Monday, March 26, 2018
Monday, March 19, 2018
Adventures in Oerth- The Bane of Vecna: Book Two, Chapter Six
Assault on Our Forces
Dramatis Personae:
Aurora Isilime, the Valley Elf Bard of Valor and Bae'qeshel of Lolth, the Silver Tongued Siren, who is the last Vale Elf
Eurydice, Aurora's faerie dragon familiar
Aurora Isilime, the Valley Elf Bard of Valor and Bae'qeshel of Lolth, the Silver Tongued Siren, who is the last Vale Elf
Eurydice, Aurora's faerie dragon familiar
Pharin Braz'Dracon, the Brass Dragon-Drow Conjurationist Wizard and Priest of Lolth, the Dark Conjurer
Sarlockh, Pharin's choldrith familiar
Vilrath, Pharin's flesh golem
Sarlockh, Pharin's choldrith familiar
Vilrath, Pharin's flesh golem
Skye Vindhalle, the Air Genasi Druid
Dervish, the Kasathe Brass Dragon Fighter and Dragon Blood Sorcerer
Willow Liadon, the Eladrin Arcane Trickster
Grax Thunderhorn, the Lightfoot Halfling Assassin with a voice in his head
Oryn Talus, the ancient and mysterious halfling who has employed the party; also know as Cinder, the ancient power that is said to destroy every world
Grax Thunderhorn, the Lightfoot Halfling Assassin with a voice in his head
Oryn Talus, the ancient and mysterious halfling who has employed the party; also know as Cinder, the ancient power that is said to destroy every world
Lan El'Mandragoran, the Human Paladin of Pelor
Lothar, the Sovani Smith and semi-Cleric of Moradin, High Priest of Lolth, Cleric of Istus, forced Cleric of Asmodeus; Kas Reincarnated
Aerathema, the Wood Elf Druid
Andolin Braz'Dracon, the Brass Dragon-Drow Fighter/Beast Master
BarraZotreth, Andolin's displacer beast animal companion
BarraZotreth, Andolin's displacer beast animal companion
Narg, there's really no way to describe Narg, Narg is just Narg
Elder Vish, Dervish's friend and mentor from his world
Sil'ilos'anon Braz'Dracon, the "Drow" Warlock Blood Mage of Lolth
Ralliakkan, the Drow Rogue
Elder Vish, Dervish's friend and mentor from his world
Sil'ilos'anon Braz'Dracon, the "Drow" Warlock Blood Mage of Lolth
Ralliakkan, the Drow Rogue
NOTE: Things will be mostly from Aurora's perspective. Anything in italics is from a third person since the bard can't be everywhere at once.
***** Lacysnows 19, CY 710, Sigil
After spending some time catching up with Oryn, Pharin decided we needed to hit the shops. He wanted to find some artifacts- and was hoping for the Wand of Orcus, thinking he could use that to turn Vecna's forces against him or something. He couldn't find that, but instead, he found and decided to buy the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords... That drow has something planned for that axe, and I don't think it's good.
During our shopping, I discovered that no one has been able to make one shot items lately, which was weird. I wondered if what we did to the last Beacon had something to do with it, but Sigil is in a different plane, so I don't know if that actually works. The boys wandered off at some point while I was shopping, and I'd been alone for a couple hours when Sil randomly showed up.
Sil said that Pharin had gone to his mage tower in the Demonweb Pits and it was under attack by five thousand liches and demon knights- who were all fucking immune to fire and lightning. Apparently, Vecna's cultists were making their move.
Upon arrival, Sil sat down and began finger painting on the walls... with blood. She was trying to make the tower fly. After seeing that acid was hurting the undead forces, Pharin decided to shift into a black dragon... only to be shot by that fucking gunslinger. We asked the gunslinger how much it would take to make him just fuck off; his price was $500 million... which we would have had between Douchebag and I if he hadn't just bought that fucking axe.
I dumped 50 flasks of radiant alchemist fire on the liches and didn't seem to do much to them. Fucking liches. Pharin's mages were launching spells at the undead, Dervish's bunny dragon was mauling them, and it still didn't look like this battle would end anytime soon. Pharin announced that we'd be plane shifting the entire tower the fuck out of here. At that point, a fucking ancient brass dragon began flying at us. Apparently, the gunslinger had enslaved it or something, which pissed Douchebag off, so he freed the dragon. That dragon turned and went right for its former captor, getting the gunslinger off our backs for a little while.
Not wanting to miss this fight, I sent Eurydice to check on Sil, since we hadn't seen her in a little bit, and found her unconscious and bleeding heavily. I had my familiar heal her, and Sil absorbed Eurydice's blood somehow, killing her. The dragon flung the gunslinger through the air, and he turned into a fucking solar. That asshole fights dirty. Unfortunately, we didn't get to watch the dragon fight the solar, the fucking plane shift went off. I activated five of my instruments to keep the tower in the air for a little while.
Dervish said that the Vale was under siege- I'm not sure how he knew that. He said he would go help, but I needed rest before I could do anything. My people and home weren't there anymore, so I wasn't in a rush to help Dervish's people.
The Vale was being attacked by liches and undead flesh golems, who were working to drop the barrier Aerathema had erected to protect the empty, lifeless valley. Sil followed Dervish to the Vale, and through some disturbing blood magic, slaughtered the army of undead pretty much single-handedly. Apparently, it was an epic fight, so I probably would have enjoyed being there, but I was too tapped out to be of any use.
***** Lacysnows 20, Vale of the Mage
I finished up my rest, resummoned Eurydice, and met Dervish in the Vale. The Undevale that Aerathema had created was empty, she'd moved herself, the Valley Elves, and Dervish's people to a demi-plane; Oryn had mentioned it yesterday, but I didn't think about it until seeing the empty paradise. Of course, Douchebag stayed behind, since he's not welcome in the Vale.
Seeing the Vale empty, we headed back to the ship, and I got a sending from Briisa, saying that all of the barbarians were attacking Potidaea. When he found out that my college was near an ancient dwarven stronghold, he said he had an idea to enlist the dwarves to help us. He wouldn't tell us his plan, just insisted that we head straight there.
Pharin modified the party's memories to forget about the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords. If his plan was going to work, none of the party could remember buying that axe in Sigil.
When we teleported to the outskirts of Jotsplat, the town just outside of the dwarven stronghold, a meteor swarm pummelled Pharin and Andolin- and somehow it managed to kill those fuckers. A dwarven male holding a magic axe was standing near us. Even though Pharin and Andolin seemed dead, I was sure they'd be back. Death isn't something that can stop a being as evil as Pharin.
Our entrance caused a major commotion, of course. We were instantly surrounded by humans and a few dwarves, wondering what the fuck was going on. The dwarf introduced himself as Cyrrik Goldmattock, the last dwarven king to wield the Axe of the Dwarven Lords- which was the axe he was holding. He had vanished a couple thousand years ago, with the axe. The dwarves that had gathered asked him to tell them the name of his mistress to prove himself. Instead of answering the question, this guy decided to lunge for the goblins in the crowd... Then started going off about elves being horrible. This guy's a fucking douchewagon.
The town historian handed Cyrrik something written in ancient dwarven, which said that he needed to show them his birthmark to prove his identity. He did... the birthmark was on his nutsack... At that point, the historian told us to come with him. We spent the next eight hours learning everything about King Cyrrik Goldmattock.
I explained our situation with the barbarians assaulting Potidaea, along with Vecna's cultists attacking fucking everywhere else. Cyrrik agreed to help us deal with the barbarians, and together with the historian, we were taken to the current king to try to get aid.
A couple of guards started copping an attitude with Cyrrik, so he started ranting about who he was, blah blah blah. They demanded we drop our weapons- they were mercenaries here for us. Dervish killed half of the mercs right away- I tried to talk the rest into switching sides when the leader cried out in pain, but we didn't see anything that caused it. Sil had been following the party invisibly during this, and she had injured the leader. She's the only one who knows that Pharin and Andolin are Cyrrik. The real guards showed up and arrested those assholes before anything more happened.
We were brought to the throne room in the dwarven palace, which was full of bickering dwarves. Turns out there was no current king, and when Cyrrik demanded to know who was in charge, every single dwarf in the room began bickering. To shut them up, Cyrrik drew the axe, walked up to the throne, he recited the oath of the kings, along with the lineage, and sat his ass down. A guard tried to stop Cyrrik from getting to the throne, and tripped over his own feet, knocking every other dwarf in the line down like dominos. I barely maintained composure to keep from falling over laughing.
Cyrrik announced he was claiming the throne and if anyone contested he'd invoke trial by combat. One man, wearing the insignia of the Stone King, the clan that had helped Cyrrik claim this mountain from drow and duergar thousands of years ago. Apparently, his grandfather had been the naked monk who'd helped Cyrrik all those years ago. They fought naked, and after a pretty quick battle, Cyrrik won the challenge.
At that point, Cyrrik said I should present my case to the council. I explained to them about the barbarians, and that while it was the college being attacked now, they would be here next- it was the next closest civilization. Before the council could really respond, the high priest of Moraddin walked in and announced that the cult found Vecna's body and have regenerated it for the ritual.
