The Valley #36-39

The more things change the more they stay the same.

We are currently down to Aaron, Dale, Scott, and me with a potential new member soon.

Glenn’s schedule just wasn’t stable enough so he had to move on.

It seems we go through a lot of players, but what can you do?

We debated taking a break, but we decided not to.

We discussed playing an online game, but we couldn’t agree which one. There are a lot of free ones, but those don’t appeal to me thanks to the kind of people that are attracted to free games and the fact that those games aren’t free. Instead of free, you get a broken or limited game that requires money to unlock certain things.

Then there’s the unavoidable fact that an online game will lose some of the role-playing aspect. Instead of talking to the DM, everyone is reading text for a quest. Then everyone has to go kill 10 foozles or bring back the head of the foozle king.

No thanks. It’s not even remotely the same.

As I’ve written about recently, we’ve discussed dumping 4E. But we can’t agree on what we’d rather play. So we’re not dumping 4E.

(I’m still going to bash together my own system from the best parts of other systems, but that is just me playing around.)

So for the next year or so, we’ll be playing 4E, hoping (probably in vane) that Hasbro pulls their collective heads out of their collective asses.

This entry I’ll be writing about 4 sessions of the Valley that occurred up to 5 months ago.

Please note that this is all from memory. If I miss something, oh well.

First I forgot to mention in the previous Valley entry that the sphinx told the party to “Return to the center of the beginning”. This they assumed was something the bronze disc was needed for.

They did a lot of research as to what the “center of the beginning” meant, and they believed that it was probably the place where the Valley was created so they focuses their research on the days Nafterran came to the Valley and where he cast his great spell to lift the curse of the Silver Veil.

They determined the location where the spell was cast was just north of Crater Lake (named because it looks like a crater - roughly round with a slight lip).

Now Crater Lake is not the most pleasant of places. It is where several of the rivers and rivulets join together, several from goblin territory which brought the lovely odors of that race’s stench.

For the most part, the lake is calm as no race claims it. Each time it has been claimed by the city or the goblins, or even the dwarves, that side tends to lose their claim in a bloody reprisal. So there is a truce of avoidance for all sides.

It is neither shallow, nor deep, and is moderately clean as it feeds a river that eventually goes underground.

The party’s search led to nothing, so they investigated the lake itself.

They made a raft and swam to the middle. There Adri’s elf eyes spotted the faintest abnormality as the bottom so the party sent their rogue (at the time) to investigate.

The moment he touched the seal a pair of water dragons (and other creatures) appeared and told the party to flee or face destruction.

So they fled.

Then Admon purchased a Water Breathing ritual and cast it the next morning.

Actions repeated but the dragons didn’t pause this time and attacked the party. The challenge was greatly reduced without the need for air. The biggest danger was posed to the party’s rogue who receive quite a few attacks and jolts of electricity.

At the bottom of the center of Crater Lake was a corroded and mostly covered over magical lock which the rogue focuses on and cleaned up enough for the bronze disc to be inserted.

It opened to an air-filled room that let not water in (well, just a trickle).

That room led to another that held an altar and a giant silver door.

When the party approached angels and demons appeared with a shout of “Protect the prison!”

Angels and demons working together concerned the party, but they won much more easily than I would have preferred (bad save rolls for the lead angel).

When the fight was over they opened the prison door after some debate and an appearance of an angelic creature who told them that the prisoner they were about to free brings trouble wherever he is.

Behind the door was a spherical silver room and single silver chair rising out of the floor.

The only non-silver thing inhabiting the room was Narxoom; a young human man.

He stretched and then hopped out of the silver room, animated thanked everyone present, and introduced himself as Narxoom before passing out.

They took him to Edward’s house where we remained stable but unconscious for a couple days.

During that time they researched the name Narxoom but found only that he was a bit of a reckless and powerful mage.

When Narxoom awoke Ander was there to greet him, alone.

Ander and Narxoom hit it off amazingly well. Narxoom was obviously smart and used his magic freely to do almost whatever he wanted. While he did nothing malicious, he was definitely not paying attention to the consequences of his actions.

The two exchanged stories and left the house so Narxoom could see what he, supposedly had caused.

Simply put, Narxoom cast the great spell the caused the Silver Veil to be created, thus “destroying” the lycanthropy that many people had been afflicted with. He remembers nothing but intense light and deep darkness after that moment. He is also 100% positive that his great spell did not cause the Ellicross Mountains to erupt from the ground.

As part of their back and forth stories, Narxoom also examined Ander. He determined that though he is a halfling in appearance, he is most definitely not one, though he is not quite sure what he is.

Much of the day involved Ander showing Narxoom around the city.

(Dale enjoyed this role-playing immensely as he loves having characters like Narxoom around when he runs. I think he does it to torture me.)

Eventually Edward and Admon found the two of them, hoping to contain any damage the two of them could cause to the already beleaguered denizens of the Valley.

At this point Narxoom was on a mission. He refused to believe he had created the Valley and was going to talk to someone with information.

They walked to a semi-deserted section of the Crags when Narxoom turned around and asked “Does anyone have a shovel? We need to dig right here I think.”

The party spent a few hundred gold on shovels and helpers and began digging through a good chunk of the day until a large stone was hit about 6’ down.

“Wake up! You’ve slept long enough! Now get and talk to me!” as Narxoom hit the rock with his shovel.

The ground rumbled and the workers scattered as from the ground stepped up a huge earth elemental almost as tall as the Valley wall.

The elemental bent down and yelled at Narxoom, who held his ground and yelled right back and mentioning that the elemental owed him after he saved the elementals sister from some horrible situation.

The party could only hear what questions Narxoom was asking since they couldn’t understand the language the elemental was using, but Narxoom filled them in when it was over.

