Umber

Haissha celebrates with Sir Geoffrey on the salvation of Blasingdell, but expresses a certain relief at the imminent departure of the adventurers.

Dearest Geoffrey,

By the grace of Pelor and Fharlanghn, I send to you now the words that yesterday I despaired of ever being able to write: it is finished, and we are well. Trapped inside the town walls for the entire conflict, I would know little of what occurred had Psydney and Hadrack not sat up with me until dawn came again, recounting what they saw and heard.

The losses among our infantry and especially among our allies were staggering, but by quite literal miracles we suffered no casualties among the townspeople. And although I would not breathe a word of this in Berrick’s hearing, you and I both know that dying to protect the villagers was their duty, and while sorrowed by their deaths I am proud to say that they discharged that duty with honor and dignity. Although Scald’s men, who suffered the greatest total casualties of the battle, were at one point shaken and fled toward the forest, they bravely responded to the unicorn’s rallying cry and regrouped to fight on.

I don’t need to tell you about the unnatural eclipse – no doubt you saw that for yourself. I hoped that would be sufficient to lure our wayward adventurers back to Blasingdell, but it was some hours before Enai and Psydney returned in the company of a ghaele, tired but relieved at having disabled the Doomgrinder before it plowed through any towns and muttering something about “fools and their mithril.” The rest of the party was not far behind, and they were indeed chattering excitedly about how to dismantle the mithril drive shaft of the now-defunct doomsday machine.

Barely had Magnus and Kuhlefaran gathered their troops for training, Bane and Psydney gone to rest and recover their nearly spent powers, and Serge and Enai to return to scouting, when Hadrack came running through the gates like the man with the Abyss at his heels that he was, shouting that the battle was upon us.

Players

I have never seen the like of the forces arrayed against us, Geoffrey, and Pelor willing I never will again. A swamp yawned before the gates, and although the more experienced of us could determine that it was a phantasm, the rank-and-file had no hope of disbelieving its existence. When battle was joined, we were going to have to go around it. What was not an illusion was the hillock of earth slowly creeping up to the level of the wall near the inn. Our efforts to dismiss the magic driving it failed, so Scald hurriedly deployed his infantry to defend the rising breach.

You would no doubt be interested in an exhaustive description of troop movements, but I fear I lack the time to indulge you, as such an accounting could take hours. Suffice to say that besides the frontal approach, we were constantly under threat from troops emerging from another of those infernal magic screens, set up just beyond the river by the graveyard. Whoever wanted to teach us a lesson intended to make it a hard one, as we were besieged by hundreds of orcs and goblins mounted on warboars and wargs, another half dozen warrior stone giants, and an entire unit of hill giants.

But even as enemies kept materializing seemingly from nowhere, so did allies. Whether you and I agree with their choices and methods, whether we personally like them or not, these adventurers have made many friends in their wanderings. And they all came, from the mountains and the forests, from the fens of the north, even from the Underdark and places still more wild and strange.

The first wave of orcs and goblins, poised to decimate Scald’s infantry, found themselves under a hail of bolts shot from halfings mounted on the local centaurs, and harried by the mercenary lancers. The hill giants, no doubt expecting easy carnage, met instead with Thiff’s powerful band of girallons. Bane, with a single spell, dispatched the goblin catapults hurling projectiles of horror and disease from behind the apparent safety of the magic screen. Magnus, Purcell, Psydney and Serge ran, flew and teleported out to meet the stone giants before they could wreak havoc among our archers as they did before. The dwarves emerged from their mountain halls to join the battle, and the reclusive T’lar sent a unit of elven archers to assist where they could.

Even the flighty pixies, the Champions of Mirth as they called themselves, put in a brief appearance at the conflict, delightedly playing the enemy’s own tricks. A gang of mounted orcs bearing lit torches emerged from behind the screen; charging across the bridge at the town’s all-too-flammable buildings, they had time for no more than an instant’s perplexity when their warboars’ hooves met nothing but air, then plunged into the water, where King Yiss and his lizardmen awaited with javelins and spears: the pixies had created an illusion of a bridge several feet to the right of where it actually spanned the river. The psionic sovereign was a force in his own right, felling half a dozen hill giants whenever he focused his attention in their direction.

Breaches

Watchful as we tried to be within our walls, our vigilance failed us several times. I was horrified as noxious clouds and fireballs struck at Scald’s troops again and again, and Hadrack and Kuhlefaran’s archers were mesmerized by rainbow lights dancing across their fields of vision; my own efforts to move my infantry into a supporting position were thwarted by an unnatural sleet pelting only that portion of the walls where my men were trying to ascend. We finally spotted the source of at least some of the spells, inside of the inn.

