(21 days total; 23 days until the New Moon)
The Fourth Day
After three days of preparation, the fateful time of attack had come. It was a gloomy morning, gray and drizzling, and morale wasn't much brighter. Light or no breakfasts were had as even the satyrs stayed quiet. Thoughts of what lay ahead began to bear down, the heart of Al'kek'uma's power, the last stubborn claw dug into the Savanna, manned by a reportedly superior force.
Arrival of the Moles
Then the great moles of Tahmuras came, ten in all, each of them some thirty feet long and erupting small hills of dirt. Their claws were like plows and their teeth shovels. Portia and Hopper treated with them (much to Pongwa's jealousy) and the war council laid its simple, perhaps reckless, plan out. Sap the tower, unbeknown to the demon's forces, while the Vergers provide the distraction.
Morale
The mood was somber as friends, family and lovers wished each other well and took the heads of their regiments. Sixty to each of them, a mix of four fey races, beside five other regiments consisting of the other Verger leaders. Newly present among the leaders was Arkith, Beastlord Hound and master of the Cu Sidhe, looking like Bannoch but all grown up and just about the size of a rhino!
The Vergers lined up and ready by mid-morning, the march began with a daring step from the king of the Wadi Hafa. However it was obvious the effects of the weather and the weight of the task at hand were dragging the troops feat. The scions attempted to boost morale all the miles-long march, but only Hulda was able to transfer her feelings, power and will into the ones that followed her, almost as if this sort of thing were in her blood. Portia tried her own hand at inspiring the troops, calling on a rhreen named Blaster as a perch, but a hard fall in the mud soiled her credibility.
Koorla
The army sloshed through wet plains and hardening rain until something was spotted in the distance, a great smoldering heap that once was the village of Koorla. The Vergers stole themselves, fighting the thought that all Savanna civilization could be reduced to black charr and their peoples wiped out or made low. The gnomes knew well the cruelty of demons, and rhreen the hurts of generational slavery as well.
In the distant haze of rain and river fog, the tower loomed but a mile away, with a darkness like the antithesis of light flickering from its pinnacle...
Twisttongue Tower
It was a good bet the enemy knew of their approach, but that was the point, and the Vergers marched through killing fields, mud churned with guts and gore, and through a heavy sheet of rain to the beacon of woe...
As if a curtain lifts, the heads of the column pierce a particularly fierce veil of rain and there it is... Twisttongue Tower no more than a thousand feet away in all its gruesome glory. Its a six hundred foot tower of twisted metal, welded by demon fires and flesh. Its base is almost entirely raw iron, blood stained and riddled with razors and spikes, but the further it climbs, the more it takes on the appearance of a giant limb, for hundreds, maybe thousands, of flayed skins of varying sizes wrap its higher reaches. Something like lips, a thick ledge of bodies, crowns the structure and from it erupts a spiraling, writhing pinkish mass like the tongue of a titan. At its tip is embedded a platform whereupon the black light shines.
Two great, circling barricades ring the elevated base, trenches dug from the river to provide moats, all of it filled with razor wire and sharpened bones.
And worst of all, an army of thousands stands the ready, positioned on the banks between moats. Mostly gnolls, large contingents of lions also lurk, as well as spots of unidentifiable abominations of mangled parts and flickering elements... demons. There is also a great and putrid smell seeping from the four holes in the hill that is the tower base, where hundreds of undead steadily creep.
Hundreds of black buzzards like a low-hanging storm cloud wheel their way around the tower heights, waiting to feed.
The Battle
Swallowing their fear, the Vergers stole themselves and charged! Their first obstacle was a nasty, sunken barricade meant to tangle, cut and drown. Scores of vergers were hung up on this grizzly wall, reinforced with corpses, of which their own soon supplemented. However, when enough bodies shielded the razor wires and bone shards and made stepping stones to the far bank, the army continued.
The wall had done its job, though, slowing the charge enough for the tower artillery to position itself. Then rained arrows, bolts, ballistic spears and even shrapnel-exploding devices. The vergers were trounced a second time, though many shields took the edge off, and grit kept them moving forward.
A wall of gnolls met the charge, fey crashing into monster in a cascading rumble. Both sides dug in their heels, pushing either way, the gnolls stabbing all the while with their simple weapons and shields, but superior skill and arms, coupled with some miraculous rallying and flanking tactics on part of the regiments, broke the lines and consumed the monstrous first legion.
Yet no sooner had the gnolls been dispatched savanna lions, corrupted from the noble kings of yore, enacted their own pincer flank. The vergers scrambled into ranks, meeting the ferocious pounce of prides. Heavy losses were had against these beasts, led by their demon-twisted beastlords, but Portia and her regiment laid in wait under the corpse debris, waiting as the lions circled back for those vergers unable to shake the harrying lions. As they came back around, Portia's unit pounced, allowing the last of the vergers to move on ahead, but in doing so getting trapped by the vengeful prides themselves. Portia's friends and their troops came to her aid, together smashing the lions out of existence.
