Several years have passed. The Winter Wolves have been directed to carry out an important mission for King Sparrowhawk II. He has told you that his daughter, the voluptuous White Feather, is missing. She is not in her chambers, and she is not anywhere to be found in High Home. This fact has been corroborated by search parties that have been scouring the Elf Home for hours with no sign of the princess. The king also tells you that White Feather has been, of late, sleeping with a certain newcomer to High Home, a human named Damien Black. The king feels that this certain Mister Black may have absconded with his beloved daughter. The king tells you that Mister Black is a tall blonde man with many intricate tattoos. He also tells you that he has been doing some snooping in the library, actually Lillie Pad the Royal Researcher has been doing the snooping, and she has uncovered that Damien Black has a stronghold in the Black Mountains to the west of High Home. Lillie Pad has also uncovered Damien Black's personal sigil.
Damien Black's Sigil
(Blacksigil.jpg)
King Sparrowhawk has sent you to the west on foot to scour the countryside between High Home and the Black Mountains to find his daughter. You have been traveling for three days. The sun is beginning to set on the western horizon. You have seen no sign of civilization since the day before yesterday, when you passed the last of High Home's century trees. Today, travel has been excruciatingly slow. You have been hacking your way through thick underbrush. The mosquitoes have been relentless, and even for early summer, the heat has been stifling. All of you are covered with mud, muck and sweat. Your muscles seem just about to give in, when you reach a small stand of pine trees. You emerge under a canopy of green needles.
You are walking freely on a soft bed of needles under an ancient and extensive stand of pine trees. There is little undergrowth to impede your progress, which is a welcome change from the jungle that you had to fight through in the now receding deciduous forest. The ground rolls several yards ahead of you, and you cannot make out what lies just beyond the crest of the hill. The sunlight is failing, and you notice several ravens perched in the pines, along with hawks and eagles. You begin to smell a rancid sickening smoke as if hair is burning. From over the crest of the hill you see that a thick, hazy fog beginning to move your direction and settle on the ground, wisping about your feet. The wind increases speed and begins to howl through the bare trunks of the pine trees. You see a glow from over the hill as if someone is burning a huge bonfire, and then you here it -- a high staccato moan from a she-elf, evidence of a being enraptured in the throes of sexual passion. The moans keep a certain bestial rhythm, and they increase in volume and intensity.
As you move closer to the moans, you see the light from the fire beginning to flash and you hear crackling as of green wood burning. You can now faintly perceive an undersong in the passionate moaning -- low evil groaning as from thousands of voices all in the same cadent cacophony just below the passionate song of the she-elf. As you approach, you can make out under the smell of burning hair, the pungent smell of sizzling flesh.
You climb the top of the hill, and below you down the back slope of the hill is a scene of unspeakable, diabolical horror.
Thousands of living and dead elves, humans and dwarves are locked in passionate union. As Enchandra approaches, several of the undead lovers explode under the power of her holy might. No matter, another of the dead joins itself to each living partner. You can hear it now. The undersong screams are cries of passion from the Mass of Lust below you, each creature answering the call of its carnal desire. Flesh, dead and alive undulates in a cadaverous unison, screaming, calling, swearing, moaning, and praising God and Nature in a unified act of erotic blasphemy. Thousands more living dead shamble on the borders of this Circle of Flesh, guarding, waiting. Gargoyles fly over the scene, swooping, occasionally low enough to snatch a live or dead participant from the act. A flock of buzzards have gathered in the trees. They are black and ominous. Foretelling the future that you hope does not await you. Spirits, evil spirits float o'er the scene, screaming and twisting in ethereal kinesthesis. The ground beneath the mass is blackened. As you watch, the blackness slowly spreads, widens and begins to creep toward you, infecting the very nature of the vegetation and the trees. The evil of the Darkwood is close to you now. You can almost feel its hot breath on your neck. It is whispering to you, "this is what lives in the hearts of men. This...only this. Nothing more."
A funeral bier rises from the center of the Circle of Flesh. It is taller than is a man, and it is wide as a house, made of dry brush and topped with a sawn wood platform. A muscular, brawny man stands atop the bier. He is nude and obviously engorged with passion. The man is covered from head to toe in sigils and runic tattoos. He is blonde and has a close-cut goatee. He is Damien Black. White Feather is standing beside him. A thick and intricately carved quarterstaff stands upright in a hole in the sawn platform atop the bier. Damien begins to undress White Feather. He has a black dagger in his right hand. He looks toward you, and he sees you over the chaos that is roiling below him. He lifts a single finger and mouths a word that you cannot hear. A cloud of noxious gas appears around your feet. Your skin begins to tingle and then burn.
Turning to his companions Winsome shouts out...
"Too the trees! Get off the ground before this foul gas kills you..." glancing down at the writhing mass of living and unliving... "or worse. I am going to try to get closer." Immediately Winsome Hawk leaps into the pines.
Once in the boughs Winsome Hawk blends deep into the natural shadows of the tree and quickly tries to leap from tree to tree to close the gap between himself and the bier, but some unseen force is stopping him, holdig him to the tree "Must get to her... the trees will show the way... we've lived a lifetime leaping from these boughs... got to hurry though...I must break free of this, this evil force, but I cannot."
