Dremlunts: The Alkaloks
Life, Achievement/ Win
3/1
The Sapphire Oath fight their way through the Alkaloks Woods and attempt to solve the mysteries of the rhyme that guides them.
The next morning, the harpies bade their goodbyes on far friendlier terms than the elven scouts. The companions would finish the last small stretch to get to the tornado's wreckage before it had finally lifted from the terrain. Massive trees were knotted in jumbles for hundreds of meters. The climb through would surely twist and ankle if not cause a shifting avalanche to crush somebody.
Looking to the sides of the wreckage and the forest, those options didn't seem safe either. The forest was grey and dusty. It looked like it shouldn't be alive but it was. It could have just been the harpies' ghost stories but the party swore they were catching shifting shadows behind the treeline waiting to snatch out at anyone who drew too close.
With danger all about, Zith determined to solve the entire problem on his own. After putting up his customary glow of a force armor that faded away, Zith then incanted a new spell he had mastered to meet this bestial land as a beast itself. With a roar, Zith polymorphed himself up into a giant ape. From the small little gnome, up, up, up past Ravel and Beatle, past Marduk, past the troll, the transmutation blew up his body to a behemoth of muscle and fur.
The giant ape then began the process of rampaging through the wreckage. He slammed through tangle debris, lifted precarious branches, shifted heavy trunks. The might of the beast plowed it's way through the tornado's path and created a safe series of speed bumps for the party to directly traverse instead of having to maze through with delicate precision.
Getting to the far end, Zith gave a final series of chest beats before returning to his normal gnomish self. As the companions regrouped they looked around. Where to now that they had passed the 'jumbled disorder'? There seemed to be multiple paths into the woods from a felled tree falling inward to a ravine to deer paths. Looking back to the directions, the next lines up were “Enter there-in and follow where-in/ Grey does brown and brown does bleed.”
Looking about, they approached where the ground was a bit moister. Through the wreckage a minor stream trickled into the wood likely to make it's way through and to the distant coast. The moisture of the stream had washed away the powdering grey sediment that seemed to cover everything here leaving behind a mildly damp clay bed. Where all other paths were greed in dust, this minor water channel was a muddy brown.
Taking it as their lead, they followed it into the woods like a tunnel. As the Alkaloks grew around them, the ominous feeling of being watched never faded. After about two miles of hiking this muddy trail, the gathering water growing into a tiny creek in time, they found their next clue. Along the bank, the mud began to have patches of a deeper red mixed in. Continuing a bit further, they found a fresh patch of vibrant red as the substrate was not changing, it was being polluted.
A fresh stream of blood was trickling down to the creek from an elk corpse higher up the bank. The large ungulate was eviscerated but not butchered. It had been massacred and left. Looking around the area, the party found some deeply imprinted boot prints in the area. As they discussed the austerity of directions based on a possibly elk-waypoint that never rotted, there was a squishing thump behind them.
Turning about, the party saw a man across the other bank no bigger than Zith in size though far older. A giant bushed of mustache and chin beard erupted from the face. Upon his head was a stocking hat stock firmly there with a sticky red liquid. In anger, it spat out, “What are you doing it on my lawn? I should kill you. I should kill you for coming here.”
Zith knew a bit of what he was looking at. Like the deathcattle, the elves of Gofinath had also warned of unseelie fey, listing redcaps among them. Fey creatures of unrelenting blood lust, they killed for the joy of killing and got their names from their habit of dunking their hats into their victims.
Knowing of their murderous ways, Zith attempted to strike up conversation with the redcap and win him over. The gnome complimented the blood soaked hat which received a return volley that equated to, “you should try it”... which Zith did. There were some general blustering threats. Beatle spoke out a claim for the redcap not to mess with the party while Marduk bisected the dead elk in a swift strike. If anything, though, this just egged on the redcap to call in two of his buddies from elsewhere in the wood but Zith wouldn't let it go at that.
The companions attempted to bargain with the redcaps about being led to the Galeborn but those deals where tinted by the one thing the recaps wanted. With four party members and three redcaps, the bargain was thus: one-on-one combat to the death. They eagerly showed the giant, wicked sickles they were keen to use. The redcaps would continue to kill the Sapphire Oath until they stepped away and the Sapphire Oath would continue killing until there was a single redcap that could guide the party as far as their were allowed to. The Sapphire Oath did not sell their willingness to just let their companions die well but the redcaps missed that in their eagerness for blood.
