Episode 16: The Shattering Sparrow led the way down through the tunnels, with the Oracle’s magic guiding him every step of the way. They quickly passed through several levels as a result, until they found themselves directed to pass through corridors held by several kuo-toa—evil fishlike humanoids that had settled in the sunken dwarven fortress. The kuo-toa were no match for the adventurers in small groups, however, despite a powerful lightning attack they could summon in groups. Eventually, the creatures merely hid in the dark water that pooled at the bottom of the tunnels. With no way to swim through the water safely, Larannen surprised everyone by unveiling his latest mastery of magic: a spell that allowed them each to crawl across the ceiling like spiders. With each member of the party so enchanted, they skittered safely across the top of the flooded hallways while the kuo-toa hid.
Soon they arrived at a massive hall that had once held a thriving dwarven town, but was now flooded, infested with kuo-toa. The team began crawling across the cavern’s ceiling, but they soon saw their path would bring them near a cluster of electrically-charged kuo-toa standing on the roof of a half-submerged building. As they were unable to effectively fight while stuck to the walls, the group quickly scattered across the ceiling like the spiders they were mimicking. The kuo-toa fired a powerful lightning bolt, but were only able to strike Nappy and Jill before they were all out of range. The kuo-toa cursed in their bizarre fish-language, but the adventurers were able to follow the Oracle’s magic out of the cavern and into an upward-sloping passage.
The passage opened into a room with a large stone statue of a dwarven warrior blocking another exit. Alestan sensed a probable danger situation, and Larannen confirmed that the statue radiated Green magic. Hearing all he needed to, Adi charged into the room and struck the stone form with his bastard sword. The statue, predictably enough, animated and struck at Adi, crushing his bones with his stone hammer and fist. Larannen’s magic was utterly ineffective against the golem, and Sparrow’s arrows bounced harmlessly off of its stone form. Only Nappy, Adi, and Jilla were having any luck chipping away at it, but the golem’s devastating attacks drove them back. Nappy and Adi were forced to retreat to let Alestan heal their wounds—leaving Jilla in battle against the golem alone. The construct, once animated to protect dwarves, broke the dwarfmaid’s body until she was on the brink of death, but she held on. Sparrow rushed in to battle to feed her a healing potion, but rather than retreat and let the golem advance on Sparrow and Larannen, Jilla kept it tied up in melee. Adi was healed by Alestan’s blessing and hurried back into battle in time to witness the golem bring down both of its stone limbs squarely on Jilla’s head—killing her instantly.
With anger, Adi cracked the golem in two, but it was too late for Jilla. Saddened at the loss of another friend, he used his dagger to cut one of her two braids and hang it from the same necklace that held Lily’s ashes. Nappy decided to carry Jilla’s fallen body back to Skullsport, either for a proper burial or, perhaps, even restoration to the land of the living so that she might complete her mission of vengeance against the mysterious Grandfather. Their hearts heavy, the adventurers heard the sounds of metal clashing with metal in the distance: the dwarf Armory lay before them, and someone was forging at that moment. They resolved to finally learn what Jilla’s sacrifice had been about and proceeded up the corridor towards the forge.
Being the stealthiest by far, Alestan silently padded his way into the Armory, a massive room surrounding a pool of active lava. A round platform in the middle of the pool held four anvils and a forge heated directly by the lava. Only a narrow walkway rose to the platform, where the halfling spotted the red-and-yellow lizardman that had captured the Mysterious Staff so many months before. The creature was clearly engaged in forging something on one of the anvils and failed to notice Alestan’s tiny form slipping from shadow to shadow. He soon returned to the hallway to relay what he had seen, and the adventurers devised a plan.
Alestan and Larannen returned to the Armory, with both under the effects of invisibility magic. Before leaving the corridor, Larranen blocked it full of web behind the party, in case the lizardfolk attempted to escape. The invisible pair crept up onto the suspended walkway, but Larannen’s relative inexperience at moving quietly betrayed his position to the lizardman. “Tenkazu!” the creature called out, “I know you are here! Show yourself!” Thinking quickly, Larannen used a Green spell to shift his body into an approximation of the samurai, hoping it would fool the creature, and then revealed himself.
“Who are you? Did Tenkazu send you?” the lizardman demanded. Realizing that his disguise attempt was only partially successful, Larannen reacted with his most powerful Blue spell to date: he demanded that the lizardman sit on its hands quietly, and the power of Blue magic caused the creature to comply! But Larannen had worded the spell poorly, and the creature immediately sprang back up seconds later, its “task” completed and the spell thus broken. As the lizardman collected the still-hot object it was forging, Larannen tried the spell again, demanding that the creature stay seated until told otherwise. This time, the magic took hold fully, and the snarling angry reptile was compelled to do as the sorcerer demanded.
Larannen then used another burst of Blue magic to try to compel it to answer his questions, but it shook off the effects of the magic. He tried one last time, insisting that the lizardfolk answer all of his questions, “quickly and truthfully”. This time, the spell appeared to work, as the creature began answering questions. He spoke excessively fast, however; a seeming side effect of the letter of Larannen’s command.
Sparrow, Adi, and Nappy finally entered the Armory and began helping Larannen interrogate the lizardman. They learned that the creature had stolen the crystal from Tenkazu’s grasp because the samurai’s unseen master wished to possess it. It claimed that it would rather destroy the crystal than let it fall into the master’s hands. It further stated that it did not know what the crystal did, only that it belonged to the lizardfolk and should not be allowed to be used by outsiders. It had come to this buried forge to craft a hammer capable of cracking the magically-reinforced crystal; only adamantine could break the sphere, and only special dwarven forges like this one could melt adamantine.
