Difference between revisions of "Thaddeus (Chapter 11)"

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Thaddeus (Act II)#Chapter 11

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-Be not sad, all those who suffer on this earth,
-Whose hands are frustrated and see no success.
-He who is wounded, hands will bind him up.
-In time of famine, he is redeemed from death.
-Do not fear wrath or the scourge of the tongue,
-The scepter shall rise for your defense in war.
-When evil comes to you, know good may as well
-And all that was taken away may yet return.
--- The Book of Radenis, c. 5, v. 17-24
-Before doing anything else, Thaddeus took the things he'd found in his footlocker to Cain.  A complete analysis failed to turn up anything out of the ordinary -- they were just very nice items, finer than anything he'd yet seen.  The scepter was a Monk's War Scepter of Fire, with high bonuses to the skills of Zeal and Blessed Hammer, and an even larger one for the weilder's Concentration.  The shield was a Crown Shield, a seldom-seen item only a Paladin can use.  Of superior quality, the shield bestowed high resistances to the elements.  Three runestones set in the shield, Ral, Ort, and Tal, granted the shield even more resistance and strength.  It alone would take care of almost all Thaddeus' resistance needs.
-These were wonderful gifts, there was no denying it.  All the same, Thaddeus couldn't help but wonder where they'd come from, and why they were given to him.  Judging from the tone, the note must come from the same man who'd given him the Sparkling Mail; obviously he was far more powerful and knowledgeable than he'd let on at first.  As far as he could remember, Thaddeus hadn't told anyone he'd been experimenting with Blessed Hammer.  Cain knew, he'd seen the book, but didn't know anything about Thaddeus' benefactor.  Perhaps this was a blessing from above, by an unexpected messenger.  All the angels he'd heard of in legends sounded quite different, but this might be a lesser celestial being.
-Or possibly... an infernal being?  Thaddeus could see nothing wrong with the items, no hidden spirits or unseeen traps.  Perhaps Fara could help.  He'd been looking for a chance to speak with her again, and this would be an excellent opportunity.
-"Hello, Fara.  May I ask your opinion about some things?"
-"I would be honored."
-"This War Scepter came to me, and this shield.  Have you seen such things before?"
-Slowly, Fara examined them, then shook her head.  "Not in this part of the world.  When I was in Kehjistan..."
-For a long moment, she was silent.  Whenever the lands across the Twin Seas came up, Fara tended to go quiet.  Sensing that she wouldn't be ready to talk about it yet, Thaddeus said, "I wondered if there was anything wrong with them."
-"I cannot see anything.  The shield is a wonder, a great rarity.  This scepter I would consider adequate at best; you could find better."
-"What do you mean?  It seems quite a good weapon to me."
-Fara smiled a bit.  "This scepter increases your skills, but those you gain the most in are not the best.  There are few other advantages to using it as a weapon."
-Thaddeus nodded.  "I would think Blessed Hammer, and Concentration, very useful skills, and of great value."
-"When I went forth with the Hand of Zakarum, the blessing of the light I found most useful was Fanaticism.  Calling up the vengeful spirits of Paladins past is far superior to simple zeal.  And while this scepter is quick in the hand, I always favored the sword or lance."
-"Charging with a great spear is a devastating attack."
-"Absolutely."  Combat and weapons seemed to be a safe subject; Fara was starting to open up.  "No one calls on the Hammers of Maccabee anymore.  In ages past, all Paladins were masters of concentration, and the Hammers were very powerful.  Now, all you will find are fanatics, who strike with the speed and vigor born of unthinking certainty."
-"Must fanaticism cloud the mind?" Thaddeus inquired.
-"It often does."  Fara's eyes were flashing, her voice rising as she spoke.  "The weakness of concentration is that you must be sure of what you concentrate upon.  It is a great help for you and others, but it is slow.  A fanatical warrior is a frightening opponent; it makes combat quicker, and easier.  After all, our goal is to deal with the enemy quickly, yes?"
-"Yes...?"
-"Yes!  There is no need to think of who we were striking down, of what crimes they are accused.  Fanaticism is the enemy of thought -- flail away at whatever moves, as you are instructed.  For those who survive, death comes more slowly, but there is no need to worry about that either.  They are possessed by..."  Suddenly Fara stopped, and dropped her head to stare at the floor, her face flushing nearly as red as her hair.
-"Yes, well..."  Thaddeus shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.  "Surely, even a fanatic has calmer moments, and may consider their actions while at peace."
-Returning to examining the shield, Fara nodded.  "But some avoid it, even when they can, lest they come to realize just what they are doing.  This shield is very impressive; it would be difficult to find its better.  The scepter will serve.  Where did you find them?"
-"In my room.  Someone left them for me."
-Fara blinked with surprise.  "These are very valuable things.  I could not begin to pay you what they are worth.  They were simply given to you?"
