RQ Meeting summary 14 - June, 2011 - part 2

Our group consisted of:

Baclane - Mark's master of horses
Arre, Thad's Melnibonean alchemist archer
Aurelius, Rich O's graeco-egyptian sorceror charioteer, favorite of Ra, The Golden, The One, Pharoah to both Humans and Fairies, Lord of the Summer Lands, The Returned, He Who Rules in Strength….
Palanar - Leon's Maat/Humakti arkati sorcerer
Nick the Greek –Scott’s Byzantine catacphract (disciplined, well armored horse archer)
Keith’s Argan Argar Troll, who has left Constantinople in order to enjoy the sunny shores of the Baltic
Dave’s hunter sidhe, Felcia Shadowclaw, from the Unseelie Court, who follows Fladais the Huntress, who has been guarding the camp, for a while now, actually .
Dwayne’s virgin sorcerer
Harry's frankish knight (I can't find the name)
Stan's german housecarl, John of Saxony
Bob’s sidhe from the Unseelie courts, Lysteria, who follows Sholto, the sidhe Lord of the High Hunt
Tony’s sidhe from the Unseelie courts, Namon Pferd, who has betrayed his loyalty to Essus the Just, Prince of Flesh and Flame (brother to Andais, The Queen of Air and Darkness, ruler of the Unseelie Courts.)  Namon now follows Ra, The Golden, The One, Pharoah to both Humans and Fairies…you get the picture.
Rich F's sidhe from the Seelie Court, (whose name I forget), who follows Hugh Belenus, Seneschal of the Court of Light.
Please note that everyone from the Seelie and Unseelie Courts takes double damage from iron.
People of Note:
Allies and Friends
Louis the Pious, Emperor, heir to Charlemagne
Reinald, Paladin, commander of the imperial forces in Hispania
Duke Astolph, mage, protégé of Merlin, the only english Paladin in Charlemagne's court.  Next to certain members of the party, he is the greatest personal enemy Malachi has, having just recently made his way into the Castle of Iron in stealth and stolen the cream of Malachi's prize menagerie: a griffin, a hippogryf and one of the giant Eagles of the Atlas mtns.  Current whereabouts unknown.
Merlinus Ambrosius: you knew he had to be around here somewhere.

Enemies, Threats to Western Civilization and All around Bad People
Malachi, Mage of the Castle of Iron, Sorcerer and Master of Moorish Spain, also called the Curse of Hispania, also called Cidi Atlantes (Lord of the Atlantic or West) one of the 3…I mean 2 great lords who rule the muslim world.
Asshurbanipal - Dread Lord of the Muslim world from the Sinai to western India, current Guardian of Mecca and Medina, known to be able to summon demons, believed to be thousands of years old.  Eats kittens, but is said to be one heck of a dancer.

Scott, we will finish determining the effects of your die rolls the next time we are face to face.  Professional courtesy demands it.

Come on, guys.  You didn't think that I'd let him slide with just the loss of 3 points of power, did you?


Now, where were we?  Oh, yes…

Everyone runs for the next gate and manage to escape before either of the elemental lords can catch them.
End of part 1

In the next world, the party finds themselves in the middle of a vast plaza, with 4 fountains at the corners and a statue in the middle.  The people in the plaza run screaming at your sudden appearance, giving the party some time to investigate their surroundings.  Each of the fountains is set atop a world gate, with some sort of magic preventing the water from flowing through the gate, but the statue…the statue is of Malachi, but an oddly different Malachi than the one who has been trying to kill all of you for the past 50 years.  He seems…noble and inspiring, somehow.  The inscription on the statue says  "To Our Great and Wonderful Founder and Protector".  Talk about different worlds.

The party surmises that the spike for this world is hidden in the foundation of the statue, and proceeds to dismantle it.  They are interrupted by a detachment of the city guard, 12 heavily armored minotaurs, who want to know why a bunch of odd-looking strangers is vandalizing the favorite statue of their beloved Protector.  A nasty fight ensues, which the party wins (insert details if you wish).