After spending some time catching up with Oryn, Pharin decided we needed to hit the shops. He wanted to find some artifacts- and was hoping for the Wand of Orcus, thinking he could use that to turn Vecna's forces against him or something. He couldn't find that, but instead, he found and decided to buy the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords... That drow has something planned for that axe, and I don't think it's good.
During our shopping, I discovered that no one has been able to make one shot items lately, which was weird. I wondered if what we did to the last Beacon had something to do with it, but Sigil is in a different plane, so I don't know if that actually works. The boys wandered off at some point while I was shopping, and I'd been alone for a couple hours when Sil randomly showed up.
Sil said that Pharin had gone to his mage tower in the Demonweb Pits and it was under attack by five thousand liches and demon knights- who were all fucking immune to fire and lightning. Apparently, Vecna's cultists were making their move.
Upon arrival, Sil sat down and began finger painting on the walls... with blood. She was trying to make the tower fly. After seeing that acid was hurting the undead forces, Pharin decided to shift into a black dragon... only to be shot by that fucking gunslinger. We asked the gunslinger how much it would take to make him just fuck off; his price was $500 million... which we would have had between Douchebag and I if he hadn't just bought that fucking axe.
I dumped 50 flasks of radiant alchemist fire on the liches and didn't seem to do much to them. Fucking liches. Pharin's mages were launching spells at the undead, Dervish's bunny dragon was mauling them, and it still didn't look like this battle would end anytime soon. Pharin announced that we'd be plane shifting the entire tower the fuck out of here. At that point, a fucking ancient brass dragon began flying at us. Apparently, the gunslinger had enslaved it or something, which pissed Douchebag off, so he freed the dragon. That dragon turned and went right for its former captor, getting the gunslinger off our backs for a little while.
Not wanting to miss this fight, I sent Eurydice to check on Sil, since we hadn't seen her in a little bit, and found her unconscious and bleeding heavily. I had my familiar heal her, and Sil absorbed Eurydice's blood somehow, killing her. The dragon flung the gunslinger through the air, and he turned into a fucking solar. That asshole fights dirty. Unfortunately, we didn't get to watch the dragon fight the solar, the fucking plane shift went off. I activated five of my instruments to keep the tower in the air for a little while.
Dervish said that the Vale was under siege- I'm not sure how he knew that. He said he would go help, but I needed rest before I could do anything. My people and home weren't there anymore, so I wasn't in a rush to help Dervish's people.
The Vale was being attacked by liches and undead flesh golems, who were working to drop the barrier Aerathema had erected to protect the empty, lifeless valley. Sil followed Dervish to the Vale, and through some disturbing blood magic, slaughtered the army of undead pretty much single-handedly. Apparently, it was an epic fight, so I probably would have enjoyed being there, but I was too tapped out to be of any use.
***** Lacysnows 20, Vale of the Mage
I finished up my rest, resummoned Eurydice, and met Dervish in the Vale. The Undevale that Aerathema had created was empty, she'd moved herself, the Valley Elves, and Dervish's people to a demi-plane; Oryn had mentioned it yesterday, but I didn't think about it until seeing the empty paradise. Of course, Douchebag stayed behind, since he's not welcome in the Vale.
Seeing the Vale empty, we headed back to the ship, and I got a sending from Briisa, saying that all of the barbarians were attacking Potidaea. When he found out that my college was near an ancient dwarven stronghold, he said he had an idea to enlist the dwarves to help us. He wouldn't tell us his plan, just insisted that we head straight there.
Pharin modified the party's memories to forget about the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords. If his plan was going to work, none of the party could remember buying that axe in Sigil.
When we teleported to the outskirts of Jotsplat, the town just outside of the dwarven stronghold, a meteor swarm pummelled Pharin and Andolin- and somehow it managed to kill those fuckers. A dwarven male holding a magic axe was standing near us. Even though Pharin and Andolin seemed dead, I was sure they'd be back. Death isn't something that can stop a being as evil as Pharin.
Our entrance caused a major commotion, of course. We were instantly surrounded by humans and a few dwarves, wondering what the fuck was going on. The dwarf introduced himself as Cyrrik Goldmattock, the last dwarven king to wield the Axe of the Dwarven Lords- which was the axe he was holding. He had vanished a couple thousand years ago, with the axe. The dwarves that had gathered asked him to tell them the name of his mistress to prove himself. Instead of answering the question, this guy decided to lunge for the goblins in the crowd... Then started going off about elves being horrible. This guy's a fucking douchewagon.
The town historian handed Cyrrik something written in ancient dwarven, which said that he needed to show them his birthmark to prove his identity. He did... the birthmark was on his nutsack... At that point, the historian told us to come with him. We spent the next eight hours learning everything about King Cyrrik Goldmattock.
I explained our situation with the barbarians assaulting Potidaea, along with Vecna's cultists attacking fucking everywhere else. Cyrrik agreed to help us deal with the barbarians, and together with the historian, we were taken to the current king to try to get aid.
A couple of guards started copping an attitude with Cyrrik, so he started ranting about who he was, blah blah blah. They demanded we drop our weapons- they were mercenaries here for us. Dervish killed half of the mercs right away- I tried to talk the rest into switching sides when the leader cried out in pain, but we didn't see anything that caused it. Sil had been following the party invisibly during this, and she had injured the leader. She's the only one who knows that Pharin and Andolin are Cyrrik. The real guards showed up and arrested those assholes before anything more happened.
We were brought to the throne room in the dwarven palace, which was full of bickering dwarves. Turns out there was no current king, and when Cyrrik demanded to know who was in charge, every single dwarf in the room began bickering. To shut them up, Cyrrik drew the axe, walked up to the throne, he recited the oath of the kings, along with the lineage, and sat his ass down. A guard tried to stop Cyrrik from getting to the throne, and tripped over his own feet, knocking every other dwarf in the line down like dominos. I barely maintained composure to keep from falling over laughing.
Cyrrik announced he was claiming the throne and if anyone contested he'd invoke trial by combat. One man, wearing the insignia of the Stone King, the clan that had helped Cyrrik claim this mountain from drow and duergar thousands of years ago. Apparently, his grandfather had been the naked monk who'd helped Cyrrik all those years ago. They fought naked, and after a pretty quick battle, Cyrrik won the challenge.
At that point, Cyrrik said I should present my case to the council. I explained to them about the barbarians, and that while it was the college being attacked now, they would be here next- it was the next closest civilization. Before the council could really respond, the high priest of Moraddin walked in and announced that the cult found Vecna's body and have regenerated it for the ritual.
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| Map from the 2e D&D Planescape Boxed Set by Wizards of the Coast |
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| From "Resurrection" by R.A. Salvatore and Paul S. Kemp |
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| By Anna B. Meyer |
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| By Anna B. Meyer |
Monday, March 12, 2018
Adventures in Oerth- The Bane of Vecna: Book Two, Chapter Five
The Final Beacon
Dramatis Personae:
Aurora Isilime, the Valley Elf Bard of Valor and Bae'qeshel of Lolth, the Silver Tongued Siren, who is the last Vale Elf
Eurydice, Aurora's faerie dragon familiar
Aurora Isilime, the Valley Elf Bard of Valor and Bae'qeshel of Lolth, the Silver Tongued Siren, who is the last Vale Elf
Eurydice, Aurora's faerie dragon familiar
Pharin Braz'Dracon, the Brass Dragon-Drow Conjurationist Wizard and Priest of Lolth, the Dark Conjurer
Sarlockh, Pharin's choldrith familiar
Vilrath, Pharin's flesh golem
Sarlockh, Pharin's choldrith familiar
Vilrath, Pharin's flesh golem
Skye Vindhalle, the Air Genasi Druid
Dervish, the Kasathe Fighter and Dragon Blood Sorcerer
Willow Liadon, the Eladrin Arcane Trickster
Oryn Talus, the ancient and mysterious halfling who has employed the party; also know as Cinder, the ancient power that is said to destroy every world
Oryn Talus, the ancient and mysterious halfling who has employed the party; also know as Cinder, the ancient power that is said to destroy every world
Lan El'Mandragoran, the Human Paladin of Pelor
Lothar, the Sovani Smith and semi-Cleric of Moradin, High Priest of Lolth, Cleric of Istus, forced Cleric of Asmodeus; Kas Reincarnated
Aerathema, the Wood Elf Druid
Andolin Braz'Dracon, the Brass Dragon-Drow Fighter/Beast Master
BarraZotreth, Andolin's displacer beast animal companion
BarraZotreth, Andolin's displacer beast animal companion
Narg, there's really no way to describe Narg, Narg is just Narg
Elder Vish, Dervish's friend and mentor from his world
Sil'ilos'anon Braz'Dracon, the "Drow" Warlock Blood Mage of Lolth
Comrades we have lost:
Ralliakkan, the Drow Rogue- killed by Cinder
Elder Vish, Dervish's friend and mentor from his world
Sil'ilos'anon Braz'Dracon, the "Drow" Warlock Blood Mage of Lolth
Comrades we have lost:
Ralliakkan, the Drow Rogue- killed by Cinder
NOTE: Things will be mostly from Aurora's perspective. Anything in italics is from a third person since the bard can't be everywhere at once.