-"Yes," Thaddeus shrugged.  "By a pale, thin man, who I had seen earlier, I believe.  He also gave me the Sparkling Mail, which I now wear."
-"I had noticed," Fara said, staring.  "I have not seen this man here in Lut Gholein."
-"I suspect he has not actually been here."
-"Then how did he place these in your room?"
-Thaddeus shrugged.  "It is a mystery.  That is why I wished your opinion."
-Slowly, Fara nodded.  "Perhaps you have been favored by a higher power."
-"I have wondered, but worried more that I might be misled by a false light."
-"But no one has tried to dissuade you from your quest?"
-"I have been given tools, and knowledge of ages past to help me.  Perhaps they were given with the intention of distracting me, encouraging greed or pride in my heart.  The ways of Hell can be subtle; is evil ever more seductive than when it is useful?"
-"Yes," Fara said.  "When evil gives you the goal you put your life towards."
-That was a disturbing idea, Thaddeus thought as he returned to the desert.  Something truly terrible must have happened to the Hand of Zakarum.  To judge from what Fara said, a new fanaticism that had overtaken the Paladins there, and much suffering resulted.  The order of Protectors guessed as much, especially when no word came from the east for years.  But Fara had come from the east more recently, and from what she said, there was evil there... giving her the goal she put her life towards?  Shuddering, Thaddeus strode out through the dunes towards a large oasis.  The Protectors saw the service of man and the Light differently than the Hand of Zakarum, but surely evil could not take hold among them.
-As he approached a pool of stagnant water, tight swarms of biting flies come to meet him, as well as a crowd of vultures.  The vultures were green and dried out; Thaddeus was sure they had eaten nothing but undead flesh, or were already dead themselves.  His new scepter should greatly increase the power of the Blessed Hammer, so he set a few hammers whirling, moving a few steps to unleash each from a different spot.  The bronze hammers spun and spiraled out, blasting through the insect swarms and striking the vultures dead on the spot.  Very shortly, Thaddeus was surrounded by corpses; he never needed to raise his hand to any of them.
-Throughout the oasis, the story was much the same.  Demons come out.  The hammers ring around him.  The demons all fall down dead.  Clearing the oasis went very quickly, except for a ruined house whose walls stopped the hammers.  Inside, a group of Lightning Scarabs laired, and their chief was resistant to magic.  This made the hammers far less useful, so Thaddeus lured them out and killed them with a series of charges.  Bouncing from one to another, Thaddeus kept them separated, avoiding the lightning and preventing them from coordinating their attacks until all were dead.  It was all so easy.  Once, he caught himself thinking, 'Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I shall not fear evil, because I am the most dangerous bastard in the whole valley.'  Now, what would the other Paladins think of that?
-Soon, the oasis was empty of life, even unlife, apart from Thaddeus and whatever innocent animals had survived the demonic occupation.  Even the scorpions seemed pleased to see them gone.  All that was left was a round hole in the sand, leading to a tunnel.  The tunnel sides were sand cemented together with some kind of slime.  The result was almost as strong as stone, so the narrow tunnel could go very deep into the ground.  Thaddeus thought about certain insects he'd seen, which dig a hole, then dart out to attack passing prey.  Nothing leapt out as he approached the hole, so he went inside.
-The first thing Thaddeus found in the tunnels was a human body, thoroughly covered with slime, cemented to the floor.  It seemed to be dissolving, like the slime was digesting it.  This was not a sign of anything good.  As he ventured into the tunnels, he had to crawl on hands and knees, the ceiling was so low.  Down here, the hammers would do him little good; there was no room for them to spin.  He'd have to rely on his new scepter exclusively as a weapon.  After a short distance, he found one of the things that made the tunnels: a gigantic insect, easily 10 feet long, with legs everywhere and a fat body covered with chitinous plates as hard as stone.  It spat a stream of poisonous slime, then retreated to cover a group of pulsing, throbbing eggs with its body.
-There could be no doubt about identifying this thing.  Accounts of Hell had mentioned them many times, horrible things called Maggots.  The eggs they lay mature with unnatural speed, hatching into ferociously hungry young.  The mother creature, meanwhile, busies herself laying more eggs.  The horde one mother can produce will quickly overrun many opponents, if she and her eggs are not dealt with.   The tunnel conformed to the Maggot's body shape: low but wide.  Thaddeus barely had enough room to swing his weapon; any narrower or lower, and killing it would have required a spear.  Before it died, the eggs hatched into small Maggots.  They took longer to kill, but at least they were too young to be poisonous.
