Excepted from Sokeus, Sta "Dropping the Lance" The Annals of the Expeditionary of the Lyceum Arcana CXIX.2After the utter destruction of Guards-Captain Hannerty (he had a fine ear for music, I much regret his loss) we decided to make camp among the dunes near the ruined Inn. And while there we were harried by a local Lich and his demonic consort. A heated battle culminated with my dagger thrust into the Lich's brittle chest. As the Lich crumbled, I felt an expulsion of malignant energy and, afterwards, I was pleased to discover that the dagger had spontaneously improved: it was lighter and more wieldly and, upon arcane inspection, I saw it had gained a necrotic aspect. It was no longer suitable for use as my camp knife, turning meat sour at the slightest touch, but was quite fit for battle.This is an example of what I call the Natural Ritual, in this case a ritual of enchantment enacted by battle and death. The majority of the Learned Rituals are probably Natural Rituals which some beneficent soul has observed, abstracted, and set to paper. More magic is unknown than will ever be known, much as it might fret my colleagues to admit this. We need only look to the humble Sorcerer, who wields magic despite his ignorance, to see this personified.With my curiosity aroused, I set out with our scout and secured the Lich's phylactery. I kept this with us and, every week or so when the Lich reappeared, I would dispatch him again with a fresh knife. Sadly, despite dozens of trials, I was never able to recreate the exact circumstance of the initial encounter. Perhaps there is an element of urgency which is required.The Lich grew quite tired of me before all was done.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Reflections on the Spontaneous Arcane Improvement of a Weapon
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Return to the Caldera
From the journal of Kale:
21st day, Morning
Our guide is dead and we are on the run. Aelar thinks he can lead us back the eladrin encampment, though everyone agrees we should circle to the back before entering. I believe the prophecy of Mades Skinner holds the key forward: we must claim the three-legged construct that I inspected earlier.
You have seen too much. You must die.
-Speaker
21st day, Evening
I am riding inside the belly of a strange machine. This has been an eventful day.
We managed to locate the construct without much difficulty, and it was exactly as I had remembered it. As we began to inspect the tripod an eladrin emerged, dressed in simple robes and carrying a spear. The resulting conversation was rather tense, and ended badly.
We were immediately set upon by about a dozen eladrin soldiers who appeared from nowhere, wielding powers of ice. The battle was chaotic and fierce-- Firinne and Garg rushed into melee, killing several soldiers, but they were quickly surrounded. The earlier speaker proved to possess tremendous teleportation abilities and began to blind members of the party with Fey spells. Reacting quickly, Ryn employed his own Fey teleportation abilities to pull away Firinne, killing several soldiers in the process. I managed to summon a poisonous cloud across the eladrin formation, inflicting further casualties (I regret that Garg was among the victims). We quickly realized that two of the soldiers possessed the ability to absorb inflicted wounds from their allies-- a dangerous ability that we had seen before.
The situation seemed grim: Firinne nearly succumbed to her icy wounds. Nonetheless, despite the blinded Carlagnios managing to knock over half the party in a sightless fury, we eliminated all but the two resilient knights and the speaker. We poured our fire onto the lead knight, and finally they broke, crumbling down together. We then faced only the elusive speaker.
Realizing that the speaker would likely flee unhampered once we managed to wound him, we quickly devised a cunning plan. In a moment of confusion I concealed myself with a spell of invisibility and began to creep towards the speaker's position. Meanwhile Carlagnios began to loudly negotiate terms of a truce. I edged up behind the speaker without alerting him, while removing the iron snake from its wrappings. As the speaker began to proclaim the terms of our surrender, I snapped the snake around his neck.
He's a liability.
-Ryn
Though he did carry the key to the construct, the disabled speaker proved to be of little use. The morphic key and lock on the tripod appeared to be on a sort of periodic cycle that was unaligned. The speaker, laughing, proclaimed that the two would not be in sync for a week. He said little else. It was clear that the elf was some sort of fanatic. As we began to explore other options, Garg callously snuffed out the speaker's life with his blade. I see the necessity of this course, but I must say that such a cold-blooded act does not fail to unnerve me. Perhaps that is a good thing.
In a flash of insight, Firinne suggested we make use of the iron scarab we discovered earlier in the Ring of Melora. Attaching the scarab stopped the action of the key. It had a similar effect when attached to the lock, and Bran, seeing it frozen, realized he had a chance of picking it. He deftly subverted the lock, and the door atop the construct was opened. As we began to climb into the small space within, we were astonished to hear the device begin to speak to us.
Ryn: What can you do?
11: I can walk.