***** Lacysnows 14, CY 710, Forgotten City
When I finished my reverie, I immediately began setting up my resurrection ritual so we could get Dervish's fucking mages up and running again. I had Eurydice aid me with the spell so that I could get two of them revived at once. Once those two were breathing again, they volunteered to do the true resurrection ritual for Scottie so I could take care of other things.
Apparently, while I'd been in reverie, douchebag had found a whole new section of the bunker, a fucking residential section. Now I had no idea where those assholes were. I explored as I went, and eventually found a tactical command room with a map of Flanaess. There were lights on the map that indicated the Beacons that were activated, and it included the Beacon we hadn't gotten to yet. Just below the tactical room was the Beacon Key room, which was where the others were.
Even though this Beacon was already on, we were hoping we could belatedly put some spells into it. After spending way too fucking long debating on it, we decided we were going to try to resurrect Haas, turn off the dimensional lock, and sequester Cinder until the means to cleanse him are brought before him and the words "Awaken Alucard" are spoken. Allysandra set up a three-tiered circle for us around the key, and we set to work.
As I began to call Haas' soul back, Pharin got the hair-brained idea (pun intended) to have Andolin control Dervish and cast find familiar through him. The assholes were trying to make Haas Dervish's fucking familiar. A bunny appeared in the circle moments before a giant rift from the Plane of Positivity opened up in the room, and the amount of pure good that poured from it was a bit suffocating. Didn't help that my Lolth Blade was having an adverse reaction to the energy, making my discomfort worse. The tear made us think we wouldn't have time to perform a true resurrection, so Sarlockh used a rod of resurrection instead... Nothing happened. His soul was truly destroyed.
Allysandra announced that with the amount of energy we'd just wasted on that stupid bunny, we could either sequester Cinder or try to shut down another Beacon. At that moment, I realized exactly what spell was on the Beacon that had shut down travel: Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum. Knowing which spell had been doing this made Pharin and Allysanda decide to go to the other Beacon to shut that shit down.
Pharin and Allysandra entered the other Beacon, and it was then that Pharin realized that each Beacon needs to represent a different alignment; something no one had been doing, there were two good and two evil Beacons, and if the final Beacon was activated with either of those, it would have a nasty fallout for the world. Allysandra expertly unraveled that spell.
While Douchebag and Allysandra were dealing with the other Beacon, the ground began to rumble; Cinder was nearby, and he was burrowing to us. Wards began lighting up on the walls, one by one, and then a small crack appeared in the wall. I hoped those fuckers would finish before Cinder kills us all. The wards flared, nearly blinding everyone, and a web of energy appeared. The wards exploded as Cinder broke down the wall. Fuck.
Vish was able to engage Cinder and keep him off of us, but who knew how long he'd be able to do that. As soon as Pharin announced that they were done, I decided to use the circle to teleport all of our asses the fuck out of here- aiming for the next Beacon. The problem was, Cinder was really fucking powerful. Everyone else was teleported out of the room, and I was left alone with Cinder. Terror wrapped its icy hands around me. I knew I wouldn't survive him.
I tried again to teleport the fuck out, and he stopped me, again. I frantically activated a Hut, I knew he'd probably dispel it instantly, but it was all I could do. Surprisingly he didn't break through the Hut right away, which gave me the dimmest glimmer of hope, before he stopped me from teleporting, again. I was now out of the magical energy required to get out of here. I wouldn't make him easy to take me out though, I'd make it one for the books- and I wished I had a memory crystal on me so I could record it for those books.
Cinder broke down my Hut, grabbed me by the throat, and lifted me off the ground. I was frantically trying to come up with a plan when Lan came flying out of the rift we'd opened to the positive plane, slammed into Cinder, and sent him flying! Lan sliced the air with his sword, told me to go through it, and squared his shoulders, ready for Cinder to come at him. I wanted to watch the fight, but I knew I needed to leave. On the other side of the portal was Calbut, the town where the Beacon Key was located.
Appearing out of nowhere in the middle of a street isn't a good idea. I'd never recommend it. I found myself surrounded instantly by a group of guards throwing questions at me too quickly for me to even attempt to answer them. As I started trying to tell them who I was and that they needed to fuck off, Douchebag and Dumbass appeared and found themselves surrounded too. Of course, this is the one and only time Douchebag would ever label me the leader of this shitshow. Problem was, none of my magic was working to calm these fuckers down.
They began taking me to their leaders when Douchebag set up a Hut, and somehow he managed to collapse two buildings in the process. Pharin excels in destroying things. He told the guards to let him go or drop their weapons, which they didn't appreciate, so he started freezing them. Then, because when things go to shit everyone decides to join in the fun, the fucking Gunslinger showed up. Turned out the guards were vampires, and his appearance prompted them to reveal themselves.
Seeing them sprout fangs, I dimension doored the fuck away from them, just in time for Pharin to summon a plague of spiders... which Andolin then enraged... Screams erupted all around us as the angry arachnids began killing everyone in sight. The final death toll ended up being around 31,000... Meh. Pharin used a dracolich's phylactery- I don't know how he got it- as a magical battery to keep the spiders going.
Scottie crossed his arms and glared at Pharin for the devastation he was enacting, so Pharin grabbed a little wood elf child and revived her. He was adopting her or sacrificing her to Lolth, or something... I don't know. That fucking drow does weird shit.
Once the screams had died down a little, we now faced the problem that the entire town was covered in spider webs, making it kinda hard to look for the stupid Beacon Key. So, since it wouldn't hurt the spiders, I dropped a fireball on the webs. Turns out that was a bad fucking idea...
***** Lacysnows 18, Calbut
It took three days for the fires to die down enough for us to get into the city. I probably shouldn't have done that, but oh fucking well. We spent those days on the ship, hovering above the city, watching the flames devour it.
During those days, Dervish wandered off to find his people, and Pharin took the little elven girl, who he named Sil'ilos'anon, and turned her into a drow. Then he unofficially adopted this little four-year-old and took her to the Demonweb Pits to try to give her a warlock pact with Lolth. I don't care enough to feel bad.
Now that we could finally get into the city, Andolin found where he thought the Beacon might be. Pharin spent two and a half hours tunneling us down to the entrance, and he had to activate the dagger to find the damn place. I put a private sanctum up first.
We walked into the building where we thought the final key was, and there was Ralliakkan, lounging on the throne. Apparently, it had been her clone that died. At least we were in the right place.
It took us forever to decide what spells to use in this Beacon. It was so fucking ridiculous that I stopped arguing and just envisioned myself killing Pharin and Dervish, over and over, in the most brutal ways I could think of. That was an enjoyable diversion. Eventually, it was decided that we'd make brooches using fabricate, that would function like our communication rings, and would have a few buffs on it: umbral weapon, ethereal shield, and investiture of wind.
Almost right after we decided this, the ground began to rumble. Fucking Cinder found us. Allysandra went to deal with him while the rest of us prepared the ritual. Pharin spent a couple of minutes getting the framework for the spell up and running, but thankfully this was one he'd created before, so he knew what he was doing. We'd decided to use Dervish to activate this Beacon so we would have a different kind of alignment in the mix.
Right before we turned on the Beacon, Cinder broke in. Allysandra quickly threw up a barrier to keep Cinder from interfering with the spell; I hoped it would be enough. When Pharin finally activated the Beacon there was a massive blast of energy, as the drow began funneling 4,000+ souls through Dervish, into the Beacon. As Dervish began to age, Pharin funneled some of his blood into Dervish so he wouldn't die. Then Sil activated fucking blood magic to empower the circle and strengthen the barrier between us and Cinder; she used the last of the blood she'd taken to pin Cinder against the wall. That child is fucking terrifying.
The spell finished and the barrier faded out, turning into a red mist. Thanks to what Pharin did to Dervish, he'd aged 340 years and was now a half brass dragon. Bunny, his familiar was a miniature brass dragon too. That was fucking weird. We teleported back to the Forgotten City before Cinder could do anything to us.
Cinder followed us, but he couldn't get through the wards into the bunker, so he threw a rather terrifying hissy fit in the key room. We really needed to do something about him. I told the others about the Silver Star and said I'd retrieve it in the morning.
***** Lacysnows 19, Potidaea
I teleported over to my college first thing in the morning, only to find it was in complete chaos. I couldn't get an answer out of anyone, so I rushed to Gabrielle's office and found my friend, mentor, and idol, dead at her desk. The room was ransacked, and I could tell from what was used to kill her, that was no way I could bring Gabby back. I hurried up to the top floor, where the mute Dancer's rooms were, and found the Drow bitch and the Duergar were attacking her. Suddenly Gabby's sending to me made sense. It wasn't Cinder attacking them, it was these fuckers.
They had the Dancer flanked, so I bitch-slapped the drow bitch with Bigby's Hand. That distracted them enough for the Dancer to trip both of them, then gracefully leap away. The drow dropped a Hut over the two of them and they began chanting. It was then that I realized where Gabby would have hidden the Star- on the top of the lightning rod on top of the College.
