Wake of the Storm
Episode One: Null and Void
AK 594/7/1-14 (1890-1903 PK)
Includes events from the 11/29 and 12/21 runs.
Froot Loop ferried Silvana and Stealth from the Beastlands to the
grey elven forest, where they
sprouted as leaves on a tree. Plant Dude came by and seemed
especially pleased with himself.
- Plant Dude:
- "Rakni no much clever is. She no much yum-yum has."
However, he was a little perplexed by Ganeth's and Thorongil's
alternative means of return (probably because with Whitemoon
preventing him from altering Silvana and Stealth, he was hoping to
recoup some energy by sucking stats from other sources).
- Plant Dude:
- "I make Thorongil! I puff-puff Rillifane. That no good
is. You wait, I go look-look."
[trances for a moment]
"That Thorongil! He go Rillifane to. He no much clever is."
A while later, Stooping Hawk (a ranger/priest of Solonor and current
High Priest of the Forest) and Silver Feather (a mage/priest of
Hanali, currently without mage spells due to the interplay between
Plant Dude and Hajmola) came by to talk with Silvana and Stealth
(using speak with plants), informing the recently-dead duo that the
forest was on full alert but nothing was happening yet. Silvana
thought that it might be prudent to make peace with the illithids,
(particularly with the Lifeblood drow gate accessible and a reckoning
with KOSOL still in the
works), and that it might be wise to curtail Plant Dude's free-betting
ways a bit to keep the forest out of further extraplanar trouble. As
Silvana mentioned this, Plant Dude appeared and gently shooed Silver
Feather and Stooping Hawk away.
A week after the Dustplane mission, Silvana and Stealth were fully
back to life and looking at a crisis. The Incarnation of the Void had
set out on foot from Silverton toward the forest, with an eight spider
escort, right out in the open for everyone to see. Normally,
restrictions on constructs like the void spider limit their
manifestations to short durations in remote areas; that it would be
making a week-long march across open territory was very strange, and
that nobody was jumping on it try to capture its energy was stranger
still. The higher-level grey elven priests had consulted their gods
and received the message, "We are alone." And even if the
void spider could be stopped before reaching the forest, its
destruction would likely cause a dimensional rift that would threaten
the integrity of the entire region.
- Silvana:
- "Sure, we could beat the void spider. It's just xp. We cheat and
cheat and the bill keeps adding up."
Silvana figured that some kind of extraplanar reckoning was in
progress, and since Zzukiss is a known arbiter of issues of
extraplanar balance, she asked the priests to ask the gods to request
a meeting with one of Zzukiss' representatives. The next day, a whilg
appeared in the forest and informed Silvana that Plant Dude's
harboring of Hajmola was in violation of extraplanar agreements: The
Alliance for Law and Rakni had dibs on the Chaos Lord, the Alliance
had ceded its claim to Rakni, and Rakni's stunt with the void spider
was permitted as an attempt to claim her due. (Rakni had been unable
to do this previously, since her hold on the Dustplane was also in
violation of the rules, but since Dustplane had been destroyed out
from under her, she had unintentionally become a law-abiding member of
the extraplanar community once more, and was using it to her
advantage. Incidentally, there are also grievances pending against
the Shade Lord and the Dustplane whilgs. And when asked who Rakni's
mortal representative was, the whilg replied that Rakni, Hajmola, and
the Shade Lord all represent themselves.)
- Whilg:
- "This is the kind of escalation that leads to turmoil on a planar
level."
After much thought, Silvana came up with a plan that would end the
forest's violations while keeping Hajmola safe from Rakni (at least
for a little while). Hajmola used his shapechanging ability to change
himself into a huge pile of gold coins, which would then be scattered
through Auramkil. No
individual coin would possess enough Haj intelligence or energy to do
anything, so the Mola would be out of action for a while, but groups
of coins would bring luck (one of Hajmola's fortes) to their
possessor, so eventually somebody would try to gather the coins
together, and Haj's intelligence would re-form.
Plant Dude was technically "harboring" the fugitive Hajmola because
shortly before the Shadowing, Haj had willingly entered Plant Dude's
"trap" to avoid capture by the Alliance for Law. Since Haj would be
completely passive while his constituent coins were being shuffled
around, the mortals in possession of his bits wouldn't be subject to
the same sanctions. Rakni's agents could try to steal or otherwise
recover the coins (or make trouble for the possessors), but they won't
be able to take significant direct action again the mortal
coin-holders themselves. (Even so, life in Auramkil is likely to get
a lot more interesting.)
Hajmola's "escape" didn't exactly please the whilg, but after
verifying that there were no traces of Haj left in the forest, Plant
Dude's violation status was ended, and the Incarnation of the Void was
called off (probably sent back to Silverton). Plant Dude was able to
recoup some of the energy he'd lost in Haj's release by invoking a
claim against the Dustplane whilgs for their attack on Silvana.
Expecting future problems with Rakni, Stooping Hawk and Silver Feather
left the forest to search for material components for a defense
against the void spider (including black volcanic glass, so their
first stop will be the Monastery of Absolute Good, whose lake was once
a volcanic crater). And Pepper, newly separated from Frankel's
spirit, was reborn in the forest and began training for his next
fighter level.
Plant Dude and the Axebeak Lord ended up the prime beneficiaries of
whatever wagers had been placed on Dustplane's demise; since the
settlement centered specifically around "the sentient aspect of the
chaos being", the reigning Partners in Crime may have eaten Hajmola's
share of the profits. Hajmola's coins turned out be gold (in
appearance, that is), imprinted with the Champion of Good's face on
one side and the Champion of Evil's on the other -- definitely
collector's items, but not too likely to lower Silvana's profile in
the coming months.
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Maintained by Erich Greene; last changed 12-23-97