Chapter 75
Earlier in the day, Grindlefoot found himself wandering the halls of the Sanctum, Lady Alustriel’s home in Sigil. Even though he’d never seen the outside, it seemed way too big to be contained inside a single building. There were hallways branching into more passages diverging into further corridors, all of them with doors along either side. Opening random doors led the halfling to parlors with fancy divans and lace throw pillows, water closets with fancy devices that spouted water upwards and splooshed it downwards, small libraries with books upon books lining dark oak shelves, and even a solarium filled to the brim with plants of all kinds. That got him thinking and he went in search of the mages.
As if he willed her to appear, the halfling opened a door into a parlor to find the raven-haired Tasha lounging on a divan, surrounded by plush cushions. Cradling a leather tome, she looked up at the halfling and smiled. Thinking back through their visits, it’s the first time her smile seemed sincere—especially compared to the one she last gave Gven.
“Excuse me, Lady Tasha, but might I make a request? I came across the solarium and was entranced by its inhabitants, so many lovely varieties and species to behold! Which got me thinking about my humble garden back in Neverwinter. Is there any way you could check on it for me, maybe let me see how the plants are doing?”
“Ah, my petite yet sturdy comrade, it would be my pleasure.” She sets her book on a side table and a small porcelain bowl appears in her hand. “Would you happen to have something from the garden, perhaps a potato. You seem like the type to carry an extra potato for boiling, mashing, or stewing.”
Grindlefoot shakes his head no, “Sorry, my lady, but I didn’t bring any with me when we left.” Out of habit, his hands reach into the pockets of his reliable coat and he feels something oblong shaped with a rough exterior. Pulling his hand out of the pocket, he sees a potato the size of a pocket watch. “Well, whattaya know. Here you go!”
The mage gives him a sly wink and takes the small tuber, putting it into the porcelain bowl, which is suddenly filled to the brim with water. “Think deeply about the potato and where it began it’s life.”
“I can be the potato,” he says quietly, emphasizing the last word. Looking at the floating vegetable, he notices that it has three eyes. They have eyes, yet they can’t see. What does that mean? Wait, what if potatoes have Darkvision? That would be amazing, but does that mean they are sentient? Do potatoes have thoughts when they see in the dark? Did they develop darkvision from growing in the dirt? So many questions.
Tasha clears her throat lightly, disturbing Grindlefoot’s chain of thought. He looks up to find her grinning at him, “You needn’t think about it quite that much. In fact, not at all. That was to keep you busy. But look, you can scry for yourself.”
In the water’s reflection, Grindlefoot can clearly see his Neverwinter backyard. The sturdy potato plants anchor the garden, their leafy greens concealing a mammoth harvest of tubers maturing in the cool, dark earth. Nearby, vibrant rows of tomatoes and climbing beans create a stark contrast of color against the sundered soil of the walking paths. Sunflowers stand like sturdy sentinels along the fence, their mammoth golden heads beholding the sun’s path with an incandescent glow.
Eva Brightbroom is kneeling in a bare patch of dirt, her ankle-length dress spread out around her, and pulling the few weeds that have dared to enter the premises. She looks up momentarily with a quizzical look on her face, which soon settles into a smile. Her mouth moves silently, but Grindlefoot realizes that he understands, “All is well here, friend. Now, stop lollygagging about and carry on with saving all those worlds.”
The image in the scrying bowl fades away, leaving a small basin of plain water with a floating potato. The druid’s face is a mixture of contentment and melancholy. He reaches out to the tiny spud and whispers a cantrip, causing several buds to appear on its exterior. Overcomed by his feelings, Grindlefoot nods his appreciation to Tasha and ambles towards the door, missing the comforts of his garden.
The next day, the companions gather in one of the parlors. It’s furnished with heavy, somber-colored furniture and decorated with gilded, ornate-framed paintings hanging on the walls, and porcelain figures resting on the tables. The center of the room is spaciously cleared, obviously where Alustriel will create the portal.
