|
16 Tilden 1120 An Old Enemy
The heroes enjoyed the hospitality of the Diamond Palace while the Emperor made good on his pledge to seek out a mage capable of helping them complete Castanamir's unfinished spell. It took several days before Sonozaki summoned the group to his office again. The Emperor's man had good news: His Immortal Highness had received a response from Aldavir Neth'anin, an Elven mage who had known Castanamir and was familiar with his spells and formulae. Aldavir had agreed to assist the party and suggested they meet on Castanamir's island. In the port city of Kaito the party did some asking around about their benefactor. Aldavir Neth-anin, they learned, was a retired mage who had been quite famous in his day -- but his day had been a century ago, when he capped his career by assisting with the magical protections created for Marhaven. Aldavir had served with Castanamir on the Council of Twelve and continued on that body until his retirement in 1068. The mage spent his retirement alternating between residences in Nessen, where he sometimes guest lectured at the University, and his original home in Aelhandra. Since Aldavir had known and worked with Castanamir it made sense that he would suggest meeting at the villa, not realizing that the party had already made it their new home base. The heroes loaded up the Chimera and returned home. Choppy seas made the going slow; it was dusk as they reached the shore. They noticed a small rowboat dragged up on the beach and deduced that Aldavir was already on the island. Before they could confirm that, however, they were set upon by a trio of fell trolls. These two-headed monsters were ravenous and typically dim-witted, but having two independent if dull brains made them annoyingly resistant to Mrs. Wilkins' mind games. The combat was short, and notable mostly for giving Strontium his first chance to use Isaac's Ultimate Missile Storm, the new spell he had been sent in Marhaven by their uknown benefactor "Penworth". The party quickly rendered the creatures unconscious and burned the bodies to prevent them from regenerating. How the monsters had ended up on their island was a question that would have to wait. As they approached the hilltop villa the heroes spotted a cloaked figure apparently meditating near the structure. They hailed the figure and, at his responding wave, hastened up the hill. Only Quinn noticed a shadowy shape moving in on them from the left, but once the greater shadesteel golem unleashed its negative energy pulse they all felt the attack. Audas grabbed Strontium and Mrs. Wilkins and teleported the three of them to the hill top so that the party would be less concentrated and could help protect their visiting mage. Quinn protected herself with her Elephant Hide feat and prepared to do battle. Strontium was plotting his first move when another creature appeared out of the ground right before him. It reached out with a stony tentacle and Strontium found himself instantly transported to the Ethereal Plane. He would later discover that the creature was a maulgoth, an aberrant outsider with druidic powers over plants and animals and the ability to move through stone at will. His first concern, however, was getting back to the combat. Fortunately he had the group's amulet of the planes in his pack. Strontium returned from the Ethereal in time to fall victim to a greater shout cast by the cloaked mage. He, Audas and Mrs. Wilkins were all rendered deaf by the sonic blast. He turned to face the attacker and, with his dwarven darkvision, peered through the shadows to recognize their old enemy Rorin. Downhill the rest of the party was too occupied to hear his warning shout, as Rorin had two greater shadesteel golems on the attack. These were larger and tougher even than the ones that had given the party such trouble in Rorin's Astral residence (Showdown). They were immune to almost all spells and so damage resistant that even Caenus was hard-pressed to scratch them; only Quinn's trident and Aria's gloved fists could bypass the golems' defenses in any meaningful way, and they were capable of dealing far more damage than they took from such weapons. A stunned Mrs. Wilkins was touched by the maulgoth and vanished onto the Ethereal Plane and Rorin used the time bought by his greater shout to protect himself further with greater mirror image. Audas, the first to recover from the shout, tried to use word of changing on the maulgoth but the beast's magical protections were too strong to overcome. Audas backed away from the thing and focused his attention on the shadesteel golems, where his vitriolic chain attack could be more effective than the party's physical weapons. With the golems now taking abuse, Aria used dimension door to reach the magic users atop the hill. She recognized Rorin after Strontium's shouted warning and charged