The Story So Far

Into The Broken Lands ********************************* Blackfoot and Hugh make their way to the crossroads which are the true entrance to the Lands. Known as the Lost Crossroads, they are an abandoned, destitute place. Falling down structures in a scrub-brush landscape among a dusty, umber glow. A signpost points in dead script towards dead villages. The heroes set off towards Akital, the wizards outpost, now a ruin. A second sun appears in the sky, with an arc of plasma between. They come upon the spectral form of a mysterious dwarf. He seems to be trying to speak but quickly winks out. A few turns down the trail, they encounter the same dwarf, embedded in a stone from the waist down. He writhes a bit but cannot speak. Search reveals a square-tipped blade near him in the tall grass. The heroes leave it within reach and continue. Oversized insects buzz through the area: wasps as big as house-cats, butterflies with several-foot wingspan. The terrain becomes thick with copses of succulent-type plants as they approach the ridgeline covered with tropical forest. They skirt the edges of a bog and allies appear. memories tell Briar that the small horde of mud-men/homonculi which appear are a product of the magical anti bodies of the island. Diminuitive proto-golems made of clay and mud, they accept commands and are helpful crossing ravines and ascending embankments by making a bridge of themselves and stacking into pyramid formation. Upon approaching the front gate of Akital, an overgrown complex of onion-domes in the jungle, the shrieks of the Faceless Shriekers are heard and strange lights flicker from within. With the homonculi taking the lead, a strange force ripples the air and seizes a number of them and dismembers them. Further in, they encounter an egg-clutch of the shriekers, an alcove thick with mucusy-membranes. A quick battle ensues when the shrieker bursts around the corner: a pale hairless ghoul with a blank head except for a long snaking proboscis. It has 3 talons on each limb and its legs bend backwards like a cats. A scimitar strike from the druid ends it. Searching deeper into the structure reveals the chamber of the archmage. Against a wall is a strange mirror with a stout stone box below it. The mirror shows a strange reflection: Briar's reflection is that of AlFang, in full shaman head-dress and regalia. Behind him crawl spectral things; softly glowing blue and green centipedes and things either plant, animal, or insect crawl in the reflection. Intuition tells him these are another expression of the islands magical defenses/antibodies. The stone box/stasis box contains the crystal staff holding Othon the Air Elemental. The sky sled rests nearby, concealed behind debris. Further noises in the ruin sound closer. A wall of broken stone collapses, nearly trapping them in rubble. A second Shrieker appears, larger and darker. The mud men do their best to encumber and grapple with it long enough to mortally wound it with another scimitar strike. Turning a corner to the room with the flickering lights, they come across the Arboga: a multi-dimensional mutated squid humanoid drawn from the interstices by a hunger for magic. It has stealthed itself by spreading its tentacles out in a blinding sensor-null net. It wounds them with barbed tentacle strikes but is overcome when Briar hurls a magic arrowhead at it with his sling. The powerful magic of the arrowhead glows and smokes and sputters, incapacitating the horrid creature. The mudmen lift the Arboga and hurl it into the fractured dimensional armature device in the center of the chamber. The monster elongates and disappears into a rip in space. Shortly the staff is applied to the Sky sled and the party take flight through a gap in the dome. The watercourse next to the structure resolves into a waterfall which falls upward, into the sky. Ri learns to channel the power of the air elemental and they flit off.