Return To The Ruins (Warlords Palace)

[silifi]

Sik clutches his battle axe tightly.

"I have a bad feeling about this."

[Rex]

Drest

"What are you idiots doing now!"

[Karaunios]

Akhilleus grips his sword handle at Sik's comment. He was more curious than anything else but Belloc's observations about the staff have made him uneasy.

[hedgeknight]

Drest "What are you idiots doing now!"

Ceana sighs. "I was about to attempt to speak with the frog, but they are trying to teach it some new trick, like it's a pet."

[The_Wanderer]

Sorry OM - I missed this one on my own sheet. Can you confirm if this is magical? a small statue of Xathoqqua

Cyril tosses aside the pin skewered dwarf doll. "If anything was going to be magical, I would have thought this was. Oh well.

Now Drest, it's not polite to call your colleagues idiots. This is how we learn. We experiment."

He sits back to watch what happens with the frog...

[Rex]

Drest

"Polite? Huh?"

[Monsieur Rose]

Kainaxarthos

Kain is also curious about any possible effects, but he also backs away and positions himself behind Drest.

[shaidar]

Xenos watches with interest, ideally from 20' away.

[OGRE MAGE]

I will say the staff touch happens before the spell, so there is no wasted magic.

Still Under The Zakath Desert
Friendly Froggy
No Idea On Time Or Day

The group seems reluctant to learn what touching the friendly frog with the cursed staff will actually do to it, but it seems that despite his lack of magical knowledge, Akhilleus is pretty close with his guess.

Belloc equates the results as a higher power of magic negating a less powerful spell, when an attractive woman suddenly appears where the little frog once was. The dark and mysterious figure seems unconcerned that she suddenly stares down a group consisting of mostly strong, powerful men.

Magda.jpg (104.81 KiB) Viewed 168 times

Actions?

I will let you all roleplay this out while I'm gone for a few days.

Drest (Sc4) FA:3 AC7 16/22
Xenos (DS3) FA:3 AC5 17/17
Akhilleus (F4) FA:4 AC4 19/35
Kainaxarthos (C2) FA:1 AC6 9/11
Sik (Ba1) FA:1 AC5 9/12
Cyril (Pr2) FA:0(20) AC8 12/12 CLW, DM
Ceana (D2) FA:1 AC5 13/13
Taibhse (Sh2) FA:0(20) AC5 11/11
Belloc (M2) FA:0(20) AC6 14/14

[subaltari]

Magda

... an attractive woman suddenly appears where the little frog once was.

Wisps of grey fog rise from around the stranger, perhaps a mystical side-effect of her transformation. She waves some of the fog away from her face as she smiles and nods to Belloc. "I am obliged to you, Magister," she says in Common with a thick accent that is clearly Ixian. "To you and to your..." her voice trails off as she glances at his staff, upon whose tip a moment ago she perched as an ensorcelled frog.

The young woman is wearing a loose dress of simple, but finely dyed and tailored blue cotton. The adornments on her hair and ears are made of thinly beaten bronze; cheap jewellery favoured by many of the nomads seen in the Zakath Desert. Around her neck hangs a dark blue medallion in the shape of an eight-pointed star, the diagonals a bit shorter than the cruciform points. At her feet additional shapes have appeared, still shrouded in fog: a sturdy wooden staff lying atop a couple of bundles wrapped in dark leather, one larger than the other.

She now addresses the whole group by gripping her skirts and making a slight curtsey. "To your friends. My name is Magda, a daughter of the clan Erebos of Scythium. I was in the form you saw, as some of you no doubt guessed, thanks to a vengeful curse by the Toad Matron. And I presume you are they that took up her quest to hunt the nest of dwarfs in yon caves," now her dusky olive face forms a bemused expression, "...but only after murdering the Matron herself?"

I will let you all roleplay this out while I'm gone for a few days.

Have fun, and thanks for my intro!

[Rex]

Drest

"Welcome Magda, I must say that was the most impressive entrance I have ever seen. I don't like to think of it as murder but protecting ourselves. She was clearly using dark magics on us and thankfully some of us were able to resist and stop her from her evil ends. May I inquire as to what you did yo get on the toad witches bad side?"

[Belkregos]

Belloc raises an eyebrow as he hears Drest change his tone, a smirk playing on his lips.

"Well, Madam Magda," he begins, addressing her with a touch of formality, "please excuse my apprehension, but I must inquire about your relationship with the matron. Was she your mentor?" Belloc pauses briefly, his tone reflecting a mix of curiosity and caution. "Indeed, even in the short time we interacted with her, the majority of us were ensnared by her charm, entangled in her web of deceit."

[hedgeknight]

Ceana

The druid looks the new arrival up and down, often as people do, and is not thrilled that the woman is so pretty. She can already imagine what the men in the group must be thinking. She nods her head when Magda introduces herself and smiles. "I'm Ceana, servant of Yoon'Deh. I hope you can tell us more about this place. How long were you in...erm...were you a frog?"

[The_Wanderer]

Cyril

"How fortunate for you that we had to return here after defending ourselves so vigorously from the totally unprovoked...Yes! Unprovoked I say!...attack of the treacherous dwarfs. Why, you might even say that had we NOT gotten into that scrape, your future would be totally different...I suppose it's fortunate that things turned out the way they did, thank Azathoth...

Speaking of which, do you know of the Matron's quest?"

[silifi]

Sik stands back, astonished by the transformation. He looks around at the nonplussed faces of his sorcerous comrades, and loosens his grip on his axe.

"Hmpf," Sik snorts. "Another sorcerer," he mutters, looking at Drest and Akhilleus for their disapproval.

