"He Chose You"--Hazlan
General Summary
After meeting with the Circle of the Black Grove, you discussed your options and concluded that you needed a way for the treants to wipe out the ruling class while leaving the innocent unharmed. You thought that a plague might actually be the best way to do that, since you could try to make sure that the innocent quarantined or removed themselves. Barring that, if the treants decided to destroy the entire city, you might be able to get some of the underclass to evacuate. The woman with no mouth, who finally introduced herself as Lalam, had a safehouse inside Sly-Var; she wrote down the address for you (you destroyed the paper with the address on it after memorizing it), so you can reach her later and tell her to spread the word if necessary.
Vanya remembered hearing a song about Azenwrath, the Grandfather Tree. According to the song, he had come from another land where the sun and the soil were pure; when he came to Ravenloft, the taint and corruption in the soil drove him mad. Knowing that humans were somehow responsible for this, he created new treants, brought them together in a druidic circle, and swore to destroy all humanity and return nature to its innocent state. Eventually, he was killed, and there the song ended. You had the sense from the song that while he hated humanity, he genuinely loved and cared for animals and trees. You wondered if you could point him and the other treants toward a domain that was less corrupted than Hazlan; Thornroot was malevolent, but he seemed to mind his own business until someone poked the hornet's nest rather than seeking out humans to kill.
Other things that came out in questions: it's Ravenloft, so you can't just send them back to wherever Azenwrath came from (if only and as far as you know, all treants are evil (out of character knowledge: because the land itself in each domain is a reflection of its darklord and the treants are intimately connected to the land, they all become corrupted by the darklord's evil). From what the treants said, the rune can't help them to cast arcane spells, but they can basically use Azenwrath as an adapter to channel their druidic magic through the rune and cast . . . ninth level druid spells? Mythic ninth level druid spells? Mythic maximized extended disruptive enlarged intensified any-metamagic-feat-but-merciful ninth level druid spells? Who knows?
You knew your best chance was to get the box back from Iskander and use it to try and negotiate with the treants and/or Azenwrath; if you could convince Azenwrath that a more extreme approach would lead to reprisals against the Circle of the Black Grove or the natural world, he might be open to moderation. You decided to stake out Iskander's manor and get a sense of what sorts of defenses he had so that you knew what spells to prepare.
But then things escalated.
Before you went to bed, you set up a contingency plan with Julien: if he saw Vanya setting off dancing lights into the sky, he'd run for Darkon and try to look for Carnival. Julien nodded, but looked subdued. He'd had a vision of something very, very bad coming. You assumed he meant whatever the treants were planning, but he told you that he hadn't seen anything with trees; something with fire, and with being trapped somewhere dark. You asked if it felt worse than anything else you'd experienced, and he said he hadn't felt anything this bad coming since the day before The Blade Brothers had almost killed him. You assured him that whatever it was, you'd protected him then and you'd protect him again.
After you turned in for the night, Rose found herself dreaming that she was back at Ivana's Dinner Party--Borca, dancing with Vincente Travatello, who had his usual sad expression. Everything seemed normal, the way it does in dreams--but then he drew her close and she felt his batlike wings folding around her, and the bubble popped.
Rose pulled back and saw The Gentleman Caller in the shape that he normally presented to her, wearing the same sad expression--something she'd never seen on him before. She asked, without any particular sympathy, why he looked so despondent, and he shrugged and said that he had brought her here because he knew she had been happy in this moment and he wanted her to have a moment of happiness again, because they would likely be few and far between from this point on. He asked if she remembered what they'd talked about at the actual dinner party: that he would come to call on Julien, and that if Julien came with him willingly, no harm would come to him, but if he refused, he would die in agony. He congratulated Rose sadly; she'd taught Julien well, and he'd chosen her. Rose said that she didn't need the Caller to tell her she'd raised him right, thank you very much, and demanded to know what the Caller had done with him. The Caller scoffed and said that neither he nor any of his agents had taken Julien; he had offered to take him away and protect him from what was coming, but had warned him that Rose wouldn't like it, and Julien had chosen Rose. He said that he would have given Julien a gentler education than the one he was receiving right now, and when Rose was indignantly skeptical, he told her that he at least wouldn't have tortured Julien, which stopped her in her tracks.
Rose said that if Julien was being tortured and the Gentleman Caller was truly unhappy about it, he needed to let her wake up immediately so she could save him. The Caller said that first, he wanted her to know what part she'd played in this. She kept her hands so clean in her dealings with him, he sneered, but she'd delivered the brain and the box to Iskander, even knowing that they were harvested from sentient beings, even knowing that he intended nothing good with them. She'd known, though, that he intended to use them to summon a demon, and she'd just so happened to bring a demon to his very doorstep . . .
Rose said she was going to make this right, and demanded to know why he had brought her here other than to taunt her. The Caller said that he'd just told her where Julien was and that he believed a "thank you" was in order, which put Rose into even higher dudgeon than she'd already been in. She asked if the Caller could just go save Julien, and he admitted that he didn't know; he liked to play it safe where conjurers were concerned, and humans were probably safer around them than his kind were, especially since Iskander had prepared himself with all kinds of spells for bringing demons to heel.
Rose reiterated that she was never going to thank him, and said that if he was in her head, he knew what the dinner party had meant to her and how much this dream fell short. The Gentleman Caller said that he was sorry to hear that, and seemed as sincere as he ever was. He said that Julien would have one more chance to come with him willingly in the future--"well, whatever's left of him, anyway"--that if he'd taken him by force this time he wouldn't have had that chance, and that next time, the stakes would be life. Rose said that she would never encourage Julien to be used by him or to become the kind of person who would choose him, and the Caller once again responded with what seed like sincere regret. He told Rose to make sure she greeted the dawn, and she spat that she'd never forget her prayers on his account; he clarified that she might forget them in Julien's account, and if she ran in half-cocked to save him she'd just get them both killed. She said she'd grown up from having to deal with him, and that may have been the only good thing he'd ever done for her. He kissed her hand and she woke up.
Rose woke Vanya and, sure enough, Julien was gone. Vanya started forging a letter in Kourdara's handwriting saying that Iskander had shorted her and demanding that he return the brain in the box and/or send her more money. You hoped it would distract him long enough for Rose to sneak in invisibly or fly in as a bird or something. Rose didn't have anything to do for the next half hour except stare at the horizon and will the sun to rise faster, so Vanya suggested that she look through the Tome of Bindings to see if there was anything along the lines of "never do X, Y, or Z or the demon will break loose and wreak its terrible vengeance" so you could do X, Y, and Z and allow the demon to break loose and wreak its terrible vengeance. As you worked, you felt a stab of helpless terror and heard Julien screaming in your minds.
Related Reports
Previous session: Treating With Treants--Hazlan
Next session: Scouting Iskander's Sanctum--Hazlan
Report Date
06 Nov 2022
Primary Location
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