The gnomes were able to recharge Lorcan's monocle (though Nomistrus barred them from experimenting on it within a mile of the temple). Whether this was a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen. ;-)
Beeel asked the gnomes if they could design some sort of headband that could hold a con light gem, in case he had to do a lot of fighting in the dark again. The gnomes eventually came up with a fully non-magical system involving a ring into which a gem could be mounted, and a clip that could mount any ring onto any headband, belt, or sash. They also threw in a durable translucent bag that would fit the clip and could hold any size gem (though it would limit the light to 40' instead of 60'). Beeel, Lorcan, and Zoron each bought one, making up the minimum order of three.
In preparation for some upcoming underwater adventures, Lorcan and the gnomes invented an "underwater air-tent" -- something like an unbrella with a metal frame, oiled leather outsides, and serious chains and anchors. Once it's set up (by one person in 5 rounds or three people in 2 rounds), it forms a 5' radius hemisphere, open at the bottom (thus the anchors, to keep it from flipping), with shelves for propping up spellbooks and a makeshift table on the umbrella shaft.
Frankel decided that he would like become the protector of the centaur tribe he and the party rescued, but he was worried that he couldn't perform that function and carry out his duties to the party, Silvana reassured him that adventurers in general, and even rangers in particular, weren't expected to become outcasts from society. Pepper, who would be staying in the area anyway, offered to keep an eye on the tribe when Frankel was away.
- Silvana:
- "Also, your tribe is competent enough to take care of itself. If they want you, it's more because they like you."
Frankel spent the next few months helping the tribe set up their temporary villages (standard procedure for nomadic centaurs) and generally enjoying the sense of belonging. He also got a few birds as animal friends; this was fairly routine, except that the birds had heard rumors of a big sleeping worm that was going to wake up.
Meanwhile, Thorongil headed into the forests to visit his tribe. They still hadn't heard from Teonor (Thorongil's younger brother, who'd headed off east before the Shadowing with a stack of magic items and a cocky attitude), and Elasil (their mother) was afraid something had happened to him during the war.
- Thorongil:
- "There weren't really a whole lot of battles."
- Elasil:
- "Could you ask one of your friends to do some divinations on our behalf?"
- Thorongil:
- "I think divinations are overrated."
Thorongil filled the tribal elders in on the latest doings around the Banditlands. Eldvar recruited Thorongil to be the tribe's war chief, in case trouble with the orcs, the bandits, or the Jagrmund hordes was on its way. Orc activity had become especially heavy at late, and most of it was due to organized troops rather than raiders, serving under a warlord off to the northwest. Elasil predicted that the orcs would start invading the (former) West at some future date.
- Eldvar:
- "I don't know that we need a war chief. It's just that you'll boost morale in the current uncertain times."
When the tribe found out that Thorongil had made 10th level, they threw a big party to celebrate their first ranger lord in a very long time. A number of wood elves gave the impression that they'd gladly become followers, but Thor didn't take anyone on.
When Thorongil talked with the young treants who lived near the tribe, they'd heard of the old treant in the grove: He was friends with a human druid who had once been his adventuring companion. (They found the idea of a treant adventuring quite strange.)
Thorongil passed the next few months between his tribe and the Hollerith Library, generally relaxing.
After about fifteen weeks in the Crystal Cocoon, Ganeth's new body looked basically formed. Then it fell apart and Silvana had to start all over.
After another eighteen weeks, Ganeth's body had coalesced again, and this time it held together. Nomistrus did a battery of tests and made several discoveries. First, even with the 25 effective HD of scorpion gone, there was still a lot of energy packed inside of G. How much energy, you ask?
- Nomistrus:
- "Let's just say that if Omimajish were looking at you now, he'd still be frightened."
- Ganeth:
- "Would he be any less frightened?"
- Nomistrus:
- "No, not really."
On plane source, Ganeth showed up as the traditional mix of Prime Material and Elemental Plant, but there was also a glimmer of Upper Planes coming through. It turned out the snow used in G's construction was not indigenous to the plane -- it was produced on something akin to a demi-plane (but much more expensive to create and maintain) in the Astral toward the Good side of the spectrum. It's basically what holy water wants to be when it grows up, so if there are any hidden evil bits still inside of Ganeth, they're pretty damn tough. So G should be blessed enough to take damage from unholy water (probably the token point, but Nomistrus didn't have any on tap for a test run), but nobody anticipates a double hosing from unholy damage.
- Nomistrus:
- "When you're being attacked by a high elf in black dragon scale, unholy water is not the first tactic that comes to mind."
Though Nomistrus believes that the major problems with Ganeth's spirit are all still around, they're generally submerged and hard to analyze. The one notable change is that Lessania's and Ganeth's spirits have started to integrate; Nomistrus speculated that this was supposed to have happened at the initial joining but something went wrong (or was put wrong), and either the snow or the cocoon was able to fix things. Nomistrus doesn't know what to expect from this, but he thinks that with proper training (which he has no idea where to find), Ganeth and Lessania might eventually be able to coordinate and control G's body simultaneously, doing neat tricks like fighting and casting in the same round (as an absolute best-case scenario).
