Zetris' Diary

[DM Quietus]

For Gilraen, Faewen, and Nienna - may this book make its way to you, if I cannot.

[DM Quietus]

My dearest children.. I'm sorry that I haven't been there for you the way I should have. Since the death of your father, it fell to me to take up his role as defender of the swamps, and that was no place to raise you. I trust that my family has seen to your education, and I do long to see you again, but I have responsibilities to see to before I can once more travel to our home of Montang.

I write this so that if I don't return, you will know what happened - know that your mother, despite her failings, is no coward, running from the responsibility of caring for her children. I don't doubt that some word of my exploits has made it to Montang by now, but I would rather you hear everything in my own words.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. This whole adventure - if it can be called that - began when a group calling themselves the Silent Woodsmen were on their way through Calmworth, where I was restocking on basic equipment. They needed some assistance getting through the swamps safely, so I accompanied them, and got wrapped up in their fight. This was back when the assaults were just beginning; We even came across a tower which had been taken over by the enemy, and assaulted it - we were successful in repelling the invaders, but that was a short-lived success.

After that fight, we went our separate ways for a time. They headed to the Silent Woods to take care of some sort of unfinished business there, while I headed into the mountains, to learn the passes. Even then, I had a hunch that something would be happening. I just had no idea the sheer size of the brewing storm. That would change quickly, however. It was several months later when I made my way back out of the mountains, and I found myself back in Calmworth, where I learned of the push from the East, and the fierce press of armies that had tramped the swamps. MY swamps. The blood swamps, they call them now.. but I have devised a method of returning them to the state they used to be.

At any rate, I rejoined the group - they had seen significant changes in their ranks. In fact, of the group I'd first met, only Dalia still lives. I suppose I should tell you of my current companions...

Dalia - a halfling cleric of Ehlonna. She's.. a valuable ally. She has a decided problem with showing mercy, though, by which I mean she shows too much. She even demanded we spare the life of Lizardrider, a man she seems to detest completely, and who has committed any number of atrocities. She's a sweet girl, but naive.

Rose - a human mage, with impulse problems and the magic to match them. Don't ever make her angry, she's more dangerous than a thunderstorm if she wants to be... as long as she can keep her mind on the task at hand. Somehow, she managed to learn to cast many spells at once, and has tied some strange energy to herself which gives her more hands with which to cast those spells. I don't necessarily agree with the risks she took to do so, but the results are undeniable. Seems like she traded her brains for her looks sometimes, but she certainly got her money's worth. You'll know her when you see her. Gilraen, hands off - she's spoken for.

Pierce - a human warrior. Rose's Fiancee, and a perfect match for her. He's also not the brightest torch in the camp, but where Rose has traded her brains for looks, Pierce has traded his for sheer raw muscle. The man's sword is sized as if for a giant. He's got an incredible temper, so again, try not to upset him. He seems to dislike me, though I've no idea why, with the number of times I've saved his life, or that of his boar. Sometimes I think he only tolerates me for Rose's sake - the two of them may give me headaches at times trying to follow their thought processes, but I can't deny that they're good at what they do.

Banner - A Gnomish holy warrior of some sort. Hates the undead, but I don't really know much about him beyond that. When he fights undead, he's fairly decent at it, and while he can hold his own outside of that, I'd still rather have Pierce at my back than Banner. Even with the cold relationship I have with Pierce.

Raven - I may be misspelling her name. She's a fellow Elven follower of Obad-Hai, more interested in the priesthood from what I can tell, but she's taken an interest in the more hands-on aspects of worship. I've taken her under my wing, and begun teaching her the ways of the druid.



At any rate. This is the core group I've been traveling with, since I came down from the mountains, and the ones whom I lead back into those rocky paths. As I'd stated, when I came back to Calmworth, I found that the Eastern hordes had come down en masse, and they were working on getting hold of a particular item which would give them access to some kind of spider-shaped war machine (more on this later). We cut into the mountains to cut off their return route, and managed to waylay a supply caravan we thought was carrying this item, some sort of power source. The caravan was a decoy, but we did manage to intercept Seth Lizardrider along the way. You've heard of him, right? Follower of Hextor, known for all manner of raids on different towns, insanely strong.. he nearly beat the group of us. The only thing that saved us was some magical cloak we were carrying, which allowed us to Charm him long enough to .. well, have him not kill us. We'd convinced him to let us rummage through his packs, and I was the only one who noticed that something rattled in his map case - never say your mother never gave you anything, keen Elven senses are ALWAYS a boon.

