You turned his fort into a very nice castle.
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A castle that is currently Mad Science HQ and Harpy Daycare.
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Phoenixhat will be very useful. Anything you can't settle with diplomacy, you just burn with fire.
Pretty sure that's what Errol's for. And Jaekah.
But hey, there's no kill like overkill.
Sessions Eight through Eleven
On the night following their discussion with Thousand Bones, the Lords of Iomrall slept safely and soundly within the security of the Nomienn encampment… or so they believed. Lilith, Errol, and Elegy did not rest easy, in fact, and were awake when the unexpected visitor came calling. A shadowy form descended out of the sky, coalescing before Errol and calling the warmage’s name as it lunged to attack. The distorted form of the Soul Eater materialized and lashed out at Errol, claws raking shards of his soul from his body with each strike. Elegy and Lilith caught the sound of his cries and his retributive casting and fled to his aid, lashing back at the daemonic creature with arrow and spell, until at last between the three of them it dissolved into black ichor and smoke with a final strike from Red Right Hand.
Errol quickly shared what he knew of the creature with his companions, and invested with a new fear of what their enemy was capable of the group did what they could to endure the remainder of the night and wait until morning to regroup, no less on guard for their troubles. When morning did come, no time was wasted in preparing themselves and departing to the southwest, headed as per Thousand Bones’s directions toward the border of the Cinderlands, the landmark of Linnorm’s Grave, and beyond it to the Valley of the Dead where Vordakai was said to slumber. The winter wolves were ordered to remain behind and provide security for the Nomienn, in the case of Vordakai or some other hunter following The Cinderlander’s trail attacking in their absence.
The next five days were spent marching across the Nomienn Heights, descending back into the badlands of Varnhold as they approached the mountain foothills of the Tors. On the morn of the fifth day, the cloudless late-spring sky was blotted by a distant storm, an immobile, malevolent stain of violet-black clouds spitting red lightning and hovering unmoving over the site of Linnorm’s Grave. Even from this distance, the incredible power of mythic necromancy was visible to Elegy and Errol’s trained eyes, yet even they were caught off guard when the spell ended and its fruits were brought to bear - the ancient, half-buried remains of the crag linnorm Krukjalfvir tore themselves from the earth, spitting black lightning and cracking the earth to reveal pits of boiling magma within each footprint, and turned to march toward the Nomienn camp.
Without delay, Errol whisked himself and his compatriots to the top of the beast’s skull, where they found, ensconced within its eye sockets and jaw, a trio of negative energy elementals feeding the massive colossus with their essence. The group swiftly set to exterminating the things, correctly identifying them as the skeleton’s power source, but as they went about their work swarms of ghoulish crows descended from the dark clouds above, and among them a dreadful enemy - a winged Corby clad in mithral armor of utterly evil make, wielding a burning lance. Elegy’s keen memory identified the vile runes and markings as the insignia of a Graveknight, an undead horror of the martial battlefield whose armor housed its wretched soul as a phylactery would hold that of a lich. This Carrion Crow launched her attacks from above, diving down on Jaekah and Takeshi, lashing with her lance at each passing and threatening to send the Lords of Iomrall toppling the two-hundred-plus feet to the ground below.
Save Errol, who continued to focus on the elementals, the group broke off their attacks and focused an all-out assault on the Carrion Crow, who traded blows with Jaekah for several seconds, nearly bringing the dragon general to his knees, before at last the barrage was too much for her and her lifeless, disintegrating body - and the armor that, unless destroyed, would return her to unlife within days - dropped to make a crater in the ground below. Errol and Takeshi finished off the last of the elementals within the skull moments later, and bereft of its power source the skull became lifeless and dead once more, and fell from the still-animate spine to land atop the Carrion Crow’s remains below. The group scrambled to reach the spine (safe Errol and Jaekah, who both were flying at the time); Elegy assumed her spider form and relied on the strength of her webbing and her gripping leg-claws to hold her place, Lilith simply ran, and Takeshi tore free a tooth from the shuddering skull then used it to slide down the spine like some bizarre gladiator.
They repeated the process in the beast’s chest, slaying the four (slightly smaller) elementals there, then fled to the torso and tails, where three yet more remained but were even more easily dispatched. The last of Krukjalfvir’s animate remains lost their spark at the destruction of this final trio, and Linnorm’s Grave - now bizarrely inverted - moved no more, having settled a few miles to the northeast in its walk. After seeing to the disintigration of the Carrion Crow's armor by Errol, the Lords of Iomrall made camp not far from the new site of the landmark, and weighed this new information with what they’d learned of Vordakai already from Thousand Bones and Lilith. Assured the necromancer they were to face was beyond powerful, they made every preparation to advance with caution over the next two days before they at last arrived at the Valley of the Dead.
The ancient place descended into a long-forgotten, well weathered valley, which Errol and Elegy determined was warded by a powerful abjuration that prevented telepathic communication such as sending as well as shielded the area from the worst of the predations of nature. They swiftly decided that this ward would need to be removed, and began setting to preparing a ritual for just that purpose. Meanwhile, Lilith convinced Jaekah to carry her around the area to investigate the large river that cut through the bottom of the Valley, the tower amidst it, and the isle on the other side. As they flew about, their presence attracted the attention of a group of wyverns dwelling behind the waterfall; however, Errol incinerated all four with a single fireball, sending the entire flock dropping into the waters. Lilith then had Jaekah accompany her into the cave from which they’d come; there they found several nests filled with wyvern eggs, which Lilith claimed with cautious glee and extracted from the cave, then hid away in the brush on the ascending side of the river.
The next hour was spent with Jaekah, Lilith, and Takeshi busying themselves - Lilith arranging and tending to the eggs, Jaekah hauling up the wyvern corpses, and Takeshi minding his own business - while Elegy and Errol completed the dismantling ritual. The buzzing snap that followed assured them the spell was gone, and both were quick to test the reach of their own sendings now, and deployed missives to Akiniyi and Cesca respectively, assuring both of their well-being, updating them on the situation, and in Errol’s case requesting information: to see if the tome of worldly knowledge had any further details on the name Searlait (it didn’t) or the nature of the leanan sidhe (it did).
Lilith and Jaekah resumed their explorations afterward, taking note of the cleft at the top of the tower from whence a black, acrid smoke was drifting. As they made to explore this, however, from the large isle a trio of cyclopes - or rather, as they soon learned, cyclopes dread zombies - rose from their hiding places in the brush and hurled boulders at Jaekah, though the third instead threw its stone straight up and clobbered itself on the head. The group launched an immediate counter-offensive, with Takeshi leaping across the river to get into melee range just in time for Errol to drop two of the three into a spiked pit whose edges stopped just short of Takeshi’s feet. Lilith and Jaekah finished off the third, then killed the two in the pit like fish in a barrel.
During their flyover, Lilith took note of a hidden cleft in the rocks deeper into the isle, from whence the trail suggested the cyclopes had arrived, as well as two other sets of prints - both human-sized, one large and booted, the second slightly smaller and bare; the former continued further inside, while the latter stopped at the entrance, seemingly simply disappearing. However, the group decided to recuperate and camp one more night outside before heading in, hoping to go in at full bearing. Their night was not to be a fully restful one, however; Errol and Elegy were stirred from slumber by the failure of a scrying to pierce their mental and magical defenses, and when they shared this information with the on-watch Lilith, they were interrupted by the semitransparent figure of a robed, skeletal cyclops with a single huge ruby inserted in its eye socket - a monstrosity Errol and Elegy quickly identified as a Lich, and most likely as Vordakai himself. The phantasm confirmed this by addressing the group directly and particularly making note of Lilith’s connection to his one-time apprentice Ibrahim, then welcomed them to seek their deaths within his lair before vanishing.
The next morning, Lilith and Jaekah flew up the tower once again to the smoky cleft, where they found an ancient stone door flush with the wall within. Jaekah attempted to break the wall open with his adamantine axe, but through the crack he created a greater gust of black, tar-smelling smoke rushed, forcing the two of them to retreat. Elegy climbed up after them and dispelled the arcane lock on the door, but even this did nothing for their inability to budge it one direction or another. This path of entry impassable to them without greater expenditure of resources, they decided instead to enter by the cyclopes’ path - what they presumed to be Vordakai’s front door.
This tunnel descended into an utterly frigid tomb, greeted by an arch displaying magical emblems that Errol deciphered as an expended alarm ward. The collapsed wall at the end of the hall showed evidence of being broken out from within, and the scattered footprints in the dust confirmed that something large - another cyclops, likely - had emerged, left the tomb, then come back; the remaining pair of humanoid prints had turned back and fled some time sooner, just short of the pile of rubble that ended the hall before the next room. In the pyramidal chamber beyond two more cyclopes awaited; within close quarters the brutal creatures proved more dangerous, pounding Takeshi and Jaekah badly with their clubs, shrugging off spells, and burying Errol in collapsed rubble by punching the ground to create a localized earthquake. Nevertheless thanks to some quick ingenuity and brute force the Lords of Iomrall were able to overcome this first challenge; carvings on the wall of Vordakai animated to congratulate them on their first success then warn of greater horrors and enmity further in, before they were left in silence to press on.
The next chamber was divided in half by a large pool beneath a forest of stalactites. Elegy provided Lilith with a web-rope she used to swing to the opposite side of the chamber, where a long tunnel descended into darkness; however, the spymistress soon found herself surrounded by four more winged Corbies, who dropped from their hidden places in the ceiling and lashed viciously at their newfound prey, paralyzing her with their ghoulish touch. Three more on the other side of the room pounced on Errol and Jaekah, who despite the injury were able to shake off the ensuing paralysis. In the ensuing fray, Lilith was almost brought to her end despite slipping free of the paralysis, but quick magic by Elegy and her summoned sephirah returned the huntress to fighting form before the beasts could claim her life, and Jaekah’s quick arrival turned the tides against them as he flew across the pool, leaving the other three Corby Ghouls for Takeshi and Errol to take care of.
In the ensuing battle, one of the Corbies attempted to spring onto the wall where Elegy clung; a burst of magic from the aranea caused the two to swap places, and the ghoul lost its grip and dropped into the water, where it was swiftly torn apart by the ravenous pair of Amorphous Elasmosaurs dwelling within. The elemental-touched creatures returned to their lurking beneath the surface invisible while the Lords finished off the remainders of Vordakai’s Flock, then debated what to do next. They eventually decided to explore further down the tunnel and sent Jaekah to fly Errol over (assuming Takeshi would just make the jump easily at its narrowest point); when the dragon attempted to cross, however, one of the Elasmosaurs lunged from below and took a bite out of him. Lilith, frustrated by the continual attacks, launched one of her improbability arrows at the beast; while the saurian itself was harmed by the accurate snipe, it was the pool that took the brunt of the unpredictable magic, as its entirety was suddenly transmuted into acid that began to rain upwards, pooling in a sizzling puddle amongst the forest of stone above.
The Elasmosaurs, panicking, fled their abode and took the battle to land. The first of the two, attacking Jaekah, Lilith, and Elegy, was the more injured and was swiftly dispatched; the other, going after Errol and Takeshi, was less so and the ensuing battle - with the ranged attacks from the other side interrupted or destroyed by the curtain of antigravity acid - took quite some more time. Nevertheless, they eventually dispatched the beast, Errol recovered a ring of freedom of movement from within the pool before the acid could destroy it as it had the skeleton of its owner, and the group waited until the entirety of the interior lake was now burning its way through the ceiling before descending the stairs into the pool and, after a short sidetrack, finding their way to the next chamber.
The room beyond the pool was filled with ancient, giant-sized pottery “cups” and “mugs” decorated with cyclopean carvings and art; the ancient style was beyond the group’s ability to identify at that time. At the far end of the room Lilith and Errol investigated an ancient pair of bronze doors, beyond which they heard only a faint metallic jangling. Lilith went ahead alone to investigate, finding the room beyond filled with cyclopes statues resembling Vordakai - these, at last, were enough to identify the lich himself as not one of the Great Cyclopes, the fireproof zombies the group had fought already, but rather merely a “normal” cyclops beyond his undead status, assuring Errol his pyrokinetic assaults would harm the master where they had failed on the slave. Luckily from the group, Lilith found and disarmed - after a near failure - the dastardly trap within the room, sparing the group a near fate of drowning horror for their spymistress. His deathtrap disabled, Vordakai - now speaking through all sixteen of the statues in the room - provided another taunt and threat for his visiting “parasites”, warning them of the doom that waited below and urging them to surrender before the might of Casmar, which Elegy and Errol finally identified as the source of the art style back a room before, the ancient giant empire of the cyclopes that once claimed the area now known as the Stolen Lands and northern Divus.
Nevertheless, the battles thus far have been brutal and unforgiving, and much of the ancient tomb waits to be explored. Just how deep does Vordakai await them? And how many more horrors will they encounter on the way?
There must now be a picture of Lilith sitting on a clutch of Wyvern eggs. :)
Sessions Twelve through Fourteen
Descending into the second level of Vordakai's lair, the Lords of Iomrall found themselves almost immediately confronted with a peculiar room - carved with ancient bas-reliefs of cyclopes and daemons marching toward a black river etched into a bronze door with obsidian chips. Lilith attempted to open the door, which activated a vicious trap that filled the room with Stygian flame, scorching the bodies and minds of everyone except Lilith (who miraculously evaded the attack) and Takeshi (who was out of the blast radius). Quick examination afterward allowed Lilith and Errol to decipher the strange old ritual of lighting the braziers around the edge of the room and pouring blood and oil into the flames to open the door, and thus by gained entrance to the next area of the tomb.
In the corridor beyond, after an unfinished stairway leading to nothing but a blank wall, stood sentinel two Piscodaemons, who demanded to know by whose name they would pass. After several false starts, Lilith eventually invoked Vordakai's name; at this, the fiends allowed them to pass into the small prison beyond, where chained to the wall they found one of the missing people - not a Varnhold villager, but rather the visiting scholar Maestro Elvira Pendrod, author of the books and papers Elegy had found in the inn in Varnhold. After removing the paralysis laid on her by Vordakai's touch, they swiftly freed the woman from her bonds and quizzed her regarding the state of her capture, the whereabouts of the Varnholders, and anything she could tell them about Vordakai himself. She informed them that the villagers were being kept in what Vordakai called soul jars, that the lich had a "strange golem made of souls" that would devour the remnants of the dead, and that he raved about some ancient queen who had wronged him in eons past. Unsure about how to ensure Pendrod's safety, Elegy first instructed her to remain in the prison until they could retrieve her safely, then banished the daemons outside, taking with them the hiding Astradaemon lurking unseen above.
Backtracking to the ritual room, the Lords took the third exit, which led to a steeply descending hallway that grew warmer as the party reached the door at its far end. The room beyond this was a large tomb-lined chamber, with the chambers sized for giants, with two pillars featuring Vordakai's likeness that came alive upon the party's entrance. Following another short monologue, a pair of Soul Eaters emerged and attacked; Elegy banished these as well, in no mood for further drawn-out combats against the evasive creatures, and urged the party toward one of the room's two exits. The winding path beyond led eventually into a large workroom where it appeared cyclops-sized sarcophagi were made; Lilith discovered a secret door here that emerged into a narrow room dominated by an enormous carving of a red eye on its rear wall. Errol detected powerful magic at work here and the group universally elected to retreat rather than disturb or invoke it.
Taking the other exit, the bitter cold in the tomb at last gave way to scorching heat as they emerged into a huge cavern filled with boiling tar. A quartet of more cyclopes zombies, immune to the heat, slogged through the tar on patrol for enemies; however, Errol and Lilith were able to slay most of them before they reached the shore, where Jaekah and Takeshi finished them off. The group managed to cross the tar without any accidents or casualties, and were alerted to the presence of an invisible opponent when the door on the other side of the tar opened and shut of its own accord when the first three giants fell in a single stroke. Despite the speed of their pursuit, however, the group failed to keep up with their unseen quarry; furthermore, Lilith at the party's head soon found herself faced with a choice between two parting doors, one to the left and one to the right, leading into opposing chambers.
She investigated the right door first and found within an enormous, lavish dining hall, its table heavily stocked and its chairs all filled, but both with the dead of Varnhold, humans and halflings mingled, their skulls emptied and brains excised by some hideous force. At the table's head was none other than Maegar Varn himself, or what was left of him.
Lilith swiftly backtracked, returning to the hall then to the other door, where she found more crypts, these strewn with feathers and sized for Medium creatures - the nests of Vordakai's Flock. The only thing of note here was the half-decomposed, partially-shattered skeleton of a human - one of Varnhold's lost, no doubt.
At the last the group determined they must now face the horrors of the dining hall; almost immediately upon their entrance, the group was pounced upon by more of the Flock hiding in the dark corners of the room's ceiling. Though Lilith, Jaekah, and Takeshi were swiftly surrounded, Elegy and Errol were protected by her undeath ward, which caused several of the undead Corbies to simply bounce harmlessly off its edge and roll away in their initial attempt to pounce on the seemingly-unwary Viscountess. Despite some close calls, the group managed to overcome the superior numbers of the Flock and lay the ghouls to rest.
