A note is scribbled in the lefthand margin: “I did not realize then that I ought to have designated this as the FIRST troll battle”.
The trolls, at last, were not moving. The stench of burnt flesh hung heavy in the air, but it was almost (ALMOST) welcome now.
As is now customary, Rigel initiated a search of the (smoldering) bodies. Nothing was found. Sabin flicked a quick detect magic — also nothing. Bored, Rigel inspected the east door. No traps. And opened it.
As luck would have it, there were more trolls. This time, at least, we were positioned a bit more advantageously. That is to say, I was NOT closest to them. Rigel, however, was too close to them for comfort, and managed to get off a single arrow before strategically repositioning herself behind larger bodies.
Having just learned a valuable lesson about trolls and fire, I immediately started another burning sphere. Fireball would have been nice, but the arrangement of bodies in the room made it a little too risky. Were it to detonate prematurely it would not only have harmed the trolls (yay) but the party (boo). While I’m sure the clerics could have fixed it all up, I think I’d rather not have the party fear my use of fire. Especially since I seem to be particularly adept at it! Additionally, while a fireball does more damage over a larger area, having a bit of fire that can move around is particularly handy with trolls, as they seem to very much dislike fire and, well, tend to move around to avoid it. The burning sphere scorched the initial troll pretty well and though he seemed discomforted by it, he did not (yet) move away.
So it was, a few seconds later, I started a second burning sphere under another troll. It is really convenient that these burning spheres are easier spells, as it means I can create more of them (than, say, fireballs) before having to rest. As another troll roared in anger, I was thinking Father totally should have told me more about this fire thing. What else hadn’t he told me about?
I wondered if these trolls were smart enough to know that I was the one creating fire? No matter, I guess, as all the fighters were up front by then, and the clerics in back of them, doing the non-troll version of regeneration.
It didn’t take long at all for us to take out another four trolls. The burning spheres were still going, so we shoved various troll bodies and body parts into them. I don’t think there is any way to make burning troll flesh smell good. Oh! and as we were collecting troll parts, we discovered one troll had not been burned soon enough, as he rose again and went to take a piece of Nolin. Instead, Nolin took him down (again), cut off his head, and ceremoniously put it in the fire. We quickly made sure ALL trolls were decapitated and their heads thoroughly singed. It’s like dealing with germs — must kill them all with fire or it’ll hurt you in the long run.
This room has more of the fungus. I was a bit wary of it, but Kane said it was all native. The trolls may have brought it along as a way of feeling more at home. Eew.
A quick run through all the usual sensors — detect evil (Avia), detect magic (Sabin), and detect everything else (Rigel) yielded nothing. Sabin and Nolin went to the doors in the NE corner of the room, finding they were closed but badly beaten. While they couldn’t be opened, with a little more beating one could be damaged enough to be useless, and we created an opening to the other side of the top of the dam.
Less than 50 feet away was the breach that had been created in the dam. Water roared over it, and the stonework around it looked a bit stressed. Every now and then a good sized stone could be seen cascading to the ground below. It was apparent that the force of the water through this breach was continuing to damage the dam. Looking over the side we could see floodgates far below, but they barely had anything flowing through them. If we opened them, it would not only lower the water level, but lower the chance that the whole dam would give way.
We concluded that the control to the floodgates must be in one of the rooms we had not yet searched, so we returned to the trollhouse (as I’d come to call it) and began carefully opening doors.
We found that in general the dam was in mild disrepair. I don’t know if that was due to the trolls or not, but probably not. It’s just ancient. In one room on the downstream side, a wall in what appeared to be an observation room had crumbled and broken out and the room opened to a dangerous precipice. This, of course, only allowed more weather and elements into the structure. Its mirror on the other side was intact but reeked of mold. However, at the north end of the central room, we finally found what we’d (kind of) been looking for.
Well, yes, we’d been looking for floodgate controls, but if you find an ancient stairway behind a pair of very heavy doors above which was written in Giant a very long time ago: “Below dwells wet papa Grazul”, I mean, that certainly sounds like floodgate controls, doesn’t it?
