Summoning Ocellus

There were a few other towns on the path to Turtleback Ferry, and from the commission they’d gotten from the Mayor it wasn’t clear whether or not their messages were getting through. None of them had any particular reason to send messages – most were lazy fishing villages along the river they were following, and didn’t have any close ties with the city – so they hadn’t really noticed the disruption.

Turtleback Ferry, when they finally arrived, was larger, and surprisingly not on fire. It was a fishing village but also had farms, a large dock for a large ferry, and a central market, making it more of a rural town.

“Shopping time!” Tixi exclaimed happily.

One look at the prices disabused them of that notion. Even the temple was marking up their healing potions 200%, and the blacksmith was even worse.

“Look, this is what things cost,” the blacksmith said. “If you can’t afford it, you can get on the ferry like everyone else.” At their looks of confusion, he elaborated. “There wasn’t much traffic across the lake since the forest went bad, so they turned it into a casino. Really good odds, almost everyone is a winner. Pumped a lot of gold into the local markets, so we had to raise prices to keep from being overwhelmed.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” William asked.

“I didn’t ask,” the blacksmith said. “I also didn’t get on the ferry. Seemed kind of shady, you know? And I was making enough selling at a mark-up.”

===

“So,” Ocellus said. “The forest went bad.”

“It’s a sidequest,” Keeper replied, “we don’t have to investigate that.”

“1000 gold says we end up having to,” Ocellus said.

“I’m not betting on whether or not we end up doing sidequests,” Keeper said. “It’s a bad habit that can distort our decision-making process.”

“We have a decision-making process?”

“WE have one,” Keeper said. “You’re the familiar of a cohort. You don’t get a vote.”

“I hope I at least get to talk in an advisory capacity,” Ocellus replied.

Tixi giggled. “You can have my vote if you want. My half a vote.”

“Alright. Do we care about the ferry, or should we move on directly to the giant-occupied dam?” Ocellus asked.

“Cult activity has been behind most of our quests,” William said. “We should at least find the people backing the ridiculously unprofitable casino and see if they’re Sihedron cultists.”

“Sihedron?” Ocellus asked.

“It’s a seven-pointed star. They’ll have it tattooed somewhere on their body,” Danielle explained. “We think it lets Karzogg claim their soul when they die.”

“And Karzogg is bad,” Ocellus said.

“He’s claiming souls. I doubt it’s for ‘sentimental’ purposes,” Keeper said.

“Especially since the previous cults skinned people alive or turned them into ghouls,” William said.

“Or burned them alive in a secret sawmill,” Danielle added.

“Technically that was us,” Keeper replied.

“We didn’t start the fire,” Danielle said. “We just locked the doors and let nature take its course.”

“And then Karzogg’s minion showed up to congratulate us on helping their cause,” Keeper said. “Tixi, do you know Fly? Because it would have really come in handy against the flying naga that we’ll probably have to fight again.”

“Of course!” Tixi said. “It’s a staple. How many people need to fly? I can start preparing it.”

“Flicker and William,” Keeper said.

“I can shoot her just fine from the ground,” Flicker said. “I don’t need a kobold’s spells.”

“Then why did she get away?” Keeper asked.

“Because none of us have Dimensional Anchor,” Danielle said. “I don’t think we have anyone that can cast it even.”

“Ijj and I are close,” Tixi said. “I’ll take it since Ijj gets locked in to his choices.”

“Not locked! Can change old ones when I get more power,” Ijj said. His common was really improving.

===

A few hours later, they met up in the ridiculously expensive inn. It was still affordable for adventurers, so they’d decided the stay there despite the mark-up.

“I have good news, and bad news,” Danielle said. They’d all split up to investigate the town, but most had come back with no news. “The good news is that the ferry is, in fact, run by Sihedron cultists. I found a recruiter and they tried to give me a Sihedron mark as the secret sign for ferry access.”