Preparing for their trip and knowing that Mournland lacks natural food for foraging, Grindlefoot carries a bag of goodberries in his pack. One berry can sustain each of them for a whole day, even the barbarian half-orc, Gven.
Through their conversations about the first and second pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts, Bilwin and Mond decide to trade. The sorcerer is much more interested in the second piece’s ability to cast Arcane Gateway. Meanwhile, the cleric feels drawn to the first piece that enables him to Commune with Hanseath, or another deity if need be.
The six-foot-wide portal appears in the middle of the room, through which the group sees a misty environment that obscures the distant details. What they can see appears flat, damp, and barren, absent any vegetation. With a slight nod to the others and the mages, Gven enters first, hand on Tempest Edge’s pommel. The rest follow, one by one disappearing from the luxurious parlor.
After passing through the portal, Dolor turns back to look and discovers a twenty-foot tall obsidian glass oval. Moist and sludgy dirt surrounds it on all sides, emphasizing the mystical quality of their reflection in the dark glass. The tiefling’s pointed ears twitch slightly as he realizes they’ll need to return to this spot to travel back to the Sanctum. Fortunately, Grindlefoot’s Outlander background gives him an uncanny ability to remember exactly where he’s traveled before. Finding this again shouldn’t pose a problem for the druid.
Mond holds the second piece of the rod in his hand, expecting the same pull he felt with the first piece in the Astral Plane. It’s unresponsive. He turns to the others and shrugs, “Nothing, just as the mages predicted.”
“Maybe I can pierce this odd mist.” Using her eagle eyesight, Gven slowly scans the horizon in all directions. Shaking her head in frustration, “Not much. There’s a large fuzzy blob over that direction, which could be one of those colossus machines, a fortification or city, or something else completely. That’s the best I can see through this crap.”
With nothing else to guide them, the companions travel towards the blob. Grindlefoot offers an alternative to walking on foot. Wind Walk transforms them into cloud-like forms that can fly ten times faster than they can walk. Unsure of the distance or what they might miss in cloud form, they decide to walk.
Six hours later, they can finally make out the form of a three-hundred-foot-tall construct made of metal, wood, and stone. The bi-pedal war machine is kneeling, with one knee on the ground and one arm raised, as though it’s bowing to someone or something. Dolor, the watch builder and glass blower, is fascinated by the behemoth’s engineering and composition. The ability to create the humongous creature, not to mention the sheer audacity, from such disparate materials fascinates both the engineer and the artist within him.
Inspecting what he can from their approach, Bilwin notices two possible entry points into the colossus: a round hatch inside the upright knee joint and a rectangular door at the thing’s waist. Walking closer to the monstrous foot planted on the soil, the dwarf notices metal rungs leading up the inside of its leg to the hatch at the knee.
“How convenient, they provided a way up for us little folks. Might as well see what it’s all about up there.”
Dolor follows Bilwin up the prefabricated ladder, along with Mond and Gven. With little thought, Grindlefoot shifts into his giant spider form and quickly makes his way past the others. If a spider could grin, he did so.
The halfling easily arrives at the door before his companions, still climbing the ladder up the giant’s calf. When Bilwin arrives, he attempts turning the handle and finds it locked. They can now clearly see the other door, at the colossus’ waist and a safe walk along its upper leg, resting horizontally in the kneeling position. The druid, still in spider form, skitters across the leg and over to the entrance. The door is slightly ajar and he pulls it open with the end of a leg, its loud creaking alerting anyone or anything inside to their presence.
The group spends two hours searching the inside of the giant automaton from the middle to the bottom and then up to the top. Most of the narrow corridors are passable, although some are a tight fit for the muscular barbarian. The interior construction reflects that of the exterior, a mixture of stone, metal, and wood that perplexes the group. Obviously, magic had to be involved for this mechanical mammoth to function, but they all find various bits and pieces of it to be fascinating.
It’s late afternoon by the time they reach the top area, inside its head. Panes of thick glass are placed in several spots around the head, allowing them to see in all directions from three hundred feet above the land. Again, using her eagle eyesight, Gven is unable to see clearly through the eerie mist. She can tell there’s another large object to the north and a river that runs that direction, but no more details than that.
