Diplomacy is Scary

From the journal of Erian Ilphelkiir

I arrived home from my first diplomatic mission today – I
accompanied Cyren (our Governor of Diplomacy) on a journey to the Duergar I
first encountered some weeks back in company with Fizzwidget, [http://saint-herves-westmarches.wikia.com/wiki/It\_Seemed\_Like\_A\_Good\_Idea\_At\_the\_Time... as I related in
another place]. Also joining us were Azrael, Fr Isaac Brown, and Terrence the
Librarian (I swear he looks more sickly every time I see him). Our intent was
to begin the process of uniting the Free Peoples in the area, so as to bolster
ourselves against the growing threat of Balthasaar from the north. To this end,
we brought with us a significant amount of treasure, and as many of our
original party as we could, hoping that the services rendered them in the past
would dispose the dwarves towards us in friendly wise.

Once returned undergrouond, it was apparent that the
resistance had had some significant successes. The city was once again buzzing,
with not a curfew-enforcement drone in sight. Children roamed the streets
freely. There was one very noticeable difference this time, though – I received
a number of strange, suspicious stares everywhere we went. No one else was
subject to this scrutiny, or, may I say, disapproval. I decided to shroud my
face and hang back.

Stopping for refreshment and gossip at a local pub (I ate my
own food, as underground preparations can be sketchy, and it was clear that
those around me wished me a degree of ill), we learned that our original
impressions of the war on the automatons were correct – significant advances,
the city more or less held steady. Part of this was due to the assistance of
some newcomers in town: animated suits of armour, referred to as “the Footmen,”
from a mysterious “friendly” power, in return for the promise of unspecified
services in the future. And as if that didn’t sound shady enough, the dwarves’ former
allies, the Drow, distrusted this offer of assistance enough to cause a rupture
in the united command. A civil war of sorts had broken out, pitting the Drow
against the Dwarves, in addition to resisting the further incursions of the
Automaton Army. This explained the hostile attitude toward me.

We went to pay a visit to our old friend Ronan, who turned
out to be holding a position of high command in the Duergar armed forces. He
was happy to see us, but it was plain that he was far less happy about the way
the war was progressing. The Footmen seemed to be more concerned with taking
Drow prisoners than stopping Automatons, and he himself was suspicious of the
commander of the empty suits. He told us it would take some time before he
could get us an audience with the High Command, and that we should cool our
heels in town for a day or two.

I believe Azrael made good use of his stealth abilities to
pick up additional information, whereas Cyren and Fr Brown needed to maintain a
respectable front. I did not wish to be seen, so Terrence and I thought we
might check and see if the Duergar had any kind of library in the city. Our joy
at discovering that such a place existed was immediately tempered by the
unpleasant knowledge that it lay in the no-man’s-land beyond the dwarven front
lines. However, the thought of such knowledge lying unattended and un-cared-for
so near by was too compelling, so we slipped through the entrenchments and
culled a few tomes. They were abandoned, really – no one was claiming them as property,
so you couldn’t really call it stealing!

Regrouping in our assigned quarters, we shared what we had
learned. There was no doubt in any of our minds that the Footmen were none
other than Balthasaar’s agents, and that the less influence he had over the
underground free peoples, the better for us. But how to win the Dwarves to our
side, when this help had already proven so seducing as to sunder them from
their former allies? In the dead of night, Ronan came to us in disarray – he
had fallen into disgrace by cussing out the Master of the Footmen, and High
Command had dismissed him from his post. He seemed afraid for his life.

It seemed that there was a house from which the animated
armour appeared to originate, and where they re-congregated each evening. It
was decided that we should search this house for incriminating evidence during
the time when the Footmen were away and active in the battles, in order to
leverage our position.

The house was dark. No one could see inside at all, not even
me, though I have trained my eye to pierce even magical darkness. I correctly
interpreted this as meaning that the house was nothing more than a
teleportation portal point on the inside. We tried to test the limits of this
theory by seeing how long I could maintain contact with someone who had passed
through the window, but I lost track, even telepathically, as soon as my
companions were inside. There was nothing else to do but for all of us to
follow.

Once inside, we were forced to fight a number of the
Footmen, who fought with swords made of flames, similar to ones brought back to
town by Azrael, Cyren and others who had triumphed over them before. Once they
had been dispatched, we began to explore the house systematically, eventually
finding ourselves in a secret cellar, seemingly empty of everything except a
covering of dark mist on the floor. We began tapping the floor with our staves,
checking for more secrets… when I suddenly found myself snatched from our
current location and teleported to a remote valley.

It was a dark and forbidding landscape, ringed about with
mountains and shrouded in mist. A menacing tower loomed some distance to the
north. Cyren and Azrael materialized by my side in short order, and hurried
conference produced no solutions, only a growing certainty that we were in the
Misty Valley north of our city, the lair of Balthasaar himself. Fr Isaac and
Terrence had remained behind.

Three figures appeared on the horizon – two Footmen of
impressive dimensions, and a masked, caped or winged figure carrying a large
glaive. Though we ducked into the mist as fast as we could, we knew we were
seen, as the central figure sent the Footmen ahead to flank us, while he
himself approached our position and began thrusting his glaive down into the
mist in the hopes of skewering us.

At that precise moment, Fr Isaac and Terrence decided to
come to our rescue, because who doesn’t need a sickly Librarian on the scene
when one is facing a dreadful foe? At least, such was my initial fear for their
safety. In fact, we quickly realized that Terrence was the only one among us
with the power to reactivate the teleportation circle and bring us to safety,
so we set ourselves to the daunting task of keeping him alive long enough to
keep us alive.

And a dreadful foe he proved to be – he summoned four walls
of fire to pin us in place while casting dreadful spells, and the Footmen
attacked our source of escape. Fr Isaac was as indispensable as ever, bringing
Terrence back from the brink of death no less than three times as he staggered
under heavy blows, never losing his concentration on the arcane circle under
his feet. Cyren and Azrael were most cunning in their strategems, taking out
the fire wall generators, dealing massive amounts of damage and at one point
planting a tree which instantly grew 50 feet in the air. Our adversary had the
ability to teleport short distances, which enhanced the range of his strikes to
a distressing degree. Fr Isaac seemed at one point on the brink of stopping his
onslaught altogether with a brilliantly-timed casting of the spell Calm
Emotions, but alas, it only gave us a tiny six seconds of breathing room before
he remembered that he had hostile intent towards us.

When things were looking grim for us, the Tower in the
distance awakened. The General before us (for I doubt he ranks any lower than
that at the least) cried out in dismay and used every power at his disposal to
retreat as quickly as possible, as far from the tower as possible. It was now
or never. We gathered on the circle and drank our healing potions as Terrence
made one last effort. A huge bolt of dark energy streaked from the tower
towards us, and utterly obliterated a piece of the landscape just feet from our
tiny sanctuary, and then we were back in the cellar of the house we had left.
It was empty of mist, empty of the strange darkness, and empty of Footmen –
just an ordinary house.

We found High Command in total disarray. The Footmen had
turned against the Dwarves, and Ronan had reassumed command. He claimed
authority to accept our offer of help, but told us that as far as the fighting
went, the Dwarves could handle it for now. What he needed was for us to rescue
the Drow prisoners and bring reinforcements. We left our treasure behind, and
went to fulfill his request as best we could. Azrael stayed behind with a
company of his rangers, but what Azrael does on his own time remains an
impenetrable mystery to me, perhaps because I am not sure I want to
investigate.