26th Of Toil
Those goblins and bugbears took a lot out of us, so we make our way back through the ruined city beneath the shattered dome. We spy what appears to be an elf within a crystal, but it turns out that it might have been simply an image. He paid us no attention before we destroyed the crystal. We continue to see his moving image even in the broken shards. Whoever he is, he’s in a wooden building that resembles the lab of someone who creates and identifies magic items. He stands before a table working with a violet glass globe upon a tripod—some sort of crystal ball, Barbatos says. The moving image repeats after a while.
We don’t allow ourselves to get distracted, though, even when Barbatos finds a wooden building he thinks is tied to the vision. Out in the woods again we find Eloias in a clearing, where he’s made camp. We heal a little and pass an uneventful night, which is all we could hope for.
27th Of Toil
Returning to the city the next day, we meet some other explorers in the ruins, including a couple clerics of Lothian. They look cut up, bruised, and drained. We offer some help to them: Kerr (a fighter), Maldek and Zeld (dwarves), and Denaeroth Vess and Lynessa Koran (a human cleric and paladin, respectively). All these folks give Archinemus a strange look. They managed to destroy the undead they encountered on their way into the city. They have come to parley with the bugbears, because they have the means to get into the home of dark elves here, their “vault.” The group is looking for a relic of Lothian (the Teeth of the Saint) stolen by dark elves long, long ago. This band is from Carper’s Bay farther north, and they seem a bit naïve to me. For instance, they think the bugbears will help them access the dark elf vault out of their mutual hatred for dark elves. Chaldesh Delano (grandfather to Shurrin, one of the famed Runewardens) learned long ago that it was dark elves who stole the relic, they say.
We lead the team back to our camp and discuss the possibility of joining forces once they have rested. This group received help getting here from some local elves. They reached the lake but could not get to the sanctum beyond—a ward there is too strong. They tell us they learned of the bugbears through a pair of roguish brigands who call themselves the Perfect Ones. (Someone in Ashenburg asked us whether Archinemus was a Perfect One—they must be sibeccai, too.) The goblins and bugbears were once slaves of the dark elves. Recently, the dark elves have suffered major setbacks and have weakened. And working with the Perfect Ones, the goblins and bugbears came up here hoping to establish a home of their own away from their captors. But the clerics think the dark elves are still down there somewhere.
On the sly, Maldek nods toward Archinemus and asks Calista, “Is that one of the Perfect Ones?” She assures the dwarf he’s been a good friend to us, that he has no roguish dealings. The dwarves, it seems, are paid mercenaries accompanying the Lothianites.
Later On The 27th Of Toil
We bid farewell to the Lothianites, telling them we’ll return to camp later this afternoon with a report. On our way back into town, we hear a baby cry. Although we fear a trap, we decide to investigate nonetheless. Diethan comes upon a snakelike shadowy monster with long arms and fingers and no lower body. It is making the baby noise, but it doesn’t hear him, and he slinks away. We move on.
The wrecked chariot from the battle yesterday is still there, but the goblin and bugbear bodies are gone. Some of the trees on this end of town are still alive, which makes us feel a little better. Then we spy the red rock by the lakeshore and head over. Within the lake rises a great fortress. Between us and the fortress is a tall tower, and a glass bridge connects them all. Tharn, meanwhile, spots a green woman by a tree surrounded by an iron fence. We disregard her for the moment, because Diethan spots a bugbear guarding the stone. Fearing he will try to warn his allies, we attack. More bugbears join the fray but are no match for us.
The green woman is trying to signal us. After the battle, we unlock the gate that secures the fence. She tells us her name is Faestra. Long, long ago the dark elves put her in there and also trapped her sisters. She says the iron fence is trapping her and her tree; if it were gone, she and the tree could both leave. Sorrowfully she recounts that the bugbears have already taken many of her sisters and burned them—her people burn like wood but last longer, she says (the dark elves burned her kind as well). She explains that the bugbear leader is part devil, with scales and horns. “He is the cruelest of them all,” she said, adding that the bugbears and goblins have been here for perhaps a year.
Faestra says that some of her sisters may still be alive—they take a long time to burn and they’ve only been in the fortress for a month. With renewed vigor, Tharn and I attack the fence confining her. Meanwhile, Faestra explains that the bugbears are afraid of the tower at the top of the orchard nearby, but she doesn’t know why. She recognizes our description of the elf we saw in the shard of glass: Aelhan Whiteblade, Kaelist’s most powerful sorcerer. “The residents of Kaelist are still here, all around us,” she whispers.
She confirms that the dark elf statue with the living lips was a tool of corruption—the dark elves left behind many similar tools that promised their victims great things but instead brought them to evil. But the red stone was put here by the original builders of Kaelist, she explains; it manages the wards around the sanctum. She says the bugbears came from within and so could bypass the wards—once you enter the sanctum, you can always enter it.
It takes us a couple hours to remove the fence and free Faestra. (I rigged up a rough winch arrangement, while Tharn attacked with a crowbar. If only I’d had more tools with me, I’m sure I could have managed a better device…) While we work, she frees a creature from the tree: a rainbow-colored lizard with fluttering wings. He talks to Faestra in Draconic in a squeaky voice. He smells like apple blossoms and looks like a pink and purple dragon with butterfly wings. The two-foot-long creature settles onto Barbatos’ shoulder. It’s a garrulous fairy dragon named Rathondhir, he says. I try to speak to him, but he speaks only Draconic and Elvish, so all I manage to do is say hello and count to ten in Elvish for him. (I think it confused him.)
