The dikka ship touched down successfully and was met by a group of Truth priests who told the party to, "Please wait here," before taking off to fetch Omimajish. Ganeth, remembering what the Cuthbert wanted to do the last time it scanned him (in Derdriu's relatively benign hands), decided not to wait around and see what it and Omimajish had in mind for him, further reasoned that the word "please" really implies a request rather than an order, and took off (ignoring Cambra's explanation of the true intent of "please"); Thorongil and Stealth, who also had no great desire to see Omimajish again and bask in the LG Cuthbert glow, went with him. The elves stepped off the launch pad to find it surrounded by guards, so G cast a rope trick right there and the elves climbed in. (The guards seemed a bit surprised by this but made no move to stop them.)
Omimajish returned a short while later, scanned Cambra, Beeel (whose invisibility was dispelled by the Cuthbert), and the gnomes, and took Cambra off for debriefing. A short while later he returned alone and started in on Beeel, who was as vague as possible within the bounds of honesty. After a little give and take, in which Omimajish maintained that since Silvana was dead, Beeel's obligation was to work with the Western Army, and Beeel reasoned that while she was dead, she couldn't release him from his obligation to her party, he filled Beeel's schedule with philosophy/Truth classes and workouts with the army and had Beeel taken to quarters. (Omimajish didn't seem especially convinced that Silvana would in fact be returning.)
Omi paused under the rope trick for a moment when he departed but left it alone. He did, however, post a Truth priest there before leaving the area.
Beeel quickly discovered that the camp had three main buildings: large warrior quarters, large priest (and paladin) quarters, and a smaller building for higherups. In the morning, he also discovered that classes run by Truth priests aren't much fun.
Later in the morning, Thorongil used the mirror to contact Plant Dude and see if he was interested in the gems the party had picked up. Plant Dude was not in a very good mood and was unimpressed.
- Plant Dude:
- "I no make Silvana much good."
- Translation:
- "Whitemoon didn't let me suck any stat points."
The elves then used invisibility on themselves and lesser invisible object on the rope trick's rope to slip past the Truth priest and guards undetected. Stealth located Beeel, who was working out in an open area with the other fighter-types, and let him know the elves were leaving the compound but would be in the area, and that they didn't think he'd be in any danger. Meanwhile, Ganeth used a poly self to do some aerial recon of the area; he found that the compound was set on an east-west road (which turned out to have been created by Hollerith spells) atop a bluff with caves in its face. The area to the south was barren and littered with the remains of gnomish alpha and beta tests; a brook ran to the north, with cows and sheep grazing in the meadow beyond. The elves decided that the best place to camp would be out in the middle of the sheep, hopefully far enough from the encampment for most folks to leave them alone but close enough to cut down on wandering monsters, so they flew over the compound walls and set up a Leomund's Secure Shelter amidst the livestock.
Rogash was naturally among the warriors working out, and after learning who Beeel was from Cambra, he introduced himself. Since Rogash has had a number of traumatic experiences when the party has shown up (death of his favorite priest [twice], betrayal by his wife, getting trapped in a rope trick over wide-open ocean, level drains, facing his evil undead father, being turned to stone, and more I'm probably forgetting), he decided to take the initiative and track down the party before all hell broke loose. Beeel didn't have anything useful to tell him, but Rogash figured they'd make contact again and told him that he'd "whup their asses" (in a friendly sort of way) if he had to track them down himself. Beeel then told Rogash in a fairly general way about being caught between general LG obligation to help the army and more specific obligations to the party and received some sage advice.
- Rogash:
- "When faced with multiple things that are right, do whichever one you want."
Stealth came back to check on Beeel later that day and heard that Rogash was looking for them. Rogash talked with Beeel again; when Beeel still didn't come up with a location, he smiled and remarked that the hunt was on. They also arranged for one of the army weaponsmiths to make Beeel three spare nunchaku in exchange for Beeel giving general first-level fighter training to some of the new recruits.
The following day (that's 1793PK), G began training for ninth-level fighter under Thorongil and learning staff proficiency from Stealth; meanwhile, Beeel started with his trainees. Two days later, Rogash found the elves' shelter among the sheep and dropped by for a visit. Ganeth told him about the activities of Kharnzeel's followers and the likely existence of a third, Asmodeus-backed faction in the War; Mustaf, Rogash's bard, had once mentioned Kharnzeel to him, but he couldn't remember anything specific. G also reassured him that the elves weren't expecting to bring doom upon them; all things being equal, they'd much rather train in peace. (Rogash couldn't quite wrap his mind around G training for name level -- he was fourth when they first met -- but he tried.) Rogash passed along word that Pepper and Frankel had joined up with the skirmishers. He also extended a dinner invitation, adding that he'd be quite offended if they didn't come.
- Ganeth:
- "Which dignitaries are likely to be in attendance?"
- Rogash:
- "A few fighters. A few priests. Why?"
- Ganeth:
- "I like being able to see what I'm eating."
- Rogash:
- "Omimajish left this morning."
Dinner was the usual excellent boar, with a far-less-excellent vegetarian entree for Stealth. Rogash, the elves, Beeel, and Cambra were in attendance, along with random other folks from the camp. Rogash introduced Ganeth to Gorakheel, a mage and former shopkeeper from Banzeel who fled the East when the Empire started cracking down on Good merchants and destroyed his shop.
- Rogash: [to Ganeth]
- "This is Gorakheel. He's not just some slimy mage from the East -- I hear he's planning to become a priest or paladin."