Unfortunately, I broke the charm effect when I tried to (stealthily) retrieve the rattling object that night, and woke Seth. Thankfully, he is a man of his word, and since we'd called a truce for the night, he simply moved on. We caught up with him later, after getting proper rest and recovering spells, and managed to capture him.. that's right, your mother was the one who brought in a wanted fugitive! Learned a thing or two about Crodlu, too.. fascinating creatures. And FAST.

So, after capturing him, we found the item that was rattling around - some little black bauble that burnt Dalia's hand, but I didn't find it so hot to the touch. Thought that girl had a better tolerance for pain, honestly. It's just as well she worships Ehlonna, she couldn't stomach some of the Shalm's teachings. Anyway.. we returned that to King Melbourne for proper disposal, and I got my first glimpse of the state of the swamps. There was nothing I could have done, had I stayed down from the mountains. Charged with defending the swamps or not, one druid is not enough to stop two clashing armies of that size. Of course, we ended up getting involved in that fight, and I certainly HOPE you heard stories about THAT. Massive lines of trolls, orcs, goblins in the front.. and all manner of creatures standing rank-and-file, including Drow and Duergar, plus some Spellweaver creature (which later taught Rose how to cast multiple spells at once.. neat ability, but I still shudder to imagine what she had to go through), and at the back of the invading army... summoners, performing a ritual, protected with (Lesser?) globes of invulnerability. Nothing we could do without breaking through, and unfortunately, no one listened to me, as usual.

With the rest of the group charging through to engage the right flank, I had to pounce into action as a mountain lion, into the middle of the left flank, to get in spell range to affect a makeshift wooden tower near the ritual casters. Unfortunately, I got there a few seconds too late; They finished their ritual, and summoned an aspect of Hextor.

I welcomed it to our world by finishing my spells, with a great deal of help from Obad-Hai, and made the tower drop on it.

Needless to say, it was not pleased with that in the slightest. And it could hit hard - VERY hard. Knocked me unconscious, in fact. Though, Dalia's prayers brought me back to full health, and to my feet - say what you will about the girl, she may be naive, but she's a powerful healer. I ended up engaging the aspect with everyone else, and if I can pass you any advice at all, it would be this.. don't rely on a lot of weak attacks against anything that can shrug off weak attacks. On the other hand, Orm did his job wonderfully, though he did take a mouthful of exploding Aspect fire for his trouble. Because bringing down Seth a little over a week previous wasn't enough.. I had to drop an aspect of Hextor, too.

We spent some time in the swamps, then, eliminating some of the undead that had been raised, and fighting off a mage who held some sort of artifact staff; we had to give that up, unfortunately, as part of the barter to creation my water-filtering system, a small egg which can automatically purify any water it comes in contact with, and is animated to move itself around. It was a tough trade to make, but I needed to see to it that the swamps were being cleaned, and I'd found out the hard way that using my own personal power to do so would be slow and ineffective.

Not long after that, we were asked to assist King Melbourne's army in its offensive, pushing forward faster - we each assaulted a watchtower individually, and for the most part, each of us were successful. I managed, with mine, to defeat the twelve Ogres that were guarding it, but then some dwarf got a lucky shot with his axe. I'm still not certain how I survived there, truthfully; The halfling I'd saved said something about healing potions, but I was quite far gone, and had taken the form of a tiger - when I changed back, those wounds would have been WELL beyond my body's ability to handle. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, of course... I'm glad I survived, even if Orm didn't. Poor guy.. I've reincarnated him, and Obad Hai sent him back as a mouse. Poetic irony, I suppose. He's not really suited to be my companion any more, though... but until the Shalm deigns to send me something more combat-worthy, I'll be keeping him as my companion, to give him that extra boost. Hopefully, when I need to release those ties, he'll stay with me.