Beyond the feasthall was a further descent into the lowest level of the tomb; there Vordakai expressed his final revulsion and frustration with their invasion and welcomed them to their challenge against him. Before they could reach him, however, they had to pass through two more rooms. The first radiated vile energy and daemonic power but seemed to have no visible harming effect on the group; the second found themselves face-to-face with their invisible assailant, none other than the zombified remains of Cephal Lorentus, Varnhold's magister, and the Stygian water elemental at his command. The majority of the group brought their might to bear against the elemental, in the form of a hideous serpent, while Elegy attempted to take out Cephal before the mage could bring his arcane might to the fore; a lucky blast of divine energy however ripped a hole in reality once more, this time casting Cephal into the glorious light of the heavens with the accompaniment of angelic chorus. With the wizard gone, the group turned its full might against the elemental and reduced it to drying remnants with ease.
In the chamber beyond awaited none other than Vordakai himself, accompanied by his masterwork: the "soul golem" Haru Anon. The ancient lich unleashed his necromantic fury on sight of his opponents, and it was Lilith - his "granddaughter" as the party had come to consider, mostly to Vordakai's derision - who took the brunt of his fury, as his horrid wilting sapped the life from her arboreal hybrid nature. The group divided efficiently, with Lilith and Jaekah bringing their might to bear against Haru Anon while Takeshi and the spellcasters focused on Vordakai, but it was not quite enough; Haru followed Vordakai's blast with an eruption of his own, one that tore the last of the life, and her very soul, from Lilith and added it to the horrendous gestalt that was its existence. Its victory was short-lived, however; Haru was swiftly destroyed after, and the trapped souls within it freed, thus allowing Lilith's long-ago planted seed clone to rise in Summer's Garden and return in short time to Dun Raige via Puck and Oberon's portal.
Without her aid the rest of the battle against Vordakai was difficult, but by no means impossible. Vordakai fled halfway through, seeking to mend his wounds; his absence allowed the group some time to recuperate their spells and mend their own injuries, and for Errol to begin his frantic search for Vordakai's phylactery. The intermission was short-lived, however, and Vordakai returned in force shortly - his injuries mended, his spells recuperated, and a hungry black pudding at his side. His paralytic touch was surprisingly, to the lich at least, ineffective against Elegy: warded against negative energy and wearing the ring of freedom of movement found by Errol earlier, the touch did absolutely nothing. It was no more effective against Jaekah or Takeshi either, as they closed ranks to attack the lich in close quarters after Elegy once more banished, removing the pudding from the field of battle. At the last Errol unleashed his burning fury, pelting the room they were in with fireballs, carving out safe positions around his party but immolating Vordakai's physical self in the inferno.
Furious search of the tomb would not yield the lich's soul-stone, however, despite Errol's frantic demands that they could not leave without destroying it; a hurried divination by Elegy confirmed their greatest fears, that it was not here at all, but rather sequestered away somewhere safe by his former apprentice and "son", the vampire Ibrahim, Lilith's former sire. They did however learn that the soul jars could be opened or smashed to release the prisoners within, and recovered the remaining citizens of Varnhold - among them its marshal, Jubilost Narthropple, and its former diplomat and heir, Miriam Varn.
After catching the Varnholders up on a truncated version of what had occurred, gathering up the treasure, Vordakai's and Lilith's equipment, and retrieving Pendrod, the group camped outside the tomb for the night, only to be woken in the morning by the arrival of none other than Oberon himself, come to report his findings to Elegy regarding their earlier arrangement. After some great arguments and debates among the party, mostly initiated by Errol's frustrations with being unable to destroy Vordakai permanently, Oberon teleported the whole of the huge party to Varnhold, deposited the villagers there (sparing Elegy just long enough to tell Miriam that Iomrall would send a delegate to help them work out their situation shortly), then transported the party back to Iomrall's castle, much to the surprise of its staff and interim council.
Amidst all this rampant travel and chaos, Oberon informed Elegy of what he had learned in Olorunium: the Barony had fallen, Olorunium was in chaos, and Lord - no, now Count Stelian Medvyed was on his way to Iomrall, accompanied by a young Alvaris lord and eighteen battalions of Olori soldiers.
I am your poison candygram, the love that's meant to fade away -
Vade retro, alter ego; move aside, I'm choking on this life!
I think I tolerate your hate, as long as you're afraid;
All I wanted was to be with you, and suffer every day!
Under the moon I hold a wake for a promise torn;
Mortally wounded, feelings sheltered.
Me, once again my shadow will enter your life:
Time to walk with me the last mile!
I read a book about a man, a love, a woman, how they died,
How I was waved aside - listen how the headless doves cry!
I truly see a madman in the mirror when I'm weak;
I spent a year in love before I realized it's me!
Open your blue eyes, tell me that you love me, whore!
Make me believe it, oh I know you're lying!
Broke the vow I thought you made, my angel, why -
Could I let you wait out the night?
Mother always said, “My son, do the noble thing;"
You have to finish what you started, no matter what, now!
Sit, watch and learn: "It's not how long you live, but what your morals say."
Cannot keep your part of the deal? So don't say a word, don't say a word!
It won't be long now, love; like mist I slowly fill the room!
I place a black candle on your chest, the path of night is manifest!
I never wanted us to end up in this catatonic phase!
It wasn’t me who ran away - you made me stray!
Open your blue eyes, tell me that you love me, whore!
Make me believe it, oh I know you lie!
Broke the vow I thought you made, my angel, why -
Settling the score, we pass the twilight!
Mother always said, “My son, do the noble thing;"
You have to finish what you started, no matter what, now!
Sit, watch and learn: "It's not how long you live, but what your morals say."
Cannot keep your part of the deal? So don't say a word, don't say a word!
Strawberry blonde, your stranglehold on my heart is bound to end -
I suppose, life sometimes, it doesn't go the way it was meant!
Though you never were a believer, I assure you: I won't die before you!
You read the book now, the part: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!!”
Short is the flight of this little starling.
Love sounds familiar, but the emotion escapes me.
I will carpe the diem while it's still here,
And see how the fear of death becomes her.
We had it all so sweet - made for me, you, indeed;
Big secret, small the lie - don't cry for me, oh argentite.
No word you say tonight can make this be alright.
I'll help you follow through; remember this? "Pacta sunt servanda!!"
The wounds are too deep; I need to keep the scars
To prove there was a time when I loved something more than life.
Unlike the last time here, I now have the means and a will sincere!
Your knight is nowhere near - Unfortunate for you, this makes me your God!!
Closing your eyes, don't ever say you love me, whore!
You never meant a word, I know you lied!
When there is life, there is despair. Indulge me now,
And stay alive this night: I promise you the end before the first light arrives!!
Mother always said, “My son, do the noble thing;"
You have to finish what you started, no matter what, now!
Sit, watch and learn: "It's not how long you live, but what your morals say."
Cannot keep your part of the deal? So don't say a word, don't say...!
Mother always said, “My son, do the noble thing;"
You have to finish what you started, no matter what, now!
Sit, watch and learn: "It's not how long you live, but what your morals say."
Cannot keep your part of the deal? So don't say a word, don't say a word!
Session One
With only a few days to spare before an army arrived at their doorstep, the Council of Iomrall had to act fast to make preparations. Their meager six small militia forces would stand no chance in open conflict with Olori armies, a fact well known to all participants; fortunately (or unfortunately) Oberon was swift to offer a solution. The King of Summer proposed a deal to Elegy: faerie armies to bolster her troops, led by himself and his generals, in exchange for all her yet-unborn children.
This, predictably, shocked everyone who was privy to the deal - at first just Elegy, Errol, and Akiniyi, but soon all of the Lords and many members of the Council, including Puck himself, in guise as Ivan at the time. Elegy presented a few counteroffers, but Oberon rejected all of them, until at last she played the last card she had: offering instead the children she could have had from her lost human life before her reincarnation. Intrigued by the idea of claiming something thought forever lost, Oberon ceded to the altered agreement, and promised the soldiers would be at Dun Raige's gates the following dawn before departing.
Elegy sequestered herself away in her room for the remainder of the day, until at Lilith's suggestion Akiniyi teleported to Tatzylford, retrieved Elegy's mother Petra, and returned to talk the Viscountess and daughter (one natural, one surrogate) out of her depression. Elegy, as usual for when such drastic or unpleasant events occurred, had shut herself away in her room and laboratory and drowned her thoughts in her work; it took both Petra and Akiniyi's prodding and encouragement to break her out of her anti-emotional shell and force her to acknowledge the situation and work through the natural stages of grief and fear, rather than risk a later breakdown at perhaps a crucial moment. The exchange took several hours, but by the time the older women departed, Elegy was for many different reasons better off. She later that night arranged a scrying communication with her brother Evan, informing him of the situation and learning of some of what was going on in Olorunium; Evan offered to arrange safe passage for the soldiers in their return to Alvaris land if Iomrall could negotiate something with them peacefully, though he could offer no direct aid himself, being too involved in the war at this time.
Errol, on the other hand, spent the entirety of the day with his wife, much enthused and relieved to be home. Unbeknownst to anyone save Cesca, he also took this time to answer the demands of the oculus of Abaddon, the ruby gem that had served as Vordakai's eye - by tearing out one of his own and replacing it with the daemonic artifact, Errol found himself now privy to many of Vordakai's strange powers. The oculus remains a secret from the rest of the party, hidden behind the enchanted eyepatch Errol normally wears, his injuries from the self-inflicted surgery healed by the oculus's own magic and Cesca's aid.
Jaekah and Takeshi took the following days to preparing their armies, integrating tactics with their new allies - Oberon, the faerie commanders, and notably a dark-skinned Anhuri human woman with ivy strewn in her hair, introduced and identified as Aza, Summer's Le'Fay. They also assisted in Elegy's notification of the other cities in Iomrall, alerting their leadership to the incoming danger and urging them to prepare without panicking the populace.
Meanwhile during all of this, Lilith was dispatched with her select team of operatives - among them the aranea inquisitor Glaicyd, "Silent" Valkeri Sothale, Sootscale kobolds Mikmek and Keldri, and of course Perlivash, Ledipte, and Tyg-Titter-Tut along with the rest of Za-Forest Guard - to spy on and report vital information about the incoming forces. Lilith decided to expand on these orders, instructing the "bigginses" members of her troupe to ride along the army's edges and spy, while the fey were sent into the camps to make mischief. Fires were scattered, tents were unstitched, food was stolen or infested with insects, equipment was spirited out to Glaicyd who would cocoon it in webs then hide it in trees or bushes or gullies, and all in all torment was made of the soldiers, who prior to Lilith's arrival had been speaking jovially of how the trip to Iomrall was to be a "working holiday" and how the "backwater colonists" with their "lumber militias and squirrel-hunters with slingshots" would be so cowed by the arrival of such a large military force that surrender was assured.
Mischief managed, Lilith also infiltrated the camp to seek out the most important information she could find. She snuck first into the officers' tent and spied on their plans, noting that they had semi-up-to-date maps of Iomrall and that for the information they had available (lacking note of Elegy's deal with Oberon, primarily) their plans were not poor or unwise. Assured she could learn no more from that investigation, she turned her priorities to finding the ringleaders - Stelian Medvyed and the unknown young Alvaris lord.
Medvyed (or as the rest of the party has come to know him, "Dadvyed") was the first she located, hidden away in a private but guarded tent near the center of camp. Lilith spied on the man using a well-placed mirror, and found him crouched over a portable desk in his tent, reading a small stack of parchments and making notes. By having Perlivash and Tyg kick up a nearby fire and set part of the tent aflame she was able to sneak inside in the chaos, and discovered (reading over Stelian's shoulder unseen and unheard even in the close quarters!) he was researching a very limited, very sparse treaties on Arachnes, searching for vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Revolted and more, Lilith made use of some of the poisons she'd been brewing, growing, and fermenting for years, and spent the next few days traveling with the camp in disguise and, when opportunity arose (which with her stealth ability was frequently) dusting Medvyed's pillow and bedding with insanity mist poison. Within a matter of days Elegy's father was a raving, hallucinating wreck, confined to physicians' tents for the remainder of the journey.
For the first day, however, after laying the poison Lilith made her way next to the Alvaris lord's tent, where she found and identified Lord Casimir Alvaris, youngest child of Vanguard Lord Ulrich Alvaris, the colony's sponsor and charterer. Unlike Medvyed, who seemed too engrossed in his own plans and perceptions to pay much mind to others, Casimir proved to be a listener and shrewd observer, as well as a keeper of careful and meticulous information; had Elegy been present she would have been able to identify the young man as having no real role in his father's house and being something of a dilettante, dabbling in music and art and normally having little to do with politics or warfare. Constantly at his side, amidst the other nobles and military commanders on this journey, was a tall, thin, dark-haired Olori woman later identified as Lady Jaroslava, Casimir's right hand, assistant, bodyguard, and mage counselor. She was no less observant than her commander, watching the seemingly benign interactions of Casimir's warcamp cohort with a hawk's distrusting eye.
Finding nothing incriminating among Casimir's belongings or paperwork, though he did seem slightly more well-informed regarding Iomrall's state (though not enough to see their surprise plans coming), she resolved to remain in the camp, communicating magically with Glaicyd who would then send reports on to Elegy, and keeping up her (unspoken) plan of poisoning Medvyed to keep him out of the operations.
By the time the army reached Gildgate - where the Council and Iomrall's bolstered army waited for them - the Olori force was in shambles, emphasized by one last-minute barrage of magical pranks from Perlivash, Tyg, and Ledipte as they and Lilith abandoned the march. An Iomrallan courier, despite being dumbfounded by the havoc of the display, approached and invited Lord Casimir and his retinue to parley, with promises of safe passage into the city until their business was concluded, conveying Elegy's hopes of preventing bloodshed, an offer that seemed to appeal to the young lord greatly.
He found Elegy along with her gathered partial council - including Errol, Takeshi*, Jakeah*, Akiros, Kesten, Akiniyi*, Rannulf, Aza Le'Fay, Ivan (Puck), Lilith, Valkeri, and Glaicyd* (* all in human guise) - calmly sitting at a prepared table playing her violin. Jaroslava was swift to inform him of the antimagic field Elegy had surrounded herself, Errol, and Takeshi in, but made no move to stop the young master from joining the group at the table.
In the ensuing discussion, it was revealed that a great amount of information was missing on both sides. News of Elegy's state as an aranea had indeed reached her father, but he had either been misinformed or deceived himself into believing the shapeshifter was not Elegy herself but some doppelganger claiming her identity falsely, a claim that had been enough to spur at least the forceful investigation, with plans if it proved true for Stelian - named Count if only to outrank the imposter Viscountess that never was - to seize control of Iomrall, remove the false Elegy, and restore order in the colony. Quite some discussion and trading of updated information ensued, with Elegy quickly proving the truth of her identity and providing an explanation for the nature of her species change to put rumors to rest.
After over an hour of debate, discussion, explanation, exposition, and interrogation, the discussion parted on the best possible terms - Casimir and his army would return to Alvaris lands where they would rejoin the Vanguard Lord's forces and focus on securing their homeland in the revolutionary chaos of the collapsing Olorunium, and Casimir would carry a writ of testimony from Elegy regarding her father's state, the rumors of her usurpation, and a bold prospect: asking Vanguard Ulrich to grant Iomrall its independence freely, rather than seeking a revolution of their own, to spare Alvaris the expense and distraction of having to manage their colony while Olorunium crumbled around them. She offered willingness to continue alliances and aid both directions, up to the point of offering herself as bride to Casimir (or another heir of the Vanguard Lord's choice, as the case might be) if that was what was needed to seal the deal.
Casimir, with Jaroslava's careful and distrusting watch at his side, then offered to take Elegy (and any escorts she chose) to see Stelian. By the time they reached the Olori camp and made their way to the medical tents, the doctors had managed to isolate Stelian away from his tampered-with belongings at last (Lilith had been sneaking into the medicine tents to taint their pillows and beddings with yet more poison as well) and identified the Insanity Mist that was causing his malady. Elegy, unaware of the source of the infection (she had NOT ordered this, as she would later assert to any who asked) used magic to rid her father of the worst edges of the toxin, though his wits would not fully return for a few more days spent in untainted quarters. Through his stupor, the grizzled old politician still demanded that Elegy was not his daughter but some skin-changing duplicate, and it took quite a few of her cutting comments to begin to convince him otherwise.
The Iomrallans offered to allow Alvaris and his troops to restock in Gildgate and rest peacefully in their lands for the next few days before marching back home, and as promised sent word to Evan of their peaceful negotiations. The following day Elegy returned to Casimir's camp, this time accompanied only by Akiros and Akiniyi, and attempted to speak with Stelian alone.
Far from the arrogant, powerful man she had been raised by, Stelian now - after three days of near-coma and hallucinations and being surrounded by eighteen battalions of fey-tormented troops - was a broken man, at last taking in the totality of his loss: his entire family, starting with Emerson and ending with Elegy and his wife, had turned their backs on him one by one; his homeland was among the first seized by hostile forces in the revolutionary war raging to the east; and now he was to be hauled back in virtual chains to be judged by the Vanguard himself. Whereas, somehow, Elegy - who did and was everything he had ever thought would only lead to political failure - had beaten him. Even worse, he could not understand her unwillingness to gloat over him or enjoy her triumph. The ensuing discussion between them was far more frank, direct, and personal than either had been expecting upon their next encounter, and despite everything Elegy elected to give the man a second chance - she approached Alvaris shortly after, arranged for Stelian to be released into her custody rather than distract the Vanguard with a trial back home, and made arrangements to send him to Dun Raige under a sort of house arrest until something could be found for the broken man, or further word from the Council or her fellow Lords decided otherwise.