Well, at the least, it led to the only part of the dam we had not explored, so follow it we did. The stairs went on for hundreds of feet, with landings and turns that made it difficult to keep my bearing. Finally we reached the base of the stairs, where another heavy set of double doors were waiting for us, as well as, presumably, “wet papa Grazul”.
Avia could not detect any presence of evil behind the doors, but warned that if these doors were as strong and massive as the ones upstairs, she may simply not be able to detect evil through them. Rigel confirmed there were no traps, and the doors were slowly pushed open.
What greeted us was a largish room with a pool in the middle. The pool seemed to have floating in it more of the mold we’d seen about, or at least some sort of similar flotsam. Concentrating again, Avia was able to announce that there was one strong source of evil in the pool. It was damp, and puddles were scattered about the stone floor, making footing a little treacherous.
So it seemed likely that wet papa Grazul either had survived a large number of years, or his progeny had, or something worse than any of them had killed him and taken up residence. None of these options sounded particularly encouraging, but if we were looking for encouragement, we’d come to the wrong corner of the world anyway.
And with that thought, wet papa Grazul came to greet us.
Rising out of the water was something that vaguely resembled the trolls upstairs, but clearly was not. It was large, like they were, but built differently. It seemed at home in the water. Half its face looked like it had been clawed away in some battle that it had apparently barely survived. As it approached Avia, still in the pool, it brandished a large military style fork and stabbed at her, wounding her. Sabin jumped forward and returned the attack. And so the effort began to give wet papa Grazul a long wet nap.
Grazul’s ability to disappear beneath the water at times made it difficult to hit him, and wielding the large fork gave him an attack range greater than any of our melee weapons. It meant engaging him in melee was both difficult and dangerous, since none of us felt entering the water was a particularly life-extending maneuver. Like the trolls, he had a vicious bite as well, and I kept half expecting tentacles to rise out of the water and thrash us too (turns out he had none).
His affinity for water made use of a burning sphere problematic, but the large room we were in made it particularly well suited to fireballs going off behind him — and two did. And still, it was nine versus one, and after particularly vicious hits by Avia and Nolin within seconds of each other, it at last lay still. Grazul is dead; long live papa Grazul. We confiscated his fork [520] which we later identified as +1, vicious, and adamantine.
We weren’t sure if there were baby Grazuls waiting to avenge Dad’s death, so we proceeded cautiously. This room had doors to the NE, NW, SW, and SE, as well as double doors to the south. It turns out that the room to the west simply held another pool, and the NW and SW doors both opened to that. There was another room to the east, entered by both the NE and SE doors, but that proved much more interesting.
In that eastern room, in addition to a much smaller pool with stairs leading down to it, there was an amazing model of the dam itself. But more than just a model, there seemed to be some magic employed such that it showed the dam exactly as it was at that moment. No surprise, it strongly radiated magic as well. The model seemed to be accurately reflecting that the floodgates were mostly closed.
Finally we turned our attention to the southern double doors. And here we found a most amazing arrangement. The room was shallow but wide, and at the east and west ends of the room there were inscriptions on the ground, behind two sets of portcullis. Inside one set of inscriptions was a pile of, apparently, ash. Inside the other was a leathery, winged, ugly creature that we all were able to recognize as a demon. It appeared motionless and perhaps dead, but upon detecting our presence, it slowly turned its head and croaked “f r e e m e”.
Instant turmoil in our group. People had some very immediate and very polar reactions to that.
I asked, “How did you get here?” and it replied “s u m m o n e d.
K u r z o c a p t u r e d u s, c u r s e h i m.” It was able to confirm that it was the means to control the floodgates — apparently its life force was used to run the machinery. Ordinarily, the floodgates acted automatically to relieve pressure on the dam, but with the companion demon “used up”, this demon had insufficient power left to run the mechanism.
Nolin pointed out that the floodgates had to be opened. We tried to get the demon to tell us what force was utilized — thinking maybe a lesser restoration performed upon the demon would provide enough power for it to operate the floodgates — but it seemed baffled by our question.
