Afternoon, Kelehess 4th
(6 total days survived)
Portia Explores
Eight glorious hours of not being hounded, hunted or in immediate fear of their lives, the scions woke rested and ready in down beds with relative privacy, warm despite the inch of snow outside.
The boggart woke up a little earlier than the rest, after a night of bad dreams surrounding a wide, open plain, a tower, flashing teeth and blood. The precious was in her hands, throbbing as if it'd gained an actual pulse. She sneaked downstairs, the gem covered, drawn to the weeping stone. As The Heart of the Wild fought to escape her bag and touch the statue face, Portia gave a thought to the implications, cooed to it softly and opened the bag. Precious leaped onto the stone, shining like an emerald sun (which shone through the floorboards and into the second floor) whereupon the man-sized face stopped weeping to deliver a message to the boggart and Petunia, who happened to be cleaning glasses behind the bar.
The rest of the group save Frederick managed to make it down before it spoke its peace.
Distress Call
The stone called for aid to any who could open the door into their world. An unspecified kingdom was under siege on the Savanna, waylayed by the demon Al'kek'uma and his minions. Their king had been captured and their region was quickly dying. This message was a last ditch effort before their people died in slavery and their civilization with them.
Then the stone's mouth yawned wide open, wide enough for a man or half-giant to fit through, an emerald portal shining between its jaws. It began to weep again, half the common room flooded by this point, all the pots overflowed.
Uncle Bart
Petunia screamed for her father then. Higiliac did come eventually, albeit slowly cause of his blindness. Someone else got there first, a young man with reddish hair who could see quite perfectly with amber eyes. He shared surprised looks between the portal, Petunia, and the wildly diverse group assembled before him.
While things might have gotten out of hand very quickly, the group expressed their intentions very plainly and nonthreateningly. As it was, he didn't freak, but instead had a seat and thought a moment. He seemed fairly trusting of everyone, considering he was a Nors. Higliac came in then, where upon Petunia was forced to explain the situation. Higliac was furious, but Bart remained calm, eventually revealing he could relate to their difficulties. He pulled off his hat and wiggled his ears and revealed himself to be a half-elf.
Breakfast
Bart led the others into the a dining room, motioning them to sit and set their places whilst he went into the kitchen. He returned with eggs, bacon and potatoes. The group dug in, except for Giers, who took one look at the poached eggs and nearly spewed. He excused himself, went back into the common room and lingered by the bar, soon followed by Kaylan.
The rest ate and conversed, topics ranging from cultists and circus-folk to drow and Inquisitors. Higliac rued their lack of normal gossip and tried to start up talk about the weather, but prospects the other guests might wake up and see the group prompted he and Petunia to take counter measures.
The Chat
Kaylan sat with Giers for the duration of the meal, first talking of Isabella and that budding relationship, then moving onto the topics of monogamy and polygamy. Eventually conversations evolved (or degenerated) into sexual advances and what ifs. Not wanting to hurt Isabella, Kaylan ultimately spurned Giers, but in the friendiest way possible. The two parted with a better understanding of each other and an increased respect for the other.
The Scent of Magic
Bart gave Isabella and Frederick something of an ultimatum, though perhaps one degree less harsh, mentioning how they owed Higliac and Petunia a solution to the crying stone... either entering and solving the source of its woe, or disposing of the thing, since it was they who activated it. The majority of the group felt the same in any case and with that Hulda rose and left, interupting her brother mid-shoomze and throwing him over her shoulder.
The scions gathered their gear and plunged through the mouth, the stone making terrible slurping and devouring noises as each person passed. Then came a wild ride through known reality, firing through the Void, passed stars, around planets and moons. Then a green planet came into view, with a cancerous tan spot on its face, a spot the group crash landed. And then black, and light, and the sounds of choking.