Two days later, Casimir and his forces departed, returning peacefully from whence they came, Elegy's missive in hand. And in this time, months would pass in relative peace, with only minor local happenings and no sign of any impending strife, further assault, or unusual trouble.
But this calm could not last forever.
She offered willingness to continue alliances and aid both directions, up to the point of offering herself as bride to Casimir (or another heir of the Vanguard Lord's choice, as the case might be) if that was what was needed to seal the deal.
If I may...I merely pointed out that I was aware of the most traditional form of alliance between two parties and that it may be a problematic solution in this specific case.
Sessions Two through Four
For the first time, the Council of Iomrall gathered to judge and pass sentence over an enemy of the colony. Rather than be tried by the edge of sword and spell as threats before him - the Stag Lord, King Hargulka, the lich Vordakai, and the countless lesser dangers that have plagued Iomrall since those early autumn days in the Greenbelt - Stelian Medvyed would face the gathered faces of Iomrall's leadership, faces that mere days ago he would have derided as beasts and monsters fit for expulsion at best, slaughter at worst.
The keen-minded worg alpha Rannulf was quick to point this out to the rest of the council, noting that no mercy would have been spared for the citizens of Iomrall that did not fit Olorunium's acceptances, and had Stelian's plan unfolded as intended they would be cast to the wilderness without care or worse. He in turn advised that no such mercy be spared for him as well, and that his death serve as an example to all such who would threaten Iomrall or its citizens - human, beast, and all between - ever again.
His speech was appealing to the likes of Errol and Mikmek, but Jhod and Elegy were quick to counter, pointing out how despite what his intents might or might not have been, no deaths had occurred and the result of the encounter might be even a beneficial one, depending on the Vanguard Lord's response to Elegy's missive, which she would have been less likely to have the opportunity to send so directly without Stelian's interference. Yet they were not blind to the intents of his crusade, and advised that indeed a firm hand needed to be taken and an example made, but blood need not be shed to do so; in fact, by putting him to labor in the colony's service, his sentence would be paid as well as forcing him to build up the very society he had intended to tear down.
Lilith was also quick to add that Iomrall was a land of second chances, where those whose crimes or whose histories had harried them in other places had found fresh opportunity and freedom from judgement, and the potential of starting anew to build something they could never have achieved before. This addition was swift to strike home in the hearts of the majority of the council - especially the likes of Akiros, Valkeri, Jhod, and even some of the founding five - and likely was the main reason behind the ultimate result - of the eleven councilors, six (Elegy, Lilith, Jhod, Akiros, Akiniyi, and Jaekah) voted for imprisonment followed by a debt to be paid in labor, three (Rannulf, Errol, and Mikmek) for execution, with two (Takeshi and Valkeri) abstaining. Stelian was turned over to Takeshi for imprisonment; Lilith suggested when the time came, that it be requested of his ex-wife and Elegy's mother, Petra Dragomir, to be his supervisor and observer, on the grounds that "she's the last person in Iomrall who will fall for his facades". This idea was later rejected - at least, for the time being - by Petra herself when Elegy delivered the news of Stelian's imprisonment to her disparate family; however, when the information reached Belle Leighn, the alraune bardess known in a former life as The Dancing Lady, she eagerly volunteered for the position of "minder" for the wayward Medvyed if such was still needed. After all, she was usually the one called on to deal with Auchs's tantrums; compared to him, what could one wiry old politician pull off?
With the external threat to their home dealt with, it became all the more imperative to deal with the Varnhold situation as swiftly as possible. The five Lords and Akiniyi teleported back to the half-empty capital of their neighbor colony, where they were immediately approached by Miriam Varn, Jubilost Narthropple, and a handful of other concerned Varnholders worried, angry, and frustrated after discovering their town had been overrun with Thornjacks in their absence. Elegy and Lilith took this opportunity to make it clear and with no uncertain terms that the inherent speciesism that had gone on in Varnhold was to come to an end as Iomrall was to annex the straggling remains of the lost colony, starting with a peaceful cooperation with Filcher-Grip Jane and her compatriots as well as an impending negotiation with the Nomienn to put an immediate end to the strife between the colony and the tribe. Lilith remained behind to speak with Jane, and quickly and calmly negotiated a relocation of the Thornjacks, leading them deeper into the Tors de Levenies to find a residence of their own away from humanoid colonization; in the meantime, Errol and Akiniyi teleported the remaining Iomrallans plus Varn and Narthropple to the site of the Nomienn camp.
After the initial surprise and greeting of the friendly Fenrin, the group was approached by chieftain Aecora, Thousand Bones, Krojun, and a younger female Fenrin who resembled Aecora, later introduced as Xamanthe, her daughter and Thousand Bones's disciple, a seer of some skill; when the Lords made their offer to the Nomienn to become protected vassals and provided an explanation of what such protections would imply, the tribal leaders agreed with only a little hesitance and selected Xamanthe to return with the Iomrallans as the tribe's representative. Elegy and Akiniyi also oversaw the official declaration of the end of hostilities between Miriam and Aecora, at last bringing the strife between Varnhold and the Nomienn to an end. They then returned the two halflings to Varnhold, instructed Miriam to send riders to Nivakta's Crossing and Harse informing them of the annexation and the changes of policy that would follow, then returned to Dun Raige with Xamanthe in company, meeting Lilith when she returned on her own a few weeks later.
In their absence during the investigation of the Vanishing, the authorities in Dun Raige had broken up a smuggling ring working on the Tusk waterfront; upon their return from the annexation arrangements, Takeshi's chief lieutenant, Melinda Linville, presented the samurai with a large iron box that she reported contained the most unusual of the smuggled treasures: a bizarre-looking gem that seemed to shift colors on sight, and as Takeshi soon learned would speak into the mind of anyone who touched or held it. The gem's intellect did not seem very pleased with the naga, however, lamenting his "limitations" and "restrictions". Perplexed, he had the gem sent to Elegy for study; it was no less pleased with her personality, and she in turn passed it on to Errol, whom it seemed to identify a bit better with. The two of them were able to identify it as a chaos diamond, but could learn little more, and Errol suggested it be sent to Lilith instead.
Lilith, in turn, appeared to be the most compatible with the gem's personality, and was able to get it to give her its name - Parodia. She took Elegy and returned to Errol, and announced that in addition to learning the name, she'd discovered the gem held either a portion of or all of Parodia's mind, and her body was separate, held somewhere or destroyed; she requested the two casters scry on the gem and try to locate the missing corporeal portion of her existence. Their efforts proved fruitful, and they discovered the body of a Lillend Azata held in stasis, crucified to a tree on an extraplanar location filled with countless singing voices; the fey energy in the area could be detected even through the scrying, and the group easily identified the area as a region of the Summerlands known as Thousandbreaths, the realm of the slain faerie princess Nyrissa, who the Lords had long begun to suspect was far more strongly connected to the Queen of Forgotten Time than their initial impressions had supposed. Parodia's diamond was left in Lilith's possession, as her personality clashed the least with the azata's and she could make use of its powers, and because Errol already possessed one intelligent object.
Shortly following this, after another day of work the Lords returned to the castle to find a new guest awaiting them - The Greymaulkin, the Herald of Winter, whose chosen form was a man-sized predator cat with grey and black fur, barring a white snowflake on its chest, with black eagle wings spreading from its back and hard leather boots with iron-shod soles - similar to the boots of a Redcap - adorning its back paws. The Maulk (also known as the Cheshire Cat, the Cait Sidhe, Father of Felines, and other appellations) had come in response to conversations he had pursued with Elegy in her dream-visits to Arctis Tor at Mab's summonings, and had come to alert the Iomrallans that one of Elegy's requests would soon be granted - Mab had called Elegy in anger over her bargain with Oberon, demanding to know why she had gone to Summer with her troubles, only to be rebuffed when Elegy pointed out she knew no way to contact a representative for Winter without summoning Mab personally, an act that would blanket the heavily-agricultural Iomrall in unseasonal frost. Two weeks later, Maulk returned with the selected champion - a Winter Le'Fay, an Ael-Varan woman by the name of Traversini Regula, a spell-knight of some great skill and one of Mab's battling champions. The Lords bemusedly placed her in cooperation with Ivan, thus forcing the Summer and Winter spies in Iomrall to work in tandem, spending more time watching one another than interrupting in the lives and work of mortals.
At the last, near the following midsummer, a response came from Vanguard Alvaris, approving Iomrall's request for independence, granting Elegy an honorary promotion to Countess, and agreeing to seal the alliance between himself and the newly-minted country by sending the very son who had just departed, Lord Casimir, back to be wed.
Session Five
In preparation for her impending wedding, Elegy began doing some research on her family, wanting to send invitations out beyond the immediate branch of her parents and her uncle Rupert, currently stationed in Fort Drelev working for the Duke in dealing with his Lizardfolk problem. In her studies, she learned that the Medvyed clan had been one of the oldest families in Olorunium, only denied a place as Vanguards themselves by their refusal in the earliest days of the country to settle and abandon their vagrant, wilderness-traveling lifestyle. The Medvyeds as a clan, and later as a House, had always had strong connections to the fey; in fact, Elegy learned she had no less than five ancestors who had sworn themselves Le'Fay - two to Winter, two to the Wyld, and - if the legends were true - one to Summer, the first Le'Fay, Morgan herself. Her curiosity intrigued, she willed herself to Arctis Tor by night and inquired of The Greymaulkin as to the whereabouts of any of those who had chosen the immortal life of joining the court over the death of a mortal at their end of days.
Maulk escorted Elegy to meet one of the more recent of these, a sorceress once human (and, Elegy later learned, a Werewolf) but now one of the Daoine Sidhe, called by the name Magda of the Hounds. After proving her identity and her goodwill to her distant ancestor, Elegy soon learned a great deal about herself, her family, magic in general, and many other questions, as Magda recognized that Elegy had spent her whole life devoid of a great amount of information she should have been taught as a child, and answered to a familial debt of instruction to share her knowledge with this wayward descendant, a one-time exchange without personal cost that Elegy took immense advantage of. She also learned, from both Magda and Maulk, of how her branch of the family had become divorced from the fey-tied trunk of the Medvyeds: her father's father, Armand, had been particularly close with his sister, who unbeknownst to him had been but a half-sibling and a changeling child. When the time had come for the Choosing, her great-aunt had chosen FaeReie over the Realm of Mortals, shed her humanity and accepted the life of a nymph of Winter. Armand, believing some treachery, deception, or kidnapping had occurred, had labored for five years under a fey taskmaster for the opportunity to see his sister and invite her home, but when finally escorted to meet her, she had refused his request and chosen to remain with the fey. Distraught and angered, Armand had abandoned his family, disconnected himself from the Medvyed clan whole, and gone on to live a life fully buried in the heart of mortality, raising his only child, Stelian, in full focus of civilization and mortal desires and cares, urging him, and through him Elegy despite Armand himself dying before she was born, to an ingrained fear and distrust of the fey.
Much of Elegy's experiences, especially her early interactions with Mab and others, suddenly made sense in this new light, as she could now understand why they seemed to have expected so much more of her than she ever could have given in the life she had lived. She moved eagerly to begin mending the bridges her grandfather had burned, extending an invitation to the clan's current matriarch - Marquise Sophia, Armand's eldest surviving sibling - to her wedding the following autumn, lamenting only that it was too late to invite them to her brother Emerson's wedding to Penelope "Nell" Siskin, a scholar and teacher at Tatzylford's academy, shortly after midsummer.
Elegy, knowing what was to come in her own engagement, then approached Mab with an offer. She had seen the sort of boons that Lilith had acquired from Puck thanks to the Trickster stealing a maiden's first kiss; she was in turn ready to make the offer of the same in turn to Mab, before being forced at her upcoming wedding to surrender it for little appreciable value instead; however, she did not have a favor or request immediately in mind. Nevertheless, Mab agreed to the arrangement with a few limitations, such as the right to refuse the requested payment if she felt it was of too great value for what Elegy had surrendered, to which Elegy agreed. Their pact made, Mab seized the offered gift herself, then dismissed Elegy until such time as she wished to request her payment in turn. Elegy later admitted to Maulk that she had little love for Casimir Alvaris personally, though he seemed pleasant enough; she also had little personal investment in the idea or action of a "first kiss" (being fairly sexually apathetic in all regards); Maulk, amused, urged her not to share this information within earshot of Mab unless she wanted her ultimate repayment to be severely reduced in value.
In turn, Elegy did shortly after manage to corner Casimir and his bodyguard, the wizard Lucia Jaroslava; in a surprisingly candid discussion, Elegy revealed she had no personal romantic interest in him, even disregarding their species incompatibility. Surprisingly, this seemed to come to a great relief to Casimir, who politely revealed he likewise had no such interest in Elegy herself, understood the political nature of their arrangement, and was quite content to continue his relationship with his escort if Elegy was not opposed. The two made note to see their vows revised so such an arrangement would not be troublesome (especially with the nature of Elegy's oracular Curse) and continued on their daily lives as if nothing had changed, save perhaps a growing platonic friendship between the three of them.
Eventually the day of the wedding began to draw close; in preparation for the impending day, the council was urged by Lilith to send invitations to all three Courts, lest the fey be angered by their lack and bring down their wrath on the day of celebration. Akiros was, somewhat reluctantly, drafted to compose the invitations and arrange for their delivery; luckily for him, this only involved handing them off to Ivan, who assured him they would reach their destinations. (Ivan delivered Summer's himself, instructed Regula to send Winter's to her mistress, and acquired the services of Perlivash to transport the third invitation to the Lords of the Wyld.) Though the actual marriage ceremony was performed in Dun Raige's cathedral and thus on holy ground, which was uncomfortable to even the least of fey, the following celebration was on open courtyard ground and many were welcomed. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, but also perhaps not considering that this was indeed the wedding of the kingdom's - no longer colony - ruler, the attendants from the courts were the king and queens themselves. Cernunnos of the Wyld was the first to arrive, bringing a gift of a white hart; Mab and Desdemona of Winter followed, offering a present of crystal goblets and ancient wine drawn from the icy heart of Arctis Tor itself. Only some time noticeably later did Summer's representative, the Lady Cordelia, arrive at last, bearing a bloom from the Tree of Life that grows in the heart of the Ever After; her presence, however, proved to be a harassment on almost everyone else at the celebration, thanks to her condescending nature, self-righteous candor, and gaudy appearance.
The guests beyond the fey were no less grand. Of course the groom's family had attended in near-full, as much as the war back to the east would allow. The Medvyeds, headed by Sophia herself, had also answered Elegy's invitation in the positive, and many of her extended kin had come to meet their wayward cousin for the first time. Magda herself also arrived, and as her own guest rather than a member of Mab and Desdemona's retinue. Guests from their neighbors were no less present - Miriam Varn of course, her uncle Rupert (who gave the bride away in place of her father, who remained in prison), the entirety of the Iron Wraiths of Weuland, Lord Archmage Havelock and Lady Engelidis from Shadrach, and even Countess Rinne Naltasi, her younger sister and fellow-soldier Carmen, and not-prior-met daughter Octavia (later learned by Jaekah to be a clone of Rinne, created due to the old soldier having no heirs of her own and wanting a child who could be raised to be a ruler rather than a soldier thrust into the crown) from Naltaskar, who managed to make the journey despite the war raging between their country and Iomrall. And no fewer were the guests from the homeland - almost everyone of any level of importance who was capable of making the journey had come to see their lady be wed and to join in her celebration, despite Elegy herself having almost no interest in being the center of attention in such a dramatic way.
She did, however, manage to slip out of the crowd for a few moments, long enough to speak with Lady Engelidis in private. Ever since discovering the third ring of the jabberwock in Vordakai's robes, Elegy's worry of something tying the rings together as an open threat had been more and more solidified. Engelidis was able to confirm most of Elegy's suspicions, and even expand on some of them; however, the young Countess could tell the hidden yuan-ti wasn't sharing everything she knew, but chose not to press the issue for now. Engelidis acknowledged Elegy's worries that after finding the third ring in Varnhold, not at the time part of Iomrall's borders, she feared the aims of the Queen of Forgotten Time had been spread throughout the entire Stolen Lands. She in turn urged Elegy to find people from Drelev and Weuland that she trusted and give them what she knew, so that if an attack were to occur that none would be caught completely blind. Elegy agreed, and later informed Rupert for Drelev and Lucian, Gabriele, and Juliana from Weuland about the situation in as much detail as she could. In the meantime, Engelidis took the ring acquired in Varnhold with Elegy's agreement, offering to take it back to Shadrach where she could study it in more detail and with more sophisticated equipment and magic than she had on her person for the short-lived trip to Iomrall.
