Chaos Out of Order

Update Archive

Once the berm of the outpost was in view, the travelers saw humanoid figures on the lookout. They sent Methystina into the outpost, where she reported that well armoured female maenads were posted every thirty feet atop the berm. She snuck in, and found Gorgoreth talking with a maenad commander in his tent. Evesdropping, she heard that the maenads were happy with the change in Haalak since Gorgoreth talked with him. Evetually she left, and Methystina entered.

Gorgoreth seemed surprised that Methystina could already talk, and was happy to hear that the mission was completed. He mentioned that the elves did not attack from the north that dawn, which seemed to back up her claims. He then answered her questions, most of which were communicated to her from GaliLena. They discovered that the outpost was now under the control of House Stel, whom had supplied the maenad mercenaries.

Shocked and unable to believe this betrayal, they were astounded even more with news that Laalarash was no longer a concern, that Amanya had escaped due to a previouslky unknown potionfruit of flying, and that the rest of the outpost except Haalak and Gorgoreth had been elimated! He further promised that if they came in with the proper password, they could still work for the outpost, but if not they were free to go.

Disappointed, Methystina left. Once Raele had completed his trance, he heard of the conversation and decided that he should sneak in and hire Haalak. Despite the warnings of his friends, he snuck in and found Haalak alone in the Hospital Tent. Haalak was willing to burn down the Red Tower, but didn’t want to abandon his post as the only healer in the outpost while elves were still attacking. Once the elves quit attacking, and with Gorgoreth’s permission, he said he would be willing. So Raele walked across the compound to talk to Gorgoreth.

Unfortunately, the maenads in the mess tent saw him and called him out. When he failed to correctly pronounce the password, they chased him into Gorgoreth’s Tent. There he begged Gorgoreth to call off the maenads. Gorgoreth told him to use the password, so he tried to use Gorgoreth as a hostage. When he proved too slippery for Raele, Raele chose to flee the outpost as arrows flew from all directions. Once he returned to his friends, they discussed finding the Klethira army and warning them of the Stel takeover.

After healing up, Chiki’tiklatl burried the crystaline entity deep in the ground while Raele burned up the elven dead in the first floor fireplace. GaliLena continued to test the gong’s interaction with the central fireplace, while Coraanu gathered a few bags of redleaf. Eventually, they all gathered together to explore the tower.

Up on the top floor, Raele failed to pick the lock of the skeleton’s chest. So Chiki’tiklatl opened it using brute force. Inside there was an ancient scroll woven with leather strips into a leather backing. No one could decypher the characters, so GaliLena took it with her.

They then traveled down the tower exploring each level. They found that the upper levels appeared dusty, while the lower levels looked cleaned up. They found shelves of skulls, desks with books and scrolls (several of note which GaliLena took with her), straw bedding, as well as everything which had already been explored. Eventually they had all of the loot they wanted.

Chiki’tiklatl barred everyone outside. He then took the various lengths of rope from the tower and tied them to one of the crenulations to let himself out. They then made for the Swiftwing camp, where Coraanu once again made an appointment for them with the council of elders.

The council was pleased to hear of the demise of the Master of the Red Tower and the securing of the red leaf production facilities. In fact, they sent runners to the other two tribes to halt their attacks on the Klethira outpost and await further redleaf from the Swiftwing tribe. They hoped to get the other two larger tribes to become separate clans within the Swiftwing tribe through control of the Red Tower’s red leaf facilities.

After the meeting, GaliLena slept and Coraanu rested while the others tracked down the elder cleric of rain. He admitted that there were some on the council opposed to using the red leaf against the other tribes. Once everyone was rested, they set off for the outpost.

On the way, they stopped in the observation camp of the war subchief. No one was on watch, and everyone was heavily into their search for knowledge and understanding since being told to stop their attacks. The travelers found Alie-Aka smoking a cactus cob pipe where Raele gave him a bag of redleaf for his troubles. Coraanu was moved by this display of apathy in his people, and begged to be left behind to help them off of the redleaf as best he could. So the three left without him.

As the night air cooled off, Methystina entered the Red Tower via one of the arrowslits. She found a room heavy in humidity and dimmly lit from a central fireplace. At each of the arrowslits was a series of mature plants with broad leaves. She went up the central spiral stair to the next floor, where a similar room without arrowslits contained desicated versions of the same plant. A central fireplace seemed to contain the same pilar of fire.

