Umbral Gaze 3: The Cyclone
The island-city of Ruathym lies midway between Waterdeep and the first expanses of open ocean that reach to the west. It is home to a Northlander people, a company of pillagers and thieves who raid the near Coast in accordance with what they see as their natural right and dominion.
Our brave heroes find themselves on a ferry ship, bound for that cold speck of rock, to do the work of their mission’s latest leg. In compromise with Almuth’s Goddess, the party decided to undertake vanquishment of the Cyclone— odd even among its eight fellows, and against whom preparation has proved difficult— on the heels of their victory over the Witness. It is something of a blow then that Almuth himself should not be present today1, engaged as he is, otherwise, with clerical business of a higher priority. Warren too is missing; he tends to obligations2 amongst his dwarven kin under Fourthpeak. The beholder on which the party now sets its sights waits in blue water, west even of Ruathym, where it foments a vortex of thin-drawn thunderheads that hammer spumy, livid coils into the Trackless Sea.
The ferry captain— a halfling who introduced himself on land as “Ramel”— ventures a question. “What could outsiders seek on the island of Ruathym, so notorious a skerry for its people’s disdain toward just such mainland-dwellers?” He catches looks of confusion that flit about the party members’ faces and, seeing that they don’t quite comprehend the situation into which they will soon disembark, gives a short lesson. Ramel explains that the inhabitants of Ruathym are an Luskan people who make their way by raiding nearby settlements of the Sword Coast and Moonshae Isles3. They believe in their own rightful mastery over all the lands touched by the sea’s northern reaches, and long for the day that they will take them back by force. Concomitantly, mingling is ill-advised.
Though freshly uneasy, the party is— of course— not dissuaded; a mission is a mission, after all. They share the immediate tenets of their quest, to see the Sea of Swords ridded of the monstrous storm. As the ship pulls upon the near dock of Ruathym, its captain bids his charges well, but before the party departs, they ask for directions to the nearest place with ships for hire— this dock is sparely populated indeed— and learn that a greater port lies north across the island. They receive one last piece of advice: if it is to brave the storm that you desire, seek Hergatha4, the Storm Maiden, Chieftess of the Ruathym people; none are her equal in the art of conquering storm-lashed seas. Carmel casts “seeming” over the party, working from Ramel’s description of the locals, which should lubricate their interactions considerably.
As the bard works his magic, the forms of the party members are like running wax molded into burly raiders by the arcane hand. Carmal is inhumanly muscular; Gottlob gets a handlebar moustache. Louisa and Clementine, unfortunately, are beyond the capability of the spell to disguise as human, and so reduced to regular livestock: a horse, and a llama with a perm.
Striding over the gangway and onward to land, adventurers incognito set their sights on a band of hills separating the narrow harbor in which the party laid anchor from the rest of Ruathym to the north and west. Grime and gravel, tiny, abandoned shells, and the dried droppings of seabirds make gritty complaints against trampling boots that grind them into stones underfoot. Further on, beds of shale turn to tufts of grass, then to scraggly fields that gather like skirts around clusters of sharp-but-stubby protuberances that form the body of the island. As the party reaches a hill-base and begins to climb, a heavily armored half-orc barrels past at angles; his unpolished half-plate and stunted tusks return stratus-filtered sunlight as a dull gleam. The warrior shouts as he passes, his words punctuated with laboured breaths— “What are you lot loitering over here for? There’s a battle on!”— before disappearing
Following the half-orc’s path, the party peers tentatively over the crest to see a sort of temporary military encampment below, abustle with the agitations of battle. A second hill lies at the other side, forming a shallow sort of valley that nestles the ramshackle complex in a grassy depression amidst boulders covered with moss— in other circumstances, the place might be considered cozy. From their vantage point, the party can make out faint sounds of metal clashing on metal and a tenor of conflict described in shouted fragments that circumnavigate the earthen barrier yonder. They investigate, careful steps carrying them down and up once again to the the second hill’s crest, and the source of the clamour becomes clear.