- [to Gorakheel]
- "This is Ganeth. While he spent some time in prison at my keep, he's a nice guy."
Gorakheel would like to see Banzeel come out of the war as a free city where he can resume his business in peace, but in the meantime, Omimajish was pressuring him to train as either a priest or a paladin, both to prove his trustworthiness and to demonstrate that Easterners are welcome in the Western fold (as long as they follow the Cuthbert, of course). Some discussion of the various Western religions followed, but the meal was otherwise uneventful.
Three nights later, an "emissary" knocked on the door of the shelter to talk about "repercussions of past actions."
- Emissary:
- "Are we going to talk through a closed door all evening?"
- Ganeth:
- "Works for me."
Bottom line was that while Silvana was down, someone was going to be sending in a bunch of poisonous creatures (who wouldn't be stopped by a closed door) to attack Ganeth and Co.; the emissary's backers (presumably devils) were willing to provide items that would help, at the cost of transferring some enmity with Rakni from the devils to the elves. The emissary left a bag outside; when the party didn't retrieve it, it dissolved into mist at dawn. So the elves decided to move into the compound to be close to all the nice priests with the slow and neutralize poisons (and to take advantage of the deterring effect of masses of mortals on extraplanar strikes), and Rogash decided to move in with the elves to get in on the action. But the attack never materialized (either because the party's precautions were sufficient or because the attack had only existed in the first place to get the party to use the items).
Stealth got word from the Forest on 1800PK (which happened to be the fifth anniversary of the party's time-jump) that Silvana had been revived. She flew the cloudship to the compound on 1802, along with a hag-hunting half-wood-elven priest/ranger called Rillohar; Omimajish returned to meet with her on 1803 (and the training contingent moved back with the sheep).
Omimajish felt he was in a bit of a bind. On the one hand, he wanted Silvana (or rather her staff of 1 clw/day/recipient, which works great on armies) around for the army's major battles. But he'd also been warned (by, Silvana suspects, LN intermediaries being fed information from certain LE parties) that Ganeth was primed to explode in a very Lawful-hosing way and felt it would be best to keep G as far from the army as possible. And obviously even killing one of them doesn't separate them for very long (no, he didn't say that). So he decided that the thing to do was stick G on a pocket demi-plane and "cleanse" him there (i.e., detonate him under controlled conditions and worry about cleaning up the mess later); Nomistrus is researching the details of how this might work (though perhaps not happily). Silvana pointed out that unless G died before his big showdown with whoever the intended target was, there probably wasn't much of a risk.
- Omimajish:
- "We would prefer that Ganeth not die, but we do not feel that he takes sufficient precautions."
After some rather heated discussion, Omimajish did mention that he was not going to capture G and force him onto the demi-plane, partly to avoid feeding G's natural paranoia and partly because a showdown involving the Cuthbert might provoke the entities G is carrying into doing something rash. (Thus, presumably, his decision to leave the rope trick and the shelter alone.) Instead, he wants to convince Ganeth that it's in his own best interest, and in the interest of Lawful Good in general, for him to submit to this.
- Omimajish:
- "There is no reason to feel that Lawful Good does not include Neutral and Chaotic Good. They are important facets."
(He may be the High Priest of Truth, but he and the Cuthbert both seem a little nuts in a simpatico sort of way.) In any case, the demi-plane wasn't ready yet, but he wanted Ganeth to agree to abide by certain restrictions and sign off on them with the Quill of Law (which, contrary to popular belief, can be used by chaotics, only it hurts a heck of a lot); we're still waiting to hear more about this.
Somewhere during this discussion, the conversation turned to Rakni's base in the Deadlands. According to Omimajish, the Deadlands contain some large pyramid-shaped power sources that might be powering the cursing/disease effects in the area. At this point, he wanted the party to sacrifice themselves in an assault on the spiders in the Deadlands, thinking this would also cause detonation and solve the Red One problem. (Fallacy here is that there was no sign of detonation during the assault on Silverton, though Froot Loop had prepared for the eventuality. Also, whoever is funneling this information to Omi would probably be more than happy to jump on the power source themselves after the party and spiders started going at each other again, but Omi's focus on the War doesn't seem to leave room for these nuances.) Suffice to say that the Champion of Good was not pleased and told Omimajish that he should stop and think about the motivations of his informants and that he should think long and hard before trying to dictate terms to her again.
And so the conversation at last turned to Silvana's agenda: the removal of the evil Lifeblood entity and the bloodwood trees. To prevent the energy of the bloodwood from being harvested by the Easterners or the spiders, Plant Dude had been convinced to move the entire Bloodheart onto the Elemental Plane of Plant for an unspecified period of time. To do this, 74 anchor trees had to be planted around the center of the forest (every quarter mile along the perimeter of a roughly three-mile-radius circle) and aged from seedling to maturity; once this was done, the Lifeblood entity would be able to move the area offplane. With more time, the entity, the bloodwood, and the evil elves could have been moved while leaving the area intact, but instead the entire area is being removed, which will distort and generally shorten distances through the center of the forest.
The major downside here is that the location of the Bloodheart was not accidental. It was placed there to prevent access to other, more evil things, and with the core of the forest gone, anyone able to penetrate the spatial distortion will be able to break through into the area "under" the forest. Among the goodies down there are a gate to the drow plane and ruins left by a group of Abbathor-worshippers. So the solution is less than perfect, but in the short term it should suit the Westerners just fine.
The magic items from the Djinn Vizier were delivered to the party via aerial servant on 1806PK. A week later, Ganeth finished training and the party prepared for their return to Lifeblood.