Reviving Alucard
Dramatis Personae:
Aurora Isilime, the Valley Elf Bard of Valor and Bae'qeshel of Lolth, the Silver Tongued Siren
Charlotte, Aurora's violet Faerie Dragon familiar
Eurydice, the Faerie Dragon Feylock, formerly Aurora's familiar
Aiden, Eurydice's Sprite familiar
Aurora Isilime, the Valley Elf Bard of Valor and Bae'qeshel of Lolth, the Silver Tongued Siren
Charlotte, Aurora's violet Faerie Dragon familiar
Eurydice, the Faerie Dragon Feylock, formerly Aurora's familiar
Aiden, Eurydice's Sprite 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
Dervish, the Kasathe Brass Dragon Fighter and Dragon Blood Sorcerer
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, and the new DEATH
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, and the new DEATH
Ralliakkan, the Drow Rogue
Comrades we have lost:
Oryn Talus, the ancient and mysterious halfling who has employed the party- fractured himself into 4 parts to prevent cult from taking his soul
Willow Liadon, the Eladrin Arcane Trickster- sent to Elysium through a trap and was never heard from again
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.
Pharin and Andolin have merged into a single body and are pretending to be Cyrrik Goldmattock, an ancient dwarven king who vanished thousands of years ago. The party believes both drow to be dead.
Pharin and Andolin have merged into a single body and are pretending to be Cyrrik Goldmattock, an ancient dwarven king who vanished thousands of years ago. The party believes both drow to be dead.
***** Lacysnows 24, CY 710, Ruins of the Free City of Greyhawk
Lothar said that the only way the spell to bring Alucard back would work was to sacrifice the active Lothar. If we took him out, there'd only be one Lothar left- we'd killed two that had been found by the cults. Without sacrificing him, we wouldn't survive the ritual. Before we could even start this, we needed to find the illithids.
Cyrrik sent away the remains of the coffin Alucard's body had been in. He asked the Stonemason for the Sword of Kas and the Wand of Orcus, but for some reason, the Stonemason couldn't give them to him. The Deck must have done something to them. He didn't want either of those and really the sword could only be wielded by Lothar; the wand would have been better in one of our hands. We started debating how to help the dwarf when a flash of radiance and a loud ringing sound exploded around us. Lothar had slammed his hammer down to shut everyone up. I was deaf for the next couple of minutes- lesser restoration wouldn't even fix it.
While I waited for the deafness to fuck off, I received a memory stone from Briisa. There were five hundred thousand barbarians in shadowy armor outside my college- which had a whopping thirty thousand bards. The small chasm that always surrounded Potidaea had grown by about thirty feet- another layer of defense. Narg looked scared... I didn't think that was even possible. Behind the barbarian army was a horrible cry, and a huge circle lit up, revealing the tarrasque. Apparently, these fuck holes had figured out how to find it after we beat it. That's just fucking wonderful.
I scryed the rest of the world, and things looked just as bleak. The area around the Forgotten City was completely black; when I zoomed in I saw that the thri-kreen had surrounded it. ALL of the thri-kreen had surrounded it. The other two Beacon Keystone locations were also surrounded by cultists- including four guys who all looked like the Sultan of Nothing. Evidently, they'd made copies of that fuck hole- cause there's no way they'd gotten him back from Lolth.
All of a sudden, all the dwarves vanished, except for the Stonemason and Cyrrik. Everything lit up and the sound of a hammer striking an anvil rang. Moradin took over the Stonemason- whose name I learned then was Runegear. Runegear/Moradin told us all to get out so he could do something- but I was the only one smart enough to listen. Streams of wires, gears, and other mechanical shit came out of his hands and covered the room. I felt a slight tremor deep inside myself, right where the soul shard from Oryn had gone into me. The mechanical room sprang to life and hummed with energy for the next few seconds before Runegear/Moradin grinned and said: "Now the fun begins." As soon as he said that, Stonefist grabbed me and yanked me back into the room.
The room lurched and began moving through the sky. We spent the next half hour soaring in a tiny room through space, all the while that soul shard was shaking harder and harder. Runegear was constantly adjusting things and switching directions. As soon as we'd taken off, Lothar collapsed and began to shake violently; Alucard's body was shaking in time with his. Lothar was comatose, and it was as if everything inside him was shaking.