The party then short-circuits the green spike in this world with a silver dagger, and escapes through the next world gate.  This world gate takes you to a cavern, roughly diamond-shaped, with a world gate in each corner.  What is different here is that the 6-pointed spike that is suspended between the world gates is not green, but appears to be made of gold, and you can see the waves of power that swirl across its surface.  The only way out of this cave is an iron stairway that leads up to a massive door of iron.  The door opens inward.

Listening at the door, members of the party can hear voices calling for help, shouts and crashing noises in the distance that sound (and feel) as if several very heavy metal objects have fallen over.  You can see through a grate in the door into a corridor, which runs left and right.  The noises and yells come from the left, no sounds come from the right.   Now, when the party short-circuited the spikes in the other worlds, the safest method was to use something silver in the hands of a sidhe, who would then throw the silver object away and run, to avoid the explosion.  That isn't possible here, so Namon volunteers to wait until everyone has left through the door before he strikes the gold spike, and then runs like heck for the stairs.

The party opens the door and quickly moves into the corridor, whose walls and ceiling are made of iron: you have entered the fabled Castle of Iron from beneath.  This corridor is lit by silvery balls of light that hang from the ceiling in iron baskets, and which runs about 10 meters to your right and ends at a large solid iron door.  To your left, the corridor runs for 30 meters or so to a stairway leading up; about halfway to the stairs, there are two cell doors, one on either side of the corridor.  These cells are where the cries for help are coming from.  The shouting and crashing noises are coming from the stairs, and it sounds like some is coming.

Several members of the party investigate the door to the right; it isn't locked and it opens onto a scene out of the Arabian Nights: it's Malachi's treasure room, and it is filled to overflowing with coins and chests, ingots of precious metals and bolts of rare fabrics.  There are suits of silvered armor, bejeweled weapons and statues carved from rare or precious stones, but there is no way OUT.  No windows, doors, hatches or gates.  If you want to leave,  you need to go back the way you came or up the stairs.
Other members of the party have moved to the left and managed to free the prisoners in the cells: a pair of Frankish nobles and an old man, a revered shaman of the Iberian Celts to the NW.  At this point, the men doing the shouting arrive: a dozen swordsmen, a dozen spearmen, four halberdiers and Malachi himself, leaning on a heavy black staff that is topped by a glowing green jewel.  There is someone in the corridor behind Malachi who looms over the old wizard like a mountain, a heavily muscled slave who carries two man-sized bundles like they are just bags of potatoes.

The swordsmen charge the party and battle is joined.  Nick is in the front rank wielding Durandal, and something is…different about him.  His armor seems to glow with a life of its own in the eerie light from above, and the great black sword of Hector seems to weigh no more than a carving knife in his hand.  His footwork is perfect, his attacks are unstoppable, even his verbal taunts are devastating: an eclectic blend of maternal slights,  grooming tips and hairstyle critiques that leave his foes speechless.  He carves a bloody swathe through Malachi's henchmen until he drives Durandal completely through a foe's shield, armor and chest, and must drop the sword when it gets stuck in the shield on the withdrawal.  It's almost like Nick is a new person or something.

