Our Heroes scampered off and found a well-trodden path leading up in the right direction towards the mountains. Fortunately for those of them who are unable to see in the dark (Karlof and Barsh) it was reasonably easy to navigate, even in the night-time, and they made good time. They came out of the forest on to a high tussocky moor just as the sky to the easy was beginning to pale, and looking back towards the village they saw a string of lights coming up the path behind them. karlof estimated that they had about half an hour before the rest of the village arrived to spoil their Cunning Plan.
Pandora flew off up to the stone circle to assess the tactical situation. She found Jim alright, sort of floating in a weird glow in the wicker man's belly with his eyes rolled up so only the whites showed. Sitting around a small camp fire outside the circle were four warriors, none of them armoured. "Excellent!" she thought. "Only four of them. This will be easy!"
She flew back to the others and reported what she had seen, and they set about developing a cunning plan of stealth, diversion and deception so that they could snatch Jim with a minimum of casualties.
No, I'm joking of course. They charged in, swords swinging, and proceeded to lay waste.
Pandora flew in to the circle and attempted to turn the wicker man's wicker belly into honey, but found that she couldn't affect it at all.
Three of the four proved to be easy meat; Basil stayed back in the tussock and used his mental powers to give them really bad headaches while Tallis and Karlof beat them up. In spite of repeated attempts however, he found that he couldn't affect the other one (christened "Mr Tartan-Pants"), who was kicking the crap out of Vallana without even raising a sweat even after embarrassing himself by flinging his sword away (following a fumbled Quickdraw roll). Mr T-P disarmed her with a cunning flick of his francisca and set about smacking her about the head until she fell down. Once down, he honourably stood back to allow her the opportunity to gather her wits...
...which is more than Tallis, gentle nun though she's supposed to be, did with her opponent. She knocked him down and out, wounding him badly, and then (after healing him enough to bring him around) waited until he got up and turned his back on her to retrieve his sword before running him through from behind, killing him instantly. Tsk tsk tsk, that's not nice. Can't imagine the Maiden being pleased with that sort of behaviour. Tut tut.
Pandora, her anti-wicker man tactics foiled, turned her attentions to Mr Tartan-Pants, but again she was balked; he invoked fairy law against her interference, leaving her both impotent and really ticked off.
Karlof, meanwhile, had scampered into the circle and was chopping away at the wicker man's legs to bring it down. He theorized that if the wicker man could be got out of the circle, perhaps it might disrupt the magic holding Jim inert. Barsh and Tallis bravely engaged Mr T-P, giving Vallana a chance to crawl ignominiously away to see if she could find her missing morning-star (she couldn't) and then to help Karlof haul the fallen wicker man out of the stone circle.
Barsh and Tallis had no better success than had Vallana, and things were looking a bit bleak when Pandora found a loop-hole. Although she couldn't enspell Tartan-Pants, she could magic Tallis... which she did, by making her unbelievable beautiful, leaving Tartan-Pants momentarily stunned and befuddled and less disposed to chop her head off. Tallis took the opportunity to run for it, closely followed by the now amorous warrior. He caught her in short order, and clutched her to his strong, muscular, manly chest. She wriggled and struggled (beautifully, of course) but to no avail.
She eventually got him to put her down by demanding that he let her tend to the fallen... which is when he noticed that his charge (the wicker man) had been chopped down and dragged away by a bunch of sacrilegious savages, who had stolen the sacrificial victim and were runnning away with him! He gave a roar of outrage and gave chase, punching his spear right through Barsh's chest, killing him stone dead. Karlof got some of the same treatment, though with slightly leass fatal consequences.
Things might have been a little bleak for the Good Guys, except that Pandora discovered a side effect of the prohibition placed upon her: although she couldn't directly interfere with Tartan-Pants, neither could he with her. She interposed herself between him and his prey, allowing them to get some way away from the circle, and he being bound by his vow, couldn't follow and was reduced to jumping up and down and shaking his fists at them.
Meanwhile, the rest of the villagers, and their druid, were getting closer all the time.
Shane having dropped out of the campaign, Barsh is now an NPC in any case, so the loss is not as bad as it might have been.
Rather than run off back down the trail into their arms, the party decided to scamper off into the primeval forest carrying the comatose Jim and bemoaning the loss of Barsh the Brave. Certain members of the party suggested leaving Jim, but the less selfishly venal among them realised that to do so would be quite dishonourable, and in the end he wasn't left behind after all.
Pandora flew up through the canopy to see what was going on back at the stone circle. She saw that the villagers had arrived there and were milling about, though she couldn't see clearly what was going on. Then she saw the wicker man lurch upright and start a shambling jog down the moor, following directly on their trail! Crikey! She flew back as fast as her little wings could carry her to let Our Heroes know that their troubles weren't quite over just yet.
Karlof, the only one of the party with any kind of woodland survival skills, led the way. They forced their way slowly through the dense undergrowth, making their way down towards a gully between two ridges, hoping to find a river which might put the thing off the trail. he found one, a flow of modest breadth (only ten metres or so wide) but swift and deep. Pandora cleverly made a sort of rope bridge between two high trees by means of her Amazing Fairy Magic, and the party began clambering across it. Vallana carried Jim the Unconscious across, though in fact precisely how was sort of glossed over, to tell the truth. Anyway.
