2705:11:26
22:35
Rounds thirty-one
to thirty-five
Flash
The green troll's ray hits the retreating elf and he is surrounded by a
burst of light, similar to those that punched holes in the wall. For an
instant, Flash is overwhelmed by a wrenching, tearing feeling and then
it passes. Slightly surprised that he is still alive, Flash thinks a
message to the others via the rings:
"Help!! We can't hold this breach....it must be closed off with magic
or something... need more re-enforcements to help with those that are
already through. WE HAVE TO KEEP THEM OUTSIDE OF THE WALLS -- it is
carnage in here."
Then, privately to Artak: "Can you find out if they have weakness to
something that we can replicate... like sunlight? And real quick!"
As Flash and the other troops continue to fall back, the trolls move
forward. Two trolls dart unexpectedly to one side, leaving a small
group of archers with no escape route. Flash is about to charge to
their aid when there is another sickening exploding sound and -- to a
man -- the group of archers bursts into lumps of flesh and bone.
Only Flash can differentiate the green troll from the browns. He
notices that as the trolls advance, the browns fall into a rough
formation around the mottled green.
Euvgeni
Euvgeni turns to face the ice-breathing green troll, one hand clutching
at the Pendant of the Twelve Villages.
The barbarian's hand comes to rest on the largest of the four remaining
globes, and with one fluid motion, he pulls it free of the chain and
hurls it in the face of the mottled troll. The nearby troops are thrown
to the ground by the force of the resulting explosion, and Euvgeni
himself feels a wave of superheated air wash over him. A smell of
burned flesh and hair fills his nostrils.
As the smoke clears, the burly warrior yells encouragingly at the
nearby forces: "What the hell are you doing dying on me! Keep together!
Stop being split up!" Euvgeni continues barking commands as the young
messager darts forward and thrusts a potion into his hand. Assuming it
is a healing potion, Euvgeni downs it. Immediately he feels
lightheaded... and lightarmed... and lightbodied... it occurs to him
that this is probably the flying potion he asked the king for at the
beginning of the battle.
Euvgeni wills himself off the ground, and the smoke clears enough to
reveal the fate of the green troll. Although most of the creature's
face is missing, the troll is still standing. Now hovering slightly
above the battle, Euvgeni sees the green troll pound one of the
alchemist's fire throwers into ground with disturbing accuracy. He
realises that even thought the troll's eyes have been burned away, it
can somehow still see!
The burly warrior doesn't hesitate. Wielding Defender and his Sceptre of Might Euvgeni attacks
the troll, flying loops around it. Despite its blindness, the troll
tries to target Euvgeni with its deadly rays, but he is able to dodge
them and cut the creature down. As soon as it falls, he rallies his
squad forward towards the other trolls.
Tekuna
Replying to Fengar's question, Tekuna thinks: "That'd be a big 'yes'.
We could really use some dwarven soldiers with experience fighting
trolls in confined quarters."
"Send half, or just less than half, and keep the rest in reserve in
case you are attacked," interjects Euvgeni.
Then, using the Chain of Transport, Tekuna teleports to the Rotan Alms
House and rouses some of the beggars sheltering in the cellar. She
orders them up on to the rooves to watch for trolls and gives them
brief instructions on how to signal to each other.
"But it's really dangerous out there..." one of the beggars starts to
say, before the look in Tekuna's eye persuades him that it would be a
lot more dangerous for him to stay inside the cellar.
As the misfits and vagabonds spill out onto the streets and make their
way onto the rooftops, Tekuna and two rather surprised signallers
vanish from the cellar to reappear on the roof of the Rotan Palace.
Quickly the snow-haired roguess begins attaching a rope to one of the
nearby carvings.
Damalanthas
Damus makes the most of the reprieve offered by Souriin and Euvgeni's
fireballs and directs his attention to the glistening ramp. Making his
way forward, he conjures up a crackling wall of blistering fiery heat
behind the strange ectoplamic forms, hoping to cut them off from any
supporting trolls making their way up the ramp.
Charging forward, the bard's voice rises in song, calling men of
courage to defend the ramp against the spectres. Laughing maniacally at
his own madness, Damalanthas leads a wave of men along the top of the
wall. His blade, Dirge, waves above his head, its steel ringing with
its own song of death.
And then one of the strange transparent creatures walks right through
the bard's illusionary wall, seemingly oblivious to it. It lashes out
with a clawed limb and sends a dwarven axeman tumbling from the wall.
Two more of the creatures close in on Damus and his men from the other
side, both walking straight through the fiery wall.
Artak
With well-rehearsed precision, Artak and his team strap the prone troll
into the interrogation chamber's rack. Perhaps sensing the danger it is
now in, the troll regains consciousness. It roars and bellows,
straining against the thick leather bonds, and Artak's team all take an
involuntary step back.
