S1 E61: Borem Defeated
General Summary
In which their honor party turns into more than they bargained for, but the Scale Squad saves the world.
- As they celebrate on a wide, pixie-lit lawnscape of cotton candy flowers and edible pancake dishes, Blizzard and Mae become aware, suddenly, of how muddy the grounds have become - spoiling the fronds of candygrass. Mud automatically puts them on edge, and after asking one of the other partygoers about it - a man they discover chanting some kind of high level spell - everything flickers slightly. While nothing seems to come of it at first, they soon become aware now that the man has ceased chanting that the partygoers are either frozen in place, or looking at them oddly, unpleasantly - and Queen Titania and her husband, King Oberon, are among those who do not move - and then of a sudden, start melting away like so much chocolate hardcoat in the sun. But the mudd continues to bubble up
- Illusions drop around those who are still moving on the lawn, and Far Realms infiltrants make themselves known - monstrous shapes like man-sized mosquitoes - Mosquithers - and worse still, tentacles topped with teeth and more tentacles, and a goop-squirting collection of pus-bags surrounding a wide-open mandible-mouth. The battle ensues across a ground increasingly more marshy and hot; steam begins to escape, and bubbling acidified mud.
- The creatures are defeated, slowly and with difficulty, and the entuire time, more calcified mud boils up, until it begins covering sections of the ground. From its midst, an enormous nightmare head and shoulders, roiling with heat, rises up from the mud; it is Borem, and he glows from within, his purple Amethyst heart filled with the life energy of the magical slime created by Quindarin, the pinkish substance called gorgasuul, the Oil of the Slaad Lords.
- Combat against him proves frustrating, as the border between what is the monster and what is merely mud is entirely unclear. Chopping at the mud, burning it, freezing it, has no affect at all; he simply moves from a hundred other places, engulfing the ground, and the Scale Squad. Targeting the head, and trhe area around his heart, does seem to work, but only slightly.
- But the squad has the tear, and when Mae goes down under a slam of boiling mud, Zalock grabs the Silent Lady's Tear which has been preserved these 3,000 years by Elandir, watched over by Sylvanwroth, and shed from the eyes of the Lady of Pain herself - what looks like dirty mercury in a bottle. Expecting the effort will end him, nevertheless Zalock leaps headlong and spiraling into the core of Borem, the tear in his outstretched fingers.
- Contact breaks the thin glass of the vial, and the Lady of Pain's irresistable power to unmake gods unmakes Borem, almost instantaneously. HIs piteous howling is as much a last cry of rage at his creator, Quindarin, as it is his own pain at losing sentience. Perhaps he will join with the other dead gods floating in the infinite Astral Plane; perhaps he simply returns to what he was, a geothermal lake. But with his demise the barrier separating them from Titania splinters apart and she descends in rage and glory, furious at the gall of this creature keeping her out of any part of her own realm. "But we must make haste," she says. "We have gone off the edge of the Feywild, into its dark wilds, a place far worse than even the worst places of the Abyss; all the dark emotions gather here to fester - fear, grief, hate - made manifest as terrible forces even my powers are at a loss to master."
- As they rise out of the depths and return to the well-lit and more reasonable parts of the Feywild, they do catch a glimpse of something in the dark, huge and mindless, innocent and terrifying - an eight-armed abomination of black, rancid flesh that would tower over mountains on Tergaith, its hands posed in the blasphemous signs of the Ecstatum and Infernum invoking rituals predating life in the universe, its head as pale and smooth and simple as a drowned baby, grinning toothlessly, surmounted by the rays of a black sun. But that frightning reminder that evil has other forms besides defeated Borem does not diminish their relief that they have, in fact, defeated Borem; the Far Realms now must find other routes, and at best can only ooze into the material plane, rather than smashing into it catastrophically. Titania assures them that the Far Realms is a place of such chaos that it likely will not 'want' anything for millennia more, and bends their heads a bit wyhen she suggests perhaps destroying Borem was what it wanted in the first place, and by this chaotic path it too is happy now.
- The Scale Squad then enjoys the real party, fully, without any tingling feelings or worries; they are feted, properly, as the saviors of the realms by the queen of the Feywild. She grants them each a boon. All decide that, though they may certainly come together again in the future to reminisce and to perhaps pursue other adventures, they have earned a retirement and the opportunity to enjoy the thanks of the world that they have saved.
Rewards Granted
- One boon, or favor, that Titania might grant each of the PCs at some pointt in the future; they need merely ask for it.
Missions/Quests Completed
- Main Quest Complete
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