Welcome back to Trojan Worg!
Thanks for helping us restart the old group! Here’s a refresher on the week.
Wednesday, March 22, NY 931
“Help!”
Seyer
checks the lock on the grand wooden doors between him and the woman’s voice,
but it doesn’t budge. Resigned, we
descend the stairs from the balcony to the beautiful library below. Naya, her owl obediently in tow, glides
silently down the stairs as Naya nimbly hops down the flight of smooth stone
steps. Raina ambles down, her arrows
clattering within her bulky quiver with each step. Kale proceeds down, considering the scroll he
had just pocketed and what its mysterious runes might contain.
As we come
to the bottom of the staircase, we hear the large and ostentatious front door
swing open, creaking on its loaded hinges, and slam back with a cacophonous
echo; the portal’s slam reverberates around the castle, and the candlesticks on
the tables around us teeter for a moment.
We position ourselves around the doorway through which we entered the
library. Seyer looks at his comrades, and
then peeks his head around the corner.
As he does, he observes two goblins, one armed with a crudely-fashioned
handaxe and the other with a gnarled, brutish staff, clacking away from them
towards the armory. The soldier, perhaps
out of instinct or use, checks the hall behind him before turning into the
armory, and as he does, he sees Seyer’s head dart back into the library. Curious, the adept mutters a crude goblin
chant, and a whooshing noise sounds through the open hallway. Suddenly, they knew we were there, and they
charge.
Seyer jumps
from behind the doorway, greatsword drawn.
The small goblins are clearly
surprised and intimidated by the imposing, overburdened fighter, and with a
single parry, Seyer overpowers him. The
adept, hiding in the alcove of the front door, fearing for his life, throws the
door open with all his might with a bang and dashes out the door, which
thunders shut behind him. Silence
returns to the old castle, and we move from around the corner and find a dead
goblin, his armor and collarbone split as he lies slumped on the flagstone. After recovering some startlingly valuable
platinum pieces from his purse, we proceed to the only closed door left in the
castle, far along the southern part of the eastern wall of the armory.
It’s wide
open.
From
within, a booming, deep voice bids us to approach. It is a familiar voice, though we’d never heard
the voice speak in Common. As we enter
the room, which turns out to be a dining room still flanked with two immense
feast tables, we find that one table bears a squat, but undoubtedly tough
goblin; his eyes look back at us unswervingly as he fiddles with the fletching
of an arrow within his quiver.
Another,
more imposing figure, sits atop a tiered pedestal which bears what must be Lord
Nadmum’s throne. Irreverently seated
there is a hobgoblin of oppressive presence; although he does not say his name,
he wears a smug smile, barely seen through the fine, unkempt hair that covers
his chin and much of his face. His skin
is a grayish-white, barely visible underneath his shining, unscratched
breastplate. He twirls a sword pointy
side down on the marble step on which he sits, and it swirls around
effortlessly on the glassy rock. A
handsome steel shield rests against the throne beside the hobgoblin, the image
of a stag emblazoned across it; lifted from some past pillaging, no doubt. As Kalecgos bravely challenges the
hobgoblin’s presence, the goblin sits idle and silent while the hobgoblin
stands, hefts his shield onto his left arm and swings his bastard sword with
the other. His right hand catches our
eye – hairless, swollen and different hues of sickly pink and crimson. Nevertheless, it swirls the sword around
easily as he orders his henchman to open fire.
The short
goblin, as keen as his eye may have been was unable to land a blow with his
fluid, swift shots. Raina ducks and weavs
his arrows, returning fire of her own; she plants an arrow in his gut while
Kalecgos strikes him with a bolt of his own in the thigh. After his injury, his aim loses all
truth. Raina nocks two arrows at once;
quite a feat for someone with hands the size of a peach. Deftly, she releases both aiming for the
wounded goblin; each strikes home, the first finding a gap in the creature’s
chain shirt and the other piercing him in his scrawny, narrow neck. He was dead before he hit the table.
Meanwhile,
Seyer engages in a furious melee with the red-fisted hobgoblin. The fighter’s first raging blow was dodged;
it staggers Seyer, and the hobgoblin slashes him hard with his bastard sword,
drawing a serious wound. Seyer stumbles
back. Naya, seeing Seyer’s need, dashes
forward and places her soft half-elven hands on the sweaty nape of Seyer’s
neck. With a subtle and sweet
incantation, her hands glow green with life, and Seyer’s wound closes. Seyer, rejuvenated, pushes back, riposting
the hobgoblin’s next blow and slashing mightily. He has noticed the hobgoblin’s weakness and
exploited it. With a swing he draws
blood from the creature’s midriff.