I held onto Lothar as best I could, trying to keep him from swallowing his tongue. I know we were just about to kill him, but I was rather fond of him, so I felt the need to attempt to at least bring him comfort. Dervish found a scar on Alucard's body- which somehow led him to an intelligent idea- that maybe Alucard's organs were inside Lothar like Lothar was a living canopic jar of sorts.
After another hour we could feel some magic trickling into the room, and Cyrrik collected hair from each of us; he said it had to do with the ritual somehow. Two more hours passed before everything went completely silent- both Lothar and the body stopped shaking, and so did the soul shards. The dwarven bard with us went flying into the wall when it all stopped moving. Runegear was gone.
Cyrrik set up the altar, which was covered in the symbols of literally hundreds of gods- some even I didn't recognize. I opened to door to reveal a hallway made of diamond. It was fucking beautiful. Dervish decided to lean out of the room- without exiting it- to try to mine the hallway, which failed miserably. Cyrrik continued working on the ritual for another two hours- everything was perfect, but it didn't work.
***** Lacysnows 25, location unknown
Since the damn ritual hadn't worked, we decided to explore this place, hoping that whatever would make the ritual work would be out there somewhere. We spent a couple of hours walking, with absolutely nothing changing, but it definitely was not a maze, so we kept going. An hour later Stonefist stumbled and fell over, which somehow made us figure out we were in a hall of mirrors. Eurydice managed to find us the correct path.
Cyrrik randomly whacked a wall, producing a deafening ringing, which Dervish quickly silenced. We kept going, and the Priest of Moradin figured out where the next part of the path was. It was then that we realized the silence was lasting much longer than it should have and seemed to cover a much bigger area than it should have as if the magic was being amplified or something. Dervish summoned an earth elemental to guide us through the area, and it did a seriously shitty job.
Eventually, we reached a cliff, which was found by Stonefist falling down it. He was hurt, but alive- glad it was the monk who'd fallen. Cyrrik tossed a pipe down after him. Dervish decided to fly down to get Stonefist and ended up getting confused and attacking his own reflection. I don't know how that idiot is the leader of his entire fucking world.
Cyrrik floated down to help Stonefist and found the monk's leg was shattered. He amputated it so Stonefist could regenerate it as they worked their way back to us- cause that's so much easier than just fucking healing him. The pair ended up on the other side of the cliff instead of coming back to us.
Dervish's stupidity was showing proudly now. He ran away from his own reflection in terror- I didn't think the Dumbass was quite that ugly, but apparently I was mistaken- then somehow managed to tie himself up. The dwarves went to help him, and the idiot attacked them, then tried crawling away. The dwarves beat the crap out of him and ended up dropping him, while he tried limply to fight back, tangled in the rope. Once they dropped him, they tied him up properly, then revived him.
Cyrrik came back for us around then, and since we needed to make sure we wouldn't get separated, we had to get creative. Three of the dwarves got into a portable hole with a bottle of air, another dwarf and I got on a carpet, and we tied Dervish to a broom, which we tugged along behind us on the carpet.
When we made it to Stonefist, he'd apparently been smoking in a Hut, which as soon as it was dropped, got everyone high. Great fucking idea, that'll totally make this place less confusing.
The next tunnels we went through were bright and seemed to be a bit more reflective than the others. The silence spell was still lingering, and I didn't dare use my Words of Thunder spell that would break the silence, that could end up with thunder ringing in our ears instead. Then the tunnel abruptly ended, with no apparent way to go from here.
Cyrrik dispelled the silence spell finally, and literally, all of our magical effects ended with it. He cast something else, which failed. Dervish randomly cast greater invisibility, and all of us went invisible. I used legend lore to try to figure this fucking place out, but it doesn't exist anywhere. Cyrrik began trying random shit to open the dead end, but nothing happened. When he grumbled that he was getting low on ideas, Dervish used the knock spell on the wall.
We found ourselves in a dark, empty void. In the middle of it a was massive, one million point circle in the shape of a sphere, with Lothar and Alucard inside it. Between them was a dagger, and as we watched, they began whirling around it, and the soul shards inside us began to shake violently in response. It felt like they were trying to get out of us and go to Lothar and Alucard. Little sprites of pure arcane energy began swirling around the pair.
