One for All

The music and wine continue to flow but the massive figure of Thornberg, standing back in the shadows of the surrounding trees, finally makes his looming presence felt. His voice is both deep and grave.

“I’m glad that The five of you made it back safely from the void between worlds, but I also want you to know, that I know what you’ve done. Three members of my brotherhood have been killed in the last few months and I knew that you were involved somehow. Koenig, the Three-Quarterling and Zephir.”

The monstrous brown bear growls to reinforce Thornberg’s menacing tone,

“However, Zephir of the oasis was killed before you’d even arrived there and I cannot blame you for carving up his mindless, reanimated corpse. You had a hand in the death of the pacifistic Three-Quarterling but not the murder itself, but his father? You are, all four of you, responsible for Koenig’s death. He may have been over-zealous and acting far beyond his remit, but he was still a member of the Circle of the Scale and a price must be paid. Balance must be restored and although our creed is usually a life for a life, many voices have spoken up for you. From the little fox to Droofin the Frost-giant. As such, instead of death, one of your group must relinquish their current life and swear allegiance to our order.”

The adventurers respond very differently to this surprising news. Man of few words; Fortu reaches for the hilt of his indestructible sword, Rifkin opens his mouth, searching for a convincing argument to use in their defence but Liga Bur does the opposite, biting down to prevent himself revealing his true thoughts. It is the Elf; Arowe though, who breaks the silence.

“I’ll do it. To save my friends, I’ll join your Brotherhood.”

The bulky, bearded Druid’s eyes widen in response before laughing it off.

“Tis a surprisingly noble offer Elf, but the choice has already been made. The Halfling has already received rudimentary training and possesses a natural aptitude for our craft. What say you Liga Bur?”

Fire and Water

The last few days travel pass uneventfully and the Party finally get to within sight of the doubly-dead; Zephir’s oasis. It’s withered and browned a fair bit since they were first here but, considering it contains their way back home to Fissa, it’s still a very welcome sight.

Scattered prone around the outer periphery are several tall, multi-limbed bodies though. Several dead, tall, multi-limbed bodies. The corpses of about a score of the nomadic, insectoid Tri-Kreen. The skilled Liga Bur initially suspects another zombie trap but, after ‘careful’ inspection with a ten foot pole, he’s relieved to find them merely mundanely dead. Probably innocent desert travellers exploiting the free water supply here and killed needlessly and mercilessly by Sir Briefadel, his Mother and the dark horse they rode in on.

Scouting ahead and grateful to find no opposition guarding the inner oasis, Liga Bur cautiously approaches the top of the central stone well. Once there though, the fiery Dijonn on realising what’s happening, suddenly flares wildly atop his torch perch.

“Oh No, Oh No, Oh No! Please Master, don’t put me down the well! Leave me here; I can guard the oasis for you. I can easily survive on just the dead, dried out bushes and trees. I promise I won’t burn the living green stuff!”

Rifkin’s slightly-almond eyes also flair, but far more subtly as he hears Dijonn’s terrified hisses and crackles. Why hadn’t he thought about this before now? There’s no way that the flame-bodied Dijonn could survive for even a second underwater and there’s no way to protect him from it for anything more than a few moments.

Arowe immediately comes to the little elementals defence and Liga Bur has no interest in extinguishing his spluttering servant. The canny Halfling had noticed that Dijonn always shrank to his smallest, unnoticeable flame whenever Ghostly Pardrik was on guard or when the Hag had visited. The fire elemental was definitely hiding something, but what?

Still, whatever that ‘what’ is, it’s no reason to kill him. The rough Halfling had begun to question his own cynicism of late. He hadn’t trusted Fortu, Arowe or Rifkin when he’d first met them on the road to Scar Borough, and now he’d trust them with his life. He had been trusting them to protect him from the protracted attacks from the Hag and they’d not let him down. Considering his past losses, it’s hard to have faith in people but perhaps it’s time to change that mindset. Perhaps he could have faith in something bigger than himself. Something deeper. Perhaps he should choose to believe that Henshaw and Doberman weren’t secretly plotting against him… Barbella would be more of a stretch though.

After making Dijonn swear on his favourite fire gods not to burn down the entire oasis, Liga Bur frees the tiny elemental by gently transferring it from his torch to a dried out bush on the dead outskirts of deader Zephir’s oasis garden.

