We’ve got a young lad, Branden, whom we once saved from kidnapping by brigands, installed as the current Baron of Hoddenhill. We happen to know he’s also got the best claim to the throne of the Weald. The usurper Prince, whom we don’t like because he oppresses the people, also knows this. We’re very slowly and very carefully heading toward something ugly. The longer we take, the better for us. As of now, Prince William could easily crush us with his army. The longer we have to prepare, the more allies we’ll have and the stronger our own army will be.
While I was at Orthanc, waiting for the Prince to decide whom to install as the new leader of Hoddenhill, I decided to try and contact the Dwarves. We’d been told that no word had come from Thorsten Hall Delving, their underground city, in a couple of weeks. Not wanting to leave until the Prince replied, I sent Kephara. My little copper dragon is feisty, likes pleasing me, but also likes spending most of the day lying around doing nothing. I rouse him and get him excited about flying the 200 miles to Thorsten Hall Delving with a message. Kephara is ready, and takes off! He comes back two days later. He’s jarred. Something attacked him in the air over the area above Thorsten Hall Delving. It had three heads, it breathed. . .acid, or fire, I can’t remember which, at him and he came back. Ooo, poor dragon! What a brave dragon you are! Scritchings and luvvings all ‘round. Who’s the best dragon? YOU ARE!! We’ll take care of the nasty flying beastie what tried to eat you. He’s happy and home and ready to go out again.
Because we need allies, because Robert Dubanic, Baron of Dun Mendip is one of the greater leaders of the Weald, because we had planned on going to talk to him, to learn where his allegiances lie in case we need to move against the Prince, and because we’ve lost contact with the Dwarves who’s fastness lies two hexes southeast of Dun Mendip, we take off west to visit his keep at Brugh Melton.
We leave the boy Branden in the care of the people of Hoddenhill. We’ve got some NPCs we trust, the old beggar we met in the Capital, who turned out to be Lady Halfrid’s father’s old guard captain, now serving as our captain of the guard. Between him and Ogsbod, the boy should be safe. Adding to this, I, acting as regent of Hoddenhill until the boy is old enough to assume the mantle of leadership, ordered the boy to work in the fields, with the people. Aid in the reconstruction of Hoddenhill. My goal: to keep the boy in the open, one of the people, seen, so the Prince could not possibly act against him without the entire town rising up to his defense.
Dun Mendip lies seven hexes west of Hoddenhill. When we arrive, the town is decimated and the keep smoking. A day or two ago, the town was attacked by a dragon. A huge red wyrm. Harn instantly leaps off his horse and begins aiding the wounded. ‘Thank the gods, a priest of Thor!’ I urgently seek out Baron Dubanic. None of the people know where he is. I got to his keep, his guards, those who survived, say the Baron went to the west with his personal guard to seek out and kill the Dragon.
It’s not clear to us that it was a Dragon, since we think Kephara was probably attacked by a Chimera. And these people, while honest, are uneducated. We plunge into the forest to the west of Dun Mendip seeking the Baron.
After a few hours of travel, we locate him. He’s returning to town. He greets us and we introduce each other. He’s heard of us, the Heroes of the Weald. He heard of what happened to Lady Halfrid and is sad for our loss. He tells us of the Wyrm that came to his town, how it flew over, raking the earth with its fire. We’ve seen the aftermath. Harn, of course, offers to stay for as long as it takes to get the people back on their feet. Dubanic has given up trying to find the beast and thinks there was probably no way for he and his men to kill it anyway.
Sekhet is fixated on the idea of the Wyrm. A dragon! A real live dragon! Dragons are beasts of legend in Atlantis. Known to exist in the wilds of the earth, but not seen on my island nation for thousands of years. The chance to see one, to fight one, to vanquish one or die in battle with such a beast! Surely this challenge was set before the Paladin by Horus, himself! A quest for the noble knight!
“Robert!” I say. “We can do this! You could not have taken on this magnificent beast yourself but with my aid, we can seek out this creature where it lives and fight it in its own lair! Come! Our destiny awaits!”
“Fuck that!” comes the reply. More or less. I paraphrase. J There is some disagreement among the heroes about whether we can conquer this beast. “Of course we can!” I say. Though I’ve not said so, it’s becoming clear to the other players that I am totally entranced with the idea of fighting a dragon. Anya makes a comment along the lines of “and you guys give ME shit about being possessed by the harp! This guy’s going to get us all killed!”
