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Okay, this is really terrifically belated, but I have excuses! Right after gaming, my brain was full. And then I was away for a week and stuff.
But now I bring you. . .
So we'd been sort of gotten up in the middle of the night to deal with hobgoblins that were trying to burn the town down. We made them stop. A halfling who looked official came by and thanked us and said he wanted to talk to us in the morning and went away again. I suppose dealing with the town burning down and stuff like that can make a fellow busy. We gave him the one that Karas put to sleep, and took the gear off the others, and we went back to bed.
Renn got up early and went out to ride. When we all got out, we took all the stuff to the smith and sold it for lots of pieces of metal and a mule. Well, a little token that the smith said we could trade for a mule at one of the caravans at the edge of town. So we did that.
Then the official halfling came up and introduced himself. He was the captain of the town guard, and he wanted to show us to the mayor, and all of that. He wanted to find Adosar too (Adosar had taken some of the metal bits and gone off with them), and didn't remember Renn until we reminded him. We went looking for Adosar, mostly by asking random other halflings, "Did you see a dwarf?" and going in the directions that said "Uh, yes." He was in a shop. We got him and went off to the mayor.
I think halflings confuse me. The one that found us looked like a chief, and the mayor didn't at all. But the mayor told the captain to do things, and he did.
We talked to the mayor for a while, about all sorts of things, and Karas talked about trade. And then the mayor talked about trade, with so many big words that I know I was confused and I think Karas was too (even though he's good about not making faces like he's confused when he's confused). And he gave us a bag of metal bits.
I got some and went and looked at caravans and got little things, here and there. Some of them might even be useful. I went to the herbalist, too, and talked a lot about plants and where to find them and what to do with them, and gave her some metal bits for those.
Eventually Renn came back, a little frowny. We told her about the mule, and she went to see him and look him over to see how good a mule he was and that we weren't being cheated.
She said she'd had a dream about the forest -- the one we were going to go around because it was dangerous and everything, and might have elves in it that didn't want us to talk with them at all. A dream about a low building shaped like a hill, with a door open and a horrible stink. So she'd gone to go look at the forest, and she felt something calling to her.
I had wanted to at least go near the forest, right? So that wasn't so bad. We decided to go look. Adosar said it was a dream and we should pay attention.
After all, where would we be if we didn't pay attention to people's dreams?
Ahrm.
So we went. It was pretty dark and gloomy and . . . unhappy in there. I don't know how to say, it was . . . unhappy. We went along for a while, and Renn and I saw a vine move up ahead, just a little twitch, but even so. We stopped and stared at it for a while, and pointed everyone else at it, and they stared at it until they saw it. Eventually, we went around, rather than see what sorts of things it'd do if we didn't. (Karas had stories, of course, about vines that fell on people and tried to eat them.)
We kept going. Renn knew which way we had to go, whatever it was was calling her still. (We'd looked at it to see if it was magic, or something with a spell on her, or something like that, but nobody saw anything. At least nobody who looked. I couldn't look at all.) Then something reared up off to the front, big and made up of vines and mud and leaves and sticks, and started running towards us. Renn knew what it was, and said we might be able to outrun it; she got Adosar up onto Hethian and we pulled back some -- Renn and I shot arrows into it, but they just sank. Karas stood there with his spear, and it bit him. So Renn and I picked him up, and we ran away from it. Eventually it lost us, or we lost it, or something. We healed Karas some.
There were a bunch of spiders. Some of them managed to bite us, but it wasn't as bad as it might have been. I was mostly all right. I cut off their fangs; maybe I'll be able to figure out how to make the poison stop. Or use it for something.
And then we found it. It was a low building, sort of roundish, flat on the top with sloping sides, and carved all over with what might have been magic writing, but which was all worn away and gone. (I asked Adosar if making the writing go away like that was something that would break the magic in the writing if it was magic writing.) The door was closed. Renn was surprised it was closed.
People looked around for magic stuff, and thought that the place was sort of glowy from magic somewhere, somehow. But nobody could figure out what it was, it was too thin. Maybe like a fog, or a thin mist, I guess. I couldn't look.
Adosar made protective magics on himself and on me, and magical weapon magics on Renn and Karas, and we opened the door, all ready for whatever was locked in there to come jump out at us.
The staircase down failed spectacularly to maul anyone.
It was dark. The stink was pretty bad, though. I think it was Adosar took his glowing rock and threw it down the stairs. Nothing happened, but we had to go down and get it.