“The bad news?” William asked.

“The ferry’s missing. It should have been back days ago, but it went out on the lake and never returned.”

William gave a heavy sigh. “They’re all dead, aren’t they.”

“Probably. Should we go check?” Danielle asked.

“No,” Keeper said.

“Yes,” William replied. “There might be survivors.”

“After two days on a lake?” Flicker said, skeptically. “We missed our chance. Let’s head to the dam and see what’s going on there.”

“Yeah, I don’t feel like swimming to find a destroyed ferry either,” Danielle said. “I vote no.”

“I want to swim. Tixi knows water breathing spell, right?” Ijj said.

“Too bad, you’re already outvoted,” Keeper replied.

“I don’t actually know that spell anyway,” Tixi said.

“Aww,” Ijj said. “Fine.”

===

The trip to the dam was uneventful.

“So,” Keeper said, as they hid just in sight of the occupied dam, which blatantly flew a Sihedron flag. “The dam has a fort built next to the base of it. According to the ranger we rescued, there are three ways in. First, the front doors, which would involve breaking down a gate while under fire from ogres manning the wall. Second, there’s a monster-filled cave that eventually leads to the fort’s water supply. Third, we could climb the cliff and attack the fort from above.”

“If we can climb the cliff, can we just skip the fort entirely?” Tixi asked.

“Unlikely,” Keeper replied. “They have siege weapons that can train on anyone on the ridge, and probably a patrol up top.”

“Monster cave then,” Ocellus said.

The people with actual votes unanimously agreed with her. Monster caves were an adventurer’s bread and butter, after all.

===

“Web’s still holding them back!” Tixi said, firing her crossbow into the throat of one of them where that wasn’t quite true. Ocellus backed her up with a horn blast but managed to somehow miss the immobilized centipede.

There were so many centipedes. Ijj fired a perfectly placed fireball that fried the cluster that was bunched up attempting to take down William and Danielle.

“That was not stealthy,” Flicker objected, firing her giant crossbow and taking out yet another of the larger centipedes that were trying to hang back out of range while their smaller cousins overwhelmed the party.

“If the ogres want to come in and fight us here, all the better,” William said, readying his weapon to attack the next target that got close.

Danielle spun around, dancing to inspire the party while she readied her own attack.

Ijj fired off a couple more fireballs – one of them incinerating Tixi’s web and the centipedes inside – and the remaining monsters retreated.

“So wasteful,” Tixi said, shaking her head. “Are we going to have to rest before we attack the fort?”

“Might as well,” Danielle said. “But not until we clean out the rest of this cave.”

“I can track them back to their lair,” Flicker said. “Follow me.”

The lair was full of eggs, and noncombatant centipedes, and both of the remaining leaders went down under a dual attack from Tixi and Ijj, using up Tixi’s only memorized fireball and Ijj’s last burst of magical energy. The rest tried to scatter but couldn’t get past the party, and were slaughtered mercilessly, squashed like the bugs they were.

“Yeah, okay. Let’s take a rest and recover,” Danielle said.

“I’m almost out of bombs for the day,” Keeper said. “I second the motion.”

Tixi and Ijj also voted to rest, as well as Danielle who was a little winded from her magical dancing, and that was four to two. William and Flicker stood watch while the spell-casters recovered their magic, and soon it was the middle of the night – the perfect time for a sneak attack against humans and other creatures that, unlike ogres, didn’t have darkvision.

“It’s still good against ogres,” Flicker said. “The fort is 300 feet across, and ogre darkvision only goes 60 feet or so.”

“So what’s the plan?” Ocellus asked. “I don’t think we’d survive a frontal assault.”

“Ijj and I sneak into the camp, lock the barracks, and set them on fire,” Flicker replied. “It worked well last time. Can we borrow some bombs to set the fires?”

“My bombs go off three seconds after I prime them,” Keeper objected. “I have some lamp oil and ordinary alchemist’s fire, though. That should be enough to set the buildings on fire.”