I agree that, since we’re going to be here for a few days helping the people, the time can be taken to send Kephara back to Orthanc and ask the Oracle about this. The message is sent: “What will be the fate of the heroes if they attempt to vanquish the dragon?”
Days pass, the reply comes; “They will surely die. The beast seeks artifacts of power. Finding none in Dun Mendip, it has moved on. Your experiences will eventually lead you to the beast when you are ready.”
Well shit. Fine, be that way.
Dubanic is a good man, and clearly a capable leader of men. His reputation as a general precedes him. But he’s not very bright. He hates the Prince though, spits when I say his name. Bright or no, that’s good enough for us.
When things have settled down, we journey to Thorsten Hall Delving. The Dwarven cairn is huge, the massive doors set into the side of a hill. We approach, there’s no sign of life. The doors stand open. We enter.
The main entry hall has several hallways that branch off it. It’s clear as soon as we enter that these rooms now serve as the lair of some beast. There’s shit and blood and bones and branches littering the place. The possibility that this is the dragon’s lair is on our mind, but we all feel pretty confident that the dragon was one thing, whatever attacked Kephara something else. Kephara’s smarter than Sekhet, he wouldn’t mistake a one headed dragon for a three headed Chimera. As we explore, the beast appears before us. It has some invisibility or something. It’s definitely a Chimera. Magical beasts are indeed taking advantage of the fall of the human civilization from the plague. We fight and defeat the Chimera. It’s not that hard. Our party is well-balanced and so far any single creature presents little threat since we can gang up on it. Groups are different; witness the lizard-men who killed Halfrid, and the rest of this entry!
The dwarves are holed up deep in the cairn. They’ve been living there for weeks, unable to leave due to the presence of the Chimera. They’re very thankful and reward us. Sekhet’s Mercurial Greatsword is now +1, and can hold any third level spell or lower cast into it. Erendill casts Haste in it for me. Others get similar items. Glim gets glamered armor.
We return, by way of Dun Mendip, to Hoddenhill.
As you may recall, we tried to ally ourselves with the Druids of Albion. We cleared out the elven stronghold of Caer Brollachan and let them have it. Well, we thought we cleared it out. The druids ended up being mostly eaten by the harpies that were still there. The druids believe we set them up and sent them there to be ambushed. Maybe we couldn’t clear it out and we thought either the Druids would do it for us or die trying.
Of course, that’s absurd. Well, it’s absurd to us. The druids represent the Old Order. Their organization predates the coming of men. Their religion older than any currently seen in Albion. They do not involve themselves in the activities of the Men of Albion. Their ranks include both elves and men.
On our way back to Hoddenhill, we pass Giant’s Dance, the great set of stone megaliths set into the plain of Albion. Basically, it’s Stonehenge. The local power center of the Druids. It’s night, and from our camp we can see activity, light, fire coming from Giant’s Dance to the south. We leave camp and investigate.
The druids are doing something major. They’re enacting some ritual. Clouds gather over Giant’s Dance. Clouds are gathering over all of southern Albion. The druids are changing the weather. Craig’s new dude is an Elven Druid I think. Something like that. He’s interested in what these druids are doing. It’s clear to us they’re casting Control Weather. We approach. Sekhet wants to heal the wound that’s opened between us and the Druids, wants them as allies.
Our approach is blocked by what seem like mercenaries. Fighters of some sort who work for the Druids. Our presence is not welcome, we will disturb the ritual. Fair enough, Sekhet says, we’ll come back tomorrow morning. As we leave, the druids are casting Call Lightning. Lightning bolts are hammering into a stone altar in the middle of the circle. The druids are making some kind of magic item.
The next morning we go back. The druids are all waking up, making breakfast, generally recovering from a night of partying. Their emissary to the Weald, Hildebrun, greets us very warily. She, of course, remembers us as enemies. I, of course, consider her a friend. This confuses her and grants us a certain degree of acceptance, she’s curious about what we could possibly want and why we don’t behave with the attitude of enemies.