After all the tests were completed, Silvana put G back into the cocoon for a month to knock a year off his decades of magically-induced aging.
Before getting back to adventuring, G dashed off a few sendings:
Milana
- Sending:
- "Westerners gone except Holleriths, Marakeel breached, Banzeel hosed, C-Ra closed, Organization revived, Parnos and Shorin hiding. Yuan-ti active under Banzeel. How are you? More dreams?"
- Response:
- "Yuan-ti active here; Slissil, exile yuan-ti, adventuring with us. Parnos in North allied with sea-elves building warships for invasion. Zaran, I may join. Meet?"
Tremere
- Sending:
- "How's the memory, dude? Sis says hi."
- Response:
- "In a forgotten hollow, lay a sleepy snake.
His eyes were blue, his tongue was red, and his name was Mistake.
Along came a spider"
Clynthia
- Sending:
- "New body successful; no obvious evil. Nomistrus thinks Lessania and I may be integrating a bit. Ixthreel is taking an interest in Beeel. How's life?"
This sending failed, possibly indicating that Clynthia was offplane.
The reassembled party's first order of business was visiting the dwarves to pick up the completed shelter and Krovac (a gnomish biotech inventor needed to help the party reconfigure for their coming underwater adventures -- in Silvana's recent challenge against a necromantic octopus called Octavius, the bad guy fought the combat magic jarred into Krovac's body, and Krovac's basically mindless body ended up with the dwarves). They took the standard day's ride out and camped for the night.
Around midnight, a torch appeared in the distance, and a few minutes later the party found the red wizard, sitting on a folding stool reading a book by the light of a hovering torch. Using DI, Ganeth got the impression that she was an astral projection.
- Wizard:
- "Hello, Silvana. At last we meet. Greetings, Wizard Ganeth. Your reputation has spread."
- Silvana:
- "I fear you have me at a disadvantage--who are you?"
- Wizard:
- "You do not know me? I am crestfallen. My name is Selika."
- Ganeth:
- "Whatever piece of you is here, anyway."
- Silvana:
- "Oh, yes. We've heard of your spell."
- Selika:
- "The rumors that I eat spiders and small children are simply not true!"
- Beeel:
- "Planning to assassinate more of our prisoners?"
- Selika:
- "That was a necessary and unpleasant task. I do not make a habit of it. I just came to chat."
- Silvana:
- "In the future you might note that we usually keep daytime hours."
- Selika:
- "I have a daytime job. I'm doing this in my off-hours. I'm here to talk about spiders. I am also here to discuss weapons of mass destruction and how these two topics may be fruitfully juxtaposed. As you may know, spiders have been a hobby of mine for many years."
- Silvana:
- "No, I didn't."
- Selika:
- "Apparently, I am not quite as famous as my cronies lead me to believe."
- Silvana:
- "Well, you seem to be well known with some other members of my party."
- Selika:
- "Oh, that ugly business with Ghoram? Put it out of your mind."
- Silvana:
- "Does this mean you won't be here to take our remaining holy warrior tonight? Or are you not making any guarantees about that?"
- Selika:
- "He's a very nice boy."
According to Selika, partially taking on the guise of a spider is a way to gain immunity to spider venom, so she was offering lower-level variants of shapechange that confer partial spider forms. (The two main variants were 5th and 4th level, though there were some even lower-level variants as well.) Silvana pointed out that being in such a form could also make someone susceptible to various forms of spider control (like however Rakni keeps her minions in line).
- Selika:
- "Interested?"
- Ganeth:
- "That depends on what you want for it."
- Selika:
- "I was thinking of being crass and asking for a pile of money. It would be a refreshing change in the current climate of extraplanar wheeling and dealing. I was thinking 8888gp would be a nice round figure."
Meanwhile, Thorongil and Zenig swept the area and found Selika's pets, a pair of venomous green jumping spiders named Orcus and Yeenoghu. Once the sounds of fighting were heard, Selika tried to calm her pets down, but they really disliked Zenig and kept fighting. Beeel ended the affair by scaring the spiders away with his headband.
- Beeel:
- "We're not going to give you a second chance. Keep your pets under control."
- Selika:
- "And you yours."
- Silvana:
- "Maybe it would be more profitable to discuss this at a point when we might be able to meet your price. How should we contact you?"
- Selika:
- "This initial meeting was to present the idea to you, and to show you my pets. I'll give you time to liquidate some assets etc. Would you like to set a time and a place for an appointment?"
- Silvana:
- "Maybe you should just tell us where we can drop a message for you."
- Selika: [to Ganeth]
- "Care to exchange sending permissions?"
- Ganeth:
- "Not tonight, thanks. Just had some extraneous ones cleaned. What exactly do these spells you're offering do, anyway?"
- Selika:
- "Fair enough. How about I sell you documents with some spell details for 25gp per spell that you are interested in?"
