Session 5-17-09

Maia 16-17, 23CR -- Yggdrassil, the World Ash to the Beastlands:

Though they have discovered a direct gateway to the Demonweb from Kostchtchie's realm, the party decides to take a side trek back to the Beastlands to find a new home for the war-mammoth that Kaelin saved from frost giant servitude.  Departing the frozen reaches of Rime Thuras, the six heroes return to Yggdrasil via the rune-gate across the wide snowfields, backtracking along the same route which led them to Icestone Tower.  No further giants or demons seem intent on bothering their passage, given the relative ease with which they defeated the guardians of the tower.

Passing through the rune-gate, the companions soon find a friendly ratatosk guide to lead them back across Yggdrassil's wide, twisting branches and back to the Beastlands rune-gate.  They are growing more and more familiar with the various pathways across the World Ash, and Acacia seems especially at home among the branches now, given her recent training with the Monkey King.  The journey takes an entire day, given the logistical hassles of transporting a huge mammoth across the World Ash, and upon reaching the middle layers of the Beastlands themselves, the tired party makes camp and enjoys a peaceful sleep to the chirping of crickets and other night insects. Upon awakening they set out northward and slightly west, heading for the colder, tundra-like upper regions of the Beastlands, using Acacia's orienteering skills and Ayotunde's knowledge of the planes as a rough guide.

The land turns rougher and colder as they travel, but this only serves to invigorate Kaelin's mammoth friend.  It is as though the plane itself has blessed the party for their kindness towards the animal, and their pace quickens beyond what even Rockbounder is normally capable of.  Soon they reach a wide-ranging tundra and hear the thundering hoofbeats of an approaching mammoth herd.  Kaelin's mammoth trumpets their arrival happily, looking back with its enormous brown eyes at Kaelin and blinking in thanks before it charges ahead to join its new family in the Beastlands.   A soft, cool breeze blows, ruffling Kaelin's hair and soothing the heroes' spirits.  The land itself has granted them the Blessing of the Mammoth, and all know their travels through the region will be hastened and eased because of this act of compassion.  They wave farewell to the herd, which thunders off into the distance.

Maia 18, 23 CR -- The Beastlands:

Travelling rapidly southward, the heroes find themselves amongst a muddy, hilly landscape dotted with huge boulders and rock formations.  Spring thaw has come here in force, and the entire area is thick with wet brown mud and streams of ice-cold runoff.  Some of these streams are small and humble, no more than a trickle, but Rockbounder hears the strong rushing of water off to the west.  Called to the sound, he leaps from boulder to boulder and soon finds what he seeks: the main thaw runoff.  This huge flow rolls down in massive, crashing waves from the higher hills, forming a raging, foamy river that cascades down a series of boulders, spraying a fine mist of muddy water in all directions. 

The goliath observes the flow of the water for some minutes, and declares it good.  "This will serve for the bonding ritual with Quell," he says to the others, and they prepare to make camp.  Drawing the large black-metaled greatsword from his back, Rockbounder jumps directly into the current, straddling two mud-slicked rocks and balancing precariously amidst the strongest flow.  His limbs flex with exertion as he settles into a meditative stance and prepares for his day long ordeal.  As the water surges over the goliath and his newly claimed blade, he feels the power of the bonding ritual begin to flow through his body and the blade simultaneously, making them as one.

Knowing their friend must spend a full day meditating in the rushing current, the others settle in for a damp and muddy vigil.  Acacia finds a wide outcropping which shelters them from the worst of the mud-spray and cold, and Altaer summons forth a campfire.  Jackcooks a warm meal of beef stew from the group's travelling rations, which is more than welcome in the clinging damp, and Kaelin entertains them with bardic stories of the fey realms.  Together, the four friends -- Kaelin, Acacia, Jack and Altaer -- also take shifts to observe Rockbounder's bonding ritual, lending him their encouragement and good intentions as he stands motionless among the roaring thaw-waters, holding his new blade Quell steadfastly against the current.

Ayotunde seeks solitude among the higher rocks, wandering away towards the hills to pray, meditate and commune with the land.  As she travels away from the others, Ayo notices the telltale signs of rock trolls: spoor piles, huge footprints, and the occasional warding sigil carved into a boulder here and there.  Despite this, she settles into a small cave (an abandoned wolf den) overlooking the lands below. Seeking inside herself, she reaches inward with her divine senses, trying to contact the tiny spark of life now within her belly.  Try as she might, however, her mind will not quiet enough to hear the sounds within.  As Rockbounder continues his bonding ritual below, Ayo struggles to discover what is growing inside her. 

