Chapter 43 - The Wind Servants, the Stone Guardian, and Tsar Drazhan
General Summary
Sasha summons a magical tent, but keeps Drazhan out, for fear of the prophecy. The wolf shapechanger isn't tired anyway, having slept most of the previous day while his companions scoured the rune-shaped rooms, seeking for a way to go further into the complex. Drazhan spends the night hammering away at the slit in the wall that Mole Plamen had gone through the previous day, but to no avail. Fortunately, the people sleeping in the tent to do not hear the sound of his booming hammer.
The following morning (if morning it is), Vasilisa Priamovna decides to go fetch some wood from the giant's cave to restart the fire in the foundry, though others have misgivings about confronting the two fire serpents yet again. Boris the Boar begs her to take him and Lumír back out of the complex, because he fears for his master, and having seen what he's seen inside the subterranean book, he has had enough. Drazhan opens the portal back to the vestibule guarded by the gryphons to let them out, and sees that they have turned back into stone, and assumed their place by the door. Stepping in front of them, he causes them to become flesh and blood, and commands them to heel and serve him. The gryphons obey - apparently, his crown seems to be working. The king feeds them some magical berries, and commands them to remain at their posts.
Vasilisa then accompanies Boris and Lumír to the entry point of the complex. Lumír climbs the rope they left behind up to the giant's cave, and Vasilisa follows him, but the last few days of strain have taken their toll, and before reaching the top, she slips and tumbles all the way down, being fortunate not to break her legs in the process. Boris begs her to take him up, but she is not taking any chances. Climbing up by herself, she calls out to her wolf up on the surface, and ascertains that he is still there. This makes Lumír too worried to climb up, and Boris too worried about his master, from whom he is now separated by a 30 foot shaft. Vasilisa gets a bundle of wood, lowers it down, and then descends. Wishing the anxious Boris the best of luck, she returns to the foundry with the wood, and then, shoves it through the shaft to the smithy.
The plan is now to light the wood in the forge, to see if a key can be fashioned out of the iron that has now congealed all around the smithy. But the text seems to suggest that the metal needs to be poured onto the stone. One problem is that the mud in the mud bucket is all dry, and cannot be fashioned into molds. And the party has no water with which to soften it. Chonkorchuk and Plamen work the bellows after Vasilisa lights a fire, and Drazhan beats the molten metal into a vaguely horn-shaped clump, but the fire seems to be insufficiently hot, and the sloppy mold out of dried mud is only good enough to shape a lump which possesses no detectably magical properties. It seems pointless to try to mount it onto the crown, in the place where one of the missing horns was - and in any case, it is not copper.
The Yokels then get creative. Plamen summons two cows with generous udders, and uses the milk to moisten the clay to create serviceable molds. At that point, they take a chance, and break open a stone vessel attached to the bellows, and a wind is released. As it swirls and forms into a dangerous whirlwind, Sasha casts a spell that allows her to communicate with it, and Drazhan commands it to stop blowing, and obey. The wind complies - the crown works its magic yet again. Sasha begins to converse with it. It tells her that it is a servitor confined to that complex, and that its task, along with that of its brother (in the other stone vessel) is to forge items out of the metal - one works the bellows, the other hammers things (with Drazhan's hammer). They confirm they cannot leave the complex, but will otherwise do what the wearer of the crown commands. In response to questions about what happened to the horns, they say that the "other one" who comes in there had them removed. Through Sasha, Vasilisa inquires whether the visitor was a big person (referring to the giant), and the wind tells her that it was in fact a small one - smaller than all the Yokels. From this, they infer that it must have been Filipok, from Yarozersk. To ascertain whether the wind is being truthful, Chonkorchuk uses his spirit sight to see what an item forged here will do. He sees that if inserted into the small aperture in the wall that Mole Plamen went through, it will open it and grant access to the next level in the book.
The Yokels then release the second wind, and after Drazhan reluctantly releases his hammer, they begin to work the metal and the bellows. Sasha summons a key, and uses it to shape a mold, and the winds fashion it into an iron key, which Chonkorchuk reports is in fact magical. Vasilisa also uses the opportunity to reforge her bent dagger, which the winds dutifully straighten. Chonkorchuk again goes into a trance to see what will challenge them once they open the portal, and sees that it is a stone statue. Needing some time to prepare for the confrontation, they decide to put off the fight until the next day. For some reason, Plamen and Sasha grow depressed and weaken, and Chonkorchuk concludes that the guardian is somehow attacking them. The rest of the waking period is spent healing, relaxing, and trying to divine what will happen to them on the morrow.
The following day, the party sallies forth. The key the winds made does indeed fit into the keyhole - or rather, the keyhole reforms around the key, and the wall opens onto the next transversal passage. Drazhan commands the winds to carry him aloft. The Yokels inspect the chambers Plamen had looked at earlier, and find the three-legged menhir structure in the a rune of the word 'anvil'. Then, they head toward the statue - a 10-foot tall stone man with a white-amber-colored stone set into its forehead. Plamen summons two large bears, and the party attempts to force its way past the guardian. Sasha curses it, and it begins to have trouble moving. Drazhan orders the winds to pin its arms, but when the statue attempts to fight back, he begins hammering away at it. Vasilisa takes aim at the stone in its forehead, but it is a difficult target, with lots of people moving in front of her, and she ends up hitting Drazhan instead. At one point, the creature does manage to slow most of the creatures attacking it, but it never gets around to being able to pummel anyone with its huge fists. Though it needs to be struck numerous times, Drazhan eventually pounds it down with the royal hammer. Sasha and Plamen are both drawn by the stone, but Drazhan picks it up first. As he hands it to Sasha, it darkens, and becomes a normal rock. Drazhan feels like he can now resist poison, and turn into other things.
Disappointed that she will not be able to keep the pretty stone, Sasha consoles herself by composing a lay about Tsar Drazhan's great exploits. With plenty of poetic license.
Rewards Granted
- Forged magical key
- Boon for Drazhan from magical stone
Missions/Quests Completed
- Magical key forged
- Wind smiths tamed
- 4th level of subterranean book accessed
- Animated stone guardian defeated
Character(s) interacted with
Report Date
31 Oct 2020
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