Might and Magic 3 (Ch. 12)

Ongoing blog of Might and Magic 3: Isles of Terra

Chapter 12 - Druid's Hold

-

"Let's explore closer to 'Home'. When we first set out from Fountain Head we didn't stray far from the main road, and it'll give us a chance to start covering the largest of Terra's Isles."

Venturing forth back to Fountain Head was simple enough with access to the Mirror teleportal. And then it was just a matter of trudging east over the foothills that guarded the Hidden Valley.

According to Corak's notes, this was the Druid's Hold -- a place where those noble servitors of nature gathered to conduct their rites. Stella had previously been a ranger here--that is, until the Moo Cult arrived and either scattered or enslaved them to their will.

"These are wild Dropsy Fungus," Stella explained, "Most fungus only feeds on decaying matter, returning it to the cycle of nature. But these fungus don't like to wait. Their motile roots contain a poison shock that can knock you over if you're not careful."

"Ugh--I hate mushrooms." Bernadene moaned.

Although large--the threat of aggressive fungus was about as dire as could be imagined. Which is to say they posed no real threat to us. After knocking them to pieces, we would often find magic gems concentrated in the 'roots'.

 "Hrmph. We usually monitor the water flow here to keep their population in check. But it looks like it never got turned off when the Moo Cult came."

There was no fix for it now. We destroyed the spore colonies that had overgrown the fountain and then stopped up the water for now, that they would not continue to infest the grove.

 There were many mysterious stone heads spaced throughout the grassy spaces and nearby beach. All of them craved magical gems. Most of them would only offer minor and temporary bonuses to elemental resistance in return--but one took a larger sum and revealed to Stella new understandings of astrology.

For a hefty 2000 gems, one of the stone heads revealed to us the secret treasure of the high seas pirates, left buried and forgotten here since time immemorial. Although we came away with 10000 gold and a few trinkets, I still felt we came out on the losing end of that deal. With the cost of training and maintenance alone we could burn through 10,000 gold fairly quickly while 2000 gems was going to be harder to replace.

"This dungeon leads to the territory of the Slithercult Stronghold." Stella explained, "The cult lived in an uneasy truce with the druids but they are by no means friendly."

"Do you think they had anything to do with the Moo cult's activity in the area?"

"No--the Slithercult would never ally with the Moo cult. They're too involved with their own worship of the serpent gods. Most likely they're just keeping to themselves underground to avoid all the war and danger up here altogether.

"Let's stop in anyway and see if they know anything."

"I don't know if this is a good idea...," Stella warned reluctantly as we invited ourselves in. The Cobra Fiend priestess at the door wasted no time in confronting us.

"Good day, Slithercult member! I'm Faulkner the cleric, and on behalf of..."

With a darting hiss, the fiend lashed out at me with her fangs, but Knell intercepted the serpent's fangs with her pike.

"Mind yee're manners now!" she taunted the fiend--struggling with it until at last the fiend lay slain. In the process though--Knell had been scratched along her wrist by the beast's fangs and settled against her pike wearily.

"I'll be uh'kay." she said, "'s not venomed...I think."

Alicia kneeled closeby and examined the wound closely, mouthing a few arcane syllables of identification.

"Not venomed with poison, anyway. Venomed with some kind of sleeping agent."

I laughed. A prayer of revitalizing awakening was one of the easiest to do. It was among one of the few rituals I intuitively knew when I first arrived here, and a cantrip so simple that even Stella or Bernadene could cast one.

"Just stay close, everyone. Their poison might be on the weak side but we don't want them catching us by surprise anyway."

From down the hall ahead, we saw a glimmer of firelight. Thinking that perhaps the cult had sent watchmen our way, we readied our weapons and charged in, but it was not a cobra fiend this time.

"What in blazes?!" Bernadene said, mouth agape in slight unease at the shambling figure that stalked toward us.

"It's a candle creep!"  Lydia exclaimed.

"Boss, protect us from fire!"

Trusting her familiarity with the thing, I began making the ritual signs right away--as I did so, the flame atop the wax creature's head suddenly grew brighter and leapt down the hall at us in a swirling fireball, dissipating into harmless sparks just over us when I finished the prayer.

"They're like a kind of golem, I think." Lydia explained afterwards, while we investigated the thing's body after we'd defeated it.  "Not as impressive as a real one but probably easier to make. I got chased around a temple by one once when I invited myself into one after hours." she grinned.

We ended up finding a few magical gems in the waxen core of the creatures, no doubt fueling it's enchantment.

There were numerous guillotine traps that swung down from the ceiling too quick for us to avoid, having been cleverly placed in front of closed gates like these. There was nothing to do for it except absorb the blow. On our way back, with the gate already bashed open Alicia or Bernadene could carry us past the trap with a 'Jump' spell.

"Are you sure this is...you know...the Good thing to do? I mean--we did kind of just invite ourselves in. Aren't we the aggressor here?" Bernadene asked--suddenly growing a conscience as Lydia set to work looting the lockboxes we'd found in some of the rooms.