Everything was a ready for a protected blindside on the 1v1's up until the point that the Zith incanted a spell to enhance his companions fighting capability. The redcap's called out the unfair team ups and Beatle attempt to dispute that the redcap's couldn't change the established rules (despite the fact that the party broke the most literal definition of one-on-one). With the party's obstinate choice to maintain their course, the redcaps yelled out about cheats and the free-for-all was on.
The battle... did not go the way the redcaps wanted. Despite Beatle being up on top of the leader of the redcaps, Marduk charged in instinctively first to prevent his friend from being ganged up on. Getting between the mid and southern redcap, Marduk eviscerated through the newcomer with his glaive. The redcap was still up but bleeding before he knew it.
Ignoring Beatle in front of him, the leader flung himself at Marduk in an iron-bound pursuit as he lead his jump with his heavy metal boots. Marduk dodged to the side causing the redcap to land on the other side with a huff. The leader then placed himself in between his friend and the bugbear.
As the battle moved south, Zith tracked it and lined up a firebolt shot under Marduk's legs, past the redcap leader, and into the torso of the damaged gremlin causing him to explode into dust, dropping only the glaive and his hat to the ground. By this point, Beatle was aghast in laughter.
The second of the newcomers charged to the rear of the party, dodging between Ravel and Beatle to fling himself at Zith as well. His boots flying high, Zith ducked underneath taunting him about not being use to fighting people his size. Ravel attempted to give him frostbite but it was no colder than his heart already. The taunts continued as Beatle threw his at the leader, “You're the reason baby gnomes cry at night!”
Back down to the where Marduk was squared off with the leader, the bugbear grimaced down at him, “Looks like it's just you and me Squirt” Marduk proceed to carve back and forth to bloody the leader as well.
Up with Zith, the gnome had to get the redcap off of him. Incanting out a might Mind Whip to surge through both, the leader resisted most of it but his immediate pursuer was mental thrashed. The gnome took the opportunity to slide away but couldn't escape another of the iron-bound pursuits. The redcap's blood lust let him push through the mind whip's debilitation in this moment. Catching the boots in the back and the head, Zith tumbled to the ground. That got Beatle to stop laughing
The bard soon found his own joke though as he enchanted the redcap's boots to sear with heat. The redcap started to scream. Ravel then stepped up to take more of the redcap's attention off of Zith.
Marduk was met with a devastating flurry from the leader's sickle only quelled by the bugbear's own rage. Marduk then heaved to heavy attacks through him to drop the lead to a knee, blood freely flowing. Marduk attempted to offer mercy but the redcap spat back “I'll take you down with me.” Having made his choice, Marduk cleaved the stomach, grappled the hat to catch the offal for “one last bathing”. The remainder of the corpse fell back into dust once more just leaving the sickle, the hat, and the entrails.
Back up at the one remaining redcap, there was the idea to take him privately but that would not be easy. With Zith slipping away, the redcap hacked into Ravel twice to great effect. He turned towards the cruel Beatle but could not bear to move towards him. Instead, his third attack sent the sickle tumbling end over end at the bard but Beatle managed to back bend away from being hit. As Ravel cudgeled down onto the redcap's head, the bard sent out a magic lullaby to drop the redcap unconscious
Quickly, the horde bounded onto the redcap, knocking the sickle away, and pushed and pulled in every direction to bind him, gag him, and remove his iron boots. He was quickly awakened by all of this but with all of the hands firmly on him by the time that happened it didn't matter.
What followed would be a combination of interrogations, torture, and indecision. For simplicity's sake the facts of the matter are as follows:
~ the party would be keeping the redcaps' three sickles.
~ the redcap agreed to lead the party as far as he could to the Galeborn as already had been promised and then he would be release
~ the redcap requested a balm for his completely blistered feet. Beatle stomped on his foot amid “negotiations” after the request but Ravel would eventually supply aid
~ the party experienced their first fey agreement with the understanding that they were not so simple as to be broken.
~ the party took a short rest to recuperate and the redcap therefore did as well
~ after assertions of the elk possibly being the “Alkaloks Dead King”, the redcap shared under duress that the place he would be taking the party could be considered a shrine to a great guardian elk that could be could be considered as that title given his mighty size and crown.
After the rest, the redcap would veer off the creek-path into the woods through more bloodied territory. They traveled for an hour before things began to change. Slowly, though, the wood grew greener and lusher whether that was from the presence of the druids, the fey, or both. As the party approached a grove, the redcap requested to be released from his bindings as he did not wish to enter the grove itself. The redcap had to agree that he would not go get others to come attack the party or retaliate himself. The redcap limited that to one day's time. He refused to give up the right to defend himself in the future. The party agreed, ending him on his way with one last kick in the rump from Beatle.
