After parting company with Subator, the party walked through the rain for half an hour to get clear of the nearby town, set up the Leomund's Secure Shelter, and tried to get some rest. But during the second guard shift, Pepper's danger sense went off. Silvana and Pepper went zooming around to distract attacks from the hut (and smelled something that may have been a ghast) while Beeel and Frankel headed out to search for bad guys on foot. Frankel cursed loudly shortly thereafter, and Ganeth and Thorongil went out to investigate; Silvana and Pepper also converged on the scene. The enemy turned out to be a pair of zombies created from dead human children; they were easily dispatched, but the corpses began emitting loud pitiful wails that could be heard for at least half a mile...like the sounds children being tortured to death would make. And anyone happening on the bodies would probably assume that's exactly what happened. (The zombies also seemed to cause a minor fear, perhaps like Beeel's headband, but everyone present had too many levels to be affected.) So the party decided it was definitely time to abandon camp and get the hell out of there. They put the bodies in the shelter, threw down some dust of tracelessness, and booked into the night. As they left, a squad of half a dozen zombies (humanoids with a 6" move, at any rate) converged on the shelter, but the party was quick and evaded them on the way out.
The party jogged north for 15 minutes and then turned west. A few minutes later, they happened upon a small road heading northwest, which they followed uneventfully for about 20 minutes of more rapid escape. Then west again, and after another half hour the party wandered into an orchard; this made the elves happy, and the party set up Camp II under a Leomund's Tiny Hut (though I have no idea why anyone would call it a hut -- but it does keep the rain off).
The rest of the night was uneventful.
In the morning, memorization took place inside the hut. Outside, a group of eight low-level warriors or bandits, plus horses, entered the orchard from the direction of the road; they appeared to have a leader-type and a spellcaster among them. They were talking about money and they never noticed the party, so the party was content to just let them wander by.
The party set out west again, under cloudy but no-longer-raining skies, and after half an hour they emerged from their nice cover into a rice paddy. A few hundred yards away stood a farmhouse, and by that was a road running north-south. The party gave the farmhouse a wide berth and continued west.
A bit later, the party came into a stretch of recently burned fields (on too large a scale to be consistent with something like fireballs). Smoke was rising to the south, perhaps from more fields on fire. Silvana thought this might mean that the party was getting into territory where the revolutionaries were active, and the burns were being done to cut down on cover and facilitate aerial recon.
Sure enough, within the next quarter hour, a pair of griffons plus riders appeared, leading to a long and nasty combat featuring aerial bad guys with poor MCs making passes at the party every few rounds:
- Fighter: She wielded a medium black-tipped telescoping lance (ideal for 96" griffon charges), a scimitar that gives an additional attack after every hit (at some accumulating penalty until a swish finally occurs), a vampiric stiletto, and a magical buckler, and she was dressed in black dragon scale armor (roughly equivalent to Ganeth's, apart from the color). She also had a bunch of items for summoning creatures and a stone with con darkness on it, was magically prevented from falling off her mount, and was able to spot invisible party members. She really didn't like Ganeth after he bounced her initial charge off a stoneskin, wiped out her stoneskin with electric arcs, received an imp invis from Stealth at a crucial moment to escape being strafed to death by the manticores, and slowed her mount, so instead of doing the prudent Eastern thing and escaping, she took one last pass at the invisible G -- which probably would have killed him, but Silvana came charging in on Pepper and threw herself in front of the scimitar, which surprised the figher so much that she criticaled and chucked the weapon away. The move also allowed Thorongil to pace her with his winged boots and engage her as she fled, and Ganeth eventually overtook her as well with some polymorph-enhanced flight. She turned out to be bonded to her mount; when she finally died, her griffon died the same segment. (And since both the fighter and the griffon were stoneskinned, the arrangement may have been reciprocal, which isn't a typical Eastern thing to do.) The party scavenged the following items from her: The saddle [the likely suspect for keeping her mounted], the scimitar, the lance, the stiletto, the armor, the con dark stone, two rings, a statuette, a satchel of coins, writing paper, a phylactery, bracers, lenses, a potion, a cloak, boots, and gloves. The griffon was wearing a pair of iron bracelets.
- Pseudo-alu-demon: She went invis and hopped off her mount well before the griffon closed, activated something like a Murdock's Feathery Flyer, blasted away with a fireball wand, and eventually landed and pulled the fake spellcasting trick to lure people into melee range. She wielded a vampiric staff and held a tic-shield in a prehensile tail, and she could only be hit by +1 or better weapons (but was not stoneskinned). She either had an ability or an item for creating some sort of red stunning gas; since she did it at zero range, she presumably had some sort of resistance to it, but she failed all her checks and wound up stunned herself, while Beeel and Cambra made their saves. Even after she was killed, Cambra continued sensing evil on her; Silvana thinks her more interesting abilities may be tied to a focus similar to the gem in Ganeth's ribcage -- there's evidence of a healed wound over her heart where the evil seems to emanate from. Her items: the staff, the tic-shield (with 4 leaves), the red fireballing wand, a tin wand, two rings, a cloak, a potion, and three eggs. Her mount was wearing a phylactery.
- Two manticores who strafed the party trying to wipe out stoneskins. One fled but will hopefully be too cowardly to report back to base and take whatever punishment is coming its way for failure; the other surrendered to Frankel, who tied it up. More on it shortly.
- Two summoned trolls: Just like normal trolls (and just as satisfying for Frankel), except they vanished at -20 hit points; they generally kept the party occupied on rounds when all the flyers were busy turning.
- Two summoned gargoyles who weren't all that effective.