They’ve found nothing that appears to be a docent or indicative of where it might have been. The mages described the device as small, about the size of an apricot or peach, and constructed of metal. Admittedly, they were moving swiftly and didn’t have a good idea of what they were looking at during their initial search. After two hours of wandering, investigating, and collecting information, Dolor feels more of a kinship with the colossus.
“Now that we have a better idea of how this thing is laid out, I think I’ll be able to recognize where one of these docents might have been used. The thing is designed similar to our form with a body, two legs, two arms, and a head. So it makes sense they would have put the docent where the brain would be located or, if not there, in the chest with its heart. Let’s search the head methodically. If we don’t find anything here, we can go down to the chest.”
The head contains many controls labeled with the cipher lettering, long lengths of vine-like wires, and nooks and crannies large enough to hold a docent. After their thorough search, Dolor is certain that it wouldn’t be anywhere in the head. Moving to the chest, the companions find a large room with more labeled control levers and buttons and vast lengths of vine cabling. In the center of a large console, Dolor finds an empty receptacle that would hold an apricot-sized sphere.
“This is it. But, no luck. At least we know where to search next time. It must be early evening, how about a goodberry and some rest before we move on?” Looking around at the room, the rogue notices footprints in the dust and rusty residue on the floor. They appear to be fairly recent, probably less than a week old. “This room looks defensible, if anyone were to attempt an attack.”
The others agree to the tiefling’s suggestion and settle in for the night.
Anxious for some guidance, Bilwin decides to reach out to Hanseath. Since they’re already closer to the heavens than usual, the cleric closes the distance moreso by venturing up to the top. Finding the head cavity empty and quiet, he sits on the floor, comfortably crosses his legs, and closes his eyes. In his mind, he calls out to Hanseath. Hearing a belch, the dwarf opens his eyes to find the dwarven deity of carousing, brewery, and singing in front of him, sitting on a rock.
“Well, lad, I don’t have all day. Actually, I do because time is only a construct.” Shaking his head and taking another swig, “But get on with it, will ye.”
“To find the docent, should we travel towards the fuzzy object in the north?”
The god shrugs his shoulders and hesitantly says, “Yes.” Seeing Bilwin’s befuddlement, “Look, there are rules to this whole commune thing. You get three questions and I can only answer yes or no, without any explanation.” He gestures wildly with his hands, generously sloshing his ale outside of his stein, but leaving the floor oddly dry where it lands, “So, yes.”
“Will we find it quicker if we follow those tracks?”
Finishing his long drink with another thunderous belch, “Yes.”
Bilwin asks his third and final question, “Should we follow the river?”
Shrugging his shoulders again the dwarven god winks, “Sure.”
The cleric watches Hanseath fade away into the air, leaving him alone with his thoughts. Eventually, he makes his way down to the control room in the chest, where the others are relaxing. The companions take turns watching while the others sleep, but it’s uneventful.
Long rest….
Standing at the foot of the colossus, the companions agree to Grindlefoot’s offer to transform them into clouds so they can fly instead of walk. Dolor takes the lead, moving northward above the river, which has barely two feet of dirty water slowly drifting along. They settle a few hundred feet in the air, low enough so that they can see the ground clearly and anything of interest. The constant mist in the air camouflages their magical transportation and makes it more challenging to keep tabs on each other in cloud form.
After they’ve flown for an hour or longer towards the blurry construct, Dolor sees a group of five humanoids on the ground below them. They’re walking single file in the same direction, northward. The tiefling in cloud form slows and begins to descend, communicating silently to his companions his intentions to talk with the strangers. As they move closer, it’s apparent that these are warforged. The leader is purple-hued and carries a staff, topped with a light to luminate their way, as does the last one in their line.
Dolor decides to greet the constructs and speeds further ahead to the north, his companions following. After several minutes, the group descends to the ground and shifts back into their natural forms. Within a minute, they can make out the warforged emerging from the mist. Their leader notices the companions and stops.
“You were not expected.”
Bilwin exclaims, “We get that a lot!”