- Ganeth:
- "That's not much of a sales pitch. Usually people pay to have their advertisements posted, but I was going to be nice and read them for free. By the way, aside from being a total incompetent, what did Ford do to get himself whacked?"
- Selika: [visibly shocked]
- "You know about Ford?"
- Ganeth:
- "We were briefly acquianted."
- Selika:
- "I understand that he was ambushed by some humanoid looters...orcs maybe. Such a pity."
- Ganeth:
- "And there I thought the Organization had him killed. Maybe it really is true about the left and right hands."
- Selika:
- "Such things are, and should remain, speculations. I understand that Ford's masters currently have no leads in the case. Pity."
Selika suggested meeting in Auramkil on the night of the second full moon. When that didn't go over well, she proposed leaving messages with the innkeeper of the Shattered Mirror, a new Auramkil establishment. She expressed interest in purchasing some of G's more esoteric spells and got nowhere. And then she blew out the candle and vanished (astral thread and all).
The party took the cloud ship the rest of the way to the dwarven caverns. When they arrived, they saw thri-kreen all over the place; apparently they'd gotten partway over the mountains (probably with outside help). So Silvana did a sending to Forked-Beard Dude.
- Silvana: [with some ghostwriting]
- "Arriving for shelter in 20 minutes. Open valley door for us. Must stay a week for ship recharge. Polymorphed centaur into kobold. Do not shoot."
- FBD:
- "Elves are always in a hurry. Kobold cannot enter. See you in 20 minutes. Come ready to slay bugs and goblins. --High Priest of Moradin"
- Silvana:
- "Since when is he the high priest?"
- Ganeth:
- "High priests are getting whacked all over."
The party descended and hunkered down around the boulder that covered one of the entrances to the dwarven caverns. Several clumps of thri-kreen attacked but couldn't swarm any of the elves, thanks to Thorongil's suggested defensive configuration. Zenig had his traditional string of wild shots and critical misses and narrowly avoided spearing Ganeth's fire shield. During a slight lull in the onslaught, Lorcan tried to get the dwarves to hurry up and move the boulder.
- Lorcan:
- "This is Lorcan Saxe-Marek, Cardinal-Archbishop of Wom in Sheepy Magna. Everybody is here, and we've beaten the thrikreen away. Ready when you are."
- Dwarf: [from inside]
- "You lie! There are still bugs out there, we can hear them."
- Lorcan:
- "Well, maybe one or two bugs. But we have it under control."
- Dwarf:
- "By Moradin's beard, have patience, you elves. We're getting to you..."
- Lorcan:
- "Am I supposed to get off this boulder before you move it?"
- Dwarf:
- "I don't care whether you stay on the rock or not. It's not like an elf can stop a mountain."
A few more waves of thri-kreen converged on the area.
- Dwarf:
- "How's the bug war coming along?"
- Lorcan:
- "Look, there are only ten thrikreen in sight right now. And half of them are heavily damaged. This is a great moment for us to come in."
- Dwarf:
- "We can spray bug-killing acid out there, if you guys think you can take it. It won't hurt you as much as it will hurt the bugs."
- Lorcan: [to Silvana, but loud enough to be heard]
- "Maybe I should try my corkscrew. It could open up a big hole, and then we can just walk in."
- Silvana: [to Lorcan, then the dwarf]
- "No, no, please don't do that. Come on, let us in. It will take us a few rounds to back in anyways. You wouldn't want your fellow beard brothers to perish out here, would you?"
The thri-kreen eventually realized that cold shields, fire shields, minotaurs, bluured weird weapon wielders, and kobolds that refuse to drop just aren't much fun to play with, so the survivors retreated.
- Silvana:
- "Only one almost dead bug left!"
- Beeel:
- "It's the perfect moment!"
- Dwarf:
- " We're working on it. Stone moves at stone's pace."
The dwarf eventually opened the passage and couldn't decide whether to be disgusted by the magery or impressed by the efficiency while Ganeth unloaded a stack of spells into the retreating bugs' backs. (Since he really disliked the bugs, admiration seemed to be winning.) After a lot of discussion with the dwarf (whom the party nicknamed Grumpy, though his name was actually Stoneheart) over whether Frankel was a real kobold, everyone went inside. There was a ward on the entrance that would kill a kobold (or a goblin); Frankel made a save and felt a short burst of fear, but nothing particularly painful happened.
- Grumpy:
- "Why would one choose to become a kobold? The kobold is one of nature's most cursed forms."
- Silvana:
- "Because that was the only item we could find to reduce him. If you'd make us an item to change him into a dwarf once a day, we'd be deeply honored."
A while later, the party met with High Priest FBD, who filled the party in on the recent problems the dwarves had experienced. There had been a ghoul army and a carrion crawler infestation, but those were already gone. Current problems were the goblins at the main gate, thri-kreen at the other entrance, waves of umber hulks coming up from below, 3' tall extra-strong trolls from the Veins of Abbathor, and batches of hordlings of unknown summoning (but no drow).
The party picked up their shelter and camped in it that night. In the morning, they decided to investigate some of the problems below the caverns, since they had a week to kill while the cloud ship recharged.