Day 32-33 - Deaths Final Embrace. (Continued)
Journal Entry of Tyson Harcord.
Day of Penance, Mycius 13th-14th - Year 867;
They left his lifeless body in the hall while the Leader berated the Paladins for their poor performance, the paladins had been instructed to take their downed companion to be shipped off to retraining, and then to come back and retrieve Mik's body. The Jailhouse guard followed the Paladins out, possibly trying to figure out what the hell he was going to tell his boss about the dead inmate.
Leyla pointed out that she could see that Mik had a key in his hand, possibly swiped during the brawl, maybe in a final attempt to protect his team by securing their freedom. If he was anything he was loyal, even to the very end. Altus used his weird device, obviously of Gnomish make, to pop open the cell door, fortunately not breaking the door or the lock during the attempt, and we moved out into the hallway to collected the key. We stood there debating what to do next: We could either make a break for it unarmed against an unknown number of guards, or we could have our rogues attempt to infiltrate the rest of the Jail/Court house a possibly find out gear and return it to us, or come up with some other solution.
We got back into the cell and waited for the Paladin troup to come back and retrieve Mik's body, even waiting a deal of time after that. By the time we decided to make our move the Jailhouse guard had returned and was focusing on filling out a report. Zahara quietly slipped out of the cell and snuck her way right up to the guard. Stealthily she struck, hitting the guard in the head knocking him unconscious. She Quickly lowered his head down to the desk while deftly searching his body. She found a set of keys, a billy club wrapped in leather (a little bit large, but she could hold it in two hands), a flask of ale, and some spare change. Going through the desk she found a further four clubs, which she immediately disbursed to the other two rogues, some paper, ink and inkpen which she took.
After placing the flask on the desk, open with a little of the brew spilled on the table for effect, and positioning the guard as if he had passed out drunk. Zahara and Aura stepped out into the hallway and with a glance back at us, changed themselve to look like guards. Owla stayed back with us and guarded the door into the Jailhouse hallway, ready to deal with any stray guards. Resolving to be as inconspicuous as possible, we went about opening the cells of our other compatriots and gathered in the primary cell.
Time passed, we all waited straining our ears to hear any sounds of fighting or alarm, but thankfully none ever came. Eventually Owla whispered that there were two guards approaching, quickly she scurried back over to the cell and got inside, shutting the door behind her. The guards walked into the Jailhouse hallway, and shifted into the forms of two halflings.
Joining us in the Cell, the Rogueling twins described to us the events that transpired since leaving. They had scouted out, finding the janitors office, a stairway leading up to the barracks and mess hall, a short hallway leading to the courtroom, and a corridor leading to the morgue, evidence room, and barracks supply rooms. On the way they had encountered several guards, but none of them had noticed that the Roguelings weren't the guards they posed to be. In fact, their disguises were so well done that as soon as Aura had walked into the Storeroom she was mistaken to be the guard that was to relieve the two who had loaded up a cart that was designated to accompany some of us to the Deadlands.
They told us about going into the evidence storehouse and stumbling upon none other than a member of the mysterious mage's party, the Tinker Gnome - Arredondo. He was attempting to pick the lock on an evidence chest that had their supplies in it; but was failing horribly, because as he said himself "Dammit, I'm a Bard, not a rogue!" Soon after approaching the gnome, however, he was able to see through Aura and Zahara's illusory disguises and made a bargain with them. He wouldn't alert the guards and get them caught, if they would just open the chest and let him retrieve the item he had been paid to get.
Inevitably, backed into the corner as they were, they accepted his proposal. After taking what he was after he used a magic device he had to turn himself into a gaseous cloud and fly away out of a vent in the wall. Upon inspection the roguelings had found that the Gnome had taken Leyla's bag of holding, containing the Ebony Skull. With little time left the roguelings formulated a plan that involved altering the court records that were attached to the front of their evidence chest; modifying them with false names, changing the charges to "Prostitution", and then changing the penalties to "A term of servitude, fighting in the Dead Lands, not to exceed 6 months, or death, whichever came first". They then quickly swapped out the supply chests from the cart that was going to the dead lands with the chest with our gear in it and an empty chest (which they loaded up with Mik's body). After adding the cages containing the party's various pet, companions, and familiars into the cart they covered them with sacks of supplies and made their way back to the Jailhouse.
