Reign of Winter, San Diego Pathfinder gaming group: Session 19: Reign of Winter, The Shackled Hut: The Market square, Dawn Pipers, gremlins and Baba's hut!!

Diary of Zaaz Bloodfortune:

Some ask why witches seem to have such a love for the base elements, the seasons, the positions of the stars. It is because they don’t understand the nature of the reality we live in. Fire, water, air, and earth. Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. These base elements are the fundamental building blocks of what is. We can never truly understand any them to our core though, as we are not one of those things, but all of them. The seasons are the time of those elements. Spring is the season of water. Showers that fall down upon our lands to give bounty. Summer is the season where fire holds most influence, bringing the heat that warms. Fall, the season of earth as the leaves fall to ground to nourish the next season. Winter is a gale glowing in cold mercilessness. The heavens bring the alignments to it all. Good, evil, chaos and law. This may be the influences of the various gods, but who can tell for sure. All of this goes into making what we see, reality. My learning of my craft has focused mostly on the simple surface of those influences, and seasons and elements, but I always understood well from the teachings of my mother and the voices of the spirits that what I was learning was only the smallest part. The bending of our reality to what we wish it to be that we call hexes. The redirection of energies that we call spells. These things were just tools in my hands and the idea that we were changing the basis of reality was just a far off idea. This did change and I begin a greater understanding….

The trolls being taken care of, deeper into this strange forest of the hut we did enter. The path was wide in some places, narrow in others. Obviously great effort had been taken to keep the path clear as the great dense thickets of thorn and branch that edged the trail were neigh impossible to traverse on foot. Soon, we came to a clearing and could see off to one side a path leading towards a strange sight. A lone fay, I knew only as a Dawn piper from my research on the folk, stood surrounded by a pool of silvery shimmering water. A constant flow of water ran from the edge of the pool towards the center and streamed up into the sky. Between the streams snow fell back down into the pool below. Strange and strange a sight. The creature did greet us with little enthusiasm, but no apparent malice as it warned us to stay clear of its pool. It seemed to mean us no harm, so going back to our original path we continued in towards the center.

Close to the center we found our target, but also a new obstacle. The hut was amazing. Standing tall and proud on two legs in a clearing, but chains on its leg holding it on short shrift. One could understand the power of Baba Yaga if she was able to command such a majestic artifact. Surrounding the clearing it was in was a vortex of black energy forming a circle of wind and a vortex of power. Within me my heart began to hammer for some reason as I saw leaves, snow, and debris being sucked into this maelstrom of nothing. A thrumming resonance in my blood called out. The voices, so ever present, came to silence. Yoska called out, “look its getting bigger slowly.” Then I knew. Then, all of my teachings about the nature of things came to roost. This strange ritual magic was slowly eating away at the reality around it. Reality was being ripped away piece by small piece and taken…. elsewhere… The thrum in my heart was the resonance of reality calling to me in pain for a relief from this tearing. I thought deep into my memories of all I had learned and knew that nothing I could do would be powerful enough to end this. A Vortex like this would need energy on this side of the portal to power it until it got big enough to sustain itself though. Desna help us if it was already there. Still, it’s growth was slow so I thought, there do yet be time.

Tearing my eyes away from the madness before me, I found that Noname was looking for help. While we had studied the hut and the vortex, he had taken his frogicorn around to scout a bit and had discovered what purported to be a family stuck in a tree. Going over to look we saw that when the forest had suddenly burst forth, a tree had grown directly under one of the houses and carried it all the way up into the canopy. Calling upon our ability to fly, Yoska and I flew up to help. I tried to reason with the little girl who opened the door, but she being scared of the witches was loth to let me in. Yoska quickly took charge and made clear their choice of accept help or not, choose one and do it quickly. A bit intimidated by Yoska’s brief speech the little girl quickly opened the door. Seeing it was indeed three small children with a father pained by a broken leg, I flew in and quickly gave healing to all four. Noname had excellently had the idea to use a ring of feather fall for the father while Yoska and I ferried out the three children. Seeing they were also quite thin and gaunt from their many days in the trees, I passed them the box of vegetables I had taken from the witches. It makes sense it pass back to those they likely stole it from. Crying in relief, the family was effusive in their thanks. The farmer pressed into my hands a gift of magic protection. Telling them the way out and warning them of the fighting going on, we wished them the best of luck and sent them on their way.

