Crystal Quest Aftermath, Part 14
5-7-2005
After a bit of debate, the group moves into a different part of the forest, and sets up camp for the night. Sarai and Atheele, both being elves, only need four hours of sleep compared to everyone else's eight, so they split the watch for the night between them.
Sarai watches first, and during her watch, spots something about softball-size, floating along, although it's rather difficult to focus on. She fires an arrow at it, and misses, as it comes closer. She fires again, and hits it. The arrow flies through, but at a much-reduced speed. It ducks behind a tree. Sarai creeps towards the tree, preparing components. She creeps around again, and darts around it! It watches her. She casts Savron's Gout of Flame, flinging the spell at the... whatever it is. It seems to ignore the spell, and moves towards the camp. Sarai now chooses to wake everyone, shouting "Everybody up!"
Everyone awakes, although Akili isn't able to spot it. Sarai finally identifies it as an Arcane Eye spell; a wizard is spying on them, and the eye is normally indestructable. After a bit of thinking, Andune casts a spell to make an illusion of an army to accompany the party. The Eye notices the army, and Atheele gets the general impression that the eye is... worried. After a short while, the group looses track of the Eye, and supposes it was dispelled by the caster. Akili, never having been able to see it in the first place, goes straight back to bed. Andune eventually releases the illusion, and also returns to bed. Sarai's watch concludes uneventfully, and she wakes Atheele for his turn.
From the vantage point in the tree, Atheele can see their destination of Dabos Castle, lit by a few spots of light inside. There is a bay seperating it from the other spot of land, and in the distance, about 40 miles away, he can see the giant ball of flame that is the Tower of Koron, moving down the last of the hills, near the shoreline of the bay. After a bit of watching, Atheele determines that the field of grass around the tower is not, in fact, grass, but rather is an army surrounding and moving with the tower. Atheele decides to not disturb anyone, and continues watching the tower and the surrounding area.
The morning finally arrives, and the party takes a closer look at the army around the tower with Oy-aht's telescope. They estimate there to be 250,000 troops. Far, far too many to fight directly. After deciding that they're getting ahead of themselves, they go back to figuring out how to deal with the castle.
Investigating the field further, Atheele finally identifies a number of concealed trap doors in the ground that would seem to lead into an underground cave network, were other members of the army are hiding. There is more discussion about what to do from here - mainly, whether to go into them, or to try to seal them shut.
Andune casts a spell to make the party look like grass people, and they go towards one of the trap doors. Sarai points out that Manq is a Mannequin, not a Womanequin.
Several ambulatory piles of grass shuffle across the plains, and Atheele realizes that he's about to stumble over someone who is hiding in the grass, who does not appear to have noticed them. He stops, and everyone manages to notice everyone else stopping. Atheele pulls out his bow and fires a shot into one of the hiding Slavaakians, and kills him. Three other hidden army men notice this, and fire back. Full combat starts.
The small group of men are quickly defeated, and the party moves to the trapdoor, struggling to prop it open for a few minutes. Sarai figures out that the door has hingles; Atheele finds out where the hinges are, and Sarai disarms them. The trapdoor ends up swinging the other way, and smushes a small cluster of people. Sarai leaps in! The others follow.
Once inside, the party concludes that the tunnels are all connected, and start moving deeper inside. Some conversation is heard from inside. Two guys come around the corner, and are dropped by the party very quickly. Moving a little farther down the tunnel, the party comes across another group of men. Five are asleep, while two are awake. Oy-aht summons a hound archon again, which starts beating the heck out of the men. The party defeats just about all of them, and chase after the last couple. Atheele chases after and kills one of the fleeing men. Since the passageway is clogged with persuers, Akili flings a Weirdness effect at the last standing Slavaakian. The room fills with randomly-colored sphereoids (beach balls) that impede the Slavaakian's progress in trying to run away, but he avoids tripping over any of them. The Archon (seven rounds left) squeezes between Atheele and Andune, and pounds the last guy into the ground.
The game is paused here.