The radiance illuminating the fortress was extinguished but almost immediately replaced by globes of light such as those that lit the scenes behind the attacking forces. Men watching from the castle or the surrounding camp of the besiegers saw the blazing fire elementals' flames become smothered and wink out.īass twangs and thumps came from the encircling force, and arcing boulders and massive spears again rained upon the curtain walls, the towers, and the castle courtyard and buildings inside it. Earth and fire contested, as did fire and water. Even as the two giant elementals struggled, a new sort of elemental creature arose from the rain-soaked earth, this one formed of damp dirt and stone and clay. A pillar of water suddenly arose, formed itself, and grappled with its fiery counterpart. One of these glowing elementals was near the partially filled moat. The fire elementals, four in number, hissed and roared their anger and pain as the pelting drops of water vaporized upon them, sending forth steaming clouds and cooling the monsters' flames. As all this occurred, drenching bursts of rain issued forth from directly above the huge fire elementals, while gentler precipitation fell upon burning wood.
#Gygax pure hearts full#
In turn, the sky above the castle was bright, and the place was illuminated with something that resembled the light from a full moon, while the area round about its walls was dark, save for burning equipment and fiery elementals still delivering death. Abruptly, the scene changed.Īlmost simultaneously, the bright spheres of light that revealed the attacking army went out. It seemed that the spell-casters of the besieging force were unable to withstand those within the great fortress, for the former had to work relatively unprotected, while those within were not so exposed. There were a few, pitiful spells cast too - silvery darts and opalescent rays of cold light, even a few blasts of fire - but these had slight effect. Thick, spearlike missiles flew also, until, likewise burned, the ballistae that shot them forth were blazing bonfires. Rocks and boulders smashed into bartizan and tower, impacted wall, or arced over into the courtyard, before fire silenced catapult and trebuchet. While the defenders in the great castle wrought their destruction, the ringing soldiery had countered with showers of arrows, but parapet and merlon protected the defenders, and bolt and shaft most often splintered harmlessly against stone. The battle was not all one-sided, of course.
Arrows and buzzing crossbow bolts sought out the retreating attackers and exacted further toll, while chains of blazing, blue lightning leaped among them, slaying and completing the devastation. The lines of soldiers quickly became scattered, fleeing men seeking escape from flaming death, their ranks decimated, all cohesion gone. Flesh and blood could not stand such an inferno. Glowing tentacles sprouted up from the earth itself and wrapped their fiery coils around war machines and men. The very flames formed them, and these great things strode forth from the fires to further wreak death and destruction on the attacking army. Torrents of flame erupted from the sky to set siege towers blazing, giant torches that added a hellish light to the scene, while raging fires swept over the advancing lines or made curtains of flame that seared their flesh.įrom these conflagrations sprang huge, manlike forms.
Varicolored darts sped unerringly into hapless targets who screamed and died. Bodies were tossed high by roaring blasts wheeled shelters were split and broken by the flashing strokes of electricity while metal-clad men-at-arms behind them became charred corpses. The magic missiles, blazing fireballs, and crackling bolts of lightning were far worse. Some arrows and quarrels lodged in wooden mantlets or struck into shields, but others sank into flesh.
Arrows, quarrels, and streaking missiles of magical origin flew toward the encircling soldiers. Men and machines were moving across the trampled ground toward the great stone walls. The starless night was suddenly bright with globes of glowing light, radiance that shed betraying illumination behind the lines of besiegers outside the fortress. Horns bellowed in answer to the screaming trumpets that sounded from the high towers of the concentric castle. Series: Greyhawk Artifact of Evil Gary Gygax
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