BECMI Chapter 351 – Death is Riding, and Riding…
https://www.scribd.com/document/612922533/Module-CM2-Deaths-Ride
(One of the most metal covers in TSR’s catalogue! :) )
A flying castle was a useless extravagance that cost far too much money for its size and capabilities. Siricil wouldn’t field one, and the cost alone assured that a single wizard wasn’t going to be putting one into play without the financial resources of a highly-developed city or major dominion… and years of saving too much money.
So, origin as either VERY old, or Delphan. Because Delphans routinely made stupid stuff like that for fun and giggles and style points.
-Who do we have on Reserve Duty?- Briggs /asked Divay, having a rough idea, but some of the teams would be on mandatory rest as they relieved one another.
-Your dwarf Grimbol and those youngsters he is training up,- Edge’s Courtier Sim Eight /responded instantly.
He nodded to nobody in the dark. -Drop them at the edge of the Scrying interference, send them in. If you lose communication, send in scout teams in staggered relays if possible to keep coms open. Find what’s causing the interference first, do an orbital scan to see if you can center it, and find the source. That would be… Twinlakes Vale Barony, right?-
-Yes, sir! A decent border holding, if isolated by choice,- was the prompt /reply.
-Get the analysis and data back to us promptly, and I want eyes on that flying castle, if it is there, as soon as possible. The timing is not a coincidence.- As in, someone Immortal had noted that a decent number of the mortals who’d fought in the Wolf Winter and clearing of the Wyrmfangs were now in Zanzyr tearing up undead, and decided to make a move while the anti-undead defenders were someplace else.
Grimbol’s team was full of eager Clerics of the Morning and dwarf-priests who hadn’t been allowed into Zanzyr, and would be very, very happy to go rampaging on some undead, if that was the case.
Baron Nearu was also from Siricil, which had unpleasant political connotations. If his dominion was wiped by a Delphan force, that could be an excuse for Siricil to take umbrage at treatment of Siricilan colonists in the north, and trigger an invasion… something Siricil was urgently trying to create an excuse for.
Briggs frowned, and waited in the dark.
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I Darted a trio of hordelings clawing and scraping at the Protection from Evil field into flaming corpses, the fourth one was cut in half by a Sharding coming from the room ahead of me.
I walked through Burning corpses of things from the Entropic Realms, no two of them alike, spanning the range of sizes from kobold to slightly larger than ogres. They had every kind of limb, face, mouth, claw, skin/hide, and body design possible, with all sorts of perverted elemental and magical affinities visible as residue Burning away en vivus.
Two more hordelings desperately stumbled past and flapped by Sama there, who was energetically chopping a camel-worm in half and following up with splitting a pig-leech in twain.
I blasted five-legs right into her backside, where it broke apart on her, and toad-wing there splattered against the wall already streaked with Burning, misting gore and going unwhite. If I happened to be wading through a few dozen Burning hordeling corpses who thought they could escape from her by running down the hall because Tremble was only a Sword, well, more fool them.
I walked up behind her, out of her shoto, watching her slide back and forth and rip hordelings apart with fantastic speed and efficiency. She was clearly enjoying planning ten steps ahead, every movement a calculation of effect and carnage designed to get her enemies moving this way or that, putting them into position for a cut, thrust, hack, or slash delivered with minimal effort and maximal lethality.
I didn’t see anything living through the combination of her attack speed and the Cleaving and Sword beats Fist going off on these things. The dead were heaped up all over the place, Shardings were arcing off with consummate lethality to chop apart the things that thought they were out of her range, and she always seemed to be in position to intercept clusters of the things spilling out, where their numbers generated more attacks and more explosive slaughter, not greater survival chances, the exact opposite of what was normally expected.
With me present, she didn’t need to waste Shardings on weak things, and calmly worked that into her movements. I calmly picked off the weaker things shrieking, squealing, and making other kinds of skin-crawling sounds as they squeezed out of the Writhing Well into a Hell of vivus and a Sword ringing Ding! Ting! and corpses of their own heaping up and Burning down as vivus poured in hungry streams down the Well.
Her nameless Song wasn’t even interrupted as she asked me, “You got him?” perfunctorily.
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I nodded once. “Petrified in a private crypt lined with lead. Itemized him and he’s in my Portable Hole.” One Dart, aie! Two, shriiiek! Three, awoo! One Dart, arrrr! Two, eeeeek! Three, squeeee!…
Most of which were overwhelmed by the sounds the bigger things were making as she shredded them, treating hide, scales, shells, and carapaces with equal disdain, and all of which somehow blended in musically to what she was Singing along, even bearing the right notes somehow.
Heartsingers, gotta love them.
“So, we can pop this thing and we’re out of here.” An ominous new note arose from Tremble, and Dread supplied Endure’s normal beat in anticipation, none of which made the hordelings squeezing through into this place any more confident of their chances.
“I can Shape a path out easy.” I didn’t even ask if she could hold it until it was time, but she’d have to get into it once the Well blew, and we wouldn’t have the time.
