Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Dreams of Erthe
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 8824613" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 38: NEST QUEST</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Alewyth Putterpye, dwarf priestess of Aerik 8</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Thurloe Pulver, human fighter 3/wizard 3/spellsword 2</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Wakuren, half-orc cleric of Cal 4/paladin 4</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Xandro Silverstrings, human bard 6/rogue 2</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Zander Quilson, elf sorcerer 8</p><p></p><p>Game Session Date: 5 November 2022</p><p></p><p> - - -</p><p></p><p>"Hey kupo," Mogo greeted the five dreamwalkers at the beginning of their nightly Dreamlands training session. There was a man standing beside the moogle, someone they'd never seen before, a burly human with shaggy, brown hair and long sideburns. "This is Garth Mankin, kupo. Tomorrow morning, before you start off towards the location of the next dream victim, he'll meet up with you and you'll give the dreamstones to him and he'll take them to where they're needed, kupo.” Garth said nothing, just stood there looking impassive, with his arms crossed and his feet shoulder-length apart, as if awaiting his next orders.</p><p></p><p>Mogo explained that Garth was a dreamwalker like them, but not an adventurer, so while he could be given instructions in the Dreamlands he wasn't being trained to interact in other people's dreams like they were.</p><p></p><p>"What are the dreamstones being used for?" asked Xandro. Mogo explained the Queen of Dreams was trying an experiment that might make it easier for them to stop the dream sickness. They'd know in the months to follow if the five newly-carved dreamstones were having any effect.</p><p></p><p>In the meantime, their training session that night involved entering an individual's dreams and changing the environment around them without being noticed by the dreamer. Garth, having seen the five dreamwalkers and thus able to recognize them when he met up with them in the Waking World the next day, nodded and took his leave; he was not needed in the night's dreamwalker training session.</p><p></p><p>But sure enough, when the group finished up their breakfast in the inn they'd stayed at the night before, Garth Mankin was there as promised. He took custody of the five carved dreamstones, packing each in soft linens so they wouldn't jostle in the back of his pony-driven cart. Then, without a word, he gave them a final nod and was on his way. The adventurers followed for a short while, but once out of town the heroes continued east while Garth turned to the south.</p><p></p><p>"Chatty fellow," scoffed Thurloe - during the entire time they'd met with him, in both the Dreamlands and the Waking World, he hadn't said a single word.</p><p></p><p>"Maybe he's shy," suggested Zander.</p><p></p><p>"Maybe he's mute," countered Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>"Maybe he's a monk having taken a vow of silence," added Xandro.</p><p></p><p>"Maybe I don't really care," answered Thurloe. "So, just how far is this next dreamer?"</p><p></p><p>"We've got about three days of travel ahead of us," answered Wakuren. "It's a small farming village called Sun Valley." Then, anticipating the spellsword's real reason for having asked the question in the first place, the half-orc added, "So there's no reason you can't sit in the wagon and study those spellbooks of Corbin's."</p><p></p><p>"That's what I thought," Thurloe replied, tying Horse's reins to the rear of the wagon and leaping into the back.</p><p></p><p>The first day was uneventful. But it was nearing noon on the second day of travel that they met up with a human paladin wearing the tabard of Cal over her armor. She sat astride a horse, having just ridden into the middle of the road via a side-road, and raised her hand to bring the small caravan to a halt. As Scarlie brought the mules to a stop and the heroes riding their own mounts alongside and behind the wagon followed suit, the woman called out, "I would have words with you, paladin!" to Wakuren.</p><p></p><p>"Is she evil?" Thurloe prompted in a low voice from Horse's saddle over on one side of the wagon. After having been kidnapped by the night hag Hesperna shortly after encountering her in human form on horseback, the spellsword didn't like making any assumptions about any strangers they met on the road.</p><p></p><p>"She's wearing the trappings of Cal," Wakuren answered back. "Surely she's--oh, wait, yeah, she's evil." He had trained his paladin senses upon the stranger and was definitely getting waves of evil from her aura. The half-orc growled under his breath, although it wasn't apparent which bothered him more: a pretender wearing the armor and trappings of the God of Healing and Air, or the fact that Thurloe was once again right in not trusting anyone he met for the first time.</p><p></p><p>"There is something I would discuss with you in private," the woman continued. "Will you accompany me around the bend? I do not know your companions, but what I have to say is for the ears of a member of the Church of Cal. I will leave it to you to decide whether to share what I have to say to you with them, after the fact."</p><p></p><p>"You want me to go with you out of earshot?" Wakuren confirmed. He looked over at Thurloe. "I will have one of my companions accompany us," he said. "Anything you wish to say to me can be said in front of him as well."</p><p></p><p>The woman clearly wasn't a fan of this plan. She scowled at Thurloe for a moment, then returned her gaze to Wakuren. "You do not trust me?" she asked. Then, as if realization had just dawned on her, she said, "You've detected evil in my aura, haven't you?"</p><p></p><p>"As a matter of fact, yes."</p><p></p><p>"That's part of what I wish to discuss with you. I, likewise, am detecting your aura as evil in nature. It's a problem that's become more prevalent in the church and we don't know what's causing it. However..." She paused as if weighing whether or not to talk about the issue in front of the others, but then finally relented. "Divinations have shown the answer to the problem lies with a half-orc paladin of Cal. I had not even known there to be a half-orc paladin of Cal, until I started hearing about your little band here, traveling from town to town. So I've been seeking you out."</p><p></p><p>Wakuren looked over again at Thurloe, who shrugged, as if to say, "Your call." "Very well, then," Wakuren said, rising up and stepping down from the wagon. "I will hear what you have to say." As he walked over to the female paladin, Thurloe kept pace with him on Horse. When they got to the branch in the road, Thurloe backed his mount off the road about 20 feet or so. "You should be able to talk in private," he said, and the paladin looked down at Wakuren, standing beside her own horse. She didn't dismount, but rather said, "I need to see your hands. Unshod." Wakuren removed his <em>gauntlet of Cal</em> from his right hand and placed it on the ground beside his <em>shield of Cal</em>. He held out his hands so she could see his palms.</p><p></p><p>The paladin held her own hands out to her side and touched Wakuren's, palm to palm. She closed her eyes as if concentrating. "There's some disturbance," she said.</p><p></p><p>"Disturbance?" echoed Wakuren.</p><p></p><p>"I'm trying to divine how you fit into this whole puzzle," the paladin explained. She opened her eyes back up and stared down at him. "Those rings you wear: are they magical? That might be causing the interference." It was a logical explanation, but it sure sounded awfully convenient, especially to the other heroes who had been stealthily eavesdropping on the conversation. Xandro was pretty sure this was a trick to try to get Wakuren to remove his magic rings - his <em>ring of invisibility</em> and his <em>ring of mystic healing</em> - and he led his horse White up to the front of the wagon, indicating for Zander to do the same. Alewyth guided her dire goat Pyrite off the road and into the scrub forest to the south of the road. She could see the mounted human paladin on the other side of a row of hedges and cast a <em>detect evil</em> spell of her own. Sure enough, there was evil coming from the two of them, and with enough concentration the dwarven priestess could determine it was coming from the human, not Wakuren.</p><p></p><p>"And I suppose you'd like me to take them off," Wakuren said, a tone of suspicion in his voice.</p><p></p><p>"It might help."</p><p></p><p>"I've got a better idea," remarked Thurloe. "How about we all head over to the nearest Temple of Cal and talk this all over with the clerics there? That sound like a good plan to you?"</p><p></p><p>The woman looked over at Thurloe with a look of irritation. "That's the problem," she said. "It could very well be someone from inside the church who's causing the effect. We'd have no way of knowing who we could trust."