Immediately growing larger, as he consumes the dry and brittle bush, Dijonn smirks as he wavers the Party goodbye.

“Good luck skin-wearers!.”

Reflections in the Dark: Liga Bur

Clinging tightly to the much heavier Mir Hundur in the ferocious updraft, Liga Bur tumbles after his Elven and Human compatriots. The semi-plummeting Fortu was quickly swallowed up by the swirling darkness below but he actually starts to gain on the slenderer, lightly armoured Arowe. Still, he and his faithful hound are the last to enter the absolute and unnatural shadows beneath the rotating tower.

Unable to judge the remaining distance in the black mist, they land with a bump and Liga Bur immediately rolls off his loyal companion to prevent further injury. The fire elemental; Dijonn, despite flaring wildly, is only able to pierce about ten feet of the, almost tangible, blackness that surrounds them. After picking himself up and soothing his wide-eyed dog, Liga Bur starts to search for his friends. He calls their names but his voice is worryingly muffled in the fog-like darkness.

Ever the pragmatist though, he considers what their next move should be. He's a great tracker, ironically better than the skillful Orc who'd trained him, and he's only gotten better since. His old mentor; Gajutar Auga had often joked that it was just because he was closer to the ground. Despite that though, tracking a flying horse for several days across a desert on a unfamiliar world? Impossible. The life-toughened Halfling is confident however, that once they find their way out of this black hole, he could easily guide his charges back to bustling Valdez city or dead Zephir's oasis and the portal back home to Fissa.

While leading Mir Hundur slowly forward and calling out every few steps, the sharp-minded Halfling wonders about Sir Briefadel's last few words.

"Tell my Father that, after I’ve raised my army, I'm coming for him. And then, once he's dead, I'm going to finish what he started!"

Liga Bur, perhaps due to his cautious Halfling nature or his outsider Orcish upbringing, held an instinctive distrust of large Human settlements and had avoided the main cities of Stowan. He'd travelled there only because of the stories he'd heard of old Halfling settlements along its Feyland boarders. 

Now though, perhaps it would be prudent to travel to Stowan's capital city; Cottis and warn old Lord Urdurel that his son is coming to get him?

Of Gods and Ballers

Arowe gazes down at the flimsy sling in his hand and grins in amazement. He’d not used one of these since he was a child, before he’d been allowed to be trained in the short and long bows. That was over seventy years ago and yet, somehow, he’d managed to loose one of Zephir’s small, round bullet stones, perfectly through the minuscule gap in the smaller, upper spinning orb, on his very first shot!

The bullet had passed through the fraction-of-a-second gap and then ricocheted around inside the spinning orb until it’d dislodged the sparkling green gem and, consequently, halted the larger orb beneath.

Looking through the stone ceiling above at an imagined sky, Arowe offers up a silent prayer of gratitude to whichever of the Elven gods is watching over him and guiding his hand. It should have been a monstrously difficult shot, and yet he had succeeded on his very first attempt… Discounting his original, near impossible try with the long shafted arrow.  

Henshaw is the first to approach the, now idle cold-iron hoop and is fascinated by what he finds.

Now that the ‘sphere’ has stopped spinning, it becomes apparent that Arowe was correct in his assessment and that it really was just a large metal ring spinning so fast as to give the illusion of solidity. The smaller, slower moving top ‘sphere’ possessed a third bar, allowing a repeating but tiny window of opportunity.

After momentarily examining the mechanism, a stunned looking Henshaw turns back towards his Elven employer.

"That might just have been, the greatest shot, I've ever seen!"

The Bard; Rifkin nods in wide-eyed agreement with Henshaw's accidental three-line stanza and Arowe can't help but bask in the glow of their joint admiration. 

Midnight at the Oasis

It's been four days since the seven members of the newly expanded Party left the double-dead Druid's portal well, but despite the oppressive heat above and energy sapping sand below, the group is surviving fine. Thanks, in part, to Liga Burr's impressive sense of direction (despite the alien astrology), the weeks supply of magical water found in the tent and the Fey food gifted by the goddess of the pool; Estrid.

During the journey, Liga Burr and Rifkin have taken the time to study the magical scrolls and maps found on Zephyr's bookshelf and discovered them all to be useful and, better yet, usable.