The down was pretty short, and the steps opened up onto a tunnel that looked like the curve of a circle. We went around it sunwise, and about a quarter of the way around there was a tunnel going straight down into the middle of the circle. (There was also more circle.) We were deciding if we were going to go around or down, and something bulged up out of the floor like the spirit that gave us directions when the Dark Road was closed.
I don't remember if it attacked us or we attacked it. I remember that Adosar ran right under its nose, and it tried to hit him, and something stopped it. And he laughed and told me that it was the same protective magic as the one he put on me. We pounded on it a lot until it collapsed into rubble, with the people who didn't have the magic staying back so they wouldn't get hurt too bad.
The thing was shaped like a circle divided in half, and in the middle of the circle was another stairway. We checked the other intersection, and there was another spirit. We fought that one too, but the protective magics went away, so it hurt a lot more. Then we decided to go up rather than down, and rest and feel better.
Outside, there wasn't anything near the building, even the spiders that were pretty close didn't bother us. Renn said it was like the forest was pushing in on this place. It didn't like it. I didn't like it either. Adosar spent a lot of time making maps. When he complained that he didn't have enough stuff to make another map, I let him look through my herbs to find something useful, and that was enough for another map.
Eventually we went down again, with protective magics and everything. None of the bad earth spirits could hit me, but I couldn't hit them either. I think it was because I was trying to use the shortsword in my right hand, not the dagger; I don't know the balance right. But Renn was hitting them with arrows, and Karas tripped one up with a whip, so that was all right. (Session quote: "Bonnnnnnnnnnnnng!") On the next bit down, there were lots of things from under the table as well as the bad spirits in the intersections. It also had a straight-ahead passage instead of just being a circle divided in half; there was a bad earth spirit in front of the stairs down, too.
When we went down, there wasn't a straight-ahead passage. We went around and saw it looked like a circle divided in half again. Only instead of being a staircase down in the middle, there was a big stone block. When we went to look at the big stone block, something sort of formed out of the shadows.
It was like a thing from under the table, only much bigger and sort of more human. Adosar shot a crossbow bolt through it, and it just went through. Poof. So I stopped worrying about trying to hit with the dagger (I'd changed) and just hit it with the sword from the Wind Tower. It made big flashes when I hit it. Karas ran around to behind it and tried to spear it, and it just went through too. It clawed at me, but I think the magics that Adosar made stopped it; it just sort of scrabbled. I hit it again, and it went away.
There was a thing on the altar. Sort of like a rod, only it was black, and it was like it wasn't there. I pushed it out of the dip and it just sort of sat there. I hit it with the sword and the sword stopped -- it didn't bounce like hitting a thing would, it just stopped. Karas wrapped it up in his leather jacket -- the one with all the holes in it from the shambling plant-thing, so it wasn't really much use anyway -- and we took it upstairs, since we thought the spirits had been supposed to guard it, and we made them all go away, and it would be a bad idea just to leave it.
People cast a lot of spells at it, even Adosar's special one that hurts things from under the table, and nothing happened there either. I wasn't sure I wanted to carry it around, but everyone else pointed out it was a guarded thing. Adosar said the spirits weren't really earth spirits anymore, quite, they were earth and darkness spirits. And I didn't really want to be near something that does that to people, but . . . . We put it in a bag, still all wrapped up.
Renn said the pulling-thing wasn't there anymore. The feeling. So we didn't get any dream-guidance about what to do with the thing. Terrific. We kept going.
We found the elf city that was supposed to be there. Big, with huge stone buildings. All of them completely empty. Even emptier than the ones in the town in the Dark Road, because they were just . . . emptier. Even less stuff left. We looked at a lot of them as we went across, but it was sort of uncomfortable. We rested there because it was safer, though.
Eventually we got out of the forest. Nothing else bothered us. Renn felt the forest get happier when we took the rod-thing out of it, so that was good.
End of Part 1. Intermission.
*bird-noises, throwing rocks at the camera*
End of Intermission.
And then we saw the plains. Lots of them. And we started walking. Sometimes we saw hobgoblins. Sometimes they saw us.
One big bunch of them -- maybe more than twenty -- decided that we were worth hunting. When they got close enough, Renn made the grass grab them and hold them so they couldn't come at us so fast. I had figured a few things out after going through the guardian place, and I made it so I could see better, and started to shoot them as they got closer. Adosar made a weird spell that I think walked around where he told it to. I don't think anyone got much hurt from that fight except Hethian, and a couple of them got away. The rest of the way across the plains, the hobgoblins watched us a lot, but none of them tried to hurt us.