</p><p></p><p>"I'm not so sure I trust you, given you're emanating evil and Wakuren isn't," piped up Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>"Your senses might be off because you know him well and I'm a stranger to you," suggested the paladin. "You wouldn't be the first person to make a mistake like that." But she didn't like the way the dwarf was peering at her suspiciously, nor how the spellsword looked eager to cut her to pieces with his bastard sword the first time she made a wrong move. What a pity! They hadn't peered past her <em>disguise self</em> spell to see her true form, and the foolish half-orc hadn't even registered that when they touched hands she'd surreptitiously siphoned off a bit of his mental energy, but the draining process took time and she didn't like the odds. That was a real shame, too, since she'd really wanted the ring the half-orc wore on his left hand, since her <em>detect magic</em> spell had hinted there was a very strong possibility of it being a coveted <em>ring of invisibility</em> - how she'd have been able to put that to good use!</p><p></p><p>Still, maybe she could still get away with something for her troubles! The horse obediently bending low to the ground so she could snatch up Wakuren's <em>gauntlet of Cal</em> from the ground, she made a grab for it but missed; then, the jig quite up, she went fleeing southward, down the side road from which she'd come. Not too far away was an opening between the trees into which she could lose these "heroes" in the forest.</p><p></p><p>But Thurloe wasn't having any of it. Casting a <em>ray of enfeeblement</em> at the fleeing paladin, he hit her square in the back and she flinched as if struck with a solid object. Xandro began a tactic that had worked very well on the dark naga in the kobold warren and began playing his song of fascination, hoping to entrance the fleeing paladin - or maybe even her horse. But this was not to be, for in the very initial chords of the song a string broke on the <em>Dardolian lute</em>, making any such attempts at magical fascination a fool's errand.</p><p></p><p>But then Zander rode up to the intersection, astride his horse Eddy. He cast a <em>lightning bolt</em> spell, which struck the fleeing paladin and the horse she rode with a blast of electrical energy. This likewise caused her to arch her back in pain, and in so doing it became apparent she was not really a human woman astride a horse, for horse and woman were both part of the same beast: from the waist up, she had the appearance of a human woman (with features very similar to that of the paladin - why concentrate on altering features that were fine as they were?), only from the waist down she had the centaurian build of a lioness. Zander had heard of such creatures: lamias!</p><p></p><p>Wakuren picked up his <em>gauntlet of Cal</em> and placed it back over his right hand. Then, reaching up with it, he summoned a <em>javelin of lightning</em> into his hand. "You wanted to steal my gauntlet?" he called to the fleeing lamia. "Well, here it is!" And with that, he hurled the <em>lightning bolt</em> her way; it crashed into her hindquarters and caused her to cry out in pain yet again. This was definitely not how she had envisioned events unfolding!</p><p></p><p>Alewyth spurred on Pyrite and cut the lamia off at the edge of the row of shrubs growing along the side of the road. She swung <em>Sjondra</em> with all of her strength, bringing the dwarven warhammer crashing into the side of her human ribs, likely breaking a few of them with the force of her blow. Crying out in pain, the lamia fled from Alewyth, crashing into the brush much sooner than at the clearing for which she had been heading. She scrambled to make her getaway, confident she could make her way through the forest better than a bunch of cityfolk riding horses. But Zander didn't need to enter the forest on the eastern side of the side-road; all he needed was to be able to see the lamia's location to target her with another <em>lightning bolt</em> spell. She screamed in pain again and looked to be on her last legs; Thurloe finished her off with a blast from his <em>wand of magic missile</em>.</p><p></p><p>"See?" he said, looking back at Wakuren. "It pays to detect evil on <em>everyone</em>, no matter <em>what</em> they look like!" Wakuren just growled under his breath, not liking being talked down to in that fashion.</p><p></p><p>But fortunately, that was all the excitement that day's travel had for the group. Come nightfall, they made camp on the side of the road, Scarlie volunteering to sleep in the abandoned wagon under the stars while everyone else - riding mounts included - went into the extradimensional lamp they'd gotten from the night hag Hesperna. Scarlie promised to enter the lamp and warn them if he ran into any trouble; he even wore the tiger's eye ring that allowed another person to scry through it from inside the lamp using the <em>amulet of scrying</em> they'd taken from Corbin Mallaxus.</p><p></p><p>It was early morning the third and final day of travel when they ran into their next bit of trouble. They'd been on the road for less than an hour, with the Shieldwall Mountains off to their left as their little caravan ambled on down the road, heading east. The road had picked up a lengthy fence off to the left, a short distance away from the road, and on the other side of the fence were about a dozen cows, placidly grazing on the green grass at their feet. Not so placid were the four farmers racing their way, each wielding a pitchfork. "Those damn ants are back again, after the cows!" one yelled.</p><p></p><p>Wakuren looked over at the cows, puzzled - how were mere ants going to be a problem for a herd of such large creatures? Then he got a look at the ants approaching from the direction of the mountains. The first wave consisted of eight ants, each about the size of a large mastiff, and behind them came another wave of eight giant ants, as big if not even larger. The cows, busy with the important task of choosing which particular bite of grass to feed upon next, were unaware of the giant insects' approach until they were upon them, and then their frenzied moos caused the whole herd to panic.</p><p></p><p>Zander cast a <em>mage armor</em> spell upon himself as he sent Eddy over by the fence, although he was hesitant to jump into the fray just quite yet. Thurloe also cast a <em>mage armor</em> spell upon himself, but he leapt off of Horse and sprinted over to the fence, ready to clamber over it and take on the giant ants. Alewyth cast a <em>bless</em> spell on the group and sent Pyrite over by the fence, but stayed in her dire goat's saddle for now. But Wakuren wasn't wasting any time: he cast a <em>summon monster III</em> spell as he ran to the fence and scrambled over it; by the time her was on the far side of the fence a celestial bison had manifested behind the first wave of giant ants, as the second wave approached. Lowering its shaggy head, it ran towards the nearest ant in the second wave - made up entirely of soldier ants, the first wave being mere workers who lacked the soldiers' sting - and sent a horn piercing the soldier ant's carapace. From even farther back, four more insectoid figures approached, but right now everyone was so busy focusing on the ants and cows that they weren't even noticed.</p><p></p><p>Wicked mandibles closed around the necks of frightened cows; panicked bovines tore away from the pincers and made frenzied dashes for safety. The farmers advanced, waving their pitchforks and yelling at the giant ants to scram. Xandro, still on the safe side of the fence separating him from all of the action, pulled the <em>Dardolian lute</em> from his back and started playing his song of inspirational courage. After all, it was a wide, open field - no need for him to be in the middle of all the danger for his music to have an effect.</p><p></p><p>Then, in a sudden rush, the soldiers scurried forward, three of them focusing upon the celestial bison in their midst while the others chased down fleeing cows. Zander climbed off Eddy, scampered over the fence, and lined himself up such that a quick casting of a <em>lightning bolt</em> spell took out three of the worker ants and two soldiers. Thurloe cast a <em>shield</em> spell upon himself and then, deeming himself ready for combat, climbed over the fence and pulled the bastard sword from its scabbard on his back.</p><p></p><p>Alewyth pulled on Pyrite's reins and had her dire goat flee back the way they had come. But this wasn't some sudden act of cowardice; upon reaching far enough away from the fence, she wheeled her riding mount back again and had him sprint for the fence-line, leaping over the barrier and landing in the field surrounded by panicking cows and giant ants. She also cast a summoning spell and suddenly a second celestial bison was there in the field beside her. It stabbed at the nearest soldier ant with an impressive set of horns.</p><p></p><p>Wakuren cast a <em>bull's strength</em> spell upon himself as he moved toward the closest ant, shield at the ready to immediately switch from a defensive tool to an attack weapon. The bison he'd summoned slew the soldier ant it had just gored, flinging its head from one side to the other to dislodge its carcass from his horn. The shaggy beast felt a magical attack upon his bovine mind but fended it off; looking about to see who had just tried to <em>dominate</em> him, he saw the line of four larger insects approaching - it had been one of them. These creatures were also antlike in build, but their bodies bent between thorax and abdomen, leaving four legs for walking while the forward set served the function of arms. These centaurian ants were members of the formian race, from an extraplanar hive seeking to expand into these new lands on the Material Plane. Formians had different castes, just like ants, and these four were taskmasters, built to <em>dominate</em> the local life forms and bend them to the formians' will.