The Shackled City, Day 32 (2007-05-12, 6:30 PM), Chapter 10.5: Two Wrongs

Wherein two dreams are fulfilled, and an elite criminal is outclassed

Players (Characters)
Scott (Rain)
Jeremy (Grokk)
Tom (Garlen, Amber)
Tony (Roland)
Rachel (Horkina)
DM: Catherine

Now that the Tree of Shackled Souls had released all of its energy, it was decided that the tree must be destroyed. Horkina, wielding her famous Maul, smashed pieces of adamantine and mithral from the core of the tree, collapsing its main structure in under a minute. The party headed back to the surface with large amounts of treasure and thirteen dead shackleborn in tow. Returning to the surface, they found that Cauldron's southeast corner had collapsed and turned into drainage for the lake, probably due to the final quake as the Tree released the last of its energy. Amber buried the shackleborn at her temple and the party set out to re-equip and to rebuild the town. Roland laid claim to a bit of land that stood as an island in the southeast, and he and Amber spent several days using Stoneshape to help rebuild the town and to create a wizards tower. Garlen trained Rain to be a ranger, especially focusing on anti-dragon tactics and techniques.

One day, Amber and Roland were watching as various city workers cleared away rubble. Suddenly a ghostly red dragon hand reached out from inside the stone and touched a worker, who shriveled and died from what Roland surmised was an energy drain. Amber used Sending to call the party to the area. Percy led the way with a Chain of Eyes spell allowing Roland to use him like a mobile camera. The party followed into a wide, dusty hallway. Rain heard a faint moaning in Draconic: "My Gold." Amber cast a silence spell on Horkina, who bashed open a wide stone door with her maul.

Inside was a must unusual sight: the skeleton of a red dragon named Taraxartax was laid across the stone floor. Next to it was a sword buried to the hilt in a mound of stone, surrounded by an antimagic field. Rain and Garlen searched the rest of the room and Grokk stepped up next to the sword. Rain heard the Draconic words "kill the gnome", and then a ghostly red dragon materialized. Grokk stepped into the antimagic field and pulled with all of his might, tearing the sword from the block of stone. Garlen fired his bow while Rain and Horkina attacked the dragon from flanking positions. Amber tried to use a Heal spell on the ghostly dragon, but it resisted. Roland's ball lightning did a large amount of damage to the dragon-ghost, but it responded with a breath that drained Amber's strength, dexterity, and constitution, and called out "Sventerant" while circling around the room. Grokk leaped up and swung the sword at the dragon, forgetting that it's a bit shorter than the axe he normally wields. A pair of arrows from Garlen and a charging power attack from Horkina finally took the creature down.

Roland identified the rune-covered sword as Sventerant (a corrupted form of the draconic "gnome slayer"), a vorpal rune-keyed sword designed for the specific task of killing a particular gnome. Its first successful hit against the gnome would automatically result in its vorpal power being activated, after which time its runes would dischare their magic. Rain fell to the ground weeping for joy -- he finally had his vorpal sword, and Garlen had even taught him how to use longswords just days ago! An inscription on the sword read "But one task defines your mold: all my gold for all my gold."

Rain went around town showing his shiny sword to all the ladies, and asking questions about its origin. Eventually he was pointed to an old elven bard named Aaron who would sing the tale of the sword and Taraxartax. When the party arrived to hear the tale, Aaron exclaimed "you have the sword!" Rain responded with glee, "I have the sword!" Grokk said "yes, yes, he has the sword, and we've all heard it." Rain handed Aaron a few gold pieces and he burst into extremely bad poetry telling the tale of the sword. In short, the red dragon Taraxartax, rival to Hookface, had been robbed by a gnome named Bertilook and left with a single gold piece. The dragon spent the next fifty years gathering gold, and paid it all for a special sword and a highly-trained assassin. Bertles and a spellcasting friend named Muckles showed up and killed the dragon, and were able to embed the sword in a block of stone before the assassin could retrieve it and kill them. There the sword remained for seventy years, until the party recovered it.

Roland recalled reading of Bertles, who also operated under the name Kroonk. Artus Shemwick heard the gnome disappeared 70 years ago, and agreed to search for information on him over the next few days. In the mean time, Roland attempted to scry, and saw an image of the gnome sitting at a table with a bunch of kids celebrating a birthday. The gnome stood up, beheaded a child, and held his head up to the scrying sensor with a smile. The image froze at that moment -- an obvious False Vision. The party attempted to use the scrying lattices in Kurran-Kural to see if the false vision would run out, but every few hours it would just change to another equally disturbing image. The party headed back to Cauldron, where Roland tried a spell of Locate Creature without success.

