Session 7
5 August 1999, 6:30pm
Attended by: Merwin, Chris, Ken, Jason, Scott
StoryGuide: Ken
Logged by: Jason
RULES NOTE: Ken proposed the following rule modification for spell casting during combat: a single die roll shall be made, and the resultant value used for each spell casting event, rather than rolling once for the actual casting, once for targeting, once for damage, and so forth. This would apply unless the spell itself requires additional rolls. The group agreed to test this out, since combat was proving tedious. Scott commented that he was concerned that one roll would produce a more rough pool of possible results--that things will be "all bad or all good." Ken will clarify the proposal via email.
Game
Suddenly, a giant moth swoops down and carries off our favorite Criamon, and he’s a small speck out of range! [By fiat, Purros and Iseus botched their perception rolls, and so were not able to react in time.]
Marcus and Kurpat are following the ant with Aurelia. As they walk, they feel a vast rippling--everything seems a little bigger. Whereas the ant was previously calf-high, it is now knee-high. They come upon an anthill, big enough for them to crawl into. Kurpat and Aurelia go inside but Marcus chooses to remain and investigate a little. Aurelia is not surprised.
Marcus casts a spell to see his surroundings from high above the anthill. And he gets a really high view. It looks like the palace area, but it doesn’t--his view is somehow distorted. About the length of a large kingdom is the vista--and at the borders are huge, unimaginably high walls. Covered with beanstalks, too. There are three vast lakes (seas?). Vast expanses of stone, vast expanses of forest. There is a forbidding mountain--perhaps it’s the building they passed through, but it seems distorted, as if the windows become massive shadowy shapes. Most of this realm, though, is covered in forest. A vast tract of giant purple and yellow flowers is over there, and over here a huge bush, which seems as if it would contain an entire world inside of it. There’s something amiss, though, in all Marcus is seeing. It’s strange, difficult to describe. [It’s like seeing the bay area from a plane, where the walls are the mountains around it, etc.]
Iseus and Purros take cover in order to recover from their combat and from seeing their comrade carried off like a rabbit in the talons of a hawk. However, suddenly, the wasp had a friend, and that friend is coming back. It sees its fallen...insect, and is enraged! And there, that small one! Surely he is responsible for this tragedy!
Meanwhile, Marcus completes his sightseeing and tries to enter the anthill, but is stopped by an ant, which makes the now-familiar ant noises and moves towards him in a seemingly aggressive manner. "Ni ni ni!" As Marcus falls back a little, the ant slowly pursues. But Marcus, not to be toyed with, envelops it in vines. The ant, however, proves far stronger than one might expect from an animal of similar size, such as a dog, rips and shreds the clinging vines asunder, freeing itself in a trice. Perhaps fortunately for the magus, the ant now becomes confused, and takes the vines as the target of its annoyance. Marcus is therefore free to make his way back toward where he left Iseus and Purros...
As Marcus is thus occupied outside the hill, Kurpat and Aurelia travel through the ant tunnels, down into the areas where the ants look more dangerous. Could these be warrior ants? They’re surrounded by them.
Back at the scene of battle, Purros raises his personal defenses by summoning circling winds of protection into existence--indavertantly blowing the hapless Iseus back, outside the dust devil. Iseus falls, and hurts his ankle a little. Combat ensues--the wasp's initial attack is repulsed by the violent eddies of air surrounding the magus, and Purros retaliates with a dart of crystal flying at the wasp; it strikes, but the wasp's chitinous armor protects it from lasting damage. The wasp's second attack lands a solid blow, impaling the dwarf upon its fearsome stinger-lance, and the wasp pumps its vile poison into the wound. Iseus, initially falling back and annoyed with Purros, then joins the fray with his standard wasp-sizzling pila of fire.
Gradually, and then consistently, the wasp then turns its attention to Iseus. Through several exchanges, Iseus takes a couple of hits by the wasp’s stinger, and the wasp is kept busy injecting poison from its bladder of venom into the mage...
At the anthill, Kurpat and Aurelia meet the king ant in his court, and after consuming some jelly from the gaping maw of a specialized ant--Aurelia brazenly thrusting her head inside the jaws of the ant in the face of Kurpat's hesitation ("When in the kingdom of the ants, do as the ants do" she advises him)--they can understand ant speech. The king is Stephanos of Flotsam, Emperor of All the Ants.
