22 Eidos 1120

Remembrance of the Fallen

Vladamir Vondran had a puzzle to solve. He already knew that the +1 harpoon he'd been given by the bronze dragon Athesto had a name -- the Arm of Telomir -- and a history. However, his efforts at researching that history were turning up nothing. As one might expect of a race of hunters, darfellan history is generally passed on through storytelling rather than written records. Even the extensive library of the illumians had nothing in it to help Vondran learn how to access the hidden powers of his legendary weapon.

Finally, after every other avenue failed to net him any useful data, Vondran ventured into the service sector of Marhaven and hired a wizard to cast legend lore for him. The mage informed Vondran that in order to access the weapon's least powers he must first journey to a former darfellan settlement and erect a monument to those who died at the site. Then, after observing a period of meditation in remembrance of the fallen, the Arm of Telomir would bond with him and begin to reveal its powers.

Vondran consulted artisans to develop a design and spent 2,000gp on materials for his monument. For the site he chose the darfellan settlement they had found off the Tumari coast (The Hunted) which was now Athesto's home. He felt sure the dragon, who had chosen to lair there to defend the habitat from the sahaugin and honor the dead himself, would approve.

It seemed wisest to stick together, so the rest of the party opted to join Vondran on his mission. Karu was feeling ill but accompanied them anyway. The party was also joined by their friend Quinn, who had heard the story of their encounter with Athesto and was curious to meet the dragon(1). They hired enough sailors to fill the watch schedule and set sail on Eidos 17 for the Tumari coast.

Late in the second night of the journey the lookout spotted an orange glow on the horizon and alerted Loki, who was leading the watch. He ordered the crew to make for the light and alerted the rest of the party.

The glow turned out to be a ship about the same size as the Torchwood. She was listing badly to starboard and her deck and rigging were ablaze. From inside the ship the party heard men's voices calling out for help. Quinn and Vondran, the two natural swimmers, took to the water to investigate. They noted that the ship's hull bore the same ebony color as theirs and Quinn's low-light vision caught a hint of red fabric in the burning rigging -- both were signature features of a Fell Armada ship.

They swam through a gaping hole in the hull and found three men shackled and locked in a cage on the aft end of the lower deck. They would be underwater in just a few minutes and, from their frantic cries, they knew it. Quinn and Vondran were cautious, however, knowing the nature of Armada crews. Using Quinn's adamantine trident they broke open the cell lock and pried off the anchor point of the shackles but left the men restrained by them and carried them to the Torchwood.

Once free of the sinking derelict, the men told their tale. They had been crewmen on a cargo ship, the Lucky Seven, sailing out of Survale when their ship had been attacked by the Fell Armada. In the fight these three men had been bitten by Armada pirates and then tossed into a cell to wait for the next full moon. Once they had changed into werewolves and become chaotic evil, they were to be impressed into the Armada crew. They'd been kept that way for several days and had no idea where they were. Then, an hour or less before the Torchwood had come upon them, the Armada ship had itself been attacked. The men saw a huge iron ram burst through the hull and heard the sounds of a fierce battle on the decks above, but nobody had come down to loot the ship or release them. When the battle ended the attacking ship just pulled away and left them for dead.

The tale satisfied Quinn and Vondran enough to remove the men's shackles. Recognizing Tika as a cleric, the men begged her to remove the curse from them. Tika was willing but also knew that in a few hours they would reach the settlement and she might have need of her highest-level spells. She assured the sailors that she would cure them before the full moon, but needed to conserve her spells for the moment. Since the full moon was still two weeks away the men accepted this and settled for the time being for some food and a place to rest.

A few hours later, at midmorning, they reached the area where they knew the underwater entrance to Athesto's lair would be. Most of the party went down to announce themselves and seek Athesto's approval for Vondran's plan. Tika and Karu stayed on the Torchwood with Tak for the time being.

The distance to and through the underwater tunnel was only a few hundred feet, well within the air-breathers' ability to hold a breath and swim or walk. They descended to the entrance, which was still well hidden behind a large kelp growth, and down the tunnel.

At a wide point in the tunnel, where the party had previously encountered monstrous crabs, a more ominous sight greeted them: three sahaugin armed with spears charged to attack the group.

Ash burbled an obscenity and poked at the attacking creatures with her staff as they darted to attack Vondran, Quinn, and Loki. Vondran sliced into his assailant with the Arm of Telomir while Quinn used her trident on hers. Baelavin swam over to assist Loki with his attacker.

After another ineffective swipe with the staff Ash saw that the others had things under control. With her air supply dwindling and the Gills of Hamachi left on the boat, she headed back to the Torchwood.

