Crossing the Desert Part 3:
The Devil's Lair
Dramatis Personae:
Oryn Talus, the mysterious and ancient "Halfling" who has employed the group
Aurora Isilime, the Valley Elf Bard; "The Silver Tongued Siren;" who has more instruments than she can carry, and sings to things she shouldn't
Pharin Braz'Dracon, the Half Brass Dragon, Half Drow Wizard; "The Dark Conjurer;" summoner of demon bunnies, and Andolin's twin
Skye Vindhalle, the Air Genasi Druid and saver of demon bunnies
Dervish, the Kasathe Fighter
Nanu, the NightmOrc Fighter who is late, slayer of innocent bystanders
Pimbin, the Halfling Shadow Monk of Nerull and Starlock of Y'Chuk
Willow Liadon, the Eladrin Rogue
Willow Liadon, the Eladrin Rogue
Lan El'Mandragoran, the Human Paladin of Pelor
Lothar, the Sovani Smith and former Cleric of Moradin, High Priest of Lolth
Aeryn and Aerys Shayl, the Human Ranger twins
Aerathema, the Wood Elf Druid
Ralliakkan, the Drow Rogue
Andolin Braz'Dracon, the Half Brass Dragon, Half Drow Fighter/Ranger, and Pharin's twin
Narg, there's really no way to describe Narg, Narg is just Narg
Haasenpfeffer, the giant positive energy bunny that Pharin regularly tries to summon
Comrades we have lost:
Jayce, the Human Barbarian- killed by Josiah
Jarrid, the Human Barbarian- killed by Pharin, Pimbin, Andolin, and Dervish during Kester Championship
Pieces of Vecna acquired: Hand and Eye
Other components being kept out of the cult's hands: Book of Vile Darkness, Fang of Kas, and the sword hilt
NOTE: Things will be mostly from Aurora's perspective. Anything in italics is from a third person.
***** Day 13 to the Forgotten City- the Sulhaut Mountains
When we awoke the next evening, we found the fires that had been blazing in the forest to be gone. They weren't even smoking anymore. Dervish realized that he should warn his mercenaries about the zombies, only to find out that they were under attack by bunny shaped fire elementals. Fucking Pharin apparently just released them to do whatever they wanted after summoning them last night. We set off toward sunset again, and Lothar again refused a broom or mount, he just wanted to walk. The problem is that foolish feline is ridiculously slow, so we were once again crawling at a snail's pace.
After some time into our travels, we heard music, the sound of the Graybeards, the sonic monks. I've heard about them before, obviously, so I had to meet them. The things they can do with their voices are incredible, and I would love to learn from them. Pharin and Lothar stayed behind while the rest of us went to investigate. We decided to travel longer than normal in an attempt to reach the monks, and we saw some will-o-wisps in the trees below us after it became fully dark. Fortunately we were flying high enough that the little pests didn't mess with us. Of course if they had we would have crushed them instantly, but the loss of time and waste of resources would have been annoying. Maybe we should have attacked them, it could have made an amusing tale... Oh well.
Pharin and Lothar continued traveling at an agonizingly slow speed. They set up camp for the night and were unmolested both in travel and camp.
***** Day 14 to the Forgotten City- the Sulhaut Mountains
Eventually we came upon a huge cliff that seemed to go on forever. It sounded like the monks were coming from up there, so we decided to fly up it. Turns out that was a bad idea. There was a thick fog above us that we had to fly into in order to get up this cliff. After we entered the mist, Willow got hit with a sleep spell and passed out. I was able to cast a levitation spell on her quickly enough to prevent her from plummeting to her doom. The mess that her body would have become would have been beyond my abilities to bring back the dead. Right after I caught Willow, Dervish passed out, but thankfully he was on a carpet, so he didn't begin plummeting to his doom. At a loss for what to do, I threw a wall of wind around us in an attempt to cleanse the air. My plan didn't work quickly enough, and within seconds I found myself drifting off to sleep.
Lothar discovered the next morning that his fur had changed from tabby to gray, and his eyes were suddenly red. Pharin had brought Lothar to Lolth's attention, and she wanted him.
When the tribe became unable to really hit Pharin and Lothar through the fire wall, they began chanting, and a fog began rolling in... the same fog the rest of the party was dealing with at the cliff. Pharin began throwing a dust of dryness out, in hopes of keeping the air clear. When the dust reached its limit for absorbing the fog, it became a little marble of the stuff; which the enemy proceeded to pick at and throw in Pharin's face, knocking him unconscious. At some point in the fray Lothar also succumbed to the fog and fell into the same deep slumber as his comrades.