When it was over the elemental was about to leave when he noticed the giant hole in the ground. So he grabbed the Death’s Head from its precarious position (about to fall down into the Crags) and broke it in half, shoving one half into the hole.

The other half he didn’t know what to do with, so he threw it over his shoulder. It flew out of sight of the city. He then climbed up the side the Valley wall, leaving a potentially usable trail in the future. He waved goodbye and left their sight.

Later they heard that it landed dead center in one of the goblin clans.

Narxoom relayed to the party that apparently he had made a deal with the elementals that he does not remember making. The earth elementals sent a huge amount of earth to this plane, the creating the Ellicross Mountain range. The air elementals were tasked with keeping all creatures away from the mountains. The water elementals were tasked with keeping the water flowing within the Valley. And the fire elementals were tasked with keeping the Valley warm through heating the land beneath the Valley.

Then Tonus showed up with an “I see you’ve been around for just a short time and already chaos follows you.”

Narxoom: “Tonus! You old gendarme, how have you been all these years.”

As he says that he gives Tonus a slap on the back and reality breaks lose.

The two men are thrown 60’ apart from one another with a tear in reality split between them.

On the other side is a bleak landscape where frog-like man-creatures are slaughtering spheroid and cube-shaped creatures. They turn and see this reality and begin marching to it and stepping into it.

The party sees nothing but malice in the creatures’ eyes, so they fight back to make sure nothing that gets through lives long enough to cause problems.

A few moments into it Tonus and Narxoom come to and realize they have to close the tear before the creatures swarm the Valley.

Each round a new creature steps through to attack the party.
Each round the tear is slowly shrunk by the two powerful magi.

In the end they find that the only way to close it forever is for one of them to be on each side of the tear. Narxoom volunteers and disappears behind the now closed tear.

That day Ander, and probably Dale, was quite sad.

Tonus was torn up as well, but there was nothing he could do or tell Ander that would fix it.

A week passed and there was a knock at Ander’s door. It was Iris, Polaris’s wife. She came to invite Ander and his friends to their lair for a dinner and apology.

Of course Ander said yes and soon the party was at the shores of Silver Lake entering a frozen sphere that would take them to the dragons’ lair somewhere under the water.

Long story short, the dragons had been busy trying to make the area around the Valley a much safer place because they were going to be leaving soon.

Why? Because they had a clutch of eggs and the lair and the Valley itself was not going to be enough “room” for them.

Then a purple (shadow) dragon and his minions burst into the room intent upon stealing some eggs. He had a spell that froze Polaris and Iris in place leaving the party to defend them and the silver dragon eggs.

In the fight the lair had become a bit damaged, leaving the dragons to repair it with their icy breath. Of course that’s when the fire elementals attacked.

I forget the exact reasons why, but it was something along the lines that the fire elementals are fracturing and some are for breaking their agreement with Narxoom and taking over the lands of the Valley. (Losing that jump drive really hurts.)

When it was all said and done the dragons were quite grateful and apologetic that they had to leave the party in the dark about their activities (such as taking over the sorcerers’ cabal).

Then Polaris hands over an odd-shaped crystal to Ander. “Centuries ago, a man named Narxoom gave this to me to give to you. There are two others like it and this crystal will lead you to them.”

Well the party researched the ring but found nothing (why would they, they barely found out anything about Narxoom when they looked for information on him).

In the end the party had to cast one of those “ask the gods questions” spells.

The response to their question was that the name of the completed piece was “Narxoom’s Ring of Histories” (though it was donut shaped and sized, not a small ring) and two conversations.

In the first conversation they heard Narxoom and Ivellios Gallanodil talking about a crystal. Narxoom said “Keep it safe until the right person comes to find it.”

The next conversation had Narxoom and three other men that the party didn’t recognize. Narxoom “The three of you owe me this. Keep this crystal safe until someone bearing an identical piece comes to claim it.”

Finding piece number two was so easy for the party that I think it concerned them. They just went and talked to the Thlyria Isara who handed the dusty piece of crystal over to the party, no questions asked.

Finding the other piece was not as easy.

When two of the pieces are joined, a daily power can be used to power the crystal to lead the wielder to the third piece. It led south. So they moved around a bit and triangulated the approximate location of the third piece.

They did some research, as expected, and rolled well for the history check.
They came up with an answer they did not like.
Three men, acting together, long ago, possible arcane powers, unexplored areas…they may now be the Dark Tribunal.

They are three liches who reside somewhere in the Valley. For the most part they bug no one, and no one bugs them.

The party was not too thrilled, but had to move on.

The next morning they snuck their way past the variety of potential monstrosities that could have ruined their day.

They eventually found a small pass in the mountainside and walked along the narrow passage until it opened up a bit.

There they found a cave and a large, dead, tree.

As expected the tree was not dead, nor was it a lone.

Ethereal type undead really suck in combat, regeneration and half damage makes for a long fight. Add in their draining abilities and it sucks for the party.

Now add in a tree with a threatening reach of 3, with rough terrain all around it, can trip a PC with relative ease, and hits for 15-20 damage a round, and you have a hell of a fight.

The party made a couple of bad calls and had some bad rolls and was forced to flee.

They returned and attempted to parlay with the dead tree. It worked!

Soon they were allowed into the cave.

When they were into the center they were told by three separate voices (and attitudes) to explain their presence. The party came clean about the crystals and the disembodied voices responded.

One voice “We should take their crystals for ourselves!”

Another voice “We made an agreement. We will honor it.”

A third voice “We should test reality; a trial of combat to see if things go as I expect them to. Survive this trial and you shall have your crystal.”

The fight was simple enough, random teleporters, plenty of ghoul minions, and a trio of boneclaws (ok, maybe the fight wasn’t that simple) were all out to ruin the party’s day.

But they still won and we stopped for the evening.