The Silent Wood (Part IV)

Erune's Journal

I'm Erune, an enchanter who hooked up with these people in hopes of getting back to civilization and generally escaping the tedium of communing with nature. Levin is indisposed, and it has always struck me as odd that of the four of us Levin has taken up the role of group diarist, so I've decided to write this chapter of history myself. I've got plenty of time for once.

When last Levin wrote we were wandering around deep inside a barrow-hill infested with undead, seeking information on some sort of evil artifact that was supposed to have been interred here but that was stolen by Endel of Remard. We did ultimately find out about it, from a talkative wight who had apparently been charged with guarding it after he and his troops had failed to destroy it in life. (Considering how Endel apparently managed to steal the thing without having to fight any of these undead, it strikes me that they must be failures in death as well. But don't anyone mention that to them should they ever return. For that matter, also don't mention that we're the ones who smashed all the doors and chests in the barrow while we were searching for clues - or at least if you do, please mention that I was the one member of our party who opposed that sort of thing).

Anyway, it turned out that the artifact was a magical device intended to turn animals into humans, placing them under the complete control of the wielder in the process. Pieces of the puzzle were rapidly falling into place at this point - the silence of the wood, the reason the elves held the villagers responsible, and some of Tully's behavior (though not all of it, if she was really Endel's accomplice in all this I'm surprised she didn't do more to stop us from finding out more once we stopped pointlessly re-killing the horseman's ghost over and over. I suppose she was just too intimidated by our awesome might, or something). We didn't find out anything in particular about how to counter the artifact but we did gain some strange allies. The barrow wights decided to accompany us to town to battle Endel directly, and when we got out of the barrow the elves were waiting outside to make a similar offer. Neither of them could enter town because of wards Endel had built into the well at the center of town, but we could so we were supposed to act as the vanguard to break the wards and let them in.

Call me suspicious, but I decided it might not be entirely appropriate to lead an army of murderous elves and undead against besieged villagers purely on the say-so of the undead. When we finally got back to Remard I convinced my equally-murderous companions that we should parley with Endel first.

We gave it a try. When we arrived at Remard the whole town was out in force, hundreds of people with improvised weapons milling about and Tully at their lead with Endel watching from his second-story window. However, Endel turned out to be as unhelpful to negotiate with as the elves had been; it was all "they're evil monsters!" this and "you must help us destroy them!" that - same argument the elves used on the other side. Really, we get tricked into kidnapping a lord's wife just once and people think we're morons forever. Nobody ever tries to explain _why_ they're doing what they're doing.

Endel made the dilemma simple, though. The moment I obliquely mentioned that we'd heard there was an artifact that may have gone missing from the barrow, he ordered the whole village to attack us. The man was very self-confident, I'll give him that. Unfortunately that confidence also seemed to be warranted. The first thing Endel did was to cast lightning from his fingertips, blasting all the way across the village to knock Levin out cold.

That's half the reason I'm writing this entry, Levin missed the entire fight. The others went down too so it falls to me, the last man standing, to recount what happened next. I decided that whether the wight's story was completely true or not wasn't really relevant any more, I was simply sick of these people and their irrational hostility. Delenceway had already displaced her image and run off around the edge of town, presumably intending to sneak in and wreak highly-focused havoc on Endel, and I decided a similar tactic would be best; turning into a bear and slam-dancing my way through hundreds of peasants didn't seem like the best way to apply my strength. I cloaked myself in illusion instead and headed for the well in the center of town. When trying to cloak oneself against a huge crowd of people like that, even weak-willed ones, it's virtually guaranteed that some of them will penetrate the illusion and see you anyway. The key is to ensure that those who _count_ don't see you - the ones who would otherwise be paying attention to you or be able to stop you, that is, those who are immediately around you.

Those were the ones who saw me, of course. I ended up just barging my way through the crowd, my illusion not serving to keep my progress secret but fortunately able to keep everyone disoriented enough that they couldn't grab me or pile on. When I finally got to the well I had a chance to glance around at the state of the battle before making a final decision on which side was the right one to aid.

The carnage was pretty bad. Revegelance was fighting Tully sword-to-sword, but before he'd gone to melee he'd let off a fireball that had part of the town ablaze and left a gaping hole in the crowd of peasants. I'd heard the sound of dying animals screaming when that blast had gone off, the first forest life I'd heard in quite a while, and that gave final confirmation of at least part of the story; these people weren't really humans. That also meant that they weren't responsible for their own actions, they were being forced to fight by Endel. I considered moving on past the well to Endel's house and trying to just incapacitate Endel himself. I wanted to have a chat with him anyway.

Then Endel fired off another one of those lightning bolts, blasting Revegelance. A bear versus a storm of lightning, eh? Screw these people, I wasn't going to commit suicide for them. I jumped up on the well's edge and with a mighty heave I vandalized the carved wood totems the wards were probably embedded in.