Following the chaos of the wedding, Iomrall was for the most part quiet for the next few months, until at last winter came once more to the Greenbelt. On the night of the solstice, the night before Mab would come for Errol once again - and this time, would be able to present her part of their bargain and take him away for the agreed-upon three months each year - Lilith instead summoned the Winter Queen to her home. She revealed that Puck, as per their own agreement, had presented her with the other half of Errol's lost memories, acquired from Lady Cordelia through deals unknown to her or any of her mortal companions, just as Mab herself had done to acquire her half. And, after serving the Queen and making an exceptional host of herself, Lilith presented Mab with a counter-offer.
As Firstborn, Lilith had decided that it was her duty and in her best interest to see that her children, the leanai-dubh, were properly integrated into the world of the fey. Unfortunately, up until this point the younglings had only been exposed to the Summer court and the Wyld, and had no understanding nor appreciation for Winter. Despite aligning herself with Summer, Lilith had been adamant in her negotiations with Titania and Cernunnos that her children would retain the right to choose their court of allegiance freely, but she feared Summer had already taken steps to limit the children's exposure to their rivals. So instead Lilith made a proposition for Mab: instead of taking Errol, she could for those three months, for the remainder of the Magister's life, have Lilith's children - those present and any that would be born in years to come, until Errol's years came to an end - as guests in Arctis Tor for that time instead. There they could be educated, experience and understand Winter directly, they would be under Mab's supervision and guidance and protection (as befitting of Guests), and Mab would be guaranteed to have at least some of the children choose the path of Winter in the future as a result of her education and their own inclinations. In return, Mab would surrender her hold over Errol and give up her half of his memories to Lilith. Queen Winter, capable of seeing the usefulness of this in the long-term, agreed to the arrangement after only a short confirmation of the extents of the agreement, and presented the memories - in the form of a jagged half of a large ruby, the other half of which Lilith already had in her own possession - to the spymistress before going on her way.
The next day, as Errol went out to meet Mab's Cold Riders as he had every winter solstice since making the deal, he saw not the skeletal riders but rather hooded figures on sleighs approaching the gates. Before he could approach, Lilith arrived escorting her large crowd of offspring, which she aided the hooded figures in loading into the sleighs and riding off to the Winterlands. The only explanation she offered was to present Errol with a wooden box as a "Yuletide Gift", inside which he found the glimmering ruby, restored to a solid form without sign of a single crack. Errol took hold of the gem once he'd returned to his home and informed Cesca of what had happened, and knowing immediately what it was opened his mind to it... and whatever happened, he has yet to share with the rest of the party, only allowing them to note that he seems happier, less surly, and more enthusiastic in the months to follow.
However, that could easily have also been due to the other joy in his life. About six months following Elegy and Casimir's wedding, Errol and Cesca had presented their close companions with their first child, a newly-hatched girl they'd named Chara. In a bizarre twist of personality, Errol was seen more and more often with the tiny Ael in his arms, eager to present her to anyone who asked, taking advantage of any opportunity to have her to himself (and, likely, much to new-mother Cesca's eager appreciation to have the time to herself to rest!).
In the ensuing spring, the Lords of Iomrall decided the time had finally come to put the corruption of Candlemere to final rest. Taking a collection of powerful and trusted spellcasters, including Cesca, Elga Verniex, Akiniyi and her daughters, Xamanthe, Belle, some clerics from the cathedral in Dun Raige and the Fortress of the Faith in Gildgate, and several of Errol's students, a set of ships made their way to Candlemere Island and began the process of sealing the planar thinness and hallowing the site against the Song's corruption at last. While the spellcasters worked, Lilith, Takeshi, and Jaekah were put on guard; during the ritual's unfolding, the thinness between the worlds became apparent even to the naked eye, with the gloom of The World's Shadow transparently overlaying the Material Realm before them. However, as the ritual reached its peak, a third vista suddenly appeared to the three watchers: a vibrant woodland of FaeReie, and where the tower stood in the other realms instead was a great tree, out of which emerged a tall woman draped in black. Just before the ritual was completed, her cloak unfolded, revealing a pair of enormous draconic wings; before more could occur, however, the ritual was completed and the imagery of both neighbor realms faded from sight. Other than identifying that what they had seen might have connections to a black dragon - and thus bringing up theories of the only black dragon the Lords of Iomrall had heard much of thus far, the former lord of the Hooktongue Slough, Ilthuliak - nothing of use could be garnered from the strange mirage at this time.
It was in the wake of these tidings, and shortly after the end of winter and the return of Lilith's saplings from Arctis Tor - brought on the sleigh of King Winter himself, Mab's consort Jolnir (or, as others may know him, Father Yuletide and Sinterklaas) - that fell news arrived in Iomrall once more. Rupert, Elegy's jovial uncle, suddenly and without warning ceased communicating with his niece. After waiting two weeks to see if there had simply been some sort of delay or interruption of his labor out in Drelev, Elegy attempted to initiate contact herself using scryings and sendings; however, the spells failed to reach the jolly old man. Her trepidation growing, Elegy once more dove into divination to uncover the truth of what had occurred. She learned, in the usual cryptic manner of such spells, that something had imprisoned Rupert somewhere that those spells could not reach, though it did not seem to imply he had been killed.
Rupert could easily have been defined as Elegy's favorite relative. She didn't know what Hannis and Pavetta Drelev had done to him, but it had suddenly become personal.
Session Six
Without knowing exactly how to proceed, the Lords of Iomrall gathered a limited council - their five, plus Akiniyi, Casimir, and Lady Jaroslava - to discuss their options. The group had visited Fort Drelev in the past, on their many journeys to Shadrach for each year's Rushlight Festival, and it would be a simple thing to teleport there and demand answers, but Elegy urged the group to allow opportunity for this to be solved diplomatically before initiating hostilities. Instead, after some discussion, it was agreed that Lilith and Akiniyi would go, spend some time investigating the goings-on in Drelev, and send information back as it was acquired, then return when the time was right to make a more informed plan. With no objections, the pair departed almost immediately, taking only the time for Lilith to use her hat of disguise to make her appearance mirror Glaicyd, both removing her own appearance from the equation and giving a perfectly logical reason why she and Akiniyi would be traveling together that didn't imply spying.
The pair approached Drelev's gates to find them manned by a pair of surly guardsmen who were very much not interested in making the visitors feel welcome or providing any sort of information. They allowed the pair to pass only because they mentioned wishing to ply their markets and spend the night in their inns, and apparently the lure of money was one of the few things these two would respond to favorably. However, any desire the pair had to spend in the city was very quickly erased at the sight of the boorish city guards - little more than mercenaries and bandits in haphazard uniforms - harassing, stealing from, and threatening citizens and merchants alike without even the slightest hesitation, or the towering Hill Giant sitting in the square, watching all passers-by with an evil eye.
Talking with the merchants who were willing to speak, Akiniyi and Lilith quickly learned that things had gone dreadfully sour in Drelev in the past three or four months. The duke had, for reasons no one quite knows, suddenly decided to hole up in his keep about the same time he'd brought in a bunch of "new recruit" watchmen, the first of these thugs that now walked the streets. People began to leave, but those caught escaping were either killed in the attempt or taken prisoner, and anyone taken into the keep never came back out. There hadn't been any sign of Duchess Drelev or the "big friendly mage" (obviously Rupert) in months, and the duke only sparingly. After a rebellion attempt a couple months ago, the giants had been brought in and set to night guard for a strict curfew - an hour before sunset to an hour after sunrise, the streets were to be clear upon pain of death or arrest. Lilith and Akiniyi quickly took this to mean that something was going on at night that the Drelevs didn't want investigated; when pressed the citizens revealed the only odd thing they'd noticed was the visits from Boggards coming up out of the Slough to the south on the night of every full moon. If rumor was to be trusted, a strange humanoid woman was always seen with them, cloaked and hooded; she would be admitted to the keep, then emerge some time later with a human girl in tow, with whom she would return to the Boggards and disappear out into the swamps once more.
Given several leads to work with, Lilith and Akiniyi retired to the only remaining inn in town - Bellweather's, run by an elderly woman and her harried daughters. The building was packed with "guards" when they arrived, save for a single drunken sod leaning up against the far wall, the proprietor and her serving girls, and the bearded cook cringing in the back corner by the stove. It took several minutes for the girls to be able to approach the two guests before being shouted at, demanded, thrown something at, or pulled aside by one of the leering guardsmen and -women, who likewise would snatch food, drinks, and other goods without paying, steal from other customers and each other with little more than a smile, and otherwise make wretched nuisances of themselves. And to top it all off, yet another Hill Giant was here, dominating the southwest corner of the room. Despite all this and frequent talks of the odious behavior going on in the city, Lilith and Akiniyi were able to arrange a room for themselves for the night and navigate away when the curfew was called and most of the loiterers went on-shift for the evening.
Once alone and secure in their room, Lilith dismissed her disguise and Akiniyi resumed her spider-hybrid true form as the pair began their investigation in more direct earnest. Akiniyi would remain behind, webbing the entire room - door, window, and all - tightly shut, only cutting open an entrance at the window when Lilith gave a signal to announce her return; once that task was done, she would send to Elegy to inform the rest of the council as to what was going on out here. Lilith would slip out into the night to investigate whatever was going on that Drelev didn't want the citizenry looking into.
As she began her search, Lilith noted first the giants walking patrol on the empty, silent streets beneath tottering, ill-kept, and mostly-unoccupied buildings, but a much more subtle movement caught her attention a little later. A young human woman slunk from alley to alley, apparently tracking one of the giants; a second figure, with some sort of billowing cloak trailing behind them, followed her from the rooftops. Lilith pursued the pair in silence, and discovered that once they'd followed a giant to the docks portion of Fort Drelev, the woman on the ground had muttered a spell then launched an arrow at the giant, dropping it into a bubble of silence and allowing the figure on the roof to plunge down, gleaming halberd in hand, and hack the beast to pieces without a roar or scream alerting its companions. After slaughtering the giant, the pair retreated in a jagged path through Drelev's alleyways before eventually returning to an abandoned brothel, The Velvet Corner, and disappearing inside.
After investigating several boarded windows and dropping some bricks down the (revealed to be trapped) chimney with notes attached to them, Lilith eventually managed to find a window that was not boarded shut, jimmy the lock open, and sneak inside. Her approach was less than her usual stealthy skill, though, and she found the doorway into the rest of the brother blocked by yet another Hill Giant. This one however seemed a bit less unpleasant than the rest, and after hearing Lilith's excuse for sneaking in through the window, departed to "get the boss-lady" after ordering her to stay where she was. Lilith took the opportunity to get fully into the building by the time he returned, bringing with him the two figures.
The human was a young woman with dark hair and dancing eyes, dressed in leathers and carrying a bow; the second figure was another woman, but an Entomorph, one of the metamorphic moth-folk, carrying a halberd emblazoned with the holy symbol of Aestivalis, the Avatar of Vengeance. The two inquired and quizzed Lilith about her presence and reasons for being here; after some discussion she did reveal that she was Iomrallan and was here investigating Rupert's disappearance. The two women (the human going by the name "Kris" but the 'morph's name never being spoken) and their Hill Giant lair-guard Munguk (apparently a reject from whatever hiring method Drelev had used, and a brewer of homemade blueberry moonshine) eventually agreed to allow Lilith to depart - not that they could have stopped her, more likely than not - to return to Iomrall and "gather the cavalry" before returning to deal with Drelev in full. To prove her capability (and show off a little), she also joined the pair for another short hunt, and obliterated yet another giant in a single shot in a flurry of electricity and splinters from an arrow to the skull.
After making the women's acquaintances, Lilith returned to the inn, where she urged Akiniyi that they needed to return to Iomrall posthaste. After removing the hastily-woven barricades the pair teleported back once more, after which Lilith immediately hurried to bed; Akiniyi took herself the task of tracking down the rest of the Lords, passing the news that they would need to be ready to depart on the morrow and that Lilith would have more information for them at that time.
Session Seven
Given the sparse information Akiniyi had given the party the night before, everyone was understandably excitable when morning at last came and Lilith roused from slumber to brief the group on what she'd learned.
In the meantime, Errol - secretly using the oculus of Abaddon hidden behind his eyepatch - used his greater scrying to get a look at the authorities in Drelev. The Duke was somewhere he couldn't be scried, or shielded by some magic. Pavetta was in a tiny, unadorned, dusty room, reading from a stack of books and looking bored. He considered scrying on another person of authority, but at Elegy's recommendation instead focused his final attempt for the day on Jewel, Pavetta's tiny dog. The little beast was free and loose in the Drelev keep, wandering around its halls unattended; Elegy thought this quite odd, as she "didn't think that dog liked to move under its own power". In addition, while Errol was watching someone with taloned feet addressed the dog in a shrill voice, calling it "mongrel" and delivering a swift kick that sent it bouncing across the ground; Jewel then fled to a closet to lick its wounds and sleep. The group quickly identified the dog-kicking perpetrator as Lady Marae, Duke Drelev's Ael-Varan mistress, thus assuring them that unlike Rupert and possibly Pavetta she still seemed to be free and walking about.
When she arrived, Lilith filled in her fellow councilors - the other four founders plus Akiniyi - as to the events of the preceding night: the harassing mercenary guards, the giant patrol, the secretive rebels, and the unexplained absence of both Rupert Dragomir and Pavetta Drelev within, according word on the fort's streets, at least three months prior, well before he had ceased to make contact with Elegy.
It was then that Elegy revealed her intended plan. She did not wish to instigate an international incident between Iomrall and Drelev; between their recent independence, their annexation of Varnhold, and the party's obvious distaste for the Drelevs, she feared an attack would be seen as expansionist and conquest-based, and that now that Iomrall was free of Olori control that they would begin eagerly gobbling up their neighboring former sister-colonies. Instead, she planned to have the group transported to Drelev and make as much annoyance of themselves as possible without causing injury or harm to anyone, until Drelev's people threw the first punch. Lilith at first opposed the plan, claiming it would take too long to become effective and that Elegy was just being paranoid about her fears toward Iomrall's and her reputations. She and Elegy bickered and debated for several minutes while Errol, Jaekah, and Takeshi discussed what they would do in certain situations in Drelev and what equipment they needed to bring. Eventually Lilith stormed out, and spent the next few hours ushering her children to a safehouse in FaeReie, for fear that something might attack Iomrall and harm them while the Lords were absent.
That task done, the group plus Akiniyi teleported to Drelev, where they appeared as Lilith and Akiniyi had before, just outside the northern gate. The guards there were very unwelcoming, attempting to taunt and heckle their eastern neighbors; eventually the party tired of this and just entered the city without waiting for the gates to be opened: Takeshi vaulted clear over the wall, Jaekah flew, Akiniyi walked up a tower then down the other side with Elegy riding on her back, Lilith walked up the outside wall then jumped down from the top, and Errol simply dimension doored past. The flabbergasted guards tried to threaten them with their crossbows but to now avail, then settled for fleeing into the keep to retrieve a superior officer.
In the time they waited, Elegy set up in front of the keep gates and began playing a torturous, off-key serenade on her violin. Jaekah and Lilith remained nearby, protecting themselves with earplugs; Takeshi a little further away just forced himself to ignore the noise, as did Akiniyi, up on a nearby roof where she could get a better view of the city. Errol on the other hand transformed himself into an Earth Elemental and began stomping around the city and getting the lay of the land, causing citizens and mercenaries alike to scatter and flee before him.
At last a scruffy, long-haired guardsman wearing what was probably supposed to be an officer's uniform appeared in the keep tower; he relayed a short message, apparently from Duke Drelev, that the party was unwanted and he was not seeing visitors, and that they were to leave. Elegy replied that she had no intention of leaving until she was seen, pointed out that now as a Countess she outranked the Duke, and informed the man that if he did not see to it that Drelev allowed them into the keep she would do everything in her power to make him miserable. The man retreated for a second attempt, leaving Elegy to rest her tired arms and instead rely on badly-sung rhymes and limericks instead.
Errol made his way off again, and found himself confronted by a pair of the hill giant guards as he approached the abandoned local temple. When demanded of where he was bound, he simply informed them he was out for a walk; he also dismissed his polymorph spell, changing back to his normal shape rather than the much-larger elemental form. The giants seemed to take this as an invitation to harass him; when one attempted to grab him, Akiniyi struck it with a bolt of webbing and Errol proceeded to set the creature aflame. Seeing its companion burning, the second giant beat the flames out with its club, slaughtering its partner in the process; it then charged the party, only to fling itself into oblivion at the end of Lilith's arrow. The party left the two corpses where they lay and reported the attack back to Elegy, who added "assault by city watch" to her growing list of complaints.
The harried watch captain at last returned, bringing yet another report of Drelev's refusal to meet. After arguing with the man further for a few minutes and hearing the gathering of numerous forces on the other side of the wall, Elegy led Akiniyi, Takeshi, and Lilith off, heading for Bellweather's Inn; Jaekah and Errol stayed behind long enough for the dragon to complete Elegy's request of giving the gathering troops something to think about with a loud roar. The group immediately began making themselves comfortable in the inn, and a scene was quickly started when one of the watchmen decided he wanted to make a move on Elegy and wouldn't take no for an answer.