I used my Shadow Twin to keep them fucking busy while I teleported to the Star, taking the Dancer with me. It was much hotter up here than it should have been; I learned later that Cinder had followed me, and a fireball the size of a boulder was slowly descending on my college. We got the Star and I teleported away with the Dancer. Apparently, my Shadow Twin can't teleport with me, so she instead drained the Drow and Duegar's Hut, turning it into a super Hut that protected the college from Cinder's fiery ball of death.
I gave Allysandra the Star because I would not give something that powerful to Captain Douchebag. As she worked on that, Cinder returned to the Forgotten City and was putting together a circle, most likely to attack the wards and get at us.
Sil suddenly became fucking terrifying. I felt the familiar magic of Lolth seep into the room, supercharging the child so she could fight Cinder. When she got into the key room, she shouted something I couldn't make out, but her intent was clear: she was calling the Blood God. Sil stabbed herself, turned into a skeleton, and sank into the floor. She was turning into an Avatar for the Blood God.
As soon as Allysandra figured out how to get the Star working, after some debate we decided to have Cinder cleansed only a few minutes ago- right about the time he would have been attempting to decimate my college. I wanted to wind it back earlier, but a certain idiot pushed that we not do that because of paradoxes. Even though the dumbshit doesn't know much about magic, Pharin still decided to listen to him instead of me. Fucking frustrating assholes.
We gathered in the circle and used the Star to cleanse Cinder. The Star vanished, and we were able to contact Oryn again.
I received new memories from my Shadow Twin; instead of taking over the circle to protect my school, she banished both of those assholes.
When I finished my reverie, I immediately began setting up my resurrection ritual so we could get Dervish's fucking mages up and running again. I had Eurydice aid me with the spell so that I could get two of them revived at once. Once those two were breathing again, they volunteered to do the true resurrection ritual for Scottie so I could take care of other things.
Apparently, while I'd been in reverie, douchebag had found a whole new section of the bunker, a fucking residential section. Now I had no idea where those assholes were. I explored as I went, and eventually found a tactical command room with a map of Flanaess. There were lights on the map that indicated the Beacons that were activated, and it included the Beacon we hadn't gotten to yet. Just below the tactical room was the Beacon Key room, which was where the others were.
Even though this Beacon was already on, we were hoping we could belatedly put some spells into it. After spending way too fucking long debating on it, we decided we were going to try to resurrect Haas, turn off the dimensional lock, and sequester Cinder until the means to cleanse him are brought before him and the words "Awaken Alucard" are spoken. Allysandra set up a three-tiered circle for us around the key, and we set to work.
As I began to call Haas' soul back, Pharin got the hair-brained idea (pun intended) to have Andolin control Dervish and cast find familiar through him. The assholes were trying to make Haas Dervish's fucking familiar. A bunny appeared in the circle moments before a giant rift from the Plane of Positivity opened up in the room, and the amount of pure good that poured from it was a bit suffocating. Didn't help that my Lolth Blade was having an adverse reaction to the energy, making my discomfort worse. The tear made us think we wouldn't have time to perform a true resurrection, so Sarlockh used a rod of resurrection instead... Nothing happened. His soul was truly destroyed.
Allysandra announced that with the amount of energy we'd just wasted on that stupid bunny, we could either sequester Cinder or try to shut down another Beacon. At that moment, I realized exactly what spell was on the Beacon that had shut down travel: Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum. Knowing which spell had been doing this made Pharin and Allysanda decide to go to the other Beacon to shut that shit down.
Pharin and Allysandra entered the other Beacon, and it was then that Pharin realized that each Beacon needs to represent a different alignment; something no one had been doing, there were two good and two evil Beacons, and if the final Beacon was activated with either of those, it would have a nasty fallout for the world. Allysandra expertly unraveled that spell.
While Douchebag and Allysandra were dealing with the other Beacon, the ground began to rumble; Cinder was nearby, and he was burrowing to us. Wards began lighting up on the walls, one by one, and then a small crack appeared in the wall. I hoped those fuckers would finish before Cinder kills us all. The wards flared, nearly blinding everyone, and a web of energy appeared. The wards exploded as Cinder broke down the wall. Fuck.
Vish was able to engage Cinder and keep him off of us, but who knew how long he'd be able to do that. As soon as Pharin announced that they were done, I decided to use the circle to teleport all of our asses the fuck out of here- aiming for the next Beacon. The problem was, Cinder was really fucking powerful. Everyone else was teleported out of the room, and I was left alone with Cinder. Terror wrapped its icy hands around me. I knew I wouldn't survive him.
I tried again to teleport the fuck out, and he stopped me, again. I frantically activated a Hut, I knew he'd probably dispel it instantly, but it was all I could do. Surprisingly he didn't break through the Hut right away, which gave me the dimmest glimmer of hope, before he stopped me from teleporting, again. I was now out of the magical energy required to get out of here. I wouldn't make him easy to take me out though, I'd make it one for the books- and I wished I had a memory crystal on me so I could record it for those books.
Cinder broke down my Hut, grabbed me by the throat, and lifted me off the ground. I was frantically trying to come up with a plan when Lan came flying out of the rift we'd opened to the positive plane, slammed into Cinder, and sent him flying! Lan sliced the air with his sword, told me to go through it, and squared his shoulders, ready for Cinder to come at him. I wanted to watch the fight, but I knew I needed to leave. On the other side of the portal was Calbut, the town where the Beacon Key was located.
Appearing out of nowhere in the middle of a street isn't a good idea. I'd never recommend it. I found myself surrounded instantly by a group of guards throwing questions at me too quickly for me to even attempt to answer them. As I started trying to tell them who I was and that they needed to fuck off, Douchebag and Dumbass appeared and found themselves surrounded too. Of course, this is the one and only time Douchebag would ever label me the leader of this shitshow. Problem was, none of my magic was working to calm these fuckers down.
They began taking me to their leaders when Douchebag set up a Hut, and somehow he managed to collapse two buildings in the process. Pharin excels in destroying things. He told the guards to let him go or drop their weapons, which they didn't appreciate, so he started freezing them. Then, because when things go to shit everyone decides to join in the fun, the fucking Gunslinger showed up. Turned out the guards were vampires, and his appearance prompted them to reveal themselves.
Seeing them sprout fangs, I dimension doored the fuck away from them, just in time for Pharin to summon a plague of spiders... which Andolin then enraged... Screams erupted all around us as the angry arachnids began killing everyone in sight. The final death toll ended up being around 31,000... Meh. Pharin used a dracolich's phylactery- I don't know how he got it- as a magical battery to keep the spiders going.
Scottie crossed his arms and glared at Pharin for the devastation he was enacting, so Pharin grabbed a little wood elf child and revived her. He was adopting her or sacrificing her to Lolth, or something... I don't know. That fucking drow does weird shit.
Once the screams had died down a little, we now faced the problem that the entire town was covered in spider webs, making it kinda hard to look for the stupid Beacon Key. So, since it wouldn't hurt the spiders, I dropped a fireball on the webs. Turns out that was a bad fucking idea...
***** Lacysnows 18, Calbut
It took three days for the fires to die down enough for us to get into the city. I probably shouldn't have done that, but oh fucking well. We spent those days on the ship, hovering above the city, watching the flames devour it.
During those days, Dervish wandered off to find his people, and Pharin took the little elven girl, who he named Sil'ilos'anon, and turned her into a drow. Then he unofficially adopted this little four-year-old and took her to the Demonweb Pits to try to give her a warlock pact with Lolth. I don't care enough to feel bad.
Now that we could finally get into the city, Andolin found where he thought the Beacon might be. Pharin spent two and a half hours tunneling us down to the entrance, and he had to activate the dagger to find the damn place. I put a private sanctum up first.
We walked into the building where we thought the final key was, and there was Ralliakkan, lounging on the throne. Apparently, it had been her clone that died. At least we were in the right place.
It took us forever to decide what spells to use in this Beacon. It was so fucking ridiculous that I stopped arguing and just envisioned myself killing Pharin and Dervish, over and over, in the most brutal ways I could think of. That was an enjoyable diversion. Eventually, it was decided that we'd make brooches using fabricate, that would function like our communication rings, and would have a few buffs on it: umbral weapon, ethereal shield, and investiture of wind.
Almost right after we decided this, the ground began to rumble. Fucking Cinder found us. Allysandra went to deal with him while the rest of us prepared the ritual. Pharin spent a couple of minutes getting the framework for the spell up and running, but thankfully this was one he'd created before, so he knew what he was doing. We'd decided to use Dervish to activate this Beacon so we would have a different kind of alignment in the mix.
Right before we turned on the Beacon, Cinder broke in. Allysandra quickly threw up a barrier to keep Cinder from interfering with the spell; I hoped it would be enough. When Pharin finally activated the Beacon there was a massive blast of energy, as the drow began funneling 4,000+ souls through Dervish, into the Beacon. As Dervish began to age, Pharin funneled some of his blood into Dervish so he wouldn't die. Then Sil activated fucking blood magic to empower the circle and strengthen the barrier between us and Cinder; she used the last of the blood she'd taken to pin Cinder against the wall. That child is fucking terrifying.
The spell finished and the barrier faded out, turning into a red mist. Thanks to what Pharin did to Dervish, he'd aged 340 years and was now a half brass dragon. Bunny, his familiar was a miniature brass dragon too. That was fucking weird. We teleported back to the Forgotten City before Cinder could do anything to us.