***** An unknown amount of time later...
I awoke in some sort of cave that appeared to be deep underground, and the effects of the fog had left me feeling well rested instead of hungover. All of my belongings were gone, including the communication rings, which Pharin had made invisible. The cell I was in didn't seem to have any doors or windows, it was just a sealed room of dirt and rock. I began trying to think of how in the Nine Hells I was going to escape this chamber, I wasn't sure if my voice would be enough this time.
Lothar began praying when he woke up, and he got a response, from Lolth. The Spider Queen had altered Lothar's pebble while he slept, and he was now her priest, a really high ranking one. This was why his fur and eyes had changed color. Lolth gave Lothar a drider to tear the cells open and give him a chance to escape.
The wall to Pharin's cell was suddenly ripped open, and the drow found himself facing a huge drider, with Lothar riding it. Lothar commanded the drider to begin ripping open cell after cell, and anyone who wasn't a member of the party was given a simple choice: join Lolth or die. Most were too terrified to even respond, which is a perfectly reasonable reaction to having your prison sliced open and being faced with a drider. Unfortunately for those poor prisoners, none of them were willing to convert to the Spider Queen- the drider gleefully devoured them all in a matter of seconds.
Dervish was the next member of the party to be rescued via drider. I was saved next, and it was a horrifying sight to see Lothar atop that huge drider. The fear that rolled through me like a wave was something I have never experienced, and certainly hope never to feel again. Though that fear will make for a fantastic song. The next cell Lothar busted into was Pimbin's. As we continued down the hall, Lothar opened seven more that all contained strangers; only one of them agreed to convert, the rest were eaten. The screams were almost as horrible as the sight of watching the beast tear into their flesh. Finally we found Willow, and the drider, having completed its work, vanished; thank the Gods.
Pharin was able to sense that his things were somewhere above us, so we began moving through the tunnels in what we hoped was the right direction. It stood to reason that if dickhead's stuff was above us, the rest of our stuff would be with his. After what felt like forever, Pimbin thought he heard something ahead of us in the tunnel- possibly our jailers. Pharin levitated up the tunnel, and Pimbin ran up a wall. The ceiling exploded out at us, raining rocks and dirt- a group of succubi and incubi flew in. Pharin cast a sleep spell at the winged villains, and their unconscious bodies began raining down on us. We made short work of them, slicing and dicing the seductors until the room was covered in a pool of blood. We continued on our way up.
After at least another hour of walking the tunnels began to open up more, and we found more jail cells. In them were vampires, which we began pelting with fire from outside of their cells. We continued moving forward as we did so, the vamps were so weak it was almost pitiful how easy they were to kill. The prisoners became shades as we moved higher up, and we began killing them too. Lothar decided to speed things up by opening up the cell doors; he touched a torch and every door vanished, almost as if they were never there to begin with.
As we continued on we saw more vampires and shades, ghosts, wights, mummies, lycanthropes of multiple varieties, minor devils, demons, aberrations, monstrosities, fey, and woodland creatures. It was like we had entered a museum of evil, and every prisoner was frozen in place. Willow decided to enter the cell of one of the fey and vanished instantly. Pharin decided it would be safer to shut the cell doors again, though I think he was just locking Willow in the cell if she was still there, just invisible. We found Willow in another cell, but she was masked by an illusion to hide her true identity. After unsuccessfully waking her from the deep slumber we found her in, Lothar resulted to use blood magic to free the rogue.
Willow suddenly found herself back in the feywild, surrounded by beauty. The vibrant colors and familiar sounds were soothing to the eladrin, and she felt like she was home again. Then suddenly Lothar appeared in her private paradise, sporting two extra legs- giving him eight limbs total. Willow was ripped from her fictitious feywild by the sovanni, and brought back to the real world.
Once Willow was freed we continued our journey up, but this time we stayed clear of the cells, lest another one of us fall prey to it. After a time I heard rattling, like really big bones moving, and I sent Willow ahead of us to scout. She discovered a minotaur skeleton was ambling towards us. Predictably, upon spying us it charged- and Pharin hit it with a levitation spell launching it into the air. Once the beast was airborne the rest of us wailed on it and it was destroyed quickly.