... There. That's more or less caught up to this point; since the last time you saw me, I've nearly died at least twice, apprehended a highly dangerous and wanted criminal, brought down a summoned Aspect of Hextor, and assaulted a tower filled with a dozen Ogres. I hope you three can forgive me, but Mom's been busy - this sort of stuff is important, and can't really wait.

Next up on our plate : The massive mechanical spider. We took the power source earlier, so it doesn't have all of its abilities.. but it does have some keepsakes important to Pierce, and it does pose a decided threat to our side if it's still running. And after that, I believe the King intends to ask us to help with another massive battle.. I hope that this time, people actually listen to me.

[DM Quietus]

Creepy crawly constructs

I have to admit, I've taken a liking to long-range travel. It's never particularly bothered me - Flank has always served me well in that regard. Ever since we captured Seth Lizardrider, however, I've had the opportunity to study his crodlu, a magnificent creature that I'd never heard of prior to meeting this one in person. Powerfully muscled, and covered in thick scales, it almost seems like some kind of reptilian ostrich... except bigger, stronger, meaner, and more dangerous. And FAST! I still prefer the feel of the wind in my hair when I ride with Flank, but things have become far too dangerous to put him in that sort of risk, these days. Instead, I put my (relatively) newfound ability to take the form of animals to copy the basic form of that magnificent creature, and can carry at least two of our group at a given time, at a speed far faster than even Pierce can keep up with.

And so it was, we travelled like that for a full day away from the army's main body, and found the metal spider we were looking for. That. Thing. Was. Massive. This was one of those situations where my abilities relating to nature were worth precious little; Claws and teeth were worth little against this thing. No big surprise there, really, but even the giant crocodile I summoned was rather ineffective. I'd expected a powerful tail to be a better weapon than it actually was. I wasn't particularly surprised to see Pierce being the most effective in damaging it.. even a metal shell can't stop that boy's sword, apparently. I'm glad we're more or less on the same side. Banner seemed to be trying to get up so he could get a better shot at the head, but climbing smooth metal proved difficult, even with the creature having been slowed by Rose's lightning.. so I summoned some crawling vines to try and make a ladder of sorts for him.

Then comes the bad part.. the spider stepped on me. Now, that might not sound so bad when I put it that way, but I'm talking a spider whose body was easily the size of a house, and could have - rather, did - house a huge number of other creatures. And it stepped on ME. It was only for a moment, but I could swear that I could feel my ribs breaking just from the sheer weight of it. It didn't help that Rose decided it would be a good idea to throw a vial of random green something at it.. turns out that it had been poison, which almost seeped all the way down the metal leg, and into the nice open hole it had left in my chest. Thankfully, it wasn't long after that when Banner .. did whatever it was he was doing on top of the spider, and Pierce managed to do enough damage to bring it down. The summoned crocodile helped me get the massive leg off before I couldn't breathe any more, which was a welcome turn of events.

[DM Quietus]

... And the critters it carried.

No rest for the weary, I suppose. Almost as soon as the creature fell to the ground, its shell started to open at the back. We managed to get some healing thrown around thanks to the staff we'd given to Dalia (poor girl had spent so much of her divine energy just keeping us alive while we fought the spider itself..), before what turned out to be doors were open wide enough to get a look inside.

And promptly be bitten by the most bloated, overgrown, toothy maggot I've ever seen.

Now, I know it wasn't a maggot.. but that's as good a description as I can manage. It was more like a spider, with its head on the end of a long neck, and a soft, bloated body. And the entire thing was massive, easily ten or fifteen feet across. And it smelled like hot vomit. Probably appropriate, considering the entire time we were fighting it, it was either coughing up wet packages filled with its young (nasty little biting things, they were), or having several spill out of it with every attack made. Oh, and did I mention that these things were poisonous? Yeah, every bite they landed was injecting more and more poison into our - or more accurately, my - body. And lucky me, I was the primary target, because I'd taken the time to shift into tiger form, and charge in to deal with this nasty looking threat. It didn't help that Rose, in her infinite wisdom, felt the need to cast a fireball inside the room, with me standing in the blast radius. I tried to roar at her, to try and warn her to stop, as soon as I realized what she was doing... but I don't know why I even tried. This is the same girl that can't hold a coherent conversation for more than a minute, and who thought traveling off with a six-armed creature apparently from another plane was a good idea.

