On some occasion long ago in our travels through the land of elves and humans, we came across a magic helmet of unknown properties. The mage-elves attempted to identify it to no avail. We took it to the mages most advanced in their art, and yet it was even beyond the ability of these wizards to know what the helmet actually did. One thing was for certain, and as certain as the dwarves mine the earth and make marvelous works of stone, metal and gems, it was indeed of the most powerful magic.
Months went by and after yet one more attempt to divine the helm’s secrets failed, Kalcryx, frustrated and curious, stole away in secret and donned helmet. We did not know what he had done, but he began exhibiting unusual behavior. For example, when Jaran cast a spell to temporarily restore his missing leg, he threw his peg-leg over his shoulder. Jaran had scolded him and thrust it back in his hand, but Kalcryx seemed uninterested in keeping it. Now this puzzled me because I know Master Kalcryx, High Priest of Helm better than that. I began watching him more closely and then a suspicion came over me which made the sturdy rock foundation I was born on seem to shake and falter (much like being out to sea). After praying to Clangeddin for a divination spell which would help me to know a person’s heart better, I cast it and gazed fixedly on Kalcryx. He looked at me, clearly annoyed, and spat, “What are you looking at?!”. And that’s when I saw it: an aura of evil around him!
Somehow we found out that he had donned the mysterious helmet in secret. I even tried to get him to put it back on to see if the effects would be reversed, but to know avail. But then later, we discovered that the magical aura the helm had once possessed was no longer present. Fearing that the spell could not be reversed easily, I then set out to try to restore my comrade-in-arms to his original state. I visited a high-priest of Moradin (I would have gone to a church of Clangeddin had there been one in the city which we were visting, but my church is not that well known, something I intend to change in the near future) and asked him what he could offer to help return my friend back to normal. In our discussion, we determined that he may be rejected from Helm’s church. The priest offered a scroll to me, penned in magical Dwarvish which read “Atonement” near the wax seal of Moradin. “If your friend is truly sorry for his actions, this may reverse the effects of the magical helmet.”
It was the best and only solution I was offered, outside direct confrontation in battle–a thought I did not relish greatly, and certainly an option viewed as a last resort.
We stayed at an Inn in a small village near Fortenbury, and I kept a watchful eye on my now-evil friend. Fortunately, human ale is weak, much like drinking pint after pint of flavored water, so I kept my wits about me and watched. Since I planned to sleep on the floor of the pub, I was there the entire night.
Kalcryx had spent most of the evening with two scantily clad elvish women (something I’d never seen him do normally–in fact I can’t remember a time I’d ever seen him engaging in any sort of mating ritual). They left to go back to his room at some point in the evening, and I stayed, drinking the beer-flavored-water the humans seems to like and watching the pub.
About two o’clock in the morning, Kalcryx came down the inn’s creaky stairs (bah, a dwarven inn would be made of stone–how elvish of the humans) and left through the pub’s front entrance. I followed him, and stopped him in the alley way.
“Friend Kalcryx, where be ye headed on such a fine night?” I asked, looking at him unblinkingly and sternly. “Down to the temple of Helm,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I volunteered for watch duty this morning.”
“Hrm,” I said, stroking my long, silver beard idly. “And what will you be doing on this watch?”
“Patrolling, mainly.”
“Will there be killing involved?” I pressed closer for this.
“Well, let’s see, if I’m attacked, then probably yes. Why, feel like you’ll miss out?”
“No–just, er, I want you to promise me that you won’t kill anyone tonight. I can’t explain much more than that, but if my friendship has ever meant anything to you at all, you will comply with my request.”
He just stared back (down, really), a half smile smudged on his huge face. He scratched his nose with a claw, and then said, “G’Kar, you annoy me. I have work to do,” and with that, he walked off.
The next thing I knew, I was pounding on Jaran’s door, and found myself face to face (really face to chest) with a bleary eyed, unamused half-drow. “What’s going on G’Kar?”
“We all know that Kalcryx has changed for the worse since he donned the Helmet, yes? Oh stop looking at me like that–he’s gone off to make rounds for the Helmite church, and I am afraid he will get himself into trouble. I want to use this on him,” and I pulled out the scroll of atonement I obtained from the church of Moradin. “You see, if he kills, and he does so dishonorably, Helm will ban him from his church. I believe if I can catch him before he does anything rash, and get him to honestly repent for donning the helmet in the first place, we can reverse its effects. We need to accost him now!”