"Hey--the cult member at the door attacked us first." I explained, "Besides--it isn't about Good or Evil, really. On Varn--where Alicia and I came from, such things had almost no meaning."

"Really? But...then why even identify as such?"

"It's about attitude, mostly. When you had nothing to your name and nothing to lose like my brother and I did, being Evil was basically like saying, "We're not nice people, don't bother us." And being Good was basically like saying, "I'm not looking for trouble, come on up and say 'hi'. And it wasn't something you stuck with too hard, either. If you were Evil but woke up that day feeling pretty generous, there was nothing wrong with deciding you were gonna be Neutral for awhile. An' if you were a Goodly sort but were in a foul mood, there was nothing wrong with letting a little Evil out. This whole 'war of alignment' thing you have going on here between Zealot and Tumult and Malefactor is...almost barbaric in comparison."

"Hey!" Knell yelled at me.

"No offense to my barbarian ally, of course."

"Okay....but...but that doesn't really explain why we busted in here and are looting their treasure." Bernadene rubbed her head in thought.

Lydia popped open the lockbox and liberated herself to a few thousand goldpieces.

"'cos Alicia and I are looking for Corak. And to do that, we need to do a lot of exploring and find clues."

"Clues for -what-?"

"We'll know it when we find it. Make no mistake--we are not the 'Good' guys out here today. But we are no more monstrous than any of the many and numerous beasts and dangers lurking above, either. We are adventurers. The only 'right' is whoever's might and magic prevails. Besides--we aren't going to attack anyone who doesn't fight back. That's just murder."

"Hey!" Alicia called from further ahead, "Stop jaw-jacking and get over here!"

The springs that Alicia had to show us were flowing with a yellow, swirling liquid.

"Please tell me that isn't the cult's communal urinal." I half-joked as I watched Alicia examine it and carefully smell the vapors wafting out of it.

She stared deadpan up at me and then, ignoring any want of rebuttal simply explained, "It's a pocket of mild acid, I think. Probably formed naturally underground and they built these troughs around them. I'm detecting magic inside some of them.

"Well--let me use a prayer for protection from acid and let's have a look..."

Despite the prayer--the acid did burn slightly. Feeling something at the bottom of the trough, I fished out a shining silver skull..

"Hey! I thought we'd seen the last of those in Fountain Head!" Lydia beamed.

"There must have been more made than Kranion realized. He -did- say he would still pay a thousand gold per skull, too.

"Faulkner! Look at this!" Stella called from another pool.

Knell was pulling Quatloo after Quatloo after Quatloo from the pool while Stella cleaned them off.

"Ugh! More quatloo coins! Could those brothers have come from this place?"

"The missing brother...," I mused as we found this grafitti a little further in the cave, "Maybe there -is- some connection between those monks and this cave. We need to explore further and find out."

Deeper in a guillotine-ridden hall, we encountered a spirit-infested altar that halted us in our tracks and demanded an answer, or else we would be teleported back to the entrance.

"Sssstop and anssswer! Who ssssent you?" the sibilant voice of the serpent's altar asked.

Thinking back to the lesson in linguistics I'd picked up from Lord Word, I explained my reasoning to the rest of the group...

"There was a pattern to the brother's names. Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, and Zeta. In one of the Ancients tongues, there should be an 'Epsilon' between Delta and Gamma."

There is seriously no other clue for this puzzle other than having a basic grasp of the greek alphabet. Unless you count the spoileriffic hints that are given out in the pyramids once you have access to them.

 In this enormous room that followed, guillotines swung and chopped all around us, giving us little room to maneuver without being injured. Worse--there were teleportation traps scattered throughout the room as well, which would send us back to the entrance, leaving us to traverse the danger-laden room again and again until we found the correct route through...

There in the antechamber to the room, the Slithercult's leader descended upon us. Though slightly stronger than his bretheren, he was of no threat to us and fell just as easily--leaving us to avail ourselves of the treasures kept in his private quarters--but regrettably, we found nothing in the way of tangible clues about where to proceed next.

In one of the nearby walls, a small slot suddenly opened and a half-orc cult member invited us to step closer.

"Sssstep into the Sssslitercult Ssssaloon, friendsss!"

If the snakeman was angry or embittered at all about us coming in and looting the place, he certainly didn't show it at all. It seemed even among the Slithercult there were members whose motives were their own. Leading us to this strange chamber he invited us to spend all our coins freely at the altars and then left us.

The mouths on the altars all flicked their tongues greedily towards us as we approached--'sniffing' the air eagerly at our presence.

"Quatloossss! We want quatloooossss!"

"-these- things?" I asked, taking one out which one of the brothers had given me. I had no idea what else I was going to do with them and decided to feed one to the nearest altar.

Vomiting a ray of magic light from it's mouth, the altar's power strengthened me with a permanent augmentation to my accuracy. Testing the other mouths awarded might and endurance, respectively. Between the coins that brothers had given us and the ones we'd found in the yellow pools, we were able to strengthen ourselves significantly.


Well, it was a relief at least to finally get all of those out of our inventory. I never wanted to see another quatloo again.