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23 Rhonus 1120
The Exile
Back in Marhaven, the heroes held a strategy session to determine their next move. Tagren's list of Azazel's inner circle seemed like a likely place to begin. Kallaebri was enthralled, and they felt best left for later; the same for her son, the willing accomplice Andronus. Of the remaining candidates, one stood out as a clearl target for action: the aquatic elf mage. Unfortunately, the sum total of the party's knowledge was that he was an aquatic elf mage who may or may not be a willing ally of Azazel. Lacking any specifics to identify their quarry, they turned to the cryptic but undemanding spell legend lore for a hint. Strontium cast the spell and received a response. Deep within the ancient wood Nature cries out in pain The party surmised that Goliand was likely a reference to the River Goliand, which runs through the southern Aelhandran Forest. The idea of "perversions called forth" seemed to fit with an ally of Azazel; they voted to head for the Goliand and look for perversions. The Goliand is a modest river, not large enough even at the mouth to accomodate the Chimera, so the heroes made anchor just off the coast and prepared to follow the bank on foot. Aria, Melian, and Audas could easily swim upstream, but Strontium and Caenus had a problem: the cloak of the manta ray each normally used to breathe and move in water require salt water -- in the fresh water stream of the Goliand the cloaks were useless. Strontium's land speed, because of his stature, became a significant limitation on the party's movement. Quinn sacrificed her dignity to ease the journey by using her wild shape ability to take the form of a horse and allowing Strontium to ride. On the second day of their trip the party encountered a group of elves. The wood folk were friendly and playful; careful questioning elicited the information that while none of the Goliand struck them as perverted (present company excepted), the area around the source had long been avoided by the animals of the wood. The third day brought the group to the Goliand's source: a waterfall coming down from the mountains and heading out to sea. At the site of the fall a large, deep pond had formed. The party walked the bank and saw nothing remarkable, so Aria, Audas and Quinn took to the water. Almost immediately, Quinn felt a large muscular tentacle grab for her. It wrapped around and held her firmly, and as she struggled to get loose she also felt an odd kind of metaphysical numbness envelop her. Her magic items and her spellcasting ability were gone. Moments later the same beast grabbed Aria, who likewise felt her magic items failing. As another creature closed on Caenus and missed, the party got a good enough look to recognize their enemy as balhannoths. They'd seen one grab Chandrakar and hurl her through a void into the Far Realm months before; now they were facing the magic-eating creatures in an environment where most of them relied heavily on magic to breathe and move. Audas, aware that he would quickly drown if deprived of his powers, kept his distance and harangued the aberrations with his baneful chain variant. Strontium, using borrowed gills of Hamachi, also kept close to the shore while lighting up the enemy with greater and lesser missile storms. Between their efforts and those of Caenus, who bravely swam in to do melee despite also being dependent on magical breathing help, one balhannoth died quickly. Another appeared almost immediately to take its place, however, and seemed intent on Caenus. Strontium broke out a new spell, prismatic spray, and aimed the entire cone at the new enemy. The balhannoth shuddered as it took massive electrical damage, then found itself struck by another ray in the same area and turned instantly into stone. It sank, inert and helpless, to the bottom of the pond. Quinn and Caenus ganged up on the last creature, already heavily wounded, and dispatched it soon after. Given time to explore, the party discovered a narrow ledge behind the falling water. Melian, perhaps mistaking the simple ledge for a diabolical instrument, insisted on doing an exhaustive search for traps but found nothing more than a well-crafted stone door built into the cliff face. The door radiated modest abjuration magic, which prompted Audas to volunteer his services to devour magic. The spell proved remarkably hard to dislodge, however: not only did Audas fail to affect it, but both Quinn and Strontium each failed with a standard dispel magic. Melian borrowed a use of Audas's devour magic and also failed to overcome the spell. Finally Quinn used a greater dispel magic and succeeded in bypassing the arcane lock. Inside the party found another ledge and another pool of water, this time with a long, narrow stone bridge running straight across to a chamber opening on the far side. The bridge, about 120 feet across and 4 feet wide, looked to Melian's eye like a clear and obvious death trap. He began to laboriously examine every foot for traps. Quinn, however, sighed and impatiently walked over him and ran across the bridge to the far side, reaching the opening completely unscathed. This inspired Audas and the rest to do the same, leaving Melian to catch up as the bridge was obviously quite safe. On the far side a short tunnel led to a comfortable sitting room. Easy chairs and a sofa sat in a casual circle, with a fireplace built into the chamber wall and a nice woven rug insulating the stone floor. Beyond that was a kitchen/dining area that looked recently used. At this point Melian was eager to search every wall section for possible secret doors, but he was overruled by the rest of the group. Their quarry was an aquatic elf; it seemed far more likely that there was more to this lair below the water. Quinn, Aria, and Audas stepped into the water and found that yes, there was another sitting area at the bottom of the pond. They also saw eight humanoid figures standing at the far side, apparently waiting for them. The figures seemed at that distance identical -- and even more oddly, to Quinn they seemed vaguely familiar. The heroes surfaced and