... We've been fighting a lot of things with a whole lot of limbs, lately.

At any rate, I managed to soak a flame bath before I charged in. Thankfully, Dalia managed to get some healing going before I did, but that only took away the bite, not the fireball. And Rose's fireballs hurt.

So, I charged in, claws and teeth first. Landed a few good blows, too... though every time I caught it with my claws, it was spewing babies everywhere. If it hadn't been made clear how thoroughly evil these creatures were before we'd encountered them, I probably would have been put off by that. As it was.. they were clearly not intended by Nature in any way, and equally clearly slave owners, both of which I oppose. So, clawing away I went.

That fight actually didn't last all that long. There were spells cast, and a lot of attention was paid to killing the young, but after a short while, its body burst open and released even more of its young. And of course, while we were fighting, something had fixed the spider creature that we were fighting inside, which closed its door and started walking away. Wonderful. Presumably, the smaller spider-like metal creatures that made their way inside.. with spinning metal discs instead of jaws.

Of course, Pierce did what he does best.. and pissed them off, attacking one as it went by. Wonderful.

So the lights in the place (yes, lights inside a metal spider. Your guess is as good as mine.) all go red, and these smaller spider things start attacking pierce. I summon the giant crocodile again, and go to join the fight, but my claws and the crocodile's tail were again, less effective than I would have liked. Pierce managed to outdamage us, I think, but we thankfully managed to defeat all of them, at which point we heard a voice coming from the walls of the room inside the spider's abdomen, telling us to get out. We'd managed to locate what we'd come for - turns out Pierce's belongings were left in this room, I guess as a storage area of sorts - so I was more than willing to call the attack a success and leave... and then Pierce got all moral about some goblin. Why does no one tell me these things? I hate surprises, particularly when they put our lives in danger.

Long story short, no matter what we did, Pierce had his ears in a twist about this goblin, to the point that they sent what I can only hope was EVERY BLOODY CREATURE INSIDE THIS SPIDER to the room we were in, to force us out. Wonderful. They brought the goblin with them - or more accurately, every single slave - and Pierce did his best to convince it to run to us. Did a fairly convincing job, too... Rose even helped by "distracting" them, namely by showing them her breasts and jumping up and down a little. That girl... just trying to reason out half of the things she does causes me migraines. I will never understand those two. Thankfully, the distraction did its job.. possibly a little too well, since the goblin stopped and stared too. It might have even gotten away, if it wasn't for the beholder that paralyzed the goblin as it started to run again. Oh, did I forgot to mention? Yeah. A beholder, many more smaller versions of the bloated mommy-spider-with-a-neck thing, lots of slaves, and several umber hulks, one of which was wearing plate mail.

Pierce : "How much to buy the goblin?"

Thanks for that, Pierce. No, really. Thanks. We're being actively told to get the hell out of their spider thing, there's more than enough creatures present to beat us into unconsciousness and enslave us on a GOOD day, much less after having had the spell casters use up most of the energy they have available, and you decide to buy yourself a slave. Wonderful.

On the bright side, they were open to negotiation. 300 gold for the goblin, and it turned out that they'd let all sixteen of the slaves go for the same price. I was willing to give them my shortbow to get some of those slaves free, but Pierce gave them his old sword, which was worth more than enough to cover that cost, and then some. So we took our new "slaves", as well as all the belongings in the crates - most of which was regular supplies, but included much of the slave's belongings, in addition to Pierce's stuff, and got the hell off their spider-thing.

Net effect : 16 slaves freed, Pierce has his belongings back, and the metal-spider-riding slavers are without a lot of basic supplies. Somehow the spider itself got repaired, so it got away... but it wasn't worth the risk to deal with them as depleted as we were. Not bad, when it started out with my suggestion we go find Pierce's heirlooms, before he and Rose get married.

