GURPS Fantasy Warriors Session 43: Forest Fire

Characters:

Granmarg The Striking Vanguard, The Boulderstruck, Member of the Earthling Triumvirate
Pomegranite The Treefallen, The Spymaster

Mielikki The Field Marshal, Member of the Earthling Triumvirate

Thicket The Grandmaster Terramorpher, Member of the Earthling Triumvirate

 

Anticlimax

Mielikki tried to stop the fighting, while Mindartis turned and zapped Morkral in the back with a bolt of lightning.  In retaliation, King Barrend swung his poleaxe and gouged a chunk out of the prismatic god's thigh.  Felix imbued his sword with magic, and the blade melted away as pure energy took its place.  Realizing that they knew how to get through his defenses, Mindartis flew up and well out of reach.

 

Granmarg had other ideas, and, in a flash of lightning, jumped thirty feet into the air, then grabbed Mindartis in a ring of electricity.  The plan was for this to drag him back down when Granmarg fell, but instead, Mindartis snapped his fingers and the ring, as well as the rest of Granmarg's magic, dissipated.  Felosial the elf shouted something in elvish, and apparently it was insulting enough that Mindartis turned and focused his spells on her, while she acrobatically dodged out of the way.

 

Again, Mielikki insisted that they listen to him.  With Eva dead, they would be unlikely to stop the Void Beast, but Mindartis, as God of Magic and the Void, could help.  They needed to cooperate now, regardless of anything that had happened in the past.  Rather surprisingly, most of those present were swayed.  Hans Hessen sighed and agreed, followed by Rada, who shouldered his hammer.  Felix, only a youth, deferred to his elders, and his sword of light flickered and dissipated.  Barrend and Morkral got into a shouting match in dwarvish.

Granmarg planted his feet and clenched his fists.  As sparks of static electricity flared around him and the air filled with floating dust, the sky clouded over.  A bolt of lightning struck the earthling's gold spike, and he felt his magic return.  Mindartis finally hit Felosial with a spell, this one a beam of green light that flensed the skin on one side of her torso, then turned to respond to Mielikki.  Thankful that someone had seen reason, he agreed to discuss cooperation regarding this "Void Beast" in the future at a more appropriate location, but for now he would take his leave.  The god vanished.

 

Granmarg screamed in anguish at being denied his prey, and demanded Mielikki explain himself.  When his compatriot reiterated that they had no way to fight the Void Beast, Granmarg replied that he would rather die than cooperate with one of the "gods".  Hans Hessen tried to calm him, but it was no use.  While the rest of them went to regroup at the great hall to see what had become of Baelynna, Granmarg would instead stay behind and attempt to find Mindartis on his own by meditating to sense his magic, something he had never done before.  Several hours later, he would return to their camp in failure.

 

Punishment 

After some brief tests by Uthemar and their few magisters experienced with the Path of the Moon, everyone was declared free of Baelynna's influence, and her death was confirmed.  Theren, who without his mask was revealed to have empty eye sockets, had to wave off Healing and insisted that those were an old wound.  They now had to deal with the rest of Baelynna's forces.  The majority of the soldiers, and especially the peasants, seemed not to have been under any compulsion, and had instead been following the orders of the College.

 

Many magisters, and all the High Magisters, had clearly been under her sway to varying degrees, and though this was an exceptional case, the law was clear: an example had to be made of the College for rising against the Empire.  Emperors Curzo, Uthemar, and Edelina met in private and decided that as Curzo had not been involved, he would keep is seat, but the High Magisters would all be forced to resign.  Further, taxes for reparations would be raised, primarily on the peasantry.

Romeo Bachofen, human subject of the Highland Forests and Duke of Frilothurn, asked for an audience with the Triumvirate, and received it later that evening.  Though he was not a High Magister, he found it quite likely that he would be removed from the Void Portal project, where he had been working under Eva.  It was his estimation that they would have completed it in a matter of months, but with Eva's death, they were unlikely to finish.  Mielikki groaned and noted that they had a lead on someone who might help, then dismissed him.

The Next Target

Before departing for their home provinces, the Inner Circle met to discuss what to do next.  They had one target in Astraeus, a second in Mindartis who had "escaped", and a third in Carmenta who had disappeared since leaving Baronde a year earlier.  Conversation quickly turned to why Mindartis had been allowed to flee, and Granmarg condemned his "comrades" for losing their nerve.  He would not seek persecution himself, but he would support it if the other members pursued it on their own.

 

Mielikki explained his reasoning, that with Eva dead they needed Mindartis to defeat the Void Beast, doing his best to ignore Granmarg's repeated interjections that he was misguided and weak.  Thicket agreed with Granmarg that they should have killed the god, while Pomegranite acknowledged that Mindartis had held the upper hand and could have slaughtered them had he wanted.  It was clear that they needed to do more research into their targets before acting.  Uthemar agreed, and noted that in this case, Baelynna had made such information gathering impossible.