We crossed the river we got to and kept going, up into the mountains. A couple of times I sat down and asked the mule what he thought of all this, 'cause it was pretty strange. He thought we were very silly, I think. He didn't seem to mind, though, not much.
When we got through the mountains, there was a ridge going down, and then all these trees, a thick, dense forest, all green and happy, and in the middle of the forest a tremendous mountain, all conical like in the dream. So we were almost there. Except for this cliff thing.
Adosar knows a spell that helps people climb things. We found a place that was mostly all right, and I explained the magic to Clancy. Who was confused about it, I think, but eventually he let Adosar make the spell, and went down the cliff with us. Which was definitely pretty strange. (Session quote: We have weirded out the mule!)
It was green and happy and pleasant to walk through, though, and we did, and got to the mountain on its west side. Adosar said he thought that it might be geothermal, to be so green in midwinter. We asked him what he meant. (He meant that there might be veins and things like in the fire elemental's caves, keeping everything warm here.) There wasn't anything obvious to do, so we started going up and around in a spiral, sunwise, because that would be sure to show us everything. We'd gotten most of the way around, to the south side, and we saw a building away downhill. Which was something to look at, so we went and did.
It was . . . sort of odd. It wasn't very smooth or polished or anything, not like the Wind Tower, but it was like someone with a lot of strength or magic or help had wanted to make something that would last, but didn't really quite know how to make it good. When Renn touched the door (which was big and stone), it just opened for her. Hethian said he'd stay out because he didn't think he was supposed to go in.
Inside it was . . . calm, and peaceful. There was something right and comfortable about it, like a breeze curling around a hill. I . . . don't have the words for it. There wasn't anything actually there, though, except for a tunnel going back into the side of the mountain. So we went into the tunnel.
It was a long way. Eventually there was light that wasn't ours. It wasn't veins, but a big, circular room filled with the sort of lava that was in the fire elemental's caves, pooling around and making light and heat. But it wasn't hot, it was just nice, like someone was taking up all the warm and using it for something like the slug in the cave was, or just keeping it from being too much for us.
There was a path all the way around the lava, but nothing else. We saw a sort of alcove off to one side, so we went that way, since it was the only thing to go to.
Someone said, "I've been waiting for you." Renn flattened up against the wall. We looked around a lot. And something showed, a sort of glow of some sort up over the lava. It started to get bigger and brighter and drift down towards us, and eventually wound up shaped like a man, a very tall man, half again as tall as Pa. He was very bright for a bit, but we could see through him.
He said he was Semtek. He said he didn't think he had chosen us, but we'd definitely been chosen.
He asked us where we'd come from, and what had happened while he was in the mountain, and we told him stories about our people and how we got there, and Adosar told more stories, dwarf and halfling ones mostly, that we didn't know. He didn't know how long he'd been there, because time was strange inside the mountain. We talked a long time, and we didn't get hungry or thirsty or tired, so I guess I understand that some.
He told us history, where Alar came from and how the world started. And how some of them had become something different, opening a gate to somewhere else. I think the somewhere else that the things from under the table come from (when they're not coming from under the table). Only they didn't open it in a place, they opened it in themselves. Which is why the God Wars happened, because not all of them did it.
But anyway, there were thirteen left of the ones with holes in them, and just Semtek, and he made a big magic to put them all to sleep, but he had to stay to keep them asleep. And now he was getting old and tired, because the holes in the bad ones were making him bleed out first, before the rest of the world, because he was the one holding them. And he was going to die, and when he did, all of them would wake up again, and there wouldn't be anyone to stop them.
Except if we said we'd help. And if we would . . . he'd die now. But he'd give us the strength to finish his job for him. Maybe.
Renn was crying too much to say anything. Karas asked how long before the end, anyway. And he thought a big lot. And then Adosar got up and said that his people had supported the wrong side long ago, and he would be first to step up and correct their shame. And Renn stepped forward. And I picked up the sword, which Semtek told me he'd left for me, or for someone like me, or something. And Karas said he'd help.
And Semtek said he had gifts for us, and took us to the alcove, which led into a square room with stuff in its corners. Karas got a glove and a shield; Adosar got a circlet and a ring and a bag and stuff. Renn got some bracers and a staff. I got a circlet, silver, with two blue stones set in it. (And the sword. But I already had that.)
And we went out again, and Semtek told us to throw the rod thing into the middle of the lava. Because it was a part of someone's hole, and he'd deal with it when he . . . went away.
