Real Life with Ryuei

The City of Highfolk and the Elemental Challenge

Here is some more of the continuing adventures of Ruby (my 10 year old daughter's D&D character). I'll make some editorial comments in italics.

Highfolk is a small city of elves that is nestled between the slopes of the southern reaches of the monster infested Yatil mountain range and the Velverdyva River at the point where it widens enough to become navigable. Across the river is the edge of the Vesve Forest. The surrounding hills are the homes of the gnomes allied to Highfolk. The city itself it like a beautiful garden or park. Most of the homes are tree houses with rope ladders leading up to them and delicate rope bridges connecting them. Here and there rises a tower or hall made of marble or white stone, some of which gleam in the light, and some of which are so covered in ivy that they are barely distinguishable from the trees surrounding them. There are also some humbler cottages or burrows here and there for the humans, gnomes, halflings and others who live in the city. The docks are much like the docks of the human cities but they are very clean and covered in exquisite carvings of wild animals and heroes from ancient tales of the elves. At night, lanterns of magical light hang from the trees to light up the pathways, and there is almost always a feast and some form of revelry going on in the open spaces in nice weather, and in the halls or up in the trees in inclement weather. Flying high over the city are the giant eagles, some with riders, who keep watch over the city. Music and singing can be heard at almost all hours, though the sound of craftsmen at their forges or warriors training in sword and archery are also to be heard.

This was a bit of a challenge. Using the scant descriptions of this city in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer and other D&D sourcebooks on elves (esp. Races of the Wild) I had to try to imagine and describe to my 10 year old daughter an entirely alien city - not of human but of elves. My vision is basically that D&D elves are a race of long lived, tree hugging, mostly vegetarian, granola crunching, peace and freedom loving, anarcho-syndicalists (yes, this is kind of a Monty Python joke way over the head of my daughter but I need to keep myself amused as well). Oh yeah, and if you piss them off or threaten them, the elves will unleash a huge can of magical, sword-fighting, longbow sniping guerilla warfare on your behind. This will figure into the story in a later installment. Oh, and I also threw in some happy Celtic music (the Chieftains I think) to provide the musical introduction to the elven city of Highfolk since we all know that elves spend all their time sitting around listening to Enya or dancing Irish reels.

Ruby takes a private room at the Doubletree Inn (Yes, there is a real hotel chain by this name - and I thought it would be funny in a city of elven tree houses to make the name more literal), one of the largest inns in Highfolk. As its name implies, it spans two trees and has multiple floors. There are common rooms for eating and sleeping, but also a half dozen private rooms as well. The bar is fully stocked with Aleeian Wine, Elven Mead, Moondrop, Golden Light, and Pulsch Brown Ale in addition to other more generic wines, ales, and spirits. Ruby settles in with a quality vegetarian meal and a glass of red wine (the idea here is that elves are gourmets and mostly vegetarian and that in medieval times people drank ale or wine with their meals and not Coca Cola. In any case, Julie knows that it is civilized to drink a glass of wine or beer with your dinner when you are a grown up). After speaking with Ansrolan, the innkeeper, Ruby learns that it will take 6 days to ride to the city of Schwartzenbruin, then 2 days by galley to the trading town of Ungra Balan, and then a further 5 days ride to the edge of the Burneal Forest where her family lives. This means it will take at least half a month to get there. Winter is due to begin in about a month, though it will have already begun north of the Yatil mountains. Ruby decides that it might be best to stay in Highfolk for the winter and continue on her journey in the spring. In Highfolk, one can find jobs by going to the job hall and choosing from among various tickets that show what jobs need to be done in order to earn one’s keep if one has no other employment. It is almost like a large household where people take turns picking various chores. So the next day Ruby goes to the job hall and takes the tickets for sweeping and mopping, doing dishes, and laundry, and getting food for the elderly and handicapped who are too frail to do these things on their own anymore (Elves in D&D are chaotic creatures - and so I figured that instead of holding down steady jobs the work in their communities would be shared and rotated on a volunteer basis. This also fits in with the anarcho-syndicalist granola crunching Cletic Renaissance hippies with swords kind of culture I have been envisioning. And being elves in a fantasy world I figure this kind of insane economic arrangement would actually work for longer than 5 mintues).