From the forest behind them, the party could hear the crashing of something large and unsympathetic forcing its way through the undergrowth towards them, causing a certain amount of uneasiness and anxiety.
Everyone made it across without drowning or breaking any legs, but unfortunately Tallis (whose armour and weapons were all in a Magic Fairy Sack) failed to fling the bag quite far enough, and it ended up splashing into the river. Hopefully she will be able to get yet another set of gear at the next outpost of the Little Sisters (I think that makes five so far?)
Pandora dispelled her rope bridge as the wicker man crashed out of the woods into sight on the far side of the river, and at Karlof's suggestion, had a go at making pitch (for fire-arrows). The resulting goo lokked very little like pitch, being a rather pleasant-smelling pinkish waxy substance, but it worked a treat. Karlof wrapped a rag around an arrowhead, dipped it in the goo, and lit it alight: it burned so fiercely that he could feel his fingers blistering and smell the bow-stave scorching as he drew the arrow. The wicker man walked out into the river. Karlof let fly just before the arrow burned through; an excellent shot that (regrettably) passed straight through the weave of the wicker-work and into the shingle beyond, doing the thing no harm; it strode out into the channel as the party scrambled away.
The wicker man surged forward, and then discovered the disadvantage of being something made out of wood when trying to ford a deep, swiftly flowing river: it lost its footing, fell over with a splash and bobbed away downstream and around a bend out of sight.
Relieved, the party continued on their way, trying as best they could to keep a southerly course.
The day progressed, with Our Heroes getting more and more tired; they'd been on the go now for two days solid without rest, and were beginning to feel the effects of severe fatigue. Basil had been mentally scanning their back-trail, and as far as he could tell there didn't seem to be any pursuit by hordes of angry and heavily-armed villagers, so a rest-break was proposed. Alas, it was not to be: almost as soon as they stopped, faintly through the forest could be heard the crashing and crunching of the Unstoppable Wicker Death Machine of Vengeance coming for them once again. Bother.
They had stopped in a small clearing where a tree had fallen, and not having passed any place more defensible, began to make plans for the arrival of the wicker man. Karlof and Vallana dug a trench and began filling it with branches, which Pandora was to turn into Magic Fairy Napalm (her fire-arrow mixture having been so successful). Vallana was to wait by the trench with a lit torch, ready to drop it as soon as the wicker man stepped across it, while the rest of the party arranged themselves as bait to lure it on. Karlof held up the unconscious body of Jim in front of himself to attract the attention of the thing... a good thing for him, as it turned out (though not so good for Jim).
Pandora decided that the exciting spectacle would be best viewed from a safe distance, so she flew off and sat up in a high tree offering a good view. Basil, having some doubts about the reliability of Pandora's Amazing Patent Fairy Combustibles, scuttled twenty metres off and hid under a rock.
The wicker man crashed into view, and the plan went beautifully. To begin with.
Pandora knows diddly-squat about alchemy, and therefore pretty much has to do things like this intuitively. In this instance, she did very, very, very well indeed. A little too well, as it turned out.
It made a bee-line for everyone, but before stepping over the inflammable trench, reached out to grab Vallana. "Bugger" she said, and dropped the torch. There was a bright, bright light as the trench went up with the fury of a thousand suns, immolating the wicker man but also blowing Vallana, Tallis, and Karlof into unconsciousness. Karlof got a little protection from his crispy human shield, Jim, who was burned to death. Vallana was thrown nearly twenty metres through the air, and smashed into the ground, dead. Trees and bushes all around burst into flames. Even Basil, under his rock, got very slightly singed.
We originally thought that Vallana had survived the holocaust, but Kent realised that he'd miscalculated and so Vallana bit the dust. Or, in this case, the ash. For a while there though, she was actually an uncertainty lich.
Pandora flew down and did what she could for Karlof — not much, unfortunately, since she'd already devoted quite a bit of healing to hime earlier in the day, but enough to stop him dying, while Basil scampered out and began beating out the flames around Tallis. Pandora turned her attentions to the now nude and badly scorched Tallis, and healed her up a tad as well.
"I can't help feeling partially responsible" said Pandora, looking around at the carnage.
A misty drizzle began falling, which quickly developed into a downpour that soon extinguished the incipient forest fire and soon had the scorched party drenched through.
Although badly battered (and completely shagged out), and in spite of the the passing of Vallana, and possibly because of the unfortunate death of Jim the Inconvenient, the overall mood was one of relief. Until somebody noticed that the branches of the blown-up wicker man were writhing and wriggling together, reforming themselves. Oh dear.
Our bruised, burnt and batterd friends scampered about, finding as many pieces as they could and piled them up in the smoking trench. They set fire to them and kept piling on deadwood until they were sure it was all burned away. Then they collapsed into exhaustion, leaving Basil to watch over them, and to dig graves (slowly, about a teaspoon-ful of dirt at a time) for Vallana and Jim the Dead.
So intent on his sexton's work was Basil that he failed to notice, as the fire burned down to ashes, the way they began to swirl about....
OMINOUS CHORDS! BOM BOM BOMMMMMMM!
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