forward to attack, only to see and feel her fist go straight through him -- Rorin was using ghostform to protect himself from physical attacks. The fighters were taking heavy hits and the spellcasting corps were having trouble affecting anyone, so Strontium gambled on the random but usually effective prismatic spray spell. Rorin, the maulgoth, and both shadesteel golems were in the area of effect. The golems, however, were immune to the spell and the maulgoth, which is primarily made of stone, happened to be struck by a flesh to stone ray that it simply ignored. Rorin took two rays from the spell but neither affected him; instead a rod of absorption in his hand glowed and the spell energy went for nought. To Strontium's vexation, the only individual adversely affected by the spell was Melian, who was caught in the area and fried into a coma by electrical energy. Rorin compounded his enemy's frustration with a maze spell that trapped Strontium in an interdimensional space, again away from the battle. He then summoned aide in the form of a huge, flying creature ringed in ghostly lights -- a windghost. With Strontium trapped and Mrs. Wilkins still on the Ethereal Plane, the situation looked grim. Fortunately, Audas had been making steady progress against the golems with his vitriolic blast ability. He was able to finish one, give Caenus the rod of health to heal himself, and then take down the second in rapid succession. In the meantime Strontium escaped the maze and let loose an ultimate missile storm, finally managing to do damage to Rorin and to the maulgoth. Both responded, Rorin with an orb of cold and the maulgoth with a touch that once again pushed Strontium to the Ethereal Plane, where Mrs. Wilkins stood waiting for him. He used the amulet of the planes again to bring them both back and was struck immediately by a stun ray from Rorin. Mrs. Wilkins cast a quick haste to help the party press their advantage and the fighters converged on the maulgoth, which was even more difficult to damage than the shadesteel golems had been. Quinn used a mass cure serious wounds to keep the party going and it had the happy added benefit of bringing Melian back to his feet. Audas, in the meanwhile, was being pursued by the windghost. He turned on the creature with a word of changing and transformed it into a sparkling, tentacled bat. That left just Rorin and the maulgoth. With his favorite target still stunned, Rorin used another maze spell on Audas. Quinn tried an area greater dispel magic to tear down some of Rorin's magical protections but failed. Fortunately Strontium recovered quickly from the powerful stun ray and responded before Rorin could move again with a maximized greater missile storm. The shower of magic missiles ended both Rorin and the maulgoth in one stroke. As Audas escaped the maze and the aberrant bat that had been a windghost quietly zipped back to its place of origin, a purple glow formed in the area. It grew as the party watched to the size of a doorway, then disappeared as a strange figure stepped through. It was a man, sort of. He appeared elderly and gaunt, leaning heavily on a twisted walking stick. He had grey-white hair in clumps that writhed slowly like the tentacles of a mind flayer. Sunken white eyes -- including quite a few forming a ring around his head -- regarded the party and the area. "That's the villa, all right," he said in a creaky voice. "But who the heck are you people?" Castanamir had returned. The famous mage seemed confused as to how long he had been gone; he seemed geniunely saddened to hear that his kobold servants had died in his absence. The party led him back inside the villa for a meal and a long talk. Castanamir was tired and a bit disoriented, but he was able to communicate clearly and before long seemed to be regarding the party as there to assist him. The group learned that Castanamir had been seeking a way back from the Far Realm for, it seemed to him, a decade or so. Rorin had unwittingly helped by summoning the windghost from the Far Realm; Castanamir had been able to trace the path and follow it himself as the creature returned. Earlier appearances of aberrations on the island, including the beholder Udrastin, were the result of Castanamir attempting to open such a channel and nearly succeeding. They also learned that Chandrakar had survived her encounter with the balhannoth and found Castanamir in the Far Realm. "We had some interesting conversations," he told them. "But then her brain grew legs and walked away. Literally." Strontium took a quick trip to Marhaven (by teleport after taking some chiding from Castanamir for "traveling like a lunk") to replace Castanamir's lost belt of flying and they settled in to guard the villa while the old mage completed his most important work: the spell that would allow them to use the galadiir.
<MR>
|