-Back in Lut Gholein, Atma told him that the Maggots were not creatures from Hell, just large but common desert creatures.  Before the troubles begain, they had not been so big, vicious, or venomous, and were easily tamed.  Farms used to raise small herds of them, making their eggs into a nutritious paste that was mixed into vegetable soups to enhance the flavor.  But over the last few weeks, all the Maggots had grown huge, and many killed their keepers.  Their flesh was now corrosive, and unfit to eat.
-"Are you sure you should be doing this?" Atma asked.
-"Absolutely.  These creatures are mentioned in the annals of explorers who visited the burning hells, though I cannot account for their peaceful presence here."
-"They have always been here," Atma said.  "One of the few good things to come out of the desert.  This is not a productive land, otherwise."
-"I'll tell ya," Geglash interrupted, "Bug soup's the besht hangover cure there ish.  Well... maybe shecond best.  The besht is gettin' drunk again!  Ya know, hare uva dog what bit ya.  Dunno why dog hare, I don' like rabbit or dog..."
-Thaddeus pointed in a random direction.  "Geglash, look!  It's Bigfoot!"
-"Whaa?  Where?!"  Geglash left to look around the tavern.
-"Forgive him," Atma said.  "With the city in the trouble it is, he has taken to drinking more than his usual."
-"I am sorry, I should be more patient," Thaddeus sighed. "I wonder, if there might be some infernal species of maggot, which is influencing the mundane ones?"
-"Are there hellish versions of common animals, then?"
-"Some are known to me.  I will keep looking.  As for you, you may want to water Geglash's drinks more than you do."
-Atma smiled. "I water everyone's drinks, these days.  Though it may not be a kindness."
-Of course his advice had been unnecessary.  Years of experience no doubt told Atma exactly how much Geglash should have.  Still, his behavior was worrying.  Geglash was unlikely to be dangerous, but distractibility and clouded judgment can be trouble even in a peaceful place.  Especially in someone that big.
-Deeper in the Maggot's lair, insect swarms and Lightning Scarabs filled the tunnels.  Were these things coming up from the depths too?  The swarms could deal with the tunnels easily, but the beetles had to crawl, and weren't very good at it.  A hard-hitting charge was out of the question in the narrow tunnels, so Thaddeus beat the beetles to death by calling on the vengeful spirits of Protectors past.  It was, as Fara noted, an effective maneuver.
-At the bottom of the lair, a huge chamber held what Thaddeus suspected all along: a Maggot queen.  The bloated creature might once have been an ordinary mundane Maggot, but Hell's poison filled its distended body now, apparently through pulsing tendrils snaking into its body from the earth. Its chamber held at least a dozen Maggots and their young.  The monstrous queen was so engorged with venom it couldn't move, not even to lift its head to spit.  Its offspring, however, defended it with a frenzy of spitting and egg-laying.  Thaddeus tried to charge in, but a horde of young Maggots blocked him.  Laying about with great zeal, he flailed right and left through a rain of corrosive spittle, smashing Maggot young and any adult foolish enough to come within reach.
-His new shield made him almost immune to the creature's venom, and the waves of Maggot young were easily killed; there were just so many of them, it was almost impossible to reach the queen.  Pushing in through heaps of crushed bodies, Thaddeus started releasing hammers into the chamber, driving deeper as the way was cleared.  Soon he was casting Blessed Hammer from right next to the queen; they tore through it and its offspring easily.  One last Maggot hid in a far corner, next to a chest.  Once it was taken care of, Thaddeus killed the queen, his scepter crunching into it repeatedly.  It died squealing hellishly, its remaining life spraying out in an explosion of icy-cold, venomous slime.
-Thaddeus was completely, thoroughly beslubbered with half-frozen corrosive ichor.  It was almost enough to make him vomit himself.  For once, he didn't even try to clean up before going back to town.  It took a rinse in the ocean to get it all off; several fish died.  The queen had collected some magical items in its lair, all in that chest.  Strangely intelligent of it... but Thaddeus was more grateful that the chest had protected its contents from the corrosive venom.  In the chest was a broken staff, its headpiece snapped off.  Cain identified it as the Staff of Kings, a Horadric staff.  He was very happy to see it, but Thaddeus only frowned again.  Once again, something he needed just happened to turn up, in the last place he would have looked for it.  Perhaps it was fate, or an unseen hand guiding him to some goal, but he was beginning to grow very suspicious.
-Going back to the inn, turning over the day's events in his mind, Thaddeus opened the door and found... something new in his room.  Again.  A gleaming set of gothic plate stood on a rack next to his footlocker.  Two runes were set in the breastplate, and a note was stuffed under the pauldron.
-Master Cleanliness-is-next-to-holiness,
-Gross!  And to think of what that salt water can do to chainmail, too.  You're doing just fine, but here's something to help you on your new career path.  The runeword is "stealth."  Don't worry, it's got nothing to do with sneakiness, it's just something to help with casting spells.  Let those hammers spin, dude!
-- The Mule

Difference between revisions of "Thaddeus (Chapter 11)"

Latest revision as of 12:19, 12 February 2017

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