prepared for combat, with Quinn casting aura of vitality to boost everyone's physical abilities. Audas jumped back into the water first. Figuring the eight opponents for a single mage using greater mirror image, he launched a vitriolic blast at one of the figures and watched it wink out instantly. The mage responded with bands of steel, capturing Audas neatly in a steel bundle. The rest of the group took to the water and made best speed toward the enemy. Strontium paused long enough to cast dragon skin on himself before taking the plunge. Quinn, eager to confirm her earlier suspicions, ran straight for the middle of the group of figures and discovered that yes, she did know this man: Rorin Otor-asay, late of the Deep Elandrin military, until Quinn and Tana Brightwave had reported the man's malfeasance and gotten him dishonorably discharged and exiled from the community. Over a hundred years had passed since then, but she knew that face as soon as she got close enough to see it well. She muttered a snide remark and struck at Rorin with her trident, only to see the illusionary duplicate vanish harmlessly. Just then a pair of huge creatures appeared out of nowhere, moving smoothly and swiftly through the water. They looked vaguely like huge dire sharks, but they had tentacles instead of fins and an overall ghastly look about them. Audas recognized them as pseudonatural creatures, animals infected with the essence of the Far Realm. One nipped at Strontium and missed; the other bit down on Melian and caught him in its jaws. Rorin cast another spell with no immediate apparent effect, and another duplicate Rorin appeared to further confuse matters. Aria attacked another and made it vanish while Caenus, lacking swimming ability in fresh water, let himself sink to the floor and ran to assist. Melian wriggled free of the shark's jaws and slipped away only to be bitten and held by the other. And then, in the wake of the shark attacks, two more grotesque creatures appeared. These pseudonatural giant squid had an abundance of eyes all over their bodies and their tentacles looked particularly stringy and sickly. They were not, as Quinn would quickly discover -- those tentacles struck hard and had the potential to hold fast. As Quinn dodged squid tentacles on two sides, she felt herself struck by a black, crackling tentacle of dark energy. The blackwater tentacle hit and drew off some of her life energy, inflicting a negative level and all the associated penalties. She retaliated with ice flowers, a new spell of hers that caused the ground itself to burst into sharp projectiles of ice. Four of the false Rorins winked out and the squid took damage in the process. She had little time to celebrate, though, because just then a shark bit down on her and held firm. Things were looking grim for the heroes. Audas continued to struggle in vain to escape the steel bands; Aria was caught up in squid tentacles, Quin in a shark's mouth, and as another giant squid appeared to join the fight the party still hadn't managed to identify the real Rorin among the duplicates. Until they could do that, he could summon more and more atrocities each round. They knew, from seeing Mrs. Wilkins use the spell, that only one new duplicate could appear each round; the key, then, was to take out as many duplicates as possible as quickly as possible. Strontium brought out another new spell, Mordenkainen's sword. A shimmering blade of force appeared and struck at a Rorin, which winked out. Another down. The spell didn't last, as Rorin used a dispel magic to end it, but progress had been made. Things got uglier for Quinn when the shark swallowed her. The thing's insides pressed against her and its stomach acid burned as she worked to cut her way out with a dagger. The shark ultimately did her a favor by biting and swallowing Caenus as well. Between the two of them they were able to cut themselves free quickly. Meanwhile, the party regrouped and came back. Melian freed Audas from the steel bands, making them both available to attack images of Rorin and for Audas to use his vitriolic chain against the horrific monsters aiding the mage. Strontium hit a Rorin with the dimensional anchor spell and all of them glowed green, so at least they knew Rorin would not be escaping by teleport. Rorin responded by squeezing Strontium in a pressure sphere but the dwarf's superior constitution kept the spell from doing any significant damage. The number of Rorin images dropped to four. Fast action by Audas, then Aria, then Melian took out three, leaving the real Rorin open and exposed for just a few seconds. Strontium was ready; he launched an empowered greater missile storm right at the enemy and in one stroke took him from barely scratched to barely standing. Rorin gestured and intoned and encased himself in a stone block where he stood. The party moved in, determined not to be deprived of the chance to interrogate their prisoner. Caenus and Quinn, fresh from the shark's belly, beat on the stone cube and Quinn cast another ice flowers to let Rorin know hiding would not help. Audas used an empowered vitriolic chain and killed the last remaining squid and shark, allowing the group to focus all their efforts on extracting Rorin from his bunker. When they bashed in the stone wall, however, the cube was empty. Strontium realized what had happened: prevented from simply teleporting, Rorin had used the powerful time stop spell to gain the advantage of at least two rounds of free action. During that time he had constructed the cube using a wall of stone spell, dispelled the dimensional anchor, and then teleported away. The stone cube had bought him time in case he didn't get enough of a head start from the time stop. In all likelihood, though, Rorin had already been gone before the party even knew it. Bitter and angry over Rorin's escape, the party consoled themselves by looting his hideout for the valuables they could find. Of course, they also now knew exactly who Rorin was, and Strontium still had a scroll of discern location on the ship. The conjuror would not evade them for long.
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