</p><p></p><p>Now the farmers found themselves under attack by a trio of worker ants, for the taskmasters didn't care which of the local life forms were slain to provide nourishment for the hive; humans would serve just as easily as cows. The farmers fought bravely back with their pitchforks, but it was quite easy to see they had no experience fighting off giant ants using only farm implements normally used to gather up hay. Feeling a little guilty at remaining behind out of danger, Xandro stepped onto the rail-post fence and climbed up it using only his legs, both arms busy playing the lute. He swung a leg over the top rail and leaped back down on the other side, not having missed a beat of his inspirational song.</p><p></p><p>The soldier ants swarmed over the cows they could chase down, while two continued the attack upon Wakuren's celestial bison. Zander, having spotted the taskmasters and deciding their greater size made them likely the biggest threat (he wasn't sure at this point if they were just bigger ants or some other creature entirely), cast a <em>summon swarm</em> spell that had a cloud of bats flying in to surround one of the taskmasters, nipping and biting at the insect with their sharp teeth. Thurloe, still too far away to bring his sword to bear, chose a taskmaster and targeted a <em>ray of enfeeblement</em> spell at it, but the shot went astray. Alewyth, not sure just what these larger ants were all about, cast a <em>magic circle against evil</em> just in case. As it happened, neither the formians nor the giant ants were of an evil nature, but the spell had the beneficial side effect of keeping the dwarven priestess - and anyone within 10 feet of her - safe from the effects of any attempts at mind-control.</p><p></p><p>Alewyth's celestial bison slew a soldier ant, ripping through its carapace with her horns and then stomping on it with her hooves. By now, Wakuren was close enough to be able to charge another soldier ant, crushing its carapaced head with the edge of his shield. The celestial bison he'd summoned killed another soldier ant and moved forward to take on the nearest formian taskmaster.</p><p></p><p>Two of the farmers suddenly spasmed as their minds were successfully dominated by a pair of the taskmasters, one of them bleeding from dozens of wounds as it extricated itself momentarily from the swarm of bats surrounding it. The farmers stopped trying to fight off the worker ants and the ants stopped trying to bite those particular farmers; the two were now part of the same slave force. A third taskmaster tried to <em>dominate</em> Wakuren, but he was having none of it. The fourth had no such opportunity, for it was fighting for its life against the half-orc's summoned celestial bison, stabbing the bovine creature with its tail stinger while scratching its shaggy fur with both sets of front claws. One of the farmers still possessing his own faculties stabbed at a worker ant with his pitchfork, while the other was grabbed up by the two of his co-workers now under the taskmasters' mental dominance. "Hey!" he cried. "Lemme go!" Xandro, still playing his tune, started heading in the farmers' direction, dodging fleeing cows as he did so.</p><p></p><p>Another of Zander's <em>lightning bolts</em> hit two taskmasters in a row, one of them being the one besieged by biting bats. The bats refocused their efforts, diving back in at the one who had just escaped their swarm; the taskmaster was now dying a death of a thousand cuts, as blood dripped from numerous wounds in his carapace. Thurloe cast a <em>magic missile</em> spell at another of the taskmasters, for it was fairly obvious now that these larger bugs were the masterminds behind this entire raiding operation.</p><p></p><p>Pyrite ran down a soldier ant and Alewyth leaned over to one side, swinging her dwarven warhammer <em>Sjondra</em> full-force into the giant ant's head, crushing it to jelly. Her summoned celestial bison slew another worker, while Wakuren rushed a taskmaster and slammed his shield against it. The bison he had summoned from the celestial realms slew one of the taskmasters, bringing their number down to just three. With the creature dead, several of the ants stopped their attacks and seemed to look around frantically, as if just now realizing where they were and what was going on around them.</p><p></p><p>One of the remaining taskmasters bent its will to taking over Wakuren's mind, but the stubborn half-orc's mind was now a red haze of battle lust and the process was not as easy as the insect overlord had hoped it might be. The bat-covered formian scrambled away from its tormentors, just in time to die from its wounds. But the third one managed to overcome the mental defenses of the celestial bison Wakuren had summoned and it dutifully obeyed its new instructions, running over to the farmers, who were still being mentally controlled by the formians. The sole remaining farmer with a weapon - for the two dominated farmers had dropped their pitchforks to wrestle the free-willed farmer, who had likewise lost his impromptu weapon - stabbed at the worker ant still trying to catch him between its wicked mandibles. His pitchfork caught the ant between its bulbous eyes, stabbing into its head, and it dropped to the ground of the field, dead. Then, looking about for his friends, he found them climbing onto the back of a shaggy bison, two of them pulling a struggling third up between them.</p><p></p><p>Alewyth found herself under attack by a soldier ant and she leaped down from Pyrite to meet the attack head on, figuring she was better able to deal with it than her trusty mount, who was not trained in the ways of battle. Zander cast another <em>lightning bolt</em> spell at a taskmaster, even though doing so meant the blast of electricity went through his bat swarm as well. Fried bats fell from the sky around the taskmaster, and Thurloe followed up with another <em>magic missile</em> aimed at the same formian. And still it refused to fall!</p><p></p><p>After having slain the soldier ant she was fighting, Alewyth cast a <em>hold person</em> spell on one of the dominated farmers keeping his friend held in place upon Wakuren's bison. This gave the free-willed farmer enough of an opening to wriggle free from his <em>dominated</em> friends and leap down from the bison's back, while at the same time Alewyth's bison slew the last of the worker ants that had still been trying to bring down a cow. Wakuren slammed the edge of his shield at one of the remaining taskmasters, while another one managed to successfully <em>dominate</em> the farmer who had just gotten himself free from his friends' grasp and was looking for his dropped pitchfork in the grasses of the grazing field. Then a final <em>lightning bolt</em> spell from Zander slew one of the two remaining taskmasters, while Thurloe took out the other one with a <em>magic missile</em> barrage. The taskmasters now all slain, the formerly <em>dominated</em> mind-slaves found themselves with their own faculties back, and the farmers still on the back of the celestial bison climbed back down - and just in time, too, for shortly thereafter it vanished, returning to the celestial plane from which it had been summoned.</p><p></p><p>"Is everyone okay?" Alewyth asked the farmers. A score of insectoid bodies littered the field, but remarkably all ten cows had made it through the attack alive.</p><p></p><p>"We're fine, Miss, all thanks to you," one of the farmers replied.</p><p></p><p>"You said the ants were back," Wakuren said. "They had attacked before?"</p><p></p><p>"Yeah, two days ago," answered one of the farmers. "There were less of them, but they managed to kill two cows and drag them away."</p><p></p><p>"It wouldn't be very difficult to track them," pointed out Xandro, putting the <em>Dardolian lute</em> on his back now that the combat was over. "Two big, heavy cows being dragged along the ground, back toward the mountains...." He pointed off in the distance, where signs of such drag-marks were still evident, two days later.</p><p></p><p>"Tomorrow," Thurloe decided. "We've used up a bunch of our spells today and I wouldn't mind being at full strength if we're going to track those mind-controller bugs back to their nest. Those celestial bison were plenty handy in soaking up attacks that otherwise would have come our way, and they did their fair share of killing as well. Plus, I want to make sure we're all protected from being taken over. I don't want to be some bug-slave the rest of my life!"</p><p></p><p>"Would it be possible for you to put us up for the night?" asked Alewyth. "We'd be fine in a barn with our animals." The farmers readily agreed, feeling it was the least they could do for these wandering heroes who had just put their lives on the line for the four of them and their small herd. Of course, they didn't know the heroes were going to be sleeping in slightly more luxurious conditions than a pile of hay in a barn; they'd be inside the extradimensional lamp.</p><p></p><p>The next morning, fresh and relaxed - and, more importantly, with a full spell repertoire at the ready - the group returned to the field, surprised to see a few of the corpses from the previous day's battle missing. Fresh drag marks paralleled the ones from the first attack, when two cows had been slain by a smaller force of giant ants. It looked like two of the formian taskmaster corpses had been singled out, whether because they were the biggest (and thus would provide the most meat) or to hide their involvement (which would mean another task force would be sent to fetch the two other corpses soon enough) was unclear. But the group decided unanimously not to wait for the next wave of ants and formians to show up, but to backtrack them to their nest.