[DM Quietus]

Forces of Nature

It's been a couple of days since our encounter with the spider-thing. Traveling has gone slowly, as we're accompanied by 16 people on foot, so I can't just shift into a form capable of carrying the party and move, but for the freedom of those individuals, it's worth it. Pierce has spent a great deal of time talking to the goblin about some tests it performed on him, which I tried at first not to listen in on, but I swear, even when they're trying to be quiet, these humans could wake every tree in a forest with their conversations. Rose and Dalia, on the other hand, have been acting completely different; They aren't speaking at ALL. It turned out that the fireball that Rose bathed me in also took out almost a dozen innocent slaves. Her response when she learned of it?

"Haha, oops!"

Needless to say, Dalia is not impressed, and has been giving Rose the silent treatment. I don't blame Rose, she couldn't have possibly known, but her complete lack of remorse is a little disturbing to me as well. I, however, am chalking it up to Rose being Rose, not to a flagrant lack of respect for life, as Dalia seems to have assumed. I've tried to speak to Dalia about it, but she and I have never really seen eye to eye on much. We just ended up in one of our religious debates again, which, while interesting, never really cause either of us to budge. We're like two old oak trees, both refusing to move for the other to get more light.

At any rate, the slaves we did free, are .. well, free. We've provided them with enough coin for basic needs until they can get home, which was easy enough with the simply MASSIVE pile of copper we'd gained from the spider-thing. They've gone their way, and we've gone ours, continuing the forward march with the army toward the gates of Bombor. It wasn't long until we started to see signs of an encampment on the horizon, so we settled for the night, and waited to move until morning.

Come morning, however, there was no way we could have prepared for what we saw. A massive three-day-wide army, the combined forces of Hextor that we've been fighting against this entire time, including what I've been told was a beholder, a mind flayer, and a green dragon. Joy. Even more fun is the two unidentified towers shooting lightning all over the place, which don't seem to be harming anything when they strike. Have I mentioned I hate surprises? I hate ominous, unknown magical items even more.

At any rate, something seemed strange about the army. So what do we - myself, Raven, Rose, and Pierce - do? March forward, of course, trying to provoke some kind of response from the enemy army. And we get none. We move closer and closer, until finally we're at the edge of the army, and I realize that they aren't even acknowledging my presence. As soon as that comes to mind, the army seems to disappear, nothing more than an illusion.. except for the dragon, and the two lightning-towers. Oh good. Well, hopefully those towers are just producing the massive illusion of a three-day-wide army, and the lightning produced is just a byproduct of the sheer arcane might required for such a feat. Right? Right? Yeah, I didn't think so.

The dragon, on its part, decided to cast Mage Armor and Shield when it saw that we were approaching. Because, you know, there's nothing better than a dragon old enough to cast spells, making its already-difficult-to-penetrate hide even more difficult to penetrate. Buffs were cast all around, I can't exactly remember all of them.. I think Rose put up some defenses, Pierce made an attempt to break the crystals atop the unidentified towers with his bow, and I cast a few basic spells, and shifted into Dire Ape form. Raven actually did quite a good job, using Produce Flame to get some long-range hurting in on the dragon, which seemed to be reluctant to leave its little zone of lightning. So I do what I might honestly expect any human to do, and rush in to take out crystals by hand.

Yeah. Big mistake. And the support I received wasn't particularly spectacular either.

To be honest, I don't remember the blow-by-blow of the fight, and I'm not sure I want to. I do know that Rose spent a great deal of time doing nothing, even when being begged to help, because "the dragon hadn't done anything yet". Valid, perhaps, but it was associated with the Hextoran army, was laying siege to Bombor with the aid of magical devices, and was overall a bad reason. Pierce did charge in to use his sword, but he kept getting turned aside by the dragon's defensive spells. By this time, Dalia had arrived, hanging back with Rose, and shouting for someone to dispel the dragon.. I was hoping Rose would do it, since she has that weird four-arm spellcasting thing going on, but apparently not. I had to take a break from getting beat on while I tried to smash crystals - which, we later learned, were causing us to age very quickly. And dragons? Yeah, you don't want an angry dragon aging quickly anywhere near you - had to take a break from that, to dispel the dragon's defenses. And then we had to fall back, because Dalia wasn't able to get in close enough to heal, our primary arcane caster was doing nothing useful, and Pierce and I were not really in the mood to simply take a beating from a dragon. In all honesty, we should've just toe-to-toed it right then and there, it would've made our jobs so much easier, but they say hindsight is better than elf's sight.

