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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