Within a few moments blades were drawn, spells were cast, and half the mercenary thugs in the bar had fled, along with Elegy, who with a torn dress and a great deal of screaming had bolted out into the night trying to cause a stir. Those who remained quickly found themselves overwhelmed by the capabilities of the out-of-towners; the apparent ringleader, Elegy's harasser, was eventually pinned to the wall by Takeshi and, after spitting in her face, force-fed one of Lilith's elixirs of improbability. The man immediately began hysterically laughing, which intensified as more and more voices suddenly appeared, speaking from the myriad of mouths that were growing all over his body; he quickly collapsed into a gibbering mouther-like puddle of laughing flesh and teeth, which Takeshi and Akiniyi very quickly put out of its misery.
Elegy, meanwhile, had bolted out into the night and wandered over to the docks; she was confronted by a giant for being out after curfew, but managed to pin the galoot in place with a spell before he could harm her. Lilith quickly navigated her back to Bellweather's via the party's telepathic bond, leaving her to inform the innkeeper and her family that all was well and offer to repay them for the damages and the wretched customer behavior of the guards.
Lilith, meanwhile, escaped out into the night and made her way back to the Velvet Corner. After sneaking around a bit and assessing the rebels' traps and preparations, she managed to discover a hidden wine cellar entrance that led to a secret passageway, through which she was able to get inside the abandoned brothel and meet up with her contacts - the reject giant Munguk, the archer magus Kris, and the entomorph inquisitor, who introduced herself as Sadis. The two women were able to fill Lilith - or "Rana" as she introduced herself this time - in on some of the goings-on in Drelev in recent months, including the after-effects of a prior night in which all the giants in the city were executed by them and their fellow rebels. They also informed her that crazed fey, lycanthropes, swamp monsters, and other horrors were being blamed for the nightly attacks.
Lilith, inspired, parted ways with the two women as they went on their nightly hunt, and made her way to Drelev Keep, disguised as Puck. After examining the structure for some time, she managed to scale one wall while the patrols were distracted and make her way into the courtyard, which apparently no longer housed a whole army but just the standard patrol of a handful of giants, marked with magical runes that Lilith couldn't identify. She noted the barred windows and heavily-blockaded doors preventing or restricting access into the keep itself, and decided that a frontal assault, even a stealthy one, would not work. As a distraction, she launched a second elixir into the midst of a batch of giants; the white mist that sprung from the arrow began to emit chickens into the air, which then attacked viciously anything that happened to be nearby, all the more so when one out of every three or four was a cockatrice instead. Distraction managed, Lilith repeated her vault over the walls and escaped back to the two rebels, aided them in a few more giant-slayings, then returned with them to the Velvet Corner.
An off-handed comment by Sadis about a prior revolution attempt that failed prompted Lilith to inquire more when they returned to their lair; Kris elaborated that after slaughtering all the giants in town in that first raid, some of their people had been taken captive by the human guards the following nights. Sadis - then human - and another rebel named Melvic had gone to try to rescue them, and snuck into Drelev Keep; Melvic had died "messily", and Sadis had been taken prisoner. She was then hauled out into the wastelands to the north, in the territory of the Talon Lords lizardfolk, and hug on a post to die or be devoured; however, before anything could come to eat or kill her, she was attacked by an entonyd swarm, resulting in her metamorphosis, only keeping her self and sanity thanks to Kris and a few other friends' timely discovery of her resting place and retrieving her from her cocoon before the mental conversion was complete. It was only after this, Kris revealed, that she had chosen to worship the Vengeful Fury, abandoning whatever religion she had adhered to before to nurse her rage and need for blood justice against Hannis Drelev and his court.
Lilith, however, had latched onto Kris's mention of Sadis successfully sneaking into Drelev Keep. She left after giving the morph a telepathic message - that she, perhaps not now but sometime soon, would need to know how she'd gotten in. Message delivered and not bothering to see if an answer would be immediately forthcoming, she departed the Velvet Corner once again, returning to Bellweather's for the night.
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The man immediately began hysterically laughing, which intensified as more and more voices suddenly appeared, speaking from the myriad of mouths that were growing all over his body; he quickly collapsed into a gibbering mouther-like puddle of laughing flesh and teeth, which Takeshi and Akiniyi very quickly put out of its misery[...] the white mist that sprung from the arrow began to emit chickens into the air, which then attacked viciously anything that happened to be nearby, all the more so when one out of every three or four was a cockatrice instead.
SOLD!
I'll take every last one you got! And the recipe, I must have the recipe too! Price is no object! I'll pay you whatever you want! Gold, diamonds, blood diamonds, souls, oil, Bat-breath's lacy unmentionables; name it and it's YOURS!
Now, let's shake on it...
Forexample, perhaps Nyrissa's stealing of the River Kingdoms is viewed as perfectly within her rights to the First Kingdom and they start hinting to the PCs to just 'Roll with it'
'After a couple of centuries, she'll forget about you and we'll just trade her something for the kingdoms and plop them right back.'
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Andrea - might I recommend, in the future, taking this sort of comment to Orthos' thread on the Kingmaker section of the forums?(called I Don't Believe in Faeries!) Players don't peruse it at the GM's behest in case something spoilerish needs to be discussed.
Yes, please. Don't take the bolded post above as a shout at you too personally, I more wanted it big enough my players - should they stumble over this way before a mod spoiler-blocks it - would see the warning first and not read.
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Thank you!
Session Eight
Rousing the next morning, the members of the party who didn't spend all last night gallivanting about the city and being a thorn in Drelev's side were all up relatively early, and spent some of their time discussing the plans for the day while waiting for Lilith to rise. Errol commandeered the inn's kitchen and bar and prepared breakfast for everyone, while Elegy approached Akiniyi with her request for the sorceress to return to Iomrall - both to remove her from the potential fighting that still might occur in Drelev, and to deliver a request to Glaicyd to go through Rupert's letters to Elegy looking for a hidden message - and to either remain there or rendezvous with Akiros and his en-route army. Akiniyi agreed that she would likely not be as much help in a direct confrontation and diplomacy as she was equipped to perform had ceased to be an active part of the group's plan, but before departing gathered up requests and messages from the rest of the group, including an enormous stack of letters from Lilith to her subordinates and children.
After Akiniyi had departed, the group turned their attentions fully to their plans for the day, but were delayed by having to decide what to do with the two remaining prisoners from the prior evening's fiasco, two local guards Akiniyi had cocooned and stuck in the corner. Errol first dragged them outside to kill them unceremoniously; this however was interrupted by Lilith and Jaekah dragging him and them back inside when they began calling for the guards on-duty. Five mercenaries broke down the partially-blockaded inn door a few minutes later, but four of the five ran straight into Errol's waiting spiked pit and the fifth, seeing the fate of his companions, fled back into the streets. After some short further discussion, Errol teleported them out to the Cinderlands, cut their bonds, and teleported back to Fort Drelev without so much as an explanation, leaving the two to test their luck against Cindermaw and the other denizens of the volcanic ashlands, much to Elegy's distaste and befuddlement.
That solved, the group mused about what other torments they could perform for Drelev today in their attempts to convince the duke to grant them an audience or make the first move in an inter-colony conflict. They were spared having to come to a complete agreement, however, by an arrow shot into a toppled table, carrying a letter from one of Lilith's contacts. It instructed the group to make their way to the docks and find the fourth ship, and that they should look bored and unhurried in doing so. The party was relatively quick to comply, and headed down toward the docks in a disorganized huddle, ignoring or teasing the hyper-alert guards and mercenaries along the way.
The ship in question was a paddlewheel-driven riverboat called The Mad Triton. Shortly after all five Iomrallans had come aboard, most of the group taking note of the heavily-frayed tying line, the ship lurched into motion, snapping itself uneventfully free of the pier and heading northeast along the river out of Drelev. Lilith ducked into the hold below and discovered Munguk the moonshine-brewing hill giant dutifully pedaling away at the old manual paddlewheels, while up on decks the archer-mage Kris finally emerged from the captain's cabin and the mothfolk inquisitor Sadis dropped from her hiding place in the mast nest.
Sadis provided the group with quick introductions, a little commentary on Iomrall's unusual methods, and a small update regarding Lilith's escapades the night before, including the fact that her 'chicken stunt' had given Drelev three new lawn ornaments. She then, at the party's request, answered a few questions. She informed them that in her previous intrusion attempt, she'd gotten in via an escape tunnel Drelev had dug leading out to a shallows in Lake Hooktongue. What had surprised her and ruined the attempt had been the guards inside the keep itself: while Drelev made use of mercenary thugs and uniformed bandits for patrolling the fort's streets and the keep's walls, the interior of the keep was guarded by a small army of young women - specifically the girls who had vanished on the full moon nights. Sadis informed the group that they were very different from normal, cold and harsh, and seemingly loyal exclusively to Drelev and to one another, caring nothing for prior friendships or associations. Errol confirmed that this was not the usual modus operandi for any creature - fey, fiend, undead, spellcaster, or otherwise - that he was familiar with, but this effect could be initiated by several different rituals, many of which could be constructed to be empowered or eased by performing at a special time such as the nights of the full moon.
They also informed the group that there were two other Ael-Vari involved in whatever was going on inside - the one time they'd seen Marae Quintessa, who they were all but certain was in charge of this whole fiasco - emerge from the keep was at the visitation of a pair of Ael women in hooded black robes. Both wore chains that Sadis presumed carried holy symbols, but they'd remained hidden within their robes and no one had gotten a look at them. This prompted Elegy to share with the pair of insurgents what she'd learned regarding the lizardfolk leader, Armagk the Twice-Hatched, specifically the parts of his legend that mentioned things she had tied to the harpy goddess Irshya. Combined with the other evidence at hand, the party was quick to agree that a cult to the Wrecker of Wonders was most certainly active in the city, and that Marae and her two black-cloaked compatriots were likely at the center of the envious plot.
After answering a few more quick inquiries, Sadis and Kris requested that the group do as much as possible to spare the girls' lives when they encountered them, hoping that perhaps they might still be healed, and that they and Munguk would remain with The Mad Triton in case a rapid exit from Drelev was needed.
Satisfied by the information they had gleaned, Errol teleported the party back to the docks, and Lilith easily located the tunnel entrance now that she knew where to look. The limestone cavern within was shortly blocked by an iron gate; Lilith swiftly managed to convince it to open shortly before a pair of black puddings rose from a puddle of brackish water near the cavern entrance, only to be just as quickly put down by a fireball from Errol. The group proceeded inward, passing a storage room stocked with crates, boxes, barrels, and bags, and a large chamber that appeared to be little more than a gathering room, before making their way into a small vault. Lilith identified the two wooden columns in the room's corners as decorative and camouflaged chests; one contained the magical equipment of a career soldier, which the party swiftly confiscated, while the other was filled with artifacts and treasures clearly of lizardfolk design - likely captured or stolen from the Talon Lords; this chest the party set aside to be hauled back to one of the museums in Iomrall.
Lilith cracked open one of the doors in the room and spotted two young women in fine uniforms in Drelev's brown and blue. Before she could report this back to the rest of the party, though, Elegy tripped over something in the treasure room, catching the attention of everyone within earshot. Lilith bounded across the room to cut off the two's escape route, but before attacks could be initiated in earnest Errol blanketed the chamber in webs, pinning everyone but himself in place, including Lilith.
The young women were effectively disarmed and bound by the spell, so hostilities were not initiated further. Elegy did make her way to the door and began to question the girls about why they were working for Drelev and what had happened to them. They, gruffly and with noticeable dislike for the intruders, informed the Iomrallans that they were greatly disliked by Drelev, who apparently believed they had been given everything they desired on a silver platter. He desired their fertile, stable plainsland and forest, far greater for colonization than the swamp he'd been anchored to or the mountainous badlands Varnhold had been given. The party of course found this immensely amusing, and deflected the questions to the nature of the girls' kidnapping. They claimed they'd been taken by the "lady of the swamp" to "have their weakness cut out"; they were then sent back to serve Drelev while waiting for something else to happen. When Lilith asked if the "lady of the swamp" had pink hair (suspecting at first that it was Cordelia of Summer), they revealed no, her hair was dark, flowing, and "strangling", and though nobody was quite sure what that meant, it ruled out the petulant Summer Lady unless a disguise was being used. Elegy also confirmed, thanks to her detect scrying-enhanced glasses catching an attempt to view her a few weeks prior, that the description did not match the infamous Queen of Forgotten Time, either - Elegy had caught a glimpse of the debased nymph, and discovered her hair short and dull-bloody red-brown beneath a crown of twisted grey branches blooming red and pink leaves.
Examining the pair under detect magic, Elegy and Errol took note of a strong necromantic aura hovering around their heads; it was as if someone had indeed used magic to slice something from their minds, removing it from their auras if not physically from their bodies. Lilith suspected Compassion, but after some prodding the girls revealed it had instead been Love, "a weak emotion that is no longer needed". This sent chills down the spine of everyone in the party, as it was impossible to miss the similarity between these girls' fates and the tale of Nyrissa, the faerie princess whose love had been taken to forge Briar, the very weapon the party sought!
Further inquiry managed to unearth the plans of the womens' masters revealed that they had indeed been sworn to Irshya's service; their loyalty to Drelev was convenience at best, as they unhesitatingly informed the group that their struggles would be in vain, Armagk's army would raze these lands and their neighbors to the ground, and their faithful would be "reborn" - almost certainly meaning "transformed into harpies" - and given the ruins to roost. Then, once Armagk's work was done, the Stolen Lands would be "bathed in destruction in lightning and acid". The group quickly came up with two possible decryptions of this bizarre prophecy - either it referenced a blue and a black dragon, which were near-certain to be Cuorvhain the Conqueror and Ilthuliak respectively, or the bizarre acid/lightning hybrid power that had been the hallmark of the Queen of Forgotten Time. If not both.
Elegy cocooned the two prisoners and left them bound in the treasure vault, and the party made ready to continue their way deeper into Drelev Keep....
Sessions Nine through Thirteen
Emerging out of the wine cellar, the invading Lords found themselves at the foot of a spiral stairway burrowing up through the rock, presumably into the keep itself. Waiting beyond the door were a group of more brainwashed young women, but most of these were swiftly disarmed and disabled by the first few to pass through the door; the last fled up the stairs, prompting Lilith to pursue. She emerged into a small chamber on the next floor before Lilith caught up to her and knocked her unconscious; at the sight of the invader and her attack, two guards at the top of the stairs fled in opposite directions. Lilith decided rather than pursuing to return back down to the cellars and inform the group of what she’d seen; by the time she made it back down, the other four had opened another doorway, this one leading into a block of simple prison cells, one of which was occupied by a middle-aged man who bore more than a passing resemblance to the rebel magus Kris. After disabling the guards within and replacing the stranger with them, the group learned he was Terrion Numesti, a former member of Drelev’s military, placed here under accusation of sedition and treason by Hannis Drelev. Rather than hear the full story at this time, however, the group - primarily Elegy and Takeshi - charged Numesti to oversee the prisoners while they continued their invasion up into the higher levels of the keep.
Following Lilith’s lead, the group made their way up to the ground floor of the fortress, then followed the fleeing women out into the courtyard. There they saw the remnants of Lilith’s night raid - a trio of petrified hill giants - then made their way to one of the many doorways along the keep’s inner wall. This room turned out to be a barracks of some sort, filled with a handful of mercenaries; Errol destroyed most of them with a fireball, while Lilith finished off the last. Moving to the neighboring chamber, another barracks, found this one staffed with more brainwashed women, who were disabled less lethally - Errol trapped three in a dome-shaped wall of ice while the rest of the group knocked the rest unconscious.
The sounds of the battles had attracted the attention of the guards outside on the walls, and when the group made to emerge from the site of their latest skirmish, they were greeted with a hail of arrow fire from the mercenaries outside. The group returned fire with arrow and spell, taking out most of the attackers from afar, while Takeshi charged in to deal with the final opponent face-to-face.
Meanwhile, Elegy - invisible - made her way back into the west end of the courtyard and began looking around at the rooms and buildings behind the second gate. She, and Lilith shortly after the fighting ended, found a washer-woman at work in one room and a pair of servant girls huddling in their quarters; a handful of well-meaning but ill-timed comments by Lilith and Errol almost convinced the poor girls that the mage was planning to set the entire keep aflame, but Elegy was able to talk them down from their panic before things got out of control, and convinced them to remain in their quarters until the fighting was done.
The group continued on, moving inside and ascending up one of the towers along the outer walls of Drelev Keep. Following the stairs up, they burst into the office of the Captain of the Guard, the same man they’d had conversation with at the wall a couple of days prior; the group immediately took him captive and began going through his paperwork, and swiftly learned he was none other than Ameon Trask, the very man who had ordered the assassination of Akiros Ismort many years prior! Takeshi eagerly took Trask prisoner, allowing Lilith, Elegy, and Errol to confiscate the paperwork and orders at his desk while the samurai ordered Trask to lead him to the places where high-profile prisoners like Rupert Dragomir and Pavetta Drelev were being kept.