An army of undead and elves began their onslaught against the practically helpless mind-controlled animal-peasants. Don't I feel proud. Revegelance was down now too, Tully had bested him in swordplay - no great cause for shame, should Revegelance be reading this, he is first and foremost an elementalist mage after all. Tully would have lost had it been a contest of magic.

Speaking of which, that mad hermit-woman Henway chose about that time to pop out of Endel's house and cast a stunning thunderclap on the field of battle. She must have headed here as soon as we left her temple. The leader of the _undead wights_ was now the only person in the whole region who hadn't made an attempt to kill us!

Fortunately, Delenceway reappeared from whatever sneaky stuff she'd been up to around this point; she'd somehow got inside the upper floor of Endel's house without him noticing and she shoved him right out the window. Then as he lay on the ground below, she shot him twice in the leg with her bow. Way to go, Delenceway! Also, the battle was joined at this point by a giant animate tree (presumably the elves' doing) and the weather suggested the ghost horseman was about to make an appearance too. Still, things weren't entirely going our way; the leader of the wights got knocked into the well and Endel was almost back on his remaining good leg with a spell on his lips. I'm not too proud to say that he seemed like a more dangerous battle-enchanter than I, my only real fighting trick is to turn into a bear and that would take too long right now. I paused to consider my options (ie, I hid behind the well).

He wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, however. It turns out he was preparing a spell for Delenceway, completing it just as she leapt out of the window over him with a dagger drawn and ready to impale him. The spell he cast was "flesh to stone". Delenceway weighed about 700 pounds when she landed on him, pinning him good and hard to the ground. He apparently had just enough strength left in him for a single spell; he managed to mumble out something that turned him into a red mist that flowed out from under Delenceway and made a break for it as fast as a mist could flow.

Okay, _now_ I felt confident I could take this guy on. Also, Henway was doing something that was seriously damaging that animate tree that had stomped through the village and was now attacking the house, keeping Tully busy; I didn't want that tree to fall and give Tully a break to turn on me instead. So I took a crack at ending the whole fight with a sleep spell, targeting Tully, Endel and Henway. I put the mist to sleep. Never would have thought I'd ever see sleeping mist!

It was a bit of a relief, actually. The horseman had just arrived and I knew there was little chance to convince him to take Endel captive, but now that Endel was both incapacitated and insubstantial there was nothing the horseman could do to kill him. I wanted to have a chat with that guy later. That turn-Delenceway-to-stone trick was amazing.

Henway popped out of the house again to cast another spell on the tree, which was now attacking the house directly, so evidently my sleep spell wasn't completely successful. I was getting a bit low on energy, so instead of casting another I decided to get personal. I ran the short distance from the well to the house, opened the door, and whacked the insane old woman with my staff. Another proud moment for Erune! Henway turned and fled up the stairs, and I pursued - she could still cast spells from up there so I couldn't just let her go. As soon as I got to the top, though, guess who was also upstairs busy fighting with the tree's upper branches? Tully had retreated into the house at some point and she promptly turned on me with a sword in her hand.

My bashing stick is good for dealing with the elderly, but Tully had out-fought Revegelance and I was nowhere near as good as him at fighting. I shouted at them that they still had the opportunity to surrender, and then immediately turned and fled back down the stairs. Nobody _ever_ surrenders when I offer them the option. Tully chased me right back out of the house.

Then came my standard moment of stupid heroism. I stopped right outside the house, waiting for Tully to come out the door to take a shot at whacking her - she was badly wounded, after all, perhaps if I caught her by surprise I could take her down quickly.

This new scar I've got here on my chest shows how well that worked. I missed my blow, she didn't miss hers. I collapsed right next to stone Delenceway, and that was it for me.

When I woke back up again an elf was giving me first aid. We'd won by proxy; our allies had apparently finished off Tully and Henway and broken the artifact, releasing the surviving wild animals to flee into the woods. I still don't know exactly how it happened, but Tully's dismembered corpse got stuffed down the well - Taer saw it but her explanation wasn't much help. The undead had all keeled over afterward, and part of the village was still smouldering from Revegelance's fireball, so it was quite a scene of devastation.

Endel was dead too, unfortunately - his gaseous form had expired before I'd had a chance to get back up again and the horseman had promptly killed him. That was quite a pity, since Delenceway was still made of stone and I had no idea how to go about fixing that. Normally spells like this would wear off after a while, if the victim's resistance was strong enough to overcome it, but if she didn't recover soon it might be permanent.



To make a long story short, it was permanent. But on the plus side, Endel's house had survived the tree's assault reasonably intact and when we searched it I managed to find Endel's book of spells. I didn't need him after all, I could learn the spell myself and then simply reverse it just like if she'd been turned into a chipmunk or something instead. But it would take a long time - a month, perhaps, with at least a week or two where I'd need to do nothing but study. There was a bit of discussion with Levin, Revegelance and Taer about whether it'd be faster to haul Delenceway with us to someplace where we could find someone to hire instead. I thought that was a really bad idea considering we're in the heart of a hostile country whose prince we'd just recently assassinated, and besides, I _really_ wanted to learn that spell.