And he told me, quietly, that the things that he had spent his life looking for were things that he thought I could find. And that I should do it.
Karas threw the rod thing in its bag out into the middle of the lava. The bag burned away, and the rod thing just . . . sat there. It didn't burn, it didn't sink, it didn't even look like it was floating. It was just there.
There was a bright light, and when we woke up we were on the floor. The rod was gone. So was Semtek.
Adosar started to recite something in dwarvish. I caught some of it. It was a thing, he said later, where when someone dies, you give their name and lineage and say the things they'd done. He spoke for a long time. Renn sang something in elvish. Karas took his ruined armour and dropped it in the lava and said that with Semtek's gift he didn't need it anyway, and took a bottle of wine and poured it out for everyone and said that when he was in the baronies he learned about a custom called a "toast" and this was the right time for it.
I felt sort of left out, I guess. But I listened to the song and the chant and drank the wine.
Eventually we all went out again. I put on the circlet, and . . . I could see things. All sorts of things. I'll try to say more later, when I started looking at things more.
We got out, and neither Hethian nor the mule was right there. We started looking around, and then there was sound of something running, and Hethian burst out of the woods and ran at Renn and knocked her over. He was really happy to see her. Eventually she told us that he'd said we'd been in there for six months.
We spent some time near the building. Adosar said he wanted to take some of the mountain with him, and he went up to it and took out the gems from in the bag that Semtek gave him, and put them up against the mountain face. There was a lot of light and a sort of . . . it's not light, I don't know how to put it, but I could see the flow and energy as the stones and Adosar and the mountain all made a flash, and he took a piece out of the mountain with his bare hand, and then he fell over really tired and went right to sleep. Which after watching that I can really understand.
I spent the day with my copper pot and some herbs trying to make healing potions. Eventually I got some that I think will work, too.
When he woke up, Adosar took off his old amulet, the one he made a little while ago, and put on the new one. Then he said to me that he'd noticed that I try to protect him from things, and he appreciated it, so he was giving me his old amulet. He told me how to use it, and we checked to make sure it worked, so now I have a protective amulet, too.
I need to talk with Adosar about what the words in dwarfish for all these different sorts of rocks are. It feels important to me.
Semtek said my life would get interesting now. I wonder what he meant. I think he meant me in particular, not everyone. I'm understanding some of the things Adosar has said about magic better, now, though, because I can see it. Because of this circlet, I think. I need to figure out how to twist my hair around it to be sure it stays on.
This is big trouble.
I guess we have chores now, though. Thirteen of them.
I know where one is. Fingul. Semtek said he's waking up fastest. And we know where he is. And he killed Torvardi, which means that he probably doesn't like Breveddi at all. And this Breveddi doesn't like him either, so that's fair.
Chores.
But now I bring you. . .
So we'd been sort of gotten up in the middle of the night to deal with hobgoblins that were trying to burn the town down. We made them stop. A halfling who looked official came by and thanked us and said he wanted to talk to us in the morning and went away again. I suppose dealing with the town burning down and stuff like that can make a fellow busy. We gave him the one that Karas put to sleep, and took the gear off the others, and we went back to bed.
Renn got up early and went out to ride. When we all got out, we took all the stuff to the smith and sold it for lots of pieces of metal and a mule. Well, a little token that the smith said we could trade for a mule at one of the caravans at the edge of town. So we did that.
Then the official halfling came up and introduced himself. He was the captain of the town guard, and he wanted to show us to the mayor, and all of that. He wanted to find Adosar too (Adosar had taken some of the metal bits and gone off with them), and didn't remember Renn until we reminded him. We went looking for Adosar, mostly by asking random other halflings, "Did you see a dwarf?" and going in the directions that said "Uh, yes." He was in a shop. We got him and went off to the mayor.
I think halflings confuse me. The one that found us looked like a chief, and the mayor didn't at all. But the mayor told the captain to do things, and he did.
We talked to the mayor for a while, about all sorts of things, and Karas talked about trade. And then the mayor talked about trade, with so many big words that I know I was confused and I think Karas was too (even though he's good about not making faces like he's confused when he's confused). And he gave us a bag of metal bits.
I got some and went and looked at caravans and got little things, here and there. Some of them might even be useful. I went to the herbalist, too, and talked a lot about plants and where to find them and what to do with them, and gave her some metal bits for those.
Eventually Renn came back, a little frowny. We told her about the mule, and she went to see him and look him over to see how good a mule he was and that we weren't being cheated.
- "Does it have a name?"
