(Corvin/Mordred Adventure 2): Hole in the Thornwall

[shaidar]

Corvin

Corvin raises his eyebrows in surprise "Do you have any preference as to who should go?"

[Edeldhur]

Mordred

"I think you should go"

[shaidar]

Corvin

Corvin looks even more surprised.

"Fine, I'll go." he looks at the others "Unless one of you wants to?"

[archolewa]

"Let me go with you," says Astrid. She glances sideways at Terri. "I doubt stealth is a thing we're going to be too concerned about here, and it'll be good for you to have someone to watch your back."

"Don't worry dear, I'll try not to bring the whole forest down on us," says Terri.

[shaidar]

Corvin

Corvin nods and smiles "Glad to have you along. Let's get this done, I don't like being out in the open and exposed."

[archolewa]

Terri nods. Her eyes glimmer. "Come along you two."

Astrid gives Corvin a faintly nervous look, and follows after Terri.

She leads them a ways down the path, but stops just before the temple comes into view. She smirks at Corvin. "Why fight, when you can get someone else to fight for you?"

She raises her hands and begins to sing, her hands and feet weaving in a complex dance. Her eyes blaze with a fire's light. She sings in a language Corvin doesn't recognize, but fills his mind with flashes of an open, infinite sky filled with massive whirlwinds. A roaring wind sweeps down the path, rustles Corvin's fur and makes the trees sway. Astrid puts a hand on her sword and nervously watches Terri dance.

Terri's song reaches a crescendo, and she holds out her hands. A massive whirlwind, more than thirty feet in height, swirls into view in front of them. Moss and dirt are torn from the ground beneath it, and swirl up into the air. The vortex sways back and forth. A great rush of wind nearly knocks Corvin and Astrid from their feet. Terri stares at the whirlwind for a moment, and then nods. She begins walking slowly, and carefully, her eyes fixed on the whirlwind, the winds catching her fiery hair and making it swirl and dance about her face.

The vortex follows. Soon they come into view of the statues. Their serene faces twist into expressions of rage. They unfold their wings and lift into the air. Astrid draws her sword.

"That will be useless dear," says Terri, leaning in close for Astrid to hear over the roar of the wind. "Let Gale here take care of it."

She looks at the whirlwind and says a single word in a language Corvin doesn't recognize, but he suspects might be the same one she sang her spell in.

The whirlwind flies at the charging gargoyles.

Initiative:
Gargoyles: 16
Whirlwind: 8


The gargoyles lift into the air, and dive at the whirling winds. Claw: 1d20+4-2 = 8, 1d20+4-2 = 6, Bite: 1d20+4-2 = 22 > 20 damage = 4, Horn: 1d20+4-2 = 6, Gargoyle 2 attacks: 6, 17, 15, 17

The gargoyles duck and swoop, but struggle to get close enough through the turbulent winds. One of them manages to sink its teeth into the whirl of dust at the center. Whirlwind attacks: 1d20+13+4 = 27, damage = 4d8 = 21, Gargoyle has 19 HP.

The whirlwind shifts closer to the gargoyle and consumes it. The statue gets whirled around inside it, faster and faster until the statue just falls apart.

The second statue dives. It doesn't last much longer.

Five more gargoyles come flying clumsily out of the darkness and dive at the whirlwind. They land a few glancing blows, but the whirlwind consumes them one by one.

Once they are all gone, the whirlwind remains where it is, the chunks of gargoyle inside it being steadily ground into fine dust.

Terri glances at Corvin and Astrid, and gestures to the monastery, as if to say After you.

[shaidar]

Corvin

"Impressive."

Corvin moves forward cautiously, senses alert for danger.

[archolewa]

They first do a quick sweep to confirm there weren't any more threats. When they find none, Terri says something to the whirlwind, and it fades away.

With the whirlwind gone, they take some time to explore more thoroughly. The place is empty, and there is little to be found except the building itself. The building appears to be a massive, living tree, molded and grown into the appropriate shape.

The building/tree is dominated by a fairly large worship space, complete with a magnificent wooden sculpture of Greenleaf in the middle. They study it for a moment, and then Astrid gasps in horror. It takes Corvin a moment to realize the source of her reaction. The sculpture is not a sculpture at all, but the trunk of a great oak tree that's somehow been shaped into a likeness of the dead Elven Immortal. However, there is a great hole in the statue's chest, as if ripped open by weevils. The entire thing looks sickly and like it's slowly dying.

Terri shakes her head. "Greenleaf was such a gentle creature. I've heard that rather than fight Him, She pleaded the Tyrant to stop even as He ripped her heart out."

They find the monk and nun cells, all arranged in a couple of long hallways. None of them hold anything interesting, though they all have cots apparently grown from the wall. The cots have no bedding or anything of course, but they all seem reasonably healthy and sturdy. They also each have a small window that opens onto the night sky above.

"Elves and their star gazing," says Terri with bemusement as she looks through a window. "Never understood the allure myself."

"I think it's beautiful," says Astrid.

"Too open," says Terri. "Anything you can see up there, can see you."

Astrid shivers, and steps away from the window. "Well aren't you a downer."

Terri laughs. "I suppose I'm getting grumpy in my old age."

Astrid's eyes flick over the woman's youthful form and she cocks an eyebrow.

"I've aged gracefully."

They find an empty mess hall, and a fairly large space lined with bookshelves and ruined books. The library has several rows of benches and tables. Finally, they find a small office, likely occupied by the Abbess or Abbot. Sitting on the desk is a small, open chest.

