After Action Report Events of 22-23 July, 1023 (B.M.R.) Hostage Situation in Alonis
In such a rainy summer, it was a true blessing from Edaonae to have two days of perfectly clear skies for Blackwood’s annual(-ish) tournaments. I arrived at the faire grounds at the foot of Castle Alonis around noon on Saturday, running late and overburdened with equipment to build Chimeron’s weekend encampment. His Majesty, along with the two little princes, Sir Saka, Griffin, Bogen, and I quickly attended to our tents and banners, raising a comfortable arrangement that resembled a miniaturized great hall under a long canopy as white as the stone of Chimeron Castle. As we were fixing the final touches of home, we were called to the other side of the field for the start of the tournaments. I was very grateful that our Host-Lord Sir Torolf had erected a large canopy next to the fighting pits to provide much needed shade for the gathered combatants and spectators.
Although the order of the day called for mostly one-on-one events, we competitors were organized into two teams. This would be most relevant for the team-versus-team events but I was under the impression that our teams would also accumulate points from the individual events. I don’t exactly know what was intended but I was happy that the scorekeeping was not a significant component of these tournaments, particularly because the most scorekeeping-est tournament of all was set to occur three weeks later.
The competition was enjoyable, though I was disappointed that there were not as many regional specialties this time as there were when we competed in Verglas two summers ago. On the other hand, I was quite pleased to finally debut–and compete in–my new combat magic event dubbed Tarnisha’s Challenge. The most entertaining events by far were the armed and unarmed Corsican Mug matches, though my personal favorite was a new contest called “Vesper’s Shoot-House”.
As I am writing this, I am realizing that I never questioned the ethics of Vesper’s arrangement. I will choose to assume that the Kobolds were willing participants and were not actually capturing and recapturing the same two hostages repeatedly throughout the day. Surely if there was a band of Kobolds in the area and they were attacking members of Blackwood for real, Sir Vesper wouldn’t have turned the rescue efforts into a time trial tournament, right? This was clearly a role-playing scenario with some local kobold actors. Definitely.
Anyway, the very ethical Vesper’s Shoot House was a race against time to rescue two hostages from a handful of kobolds, all set up in a building with lots of small rooms. Per the rules, competitors enter one at a time with nothing more than a dagger, two magic missiles, and their armor. If you are killed, you quickly return to life at the door but take a 10-second penalty. You may use any equipment you find inside the building. Fastest time wins. I found out the next day that even though I completed the course the fastest, I took second place in the event to Sir Temorse after three respawn penalties were added to my time. Incredibly, Temorse did not incur any time penalties.
Unfortunately, these were not the only hostages we encountered in Alonis.
After a very excellent dinner (food on sticks!), a person we referred to as Tide Herder (I am unsure if this is an occupation or a proper name) approached us to ask for help finding a temple keeper who had gone missing. In the darkness, we made our way to that temple of Edaonae, but crossed paths (and swords) with agents acting for Change. They were accompanied by a horrifying and indescribable monster which (the?) Tide Herder was able to Banish.
Once inside the temple, we found the place had been ransacked. At the request of a talking mirror (is this normal???) on the wall, we restored the eleven anchors in the temple and placed them in the holy arrangement. This brought some of the light back to the temple, but the Mirror tasked us with collecting more energy from the surrounding area so that the temple’s forge could be re-ignited.
I can only say that those efforts were ultimately successful; I share a first hand account about how the work was done because I had found the temple keeper’s journal on a bench and spent way too much time reading about his strange dreams, his research of Domai runes, and his attempts to undo Change’s corruption. In a way, I had become a hostage to the ramblings of a madman. The worst part of all is that it seems like we never found him. The temple keeper remains lost to us and we don’t even know if he is dead or alive… or worse.
The night’s adventure’s ended with another confrontation with the terrible monster and discovering a physical projection of Edaonae paralyzed on the ground and covered in Corruption. The monster was defeated by striking it while attuned to particular elements and the Corruption was magicked away by Captain Bogen.
The following morning, we awoke to more heat and more food. Sadly, breakfast was not served on a stick, but we muddled through it. As we prepared for more tournament events, I saw a crippled Bogen crossing the field. He was covered in Corruption! He believed that same Corruption he had removed from the Goddess had come back and attached to his body. This was bad, and things got quickly worse when several members of Blackwood appeared on the field in a similar state. We rushed back to the temple and met the projection of Edaonae. It was a small but welcome comfort to see that she at least was in better health than she had been the night prior.
Edaonae was worried that Change’s rising influence over these lands was coming at the cost of her own power, and she urged us to find a way to free those who were held hostage by Change’s Corruption. By great fortune, the temple did contain a tool for this job–a “sieve” consisting of six round disks, each marked with six circles. I recognized this construction from the temple keeper’s journal and Jean Baptiste knew from experience how to use it. We needed to call a Domai rune into each of the circles on a disk, and of course the sextet had to fully balance itself. The disks stacked on top of each other, and the vertical ranks of runes also needed to balance out.
The ever-brilliant Jean Baptiste was well prepared to call forth a set of runes that would balance the sieve, but to get the job done we had to collect enough blank tokens to hold all thirty-six runes. These tokens came from the Corruption-suffering members of Blackwood. They would challenge individuals to duels–if we won, a blank token would appear nearby; if we lost, they would pass some of their corruption on to us. It was difficult to collect all of the tokens we needed without taking on an excessive amount of Corruption, but we did eventually provide enough materials to JB for him to activate the sieve.
I don’t know if it was the act of completing the sieve or just an unfortunate coincidence, but as soon as we were ready to start clearing the area of Corruption, some of the members of Blackwood appeared to transform into very heavily Corrupted agents of Change. They created large explosions, none of which touched the temple. We fled into the shelter of Edaonae’s power, but our protection did not last for long as agents set the temple alight. Through the flames engulfing the building, we fought back against Change and subdued the Corrupted beings one by one. When they were forced through the sieve, all but the most Corrupted members of Blackwood returned to normal. Those who had become the Corruption agents simply dissipated like shadows burned out by light. Thankfully these forms were not the real bodies of our friends and were in fact just illusions created by Change.
With the immediate danger at last resolved, we finished the day with a few more tournaments. Our Blackwood hosts did not seem particularly perturbed by Change’s attack on them. Perhaps such things are so common for them now that they are simply a matter of course? It certainly didn’t hinder their ability to finish the day on a positive note. Following the conclusion of the last events, they served us more food on sticks and some leftovers that weren’t on sticks, and then gave out several pointy bladed sticks as prizes to tournament winners.
Oh, and regarding the temple keeper’s journal: with Edaonae’s permission, I have taken the book with me back to Chimeron. I intend to transcribe its contents so that it can be shared broadly among those of us who expect to keep encountering Change.
In service to the Realms,
Sir Orion, Avatar of Chimeron