</p><p></p><p>The way was not difficult, with the multiple drag marks all pointing the way the insects had gone to return to the nest. The ground was level for the most part, although it got slightly hilly as they approached the edges of the Shieldwall Mountains. But the drag-marks ended when the grass did; fortunately, there were spots of blood and scraped hide to show which way the cattle corpses had been dragged, and it wasn't too difficult to guess their eventual destination once the two columns came into view.</p><p></p><p>Two pillars rose up from the stone ground, one on either side of a wide, open cave in the side of the nearest mountain. All indications showed the cows had been dragged straight into the cave entrance. "How do we want to do this?" Xandro asked.</p><p></p><p>"We buff up, we go in," suggested Thurloe. He didn't want to hear any suggestions from Wakuren involving Hesperna's lamp, the half-orc's <em>ring of invisibility</em>, and a <em>gaseous form</em> spell. If the spellsword was going in, he wanted to be able to see what all he was getting into.</p><p></p><p>The preparatory spellcasting took some time, making sure everyone was covered with either a <em>magic circle against evil</em> or a <em>protection from evil</em> spell, to ensure nobody would be falling sway to a taskmaster's <em>domination</em> effect. Thurloe and Zander covered themselves in their standard <em>mage armor</em> and <em>shield</em> spells; Alewyth cast an <em>entropic shield</em> spell on herself and Wakuren followed suit; the half-orc followed it up with a <em>shield of faith</em> spell, <em>bull's strength</em>, <em>eagle's splendor</em>, and <em>heroism</em>, and only then signaled he was ready. "Then let's go," suggested Thurloe, leading the way up the hill towards the cave. Xandro cast a <em>heroism</em> spell on the spellsword as they headed toward the cave entrance.</p><p></p><p>As Alewyth and Wakuren approached, their innate darkvision allowed them to see inside the unlit cave's interior, and thus they were the only two to see the formian at the back of the cave. It was even larger than a taskmaster, but fortunately it had its back to the approaching heroes and didn't seem aware of their presence. But it had a quiver of a half-dozen javelins strapped over one shoulder, while it held some sort of slightly glowing stone in one hand.</p><p></p><p>But that wasn't the only thing they noticed as they got closer to the cave opening. There was a steady tone, rather like a single note being played by a flute. Looking up at the stone pillars flanking the cave, whose straight lines and sharp angles showed they had been carved or built into their forms instead of arriving in their shapes naturally, the heroes could see that near the top of each 25-foot column was an angled gap, and the wind coming down from the mountain blew past these gaps, causing the tone. They could see no effect coming from the pillars other than the noise and couldn't figure out its purpose: as a warning, perhaps? A means for the scouts and food-gathering parties to find their way back to the nest?</p><p></p><p>But then the wind died down, the noise stopped, and the cave opening winked out as if popped like a bubble. The group of five, who had been stealthily approaching the cave opening, now found themselves stealthily approaching the blank side of a mountain.</p><p></p><p>"Um, what?" asked Zander from the rear of the formation. But soon after the wind picked back up, the tone started back up, and like a shimmering mirage the cave opening was back in place. Thurloe thought he knew what was going on, but they were too close to the cave opening now to allow talk amongst themselves without potentially alerting the formian myrmarch of their presence. So, using hand signals only, he indicated for them to silently sneak onto the cave and take out the giant formian with the javelins.</p><p></p><p>Unfortunately for the heroes, there were two side passageways coming from the central cave chamber, and from the corridor to the right scrambled the familiar form of a formian taskmaster. It spotted the heroes, sent some telepathic signal of warning to the myrmarch (for the larger insect spun about to face them, glowing stone in hand), and tried <em>dominating</em> Thurloe, to no avail - his <em>protection from evil</em> spell kept him safe on that front.</p><p></p><p>Then the myrmarch waved a hand in the direction of the cave opening and a <em>dictum</em> spell exploded around the heroes. Neither Alewyth nor Wakuren were the least bit affected by the magical attack, whereas Thurloe, Xandro, and Zander all found themselves deafened and under a <em>slow</em> effect. But even though he couldn't hear himself speak, Thurloe decided to cut their losses. "Everybody out!!" he called back to his friends. "Alewyth - take out the pillars!"</p><p></p><p>Scrambling back out of the cave in an unaccustomed retreat, Alewyth looked up at the pillar to the left of the cave. It was too angular to be natural, that much was certain, but as she examined its texture she could see it hadn't been carved from an existing chunk of stone; rather, it had been assembled, likely by creatures chewing up stone into a pulpy mess and then shaping it, inch by patient inch. (She was correct in her assessment, but hadn't taken into account the other materials added to the chewed stone: the remains of local denizens, whose pulped bones and dried blood helped anchor the structure together.) But seeing as it wasn't unworked stone, her <em>soften earth and stone</em> spell would be ineffective if she cast it directly upon the pillar itself - so she cast it at the ground upon which the pillar was anchored. And then she ran at the pillar, toppling it over to fall to the ground and shatter.</p><p></p><p>The cave opening, with a battle-ready formian taskmaster and myrmarch still inside, winked out of existence at the moment the shattered pillar stopped adding its wind-tone to the other one. Not having a second <em>soften earth and stone</em> spell prepared, Alewyth made do with attacking the other pillar with <em>Sjondra</em>, and soon it too lay in ruins.</p><p></p><p>"Explanations?" asked Zander, once the deafness had left his ears.</p><p></p><p>"The other side of the cave opening, past those pillars - all that was on another plane of existence," Thurloe explained. "When the wind blew, it aligned the extraplanar gateway from the nest, so it could more or less open a door to our world. With the pillars smashed, they don't have a means to come back here. The rest of the nest is fine, on whatever plane it's on, but now they can't come back here."</p><p></p><p>"Then how did they get here in the first place?" demanded Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>"Easy: they opened up a planar gateway that just happened to end up here, pushed through a couple formian workers, and they got busy building those pillars. They'd serve as a sort of 'homing device,' so when the nest opened up another gate, it would lock in to this location. They can still open up a gate from the nest - that might even be what that shining stone the big guy was holding was all about - but they have no way of opening it at any specific location."</p><p></p><p>"So it'll just open up somewhere else in the world?" Alewyth pushed. "So we just made it somebody else's problem?"</p><p></p><p>"No guarantees the gate would even open up anywhere on this world at all," Thurloe argued. "The Material Plane is a really big place, and our planet is just one of who knows how many a planar gate could link up to."</p><p></p><p>"Still, maybe we should have taken care of the whole nest while we had the chance," Alewyth continued. "They could show up anywhere, maybe where there wouldn't be anyone to stop them like we could have."</p><p></p><p>"I got news for you, sister," Thurloe replied. "There's no way we could have taken down an entire nest of those things. Do you have any idea how many of those bugs there are in a full-blown nest? And that big one we saw, that deafened us? That's not even the most powerful type of those bugs there are. Believe me, this was the best solution."</p><p></p><p>"I guess," Alewyth sighed.</p><p></p><p> - - -</p><p></p><p>This was a pretty short session, lasting just about three hours. I had designed four chambers in the nest before the big door which led to the main nest, which was far beyond the PCs' abilities to handle. I didn't even bother designing the nest beyond the security doors, either, instead beefing up the security there to make it quite evident the PCs were in over their heads. But they didn't even need to enter the nest to figure out the importance of the pillars (the concept of which I got from an old movie, "Phase Four," about a nest of super-intelligent mutant ants out in the desert, although their pillars were sonic weapons, I believe).