I cut myself where the shard inside me was to help it escape, Dervish followed suit. Cyrrik drew his shard out with a ring of mind shielding- Vish didn't do anything to his, and it ripped out of him violently, blood flying everywhere.
Pharin realized that two pieces of the soul weren't here: enchantment and transmutation. He touched divination and was wracked with pain by the visions it contained. Pharin found transmutation in the hilt of a dagger. He reached out for conjuration next and attempted to summon enchantment to the group. First, he called forth an axe that had once held the fragment, but on his second attempt, a ring appeared on Alucard's finger.
With all of the soul shards here, we realized we needed to get Alucard's organs out of Lothar. Dervish sliced him open, but couldn't break his ribs. Cyrrik lopped off Lothar's head, sending blood flying everywhere... some got in my mouth, and instead of the usual coppery taste, this blood tasted sweet and tangy. The blood was pouring into the center of the room, getting bigger and denser, and it quickly became bigger than was possible, there was no way that much blood was in Lothar's body.
We had to leave the room quickly, as there was so much blood in there that we couldn't fit anymore. With nothing left for us to do, we began making our way back through the tunnels. Getting out was much easier than getting in, and when we went through the door that should have taken us back to the room we arrived in, we found ourselves in the courtyard outside the castle, in Greyhawk.
An army of liches was waiting for us in the courtyard.
Pharin finished up a spell he'd begun much earlier, making quickened assassins of the group, only with modify memory so they believed they'd already killed their targets; making duplicates of the entire party. The modify memory spell he put on them didn't work though.
The Sultan, but not, walked up to us and told us that they weren't going to take us alive. Vecna wanted us all dead. Now. I set up a Hut, but the asshat dispelled it. Eurydice dropped another Hut, and this one stayed, protecting us from a volley of shit.
Cyrrik surrounded the liches in a curtain of fire, which slowly began closing in on them- Not-Sultan tried to cancel it but failed. I attempted to teleport us all to safety, but it didn't work, apparently travel magic was still fuckered up. As the liches broke down the curtain of fire, a multi-point circle appeared in the crowd. We began falling back to the 100-point circle room- hoping it was still there- and found a man sitting in the middle of it.
He looked somewhat elvish, and almost like Alucard, but not quite right, and he had no idea who he was. Cyrrik had him help activate the circle in the room, and I guess that made him remember who he was. The pair hurried outside to get the defenses going again, to get the fucking liches off our backs. Then Cyrrik turned into a dragon, startling Alucard and making the nodes attack him. Alucard then appeared on a balcony above us, said we're friends, and our lives passed before our eyes as he looked into our souls. He said he'd meet us at Potidaea, and I attempted to teleport us again; thankfully it worked this time.
When I appeared in Potidaea, one of my bards- a female tiefling whose name escaped me at the moment- stopped in her tracks and asked me where the Hells I'd been. I gave her a quick rundown of what I'd been doing, and accidentally made her insane; I fixed her though before going to find Briisa.
Apparently, Narg was fighting the tarrasque completely on his own, and the barbarians were just standing around watching. Cyrrik and Dervish turned into dragons- I hopped on Cyrrik's back, and he scooped up Stonefist, polymorphing him into a remorhaz; we flew out to help Narg with the damn tarrasque.
Narg was badly injured, I sent Charlotte to him so I could give him a power word heal, but he still seemed off. Cyrrik dropped Stonefist right on the tarrasque before he and Dervish divebombed it. They all hit it fucking hard, and the beast writhed in pain. Narg speared its mouth shut with its own horn, and as it tried to pull it out, it hurt itself even more. Stonefist managed to burrow into the tarrasque, killing it by exploding out of its chest. That was even cooler than the quivering palm diarrhea he did to it earlier.
As the tarrasque died, the barbarians all screamed in rage. Behind us we heard applause, we'd impressed Alucard with how quickly we brought the damned thing down. Alucard said there was a fucking ghost fleet behind Potidaea because five hundred thousand barbarians and the tarrasque weren't enough. Cyrrik had an insane idea, so Alucard made an enormous circle for him, out of the tarrasque's corpse. He wanted to try to summon positive energy elementals to take on the ghosts.