Divining the passage of time here has proved difficult though, due to the constant light from the multiple moons and suns. Also, unfortunately because of the heavily armoured Fortu's slow pace, it's nearly midnight when Liga Burr spots the mid-journey oasis.

The small patch of green seems incongruous amid the seemingly endless expanse of golden, barren sand surrounding it.

Despite the still twilight sky, lit by three various sized moons, a campfire is clearly burning and as the Party approach, Arowe spots three still-living versions of those ugly horses tethered. Standing in front of them, a rotund, tanned but red bearded man is waving a greeting. His posture and broad smile appear welcoming but the two large, heavy-set and armed Orcs flanking him seem 'slightly' less so.

"Blessings upon you my friends!" He calls out.

Every Capuchins' a Critic

The heavy thud of the fist sized nut onto his leg, knocks Rifkin backwards and he quickly squints up at the oddly angled tree-tops in annoyance. Despite, or perhaps because of the bright light burning all around them, it'd been impossible to spot the small, unmoving monkeys hidden high in the strange trees. Impossible until they started throwing coconuts.

Just moments before, the gigantic, desiccated and seemingly dead snake slid from the sloping trunk it was draped over and the seemingly dead man shuddered back to a twitchy, staccato semblance of life. Slow moving but indifferent to their own safety, they mindlessly pressed forward to attack.

His friends reacted exactly as he'd grown to expect... Arowe from a position of relative safety, balanced atop the stone well, fired arrow after arrow into the giant python. Fortu blocked the advance of the reanimated Druid, driving his thick sword through the wretched creatures chest. Liga Burr though had spotted the high positioned monkeys before the first thrown coconut had landed and was already firing back at them and the three Human guards worked together to take care of the giant constrictor.

Or tried at least.

Everyone's blows seem to be having little effect. The creatures' lack of beating hearts or vital organs mean that their slashing and piercing weapons are mostly ineffective, with arrows just poking into them like sandbags. Only dismemberment will stop them. A surprisingly difficult proposition when dealing with a giant snake!

Several more of the large, brown nuts impact into the sand near Rifkin's feet and another one bounces off his head. Thankfully there's no power behind the small monkeys' aim but it still annoying and the Bard also does what he (and his teammates) have come to expect.

Rifkin pushes further backwards into the lush greenery for cover and plays on. He knows that his inspiring music is much more helpful than anything else he could do to contribute.

The battle now seems more like a chore, with Fortu easily dismembering the unarmoured zombie and the guileless snake seemingly unable to grab any of its multiple opponents. Battles can change in an instant though, as Henshaw, too reliant on his shield, takes a powerful blow from the enormous snakes head and is sent flying, with his ribs broken and the air knocked out of him. A dozen more seconds though, and it's all over, with the zombified snake flayed to the point of immobility.

Then, despite all his teammates being open targets and the deep cover he'd given himself, two more of the oversized nuts bounce off Rifkin's shoulders.

"What's wrong with you little pricks?! Don't like music?!!"

Treasures Past and Present

After the battle is done, the campfire lit and Henshaw's stoved-in ribs tended to, Rifkin moves to help Liga Burr rummage around the magically cooled tent of the now twice killed Druid.

Despite Sir Briefadel obviously beating them here with hours to spare and murdering Zepyr and his menagerie, he seems to have taken nothing more than, perhaps a map or two... And one of the ugly, oversized, hump-backed horses. Just as before, as in the underground home of the slaughtered Three-Quarterling, the dark knight is obviously searching for something far more precious than mere gold or magical trinkets.

Rifkin hears the Human guardsman Henshaw outside, negotiating for his groups ongoing fee with Arowe, before he wanders in and offers to help parcel out the found coins and gems. The demi-elf's initially suspicious of the man's intentions, but after carefully scrutinising the tall, blond, jug-eared Human divide the treasure into seven neatly separated piles, he can't fault the man's maths or understanding of lowest common denominators. 

Henshaw is no fool and, more surprisingly... Apparently honest!

The three human soldiers all gladly accept their one-third gold shares but express no desire for any of the magical trinkets or scrolls found. Henshaw's interest is piqued though, when Rifkin empties his knapsack to repack and reveals the dead werewolf Kane's twin magical cold-iron short-swords.