The Savanna
A stone face identical to the one at the inn vomited everyone onto an open savanna. Yet this plain was dying, all the life and color sapped from its grasses, its trees curled and dead, its dirt turned to dust, its watering holes to blood, and all of it dominated by a terrible jaundice light coming from a distant tower.
The heat was almost unbearable, sweltering under the light, and the air was heavy with decay and thick with mosquitoes and flies. A dry, dead thicket laid ahead, as did a boneyard, and a narrow corridor of open field, between the group and the tower, which was the obvious source of power in this region. Even the sky looked off, strange with its orange-sick clouds mixed with gray, teasing rain perhaps but not having delivered it in some time.
Kaylan remarked it was as if The Weeping Stone's tears in their world drained the plains in this one. Hulda shuddered in her sweats, a jotun-blooded girl in a land entirely opposite of hers. The entire group felt like they were slow cooking, basted in sweat.
Portia found the precious had grown two sizes, later deducing they were actually in the fabled Wild, the realm wilder than nature, torn into reality with the fall of Lordanna.
The Boneyard
Isabella drifted for the boneyard, feeling right at home amidst the monumental skeletons, dry and dust-covered and smelling of old death. Some were of mammoths, or great apes or lizards, others smaller of lions and canines. A majority were humanoid, small like children or tall and mixed with the bones of dogs. The bones cast long shadows and afforded many places to hide, but the group remained unperturbed as they moved ever-closer to the tower.
Their path took them into a shadowy basin, where the evil light did not touch. The scions took what shade they could, but found they weren't the only ones. Laughing kicked up like dust, maniacle, half-animal. Then voices, feral and gravelly, taunting and teasing the scions as they drew weapons. Frederick was able to discern their numbers and relative locations, stealing himself for what might become an ambush.
Saku Koivu, Keeper of the Bones
A seven-and-a-half foot figure crested the edge of the basin, looking lean and bone-adorned. Though back lit by the tower light, the scions recognized he possessed the head of a hyena, backward knees, a tail and wicked claws. He brandished a sabertooth fang carved with serrated edges.
He named himself Saku Koivu, Keeper of the Bones, when a few of the scions introduced themselves. Though the moment was tense, it looked as if there might have been an opportunity for diplomacy to shine. However the gnolls laughed at much of what the group said, especially when they spoke highly of Kalinda, and praised Krysarok before attacking outright.
Portia was a murderous storm against the lesser gnolls, killing one with a blow to the head and the other with her bag. Still the archers harried Giers and Kaylan, eventually focusing all their malice on the paladin alone for the way he insulted and infuriated Saku.
The battle, though rather easy, wasn't an entire waste, for the group learned that the light shining from the tower top was called the New Sun, a source of worship for the gnolls. They also learned the tower was called The Mangletooth and that it was the lair of the demon Al'kek'uma. Saku Koivu himself was leader of the "shamed" gnolls, though no explanation of how or why they were shamed was given. Seeking to restore his power was apparently one of the reasons he decided to attack in the first place.
When one of the gnoll archers was struck in the face by Hulda's throwing hammer, he called for a retreat to warn the village. This angered Saku, but the packleader ultimately complied as he was the first to flee the basin. The others followed suit, the scions eventually resolved to let them go while they tended some immediate wounds.
Mud Village
On the way to the tower, the group spotted a small village of mud huts, bone and heath. The group noticed there were more gnolls there, leading columns of chained children back and forth between the tower, the dying grassland and the village. Some children carried sacks, or rocks, and sometimes their own dead. Gnoll overseers cracked whips and barked orders.
Saku and the fled gnolls ran in that direction with unrelenting speed, only spurring the scions to avoid the place entirely. Isabella recklessly moved off ahead, though vultures continued circling her from above, their shadows passing like ghosts around her. Maybe they knew something she didn't...
The Garden
The sticks which surrounded the tower from a distance were in actuality pikes, each with a piece of something rotten and buzzard-picked hanging on them. The bodies looked like children, though heat and rot and insects had made their features impossible to discern, and grotesque to examine. The smell was fierce and the flies buzzed crazily in a haze over this bestial garden.