A skirmish indeed rages before them, fish people5 and Luskans at each other’s throats. Laeral mentioned something about this, that the beating of the cyclone upon the sea has displaced its people, people who clearly now struggle to find living spaces, deprived as they are of their habitual territories. The islanders, for their part, strike at the newfound foes with relish, their attitude in accordance with their fearsome reputation. Though possessing an impressive array of martial skills and implements of war between them, none of the Ruathen6 is so conspicuous, in dress or in action, as to be taken for the “Storm Maiden” our heroes seek.
A sandy escarpment gives on from the party’s position to the sea; further hills make a row to the left and right. On the peak of a neighboring prominence, an Luskan woman, clad in steel among a zoo’s worth of monster pelts, slings bolts of thunder upon her enemies from on high, plucking hard implements of violence from seemingly empty air. This, surely, is Hergatha. Voicing his intention to those near, Carmal “sends” a telepathic message to the warrior. “I have a team that can defeat the fish and put an end to this storm; come, meet us on the hill.” Gottlob waves his arms about to draw the storm maiden’s gaze, thus clarifying just what hill she is to meet them upon. With a creditable lack of agitation in the face of Carmal’s disembodied urging, the Chieftess looks around; her eyes find the satyr’s signal, and she bounds clear over the fray in a triplet of mighty leaps to land before them with no greater impact than a speck of nest-fallen down.
After confirming that the party has indeed located the Storm Maiden, Carmel puts to her their plan— they require a ship and a skilled captain who can master the unnatural storm; in return, they will furnish the expertise and strength of arms to defeat its creator. Hergatha listens, but a pallor of displeasure overtakes her features as the bard speaks. She interrupts. “Why would I or my kin want to put an end to this glorious battle!? We haven’t had this much fun in ages! What kind of northlander would even suggest such a thing?” Carmal and the party rejoin.
Glorious this battle is, but does it not grow monotonous, too? Would it not be still more glorious— more fun— to vanquish the monster lurking in the typhoon’s eye? The people of Ruathym suffer here— no great tragedy— but surely their lives would be better spent in righteous conquest of the northlands irredenta, better used to crush the armies of Waterdeep.
At this, the Chieftess’ skepticism is is gone, and a new vigor suffuses her being. She gives directions to the wharf whereat her warriors moor their ships and bids the party meet her there— she has some quick business to attend to before they depart. The skirmish seems to be wrapping up— in the Northlanders’ favor, which suits the plan nicely— but the party does not descend to the battlefield; they head away, yet farther north, whither Hergatha bade.
Arriving at the wharf, our heroes find a vast and varied array of ships. Stately galleons preside over twitching clippers that bob in devolved wavelets of the storm-agitated sea. The vessels and the trappings of their berths enjoy conditions that strike the party as incongruous with the general state of shabbiness that pervades the rest of the island. Perhaps one must learn to be fastidious when sailing is a matter of such necessity as it is for the Ruathen. The party boasts no sailors— only Almuth knows the first thing about a ship— but they select a sturdy and fast looking specimen and begin to head aboard.
They are stopped by a pair of loitering crew, who challenge the party about their intentions. Thankfully, our heroes need tender no half-truth explanation; objections are interrupted by a sound like a jet liner caught in a tornado that barrels toward shipyard. Hergatha lands, this time with a crash, and giving orders to other lingering crew to raise anchors, cast off lines, and unfurl sails, makes ready the very same ship the party just approached. Serendipity.
Following the speedy hullabaloo of their departure, the party— plus the Chieftess and some secondary crew— approach the center of the storm. Disparate eyes can be seen blowing about in the clouds like windswept debris, though gazes are fixed ever outward. Blistering gusts drag at the ship’s keel and threaten to rip her masts from their steps, but Hergatha is prepared. She calls out to the storm, calming it, asserting her own power over the unnatural gale and subjugating the whipping banks of fog that form a wall through which she and the party are determined to pass. One eye halts in the storm, studying her from afar— it regards an unwelcome competitor.
As the clipper breaches the cyclone’s great eye, a strange sense of lightness comes over the adventurers. Something besides their own feet supports the weight of their bodies, a new spring and fleetness7 that bolsters their every movement.