Jaran instantly snapped out of her grogginess, just as if a magical bellows had caused flame to spring forth out of cold, quiet stone. She was in action, and we were already going down the hall to seek Delen and Connor.
We went to the temple of Helm to learn Kalcryx’s planned route, but his route was so large that he could be anywhere in the city. Once we exited the Helmite temple, Jaran performed in her usual way (she has never admitted to having thiefly ways, but I figured it out from a long time of fighting along side her, watching her pick locks, disable traps, move in a utterly silent way and inflict grievous wounds from behind an unsuspecting opponent). She vanished into the night to seek out where Kalcryx might be.
We finally met up with Jaran, who had located Kalcryx. Apparently there had been some sort of altercation between the priest and a different thief, and they had just returned from the prison where they had deposited said thief. But my fears were abated when I was told that he acted in self-defense. Had he acted in a dishonorable way, it would be one more deed too many–this could cause the atonement to fail. If I could but convince him that donning the cursed helm has led him astray from his god, if I could make him but feel genuine remorse… It was in Clangeddin’s hands at this point.
“I was just trying to wake up some of the mages around here,” said Kalcryx, “and buy a scroll. But none of them seem to want to come out of their houses. I was going to trade this for a scroll before I got attacked by that thief, ” and he held out a handsome gem. I wondered if it had been cut by a dwarven diamond-smith, it’s angles were so precise.
I eyed my old friend suspiciously. “Why searchth thee for scrolls at such a late hour, particularly when you are in the charge of the church of Helm to patrol the streets?”
He shrugged, “I dunno. I wanted to buy a scroll.”
“This does not sound like the honorable warrior and priest I have come to know over the time we have campaigned together. Surely, does this not sound strange?”
“No. I don’t see anything wrong here.” Kalcryx’s expression was blank, save for a slight upturn of his lip. His eyes were shining in a way which reminded me of a crafty dwarven child playing a practical joke on a friend.
“Then I submit to you, Kalcryx of Helm, that you have fallen from your ways as a priest and have run afoul of Helm’s honor! Do you wish to be expelled from your church?! You will no longer be able to cast the spells of Helm!”
“Oh.”
“Does this not fill you with remorse and regret?!”
“Yeah, I suppose it does,” he looked anything but convincing to me. Jaran took the opportunity to hand Kalcryx the Lifebringer. If there was one truly honorable and noble weapon in the world, this was it. “Take it.”
At that point I noticed Kalcryx casting a spell. The power of Clangeddin allowed me to divinate that he was trying to dispell the magic of the mysterious Lifebringer!
I wasn’t sure if it worked, but I brandished my Dwarventhrower and shouted, “let us do battle then! If you are still normal in every respect, the Lifebringer will work for you–but I daresay it will not on this day…ah! It speaks to you–what does it tell you!?”
“The Lifebringer says that it’s quite happy to be back with me,” Kalcryx smirked.
“Why then did you attempt to dispell it’s magic?!”
Kalcryx had no answer. There was a terrible lull, a tension filled silence which surrounded us while we stared at each other. I noticed that the smirk had faded from his face. “Do you truly wish to have Helm grant you more spells on the morrow?” I pressed.
He thought about it, then looked down at me, “I wish Helm would grant me more spells.”
With that, I pulled out the scroll the dwarven priest of Moradin had sold me. The symbols were in dwarvish, but they shimmered in the way magical scrolls do. Minutes passed as I read, parts of the scroll crumbling away magically into powder.
A drop of moisture hit my hand, and I held my shield over the scroll as it began to rain, lightly at first. With each passing stanza, the rain increased in volume. Soon Jaran was holding her cloak over me, deflecting most of the downpour.
Then, I noticed something strange. The rain, which had been coming down hard, began to look wrong. I blinked my eyes, but sure enough, each raindrop’s fall was slowing. I paused from my magical reading and saw the crumbling bits of parchment slowing their drift to the street. Jaran and Kalcryx stood unmoving, the noise of the rain began to fade, and all became utterly still. I was as if I had cast Clangeddin’s Withdrawl, but I cannot cast two spells at once!
