The World of Telvar

On the road from Kelburn, we were accosted by a weird black creature with super-extendo arms that took 90 gp from us. We decided rather than risking it, we’d give him the stuff. It appeared that the creature could read our minds, but perhaps not.

With Morgan on watch, still miles from the Greate Olde Woode, the inevitable happened. Two volts came streaking at the hapless fighter and pasted him. Morgan, realizing his imminent danger, drew Thunderstruck, yelled, and threw the sword away from him. Kodo hacked one up in the air, and Balinor and Kodo finished off the one clinging to Morgan. Thunderstruck is sometimes totally ridiculous.

The sword had yet another role to play. A huge thunderstorm passed near us, and we realized that Morgan would be rapidly incinerated if he wore the sword, and Quentin might be in trouble even with his protection. So we dropped the sword in the mud and tied a rope to it, which Balinor held (his fear was that the sword could be lost in the storm and was too valuable to risk). He was quite surprised when he became the test subject of a new experiment.

A bolt of lightning arced straight at the sword, traveled up the rope and smashed Balinor, doing 20 points of damage (after a SUCCESSFUL save). Balinor dropped the rope, saying “ow” and immediately the lightning moved elsewhere. Donald remarked that it was “quite interesting” and that somehow the sword was considered to be Balinor’s personal aura even 60 feet away on a rope.

Balinor asked what his payment was for being the subject of this little piece of science, and Donald handed him a platinum piece. Balinor coughed smoke and took the money.

Passing under a Dunadorian highway and being momentarily confused, we passed through an old wood, though Quentin could not find any trees to talk to that responded. After a few days, we came upon the Wild Wood Inn.

In short, it was a hilarious and bizarre stay, which I’m sure comes as no surprise. From the guy who fell out of the tree and popped his limbs back in place, to the guy who stared catatonically at Kodo and asked for a magic hand axe, and the guy with the noodles who wanted to sell us “information about the noodle market,” and finally the halfling bartender with the eyepatch, it was quite a stay. We were particularly amused by the auto-refrigerator thing under the bar. We didn’t break anything, stuffed ourselves silly, and went to bed. Out of habit we had guard watches, and a weird white fanged thing taunted Balinor from the window. First Balinor tried to ignore it by perusing the Nevronian book in the room, but was unsuccessful. He shut the window, and then the scratching noises started. There was a pentagram on the window. Balinor grumbled, said, “Would you stop bothering me?” and the thing vanished.

There had been total chaos the night before, including about a twenty person melee in the yard, but the only signs of that were a single arm lying on the ground and some bloodstains. The bartender was now much more sedate and groomed. The inn had undergone a complete transformation. We bought food and moved on rather than ask questions. Some things are better left unknown.

On the path through the forest beyond the Inn, we were nearly caught by some slaver ambush when Kodo noticed a net above us and about a dozen men running away.

They nearly ambushed us again later, but with the same results.

Finally, we reached the cave through the mountains, beyond which lay the Court of the Archdruid. We went down the long tunnel for about a day, ignoring several sidepaths, rumbling sounds, etc. We came out on the other side and walked into an older wood. When Quentin tried to talk with the trees, all he got was a weird rustling in response. We moved through the forest for awhile until reaching a very tenuous looking rope bridge.

Kodo decided to scoot across first. He did so without difficulty, and as we were trying to decide who should go next, four worgs jumped out of the bushes at Kodo.

Two of them smashed into Kodo, who managed to remain standing despite the leaps. He then badly gashed one. Alduin and Morgan missed the wolves with bowshots, Quentin threw a Faerie Fire, and Donald threw a Slow spell. The slowed glowing worgs were so disturbed that they ran away.

People continued to cross the bridge, but it became apparent that it was by no means a sure thing, and that it was probably downright dangerous for one of Balinor’s sparkling agility.

We attempted to tie ropes to Balinor and have him cross secured. Of course, he slipped, missed the ropes while grabbing madly for them, and toppled off the bridge. He was hanging suspended above the bridge with a levitating Donald holding him up. Throwing ropes to the other side, Balinor pulled himself up. The bridge held, but it did creak in disconcerting ways.

Everyone else crossed safely.

We continued to move through the forest, following the sudden path available to us. At one point a number of orange things streaked away from us when Kodo spotted them again, and finally we reached a thorn wall.

Quentin and Kain passed through and arranged for us to meet with the Archdruid. We were disarmed, led through a courtyard of plants and animals, up a rope ladder, and to the audience area by a ceremonial guard. The guard was a reasonably powerful druid himself, and a former adventurer.

Quentin spoke with the druid in a language none of us knew, and 3 hours later he returned with our options.

There were two missions of great enough importance to warrant recharging the rod. These were:

--Go into the Dark Wood, take out a lair of demons, or devils, or whatever.
--Take out an evil treant and his empire of plant things.

These options seemed impossible for us, so we instead simply requested missions we could do for the druid. There were four missions of some importance:

--Take out a cult of humanoids
--Kill the leader of a nearby band of ogres
--Kill an animal trainer and slaver who works for Wilbar’s Fish and Critters
--Take out a faunlike malevolent creature that could one day join the evil treant

The third option involved legal complications with the town the trainer was in, but the others all seemed interesting to us.

We decided to start with some simple bash-some-heads stuff. The ogres were a band of about 15 or so. They had been the usual dumb ogres until some new leader came along and frightened them enough to make them start over-hunting the area. The druid wants us to take out the leader. If we slay all the ogres, fine. If we keep their losses minimized enough that they could return to their old lifestyle, fine. We should avoid slaughtering only half the group, which would turn the rest into starving ogres, which would cause problems for awhile.

The leader is suspected to be fire giant. Hill giants are too stupid, stone giants don’t typically do this sort of thing, and an ogre mage would have a greater agenda. We really hope it isn’t an ogre mage. Incidentally, the guard informed us that the creature that accosted us earlier was probably an ogre mage.

We traveled out to the ogre village, and observed them for a day, with Quentin performing aerial surveillance in his new crow form. It was noted that five ogres went hunting every night and returned in the morning, and that a palisade was under construction.

Tactically, we need to give this a bit of thought. We would like to do this as smoothly as possible. In either case we should attack the village when the five ogres are gone. In the event that most of the ogres escape, we should leave the five intact so that the tribe can exist. If we slaughter the group, then we should take out the five ogres on their return.

Thoughts about Invisibility 10’ Radius, and other spells are being discussed. We’ll continue this, perhaps with a short game later in the week!

Joel/Balinor