I was initially rather alarmed at the conversation I was holding with the blade – I knew of items like this, but I never gave them much thought. Didn’t really consider such things real, always relegated them to the realm of fantasy. But here I was, chatting it up in my head with a sword.<\/p>\n
It’s hard to describe this conversation – the sword seems somewhat arrogant (yes, that’s a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, I know), but we seem to get along well. It gave me a bit of its past, apparently created by an Eladrin named Aesileir, who was a slave trader in his time. Wouldn’t give me much idea of how long ago that was, but apparently the sword is a native of the Feywild. The way it spoke implied there is a great deal of memory of various aspects of the Feywild there, so that might be worth investigating at some point. Very reticent to speak in detail, though, so it might require convincing.<\/p>\n
We continued our march through the woods, seeking our campsite.<\/p>\n
Crickets apparently don’t sing here. I’d guess either that’s because the tiniest pixies will track them down and eat them, or they’re busy sneaking up on said pixies to eat them. I didn’t realize this until an hour before nightfall, the crickets here are carnivorous, or at least omnivorous. As we were walking through the woods, I saw what looked like a squirrel’s corpse (if a squirrel can be the size of a gnome), covered with crickets. Big, black spiky ones, gobbling the body like vultures. The sound their mandibles were making was fascinating, if a bit creepy. Like a steady wet rustle.<\/p>\n
Shortly before nightfall, an Eladrin appeared coming up the hill towards us, from the direction we’d come – I almost shot him, before Althea bade me to hold. She apparently knew this fellow, or was at least familiar with him. How right I was – as he approached, I realized he was a spitting image of her. As he revealed, he was apparently her twin – and had been looking for her for a while. Our entry into the Feywild set off some sort of alert for him, and he tracked us to our campsite. Apparently he resides in this general area, as does another sibling of theirs, whose reputation is…less than savory. Not that I’m in any way a holder of judgmental opinion on one’s choice of profession, but others might understand me better with that phrase.<\/p>\n
He gave us quite a bit of information about what was going on, and connected some dots that Blood Milk had left hanging – the red-cap had intimated that Donnel, ruler of Ihnbharan, was dead. Arn confirmed this – killed in a fire of some kind. He also gave us a bit of insight into the Fomorian politics of the city. The heirs of Donnel, normally subservient to the ruler, go into something of a covert civil war when their liege dies. The last contender to desire the throne still living wins. Apparently this is a steel-clad law, as even if all the contenders die, the populace decides among them which would be the best ruler and that individual is resurrected, if possible.<\/p>\n
So, with Donnel dead, six heirs are now fighting it out quietly to determine who will wear the crown.<\/p>\n
Gazul Kill was the one mentioned as the one with the strongest bid to win the prize, he apparently has some history of travelling the planes and capturing angels, whom he binds to servitude. Apparently has fashioned some sort of weapon from an angel’s wing. I’ll have to ask Sered if he knew the owner. Gazul is apparently the eldest of the brood. Hak Azuth was next up in power, and has served with Ihnbharan’s military, so his power base would be with the Fomorian army.<\/p>\n
Droil Slint was mentioned as third son, and gives the family its dose of inbred-crazy. Apparently trained in necromancy, he is rumored to wear a ventriloquist’s puppet on his hand all the time, and speaks only through it. Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe it’s the dummy that is the brain there…it might be a bit likeSybarron<\/em>, and dominated the mentally feeble family member. Or not. Zur Nav is next, youngest of the batch, and it sounds as though he has been driven into exile. Probably won’t survive long, as he’ll always be a threat to the throne if the winner doesn’t deal with him.<\/p>\n Flay Gaz, the only daughter of Donnel, some kind of witch. The rub – she’s combined her efforts with the final contender.<\/p>\n Veyd.<\/p>\n Somehow, Veyd had ingratiated himself with Donnel well enough to be named an heir, and he is subject to the same competition for rulership. So he and the Lady Flay are operating as a team, and if what I’ve been told about Veyd is even half true, he probably plots to kill her as soon as they win, so he can elevate himself to a new throne. Of course, knowing a little bit of Fomorians, she’s probably thinking the same thing of him, so they deserve each other.<\/p>\n Things are all drawing together now – Shal Rava means “Devil’s Due” in the language of the Astral, the devils. Liss told us that was who was bargaining to purchase some of us – but they weren’t after me, they were after the more long-term members of Fellbane. The ones Veyd knew about.<\/p>\n Veyd supplies his trolls to augment Flay’s fighting forces, Flay supplies money from her personal wealth to hire Shal Rava to bolster their forces in the bid for the throne, and she probably is the one who has the connection to the dragon\u00a0Rain of Tears<\/em> and loaned his service to Veyd to probe the defenses of Al’Veydra. More pieces come together for me – Veyd, a troll, could not have just created the hybrid troll-spiders we fought in that battle himself. He had to have had arcane help. The witch Flay was just that kind of help – it was she who probably enabled him to meld the flesh of his troll kin to the frames of these spiders. Fomorians are crazy, but they are not stupid, and they have enough ingenuity to create just such jarring abominations.<\/p>\n The name Shal Rava, “the Devil’s Due” certainly made sense to me – the negotiator sent by Shal Rava had been an agent of Mahar or at least associated with his entourage. So Mahar must be either a devil now, or remains a thrall to Balenor after all this time. That he is serving Veyd gives me some hesitation – I do not want to fight my friend. Perhaps I can find a way to contact Mahar and parlay with him – if I am very lucky, find a way to turn him against Veyd, or have him look the other way when we are ready to strike. A plan is forming in my head, thinking of this…but it will have to wait.