BECMI Chapter 78 – The Batrachian Basilica

“Lady Edge is using Primal Magic to inquire of the spirit of the Fens what we are seeing,” Hanvol’s voice broke into the fascinating scene everyone was watching. The geography around that location was being broken down with great thoroughness. “The nature of the magic is that it cannot sense anything that is not natural or elemental in origin. So, the blank space visible there is land that has been claimed by civilization in some form or another… and it is the only one of such size in the Fens that is primarily human, along with a great deal of boat traffic going to, from, and around it.” Their eyes fell upon the moving dots of artificial things moving along the tops of the waterways.

“There are two other locations that are occupied by races that are not human, but those are not our focus of attention. Lady Edge is now going to shift her position via ...”

There was a swirl of motion, some of the Regents having to hold their stomachs as the world seemed to shift wildly around them, and the dot that was Lady Edge’s location shot across the Fens to the chosen location.

The map that had been filling in shifted off to the side again as natural sunlight rose through the room, and they were now looking out from a different shoreline, across reeds and brackish waters from what was unquestionably a fairly large, sprawling town of crude construction. Rising behind it, yet still under the concealing umbrella of countless trees, was a massive green building… carved into the shape of a frog.

Breaths hissed out all around.

“The Basilica Batrachian!” swore King Antius, clutching his fist. “She found it so quickly!” His eyes drifted over to the side map of her location, and he blanched. “Gods above, that is clear on the other side of the Fens!”

“A hundred and fifty miles by lake and river,” Hanvol confirmed, as a third illusion built up off to the side, the raw beginnings of a tactical assessment map as shown by Lady Edge. Buildings filled in, walls, docks, labels were affixed to them, and there were even notes attached. It was a fearsome display of scouting ability, and it had only just begun!

“Lady Edge is going to be going and circling the area outside the Ward.” There was a flicker, and a dome of ethereal energy was suddenly visible extending down in front of them. “The area under the dome is centered on the Basilica and defies Scrying magic.” Their point of view shimmered for a second, steadied, and then abruptly rose from the ground and began to flit through the trees with speed.

As the view moved, both the tactical map and the overall map began to update with extreme speed. Boats, buildings, attire of the natives, walls in places, stone construction vs failing wooden construction. Occasionally the visible view zoomed in forward with unnerving precision, covering hundreds of yards and allowing them to inspect places with eerie detail from range.

The cultists were easy to pick out in their brown robes, but it was the leaders of the groups of them, with green belts, who were the most interesting.

Every one of them wore a silver ring, and every one of them did not wield a crossbow, as did the lesser cultists on patrol, but instead had a strange sidearm in a holster at their hip.

Her eyes zoomed in on that.

“A light-thrower,” the Catcher murmured under his breath, unease in his voice. “And all of them have one?”

“Lady Edge says that is a standard-issue Stellar Federation sidearm, the Garth series X92-47a model laser pistol. It throws a beam of condensed light, like concentrated sunlight, and deals searing flame damage. Resistance to fire provides ample protection against such things. However, if you are not so protected, it is an extremely deadly weapon with a range of over two hundred paces, able to melt or burn a hole through most armor.

“Amusingly enough, it can be deflected by highly polished surfaces and mirrors. It is, after all, light.”

Everyone there blinked as a side illusion popped up, showing a man with a polished shield advancing, and a cultist with the sidearm drawn and shooting uselessly at him, the bright red beams of light reflecting harmlessly off the shining metal.

“It must literally be polished to perfection, however, which is not of much help in a swamp.”

Grim laughs rose at that. Yes, swamps were not kind to polished metal.

There was a swirl of motion, and Lady Edge’s view shifted, focused, and paused.

There was a group of frogs there, brightly patterned in green and black, white and yellow.

They were the size of grown pigs. And their mouths had actual fangs!

Hanvol’s eyes narrowed. “Those mutant things are very, very unnatural, and their source is upon the island in front of us.”

Thoughtful murmurs rose from all around as, fascinated by the view, the Council sat back and made their own observations based on what was being seen there… and their words were preserved off to the side as Lady Edge kept moving.

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She was quick, thorough, and her ability to magnify details at range meant she learned things far more quickly than any of the Council members had ever imagined any scout could, even the mages among them.

It was also all being retained in frightening detail, a map of of incredible realism and detail rising beside the viewing illusion for cross-reference.

She had single-handedly raised the potential of forward scouting of an enemy to an unprecedented level.

She flitted across the river once out of line of sight of the walls and the guards around the temple, skimming just across the surface of the placid, slow-moving current. Beneath her, great alligators, fish of sizes up to the size of the gators, and more of the frogs drifted past under the surface, the last surfacing to snatch insects the size of birds out of the air in splashes of water and tongues whipping out and back with the speed of arrows.

