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Page 12
“We’ve got enough food—for now,” Sira said. “We might as well. A little forethought and we might have what it takes to fight our way through the city and out one of the other tunnels.”
Gary closed his eyes. It was a distraction seeing the entirety of the nine rings of the Paths of Power when he could only reach the two options ahead on the Path of Music.
Player Name: Gary Burns Character Name: Gary Burns
Level/Path: Bard 2 XP: 2,273/2,000 Race: Unknown
STR: 7 DEX: 9 CON: 8 INT: 18 WIS: 17 CHA: 17
To Hit: +1 Weapon: Rapier (1d6-2) , Hair Splitter (1d8+1)
Armor Rating: 11 Armor: Leather (+2)
Path Powers: Inspire (+2), Lullaby
Skills: Persuade (+5), Music (+5), Study/Search (+5)
Profession: Cook (+1)
Down Music 3A was the ability:
Bolster: All allies within fifty feet resist fear effects with a +4 bonus
Path of Music 3B offered:
Fascinate: All enemies within fifty feet must resist willpower or stop all actions while listening to the melody. Attacking or forcing the subjects to test against willpower, dexterity, or fortitude will break the effect.
Gary knew the formula for determining the roll the lizardlings would need to pass to resist. It was his level (3), plus his Charisma modifier (+3), added to a base difficulty of 10. Assuming the lizardlings were mostly all level 1 or non-leveled, and their base wisdom was 8, good for a -1 penalty on the roll, they’d be looking to roll unmodified 16s to do anything but listen, entranced, to Gary’s music.
Speaking strictly in statistics, that meant Gary could neutralize 80 percent of the scaly little runts with a song—so long as no one tried to harm them.
There was one other matter to address in leveling up. Gary was eligible for his first Trick. He should have been able to take a free one at first level like any other human—that was their lone racial bonus, after all—but the stupid race glitch from Gary’s improper character creation persisted.
Gary knew the Trick he wanted to take. If he was to play along with the party and still keep his secret safe, it could prove essential.
Fast Talk: on a failed Persuade check, roll a secondary check to make up a plausible excuse that the target can believe.
If Gary was going to lie through his teeth, sooner or later someone was going to call him out on it. Best to be prepared with a backup plan.
Player Name: Gary Burns Character Name: Gary Burns
Level/Path: Bard 1,2,3B XP: 2,273/4,000 Race: Unknown
STR: 7 DEX: 9 CON: 8 INT: 18 WIS: 17 CHA: 17
To Hit: +1 Weapon: Rapier (1d6-2) , Hair Splitter (1d8+1)
Armor Rating: 11 Armor: Leather (+2)
Path Powers: Inspire (+2), Lullaby, Fascinate
Skills: Persuade (+6), Music (+6), Study/Search (+7)
Tricks: Fast Talk
Profession: Cook (+1)
Taking a deep breath, Gary opened his eyes. As it happened last time, everyone was waiting for him.
Zeeto bracketed the air with his hands. “You know, Gary-old-chum… Most of the time, you seem like you’ve got your head on straight. Maybe you’re not much in a fight. Maybe your singing voice can make the dead claw their eardrums out. Maybe you sit on your ass a little too much while the rest of us are trying to solve puzzles. But for the most part, that thinker in your skull seems to be working juuuust fine. But then you get stuck there gaping at the Paths of Power like it was a work of art in a museum and you were there with Larsi Butterbread trying to impress her by being all cultural and sophisticated. Except you didn’t have the slightest clue about gnomish Post-Draconic-Age watercolors, so you just stood there making thoughtful noises until the museum staff booted you out.”
Braeleigh tilted her head and interposed between the two. “I take it your date didn’t end in littler halflings running around?”
Zeeto scoffed. “What? Hah! This is about Gary, not me. That was just a metaphor.”
“Sorry, everyone,” Gary said. “But I think I have a plan to get us out of this place.”
21
Gary and the others slunk out of the Gelzhearth crypts like burglars fleeing a department store with one of the window displays. If Miriasa Starlight weren’t suspended in temporal stasis courtesy of the Gem of Eternity, she’d have been aghast at the manhandling she received.