Kane felt we should kill it. It was a demon, and that’s all we needed to know. Some felt it shouldn’t be killed in its current state; Avia, surprisingly, held to the view that doing anything to it in its current state, including using it to control the floodgates, was akin to torturing it and she couldn’t abide that even to a demon. Nolin said he wouldn’t veto any decision but didn’t like the idea of killing it. I argued that it was a demon and while I was not against “healing” it in some way if it would allow the floodgate control to work, we needed to either kill it before we left or be absolutely sure it was not a threat to get loose. Did we need to have demons to make it work? Would one (or two) of us work just as well? Maybe we should kill it now and open the gates later. But then, wouldn’t experimenting on ourselves be akin to torturing ourselves?
And then in one quick motion, Kane announced that he was willing to take action, and stepped into the circle with the ashes. There was a rumble beneath us and the demon screamed horribly before turning to dust like his companion before him. Kane shuddered and paled but did not turn to dust. He was able to stagger from the circle without assistance. [Kane gained a negative level.]
I turned on him immediately for taking matters into his own hands while the group was still discussing what to do. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s done. It worked.” I was angry that he would do that and cause the demon to die before we could question it further and briefly considered a fireball (no, too small an area, collateral damage) then a burning sphere (no, not lethal enough). Sabin shrugged his shoulders. Avia, too, looked angry that he had taken action before the group came to a consensus. In the end, neither of us took action against Kane, but I for one will remember his independent decision and keep a much closer eye on him. We joke about Rigel picking our pockets when we’re not looking, but a member of the group who decides he and only he knows what’s best for the group is not to be trusted.
Returning to the room with the model of the dam, we could now see water pouring from its floodgates. Remembering the size of the lake behind the dam, it was apparent it would still be some time – possibly measured in weeks – before the level of the water went below the level of the breach, but the process had at least begun.
I decided to study the dam model more. It was a fascinating use of magic, and I hoped to learn more about its construction. Kane found that his theory the pools were connected was correct, finding a five foot wide passage between the center pool and the ones to the east and west. Rigel was searching for, you know, hidden stuff when Sabin decided to simply cast “detect secret doors”. While there was nothing in the central chamber, the western one did have a secret door. At the bottom of the pool.
We looked at each other and thought the same thing — what mess could we get ourselves into opening a secret door that was at the bottom of a pool? Derrel figured it couldn’t hurt too bad, so he volunteered to swim down and open it. The door was only about 10 feet down. Although the door was locked, he also found a whole bunch of coins down there. After all was said and done (and later counted), it turns out he brought up 2503 gold coins, 7019 silver coins, and 1257 copper coins (after repeated trips).
As to the locked secret door, Sabin decided it was easier to use our wand of knock than to use our mistress of knock (Rigel) underwater, and when you throw in the likely lack of light behind that door, Sabin with his dark vision was a natural choice. Sabin unlocked the secret door and swam in. Inside the passage behind it, there was another door, also locked. He unlocked that as well, courtesy of the wand of knock. As that door unlocked, the one he’d just come through locked. Clearly they were linked in some way. Running short of air, he unlocked the top door and returned. We concluded that the outer lock might open to the lake behind the dam, and the dual locks prevented the lake from rushing into the dam. We also decided it was not wise to explore the lake from beneath the surface.
Meanwhile, Rigel was still searching above the water. She found a loose stone near the base of the south wall. It appeared to be a small cache, which included a gold comb in the shape of a behir with tiny little pearls as eyes [522] and dainty pink gloves [523] which are created such that they never get dirty, always smell faintly of lilacs, and allow the wearer twice a day to do Snatch Arrow (ala the feat).
Our mission was done here, and we discussed what to do next. The dam needed to be guarded against further damage, and ultimately repaired as well. The dam was a bit daunting for the casual visitor to reach, but certainly not inaccessible. Maintaining the fort seemed a key part of this effort, but Jakardos had already indicated he’d like to decline the role of commander and return to a more civil life.
We returned to the fort, briefly, and discussed this with Jakardos. With a glance at his daughter, he offered that his return to civilian life could wait a bit. He too felt that strong leadership at the fort would deter further mischief, but clearly the populace at Turtleback Ferry was going to be busy for some time. Where would the bodies come from?