The Mangletooth
At last they had reached the crooked tower twisting over a hundred feet into the menacing sky. The bottom structure was a combination of mud, clay-brick, dung spackle and bones, though the further up the tower went the thinner these surface elements became. Around eighty feet they fell away completely, exposing naked, rusty metal and finishing The Mangletooth with an iron point lit by the New Sun.
A gateless entrance gaped, wide and leading below the tower. It was dim and smelled awful, of a den and of death. The entryway was lined with tiny skulls and its path was riddled with canine prints, blood and signs of struggle.
Hyena Den
Isabella forged ahead, livid as the rest of the group for the atrocities they'd seen in the garden of pikes. However their fervor was quickly matched by a pack of guardian hyenas, keeping a den just inside of the entrance. They attacked with mad fury, ripping into Hulda and Portia, and to a lesser extent the others, until eventually the scions proved victorious, albeit injured.
The group decided to take a moment's rest to catch their breaths and tend their wounds, shifting through bones, shit and carcasses for a tolerable place to sit.
Blight
Peeking into the first floor chamber, the great height of the tower soared upward over a hundred feet. Each level was a ring around the tower's interior, like a snake's ribs going up to its mouth. It was a wonder no tower dweller heard the fighting, but there was a constant, masking drone of energy, a steady hum that came from above. The noise led gazes to the tower top and revealed the New Sun was a great mace sized for a giant, black as Isabella's fulgin, and emanating a painful jaundice shine that sickened with direct exposure.
Giers and Isabella recognized the weapon as none other than Blight, the signature mace of the demonlord Falst. Witherer, decayer, Falst's legacy was now being worshiped by gnolls and killing the Savanna of The Wild. Recalling what a few of Falst's quills did to Tasha Thorleif twenty years ago, the scions could only guess what evil might manifest with the actual weapon under another demon's control.
Experience: 318 each (2568 total)
Magic: None
Loot: 2 spears, 2 bone armors (hide armors), 2 light shields
Money: None
NPCs:
Bart, Higliac's half-elf brother
Saku Koivu, Keeper of the Bones (packleader of shamed gnolls)
Al'kek'uma, demon leader of the gnolls (only heard of)
Monsters: Gnoll Packleader, Gnoll Packrunners, Gnoll Huntmasters, Hyenas
Places: The Wild: The Savanna, The Boneyard, The Mangletooth (tower)
Gnolls: Tall, mangy, twisted creatures, Gnolls are crosses between Bedouin men of the southern deserts and hyenas of the dry plains. Gnolls are incredibly strong, and more so quick, capable of speedily covering great distances, making them excellent scouts, ambushers and couriers. They favor pack tactics and work best when surrounding an enemy. They've no shortage of savagery and cruelty, finding smaller races fun to toy with and torture, and whatever kind of morality a patron god or ethos might have instilled in other races is entirely lacking in them. They do follow some sort of hyena-like structure, packs with alphas and high-ranking female mothers. They tend for leather, hide and cloth, things that allow for maximum mobility, and weapons to attack on the go like spears, bows and hatchets. However, Gnolls will take whatever stolen, found or given and turn it into something fierce.
All these traits were the reason why they were created back during The Sylvan War. When the enemies of High King Gloriandel felt the war begin to slip away from them, they turned to a dark Archdruid named Chantico to aid in the creation of new troops. Beast Races they would be known as, numbering Yuan'ti, Minotaurs and Gnolls. Yet Gnolls, made by a combination of Arcane and Primal power, lacked souls. This made them easily corruptible. The elven renegade King Kelketch was able to command them with his epic charisma, but when he fell and the Beast Races scattered, their proverbial leashes were dropped. Leaderless, godless, dark entities quickly found them and bent them into tribute.
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