Lost Dispatches of Feraso #51 - The Tower of Enerk

The 25th Day of Hexdec in the Year 1027

The Village of Mechitbayeva, Land of Hermetus

To His Lordship, Viscount Wilifrick of Verbobonc,

Following Freigraf Alwin Warmark's request, Murag Mountainhammer, Andrei Krasimir and I took our annual holiday to visit Amberstoll in the Weissmach.   While adventuring through the Weissmach was unstoppable excitement, pedestrian travel through the region has one subject to insufferable boredom.  While we had planned two months to stay with Alwin, the remoteness caused us to depart a month earlier.

To fill the time, we head back to the far eastern edge of the Empire, where Ras-Prythax meets the wizard kingdoms of Hermetus, and the rumored Vampire kingdoms of Vlachia.  

We went on two tours offered by locals to see vampires, but were only subject to potential robbery we easily thwarted.  

We wandered Hermetus proper, avoiding falling giants, and taking advantage of a poor economy with solid sustenance and refreshments.  

Hermetus itself is largely communities of poorly educated subsistence farmers with a few middle class merchants barely making ends meet. 

We found ourselves in the village of Mechitbayeva, drinking local plum-based drinks at The Fluffy Cashew (Andrei's translation, not mine).    The tavern was inhabited by the regular cast of locals, farmers, and drunks, but we did run into an actual adventuring party celebrating their recent success.  Offering to buy some plum-derived liqueur in exchange for their story, I deemed it safer to live vicariously through their actions.

The leader of the party was a smallish wizard named Henri Torsorin.  Beside him was a forlorn looking warrior who went by Serlon the Grim.  Their cleric was a dwarf(!) Thormak Gingerheart, but for reasons unexplained to us, the group simply called Chet.  An exotic looking man with almost ashen olive skin disturbuing accent when he attempted the few words of Trade-Prythax he knew,eyed us suspiciously, but they assured us the this ranger from the Senzar Empire, Lobo, was harmless outside of a dungeon.

Finally, the man acting as the group interpreter was a tall, lanky fellow from nearby Vlachian named Viesbustus

Their story was a classic tale of adventuring with a Hermetic twist.  They had been hired by the heirs to clean out the tower of one of the local wizards who recently passed away.  Unlike many of the loner wizards who ruled the land with an iron fist and a snap of the fingers, this wizard, Enerk, had raised a family before turning into a magic hermit in his tower.  His will had given them ownership of the tower, and although no one in the family wanted it, it had to be cleaned of his "creations" before a proper buyer could be found.

It seemed that the Old Wizard Enerk had some talented, and could create almost sentient clockwork designs.  Many in his early years had been quite useful, but as he slipped into his tower, he dedicated his time to clockwork protectors, clockwork guardians.

In this five story tower, each floor of the tower was filled with these mechanical spiders whose only jump was to prevent intruders from entering.  No one knew how Enerk waved off the orders of these guard-spiders, and so Henri & Company would need to wipe them out.

The spiders on each floor seemed to segregate themselves from the other groups, and each design was tougher and more elaborate than the lower stories.  Copper spiders led to iron, led to silver, led to (fake) gold, and finally, in his lair, this odd metallic red substance which they had great trouble killing the few that populated the study and bedroom of the wizard.

By the time the stories had been told in full, it was quite late, and "Chet" the dwarf was speaking of some talking frog they were going to get a quest from the next day.  I had assumed that the plum wine was making me hear things, so I ignored that last comment.  Anyway, Andrei was overexcited at the time, successfully clearing out the tower meant the family could put it up for sale, and Andrei had gotten their location and other information from Viesbustus.  He was going to give them an offer for the property before it was officially put up for sale.

Murag and I are still in shock.  Despite our best pleadings to come back and perhaps think about building a tower of knowledge (and perhaps power) back in Verbobonc, Andrei was adamant that a true wizard gets a tower in Hermetus, by any means necessary, and this was much easier than other stories he had heard.  He's already met with the heirs, and arranged payment through the Imperial Bank in Feraso City to be delivered shortly.   Outside of a quick return trip with us back to Feldkurton to pack up a few possessions, and return to establish his new property.

I can rightfully say that I am heartbroken.  In my adventures over the years, I have obtained three friends: Alwin, a boring man who lives in a boring town.  Murag, an exciting dwarf the prefers to relax in a boring town, and Andrei, who constantly wants excitement in as many different towns as possible.  I fear the few flashes of excitement left for this Baron of Greyhawk will be fleeting over the next few weeks.

Please update the contact information to one Andrei Krasimir, Magic-User, to Krasimir Tower, village of Mechitbayeva, Land of Hermetus.

Yours Always in Service,

Sir Elsderth Greyhawk, Baron of Greyhawk

Slayer of the Wizard Sazor

Freigraff of the Totenlinden of Amberstoll.

DM Notes: This is the one place in the Lost Dispatches that I get to tell the story of the game of D&D I ran in Basic Training, Summer 1992, in the barracks of Fort Jackson, South Carolina.  

Weeks into Basic, heat advisories were throwing off training schedules, we were just squared away enough for a platoon of non-combat MOS Privates that the Drill Sergeants gave us a little more time than we expected after evening PT.  

Most took the time to relax and keep a low profile, in case the Drill Sergeants came out, but for those of us with lockers in the far left back corner, a few of us figured getting smoked for gaming in the barracks was better than attempting to ask permission.  

This is not my Platoon's picture (this one's only 49 months early) but dammit if all of these look alike.  I swear I could make out every character in the platoon, including everybody from the game, and the guy that still owes me twenty-five bucks from AIT in Fort Gordon.

With no dice coming until AIT, we made due for random number generation. When I mailed my military portraits home, I saved one of the cardboard portrait folders, and with the few office supplies I could obtain, created a d4 to d20 spinner, hiding the various designs inside the folder, and creating the actual spinner from a broken Bic pen and a paper clip.  

It worked way too well, so everyone took made up the character of choice back home, and I ran a basic tower adventure, relying heavily on the clockwork horrors from MC7 - Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix. 

The game was a rousing success and it spawned a follow up game run by "Chet" involving a lot of fairy tale stuff that didn't jive with the other guys.  Before that point, I had been assigned some other duty (possibly to "break up the gang"), and within another day or two, the heat had let up and we were back to whatever training we needed to catch up on.   

And now, after 27 years, The Tower of Enerk finally has its proper space in the World of Georic.

Next: #52  A Letter to the New Viscount