Ryn: Is that all?
11: I can cry.
We quickly found that the construct, being of eladrin origin, would only converse directly with Ryn. The device reminded me a bit of a golem. Its requests were simple, almost childlike, and it accepted Ryn as its commander without question. In addition to locomotion, it seemed to have the ability to withstand great environmental extremes, and claimed to be capable of "crying." A bizzare console in the center of the construct controls the so-called tears, which emerge from a small orifice in the machine's underbelly. Ryn asked the device what its name was. It answered "eleven." We then took the obvious course-- straight to the caldera, to seek the mad mage. The tripod began to lumber off into the cold.
Then a change is happening.
-Crypt-keeper
22nd day, Morning
We are not quite were I expected us to be. In fact, I am not sure where we are at all.
Last night we rode in the construct straight to the edge of the caldera. Approaching the lip of the ridge, we sealed the hatch shut. The device lumbered up and over the ridge and down into the caldera, no doubt still teeming with gnolls. 11 reported seeing 'creatures' all about. Nervous minutes passed. Eventually we began to hear bumping and clattering noises echoing across the hull. 11 tried to shake some of them off, which seemed to work for a while, but they soon returned, and I sensed the expression of magical energies as well.
Despite this interference, Ryn guided 11 to proceed into the center of the caldera. At last 11 stopped, saying that he had clambered onto a sort of 'door'. Feeling this was as good a time as any, Ryn commanded the release of a tear. This was a singular event.
The tear was visible even inside the armored core of the machine-- a brilliant point of light that seemed to appear in the console and plummet down. I sensed powerful spatial magics (a sort of teleportation?). As the tear left the craft we felt a great heat, and then we fell.
After some bumps, 11 reported that we were floating in water. Prying open the hatch, we discovered that we were floating under water, and our metal companion quickly began to sink. Swimming up, we found ourselves in a vast cave. A passage of the tear's making pierced the ceiling, and a whirlpool was actively drawing the water down along the same axis. As the water drained away we saw that the tear's path had breached into corridors extending beneath the cave.
We also observed a bizarre spatial anomaly: a spherical portal, suspended high in the air, through which water was pouring. Eventually the portal ceased to flow, the water draining away, and we glimpsed a blue sky and (with a leap by Ryn) a lake from which the water had come.
We decided to investigate the lower tunnels, and began to rappel down the still-hot channel. Walking down the corridor, we came upon a large room-- and several humans. These men were still in shock from the tear's effects, and were expressing concern for a city they claimed was further underground.
Several things have now become clear. No outsiders had visited this place for twenty years. The denizens of this place appear to serve the legacy of Govorilli, the infamous possessor of the Lens. Govorilli left his servants instructions about what to do when "changes" occurred. We appear to have instigated such a change. One man led us through a crypt of his keeping, clearly intended for necromantic purposes. The men we met were not armed; we subdued them once they tried to contact their superiors (the "blades"). There was talk of these people having built up an army.
Finally, the mad mage is almost certainly here. When asked the name of the last outsider who appeared in this place, the crypt-keeper paused and replied "I don't remember."
21st day, Morning
Our guide is dead and we are on the run. Aelar thinks he can lead us back the eladrin encampment, though everyone agrees we should circle to the back before entering. I believe the prophecy of Mades Skinner holds the key forward: we must claim the three-legged construct that I inspected earlier.
You have seen too much. You must die.
-Speaker
21st day, Evening
I am riding inside the belly of a strange machine. This has been an eventful day.
We managed to locate the construct without much difficulty, and it was exactly as I had remembered it. As we began to inspect the tripod an eladrin emerged, dressed in simple robes and carrying a spear. The resulting conversation was rather tense, and ended badly.
We were immediately set upon by about a dozen eladrin soldiers who appeared from nowhere, wielding powers of ice. The battle was chaotic and fierce-- Firinne and Garg rushed into melee, killing several soldiers, but they were quickly surrounded. The earlier speaker proved to possess tremendous teleportation abilities and began to blind members of the party with Fey spells. Reacting quickly, Ryn employed his own Fey teleportation abilities to pull away Firinne, killing several soldiers in the process. I managed to summon a poisonous cloud across the eladrin formation, inflicting further casualties (I regret that Garg was among the victims). We quickly realized that two of the soldiers possessed the ability to absorb inflicted wounds from their allies-- a dangerous ability that we had seen before.
The situation seemed grim: Firinne nearly succumbed to her icy wounds. Nonetheless, despite the blinded Carlagnios managing to knock over half the party in a sightless fury, we eliminated all but the two resilient knights and the speaker. We poured our fire onto the lead knight, and finally they broke, crumbling down together. We then faced only the elusive speaker.