</p><p></p><p>I did introduce once change in procedures, though: before this session, I made initiative cards and flat tokens of the monsters typically summoned by the spellcasters. So when Zander used <em>summon swarm</em> to call forth a swarm of bats, I had a "Zander's summoned bat swarm" initiative card to place into the initiative deck and a 2-inch-by-2-inch "swarm of bats" token (with a "Z" in one corner to tell it apart from any other bat swarms that might be in play; Thurloe knows the <em>summon swarm</em> spell, for instance, so I made up a separate initiative card and token for his own bat swarm) to place on the battle board. After the session, I had Vicki go through her <em>summon monster I-IV</em> spells and pick out a couple from each list, the ones she'd most likely be summoning, so I could have them at the ready. (She's already summoned a celestial bison and Small earth elementals several times, so I already had those ready.) In any case, I think it should streamline play, so we're not coming to a crashing halt to gather up the stats for a summoned creature whenever such a spell comes into play.</p><p></p><p> - - -</p><p></p><p>T-shirt worn: My Einstein shirt, as it has the smoke from his pipe expanding into galaxies. It's my go-to shirt for depicting any of the Outer Planes.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 8824613, member: 508"] [B]ADVENTURE 38: NEST QUEST[/B] PC Roster: [INDENT]Alewyth Putterpye, dwarf priestess of Aerik 8[/INDENT] [INDENT] Thurloe Pulver, human fighter 3/wizard 3/spellsword 2[/INDENT] [INDENT] Wakuren, half-orc cleric of Cal 4/paladin 4[/INDENT] [INDENT] Xandro Silverstrings, human bard 6/rogue 2[/INDENT] [INDENT] Zander Quilson, elf sorcerer 8[/INDENT] Game Session Date: 5 November 2022 - - - "Hey kupo," Mogo greeted the five dreamwalkers at the beginning of their nightly Dreamlands training session. There was a man standing beside the moogle, someone they'd never seen before, a burly human with shaggy, brown hair and long sideburns. "This is Garth Mankin, kupo. Tomorrow morning, before you start off towards the location of the next dream victim, he'll meet up with you and you'll give the dreamstones to him and he'll take them to where they're needed, kupo.” Garth said nothing, just stood there looking impassive, with his arms crossed and his feet shoulder-length apart, as if awaiting his next orders. Mogo explained that Garth was a dreamwalker like them, but not an adventurer, so while he could be given instructions in the Dreamlands he wasn't being trained to interact in other people's dreams like they were. "What are the dreamstones being used for?" asked Xandro. Mogo explained the Queen of Dreams was trying an experiment that might make it easier for them to stop the dream sickness. They'd know in the months to follow if the five newly-carved dreamstones were having any effect. In the meantime, their training session that night involved entering an individual's dreams and changing the environment around them without being noticed by the dreamer. Garth, having seen the five dreamwalkers and thus able to recognize them when he met up with them in the Waking World the next day, nodded and took his leave; he was not needed in the night's dreamwalker training session. But sure enough, when the group finished up their breakfast in the inn they'd stayed at the night before, Garth Mankin was there as promised. He took custody of the five carved dreamstones, packing each in soft linens so they wouldn't jostle in the back of his pony-driven cart. Then, without a word, he gave them a final nod and was on his way. The adventurers followed for a short while, but once out of town the heroes continued east while Garth turned to the south. "Chatty fellow," scoffed Thurloe - during the entire time they'd met with him, in both the Dreamlands and the Waking World, he hadn't said a single word. "Maybe he's shy," suggested Zander. "Maybe he's mute," countered Alewyth. "Maybe he's a monk having taken a vow of silence," added Xandro. "Maybe I don't really care," answered Thurloe. "So, just how far is this next dreamer?" "We've got about three days of travel ahead of us," answered Wakuren. "It's a small farming village called Sun Valley." Then, anticipating the spellsword's real reason for having asked the question in the first place, the half-orc added, "So there's no reason you can't sit in the wagon and study those spellbooks of Corbin's." "That's what I thought," Thurloe replied, tying Horse's reins to the rear of the wagon and leaping into the back. The first day was uneventful. But it was nearing noon on the second day of travel that they met up with a human paladin wearing the tabard of Cal over her armor. She sat astride a horse, having just ridden into the middle of the road via a side-road, and raised her hand to bring the small caravan to a halt. As Scarlie brought the mules to a stop and the heroes riding their own mounts alongside and behind the wagon followed suit, the woman called out, "I would have words with you, paladin!" to Wakuren. "Is she evil?" Thurloe prompted in a low voice from Horse's saddle over on one side of the wagon. After having been kidnapped by the night hag Hesperna shortly after encountering her in human form on horseback, the spellsword didn't like making any assumptions about any strangers they met on the road. "She's wearing the trappings of Cal," Wakuren answered back. "Surely she's--oh, wait, yeah, she's evil." He had trained his paladin senses upon the stranger and was definitely getting waves of evil from her aura. The half-orc growled under his breath, although it wasn't apparent which bothered him more: a pretender wearing the armor and trappings of the God of Healing and Air, or the fact that Thurloe was once again right in not trusting anyone he met for the first time. "There is something I would discuss with you in private," the woman continued. "Will you accompany me around the bend? I do not know your companions, but what I have to say is for the ears of a member of the Church of Cal. I will leave it to you to decide whether to share what I have to say to you with them, after the fact." "You want me to go with you out of earshot?" Wakuren confirmed. He looked over at Thurloe. "I will have one of my companions accompany us," he said. "Anything you wish to say to me can be said in front of him as well." The woman clearly wasn't a fan of this plan. She scowled at Thurloe for a moment, then returned her gaze to Wakuren. "You do not trust me?" she asked. Then, as if realization had just dawned on her, she said, "You've detected evil in my aura, haven't you?" "As a matter of fact, yes." "That's part of what I wish to discuss with you. I, likewise, am detecting your aura as evil in nature. It's a problem that's become more prevalent in the church and we don't know what's causing it. However..." She paused as if weighing whether or not to talk about the issue in front of the others, but then finally relented. "Divinations have shown the answer to the problem lies with a half-orc paladin of Cal. I had not even known there to be a half-orc paladin of Cal, until I started hearing about your little band here, traveling from town to town. So I've been seeking you out." Wakuren looked over again at Thurloe, who shrugged, as if to say, "Your call." "Very well, then," Wakuren said, rising up and stepping down from the wagon. "I will hear what you have to say." As he walked over to the female paladin, Thurloe kept pace with him on Horse. When they got to the branch in the road, Thurloe backed his mount off the road about 20 feet or so. "You should be able to talk in private," he said, and the paladin looked down at Wakuren, standing beside her own horse. She didn't dismount, but rather said, "I need to see your hands. Unshod." Wakuren removed his [I]gauntlet of Cal[/I] from his right hand and placed it on the ground beside his [I]shield of Cal[/I]. He held out his hands so she could see his palms. The paladin held her own hands out to her side and touched Wakuren's, palm to palm. She closed her eyes as if concentrating. "There's some disturbance," she said. "Disturbance?" echoed Wakuren. "I'm trying to divine how you fit into this whole puzzle," the paladin explained. She opened her eyes back up and stared down at him. "Those rings you wear: are they magical? That might be causing the interference." It was a logical explanation, but it sure sounded awfully convenient, especially to the other heroes who had been stealthily eavesdropping on the conversation. Xandro was pretty sure this was a trick to try to get Wakuren to remove his magic rings - his [I]ring of invisibility[/I] and his [I]ring of mystic healing[/I] - and he led his horse White up to the front of the wagon, indicating for Zander to do the same. Alewyth guided her dire goat Pyrite off the road and into the scrub forest to the south of the road. She could see the mounted human paladin on the other side of a row of hedges and cast a [I]detect evil[/I] spell of her own. Sure enough, there was evil coming from the two of them, and with enough concentration the dwarven priestess could determine it was coming from the human, not Wakuren. "And I suppose you'd like me to take them off," Wakuren said, a tone of suspicion in his voice. "It might help." "I've got a better idea," remarked Thurloe. "How about we all head over to the nearest Temple of Cal and talk this all over with the clerics there? That sound like a good plan to you?" The woman looked over at Thurloe with a look of irritation. "That's the problem," she said. "It could very well be someone from inside the church who's causing the effect. We'd have no way of knowing who we could trust." "I'm not so sure I trust you, given you're emanating evil and Wakuren isn't," piped up Alewyth. "Your senses might be off because you know him well and I'm a stranger to you," suggested the paladin. "You wouldn't be the first person to make a mistake like that." But she didn't like the way the dwarf was peering at her suspiciously, nor how the spellsword looked eager to cut