Camille crests the rise and stares, eyes bulging, at the horrific scene of infernal coitus below. She is speechless at first, and her fair skin drains of all color, appearing pallid and wan in stark contrast to the streaks of dirt on her face. Then the whispers begin, and she cups her hands over her ears and shakes her head vehemently, refusing to listen to the words. "No, this cannot be!" she cries in a stricken voice. "It CANNOT!!"
She glances fearfully toward the center of the chaos, and what she sees there stops her heart. The dying light is glistening off of the smooth shoulders and breasts of the woman she knows intimately, the one she loves. Camille's eyes grow large and haunted. "Oh Gods, no," she moans, pulling herself to her full height. Her fiery mane whips about her like wildfire, and her eyes burn with fury. "Let go of her, you...bastard!!" Camille screams at the tall, tatooed man. Throwing back her head, she raises a hand to the heavens in supplication, then lifts her spear so that the point is aimed directly at Damien's head. The many feathers that adorn her weapon flutter wildly in the breeze. Tears form in Camille's eyes as the gas roils around her, but she pays it no heed. Focusing on the many ravens and vultures she witnessed on the way to the hill, she makes a gesture with her free hand and attepts to cast a thought of summoning toward their collective awareness, but her hand is stopped by the same force that is holding Winsome to the tree.
As a multitude of avians descend toward Damien, Camille meets Damien's gaze through streaming - yet unflinching - eyes. The head of her spear glints in the ebbing twilight, its point mercilessly flush with Damien's forehead, but unmoving. The carrion birds begin to pick at the dead and the living, feasting on the mass of lustful flesh.
"Oh, My Lord Oak!" Shrieks Enchandra, her voice nearly cracking with adrenaline and edgy with fear and rage, her face pale as the full moon, "Take these Damned Ones back to the earth and feed them to the weeds!"
Her heart swells with Holy Anger and several undead burst into pieces which litter the soil and the undead around them, their bodies twisting and rolling with mocking passion so blasphemous, so horrible to conceive, the dead everywhere joining with the living. Her shoulders slump with the release of Holy Force,
"This is so wrong, so wrong, so many of them... so many... what can I do... They do not care and so many of them..."
Enchandra eyes fill with tears of sadness as she looks upon the lost souls below her that she barely notices the bier and the figures on it. The Priestess, her shining Elven Plate now radiant upon her body, the armour now having shown its true form instead of hiding as simple ill-fitting garments, rises her helmed head to the sky and shouts, no, screams at the top of her lungs, "No! I will not be cowed! Thy Will will be done Lord! I am your servant, your Hammer!"
Her eyes blaze with intense devotion, nay, fanaticism, and the blood swells red in her face and in her eyes, the veins interlacing around her grey pupils as Holy Rage fills her veins. The foul thing known as Damien Black points to the party and a mist forms at their feet, tingling and then quickly burning.
Enchandra barely feels the pain, but recognizes the danger and cries to her Lord, "Great Acorn! Bring my foe to me! Let him who hath summoned this blasphemy against the All be brought to face your Wrath in the form of your Hammer!"
Enchandra's shield falls to the ground as the Priestess raises her arms and motions at the tattooed man standing on the Bier. As if summoning a small child to her arms she motions slowly and calmly, and then her hands go stiff and she cannot move. She is locked in the same magic grip that hold the other Winter Wolves in place.
Korian
As the killing mist swirls around my companions and I, I set my spear in the crook of my arm as to have both hands for my spellcraft. I begin weaving the magical forces, shaping them to my will with the precision control that comes with much practice, knowing that should I lose that control, the magic would go wild, possibly killing me and my companions where we stand. At the end of my casting, a magical shimmering erupts from the ground in front of me. For the briefest of seconds, the magic resembles a tall spiral stair, extending up into the trees, then it is gone. transparent. utterly invisible to all eyes. All that is, except mine.
I sprint up the stair as fast as my nimble elven legs will carry me. on my way up I pull two lusterlees black beads out of a pouch at my side. As I prepare to drop them into the mass of writhing undead, I can feel magical power flowing through them. I throw them into the throng of decayed flesh, trying to clear areas for my companions to manuver into. upon impact the beads explode with a powerful blast, scattering the dead and the living alike. Some carcasses that don't quite die are encased in a sphere of transparent magical force. I smile as I see the living dead brainlessly beat on the ungiving walls of the spheres with body parts that were blown off in the initial blast.
This smile lasts longer than I intend it to however, as suddenly I am held also in place by an unknown magical force. Not one muscle in my body will respond to my commands to move, to flee into the safety of the trees. The only things that will move, I discover, are my eyes as I look around in panic. I try to catch a glimpse of my companions, but being over fifty feet in the air and motionless as I am, all I can see are branches and trees. I am held in a trap more inescapable than the deepest pit, bound tighter than in any rope. Helpless. Hopeless. Spark, great Father of Fire hear my last prayer to you...