"I think we named it Clancy."
". . . okay."
She said she'd had a dream about the forest -- the one we were going to go around because it was dangerous and everything, and might have elves in it that didn't want us to talk with them at all. A dream about a low building shaped like a hill, with a door open and a horrible stink. So she'd gone to go look at the forest, and she felt something calling to her.
I had wanted to at least go near the forest, right? So that wasn't so bad. We decided to go look. Adosar said it was a dream and we should pay attention.
After all, where would we be if we didn't pay attention to people's dreams?
Ahrm.
So we went. It was pretty dark and gloomy and . . . unhappy in there. I don't know how to say, it was . . . unhappy. We went along for a while, and Renn and I saw a vine move up ahead, just a little twitch, but even so. We stopped and stared at it for a while, and pointed everyone else at it, and they stared at it until they saw it. Eventually, we went around, rather than see what sorts of things it'd do if we didn't. (Karas had stories, of course, about vines that fell on people and tried to eat them.)
We kept going. Renn knew which way we had to go, whatever it was was calling her still. (We'd looked at it to see if it was magic, or something with a spell on her, or something like that, but nobody saw anything. At least nobody who looked. I couldn't look at all.) Then something reared up off to the front, big and made up of vines and mud and leaves and sticks, and started running towards us. Renn knew what it was, and said we might be able to outrun it; she got Adosar up onto Hethian and we pulled back some -- Renn and I shot arrows into it, but they just sank. Karas stood there with his spear, and it bit him. So Renn and I picked him up, and we ran away from it. Eventually it lost us, or we lost it, or something. We healed Karas some.
There were a bunch of spiders. Some of them managed to bite us, but it wasn't as bad as it might have been. I was mostly all right. I cut off their fangs; maybe I'll be able to figure out how to make the poison stop. Or use it for something.
And then we found it. It was a low building, sort of roundish, flat on the top with sloping sides, and carved all over with what might have been magic writing, but which was all worn away and gone. (I asked Adosar if making the writing go away like that was something that would break the magic in the writing if it was magic writing.) The door was closed. Renn was surprised it was closed.
People looked around for magic stuff, and thought that the place was sort of glowy from magic somewhere, somehow. But nobody could figure out what it was, it was too thin. Maybe like a fog, or a thin mist, I guess. I couldn't look.
Adosar made protective magics on himself and on me, and magical weapon magics on Renn and Karas, and we opened the door, all ready for whatever was locked in there to come jump out at us.
The staircase down failed spectacularly to maul anyone.
It was dark. The stink was pretty bad, though. I think it was Adosar took his glowing rock and threw it down the stairs. Nothing happened, but we had to go down and get it.
The down was pretty short, and the steps opened up onto a tunnel that looked like the curve of a circle. We went around it sunwise, and about a quarter of the way around there was a tunnel going straight down into the middle of the circle. (There was also more circle.) We were deciding if we were going to go around or down, and something bulged up out of the floor like the spirit that gave us directions when the Dark Road was closed.
I don't remember if it attacked us or we attacked it. I remember that Adosar ran right under its nose, and it tried to hit him, and something stopped it. And he laughed and told me that it was the same protective magic as the one he put on me. We pounded on it a lot until it collapsed into rubble, with the people who didn't have the magic staying back so they wouldn't get hurt too bad.
The thing was shaped like a circle divided in half, and in the middle of the circle was another stairway. We checked the other intersection, and there was another spirit. We fought that one too, but the protective magics went away, so it hurt a lot more. Then we decided to go up rather than down, and rest and feel better.
Outside, there wasn't anything near the building, even the spiders that were pretty close didn't bother us. Renn said it was like the forest was pushing in on this place. It didn't like it. I didn't like it either. Adosar spent a lot of time making maps. When he complained that he didn't have enough stuff to make another map, I let him look through my herbs to find something useful, and that was enough for another map.
Eventually we went down again, with protective magics and everything. None of the bad earth spirits could hit me, but I couldn't hit them either. I think it was because I was trying to use the shortsword in my right hand, not the dagger; I don't know the balance right. But Renn was hitting them with arrows, and Karas tripped one up with a whip, so that was all right. (Session quote: "Bonnnnnnnnnnnnng!") On the next bit down, there were lots of things from under the table as well as the bad spirits in the intersections. It also had a straight-ahead passage instead of just being a circle divided in half; there was a bad earth spirit in front of the stairs down, too.