Cinder followed us, but he couldn't get through the wards into the bunker, so he threw a rather terrifying hissy fit in the key room. We really needed to do something about him. I told the others about the Silver Star and said I'd retrieve it in the morning.
***** Lacysnows 19, Potidaea
I teleported over to my college first thing in the morning, only to find it was in complete chaos. I couldn't get an answer out of anyone, so I rushed to Gabrielle's office and found my friend, mentor, and idol, dead at her desk. The room was ransacked, and I could tell from what was used to kill her, that was no way I could bring Gabby back. I hurried up to the top floor, where the mute Dancer's rooms were, and found the Drow bitch and the Duergar were attacking her. Suddenly Gabby's sending to me made sense. It wasn't Cinder attacking them, it was these fuckers.
They had the Dancer flanked, so I bitch-slapped the drow bitch with Bigby's Hand. That distracted them enough for the Dancer to trip both of them, then gracefully leap away. The drow dropped a Hut over the two of them and they began chanting. It was then that I realized where Gabby would have hidden the Star- on the top of the lightning rod on top of the College.
I used my Shadow Twin to keep them fucking busy while I teleported to the Star, taking the Dancer with me. It was much hotter up here than it should have been; I learned later that Cinder had followed me, and a fireball the size of a boulder was slowly descending on my college. We got the Star and I teleported away with the Dancer. Apparently, my Shadow Twin can't teleport with me, so she instead drained the Drow and Duegar's Hut, turning it into a super Hut that protected the college from Cinder's fiery ball of death.
I gave Allysandra the Star because I would not give something that powerful to Captain Douchebag. As she worked on that, Cinder returned to the Forgotten City and was putting together a circle, most likely to attack the wards and get at us.
Sil suddenly became fucking terrifying. I felt the familiar magic of Lolth seep into the room, supercharging the child so she could fight Cinder. When she got into the key room, she shouted something I couldn't make out, but her intent was clear: she was calling the Blood God. Sil stabbed herself, turned into a skeleton, and sank into the floor. She was turning into an Avatar for the Blood God.
As soon as Allysandra figured out how to get the Star working, after some debate we decided to have Cinder cleansed only a few minutes ago- right about the time he would have been attempting to decimate my college. I wanted to wind it back earlier, but a certain idiot pushed that we not do that because of paradoxes. Even though the dumbshit doesn't know much about magic, Pharin still decided to listen to him instead of me. Fucking frustrating assholes.
We gathered in the circle and used the Star to cleanse Cinder. The Star vanished, and we were able to contact Oryn again.
I received new memories from my Shadow Twin; instead of taking over the circle to protect my school, she banished both of those assholes.
Monday, March 5, 2018
Adventures in Oerth- The Bane of Vecna: Book Two, Chapter Four
The Search for the Beacon
Dramatis Personae:
Aurora Isilime, the Valley Elf Bard of Valor and Bae'qeshel of Lolth, the Silver Tongued Siren
Eurydice, Aurora's faerie dragon familiar
Pharin Braz'Dracon, the Brass Dragon-Drow Conjurationist Wizard and Priest of Lolth, the Dark Conjurer
Sarlockh, Pharin's choldrith familiar
Vilrath, Pharin's flesh golem
Skye Vindhalle, the Air Genasi Druid
Dervish, the Kasathe Fighter and Dragon Blood Sorcerer
Willow Liadon, the Eladrin Arcane Trickster
Oryn Talus, the ancient and mysterious halfling who has employed the party; also know as Cinder, the ancient power that is said to destroy every world
Lan El'Mandragoran, the Human Paladin of Pelor
Lothar, the Sovani Smith and semi-Cleric of Moradin, High Priest of Lolth, Cleric of Istus, forced Cleric of Asmodeus; Kas Reincarnated
Aerathema, the Wood Elf Druid
Ralliakkan, the Drow Rogue
Andolin Braz'Dracon, the Brass Dragon-Drow Fighter and Beast Master
BarraZotreth, Andolin's displacer beast animal companion
Narg, there's really no way to describe Narg, Narg is just Narg
Elder Vish, Dervish's friend and mentor from his world
Elder Vish, Dervish's friend and mentor from his world
NOTE: Things will be mostly from Aurora's perspective. Anything in italics is from a third person since the bard can't be everywhere at once.
***** Lacysnows 13, CY 710, bunker in Highfolk
As we walked through this bunker, Dervish triggered a trap, making the walls smack him and Vish. It was fucking hilarious. At that point, Vish decided it was time to try to wake up Willow to look for these stupid fucking traps. Really could use Ralliakkan here.
Just as Vish woke Willow, something was triggered, and I was back home in the Vale. My family was alive, and the beautiful valley was restored to its original glory. For the first time in a long time, I felt at peace, like everything was as it should be.
Pharin, Aurora, Willow, and Vish all believed they were safe at home until Andolin used his psychic powers to snap everyone out of it.
I felt something press on my mind, and I was back in the bunker. While being trapped in my mind fucking sucks, it would have been nice to stay for a little while. After taking a moment to sort out our thoughts, we continued on. Andolin decided that it would be faster for us to just use animals, so he pulled a jackal out of a bag of tricks. It instantly turned and snarled at us. Andolin knocked it prone for a moment, but it recovered quickly and lunged at Willow. She filleted it.
Then two bears appeared- I'm pretty sure those weren't from the bag of tricks this time. Vish killed one instantly, but the other one managed to badly wound Dervish, and it started eating his head. Why couldn't that ever happen to Douchebag? I hit it with a bead of blazing and stabbed it with Luna, but not enough to drop it. Andolin and Willow finished it off. I really hope the fucking Beacon is fucking here.
A couple more hours went by with us finding no traps before Willow found one that was almost invisible. She actually managed to disarm the fucking thing without setting it off! But she failed on the next fucking trap. The entire room began to shake violently, so we fucking ran, with Willow doing quick searches along the way, disarming what she could. We ran into a section, and suddenly Dervish, Vish, and Willow began turning to stone. I fixed the jackasses before they fully turned to stone.
Eventually, we reached a barred door that had a Cinder rune on it. Andolin pulled out Cinder's dagger and touched it to the symbol, and the door opened. We walked into an ancient dwarven dwelling, in a ridiculously large cavern that seemed to have been created by a single energy burst. There was a throne in the room that had a weird looking crystal on the top of it. Dervish decided to be a dumbass and sit on the throne without letting us properly inspect it first. As soon as his ass his the throne, a weird mist seeped out of the pot Narg gave me, going straight into Dervish. He insisted he felt fine, but I was pretty sure he was completely full of shit.
I sat down and used my legend lore spell to gain as much information as I could about this fucking place. As I started getting the information back from my spell, Dervish started reciting it in unison. Yeah.. there's definitely nothing wrong with the idiot. We were in the antechamber of a stronghold of Moradin that had been abandoned long ago by the dwarves and their God. Four thousand years ago a war erupted and four outsiders had to intervene. I think the war was between Vecna and Moradin, but the wording of the legends wasn't exactly precise.
There was a forge section in this chamber that we were completely cut off from, so Andolin walked up to it and beseeched Moradin to grant us entrance in the name of Lolth. He rattled off ancient treaties that he thought would work, but since Moradin abandoned this place four fucking thousand years ago, it was nothing but wishful fucking thinking. Andolin then produced his smithing hammer and asked Moradin to bless it.
We heard this weirdass wooshing sound at that request, and Dervish said he saw someone. Andolin and I thought maybe if Dervish sat on the throne and asked Moradin to let us in, that might work, but the jackass refused. Eurydice told me she thought something else was controlling Dervish, which would make sense, who knows what that fucking throne did to him. A thudding noise came from outside of the chamber, which Dervish used as an excuse to turn fucking invisible.
Considering what an idiot he was, Andolin and I decided to fake that we thought he'd left. That would make him slip up. After a few moments, he reappeared, and the door exploded inward. A figure stepped into the dust, a humanoid that held two hammers. The dust cleared and settled, and we found Lothar standing in front of us. Andolin decided to give Lothar an existential crisis and tell him he's a fucking contruct- which, of course, Lothar didn't believe. Honestly, if it hadn't been Aerathema who told us about it, I likely wouldn't have bought it.
While Andolin was giving Lothar a headache, Dervish investigated the throne and found Oryn's sigil on it. Andolin decided that the best way to approach this was to have Barra claw the fucking throne. I don't understand these boys sometimes... okay fine, most of the time. As soon as Barra's claw connected with the throne, energy began to flow, and we found ourselves in an ancient dwarven city.
We were on a small platform that led to a network of pathways and buildings, and there was magic everywhere. The plants and foliage were still alive and flourishing, and somehow the sun was able to reach this city, even though we quite clearly underground. The path in front of us led to the massive metal gates to the city, and it was lined with statues and suits of armor, that were in remarkably good shape, considering their age.
As we reached the armor, we heard creaking and one of the statues lunged at Dervish, missing him completely. Dervish responded with a strike of his own... which also missed horribly. Those two were completely fucking uncoordinated. Willow dashed in and stabbed the statue on Dervish, then moved away again. Andolin began casting something, while the two kasathe kept chipping away at the statues as they animated and attacked.
