant level changes in your story, such as any new professions, spells, or any other major changes to your character.
The next adventure will be taking place at the end of winter and beginning of spring.
Don't forget that you have to spend money on your lifestyle. Please see page 100 in the core book for costs and any associated rolls. If you don't have the book, let me know.
Please make any appropriate rolls for the lifestyle.
Please make any appropriate rolls for the lifestyle.
As Tess and Charles took care of the formalities with the Commander Drot took it upon himself to unload everything they brought back with them from the cart. He was happy to be assisted by several soldiers who were passing regardless if it was out of respect for the group as a whole or out of fear of the Orc the has proven his ability to brutalize every man in the fort with his bare hands. Drot chuckled at himself and began to make small talk with them. He relayed the events of their recent excursion, of course being met with disbelief but the new scars and wounds, and the woman they brought with them was enough to the convince even the most skeptical.
After the work was done Drot began a stint of isolation, working on his studies lasting about a week before he realized he needed a larger variety of mental stimulation to keep his mind sharp and healthy. He took to working with the other mechanics and engineers to fix broken equipment and carts, as well as developing new instruments of war and battle strategies. Although he didn't technically have the required training for some of the tasks he helped with, he was still able to contribute a wealth of knowledge and problem solving ability to anything brought to him.
The Commander could see the benefit of the Orc's mind and wanted to incentivize its use. Unable to warrant adding Drot to an official payroll, there was no rule against giving out extra accommodations and benefits to people of interest like diplomats or Orc strategists who build cannons and catapults from scrap parts and can move a batallion's entire loadout by himself in record time.
Happy with how things were going, Drot decided to push the boundaries of what people were will to give him for his help. After designing and implementing a rapid fire trebuchet for an artillery squad, Drot managed to convince the Lieutenant in charge of the platoon to get him a custom made Brigendine and a war-hammer, both sized for the large Orc. As he went to find his companions to show off his newly acquired loot, he couldn't help but smile like a big idiot, overly proud of himself and feeling good about it.