Levin thought we should continue onward to find the Withered Heart rather than letting Delenceway's condition slow us down, and Taer wanted to fly off in search of Joe and Bob. Oddly enough it was easier to explain the difficulty to Taer than it was to explain it to Levin. But eventually we settled on the slow-but-sure-and-safe route, and decided to backtrack to Peri's tower again as a secure place to spend the time learning this thing.

Good thing we had that cart. We loaded Delenceway and all of our loot into it, as well as Revegelance since he was still wounded. I was in pretty bad shape too, but nevertheless I turned into a horse and hauled that thing for six days to get back to the tower. Mark my heroism, again. I literally carry this party's weight.

-----
The month we spent in the Tinewood Towers.
-----

Peri was happy to see us, having not expected to encounter us again for a good long time, and she and Varian were glad to offer us sanctuary while we healed up and got Delenceway turned back. It's a pity Delenceway had to spend the whole time as a statue, really, and I didn't have much spare time myself; it was a very nice little vacation in an island of safety where the hostile outside world didn't intrude. It was almost like being back in my hovel, except that the accommodations and company were so much nicer. Revegelance spent the time fastidiously trying to convert enchanter's directions into the raw elmental understanding of an elementalist mage - and did manage to learn lightning bolt from Endle's book during our time there. Christmas came about two weeks after we arrived, and we had a big feast. We decorated Delenceway for the occasion with makeshift ornaments, and I hope she never reads this journal entry to find out about it.

Levin didn't have a good time. He's always broody at the best of times, but now it was worse - he spent all his time obsessively preparing his equipment for travel, pacing around, restlessly muttering about how we should be moving on. He didn't seem to be so healthy, and got sicker as the days passed. Fortunately Revegelance had to deal with most of that, I kept him out of the room I'd set up as my study. Finally, though, about five days before I was finished my studies, Levin burst into the room. We were storing Delenceway there since she was my practice target for the stone-to-flesh spell, and he was in an especially deranged mood - he wanted to smash her so we could leave immediately to continue on the Withered Heart quest.

Well, enough of _that_. I put him into an enchanted sleep and Revegelance helped me truss him up good so he wouldn't harm anything when he awoke. My suspicions were sparked and I did a bit of reading in other parts of Endel's spellbook, ultimately confirming them; Levin appeared to be suffering from a geas.

It was pretty clear what had happened, once that fell into place. Back when he'd been held captive for several days by the Royal Grand Inquisitor, the Inquisitor had enchanted him to go and _retrieve_ the Withered Heart for him. We weren't on a quest to destroy it after all.
Very bad news; getting rid of a geas is really hard, and having delayed his quest for so long Levin was practically on death's door from the strain. We'd probably need the Missidominici to cure this and they were in the opposite direction that Levin was being forced to travel.

I'm glad he waited until after Christmas to crack, all things considered. Now we had a monstrously strong and deranged warrior tied up in the tower, and an even more difficult choice to make than the original decision over what to do about Delenceway's condition. We hid Delenceway in the woods to make sure Levin wouldn't do anything to her if he broke free, Revegelance stood guard over Levin, and I hurried to finish my studies.

It worked. Turning Delenceway back into flesh was quicker and easier than explaining the situation that had developed since then to her, and then we had to figure out what to do about Levin. After due consideration, we decided that it was best not to risk completing the
quest - it would be dangerous, and it would be playing right into the Grand Royal Inquisitor's plans. Fortunately I came up with a good way for us to transport the by-now-delirious Levin.

First, I turned him into a turtle. Turtles are nice and tough and compact, very portable, and they can't run away so easily. This by itself wouldn't be such a good idea though since turtle-Levin was still geased to retrieve the Withered Heart, and the depths of December are no time of year for a turtle to be traveling. So I used my shiny new flesh-to-stone spell and turned him into a rock.

Levin's condition is now completely stable, and will remain so until we get him back to Aronoth. And once again, I'm filling in because he can't write an entry in his journal - won't be able to for a while to come. It's going to be an interesting trip.

People

Eric of Colbron

• Undead warlord in the center of the great barrow
• Reawakened by the theft of the druid artifact that in life he has tried to destroy
• Was only able to rest after the artifact was destroyed

Alan

• Huge tree - animated by the elves to fight against Endle and Remard
• Though usually such trees are merely controlled by their animator, this one, through some strange twist of fate became self-aware and took on the name Alan
  

Heroic Quotes

"She was human at the time!" - Robert

Adventure Names

"Erune: Last Man Standing" - bryan
"An Example of How the Player's Actions Look Nothing Like What You Had Planned" - jon
"The Stone Turtle/She was Human at the Time" - robert
"How the Mighty Have Fallen" - robyn

Legends and Lore

During the time spent with Varian and Perry rumors have drifted your way about unrest in Duraste.

Statistics

Playing Date: June 18, 2005
Foes Vanquished: Endle, Tully, Henwen, 200 Animal/Villager atomatons
Party Members Turned To Stone: 2
Evil Echanters Pushed Out Windows And Crushed By Statues: 1