When we went down, there wasn't a straight-ahead passage. We went around and saw it looked like a circle divided in half again. Only instead of being a staircase down in the middle, there was a big stone block. When we went to look at the big stone block, something sort of formed out of the shadows.
It was like a thing from under the table, only much bigger and sort of more human. Adosar shot a crossbow bolt through it, and it just went through. Poof. So I stopped worrying about trying to hit with the dagger (I'd changed) and just hit it with the sword from the Wind Tower. It made big flashes when I hit it. Karas ran around to behind it and tried to spear it, and it just went through too. It clawed at me, but I think the magics that Adosar made stopped it; it just sort of scrabbled. I hit it again, and it went away.
There was a thing on the altar. Sort of like a rod, only it was black, and it was like it wasn't there. I pushed it out of the dip and it just sort of sat there. I hit it with the sword and the sword stopped -- it didn't bounce like hitting a thing would, it just stopped. Karas wrapped it up in his leather jacket -- the one with all the holes in it from the shambling plant-thing, so it wasn't really much use anyway -- and we took it upstairs, since we thought the spirits had been supposed to guard it, and we made them all go away, and it would be a bad idea just to leave it.
People cast a lot of spells at it, even Adosar's special one that hurts things from under the table, and nothing happened there either. I wasn't sure I wanted to carry it around, but everyone else pointed out it was a guarded thing. Adosar said the spirits weren't really earth spirits anymore, quite, they were earth and darkness spirits. And I didn't really want to be near something that does that to people, but . . . . We put it in a bag, still all wrapped up.
Renn said the pulling-thing wasn't there anymore. The feeling. So we didn't get any dream-guidance about what to do with the thing. Terrific. We kept going.
We found the elf city that was supposed to be there. Big, with huge stone buildings. All of them completely empty. Even emptier than the ones in the town in the Dark Road, because they were just . . . emptier. Even less stuff left. We looked at a lot of them as we went across, but it was sort of uncomfortable. We rested there because it was safer, though.
Eventually we got out of the forest. Nothing else bothered us. Renn felt the forest get happier when we took the rod-thing out of it, so that was good.
End of Part 1. Intermission.
*bird-noises, throwing rocks at the camera*
End of Intermission.
And then we saw the plains. Lots of them. And we started walking. Sometimes we saw hobgoblins. Sometimes they saw us.
One big bunch of them -- maybe more than twenty -- decided that we were worth hunting. When they got close enough, Renn made the grass grab them and hold them so they couldn't come at us so fast. I had figured a few things out after going through the guardian place, and I made it so I could see better, and started to shoot them as they got closer. Adosar made a weird spell that I think walked around where he told it to. I don't think anyone got much hurt from that fight except Hethian, and a couple of them got away. The rest of the way across the plains, the hobgoblins watched us a lot, but none of them tried to hurt us.
We crossed the river we got to and kept going, up into the mountains. A couple of times I sat down and asked the mule what he thought of all this, 'cause it was pretty strange. He thought we were very silly, I think. He didn't seem to mind, though, not much.
When we got through the mountains, there was a ridge going down, and then all these trees, a thick, dense forest, all green and happy, and in the middle of the forest a tremendous mountain, all conical like in the dream. So we were almost there. Except for this cliff thing.
Adosar knows a spell that helps people climb things. We found a place that was mostly all right, and I explained the magic to Clancy. Who was confused about it, I think, but eventually he let Adosar make the spell, and went down the cliff with us. Which was definitely pretty strange. (Session quote: We have weirded out the mule!)
It was green and happy and pleasant to walk through, though, and we did, and got to the mountain on its west side. Adosar said he thought that it might be geothermal, to be so green in midwinter. We asked him what he meant. (He meant that there might be veins and things like in the fire elemental's caves, keeping everything warm here.) There wasn't anything obvious to do, so we started going up and around in a spiral, sunwise, because that would be sure to show us everything. We'd gotten most of the way around, to the south side, and we saw a building away downhill. Which was something to look at, so we went and did.
It was . . . sort of odd. It wasn't very smooth or polished or anything, not like the Wind Tower, but it was like someone with a lot of strength or magic or help had wanted to make something that would last, but didn't really quite know how to make it good. When Renn touched the door (which was big and stone), it just opened for her. Hethian said he'd stay out because he didn't think he was supposed to go in.
Inside it was . . . calm, and peaceful. There was something right and comfortable about it, like a breeze curling around a hill. I . . . don't have the words for it. There wasn't anything actually there, though, except for a tunnel going back into the side of the mountain. So we went into the tunnel.