Between the time we spent trying to break crystals, and the time we spent backing off and casting a few more buffing/healing spells, the dragon managed to grow significantly, becoming a much larger, much meaner, and much ANGRIER lizard. One who could become invisible. Yeah, I hate surprises. Rose, in the meantime, decided to use some bottle she had that was filled with smoke to send up a "You are free" message, though she had to use Prestidigitation to cause the smoke to shape the words.. which took quite a long time. And, you know, was probably useless since we were so far from Bombor. So, with the dragon invisible and becoming ever more powerful, we did the only thing we could do. Prepared for an assault we wanted no part of. Pierce remained with Rose and Dalia, while I went to break some more crystals, now buffed with all of the strength- and size- increasing magic I had available. I didn't take the time to check, but I felt at least twenty feet tall.. I was as big as the dragon, at the very least. That's a very strange feeling, by the way. Of course, since I was the one dealing with breaking its precious crystals, the dragon decided to attack me first.. we actually traded a few blows, and thankfully, my Stoneskin spell took the brunt of the damage. I've no doubt I'd be dead now if I hadn't had the foresight to buy that diamond dust.

Oh, one thing I nearly forgot to mention : The dragon's breath weapons. Yes, it had two. One was a cone of acid, which I'd protected myself from. The other? Some kind of poisonous mist, which didn't affect me in the least. I guess that massive dose of weird-spider-maggot-thing venom that I got a few days prior really did a number on my immune system. The other members of my group, however.. not so lucky. They had their health drain away, much the same way that Orm's poison used to do when he was in his proper snake form. Poor Orm... He was caught in the breath weapon too, and couldn't handle it. He's dead, again.. and this time, I'm not going to bring him back. I've put him through too much already, he deserves his eternal rest. I'm sure he's got stories to tell to all the other snakes of the Beastlands.

At any rate.. the rest of the fight went very quickly, and very deadly for both sides. Rose actually engaged the dragon, which was nice, although now that the dragon had grown more, it had become far more resistant to her spells. Still, it was really nice to see her throwing spells at the dragon, finally, since it had been beating on both Pierce and myself for a while. With the dragon's defenses dropped, however, Pierce managed to get in a few solid shots, as did I.. but the dragon was turning invisible regularly, circling around, using breath weapons, and any time it did so, I took the opportunity to whack at the crystals on the towers. Being twenty feet tall, with massively long arms and a giant glowing magic stick, you really pack a wallop, so whenever I did this, the crystals were breaking. The dragon, however, was the main threat now, and had no issue moving outside of the crystal's lightning range, tearing holes in the party. I think at one point, both Pierce and Rose were down and unconscious, from a combination of sheer damage and the poisonous mist. Dalia managed to get them up, however, and I charged back at the dragon from my position near the crystals... unfortunately, my blow was deflected off of its scales, rather than doing any real damage. In the end, it was Rose with a really well-placed scorching ray spell that caused the dragon to drop.. which, and I have no problem saying this, was enough to get a sigh of relief from me.

The aftermath was fairly short. Since I was able to crush a crystal with every swing in my currently spell-laden state, I took care of the remaining ones, taking bolts of lightning in the process.. I do seem to be handling it better than Pierce is, though. I can see the aging effects of those towers in the way he walks. And unfortunately, we dont' know anyone capable of casting the spells necessary to fix the damage. I'm not really all that worried, I still have several centuries ahead of me, but.. well, Pierce is human.

With all this done, however, I still have one question left lingering. Where is Hextor's army?