Session 2: The Figure in Shadows Pt 1
General Summary
Having agreed to Lord Tyranax Calyops' terms, the Temple Thieves, as they call themselves (privately, of course), are given their first target: a ship's figurehead supposedly ensconced in the ruins of the nearby Rain Temple of the god Templatir. The Golden Empire of the Neher is now but a twilight memory of its once powerful and glorious past. Only the core of Empire remains, wasting away into hedonism and decadent magic. The ancient cities of the empire have fallen to ruin and been retaken by the wilderness. That means, despite the efforts of the Legacy Rangers and the Moonrise Knights, whose numbers are not nearly what once they were, those ruins are now ripe for plundering. Most of those closest to cities have already been stripped of their treasures, of course, but there are still one or two that keep their secrets, protected by magic, puzzles, or difficult-to-access locations. The ruins of the Rain Temple is one of these. Located not far from Etherian Elps, City of Domes, the Last City of the North, the Rain Temple was a place of solitude and introspection for a millennia, dedicated to one of the Twilight Empire’s Gods of Elder Thought: Templatir, a deity of education and contemplation. During the Kingmage wars, the Rain Temple was occupied by the followers of the Darken Fey’s Queen of Night and Magic. Most of the Templatirians’ relics and books were moved early in the war to the capital at Amerest Adone, but not all. Some were overlooked, and some, such as the Winged Figurehead, were too large. It is this figurehead that Lord Tyranex Calyops, the beholder patron of the Temple Thieves, wishes retrieved. Anything else the party finds is theirs to keep. The adventurers procure some essentials for the travel to the temple, which is only a half-day's ride outside of the city, including a cart and pony, before setting out on the Northing Road. The Northing Road is one of the last roads maintained by the Twilight Empire in the north, and is the primary conduit between the empire and the Belt Cities. Even so, it is not well-maintained, nor is it excessively travelled. Encountering a Moonrise Knight or Legacy patrol is far more likely than coming upon an Arabellan trading caravan, though the latter does happen. The Northing Road as it leads out of the Ether is a flying road, built up on buttressing arches to leave the city above its protective walls of dark granite. Near the city, repairs are better done, but the magical and architectural skills required to rebuild the elevated portions of the road perfectly have long been gone. Great gaps in the gray-stone structure have been bridged with patches made of thick planks neatly fitted into the breaches. From this height, the farmlands surrounding the city -- marshy rice paddies, for the most part, gleaming in reflected sunlight -- stretch out for miles, and the remnants of the Eastering Road can be seen jagged and toothy in the distance to the right. To the north is the encroaching forest, first the Marshwode, and then, beyond them, the thicker woods called the Mosquito Reach. The road drops down from the heights once it has cleared the farmlands, about a mile from the city, and takes to the ground, kept dry atop a causeway of packed earth. Here, where the breezes aren’t as omnipresent as they were higher up, the adventurers are beset by an oppressive summer heat. Large-eyed water bison turn their matted, shaggy heads and watch as they pass, chewing on tall leafy shoots that make their own diminutive forest of grasses to either side of the Northing Road. When at last they entered the woods, it was to welcome shade and the sight of a coin deer leaping off the road ahead and in among the twisting and arching roots of the mandill trees flanking the cracked pavement. It is also to the sight of a lone traveler idling toward Ether from parts north. Though cloaked, the figure's hood does little to disguise the fact that he is a Kenku -- as it turns out, a Kenku bard named Fallenbridge, that quickly (almost TOO quickly) ingratiates himself with the party. He then petitions to join them on their quest, presumably because he has been searching for a group of adventurers so as to live out the adventures he has previously only repeated (in perfect mimicry) as told from the mouths of some of the finest storytellers, singers, and skalds of the Belt Cities and the Twilight Empire. The Thieves and their new companion eventually reach the point on their rough map where they are to leave the road and venture into the woods proper. They hide the cart and pony (hoping neither will be eaten by anything while they're away), and strike off, following game trails and what little geographic knowledge they have of this area. Within an hour, they smell the faint scent of roasting meat and hear the low murmur of voices from up ahead in the trees. Here, the mandills give way to more conventional oak and birch, their leafiness blocking good views of whoever, or whatever, might be beyond. A quick scouting mission reveals that they have found the Rain Temple, and more! The ruins of the Rain Temple are located in a half-moon hollow, behind and above which is earth dense with blackberry vines and tall, spindly trees. The stonework of the temple is obviously old. Large granite blocks that once fitted together hardly without seam are now misaligned and askew. Three entrances are cut into the back wall of the hollow, opening into a portico of sorts that is the frame for another, larger entrance, this one blocked by a huge stone slab inscribed with runes that cannot be easily discerned from a distance, but which are well-lit by the reddish light from two portable, copper braziers filled with coals, flanking the inner door. The floor of the hollow is of worked stone pavers, now at different heights, pushed up by roots and the hydraulic action of centuries of rainfall. This area is also filled with the accoutrements of a strange camp: tents of a foreign make, pavilion-like, but with high, sharp points, and edged in bright, primary colors on white fabric. Around and between these, eight or ten scorpion-tattooed southerners, brown-skinned and dressed in leathers, djabala and headscarves, actively go about their several duties, much of which seems to involve putting together equipment to breach the main door of the temple. Nearby are picketed a half dozen Neheran work horses and three top-heavy wagons such as the wandering Risli employ. But no Risli are in evidence. More alarming still, staked out on a rope that seems far too thin for its strength, a scorpion the size of a pony stalks and pulls close to the temple’s portico, occasionally tended by a keeper from among the southerners. Wisely, the adventurers decide to scout the rest of the temple to see if there is another entrance. Ruhst and Fallenbridge head out to do so, but run afoul of a Scorpion Cult picket. After a brief tussle, they kill one the guardsman, but the noise brings more, and it is only the timely intervention of Trajinous, Percy, and Kelpip -- also drawn by the sound of sword-on-sword -- that decides things before the whole camp falls upon the interlopers. Deciding to continue around the ruins together (and to put in an order for matching "Never Separate the Party" t-shirts on Amazon) the Thieves discover a disintegrating tower. The hollow of the tower and portions of two supporting walls are all that remain of where the upper stories of the Rain Temple once stood. Shrouded in blackberry bushes and twined with the trunk of an ancient tree, the tower has become almost a part of the forest. Openings at the base though, tangled with thorny vines, lead 'inside'. Past thorny, clutching vines that have to be chopped away, a staircase at the base of the tower, slick with moss and dew, winds down and around from the tower’s lowest level into a hollow scooped out of the ground. This hollow is circled by pillars supporting the roof of a recessed breezeway. A door is set into one wall of the breezeway, past the roots of the massive tree that has melded with the tower above, and appears to be a much better way in to the remnants of the temple than the heavily-guarded front door, though fallen columns and uprooted pavers do make an obstacle course of the floor of the hollow. However, as the Thieves proceed carefully down the crumbling staircase, and with a wrenching of the earth, the roots of the massive, smooth-boled tree rip themselves free of vines, dirt, and stonework. Choking dust fills the air, and the roots begin to flail and toss, searching to crush and mangle the intruders!