After that, GaliLena sent Methystina to find the top of the building. As Methystina traveled up the stairwell, she discovered that the central fireplace was on each landing. 105’ from the ground she stopped at a trapdoor. Unable to lift it, she explored the room underneath it. Besides the spiral stair and accompanying fireplace, the room was covered in a thick layer of untouched dust. Beneath the dust rested a humanoid skeleton with its hand reached out toward a stone and wood chest with a metal lock.

Meanwhile, Raele decided to attempt to reenter the tower through the front doors. Chiki’tiklatl, GaliLena, and Raele were then telepathically questioned as to their buisness with the Red Tower. As Raele had already been rejected and GaliLena was already capable of sleep, the voice in their heads said that only Chiki’tiklatl would be admitted to the tower.

An elf opened the door and admitted Chiki’tiklatl. GaliLena was able to convince the door guard to allow her to stand beside him in the doorway to watch her friend. Eventually, the master of the Red Tower came down the stairs to speak with the kreen. He failed to deny sending the elven zombies (even implying his guilt) and was immediately lept upon. As the three fought the human and elven guard, Methystina rushed down the stairs to join them.

The master of the tower displayed several psionic powers in the combat, so Chiki’tiklatl began to choke him (and thus himself). A small crystaline entity also joined in the combat to assist the human, before wising up and arousing the elves curled up on the floor. When Coraanu had been aroused, he asked both sides to quit fighting to no avail. Coraanu and the other elves claimed to have been able to go to sleep and dreamed of being killed by a dragon, although each elf described a different death.

Methystina found that the floor below the one she originally entered appeared to be set up to dry, shred, and bag the leaves of the plants that were growing above. GaliLena was able to convince Coraanu to go upstairs and check that floor out. She followed, leaving the human to the kreen and Raele to fight his fellow elves. When she reached the third floor, she rang the large gong. Besides the vibrations which were felt by everyone in the tower, the column of fire briefly grew brighter on each floor every time she struck the gong.

Eventually, the human burst into dozens of flitting tounges of flame, failing to even leave a cloud of ash behind. At the same time, the crystaline entity dropped to the ground, apparently inert. Raele eventually dispatched the last of the tower’s elves, finally allowing the band to rest.

Disappointed that the group was ready to go without availing themselves of the provisions offered by the chieftan, the elven guide prompted them to think about it some more. GaliLena suggested that blankets would be good, so he used the excuse to sneak the group into the trade goods tent for looting. While Raele offered an excellent distraction by obtaining twelve braclets and an iron shoe for trade purposes, the guide was able to obtain a few choice items himself. Despite the group’s familiarity with merchant caravans, they refrained from actually going to the practical goods stores and left without the blankets when GaliLena became frustrated with the two elves.

As the Maenad was the only slow member of the party, she crawled atop Chiki’tiklatl’s back as they made for the Red Tower. Several hours into their journey they found themselves being tracked by a reptilian foe in chitin armour armed with a soulknife and wooden shield. The lone foe spoke in an unintelligible toungue, but the language of violence was easily understood when Raele was handily taken down. When the foe was itself downed, Chiki’tiklatl did a coup de grace and left the meat to the tender mercies of the desert. He then pried some crystals off of the chitin for GaliLena before burrying it. The matching crystal-embedded shield was taken with them as they continued toward the Red Tower.

At sunset the party neared the tower. The two elves did a reconnaisance, finding one elf guarding the front door and three elves painting the rear wall. On their way back to the others, the elven guide, who introduced himself to Raele as Coraanu, made too much noise. The two were found by the three painters, but managed to pass themselves off as folk interested in joining forces with the master of the Red Tower thanks to some fast talking and Raele’s stash of redleaf. The elven painters told them of their master’s ability to bring them sleep—something previously thought physically impossible among elves and kreen alike!

Eventually a gong summoned the elves inside, with Methystina sneaking in with them. Coraanu and Raele presented themselves to a short, pasty white, pudgy human who claimed to want to help the inferior sleepless races. He placed his hand upon Coraanu’s head. After half a minute Coraanu collapsed unconscience. Then the human placed his hand upon Raele’s head, but the human then claimed that Raele was unfit and had the other elves toss him out into the desert night. Methystina followed Raele, leaving Coraanu alone as the door was barred from the inside. Chiki’tiklatl and GaliLena caught up to Raele, and the three explored the exterior of the tower as best as they could in the dark.

As Chiki’tiklatl, GaliLena, and Raele wound down from the dusk attack, a runner from the Hospital Tent came with a request that they do something about Alie-Aka. Apparently their prisoner was sobbing uncontrollably, much to the annoyance of the wounded. As they were preparing to depart for the Hospital Tent, another runner came from another direction with the same request. On the way to the tent, yet another runner came to the three. This time the messenger was from Gorgoreth requesting an audience with the three and their prisoner in his command tent.