“Pardon, my lady,” Beldrak murmured again and again as the statue-like elven woman cracked against the vault on the way through the door, as he nearly dropped her adjusting his unfamiliar new sword at his hip, and when he switched shoulders to free his sword hand in case of combat.
Zeeto shook his head as he led the way toward the city proper. “I can’t believe we’re trusting our lives to bardcraft. It’s like being on a sinking ship, and the only guy with a plan is the cook. And the plan is peanut butter.”
“Path of Shadows offer up anything better?” Sira asked. “I’ve always wondered what you can see when you look at your Path.”
“Treasure and glory is what I see,” Zeeto replied. “But I’ve got nothing that’ll sneak four clumsy oafs, a wolf, and a birdbath decoration past a city full of non-huge lizards.”
Gary had his crossbow slung on his back. This was a job for a lute. As he trailed the group, his fingers formed chords on the strings. No strumming; just practice.
Zeeto held up a palm outstretched behind him, and the party waited while he looked out the archway into the dwarven city. The halfling crouched even lower than his normal stature and clung to the side wall, peering out into the city as everyone else hung back in the darkness.
A minute later… five minutes later… ten…
Gary grew antsy. Zeeto had warned them that he wasn’t going to give them a quick thumbs up or down the instant he glanced upon the city. This was tactical recon. Therein lay an inherent need to trust the judgment of the one observing the enemy.
This was the same halfling who’d dropped half the mines in an avalanche and touched every button, pulled every lever he saw.
There was a swift hiss and the crack of an arrowhead on stone.
Gary strangled the neck of his lute, anticipating battle.
Zeeto came back carrying an arrow in one hand and a scrap of parchment in the other. “Can’t read this. Too dark.”
They headed back to the vault room rather than risk a light within view of the lizardlings. Everyone gathered around as Zeeto unrolled and flattened out the rumpled scrap of parchment. The halfling cleared his throat.
“Combine forces? We know a way out. Lack sword arms on our own. Light two torches at the entrance for ‘yes.’ We are the Sunspear Four.”
Zeeto crushed the note in his fist. “See? So much cooler than us. We need a name. Something like ‘The Furious Nightblades’ or ‘Zeeto and the Zeroes.’”
“‘Seekers of the Lost’?” Braeleigh suggested.
“‘Gary and the Dominos’?” Gary suggested with a sly grin.
“More like ‘Gary and his bodyguards,’” Sira grumbled.
“Perchance a determination on this subject might best wait for greener times and a hall with ale and stew?” Beldrak asked, hand resting on his sword hilt as he stared down that passageway back to the city proper.
Zeeto sighed and looked to Sira. “So… two light spells? Any objections?”
Inwardly, Gary groaned. The Sunspear Four was a backup plan, a contingency in the event that the party couldn’t make it out of Gelzhearth on its own. Accepting their help was the backup parachute for the adventure.
Gary had never imagined that the party would get stuck down in the dwarven city forever or get wiped out by the diminutive residents, but neither did he want them spending in-game weeks on hit-and-run tactics, guerrilla ops, or cockamamie schemes like setting up a mushroom farm and living in the crypts until they could level up enough to curb-stomp the community.
The Sunspear Four was the tapping foot demanding that the campaign get moving.
“I could still try u
sing Fascinate to keep roughly 80 percent of the lizardlings from attacking us,” Gary mentioned.
Zeeto waved the notion away. “Nice plan for desperation, but if I’m choosing between your singing voice and a second band of stranded adventurers…”
“It does seem like the obvious choice,” Sira added.
Braeleigh came up and put an arm over Gary’s shoulders, giving him a brief side hug. “I’m sure your way would have worked too. But, like, don’t we get farther on the Path of Power fighting?”
No, you dopes! You can get full XP for defeating an encounter without resorting to murder!
There was simply no way to discuss the intricacies of the Paths of Power without either campaign spoilers, opening Pandora’s Box to min-maxing, or revealing that he had more knowledge of the world and its workings than he was willing to admit.
So, Gary said nothing.