But the straps are strong enough to restrain the ferocious creature,
and Deppin steps forward with a bubbling vial. The scent of melted
troll flesh soon fills the room. Artak examines the resulting wound and
calls out an estimate of the damage. One of his assistants scrawls
notes on a large blackboard. The herbalist's eyes dart across the
assortment of vials and containers on the shelves, trying to decide
which one to test next.
Artak reaches up to a small vial of clear red liquid -- a mind-altering
cordial. Deppin looks at Artak knowingly. In the not-to-distant past
Deppin has tested the effects of different doses on himself, so he is
well aware of its potent effect. Just a few drops to the blood stream
had caused him to withdraw, whispering in his head, reviving memories
that he wasn't even sure were his.
The impact on the troll is more drastic, almost instantly the
creature's eyes take on a distant look. For the next few minutes, Artak
tries to get a reaction from the troll, but nothing -- including the
detachment of a limb -- results in any response. Clearly the liquid
would be a potent weapon, but Artak knows that it would take weeks to
brew any significant quantity of the cordial.
Souriin
As the invisible mage moves carefully past the thronging trolls toward
the grounded dragon, he notices that the trolls do not seem to be
attacking Ayak. They are simply moving around the black dragon and on
towards the walls.
Suddenly, a voice emanates from the message tube tucked into Souriin's
belt. Damalanthas can hardly hear his tube over the sound of the raging
battle and the nearby flames, but Tekuna and Euvgeni can clearly hear a
familiar voice from their tubes.
"It is I, Seth Benturu, known to you as Athalar. I have been appraised
of your situation and I bring you a message of hope from the Penrith
Resistance. We are about to make contact with a being I hope will aid
us all in this battle. But for this plan to work, it is vitally
important that you throw everything you have at the green trolls. They
are the key; take them out and the Troll-King will no longer be able to
control his troops. Will you do this? Do you trust me?"
With a sense of horror, Souriin realises that the sound of Athalar's
voice has attracted the attention of a troll. Even worse, it is a green
troll and it is now looking directly at him. While another part of his
mind notes distractedly that Ayak seems to be stirring again, Souriin
hopes that the green troll's attention will not remain on him.
And then Athalar speaks
again: "One more thing. It is absolutely vital that you avoid
teleporting or anything similar near the green trolls. The trolls have
not mastered the discipline of psychoportation and you must not give
them any ideas. Things will get a lot worse if the Troll-King learns
how to move the trolls around without using the Troll Gate."
As Souriin's tube finally falls silent, the green troll -- now facing
Souriin -- raises its arms. His instincts take over, and without
hesitation the mage casts the most powerful spell left in his
repetoire. The laws of physics alter in an instant, and gravity
reverses, hurtling the green troll and several others near him into the
air. Smiling grimly, Souriin calls forth more shadows, and sends them
floating up towards the helpless trolls.
Next, Souriin shouts at the dragon in Draconic: "Awaken Ayak, or they
shall take ye prisoner, and the troll king will have a mount for his
pleasure, and ye shall know an eternity of servitude. Smite the green
trolls and remain free."
Mindscape
II
Shortly after
speaking to the real Lords, Athalar opens a bridge into the mindscape
of the Overmind, where the real Damalanthas lurks. He and Manto (a
member of the Penrith Resistance) appear in the Overmind's mindscape.
Athalar explains that he (and Areena, prior to her absorption) have
been working with agents of the Penrith Resistance and have discovered
a way to create 'bridges' between different mindscapes. Each
psionically active 'community' creates its own mindscape, which
provides a mechanism for psionic communication and, to some extent,
other psionic powers. The Resistance has one, the Overmind has one and
(presumably) other psionic races also have mindscapes.
Athalar reveals that each group of invading trolls has its own
mindscape. It is through this mindscape that the green trolls are able
to exert control over the white and brown trolls. The Troll King also
has a link to each mindscape so that he can exert some control over the
other trolls. Athalar shares his knowledge of how to create a bridge
with the Overmind, as a peace offering from the Penrith Resistance. He
explains that he has just told the Lords of Rotan that they should
focus all of their efforts on the green trolls, and he intends to ask
the Overmind to create a bridge to the Rotan trolls' mindscape and
attack the green trolls from within the mindscape simultaneously.
Together with the absorbed version of Areena, Athalar and Manto return
to the mindscape of the Penrith Resistance, leaving Damus alone in the
Overmind's mindscape with Sifreena, the former Council member for the
Empire.
Since it presents a possible means for him to escape his imprisonment,
Damalanthas agrees to travel through a bridge to the troll's mindscape
and undertake an attack on the green trolls in an attempt to collapse
the mindscape entirely. To aid him, the Overmind offers to create
contructs of the companions it has recently 'read' -- Euvgeni, Flash
and Souriin. (It also gives Damus the option of sending another copy of
himself through the bridge, but the bard decides that the real him
should go.) A copy of Sifreena also travels with them. Damalanthas has
a hard time convincing the copies -- especially Souriin -- that they
are actually copies.