Kalecgos spurs emerald-green missiles from his palms and damages the
still-standing hobgoblin. A powerful
thrust from the mighty greatsword nearly kills the hobgoblin, and a final
barrage of arcane missiles from the sorcerer knocks the hobgoblin to the
floor. His bastard sword clatters
unattended on the flagstone. Naya
quickly retrieves the sword and throws it on the table where the goblin died;
it is quite heavy and bulky. It thunders
onto the elegant table.
The
hobgoblin lay dying on the ground as the group surrounds him. He spits on the floor, blood intermingled
within the muck. With his last breath,
he tells us what fools we are, and that the war had already begun, whatever
that means. Seyer saddles his greatsword
and bends down to the hobgoblin; after he refused to tell us anything more,
Seyer smashes his head with his fist.
The hobgoblin’s head cracks on the hard floor; shortly after, he slips
from life.
On
examination of the room after the bloody battle against the keep’s master, we
look about and find little of import except handsome curtains lining both walls
to prevent sunlight or prying eyes from getting in. Naya sees something beneath the throne on
which the hobgoblin stood; she bounds up the pedestal and recovers a small
chest from underneath the throne. It is
a beautiful box of lacquered wood and intricate gold filigree. On the top, a gold-embossed dragon proudly bellows
out gilded flames with its wings outstretched.
The lock on the front clicks when touched, and scratch marks indicated
attempts to circumvent the lock. After
each of us looks at the box, none of us are able to literally or figuratively
crack the lock. Although a silver key of
exquisite craftsmanship was found on the hobgoblin, close to his rent flesh, it
did not fit the chest. Naya commits the
strongbox to her belongings and we walk to the only possible place that lovely
key could fit: upstairs.
Upon
arriving, Seyer inserts the key into the welcoming lock, and it fits perfectly,
admitting us to another set of double doors.
Seyer listens at this new set of doors, but all he hears is rustling, as
if cloth was meeting cloth but he heard no voices. He pulls the door open.
What we find
is a grand bedroom of significant size.
On either side, tall bookshelves like those found in the library behind
us stand, bearing much older and less tidy volumes. An armoire and a vanity rest against the
right wall, and a four-post bed directly ahead.
What we do find unusual is the woman on the bed.
A woman
garbed in black leather from neck to toe and all the way up her arms lay bound
on the bed, her arms tied behind her back and her ankles knotted in a thin
rope. She has a gag over her mouth and
long black hair wrapped up in a bun behind her head. Upon seeing the door open, she meets Seyer’s
gaze and shouts “Wait!” from beneath her gag.
Seyer, although aplomb at physical combat, heeds her cry. Her gaze darts to the left and right corners
of the room adjacent to our fighter.
Seyer nods and lunges to the right, grabbing a hidden goblin sneak
around the corner. We move in as Seyer
pins one sneak down; another one, from the other corner jumps in to help. Raina draws her shortsword in a hurry and
surprises the goblin, thrusting her blade straight through him. The creature dies on her impeccably placed
sword while Kalecgos and Naya respectively stab and club the other goblin to
death.
The woman
on the bed struggles to free herself when we approach; Kale approaches first and
removes her gag. She’s a fair-skinned
human of a lean, muscular figure; her lips are thin and her eyes sharp and
urgent. She thanks us and requests she
be released. After a moment’s hesitation,
we learn her name; Mel Noddera. This
satisfied us, for now. Her wrists were
untied, by which point she is capable of wiggling free from her ankle
bindings. She jumps up and undoes her
hair in a hurry, retying it in a tighter, more secure bun, muttering to
herself.
The window
beside the bed is open, and a grappling hook lay lodged in the wooden floor of
the bedroom, and a rope from it dangles out the window. She hops on the sill, grabs the rope with one
hand and beckons us to follow her with the other. Although not knowing a thing about Mel, we
all follow. Naya searches what we assume
to be Lord Nadmum’s bed, and she locates a beautiful and ornate dagger,
certainly kept there for protection by the displaced lord.
Shortly, we
are all safely outside the castle. Mel
immediately inquires if we had found “the box.”
This woman is pushy, no doubt about it.
Naya concedes that she had indeed found a box of sorts, but she refuses
to relinquish it. Mel, annoyed but
understanding, urges them to follow her back to the city.
We find the
walk back much easier; it barely takes an hour to walk along the ridge. Goblins lay strewn about the hillside, all
felled by our blades, bows and sorcery.