They moved on to the second barricade at the base of the tower's hill, clearing it much quicker than the first, though not without losses. And losses there were, a dwindling of vergers that continue until Kaylan was on her own, her regiment decimated, a lone light in the sea of darkness. Still she persisted against all odds, expending boons and banes in the name of Kalinda.
Half-way up the hill, tremors and noticable sinkholes began to appear around the base. The moles were doing their part with furious efficiency, but were drawing far too much attention to themselves. If the tower knew of the plot too soon, they might take preventive measures and ruin the whole operation. Hulda called on the power of the twins to summon an arctic breeze from her homeland, crying out with the ring of the mountain storms, whilst Jeda expunged her own, more fiery roar, allowing the demon to take over as she surged with her troop up the gut-mud slippery slopes. The clamor was more than enough to pull the tower eyes and enemy troops on top of the verger threat.
However a second legion of gnolls, hyenas and scattered demon leadership bore down on them. The fight culled most of Portia's troops, leaving her with an elite team that managed to infiltrate beyond the initial vanguard and slay the demon strategists. The others followed, also taking more losses. Jeda continued to lead the way, to victory or ruin, more and more of her forces falling off as more and more enemies sprung. Yet the tiefling finally reached the doors of the tower itself, turning her back to them to defend against a breath-stealing horde of enemies quickly surrounding and closing around the comparatively meager verger army.
Eventually the remainder of the army stood huddled at the doors, a cresent formation defending against wave after wave of gnolls and undead, the occasional canine demon taskmaster lashing them on or attacking with particular ferocity.
Shadow of the Black Heart
And then the tower began to crumble. The spent fey army looked up with tears of hope as the great monolith swayed and a million cracks like so much lightning ran up the tower to meet their heavenly counterparts flashing wildly in the stormy sky. A great wail was heard from the tower top, a demon's voice like the end of all things, and the black antilight flaired.
The power of the Black Heart turned verger tears into those of despair as it created a shadow copy of the tower, one that reinforced and supported the buckling material structure. The moles erupted near the Vergers, their jobs done in as far as they could complete them, and began defending alongside the last hope of the Savanna. Lady Goldhorn and King Pongwa lamented, as General Rho, Arkith, Frederick and Dokur fought furiously to hold back the crushing evil with their sorry numbers. Nearly half the army was dead, now...
Eyes turned to Portia, Hopper in her hands, to counteract its ebon twin, but when the boggart held the gem frog up high all it could do was croak timidly. The transformed fey gem had failed them.
Newt Gibbings and Catastrophizers
There was but one option left: enter the tower and disarm the Black Heart. Then the abyssal antenna would be allowed to fall, hopefully wreaking untold havok on the The Lord of Twisttongue and his forces. The Vergers agreed the Liberators should go, miracle workers in a pinch, while they did they best to hold the lines. It wouldn't be more than a few minutes, at best...
Portia tucked Hopper away and began to unravel the complicated mechanical lock attached to the forty foot doors of the tower, whilst the others defended her from all sorts of attack. It was desperate maintaining even a foot as the vergers constricted into even tighter formation, but they allowed the swift boggart time enough to pop the lock.
Though wanting the entire army to follow her, the rest of the group quickly ushered Portia inside while the vergers remained defending their passage. The Liberators nearly fell into a huge, deep pit of collapsed flooring and foundations. Backs to the perimeter wall, they slowly edged their way toward the spiraling ramp up toward the Black Heart.
Mech Warriors
But the pit wasn't empty. Two great machine men, giants of metal shielding with huge, revolving cannons with long missile ribbons for hands, fought their way through the uneven mess below. These mechanical warriors were not automated, though, rather massive suits driven by pale, twisted, hideous dwarves with straggily black beards and glimmering eyes. They aimed their arms for the passing group and fired, spraying the group with a torrent of bullets. Had the firing arms of the mechs not been at such a distance and so sharp an angle, the group might have been slain outright.
Twisttongue's Throat
As it was, the Liberators endured, making it to the ramp and completely out of the mechs' sights. Yet they were exhausted, with a six hundred foot climb still ahead of them, the noises of machinery, gnolls and worse thundering the whole way up. Emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted, the weight of the vergers' fate and the Savanna's freedom on their shoulders, evil pressed on all sides, the future looked bleak...
Experience: 1000xp each (6588 thus far)
Money: None
Magic: None
Loot: None
NPCs:
Arkith, Beastlord Hound and leader of the Cu Sidhe
Blaster, rhreen soldier and Portia's perch
No comments:
Post a Comment