Realizing that the speaker would likely flee unhampered once we managed to wound him, we quickly devised a cunning plan. In a moment of confusion I concealed myself with a spell of invisibility and began to creep towards the speaker's position. Meanwhile Carlagnios began to loudly negotiate terms of a truce. I edged up behind the speaker without alerting him, while removing the iron snake from its wrappings. As the speaker began to proclaim the terms of our surrender, I snapped the snake around his neck.
He's a liability.
-Ryn
Though he did carry the key to the construct, the disabled speaker proved to be of little use. The morphic key and lock on the tripod appeared to be on a sort of periodic cycle that was unaligned. The speaker, laughing, proclaimed that the two would not be in sync for a week. He said little else. It was clear that the elf was some sort of fanatic. As we began to explore other options, Garg callously snuffed out the speaker's life with his blade. I see the necessity of this course, but I must say that such a cold-blooded act does not fail to unnerve me. Perhaps that is a good thing.
In a flash of insight, Firinne suggested we make use of the iron scarab we discovered earlier in the Ring of Melora. Attaching the scarab stopped the action of the key. It had a similar effect when attached to the lock, and Bran, seeing it frozen, realized he had a chance of picking it. He deftly subverted the lock, and the door atop the construct was opened. As we began to climb into the small space within, we were astonished to hear the device begin to speak to us.
Ryn: What can you do?
11: I can walk.
Ryn: Is that all?
11: I can cry.
We quickly found that the construct, being of eladrin origin, would only converse directly with Ryn. The device reminded me a bit of a golem. Its requests were simple, almost childlike, and it accepted Ryn as its commander without question. In addition to locomotion, it seemed to have the ability to withstand great environmental extremes, and claimed to be capable of "crying." A bizzare console in the center of the construct controls the so-called tears, which emerge from a small orifice in the machine's underbelly. Ryn asked the device what its name was. It answered "eleven." We then took the obvious course-- straight to the caldera, to seek the mad mage. The tripod began to lumber off into the cold.
Then a change is happening.
-Crypt-keeper
22nd day, Morning
We are not quite were I expected us to be. In fact, I am not sure where we are at all.
Last night we rode in the construct straight to the edge of the caldera. Approaching the lip of the ridge, we sealed the hatch shut. The device lumbered up and over the ridge and down into the caldera, no doubt still teeming with gnolls. 11 reported seeing 'creatures' all about. Nervous minutes passed. Eventually we began to hear bumping and clattering noises echoing across the hull. 11 tried to shake some of them off, which seemed to work for a while, but they soon returned, and I sensed the expression of magical energies as well.
Despite this interference, Ryn guided 11 to proceed into the center of the caldera. At last 11 stopped, saying that he had clambered onto a sort of 'door'. Feeling this was as good a time as any, Ryn commanded the release of a tear. This was a singular event.
The tear was visible even inside the armored core of the machine-- a brilliant point of light that seemed to appear in the console and plummet down. I sensed powerful spatial magics (a sort of teleportation?). As the tear left the craft we felt a great heat, and then we fell.
After some bumps, 11 reported that we were floating in water. Prying open the hatch, we discovered that we were floating under water, and our metal companion quickly began to sink. Swimming up, we found ourselves in a vast cave. A passage of the tear's making pierced the ceiling, and a whirlpool was actively drawing the water down along the same axis. As the water drained away we saw that the tear's path had breached into corridors extending beneath the cave.
We also observed a bizarre spatial anomaly: a spherical portal, suspended high in the air, through which water was pouring. Eventually the portal ceased to flow, the water draining away, and we glimpsed a blue sky and (with a leap by Ryn) a lake from which the water had come.
We decided to investigate the lower tunnels, and began to rappel down the still-hot channel. Walking down the corridor, we came upon a large room-- and several humans. These men were still in shock from the tear's effects, and were expressing concern for a city they claimed was further underground.
Several things have now become clear. No outsiders had visited this place for twenty years. The denizens of this place appear to serve the legacy of Govorilli, the infamous possessor of the Lens. Govorilli left his servants instructions about what to do when "changes" occurred. We appear to have instigated such a change. One man led us through a crypt of his keeping, clearly intended for necromantic purposes. The men we met were not armed; we subdued them once they tried to contact their superiors (the "blades"). There was talk of these people having built up an army.
Finally, the mad mage is almost certainly here. When asked the name of the last outsider who appeared in this place, the crypt-keeper paused and replied "I don't remember."
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