Once within Thoroma, it is clear that the festival is in full swing at noon; people loiter beside the roads,
gossiping and enjoying a drink. Children
play their little games alongside the street.
Mel, on the
other hand, has her eyes front. People
regard her with a palpable distaste, turning to a neighbor when she passes,
surely whispering of rumors and assumptions.
We follow her west on the Garrisunnie into the heart of Thoroma and turn
north onto the Argent Trail; she shouts back at us that we were going to the
temple, apparently no secret worth keeping.
The temple, more of a cathedral, is a beautiful stone temple, cut from
fine stone and perfected over centuries of careful maintenance; this was not a
roadside temple to the primitive. Within
the grand front doors, the nave is filled with parishioners praying to Pelor,
the God of the Sun. He is represented by
an altar in the center of the T-shaped temple and, from either side and above,
grand windows admit the sun’s beams. A
large mosaic window behind the altar depicts Pelor in a glorious, magnanimous
pose.
Mel isn’t
here to worship, it seems. She hustles
past the commoners to one transept of the temple. We follow her duly, but uncertain of where we
are going. We reach a large stone
covered in commemorative and honorific inscriptions, but Mel doesn’t pay that any
mind, either. She kneels down, out of
sight of the parishioners and feels along the edge of the stone on the
floor. Her dainty, strong fingers trace
the stone like a fragile jewel until she finds her mark. She coughs loudly, pressing down on the stone
as it grinds against its neighbors. A
narrow, dark opening appears where the stone was as it slid in place, and Mel
descends into the hole using carved handholds in the side of the shaft. We follow, Seyer descending first.
Once Mel
slid the stone back into its civilian place, she calls ahead to Seyer in the
close hallway that he should just proceed straight and he will find a
corner. Seyer withdraws one of his
pilfered oars to use as a guiding stick.
It dutifully finds the corner and he rounds it; however, he makes a
misstep as the ground went from hard rock to dirt, and he slips, bruising his
arm and his pride. However, a wooden
door lies ahead. Seyer gets to his feet
and opens the door.
Behind this
door lies a dimly lit domed stone room filled with about ten other people; as
soon as the door opens, they look over at us with great surprise but not an
ounce of fear. Mel emerges from our
group and bowes deeply to them. She
introduces us briefly to the others gathered there, seemingly making a meal in
an old iron pot over a magical flame that produces no smoke.
Naya
reluctantly surrenders the box to Mel, who shows it to the others gathered
there. She thanks Naya for the box and
hands it to the eldest member of that group, a white-haired human of
indeterminable age with the hazelnut eyes of an unseasoned youth. He examines the lock, requests a pick from
one of the half-elves present there, but is unable to manage the lock. He sets the box down, looking at it in
consideration. A half-orc smiles, grunts
and heaves his warhammer to his shoulder, dropping it heavily onto the
box. The wooden box smashes to
smithereens, gold inlay and red-dyed wood flying in every direction. The crash was close and loud in the small
stone cavern. Within, an exceptionally
large, unparalleled ruby lies on a flat purple felt pillow.
Everyone in the room gazes at the
massive gem, but Raina feels more compelled to look than the others. Her eyes stare unblinking at the rock and her
little arms reach out to touch the gem.
Seyer approaches, attempting to restrain the pint-sized hunter, but she
pushes him back with unnatural strength, as a desperate mother might defend her
only child. She touches the gem with her
petite hands, which only makes the drive to have the gem more and more
pressing. Kalecgos, seeing the entranced
halfling, casts the gem aside with his mage hand. Mel catches it and removes it from Kalecgos’
telekinetic grip, shrouding it with a nearby cloak. Raina snaps out of her stupor, fully alert
but unaware of what just transpired.
Mel sets
the gem in a safe place below the bench.
She explains that it is a dragon ruby, a powerful mind-control tool
used by red dragons to addle and seduce the greedy and the weak-minded. They are being used by the red dragons of the
world to restart the War of the Ages that nearly destroyed Alora almost a
thousand years ago. Now, the beasts are
no longer dormant, and their ancient grudge is reignited. They have been sending their agents
throughout the world to further their cause and build willing (and unwilling)
support. Soon, Mel fears, their
mercenaries will dominate all of Alora.
This, she says, is what her and her brethren plan to stop.
She
introduces us to them as the Priory of the Icterine Eye. There is much more to learn, but it seems
safe to assume they are friends, and we feel secure in our decision, relieved
that our adventure to Manifang
Castle is not our last.
What of
Lord Nadmum and his lover? What will he
think about this news, and how will he react to the party’s for their valiant
victory? What of the Red Dragons?
Find out
next week!