Morning passes into afternoon and then to evening, and as the sun begins to fade into orange and gold tones across the horizon, Ayo hears the heavy footfalls of an approaching rock troll.  She tenses for battle, hefting her longspear and commanding it to alight with flame. A massive troll's face appears at the cave mouth, but no hint of violence or hunger appears on this troll's countenance. This one is a female, festooned with tribal fetishes, her swollen belly heavy with child, and has come only to speak.  "Greetings, small one.  I am called Sun-Over-the-Mountains, the shaman-matron of my tribe.  You found my sitting-spot, and I can sense the life within you, though you cannot yet feel the kick of child.  What do you seek here?"

Ayo invites the huge rock-troll to sit with her, and shares her purpose with the old shaman.  "Well," says the troll, "your mind is not quiet.  All things -- rocks, trees, the life within us -- has a heartbeat, a rhythmn.  Listen to the rhythmn and don't be afraid... you will hear what there is to be heard.  Sit with me now and find quiet."  The two females sit together quietly for hours, watching the waning sunset dim into nightfall as thousands of stars come out.  As the hours pass, while Rockbounder labors below in the current, Ayo's mind begins to grow still and silent, and she indeed hears the beat within her... in actuality, two of them, in addition to her own heartbeat.  She smiles as she realizes that she is carrying twins, the double-get of her union with Besha.  Somewhat more at peace now, Ayo sits with the great troll-mother throughout the night, returning to the others as dawn breaks some hours later.

Rockbounder's ordeal continues throughout the night.  The bonding ritual is truly a mind-altering experience, and from time to time, the goliath warrior suffers moments of doubt and confusion, nearly losing his footing and his sword alike, but each time doubt creeps into his mind he steels himself further, pushing his whole weight into the rocks themselves and using the heavy blade of Quell as a counterbalance against the roaring waters.  He is beyond fatigue or conscious thought when some dimly aware piece of his mind notes the lightening of the night sky to blue, and from there to dawn.  Only a few hours remain before the ritual is complete, and now confidence surges through him as he observes the rising of the sun to the east.  Now stronger than ever, he is moved to begin a slow-motion battle kata, anchored to the rocks and performing the ancient motions of goliath battle wisdom at one-eighth speed, each movement precise and controlled within the fury of the thaw-waters.  Ayo returns from her meditations with the troll-mother just in time to see the completion of the ritual. As she joins the other four heroes at the edge of the waters, Rockbounder's motions increase in speed and he completes his kata at full speed, concluding with a bounding leap off the rocks and into his friends' midst.  He and the blade Quell -- the Demon-Quelling Sword -- are now bonded, forged together into a single soul.  Quell's voice speaks into the goliath's mind: "Now, together we shall take the battle to the Abyss, and slay all demons that challenge our passage!"

Each of the companions congratulates Rockbounder on the completion of his ritual, and together they break camp and begin the journey south towards the rune-gate and thence back to Rime Thuras; their work in the Beastlands is complete for the moment, and the Demonweb awaits.  Somewhere within Lolth's abyssal realm is their objective: the double-agent priestess Lissondra -- a true servant of the Dark Huntress aspect of Irindix, working in secret within the Demonweb for many years and now prepared to assist the heroes and Rule-of-Three in disrupting Lolth's upcoming Abyssal Pact.  The precise nature of the Pact and of Lolth's plots against Gaia and even her other aspects (the Dark Huntress and the Queen of Nightmares) is still unknown, but Rule-of-Three indicated that Lissondra has vital information to share on those subjects.

Thanks to the Blessing of the Mammoth from the Beastlands themselves, the heroes' journey back to the rune-gate takes only a few hours.  Their footfalls are effortless, and each of the companions breaks into a full run with the power of Nature surging through their limbs.  They quickly acquire the services of a ratatosk guide and find their way back to Rime Thuras.  Crossing the abandoned, icy wastes, they pass the familiar landmarks of the canyon holding two dwarf guard-towers and the wide snowfield, approaching Icestone Tower itself.  As they do so, a terrible illusory countenance of a wrathful frost giant appears in the swirling snow.  It bellows an angry proclamation, which Altaer's spellcraft identifies as a programmed image.  "Acacia Blackthorne!  Gorram Rockbounder Ogolakanu!  Slaves and rebels!  Know that your passing and your attack upon Icestone Tower has been marked by Arbrozzar himself, that he shall hunt you until the end of days, and that your souls shall be shackled to his service forever for your brash arrogance.  Undying servitude awaits you upon your inevitable capture.  So says Arbrozzar!"  The frost giant wizard's threats ring hollow to the heroes' ears, given their recent victories, but Rockbounder and Acacia know that their former captor will indeed stop at nothing in his attempts to return them to his fold.