While the melee fighters are grinding through Malachi's elite guard, Arre has readied his bow and in an attempt to determine if you are fighting the real Malachi and not an illusion or decoy, draws a bead on the sorcerer and nails him in the head with a perfect shot, doing enough damage to kill 5 normal men in one strike.  All it does is enrage the wizard: yep, it's the real Malachi.  He screams in pain and fury and unleashes some of his twisted magic to teach you a lesson for daring to attack him in his own stronghold.  Malachi simply points at the party with his staff and everyone is struck by a spell that seems to come from the castle itself; it has 20 points of magic behind it to punch through protective spells and feels as if it were cast by something with a POW of 100.  It is a Fumble spell, and the party is staggered as chaos sweeps through your ranks.
It isn't enough to stop you though, not with Nick the Greek leading the way.
The party recovers from the effects of the spell and have wiped out the swordsmen and are scything through the ranks of the spearmen when Arre gambles everything on one shot and manages to shoot through the ranks of fighters and nail Malachi with the Bane arrow, the arrow enchanted with Malachi's own blood and the lore of Melnibone'.  Years ago, you fought Malachi when he came to Constantinople to personally kill Grumfar, and you managed to physically wound him and recover some of his blood.  Grumfar is dead, but he's getting a good laugh, because Malachi's hubris has enabled the party to strike him with an arrow that ignores all of his enchanted hit points and damage him as if he was a normal human being.  You strike down the 2nd greatest wizard in the Islamic world and hell breaks loose.
With Malachi dead, all of his enchantments begin to unravel, starting with those nearest his body.  This frees two of his slaves from the bonds he had imposed on them, and they take their real form.
Malachi's staff is not made of wood, but is instead the imprisoned form of a demon of death, darkness and chaos from another world (the world of the Dark Border).  It attacks as if it were a greater shade, but can kill with its touch and it eats anything organic that it overcomes.  It devours all of the survivors of Malachi's guards, (and Stan's John of Saxony), and surges forward to attack the party but is hindered by the Sunbright that Aurelius casts and is ultimately destroyed by the sunlight brought down on it by Namon's Hand of Power.
The slave that had been carrying Malachi's belongings takes its true form as well, and it is even more formidable.  It is huge (size 40) ugly (of course), fiendishly strong (ditto), has natural armor of 20, regenerates 25 hits a round and almost impossible to kill (400 hit points).   It can attack with both claws, its bite and a venomous sting and it lunges at the party's front line only to have someone (I forget who) get a lucky hit with a magical weapon and managed to stun the demon for 3 rounds.  The party then drove the demon the length of the hallway and in one of the most stunning displays of ineffective combat I've ever seen in more than 30 years of GMing, FAILED to kill the monster given 3 full rounds where it couldn't strike back.

The demon turns on the party after recovering from its stun and proceeds to spatter the corridor with the party's blood.  It has multiple weapons stuck in it, and it doesn't care.  Now, luckily for the party, before his death, John of Saxony managed to retrieve Durandal from the shield it was stuck in before he died.  Nick sticks his humakti blade into the creature and then grabs Durandal; his blow drives the Black Sword into the demon's entrails, but the sword is stuck and it only seems to piss the demon off.  It turns on Palanar (who had hurt it the most), crumpling his shield and pinning his left arm to his body with one claw, ripping off his right arm with the other claw, stinging him with its tail and has its jaws around Palanar's head when Nick leaps forward and throws his whole weight on Durandal's hilt, driving the sword through the creature and out its back, killing it (finally).  Palanar owes his life to Nick's skill, reflexes and courage.  I'm serious about that, if Nick hadn't killed the demon with that leap, he would have had to take at least 2 attacks at the beginning of the next round that couldn't be parried or blocked.  Nick was…was actually kind of wonderful in this battle.

There are more crashing sounds; it sounds as if the entire castle is getting ready to come down around your ears when suddenly the door leading to the cave with the world gates is ripped from its hinges and pulled INTO the room with the gates.  Tendrils of wild magic ripple outwards through the doorway and as the walls begin to groan and buckle, you realize that the Castle of Iron is imploding, and is being sucked into the world gates that fueled its construction.  You grab the freed prisoners and what loot you can, and make a run for the front gate of the castle.
After some last minute heroics at the castle gates, you escape, and within minutes there is nothing left of Malachi's tyrannical reign of blood and magic but a hole in the ground.  You rejoin a jubilant Paladin Reinald, and the assembled Frankish forces cheer you and the sight of Malachi's complete and utter defeat.
Nicely done.