That night, Rain and Grokk headed for the bar. Garlen followed to keep an eye on Rain and his fancy new sword, but Horkina got sick of Rain's not-so-smooth flirting with all the ladies and went home. About midnight, a voice called out in Draconic "My gold!" A ghostly red dragon hand reached through the wall and narrowly missed Rain. Garlen, Rain, Grokk, and all of the bar patrons headed outside, and the ghostly dragon followed Rain. Garlen ran at full speed to wake Roland and Horkina, while the others hurried quickly behind, easily outpacing the dragon. The party gathered on the street and began raining arrows and magic missiles at the dragon, who continued moving directly toward Rain and his sword. A delayed blast iceball from Roland passed right through the dragon, but eventually enough arrows hit the beast in enough places to make it dissipate.

In the morning, Artus returned and let the party know what he'd discovered: the gnome was now based near Sasserine, under the name Heppenfod, and there was a fifty thousand gold piece reward for his head due to his consistant and brutal crimes. His fortress location was well-known, but none had successfully assaulted it. The party teleported to Sasserine and began walking toward his fortress, just a few feet off the road, with Garlen stealthily leading the way. Garlen noticed a group of six gnomes hiding near the road, no doubt preparing to rob a group of commoners. He used the telepathic bond Roland had given the party to warn everyone, and then used a lion's charge to attack and kill two of the six. Rain jabbed a third with his rapier, and Amber used Greater Command to make the remaining three fall on the ground. Garlen walked across the road and greeted the travelers: "don't mind me, I'm just here to kill the guys who were about to rob you." He and Rain finished off the criminals and handed their gold to the travelers, as a sort of reverse-robbery.

Another mile through the forest, and the party found the path leading to their destination. Soon glowing illusory signs began to point the way to "Heppenfod's Playground". The path led directly to a door -- or, what looked like a door, but Roland could tell was clearly an illusion. He used a wand to make most of the party invisible, and then they scouted around the building. There were three other doors and no windows of note. The party decided to create a door where the illusion was, so Horkina got out her Maul and punched a nice opening in the wall. This led to a basically empty room with no doors, so Horkina created another door to the south. This led to a room where a nymph had been held captive for a number of years, a slave to the evil gnome's every whim, so the party set her free.

Rain peeked out through another door and noticed a guard behind a slightly-open door watching a set of double doors to the outside. Garlen snuck around through a long hallway and yanked that door open just as Rain pulled the opposite door open, and the guard went down in a hail of arrows. On the wall right next to him was a large red button, no doubt keyed to some sort of alarm spell. The party kept moving sneakily to the south, stealing various treasures from a large dining room and a living room. One room led to a large arena with a deep pit, where an animated suit of armor stood over a dead dwarf whose beaten corpse bore the marks of the blackrock clan. A set of rooms to the west held treasures and trophies, including several illusion scrolls. When the party located Heppenfod's shower, Garlen decided to pee on his embroidered towels.

The party came to a spiral staircase leading up and down a tower. Garlen was leading the way up the stairs, but Rain bluffed him into looking behind and then pushed past. At the top of the stairs, a huge stone golem stood guard. Horkina and Grokk pounded on it while Garlen and Rain provided flanking, and it went down fairly quickly. Amber healed Horkina from the wounds she took. The party checked the bottom of the stairs, but decided not to work on the bottom floor of the complex until the main area was secured.

Three gnomes stood in a kitchen area working on preparing a large meal. Garlen and Rain tumbled to block two exits while Percy blocked the third, and the cooks quickly surrendered. Garlen and Grokk escorted them out and told them to "work for someone less creepy", sending them on their way toward Sasserine. The party moved into a very large dining room and positioned themselves around the eastern doorways while Garlen looked in two small rooms to the west. A gnome in one of the rooms hit a big red button to set off an alarm before Garlen was able to drop him. A group of enemies nearby quickly took cover and hid. Grokk, Rain, and Garlen combined to take one down with their arrows and then Roland flew into his room and fired a magic missile at the next enemy he saw. Several gnomes fired sneak attacks at Roland, but his magical protections meant his wounds were only minimal. Grokk's axe and an empowered fireball dropped the remaining mooks in the area.