her to pieces with his bastard sword the first time she made a wrong move. What a pity! They hadn't peered past her [I]disguise self[/I] spell to see her true form, and the foolish half-orc hadn't even registered that when they touched hands she'd surreptitiously siphoned off a bit of his mental energy, but the draining process took time and she didn't like the odds. That was a real shame, too, since she'd really wanted the ring the half-orc wore on his left hand, since her [I]detect magic[/I] spell had hinted there was a very strong possibility of it being a coveted [I]ring of invisibility[/I] - how she'd have been able to put that to good use! Still, maybe she could still get away with something for her troubles! The horse obediently bending low to the ground so she could snatch up Wakuren's [I]gauntlet of Cal[/I] from the ground, she made a grab for it but missed; then, the jig quite up, she went fleeing southward, down the side road from which she'd come. Not too far away was an opening between the trees into which she could lose these "heroes" in the forest. But Thurloe wasn't having any of it. Casting a [I]ray of enfeeblement[/I] at the fleeing paladin, he hit her square in the back and she flinched as if struck with a solid object. Xandro began a tactic that had worked very well on the dark naga in the kobold warren and began playing his song of fascination, hoping to entrance the fleeing paladin - or maybe even her horse. But this was not to be, for in the very initial chords of the song a string broke on the [I]Dardolian lute[/I], making any such attempts at magical fascination a fool's errand. But then Zander rode up to the intersection, astride his horse Eddy. He cast a [I]lightning bolt[/I] spell, which struck the fleeing paladin and the horse she rode with a blast of electrical energy. This likewise caused her to arch her back in pain, and in so doing it became apparent she was not really a human woman astride a horse, for horse and woman were both part of the same beast: from the waist up, she had the appearance of a human woman (with features very similar to that of the paladin - why concentrate on altering features that were fine as they were?), only from the waist down she had the centaurian build of a lioness. Zander had heard of such creatures: lamias! Wakuren picked up his [I]gauntlet of Cal[/I] and placed it back over his right hand. Then, reaching up with it, he summoned a [I]javelin of lightning[/I] into his hand. "You wanted to steal my gauntlet?" he called to the fleeing lamia. "Well, here it is!" And with that, he hurled the [I]lightning bolt[/I] her way; it crashed into her hindquarters and caused her to cry out in pain yet again. This was definitely not how she had envisioned events unfolding! Alewyth spurred on Pyrite and cut the lamia off at the edge of the row of shrubs growing along the side of the road. She swung [I]Sjondra[/I] with all of her strength, bringing the dwarven warhammer crashing into the side of her human ribs, likely breaking a few of them with the force of her blow. Crying out in pain, the lamia fled from Alewyth, crashing into the brush much sooner than at the clearing for which she had been heading. She scrambled to make her getaway, confident she could make her way through the forest better than a bunch of cityfolk riding horses. But Zander didn't need to enter the forest on the eastern side of the side-road; all he needed was to be able to see the lamia's location to target her with another [I]lightning bolt[/I] spell. She screamed in pain again and looked to be on her last legs; Thurloe finished her off with a blast from his [I]wand of magic missile[/I]. "See?" he said, looking back at Wakuren. "It pays to detect evil on [I]everyone[/I], no matter [I]what[/I] they look like!" Wakuren just growled under his breath, not liking being talked down to in that fashion. But fortunately, that was all the excitement that day's travel had for the group. Come nightfall, they made camp on the side of the road, Scarlie volunteering to sleep in the abandoned wagon under the stars while everyone else - riding mounts included - went into the extradimensional lamp they'd gotten from the night hag Hesperna. Scarlie promised to enter the lamp and warn them if he ran into any trouble; he even wore the tiger's eye ring that allowed another person to scry through it from inside the lamp using the [I]amulet of scrying[/I] they'd taken from Corbin Mallaxus. It was early morning the third and final day of travel when they ran into their next bit of trouble. They'd been on the road for less than an hour, with the Shieldwall Mountains off to their left as their little caravan ambled on down the road, heading east. The road had picked up a lengthy fence off to the left, a short distance away from the road, and on the other side of the fence were about a dozen cows, placidly grazing on the green grass at their feet. Not so placid were the four farmers racing their way, each wielding a pitchfork. "Those damn ants are back again, after the cows!" one yelled. Wakuren looked over at the cows, puzzled - how were mere ants going to be a problem for a herd of such large creatures? Then he got a look at the ants approaching from the direction of the mountains. The first wave consisted of eight ants, each about the size of a large mastiff, and behind them came another wave of eight giant ants, as big if not even larger. The cows, busy with the important task of choosing which particular bite of grass to feed upon next, were unaware of the giant insects' approach until they were upon them, and then their frenzied moos caused the whole herd to panic. Zander cast a [I]mage armor[/I] spell upon himself as he sent Eddy over by the fence, although he was hesitant to jump into the fray just quite yet. Thurloe also cast a [I]mage armor[/I] spell upon himself, but he leapt off of Horse and sprinted over to the fence, ready to clamber over it and take on the giant ants. Alewyth cast a [I]bless[/I] spell on the group and sent Pyrite over by the fence, but stayed in her dire goat's saddle for now. But Wakuren wasn't wasting any time: he cast a [I]summon monster III[/I] spell as he ran to the fence and scrambled over it; by the time her was on the far side of the fence a celestial bison had manifested behind the first wave of giant ants, as the second wave approached. Lowering its shaggy head, it ran towards the nearest ant in the second wave - made up entirely of soldier ants, the first wave being mere workers who lacked the soldiers' sting - and sent a horn piercing the soldier ant's carapace. From even farther back, four more insectoid figures approached, but right now everyone was so busy focusing on the ants and cows that they weren't even noticed. Wicked mandibles closed around the necks of frightened cows; panicked bovines tore away from the pincers and made frenzied dashes for safety. The farmers advanced, waving their pitchforks and yelling at the giant ants to scram. Xandro, still on the safe side of the fence separating him from all of the action, pulled the [I]Dardolian lute[/I] from his back and started playing his song of inspirational courage. After all, it was a wide, open field - no need for him to be in the middle of all the danger for his music to have an effect. Then, in a sudden rush, the soldiers scurried forward, three of them focusing upon the celestial bison in their midst while the others chased down fleeing cows. Zander climbed off Eddy, scampered over the fence, and lined himself up such that a quick casting of a [I]lightning bolt[/I] spell took out three of the worker ants and two soldiers. Thurloe cast a [I]shield[/I] spell upon himself and then, deeming himself ready for combat, climbed over the fence and pulled the bastard sword from its scabbard on his back. Alewyth pulled on Pyrite's reins and had her dire goat flee back the way they had come. But this wasn't some sudden act of cowardice; upon reaching far enough away from the fence, she wheeled her riding mount back again and had him sprint for the fence-line, leaping over the barrier and landing in the field surrounded by panicking cows and giant ants. She also cast a summoning spell and suddenly a second celestial bison was there in the field beside her. It stabbed at the nearest soldier ant with an impressive set of horns. Wakuren cast a [I]bull's strength[/I] spell upon himself as he moved toward the closest ant, shield at the ready to immediately switch from a defensive tool to an attack weapon. The bison he'd summoned slew the soldier ant it had just gored, flinging its head from one side to the other to dislodge its carcass from his horn. The shaggy beast felt a magical attack upon his bovine mind but fended it off; looking about to see who had just tried to [I]dominate[/I] him, he saw the line of four larger insects approaching - it had been one of them. These creatures were also antlike in build, but their bodies bent between thorax and abdomen, leaving four legs for walking while the forward set served the function of arms. These centaurian ants were members of the formian race, from an extraplanar hive seeking to expand into these new lands on the Material Plane. Formians had different castes, just like ants, and these four were taskmasters, built to [I]dominate[/I] the local life forms and bend them to the formians' will. Now the farmers found themselves under attack by a trio of worker ants, for the taskmasters didn't care which of the local life forms were slain to provide nourishment for the hive; humans would serve just as easily as