Forty elementals appeared, but then he decided to turn them all into a single elemental. It went with Dervish to deal with the ghost fleet. Alucard stalked toward the barbarians, his cloak flared, and he was suddenly in black armor. I tried to charm the barbarians with one of my Bae'qeshel abilities, and it failed. I'd forgotten that shit didn't work on these fuck holes.
Then Cyrrik started summoning little positive energy flying nugs familiars the size of doves, summoning and releasing, over and over. Which was awesome until the daft dwarf decided to have them draw from the Deck of Many Things. The first one to draw pulled the Balance card, turning it evil... an explosion of epic proportions went off in a five hundred yard radius. All the dwarves were gone- Cyrrik included.
Pharin found himself in Acheron, which is in the Outer Planes, facing a dragon slayer. Pharin quickly banished himself back to Faerun, and then realized the slayer had his blood. There was only one thing Pharin could think of to keep that hunter from finding him: destroying all of his blood. He activated the contingency, burning every drop of his blood on every single plane.
Fire rained down upon the world, water and land igniting instantly. Everything exploded in a whoosh, and three of the Beacons turned blood red as the door to the Positive Energy Plane slammed shut. As soon as that was over, all of the dwarves were resurrected by Moradin, and Stonefist was declared king. The entire battlefield stopped in awe of the massive explosion and flames that engulfed the world.
One-third of the world burned, water, creatures, plants, gone. The elementals had been passing the east side of Potidaea when the explosions went off, and the entire wing was gone... that was where most of our library was. 20% of my bards were gone. Dervish's 27 half-dragons, that were made of Pharin's blood, were dead, his familiar was destroyed, 30% of Dervish's people died, as did Dervish himself. Our communication rings exploded, as did half of the brooches- only half of those because Allysandra had made the other half. Pharin had just brought devastation to this world that was greater than anything Vecna's cult had done. I knew he wasn't dead. Istus was right about Pharin, he would have a hand in ending the world.
From behind me, I felt a whoosh of air as it was drawn into Alucard, then he blanketed the battlefield in flames. I dropped two firestorms on the barbarians, which he amplified to cover the entire battlefield. The few that survived the series of infernos began to run, and I told Alucard we shouldn't let them get away. Alucard raised his hands, and a red mist swept over all of them, with a flick of the wrist, they all exploded. That went well.
I went looking for Narg, worried he'd been hurt in the explosions. He wasn't in great shape, but he'd be okay in time. Allysandra and Scottie found Dervish and resurrected him; he no longer had dragon blood, he was just his boring self again.
Alucard told us he needed to go to the illithid for a scroll, one that's supposed to resurrect anyone who ever lived. He told us to meet him in Greyhawk in a week, and to be prepared to infiltrate; we're going after Vecna directly.
Lothar said that the only way the spell to bring Alucard back would work was to sacrifice the active Lothar. If we took him out, there'd only be one Lothar left- we'd killed two that had been found by the cults. Without sacrificing him, we wouldn't survive the ritual. Before we could even start this, we needed to find the illithids.
Cyrrik sent away the remains of the coffin Alucard's body had been in. He asked the Stonemason for the Sword of Kas and the Wand of Orcus, but for some reason, the Stonemason couldn't give them to him. The Deck must have done something to them. He didn't want either of those and really the sword could only be wielded by Lothar; the wand would have been better in one of our hands. We started debating how to help the dwarf when a flash of radiance and a loud ringing sound exploded around us. Lothar had slammed his hammer down to shut everyone up. I was deaf for the next couple of minutes- lesser restoration wouldn't even fix it.
While I waited for the deafness to fuck off, I received a memory stone from Briisa. There were five hundred thousand barbarians in shadowy armor outside my college- which had a whopping thirty thousand bards. The small chasm that always surrounded Potidaea had grown by about thirty feet- another layer of defense. Narg looked scared... I didn't think that was even possible. Behind the barbarian army was a horrible cry, and a huge circle lit up, revealing the tarrasque. Apparently, these fuck holes had figured out how to find it after we beat it. That's just fucking wonderful.