After all was said and done they had returned to the cell without incident. We locked up and waiting. Morning came finding most of us unrested, worried that our desperate plans would work. A new guard came to relieve the Jailer, but had found him "passed out drunk" at his desk. The Jailer was pulled out into the hallway where we could barely make out hearing the relieving officer yelling at him. Later, we were gathered up and transported outside, passing two more guards who were getting fired for leaving their post in the storeroom during the night. They chained us up in the back of a cart and drove us to the dry docks where we were forced to board a Zeppelin Air Ship, from the way it looked it belonged to mercenaries, and was not a City vessel.
There were other prisoners being transported to Sworn, a dark skinned Human beggar (from the look of him) and a Dwarf.
After securing all of the prisoners, the guard troops, and supplies on the ship we felt ourselves cast off. It was an odd sensation, one not unlike swinging from a tree branch on a rope as a child. This time, instead of just hanging on a rope, it was the entire ship that was swinging... from a floating balloon.
We had been flying for several hours when Roth pulled something out of his pants that none of us knew he had, in fact, at first I thought he had just scratched his butt and was attempting to examine something he had found. But, it was in fact something that he had somehow managed to hide from our jailors; a large coin with what appeared to be an anchor on it. He just smiled at us, didn't say anything and placed the coin gently down on the floor. As soon as he placed the coin down the strangest thing happened. The entire ship stopped very abruptly, almost as if some giant creature had reached up and grabbed it. The resulting chaos due to the stop was more disconcerting, because everyone found themselves thrown forward. a few of us managed to not get hurt by colliding with the walls and each other, but most were bruised. I couldn't tell if anyone had been significantly injured, but I could hear screaming in the distance though even that seemed to fade away.
Roth picked up his coin and then proceeded to break down the cell door, where we found that the people in the other cells had already done the same. the two sailors who had been in the Cell block were out cold, having been thrown a good 10 feet head first into a wall. We quickly searched our level of the ship and found the storage area that contained all of our equipment. Quickly suiting up we spread out to secure the ship, but found quite the harrowing site. All but 10 of the 40 crew members of the Airship were gone, presumably thrown from the deck of the ship, including the pilot and captain.
This put us in quite the odd position. we were about 16k feet up, on the outskirts of the sea of reeds (a dangerous place to crash land) and none of us knew how to pilot the Gnomish craft. That didn't stop the party though, they immediately all started turning knobs, pressing buttons, and pulling levers. Now i'm not fluent in Gnomish, but I could swear one of the buttons was clearly labeled as "Emergency Balloon Release", thankfully none of the team members pressed that button. Eventually it appeared that Altus had gotten a basic enough understanding of what the controls did and he was able to gradually land the Airship at the edge of the Sea of Reeds, just a short 200 foot run from the Airship.
We all agreed that it would be best to get off the ship and out of the reeds before the inevitable happened and we prepared for what we knew was strewn all about in the sea of tall grass. The undead had long ago claimed this area as their own and no attempts to eradicate them had succeeded to this day. As we were getting ready to run, I saw that Roth had gathered the remaining ten crewmen and bullied them into forming a meat shield around himself. I was dwelling on that when the signal to run happened, we all jumped from the perfectly good Airship into the Sea of Reeds, and ran for our lives. Almost immediately I heard screaming, the crewmen, I could see undead stirring all around us. I put my heels to the dirt and ran like death was at my feet (because it was!).
We all emerged from the tall grass more or less at once, and by all I mean all but the crewmen. It appears that all of them were taken by the undead in the grass. We gathered and continued moving, trying to place as much distance between us and the undead as possible, though it appears that they did not leave the grass for some reason. After hours of walking through an eclectic landscape, sometimes consisting of forested trees, sometimes of short grassed meadows, and sometime barren scarred desiccated landscape.
Eventually we stopped in a copse of trees and made camp. We built a fire, laid out our sleeping mats and set up a watch schedule. with the day winding down, and things finally appearing like they would be much, much better.