Upon reaching the Hospital Tent, they found Alie-Aka wracked with tears over the apparent failure of the dusk attack to rescue him from captivity. As they ungagged and untied him, they informed him of the summons. Once he discovered that he had been summoned to the command tent, he cheered up.

During their meeting in Gorgoreth’s tent, he informed them at the rate of casualties the outpost was taking they would be wiped out either during the dawn attack or, optimistically, during the next dusk attack. With so few able bodies remaining, Alie-Aka, Chiki’tiklatl, GaliLena, and Raele were to each monitor one side of the berm by themselves for the second watch. While Alie-Aka was thrilled, the others were shocked that things had gotten so desperate. Gorgoreth insisted that it was necessary, but that Chiki’tiklatl was to eat more parts of Alie-Aka if he tried to do anything contrary to the outpost’s survival.

Gorgoreth then berated them for telling Laalarash about their excursion outside the berm. He explained to them that they had a new mission, a mission so secret that after this meeting even he and Laalarash would deny knowing anything about it. Sometime during their watch after the 1st watch was asleep and before the 3rd watch was up, Alie-Aka was to lead the other three to his tribe. There, they were to do whatever they had to do to insure that the outpost would survive.

Chiki’tiklatl then went to outfit Alie-Aka while Gorgoreth held back the other two. He explained to Raele that he needed to go to Amanya in private and tell her that they were on a secret mission that required access to her non-fruit potions. As Raele left to comply, Gorgoreth informed GaliLena that he had used his own personal resources to secure a mercenary group known as the Black Talons. They were on their way from Urik because the force requested from House Klethira by Laalarash was too small for the current seige in his estimation. The mercenaries are an all female Maenadi band who shoot first and sort the dead bodies later, so he trained GaliLena in the hand motions and Maenadi code phrase she would need if the group was to survive a contact situation.

Once she had learned her code signs, Raele had secured some potions and a tattoo from Amanya, and Chiki’tiklatl has outfitted Alie-Aka, the four paired off several different times. One person babysat the prisoner while the other two met to prepare for the mission. Raele handed out the gear from Amanya while GaliLena attempted to teach them the contact code signs for the Black Talons.

While on watch things went smoothly, and one hour into the watch the four headed northwest toward the Swiftwing camp. Along the way they met various elves on their way to prepare for the dawn attack. Alie-Aka was successful in getting those they ran into to follow him back to the subchief’s observation camp. There the four had an audience at dawn, where he passed around the pipe of knowledge and understanding. While the subchief, Alie-Aka, and Raele succumbed to the intoxicating effects of redleaf, Chiki’tiklatl and GaliLena bluffed their way through the ordeal. Eventually they received permission to continue on to the main Swiftwing camp, so the two took Raele with them and left Alie-Aka to his reward.

To find their way the three secured the services of another elf in the observation camp. With GaliLena sleeping on Chiki’tiklatl’s back, the group ran a half day, past Zaltan’s Wadi, to the main camp. There, their guide garnered an audience with the chieftan and council of elders. Raele chose to infiltrate from the rear, masquerading as a dishwasher for the council tent. After the council was told about the Swiftwing elf zombies that were in the haboob, one of the council left the tent. Raele tailed him to a water barrel, where he seemed to concentrate and mumble with his arm partially submerged before returning to the tent. Instead of returning directly to the dishes, Raele chose to try to decipher some large tomes in a side tent attached to the council tent.

Meanwhile, the council appointed Chiki’tiklatl and GaliLena, plus their elven guide, to stop whoever was creating and controlling the zombies. The chief then confided in them that the redleaf was newly introduced to the tribe by their mysterious employer. The redleaf does not actually give knowledge and understanding as claimed, but causes users to have a sense of indestructability, renders them more suggestable, and causes such an intense addiction that they care less and less for anything else in their lives other than doing whatever they must to smoke more. The chieftan explained that the redleaf is supplied in exchange for the Swiftwing, Silverseeker, and Nightcloak tribes eliminating everyone at the Klethira outpost and securing it for the new resident of the Red Tower. The council authorized the crew to take whatever provisions were needed from the tribe, but emphasized that the secret of redleaf must not get out. It was also implied that the employment was not completely voluntary on the part of the tribe, but occurred subsequent to losing a party sent to explore the newly reinhabited Red Tower.