The herald ant asks Kurpat, "Are you one of the five, er, six, who were foretold? We had not yet anticipated your arrival, as was foretold by Herodotus the Mad in the Book of the Monolith, before he was recycled." Kurpat doesn’t answer precisely, but suggests that it would be wise to retrieve the others. It is decided that Kurpat would return to get the rest of the group and bring them to court, and with him would go an armed contingent. "For these," says the herald, "are dangerous times, and Stephanos does not rule all things as well as he has in the past."
Meanwhile, as the wasp is raining death upon Iseus, Purros, nigh-mortally wounded by the wasp's sting, takes a moment to stave off death by magically purging the poison from his body. Iseus continues to rail fire against the beast, becoming more and more desperate as the exchanges continue--but his pila strike true, and the scent of scorched wasp again fills the air. Finally he is victorious, and the winged creature, now burning outright, crashes down lifeless upon the magus. Iseus is pinned beneath it, only a foot (connected to a damaged ankle) showing.
Purros, having seen his comrade pierced once by the wasp's cruel sting, casts another spell to ease the venom in Iseus--but having failed to observe the creature's second successful strike, does not make the spell potent enough to nullify all of the toxins. Iseus is unaware of Purros' ministrations, perhaps because he’s being simultaneously crushed and scorched, and perhaps because he had so much more of the venom injected in him than did Purros.
But Purros is not done yet. The dwarf attempts to levitate the wasp to allow Iseus to crawl free, but his last ounce of strength proves insufficient to the task and as the magic drains impotently out of him he falls unconscious.
Under great strain and considerable duress, Iseus somehow manages to levitate the wasp himself, concentrating with every fiber of his being to sustain the magic while he rolls out from under it. He emerges to find Purros--who, as far as the elementalist is concerned, must have fought valiantly but been stricken early--unconscious. The both of them are swollen, look like death warmed over, are feverish, and in very bad shape, with bloody, open wounds.
Marcus arrives onto the scene, and sees not one but two smoldering, dead wasps, and two nearly dead magi. The still-conscious Iseus tersely recounts to him their misadventures, and Claudius' fate. Marcus then sets himself to magically binding the wounds of the combatants, to preserve what little life's blood remains to them.
Having successfully negotiated a place for himself with the search-and-rescue mission, Kurpat guides some warrior ants back to the rock cliff to retrieve the others. The warrior ants are strictly regimented, and very disciplined, under the command of Centurion Kappa-Theta. The contingent arrives, speaking only the tongue of ants. After some confusion (stemming from the fact that all Marcus and Iseus can make out is "Ni ni ni!", even from Kurpat) and discussion (made possible by Marcus' success with a spell allowing him to understand the language of the ants--but not to speak it; fortunately Kurpat can both speak the tongue of the ants and still comprehend human speech), Marcus and Iseus are persuaded to consume the gelatinous substance from the mouth of the "translator," and Kurpat places some of it in the mouth of the unconscious Verditius, though it is unclear if this will suffice.
Iseus is apparently in worse shape than the unconscious dwarf, and is fading fast, on account of being struck and stung twice by the wasp. After some debate regarding the fate of the missing Criamon, and over the preferred course of action for dealing with the two combatants (the soldier ants asking bluntly whether they should be healed or "recycled") the wounded magi are bodily carried by a number of ants back into the anthill, where Iseus quickly joins his comrade-at-spells in the oblivion of unconsciousness.
Once inside, the way is made to a "place of healing" where the ants are unable to begin their work because "something is blocking it." Understanding, Kurpat uses PeVi to easily remove the spells that Marcus administered in the field, and removed the clothing and items from the magi who are now ready for the ministrations of the ants. At least a score of healer ants--apiece--swarm on top of the two magi, and commence their strange insectile work.
Meanwhile, Marcus goes with Kurpat to have a small meal of royal jelly--again from the maw of a specialized ant. The two magi, nearly ravenous from their forced fast, find the substance sweet yet satisfying, and soon have their fill of the strange meal. With that complete, Aurelia nowhere to be found, and Claudius somewhere with the moth, the Merinita and Quaesitor are led through the maze of tunnels to a "private" room (already occupied by a mere ten ants) where they can achieve some rest.
Updated on 25 August 1999
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