The World of Telvar

As it turned out, the Phaulkonians of the Stone Soules and Restenford Defenders met at Hoch Och at Lanthalassa-te (New Years) 2185, a ceremony noted by myself most for Rangorn’s conversion to Phaulkon, but I suppose others might be interested since Alegra and Star were there. This allows a great deal of future planning between Alegra and Cassian, as well as Rangorn and the elf-stealth party that may form.

Donald and Chiaro did a great deal of spell-trading. Donald has not revealed the spells he got outside of one—Zane’s –Something—that maxes all melee damage done by the wizard. This prompted us to give Donald the shortsword-dagger. Donald’s other spells were not revealed, though Bigby’s Grasping Hand vanished.

Chiaro picked up a great array of spells including Invisibility, Color Spray, Non-Detection, and Cricket Song.

Felix decided to save money on training and gain a position with Clangeddin, his new god, by becoming a defender of that faith. The position he tested for was similar to a Warder of Phaulkon, but since this is the dwarven god of battle, greed, and mining, the test was a bit different…

Felix was thrown in an arena with an amount of scraps but no equipment, to face a hill giant within a half hour. Felix was able to find a worn tool-hammer and chain to use as weapons, and when the giant came out, Felix hid and waited for it to pick up some rocks.

Felix made a brief appearance, drawing a throw, and then charged straight into the giant’s frame, beating it during its recovery segments, defeating it in close combat, although his hammer shattered. He gained honor and the ability to go throughout the kingdom of Shabrund, which is certainly a boon.

The party regrouped in the dwarven citadel, and marched off for a final clearing of the Horn of Iguilve. The trip was… eventful.

First we encountered a giant snake which was stopped by Chiaro’s new Color Spray spell. The snake was known to be an ornament of honor in Balinor’s tribe, but Quentin responded unfavorably to Balinor’s plan of skinning it.

A trio of bears nearly attacked the party when Quentin failed to talk them out of attacking us. However, he was able to convince them that the chewed no-blink they were eating could be transformed (this was Chiaro’s idea) into nice trout. Chiaro couldn’t quite remember what trout tasted like, but the Spectral Force fooled the bears, and we ran on past.

We re-entered the Horn of Iguilve. We mapped out all the remaining caves with ease—most notable was a room of “good feelings.” We were immediately suspicious, and in fact it was realized that the room planted a feeling of laziness in the characters remaining inside, reducing their will to do things, even if attacked.

The only other thing of note during our exploration was this:

As we left a room, the walls moved out and grabbed Nakumanu and Balinor. The “walls” were weird squishy things with six tentacles. Balinor was immune to their attack as it was strength draining, but Nakumanu was dropped into instant helplessness and dragged toward the monster’s maw. Balinor leaped to rescue him, and the party rained down tremendous damage on the monsters, inflicting 180 damage in a particularly brutal 5 segments. When it was all over, Nakumanu was barely alive but intact, and the creatures—ropers—were dead. Cassian’s suggestion to cut them open paid off as we found a few hundred gp of gems.

That left the blue crystal room, the hole in the ground, and the room with the five pillars.

Well, the astrology we had gotten was somewhat obtuse, but interestingly the unlucky number was 5 and the unlucky color was blue. This wasn’t good, certainly.

So the pit wasn’t mentioned, but the other two were fairly clearly warned against.

We approached the pit, and there was some sort of weird smell that Balinor couldn’t identify, even with the armadillo nose. We checked out the hole by having Kain swoop over it in crow form. He could see nothing, so he dropped a light stone down the hole. Almost instantly there was a weird hissing noise and something rose up out of the hole.

Yes, it was our worst nightmare, and the Defenders recognized it instantly.

A beholder had come out of the hole.

The panicked retreat that followed may be the most unified action ever taken in Defenders history as the party streamed out, to a man, sprinting if possible, running all the way through the dungeon to the cliff face entrance. The beholder had been quite slow and did not follow very quickly.

