It looked like there was a druidic grove in play down in the valley, which meant plant creatures (such as elves and unicorns) had to worry about being charmed or taken over. Ganeth was probably immune in his devil body, and his plane source of Lorcan showed mostly Prime Material and a non-trivial dash of Limbo, but no Elemental Plant.
The party headed back toward the valley and looked around from the cliff. There was no obvious central grove, but there were two thickets (probably enhanced with plant growth) that were shielded by oak trees. Their plan was to fly in toward the nearer grove, have Silvana reduce age on nine of the trees, and get a look at whatever was hiding among them. As they headed in, a pair of tentaurs (the usual javelin and lance pair) decided to object, so the party hung back out of javelin range and started shooting at the oozes. This attracted the attention of something in the trees with a big booming voice (sort of treanty, but way too fast).
- Dan:
- "We definitely have to get a CoG Booming Device."
- Voice:
- "Stop hurting my children!"
- Silvana:
- "Release the centaurs from this unnatural influence."
- Voice:
- "This isn't your concern. Leave before you get hurt meddling in the affairs of adults."
- Silvana:
- "We want the centaurs."
- Voice:
- "They are not your centaurs to have. Go away."
- Ganeth:
- "We didn't mean in the carnal sense."
- [Silvana looks horrified.]
- Voice:
- "Enough fighting then, children. Come down and we can talk like mature creatures. I am saving the centaurs from a worse fate than you. Come to me, my little elven saplings!"
As expected, the owner of the booming voice tried taking over the elves. Ganeth and Lorcan were unaffected, Silvana, Stealth, and Pepper saved, and Thorongil went happily cruising into the grove and found a nice spot to sit down and relax.
- Voice:
- "We are all on the same side. Why don't you take the time to listen to me? If you run around like that, you'll burn out. I like all of you and don't really want to hurt you, little bees. Time is running out, you know. The wolves will come tonight."
The tentaurs converged around Thorongil, and one of them grabbed a berry from a nearby plant, ingested it (through the ooze), and got some healing.
- Voice:
- "Hey, little centaur! Why don't you come here too? I will keep you safe from the wolves."
- Frankel:
- "I want you to explain the fate that you saved my fellow centaurs from by turning them into creatures without minds."
- Voice:
- "They are not creatures without minds. It only seems strange to you because you do not understand plants. To avoid the wolf, the horse must become grass."
- Frankel:
- "Fine, I shall not mince words. When they are covered with goo, they are other, they are no longer strictly centaur. Whoever has done this had a reason. What was that reason?"
- Voice:
- "It is I who have done it. And I did it to save their lives."
- Frankel:
- "Can you explain, in terms I can understand, how their lives were at threat? For so far as I can see you have effectively put them into deep coma and that's only a wordgameplayer's toss away from killing them."
- Voice:
- "I am getting hoarse from all this shouting. I will gladly explain the situation, but not by shouting it all over the valley where all may hear. I can see that you are uncomfortable about talking to me here. Why don't you go home and talk to me instead? When you understand the wisdom of my words, you will do the right thing. I will give the little winged elf a mushroom. Consume it and talk to me."
- Frankel:
- "And yet I cannot trust you to leave my physical autonomy and integrity alone if I go where we can talk more quietly, can I? Stalemate. For that reason I will not consume the mushroom, but thanks."
- Voice: [sighing]
- "Do you have a better suggestion?"
- Frankel:
- "Can you implant the knowledge in one of your victims' -- for want of a better word -- minds, then let us free that one?"
- Voice:
- "Hmmm. Alright. You have already robbed me of two. I shall be generous and grant you a third."
One of the tentaurs came out of the grove, and the goo detatched itself, revealing a middle-aged centaur. The voice's owner intended to hang on to Thorongil until it got the centaur back, so Silvana put up an anti-plant shell and the party moved down to the valley floor, getting both Thorongil and the ooze inside the shell (which was open on the bottom, leaving the party open to whatever the grass decided to do).
The centaur didn't remember her name (it turned out to be Halana), but recalled following Randaf (her child) on a pilgrimage and getting ambushed by the oozes. She described Kantor as rash but having a good heart (and armed with an electric lance); she figured he wouldn't have surrendered to the slimes, but she had no idea whether he was dead or off somewhere planning a rescue. She also knew she was a priest of Skerrit. A piece of ooze was still in her throat and periodically took over her vocal cords to impart some not-terribly-useful bits of information.
Meanwhile, Silvana and the voice continued their conversation. Silvana went through the party's credentials in the field of fighting Jagrmund followers. The voice connected Jagrmund with wolves who were planning to burn down the forest and responded to questions about which forest lord it was with the opinion that there was really only one forest, so it didn't much matter. Eventually the voice got around to making a demand.
- Voice:
- "Bring me the head of the wolf and the eye of the sister and then we'll talk."
- Silvana:
- "Eye of the sister means hag, but what is the wolf?"
- Voice:
- "You'll know the wolf when you see it."
- Ganeth:
- "Lot of tactical help that is."
- Ooze:
- "Look here, smart guy, I see the Wolf, but he probably won't look like a wolf to you. Don't want to confuse you, OK?"
Silvana cast cure disease on the centaur, who coughed up some blood and a chunk of green slime. This pissed off the voice, which started an entangle in the area; that bounced off the unentangle on the party, but it gave Thorongil a new save, and he snapped out of whatever he'd been snapped into.
- Voice:
- "Oh no! Go away, the lot of you. I am really tired of dealing with you. I will let you flee. Next time I see you here, it had better be with the head of the wolf and the eye of the sister. Else, I will kill the remaining centaurs. Now GET OUT!"
