The murderhoboes
Zaber, suave and debonaire man
What they did
The demons are now dead.
Garreth asks Bleu, "Are these demons made of things that are valuable?"
I roll my eyes. "She's gonna babble all damn day about this, I know it."
Bleu does babble as I foresaw. "They don't look very valuable in and of themselves, however, referring back to Axioms of Avaricious Adventurers, we should check for valuable items."
I lean over to Garreth. "I didn't bother to read that one." He nods, and we start to rifle through the glabrezu's body, and find both a mantle of bezekira fur, a decorative bit of armor inlain with obsidian, a chimera leathern belt with a cold iron buckle, a meteoric belt buckle, and a dark blue rhomboid that was floating around the glabrezu's head earlier. The vrocks have a bunch of platinum coins.
I grab the rhomboid. "What does this thing do?"
Why did I open my mouth? Garreth's lackey the walking babble box starts her babble. "Oh come on, surely you have read Triffid's Guide to Ioun Stones? Or the Commentary on Common Magic Items? It raises your perception by 2."
I raise an eyebrow. "Are we talking about a triffid, a walking mutant plant?"
Bleu shakes her head. "Actually I knew Triffid, I spent years making coffee for Triffid. And more coffee. Sometimes I made tea. One time I sharpened pencils."
Garreth picks up the ioun stone and holds it uncertainly near his head before gently tossing it up. Stonemaul gives the Vrock corpses an extra slash for keeping him stun-locked that battle. I pick up the severed claws of the glabrezu. "These have any meat in them?"
Bleu nods, but adds how toxic they are. "Well, Garreth can probably eat them."
Ibizaber shrugs. "Logan, eat up, boy." Logan eats the demonic crab meat. It doesn't seem to bother him.
Bleu keeps babbling for some reason. "One time I made coffee and sharpened pencils the same week…." And she keeps telling tales about working for Triffid.
I have to ask her if she knows the Silence spell, and she says she does. I tell her to cast it on herself. "Oh, that's the same joke Triffid made."
I lean over to Garreth. "Do we really need to endure this?"
He shrugs. "We need her knowledge and spellcasting. Unless you want to go to wizard school."
I shake my head. "Wizard school sounds like hearing this stuff nonstop."
Stonemaul casts Bless on me, then we start resting. Polly comes over to me after everyone else sits down. "This is so boring. We should scout, Zaber." I shrug, and stand up. I tell Logan to go over to Garreth and get some beer, then pull out the twine and tie it on my and Polly's wrists before putting on my ring.
After some flying ahead over the waterfall of acid, I see a statue of pure onyx stands near a corner. It is decorated with antique, golden armor, with a spiked helmet and thick bracers. Its expression is grim, as if it knows a finality or a deep secret it would tell if it could. The whole thing must weigh many tons, and stands just over ten feet tall. I take a closer look at it, but doesn't touch it.
Polly asks, "Ooh, should I shoot it?"
I let her know, "It's not threatening us."
Polly looks upset since I talked her out of shooting. "Wonder what it is? Is it nature?"
I chuckle. "Are helmets Nature?"
Polly says, "If you make them out of a calabash."
I fly around, looking for any mechanisms on it, which I do not see. However, I find a book in a nook. It's in Common, and is a self-help book called Virtues of a Life of Service by one Allie the Archon. It's really boring stuff about virtues like temperance. I show it to Polly, and she asks me what temperance is.
I scoff. "A really dumb idea put forth by the evil witch Nansiraygun"
We fly back to the others, and let them know about the statue and book. The others come over, and I let Polly take a shot. The statue bellows, "Death has no quarrel with thee, Citizen!" and Polly falls prone, prostrating herself before the statue.
Stonemaul asks the statue if it will talk, but it does nothing. He tells us, "This is an inevitable marut. It's a lawful entity that very much does not like necromancy or resurrection."
Garreth asks, "So if I'd been resurrected, it'd have a beef with me?"
Stonemaul shakes his head. "More if it were in presence of people trying to do such."
Garreth thinks for a bit. "So, uh, does it have cool stuff?"
Stonemaul again shakes his head. "Just what you are seeing: oversized equipment and powerful mental attacks. I don't think its a component of our larger task here, just another summon caught by the improperly arranged 'Demonhold.'"
Garreth nods. "Then got stuck like the demons, devils and celestials." He turns to the statue. "Marut-thing, is that what happened?"
It stands there. It does not speak. After a bit, Polly stands up.
Garreth asks again. "Marut, if I can give you leads on things you hate, you interested?"
Polly glares at it. "It must be an enemy we should take it out."
It stands there. It does not speak.
I whip out the book of virtues to a random page and start reading it aloud to the inevitable.
It stands there. It does not speak. Folks learn about giving money to the poor.
Garreth says, "I don't think we have to kill it." He turns to Bleu. "Bleu, you have any perspective on this?"
Bleu says, "What do you want to know? Maul knew the gist of it."
I say, "Yeah, but we figure since it's terminally boring through not talking and you're terminally boring through talking, you might have some insight."
Garreth asks, "Is this a critter that normally can be summoned? Is it a being that can be negotiated with? Can it be weaponized? Is it more or less scary than the demon we killed?"
Bleu nods. "If you bring a necromancer or something to it then it will attack it. If you agree to stop being a necromancer it will stop attacking you and place you under a powerful geas."
Garreth asks, "What about telling it where one is?"