When you started to short-circuit the devices controlling the world gates, the effects were noticeable in your world.  The combined Sidhe courts launched a magical attack on the Castle of Iron, and after seeing this, Reinald began bombarding the castle walls with everything that could throw a missile.  This three pronged attack was too much for the castle to withstand.   As his magical fortress began to come apart around his ears, Malachi decided to make a strategic withdrawal to an alternate world where he could rebuild his power and then launch a counterattack at a later date.  He was just too late to stop you from entering the castle using the door he was going to use to leave, and then destroying his bolt hole behind you to boot.
Malachi's ghost REALLY hates you guys.

You journey back to your ship after letting Reinald know where you are going.  The journey itself is uneventful, but the decision is made to take the ship to sea and join Ra in Egypt.  Since you were told that both the Seelie and Unseelie courts of the Sidhe were going to war with Ra as soon as you settled Malachi's hash, the party decides to circle around the area of conflict by sailing around Africa and approaching Ra's territory from the south east.  This has the benefit of taking the party past the lands that are home to Nudd the Old, the Celt shaman you freed from Malachi's dungeon.  He is more than happy to repay your rescue by helping the party replenish its spirit support.  By the time the Liafail II passes the Pillars of Heracles heading south, the ship and the party are ready for anything.

The last time you sailed these waters, you were hunted by the black-sailed fleets of the Emir of North Africa.  Now, you don't see any fleets at all, and the few ships that spot you and flee are never larger than a fishing or trading vessel.  All of the settlements that you pass are either heavily fortified or burnt  ruins.  The civil war between the Emir's subordinate warlords continues to ravage North Africa.  You continue south, until the desert gives way to savannah and then to forest and then to jungle and you turn east following the coast.  Although the Phoenician explorer Hanno circumnavigated Africa 1600 years ago, these lands are still mostly mythical to the states of Europe.  This is the land of forest ogres, river dragons and lions as big as horses.
Everyone you meet flees from you; indeed, it seems that they think that your ship is the monster.  Nothing like it has ever been seen here in their memory and they avoid you.
You sail east for hundreds of miles and then follow the coast south.  After a time, you notice the water has changed color and temperature, as if you were nearing a river mouth, but there is no river in sight.  Miles later, you pass the mouth of a great river whose outflow can be felt miles at sea, and continue south.  The stars have changed and hundreds of miles later, you leave the jungle behind you and pass league upon league of savannah teeming with game.  After a time, the shores turn from sandy beach to gravel slopes.  A landing party checking for fresh water finds a odd-looking stretch of beach where Arre finds rough diamonds scattered amongst the other stones.

The temperature has grown more temperate, and after sailing around a broad cape, the coast turns NE.  The human settlements that you see along the coast live off of farming and fishing; they are curious about you, but keep their distance until one day a delegation approaches one of your landing parties.  They have seen your crews practicing with the great arrow engines and they have come to plead for your help.  A herd of elephants has taken to plundering their fields, and they ask you to kill or drive them away.  The party accepts and lands to hunt some big-eared pests.  They're just elephants, right?

Well, actually, it is a big herd of the biggest damn elephants you've ever heard of, and when the party gets close, they're spotted and attacked by 3 bulls, one of which is absolutely monstrous in size, and which has been so cunning when avoiding traps and poisons that the natives think him a demon.   It results in a nasty fight ( I think some of you were overconfident), but the party manages to take down all 3 elephants and drive the herd away.  The natives are ecstatic; they throw a big feast which many tribesmen from the surrounding area hear of and they gladly help the party butcher and skin the elephants.  Keith's Argan Argar takes custody of the ivory; the tusks of the great bull are so big that it is hard to believe that they are real.

