Session 40

An Unlikely Plan • His Teeth Stained Red • The Fane of Apollyon • Oleanders and Azaleas

The Players

Ditchbank, 5th level Karslish Rogue

Graciela, 5th level Realmish Cleric

Kenneth Bolero, 1st level Under Mountain Dwarf

Petra, 4th level Under Mountain Dwarf

Prospero the Violet, 5th level Wizard

Wren the Weird and Wisterial 4th level Averois Changeling

Their Hirelings

Chiavaiolo the Chartreuse, Medium

Gracielous, 2nd level Fighter, a fanatic dedicated to the Law

Simona the Grey, Medium

Zorzi, a pirate

The week of Leftember 25th began with Ditchbank laying out a plan of dishonesty: to pass through the guarded gate into Apollyon's Fane, the men in the party would disguise themselves as women. Much had been abandoned in Serpentona. It was easy enough to find women's clothing and make rouge. The pirate, Zorzi braided flowers into Ditchbank’s hair.

“After they are fooled, what then?” Prospero asked while undressing, his eyes merry.

Ditchbank paused in shaving his mustache and was quiet a long while. “I hadn’t thought that far.”

Only Bolero’s hired wizard, Chiavaiolo refused to play a part. Prospero was obliged to make him invisible, having no other solution except to leave the stubborn ass behind. 

But by mid-morning, the rest of the men were in their costumes and the party rode out again through untended orchards into familiar hills. If Graciela, Petra, or Wren had doubts, well, these ladies kept their own counsel. Like a daytime star, the white ruin they sought, shone out from the horizon. And it was by this mote, they guided their horses, wending through hill and dale.

On these days, whenever they tired of his singing and his psaltery, the party would send Ditchbank scouting. And this was how, one afternoon, the rogue found himself alone with a great terror of a man, twenty-two feet tall, his skin the color of burnished bronze and his hair gold. He stood in a hilltop crater, charred bodies all about. He wore a silver breastplate in the imperial style. 

The rogue’s disguise held up at thirty yards. The giant laughed. His teeth shone as brightly as his breastplate. “Ho! I haven’t seen a woman here in some time.”

“And I have never seen a man such as you. You are magnificent!” Talk of the fane did not much interest the titan but flattery did. 

The scorched corpses at his feet were all headless. Had he decapitated them? More likely they were Blemmyes. The minstrel did not care to approach close enough to understand. The giant picked up one of these, took a great bite from its thigh and tossed it away. He smiled again, his still shinning teeth stained red.

Ditchbank steadied his heart and his hand and pointed to a black stone edifice, faint in the distance. “Is that your home?”

“Ho ho! No. I  dwell in a castle in the clouds. I only came down to dine.”

“Well, sirrah, you have a feast before you. I will leave you to it,” answered the rogue, and turned his horse and rode hard away.

It was not yet evening when the company reached Apollyon’s temple, but braziers had been lit. They dismounted at the foot of low mountain, in a long columnated courtyard concealed among the rocks. And as they approached a trumpet sounded once from the dim, somewhere above and beyond the great bronze doors before them. One door stood partly open, wide enough that a lone woman might slip through. Graciela went near and glimpsed the room beyond, only ten feet deep, stone stairs winding down into darkness.

As she approached, two women in a guard post above the gate called out in greeting. They wore lily white chitons, necks and breasts red with wine or blood or both? One descended and led the horses to a hitch post. “These will be good for our sisters.”

Ditchbank hissed in Petra’s ear, “She means as a meal for the harpies!”

“Welcome, welcome, tell us of yourselves.”

Graciela made to answer for the party, as was her habit. But it was better that Wren spoke first. “We’ve come to learn more of your sisterhood and meet your master,” she called out. A look of recognition passed between the changeling and the maenads, which Ditchbank wished he had not seen.

Nine more women soon came forth with anointing oils and crowns of oleander and azaleas. They were, to a woman, drunk. and were dressed all alike. Each wore a belt cut to resemble a serpent wrapped about the waist. And, opening their arms wide in greeting, all revealed wickedly long knives at their hips. 

Despite all that went according to plan, the party’s fear built. Prospero knelt first. He bowed his head not in supplication, but to hide how he hurried through the half-whispered words of his sleeping spell. A spell that came to naught.

Hot with rage at the betrayal, the maenads screamed. They moved like blood spilt over the dry ground, were all at once among the lines. They could not be pinned down nor hemmed in nor even counted. All was confusion.

Still Graciela the Good trusted to prayer. Two women were held fast by her faith. Swords raised that would never come down.

Cunning Petra opened the woman suddenly before her with Treachery. Her pirate Zorzi cut a maenad nearly to the bone before they were separated. It was a mad, whirling fight, the maenads desperate to kill, the party desperate to survive.

Prospero the Violet raised his right hand significantly only for a woman to catch it by the wrist and wrench the arm from its socket. She pulled him close to bite, teeth almost touching in the flesh of his neck, while her sister stabbed him in the pit of his other arm. He fell, his cause desperate, his life slipping away.

The dwarf, Boleto saw it all, and clashed his way across the battle to the wizard to cut Prospero’s attackers back.

Petra hammered a woman so hard she turned a half circle before she fell dead.

And then the fight was over as sudden as it had begun: one maenad surrounded. Ditchbank turned his blade at the last moment, and struck her sore but not fatally.

She spat blood from somewhere deep inside then collapsed. In the hope that she might still someway be delivered from out up of her madness, the rogue bound her wounded head and then her hands and feet.

The sun set. The hour did not taste of victory. Rather than enter the fane and descend, they fled.