Coalescing out of towering thunderheads appears what seems— surprisingly to the party, or at least to Gottlob— like a conventional beholder. It’s visage resembles well the momentary image of the Witness glimpsed before that creature succumbed to its captors’ infection. With a deep inhalation of the cloud and spray whipped up in the near eye-wall’s whirling fervor, the beholder speaks; a voice that booms with thunder runs thick across a field of crashing waves.
The party beholds Gwyntowynt, the Living Storm, son of the Gas Giant Gzemnid8 and grandson of the Great Mother9 herself. The confidence of that majestic lineage is plain in his tone as he introduces himself to those below. Carmal and Gottlob query the beholder successively, probing for information, but the beholder requires further assurances of the party’s worthiness. He summons three elementals from bowels of his aberrant vortex— roiling forms of water, air, and lightning alight upon the deck of the Storm Maiden’s ship, poised to do battle with her retinue. If the party can defeat his subalterns, the the Living Storm will consider entertaining a conversation.
These fresh foes boast impressive offensive capabilities and resistance to spells and steel alike, but the four party members present— with Hergatha along-side— defeat Gwyntowynt’s storm-aspect incarnations with little jeopardy. Louisa fires rays of frost that freeze swaths of the water elemental solid. Clementine summons a giant eagle to assist her as she launches arrow after arrow from an enchanted bow. Her arrows seem to ignore the wind, flying steadfast in their courses as strike their targets, unimpeded. Despite the party’s successes, searing bolts of living electricity flung from the lightning elemental’s what-pass-for-hands do considerable damage, and our heroes are notably weakened as Hergatha’s blade deals the last standing elemental a mortal blow, prompting Gwyntowynt to reappear.
Gottlob and Carmal seize once again the opportunity to probe their adversary’s thoughts through conversation– the beholder is more receptive now, the fact of his engagement indicating a new regard for the party members. Gwyntowynt divulges his goal: he aims to surpass the great Gzemnid— to escape the oppressive shadow of his father’s legacy— and it is to this end that he exercises his tempestuous faculty by which he has ravaged the Sahuagin and incited the crisis that impelled our heroes here today. The great and lingering storm that Gwyntowynt wraps about himself, the cause of this whole affair, is the mere accidental product of his exertions.
Gwyntowynt regards the party where they lean against masts and railings to catch their collective breath and, though attacking them now would be only too easy, refrains; the beholder instead states terms. He is an honorable creature; if his life is preserved in defeat at the party’s hands, his will shall be theirs to command; he will comply with their order, whatever it may be. Gwyntowynt pauses for a moment, retreating into the sky a dozen yards or two; from the party’s vista, he looks like a leathery ball reposing on a bed of pulled cotton as he gives his opponents precious time to comprehend the implications of his word.
Carmal seizes the opportunity to converse in the window of their narrow reprieve; he turns to Hergatha, a calculating glint in his eye. “Surely”, he ventures, “the Storm Maiden, Chieftess of the Ruathen, should seize upon this opportunity for gay and glorious battle!” Killing the air elemental has set her blood-lust on edge, and Carmal’s urging pushes it over— she vaults and leaps at the hovering beholder; from her throat she looses a welter of furious exuberance.
Back on the Sword Coast, Almuth lingers by a murmuring brook, just beyond the limits of a druids’ grotto. He made his way to its bank on foot, venturing through the sparse woods between here and his monastery that lies near Waterdeep. Something foreign, but familiar, has begins to pull at his psyche, a sort of tranquil hypnosis that tangles among the threads of his thoughts and guides his steps inexorably into the water. The cleric’s socks get wet. Kneeling, Almuth has a sense of being pulled up, out, and away from his own body, whisked westward across an interminable expanse of violet mists.
Still farther away, as his party-mate is jerked from one mode of existence to another, Warren delves under Mithril Hall in the wane glow of a torch. As its light expires, he finds himself enveloped in absolute black. On his hands and knees in the darkness, the harengon, too, begins to feel something take hold of his being, an external urge that beats upon his consciousness like the strokes of a hammer. Impact after impact strikes out a familiar rhythm, and Warren starts as an impulse of increased force knocks his soul clean from his body, a note of the divine ringing out as the impact sends him reeling across lavender seas.