Going through the mess on and in Trask’s desk led to a great many revelations. Writs commanding the hiring of assassins for not just Akiros but many other members of Iomrall’s council, as well as many of Weuland’s lords and Lady Iola Engelidis of Shadrach (though, interestingly, not any other of the magocracy’s council). A quick observation determined that while the signature on the documents appeared to be that of Hannis Drelev, the writing of the actual assassination order itself was in another, more feminine hand. Confirmation of suspicions was swift to follow, when the final page of the pile was revealed to be a completely unexpected development - a letter to Marae Quintessa in the hand of none other than Cuorvhain the Conqueror, instructing her as to the particulars of his orders to subvert Drelev and expressing his dissatisfaction with the pace and process of her efforts thus far. In addition to being involved with these “Black Sisters” as had been mentioned by others prior and her distasteful performance at Drelev’s side, it seems the flighty-looking ael has been in the palm of the great wyrm all along.
With Trask in tow, Takeshi led the party back to the central room first to Drelev’s throne room - where another pair of guards were swiftly rendered nonlethally incapacitated - and up the spiral staircase to the ascent of the tower. The brainwashed guards in this hall were in much higher number than elsewhere, but reluctantly stood down at Trask’s command as an enormous lead door was unlocked, revealing a highly-warded but well-stocked library and residence beyond, dominated by the great form of Rupert slouching in a massive chair, a stack of books at his side. The wizard greeted his rescuers warmly, but there was little time for more than a passing greeting; the makeshift prison was quickly occupied with the four women who had been standing watch in Rupert’s place, and the party resumed their single-file march up the stairs to the highest floor of the tower.
There, Trask led Takeshi to the final locked door, Duchess Pavetta’s room, while Lilith and Errol investigated Hannis’s chambers across the hall. Finding nothing of use among his belongings and a recently-sealed former secret passage along one wall, they quickly eliminated all but one of the rooms on this floor save one, which Trask identified as Marae’s quarters. His work done, Takeshi relieved the Captain of his keys, locked him Pavetta’s room, and sent the Duchess back downstairs to wait with Rupert until the fighting was done. Then, with Jaekah and Lilith in the lead, they smashed open the door into the mistress’s chambers.
Drelev himself, standing ready for an intruder, was just too close, and was knocked aside by the hurried assault; he was then swiftly dispatched when Jaekah charged into the room and shoved the Duke out the nearby window. Marae attempted to flee and attacked the party with a slow spell which failed to take hold on any of them; Elegy dispelled her, removing some of her protections and enhancements, then Errol ran to a nearby window and struck the harlot with a chain lightning; the blast from the spell actually killed her immediately, but also triggered a powerful contingency teleport that Elegy had not managed to dispel, proving its source much more advanced than Marae herself. Jaekah flew down and fetched a badly-wounded but not dead Drelev from the courtyard below, and deposited him on the floor of Marae’s room, leaving him to Lilith and Errol’s attentions while the rest of the party regrouped and brought the fortress to order, with Elegy only taking a moment to deliver Pavetta’s request for a divorce before departing.
In the ensuing controlled chaos, Lilith was, through various unethical means, able to learn how much - and how little - Hannis Drelev knew about his current situation, a little about Marae (but not nearly enough), and the fact that Drelev himself was of incredibly little importance other than for his title in the scheme of the entire operation. Meanwhile Elegy took the time to catch up with Rupert, then informed Engelidis and the Iron Wraiths of the assassination attempts. Errol interrogated some of the captive brainwashed girls, and used one of them to focus a scrying hoping to learn something about the nature of their malady; he was rewarded with a view of a nest full of glimmering green-black, glassy, egg-like objects that he was certain were the coalesced stolen emotions, being held in a black tower overlooking a vibrant forest through a wall of thorns, highlighted by a permanent twilight and a distant echo of innumerable voices singing, before his scry was interrupted by the sight of an enormous green eye. Meanwhile Takeshi and Jaekah were sent out to rendezvous with Akiros, Akiniyi, and the arriving Iomrallan army, and proceeded to invite them into the city and encourage them to make themselves at home.
Engelidis was the first of the requested visitors to arrive, teleporting straight into the middle of town just as the army was moving in; she was escorted by Errol to the keep where she spoke with him and Elegy shortly before going to find quarters for the night. A return missive from Weuland informed Elegy as well that their representatives would be arriving the following day, allowing Elegy to take the time to prepare for a morning meeting. In addition, once all the prisoners were secured, Numesti was allowed to come out of the dungeon and greeted with the arrival of Kris and Sadis - or, as was quickly revealed, his daughter Kisandra Numesti and her compatriot Satinder Mourne.
When morning had come and the Weuland representatives - Duchess (or perhaps promoted beyond that, no one thought to ask) Safira Lemuel, Magister Lucien Alexandren, Diplomat Gabrielle Dalca, and Marshall Ruxand of Zelensk - had arrived, the meeting was convened in Drelev’s throne room, with the Numestis, Mourne, Rupert, and Pavetta present in addition to the representatives of the other three colonies. While all agreed that Drelev as it was was no more, and Pavetta freely admitting her lack of skill or capability as a ruler in Hannis’s place, it fell to the other three ex-colonies to determine what would become of this segment of land. At first neither group wished to claim the territory, citing the unsuitability and near-uninhabitability of much of Drelev territory as well as the constant threat of harassment from the north. A suggestion was made early on by Errol in the discussions to have the three colonies jointly occupy the territory as a neutral zone, staffed by military forces from all three either simultaneously or in rotating monthly or yearly assignments to secure the northern border against the lizardfolk and other Northlands threats, but worries of how to deal with localized threats and competition over whatever resources might be found in Drelev’s less-habitable terrain stymied this compromise.
Eventually however, it was proposed by Lilith that Iomrall take control of the terrain, and that new alliances and treaties be drafted creating a partnership between the three ex-colonies, primarily emphasizing the potential of attack by Northlands forces and requesting military support and assistance in times of conflict. This was deemed agreeable to all present and a treaty was quickly drafted and signed. During this time, Errol informed the group of what he’d learned from his scrying, alerting the group to the involvement of Thousandbreaths and, by theorized connection, the Queen of Forgotten Time; this coupled with the warnings Elegy had given in the past convinced all present to redouble their preparations for both fey and barbaric hostility. Lilith also, somewhat unwittingly, revealed how the lich Vordakai had been behind the Varnhold Vanishing; when pressed, she even more reluctantly revealed he had not been fully destroyed, and that his phylactery was in the hands of a vampire whose whereabouts were not yet known, causing Lucien to fly into a frustrated rage and storm out of the room.
During this time, after being confronted by Ruxand regarding her being the only Shadrachan to be marked for assassination, Engelidis requested the opportunity to speak privately with the Iomrallans after the treaty was signed. Once the Weulanders had departed, the five Lords and Engelidis relocated to another nearby chamber to discuss the situation in more detail. It did not take long of talking with her for Errol, Elegy, and Lilith to pick up on the very fey-like nature of many of Engelidis’s quirks of speech; when confronted, the yuan-ti sorceress at last admitted that she was indeed of fey blood, a half-breed or changeling. When this lead was pressed, inquiring if she knew anything of the Queen, Engelidis revealed an even more surprising truth - she did indeed know the Queen of Forgotten Time, and in great detail, as she - also known as none other than Princess Nyrissa - was Engelidis’s own mother.
She revealed she had been sent some time prior on the same mission many of Nyrissa’s other pawns pursued: the recovery of Briar. For some reason she did not explain, she chose to abandon that duty and cast her lot with Havelock and Shadrach instead. She has been remaining hidden from Nyrissa’s view, trying to stay uninvolved in her plans and schemes and those of her many puppets. She explained that Nyrissa, ever since being severed from Summer, was bound to her realm of Thousandbreaths except under certain rare and specific circumstances, and was therefore forced to rely on various intermediaries, minions, and pawns to attend to her desires; Engelidis postulated that the eye Errol saw belonged to the greatest of her allies, the black dragon Ilthuliak, and thus that the stolen emotions of the brainwashed Drelev girls were in her possession.
In turn she requested and received a great deal of information about the Iomrallans as well - information many of them had not even shared with their compatriots before. She learned of Elegy’s mission to learn who had stolen Briar for Mab, while Errol and Lilith both sought the legendary weapon for their own purposes - Errol to quench Red Right Hand’s desire to destroy his counterpart, Lilith on a mission from Titania to see it returned from whence it came, a task that Engelidis and most of the group balked at. She also learned of Lilith’s connection to the infamous vampire lord Ibrahim al-Aziz-Zaman Faysal, his connection to the lich Vordakai, and in turned presented her theory of how Vordakai and Nyrissa may have been at odds in the distant past, during the waning years of the cyclopean empire. Errol also determined that the “man with sword hands” who had delivered Ibrahim’s message to Lilith years ago was a Deadly Dancer, a rare type of blade-limbed aberration known for their agility and their natural weaponry, and surmised that this one was likely a necromantic attempt to create one of the creatures rather than a natural specimen.
Engelidis then turned to Takeshi and, addressing him in his native Naga (a language only Errol of the rest of the group could understand), inquired as to his purpose on the mainland. Takeshi was cryptic and terse, but did eventually reveal that he was here looking for someone and had a debt of honor to repay. Engelidis first referred to him as a bounty hunter, then an executioner when corrected; this latter he did not choose to dispute. Engelidis inquired as to whether he knew where his quarry was, and revealed she’d only met one other Senkakuan in her time here, to which Takeshi replied that he had his leads and her revelation had simply added to them. She ended the conversation with the cryptic comment of “you should know, they are your stories after all” before switching back to Common and resuming discussion with the rest of the group.
Their sharing of information complete, and a mutual agreement by both sides to not allow the aspects of this discussion to be shared outside this gathering, Engelidis bid her farewells to the Iomrallans and made her way out of the keep before teleporting back to Shadrach, leaving the Lords, their local allies, and their army to begin preparations for whatever their next step is.
Sessions Fourteen and Fifteen
With the days quickly drawing near to the full moon, the Lords of Iomrall knew their time in preparing for the eventual arrival of whatever sinister representative of the Black Sisters would come for their sacrificial maiden was drawing short. Slightly less than a week was allotted; the first day of that time was spent in disparate tasks. Lilith vanished from public sight, turning her day's attention to the swamps and inquiring of the flora and fauna there of anything strange that was going on in the swamp. Sadly the limited intellect of the latter and limited mobility of the former harshly restricted her ability to gather information, but she did acquire one interesting piece of knowledge from her inquiries - that the "Mother of Thorns" was soon to return to the swamp. Lilith put her wager on this "Mother" being none other than the Slough's former ruler, Ilthuliak. She returned late that night, rendezvoused with Satinder and Kisandra, and dropped into a bed with intent to report the following morning after sleep.
Errol and Jaekah had the same idea, and when the former returned from a teleport trip back to Iomrall to visit his wife and daughter, they and a small group of Kobold scouts set to the skies under invisibility to scout out the Slough from above. They focused their traversing to the south rather than the east, and thus never had the chance (however slim) to spot Lilith in her own excursions; they made note of several roving bands of boggards, bog-striders, lizardfolk, and swamp fauna, as well as a large patch of Yellow Musk Creeper and its associated mindless servitors. They also noted a large herd of wild horses traveling the plains to the west.
Elegy spent her time buried in paperwork, attempting in vain to rationalize the spuriously-kept books of Drelev. She was drawn away from these pursuits only once, for a short time by Jaekah, who had made a decision as to how to finally use his wish from the Puck - to provide the repairs and resources Drelev needed to recover. Elegy advised him to speak with Latricia Rezbin in Tatzlyford when the group returned to Iomrall, as a barrister she would be able to identify any troublesome loopholes in the wish's request, and then later portaled herself back to Dun Raige to make inquiry of Puck himself. She managed to negotiate an acceptable wording of the request without revealing who from or why it was intended to be made; however, in return for his aid, Puck requested a strange favor: he claimed he'd peeked into the group's future, saw them acquiring a particular treasure in "an old castle", and asked that when they found it, they would bring him the other treasure stored in the same area - a simple purple stone, whose purpose or powers he would not elaborate on.
Unwilling to simply agree to hand off an object like that without knowing its capabilities, Elegy instead offered a counter-offer - to show Puck how she was capable of breaking the laws of magic. Intrigued, he accepted; Elegy then revealed how she could cast without hindrance while still inside an antimagic field. She explained, at request, that she was certain it was somehow tied to the Oracle's boon that Mab had granted her, as this was one of the spells she was granted instinctual knowledge of immediately, along with a small selection of other spells that she'd tested and found herself likewise unaffected by. Puck was impressed and called their bargain even, though he did request that if the group would still bring him the stone, he'd be willing to barter for it regardless.
Takeshi spent his day in Drelev sampling the various bars that survived around the town, making contact with the army and its commanders, and otherwise simply killing time.
A couple days later, the Lords regrouped, and despite the struggles and hostilities of early-morning miscommunications, managed to share what the two scouting attempts had learned, drag Elegy away from the paperwork (by distracting her with requests for divinations, where she learned that the monthly visitor still intended to come to Drelev, that they would turn their sights to Iomrall next if no further suitable prey were to be found here, and that the key link in the chain of operations was someone referred to as 'The lady of screams and suffocate dreams'), and coordinate a plan on where to go next. Their destination was set as the nearest Boggard tribal grounds to Drelev, across Lake Hooktongue near the center of the northern part of the Slough.
Aided by flight magic from Errol, the group made good time on traveling to the Boggard village, which they soon learned was called M'botuu, loosely translated as "those swimming in blood". Elegy, insistent that if the Boggards' leadership could be curtailed the rest of the tribe would no longer present a threat, demanded that they attempt diplomatic overtures before initiating an attack on the village. Aided by tongues, she approached the northern edge of the ramshackle circle of huts, and called out her desire to speak with the tribe's leader, while Errol, Takeshi, and Jaekah stood guard at her sides and back, and Lilith watched from an unseen position nearby, taking note of the guard archers in trees around the village's edge and the many holes leading underground from both land and sea.
In a short time following Elegy's request, a peculiar-looking Boggard with scaly skin, claws on its webbed hands, and a crest of black scaly spines emerged from the tunnels and addressed Elegy; the party was quick to discern the creature's black draconic heritage, though they noted it was not a full half-dragon but either a later descendant or something given draconic traits through magical or alchemical means. It answered a few questions and traded demands and requests with Elegy for some time, while she would then pass on the translations as necessary via battlemind link, and informed her of the tribe's dual devotions to both Echidna, Mother of Monsters and progenitor of their race, and to the Mother of Thorns, who Lilith informed the group was likely an epithet for Ilthuliak. Further inquiry discerned that this was not the requested leader, but rather that Elegy sought the tribe's priest-king Sepoko. The scaled Boggard eventually returned below, leaving the party to wait yet again.
Sepoko arrived with much fanfare shortly after, preceded by two scaled Boggards then rising out of the water in the mouth of a Froghemoth. He at first rebuffed the party's requests to cease kidnapping and sacrificing people, informing the priest-king that the Black Sisters who had been bringing the women to be sacrificed were actually working for Cuorvhain, but the Boggard would have none of it, insisting that actions spoke more than words and the offerings of sacrifices to the Mother of Thorns would be of more importance than any written proclamation of service to the King of the Mountains. However, close observation by the party discerned that Sepoko was under the effect of a charm or similar magic; Elegy, after giving fair warning, dispelled the effect, freeing Sepoko from whatever mind control he was under.
After a few moments of shock and near-conflict, the priest-king recovered himself, screamed and roared his anger at the Mother of Thorns and the Drowning Lady for daring to touch his mind when he had served so loyally, and declared no longer would M'botuu serve the Mother of Thorns, instead devoting themselves only to Echidna herself. He then made his proclamation to Elegy - or, as the tongues spell somewhat literally translated her name, "Dirge Dragonspawn" - that if the Lords of Iomrall would travel southeast to a place called the Swamp Scar and slay the Drowning Lady (who, from the Boggards' descriptions, the party identified as a Rusalka) and deliver Sepoko's message of severance to the Mother of Thorns, then M'botuu would agree to their requests for a truce with Drelev.
Directions given and an opportunity for an alliance at hand, the party has set their sights southeast to the Swamp Scar and their latest opponent....
Sessions Sixteen and Seventeen
Traveling southeast by flight, the Lords of Iomrall paused only once, stopping in a relatively solid and dry portion of the Slough on their way to the Swamp Scar, then rising early and resuming the next morning to arrive by midday. They swiftly were informed that the Swamp Scar was not some ravaged plot of land or deep chasm, but rather a series of rocky crags that caught floating vegetation and refuse while the waters were high in the Slough, then when they receded caught them amidst the earthen grip and formed a mile-long, yards-tall wall of rotting flora.
Upon making landfall at the Scar's northern end, the group was quick to encounter a group of Boggards standing sentinel; Elegy attempted to approach and barter peace with them, but the Boggards - charmed by the Drowning Lady - would have nothing of anything less than surrender or death of the intruders. They were, with little difficulty, summarily eradicated by the group, as were their draconic cousins deeper in, patrolling near a particular cavern deep within the crags further south and somewhat east. A few of the draconic Boggards fled into the cave at the sight of the arriving enemy force; when the Lords of Iomrall pursued, they found themselves face-to-face with the cavern's guardian, a massive bloated spider-dragon hybrid Errol identified as a Blackspawn Stalker, a bestial creation likely left by Ilthuliak from her time as reigning lord of this stretch of the Northlands.
