BECMI Chapter 87 – Off to the Weirwoods
Between my terraforming and the hunting down of the mutant frogs, it was another three days before we returned to Darkmoor. Of course, I popped another Teleportation Circle to move the conquering armies back, along with quite a few spoils of war, and I had to work on the Permanent Teleportation Circle.
The Basilica naturally had a whole lot of gold there to fuel and form the Permanent version of the thing, allowing instant transition across hundreds of miles from the garrison area in the expanded area I’d looped around Darkmoor, which was rapidly being built up as a secure area to convey supplies and materials to Fort Loch.
I also had to change the entire appearance of the Basilica, from a laboriously-carved giant frog to something much less devoted to a demon god of batrachians and back to something functional.
I also left Darksimoor Two there to manage the technology, including the generator and fabricator already installed there, seeing no real need to move the things at this time. Training the troops on the use of lasers was something they started on excitedly, and also meant a lot of power clips constantly needing recharging.
Technician Dani Saliaveli was happy to pick up and move to Darkmoor City, getting her lesson plans in place and also working on a method to contact others on the Barhund who might want to escape the Captain, giving them a place to retreat to.
She was also excited to maybe trying delving into the Dungeons of Darkmoor Castle, ready to pit double laser pistols and an Apex scanner against the monsters, tricks, and traps of the Dungeon there.
Well, everyone had their own ideas on what was fun, I guess. I admit I found the idea alluring, too, but if the skilled warriors of this place hadn’t reached the bottom of the place yet, and if it changed every time someone re-entered it, then what might be found on the deepest levels of the place were likely to be dangerous in the extreme, and I didn’t feel like threatening my base of operations.
I was ever mindful of the Doom of Darkmoor. Even Horst’s records didn’t know what exactly had caused it, although an antimatter explosion was involved. What had delivered the explosion, and where it both came from and precisely where it went off were naturally unknown, buried in history and an explosion so powerful it had shifted the axis of the planet somehow.
Yeah, the orbit of the planet and true north were very different in Darkmoor before the Ruin went off. Doom had claimed the fledgling nation and all who lived in it, utterly devastated all its neighbors, and had disastrous consequences over the entire rest of the planet.
I didn’t know if the Ruin or the Doom that resulted from it were avoidable, but it wasn’t going to stop me from learning things, acquiring assets, and leveraging my personal time when needed.
Belle and I were likely going to be absent from Zanzyr for years, and yet come back right after we left each time. There were a lot of things we wanted to accomplish in that time.
Native elves of Darkmoor.
The elves of the North were divided into basically two tribes, one ambivalent and distant about joining with humans and especially dwarves, and the other downright hostile to the idea. The Ceruil and the Mealyn didn’t have much problem with one another, but had very different ideas on how to deal with non-elves.
The Ceruil were the friendlier nation, and the more populous and widespread, with clans and tribes living in multiple large forests to the east of Darkmoor City. The Mealyn were dispersed to the west of Darkmoor City across Hope Channel and the forests between it and the Duchy of Elb and its invading clans of fire-worshipers.
I’d been told by elves visiting Darkmoor City that I would probably fit right in with the Mealyn, and they’d always been surprised that I had such great influence over a force of both dwarves and elves combined. Then they watched them fight together and stopped asking stupid questions about how they could get along.
I also had a standing invitation to Paulo Hall, the ‘capital city’ of the Weirwood, really nothing more than a convenient place for the elves to gather and trade with humans, politely keeping them out of the rest of the forest. Given the similarities of Belle and the Luswyr elves to the equally fair Ceruil, they were also keen to meet these cousins from the future.
That was where we were headed next.
There was remarkably little that needed to be done in the ways of politeness and how to act around elves, given who was in charge of the Free Company and the months spent in one another’s company, even having to share details of their cultures and beliefs so those around them might understand them better.
Basically, the elves here were going to expect the worst of the non-elves, were probably ready to mock or scorn them, and the best thing to do was to be quiet and watch, impressing them with sheer competency and powerful lethality, displaying their own skills and allowing the elves to take their measure and revise their own opinions.
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It was also a very good chance for them to learn forestry and survival skills from masters of those skills, and they were looking forward to a lot of fighting beast-men/anthros/’orcs’ in the mountains nearby to keep sharp.
We didn’t own any horses of our own here, and despite their lessons in horsemanship, we hadn’t acquired any I felt confident of at this point. Basically I had an infantry team who moved around quickly on Disks, not mounts, and that’s how we went winging down the Red Road towards the Court of Redwood, strongest of the elven forest kingdoms here in the North.