Once out of the council tent, the group reunited and began preparing for the run to the Red Tower. Members of the tribe knew where the Red Tower was, knew that no elf had returned from exploring it since it was reinhabited, and knew that those who had not returned were lauded as heroes by the tribal council. Meanwhile, Raele secured himself a stash of redleaf to take with him—purportedly for Amanya to study and for resale on the blackmarket of Tyr.

As the survivors finished a nearly inedible breakfast, Laalarash came out from the well tower, freshly bathed. He attempted to boost the morale of everyone, but was quickly angered when he found out that Gorgoreth had sent Chiki’tiklatl, GaliLena, and Raele outside the berm of the outpost. He stormed off to confront Gorgoreth, followed surreptitiously by Methystina. Raele left to brood outside the outpost, but deciding against being shot, optted instead for the central western warehouse.

While Raele brooded about his failure to provide an edible breakfast, Chiki’tiklatl and GaliLena searched through her belongings until she found the potion of remove disease she knew she had stashed somewhere. With the zombie plague removed from Chiki’tiklatl, the two turned their attention to the increasingly aggitated Alie-Aka. The elf was offering outlandish bargins in an attempt to return to his tribe, none of which were worthy of accepting.

Eventually, Methystina returned and reported her findings to GaliLena. Raele returned from brooding as well, just in time to hear the news that the elves were once again laying seige around the camp. This news spurred Alie-Aka to try a desparate run up the berm to freedom, which was foiled by Chiki’tiklatl, GaliLena, and Raele, none of whom wanted to see their prisoner shot down by the other outpost guards.

Alie-Aka was tied up in the hospital tent before dusk, that way all able bodied defenders could repel the next attack. And attack the elves did, with the same abandon as before—only this time the defenders took no further prisoners!

The elves failed to attack the following morning, but instead were discovered to have bugged out in a hurry. The captured elf, Alie-Aka, was mostly uncooperative. He seemed unconcerned about being slowly eaten by Chiki’tiklatl, even after watching his left ear act as an appetizer. Yet, as GaliLena and Methystina had noticed, there were other times at which Akie-Aka seemed very concerned for his well being. Noting the increasing uneasiness of the surviving kanks, lack of animal and insect activity, Alie-Aka’s incongruous behavior, and the flight of the elves, the crew began to suspect the involvement of a defiler. Leaving the prisoner in the care of other outpost guards, Chiki’tiklatl, GaliLena, Methystina, and Raele set off west to track the elven retreat.

Along the way, it became evident that a haboob was on its way from the south, and that the elves were headed into the foothills of the Ringing Mountains for protection. Small cacti growing in the desert seemed to cast doubt on the theory of defiler involvement. Our stalwart heroes returned to the outpost in time to assist in the breakdown of the tents and awnings. As the northwest warehouse was packed with the displaced contents of the hospital tent, Alie-Aka, Chiki’Tiklatl, GaliLena, Methystina, and Raele chose to be stationed in the central west warehouse. That way they could be as close as possible so that they could assist the wounded if necessary.

Raele unbound and armed Alie-Aka. This proved to be less unwise than expected when elven zombies burst through the psionically locked doors during the worst part of the storm. Despite winning against overwhelming odds, Chiki’tiklatl received a bite wound which continued to fester even after receiving magical healing. When they left the shelter of the central western warehouse in the morning, Raele began cooking breakfast while six others completed setting up the kitchen and mess facilities.

At dusk the night before Laalarash and his caravan were to leave Gorgoreth’s outpost, a host of elves caught the outpost unprepared in a savage assault. The caravan’s mekillot was killed, both guard towers were toppled, and many more defenders were killed or wounded than elven attackers. The elves asked for nothing, but disappeared in the dark of the night. Other attacks followed at dawn, the next dusk, the following dawn, and again on the third night of dusk. It was in that fifth battle that Raele chose to capture one of his opponents for questioning.

Welcome to Chaos Out of Order, a Dark Sun 3.5 campaign.

Our heroes first gathered at a secret House Klethira outpost in the stony barrens between Urik, Tyr, and the Ringing Mountains.

Our cast of heroes includes:

A lean young adult male thri’ kreen of average height. He is the only thri’kreen stationed at the outpost. Unlike most thri’kreen, Chiki’tiklatl hordes more material goods than he can carry.

A tall and muscular young adult female maenad. She is the only known maenad currently in the immediate region.

GaliLena’s amethyst psicrystal.

A tall and thin elf nearing adulthood. He is the only elf in the House Klethira caravan which is currently passing through the outpost.