104. Orchard and Engine

* The party have escaped the flooded city of Minauros with their lives, despite facing off against a sibriex demon and then the Lord of the Third, Beelzebub himself. They ride away from the city now, their group one diminished after they offered up the body and soul of the unfortunate eladrin Ilphas to fulfil the final condition of the strange pilgrimage around the city. But with the pilgrimage complete, the interference to Clwyd's direction sense had ended and she now knows the way out of the Bog of the Damned. 
** The group use their last Greater Restoration spellwrought tattoo to clear Ingvild's head of the feeblemind spell, and then put heels to horse. 
** After riding for a few hours, they make camp. 
** Pyt shows the group that in addition to a ring his juvenile mimic can now become a coin! 
* Day 20 in the swamp:
** With Wilfred having mastered his nightmare steed at last, they can make solid progress without hindrance. 
** After a few hours of riding, the group sees a massive crop of trees stretching out over the land, each with large, bright red flowers blooming about their crowns. They've obviously been tended to in some capacity, since they're all growing at perfect intervals, like an orchard of some sort. 
** The group call it a day early, setting up camp before trying to pass over the orchard in the morrow. 
* Day 21:
** The party saddle up and start riding over the strange orchard. 
** After four hours, the putrid smell in the air they've been experiencing for most of the day's ride has gotten truly dreadful. Then, quite suddenly, Ingvild and Zadimus's horses plummet to the ground, their riders having no choice but to go with them, the mounts briefly incapacitated by the stench. Wilfred makes to cast feather fall but before he can he too falls out the saddle and hits the ground some 20 feet below. 
** The nearest of the strange trees then uproots itself, revealing a mess of bones and skulls tangled up in its root system. It walks on vine-like appendages and attacks those that have fallen, whipping with its branches and even reanimating some of the skeletons contained within itself, knitting their forms together with vines before sending them to attack the group. 
** As they do battle, those on the floor attract the attention of three more of the strange corpse flower trees that begin ambling over. 
** But Ingvild and Wilfred unleash hell on the carnivorous plants, and those still sitting their horses can rain down attacks from above. As quickly as the attack started, the four assaulting trees were slain, and everyone was back in the saddle and the nightmares in the air. 
** It takes a further five hours or riding to reach the far side of the corpse flower orchard, then they push for another hour after that, giving Wilfred one point of exhaustion. 
** After that, they set up camp. 
* Day 22:
** Their diseases get worse:
*** Clwyd and Wilfred are both functionally deaf from the ringing in their ears, but their hearing is also now so sensitive to noise as to be a real threat to them: they're both vulnerable to thunder damage.
*** Clwyd's mind is also addled to the point that any attack on her person can send her spiralling into brief inaction or even turn her against her allies. 
*** Wilfred's case of brittle bones has gotten so bad he was now vulnerable to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. 
*** And Pyt's death's helper disease had him fully exhaling smoke with every breath. Should he be reduced to death saving throws, it seemed quite unlikely that he would survive for much longer after that. 
** The party elect to ride fast in the hopes they can get out this swamp quickly -- Wilfred is carrying another disease culture that, judging by the schedules of these things, would be getting worse after another sleep in Minauros. 
** After one hour of riding, they're met with another writhing tide of Minauros's stinging, biting flies, just as they'd seen when they first arrived in the swamp. 
*** Wilfred wraps himself, Molly, Zadimus, and the two nightmares in a wall of force. 
*** Clwyd does the same for her, Pyt, Ingvild, and the two nightmares there, using the spellwrought tattoo she had prepared in the market. 
*** But the spell peters out before the tide of flies does, thanks to Minauros's spell-sapping atmosphere. Wilfred is able to cast another wall of force to fully protect his group, but Clwyd and the others are not. Instead, Clwyd surrounds them with her bones of the earth pillars, which the insects crash into and spill off like an angry ocean hitting a wave break. 
** When at last the flies have passed -- leaving Clwyd, Pyt, Ingvild, and their steeds quite badly stung all over -- Wilfred sees that in the wake of the insects, which had blotted out sight of all else while they passed, a massive monster truck-like, semi-sentient hellfire engine was churning up the swampy ground under its huge tires and steaking straight for the group. 
*** Wilfred knows that the others can't even see the thing, surrounded as they are by the pillars of stone. He quickly uses a sending spell to inform Clwyd, who then tells the rest of the group what's up. 
*** Everyone bolts upwards, towards the clouds, trying to outdistance the range or whatever weaponry this hellish vehicle might have. 
*** But once it's drawn close, the Hellfire engine angles the cannon-like mouth on its façade up at them and unleashes a screaming firework-style rocket. It explodes in their midst with a deafening boom. Molly and Clwyd are immediately downed by the concussive, deafening blast -- with a truly worrying amount of blood just pouring out the ears of the goblin-turned-tiefling -- but both were held in the saddle by the rider's behind them. Ingvild's horse, however, had also been downed, and so she and it plummet out the sky. Wilfred uses feather fall on them both, and the fire giant touched down gently, on her feet and ready for war. 
*** Pyt is able to heal Ingvild's horse from a distance and she jumps back in its saddle quick enough to flee with the others. 
*** Wilfred uses his pliable summons to make an interposing wall that blocks the engine from following them for the duration of the spell, letting them put some good distance between them and it. 
** Fleeing from the Hellfire engine, the group spill into some red rock canyons and hide the group in a relatively small alcove. Pyt makes the horses invisible to assist with this, since they're constantly burning and giving off a soft glow. 
*** They hear the loud roaring of the Hellfire engine pass them and then begin to move on. 
*** They rest where they are in the alcove, hearing the ominous sounds of the engine bouncing off the canyon walls the whole time, the thing obviously searching for them. 
*** But the good news was that Clwyd could sense their destination was close now. 
*** Using minor illusion spells to communicate between themselves with Clwyd and Wilfred rendered deaf by their diseases, the group slowly make a plan. 
*** They spend a couple hours sneaking through the canyon, staying low and giving the Hellfire engine a wide berth -- keeping track of its location was not particularly difficult with how much noise the thing was making. 
*** At the end of this, their goal comes into sight. Nestled into the side of a canyon wall was an imposing, intricately embossed, 30-foot-tall fortress gate of wrought, black iron, guarded by six bearded devils. 
*** A heraldic flag flies above the gate, depicting a bronze bull. Clwyd recognises it as the flag of Bulwark Bael, duke of the Second Hell under archduke Zariel. Bael and his crazy legion of devils, nicknamed the Bronze Bulls, are rumoured to be battle crazed madmen. To be stationed here must be an unhappy posting for one such as Bael. 
*** The party go forth and kill the devils guarding the fortress and then push inside it.Category:Part Six