BECMI Chapter 304 – Finishing up the Fane

Another Artifact, popping into play. Tools of the Immortals, things to make men slobber over in greed, and to send Aspirants after. It was debatable which was better, leaving them alone for someone else to wreak havoc with and take the consequences of wielding them, or to bring them away and secure them. Whole games were played between Immortals with their Artifacts, and stealing them and/or destroying them was a key aspect of several Paths to Immortality.Briggs was wearing one on his shoulder, although it was heavily disguised. No Aspirants had come to take it away from him yet, but it was likely only a matter of time, now that it was no longer tucked away in the hoard of the Pearl Dragon.

“I will head down and take a look.” It wasn’t that far away.

A half-dozen Constructs lay violently disassembled around the great doors, remains of bronze and brass and iron being hauled away on Disks to be Burned down for goldweight or just for metal, useful in Wondrous Architecture if nothing else. Some were geared, some were skeletal, all were heavy and required teamwork to dispose of rapidly.

I waved as I passed some dwarves working out how to get the great thick doors of rune-carved gildensteel off their hinges and hauled away for proper use elsewhere. They waved back absently, caught up in their discussions and the machinery that would be needed to be brought in. Some heavy lifters and maybe a plasma cutter…

Piles of gold coins from kingdoms gone before Siricil was born were being pushed out of here, along with ‘giant pennies’, gold and silver coins the size of a small saucer plate. They were the currency of old Jotunbrul, some minted before Darkmoor fell and others much more recently.

I had good word that dragons loved the coins for their hoards, the size and thickness of them somehow uniquely comforting. We’d probably be able to trade them to friendly dragons at a premium for their goldweight. Cirru had snatched up all she could shamelessly.

There’d been a bunch of them spread through the hoards in the Wyrmfangs, proof that giants and dragons didn’t always get along, either.

It was all being weighed and moved with from Briggs’ Ring , lumps of a hundred pounds of coins of whatever size lifted at once, deposited in containers or Disks, then mounds of said things being pushed out for the Mirror-Portal to get out of here, split up in shares, allocated among those fighting, and Burned away. Eismoor’s share for expenses would come out of the silver and copper, always the largest amount by volume and used far more in day to day life, and specifically useful in electrical engineering of all types, especially the Fire Isotopic versions of huosilver and eldrcopper found in plentiful quantities here.

“Hey, Edge,” he greeted me, concentrating and moving ingots and streams of coins to waiting Disks. “Gathering go well?”

“A plethora of magical items of all kinds, some of them thousands of years old. Unsurprisingly, no technological stuff. They’ve been preying on smaller races and dragons for a lot of years, and I’m sure Gulguz was gifting them magical items with His power, too, given how many giant-sized pieces are around. Thirty-four Flaming Swords and Axes sized for giants, for instance, and we are closing in on a hundred suits of magical Armor.”

“A display of wealth and power, all going to be Burned away,” he just nodded. “Probably to make the Girdles everyone really wants instead.”

“Sir Horn has indicated that there has been a catastrophic collapse of the ogre population in the hills and mountains to the north of him. There are also a whole unit of fellows wandering around with thick belts and magical Warhammers generating gossip about themselves.”

He smiled in grim understanding. Gauntlets of Ogre Power raised the strength in one’s arms to 18, the human maximum. This applied even if you were a grandmother or a child. Your legs might not be able to handle the weight of a weapon easily, but you could still swing it with ease, among other things. Combining that with a Girdle was monstrously powerful!

Since not everyone was born with an 18, or had Wishcrafters spending hundreds of IX slots to get people there, going after ogres was also a good investment.

The elves had been quietly harvesting ogre hands in the Bleaklands for the same reason.

In the Power of Ten game, there were also Gauntlets of Ogre Power, which were different from Gauntlets of Ogre’s Strength… because both stacked with the Girdles of Giant Power and Strength in the game, respectively, but only when you were wielding magical Hammers.

The Girdles here did not perform the same as the ones in game, so the point of that was moot, but Briggs still got the reference… and though he was as strong or stronger than almost any giant, he was still wearing one of the Girdles here, because the effect of doubling the base damage of any weapon you used was absolutely incredible.

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A Heavy Tauran-style Greathammer like was probably the single most devastating two-handed weapon anyone could want to master. You just had to be superhumanly strong to be able to wield a Tauran Greathammer, let alone a Heavy one!

“What did you find?” I asked in a low voice. could feel something with Immortal Power around, so there was definitely an Artifact present.

“Chest in the corner,” he gestured, meaning he didn’t exactly know, and it was best for me to find out myself.

The chest was giant-sized, so likely filled with a lot of semi-valuable junk. Four feet high, eight long, and three deep meant I had to sort of peek over the rim of it. The top was already open, and something nasty had been trapping it, by the holes around the lock… a lock that had expeditiously cloven deeply apart by an Ancient who didn’t want to bother picking the thing after probably eating some poisonous flames to the face.