Terri peeks in. Her eyes light up, and she reaches in, pulling out a beautiful sapphire that glimmers in the moonlight coming in through the office window. "Pretty. This is probably where the monastery stored what money they had. Probably grabbed what they could as they fled, and missed a few."

Terri slips the sapphire into her coin pouch. She peeks in again. "Let's see, another sapphire, a pearl and an opal in here, looks like. You can have those if you'd like. I've got my souvenir."

[shaidar]

Corvin

Corvin reaches into the chest and removes the contents. He slips the sapphire into his pouch and offers the pearl and opal to Astrid "Do you want to look after these for now?"

He then gets a confused look on his face and turns to Terri "You said you were friends with an elf here. That must have been hundreds of years ago!"

[archolewa]

Astrid nods and takes the two gems. She slips them into her pack.

Terri laughs. "Oh, this monastery didn't fall that long ago. We're just outside your Wall after all. I went to ground hmm maybe forty years ago? A little before your Wall went up I believe. I don't think the monastery had been quite abandoned yet when I hid, but of course I don't know for sure. But I can say it was standing about fifty years ago or so. Of course, at the time it was used mostly as a refugee camp. No sense in worshipping a dead Immortal, now is there?"

[shaidar]

Corvin

"Sorry, history was never my best subject. This place seems safe enough. Let's get everyone here and settled for the night."

[archolewa]

Astrid frowns. "Corvin that still puts her at older than seventy if she was in her twenties when she knew the elf here. Maybe fifties or sixties if she was like a child refugee or something."

Terri smiles. "I've aged gracefully."

"That still made you incredibly young when you started being a 'Mistress of the Arcane Arts' so powerful the Kinslayer wanted to forcibly recruit you," says Astrid.

Terri holds up her hands. "That much younger than Prince Roland? He was what, in his forties when he led the assault on the Kinslayer's Maw? I don't know how good he was in his twenties, but he had to still be quite gifted to reach the heights he did by his forties. We've all been fighting tooth and nail to survive. You do what you have to, learn what you have to, as fast as you can."

[shaidar]

Corvin

Corvin just smiles at Astrid.

"Terri has mentioned a daughter and two sons, surely fully grown if the Kinslayer turned them into violent beasts, and there have been other, interesting, turns of phrase. I've never seen a human with eyes and hair that colour, or even heard of it. I've always been more interested in who people are rather than what they are. I know what it's like to be the different one."

[archolewa]

"Fair enough," says Astrid. She does give Terri one last frown. "Can't quite get what Mordred said out of my head though. 'With the truth you deceive me' or something. For me, though I'd say more befuddled than deceived."

"You're welcome for the mystery," says Terri, replying to Astrid's frown with a wink. She gives Corvin a little bow of her head. "It's a shame I haven't met more Lupines before. I've only met one other to date, and you are both so very...hmm, what's the word I want? Earnest. Yes. A delightful thing to see these days."

She leads the way back to the caravan.

Sebastian and Kasper approach with a fair bit of obvious relief.

"So I take it things went smoothly?" asks Sebastian. "Nobody looks injured. Or newly injured at any rate."

[shaidar]

Corvin

As they head back to the group Corvin lets Terri get a little ahead of them so he has a chance to whisper to Astrid "Don't worry. I'm not saying I trust her fully. She obviously has her own agenda, likes to get others to do the dirty work, and works by exchanging favours with people. That doesn't mean we can't help each other, we just need to do it with our eyes open. "

Sebastian and Kasper approach with a fair bit of obvious relief.

"So I take it things went smoothly?" asks Sebastian. "Nobody looks injured. Or newly injured at any rate."

"Yes. Terri summoned a whirlwind which destroyed the two gargoyles, then five more that arrived. We search the abbey and it looks safe enough."

[archolewa]

Sebastian and Kasper approach with a fair bit of obvious relief.

"So I take it things went smoothly?" asks Sebastian. "Nobody looks injured. Or newly injured at any rate."

"Yes. Terri summoned a whirlwind which destroyed the two gargoyles, then five more that arrived. We search the abbey and it looks safe enough."

Mordred Arcane Lore check: 1d20+14+1 = 20 = 20

Mordred is aware of two arcane spells that might fit Corvin's description. The first, Conjure Elemental allows the caster to summon a powerful air elemental (which looks like a giant whirlwind), while the second Weather Control can create a tornado. Both are very powerful spells.

[Edeldhur]

Mordred

"So it is now safe to move along?" - Mordred asked.

[shaidar]

Corvin

"It's safe for us to rest at the abbey."

[Edeldhur]

Mordred

"Let's go"

[archolewa]

The team gets the caravan together, and Corvin and Astrid lead the way to the abbey. Sebastian and Kasper take up the rear, watching for stragglers. Terri follows along a little bit to the side. The folks in the caravan, those who aren't too tired to do much more than put one foot in front of the other, throw sidelong glances at her, and murmur to each other. Words like *witch* and *shade* flicker through the crowd. Terri does not especially surprised or perturbed by their whispers.

Gasps and murmurs of awe ripple through the caravan as they enter the worship space, though more than a few blanch at the hole in the statue's chest. The people of the caravan huddle together in the center of the space, and most of them are soon fast asleep, with the rest well on their way.

"Well?" asks Terri of Corvin and Mordred once everyone is in the abbey and settling down. She dances a copper piece across her knuckles. "I think I've proven myself more than capable of holding up my end. So what do you say?"