No, they didn’t want to try swimming in those waters. Low walls circled the entire island close to the waters, making it difficult for anything to come up out of the water onto the land, even the presumably jumping frogs.

As she circled around the gardens to the sides and rear of the temple, tended both by more cultists and lines of shackled slaves in ragged garb, the level of investment in the Temple was becoming more and more apparent.

Clearly, the place had a population of thousands, even without considering the slaves, with a large percentage of that manpower able to fight.

Getting a waterborne force into place was going to be incredibly difficult. Darkmoor simply did not have a large enough navy, a fact the Basilica and Northmen raiders had been exploiting for years. Indeed, the Batrachs were likely the most-established waterborne power in the Fens and associated lakes, even if the galleys that had been drawn up outside what looked like an official trading center with well-made docks of stone definitely came from hostile neighboring nations and forces, including both the Duchy of Elb and the Iron Graf.

And so, so many of those troops had weapons of high technology…

Lady Edge had also spotted Scrying sensors, a form of remote eyes she called ‘cameras’, as well as far-speaking horns called ‘loudspeakers’, and ‘light bulbs’ powered by electricity that were brighter and steadier than torches or even most

It was her blitzing speed run in that put their hearts in their mouths the most.

She had completed her circuit of the Basilica, its surrounding lands, and then raced along and above the streets of the shanty-town that attended the temple and its slave market, outlining everything in the side image. Then she plunged into the slave market buildings and flew through the area at top speed, pausing once to let out a pulse of Divination magic that abruptly and completely mapped out everything within eighty yards of her position, including the subterranean passages, holding pens, and barracks areas, as well as all the defensive positions!

Then she swept out through a crack in the doors, unseen by slaves, buyers, or cultists alike, and flashed up at stomach-churning speed along the main approach to the temple itself.

She avoided the doors and even the windows, instead flashing into and through a ventilation duct, zipping through constricting tunnels of metal and stone, and then was abruptly out and through another grating and into the main worship hall of the Batrachian Basilica.

The far end was dominated by a massive gold plug, a carved thing of gold so large it left those watching gaping. Dozens of cultists seemed to be attending a ceremony of some kind. There was a massive pipe organ of awful grand size and tone playing at this evening ceremony, and it looked like some sort of human sacrifice was on the docket, judging by the way the old man was bound up there and the golden plug was cycling aside and revealing a gaping hole, out of which a greenish miasma was rising.

“The building is under a dimensional Interdiction. Lady Edge says that teleportation directly in and out of the building is impossible, and there is something messing around with time located there, perhaps a sub-spatial temporal offset designed to shift the temple to a parallel time stream in case it is attacked by an overwhelming force. The name of the Immortal they are venerating seems to be Wasnura…”

There was a blur of motion, and an unseen ripple of magic flashed out.

Everything within a hundred yards flashed into existence on the map, including the entire inside and subterranean levels of the Basilica.

It also instantly set off a blaring alarm, rather instantly interrupting the ceremony taking place there… which seemed to be precisely the intent. The priest there looked up, stepping sideways… and seemed to stumble and trip on something. With a shocked cry, he flipped over the side of the hole and plummeted out of sight into the pit there, his voice echoing weirdly as eager croaking cries came up from below.

The slave struggling weakly on the altar seemed to rise up and get sucked into the pit in a of blurred motion, exactly like he’d been caught by a frog’s tongue and was drawn within. The cultists lost all track of him, unaware he’d been rendered and was shooting past and above them towards the doors behind them, which suddenly crashed open as a heavily armed band of cultists, all of them bearing laser sidearms or ‘particle rifles’, surged into the place, looking for an intruder or trouble.

Lady Edge and the old slave zipped right overhead of them, peeled off to the side, and were up and over the walls and moving away with speed.

“Lady Edge will be on the Seal Focus in the back yard shortly,” Hanvol summed up. True to his words, the view of the illusion turned into the head-spinning swirl of dancing through dimensions, and suddenly the rear view of the Thisbean Inn was visible before them.

Two of the defenses around the town of Darkmoor that Belle and Lady Edge had introduced had been and . Anchored to the City Wards, the effects effectively made it impossible to fly magically within the city walls, or to Apport about or dimensionally move there, completely blocking all manner of such infiltration, and not incidentally preventing a large number of monsters from easily invading or bypassing the city’s defenses.

There was exactly one approach vector for a flying creature to enter the city, a precise point above the northern city walls above the harbor, and a steady glide path that led right to the courtyard of the Thisbean Inn… where some potentially lethal magical defenses had been put into place in the forms of Symbols and Glyphs of dreadful power.