Crystal Quest Aftermath, Part 12
3-5-05
As the party flees on horseback, a number of guards persues the party from a couple hundred feet behind, although no one is quite sure how many their are. Oy-aht summons her Hound Archon to handle anyone that gets too close, while Andune flings an Ice Storm. As it is flying towards the enemies, Oy-aht realizes that there were only four horses left, so there have to only be four guards. Then they're all pulverized. Oy-aht sends her Hound, accompanied by a Celestial Bison, to pound the remaining troops into the ground.
The party then gallops off, dashing along for a while along the cliff-edge of the shoreline, and as it is a little past the middle of the night, the party debates where to set up camp. Their options seem to be either out in the open, or down at shoreline, below the cliffs. Now moving at a trot, Oy-hat uses her magical spyglass to check out the surroundings. She smiles at the distant view of the bison cleaning up the enemy campsite, and then finds what appears to be two scouts, about eight hours' horse-riding away.
After a short pause, the group decides to take a short rest of about four hours. While Sarai watches, she hears a short, booming sound, echoing from what she thinks is the north, but there are no visual indications. Everyone else finally gets up around noon, and they move on.
Finally making it to the treeline, Sarai heads into the woods, and after a pause, most of the other group follows, as she locates a significantly old oak tree and ransacks it for spell components. After pondering, tree climbing, and some other amusement, Sarai finishes making a couple handful of oak ashes, and Eldar unexpectedly appears.
He tells the party that while they're doing a good job, and all of that, there's another member he wants to add to the party, who just recently qualified to help out. He also instructs the party to check out a city - "Destroy it?" asks Sarai. Eldar gives her a Look. "Liberate," he replies - and after a question from Oy-aht about why there are so many Salorvins, Eldar says it's a necessary thing, and vanishes.
Atheele (Eric) is the new male elven ranger that joins the party. Introductions are made, and he is, as usual, worried about the resident Chaos Mage, Akili. Sarai attempts to bluff Atheele into thinking that he's her 'personal slave'. Her bluff fails, partially because she's not very persuasive. Akili's explosive bout of coughing certainly doesn't help matters.
The group goes a little farther, until it is roughly 10pm, then sets up camp. Atheele sets up an Alarm spell, so the party can rest without being forced to take a watch. But they take a watch anyway. As they prepare to go to sleep, they hear more booming noises from the same direction, north, closer this time. Still no indication of what they are, however.
During Andune's watch, she trains Oy-aht's spyglass north. She spies a couple scouts, then sees a besieged castle up ahead, about two days of travel away. The castle appears to have been putting up a valiant defense, but now it is showing signs of significant damage, and the booming noises are eventually revealed to be castle towers being knocked down. The pair of scouts give up after about twenty minutes, and head back in the direction of the castle.
As other turns of watches go by, the seige against the castle progresses.
Morning arrives.
Akili asks Sarai about the exploding boulder spell. She needs a silver hammer.
Akili tries using his wand of polymorph on a rock to turn it into a silver hammer. It becomes a tin hammer.
Akili realizes polymorph can't create precious metals, but he can polymorph precious metals into something of a different shape, with the same metal. He asks for some silver coins. He pauses, then asks if there are enough to make a silver hammer-shape. Everyone roots around to see if they have 100 silver coins to make a pound of silver. Sarai determines that she can come up with enough out of Lerith's treasure stash that they absconded with some time ago in the ransacked temple, that was taken over by Koron.
Eventually, the party emerges from the woods, and sees the castle, still about a day's worth of travel away. Atheele finds a good site to set up camp for the night. Andune starts her watch while Akili successfully turns a pile of silver into a silver hammer, and points out that a regiment of the army, about 100 soldiers, is approaching the forest at top speed, and will probably arrive in about four hours. The party starts immediately making plans to handle them.
The game is paused here.