I dashed into the building, stopping for a word with the innkeepers, who swore that the only person in that location was Bane’s teenage protégé, Alban. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that the boy had been corrupted. It was possible that he was coerced, but even that seemed improbable; the Eight themselves couldn’t have advanced his skills that quickly. No, it was far more likely that someone else had managed to conceal himself upstairs.

Hoping to draw the attention of whoever it might be away from the troops outside, I shouted up the stairs that I was coming for him. My effort to distract succeeded almost too well, for when I ran into the room he occupied, he was waiting for me. He taunted me for a moment, then prepared to open an interdimensional door and step away. He will disappear to another building, I fretted, and unleash more of his poisonous spells while I lumber through the streets cursing this heavy armor.

Then a tiny missile of force shot out and struck the sorcerer squarely, and I saw Alban’s head disappear back into the shadows under the bed. The shocked enemy mage faltered in his concentration, and his spell failed. Mine did not, and he found himself trapped for a moment in a disk of whirling blades. When he ran toward me to escape I struck him down with my mace, then hurried to rejoin my troops, who were still unable to regain their footing in the freezing rain.

The temple itself was breached as well, by an assassin no doubt intending to murder the cleric at prayer inside. Psydney responded to news of strange lights inside the church, retreating from the field of battle in time to see the assailant fall dead at the hands of an unseen force, and to hear a disembodied voice whisper, “Not in my church, you don’t.” She swears it was Frito. She is not given to idle fancy, so I must believe her, but – an assassin of Pelor? These are strange times indeed, when such become our guardians, but it is not for me to question the whims of the gods.

The most serious infiltration escaped our notice until too late, although its feint drew Kuhlefaran back to the town proper, a move which in the end may have saved all of our lives. Two houses within town caught fire, including young Callie’s home. The peasant militia responded as best they could. But Kuhlefaran, worried about Callie’s prophecy concerning her sister’s death and alarmed at the prospect of the fire spreading throughout Blasingdell, teleported back within the walls and, calling on the power of Fharlanghn, doused the flames with a well-targeted deluge.

She and Psydney saw two unfamiliar men, airborne, speeding away from the village with small bundles under their arms. Fearful that the town’s children were being kidnapped for some nefarious purpose, Kuhlefaran called for the ghaele, who transformed into globes of light and sped after the strangers. As events unfolded, she proved to be both more wrong and more right than any of us could have imagined.

Visitors

For such a dangerous place, there were a surprising number of individuals dropping by unexpectedly. The conflict came to a virtual halt at the sight of a large wheel, thirteen creatures of unknown origin and intent its spokes, a fiery entity at its center. Singing a song celebrating death and destruction, they asked for a target to slay.

One of the leaders of the enemy forces – that most degraded of men, a fallen paladin, astride the largest nightmare I’ve ever seen – gleefully shouted out descriptions that clearly fit Serge, Psydney and Purcell. He had a fixation with Magnus, and wanted the personal pleasure of finishing him, apparently because the fighter had slain his gladiator; as is the way with evil, the fact that it was a fair fight started by Garnick himself failed to figure in the commander’s calculus of vengeance.

Kuhlefaran, with her keen insight into human nature, laughed. “The man is bluffing! He has no more idea what’s up there than we do! Call out a name, quickly!”

Bane, Magnus and Serge shouted out the name of the commander, Timoshenko; Psydney and Enai, in a fit of pique, demanded to know who in the Nine Hells was up there offering assassination services. After reducing the blackguard to a small pile of ash, another old acquaintance of the adventurers’, Nurn, called down that he and a few of his death slaad friends had run across the liberated Spirit of the Doomgrinder, wandering aimlessly now that its container had been deactivated, and thought they’d join the party for a while. “Let us know who else you want eliminated!” he laughed. “There’s still some power left in this thing!”

Then Hadrack was startled by the sudden appearance of a creature, half-man and half-leopard, next to Bane. As the wizard seemed surprised but not unduly agitated, Hadrack did not raise an alarm, and indeed the two were acquainted. This Garn was evidently responsible for not a small part of the worst havoc visited upon us, as he is something of a student of ley lines and their control, and was hired by our enemies for several very special commissions. He did not understand quite the scope of their designs, and in the tiny organ within him that passes for a conscience surveyed the battlefield with something like dismay. “I could help you,” he said to Bane. “But, you understand, research is expensive…”

Bane did understand, and reaching into a pouch withdrew a piece of one of the Eyes of Orcus, torn from an idol by the adventurers as a show of defiance as much as for profit. Garn blanched. It was a kingly, if dangerous, gift. He seemed torn between greed and fear, but finally pocketed the gem, and through some sort of interdimensional rift forty of the strangest and most frightening golems I have ever seen appeared on the battlefield. Blade golems, Bane explained later, a special creation of the ever-tinkering geomancer. Their ponderous movement prevented them from engaging a single combatant, but their mere presence was enough to inspire fear among the lesser enemy forces.

