Harmony Session 25: Wrought in Faith, Entombed in Stone

"I don't hire adventurers that brave risk. I hire adventurers that ignore it."

- Ivin Ivinson, Guildmaster of The Windblown

The arrival of the ogrepede heralded not only the end of the battle, but doom for The Suckhole Six. Volthen Arkkaradson had rallied, summoning another Child of 1,000 Legs and even healing his battered body by sapping the life force from Azarki Kevin-Kevin. Juuze pushed his attack on Pilgrim as rocks began to loose themselves from the ceiling. Panic nearly set in before the Six got themselves together and made a plan: get what they came for and get out.  

The Broken Pillar

  To that end, Enoch jumped into action, summoning a deft mage hand to scoop up two centipede-bound tomes off the stone altar in the center of the room. Gorr followed his friend's example and grabbed the remaining items: a canvas bag filled with coins and a map splayed out across the altar. Across the room, Pilgrim pulled Keening, his chainblade arm, through one of the two pillars holding up the ceiling. In response, Juuze lashed vicious tendrils at the Faithwrought and brought him down once again.   Zoran fell to a psychic blast from Volthen as he attempted to keep the ogrepede at bay. Enoch, not willing to leave Pilgrim behind despite the plan, rushed forward to save his him, but quickly fell to the concentrated attacks of the ogrepede. Azarki responded quickly, getting both Zoran and Pilgrim back to their feet in a beautiful display of exigent power. Pilgrim, ever resolute, gathered himself up and uttered a final word of healing to the unconscious Enoch before swiftly moving to the final pillar and setting his whirring blade against the stone.   Gorr fired a guiding bolt into the stone fixture, which Azarki and Enoch used to chip away at it before retreating into the secret hallway. But it was Pilgrim, with the cold tendrils of Juuze Just-scary wrapping around the Wordmaker at his neck, that severed the pillar through and brought the ceiling down. Thousands of tons of stone fell upon Volthen, the ogrepede, Juuze, and Pilgrim, crushing them entirely. It was only the judicious use of a Swango-powered mold earth from Azarki that freed the indomitable Zoran before he too was lost.   The rocks tumbling over the entrance to the hallway cast the remaining heroes in a sudden rush of oppressive darkness and defeaning silence. Pilgrim was gone.  

Mission Accomplished

  The Suckhole Six Five collected themselves and moved away from the grave quiet of the collapsed room. They picked up Fingol and slowly climbed the tunnels and stairs leading back to the surface. They planted a bolt and searched for a suitable camping place for the night. The evening was quite subdued except for the strange behaviors of Fingol as he spread out what he had collected on the dirt before him. Among his collection were detailed ledgers of Varduran goods transportation, which revealed much about their infrastructure.   Additionally, he was able to provide some insight on the Cult of 1,000 Legs. 30 years ago, Fingol was taken prisoner when the First Expedition left Vardura. Since then, he had witnessed the the cult of centipedes in service of the 1,000-Legged Queen expand their reach to the surface while collecting and mutating any creatures they could find. None survived long, but the party of adventurers recently mutated had been particularly potent. The birthing of the Children was also new. Fingol reported this was all done to serve the Queen's vengeance against Vardura, The Evervoice, and The Eternal Symphony .   Fingol also helped our heroes took stock of what they had swiped off the altar by translating the titles of the centipede tomes recovered by Enoch. In addition to the bag of coins swiped off the altar, Gorr had also grabbed a map that appeared of Varduran make. This was surely the item relevant to the recovery of Volthen Arkkaradson's belongings. Hopefully whatever Rieta the Sleeper will glean from it would be worth the cost...   From here, our adventurers could do little more than find what respite they could beneath the canopy of Ferrous Forest, made even heavier by the pouring rain.  

Homeward Bound

  Two days of rushed travel followed. The forest offered no resistance to our adventurers as they pushed through the massive trees, almost as if in reprieve. Only Fingol made any conversation, and most of it muttered nonsense at that. Only when they reached the Woodsman's Path that would offer them quicker passage back to camp did they encounter something.   Azarki took the first watch under the strange Varduran stars that rarely reached the forest floor. Soon after everyone went to sleep, he felt as if he was being watched. As if out of nowhere, a figure appeared at the edge of the firelight with their hands raised in a gesture of peace. Azarki tentatively allowed the person to approach and she quickly introduced herself as Dr. Scully, a survivor of the First Expedition and envoy of a sort. The much larger figure that emerged from the woods behind her highlighted this point: a megafoot standing only about 15-feet tall wearing a crown of colorful flowers. Scully introduced her companion as Mouse, and she had been asked to approach them on behalf of the megafoot population of Ferrous Forest.   Since having walked off into the wilderness during the First Expedition, Dr. Scully had been serving the megafoots for 30 years. Originally native to the etheral plane, the Vardurans brought these creatures into the material plane as beasts of burden and war. Those days were long gone now and megafoot life has changed. Now, their troubles lay far to the east. Looking pointedly at Malachai, Scully reported that the rockwoods that had been spotted in the woods were actually enemy agents summoned into being by the maizegrown out east. The megafoots sent Scully to ask what the Suckhole Six, and the greater Second Expedition, want from the forest. Though unable to answer directly, our heroes were able to glean that the megafoot were looking for reasons not to fight them. A two-front conflict would be very bad for the gigantic simians, however it went down. The adventurers did their best to reassure Scully that they intended no harm to the megafoots, but she understood they could only promise so much. If anyone was familiar with the ambition of the Echwinks, it was Dr. Scully.   The party, along with Dr. Scully and Mouse, finally went to sleep.  

The Ways of the Forest

  In the morning, Dr. Scully and Mouse offered our heroes a fast method to return to camp. Apparently, these creatures had the ability to walk into the etheral plane to travel great distances at great speed across Ferrous Forest. Following the megafoot, our heroes seemed to pass through a heavy curtain of reality into the trunk of a great tree. Once through the gate, they saw that the ethereal plane made everything appear outlined in stars, incorporeal but more real they had ever seen. As they began to move, the massive starlit trees shrunk away before them until they were like tiny blades of grass brushing their ankles. They only traveled like this for a handful of hours before the trees (or adventurers) began to resume their normal size. Mouse took them out of the etheral plane here, just about an hour's walk from Echwink's Landing.   Before parting, Mouse gave our heroes a black pine cone. Planting it would grow a tree through which they could communicate more easily. In return, Gorr gave the diminutive megafoot a petal from the white lily from Swango Swamp. With that, Mouse and Scully disappeared into the Forest and our heroes turned toward the bustling camp. A flurry of new constructions, faces, and an unfamiliar ship moored in the Singing Bay greeted our heroes as they returned home having completed their quest.   Most of them, at least.