It was a long way. Eventually there was light that wasn't ours. It wasn't veins, but a big, circular room filled with the sort of lava that was in the fire elemental's caves, pooling around and making light and heat. But it wasn't hot, it was just nice, like someone was taking up all the warm and using it for something like the slug in the cave was, or just keeping it from being too much for us.
There was a path all the way around the lava, but nothing else. We saw a sort of alcove off to one side, so we went that way, since it was the only thing to go to.
Someone said, "I've been waiting for you." Renn flattened up against the wall. We looked around a lot. And something showed, a sort of glow of some sort up over the lava. It started to get bigger and brighter and drift down towards us, and eventually wound up shaped like a man, a very tall man, half again as tall as Pa. He was very bright for a bit, but we could see through him.
He said he was Semtek. He said he didn't think he had chosen us, but we'd definitely been chosen.
- "What have you been waiting for us FOR?"
"Now, we get to the complicated bit."
"It's all complicated bit."
"And none of it can be fixed with chores." --Thiara, Semtek, Thiara, Renn
He asked us where we'd come from, and what had happened while he was in the mountain, and we told him stories about our people and how we got there, and Adosar told more stories, dwarf and halfling ones mostly, that we didn't know. He didn't know how long he'd been there, because time was strange inside the mountain. We talked a long time, and we didn't get hungry or thirsty or tired, so I guess I understand that some.
He told us history, where Alar came from and how the world started. And how some of them had become something different, opening a gate to somewhere else. I think the somewhere else that the things from under the table come from (when they're not coming from under the table). Only they didn't open it in a place, they opened it in themselves. Which is why the God Wars happened, because not all of them did it.
- "The Alar were created as a result of a great clash between the elemental planes. As such, the Alar could be considered children of the elementals themselves."
"Geothermal!"
But anyway, there were thirteen left of the ones with holes in them, and just Semtek, and he made a big magic to put them all to sleep, but he had to stay to keep them asleep. And now he was getting old and tired, because the holes in the bad ones were making him bleed out first, before the rest of the world, because he was the one holding them. And he was going to die, and when he did, all of them would wake up again, and there wouldn't be anyone to stop them.
Except if we said we'd help. And if we would . . . he'd die now. But he'd give us the strength to finish his job for him. Maybe.
Renn was crying too much to say anything. Karas asked how long before the end, anyway. And he thought a big lot. And then Adosar got up and said that his people had supported the wrong side long ago, and he would be first to step up and correct their shame. And Renn stepped forward. And I picked up the sword, which Semtek told me he'd left for me, or for someone like me, or something. And Karas said he'd help.
And Semtek said he had gifts for us, and took us to the alcove, which led into a square room with stuff in its corners. Karas got a glove and a shield; Adosar got a circlet and a ring and a bag and stuff. Renn got some bracers and a staff. I got a circlet, silver, with two blue stones set in it. (And the sword. But I already had that.)
And we went out again, and Semtek told us to throw the rod thing into the middle of the lava. Because it was a part of someone's hole, and he'd deal with it when he . . . went away.
And he told me, quietly, that the things that he had spent his life looking for were things that he thought I could find. And that I should do it.
Karas threw the rod thing in its bag out into the middle of the lava. The bag burned away, and the rod thing just . . . sat there. It didn't burn, it didn't sink, it didn't even look like it was floating. It was just there.
There was a bright light, and when we woke up we were on the floor. The rod was gone. So was Semtek.
Adosar started to recite something in dwarvish. I caught some of it. It was a thing, he said later, where when someone dies, you give their name and lineage and say the things they'd done. He spoke for a long time. Renn sang something in elvish. Karas took his ruined armour and dropped it in the lava and said that with Semtek's gift he didn't need it anyway, and took a bottle of wine and poured it out for everyone and said that when he was in the baronies he learned about a custom called a "toast" and this was the right time for it.
I felt sort of left out, I guess. But I listened to the song and the chant and drank the wine.
Eventually we all went out again. I put on the circlet, and . . . I could see things. All sorts of things. I'll try to say more later, when I started looking at things more.
We got out, and neither Hethian nor the mule was right there. We started looking around, and then there was sound of something running, and Hethian burst out of the woods and ran at Renn and knocked her over. He was really happy to see her. Eventually she told us that he'd said we'd been in there for six months.
We spent some time near the building. Adosar said he wanted to take some of the mountain with him, and he went up to it and took out the gems from in the bag that Semtek gave him, and put them up against the mountain face. There was a lot of light and a sort of . . . it's not light, I don't know how to put it, but I could see the flow and energy as the stones and Adosar and the mountain all made a flash, and he took a piece out of the mountain with his bare hand, and then he fell over really tired and went right to sleep. Which after watching that I can really understand.