Then a shimmering light came forth and I shielded my eyes, for strong it was. When I could focus, my mind was dazzled and my heart sent beating fast. And then a figure emerged from the light.
The figure was massive, standing head and shoulders above the buildings around us. It’s head was covered in an ornate helmet, and body armor so massive that I could outfit an entire troop of the High Priest’s warrior dwarves. Then the figure spoke and the ground seemed to shake with the depth of his voice.
“THIS WILL NOT WORK. HE HAS COMMITTED NO MISDEEDS. THERE IS NOTHING TO ATONE FOR.”
I stood agape looking at the figure, and realized that I was addressing Helm himself! Great Dwarf, here I was conversing with such a great and noble being, and yet my own god failed to give me audience, only occasionally communicating to me in dreams, and then only in visions!
“But–surely, is it not a crime for him to be excommunicated from the church of Helm? Perhaps his crime is the change of heart he has had. Please, he is my friend, and surely one of your greatest followers! You cannot turn away from him, for he needs you now!”
The great figure paused, then extended his great hand. “I CANNOT LET YOU WASTE THIS OPPORTUNITY. THAT IS WHY I AM HERE.” I noticed a scroll pinched between two massive gloved fingers. I noted that had he wanted to, he could smite me where I stood, with just one of those fingers. I took the scroll, which filled my hand, and looked at the seal. “Will I be able to read this scroll?”
“NO. THIS IS FOR YOUR MAGE. YOU MUST RESTORE MY CHILD TO HIS RIGHTFUL FORM.”
In his other hand, he held what looked like a miniature helmet (but which I realized was larger than my own head). I recognized it to be the magic helmet which had caused Kalcryx to become not himself. Helm squeezed his hand and crushed the helmet into dust.
I looked down again at the scroll, and then back up at the larger-than-life warrior.
“Oh Great Helm, you are a fair and just god…”
And with a no warning, time resumed for me, water droplets, which were suspended in mid-drop, hit the now muddy streets. The sound of the rain was almost deafening. Jaran took a small step backward in spite of herself, as she realized I was no longer holding the scroll I was reading, but a different, larger scroll still rolled up bearing a seal. I turned to her.
“You MUST read this. I have it on extremely good authority that it will restore our misguided friend,” and with that, I shoved it into her hand.
“What’s on the scroll?” Kalcryx looked startled. “I thought you were reading something else?”
Jaran faced him. “It is a scroll which contains mage magic, and will grant a wish of any proportion to the reader.”
Kalcryx shrugged. “So? I don’t need a wish. And I can’t think of a reason why you would want to read it either.”
“Kalcryx, do you want me to restore you back to the way you were before you donned the magical helmet? I want to make sure you understand what I’m about to do.” Jaran told him.
“Just read it Jaran!” G’Kar shouted.
“What’s all the urgency, dwarf?” Kalcryx now looked a little nervous, his hand going into his pocket.
G’Kar faced Kalcryx, “the scroll comes from Helm himself! I have seen him!”
Kalcryx just laughed, then suddenly pulled out a scroll of his own and without anyone
being able to stop him, he vanished.
“An invisibility spell! Jaran, waste no more time!”
With that, she broke the seal on the scroll and read aloud in a language I could not understand. Then she added at the end in Common, “I wish Kalcryx to be restored to his state from right before he put on the helm.”
There was a pause. Then in a flash of light, Kalcryx reappeared, this time with his peg leg. “All hail friends, ” he said, then looking around, “where am I?”
“My good friend, it is a long story, one best told whilst drinking dwarven ale and smoking a fat pipe of fine tobacco.”
We headed back to the tavern, and agreed to try to get a good nights sleep. As I lay down on the wooden floor, wishing for something harder like good solid stone under my head, my mind drifted, and I pictured the massive and great Helm standing over me. I have seen faith waver before in my time, and I have seen magic take loyal followers away from Clangeddin. But I must admit I’ve never seen a god come back to rescue one of his own.
In addition to doing my nightly worship and prayer to Clangeddin, I also prayed to Helm to watch over our friend. Great Helm, I thank thee!