The first statue that had gone for Dervish managed to drop the idiot with a whip. I contemplated leaving him there for a minute, but he was kind of useful, so I revived the jackass. We all worked at them, stabbing, slashing, and slowly chipping them away, piece by piece. After a few moments, I summoned my shadow twin to help with the fight. Then Andolin called out that we needed to disable one without destroying it. We managed to get a few down without shattering them, but it was a little more annoying to do that.
A little column of dust appeared where each statue we'd managed not to destroy had been prior to our arrival, and Willow heard mumbling coming from inside of one of them. Dervish and Vish reached into one of the columns of dust and pulled out a female gnome. Andolin pulled an elderly male dwarf and a female goliath out of the other two. The last armor we hadn't destroyed had what looked like a soul gem glowing inside of it. We tried to free the trapped soul, and while we did see a little wisp of a soul flutter out, nothing else happened. The area seemed relatively safe, so we decided to camp and talk to the poor fuckers we'd just released.
Grax Thunderhorn, a halfling assassin had been released from the soul gem, and he found himself standing on the platform above the statue area- where the others had started. He decided to sneak down to the group camping below.
Willow and I looked up and saw a halfling come slinking into camp, failing miserably at hiding. Turns out he was in the soul gem. We invited him to join us, and I eagerly pulled out my notebook, getting the stories from these four people about how they came to be stuck in those statues. They were fascinating.
Dervish had been acting weird since whatever was in that pot Narg gave me went into him. Andolin had the idea of putting him in an iron flak to get the spirit, or whatever it was, out of him. Didn't work.
Once we were all well rested, we decided to approach the colossal metal gates to the city. Andolin instantly set off one of the traps on them, and a bunch of rocks landed on top of him. Ass deserves it. Of course, that wasn't the only fucking trap on these stupid gates. Grax set off two of them while he and Willow searched for them, and Willow was able to disable a shitload of them. Then Grax found a petrification trap, and I had to turn him back to flesh- apparently, this guy gets turned to stone a lot. Right after I finished fixing Grax, Willow set off another trap and vanished. Willow had been sent to Elysium, and with the interplanar travel on lockdown, she couldn't return to the party.
We found another trap fucking 200 feet up, and the halfling couldn't fucking fly. I decided to give Eurydice another storm giant's strength potion, and we tied a rope to Grax, with Eurydice holding the other end. My cat-sized violet faerie dragon was carrying a rope with a halfling attached to it... Oh, the song I'm going to write about that will be epic.
Grax disabled the first trap he found, but the second one had more petrification powder in it... Seriously, this dude just loves being stoned or something. Eurydice dropped the rope holding him, dove down to him, I cast the restoration spell needed to fix him through her, and she snatched the rope back up. My little faerie dragon is seriously fucking bad ass.
Andolin decided to just start throwing rocks at the traps. Disabling all of these was taking for-fucking-ever. Then we found a trap that required life force to disable. Dervish thought we should try my pot from Narg, but the soul isn't in it anymore, it's in fucking Dervish- I think. Andolin pulled an axe beak out of a bag of tricks and Lothar chucked it at the trap. Then he threw a jackal at another trap, just barely missing. It ran scared- unfortunately for it, there was nothing but death behind us. Next was a tiger, which set off a couple of traps. It looked like there were only two traps left at this point. They had a mastiff set one off, and summoned a giant boar for the last one, but it missed. Eurydice drug Grax to that trap... instead of turning to stone, he got paralyzed. I sighed at this unlucky halfling as I cast the restoration spell through Eurydice.
Then a red ball began to glow in the center of the door, growing quickly. We dimension doored the fuck away and ran. It blew up, and I was fucking glad we'd ran. A second attempt did it again. But third time was the charm.
At any point during this Pharin/Andolin could have used the Dagger of Cinder to unlock the doors and disable every trap...
The city was massive and in remarkably good condition for a long abandoned place. We made our way through it, passing old market stalls, buildings, and whatnot until we reached what we thought was the center of town. There was a large, round building with tons of windows, and we could make out what sounded like a forge inside. It was a round building, about 500 feet in diameter- we thought it was a prison, and it seemed to be shaped like a ribcage. Dervish suddenly began spouting off information about this place... information he had absolutely no business knowing. When that idiot starts acting like there's some intelligence in there, you know something is very very wrong.
A point on the building started to glow, just like the trap on the gates, and Lothar yelled: "run!" He hung back to deal with the trap though, which went well until one actually hit him. His ribcage was badly broken after that hit, I knew it would take some serious healing magic to fix him. Dervish opened a dimension door right in front of the building, and Andolin had Barra whip a tentacle through it and touch the building. She barely got her tentacle back through when a massive hole was blown in the building- an explosion meant for her. This complicated things.
As we began debating on how the fuck to get into this stupid building, Ralliakkan appeared. Cinder hadn't killed her! She turned off the traps temporarily. They were called Death Spires, weapons from the Ancient Wars that were said to be powerful enough to annihilate entire regions.
Inside the building was enough space to comfortably seat at least a thousand people, this seemed to be the city's meeting place when it still had inhabitants. Grax found sigils on the floor, there were about fifty different ones. The spirit in Dervish said they were a path and he knew the pattern to follow it properly. He led Ralliakkan to a panel to have her deactivate the traps; she had to use Narg and Alucard's blood to shut everything down.
Once everything was shut down, Ralliakkan showed me the parting gift Cinder had given her. She had a nasty looking wound that he'd used soul rot on. Only a couple of things- that I didn't have with me- could cure that. If we didn't get out of here soon, she would literally wither away to nothingness.
After a few minutes, we heard a soft rumble, and it suddenly seemed like we were standing on a lake that was as reflective as a mirror. At that point, the soul in Dervish- which Ralliakkan had told us was a fragment of Alucard's soul- left Dervish; he was the battery to activate the Beacon.
The soul fragment went into the Dagger, and Pharin decided it would be a good idea to offer it a draw from the Deck of Many Things. It drew the Skull card- the one that calls an aspect of Death to you, which you then have to fight...
An aspect of death appeared amongst us and went right for Dervish and Vish. It savagely ripped into both of them, before turning to Ralliakkan and dishing out another nasty blow to her. Andolin tried to put it in an iron flask, which did nothing. Ralliakkan destroyed the damned thing, but at cost to herself. She was barely hanging on, and there was nothing I could do.
While I internally lamented that I couldn't help my friend, the room began lighting up, and the stone in the center glowed brightly. The Beacon was on, it just needed spells now. It felt like it took for-fucking-ever for us to decide which spells to put into it. Eventually, we settled on Bless, Godsblood, Divine Disconnect, and Power Word Heal. I was hoping throwing the healing spell in there would help Ralliakkan. Godsblood would turn all water in the world into holy water and give us a couple more boons against undead. Divine Disconnect would cut off the cults from their gods, at least for a little while. Andolin tasked Ralliakkan to get the blood of as many gods as she could, only gods whose blood was included in the spell would be able to reach their followers once the spell went off.
During our debate, the temperature had been steadily rising. Cinder was coming. Andolin/Pharin and Dervish's mages began setting up the circles for the spells, while Dervish, Vish, Grax, and I went out to face him. I really hoped that we'd be able to get out of here before he showed up. Ralliakkan gave us three sticks- one of white oak, one of black oak, and one of regular oak. She told us to break them, they'd help us against Cinder.
The four of us hid in the doorway of the building because as we got out there, fireballs began getting launched at us. It was fucking annoying. I felt the tingle of powerful magic as they began the ritual to put these spells in the Beacon. A wave of fire rippled toward us, announcing Cinder's arrival. Just as he showed up, I felt Bless be cast through the Beacon.
Dervish broke the white oak stick, and snow blanketed the area. Vish broke the regular oak stick and the earth lashed out and gripped Cinder. Then I broke the black oak stick and smoke filled our vision. So we had Cinder trapped in the snow, but we couldn't fucking see him with all the smoke. It would be fucking nice if they'd come with fucking instructions. It took nearly a minute before we heard the earthen chains break from inside the cloud. While we waited, I felt Godsblood go off. Soon the water would "poison" everyone's blood with holy water. Suck it Kas.
Webs began shooting around the smoke, and when it disappeared, we were greeted by a very angry halfling. Cinder wasn't quite as intimidating to look at when he was that small- but we wouldn't underestimate him. Dervish and Vish began launching arrows at Cinder, which did fucking nothing. I tried to banish him, but the fucker deflected it and nearly turned the spell on me. The tingle of magic hit me again as Divine Disconnect went off. All that was left now was Power Word Heal.
Lightning began arcing everywhere, it sounded like a huge earthquake was trying to rip the world in half. Cinder began channeling the lightning, and Pharin was just barely able to wrest control back. It was time for Power Word Heal, so I summoned my shadow twin and sent her in to cast the spell. Eurydice would also be there for me to cast it through her. While this was happening, Cinder did something that deafened both Dervish and I, and we were both stunned for a moment. Vish shot at Cinder and splashed him with sovereign glue... That pissed Cinder off. He grabbed Vish and threw him in the glue; Vish later told us that it felt like his soul almost got eaten. Grax randomly popped up- I'd forgotten he was there since he was so fucking helpful cowering in the corner- and hit Cinder with a nasty looking cat 'o nine tails before disappearing again.