I scryed the rest of the world, and things looked just as bleak. The area around the Forgotten City was completely black; when I zoomed in I saw that the thri-kreen had surrounded it. ALL of the thri-kreen had surrounded it. The other two Beacon Keystone locations were also surrounded by cultists- including four guys who all looked like the Sultan of Nothing. Evidently, they'd made copies of that fuck hole- cause there's no way they'd gotten him back from Lolth.
All of a sudden, all the dwarves vanished, except for the Stonemason and Cyrrik. Everything lit up and the sound of a hammer striking an anvil rang. Moradin took over the Stonemason- whose name I learned then was Runegear. Runegear/Moradin told us all to get out so he could do something- but I was the only one smart enough to listen. Streams of wires, gears, and other mechanical shit came out of his hands and covered the room. I felt a slight tremor deep inside myself, right where the soul shard from Oryn had gone into me. The mechanical room sprang to life and hummed with energy for the next few seconds before Runegear/Moradin grinned and said: "Now the fun begins." As soon as he said that, Stonefist grabbed me and yanked me back into the room.
The room lurched and began moving through the sky. We spent the next half hour soaring in a tiny room through space, all the while that soul shard was shaking harder and harder. Runegear was constantly adjusting things and switching directions. As soon as we'd taken off, Lothar collapsed and began to shake violently; Alucard's body was shaking in time with his. Lothar was comatose, and it was as if everything inside him was shaking.
I held onto Lothar as best I could, trying to keep him from swallowing his tongue. I know we were just about to kill him, but I was rather fond of him, so I felt the need to attempt to at least bring him comfort. Dervish found a scar on Alucard's body- which somehow led him to an intelligent idea- that maybe Alucard's organs were inside Lothar like Lothar was a living canopic jar of sorts.
After another hour we could feel some magic trickling into the room, and Cyrrik collected hair from each of us; he said it had to do with the ritual somehow. Two more hours passed before everything went completely silent- both Lothar and the body stopped shaking, and so did the soul shards. The dwarven bard with us went flying into the wall when it all stopped moving. Runegear was gone.
Cyrrik set up the altar, which was covered in the symbols of literally hundreds of gods- some even I didn't recognize. I opened to door to reveal a hallway made of diamond. It was fucking beautiful. Dervish decided to lean out of the room- without exiting it- to try to mine the hallway, which failed miserably. Cyrrik continued working on the ritual for another two hours- everything was perfect, but it didn't work.
***** Lacysnows 25, location unknown
Since the damn ritual hadn't worked, we decided to explore this place, hoping that whatever would make the ritual work would be out there somewhere. We spent a couple of hours walking, with absolutely nothing changing, but it definitely was not a maze, so we kept going. An hour later Stonefist stumbled and fell over, which somehow made us figure out we were in a hall of mirrors. Eurydice managed to find us the correct path.
Cyrrik randomly whacked a wall, producing a deafening ringing, which Dervish quickly silenced. We kept going, and the Priest of Moradin figured out where the next part of the path was. It was then that we realized the silence was lasting much longer than it should have and seemed to cover a much bigger area than it should have as if the magic was being amplified or something. Dervish summoned an earth elemental to guide us through the area, and it did a seriously shitty job.
Eventually, we reached a cliff, which was found by Stonefist falling down it. He was hurt, but alive- glad it was the monk who'd fallen. Cyrrik tossed a pipe down after him. Dervish decided to fly down to get Stonefist and ended up getting confused and attacking his own reflection. I don't know how that idiot is the leader of his entire fucking world.
Cyrrik floated down to help Stonefist and found the monk's leg was shattered. He amputated it so Stonefist could regenerate it as they worked their way back to us- cause that's so much easier than just fucking healing him. The pair ended up on the other side of the cliff instead of coming back to us.
Dervish's stupidity was showing proudly now. He ran away from his own reflection in terror- I didn't think the Dumbass was quite that ugly, but apparently I was mistaken- then somehow managed to tie himself up. The dwarves went to help him, and the idiot attacked them, then tried crawling away. The dwarves beat the crap out of him and ended up dropping him, while he tried limply to fight back, tangled in the rope. Once they dropped him, they tied him up properly, then revived him.