During her time in Highfolk, Ruby makes friends with three other elves: Inirril (femal), Finemel (female), and Niremdil (male). They spend their time playing games such as archery, of which Inirril proves the best among them and Ruby a close second. They also decide to enter a rather dangerous contest sponsored by Highfolk’s Arcane Academy where the elvish wizards go to study and test their skills. The Arcane Academy is located within a hill overlooking the city. An ivory tower on top of the hill serves as the entrance. The academy itself is a complex of caverns and vaults wherein are the laboratories, treasure chambers, libraries, casting rooms, classrooms, dormitories, and living quarters of the elven wizards who live, work, teach, and train there. There are also a number of elven wizard/warriors and other stranger things within its halls acting as guards.

Within the depths of the Arcane Academy is a sealed chamber over which is the inscription: “The Halls of the Elemental Challenge. Those who would be masters of the elements of life may dare these halls, but only the true masters will return.” Ruby and her new friends decide to enter the Elemental Challenge to see if they have mastered enough magic to win its treasures.

There was a long amount of time between this and the events described below. A whole year in fact. The reason being that school and summer vacation in Japan intervened. I had almost forgotten about it, except that Julie kept bugging me, "When are you going to be done preparing the Elemental Challenge?" I was kind of happy that she was so looking forward to it. Also part of the idea of this is that I was teaching her the concept of the four classical elements (earth, air, fire, and water) and their assocations with the four directions (north, east, sourth, and west respectively), with the the components of our bodies (flesh, breath, metabolism, blood and other liquids) and our personalities (being grounded, flights of fancy, fiery passions, and flowing emotions), and the four suites of the Tarot deck and their symbols (disks or coins, dagger or swords, wands or branches, and cups). So the elemental challenge was designed as a kind of quiz to see how much she retained. Why bother teaching her all this? I think its a good way to contemplate all the different elements that work together to make our life possible. It is a way of introducing interdependence and the dynamic forces at work in life in simple terms. Even in Buddhism, meditation on the four classical elements is part of Mindfulness of the Body in the Mahasatipatthana Sutta. Anyway, here's how it went when we finally got around to playing it out:

The entrance chamber is sealed room with simple stone walls. They enter through a siding stone door on the east wall that slams shut behind them. A magic mouth appears on the stone door that shut behind them and announces: “Do not turn back, the contest has begun, find the hidden track, and begin your run.” Across from them on the west wall is the exit that will only slide open when they return from the test. Four magically ever-burning torches are set on either side of the entrance and exit doors to light up the room. Inirril takes one to light the way. Ruby then finds a secret door of stone in the floor that slides open, but it can only be opened by pushing in a slightly discolored slab of masonry 20’ up on the north wall. She spots this as well and casts a spell that pushes the slab in and opens the secret door. Under the secret door is a spiral staircase leading down.

Going down the stairs under the secret door they find another room with four sealed stone doors. As they walk around the room a magic mouth appears on each one. The mouth for each door asks a different question corresponding to the direction of the door.

East: If you lose it and don’t catch it again you will die. What is it?

South: It can be summoned with sticks and stone. What is it?

West: Without it you will die in days, in it you will die in moments. What is it?

North: From it all things grow and to it they return again. What is it?

Before they can answer a carrion crawler scuttles down the wall from where it had been hiding in the shadows and reaches out with its tentacles to paralyze them as they approach the western door. A carrion crawler is like a four foot long caterpillar but with fangs, and mandibles, and eight paralyzing tentacles. Before it can strike, Niremdil fires an arrow at it but misses, Finemel fires two magic missiles (balls of mystical energy) at it from her wand, Inrril also fires and hits with her arrow, and Ruby also hits it with her arrow. The carrion crawler falls dead at their feet.

Inirril stops to collect the paralyzing juice of the carrion crawler while Ruby ponders the riddles. She figures out that the east door leads to air, the south to fire, the west to water, and the north to earth. She decides they should go through the west door and try their luck against water. When the question is answered correctly the western door slides open.

What they are confronted with is a long hall filled with a kind of underground lake that stretches on into the darkness. On their side is a small rowboat resting on a small strip of sand. They board the boat and begin rowing into the darkness to reach the other side, which their magical torchlight soon reveals is another strip of sand in front of a blank wall. But before they are able to cross the boat is pushed back by a large wave with a kind of face on it. They realize that it is a water elemental and try to destroy it. Niremdil takes the torch while Finemel and Inirrel cast magic missiles at it, but the magical missiles are just absorbed by the water. Ruby casts a ray of frost at it but just a tiny portion turns into ice with no other effect. The water elemental then dumps them into the water, whereupon even their magical torchlight is quenched. The water elemental then turns into a whirlpool and catches them all up and dumps them back on the little beach they started from. Inirril pulls out a stone and casts a magical light on it so they can see again, but their boat is gone and they have no other magic that can help them cross the water so they decide to try another door.