Despite the bellicose threats of Arbrozzar, Icestone Tower appears much as the heroes' rampage left it, though all the frost giants' bodies have been cleared away (whether by hungry demons or Arbrozzar's other servants cannot be determined in the swirling snow).  The party approaches the tower's bottom level where they discovered the planar gate to the Demonweb and Acacia checks it out for new traps.  Finding none, she invites the others forward and Ayotunde clasps the golden horn token to her breast.  The rune circle beneath their feet glows with an icy white energy and the gate activates.  

Maia 18, 23 CR -- The Demonweb Pits, 66th Layer of the Abyss:

With a cold rush of wind that smells of bloated corpses and poisoned blood, the six companions are transported instantly to the depths of the Demonweb.  Now begins their first foray into the heart of Lolth's domain.  Armed with little more than the name of Lissondra and a vague map of the layer that mysteriously appeared in Ayotunde's pack during their last visit to Sigil, the party knows that failure here will result in a painful and untimely end to their adventures.

Having acquired three scrolls of the veil spell while in Sigil previously, they concoct a plan to travel incognito through the Demonwebs: using the illusory power of veil, they group will appear as a mixed party of drow and slaves (with Altaer playing the part of one Sildra Mraz, a mid-ranking drow priestess, Jack, Kaelin and Ayo disguised as male drow servants, Rockbounder as an ogre bodyguard, and Acacia as a sneaky goblin thrall).  Using the details found in the captured diaries of Lithara the Lolthblessed, whom they defeated at the Vermillion Ridge on Gaia, they come up with a reasonable cover story of travelling through the Demonweb with their "slaves" for a meeting with Lissondra. 

They appear in a chamber seemingly made of living webs, and thousands or more tiny spiders crawl amongst the walls themselves.  The air smells slightly acidic and somewhat of blood, and a raised dais on the ground below their feet shows three mosaics -- an iron pyramid, a bronze star, and a blue crystal cube -- which Altaer and Ayo identify as teleportation circles.  Ayotunde, calling on her knowledge of the planes, warns the others that beyond the web-walls there is only a thick, endless layer of billowing necrotic mist.  This mist is known to suck the life from living souls to feed the Demonweb itself, and its effects are nearly impossible to resist.  Furthermore, plane shift and teleportation magics are known to be ineffective in the Demonweb, so other means of quick conveyance or egress will need to be found.  Cutting through the web-walls, then, is not an option, and the party must essentially find its way through the maze of shifting rooms and walls using the map and their wits alone.  Shortcuts are unlikely to be found here, but Ayo has prepared a find the path spell, which she now casts.  There are only two obvious exits from the chamber, one to the heroes' left and one to the right.  Concentrating on the path to Lissondra, she sees faint greenish footprints lead off to the party's left. 

The Demonweb is a place of utter darkness, but Altaer's armor glimmers gently in the dark and Ayotunde's flaming longspear provides enough light to navigate by.  Acacia stealthily scouts ahead, using the clinging shadows of the place and her own darkvision to creep about unnoticed.  Soon the web corridors narrow to a smaller natural rock cavern, which seems to remain cloaked in darkness despite the party's light sources.  They approach cautiously, but the aberrant screech of two hunting creatures signals the start of battle.  Altaer cries out a command to halt in his altered "drow female" voice, using his Voice of the Dragon spell for emphasis.  However, his words are ignored by the inhabitants of the cavern.  Dropping down from the ceiling are a pair of chwidenchas: writhing masses of nothing more than flexible, hairy spider legs.  They move with skittering undulation, striking quickly and taking Altaer down before he can even cry out in surprise and terror.  Their terrifying ambush leaves Altaer at death's door. 

The others react with horror at the chwidencha's sudden attack, moving in quickly to strike down the hunting creatures.  Rockbounder's blade Quell slices one of them to pieces while Jack, Kaelin and Acacia team up to cut the other spider-leg horror apart.  The legs of the dead beasts flail about on their own for a few seconds before finally ceasing to move. Clearly, the Demonweb contains more threats than just demons and drow.  Creatures such as these will hunt and kill anything that approaches, whether they appear as drow or otherwise.  Lolth's control over her Demonweb is not complete, nor would her chaotic nature allow it to be.  Despite Altaer's weakened state, they must continue on.  Ayo revives her friend with healing magic and the party prepares to traverse deeper into the dark web-maze of the 66th layer of the Abyss.

The Threefold Sundering