Cyrrik came back for us around then, and since we needed to make sure we wouldn't get separated, we had to get creative. Three of the dwarves got into a portable hole with a bottle of air, another dwarf and I got on a carpet, and we tied Dervish to a broom, which we tugged along behind us on the carpet.
When we made it to Stonefist, he'd apparently been smoking in a Hut, which as soon as it was dropped, got everyone high. Great fucking idea, that'll totally make this place less confusing.
The next tunnels we went through were bright and seemed to be a bit more reflective than the others. The silence spell was still lingering, and I didn't dare use my Words of Thunder spell that would break the silence, that could end up with thunder ringing in our ears instead. Then the tunnel abruptly ended, with no apparent way to go from here.
Cyrrik dispelled the silence spell finally, and literally, all of our magical effects ended with it. He cast something else, which failed. Dervish randomly cast greater invisibility, and all of us went invisible. I used legend lore to try to figure this fucking place out, but it doesn't exist anywhere. Cyrrik began trying random shit to open the dead end, but nothing happened. When he grumbled that he was getting low on ideas, Dervish used the knock spell on the wall.
We found ourselves in a dark, empty void. In the middle of it a was massive, one million point circle in the shape of a sphere, with Lothar and Alucard inside it. Between them was a dagger, and as we watched, they began whirling around it, and the soul shards inside us began to shake violently in response. It felt like they were trying to get out of us and go to Lothar and Alucard. Little sprites of pure arcane energy began swirling around the pair.
I cut myself where the shard inside me was to help it escape, Dervish followed suit. Cyrrik drew his shard out with a ring of mind shielding- Vish didn't do anything to his, and it ripped out of him violently, blood flying everywhere.
Pharin realized that two pieces of the soul weren't here: enchantment and transmutation. He touched divination and was wracked with pain by the visions it contained. Pharin found transmutation in the hilt of a dagger. He reached out for conjuration next and attempted to summon enchantment to the group. First, he called forth an axe that had once held the fragment, but on his second attempt, a ring appeared on Alucard's finger.
With all of the soul shards here, we realized we needed to get Alucard's organs out of Lothar. Dervish sliced him open, but couldn't break his ribs. Cyrrik lopped off Lothar's head, sending blood flying everywhere... some got in my mouth, and instead of the usual coppery taste, this blood tasted sweet and tangy. The blood was pouring into the center of the room, getting bigger and denser, and it quickly became bigger than was possible, there was no way that much blood was in Lothar's body.
We had to leave the room quickly, as there was so much blood in there that we couldn't fit anymore. With nothing left for us to do, we began making our way back through the tunnels. Getting out was much easier than getting in, and when we went through the door that should have taken us back to the room we arrived in, we found ourselves in the courtyard outside the castle, in Greyhawk.
An army of liches was waiting for us in the courtyard.
Pharin finished up a spell he'd begun much earlier, making quickened assassins of the group, only with modify memory so they believed they'd already killed their targets; making duplicates of the entire party. The modify memory spell he put on them didn't work though.
The Sultan, but not, walked up to us and told us that they weren't going to take us alive. Vecna wanted us all dead. Now. I set up a Hut, but the asshat dispelled it. Eurydice dropped another Hut, and this one stayed, protecting us from a volley of shit.
Cyrrik surrounded the liches in a curtain of fire, which slowly began closing in on them- Not-Sultan tried to cancel it but failed. I attempted to teleport us all to safety, but it didn't work, apparently travel magic was still fuckered up. As the liches broke down the curtain of fire, a multi-point circle appeared in the crowd. We began falling back to the 100-point circle room- hoping it was still there- and found a man sitting in the middle of it.
He looked somewhat elvish, and almost like Alucard, but not quite right, and he had no idea who he was. Cyrrik had him help activate the circle in the room, and I guess that made him remember who he was. The pair hurried outside to get the defenses going again, to get the fucking liches off our backs. Then Cyrrik turned into a dragon, startling Alucard and making the nodes attack him. Alucard then appeared on a balcony above us, said we're friends, and our lives passed before our eyes as he looked into our souls. He said he'd meet us at Potidaea, and I attempted to teleport us again; thankfully it worked this time.