[subaltari]

Drest "May I inquire as to what you did to get on the toad witch's bad side?"

Belloc "please excuse my apprehension, but I must inquire about your relationship with the matron. Was she your mentor?"

Magda first addresses these two speakers, turning to face Drest and standing nearly his height, but uneasily she senses somehow that the Pict's diplomatic words don't quite match his personality. "Fair queries. She was a Witch as you say, fell warrior, and I too am an humble sister in the cræft."

The Ixian girl gestures with a hand to her bosom... and (as Ceana suspects) this might be to draw attention to Magda's feminine features, but others (Cyril, Kain, Taibhse, and Ceana included) would also likely notice the object she's touching on her chest is a holy symbol of Aurorus, about three inches wide and painted royal blue.

"I journeyed here originally to seek audience with the great Queen of the deserts, but upon hearing rumour of this Matron, I first sought out her abode with the intent of learning from the cræft of a wise woman (this time you can almost hear her pronounce that weird spelling). As you also learned, she proved to be something quite different... cunning and deceitful, but also greedy and vengeful. I suspect she maybe a product of the whims of that lazy Toad God himself, whom the common folk revere blindly but whose true power is waxing upon our world... ah forgive me, I digress...

"So the Matron and I disagreed over a number of things, not least her bitter hatred for those dwarfs. I suppose it was inevitable that I would earn her wrath, but then she surprised me with a spell which I did not suspect to be within her power. I became as one of her senseless children, the frogs and toads of this grotto..." Magda gestures, not unkindly, to the many little ones still meeping and hopping about the soft floor.

[Rex]

Drest

"So you are a witch too? But not as powerful as the toad witch apparently?"

[Karaunios]

Drest

"So you are a witch too? But not as powerful as the toad witch apparently?"

Akhilleus looks at the woman who has just appeared with a look of surprise, and not only because she had just been a frog a few seconds ago. "In the end, it's been the other way around. It wasn't necessary a princess the one who had to kiss the frog. The frog IS the princess." He murmurs to himself. He says nothing more and simply listens to the information being provided in response to his companions' answers.

[subaltari]

Magda
Note; she is starting to ask some questions of her own!

Ceana "I'm Ceana, servant of Yoon'Deh. I hope you can tell us more about this place. How long were you in... erm... were you a frog?"

"Greetings Ceana. Another good question, my dear... it could have been weeks, months, even a year or more. Under the spell of polymorph I quite lost all sense of time along with my sense of Magda, the girl from Scythium, and I took on instead the mind of a sticky frog. Only when the Matron fell, spilling out her vital fluids, did I rush to lick them up along with her real Children. I know that some of you were here for that. It was then that my... awareness began to return. Something in the toad witch's ichor did this. I remembered who I was, and yearned for a way to turn back into Magda. Quite desperate you see... until you lot came back, and that gave me a peculiar hope." She darts another glance at the bizarrely shaped black staff in Belloc's hand.

"But since we are down here in the dark, dear Ceana, tell me which year and month is it now? I fear I have lost much valuable time!"

Cyril Why, you might even say that had we NOT gotten into that scrape, your future would be totally different... I suppose it's fortunate that things turned out the way they did, thank Azathoth...
Speaking of which, do you know of the Matron's quest?"

The woman's eyes narrow slightly when Cyril pronounces the name of his deity, the chaotic Dæmon Sultan at the center of all... but she answers him readily enough. "Quest, sir? The Matron was mostly content to live as you found her... dwelling here in her Hut, growing her mushrooms, brewing her potions, and tending to her Children. But to be sure there were darker plans. She hated the dwarfs with a fury, and her greatest wish was that they be driven out or eradicated. I could not tell if she wanted to seize their caves for herself, or perhaps something in the caves?

"On this we differed... It's known that dwarfs are cunning artificers; among the best in Hyperborea, in fact, when it comes to certain weapons and devices. The Matron could have traded with them; dealt with them by entreaty, or by guile. She mentioned that their young are vulnerable in some way; so perhaps one might be useful as a hostage? Too, she spoke to me of certain other items the dwarfs might possess, or traffic in...

"One such thing is a jewel, a large cut stone which she hinted the dwarfs had. Not merely of great value, but I get the sense it holds some arcane power. Tell me, have you found this gem?" Magda's brown eyes shine eagerly with the question.

Drest "So you are a witch too? But not as powerful as the toad witch apparently?"

"Yes" is Magda's answer to match the Pict's bluntness... But after a moment, she breaks into a curious singsong.

"That is the reason I traveled nigh,
To learn from one more practiced than I.
Her spells and works, they were advanced,
Like the Effigy and the Witch's Dance...
And were you not, my strong man-child,
Among those by the Matron's dance beguiled?”

Magda now looks around the group, from one face to another, but especially gazing upon the tallest and most heavily armed men (i.e. Akhilleus, Sik, and Xenos). "Now tell me, which brave fellow struck the killing blow? And are none of you slaves? Be you agents of the Satrap of Xambaala? If not, then mercenaries perhaps?”

[Monsieur Rose]

Kainaxarthos

Kain sidles up to Ceana and mutters. "She's chatty, isn't she? Though I may do the same if I'd been a frog for months."

He raises his voice a bit and addresses Magda. "A chaos follower, I see. Am I right to suspect that trouble follows you, perhaps you even encourage it?" He asks with a playful wink.

Kain switches to Ixian: "You were originally headed to the Witch-Queen? I did the same months ago. Lovely place. As for your question, they are not agents of the Satrap. And don't mention slaves to those two."

Back to common: "Those dwarfs had nothing except refuse and waste, no trace of fine artifices. Perhaps you were truly ensorcelled for years if that was once true."