IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE
SESSION 13D: A TIME OF TRAGIC REST
December 16th, 2007
The 1st Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty
Dominic had watched the duel between Itarek and Morbion through a haze of dull pain and desperation. It was taking all the strength he could muster merely to keep Itarek on his feet, and he couldn’t understand why Morbion didn’t simply strike him down and ensure his victory.
When it was finally over and Itarek turned to weep over his comrades, Dominic turned to his own comrades and began the rites to heal their broken bodies.
When it was done, all of them – Dominic, Agnarr, Ranthir, Tee, Tor, and Elestra – were amazed to find themselves still alive. It had seemed to all of them that the catastrophe at the door would be their final folly.
But although they were alive, they were far from well. Their bodies were battered, bruised, and burned. Wounds still oozed fresh blood through crude bandages. Dominic had expended nearly all of their healing resources, and there were still the goblins to be healed.
An argument broke out at this. Elestra simply dismissed the goblins as a concern – they had decided that other grievously injured goblins were beyond the point that they could or should be saved, and these were no different. Tee agreed with her – without healing magic they might find it difficult or impossible to escape back to the safety of the clan caverns.
But Agnarr was adamant: If they had the ability to save the goblins, then the goblins must be saved. “Without them we would be dead.” He pointed to Itarek. “Without him we would all be dead.”
Dominic nodded his agreement and brooked any further argument by simply setting to work. Within a few minutes, the goblins – much like the rest of them – were bloodied but breathing.
Agnarr turned his attention to Morbion’s corpse. The ooze lord had worn many fine garments and carried much in the way of useful-looking equipment. Agnarr gathered these things together, and then dumped the corpse back through the iron doors. When he was done, he bound a fresh rope around the handles of the door.
Tee, meanwhile, had begun firing her dragon pistol repeatedly into the ooze troughs. The blasts of energy seemed effective in annihilating the sickly substance and she was intent on destroying it completely.
Tee halted her efforts, however, when she saw Elestra heading towards the iron doors at the far end of the hall. “Where are you going?”
“My snake is still back there,” Elestra said. “I’m going to get him.”
“No. You’re not,” Tee said.
Another argument broke out: Elestra was, once again, insisting that they go after her snake.
But Tee was as adamant on this issue as Agnarr had been on the last: “The warcaster is still back there somewhere. We don’t know what else might be waiting for us. We’re only one step away from death and we have no healing magic if anything goes wrong. We’re not going through those doors – we’re not even going to try to climb those ropes – until we’ve had a chance to rest and a chance to heal.”
When it became clear to Elestra that none of them were going to let her through the doors, she relented. And so it was decided that they would wait here, at least until morning.
Tee went back to blasting the ooze troughs.
A TIME OF TRAGIC REST
(09/02/790)
Within that hall of stone there was no clear cycle of the stars or moons to mark the passage of the night, but their watches passed and when they all woke in the morning they felt the better for their rest, no matter how cold or hard the stone might have been.
Dominic laid hands upon them all, although even now – after a full night’s rest – he lacked the strength to fully heal the grievous wounds they had suffered.
With great trepidation they approached the doors and undid the ropes that had been hastily rebound the night before. Agnarr opened them and began hacking his way through the tendrils of slime that still hung from the ceiling.
Clearing the temple they soon discovered the fate of Ursaal: The warcaster’s corpse lay behind the idol. It had the appearance of one long dead – a husk from which the quick of life had been sucked. (Ranthir theorized that Morbion had drained Ursaal’s strength from him to feed his own.)
More tragically, they also found the corpse of Elestra’s python viper. Her pet of long years – her last connection to her home in Seyrun – had been slain. Dominic laid a blessing upon the body that would preserve it for three days and nights, but there was nothing more that he could do for it.
There were three wide hallways leading away from the temple, but all of these had been blocked by ancient collapses. A careful search by Tee, however, revealed a gap in one of these collapses through which a smaller chamber – partially collapsed in its own right – might be reached.
Crawling through this gap, Tee found the walls of the room to be thickly coated in slime. A crude sleeping mat – long unused and caked in the slime – was laid out against the far wall.
Half-buried in the slime and the muck, Tee found a moldering journal. This she removed before crawling back through the gap into the temple.
While Tee had been exploring the back chamber, Ranthir had been studying the strange, amorphous idol. Upon its base he found an inscription written in strange and indecipherable characters.
All of them – satisfied that no further danger or exploration was to be found here – retreated back to the hall. They sealed the iron doors shut behind them.
After a brief discussion, all of them – surface-dwellers and goblins alike – decided that they were still too badly injured to attempt the journey back to the clan caverns. If they were to be surprised by new adversaries, they would have little hope of overcoming them.
During the night, Tee studied the journal she had found.
THE JOURNAL OF MORBION
FIRST PART OF THE JOURNAL
This part is mostly intact, but also fairly uninteresting. It catalogs a description of life in the goblin caverns of the Clan of the Torn Ear. For the most part, it is little more than an accounting of fish, fungus, and tribute. The writer, Morbion, also appears to have been involved in identifying those with magical gifts and then training them as spellcasters.
SECOND PART OF THE JOURNAL
Over time, however, Morbion begins describing strange visions and “dark whispers” that haunt his dreams. They draw him again and again to the “bridge of stone” and the “caverns of our ancestors”. Eventually he stops referring to them as the “caverns of our ancestors” and begins referring to them as the “caverns of our progenitors”. The term “progenitors” is then used later in a way that suggests it means “ooze” or “shapeless one”.
THIRD PART OF THE JOURNAL
The last few pages of the journal are almost entirely illegible. They begin with a lengthy tirade against the “tyranny of the shaped ones” and then become completely destroyed. But you do make out one phrase: “JUBILEX. HE IS OF THE GALCHUTT. THEY ARE—“
THE CLAN DEBT
(09/03/790)
Fortified with another night’s rest, the group felt ready to attempt the journey back to the clan caverns.
Tee had spent the night tying knots into their ropes in order to make them easier to climb. All of them quickly scrambled up them and, with a mixture of surprise and relief, discovered that no new dangers had arisen behind them. The journey back to the stone bridge was quick and uneventful.
Once there, Itarek quickly gave orders to the goblins standing guard. They were given escort back to the clan’s Great Hall and brought before Crashekka upon her throne.
She greeted them as heroes and gave them her thanks. And then Itarek told the tale of all that they had done, and the Great Hall hushed to hear his words.
When the tale was done, many more goblins stood within the Great Hall than had been there at the beginning of it. Perhaps Itarek’s words had echoed through the caverns of the clan. Or perhaps word had simply spread from ear to ear. But however it may have happened, the death of Morbion was greeted with the cheer of all the clan.
Crashekka stood and raised her staff above her head. “There shall be a feast!” she said. “A feast of honor!”
And Crashekka took them into her private chambers. She invited them to sit with her upon the cushions of her sunken bed, and she questioned them and sought their counsel and praised them and thanked them.
When the feast was ready, they went out once more into the Great Hall. All the clan had gathered to honor them and before them were placed strange and exotic dishes of mushrooms and fish and other fare they did not know.
And when the feasting was done, Crashekka stood and raised her staff once more. “The sharing of our tables is like the sharing of our hearts. Let us now name our honors.”
Itarek was raised up and Crashekka smiled upon him and named him Clan-Father and Father of Chieftains. In this she made him her mate.
And to the surface-dwellers who had come to the aid and rescue of her clan, she spoke thus: “Name the hour of your need, and we shall come to it. We give to you the clan debt of the Torn Ear.”