The Lords (or at least one Lord, and three copies of Lords) enter the
wintery mindscape created by the green trolls in charge of the force
attacking Rotan. The quickly discover that there is a lattice of
rubbery rope-like strands in the mindscape with smaller nodes
representing the junior trolls, and larger nodes with multiple
connections which belong to the green trolls.
The Lords enter the nodes, and experience several sets of trollish
memories, revealing:
- the initial arrival on
the arctic continent of a group of human settlers from the resistance,
together with a huge crystal
- the gradual evolvement
of the trolls' psionic powers as a result of contact with the psicrystal
- the subdual and
enslavement of the artic orge races by the trolls
- the development of the
Troll King as the leader of the trolls
- a failed attack on the
trolls by the illithids
- the sacrifice of
fifteen of the elephant-like baku, leading to a significant change in
the Troll King's visible form
In parallel with their
experiences in the memory-nodules, the Lords are able to briefly
possess the green trolls in and near Rotan. This leads to some unusual
situations, such as Euvgeni being attacked by himself while possessing
a green troll. During one of these incidents, the copy of Sifreena is
apparently accidentally destroyed. (The real Euvgeni is convinced that
one of the green trolls speaks a few words in Yablonc before he cut it
down. He isn't sure whether he should mention this to anyone else.)
After several draining confrontations, the Lords have only one memory
nodule left to desecrate. Around them, the artic mindscape is
flickering and morphing alarmingly. They enter the final nodule, and
have a momentary glipse of a githyanki, before being violently flung
back into the trollish mindscape. Suddenly, all of the remaining green
trolls appear the mindscape themselves, and immediately attack the
Lords with everything they have. The resulting battle is ferocious, but
the Lords manage to outfight the the trolls. With the mindscape
collapsing, Damus looks for a way out.
He finds only a small metallic disk. Gravely hoping that he is not
making a mistake, he -- and the copies of Souriin, Flash and Euvgeni --
touch the disk are are immediately sucked through...
...they find themselves in an altogether different place, and
completely surrounded by githyanki warriors.
Aftermath
As a result of the events taking place in the trollish mindscape, all
eight of the green trolls commanding the trollish invasion of Rotan
have been incapacitated. Those that were not physically destroyed,
collapsed unmoving to the ground when the green trolls physically
entered the mindscape to attack the Lords (in the same way that
Souriin, Euvgeni and Flash collapsed when they were temporarily
absorbed by the Overmind).
The impact of the collapse of the mindscape on the other trolls is
immediate and drastic. In seconds, the brown trolls change from a
tightly focussed attack force to a mixture of stunned, motionless
trolls and vicious, rampaging
trolls. Those outside the city walls stop moving en masse towards the
breach. Some move back towards the cavalry mopping up the trolls on the
battlefields behind them, many move towards the recovering black
dragon, a few continue on towards the city and some begin attacking
each other.
The ectoplasmic shapes which Damalathas and his men are fighting on the
walls vanish, as does the ectoplasmic ramp. The remaining groups of
white trolls become visible again. They are gathered in one group at
the foot of the wall, and are all amongst the stunned trolls.
A spontaneous cheer erupts from the defenders of the city.
Damalanthus breathes an incredulous sigh of relief from the top of the
walls. He looks confusedly at the sword in his hand, casts his gaze
around, but can see no logical reason for the apparitions disappearing
and the ramp vanishing. His wall of fire now hangs crackling in
mid-air. Turning to the soldiers with him, he smiles knowingly (a
ruse). "Let's kick the scum out of our city!" The charge at the ramp
turns around and Damus and the forces with him sweep into the city
streets to hunt down trolls, all of them chanting a Rotan victory song
at the top of their lungs.
Sizing up the new situation quickly, Euvgeni quickly barks out fresh
orders: "Attack the whites! Get rid of any psionic capability. We need
to be careful not to lose more forces to the brown trolls. Force the
breach closed! Otherwise we'll still lose a lot of soldiers and
civilians." At the back of his mind, Euvgeni is still wondering if he
imagined the green troll speaking his native language before it
collapsed.
More calmly, Tekuna makes some suggestions: "Perhaps we could have the
cavalry regroup outside the walls to track any that escape into the
countryside? Hopefully that isn't going to be a huge problem - most of
the civilian
population is inside the city anyway. We'll have time to weed them out,
we just need to give the wizards and priests (and soldiers!) a chance
to rest a bit first."
Souriin changes back to Souriin, since it is bad idea to be a troll
right now. He raises his voice in draconic: "Strike the white trolls
that brought you down from the skies. Before they're able to finish
what they started!". Souriin
commands his shades to attack the white trolls. He then shifts form
into a pixie and darts off towards the cavalry to assist them.
Makor commands the circle of necromancers to withdraw. The trolls are
broken for the moment. No need for anyone to find a new enemy.
Belimirar casts a massive mirage
arcana, concentrating mainly on the smell of rotting meat. His
objective is to draw the trolls to one spot. His plan seems to work,
and the confused trolls gathered near his illusion are soon pounded by
fresh waves of catapult fire.
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