Bleu just keeps babbling. "It doesn't like talking. If you tell it something it will listen though. They like information. Less powerful than a Pit Fiend at its full power, maybe on par with the weakened one you fought earlier, maybe weaker."
I suggest, "Hey, Bleu, start talking at it. Tell it those stories. We'll just wait in the next level or town."
Bleu starts telling stories of how she cast create food, flight, and create food and flight for an entire extended campaign. She tells it about how she burned the coffee, and how no one ate her elven rations she cooked. She tells it about how she searched an empty room inch by inch, with naps.
It stands there. It does not speak.
Stonemaul pipes up, "How about telling it where the lich is instead?"
Garreth grimaces. "Eh, the lich has … it's not a typical lich."
I hiss, "There is no ich-lay!"
Polly says, "Oh! Remember Eli! I think this thing is more Eli than Eli."
The statue stands there and does not speak. Bleu stands there and does not stop speaking.
Garreth says, "Let's move on."
Stonemaul asks, "The lowered bluff to the west, or follow the acid river to the east?" Garreth and I both agree on the river.
We fly over to it, and see that it ends in a bunch of nooks and crannies. I look down them, and find sparkling stuff hidden at the ends of some. It's too tight for me to get too far, so I call over to Bleu. "Hey, Bleu, wanna be able to tell a story about how you cast Apportation to get the sparkly stuff?"
Bleu sighs, and says, "Fine." She drags back 300 gold and a gold ring with a compass symbol. She doesn't look at it and hands it to me. Garreth asks her if it's magical and she looks at it, now that it's in my hands. "Yes."
Garreth rolls his hand as he talks. "So, can you tell me anything about it?"
She looks at it some more. "Ah, according to Van Waffstein's Guide to Magic of the 7th Empire this is a ring commonly known as a Pathfinder Ring, it is given to explorers who may find themselves lost and in dark places. If you say 'Fiat Lux' it will generate a beam of light akin to a bullseye lantern, if you command it 'Via' it shall show an arrow pointing North akin to a compass, it was first recorded in Slussoth's Commentaries and further referenced in …"
The next thing I know Logan is nuzzling me, waking me up, and I hear Bleu. "Also being made of gold it didn't dissolve in common acids."
Garreth looks up. "Is that all it does? In magical terms."
Bleu says, "It also can be hexed to the wearer to not fall off while the wearer still lives, however it still may be removed via means such as a cleaver, acid, or dragon fire."
Garreth shrugs. "Meh, a little emergency light sounds nice." He slips it on, and it sizes to fit his hand. "Let's move on."
We go back, and as we are walking back into the cave on the other side of the waterfall, a small creature poofs into existence with a puff of purple smoke. Its bloated frame shudders with each heaving step, yet it moves with surprising quickness.
I point to it. "Hey, Bleu, what treasure does it have?"
Bleu starts her babbling. "Oh, its a Malvarian's Lesser Bloat Demon, though commonly known as a dretch. It's a very minor demon that is formed of weak souls filled with self-loathing. It will attack blindly with little semblance of tactical acumen, and is defended only by its folds of rubbery hide akin in protection to plate. It carries no treasure."
I nod. "Sounds as bland as you do."
Bleu keeps babbling. "They are commonly summoned by mortal mages of little skill that traffic with demonic forces."
The dretch looks at Logan and lurches to attack. Garreth meditates, and Polly peppers the dretch with arrows. The dretch bursts in a puff of nasty rotten cabbage and eggs.
As I'm getting out my knife, another dretch poofs into being. Polly again shoots it, and it again bursts into a bad smell. Something about this seems off to me, so I pull out my knife and hold on for a second, and sure enough, three more dretches pop into the world. The first one doesn't get a chance to see our world, since I stick it in the eye, making it poof.
Garreth yells, "Bleu, can Hell run out of dretches?" Bleu rambles on into the long talk of whether Hell is Exothermic or Endothermic, and comes to the end that Prince Sylvanius Treearrow still hasn't gone out with her, so no, Hell cannot run out of dretches. Garreth chops up the other two, and then a second later, two more come. I miss with my eye-shot, Logan's slam doesn't bowl over a dretch, so Polly shoots them both. A little more purple smoke wafts into the air, but no more dretches.
Garreth asks Bleu if they are likely to disappear. Blue tells him, "Hmm, it seems some mage was using a Summon Monster spell judging by the thaumic resonance, I suspect they are very disappointed at the results." Stonemaul agrees, as dretches don't randomly spawn on their own.
Garreth's eyes bug out. What mage would use Summon Monster around here? Everyone knows you can't summon around Whiterock Castle."
Polly shrugs. "Maybe an orc mage who just got here?"
I have to ask the obvious question: "Are we in Whiterock Castle?"
Garreth says, "Near as I can figure we're way way beneath it, but still in the general vicinity."
Stonemaul says, "I thought the whole point was all the summons end up here because the Demonhold spell was all screwed up. It was routing everything here. I s'pose that could mean that someone up top was just trying to summon monsters and they ended up here instead, but I figure the summoner is around here somewhere."
Garreth shakes his head. "I can't see why anyone up top would be trying, especially trying over and over again."
Stonemaul bugs out his eyes. "You cloud-breathers don't need to deal with every aspiring wizard learning Create Servant and trying to summon up one with the biggest assets and silkiest beard they can imagine?"
Polly shrugs. "None of these demons have even offered us cupcakes."
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