We waited seven days, and Quentin cast a Commune with Nature, determining that the major predators in the area were in fact the lizards that we had talked to, and the troglodytes. There was a slight demonic presence in the area as well, which we assume was the demon orangutans. This was later confirmed while speaking with our lizard friend from the earlier trip in here. The demon orangutans were in the five pillars room.

It became difficult to believe that the creature we had seen was really a beholder since it hadn’t shown up on the scan. We had assumed that the beholder was an illusion created by the crafty orangutans, but it was in the wrong room. Puzzled but intrigued, on Kain’s suggestion we decided to take a page from Fred the monk’s book on the defeat of beholders…

Kain circled over the hole once again and dropped in a light stone. But this time when we heard the weird hissing noise, Morgan, who was standing by the edge, dropped a 200 pound boulder on the “beholder,” who was, true to form, rising up the hole.

The expected result of the Defenders was, “squish” and “run like hell if it doesn’t work.”

This was not what happened. Kain’s plan was masterful, as it turned out.

The boulder plunged into the hole. There was a massive explosion and the boulder flew upward back out of the hole, straight up. Spores of some sort flew out of the hole and scattered across the room. Stunned, the Defenders watched as the boulder fell back into the hole.

Another massive explosion blew it back out again. Then another. Then boulder came flying up the edge, but fell back down once again. After about a half-dozen more violent explosions, there was a splash, and then another explosion, and then another splash.

We waited.

We fervently hoped we hadn’t just blown open a hole to the Abyss.

Waited.

Donald cleared out the fungus with a massive Fireball.

We climbed inside, and looked below. There was an empty shaft with a sharp incline. Scouting at the bottom revealed an underground river, and a treasure trove including… 7 dwarven gold pieces.

Yes, that’s right. SEVEN dwarven gold pieces. AND two broken troglodyte spear heads.

?!&$!

‘Nuff said.

On a lucky pair of 1s on d20s, Cassian was able to figure out what happened. There were legends of creatures called gas spores that formed and lived off of living creatures. They remained in a state of semi-hybernation until encountered. Their touch is an incredibly powerful instant death contact poison. They float about when disturbed and the way they puff out, they look incredibly similar to beholders. They blow up when attacked.

Yep, the OLDEST trick in the book (Monstrous Manual).

Well, our plan worked beautifully and we cleared out a colony of just about the most dangerous fungus out there.

That left two rooms, but “bad luck.”

The orangutan seemed ok, but an Augury (gained by having Quentin fly to Hook Hill and gather components for Augury and Scrying Pool) revealed that it was quite bad. There was something about a dying old man and a beach and some such. Someone else can repeat it if they remember.

Next, we tried the blue crystal room. But we weren’t dumb enough to go in. We threw a mushroom in, and all contents of the room vanished in a flash of light after a moment.

The lizard refused to go in.

So we bribed a rat. We offered the rat half the cheese before and half upon completion of its task. Of course, the rat nearly tricked Quentin into giving it all the cheese.

Due to a miscalculation, one of the spells we cast on the rat was Invisibility, and the rat drove us nuts saying we couldn’t see it. Of course, Chiaro could.

Eventually the rat went into the room, and said, “Ok, nothing’s hap…” and vanished in a flash.

We scried on the rat, but could get nothing. We guarded the cheese for three long days, keeping a determined vigil for the rat, but it did not return.

Completely desperate by now, the party had Quentin create a toenail voodoo doll thing, leave it in the crystal room, and throw a mushroom in. But the voodoo doll was not detectable.

We finally gave up, and staggered home, though not before losing our stored 2000 electrum pieces to Lludd. The behir saw that we “looked down,” and suggested we go kill the polar worm on the top of the mountain. Of course, since the thing incinerates anything and destroys magic items on a regular basis, this was not a cool plan.

Thus ends the Defenders adventuring minus a mop-up session. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the adventures.

The website has not been updated, and will in fact be moved, but for the moment, the archive of Defenders summaries is present at:

http://newton.ruph.cornell.edu/edwin/DEF/

Thanks to everyone for playing, and creating a great experience of gaming at Cornell! I hope our stories will be regaled among future parties and that the Defenders take their place in history!

A wrap-up, next week.

Joel/Balinor