The released centaur was really pissed by this point and wanted to burn the grove down, but Frankel calmed her down, and the party left the area.
- Silvana:
- "I didn't see a point in staying to haggle since he won't honor his deal anyways. The plan is to take care of the Jagrmund folk, go back to the grove, and demand the release of the centaurs. When the creature gives us trouble, then we flame him slightly and he'll release the centaurs."
As the main party started back out of the valley, Beeel and Zenig went off to scout invisibly. They saw a centaur up on the cliff, armed with either a lance or a long spear, heading into steeper terrain. They lost LOS but were able to pick up some pretty clear tracks from the location where they'd seen him; the spot may have been one of the centaur's favorite lookout points. Following along, they again got sight of the centaur (definitely ooze-free), now heading toward a boulder-strewn ravine. As he approached, a group of leucrotta came out from behind some rocks and sniffed him (like dogs). Then they all went into one of the caves.
Beeel and Zenig headed back, but they were a bit late and saw Stealth and Ganeth flying out to look for them. They homed in on Ganeth and started chanting "Hello G" over and over until they got his attention.
- Beeel:
- "C'mon, how many parties are there with two large creatures, lots of people, and two flyers who took off towards us just when we were supposed to be coming back?"
- Stealth:
- "If it's ventiloquism, it's very convincing."
The priest was able to contribute a bit more information to the puzzle. Kantor was a 6th level fighter and a retired adventurer. At some point he'd traded with some adventuring contacts and gotten a strange wolf mask (a much nicer candidate for head of the wolf then a creature's actual head), and he may have been under its influence when he led the tribe into the mountains. (The mask was supposed to be a mask of leadership, and it did make Kantor seem more charismatic -- the question is whether something was leading him as he led the other centaurs.) Kantor had been to this area sometime during his adventuring career and said it would be a good place to start over, far from orcs and the like. He waited until the young centaurs were old enough before setting out; the hybsils stayed behind, preferring not to travel. The priest couldn't remember much about the journey itself (or even when the journey had happened), aside from having bad dreams and losing its spells to the slimes (which attacked in the darkness and picked off the centaurs one at a time).
Zenig noted some scratches on the priest's body. She figured she'd gotten them from thorns and so forth, but Zenig saw that the marks were coming from above rather than below, more consistent with the wrong end of a barbed wip than the wrong end of the underbrush. The marks appeared to be several weeks old, and the injuries had mostly healed.
Beeel pointed out two reasons to suspect that the centaur he'd seen wasn't Kantor: his pointy stick looked too long to be a lance, and he wasn't wearing a mask.
The party decided to head back toward the dwarves to sleep and reconfigure spells for attacking the suspected hag base. On their way, they ran into eight goblins who wanted to parley with them. Though some of the goblins spoke Western Common, they and G settled on orcish because the goblins didn't wish to be randomly overheard.
- Goblin:
- "We have recently heard that the dwarves have captured some prisoners...elves. The elves are from a place called Auramkil. Noble types. They were talking to the dwarves about a possible alliance. Unfortunately, negotiations broke down and the elves broke some petty dwarven laws. Instantly, they were clapped in chains. They are being held right next to the treasure room, believe it or not!"
- Ganeth:
- "And you know this...how, exactly?"
- Goblin:
- "The male elf is a prince named `Ganeth of Lorca' and the female elf is called `Lesseni'. We got this information from one of our spies. Our spy, a doppelganger, posing as a dwarf, is now unfortunately insane so all of this information may not be strictly accurate. Also they have a lizard made of gold down there. It is a very valuable magic item. For some money, we can give you the combination number of their safe."
- Ganeth:
- "Why is your spy insane?"
- Goblin:
- "Well, that's an unrelated story. He got caught up in some other adventures and almost ended up sacrificed to a demon."
- Ganeth:
- "Around here?"
- Goblin:
- "Yes, not far from here. But getting back to the dwarves..."
- Ganeth:
- "I'll give you a hint. Next time you make up a story about elven captives, try not to use the names of the people you're talking to."
- Goblin:
- "Oh! I see! Well."
- [The goblins confer for a moment.]
- Goblin:
- "Congratulations! You escaped!"
- Ganeth:
- "Clearly."
- Goblin:
- "Well, what you might not know is that we were instrumental in the escape..."
- Ganeth:
- "That's nice."
- Goblin:
- "Surely that's worth a little reward."
- Ganeth:
- "Not really, no."
- Goblin:
- "We're running low on funds... our mutual enemies the dwarves are bankrupting our economy. We could do with some elven assistance. Creatures of the forest unite and all that? We hate Orcs too, you know? Why, Maglubiyet sends hordes of Goblins to fight the Orcs of Gruumsh in Acheron. Surely that's worth something."
- Ganeth:
- "Next time I go to Acheron I'll be sure to keep that in mind."
- Goblin:
- "Well, maybe next time."
Ganeth passed the news of this encounter along to Forked-Beard Dude, who said that they'd recently had a doppleganger intruder pretending to be Dunestalker (a dwarf who'd once guided the party in the central desert). The dop didn't penetrate very far, but it did manage to escape. Dunstalker had been gone long enough for FBD to get worried; he figured Dunestalker wouldn't have been taken out by something as lame as goblins, but he might have run into something nasty like thrikreen (which resembled creatures some of their goblin prisoners had been babbling about).
FBD also tried to interest the party in war bonds (which are only sold to dwarves and beard-brothers). They have a 100 year term and return double the initial amount.
- Dan:
- "Wow, 0.7% a year!"
Silvana rented a pair of extra-tough shackles from the dwarves (fully adjustable and capable of holding a giant for a day), and the party camped quietly outside the caverns.