The adventurers took his answers to heart, especially when Alestan got him to agree to take up arms with them against Tenkazu in order to defend the crystal. Adi and Sparrow agreed that they should destroy the crystal, on the theory that it was better off gone than in the hands of Tenkazu’s master, of whom they knew nothing. Larannen argued against it; while he also did not want to see the crystal with the samurai, he was concerned that perhaps the crystal’s power could be useful in some fashion. In the end, though, he backed down, and used his weaponsmithing skill to finish the forging of the special adamantine hammer needed.
No sooner had he passed the completed hammer to Nappy--their strongest member—to break the crystal than a loud noise was heard in the webbed corridor. A split-second later, the samurai Tenkazu burst through the door, passing through Larannen’s web as if it were insubstantial. He leapt to the top of the catwalk and struck the sorcerer down in a single blow. Adi and Sparrow rushed to the walkway to hold Tenkazu back while Nappy broke the crystal, but the warrior had not come alone. Irina Lightwake, the cleric that had slain Lily with her column of fire, flew into the room, her armored form held aloft by magic. Nappy’s hammer came crashing down on the crystal just as her magic froze the barbarian in place.
Alas, only a small crack appeared in the stone. Desperate for aid against the deadly Tenkazu, Alestan verbally released the lizardman from Larannen’s compulsion. The creature leapt up and snatched the adamantine hammer from Nappy’s paralyzed hands, intent on completing the crystal’s destruction. But he, too, only brought the hammer down one time before Irina struck him blind with more magic, causing him to fumble the hammer and almost topple into the burning lava. Meanwhile, Tenkazu struck viciously at Adi, demanding that they turn over the crystal to him and not destroy it. The party ignored his threats. Back on the platform, Nappy shook off Irina’s spell and once again took up the hammer. He swung the hammer with all the power his half-ogre muscles could provide, and the crystal shattered into a million glittering pieces.
A glowing red energy unwound itself from within the crystal’s remains, hanging in the air like a coiled snake made of red energy. Sitting blinded on the platform, the lizardfolk began to laugh loudly, a harsh sound that all knew meant it had lied to them. It had never been compelled by Larannen’s final spell, but had fooled them into believing it was so with clever lies wrapped in truths. It had indeed sought to break the crystal, but to release something that lived within, something Tenkazu’s master had seen fit to try to prevent. Tenkazu shrieked in anger as he saw the energy snake grow above Nappy’s head, and Irina attempted to disrupt the form with magic, but to no avail. In a flash, the energy sought out the laughing lizardfolk and filled his mouth, nose, and eyes. It began to twist and mutate the creature’s body, filling it with its energy and transforming it into a massive black snake, over 40 feet in length, that soon filled the forging platform. This new beast had three white snake heads, each with a pair of glowing red eyes. The adventurers began to worry.
In anger, or perhaps seeking help ending his life in penance for his failure, Tenkazu threw himself at the snake-monster. His katana shattered on the snake’s scales, and the three heads tore him into shreds, killing him. In a panic, Irina summoned a blue-skinned humanoid with golden feathered wings, instructing him to whisk her away to someone named “Lord Yun,” whom she felt needed warning of the events that had just transpired. Nappy and Alestan, still on the platform beside the snake, began running across the platform before a disturbing triple-layered voice stopped them:
“Do you not wish to be rewarded for your task, my liberator?”
At the sound of the word “reward,” the umber—who days before had refused to leave so much as a bag of coppers behind—stopped and turned to speak with the snake. The creature offered to grant Nappy three wishes in return for his act. Quickly, Nappy first wished for the beast to tell them who he was and where he came from. The snake-beast obliged, spinning a tale of millennia past:
The snake-beast held nothing less than the spirit of the god of the lizardfolk. It had been trapped in that crystal since the dawn of elven civilization. Indeed, it was the fall of this god, named Seessla, that had allowed the elves to rise to power over the reptilian races. But a few thousand years ago, the elves and dwarves had rebelled against their oppressive gods and slain them with powerful magic. They did not stop with their own gods, either, and destroyed the gods of every race that walked Adros. But the snake-god lay trapped, unknown to them, in a lowly crystal sphere, and thus survived. Now with the sphere broken, Seessla was free to gather his worshippers once more, certain that he alone held the power of a deity.
Needless to say, Alestan was starting to become somewhat concerned by this story, while Larannen felt it important to remind everyone that he had opposed breaking the crystal.
Nappy, however, was still caught up in making wishes. Sparrow cautiously floated the idea of wishing to revive their fallen comrade Jilla—an idea Nappy flatly rejected. Instead, her second wish was for each of the adventurers to be granted a powerful magic item. And in an instant, a mighty artifact appeared before each of the five living party members. Each cautiously accepted their item, unsure whether or not they were safe. They were soon won over, however, as each object mentally revealed its powers to its wielders.
Finally, with a mischievous grin, Nappy made his third and final wish: to be able to fly, permanently. “Granted,” intoned the snake-god, and a large pair of black reptilian wings burst from Nappy’s shoulders, stretching and twitching practically on their own. Nappy was thrilled by his new appendages, but also knew that something inside him had changed by his dealings with this creature. He had accepted the bounty of the snake-god, and was now marked by its reptilian power forever.
With no further comment, the snake-god vanished into thin air, leaving the adventurers alone to ponder what had just happened.
End of Book Two...
