You killed off the dying/crippled bandits except one that you bound and interrogated, learning that they served “Star-Cross Darshykk” and he awaited you down the path with certain death; and the Vadeli had been that way too. He welcomed death so you granted him that final wish, and Miguel moved the bodies into the jungle so you could rest overnight to the sounds of multifarious scavengers and diverse, uncouth jungle fauna while creepy-crawlies wriggled through the treefort where you camped. The night was untroubled otherwise, and you did what bandaging and healing you could before you departed.
The trail became more difficult to follow and Miguel lost his away, again leading you into horrid thickets of putrid flora, which rended Ahappi momentarily helpless with vomiting and then long-lasting fatigue from the torment. Boamund helped him out and you back on the correct path. This led to within sight of a grey stone-walled compound with a sturdy wooden gate and a platform near the gate, with some odd tree visible in an open space beyond the gate. Boamund approached and was addressed by a malicious guard who wasted little time in firing off a “warning shot” with his crossbow as he promised your demise and everything went haywire!
Boamund rushed the gates, followed by Fraud, while Ahappi kept in cover for a moment and Miguel shot the guard dead. Shouts echoed forth from the compound- more bandits came, and soon one crossbowman came around the top of the walls to return fire with Miguel, keeping him occupied for most of the ensuring battle. But Miguel used his sorceries to rend the bronze bindings of the gate asunder and it crashed apart, allowing Boamund and Fraud to rush in. They immediately faced four spearmen at the ready, and fought a bitter fight until Ahappi came to aid.
Past the gates, you saw an awful thing: there was a Vadeli tower. It was surrounded by a foetid swamp of rotten plants. Little detail was visible on the ~50m tall, <3m diameter tower's exterior except for a middle cubical room and top pyramidal room (shaped as a Law rune w/horns- the Vadeli rune). It was caked with rotting vines and pustulent fruits, looking disgustingly like giant diseased, horned penis, and a twin to the Tower of Goode Menne in Giraine. Oh dear…
Fraud took a brutal impaling spear-wound, then it really looked like a grim situation as a skeletal being in old plate armour wielding a great axe came out of the tower's archway, and a hissing brown bolt of magic came from the tower's top, striking all three warriors in melee and turning Ahappi into a giant tapeworm, helplessly slithering amongst his armour! Another powerful spell soon came, attempting to burst your bellies with Vadeli gasses, yet Fraud and Boamund staved it off. But the bandits were beaten down soon enough and you rushed the tower. Boamund used Karkovoch's shield to keep the skeleton at bay and you passed through the archway, seeing runes overhead that spelled out in various Western dialects “Welcomme, friendes, unto The Tower of Beste Maytes! Layeth down thine weaponnes and layeth down thyselves in harmonnie with us.” No thanks!
The tower layout was all too familiar but it was more intact than the Giraine tower. A tight spiral staircase led up, barely wide and tall enough for one person. Nothing grew inside; the vibrant plant “life” stopped at the archway. A few Death rune window slits opened along the way. You scowled at faded frescoes on the walls: pictures first of a giant many-legged green serpent with horned, fanged, jubilant Vadeli riding it up the stairs; then the serpent is butchered and eaten (and worse) in a great feast with many kinds of Vadeli present, then (near the top of the stairs) the Vadeli lie about lazily and compose vile poetry etched upon the walls.
The 3m cubical room atop the first set of stairs had no windows. Each wall showed a man facing a woman; the staircase emerging from their loins, legs spread far apart; the other two walls having people standing while masturbating with insane grins on their twisted faces. The ceiling and floor depicted incredibly obscene, repulsive orgies and baby-eating. It was a scene that was hard to behold. Grimy Ouori hides formed bedding on the floor- a Vadeli had been camping here, and he stepped through the doorway at the far end, having descended the staircase to confront you. It was the vile, hunchbacked, leering, Ouori-hide-clothed toadie of Skrimton Nodeal: Zridge the Tart, distinguished by odd patches of short brown wiry fur; one blue and one red eye; and wielding a wicked rusty saw-edged shortsword and crude cudgel. He yelled at Boamund that it was time for his disembowelling and he'd have his way with his corpse after it (invoking his Hate Malkioni Sorcerors passion, which he saw fitting all if you), and battle was on!
The duel was quick enough, however. Zridge had strong magical defences (a Damage Resistance 13 spell enchantment), and his passion made him a fearsome combatant-that shortsword looked like its wounds would be very nasty indeed. Yet Boamund got in a lucky blow soon enough and felled Zridge, freezing his chest as he made one final plaintive cry of surprise to Vadel, mortally wounded. At last one of your oldest foes had fallen! But Fraud, who was trying to come to help, heard stealthy steps approaching behind him and turned, sword of Menekeyil glowing, to face the undead Darshykk. With one fell blow the ancient pirate-bandit leader knocked that sword clattering to Fraud's feet; with another powerful slash he gave Fraud a head-wound that left him unconscious.
Miguel, having finally shot his two opponents after much duck-and-cover manoeuvring and trickery (and an impaling crossbow wound that plagued him), was coming up the stairs as Boamund stepped over Zridge's rimy body and faced off with Darshykk. The duel was well-matched and many blows were traded, yet Darskykk's axe was torn from his grasp by a clever blow, so he drew a battle axe, which was also battered clear, and then the skeleton-lord, knocked prone and damaged in the abdomen, tried throwing some sorcerous curses at Boamund to “gift” his foe with that abdomen-wound; again Boamund was stalwart. Then with a final blow, just as Miguel approached to aid from behind and saw the glowing undead-slaying blade of Menekeyil, Boamund stabbed mightily into Star-Crossed Darsykk's chest and froze him, too; hissing out a final curse that his plans had been ruined.
Some first-aid brought Fraud back around while Boamund beheaded Zridge and then Ahappi returned to his normal form, roaring in fury and charging the tower. He made it up to the cubical room but the disturbing images and forbidden lustfulness depicted there turned him back; he fled the tower in shame, trying to push those memories out. Boamund explored upwards, followed soon by Fraud and Miguel. The stairs ended in the middle of the 5m pyramidal room, tapering steeply to a point above [i.e. the Law rune-pyramid]. Windows there were shaped as Magic runes. The walls had more frescoes, here depicting the violent shattering of Danmalastan, Land of Logic, by Vadeli magics before the Gods War, in the Vadeli-Brithini War; leaving only Brithos where Zzabur himself was shown residing, crying metal tears that tear into his grimoire. On one wall, it was illustrated how the Blue Vadeli separated all the Tadeniti people (one of six original Malkioni lineages) into matter and energy, and gave the matter to the Mostali of Magnetic Island; then using the energy for their foul sorceries. Not a nice place! There was a filth-encrusted stone slab in the right wall- an altar, featuring Harmony, Mastery, Man runes. Six aluminium Vadeli slave collars lay atop the altar. Across from the staircase in the floor was a grim Stasis rune that seemed to suck all life and energy from around it; even darksense is hard to look at it with. You wisely kept clear of that and the altar-this seemed like a place of massive magic that you could do nothing about right now.
You came out of the tower to reassure Ahappi, who was sitting outside the swampy area muttering madly. Boamund presented the head of Zridge and you declared victory here! (party luck pts back to 1 after a very, very tough fight!) The “Beste Maytes” of the tower had been defeated. There was a stable (full of horses and mules) in the compound with a little camp around it, and two more gates, on the northeast and southwest sides of the walls. What now?
We'll find out tonight. -John
© Copyright - 2000-2024 - John Hutchinson, Tim Evans, Pete Nash, Colin Driver and Gordon Alford