The final spell was taking longer to weave into the Beacon, so Pharin did some weird ass shout at it, that made the building rumble, and we could hear it clearly outside; his voice was much deeper and very gravelly. Lothar was in the middle of the circle since he was a conduit for the gods, and a massive shockwave emanated from him, knocking everyone inside and out over. Everything was blanketed in energy and a blinding white light momentarily dominated our vision, as the Beacon finished activating.
Unfortunately, my double Power Word Heal refreshed Cinder... This may have backfired a little bit. Dervish tried to hit him with an antimagic field- Cinder dispelled it. Dervish tried and failed again. Then Vilrath, Pharin's flesh golem, appeared and literally ate Cinder; but of course, Cinder got right back out. Cinder was trying to drain power from the Beacon, so Pharin had the other mages get the circle going again to loc Cinder out. They set the circle to be powered by the Beacon, in hopes that this would work. Before they could make it work, Cinder severed the connection and appeared in the center of the circle. Three of the mages ran in terror. Pharin attempted to banish Cinder- twice- and failed- twice.
Pharin then attempted to use the fragment of Alucard's soul that was in the Beacon to power an iron flask to make it strong enough to contain him. The circle began crackling... and Cinder absorbed the soul fragment. In trying to weaken Cinder, we gave him more power. It was clear that we could not stop Cinder, so Pharin teleported us to the Forgotten City. Cinder tried to counter it, but Pharin used a staff to block him. The staff exploded, and I felt myself slip into the darkness of unconsciousness.
Everyone except for Pharin/Andolin and Grax was dropped by the blast; Scottie was completely vaporized. I was a little surprised that Pharin revived me, and everyone else except poor Scottie; we needed a stronger spell for that.
Pharin decided he wanted to resurrect Haas using the Beacon here. He hoped that because we hadn't put any spells into it when we first activated it, we'd be able to add them now. I needed four hours to get the spell. The daft drow also thought we should try to put Cinder outside of time to give ourselves more time to prepare for Cinder's inevitable arrival.
As we walked through this bunker, Dervish triggered a trap, making the walls smack him and Vish. It was fucking hilarious. At that point, Vish decided it was time to try to wake up Willow to look for these stupid fucking traps. Really could use Ralliakkan here.
Just as Vish woke Willow, something was triggered, and I was back home in the Vale. My family was alive, and the beautiful valley was restored to its original glory. For the first time in a long time, I felt at peace, like everything was as it should be.
Pharin, Aurora, Willow, and Vish all believed they were safe at home until Andolin used his psychic powers to snap everyone out of it.
I felt something press on my mind, and I was back in the bunker. While being trapped in my mind fucking sucks, it would have been nice to stay for a little while. After taking a moment to sort out our thoughts, we continued on. Andolin decided that it would be faster for us to just use animals, so he pulled a jackal out of a bag of tricks. It instantly turned and snarled at us. Andolin knocked it prone for a moment, but it recovered quickly and lunged at Willow. She filleted it.
Then two bears appeared- I'm pretty sure those weren't from the bag of tricks this time. Vish killed one instantly, but the other one managed to badly wound Dervish, and it started eating his head. Why couldn't that ever happen to Douchebag? I hit it with a bead of blazing and stabbed it with Luna, but not enough to drop it. Andolin and Willow finished it off. I really hope the fucking Beacon is fucking here.
A couple more hours went by with us finding no traps before Willow found one that was almost invisible. She actually managed to disarm the fucking thing without setting it off! But she failed on the next fucking trap. The entire room began to shake violently, so we fucking ran, with Willow doing quick searches along the way, disarming what she could. We ran into a section, and suddenly Dervish, Vish, and Willow began turning to stone. I fixed the jackasses before they fully turned to stone.
Eventually, we reached a barred door that had a Cinder rune on it. Andolin pulled out Cinder's dagger and touched it to the symbol, and the door opened. We walked into an ancient dwarven dwelling, in a ridiculously large cavern that seemed to have been created by a single energy burst. There was a throne in the room that had a weird looking crystal on the top of it. Dervish decided to be a dumbass and sit on the throne without letting us properly inspect it first. As soon as his ass his the throne, a weird mist seeped out of the pot Narg gave me, going straight into Dervish. He insisted he felt fine, but I was pretty sure he was completely full of shit.
I sat down and used my legend lore spell to gain as much information as I could about this fucking place. As I started getting the information back from my spell, Dervish started reciting it in unison. Yeah.. there's definitely nothing wrong with the idiot. We were in the antechamber of a stronghold of Moradin that had been abandoned long ago by the dwarves and their God. Four thousand years ago a war erupted and four outsiders had to intervene. I think the war was between Vecna and Moradin, but the wording of the legends wasn't exactly precise.
There was a forge section in this chamber that we were completely cut off from, so Andolin walked up to it and beseeched Moradin to grant us entrance in the name of Lolth. He rattled off ancient treaties that he thought would work, but since Moradin abandoned this place four fucking thousand years ago, it was nothing but wishful fucking thinking. Andolin then produced his smithing hammer and asked Moradin to bless it.
We heard this weirdass wooshing sound at that request, and Dervish said he saw someone. Andolin and I thought maybe if Dervish sat on the throne and asked Moradin to let us in, that might work, but the jackass refused. Eurydice told me she thought something else was controlling Dervish, which would make sense, who knows what that fucking throne did to him. A thudding noise came from outside of the chamber, which Dervish used as an excuse to turn fucking invisible.
Considering what an idiot he was, Andolin and I decided to fake that we thought he'd left. That would make him slip up. After a few moments, he reappeared, and the door exploded inward. A figure stepped into the dust, a humanoid that held two hammers. The dust cleared and settled, and we found Lothar standing in front of us. Andolin decided to give Lothar an existential crisis and tell him he's a fucking contruct- which, of course, Lothar didn't believe. Honestly, if it hadn't been Aerathema who told us about it, I likely wouldn't have bought it.
While Andolin was giving Lothar a headache, Dervish investigated the throne and found Oryn's sigil on it. Andolin decided that the best way to approach this was to have Barra claw the fucking throne. I don't understand these boys sometimes... okay fine, most of the time. As soon as Barra's claw connected with the throne, energy began to flow, and we found ourselves in an ancient dwarven city.
We were on a small platform that led to a network of pathways and buildings, and there was magic everywhere. The plants and foliage were still alive and flourishing, and somehow the sun was able to reach this city, even though we quite clearly underground. The path in front of us led to the massive metal gates to the city, and it was lined with statues and suits of armor, that were in remarkably good shape, considering their age.
As we reached the armor, we heard creaking and one of the statues lunged at Dervish, missing him completely. Dervish responded with a strike of his own... which also missed horribly. Those two were completely fucking uncoordinated. Willow dashed in and stabbed the statue on Dervish, then moved away again. Andolin began casting something, while the two kasathe kept chipping away at the statues as they animated and attacked.
The first statue that had gone for Dervish managed to drop the idiot with a whip. I contemplated leaving him there for a minute, but he was kind of useful, so I revived the jackass. We all worked at them, stabbing, slashing, and slowly chipping them away, piece by piece. After a few moments, I summoned my shadow twin to help with the fight. Then Andolin called out that we needed to disable one without destroying it. We managed to get a few down without shattering them, but it was a little more annoying to do that.
A little column of dust appeared where each statue we'd managed not to destroy had been prior to our arrival, and Willow heard mumbling coming from inside of one of them. Dervish and Vish reached into one of the columns of dust and pulled out a female gnome. Andolin pulled an elderly male dwarf and a female goliath out of the other two. The last armor we hadn't destroyed had what looked like a soul gem glowing inside of it. We tried to free the trapped soul, and while we did see a little wisp of a soul flutter out, nothing else happened. The area seemed relatively safe, so we decided to camp and talk to the poor fuckers we'd just released.
Grax Thunderhorn, a halfling assassin had been released from the soul gem, and he found himself standing on the platform above the statue area- where the others had started. He decided to sneak down to the group camping below.
Willow and I looked up and saw a halfling come slinking into camp, failing miserably at hiding. Turns out he was in the soul gem. We invited him to join us, and I eagerly pulled out my notebook, getting the stories from these four people about how they came to be stuck in those statues. They were fascinating.
Dervish had been acting weird since whatever was in that pot Narg gave me went into him. Andolin had the idea of putting him in an iron flak to get the spirit, or whatever it was, out of him. Didn't work.
Once we were all well rested, we decided to approach the colossal metal gates to the city. Andolin instantly set off one of the traps on them, and a bunch of rocks landed on top of him. Ass deserves it. Of course, that wasn't the only fucking trap on these stupid gates. Grax set off two of them while he and Willow searched for them, and Willow was able to disable a shitload of them. Then Grax found a petrification trap, and I had to turn him back to flesh- apparently, this guy gets turned to stone a lot. Right after I finished fixing Grax, Willow set off another trap and vanished. Willow had been sent to Elysium, and with the interplanar travel on lockdown, she couldn't return to the party.