I ask if her rituals were successful, she says yes. What do we want, she asks. We were just passing through and wanted to see how they were doing. They’re doing fine, thank you very much. We treat for a few minutes. As we do, Craig’s dude notices an elf with a small red dragon, about Kephara’s size. Kephara is kinda eyeing this other dragon. Copper dragons and Red dragons don’t get along. But this elf with a red dragon is certainly different. Oh, and evil. I can tell this.
Hildebrun says they’re trying to finish some research and I offer the library at Orthanc, which, while small, includes copies of every book we’ve found and is probably the greatest center of knowledge in Albion. She’s reluctant to come. Craig’s elf says something to her we can’t understand because none of us speak Elven. Suddenly she’s definitely not coming. She seems afraid, apprehensive. I don’t know what Craig’s dude said, but it freaked this chick out.
I say “I hope you’re not going to insult me by rejecting my offer of hospitality.” Well, shit, ok if you’re going to be that way, I’ll come with you, is the result.
So, elf druid ambassador chick in tow, we continue on. I tell her that by journeying with us she accepts the risk of being one of us. She understands. I kinda of chat her up. For very metagame reasons, I want Sekhet to get married and have a kid. This has something to do with our style of play and a tradition in our group for raising families in long campaigns.
One night, when we’re only about a day out of Hoddenhill, we’re attacked. 14 or so mercenaries armed with longswords, wearing plate and shields. It’s pretty surprising how tough some generic warrior NPCs can be. The very nearly kill us. It’s a close fought battle and for the last quarter of it, it appears as though we are going to die.
We persevere, but the elf chick dies. She died early, she was, like, 2nd level. Christ almighty. We’re going to be GOOD FRIENDS WITH THE DRUIDS NOW!!! I resign myself to accepting that the Druids are going to be our enemies from now on. They were convinced we set them up before, this was our chance to prove otherwise, and we got probably the only one of them who was willing to give us a second chance, killed. Great. Next time, we’ll be dealing with the evil elf with the dragon, I suspect. As I said last night during a game of HALO when I was fragged as soon as I spawned on the map three times in a row by Mark in the Scorpion; “Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.’
Harn speaks with dead. The mercenaries were led by a mage who escaped. We get his name. He hired them. Our last question; “Where were you hired?” “Dun Hammel.” The Capital. These men were hired by the Prince to kill us.
Back In Hoddenhill
We arrive back in the Hoddenhill. As a result of the continued prosperity of the province, as a result of the continued oppression of the rest of the Weald by the Prince, there’s been a massive influx of commoners. Too many. The economy is starting to suffer, we’ve got crime in the streets, and the locals are unhappy. We instruct our Captain of the Guard to inform anyone in town without any visible means of support that they’ll be allowed to stay for only three days before they’ll be asked to leave. Since many have been here longer than that in our absence, it means asking many people to leave right away.
But we look at this as an opportunity at the same time. With the shiteloads of cash we’ve received from our adventuring, we set up a New Deal program. We fund even more improvement programs offering any of the newcomers land and work and pay. The population increases drastically.
I return to Orthanc. I find the door standing open and elven runes along the doorway. The Eye of Horus, a mark I leave on the door every time I leave (meaning “this place belongs to The Atlantean.” Yeah, who’s going to know it means that. Well, I imagine they’ll figure it out after a while,) is still there. As usual, I wipe it off, it being written only in charcoal on the white walls of the tower. I send Gallick back to Hoddenhill to get the rest of the heroes. I keep Thet with me, and ask Kephara if he wants to stay with me and fight the elves that have taken over my place, and likely die, or go with Gallick. He opts to stay with me. Awww…I tell him he’s a very brave little dragon, but he must go with Gallick. I don’t want him to die.
Gallick leaves, and I enter my place. There’s no-one there. I go upstairs and ring the bell, announcing my presence to the Oracle. She’s there. The elves came, she says, and left. They came to take Orthanc back, but left for some reason, she’s not sure why. Hmmm…I go outside and cast Comprehend Languages. Should have thought of that earlier. The runs say “This tower is under the protection of the elves.” Okaayy. A mystery.
I send Thet to retrieve Gallick and ask the Oracle; “Are the elves going to attack us?” ‘Us’ being left open to mean she and I at Orthanc, or us in the Weald.
“If things continue as they have, the elves will certainly attack the Weald.”
And that’s where we left things….
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