At the tunnel entrance, Sira cast light spells on her mace and Zeeto’s dagger. They waved the weapons like a pair of airport ground-control workers guiding a taxiing plane to the terminal.
From one of windows of a nearby support pillar, a bowstring twanged.
The deal had been accepted.
When the arrow struck with a meaty thwack, the lizardlings raised the alarm.
d20: 1 + (DEX -1) = 0
Gary stood frozen. That Initiative roll meant that he’d be spectating as the battle began. He was just lucky that a zero didn’t mean he missed out entirely.
22
Without understanding a word of the lizardling tongue, Gary understood what the creatures were saying. It took little in the way of linguistics or psychic powers to glean “hey, we’re under attack, everyone get out here” from the panicked squeals and cheeps of the squatters who’d made the dwarven city their home.
Had anyone in Gary’s gaming group decided to play a dwarven character, this would have been a great time to explore the themes of ownership when it came to places. Whose home was it? Did Gelzhearth still belong to the dwarves driven out some eighty years ago or the lizardlings who’d been born beneath its vaulted ceilings? Entire generations of the short-lived creatures might have been born and died without ever knowing another home.
And yet, there were still living dwarves among the refugees who’d fled that orcish invasion. There were masons who’d built these homes and miners who tunneled out the caverns. The sculptor responsible for the historical murals in the vault room was still alive and well in wistful exile.
As all this was going through Gary’s mind, the others on both sides of the conflict joined battle.
The Sunspear Four was a four-man company comprised of two warriors, a rogue, and a ranger. They fought their way from the tower like a commando squad because that’s the way Gary had written them. They weren’t rolling real dice; Gary had planned them as a fudge factor.
Now that he saw them in action, the idea sickened him.
Arrows took lizardlings in the eyes, never missing, never less than fatal. The swordplay between the lizardlings and rival adventuring party looked like a Hong Kong stunt director was choreographing it. It was flashy, dramatic, and lacked any sense that the Sunspear Four were in any danger.
They weren’t.
Braeleigh jogged ahead, bow taut and arrow ready, loosing a shot on the move that missed the lizardling spearman she’d aimed for. Caspian tagged along at her heel, wary of leaving his master to engage.
Zeeto ran for it. With his shorter legs, he needed to double-move to keep from being left behind, but at the same time, taking two move actions put him ahead of the elf.
Sira followed Braeleigh, angling for the tower to rendezvous with the other party of adventurers. She held her mace at the ready but didn’t seek to brawl with the city’s inhabitants.
Beldrak had Miriasa Starlight slung over his shoulder like a plank while the other held his greatsword. He’d have been wielding it at a penalty one-handed, but Gary couldn’t imagine him setting her down in any but the direst circumstances.
The paladin waved Gary ahead. “Precedeth me. Thy safety be more precious than mine doth.”
Let me carry the elf woman so you can fight.
That would have been the noble gesture. That’s what a budding hero would have done. Contribute. Acknowledge inferiority. Find a way to help the team.
Instead, Gary nodded and darted ahead. His hands quivered. He wanted to take Hair Splitter in hand and storm through the city like the protagonist in some Tom Clancy–inspired first-person shooter. Unfortunately, he lacked ammo. There hadn’t been a cache of crossbow bolts in the vault with the weapon. The place had been more mausoleum than museum and more museum than armory.
Without a weapon worth a damn, Gary played.
The lute strings were damp from sweaty fingers, slippery on top of still being unfamiliar.
“Imagine there’s no battle. It’s easy if you try. No vault below us. Above us, blessed sky. Imagine all the people… living through the day…”
Fascinate: Test Willpower against Music check
d20: 3 + (Music +6) + (No Hablo Human -2) = 7
A few of the lizardlings paused to listen, fascinated by the sound of the song even if they couldn’t understand the lyrics. Those few were readily cut down by the Sunspear Four and an arrow from Braeleigh.
“I’d tell you to stick to your day job if this wasn’t it,” Zeeto said without looking Gary’s way. The halfling was on the balls of his feet, dagger gripped backhanded, ready to pounce when next his turn came around.