Taking one of the other paths out of the clearing we were in, we soon came to another Dawn piper, this one standing on a rock platform. Surrounded by 6 large floating boulders, he almost immediately attacked us with a burst of rock and earth. His voice rang out as well telling us that this reality would soon be gone. He also cast grease upon the rock he stood on to make it most difficult to reach him. I tried to slumber him, but it didn’t take hold. Sadobras hit him with a sling stone, but found that stone doesn’t have much effect against a fay of the earth. Noname tried to bull rush him with Frogicorn to some effect and Yoska flew in to go toe to toe. Reaching into my pouch I pulled forth a wand of Icicles I had been hording there and hit him with a massive pointy pillar of ice. Though he could not easily charge at one up on a platform of stone, Sadobras proved to have more than one trick up his sleeve. On his sleeve, actually. He pulled another patch off his cloak and threw it to the ground by the platform quickly providing a way up for Dalomar. Dalomar went up and threatened the Dawn piper giving Yoska a chance to strike again. His cold iron flaming scimitar came down to massive effect. The fay dropped down and the six floating boulders shattered to dust. I could feel in my heart we had lessoned the energy in the area and it became clear to us all that the source of power to the disruption of reality were these creatures. One of the elements down, we knew now that the rest must be stopped as well.

Conniving a plan of great cunning Yoska and I led the attack on the water Dawn piper, but as with most plans it failed to live up to expectation. The Dawn piper did throw off our attempted misfortune and slumber. Striking back at us with a blast of sonic energy, the battle was joined. Hiding off to the side as well, a pair of sprigging did move in to strike at us as well, and in particular at me. Hit I was and so I went up a bit higher in the air with my fly and healed myself. Yoska hit one with slumber taking it quickly down. The other, Sadobras charge in on and with a mighty charge killed it quickly. The Dawn piper wasn’t done yet though and hit the party with a strange blast of energy. All within 30’ of the creature were struck and most found themselves suddenly blind and deaf. Lucky for me I was over 30’ high and out of the range. Knowing that most of the party was out of the fight I knew I had to make my next strike count. Most major area of effect spells like that have a time before they can be called forth again, so, determined to make my attempt to slumber the creature count, I first flew in with an evil eye to reduce its willpower. Success filled me with glee, but soon it turned to horror as the creature again struck with a blast of energy, this time blinding and deafening me. Worse yet, the sprigging that was sleeping was awake again and attacking amongst my friends. This I didn’t know till later as all I could do at the time was fly higher to get out of range. Yoska again came to our rescue. A tattoo flashed upon his arm and he flew down from the sky where he had been waiting for the blindness to wear off. Empowering his blade to massive effect, in one strike he did destroy the dawn piper, teaching it to stick to friggin its spriggins. The remaining spriggin was hit be Greta and her sword. Soon after, when my vision came back, I slumbered it allowing a quick coup.

After some healing and searching of the area we headed out to search for more of the elements. Dalomar used bubu, his new owl to scout a bit. Moving in the direction chosen after talking with the owl, Dalomar moved in front to be able to scout. As he moved ahead, a stand of trees came crashing down, isolating him from the rest of the party. Trap tripped, he was faced with a group of stinking nuglub gremlins. Foul and trixy gremlins be, and worse for Dalomar were that these creatures could shock with the power of lightning. I flew over and blasted the bunch of them with burning hands. Sadobras slammed one with a cold iron sling bullet. Yoska killed another. With a cry the remaining one went to run away, but made the mistake of getting its back turned to Yoska. Taking the opportunity to strike, he quickly ended it.

Close by the gremlins we found a wagon filled with bodies and a chest. Within the chest was some wealth and a wondrous pearl of power. Generous to a fault, my companions pushed the pearl upon me to use to call back an already used basic spell. I could think of many good uses for this. Yes, yes, I know I could do that too.. quiet you.

Wanting to get more of a handle on what else was out there in these woods, Sadobras and Noname mounted a dire bat Noname had summoned and went to fly around and scout. Minutes passed with no idea how they were when suddenly Noname was falling from the sky with his ring. Following and passing him was the dire bat with Sadobras on it. Leaping from its back while still 20’ into the sky Sadobras amazingly managed to tuck into a ball, roll, and pop back to his feat. I was almost distracted by this amazing feat of agility when I suddenly remembered, oh they were likely running from something. Scanning the skies I could see only that we were overflown by something strange. Big as a man, with a stags body, hawks wings, wolfs head, and sharp antlers on its head, it was a fearsome and mangled beast. Its very shadow seemed to mark us in some way. I had enough of this though and quickly blasted one with glitterdust, blinding it. Lets see you fly and fumble around in the dark eh you monster. Yoska quickly slumbered the other so that it fell to the ground in a smash. That woke it back up, but did splendidly damage it. Dalomar made quick work of that one and Noname commanded the bat to attack the other Peryton. Being not able to see due to the glitterdust I cast, the bat struck the Peryton again and again, finishing it.

I hope that what we have done has slowed down the growth of that rent in reality. Within me the voices continue to urge, hurry! Can it be these northern witches have no understanding of what they do? Truly, if this vortex expands too much, they will have nothing left of their kingdom. They will have nothing left of this world. Can they honestly think it will stop at sending the hut elsewhere? Hurry… we must hurry…