Back to the old wizard tower, looking for plunder and
violence. It’s not as if there’s much
else to be done – a few caves, and old lightning shrouded temple (which a few
of the companions from last time were lost to), some kind of stone circle that
eats religious men – but really for a curious redcap like Scabgrinder, there’s
nothing like exploring deeper into the cracked and crumbled ruins of the wizard’s
tower. It’s not really the money the items recovered from the tower, though
money buys drink and more metal, it the sense that one is changing the behavior
of other thinking things. As a root, one
doesn’t have much chance to do this, maybe try to choke the neighboring root
where it gets in the way of one’s expansion, but that’s rather intimate –
tendrils grasping in the dark and squeezing for months or years. The world of men is changed by a casual and
distant word – every action can be like a brush fire, rewriting the landscape
in a moment.
Indeed, the last trip to the tower rewrote the man
town. Farmer hide their produce as they have
no one to protect it with the wizard proven absent. The guards of the town are less steady
without the sureness of magical aid when things get out of hand. Random bar dweller twitch and grumble about
men from the forest coming with fire and steel.
In all the Scabgrinder is happy, so fast the world of men can change.
Back to the tower. At
the tower, still an ugly imposition of tormented earth brothers building for
speed and not beauty, things have changed.
The earth before the tower is cankered with footprints. A man of the forest, slow and clumsy but wise
like a beast, inspects them and says they are the tracks of man like
vermin. Within the tower Scabgrinder
hears snoring and sneaking in a sentry awakes in the flare of the entry’s
broken trap. It is not a man, and not a
root – a new thing – like a mouse, but man sized and holding a rusting
spear. The mouse man’s skin is wrinkled
and rotten, it’s fur sparse and it has long nails, clearly more predator then
its domestic cousins. Scabgrinder leaps, but the mouse thing is faster and a
melee begins. The spear of the creature
prevents a solid strike, and soon it flees into the darkness towards the
abandoned barracks, where Scab Grinder and the men who seek gold with him found
many weapons.
Seeking to outflank the rodent man, Scabgrinder and the
miracle man fling open the Southern portcullis and try to come into the
barracks from the South. Scabgrinder’s
charge is met with a hail of javelins and with much sap spraying from his face
the root is forced backward into the hall.
The short bearded man calls forth power, and the hall towards the spear
throwing rodents is made slippery. The things
do not fall for this trap, and chant for some filthy entity – a spirit of rot
and disease recognized by the wood’s hermit among Scabgrinder’s companions as
entropy and disorder.
Retreating back to the door, an ambush accomplishes nothing
and the band returns to town to hire reinforcements. The slow witted animal man finds a charlatan
to hire with flash powder and a fuzzy cloak.
He is given a spear and told to fight.
Returning to the tower it is decided – fight will be brought
the mole mouse men. Charging down dark
halls and over crooked tiles, into the horrors’ incisors, Scabgrinder screams
for blood to make his hat bright and strikes the largest in the chest. Ribs crack, but it stands slicing down with it’s
sickle and almost taking off the root’s arm.
The melee around Scabgrinder is a swirl of violence. The forest man goes down, dead with a spear
through his eye. The short man of power
stabs and stabs again, killing two of the creatures. Eventually the creatures flee and are crushed
in flight.
A search of the barracks reveals little beyond the horror’s
spears. A pile of dead vagabonds, bloody
and ragged rest in the corner. Some ritual
is performed by the mad hermit, to put the stinking meat to rest.
South again into the kitchen, the intent of the mole men is
discovered, they have been eating the dead, a strange habit. Amongst the gore are a few satchels with
spare coins and a dagger in them. In the
store room beyond nothing has been touched.
The mole things did not find the store of grain, and this another sign
of their unfitness. Beyond the grain
sacks is a chamber of pots, cauldrons and retorts. This is valuable. Exploring it though more syringe mouthed mechanical
spiders leap upon the party. Scab
grinder is bitten, and near death he still smashes a spider solidly. The spiders bite others as well, and most of
the explorers are suffering from wounds when the spiders are finally destroyed. Another hidden door is discovered to the
North, within a stone of power, on a pedestal.
It is grabbed and swaddled in a bag before the band returns to town with
much alchemical equipment. Scabgrinder carries a body found in the mole rat men’s
kitchen, he recognizes the man as a farmer who drinks sometimes in the plank
and tallow candle bar where Scabgrinder sleeps.
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