After leaving C-Ra, the party camped out in the hills east of the city. Early the next morning, Pepper's danger sense went off as a group of griffons (including some weird-looking ones) flew over the camp. The party set out east with Ganeth and Beeel invisible and everyone spread out beyond standard blast radii; a lone griffon overflew the party, and a while later, the attack came. The weird griffons turned out to be hieracosphinxes, who carried off Xagye and Thorongil (whom a sphinx mistook for Ganeth), while the two real griffons were ridden by a pair of Shorin twits with wands and scrolls. Net result: one griffon, one twit, and two sphinxes dead; one twit (Arten) captured at zero hit points; one griffon charmed; one sphinx changing sides; and one very confused Xagye wondering why we'd gone out of our way to save her from becoming a sphinx's lunch.
After Arten spilled his guts, the party learned that Elbret and the Red Mage were off in the desert adventuring, trying to get powers and artifacts (something about octagons and a "door against spiders") from some sphinxes. (According to Xagye, Eastern priests/mages of seventh level or higher sometimes go on pilgrimages to seek out sphinxes, pass their tests, and gain powers, so Elbret's not the only one who's tried this.) In their absence, Kalis was left in charge of the clan, which was camped about a day southeast of C-Ra while their agents were in the city purchasing supplies. Kalis has a silver box (which Xagye thinks is an Eastern communication item) through which he received a note telling him where the party was and a gynosphinx feather. The feather provided some degree of control over the sphinxes (which lapsed when Arten, who was carrying the feather, went unconscious), who were somehow able to track the party. (Kalis also told them that he knew where a gynosphinx was and would tell them if they completed the mission.) Kalis' plan was to have the sphinxes pick up the three male elves and carry them off to their camp in standard kidnapping fashion (which might make Elbret happy, since she still wants Ganeth to join the Shorin) and then "accidentally" drop them (which would make Elbret unhappy, but "accidents happen" -- and at least the spellbooks, which they were told contain spells called Time Bomb, Spit Venom, and Scorpion Tail, would be recovered). The party also learned that the entire Shorin clan was to meet in Banzeel in three days.
The surviving sphinx was given the gynosphinx feather and flew off happy:
- Hieracosphinx:
- "I have the feather -- it's almost as good as the real thing."
- Ganeth:
- "I guess if you use it right..."
Arten was relieved of his items (except for the griffon-riding ring, which he needed to get home), quested to explain to every high elf he meets what the party is about (though his grasp of this isn't all that firm, given how foreign it is to his standard slimy high elf mentality) and impress upon them that attacking the party is really not among the easy ways to get items and spells, given a letter for Kalis, secretly hit with a scry lock, and sent back to base in a sniffy state of mind. (Later scrying showed Arten trying to explain the events of the battle and taking abuse from the other Shorin, so he seems to be trying to keep his saves intact.)
The party's letter to Kalis, which was written on combined Champion of Good/Nirduk Clan letterhead, said:Kalis Bluestar: Your mysterious correspondent has misinformed you. Perhaps you should look carefully to see who your real enemies are.
Thorongil rooted to start healing from his fight with the sphinx that had carried him off, and the rest of the party took the cloudship to Lifeblood Forest the following day. In a quick spin around the forest, the party saw six manticores (one with smallish rider) patrolling above the road and an encampment of gnome- or halfling-sized people (based on their tents) near the southwest edge. The party's plan was to finalize arrangements for the Western army's passage through the forest, warn the wood elves about the Lifeblood Ambush, and drop off Pepper and Frankel before continuing to Banzeel (where a unicorn and a centaur are anything but inconspicuous)...but we all know what happens to nice simple plans...
Silvana, Ganeth, and Stealth flew down into the defoliated zone above the drow gate and moved into the forest, where they were met by a group of hunters (Lifeblood's non-Good variant on rangers), who wanted to speak to each of the elves separately (and were a little confused when Thorongil wasn't with them). When the party refused to split up, Rillathorn, the High Priest of Lifeblood (a 12th level CE priest/slayer), was summoned; the party was told the other priests were in a ceremony. (Incidentally, the defoliated zone seemed to have been given a few blood infusions since the last drow incursion.)
The party was too late to stop the ambush plan from being set in motion. Some time previously, an Eastern "traitor" had delivered a priest/mage possessed by a yugoloth to the forest; the priest/mage/demon was sacrificed, and the energy was used to start creating a War Tree and a grove of minions. (Based on Rillathorn's description, this Easterner was none other than Shabana's evil former master, who wears an elfskin cloak that lets him disguise himself as an elf and happens to hate elves with a passion.) The basic plan is to have the evil trees march on Marakeel and take the city down, and Rillathorn's got the party's role in this all figured out. After listening to too much revolutionary propaganda, she thought that Ganeth was the leader of the high elves in the area (particularly the griffon riders) and could provide forces to take out the city's magical defenses; she also thought Thorongil had a tribe of wood elves at his beck and call. And since she knew better than to trust Beeel's master, she made a backup plan for controlling the demonic tree: she bonded it to Stealth (who's genetically identical to Thornwind, a Lifeblood elf from long ago who may have done something similar). The Western army's passage through the forest was no longer assured; the original deal was a passage-for-arrowheads trade (metal is quite rare around Lifeblood), but when you're growing a demonic tree with razored leaves and acidic sap, arrowheads just aren't the incentive they used to be. The new deal is, "If you can keep the tree from attacking the humans, they can go through," but Stealth, despite his overconfidence in matters of summoning, is sure that controlling the tree is beyond his ability; Rillathorn's oh-so-helpful suggestion was that if we went out and got lots of Eastern humans to feed the tree, it might not be as hungry when the Westerners marched through. And just in case this wasn't creepy enough, all of the other Lifeblood priests were sacrificed to feed the tree; they didn't go willingly.
Silvana's full theory of the Lifeblood Ambush is that the both the Easterners and Rillathorn intend for the tree to maraud around and destroy Banzeel (which the Marakeel folk are willing to sacrifice, since they no longer control it), absorbing energy from all the Neutrals who might be tempted to sit the war out. Once the tree gets nice and fat and Rillathorn is ready to send it against Marakeel, the Easterners would destroy it (Ganeth thinks their control over the yugoloth that went into it might be useful here) and harvest the energy to use against the West and Lifeblood.
The War Tree should be ready to roll in a month. The party returned to the cloud ship and pondered their options...