#53 - Words and Worms

As told by Magnus of the Island of Seren.

It turns out, we weren’t done.

Kard did some healing on Aleae and left for town. Rendar had tracked us and let us know that all was well with our stuff as he joined us. With the land-sharks dead, Eshka looked about and Cypher asked her about her earth magic. It was impressive to summon not one but two such fearsome beasts from bare earth!

As we walked about, some of us noticed that the earth was rumbling. I climbed up onto a rock wall and scanned the area. All at once this huge purple worm burst from the ground right in the middle of the group and right in front of me. I was wounded and bleeding but a rage came upon me and I mashed into the loathsome wiggler!

The whole party lit into the thing like they had been waiting for it! Spells and weapons tore into the beast, leaving huge wounds and frozen patches up and down its body—most of which wriggled under the earth. It knocked me off the wall and the fight raged on. It bit me and I dodged, then its stinger tail rose up and ran me through the chest like a spear....

When I woke up, Clarion was looking into my face, and the worm was dead. It took a few minutes to figure out that we had won and that in the process, Rendar had been swallowed and then fought his way out, cutting a hole in the worm’s side and sliding out again, covered in slime like a new baby. I wish I had seen that.

The male Stormwalker's mood had changed. Smiling, he helped me up and finally introduced himself as Durshast.

After some healing—my chest looks bad, and I am going to need a new scale or something for the hole in my armor—we moved away from the battle ground and sat down to talk.

The barbarian witch. Eshka—Durshast's sister—was making something out of the poison tail from the worm, a nasty weapon it seems.

It was time to tell my tale:

My tribe on Seren, the Bringers of Fire, is beholden to the red dragon Lucerix. He is old and powerful and wise.  He has visited our tribe many times in the tales and I have even seen him once, as a boy. He gives our tribe wisdom and magic and we give him our loyalty.

In my time, Radavar was our leader. He had instructed me as a boy and often discussed with me his plans and strategies when we raided other tribes. He was given insights into the Draconic Prophecies by Lucerix and I respected his will. Without the dragons to interpret them, the prophecies would seem to men as gibberish and we would lose our way.

We had long been told that the time of the Defiler would come.  That we would be called upon to resist the Defiler’s lies and that we would be tested as the Defiler came to corrupt all dragonkind. Somehow, the great dragons would need us and we could stand for them, if we are worthy
.
This was all I had known. But within this same year, a dark sage named Soloshan came to our tribe and began to say quietly that Lucerix was dead, and that his son Garcerix was his rightful heir. Soon his voice grew louder and some began to follow his ways. In the end, Soloshan and his dupes wrested power from Radavar. He was defeated in the rightful challenge of combat. Rather than kill him—as he would have wanted, for there is honor in death—he was left with us as our chief, but Soloshan truly rules. It is no way to be.

Scenes from the Last War

I was bound to die. There was no way for me to accept Soloshan as my leader, my chief or my king.  I would soon say something either in public or private that would start a fight or a war or simply a killing. Radovar and his loyal friends asked me to leave. I was to go out into the world, where war raged—obvious that the Defiler was behind such widespread chaos. I was to seek knowledge and allies and power that could help me upon my return to Seren. What I would find was not known, what I was to bring, or when, was not known. Radavar trusted me and he trusted the Prophecy to bring an end to the Defiler and his plots. I put myself in the service of his wisdom.

Since leaving, I have met stalwart companions who have fought beside me for reasons I do not understand.  Our paths are entwined by the dragons and I do not know which way to turn. Yet as I look back I can see a pattern, a guidance at work. I have great hope that the mace I now wield was named “the Defiler’s Dread” for a reason.

Is I finished up, I looked around.  The Stormwalkers were slack-jawed. After a few minutes of questions, they told their tale. Eshka did most of the talking.

It seems that their tribe had been duped by Garcerix as well. A woman who looked like one of my tribesmen came to them and told them that the Defiler was at work and that now as the time for all Serens to stand and fight. Acting in the name of Lucerix, the woman and her adviser convinced the Stormwalkers that a great fiend—one of "Khyber's first children"—was stirring: Katashka, the Demon Overlord of Undeath was to awaken from his dragon-induced sleep. The scales would swing and demons, not dragons would rise.

The Stormwalker's greatest warriors were lured away from their tribe on a false errand to meet with the other Seren tribes. Vulnerable in their absence, the Stormwalker village itself was then attacked and nearly wiped out by this woman, her pale, foreign adviser, and Garcerix the red dragon.

They believe that other tribes were treated the same, that Seren now lies in the hands of the foul, honorless Bringers of Fire and the usurper Garcerix.

Eshka cast a small spell of illusion and showed us likenesses of our enemies in the smoke. The woman Xiomara did look like a Seren from afar. I could clearly see that her fire tattoos were demonic, and not at all part of my tribe. The man was revealed and both Rendar and I recognized him—Cypher would, too, had he been himself. It was Avishad, the old wizard who had approached us on the Sky Talon, weeks ago, before turning into a raven and flying away when we rebuffed him.

Avashad

After defeat, the Stormwalkers who survived—Eshka, Durshast, and too few others—fled Seren to find answers for Seren’s troubles on the mainland, because all the foul players in their tale had come from afar. Once they reached the shores of Khorvaire, on the beaches of Q'Barra, they had been found by the House Phiarlan elves and joined up with the Carnival of Shadows. In exchange for their service and entertainment, the elves had done much research about the woman Xomara and found that she was a fiend-worshipping warlord from the Demon Wastes. The Wastes is a land in the northwest corner of this continent, a holdover from the Age of Demons. From what I hear, it may be a more dangerous place than the Mournland, for it has been a scar on Eberron for hundreds of thousands of years.

Xiomar herself hails from the Carrion Tribes, mostly human clans and cannibals who revere fiends. What is she doing outside of that foul land. More importantly, what was she doing in my homeland? Her purposes are most foul.

On discussing the Demon Wastes, Cypher said something like,  “You should travel to the Eldeen, for the people I serve there are also foes to this woman and the Demon hordes.”

Cypher, in the employ of the Eldeen? That makes no sense.

The Demon Wastes lie in the northwest
corner of the continent of Khorvaire, due
north of the Eldeen Reaches.
(Click for a larger view.)

Then it hit me.

“Claviger, is that you?” I asked.

Cypher looked up at me and after a long hesitation, he said, “Yes.”

I blinked. I think everyone did. Eventually, it sort of came out that Claviger was here with us, but bereft of his memories. He certainly fought with more martial grace than Cypher does. I don’t understand, but the group seems to think that somehow the final messenger had more to it than Cypher ever thought.

We decided to make our way back to the city while we puzzled these events and stories out.  Soon enough, we were washed in the river and headed back to the city in a rented fisherman’s boat.

We have a big dinner party tonight, and a meeting with a warforged of some renown in this land.

Perhaps the elf witch—the Mistress of the Carnival who looked more like Aleae than the other elves—can help us understand our fate.

Though, without Cypher, I feel lost.