<\/p>\n In addition to these, Arn mentioned a “Portal Lord” named Wirth Nay, who apparently is responsible for channeling trade with the Eladrin, and who shuffles various portals open and shut as needed. Also an Eladrin named Eslesian, who runs a group of outcasts called the Eile in service to the Fomorians, acting as Ihnbharan’s traders.<\/p>\n Armed with this knowledge, and many more questions, we slept for the night.<\/p>\n We settled in for camp, and the night passed smoothly. I will never become accustomed to the stars in the Feywild. They seem too close, larger than they should be, and the occasional one visibly wanders. At home in the world, the only wandering stars move at a pace not truly visible unless you pay attention over many weeks. At home, when you lean back or lay on the ground to look up, on rare occasions you feel as though you could fall into the sky if you aren’t careful. Here, when you do that you feel like the sky is trying to pull you up! I had to cover my face with my spare traveling shirt just to keep from accidentally looking up while trying to sleep.<\/p>\n Things clouded up a bit on my watch in the morning, and seeing rain coming I threw together a camp ritual to at least keep the group dry while they slept. Wouldn’t help us traveling, but at least they wouldn’t wake soaked. I was expecting, this being the Feywild, a gigantic storm, but the rain just kept a steady patter while we got up and started getting ready for the day.<\/p>\n We had looped around to one side of the ruin, towards an entrance into the tunnel systems that led to Ihnbharan – we’d still have a couple miles to travel to get to the city, but we wouldn’t be coming at the front door, and hopefully in this way we would avoid unnecessary attention. Fortunately, Moss Kag was only as distant as it appeared – for once, the Feywild gave true vision. Which figures, as it was the time when we expected the unexpected, and we got what we expected which was unexpected. Someday I’ll write a song about that.<\/p>\n When we got to the area Arn described, we saw a bit of unexpected company waiting outside the entrance: red-caps. And they were riding spiders. The same kind of troll-spider hybrids that had accompanied the dragon when he raided Al’Veydra.<\/p>\n The red-caps were simply hired guards, and the spiders made it clear to us all – Veyd was expecting us, expecting Fellbane. He may not have heard yet that we were free of Liss and her partner, but he was obviously taking no chances. These were either set here to watch for us, or to watch for the forces of other competitors for the throne.<\/p>\n Probably both.<\/p>\n The entrance we sought was a wide gaping maw in the side of a steep mountainside, probably forty or fifty feet across, with a ramp leading up into it. Before the entrance was a wide field of red poppies – or at least, what passes for poppies in this realm – encircled by thick forest. The spider-mounted red-caps were riding about in the field, one with a leather spyglass he occasionally held up to his eye. We caught sight of this from the woods, and hunkered down to discuss options. I knew looking across that field that if we were to simply charge, they would outrun us and escape.<\/p>\n After discussing a wide variety of options, and the group fumbling through several versions of “let’s rush them” – and\u00a0Sybarron<\/em> <\/em>constantly urging me to get in charge of them all – I decided to try a distraction. I wanted to get into close range of these riders and start a fight there, perhaps engage them to focus them on me in order to buy time for the group to get on top of them before they noticed. Hopefully before they ripped me to shreds, too.<\/p>\n So in the end I asked Bingo to accompany me, took the map, and we marched out into the field. The riders did not approach – drat – so I called out to them as a lost traveler, and began closing the distance myself. At some point I heard whispering from the group behind me, and before I knew it, someone had shot the lead red-cap with an arrow. I felt my heart sink as my plan fell to shambles, and Bingo added more arrows to the mix, direly injuring the rider.<\/p>\n Then the red-caps did as I expected, they ran – the spiders making enormous leaps, back into the cave. They were gone before we could form up and enter, which is probably for the best – because as we entered we saw a tripwire just inside the entrance, strung taut across our path. We stepped beyond it into a broad cavern, full of carved pillars – poles consisting of stacked elves atop each other, totem-style. In the half-light, the huge room showed us two other large exits, both dark caves leading deeper into the mountainside. One to the right of our entrance, one straight across, leading directly into the heart of the mountainside.<\/p>\n The absence of the red-caps was really nagging at me. It would be some hours for them to reach Ihnbharan, to warn anyone of our coming, and still more before a response could be mounted and return to deal with us. But something was still there, tugging at my mind.\u00a0Sybarron<\/em> <\/em>was bothering me about something Althea was doing, and as we drew to one side of the cavern, I looked back to the tripwire.<\/p>\n There were bells on the ends of the wire. Not a trap, an alarm. I stopped in my tracks, the rest of the party still carefully picking their way about.<\/p>\n I looked back at that entryway, and into the field of flowers beyond. A puff of wind blew across the field, and I saw a gentle cloud of red pollen whisk up from the waving blossoms. That cave, the entrance. It was of a very great size.<\/p>\n Enough to fit a dragon, plenty enough.<\/p>\n Even as I thought this, a small flood of bats swarmed out of the deeper cave, the one leading straight in from our entrance. I thought for a second that I could feel a breeze blowing from within there, a chuff of damp air, the exhalation of the great mountain underneath which we were intending to travel.<\/p>\n And I knew, then and there. Something coming. Something large.<\/p>\n “Dragon!!”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was initially rather alarmed at the conversation I was holding with the blade – I knew of items like this, but I never gave them much thought. Didn’t really consider such things real, always relegated them to the realm … Continue reading