I awoke with a start to find a stranger in our camp, an old lady warming herself by our fire. The rest of the party was already awake, speaking with the lady. She was pretty short with her answers but the questioning of the party revealed that she was in fact the lesser deity known as Fate. She appears to be one of the few godly beings that escaped the destruction of the great war. She explained that she was here to help us, as she had a vested interest in our fates. Though she neglected to tells us why she had that interest.What she was offering was a trade, give her something, and she will give us something. the catch was we could just agree to the trade or not, she would then determine the terms of the trade. With that the only member of the party who seemed reluctant was the Lost Ranger, but he in the end choose to accept also.
The first to go was Roth, he stepped forward accepting her offer. She reached up to his chest and touched him lightly saying "From you I will take your mind, but I give you Ferocity!". Before our eyes we watched as Roth grew bigger, muscles rippling from his body, his body sprouted hair everywhere, his fingers lengthened - claws sprouting from the ends. His teeth lengthened becoming points, growing to a point where he couldn't quite close his mouth without some of them jutting out from between his lips like tusks. We watched all this, but when he looked at me I could see the faint glimmer of intelligence that had barely had a grip on the creature fade, his eyes darkening until they were just the blank black disks of an animal.
Next the newcomer Toh Yah stepped forward, and she went to him. She took from him his will, but gave him his heritage. He sprouted scales, his skin color deepening with a red tint. His muscles lengthened taunt, ready to snap at a moments notice.
The Paladin Gwenyth went next, sensing no evil from Fate she took her gift. Fate glorified the Paladin, and gifted her with the glimmer of divinity. She grew white Angelic wings, her skin now glowing slightly. But, Fate cursed her, taking from her memory of things new and old. She would forever live as if every day were her first and her last.
The other Dwarf stepped up, offering to accept her gift. "Like a leaf on the wind you will flow through the forest, like the vermin of the field you will devour your enemies" She said as she placed her hand upon his head "Though your mind cannot handle this gift, so I shall take your sanity" As she said this we watched as the dwarf turned into sand, then fell apart to the ground, only to turn to leaves and flutter around, then into locust, which crawled up each other until it had formed a roughly dwarf sized heap, which then became the Dwarf again.
The rogueling Zahara went next "From you I take your Father!" she said as she took a vial of ashes from the rogueling. I could see the rogueling twist with shock, reaching for the vial, the renunciation of her agreement on her lips. But there was no stopping Fate. She opened that vial and wove her fingers above it and said "But I give you your blood!" with that she dumped the vial over Zahara's head, but rather than creating a giant mess of ashes, blood poured forth from the vial and soaked into Zahara's skin. Soon there was no trace of the blood left as her skin had drunk every drop. I could see her skin shimmer as if something deep inside her had changed.
The rogue-scout Owla went next. Fate said there was a sickness in her blood, but that sickness would become her strength. Owla paled slightly as fate's magic took effect, and her features sharpened, becoming more avian in appearance.
Leyla stepped forward reluctantly. "There is great power in you" said fate, "but great sorrow also. I will help you harness that power but when this is all done and over you will die." Leyla, looked down. if she changed at all she did not give tell.
Aura seeing what had happened to Zahara was reluctant to accept. Maybe it was because she had never really known her father, or maybe because he was already gone, but she did eventually accept Fates bargain, only... Fate did not take her father, she took her mother. Tears streamed down Aura's face as she realized what she had done, and she too changed inside, body shimmering ever so slightly.
Altus held back, on the verge of telling Fate to leave and never return. As he was turning away he gazed off into the distance, squinting, almost like he saw something off on the horizon. He stopped, slowly pivoting, as if something tugged at him, a doubt perhaps. "I will take your deal crone, but do not cross me..." he said as he looked down. She stepped up to him and ran a finger down his cheek as she took his bow from his shoulder, "Shhhh... You may have your sister back, but she will never known peace again." Her words were just beginning to register with Altus as she handed him his bow back, it was glowing slightly as if recently enchanted, and a faint crying could be heard coming from it. "Pray she forgives you child"
And then she was no longer there, vanished, or never there, the only things that remained were her gifts and curses both....
No comments:
Post a Comment