“This’ll still be a hard fight,” William said. “Ogres are no laughing matter, and these are soldiers, not the bandits we fought earlier. We’ll have to assault the keep immediately afterwards, so don’t use up all your spells. Save some for the inevitable boss fight.”

===

Even with most of the ogres burning alive in their beds, the courtyard fight was a wonderfully chaotic mess. The ogres weren’t actually soldiers, and at ogre-shaped Ocellus’ call for a charge came down from the wall to fight hand-to-hand instead of staying near their piles of throwing rocks, and there was a pair of watchtowers that were tall enough that the ogres inside couldn’t see the ground, and were sent toppling, spilling out injured ogres right on top of Danielle, who wasn’t amused but managed to come out on top.

The doors to the keep were closed and locked, but that didn’t stop Flicker for long. Inside there was scattered resistance from mostly-noncombatants, although after seeing the contents of the kitchen and larder there was no mercy to be had.

On the second floor, they ran into the inevitable boss fight – the mother ogre who’d escaped, the naga who’d escaped earlier, and a new ogre boss who cast Dominate Person basically every turn, at least until Tixi put up a circle of protection against evil which blocked him from giving commands long enough for Flicker and Ijj to take him down with sneak attacks.

“I still don’t understand how you can sneak attack with a fiery ray,” Ocellus remarked.

“When they see it it’s too late,” Ijj explained.

When the new boss ogre fell, the other two bosses teleported away, leaving their remaining minions to die. There weren’t a lot of clues about where they headed – instead, they found out that the reason the forest ‘went bad’ was because the captain of the Black Arrows who’d previously owned the fortress had been a very close personal friend of the dryad in charge of the forest.

===

“So the obvious adventuring options are to check the dam for stragglers to make sure this place is really clean of ogres, or to go to the dark forest and… I don’t know, try to console the dryad or something so that it stops being ‘bad’,” Keeper said.

“The dam is closer,” Ocellus pointed out. “It’s literally at the top of the cliff.”

“What I want to know is when you fucked an ogre,” Danielle said, with a smirk.

“The other option is dissection,” Ocellus reminded her. “It’s usually more controlled than hacking them to bits but you’ve spilled enough ogre guts that I was able to get what I need out of our previous fights. I’ve also collected a couple of others…”

“Show us!” Tixi said excitedly.

Ocellus didn’t reprise the ogre, but showed off the giant centipede and the giant sewer rat. “If we kill more things, I’ll get more shapes, but I’m not really going to be good at fighting in any of them. I’m not really as strong as an ogre and the centipede just has normal changeling venom. Which I guess is nice since I don’t have it anymore in my base form.”

“What does normal changeling venom do?” William asked.

“Remove consent from the equation,” Ocellus responded. “It’s hypnotic. The victim has to trust you for it to work, but after they’re dosed they’ll do literally anything you ask.”

“Date-rape venom,” Danielle said with disgust.

“What?” Ocellus asked. “No, there’s no need for sex after they’re dosed. Seduction is for getting them to trust you enough to dose them.” She paused. “Was for. We don’t do that sort of thing anymore. We used to be unable to generate our own love to feed off of, so we were very *pragmatic* about acquiring it. Now that we’ve broken that curse we can feed off of each other or just eat normal food. Or leech Tixi’s life force through the familiar bond, in my case.”

Tixi snickered at Ocellus and stuck out her tongue.

“Only use it on people you intend to kill,” William said. “I can turn a blind eye to dirty tricks during a fight to the death, but dominating others because it’s more convenient is a step too far.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ocellus said. “It wouldn’t even *work* in a fight to the death.”

William nodded. “Then don’t use it at all.”

Ocellus shrugged. “Kind of hard to find someone who trusts a giant centipede, anyway.”

“No,” William said, glancing at Tixi. “It isn’t.”