We continued on for what seemed like hours, which it may very well have been. Eventually we found an exit to the tunnel we had been climbing, and found two Death Tyrants standing guard outside of the mountain. It appeared we hadn't left the Sulhaut Mountains, we were just trapped in one of the largest ones in the range. Pharin summoned four fiendish cave eels to tunnel the rest of the way up to where our stuff was located. He had planned on going up the mountain a little bit and then tunneling straight in, but the sentry tyrants made the drow alter that plan; at least the jackass is smart enough to avoid those fuckers when we're all in nothing but our small clothes. Unfortunately one of the tyrants realized what we were doing and came after us; we just barely escaped it, by narrowing the tunnel the eels made to where it couldn't get in.
We burst forth through the floor of a huge banquet hall, literally crashing what appeared to be a very upscale party. A lot of nobles and about one hundred guards were splattered with food, because of course we busted in through one of the tables. I attempted a dance to charm them, but it didn't work at all. While I was doing that, dickhead grabbed Lothar and tried to dimension door them over to a throne, upon which a duergar was perched. It turned out that we had just crashed Asmodeus' party... of course the daft drow was putting us in even more trouble, that seems to be a specialty of his.
Asmodeus of course knew who we were, because who hasn't heard of me, and proposed a deal. He offered to hide the Hand for us, keeping it safely out of either cults reach, as long as we returned to him after finding the Sword of Kas, and destroyed the pieces. The God said he would give us his hospitality for the evening, and in the morning he would put us on the other side of the Sulhaut Mountains, at the border of the Sea of Dust. He also told us he would find out which devils were after Pharin and myself, which was quite generous even if it did mean I may not get a cool golden instrument for killing the devil. After the deal had been struck, we discovered that every guest at this party was a god. Literally every god in the realms was there, the party was for them to discuss the Vecna business. When all of the gods come together about something, you know it's bad.
Asmodeus let me use a really pretty and amazingly tuned golden violin for the night! I wish I could have kept it, and it renewed my desire to obtain one of these for myself. We all spent the evening mingling with deities, and we all hooked up with a different god. I don't remember, or care, which gods the others boned, but I got to bone Hathor. Since she's a goddess of hearth and home, in addition to music, it was interesting... and now I have awesome bragging rights.
***** Day 15 to the Forgotten City- the Sea of Dust
The next morning we awoke to find ourselves in a very roomy tent and the bottom of the mountains. Since it's so obscenely hot in the desert, we decided to stick with our normal schedule, and stayed in the tent for the day. When night came and we left the tent, the moment we were all out of the tent, it vanished into thin air.
Lothar again refused any assistance traveling, but since Lolth had given him two more legs, which were almost invisible, he was actually able to move as fast as the rest of us for once. I think he may be a Favored of Lolth, which is probably not a good thing considering how devious the Spider is.
We discovered the remnants of a road in the sand, a reminder that the Sea of Dust wasn't always an uninhabitable wasteland.
Nothing really interesting happened though. I hate the stupid desert so much.
***** Day 16- the Sea of Dust
Out of sheer boredom, Lothar used one of his magic beans that day, and a bulette appeared. Of course we made quick work of the stupid thing. Nothing else happened. The desert is so fucking boring.
***** Day 17- the Sea of Dust
Something actually happened! It was such a great relief from the tedium of traveling in this barren desert!
Off in the distance we spotted a giant statue, that looked like it was possibly a humanoid of some kind, but there didn't seem to be any definitive features to it. As we drew closer, proceeding with caution, we realized it was a huge iron golem; which of course I knew that they were once guardians of the ancient roads of a people now long dead. It was surprising to see one still intact, I had thought they would have been destroyed by the same thing that destroyed this part of Flanaess. We didn't think something that had been sitting out here for so long was still even partially functional, but we were wrong.
Pharin approached the golem and felt a hum coming off of it. When Dervish approached, following Pharin, the golem's eyes turned red; the ancient guardian was still compelled to protect what was long dead. The golem turned and attacked Pharin, which was awesome. The jackass hadn't expected it at all. Lothar joined the fray and beheaded it, but it isn't a living creature, so it was able to keep fighting. It hurled Lothar into the sand, and somehow cut its own arm off in the process. Lothar flung a vial into the golem, a vial of sovereign glue, which gummed up its parts and shut the stupid golem down. When Dervish realized it was made of star metal, we spent a good portion of that day slicing the golem up into ingots.
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