We found another trap fucking 200 feet up, and the halfling couldn't fucking fly. I decided to give Eurydice another storm giant's strength potion, and we tied a rope to Grax, with Eurydice holding the other end. My cat-sized violet faerie dragon was carrying a rope with a halfling attached to it... Oh, the song I'm going to write about that will be epic.
Grax disabled the first trap he found, but the second one had more petrification powder in it... Seriously, this dude just loves being stoned or something. Eurydice dropped the rope holding him, dove down to him, I cast the restoration spell needed to fix him through her, and she snatched the rope back up. My little faerie dragon is seriously fucking bad ass.
Andolin decided to just start throwing rocks at the traps. Disabling all of these was taking for-fucking-ever. Then we found a trap that required life force to disable. Dervish thought we should try my pot from Narg, but the soul isn't in it anymore, it's in fucking Dervish- I think. Andolin pulled an axe beak out of a bag of tricks and Lothar chucked it at the trap. Then he threw a jackal at another trap, just barely missing. It ran scared- unfortunately for it, there was nothing but death behind us. Next was a tiger, which set off a couple of traps. It looked like there were only two traps left at this point. They had a mastiff set one off, and summoned a giant boar for the last one, but it missed. Eurydice drug Grax to that trap... instead of turning to stone, he got paralyzed. I sighed at this unlucky halfling as I cast the restoration spell through Eurydice.
Then a red ball began to glow in the center of the door, growing quickly. We dimension doored the fuck away and ran. It blew up, and I was fucking glad we'd ran. A second attempt did it again. But third time was the charm.
At any point during this Pharin/Andolin could have used the Dagger of Cinder to unlock the doors and disable every trap...
The city was massive and in remarkably good condition for a long abandoned place. We made our way through it, passing old market stalls, buildings, and whatnot until we reached what we thought was the center of town. There was a large, round building with tons of windows, and we could make out what sounded like a forge inside. It was a round building, about 500 feet in diameter- we thought it was a prison, and it seemed to be shaped like a ribcage. Dervish suddenly began spouting off information about this place... information he had absolutely no business knowing. When that idiot starts acting like there's some intelligence in there, you know something is very very wrong.
A point on the building started to glow, just like the trap on the gates, and Lothar yelled: "run!" He hung back to deal with the trap though, which went well until one actually hit him. His ribcage was badly broken after that hit, I knew it would take some serious healing magic to fix him. Dervish opened a dimension door right in front of the building, and Andolin had Barra whip a tentacle through it and touch the building. She barely got her tentacle back through when a massive hole was blown in the building- an explosion meant for her. This complicated things.
As we began debating on how the fuck to get into this stupid building, Ralliakkan appeared. Cinder hadn't killed her! She turned off the traps temporarily. They were called Death Spires, weapons from the Ancient Wars that were said to be powerful enough to annihilate entire regions.
Inside the building was enough space to comfortably seat at least a thousand people, this seemed to be the city's meeting place when it still had inhabitants. Grax found sigils on the floor, there were about fifty different ones. The spirit in Dervish said they were a path and he knew the pattern to follow it properly. He led Ralliakkan to a panel to have her deactivate the traps; she had to use Narg and Alucard's blood to shut everything down.
Once everything was shut down, Ralliakkan showed me the parting gift Cinder had given her. She had a nasty looking wound that he'd used soul rot on. Only a couple of things- that I didn't have with me- could cure that. If we didn't get out of here soon, she would literally wither away to nothingness.
After a few minutes, we heard a soft rumble, and it suddenly seemed like we were standing on a lake that was as reflective as a mirror. At that point, the soul in Dervish- which Ralliakkan had told us was a fragment of Alucard's soul- left Dervish; he was the battery to activate the Beacon.
The soul fragment went into the Dagger, and Pharin decided it would be a good idea to offer it a draw from the Deck of Many Things. It drew the Skull card- the one that calls an aspect of Death to you, which you then have to fight...
An aspect of death appeared amongst us and went right for Dervish and Vish. It savagely ripped into both of them, before turning to Ralliakkan and dishing out another nasty blow to her. Andolin tried to put it in an iron flask, which did nothing. Ralliakkan destroyed the damned thing, but at cost to herself. She was barely hanging on, and there was nothing I could do.
While I internally lamented that I couldn't help my friend, the room began lighting up, and the stone in the center glowed brightly. The Beacon was on, it just needed spells now. It felt like it took for-fucking-ever for us to decide which spells to put into it. Eventually, we settled on Bless, Godsblood, Divine Disconnect, and Power Word Heal. I was hoping throwing the healing spell in there would help Ralliakkan. Godsblood would turn all water in the world into holy water and give us a couple more boons against undead. Divine Disconnect would cut off the cults from their gods, at least for a little while. Andolin tasked Ralliakkan to get the blood of as many gods as she could, only gods whose blood was included in the spell would be able to reach their followers once the spell went off.
During our debate, the temperature had been steadily rising. Cinder was coming. Andolin/Pharin and Dervish's mages began setting up the circles for the spells, while Dervish, Vish, Grax, and I went out to face him. I really hoped that we'd be able to get out of here before he showed up. Ralliakkan gave us three sticks- one of white oak, one of black oak, and one of regular oak. She told us to break them, they'd help us against Cinder.
The four of us hid in the doorway of the building because as we got out there, fireballs began getting launched at us. It was fucking annoying. I felt the tingle of powerful magic as they began the ritual to put these spells in the Beacon. A wave of fire rippled toward us, announcing Cinder's arrival. Just as he showed up, I felt Bless be cast through the Beacon.
Dervish broke the white oak stick, and snow blanketed the area. Vish broke the regular oak stick and the earth lashed out and gripped Cinder. Then I broke the black oak stick and smoke filled our vision. So we had Cinder trapped in the snow, but we couldn't fucking see him with all the smoke. It would be fucking nice if they'd come with fucking instructions. It took nearly a minute before we heard the earthen chains break from inside the cloud. While we waited, I felt Godsblood go off. Soon the water would "poison" everyone's blood with holy water. Suck it Kas.
Webs began shooting around the smoke, and when it disappeared, we were greeted by a very angry halfling. Cinder wasn't quite as intimidating to look at when he was that small- but we wouldn't underestimate him. Dervish and Vish began launching arrows at Cinder, which did fucking nothing. I tried to banish him, but the fucker deflected it and nearly turned the spell on me. The tingle of magic hit me again as Divine Disconnect went off. All that was left now was Power Word Heal.
Lightning began arcing everywhere, it sounded like a huge earthquake was trying to rip the world in half. Cinder began channeling the lightning, and Pharin was just barely able to wrest control back. It was time for Power Word Heal, so I summoned my shadow twin and sent her in to cast the spell. Eurydice would also be there for me to cast it through her. While this was happening, Cinder did something that deafened both Dervish and I, and we were both stunned for a moment. Vish shot at Cinder and splashed him with sovereign glue... That pissed Cinder off. He grabbed Vish and threw him in the glue; Vish later told us that it felt like his soul almost got eaten. Grax randomly popped up- I'd forgotten he was there since he was so fucking helpful cowering in the corner- and hit Cinder with a nasty looking cat 'o nine tails before disappearing again.
The final spell was taking longer to weave into the Beacon, so Pharin did some weird ass shout at it, that made the building rumble, and we could hear it clearly outside; his voice was much deeper and very gravelly. Lothar was in the middle of the circle since he was a conduit for the gods, and a massive shockwave emanated from him, knocking everyone inside and out over. Everything was blanketed in energy and a blinding white light momentarily dominated our vision, as the Beacon finished activating.
Unfortunately, my double Power Word Heal refreshed Cinder... This may have backfired a little bit. Dervish tried to hit him with an antimagic field- Cinder dispelled it. Dervish tried and failed again. Then Vilrath, Pharin's flesh golem, appeared and literally ate Cinder; but of course, Cinder got right back out. Cinder was trying to drain power from the Beacon, so Pharin had the other mages get the circle going again to loc Cinder out. They set the circle to be powered by the Beacon, in hopes that this would work. Before they could make it work, Cinder severed the connection and appeared in the center of the circle. Three of the mages ran in terror. Pharin attempted to banish Cinder- twice- and failed- twice.
Pharin then attempted to use the fragment of Alucard's soul that was in the Beacon to power an iron flask to make it strong enough to contain him. The circle began crackling... and Cinder absorbed the soul fragment. In trying to weaken Cinder, we gave him more power. It was clear that we could not stop Cinder, so Pharin teleported us to the Forgotten City. Cinder tried to counter it, but Pharin used a staff to block him. The staff exploded, and I felt myself slip into the darkness of unconsciousness.
Everyone except for Pharin/Andolin and Grax was dropped by the blast; Scottie was completely vaporized. I was a little surprised that Pharin revived me, and everyone else except poor Scottie; we needed a stronger spell for that.
Pharin decided he wanted to resurrect Haas using the Beacon here. He hoped that because we hadn't put any spells into it when we first activated it, we'd be able to add them now. I needed four hours to get the spell. The daft drow also thought we should try to put Cinder outside of time to give ourselves more time to prepare for Cinder's inevitable arrival.
Maps by Anna B. Meyer
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