Entering the small clearing the Sapphire Oath were standing under a large tree opposite them. Integrated into the side of the tree was the head of a giant elk that would have been at least as huge as Zith's ape if not smaller. The roots of the tree wound over the ground around it. Below the skull and between these roots was a stone slab etched in runs and adorned with elven scrip in it's top crescent.
The elven script was read to not be the elven tongue but that of sylvan, the language of fey. A stutter-stop of abjurations and divinations on Zith's end slowly revealed information. The Large stone plaque as well as the skull oozed with transmutation magic. The script itself was magically translated as:
Heaven's Roar from Spark of Night
Heavenly Flower beyond delight
In the wake Death's Grip Slow
New growth awaits for those who sew
As they puzzled this over, Marduk held Zith and Ravel up to look into the blacked eye-sockets of the skull that were eight feet up. The insides of these sockets were textured by primordial sigils. Ravel understood them to be elemental in nature while Zith's understanding was of energy transmutation.
Taking all of this information, the party predicted that to continue forward, they would need to provide magical energy as a form of key. After all, “from his mouth does the storm wind sing”.
The party assumed Heaven's Roar to be thunder energy while Spark of Night was either radiance for stars or lightning to pair with the thunder. Heavenly Flower was probably fire? They struggled with Death's Grip Slow thinking that it might be necrotic damage. If so, did Heavenly Flower mean radiance?
Figuring that the only way they would learn is if they did, the party had Beatle first incant out a Thunder wave at the plaque to see what it did. As the sound wave billowed out, it began to buckle back in as it swirled to the center of the plaque. As it did so, there was snap, a spark, and what sounded like a demonic breath from the Alkaloks Dead King. His eyes sparked blue as lightning filled them then snapped down the length of the nose to gather into a singular form in the air.
The battle that commenced was hot and fast. Zith hastened Marduk before retreating away again. Beatle surged a wind wall through the creature minorly disturbing it before Sapphire Oath learned how fast it was. The lightning elemental would surge in slam twice with blunt trauma and crackling lightning, before teleporting to someone else in a small explosion of electricity. Marduk stayed on it in his hastened speed and formed the central buttress the rest of the team worked around. On Marduk's final blow, the lightning crawled down the haft of the pole arm before splitting away and surging towards the plaque.
A few words of sylvan began to glow... “Spark of Night”. They had the wrong order, Lightning came from thunder. Getting it wrong transmuted the energy into an appropriate guardian. Wanting to make Zith's/Marduk's haste last, the party attempted to hammer through the rest. Beatle cast another thunderwave to be appropriately collected into “Heaven's Roar”. Zith threw over a firebolt to get sucked in for “Heavenly Flower”. Marduk hugged the stone squeezing with all his might for a cold grip! With no necrotic, Ravel threw out some healing magic to try to 'slow death'. Once more, the plaque surged with conversion. A dense, misty cloud poured from the eyes to accumulate below.
Cold. The final answer was frost. The battle that followed was harder than the first as both the elemental was harder to damage and the party itself was already damaged. Marduk's rage had already dropped and he was afraid to tire himself out with another... then the blows rained down on him. Falls of fire were conjured, both Ravel's stable sphere and Zith's explosive bead. The companions battered there way threw to eventually send the frost drifting towards the plaque flung from Marduk's glaive.
With all four pass-keys lit, the ground began to rumble. The tree began to rise as it pushed itself up by it's roots. The elevated tree revealed a stone stairway into the earth. A tunnel of vines and leaves shown green with a dense forest far below. Zith sent his bat flying down to investigate.
After the stairs ended and the soil evened out, the bat could see a tree and vine split in the tunnel, a T-intersection left and right. A canopy ceiling boxed the bat in as it was someone in a forest maze. Zith called his bat back just in time. As the companions discussed whether or not they should descend in, the tree it's cut off that questions by lowering itself once more. This door closed itself.
Not wanting to waste the spells to enter again while battered, the party decided that it would be best to fully rest before continuing. Pulling away from the grove, the party veered off into the Alkaloks Woods, away from the green and into the grey for 20 minutes to set up a camp. Hiding in their protective bubble, they rested, recuperated, and stayed silent. The dangers of the wood loomed in the dark and the distance passing along the dead woods floor or wooping- amid the tree branches above.