In gratitude, Faestra hands us a gourd and says it contains the Green; it will restore any living creature to health. The dryad asks us to seek her sisters in the steam furnace in the lower levels of the fortress in the lake. Suddenly the sound of a gong comes from the fortress, and we can see a drawbridge lowering. Bugbears have been watching us, and they’re starting to come across to the middle tower between us and them. After a few minutes more, goblins riding wolves start making their way from the fortress to the tower; Diethan manages to pick off a couple of them while they’re still on the glass bridge.
We position ourselves on the tower on the shore to await the inevitable attack. The bugbears lower the bridges between the two towers and launch themselves at us from the tower in the middle of the lake. Three barghests pop into being on the tower with us, but Barbatos unleashes a powerful chaos hammer spell upon them. I manage to grab one and fling it off the tower, and Calista shoots it dead with her sonic spells. Tharn and Diethan send arrows singing across the bridge at the bugbears. Barbatos seems to command unusual power in his magic missile spells. “Wild magic!” gasps one of the goblin-faced wolf creatures—but we don’t have a lot of time to wonder how Barbatos learned to use that. Our attackers keep coming.
The goblins and their dire wolf mounts and bugbear troops hurl themselves at us from the tower in the middle of the glass bridge. A goblin in blue body paint carrying a staff with a gem appears at the top of the middle tower. Barbatos slays him with another bout of wild magic—where did he learn to do that? Diethan, meanwhile, takes delight in slaying goblins, his particularly hated foes, and Calista takes out a good-sized area of the bridge and everything on it with a spell of wind.
Then Swordthrasher, the bugbear leader, stalks out and we gape in horror: He’s sixteen feet tall and even more ferocious than we thought! Small winged creatures circle his head and from time to time whisper suggestions to him. Then the horrid demon-bugbear conjures up (in a nasty way using his violet spittle) a new bridge between the middle tower and the one we’ve taken. A deathweaver floats out to meet us: It’s a round, floating creature covered with many tentacles each with a mouth at the end. It obeys demonic creatures—like the bugbear leader, from what Faestra told us—and eats like there’s no tomorrow.
Thankfully, we take out the deathweaver with a round of attacks, only to be faced by another mess of bugbears charging at us from across the leader’s purple spit-bridge. The leader hawks up another magic purple loogie on one of his minions, which seems to strengthen the creature. He makes another violet bridge from the middle tower out to the shore, and more of his minions set off toward the red boulder.
The Big Showdown
Just when it seems we will be overwhelmed, from the forest come a brigade of walking trees and their green-skinned companions called thorns, summoned by Faestra. They take on a formation of bugbears led by two identical sibeccai with ornate plate armor and black bastard swords. These must be the Perfect Ones we’ve heard about. With one touch of the sword, the sibeccai’s opponents blacken and turn to dust. They spot Archinemus and speak in tandem:
“Is that—”
“—who I think it is?”
Yes, it is, they agree. “We must report this to Nicodemus,” they say in unison and disappear through a black magical portal. Who is Nicodemus? Who do they think Archinemus is?
Meanwhile, back at the purple bridge, we learn a horrifying fact about the spew that Swordthrasher uses to coat his minions: It keeps them up and fighting even after death, sustained by the violet energy! Disgusted, I knock one of these unnatural opponents off the violet bridge. Calista conjures a sonic ape that wreaks havoc on our foes. Another barghest comes out and tries to take mental control of me. Diethan pelts Swordthrasher with magical arrows to devastating effect, but sadly the demon-bugbear’s quasit advisors give him healing potions and he’s quickly back in action. Barbatos targets Swordthrasher’s quasits.
The battle, which seemed to be turning in our favor, suddenly goes south as the huge Swordthrasher comes in striking distance. In almost no time we are all reeling from his blows and he has sundered my axe. Brave Tharn, who had been fighting alongside the thorns and magical trees, dashes up the bridge and calls out the demon-bugbear. Swordthrasher rises to the bait, giving Calista just enough time to share the magic of a healing gourd Faestra gave her with unconscious Diethan, Archinemus, Barbatos, and me. After taking one massive wallop, Tharn turns and runs, drawing Swordthrasher into melee with the woodland creatures he has oppressed for so long. The thorns die valiantly, at which point the magical trees flee back into the woods.
Faestra moves in to join the battle, joined by the faerie dragon Rathondhir, whose rainbow breath weapon has no effect on the demonic bugbear. Barbatos expends two wands on the creature. After taking out the rest of his bugbear minions, we manage to gang up on Swordthrasher, who gets his revenge by thrashing Archinemus’ skivver of Destor. It crumples, and from it emerges the lightning creature we saw imprisoned in it ’way back in the caverns of the Shuul. It grabs the broken shards of the skivver, turns itself into a bolt of lightning, and arcs away toward the southern horizon. “I curse you, Destor!” cries the outraged Archinemus. Hmm. Wonder if we’ll see that lightning guy again.
With our last efforts we dogpile on Swordthrasher and take sore wounds but eventually bring him down. A shout of pure joy erupts from Faestra at the tyrant’s death. The dryad pulls from her hair a strand of vine for each of us in thanks, then promises to visit the Vaerimor sisters and describe the situation to them as we’d asked. Then she steps into her tree and is gone.
I turn to thank Barbatos for the displacement effects he cast upon me that saved my life during the battle, but I’m dismayed to see him looking wasted and drawn—quite sick. Was his wild magic somehow sapping him? Barbatos doesn’t know. We give him a restorative potion and turn our attention to the fortress before us.