You have made friends with the natives here and they are happy to share what information they have about the area to the north with you.  They warn you that times have changed; there used to be communities like this inland and along the coast to the north and east clear past the Long Land (Madagascar).  Now, a new people have come into the area from the interior, herdsmen who scorn farming or fishing and who are very warlike.  They are spearmen, very tall and very proud and likely to attack what they do not know.  But if you stay along the coast, you might never meet them.  What should concern you more, (and what frightens the tribes along the coast) is that they have lost contact with the other tribes of their kind along the coast in the past decade.  There has been no word, trade or contact with the area north of the herdsmen territory in more than 2 years.

You resupply and continue north east.  After a few days sailing, you notice that there are men on foot keeping pace with the ship and watching what you do.  You don't send any parties inland, and you don’t have any contact with them.

You continue to sail northeast along the coast, and after a number of days you spot the sails of two other ships.  These ships use a lateen rig like that of the ships you fought in the eastern Mediterranean, and both ships are hugging the coast.  On closer inspection, you realize that the ships are paralleling a land force that consists of both infantry and cavalry.  There are wagons with them as well.  This force stops when your ship is sighted, and after a time, they hoist a branch with green leaves to the top of the mast of the lead ship: they want to talk.  The party decides to send a delegation into shore to find out who these people are and get what information they can.

Your delegate goes in on a single long boat, and begins to see some disturbing details: the two ships are warships, and have anchored themselves bow to stern.  The cavalry are all Muslim warriors and the banners are unfamiliar to you, but one has symbols that suggest eastern Islam rather than the west.  The infantry are a brutal looking lot, and the wagons carry racks of chains and fetters: these are slavers.  All in all, more than 100 cavalry and several hundred infantry, plus whoever is on the ships.  The leaders of this force look to be noblemen; they ride down to the surf and give you their terms: you have intruded into the domain of the great Assurbanipal, and you will be taken into custody to explain your actions.  Your ship and her crew and all of its contents are to be surrendered at once.  This is not a suggestion, a proposition or a negotiation, it is a demand.  You refuse.  A fight starts.

The followers of Assurbanipal have archers on the ships, but they don't have the range of your marksmen, and they have never seen or heard of anything like your arrow engines.  You're ship's captain has positioned the Liafail so that 3 of the 4 arrow engines can be brought to bear and they tear through the ranks of the enemy force on the beach.  Someone manning one of the siege guns puts a smoking lead ball down the hatch of the 2nd slaver ship and it is soon on fire, which only adds to the panic when your marksmen start picking off the leaders of the slaving expedition.  When you unleash your magic on them, they break and run.  The survivors head inland and a few (on horseback) will be able to make their way north. Word will spread of your arrival.  From information your gain from a search of what is left of the slaver's ships and equipment, you learn that they are from a base on the NE coast of what is now Mozambique, and it seems there is a settlement on the opposite coast of Madagascar as well.  Ashurbanipal has significant forces in the area (thousands) and they are stripping the coasts of slaves, ivory and anything of value that they can get their hands on.

The party must decide now on the next leg of their journey.  Will you sail north up the east coast of Africa and force passage of the Mozambique Channel?  Or will you sail east into the Indian Ocean and try to circle around Assurbanipal's forces?

Alchemical Notes:

Arre has been experimenting with the samples you have gathered in your travels around the African continent and discovered a few things:

a. Tapioca.
b. Long lasting dyes that produce vivid red and green colors.
c. A tonic made from the hearts of bull African elephants (and other ingredients) that have some unusual effects, depending on the age and race of the one who drinks it:

Melnibonean: + 6 to STR and CON, duration: unknown.  (the first dose hasn't worn off yet, but it feels like a really good batch)

Sidhe (and presumably other fairies): + 10 to general hit points for 2 weeks

Human: + 10 to general hit points for 2 weeks unless the drinker is immature or about to reach maturity
(new characters, ages 17 to 21)
95% chance that the drinker will gain D3 + 2 permanent points to STR & CON
Please note that this potion has not yet been adequately tested.
 The party has 20 doses of the Elephant Heart potion.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:18, Sun 24 July 2011.