cows. The farmers fought bravely back with their pitchforks, but it was quite easy to see they had no experience fighting off giant ants using only farm implements normally used to gather up hay. Feeling a little guilty at remaining behind out of danger, Xandro stepped onto the rail-post fence and climbed up it using only his legs, both arms busy playing the lute. He swung a leg over the top rail and leaped back down on the other side, not having missed a beat of his inspirational song. The soldier ants swarmed over the cows they could chase down, while two continued the attack upon Wakuren's celestial bison. Zander, having spotted the taskmasters and deciding their greater size made them likely the biggest threat (he wasn't sure at this point if they were just bigger ants or some other creature entirely), cast a [I]summon swarm[/I] spell that had a cloud of bats flying in to surround one of the taskmasters, nipping and biting at the insect with their sharp teeth. Thurloe, still too far away to bring his sword to bear, chose a taskmaster and targeted a [I]ray of enfeeblement[/I] spell at it, but the shot went astray. Alewyth, not sure just what these larger ants were all about, cast a [I]magic circle against evil[/I] just in case. As it happened, neither the formians nor the giant ants were of an evil nature, but the spell had the beneficial side effect of keeping the dwarven priestess - and anyone within 10 feet of her - safe from the effects of any attempts at mind-control. Alewyth's celestial bison slew a soldier ant, ripping through its carapace with her horns and then stomping on it with her hooves. By now, Wakuren was close enough to be able to charge another soldier ant, crushing its carapaced head with the edge of his shield. The celestial bison he'd summoned killed another soldier ant and moved forward to take on the nearest formian taskmaster. Two of the farmers suddenly spasmed as their minds were successfully dominated by a pair of the taskmasters, one of them bleeding from dozens of wounds as it extricated itself momentarily from the swarm of bats surrounding it. The farmers stopped trying to fight off the worker ants and the ants stopped trying to bite those particular farmers; the two were now part of the same slave force. A third taskmaster tried to [I]dominate[/I] Wakuren, but he was having none of it. The fourth had no such opportunity, for it was fighting for its life against the half-orc's summoned celestial bison, stabbing the bovine creature with its tail stinger while scratching its shaggy fur with both sets of front claws. One of the farmers still possessing his own faculties stabbed at a worker ant with his pitchfork, while the other was grabbed up by the two of his co-workers now under the taskmasters' mental dominance. "Hey!" he cried. "Lemme go!" Xandro, still playing his tune, started heading in the farmers' direction, dodging fleeing cows as he did so. Another of Zander's [I]lightning bolts[/I] hit two taskmasters in a row, one of them being the one besieged by biting bats. The bats refocused their efforts, diving back in at the one who had just escaped their swarm; the taskmaster was now dying a death of a thousand cuts, as blood dripped from numerous wounds in his carapace. Thurloe cast a [I]magic missile[/I] spell at another of the taskmasters, for it was fairly obvious now that these larger bugs were the masterminds behind this entire raiding operation. Pyrite ran down a soldier ant and Alewyth leaned over to one side, swinging her dwarven warhammer [I]Sjondra[/I] full-force into the giant ant's head, crushing it to jelly. Her summoned celestial bison slew another worker, while Wakuren rushed a taskmaster and slammed his shield against it. The bison he had summoned from the celestial realms slew one of the taskmasters, bringing their number down to just three. With the creature dead, several of the ants stopped their attacks and seemed to look around frantically, as if just now realizing where they were and what was going on around them. One of the remaining taskmasters bent its will to taking over Wakuren's mind, but the stubborn half-orc's mind was now a red haze of battle lust and the process was not as easy as the insect overlord had hoped it might be. The bat-covered formian scrambled away from its tormentors, just in time to die from its wounds. But the third one managed to overcome the mental defenses of the celestial bison Wakuren had summoned and it dutifully obeyed its new instructions, running over to the farmers, who were still being mentally controlled by the formians. The sole remaining farmer with a weapon - for the two dominated farmers had dropped their pitchforks to wrestle the free-willed farmer, who had likewise lost his impromptu weapon - stabbed at the worker ant still trying to catch him between its wicked mandibles. His pitchfork caught the ant between its bulbous eyes, stabbing into its head, and it dropped to the ground of the field, dead. Then, looking about for his friends, he found them climbing onto the back of a shaggy bison, two of them pulling a struggling third up between them. Alewyth found herself under attack by a soldier ant and she leaped down from Pyrite to meet the attack head on, figuring she was better able to deal with it than her trusty mount, who was not trained in the ways of battle. Zander cast another [I]lightning bolt[/I] spell at a taskmaster, even though doing so meant the blast of electricity went through his bat swarm as well. Fried bats fell from the sky around the taskmaster, and Thurloe followed up with another [I]magic missile[/I] aimed at the same formian. And still it refused to fall! After having slain the soldier ant she was fighting, Alewyth cast a [I]hold person[/I] spell on one of the dominated farmers keeping his friend held in place upon Wakuren's bison. This gave the free-willed farmer enough of an opening to wriggle free from his [I]dominated[/I] friends and leap down from the bison's back, while at the same time Alewyth's bison slew the last of the worker ants that had still been trying to bring down a cow. Wakuren slammed the edge of his shield at one of the remaining taskmasters, while another one managed to successfully [I]dominate[/I] the farmer who had just gotten himself free from his friends' grasp and was looking for his dropped pitchfork in the grasses of the grazing field. Then a final [I]lightning bolt[/I] spell from Zander slew one of the two remaining taskmasters, while Thurloe took out the other one with a [I]magic missile[/I] barrage. The taskmasters now all slain, the formerly [I]dominated[/I] mind-slaves found themselves with their own faculties back, and the farmers still on the back of the celestial bison climbed back down - and just in time, too, for shortly thereafter it vanished, returning to the celestial plane from which it had been summoned. "Is everyone okay?" Alewyth asked the farmers. A score of insectoid bodies littered the field, but remarkably all ten cows had made it through the attack alive. "We're fine, Miss, all thanks to you," one of the farmers replied. "You said the ants were back," Wakuren said. "They had attacked before?" "Yeah, two days ago," answered one of the farmers. "There were less of them, but they managed to kill two cows and drag them away." "It wouldn't be very difficult to track them," pointed out Xandro, putting the [I]Dardolian lute[/I] on his back now that the combat was over. "Two big, heavy cows being dragged along the ground, back toward the mountains...." He pointed off in the distance, where signs of such drag-marks were still evident, two days later. "Tomorrow," Thurloe decided. "We've used up a bunch of our spells today and I wouldn't mind being at full strength if we're going to track those mind-controller bugs back to their nest. Those celestial bison were plenty handy in soaking up attacks that otherwise would have come our way, and they did their fair share of killing as well. Plus, I want to make sure we're all protected from being taken over. I don't want to be some bug-slave the rest of my life!" "Would it be possible for you to put us up for the night?" asked Alewyth. "We'd be fine in a barn with our animals." The farmers readily agreed, feeling it was the least they could do for these wandering heroes who had just put their lives on the line for the four of them and their small herd. Of course, they didn't know the heroes were going to be sleeping in slightly more luxurious conditions than a pile of hay in a barn; they'd be inside the extradimensional lamp. The next morning, fresh and relaxed - and, more importantly, with a full spell repertoire at the ready - the group returned to the field, surprised to see a few of the corpses from the previous day's battle missing. Fresh drag marks paralleled the ones from the first attack, when two cows had been slain by a smaller force of giant ants. It looked like two of the formian taskmaster corpses had been singled out, whether because they were the biggest (and thus would provide the most meat) or to hide their involvement (which would mean another task force would be sent to fetch the two other corpses soon enough) was unclear. But the group decided unanimously not to wait for the next wave of ants and formians to show up, but to backtrack them to their nest. The way was not difficult, with the multiple drag marks all pointing the way the insects had gone to return to the nest. The ground was level for the most part, although it got slightly hilly as they approached the edges of the Shieldwall Mountains. But the