This post has the following content warnings:
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
An adventuring party recruited from Osirion teleports into Azir on the 8th of Desnus. Rahadoum's recruiting contact in Osirion wrote ahead to note they were expected. Couple of guys he's known a long time - a wizard, a ranger - and a new guy, sorcerer, probably to replace the cleric they usually travel with. They spend two days in Azir getting oriented and head out to the front. The ranger wears an unusually high quality amulet of Nondetection; the sorcerer wears a headband for intelligence, which is a bit unusual as sorcerers usually don't need it to cast, but some variants do; they are otherwise unremarkable. Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, no reading, which could mean neutral or 'hiding it'. They work quickly and effectively, manage resources reasonably well, get recommended to higher-ups for a closer look on that account.
Which is startling enough that Malduoni nearly loses concentration on the spell he's re-casting to read Leareth's mind again (which is his last of the modified and optimized ninth-level Detect Thoughts), that almost never happens.
- whether or not - he is - you -
He doesn't even know how to parse that. This is possibly the most confused he has been in the last century and he is not pleased about it at all.
At this point he should probably break off soon and make actual plans, but he observes a little longer, they seem to be settling down for an uneventful night after a tiring fight, but he'd like to be more sure than he is.
Leareth thinks they don't have much reason to think Rahadoum is going to war with Cheliax if it's not secretly run by Aroden - right, it is Vanyel that Hagan explained his logic to, two weeks that feel like two lifetimes ago, and he's pleased with how well the prediction held up -
- I think Rahadoum's going to go to war with Cheliax, he'd said at the time, because they're recruiting under tighter conduct standards than make any sense for handling evil outsiders in the desert in Thuvia - you ask for that kind of thing when there are going to be civilians, and civilians you give a shit about, and Rahadoum will still think of their lost northern province as their own people...
He was (probably) right about the general picture but he will concede that he was wrong about one thing, Leareth and Aroden are in fact the kind of people who'd probably care about that just as much if they were invading Thuvia or - Valdemar - or some other place they'd never had a claim to. Lawful neutral, but not like Abadar, disinterested in the war of Good versus Evil - the opposite of that, really, doing a bazillion astoundingly Evil things for the side of Good, he wouldn't have guessed you could swing it but - maybe you can.
Malduoni switches from invisible to his usual illusion-disguise; he prefers not to do most of the hands-on work as himself. He discreetly asks some people he trusts a reasonable amount to keep an eye on that tent and alert him if anyone inside moves.
He teleports himself out, back to his usual base, already with the beginnings of a plan in mind. He gives some orders, collecting a few people who he'd like to assist him with this - it's not that he doesn't trust the random camp guards, they're recruited to a high standard, but there are levels of trust, and they can't cast the spell he needs anyway. Also he doesn't want to explain why a random group of adventurers requires kidnapping at all, much less with this many layers of contingency.
He gets some sleep - he's had a Ring of Sustenance for a very long time, so two hours is plenty - and that gives him a lot of remaining night, to prepare spells, and go over what could go wrong so he can patch it.
He teleports back to the camp an hour before dawn, invisible. The wizards who are helping him are arriving separately. He points Detect Thoughts and Detect Magic at the tent.
He is just waking up to prepare his spells for the day. He makes himself a magic light and begins.
The amulet of nondetection is hedging out the one who wears it, and the other one is also blocking him, but to the wizard's eyes they're both sound asleep.
Now.
He casts a quickened heightened mass Hold Person, it should hold all of them for a few seconds and then there's a high likelihood of at least one of them throwing it off, they're all powerful casters, and so he needs to move faster. He Plane Shifts Leareth, the not-sorcerer, out first, as planned - the unknown quantity here, the most baffling member of the party.
Leareth struggles against it but does not successfully throw it off, and he's gone.
- he prepares for his second round of spells–
He identifies the spell and can guess, from that, at what's being brought to bear against them, and he's unsure whether it's in fact wise to fight but this doesn't stop him from throwing off the Plane Shift and then the paralysis - he's thinking he can jump a short distance without any spells prepared, and then if he can get a Teleport prepared he can get to Sothis -
Their wizard is very impressive, honestly, but also there is no way he's going to throw off all of the wizards he brought casting Hold Person at him, even if theirs aren't as powerful, so he signals to them, and uses his second Plane Shift to grab the ranger next in case he's about to pull anything unexpected.
Then he does not get the chance to do that. He does think angrily in probably-Aroden's probable-direction that if anyone hurts his snake he will murder them about it.
He feels a little apologetic but not very; he's not intending to harm the snake, why would that help anything.
He Plane Shifts the wizard, who is very Hold Person'd.
He appears in the library and the Hold Persons stop working, though not before he collapses to the ground.
Mindspeech doesn't work, which is deeply frustrating, but at least he seems unhurt, having fallen on one of the rugs and not headfirst into a bookshelf.
There are additional thuds.
Leareth rises in a crouch, he's settle for using just his eyes to look around. "Mahdi, Hagan?" It does appear to be both of them, and no one else yet. Not that he'd know if there were someone hiding in a bookshelf, since he doesn't have Thoughtsensing.
(He is somewhat ticked off about being thrown in an anti-magic demiplane for the second time this week.)
Hagan does not seem to have a good angle on throwing the paralysis off and is going to fling his head at it to little avail for a while.
Leareth would help, except for the fact that he definitely cannot help because he currently lacks magic. He says something apologetic which of course Hagan can't understand, but hopefully the tone comes across. At least it looks like Fy was, as usual, snuggled up with Hagan and was hauled along.
"If you just let it expire of its own accord that'll give us some information about his capabilities," Mahdi says. "Not that it matters very much."
"Yeah," he says when it finally wears off, "I think we can characterize them as 'sufficient'. How long was that -"
"All of those were seventh-circle spells prepared in ninth circle slots. I've seen the concept before, though not with ninth circle slots obviously. A ninth circle caster specializing in enchantment -" he glances at Leareth, then remembers Leareth can't understand him. "Also he had a rod of greater quicken spell, he must have, or it would've taken him longer. And at least four other casters."
"We might have to wait a day. I'm not gonna attack him but he doesn't know that, and I am armed, sort of -" he sleeps with two daggers and with Fy - "...if I were him I'd want all my spells."
They're real books. The ones he pulls out mostly seem to be histories, and treatises on subjects like mathematics and economics.
There are also other bookshelves protected by something like frosted glass, except definitely unbreakable, that seemed to be locked with magic. (And cannot be unlocked by magic, at least not by any of them.)