I spent the day with my copper pot and some herbs trying to make healing potions. Eventually I got some that I think will work, too.
When he woke up, Adosar took off his old amulet, the one he made a little while ago, and put on the new one. Then he said to me that he'd noticed that I try to protect him from things, and he appreciated it, so he was giving me his old amulet. He told me how to use it, and we checked to make sure it worked, so now I have a protective amulet, too.
I need to talk with Adosar about what the words in dwarfish for all these different sorts of rocks are. It feels important to me.
Semtek said my life would get interesting now. I wonder what he meant. I think he meant me in particular, not everyone. I'm understanding some of the things Adosar has said about magic better, now, though, because I can see it. Because of this circlet, I think. I need to figure out how to twist my hair around it to be sure it stays on.
This is big trouble.
I guess we have chores now, though. Thirteen of them.
I know where one is. Fingul. Semtek said he's waking up fastest. And we know where he is. And he killed Torvardi, which means that he probably doesn't like Breveddi at all. And this Breveddi doesn't like him either, so that's fair.
Chores.
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Oh, and, "The staircase down failed spectacularly to maul anyone." made me laugh out loud.
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He's been working on the plot for this on and off for the past six months, at least; building and discarding mythologies, messing around with ideas, figuring out how to do things. He says he got an idea for another culture in this world from watching The Two Towers, now, so the world's continuing to spiral out.
The game was conceived of as an epic storyline -- he wanted to run an epic story, but he wanted to start it with first level characters and watch them grow up and become Epic Hero Types.
Maybe if we're lucky he'll post something about where his storyline and plotting came from tomorrow. (He hasn't read this summary yet.) (Not that I'm blatantly dropping a hint or anything like that, nooooooo.)
I'm glad you liked the staircase line. I was rather pleased with it. And it is, pretty much, how the character thinks of it, so. :)
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Good call.
I love the Epic Storyline thing, that's what I'm trying to do. I've got a month or so to try to convert three or four maps and about a dozen pages of notes into something coherent. Because I'm going to try to run it when I get back to school. Only I'm kinda impatient, so I'll probably give 'em third level as a head start, so I can start with more interesting monsters quicker.
I do okay once I have a plot started, as I'm horribly good at just making stuff up to react to the characters. Coming up with an introduction and a convincing reason for the characters to do something I want them to do is challenging. Which is interesting, because that's how I write, too. I agonize for days over the introduction, but once I'm started, the rest of the paper sort of falls out.
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I don't know if you're coming back to peer, but
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I think I've mostly decided that I'm just going to build up a really good world, put in four or five good plot hooks, and then give the players a bit of free reign. Playing to my strengths.
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Then what was that hitting me across the back of the head? :>
I guess the only question I've got is what sort of things people would like to know. I'm not really a good one for rambling on without direction.
It really helps to have a great set of players. The characters you guys have put together are really making the game come alive.
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I knew what I wanted the characters to do over the course of the campaign, which was basically remove an old and evil set of gods and replace them with something better. Once I had a good idea of what the world was like, and the basic goal, I started looking for players who would want to play in that sort of campaign. It really helped to be able to tell people that this was a campaign in which the characters were expected to be mythic-level heroes and that they would probably be challenging god-level enemies at some point.
Then I fell back on the time-honored crutch of Destiny. The first couple of sessions were rather linear in plot as a result, but I was mostly using them to introduce the players to the world I'd created, and let them get into their characters. One thing I realized early is that if you're planning on getting the characters to 20th+ level, then you can use levels 1-3 as an introduction. They don't have to be the be all and end all of character development. :>
Most games I've run have started with effectively 1st level characters because I like the basis for character development that low levels provide. Given scheduling issues, it's been difficult to get campaigns to run long enough that the first few levels aren't the majority of the game, though. I've been really happy that we've managed to play as consistently in this campaign as we've had. It gives me a lot of hope that it's going to work out.
One of the things about an epic/mythic-level campaign is that you can use things like prophetic dreams, strange internal calls, directives from God/gods, and ancient prophecies to point the characters in the right directions. Sometimes I feel like I'm overdoing it a bit, but it's worked nicely so far. This sort of thing doesn't work well with the modern insistence on rational thinking, necessarily, so I'm very glad to have a group of players who have managed to create very good characters who fit into the world I've created.
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*grin*