And thus was concocted the Fear of Flood Recruitment tour. Oh, of course, we didn’t call it that out loud. But Magnimar was clearly relinquishing its role as benefactor for the region, and what better way to find recruits than to visit the towns that would be most affected by a flood from the broken dam?
Ilsurian, Biston, Melfesh, Whistledown — none of these were booming towns but none of them were devoid of skilled labor either. Over the next nine weeks, we made a point of visiting all of them regularly, and given that each of them had a vested interest in not having the dam topple, each was able to supply carpenters, tradesmen, and other skilled labor for free at one to two week intervals. We ourselves arranged to cover for food and basic supplies, and as expected, the occasional emissary looked around, was impressed with life at the fort, and asked about staying. Slowly, the rangers would be replenished by volunteers, and the fort would again become self sufficient. During those nine weeks, most of us were able to find masters of our individual arts and receive additional training that would better prepare us for the dangers ahead. One thing we all agreed on was we needed better ways to communicate silently in the field. We decided to all of us each spend time learning silent field communications.
For we were creating a little empire here, if one were to step back and look at it objectively. Benevolent little rulers, we were, but really we’d just gone to the small towns, pointed at the dam, and said, “Nice town ya got here. Be a shame something happened to it, y’know? Maybe you could throw some people at a problem we’s got.” And did we not hold the deed to that fort still?
I mean, the right thing is happening. I’m not saying that’s wrong. It’s kinda cool. But I’m just saying.
Vale and Jakardos said it would probably take about six months to restaff the fort and choose a suitable leader. It was during this nine-week training period that Shilelu sought us out with a “little problem”. And she presented a 2-ft tall man with butterfly style wings on his back, by the name of Yap. He was agitated, he was distraught, and he was a pixie. And apparently he was looking for Lamatar, the former commander of the fort.
As the group looked at each other, I stepped in to talk. “How can we help you?”
He looked morose and angry at the same time. “Only Lamatar can help my mistress! He lives at this place and I demand to see him.”
I explained that he had died here, defending the place, and so was there anything we could do? Shilelu interrupted and pointed out that while it was very likely he was dead by now, we had not found his body here. The pixie looked hopeful. “So perhaps he is not yet dead? That would make my mistress very happy, and the land would again .. I mean, the grasses and the trees – she would heal them and perhaps she would no longer be sick herself. Really, it would have been better had she died than to be in her current state.”
It was a little fuzzy as to what he was actually telling us, but it seemed pretty clear that his “mistress” was the nymph that had left the boots and the hair, and ..
The boots! A quick whisper to Rigel and she was able to surreptitiously remove them before the pixie could see them. Wouldn’t do to have that complication messing things up. Kane tried to get the pixie to talk more, but he kept mumbling about the land dying and the mistress dying and only Lamatar could help. She had apparently run to him to help when the fort was attacked, but she had arrived too late and returned .. corrupted and twisted, body and soul. We couldn’t get out of him if the illness was magical or physical (or both), but we finally understood an important point.
Yap’s mistress, it seems was not just a random fey companion of Lamatar. She was the princess of the Shimmerglens, resident in Whitewillow, the land near the Wicker Walk. The one we were told not to venture into because they didn’t really care for the non-fey. The land that required the Wicker Walk as a material demarcation between safety and danger. The land that was apparently connected magically to the princess’s physical and mental health.
That one.
Before there was much discussion at all, Jakardos and Vale hastily told us they would see to the security of the fort, and wished us well on our journey. Shilelu smiled a bit (or was that a smirk?), and also wished us well. It seemed we had little to discuss. Father, you rather left out some significant details about the life of a an adventurer.
Since Derrel wouldn’t finish his training until later that week and this all seemed fairly urgent, we equipped ourselves and headed south, back to the marsh near Turtleback Ferry. (Without magic means, we couldn’t have contacted Derrel anyway.) We entered the Wickerwalk, but soon our guide took us off the path. As we walked through the woods, I found them strangely silent. Sometimes a wood can be peaceful and serene, but this seemed more ominous, like it was abandoned. We began to see, here and there, twisted black trees. Despite the decreasing amount of healthy foliage, and increasing numbers of blackened, diseased trees, sunlight seemed to have a hard time penetrating this part of the woods. Myrianna, Yap explained, was a princess of the Shimmerglens but queen of this area. It apparently reflected her condition. He was her servant, and both feared for her now and generally cared for her well being.