“Nah, that’s not where we’re going.” She took just a flicker of a moment to turn and look at me, her golden hair swirling, her Hagmark up and the foul blue of the thing pulsing Black with the presence of the Well, her heavens-blue eyes shining and meeting mine.
I followed her gaze down, into the depths of the Well, saw her tense her feet and turn them just so.
“Right.” And without further ado, I jumped over and past her, plummeting down the very center of the Well, ignoring the hordelings clawing their ways up on all sides who couldn’t touch me.
She was up in the air much too fast, and coming down even faster as she whooped joyfully, “TREMBLE, SHE COMES!” with all the hag’s laughter following it.
Tremble’s golden-edged blade of adamant tore into the side of the Writhing Well, and the thing woven of dimensional skeins and phase spider silks and continuity of Sins and the passage of mortal souls split apart under an effective +XV edge that could happily slice the firmament.
Space howled around us, vivus ignited as Immortal Power went wild, and Sama tore a mad laughing path down through and past the hordelings trying to squeeze their way up, doom plummeting past them towards the nexus at the bottom of the Well.
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Connsie Weilbur was a hyn Adventurer, a sneaky git who delighted in removing the assets of her enemies, getting in where she shouldn’t, and killing things that thought themselves far too tough to die to a hyn.
She was also tough, determined, and could act as an observer if needed. She had been selected to sit outside and monitor the situation of Castle Bludevich on its high mountain steadfast, seeing if anything unusual was going to happen.
Something definitely was, because the earth started shaking rather badly. -Sir!- she /blurted out to Commander Briggs, Sama and Lady Edge off-line due to their locations and the risks involved. She /dumped the view of what she was seeing to him as the ground began to get bright down below…
Streaks of harsh white Light blew out of the ground, punching through rock like taffy. Like dartholes in paper, they began to walk up the side of the cliffs about the castle, the stone corroding away around them, the rumbling only getting worse.
The entire base of the mountain blew away, raining… mist and dust out and down in a broad umbrella as the stones there were simply annihilated. The whole side of the mountain shattered as etherflames and hungry Light extended upwards…
The walls were cut apart, shattered, fell as the towers were both falling over and being launched into the sky by eruptions from below. The keep and bastions shattered, blew apart as fountains of etherflame blew through them and reached for the sky… and then, with a roar and rumble of catastrophe come to claim them, the entire side of the mountain, including the entire picturesque and indomitable, unassailable castle, dropped down, straight down, chased by rains of returning vivic fire and annihilation.
The valley in front of her vanished behind a cloud of vivic ethermist, Burning stone, and reality warbles curdling the cold mountain air.
She didn’t know how long it would take to clear, but even her last view of it said that the castle of Prince Morphail, most powerful vampire lord in the world, was no more.
-Stay there until you’ve a good view of the valley after it clears, then pull back to extraction,- the deep, calm /voice of Commander Briggs echoed through her, instantly calming down the heady combination of fear and excitement going through her.
Obviously he wasn’t worried at all about his wife and the Lady Edge, which meant there was nothing to worry about.
The master vampire and his minions had just gotten a taste of what was coming to them.
She doubted he was dead. Casters at that level were just too hard to kill so simply, you had to be up in their faces and watching their bodies and souls Burn to vivus to be sure they weren’t coming back.
But the massiveness of this? Would it break Morphail’s control over his vampire lords, unleashing them onto the mortals and starting the catastrophe all undead built towards?
Her Elven Cloak wrapped around her and her Amulet of Ironblood keeping her cozy despite the chill and mountain winds, she blended into the gray stone and waited to see what was left of the place.
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I came falling upwards out of the wormhole on the other side of the Writhing Well. Probably wouldn’t have gone too high, except I added Flight to it and kept going, rather than falling down into the things gathered on all sides.
The spray of vivic fire blowing through and past me scattered anything flying, so I didn’t have to kill anything immediately.
Cracks and unraveling whorls were showing in the wormhole even before Sama came whooping out through it, carving a line of severance through spatial threads and folds and trailed by a whole lot of Immortal Power starting to leak and Burn.
She reached for Dread, grinning ear to ear as she grabbed him and pulled close to me. The Force Bubble surrounded us just as the Well behind us snapped entirely, ignited, and a Whole Lot (precise numbers to be determined later) of Immortal Power blew off.
The world vanished in whiteness, both Dread and Tremble were thrumming happily as they sucked in that sweet and juicy Immortal Power to upgrade themselves. We both went tumbling through the air, braced around Dread’s length as we spun dizzily, her heavyfoot and my Flight pressing against the spin and slowing it down even as we were blown away as easily as a falling leaf in front of the eruption going off around us.
“Kinda big, isn’t it?” Sama asked as we spun through the air, plying magic and ki against our spin without blinking an eye.
“Planar resonance. The Immortal Power is tied to this Plane, we’re in the home of its ruler,” I answered calmly. “So the place is kind of superconducting the effect, like giving vivus a free entry into your home realm to eat and feast.”