The agents of their respective disjunctions bring the clerics together in the mist. The two see clearly now a vision of the vessel whereupon Louisa, Clementine, Gottlob, and Carmal prepare to scrimmage with the Living Storm. Each recognizes the tones of their deity among a pair of voices that speak in astral confluence— “Go to them!”— and with that, Warren and Almuth are thrust from their strange convention, like needles forced through the taught and heavy skin of a drum, returned onto the material plane. Columns of verdant light spill forth from the planar punctures and envelope them as their feet meet the planks of the party’s borrowed ship.
Those physically present are surprised— most have heard of astral projection, but these ghostly figures of their friends seem material and astral in equal part— alas, there is no time to question their good fortune10; the fight is on! Hergatha’s blade finds Gwyntowynt’s face!
Right away, Warren follows suit, leaping from the deck in a feat that astounds even the agile harengon himself, sailing over the taffrail, through meters of empty space, to take hold of a beholder’s eye stalk. He somehow manages to hang on, but the Cyclone sees an opening; a ray of deadly necrosis catches the cleric squarely in the face from the very stalk upon which his iron grip now briefly falters. Carmal, apparently having formed a habit while fighting the Witness, casts “polymorph”, and Warren becomes a killer whale. As he falls into the ocean, the beholder acts again with a salvo of eye rays cast at various party members. One blinds Clementine while another infects Almuth with a creeping petrification. The centaur takes unseeing aim at the beholder, and, miraculously, both her arrows find their marks— Clementine’s skills with the bow are such that sight is mere luxury. Louisa accesses the weave to “catapult” a nearby barrel toward Gwyntowynt, who dodges just too late and is clipped as the cask flies by. Hergatha gives a shout of dismay; the wizard threw overboard the rum.
Along the eye wall and scattered about the meteorologically calm interior of the battlefield, black, hovering pyramids11 appear in the air. Faint tendrils connect them to Gwyntowynt, and the party can think of no explanation for their arrival that fails to strike fear into their hearts. Gottlob attacks a pyramid the floats near enough to reach from the ship’s deck, the strike of his rapier making contact with a flash of blinding light, and it vanishes with a pop and a puff of smoke. A few of the others try the same, but are not so lucky.
The Living Storm activates his anti-magic cone, so adding a new element of tactical complexity to the already swimming field of our hero’s struggle. The fighters manoeuvre in and out of that field of view, trying to balance the protection it affords them from devastating eye rays with the limitations it places upon their own abilities to attack, and spells strike from behind and beside the beholder as our heroes call upon their command of battlefield geometry to land blows where they are needed most. Unfortunately, the cone has a more insidious effect than just suppressing battle magic: Carmal has been concentrating on maintaining the party’s disguises since they landed on Ruathym, but he cannot resist the beholder’s gaze; his magics are suppressed, and Hergatha sees her companions for what they really are— they really are not her kin. The chieftess teeters on edge once more, caught now between pressing battle with the orb and a burning desire to enact revenge upon the lying outsiders who have made a fool of her, but the immediacy of self-preservation outweighs, barely, the shame at having been manipulated so easily, and with the still-true promise of glory to follow Gwyntowynt’s defeat lodged at the back of her mind, Hergatha maintains the offensive. She attacks our heroes with nought but a reproachful glare, for now.
At last, the living storm begins to weaken, the multifarious powers of his eyes and swiftness of his action unable to keep pace with the multitude of warriors assaulting him from every side. Warren jumps and snaps from below as his party members hammer away from the deck and Clementine’s summon harasses from the sky. With a cry of triumph, Hergatha lands the final blow, a solidly gaseous bolt lancing from her gloved hand to strike her foe from the sky. Gwyntowynt’s limp body crashes upon the ship, his eye stalks flapping about before coming to rest, splayed and listless.