 

On a similar subject, while Edelina had successfully been kept in the dark regarding Baelynna's claim to godhood, word would inevitably spread.  Mielikki floated bringing her into the Inner Circle, but Uthemar disagreed.  During their meetings in private it was very clear that she fully accepted Astraeus as a god. Pomegranite also made clear that news of Terra's death at their hands would likely lead to civil war in the Highland Forests, and even if their own soldiers kept quiet, it was clear that Consus knew, and he had last been seen in the same city as Astraeus.

Attacking Lumene pre-emptively to get at Astraeus was off the table, as it would just cause another civil war in the Empire, so the plan was to wait for Lumene to attack them.  Edelina would call Tauschun and the League to her banner, but Ulrich controlled the former and the latter had been decimated by the tidal wave in the south.  Meanwhile, Uthemar would side with the earthlings, bringing the elves and dwarves into the conflict, and Curzo would call on Wrost and Baronde to join them.  Mielikki and Pomegranite arranged a deal with Uthemar, where his spies from Lumene would drop reports off in the duchy of Socerne on their way south to Tauschun, so that the earthlings could have some notice of a mounting invasion before it happened. 

 

Lastly, Mielikki brought up the concept of alliances between the gods.  Obviously Mindartis had been working with Baelynna, but they didn't seem exceptionally close.  After some hushed words between Pomegranite and Uthemar, the elf informed the others of the gods' elven names.  Of note, the pairs Carmenta and Clio, Astraeus and Terra, and Mindartis and Somnus all shared the same second name.  Given Astraeus and Terra had been married, it was likely that the rest were all either siblings or spouses as well, so those pairings were worth considering.

 

The magisters and terramorphers the Triumvirate had dispatched to the College years ago were sent off to aid the Segretans in recovering from the tidal wave.  They knew that the apocryphal prophecy from the League concerned Somnus, and foretold that the dead would rise from their graves.  That hadn't happened yet, so it should be safe.  Somnus had been the one to take control of Luana during her war with Tauschun, however, so it was possible he was already active.  For now, though, the earthling army returned home to the Highland Forests.

 

Scouring

As they traveled further north, the sky grew hazy, and they began to smell smoke.  The triumvirate sought out local peasants to learn what was happening, and were informed that a tall golden man claiming to be Astraeus was setting fire to the forests while threatening to slay those who had murdered his wife.  What's more, he brought animals in his wake (Mielikki: "Disgusting").  Granmarg and Mielikki were overjoyed: they could kill Astraeus on his own in self-defense, without having to worry about Lumene getting themselves involved.

 

Despite his objections, Pomegranite agreed to send Bird off to the Dwarven Undersands to call on them for aid; the elves were too far away, and the College was still in shambles.  For the next several weeks, they stalled Astraeus as best they could.  Granmarg would get his attention and then run away dodging pillars of flame, while Thicket and his terramorphers cooperated with Pomegranite to both reform the landscape and replace true paths with illusions, making navigation all but impossible.  One thing they quickly realized was that Astraeus was blind, and so visual illusions would have no effect.

 

Astraeus caught on and began sticking to rivers and other relatively immutable landmarks, so Mielikki did his best to attempt to figure out if he knew where he was going.  Fortunately, it appeared he didn't, and there were only several minor run-ins with small villages before the dwarves arrived.  King Barrend and Morkral were still sniping at each other over letting Mindartis go, but the feud was set aside, as Astraeus was clearly unwilling to talk.

 

  

Notes:

Mielikki used Luck to reroll his attempt to convince everyone to not kill Mindartis, and got 8 degrees.  The human NPCs had to resist with Will and had basically no chance.  Barrend failed a Will+12, while Morkral made his with only a +6.  Felosial, however, automatically passed.

 

Felosial thought about throwing someone (Morkral, since he was still willing to fight) at Mindartis, but decided not to when I said the roll to throw someone 7 yards vertically was going to be ST-7.  Even with a +1 for All-Out, it was less than 10% odds.

 

Thicket's player has a pretty laid-back view on what to do with the magisters/terramorphers who had been sent to the College to aid with the Void Portal.  When it was pointed out that they had been practically exiled because they wanted to overthrow them, he just said "doesn't everybody?"

 

There was some debate over what Astraeus' combat type would be.  Was he fast, like animals, or strong, like the sun?  Or maybe he was as fast as light itself, in which case they're screwed.  Granmarg had a chance to figure it out while being attacked but failed the Per roll.  He was, in fairness, a bit distracted running for his life.

 

Mielikki suggested that Astraeus looks like Starman from Earthbound.  Nobody in the group (including him) has played Earthbound.