Prophecies

But even after they arrived, Garn lingered. He seemed entranced by the unnaturally darkened sky, and intrigued by the scope of the battle, but all of his detachment evaporated when he caught sight of a lone figure in the distance, running across the surface of the water as if it were dry land. Shaken, he turned to Bane. “Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘A stitch in time saves one?’” When Bane merely looked puzzled, Garn asked, “Is there a descendant of Dydd here, on the battlefield?” The wizard, after consulting with Psydney, replied in the affirmative, and the geomancer looked still more unsettled. “But it was a dream, only a dream, it can’t be…” Seeming to come to some decision, he handed Bane a plain wooden staff he carried. “Here, take this.” His cloak separated for a moment as he held it out, and Bane caught a glimpse of a holy symbol – the sign of Fharlanghn. Then the leopard-man vanished as quickly as he’d come.

The water-walker was rapidly bearing down on us, and we had no idea whether he was friend or foe. When he touched down on land, he also approached Bane, a small box in his hand and a holy symbol of Pelor around his neck. “I seek the betrayer of the genie,” he said. Bane, confronted with the unintelligible again, stared at him blankly. “For four years I have been on this quest,” he said. He held out the box. “I must deliver this to the betrayer of the genie.” Knowing that he didn’t fit the description but not knowing what else to do, Bane took the box and opened it.

Inside the lead-lined container lay a diamond. Using the sight taught him by Tenser, Bane realized that it was an item of exceptional power. Examing both it and the staff left by Garn more closely, he also realized that the latter had a socket into which the gem appeared to fit. He placed the gem into the staff, then employed his special sight again. A revelation did come to him, although perhaps not one he intended or desired.

Voices exploded in his head. The first snapped, “Meddling Wizard! Have you not heard that curiosity kills?”

A calmer voice responded, “But they have been taught to seek, have they not?”

And the first replied, “True. But not all roads need traveling.”

And the second again, “Even I will agree to that. Mageling, this is neither your test nor your quest. Speak not of what you see, upon peril to your mortal soul.”

I leave it as an exercise to deduce to whom the voices corresponded, but I suspect it won’t tax your imagination unduly. Bane now guessed that the staff was meant for she who, to save the adventurers to whom she had been assigned as guide, had betrayed her efreet master, Nix, in the bowels of White Plume Mountain. He also understood much of the staff’s power, but was sworn to silence concerning it – and one does not break the vows of the gods if one wants to enjoy a long, prosperous life. He employed one of its lesser abilities, restoring his spells without the requisite rest and study, then called for Kuhlefaran.

Sacrifices

The early sorties were grueling, but manageable, and with Nurn and his band of death slaad wheeling through the sky, the adventurers whittling away (or, in Serge’s case, befriending) the last of the stone giants and Garn’s blade golems bearing down on the remaining hill giants, we dared to have some hope of survival. But hope abruptly disintegrated, along with the portable fortress Psydney had erected atop the small hill in the graveyard. In its place, without warning, stood a double-walled globe of force. To add to the confusion, six assassins appeared from nowhere, attacking Sister Alonsa and many of the adventurers. At the same instant, a woman appeared far off on the battlefield, wielding a staff and speaking words of command that opened a gate. And from the gate demons began to swarm.

Bane raced to Kuhlefaran, speaking a few cryptic words. The cleric took the staff and attempted to use it for the same purpose as Bane – to regain spells spent. Instead, the diamond atop the staff glowed a blinding white that seemed to fill the entire battlefield, and the earth shook so violently that most of us were thrown to the ground. When the brilliance of the diamond subsided, the darkness did not return. Instead, the light of dawn filled the sky. Kuhlefaran, Sister Alonsa and myself all felt the grace of our deities flow back into us.

But the globe of force still stood, as did its occupants. A fearsome cleric holding an obsidian, skull-topped rod stood before an altar surrounded by undead raised from our own graves and by six creatures – I hesitate to call them humans, for the demonic wings sprouting from their back would seem to belie the description, but such I think they were – suspended in midair, each holding a knife pointed inward at his heart. A wizardly sort stood beside him. And on the altar, to my horror, lay Callie’s infant sister Brin. The abductions Kuhlefaran and Psydney witnessed had been a bluff; the real kidnapping had taken place earlier.