Freed of her martial engagement, the Storm Maiden reproaches the party; she peppers them with furious questions about their origins and aims. Almuth responds; he explains that the group’s intent is to transport the beholder back to Waterdeep, to bring its exertions into alignment with the interests of peace and cordial coexistence. The Ruathen hears he worst suspicions confirmed: these conniving occupiers’ agents plan to use the captured Cyclone as fuel in the engine of her people’s oppression. The chieftess will not allow it— the winds of Hergatha’s arcane endowment lift Gwyntowynt bodily above her head, a single eyestalk clenched in her fist, as she poises once more to take a battle footing. She threatens the party that she would sooner see te beholder drowned than allow them to return with it to waterdeep. The cleric Almuth, in a fit of insanity, decides to knock her out with a single hit before she can act on her threat to drop unconscious Gwyntowynt into the maw of the sea. Taking aim and bashing her upside the head, he only makes her angrier. The enraged Storm Maiden returns Almuth’s strike, but the riposte that threatens to become an all-out brawl is curtailed by the voice of Carmal, cutting above the din of shouts and waves that lap against the hull. His spell arrests Hergatha where she stands; stunned, stupid, hypnotized, she can only grip the beholder’s eye, fingers clenched as though in death.
The party hurries to pray Gwyntowynt free of her grasp and Clementine, thereupon, to tie her securely to the mast— she must not be allowed to interfere with the plan. Carmal contacts Tasha, asking for a quick pickup, but the witch is unable to offer such comprehensive service at this time; the party must make it back to Waterdeep on their own. Resigned to what should at least be a more pleasant boat ride going than coming, now with skys clear and waves calm, the party turns the boat around and heads for land. Not without difficulty— for none of them is a sailor, after all— the party finds its way back to the Sword Coast. Hergatha struggles in her bonds, free now of Carmal’s arcanely-induced stupor, but she fails to escape— knotwork, at least, is a sailor’s skill of which the party is perfectly possessed.
Arrived in Waterdeep, the party meets their benefactor at the shore. Almuth arrives too, in the flesh, having set out from the druid’s grove immediately following the party’s victory on the open sea. Out among the regular folk of the city, Tasha is dressed more plainly than before. A short ruby rod that protrudes from a holster at her hip is the only mark of supernatural skills in the planeswalker’s attire. Gwyntowynt, having awoken in the course of their journey, hides at the ship’s stern since approaching port, not to draw alarm from the dockworkers and vacationers who mill about on the shore. Now, as Tasha opens a demi-plane at the end of a rope and ushers the party inside, he follows them into that den of privacy. Turning to the beholder as he enters, Tasha begins to negotiate and prods him to explain his actions. Having heard his response, she offers him an “out”, a way to hone his abilities without impinging on the lives of Toril’s common folk. Tasha exits her demi-plane for a moment and disappears through a portal she casts on the ground in a sheet of fine silk, reemerging moments later with the look of a woman who’s found what she was looking for. She clambers back up the rope. On a fine chain of silver, pinched between the thumb and finger of her outstretched hand, an Amulet of the Planes dangles pendulously. She presents it to the beholder.
With this, you can practice in the elemental plane of water, or of air, or an any plane that you desire. However, heed me well; the artifact is ingrained with an arcane trace. I know always where it is and for what purpose it is used. Furthermore, if I find that place or purpose disagreeable, I can simply think to destroy the amulet, and destroyed it shall be.
Gwyntowynt finds satisfaction in their accord and, with thanks for Tasha’s trinket, the party’s mercy, and their prior help in honing his prowess through combat, he vanishes. Almuth voices concerns about the beholder’s long-term cooperation with Tasha— and with the inhabitants of Toril more broadly— but the witch puts his mind at ease: the beholder will probably never land on this planet again; the objects of his priorities lie elsewhere.
Mollified, Almuth has another question. His clerical order, the Stillness of the City Monastery— followers of Eldath, all— has a particular interest in planes beside the Prime Material; in the Upper planes especially. Would Tasha, perhaps, if she has a spare, be willing to part with a second Amulet of the Planes? She considers for a moment, then offers a wager. “Do you consider yourself a gambling man, Almuth?”, she assays. Almuth supposes that he does, and she goes on. “If you defeat the next beholder in a manner according with my broader goals, but understanding its aims and converting it to our cause, I shall give you an Amulet, on one further condition: the next beholder shall be the beast of Neverwinter, the Candlehead.” Almuth agrees immediately, and with that, the next leg of the party’s journey is decided for them. Tasha offers them but a single choice: to leave now, or to first do some shopping?