drag-marks ended when the grass did; fortunately, there were spots of blood and scraped hide to show which way the cattle corpses had been dragged, and it wasn't too difficult to guess their eventual destination once the two columns came into view. Two pillars rose up from the stone ground, one on either side of a wide, open cave in the side of the nearest mountain. All indications showed the cows had been dragged straight into the cave entrance. "How do we want to do this?" Xandro asked. "We buff up, we go in," suggested Thurloe. He didn't want to hear any suggestions from Wakuren involving Hesperna's lamp, the half-orc's [I]ring of invisibility[/I], and a [I]gaseous form[/I] spell. If the spellsword was going in, he wanted to be able to see what all he was getting into. The preparatory spellcasting took some time, making sure everyone was covered with either a [I]magic circle against evil[/I] or a [I]protection from evil[/I] spell, to ensure nobody would be falling sway to a taskmaster's [I]domination[/I] effect. Thurloe and Zander covered themselves in their standard [I]mage armor[/I] and [I]shield[/I] spells; Alewyth cast an [I]entropic shield[/I] spell on herself and Wakuren followed suit; the half-orc followed it up with a [I]shield of faith[/I] spell, [I]bull's strength[/I], [I]eagle's splendor[/I], and [I]heroism[/I], and only then signaled he was ready. "Then let's go," suggested Thurloe, leading the way up the hill towards the cave. Xandro cast a [I]heroism[/I] spell on the spellsword as they headed toward the cave entrance. As Alewyth and Wakuren approached, their innate darkvision allowed them to see inside the unlit cave's interior, and thus they were the only two to see the formian at the back of the cave. It was even larger than a taskmaster, but fortunately it had its back to the approaching heroes and didn't seem aware of their presence. But it had a quiver of a half-dozen javelins strapped over one shoulder, while it held some sort of slightly glowing stone in one hand. But that wasn't the only thing they noticed as they got closer to the cave opening. There was a steady tone, rather like a single note being played by a flute. Looking up at the stone pillars flanking the cave, whose straight lines and sharp angles showed they had been carved or built into their forms instead of arriving in their shapes naturally, the heroes could see that near the top of each 25-foot column was an angled gap, and the wind coming down from the mountain blew past these gaps, causing the tone. They could see no effect coming from the pillars other than the noise and couldn't figure out its purpose: as a warning, perhaps? A means for the scouts and food-gathering parties to find their way back to the nest? But then the wind died down, the noise stopped, and the cave opening winked out as if popped like a bubble. The group of five, who had been stealthily approaching the cave opening, now found themselves stealthily approaching the blank side of a mountain. "Um, what?" asked Zander from the rear of the formation. But soon after the wind picked back up, the tone started back up, and like a shimmering mirage the cave opening was back in place. Thurloe thought he knew what was going on, but they were too close to the cave opening now to allow talk amongst themselves without potentially alerting the formian myrmarch of their presence. So, using hand signals only, he indicated for them to silently sneak onto the cave and take out the giant formian with the javelins. Unfortunately for the heroes, there were two side passageways coming from the central cave chamber, and from the corridor to the right scrambled the familiar form of a formian taskmaster. It spotted the heroes, sent some telepathic signal of warning to the myrmarch (for the larger insect spun about to face them, glowing stone in hand), and tried [I]dominating[/I] Thurloe, to no avail - his [I]protection from evil[/I] spell kept him safe on that front. Then the myrmarch waved a hand in the direction of the cave opening and a [I]dictum[/I] spell exploded around the heroes. Neither Alewyth nor Wakuren were the least bit affected by the magical attack, whereas Thurloe, Xandro, and Zander all found themselves deafened and under a [I]slow[/I] effect. But even though he couldn't hear himself speak, Thurloe decided to cut their losses. "Everybody out!!" he called back to his friends. "Alewyth - take out the pillars!" Scrambling back out of the cave in an unaccustomed retreat, Alewyth looked up at the pillar to the left of the cave. It was too angular to be natural, that much was certain, but as she examined its texture she could see it hadn't been carved from an existing chunk of stone; rather, it had been assembled, likely by creatures chewing up stone into a pulpy mess and then shaping it, inch by patient inch. (She was correct in her assessment, but hadn't taken into account the other materials added to the chewed stone: the remains of local denizens, whose pulped bones and dried blood helped anchor the structure together.) But seeing as it wasn't unworked stone, her [I]soften earth and stone[/I] spell would be ineffective if she cast it directly upon the pillar itself - so she cast it at the ground upon which the pillar was anchored. And then she ran at the pillar, toppling it over to fall to the ground and shatter. The cave opening, with a battle-ready formian taskmaster and myrmarch still inside, winked out of existence at the moment the shattered pillar stopped adding its wind-tone to the other one. Not having a second [I]soften earth and stone[/I] spell prepared, Alewyth made do with attacking the other pillar with [I]Sjondra[/I], and soon it too lay in ruins. "Explanations?" asked Zander, once the deafness had left his ears. "The other side of the cave opening, past those pillars - all that was on another plane of existence," Thurloe explained. "When the wind blew, it aligned the extraplanar gateway from the nest, so it could more or less open a door to our world. With the pillars smashed, they don't have a means to come back here. The rest of the nest is fine, on whatever plane it's on, but now they can't come back here." "Then how did they get here in the first place?" demanded Alewyth. "Easy: they opened up a planar gateway that just happened to end up here, pushed through a couple formian workers, and they got busy building those pillars. They'd serve as a sort of 'homing device,' so when the nest opened up another gate, it would lock in to this location. They can still open up a gate from the nest - that might even be what that shining stone the big guy was holding was all about - but they have no way of opening it at any specific location." "So it'll just open up somewhere else in the world?" Alewyth pushed. "So we just made it somebody else's problem?" "No guarantees the gate would even open up anywhere on this world at all," Thurloe argued. "The Material Plane is a really big place, and our planet is just one of who knows how many a planar gate could link up to." "Still, maybe we should have taken care of the whole nest while we had the chance," Alewyth continued. "They could show up anywhere, maybe where there wouldn't be anyone to stop them like we could have." "I got news for you, sister," Thurloe replied. "There's no way we could have taken down an entire nest of those things. Do you have any idea how many of those bugs there are in a full-blown nest? And that big one we saw, that deafened us? That's not even the most powerful type of those bugs there are. Believe me, this was the best solution." "I guess," Alewyth sighed. - - - This was a pretty short session, lasting just about three hours. I had designed four chambers in the nest before the big door which led to the main nest, which was far beyond the PCs' abilities to handle. I didn't even bother designing the nest beyond the security doors, either, instead beefing up the security there to make it quite evident the PCs were in over their heads. But they didn't even need to enter the nest to figure out the importance of the pillars (the concept of which I got from an old movie, "Phase Four," about a nest of super-intelligent mutant ants out in the desert, although their pillars were sonic weapons, I believe). I did introduce once change in procedures, though: before this session, I made initiative cards and flat tokens of the monsters typically summoned by the spellcasters. So when Zander used [I]summon swarm[/I] to call forth a swarm of bats, I had a "Zander's summoned bat swarm" initiative card to place into the initiative deck and a 2-inch-by-2-inch "swarm of bats" token (with a "Z" in one corner to tell it apart from any other bat swarms that might be in play; Thurloe knows the [I]summon swarm[/I] spell, for instance, so I made up a separate initiative card and token for his own bat swarm) to place on the battle board. After the session, I had Vicki go through her [I]summon monster I-IV[/I] spells and pick out a couple from each list, the ones she'd most likely be summoning, so I could have them at the ready. (She's already summoned a celestial bison and Small earth elementals several times, so I already had those ready.) In any case, I think it should streamline play, so we're not coming to a crashing halt to gather up the stats for a summoned creature whenever such a spell comes into play. - - - T-shirt worn: My Einstein shirt, as it has the smoke from his pipe expanding into galaxies. It's my go-to shirt for depicting any of the Outer Planes. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Dreams of Erthe
Top