When I appeared in Potidaea, one of my bards- a female tiefling whose name escaped me at the moment- stopped in her tracks and asked me where the Hells I'd been. I gave her a quick rundown of what I'd been doing, and accidentally made her insane; I fixed her though before going to find Briisa.
Apparently, Narg was fighting the tarrasque completely on his own, and the barbarians were just standing around watching. Cyrrik and Dervish turned into dragons- I hopped on Cyrrik's back, and he scooped up Stonefist, polymorphing him into a remorhaz; we flew out to help Narg with the damn tarrasque.
Narg was badly injured, I sent Charlotte to him so I could give him a power word heal, but he still seemed off. Cyrrik dropped Stonefist right on the tarrasque before he and Dervish divebombed it. They all hit it fucking hard, and the beast writhed in pain. Narg speared its mouth shut with its own horn, and as it tried to pull it out, it hurt itself even more. Stonefist managed to burrow into the tarrasque, killing it by exploding out of its chest. That was even cooler than the quivering palm diarrhea he did to it earlier.
As the tarrasque died, the barbarians all screamed in rage. Behind us we heard applause, we'd impressed Alucard with how quickly we brought the damned thing down. Alucard said there was a fucking ghost fleet behind Potidaea because five hundred thousand barbarians and the tarrasque weren't enough. Cyrrik had an insane idea, so Alucard made an enormous circle for him, out of the tarrasque's corpse. He wanted to try to summon positive energy elementals to take on the ghosts.
Forty elementals appeared, but then he decided to turn them all into a single elemental. It went with Dervish to deal with the ghost fleet. Alucard stalked toward the barbarians, his cloak flared, and he was suddenly in black armor. I tried to charm the barbarians with one of my Bae'qeshel abilities, and it failed. I'd forgotten that shit didn't work on these fuck holes.
Then Cyrrik started summoning little positive energy flying nugs familiars the size of doves, summoning and releasing, over and over. Which was awesome until the daft dwarf decided to have them draw from the Deck of Many Things. The first one to draw pulled the Balance card, turning it evil... an explosion of epic proportions went off in a five hundred yard radius. All the dwarves were gone- Cyrrik included.
Pharin found himself in Acheron, which is in the Outer Planes, facing a dragon slayer. Pharin quickly banished himself back to Faerun, and then realized the slayer had his blood. There was only one thing Pharin could think of to keep that hunter from finding him: destroying all of his blood. He activated the contingency, burning every drop of his blood on every single plane.
Fire rained down upon the world, water and land igniting instantly. Everything exploded in a whoosh, and three of the Beacons turned blood red as the door to the Positive Energy Plane slammed shut. As soon as that was over, all of the dwarves were resurrected by Moradin, and Stonefist was declared king. The entire battlefield stopped in awe of the massive explosion and flames that engulfed the world.
One-third of the world burned, water, creatures, plants, gone. The elementals had been passing the east side of Potidaea when the explosions went off, and the entire wing was gone... that was where most of our library was. 20% of my bards were gone. Dervish's 27 half-dragons, that were made of Pharin's blood, were dead, his familiar was destroyed, 30% of Dervish's people died, as did Dervish himself. Our communication rings exploded, as did half of the brooches- only half of those because Allysandra had made the other half. Pharin had just brought devastation to this world that was greater than anything Vecna's cult had done. I knew he wasn't dead. Istus was right about Pharin, he would have a hand in ending the world.
From behind me, I felt a whoosh of air as it was drawn into Alucard, then he blanketed the battlefield in flames. I dropped two firestorms on the barbarians, which he amplified to cover the entire battlefield. The few that survived the series of infernos began to run, and I told Alucard we shouldn't let them get away. Alucard raised his hands, and a red mist swept over all of them, with a flick of the wrist, they all exploded. That went well.
I went looking for Narg, worried he'd been hurt in the explosions. He wasn't in great shape, but he'd be okay in time. Allysandra and Scottie found Dervish and resurrected him; he no longer had dragon blood, he was just his boring self again.
Alucard told us he needed to go to the illithid for a scroll, one that's supposed to resurrect anyone who ever lived. He told us to meet him in Greyhawk in a week, and to be prepared to infiltrate; we're going after Vecna directly.
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| Map by Anna B. Meyer |
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