They go to the north door, figuring that “earth” might be an easier challenge than “air” or “fire.” This time they are confronted by a kind of canyon filled with rocks and boulders at the bottom. They assume that an earth elemental lies in wait for them and so make preparations to sneak by it if they can. Their assumption is correct as they see a mound of boulders rise up to watch them standing on the lip of the canyon.

After a discussion as to what to do, they decide that Niremdil will use his spell of invisibility and his climbing skills to descend into the canyon, cross the rocky field, and then climb up onto the ledge on the other side while the others use the spider climb spell to simply crawl across the wall to the left over the canyon. To do this, Ruby gives a scroll with that spell that she had previously inscribed to Inirril, while Niremdil casts his spell on Finemel. Ruby had already prepared the spell and so cast it on herself. As they crawled across the wall, the elemental charged the wall and merged into it. Then like a burrowing animal it sped up the wall after the three elves. Fortunately the elves make it to the ledge on the other side before the earth elemental catches up to them. Finemel even fires magic missiles at it from her wand to distract it while Niremdil invisibly climbs up the canyon wall to the ledge. The earth elemental sees that it is has failed to prevent them from crossing the chamber and so turns around. They find another blank wall but Niremdil soon discovers a secret door that also slides open to reveal a winding stairwell down.

Going down the stairwell they find themselves in a maze. It takes them some time to find their way to the center, which makes them nervous because Inirrel’s magically lit stone will only keep its enchantment for another ten minutes before it goes out and leaves them all in the center of a darkened underground labyrinth that could be filled with monsters and traps. At the center of the maze Ruby spots a Grick hiding in the shadows. Ruby shoots an arrow at it but it just bounces off, and they realize that only magic will be able to hurt it. The Grick moves out of the shadow, striking at Ruby with its tentacles. Finemel quickly shoots it with magic missiles from his wand and the Grick is destroyed. Ruby drinks one of her healing potions to heal the wounds on her arms where the Grick struck. Finemel discovers that the Grick’s nest contained four healing potions and a vial of oil. They each take a potion, and Finemel claims the oil since he put down the Grick with his magic.

Ruby then discovers the last secret door to a hidden chamber at the center of the maze. They enter and see a room with banners representing the four elements on each side of the room and a table in the center. Laid out on the table are four gems: a transparent gem for air, a light brown gem for earth, a reddish-orange gem for fire, and a blue-green gem for water) and also a masterwork silver inlaid dagger with a golden-yellow topaz in the pommel, a silver inlaid cup, a solid gold disk like a large coin with an engraved pentacle, and a wand carved and painted like a flame. They hear a voice say to them: “Having passed through the earth, what treasure do you seek? If you answer correctly, I will see that you are paid in full.” Ruby thinks back to her training, and realizes that since they passed through the earth chamber the treasure they are entitled to is the light brown gem and the golden pentacle disk on the north side of the table which represents the earth. The voice tells her that they may take those but must not touch the others. Niremdil, however, is greedy and decides to grab for the other treasures anyway. Then an arrow pierces his chest, and they all look up and see floating above them a Janni with a bow and arrow pointed at them. A Janni is one of the weaker forms of genies, formed out of all four elements. Before he can fire again, Ruby casts a magical web on the upper part of the room. The Janni is not caught but must carefully pick his way through the webs in order not to get stuck. As he does so, the elves grab all the treasures and rush out of the room, carrying the wounded Niremdil with them. The passage back to the starting room is easier as the earth elemental has gone. As soon as they can, they take the arrow out and Niremdil drinks the healing potion he found in the Grick’s nest. The four are congratulated for meeting the challenge – and Ruby keeps the gold disk (which she sells later), and the light brown gem which she is told she can break open to summon an earth elemental to help her if she is ever in need.

In this way Ruby passed the Elemental Challenge of the Highfolk Arcane Academy. She spent some time there afterwards honing her magical skills and learning new spells.

Posted by Ryuei at October 1, 2007 03:11 PM