During the combat, Ganeth and the captured manticore had a brief exchange in Orcish, so the two naturally had a chat afterwards, where the manticore asked G if he were looking for henchman and G told the manticore that his application would be greatly strengthened if he could demonstrate his scouting ability by telling everything he'd learned about his old employers. (The manticore, incidentally, knows spellcraft, has aspirations of becoming a mage, and can read Eastern Common -- "I'm not just some dumb rustic manticore" -- though its only recent reading material was a book of limericks that was taken away when he was caught perusing it on guard duty.) The manticore revealed that his base was about two hours away (flight time) to the southwest and had the following inhabitants:
- Drakos, the leader of the group, is a human with a rod that allows him to shapechange into a red dragon. The rod requires blood rubies to function.
- An invisible female mage (always invis when the manticore encounters her, anyway) who cast the invisiblity on the manticore before the mission.
- A priest of Death who's at least 5th level (so presumbly has cast a 3rd-level spell in the manticore's presence).
- "'Demonlord' is some guy with minor powers and major dreams. Thinks he's Evil's Champion or something. Maybe he should go on an adventure one of these days." He has a helm that looks like a demon bat with fangs that gives him some mental or psionic abilties (possibly a minor fear attack). He doesn't fit with what the party knows of Gloom Meet's current Champion of Evil, and the manticore has never heard of Gloom Meet, nor does he know where "Demonlord" picked up or invented his title.
- A skull that talks and has flaming red eyes.
- Six random warriors and three random manticores.
- Ganeth:
- "Tell me, what's their standard procedure when a scouting party fails to report back?"
- Manticore:
- "Don't know -- it's never happened before."
- Ganeth:
- "Do you think the manticore that was with you would have returned to base or gone off on its own?"
- Manticore:
- "Who can predict the actions of the uneducated? Surrender is a sign of intelligence."
Someone named Q'ranzil (perhaps the manticore's rendering of Kharnzeel into Orcish?) hired Drakos to torch the charred fields the party has been going through; Drakos used the rod's shapechange powers to do it, and Q'ranzil paid Drakos in blood gems. However, Q'ranzil is now late with something, and Drakos is beginning to wonder if he's been double-crossed. There are also rumors about an elf involved with the group, though the details have been kept secret from the manticore (who says he'd be quite happy to play double agent and find out who it is).
He claims not to know anything about Lifeblood, except for the existence of "some pesky elves in a forest Westwards." Beeel then took over and asked, in Eastern Common, about the manticore's combat capability; when he switched to Western Common in the course of the conversation, the manticore didn't appear to understand him. Beeel learned that the manticore's quills ("'Tail Spike' sounds so uncivilized") will grow back when he sleeps, that people call him Manhunter (do we believe that?), and that he'd rather be casting fireballs, polymorphing into things with hands, and leveling cities with a spell called "Incinerate". (The manticore was also impressed by the rigor of the party's entrance exam; Drakos' group just counted his quills, had him kill an ogre, and asked about his previous jobs.)
And the players finally learned exactly why Frankel's attempts to get Easterners to surrender (after asking Beeel how to say "surrender" in Eastern Common) met with so little success...
- Beeel: [E.C., to manticore]
- "Talk to the horse for a minute. He likes hearing the word ***, but he doesn't understand Eastern Common."
- [W.C., to Frankel]
- "Talk to the manticore for a minute."
- Frankel: [W.C.]
- "So you finally admit that you speak Westen Common."
- Manticore: [E.C.]
- "DIE!"
- Frankel: [W.C.]
- "Surrender? Me?"
- Manticore: [E.C.]
- "DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!"
- Dan:
- "The cutting edge of lawful."
The manticore had enough quills left for two more volleys and appeared to have surrendered at just below half hit points, indicating that damage was likely to ensue if the party tried to COD it. So they decided to treat the situation as an opportunity to spread misinformation and enhance their chances of escaping the region alive; Beeel congratulated the manticore on passing its interview, and Ganeth gave the manticore its instructions:
- Ganeth:
- "Okay, here's the deal...I'm the subleader of the Shorin Clan, and to further our goals in this area, we're going to need to disrupt trade within the Empire here, particularly between Banzeel and Marakeel. We're planning to set up a preliminary base in the trees just east of here, but we're going to need a more advanced base further east to start working on the Marakeel-Banzeel highway. That's where you come in. We need you to scout out the area east of here to see what hostile groups are active in the area -- revolutionaries, Ravens, and Imperials all fall into that category. We'll also need a site for a defensible base. Since your application was exceptional, I'm going to give you some latitude in how you reconnoiter out east -- we'll be heading eastwards from here as well, so either meet up with us when you find something, or else we'll locate you when we need the report."
- Manticore:
- "What name should I call you by? Also, am I now a member of the Clan?"
- Ganeth:
- "You can call me Bluestar, and you may consider yourself a provisional member of the Clan. Any questions about the mission?"
- Manticore:
- "Will I be asigned some magic items to aid me in my journey?"
- Ganeth:
- "Consider this a test of your intrinsic wit and abilities. Your performance here will indicate what items may usefully complement your talents on future assignments."
- Manticore:
- "An excellent challenge. I thank you for your opportunity. If you don't mind, I would like to leave immediately."
Ganeth and the manticore set up a rendezvous at dusk on a bridge ten miles east where the local road crosses a stream, and the manticore set off east (where it will hopefully either meet random humans and get killed in its flightless state or lead the bad guys to either the bandits the party saw in the morning or a fake meeting in the opposite direction from where the party is heading). After a few minutes, the party hid the pseudo-alu-demon's body (hoping the focus isn't strong enough to raise her on its own and not wanting to take the risk involved in digging it out of her) and high-tailed it west, hoping to be long gone before the manticore sells out its false info or another scouting party comes by.