Gary quietly tucked his lute away on his next action and allowed himself to be herded along with the rest of the party.
Two combat turns later, they merged with the Sunspear Four near a pillar tower that contained an old temple to the dwarven god of ale.
“I’m Gellard Turnweisle,” said a statuesque warrior with a cleft chin and a voice like Prince Charming. “I lead the Sunspear Four. Who leads your company?”
Gary’s companions looked to one another with questioning eyes and subtle shrugs amid the chaos of lizardling bodies that littered their vicinity. Finally, it was Gary who spoke up. “We’re a collective of equals.”
“Four equals and a sidekick,” Zeeto added quickly, casting a glare at Gary’s lute.
The rest of the Sunspear Four introduced themselves as Zeefus Mackenzie, a grizzled, green-clad bowman with a perpetual squint in one eye, Corbin Detmar, a fresh-faced lad who looked like a junior version of Gellard, and a shaggy-haired rogue who went by the single name, Shlan.
“Nice to meet you, Shlong,” Zeeto said as the two shook hands, finishing the round of introductions.
Braeleigh cuffed the halfling upside the head and offered a smile to the Sunspear Four. No one objected from either side, not even the chastised Zeeto.
With suspicious timing, the lizardlings began to regroup just as the two groups had all learned one another’s names.
“We needeth a plan, posthaste,” Beldrak said, shifting the time-frozen elf woman on his shoulder.
Gellard scowled. “You still haven’t explained that macabre trophy of yours. She doesn’t appear to have been turned to stone. Did… did someone paint her after she turned to stone?” he ventured cautiously.
“Magic mishap,” Sira said curtly. “We’re getting her out of this miserable tomb. Enough said.”
Young Corbin held up a finger. “Now just a minute. The architecture here is quite stunning, and—”
“No,” Braeleigh cut in. “It’s gloomy and rocky and no elf should have to stay down here any longer than absolutely necessary. It’s totally icky.”
“You guys know a way out of here by any chance?” Zeeto asked.
Gary fumed silently. Stop leaning on these chuckleheads to do everything for you. “I do.”
“Care to share with the rest of the class?” Zeeto demanded. “When did you sneak off and explore this place?”
“I haven’t,” Gary replied. “But think about it. This place was inhabited by dwarves. Master builders. Master smith
s. They had forges all over and didn’t choke themselves on smoke.”
Sira’s eyes lit. “Chimneys. There must be chimneys around this place somewhere.”
“Good luck finding one,” Zeeto grumbled.
Beldrak held up a hand to quell the argument. “Yet find one we must. Gary, dost thy ken contain an answer to whence these Gelzhearth dwarves removed their smoke?”
Was relying on the infallible knowledge of having created the city in his scribbled notes any better than using the Sunspear Four as a crutch?
Yes. Yes, it was.
Extending a finger in a direction he only knew to be southwest because he’d drawn the map himself on a piece of three-hole-punched graph paper, Gary indicated the central pillar at the heart of the city. “Up there. I imagine there are others in a place this size, but the dwarves would have built their community around a religious forge dedicated to Makita, god of craftsmen and laborers. It’ll contain the biggest smelter and bellows in the city, and there should be a huge ventilation shaft leading up from it.”
Zeeto shook his head. “I don’t get it. You play the lute like you’ve got ten thumbs, play songs that a local tavern drunk would be embarrassed to sing, and yet you can reverse-architect abandoned dwarven cities?”
Beldrak nodded slowly. “Our squatty friend dost have the right of it. Perchance thou hast misplaced thy proper calling?”
Gellar waved a hand between the squabbling party. “Your guy’s got the only idea on the table. We doing this or what?”
Somehow, this entire time the combat counter had been ticking. There was no additional roll for Initiative—which Gary might have welcomed, stuck on 0. The lizardlings closed in with a battle cry and took their turn.
Spears flew, sailing in deceptively graceful arcs to clatter on the stone floor or glance off armor. Gary had one nick in his leather armor that saved him from a flesh wound. The closeness of potential death threatened to rise up and choke off his reasoning mind.