"Instead of a share of the magical loot won 'ere today, can Barbella and I 'ave one of these matchin' swords each?"

No-one in the party objects and the two soldiers seem very pleased with their acquisitions.

Doberman however, happily sits, cross-legged by the fire, watching the dissected zombie parts crackle and burn, whilst simultaneously seeing how many coins he can stuff into his oversized, drooling mouth. Barbella counts them for him, after he spits them out, and the answer's apparently; sixty-one... But the brutish Doberman might have accidentally swallowed a couple.


Treasure:

Arrow:

Sling +1
Small wooden box containing 20 Lead bullets and two small leather ammo pouches.
Three small jars containing Magic stone oil.
7 Gems (Worth 50gp each)
82gp
28sp
19cp


Fortu:

Magical Ring of Climbing +5
6 Gems (Worth 50gp each)
132gp
28sp
19cp


Liga Burr:

Scroll of Animal Growth (Needs to be studied)
Scroll of Summon Nature's Ally 4 (Needs to be studied)
6 Gems (Worth 50gp each)
132gp
28sp
19cp


Rifkin:

Scroll of Summon Swarm
Scroll of Cure Moderate Wounds
3 Gems (Worth 50gp each)
68gp
15sp
10cp


Henshaw:

Cold-Iron Short sword +1 (No glow)
2 Gems (Worth 50gp each)
44gp
10sp
7cp


Barbella:

Cold-Iron Short sword +1 (No glow)
2 Gems (Worth 50gp each)
44gp
10sp
7cp


Doberman:

2 Gems (Worth 50gp each)
44gp
10sp
7cp


Items added to Rifkin's pack:

Silver Sickle +1 (Glows)
Delicate Paper Magical Wind fan

Everyone keep up to date with your magic and coinage... It 'might' be important later.

Oasis: Wonderwell

After successfully scaling the inside of the brick well, Liga Burr sneaks a quick peek over the lip of the circular stonework, his short but able fingers confidently gripping the rough edge. Gazing quickly around, despite the heat-haze, the sharp-eyed Halfling realises that the odd, leafy green canopy overhead is actually shielding them from the worst of the fiery blaze of the large, bulbous, yellow sun. Squinting up, he also spots a second, smaller, redder one over its shoulder, further contributing its extra heat.

Two suns!

This world's extreme heat though, is still a welcome change from the recent bitter iciness of frozen Kik-ri and, despite still being in the shade, his clothes are already half dry. 

Under the lush trees and bushes all around them, a soft, ochre coloured sand surrounds, not just the well, but the ground beyond. The strange, spindly trees vary in height but several of them reach perhaps thirty feet at their angled zenith. It also looks like bunches of weird, giant nuts are hanging from near the top, just under the sail-like fronds.

The air is sweet and fragrant with the scent of exotic fruits and flowers, but also... with an underlying acrid smell of cold iron, blood and death.

A few yards away from the well, lies a darkly bearded man, face down in the sand. He's dressed in blood stained, loosely wrapped, but expensive looking silks, a head scarf and strange curly toed boots. A wickedly curved knife has fallen inches from his swarthy, outstretched hand. Watching his chest for any sign of breath, it soon becomes apparent that the man is quite dead.

There's also a monstrously large snake hanging limp and lifeless from a sloping trunk, about twenty feet above and ahead. Its forked tongue lolling out of its gaping maw, its grey, glassy eyes, unblinking and its scaly skin pierced by a dozen, very precise looking sword thrusts. The creature's dried blood has dripped down and stained the sand, further darkening its shadow, directly below it.

Despite being tricked by Sir Briefadel twice now, Liga Burr is still confident that the body is... was… Zephyr, the 'Circle of the Scale' Druid - Guardian of this Desert world. Bad luck for him but proof positive, that they're at least on the right track this time!

After sensing nothing moving nearby, Liga Burr strains his much-scarred but sensitive ears for the sound of anything or anyone moving around in the undergrowth. Weirdly though, he hears nothing. No creeping footsteps behind the bushes, no animal noises. Nothing at all. Not even the drone of buzzing insects.

Beside him, helped by Arowe, Rifkin and Fortu, pushing his keen nose above the well lip, his faithful hound; Mir Hundur sniffs at the air and growls suspiciously...