Despite its fearsome nature and painful attacks, the Blackspawn was fairly swiftly slain, and the party negotiated their way into the caverns and through a descending tunnel at its rear. Another small pack of Boggards awaited them at the bottom, only to be summarily destroyed; Lilith then scouted around the two exiting hallways, found one leading east to a room occupied by a troll, the other down a narrow southern passage with a small room branching off to the west. Investigating that room found its ceiling festooned with Vargouilles, which Errol swiftly destroyed before they could rouse. Loud keening noises, sounding like highly-echoed mourning of some tortured creature, echoed through the cavern from impossible-to-discern origins.
At the far end of the southern passage was a wide circular room with several branching tunnels, dominated by an enormous tree growing underground at its center; when the party approached, its bark split open, revealing a pair of tear-laden eyes and an enormous tooth-filled maw. Lilith approached slightly to communicate with the tree, which she identified as a Quickwood - an intelligent, carnivorous tree also known as a Tree That Weeps, famed for its ability to absorb magical force and exude it back as tears of pure terror, which it could then fling phantasmal horrors at attackers or prey. Attempting to negotiate with the Tree or inquire of its situation proved fruitless, as the tree had no interests other than to feed and sow terror, and the party quickly determined it needed to be destroyed. The Tree, of course, would have none of that and immediately went on the offensive; Elegy surrounded it with summoned termites while the rest of the party moved to attack, culminating in the Tree seizing Takeshi in one of its grabbing roots and stuffing the samurai into its mouth, only for Lilith to bound over, shove her immovable rod in the jagged maw, and pounce back onto the wall before resuming pelting it with arrows. Shortly after the rest of the party were able to beat the tree into stillness at last.
After hearing another of those keening cries, Lilith proceeded on through one of the two southern exits of the Tree's chamber and found herself on a narrow peninsula stretching out into an underground lake; a swaying but sturdy rope/net bridge stretched to another section of land to the west, toward a flickering flame-like ghostlight, while swirling balls of light danced over the lake and shadowy forms swam in circles beneath. Lilith, fairly certain the glows were will-o-wisps, backtracked to check out the other southern passageway. This path branched off to a small chamber obviously an oft-used personal room, complete with heavy crates for storage and furniture and a woven mat of kelp and mosses clearly frequently used; the path also continued past this chamber to the south, opening up on the far west end of the lake chamber. Here they could see that the lake was fed from an underground stream flowing along the chamber's southern edge, and that the flickering light Lilith saw was a massive sheet of illusionary flame that dominated most of that wall.
Approaching the phantasm, Errol and Elegy both detected a large number of dormant divinations as well as a few illusions, and determined the object to be a massive web of spells used for seeing and speaking with faraway creatures. Errol, in turn, approached it and began manipulating the magical energies within; after some trying, he managed to activate the spells, granting him a view of a large room of black stone within the flickering flames. A few moments later, however, a pair of malevolent voices bellowed that the contact had come too soon, and before the Lords of Iomrall could react, they found themselves facing an illusionary facade of a very large, very angry, two-headed black dragon.
Quickly determining that this was none other than the Drowning Lady's master, the Mother of Thorns, it wasn't a far leap of logic to connect that with their long-held suspicions that the Mother was Ilthuliak herself, which the dragon/s, who exchanged their two-headed visage for a normal-looking humanoid form, did not deny. Rather, she informed them that she was quite aware of who they were and what they sought. The party bantered with the dragon for a short time, but when it became clear that both sides were hoping the other would slip some important information into the conversation and that neither was willing to surrender such, Elegy saved the group the trouble and simply dispelled the divination effect, severing the connection with Ilthuliak; the communication spell remained in place, slowly regenerating itself from the dispel, but for a time was inactive. Some discussion among the party determined that her extra head and some of her sinuous shape was not that of a black dragon, though the curving horns and shape of her wings clearly had been; these new shapes instead resembled the appearance of a primeval Cairn Linnorm, an ancient feykin breed of dragon-kind. Had Ilthuliak, who was clearly ensconced away in Thousandbreaths from the collective information the party had thus far acquired, been so thoroughly changed by the magic of FaeReie?
Meanwhile, Lilith had gone over to investigate the water again, having seen the "wisps" - which Errol and Elegy had actually identified as merely dancing lights, but not informed Lilith of such - disappear into an underwater tunnel to the north; as she was on her way back, however, a pair of massive beasts lunged out of the water. Enormous sharks, red-scaled and bearing three heads apiece, flew through the air and bit viciously into Lilith and Elegy, before being brutally beaten back by the entire group. Clearly fiendish in origin, these Triglav Sharks had been brought to the prime by unknown means likely by The Drowning Lady or Ilthuliak; the group left them where they were, intent on harvesting what of their hides and useful parts they could.
Lilith dove into the now-clear water and swam through the tunnel the "wisps" had departed by; she was able to spot a third shark and a shadowy humanoid form, likely the Rusalka, in another chamber to the north, and after returning convinced Errol to close that passage with a spell to prevent fleeing by the enemy while the party made their way back through the tunnels to flank from afar. However, noise stirred by Elegy on the way there roused the troll from its chamber to investigate; it didn't live much longer after discovering its quarry, though, put down before it had a chance to attack by Errol's magic, Jaekah's lance, and Lilith's bow.
A pair of troglodytes, following the troll, approached the party shortly after being spotted skulking in its wake by Jaekah; seeing how swiftly the troll had been bested, they pleaded with the party to be allowed to surrender and flee, which the Lords allowed, with some grumbling from Lilith and Errol. However, this spared them resources to continue on.
In the chamber beyond, as the group discussed tactics and tried to arrange themselves in the most efficient manner, the shark in the chamber charged, squeezing into the narrow remaining entrance and starting to take bites out of Takeshi. Moments later, a second shark charged through the air down from a passageway to the north, followed by the Rusalka herself, gripping a greensteel wakizashi in one hand and flinging spells with the other. The sharks, vicious and painful as they were, went down fairly quickly; the Rusalka, however, was not to be bested so easily. After a few attempts, her dominate spells eventually caught Lilith, and with a simple order of "Kill the spider", she was set to work on disassembling her own party. The Drowning Lady then turned her blade and her choking hair on Jaekah, who had made the mistake of charging her; with a few deft slashes and forceful constrictions, she cut and smothered the life out of the dragon within the span of a few seconds, then tossed his lifeless corpse aside. Takeshi, however, was swift to avenge him, severing the Rusalka's spine in one blow and following it up with a decapitating slash on the next.
As the battle was thought to be over, one of Lilith's arrows sank into Elegy's body from a hiding place in a tunnel to the south; while Errol and Takeshi moved to intercept further attacks, Elegy fired back with a dispel that blanketed the whole area, dismissing the dominate and returning Lilith to her right mind. While the three of them took the opportunity to tend and mend their wounds from the series of battles, Elegy made her way back to Jaekah's corpse to restore the General again to life.
The Drowning Lady is now dead, and her severed head taken to be brought back to Drelev or Iomrall and questioned with magic; however, never more so have the watching eyes of Thousandbreaths - now greater in number than the group ever could have feared - been so strongly upon the Lords of Iomrall.
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Enormous sharks, red-scaled and bearing three heads apiece, flew through the air and bit viciously into Lilith and Elegy, before being brutally beaten back by the entire group. Clearly fiendish in origin, these Triglav Sharks had been brought to the prime by unknown means likely by The Drowning Lady or Ilthuliak...
I think they've been feeding them some of my JokerFish! I've seen some of my minions develop similar issues eating some of my lean and mean cuisine! ...Though mostly it's just nausea and the bends. Appalling, how someone can live on an island all their lives and still get queasy eating fish!
In any case, I hope they got their licks (and bites!) in well enough for your purposes, and I'll be expecting my royalty check as soon as it clears And since it seems to have become a vogue, I think I shall keep a few of these fellow comedians in a tank for the next time that Dork Knight drops by! I hear he hasn't stocked up on shark repellant since the sixties...
Sessions Eighteen and Nineteen
Following collecting up the treasures to be had from the Rusalka's lair, including Takeshi laying claim to Orochi no kiba, her acidic wakizashi, the group made camp and Elegy spent most of the following evening performing divinations, seeking information on various things troubling her or the party. Among the things she learned was a detail regarding Jaekah's wish; during the time between deposing Drelev and heading out to face the Rusalka, she and the general had presented at last his wish to the Puck, owed ever since the group met him for the first time back in the Mazewood. Jaekah had, with the aid of Elegy and Latricia Rezbin, requested that Puck provide him with riches, treasures, and resources in wealth enough to see to the restoration of Fort Drelev - which, when the group discussed it, Errol suggested be renamed "Merfyn", which prompted no arguments from the rest of the group. Puck had granted the wish, but did not tell Jaekah or Elegy where they could find the treasure requested.
Elegy's divination pointed the group toward one of many abandoned colonization attempts in the Hooktongue Slough, a place once known as Lostlarn Keep. However, her knowledge of the place's location put it extremely close to the field of Yellow Musk Creepers Jaekah and Errol had spotted a few days prior while scouting. Inquiring further, she learned that the Creeper field was home to a fey creature of unknown origin; with the aid of her intellect spirit companion Eudocia, acquired shortly before the journey to Drelev, she was able to decipher that the creature was now a Greenbound, an entity transfigured into a floral simulacrum of its former self, though most or all of its personality should remain. The divination hinted that the creature could be approached peacefully and negotiated with; Elegy dispatched her wondrous figurine raven with an attached message requesting an audience and gave the party directions before departing.
The journey took a few days, and was mostly uneventful; Lilith was in a sulk the entire time, irritated over having been dominated, and took out her fury on the unfortunate fauna of the Slough; the party took most of what she brought back dead as food for the days in their travels. Elegy's raven returned the second day after their departure from the Swamp Scar, carrying a reply that read only "COME."; it was nearly incinerated, however, when Errol mistook the approaching construct for an incoming enemy and tried to hit it with an acid arrow.
Three days later, they arrived at the grounds of Lostlarn Keep, finding them overgrown with foliage and swamp and the swaying golden fronds of Yellow Musk Creepers dominating the surrounding horizon. As they approached the grounds, two towering giants stepped out of the overgrowth - a Marid and a Takata Raksasha, both overgrown with vines and roots and with the glazed, blank white eyes of Yellow Musk Zombies. The group followed the eerily-pacifistic titans into the courtyard of the abandoned, half-sunken fortress, where they found the keep itself dominated by a massive patch of Creepers, flanked by two more Musk Zombies, a Marilith and a Lamia. While the group took this all in, the central flower patch parted and a new, smaller creature - a beautiful woman with green-grey skin, hair the color of ripe wheat, clothed in a sarong and shawl of leaves and flowers, and wearing a Creeper blossom over one ear - stepped out to meet them.
The creature - a greenbound nymph symbiotically bonded to the prime Creeper in the fortress - introduced herself, at the Lords' request, as Melyn, an old Sylvan name loosely translated as "ivy". The others gave aliases in turn, not yet wanting to surrender their real names to a fey creature they had just met. They were, however, quick to point out that they had been advised of the fact that they and Melyn shared a common enemy, one that the divination strongly suggested was none other than the Queen of Forgotten Time. Melyn confirmed their suspicions, and wove a stark tale of cruelty at Nyrissa's hands - after her exile and having her essences stripped from her, one to be forged into Briar and one to be cast to the winds and scattered into the Stolen Lands - the vengeful, loveless nymph princess proceeded to take her many sisters captive and imprisoned them beneath her palace in Thousandbreaths, clad in iron; she would occasionally take one of them out, only to torture them hideously, always finished with removing their eyes, and at the last using the blind, broken women as helpless slaves.
Melyn herself managed to break free, using druidic magic to escape her shackles, and attempted to fight back against Nyrissa; however, she was easily defeated and once again taken captive. Rather than torment and mutilate her as she'd done all their other sisters, however, Nyrissa opted instead for a more creative method of disposing the rebel: she tore open a breach to the Stolen Lands and threw Melyn into a patch of Yellow Musk Creepers bound and gagged, preventing her from running or using her magic to escape the plant's mind-destroying spores. Something, however, intervened, and rather than be turned into a simple zombie, Melyn instead somehow bonded with the Creeper, becoming a Greenbound creature and forming a symbiotic bond with the dominating flora. She has resided here ever since, overwhelming and taking control of creatures that invade, attack, or wander too close to her demesne, but keeping the Creepers in turn from spreading too far. Several of her captives, including the Marid and Marilith, she claimed to be assassins sent by Nyrissa or her agents, which she had overcome and fed to the Creepers to become her newest batch of servants in turn.
In response, the party informed her of the situations in the surrounding lands - their overcoming of Drelev and his treason at the beckon of Lady Marae; her arrangement with the Black Sisters, the Drowning Lady, and Cuorvhain; and Ilthuliak's relocation to Thousandbreaths and her linnorm metamorphosis. After soliciting an agreement from Melyn to avoid initiating hostilities against Drelev or M'botuu unless attacked first, they agreed to arrange a royal reserve be decreed around her grove, both to shelter her from would-be attackers and to keep unfortunate wanderers from being seized by the Creepers. Melyn also agreed to consider requests for aid in the case of hostile forces or combat, noting that she had several powerful zombies at her command that, if good reason were given, she might be willing to lend to a worthy ally.
After departing from Lostlarn Keep and returning to Drelev, Elegy took Lilith aside to reveal the other divinations she'd had. Apparently, during her discussions with Puck regarding Jaekah's wish, the Trickster had requested something - a strange purple stone. With Eudocia's aid, she'd learned the stone was a minor magical artifact last recorded to be in the possession of Maure, a long-dead clan of mages who had settled in the mountainous southlands that eventually became Naltaskar. Curious why Puck believed the party would have any reason to travel to Naltaskar any time soon, Elegy divined an answer and learned that none other than Lilith's "father", the vampire Ibrahim, would be sending someone to Iomrall within the next year to retrieve his wayward "daughter". Further divinations suggested it would be a small group of envoys headed by the mysterious "man with sword hands" who had left a message at the Talonquake before; it also implied that the visit/attack would come just before Yuletide and the winter solstice, right as Lilith's brood would be being prepared for their journey to Arctis Tor for the winter.
After breaching the subject with Lilith, Elegy allowed her to retrieve Errol, Jaekah, and Takeshi, and shared the information with them. Reading the divinations as Elegy had written them, Errol theorized that one of the group accompanying the "man with sword hands" might be the murderous quickling, Rigg Gargadilly, while another might be the long-dead Stag Lord; Lilith was fairly certain one seemed to refer to a dragon, as well, but the others they were lacking in ideas completely.
Lilith demanded Puck's presence, and after repeatedly calling his name the Trickster appeared, ready to bargain with the obviously upset mortals. Lilith quickly drafted letters to all three courts, soliciting Puck to deliver one to Summer and pass the other two to Regula Le'Fay and Perlivash to be delivered to Winter and Wyld respectively, outlining the danger facing her children, how it was a threat to each court's investment in the leanai-dubh, and requesting their aid in securing them prior to Ibrahim's goons' arrival. She then made arrangements to speak with Chief Sootscale, as the riddle suggested there was some kind of tunnel, cavern, or other underground passage by which the necromancer's minions could approach the Talonquake, and she wanted it swiftly seen to and trapped for their arrival.
Meanwhile Elegy, in a fit of irritation at the Trickster's antics, threw a pen at him; he caught and pocketed it, and gave her - with much complaining from her - a strand of his own hair in return. When Errol protested, Puck offered to take him on as a mentor and teach him a few tricks - a variation on Errol's still-outstanding debt due by the Trickster himself, to find a mentor to teach him more of being fey. Errol rejected the idea at first, but started to come around to it more by the end of the conversation, especially after seeing Puck pull a few more of his stunts.
Following the Trickster's departure, the group focused on the final remaining trouble they had not yet been able to act on - the threat of the Talon Lords to the north. Lilith and Errol went up to see Ameon Trask and, thanks to telekinesis and the threat of a long drop from a tall tower, managed to uncover useful information about the movement of the lizardfolk troops and reports from field commanders under Drelev's banner.
Apparently, the Talon Lords had an immense force under Armagk's command, numbering in the thousands, with at least four or five sub-chiefs acting as generals. At least one of these units was capable of magic, and in addition, they had at least two harpy flocks, a large group of dinosaur-riding cavalry, another group of powerful dinosaurs simply used as war machines, and last a troop of zothians, powerful reptile-bodied lizardfolk-centaurs. They were also apparently tactically capable - while the main mass of the Talon Lords would remain in the north, moving slowly from location to location (the Drelev field commanders believe they're searching for something - likely, the party theorized, the weapon containing the soul and mind of the original Armagk), they would send one or two forces south to harry the Drelevian armies and engage in skirmishes. The Drelevians therefore couldn't attack directly, for fear of being flanked by the lizardfolk forces or, worse, having them bypass their army and go straight for Fort Drelev itself; but at the same time, there was no way to do more than skim their numbers a little with each attack, and there were always more lizardfolk than there were Drelevians, making a war of attrition unpalatable.
Armed with this information, now the Lords of Iomrall must take Drelev's place in this conflict, find a way to deal with the Talon Lords, deal with Armagk somehow, and - inevitably - be prepared for the retaliation of Cuorvhain the Conqueror when his favored pawns are challenged....
I did not throw that pen. Lilith took it from me and threw it. Why would I waste a perfectly good pen when I hadn't yet cast any spells for the day?