On the ship, Tika noticed Tak suddenly become distraught and took that as a sign that Ash, and presumably the rest of the group, had encountered trouble. She used a charge on the wand of water breathing and took to the water. She came upon Ash, who gestured inside the tunnel and then continued topside.

By the time Tika reached the ambush point Vondran, Quinn and Loki had long since dispatched their enemies and found more evidence of trouble. The sahaugin had been wielding spears of darfellan manufacture. A cloth sack at their post held a dozen or more ivory carvings of marine creatures and hunters -- darfellan artwork. Tika became concerned about Athesto.

They continued on to the end of the water-filled tunnel and emerged into a deserted corridor. The faint sound of drums carried to their ears from deeper within the complex. Loki crept down the passage to Athesto's habitat and came back with distressing news: a half-dozen sahaugin were dancing and beating drums next to a large, carved-up carcass.

Ash and Karu joined the group and together the party formed a strategy. They crept as close as they dared to the opening of the chamber where the sahaugin were celebrating. Then Quinn opened the encounter with a new spell, great thunderclap. A mighty boom sounded in the middle of the dancing sahaugin, knocking every one of them to the ground. Several looked momentarily dazed.

Loki spotted a four-armed mutant and charged him, figuring that to be the leader. Ash used the advantage of surprise to target a scorching ray at one of the prone figures and Tika tried a new tactic by summoning a celestial black bear to appear next to the carcass.

Vondran ran for the mutant leader as well while Loki charged up a psychic strike. The sahaugin struggled to their feet and started to gang up on Loki and Vondran, but Ash hit one with magic missiles and the bear engaged another to foil that plan. Quinn favored the leader with winter's embrace and Tika summoned more muscle in the form of a celestial bison.

The leader fought with two tridents and focused his attention on Vondran. The mutant's fighting skills were significantly better than the average sahaugin; he landed several telling blows and put Vondran on the ground. Quinn rushed forward to protect the dying Vondran from any more attacks while Tika worked her way into position to provide healing. The celestial bison, with its damage reduction, engaged the mutant and kept him at bay for a short time.

Karu found himself engaging two sahaugin henchmen. He used tumbling maneuvers to put himself in position for sudden strikes at the enemies' backs and wore them down bit by bit. Loki did the same with a mid-level sahaugin warrior, using his psychic strike to full advantage.

The mutant fought the bison. It proved easy enough to hit, but the celestial's damage reduction kept the mutant from wounding it seriously. They fought for several rounds -- enough for Tika to get past an attacker and heal Vondran -- before the mutant gave up and charged at Vondran and Quinn. They were ready; Quinn felled an underling with her trident and Vondran fought tenaciously against the mutant with the Arm of Telomir. He got the harpoon stuck in the creature's body and twisted it as the bison fatally gored the mutant. Ash, Loki, and Tika mopped up the rest of the underlings and the fight was over.

A brief examination of the large carcass left no doubt that it was the remains of Athesto. The dragon's head was missing and the body had been stripped of its wings and hide. Much of the meat was also gone, no doubt to feed the sahaugin. Several javelins tossed aside had bloodstains and a sticky residue on them which Karu recognized as a paralyzing poison, which explained the apparent lack of sahaugin dead prior to the group's arrival. Tika took charge of the unpleasant task of burying Athesto's remains. She kept a small bone aside with the intention of using it later to have a resurrection performed.

The party also spotted a scribbling drawn in blood on the chamber wall. It appeared to be a crude map of some sort. With no live sahaugin to interrogate about it, Tika turned to the spell speak with dead. From the corpse of the mutant they learned that the drawing was a map sketched to direct a messenger to the new sahaugin baron to deliver Athesto's head and hides and then bring the baron back to the cave.

Based on the distances as estimated by the pilot on the Torchwood, the party figured they had a day or so to either seek out the baron's camp or prepare an ambush for his arrival. They decided on the latter option.

That gave Vondran time to complete his original mission. He erected his monument, added Athesto's name to the honored dead inscribed on the structure, and performed the prescribed meditation and reflection. At the end of the ritual the Arm of Telomir glowed brightly for a moment and seemed to become keener in his hand. Vondran felt the weapon bond with him and intuitively knew that he now held a +1 monstrous aquatic humanoid bane harpoon. The Arm, already a deadly weapon in its own right, had just become even more devastating to Vondran's ancestral enemies.