Duum was winging along on high escort as we zipped down the road, me dragging along a line of Disks with men, dwarves, elves, and a hyn seated on them, or even laying down. Stopping every two hours for relief and fast stretching was a simple enough thing to do, and if we shocked the heck out of the riders, merchants, and farmers we passed here and there on the road, well, that’s how reputations were established and start to spread.
It was a bit over forty leagues to Paulo City overland, with about twenty of that passing by before we saw the forest and its towering redwoods. Given how fast I could fly, it took a remarkably short time, all things told, but I hadn’t made a lived-line out here yet, having done most of my late-night runs down towards the south and around and up towards the Ei of Hazz.
It was fine, there was lots of time for places to go and things to see.
For excitement, there was one raid of beastmen going after a merchant out of Jilltown in the shadow of the Raider Downs, having the bad luck to time their attack when we were less than a mile from the wagon train. The guards were acquitting themselves well in combat against the anthros despite being outnumbered, obviously experienced and expecting an attack. Us sweeping in and by basically tore the anthro raiders completely apart, such that they didn’t even manage to loot any of the wagons successfully before most of them were abruptly dead and we were waving behind us to the startled merchants and guards, barely slowed down at all.
There were elven watchers in the woods who had doubtless been moving to intercept, but they had no need now, and only needed to mark us and our deeds as we moved past.
I wondered if word we were coming would arrive ahead of us. They could use light signaling, or straight magic. I was slightly interested in what they would use, but only to some extent.
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We met the first elven patrol soon after entering the outer forest area. Duum had come down to perch on a Disk, looming nicely as the tall and fair elves in leathers and light mail waved wary greetings to us, trying to hide how impressed they were when an elfin with wings like a starry sky swooped in, followed by an enormous and colorful giant Bat and a whole group of casually relaxed adventurers just oozing dangerous levels of ability.
Our reputation as the adventurers who’d rescued King Antius had reached the elves, and we’d also been a fixture around Darkmoor City for a good two months undergoing Weapon Mastery training, so word of our ability had gotten around. Our performance clearing the Basilica with a level of butchery rarely seen hadn’t hurt matters, either, including killing off the leader of the cult and securing a treasure trove of alien magical weaponry!
Naturally, Waynder Equavus, the titular Lord of Elves in the North, and really just the only acceptable candidate among the various clan heads for the position, knew all about that, having a position on the Regency Council. He was delighted to have his invitation accepted, and especially to enjoy the presence of Brittabelle, who he had very quickly realized was far more than she chose to appear as when we’d met in Darkmoor previously.
In very little time, he had arranged for training for the humans in forestry tactics and the bow, with sword lessons for some of the eager ones who pursued that route and found the Northmen to be quite skilled, indeed.
I left off the elves to catch up with some ancestral knowledge, especially the fact that the Weirwood elves numbered druids among their number, something unknown in the ages that I or the Luswyr came from. The vocation seemed to take the place of their Wizardly talents, not be an add-on. The way Elven Magic from Sidheduiche had some theurgic crossovers, especially with Healing magic, was definitely something Belle was going to pursue more knowledge of, while totally having my blessings to provide the Elven Mage path to interested elves who had never been able to advance to the heights of magical power as the humans that seemed to be pressing in from all sides.
If all went well, Elven Magery would advance to a full Druid/Wizard theurgic combination, Elemental Theurgy at its finest, which would take care of a lot of their vulnerability and lack of access to Healing magic.
Of course, to power her advancement of such things, Belle was also going to have to be adventuring, but she was advancing quickly on her Wishing for Stats, and she definitely was built like an elven warrior-queen now. None of the Ceruil doubted she was a warrior in the slightest now, and it was no lie to say she was an intense and focused student of the more traditional crafts of the elves.
Prince Ukker and his dwarves managed to impress the elves with their stolidness, discipline, and overall noise discipline. Markspeech helped a lot with that, naturally, allowing them to chat amongst themselves, and jape and jest at some of the airy inane behavior of some of these elves who thought themselves so superior.
I didn’t put on airs, and I was definitely superior, but that was me.
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A week or three later...
“Lord Equavus. I trust I am not interfering with any moonlit walks this night?”
The tall and very handsome silver-haired Clan Lord of the Weirwood Court coughed politely off to the side. It was well-known that he spent an inordinate amount of time in the company of Princess Brittabelle, much to the ire of Ceruil elfin who had their hats tipped for the extremely eligible and sought-after elven lord. He was the tallest elf I’d seen in the future or present, a full six feet tall, looking down on even most humans, and certainly myself or Belle, a noble and courageous elf of impeccable reputation and demeanor.
He was also a rank H warrior, and if not the finest among the elves in the North, he was right up there… and a peer of King Antius in swordmanship.