Just wondering what an Ael is.
Homebrew race. Elves warped by raw magic into birdfolk.
The Ael-Vari (singular Ael-Varan) are a cousin race of Elves in our setting. They resemble their landbound kin, save that they have wings growing from their shoulders and talons for hands and feet. Their appearance was caused by a group of Elves attempting to return to the fey realm from whence they'd been exiled; the realm rebelled against their intrusion, warped them hideously, and spat out the less-hideous ones - the first of the Ael - in a completely different part of the world, where they managed to rally and establish their own society.
Those wishing to be less than flattering often refer to them as Demi-Harpies; the main way to tell the difference between the two (presuming odor is not an option) is that harpies have wings instead of arms, whereas Ael have wings and talon-handed arms.
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Curious why Puck believed the party would have any reason to travel to Naltaskar any time soon, Elegy divined an answer and learned that none other than Lilith's "father", the vampire Ibrahim, would be sending someone to Iomrall within the next year to retrieve his wayward "daughter". Further divinations suggested it would be a small group of envoys headed by the mysterious "man with sword hands" who had left a message at the Talonquake before; it also implied that the visit/attack would come just before Yuletide and the winter solstice, right as Lilith's brood would be being prepared for their journey to Arctis Tor for the winter.
You...you peeked. The Christmas surprise is ruined!
...And that's GREAT! Now we can start taking bets on who's going to walk away and who's going to shamble over to the nearest brain buffet. It's better than I could have ever hoped!
Place your bets here, folks! It's going to be the fight of the century.
Oh, and miss? Just be glad he didn't make that pen...disappear in a rather different fashion.
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He mentioned the M-word and went on and on about a ring! He earned worse than a pen thrown at him and he knows it!
Sessions Twenty and Twenty-one
Given their unfortunate situation, it behooved the Charter of the Greenbelt to secure as much possible information on their newfound opposition as possible. From the reports relayed to me after the fact, Genio attempted to scry upon either the sequestered soul of the original Armagk or his would-be reincarnation; both attempts were blocked by a powerful ward, suggesting either the tribe's shamans had shielded their leader or, more likely, he had moved or been stored in a warded area. Unable to secure information on the leadership itself, they then turned their attentions to his underlings, and focused their efforts on learning everything they could of the composition of his army.
Researching the reports from Drelev's field commanders, they were able to determine that Armagk's forces were composed of approximately four thousand total members, not counting the addition of the harpy flocks. Evaluating the enemy's potential strength against the meager defenses of the allied armies that would arrive in time for an immediate assault provided grim prospects; as a result, the decision was made for the Countess and the Magister to remain behind to oversee the first phases of reconstruction and fortification of the city and to manage the military forces that were already present, while the General, Warden, Diplomat, and Investigator were charged with the duty of escorting Drelev's common folk across the Hooktongue Slough in evacuation to the safety of Tatzylford. Given the grim reputation the group had already forged for themselves in the boggards' realm and at the death of the Swamp Scar's chief resident, their passage was unobstructed and delayed by no casualties more severe than insect bites and minor injuries, and with the Arachnean sorceress's aid they were returned to Drelev within hours of their safe arrival.
The current location of Armagk's camp was some few days' journey north, and any would-be approaches to Drelev territory would likely come along the Siltstrand River winding southeast through the badlands until it meets Lake Hooktongue along the shores of the fortress-city. Thus, in the interest of obscuring and obstructing the enemy's attacks in as many ways as possible, the maiden of the black wood was dispatched northward on wolfback to rendezvous with the commanding officers of the remaining Drelevian forces. She arrived within two days, aided by magic, and was escorted to speak with the leaders of the outrider forces, informed of her approach and instructed by Elegy via her uncle to focus their efforts on harrying the lizardfolk and delaying their approach in the event of a hostile action.
The commanders - one Lionel Eigan, a halfling warrior from the heartlands of the Olori south, and one Terin Sethran, a human and former field ranger of Olorunium's northern borders - reported to Lilith the full extent of their knowledge of Armagk's forces, their composition, and their behavior and movement patterns, suggesting and confirming many of Lilith's own suspicions, including presuming the fact that their camp had ceased to migrate was indicative of them finding what they sought - most surely the blade of Armagk the First - in the latest burial mound their encampments had surrounded. She in turn informed them of the change of power in Drelev, though she rescinded the details of the decline of the city and the true nature of the Duke's falling, desiring not to introduce further demoralization into the already-beleaguered outriders.
While one force of lizardfolk, the shamanry, the zothian herd, and their harpy companions remained within the area of the tomb, the rest of the forces were sent en-masse to the south, prompting the Drelevian forces to move into full withdrawal, laying guerrilla traps and sparse ambush attacks in their wake, aided by Lilith's skill, alchemy, and fey talents. The delay with her aid was immensely successful, slowing the lizardfolk armies with several grievous injuries and severe landscape obstructions that it was nearly a week later than expected by the time they came anywhere near close to Drelev's closer holdings. By then the majority of Iomrall's own forces had arrived along with two flights of wyvern-riders from Shadrach, and Weuland's four infantry and two cavalry units were near to arrive within no more than two days from the south, having been routed through Shadrach lands to avoid marching through the Slough.
It was at this point that the Iomrallans came up with yet another of their classic "crazy enough it has to work" plans. To add further delay to Armagk's forces' approach, Elegy enlisted the help of her uncle once more, applying polymorph spells to herself and Errol, to make them both appear to be lizardfolk; then, armed with Errol's fey blade, they approached the armies at a place quite distant from Drelev, posing as a warlord and an attendant shaman. Naturally, Armagk's forces sent out scouts to investigate these strangers and identify their tribe; Elegy, however, refused to answer the question, and merely informed them forcefully that they followed a fraud, and the true Armagk reborn now stood before them.
Though I was not there to see it, the effect must have been convincing; the Lizardfolk, after a display of wrath from Errol, reported back to their camps and commanders and within a few days - after a few repeated presentations such as this - there were notable amounts of infighting and conflict within the enemy camps. To add to the effect, Rupert prepared a magical draught for Jaekah that transformed him into an even larger specimen of dragon, a red in his case, in which form he carried the polymorphed Errol and Elegy and invisible Rupert across the sky over the enemy armies, while the unseen mage and the visible "shaman" cast out lava flows and geyser bursts across the landscape, supporting their earlier claims and demands with shows of powerful, world-rending magic, and in later such flights - for yes, this action was repeated for a few days in a row - were accompanied by the Shadrachian wyvern-riders in their dragon-helmed armor and spiked spears.
Within less than a week, the enemy armies were in chaos, and it was only a matter of a few days further for the united forces of the Stolen Lands to surround them, outnumber them, and elicit a forced surrender. The lizardfolk were marched to an encampment, disarmed, and a watch set over them and rotated in shifts every few hours.
At which point, I was informed. The sending that stirred me from my actions elsewhere was vague and unexplained; I had to make use of a pair of long-saved scrolls to familiarize myself with Drelev via scrying - having never had reason to visit the place in the past - then teleport there. I arrived to find Elegy waiting for me and, in her usual roundabout and overly-complex way, attempting to explain the situation; I simply asked her to allow Lilith to tell me the full story, since she had been left in command of the situation on the ground. Elegy was quite clear, however, that the time had come to make my alliance with Iomrall and my place in the Long Game known as public knowledge; so rather than allow her to merely whisk us to Lilith's camp with magic, I deigned to assume my true form and carry her through the air, making a full spectacle of my arrival at the containment camps where the captive Talon Lords had been interred.
Lilith explained, in great detail, how the forces of the humanoids had managed to rout the attacking force and take the majority prisoner, and suggested that, as a rival in the Long Game, their numbers would make a vast advantage to my own forces, as well as sending a clear message to their masters - Armagk and his lord, Cuorvhain the Conqueror - that this land was not for the claiming. Knowing that the leadership was likely not convinced by Errol's ruse did not take away the potential benefit of many of the grunt soldiers believing they had been cowed by the true heir of Armagk's legacy; I agreed that we could use this to our advantage.
They also presented me with some unfortunate information - that the Queen of Thorns, former ruler of the Stolen Lands, had been sighted again, and in the years she'd been missing had apparently taken on the form of a linnorm, a disturbing prospect only worsened by their affirmation that she had allied with the Queen of Forgotten Time. Knowing that her presence being made public could only herald an all-too-soon return, I informed them of my own intents to make ready for imminent attack - either from her or from the Conqueror - as well as alerting them to my actions since our last candid conversation.
In addition to making alliances, coercions, or evictions of tribal creatures and other uncivilized residents of the lands surrounding the Greenbelt - cooperating with and aiding those willing to be helpful or at least non-hostile toward us, removing or threatening those judged to be a danger or a potential tool of an enemy - I had put myself to the task of arranging an alliance with our closest neighbor, the gold wyrm Garaudhilyx, who dwells to the south in the mountains walling Weuland. Apparently their lords had taken to heart the alliance Iomrall had made with me, and approached the old gold for his blessing and his aid; he had been fairly impressed by their willingness and their humility, and had agreed to serve as their representative and overseer as I have done for Iomrall. Negotiating an alliance, and all that came with it such as assigning territory borders and judging the true allegiance of the area's resident creatures, was difficult and sometimes touchy, but not a task beyond either of our abilities, despite the differences that dared interrupt our shared goals. Nevertheless, a compromise had eventually been reached, and secure of our southern ally I had turned my attentions to rallying my own position in the Game.
But in addition to being handed a vast horde of lizardfolk - nearly an entire tribe! - I have also been given the unspoken task of bringing the residents of the swamp to heel, lest Ilthuliak return and be able to rally allies from within the western heart of our territory. Meanwhile, Elegy, Lilith, and their companions have set their eyes north, to sever the remaining link that holds the Talon Lords' loyalties in place - Armagk the Twice-Hatched himself. Should he fall, there will be nothing standing in the way of the Talon Lords turning away from their current master.
At the same time, it might be all the invitation Cuorvhain needs to bring his full wrath to bear against us....
Yet if we hadn't called you in, it would have in all likelihood been assumed that the dragon they did see was the representative and forced the escalation anyway. Better to at least have the intended player on the scene.
I don't recall complaining about it. I have to agree greatly that this is the significantly more pleasant option.
I really wish we could have had a few more years to prepare. At least until everything else can take a turn out of the spotlight...
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Going to give you guys kudos here, and you deserve it, because I think this is the first time I've seen someone end a war by re-enacting a lost script from Leverage.
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Sessions Twenty-two and Twenty-three
Traveling north and east away from Drelev/Merfyn, the Lords of Iomrall and their armies engaged Armagk’s remaining forces at the site of the chosen tomb, gleaned from Lilith and Eranex’s interrogations of the commanders of the captive forces. Much like years prior with the raid on Hargulka’s demesne, the armies faced off with the lizardfolk and their zothian and harpy allies while the five lords made their way into the Tomb of Armagk itself.
The narrow entry tunnel eventually terminated at an enormous subterranean cubish room; Lilith noted many fresh sets of lizardfolk and avian footprints in the ancient dust, and determined that one group of lizardfolk had traveled forward, one had taken the left path, and the avians had departed almost as soon as they’d entered… or flown out of sight. Even her keen eyes, however, were unable to spot the Black Sisters until they had launched their attack once everyone save Takeshi was in the room, blocking off the exits and surrounding and separating the four remaining intruders with walls of iron. Accompanying the two black-robed, black-feathered Ael-Vari was a somewhat familiar sight - Marae Quintessa, now reborn in a harpy’s body, no less gaudily-feathered than she was in her prior life.
After taunting the intruders, Marae took flight again, disappearing into invisibility after being struck by a spell, then unleashing her newfound power of song to harry and misfortune the enemies while the Black Sisters unleashed magical mayhem from above, dropping flames and blades and lightning on the Lords of Iomrall. They, in turn, returned the favor, taking spell, spear, sword, and arrow back at the priestesses of Irshya, pausing only long enough for Errol to disintegrate a portion of the wall so Takeshi could enter the room and join the fray. One of the Sisters fell almost immediately to Jaekah’s charge and Lilith’s flurry of arrows; the other persisted a little longer, fending off Jaekah and Takeshi with blade barriers and other powerful magics and healing her own wounds with a masterful control of necromancy. Yet soon she too fell, overwhelmed by the focused assault of the Lords of Iomrall.
Her allies culled, Marae attempted to flee for the exit, but found Jaekah blocking her path and, with no alternate escape routes and outnumbered five to one, reluctantly surrendered. There was almost instantaneous debate as to what to do with her via the party’s telepathic bond; verbally however all that escaped was Elegy’s speech as to how Marae could either prove herself immediately useful or she would be given a quick death, and a few threats of possible worse fates from Errol and Lilith. Marae attempted to bribe her captors with offers of information regarding Cuorvhain, Armagk, and their plans, information the group was fairly certain they could elicit from the lizardfolk deeper in. Elegy bound her in spiderweb after Jaekah clubbed her unconscious, and they left her stuck to the wall in that first chamber as they moved deeper into the Tomb, selecting the southern exit.
The room ahead was a narrow, fog-shrouded hall littered with enormous boulders; Errol and Elegy identified an active guards and wards effect causing the fog, which Errol dispersed with a river of wind. Lilith quickly determined the nature of the room's design: the boulders had to be placed in four pits on the far end of the room, each on an ascending stair; once the first was placed, a trigger activated and, if too much time was spent, the boulders would be ejected, the stairs would fold into slopes, and the stones would roll back toward the entrance en-masse. The party solved this problem by putting each stone atop the hole just below it, so the boulder was too large to fall in but it was a simple task to move it up to the proper-sized hole and drop it in once all were in place. Once all four stones were in their respective depressions, the door beyond the stairs opened and the group scurried through.
They were greeted by a square chamber adorned with four floor-to-ceiling pillars created of fused weapons, a square iron platform on the floor, and a large horizontal wheel at its center. To the east, Elegy and Errol's true seeing allowed them to see through the guards and wards illusion to find the other exit to the room. Lilith quickly determined turning the wheel would open the door; Errol in turn identified runes on the platform and pillars as being a wall of ice spell, which Lilith calculated would surround the room if anyone stepped on the central platform. After some debate, the group bypassed this by having Jaekah fly in small circles over the platform, turning the wheel as he flew. This managed to open the door after several rotations without triggering the ice trap.
The hallway beyond featured two adjoining rooms laden with ancient lizardfolk possessions and treasures, which after determining nothing was magical Lilith left be for the time being. In the chamber beyond, however, an enormous dome-roofed room housed an enormous creature - a Thunder Behemoth, slightly smaller than the average for its kind but larger than anything thus far encountered in the Tomb. It was more than aware of their arrival, and after the party took some time to work out a plan and make arrangements, it greeted Jaekah - the first one through the doors - by spitting several enormous flaming meteor-boulders at him.
The Behemoth turned out to be quite a canny and persistent opponent, devouring Jaekah alive moments later and nearly doing the same to Elegy, avoided only thanks to her anklet of translocation allowing her to escape its jaws before it could attempt to swallow her. Its bellowing roar stunned Errol, Takeshi, and Lilith before they could take any actions, and only missed doing the same to Jaekah and Elegy due to them both being within the confines of Elegy's antimagic field, which her bizarre feyborn powers allowed her to utterly ignore while still receiving the normal advantages of otherwise. Nevertheless, the group managed to rally and, eventually, cripple the beast into unconsciousness.
Unable to wish it dead as needed to truly end it, the two casters and Lilith debated about what to do with the thing while Takeshi and Jaekah continued assaulting its prone form to make sure it wouldn't get up again. Elegy wanted to be rid of the beast, and to kill two birds with one stone proposed offering it as a gift to one of the fey queens, thinking the offer might win them a useful favor. Lilith attempted to dissuade her of this idea, fearing that offering it to one queen would only anger the other unless an equal offering was acquired and given in turn; she instead got it into her head that she could take the beast home and attempt to tame it, and if she could curb its innately-destructive nature use it to protect her demesne. Errol simply wanted to be rid of it for good and forever, and, his patience ended, plane shifted it away to The World's Shadow while Elegy and Lilith debated.
Their debate settled, the group moved to press on, heading through the next southern exit into another fog-shrouded hall. Beyond, they could see vague humanoid movement and the glimmer of glowing green eyes, and hear the rustling of ancient bones and long-forgotten iron....
Maybe they'll see the
Maybe they'll see the ** spoiler omitted ** ^_________^
I was tempted to use the "return as mummies" trick, but the session had gone long already and we were quite ready to move on, so if there will be a Black Sister Encore, it will be sometime later. Perhaps after they've had the opportunity to regroup while the party deals with Armagk....
Marae was kind of a pushover in comparison.
I'm rebuilding Zorek as a Battle Oracle with a pair of Keketar buddies for next session (MAN I have waited so long to legitimately throw a Keketar at someone!!), followed by Armagk the uber-barbarian and his skeletal entourage.
Elegy took almost nothing, but she spent the entire fight standing in the corner inside her Antimagic bubble, occasionally casting and/or healing. That particular trick of hers plays merry hell with enemy casters getting almost anything done to her. Zorek will have a way to deal with it, though, and Armagk will just run up and facepunch things, Antimagic or not. =)