It looked like a mirror in the shape of a shield, but looking at it just raised the hairs on my neck instantly. It was perfectly reflective, unmarred in the slightest, polished brilliantly to reflect the least amount of light. It certainly looked like a potentially noble and brazen thing of magic to be proudly wielded… but my instincts said no.

Magic swirled as I called on my Bloodline and reached out to touch it… shutting my eyes as I did so.

The sparked off, tapping into whispers of memory and reading the history of the object with a thoroughness its Immortal Power couldn’t thwart so easily, even as I snatched my finger back.

Silently I gestured, and grabbed the lid of the trunk and slammed it closed, ignoring the mass of coins under the cloth the thing had been sitting on.

Briggs noticed and nodded. “That’s about what I was thinking, too,” he muttered without judgment. “What is it?”

I replied in English, “It was Named by its maker, the Immortal Lhiannan, but the legends usually call it . It is a very powerful Shield, of course, a full +V, and wielding it reflects all gaze attacks back upon their wielder, including eye-beams from beholders and the like. Its primary Immortal power is, however, to swap bodies with someone reflected in the Shield.”

Briggs’ nostril flared. “Well, that does indeed explain why the high priest looked as young as he did for as powerful as he was, didn’t it?” he said rhetorically. “Is this thing of Entropy, or just a wicked Immortal plaything?”

“Its creator Lhiannan is one of the greatest seducers and manipulators of Entropy. This Shield is a way of destroying mortal Aspirants and noble champions, either by forcibly taking their places, or luring them into satisfying their darkest urges, or simply creating havoc by swapping them with others at random times and causing chaos, at which point the Shield vanishes.” I glared at the chest. “So you think the former high priest swapped with one of his younger acolytes, then took his place?”

Briggs nodded once. “It was the way he moved, as if older and cannier than his scars and appearance bade him be. His magic was also stronger than I’d expect of a giant of that age whose main job is tending the Fane, not going on out adventuring and gaining strength.” He grunted as a load of copper was heaped up, and a dutiful with a featureless face and in a very uninspired tunic and workpants started pushing it out towards the edge of the upon this place, where the Portal from the great Mirror could manifest.

Well, not everyone had a default creepy-cool vibe with their magic, I sniffed to myself. Aelryinth preferred his to look like butlers and maids…

“Can it be destroyed?” Briggs naturally followed up with.

“It can be rent by brute force of enough caliber, although it’s treated to be by default, so immune to destruction by mortals. That can be suppressed and you could likely sunder it at that point with some difficulty, but doing so would simply destroy it, there’d be a nasty physical explosion, and the Immortal Power it has would return to Lhiannan.

“The proper way to destroy it I’d need to use a stronger spell to find. They are usually very clever or very onerous to do, as I’m sure you are familiar with.”

he quoted in a gravely solemn voice.

“There you go. You know I destroyed three Artifacts of Entropy while in Darkmoor for those years, right?”

“I recall you mentioning it as a side fact you kept pretty quiet about, because the Artifacts still exist over here?” he reasoned, as I Cast on the chest and shrank it down to mere inches long and wide, picking the whole thing up and stowing it away in my sleeve calmly.

“Yes. The Fangs of Zazzagrim, the Spear of the Bone Hunter, and the Proud Staff of Monarchs Mourning,” I related scornfully. “The Proud Staff had to be crushed under the heel of a humble ant.” I just looked at him. “Ants don’t normally have emotions. I had to find a giant ant, it, teach him humility, then use magic to make him the size of a locomotive and crush that damn Staff under his foreleg.

“He mashed it a few times just to be certain he did the job right.

“His name is Eddipus, most call him Eddie. He maintains my apartments in Darkmoor City. You can probably meet him after the evacuation.”

“Ohhhh. And you’re waiting for him to come over to kill the second iteration of the Staff?” Briggs guessed quickly.

“Very good. It’s being wielded by someone in the lands to the west of Eislas there, a reason why the lands there have a very shadowed reputation. I believe there’s a fallen kingdom back there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lich or something is clutching it in bony fingers over dead ruins and fallen armies.”

“Monarchs? More likely a wraith king or something,” Briggs mused, nodding slowly. “Aye, those lands have a darkly fey reputation to them, according to the elves I’ve spoken with. I imagine the dragons would know more, but we’re not much on sharing history of the lands around us.”

“I’ll send out Cirru looking for some information.”

“What about the other two?”

“I believe the Spear is being hidden in the lands around here somewhere. The Fangs are far to the south now, probably in the possession of some wanna-be werewolf spreading lycanthropy with them. They are one of Orcus’ favorite tools for spreading the Curse.”

“Ah, demon princes. You just have to not love them,” he nodded wisely...