The party's plan for the new sahaugin baron was a simple one. Tika cast an explosive glyph of warding on the floor in front of the entrance and then hid behind the newly built monument, ready to cast spells or provide healing. Loki, Quinn, Karu, and Ash took positions in the mouths of cave openings, out of sight of the chamber entrance. Vondran sat down on the large rock in the cavern's center, just as Athesto had been seated when they first saw him, facing the entrance.

About mid morning the group heard heavy footsteps in the tunnel and the sounds of sahaugin voices grumbling.(2) Shortly a group of sahaugin appeared in the cavern entrance and stopped short at the sight of Vondran sitting on the rock, thumbing the edge of the Arm of Telomir.

The darfellan grinned at his enemies and greeted them. "Hello, boys."

Exactly as expected, four sahaugin let out war cries and charged at Vondran, running right over the glyph of warding in the process. The glyph exploded and turned the warriors' initial charge into a struggle to maintain their balance.

The party fell on the sahaugin immediately. Loki charged one with his mind blade formed into a bastard sword. Unfortunately he tripped and hit himself, causing the blade to dematerialize. Ash had better results with a scorching ray and Quinn called up a capricious zephyr to keep the sahaugin on the defensive. Tika summoned a celestial hippogriff and sent the flying creature after the baron himself.

Karu's tumbling tactics were less effective against these more seasoned warriors. He got in a hit or two but then found himself facing one of two four-armed mutants in the baron's retinue. A pair of trident hits put Karu down, bleeding and unconscious. Vondran also received grievous wounds from the mutants and was soon down. Ash found herself retreating into a cavern with a sahaugin warrior in pursuit with sharp and persistent claws. The celestial hippogriff fared even worse against the sahaugin baron; the baron pulled a gleaming short sword and sliced through the hippogriff with devastating accuracy. The summoned creature died without ever landing a blow.

The momentum changed hands when a sahaugin tried to grab the Arm of Telomir from Vondran's unconscious hands. Quinn pierced the creature's neck with her trident and slew it on the spot. That gave Tika the time she needed to get Vondran back on his feet and then head for Karu to do the same. Loki landed a good blow and a psychic strike to fell another warrior and then reshaped his mind blade into bastard sword form for the next one. Vondran scrambled to stay out of the reach of the mutant's tridents while hurling the Arm of Telomir on the move and Quinn moved in on his second assailant with her zephyr.

The baron brandished his sword and charged into battle to engage Quinn. She met his charge and fought hard but lost her grip on her trident and had to back away in the face of the baron's fury and fighting skill. Loki moved in to keep the baron at bay while Quinn cast call lightning to harass the baron with electrical energy. Tika added a spiritual weapon against the baron and Ash, having overcome her pursuer, blasted the baron with magic missiles. Karu managed to hit with shuriken to add to the barrage.

As his second mutant chieftain fell to Vondran, the baron tried to flee the battle. Tika blocked his path and swung her mace, which she'd augmented with an energy weapon spell. The weapon hit the baron and halted his flight, allowing the others to close in. Vondran had the pleasure of the fatal blow but by the time the baron went down everyone had contributed to the kill.

Around the dead baron's shoulders was one more outrage: a cloak hastily sewn from bronze dragon hide. Tika seized that and added it to the rest of Athesto's remains. Then Ash cast identify from her wand on the baron's sword and learned that it was a luck blade, a +2 short sword, and that this one still had one wish available from its original complement of three. It took very little debate for the party to decide how to use that wish -- they wished for Athesto to be resurrected, and as the last gem on the sword's hilt flashed and died Athesto appeared before them in full health and strength.

The dragon confirmed what the party had already deduced -- that they had attacked Athesto with a volley of poisoned javelins, paralyzed him, and then slit his throat. He was furious to hear that the baron had taken his hide for a cloak and even more so to see that most of the darfellan's art and valuables, which he's been guarding, were gone. Athesto expressed his gratitude to the party for using a near-priceless resource to restore his life and pledged to return the favor. He also promised to use his alternate form ability to gather as much information as he could on the sahaugin's activities and leadership and to report back to the group in Marhaven with the results.

The sahaugin baron and his retinue had a surprising amount of gold and gems on their persons. Athesto's sense of honor would not allow him to ask for any from the group that had saved his life, so the party was well compensated for their toil. They parted company with their draconic friend and made for Marhaven.

<MR>
9/28/06

(1) At game time we thought Glenn, who plays Karu, would not be able to join us. Quinn's player was on hand so we drafted Quinn to help fill out the group. When Glenn did arrive partway through the session we opted to pretend Karu had been there all along.

(2) If anyone in the group spoke Sahaugin they'd have known that the baron was expressing his displeasure about the lack of a welcoming party to greet him.