At some prearranged signal, the six stabbed themselves, but instead of falling to the ground, they underwent an instantaneous transformation from life to undeath and remained hovering around the altar. At the same moment, the cleric drove a knife through Brin’s heart. The globe filled with a greasy black smoke, obscuring our sight. Psydney saw from her vantage within the church, however, that still more undead were rising within the graveyard. All that remained, I was sure, was to drop the walls of force. The smoke and the undead would swarm the town from one direction, the demons from the other, and all would be lost.

Then abruptly, instead of a player in this drama, I became a figure within a tableau, watching Kuhlefaran moving alone through time. She teleported through the walls of force into the very midst of that infernal band, snatched the dead child from the unholy altar, and in the time it takes to draw breath cast the usually lengthy spell of resurrection. The spell did not complete, but neither did it fail. For unfathomable reasons, Kuhlefaran began to cast, and cast, and cast, from her most sophisticated spells to the lesser. So this, it dawned on me, is her moment of reckoning, the time of payment for the services of the ghaele. With each casting she grew weaker, and weaker, until she could barely stand and it seemed certain that she must die. And still she kept casting, and just when I was sure she was about to fall, she straightened her shoulders and stood, if anything, even stronger than before.

And still she kept casting. And when she finally stopped, the baby Brin opened its eyes and looked at her with an unnatural, otherwordly gaze. Kuhlefaran paused, seeming to reflect for a moment stretching into eternity, and finally spoke words that none of us could hear. Instantly the enemy cleric was transported by an unknown agency outside of his protective walls, and Kuhlefaran stood beside him, Brin still clutched tightly in her arms.

Messages

The holy symbol protecting the cleric, an intertwining of the energies of Orcus and Nerull, distintegrated. A thundering voice, filled with malice, echoed throughout the battlefield. “Defeated by mortals!” it shouted. “How pathetic!” The rod the cleric held was torn from his grasp and vanished, and moments later where he had stood there was nothing, as if he had never been. Kuhlefaran disappeared as well, although my acolyte’s faint shout of joy within the temple told me that she and the baby were safe.

Then another voice spoke, everywhere and nowhere, soft and confident and filled with quiet smugness. “Either way, I’ve won.” I wonder still at its source and its meaning. Psydney seems to know or suspect more about this than she is willing to say, but when I questioned her she silenced me with a look of anger and anguish.

Many of the remaining forces were utterly demoralized by what they saw. Psydney vanished from the church, reappeared before the infernal gate, and struck down the cleric maintaining it before more than a handful of the demons could pass through. They in themselves might have proved troublesome, except that behind Psydney another gate opened briefly, and through it stepped Jake with a troop of devils, obviously spoiling for a fight. From teetering on the brink of destruction, we were left with only the mopping up.

I pray that Blasingdell may now have a time of peace. We have more dead to bury, and rebuilding to do. It saddens me a little that our innocent country hamlet has become in more senses than the literal a walled town, and is likely to remain so. But the people are resilient, and the memory of these events will fade perhaps more quickly than it should; except for Lord Berrick, I fear, and the families of Callie and Brin, and Alban.

The little mageling knows no fear – too much time already spent with that irrepressible, irresponsible kobold Meepo, I suspect, and while Callie has already grown calmer and steadier under the tutelage of Psydney’s ancient mother Lia I do not think her visions will grant her a quiet village life. As for 8-month-old Brin, for whose sake Kuhlefahran gave all that she had willingly and without a moment’s hesitation, it is impossible to say what thoughts and feelings course through her tiny being. But one cannot lie at the nexus of the schemes of the gods without being affected in deep, unfathomable ways.

And although our part in this appears to be mercifully over, the adventurers’ is not. Sometime after the battle ended, a stranger appeared suddenly in the manor. The dragon Nightwing (the unseen visitor who has been dropping gifts of mangled assassins at our gate these past weeks) had arrived in human form to consult with the party. He himself is concerned about Grandfather being still on the loose in the Prime Material, and no less a personage than Bahamut has asked them to travel to the Abyss in search of the wand ripped from the hand of the disgraced servant of Orcus. I will be sorry and not sorry to see them go – having met them, I’m sure you understand what I mean.

As I was finishing this, Psydney came bounding in to ask for an exact count of all troops lost on our side. “I’ve thought of a way to rob him of his infernal victory,” she said, barely able to contain her glee. “Have you seen Bane? I need to find out how much money we have. Know any good sources for large quantities of diamonds?”

Our ghaele are finally leaving us, but I have asked one to deliver this to you as a final favor of the many they have done us. If the pressure relieves at Mage Point, consider coming for a visit soon. Your presence would be a comfort to Berrick, a reassurance to the townspeople, and as always a welcome delight to Hadrack and me.

Ever sincerely yours,

Haissha