We came across a pool of water in a clearing, surrounded by trees. Healthy trees. Was this an oasis in this increasingly broad area of pestilence? Yap stared at it, and announced it had not been here two months ago. Kane remarked that he detected poison on the water. He walked over to the pool and looked at his reflection. He staggered and gasped, and swung around to stare at us, and then back at the water.
We asked him what he was doing, and he replied that when he looked in the pool, he looked perfectly normal but the reflections of the rest of us looked like corpses. I went and looked into the pool and saw nothing unusual, but Kane seemed seriously affected.
The pool was about 15′ across. The horses did not react to it. We shrugged, and marched on.
It was probably another 10 miles into the woods before we came across a most odd artifact. There lay a ship, aground in the middle of the woods. It looked like it had been there a long time, but Yap suggested it too was more recent than its appearance would indicate. It was covered with thick moss. It was curious, but we did not want to dally when our mission was the princess so …
After a couple more miles, the swamp (and there was nothing healthy or vibrant about it anymore) gave way to a clearing. A pool with black twisted trees surrounding it lay in the clearing. Avia detected no evil, and Kane detected no poison in the pool. A detect magic indicated some background magic, but no particular center of magic.
As we walked into the glade, Yap paused expectantly. There was a deafening howl from the center of the water, and a ghostly form rose from the middle of the pool.
“My mistress, Myrianna,” Yap said apologetically.
Her arms appeared ripped off, and I realized that the ghostly form was only such from the waist down. Yet she flew, or hovered, or something.
“You’re all to blame!” she cried. “You stood by and did nothing while the fort was attacked! Just a little more assistance and they ..”
“It was not we,” I interrupted. “We have come to help. We were sent by Magnimar to investigate the silence of the fort. Had we been here we are certainly capable of help and would have. But we arrived too late — as did you, didn’t you?”
She paused, her anger temporarily vented. “Yes. I should have gone sooner.” Her eyes blazed again. “But if you were not responsible, what place do you have here? Do you come to mock me?”
“No! We come to help you. Yap here tells us you are .. er, distressed, and he believes we can help. We offer our assistance. What can we do to help?”
“Help? HELP? They did not even leave his body. There was nothing there. The pain, and the torture, and the desecration … If you want to help, I must have Lamatar’s body, or some portion of his body. Only then can the healing begin.”
Yap interrupted. “You see what I mean. She is -”
“Shut up Yap,” we said. “The surviving rangers too, would find some comfort from finding the body of their leader, and giving it a proper burial. But you’re right — we did not find it, and we don’t know where to look. Do you know where we might find him?”
“Hook Mountain,” she almost spat. “Climb the mountain. Return him to me. Take him from the giants and the ogres and bring him back here. Only then can we be rejoined and the healing take place!”
So, wow. Obsessive much? If you can’t rescue him alive, you need some portion of his dead body near you to rest easy or you’ll destroy everything living for miles around? I suppose, being fey, that she might have some interesting magic at her disposal that would actually benefit him — could she regenerate him from a single body part, like a troll? Sheesh, I hope we’re not really talking parts. They travel easier than a whole body, but it’s really sort of gruesome. “We got two fingers, one leg below the knee, and I’m pretty sure this is an ear. Is that enough?”
Avia did not detect evil initially, but now with this spirit out here maybe she should try again. If Myrianna is now evil, should we do what she says? Can we believe her that with the body she would heal the land, or is it the case that with the body she can finish what she started? On the other hand, we do know they had a relationship, and maybe this is what grief looks like when you’re a princess tied tightly to the earth. And she herself doesn’t exactly look healthy, but I don’t think a healing potion is going to set her right.
Well, I imagine we’re off to the mountain, but we’ll probably want to discuss it. Wait, did she say ogres AND giants? We haven’t actually run into any giants yet. Someone bringing them up again is not good.
Map: dam.pdf