2023/04/12: Hunt for the Lord of Nightmares Part 3 Report

General Summary

NOTE: This report is a work in progress.   Knight, Buzz, Deadalus, Terana, Sunderfury, Zaran, Allen   Still in the dungeon under the castle of darkness. Teremech had suggestion on what to do about the LoN.   Up above in castle, young boy held in dream. If free the boy, we remove a power booster from the LoN. Teremech knows at least some of the defenses, substantial though they may be. Lots of shifting minions. Teremech says he might be able to get the party by with just a few low-level illusions. Lume is happy to provide. (And Teremech was quite impressed by Lume's proficiency.)   Party headed to free the boy, with illusions making them appear as small creatures of nightmare. Lume got to hear stories from Teremech about the nightmares of the locals that could be used. The disguises were mostly shaped like the disguisees. Ended up looking sort of like the Night Parade.   Group exited the dungeon and headed back in through the skull entrance. Lots of deathtraps, but Teremech knows how to get around them. Door about 30 feet in that required a spoken password. On the other side, lots of demons with various shapes. Often centipede-themed. Zaran did momentarily break character, whispering in Terana's ear, but everyone else was doing well enough to cover for that. (Knight did have to use all his special senses and luck to manage it, though.)   As they carried on into further and higher passages, the yokai they passed were noticed to be more and more humanoid, though still very strange. Passages went further and higher than the castle should really have contained.   Confronted by shiny black samurai. Challenged Teremech, who responded. "Remember what I said about 'weapons free'? Now would be the time."   Knight opened up with the Dream Master's Nail and soulblade, but found that it seemed like he was fighting an idea more than a creature. Only the former weapon had an effect. It did slash him up a lot, though. Zaran followed up with a mindspike that didn't do damage, but did damage the samurai's reflexes. Terana jumped in with her own weapons and a kick; only the kick actually did anything useful.   Daedalus started up some rocking battle music to inspire the others to resilience and offensive power. Buzz breathed a gout of phoenix fire that lit the samurai up from the inside for a few seconds. It shrieked and its armor started to melt. (Terana and Knight had done 38 damage. This did 110.)   Sunderfury saw that even as it took all this damage, the samurai was setting up for the mother of all counterattacks. He mixed some parries in along with his own attacks, to not much effect.   Knight saw the same, and pulled another two weapons and prepared to go fully defensive. Terana did similar. Zaran tossed another offensive spell, but this time the samurai's defenses were up and it slid right off. And then the samurai made his counterattack. 156 attacks back at the whole party. 141 were blocked. With the power of rock, the rest were further blunted. It was still 90 damage to nearly everyone involved.   Reela Su tossed a lightning bolt at the samurai, which did little. Allen, climbing out of the pocket dimension Reela'd been hiding in, cast stoneskin. Deadalus kept up the inspiring rock.   Buzz hit the samurai with the breath weapon again, and this time it was the end of him. He burst and dissipated. He left behind a steel samurai helmet and a blackened katana.   Group decided it was time to go for speed over stealth. Next landing was hexagonal, with two very female faceless statues wielding wakizashis. The statues immediately vanished and teleported, going on the attack. They're 15 feet tall.   Knight prepped for parries, making himself larger with Golden Lord's Longnail. First ninja twin statue appeared above and tossed smoke bombs down. Literally lifesucking fog; reducing Con while the group is inside. Zaran and Reela Su choking. Second ninja appeared above Deadalus and swung down in what would have been a sneak attack, but it was dramatically intercepted by a rushing Knight. From Deadalus's perspective, Knight suddenly dashed over him out of the fog, there were a lot of swinging motions, and then a colossal clang. A giant wakizashi dug a huge furrow in the ground next to him.   Terana jumped into the air and unleashed a wind blast. Reela Su was bounced along the floor, but Deadalus successfully rolled with the wind and the rest of the party stood strong. Terana's follow-up sword slashes mostly bounced, but it didn't matter; the sheer speed and brutality shattered the first statue and she rode the second to the ground, taking it apart as she went.   The Con damage persisted, but Terana was able to clear it off Knight, Deadalus, and Allen.   The corridors got narrower beyond this. The group rushed upwards. Got to locked door. Reela Su disabled trap but lock got jammed. Zaran used knock to open it. Deadalus started playing an "Enhance ability" effect that gave rerolls on Wisdom checks.   On other side, a library room with a villainous sorcerer inside, spelled up with robe with lots of glowing runes. He was preparing to toss a spell. Knight opened a pair of portals with his nail, but he didn't quite get the angles as intended; he wasn't sure where exactly they were aimed. Terana pulled out a coin and charged the mage, passing right through several defensive wards and bonking him on the head with the coin. The mage, looking scared, cast some sort of collapsing gate on her in response. She found herself falling through a firey tunnel, dodging obstacles and attackers.   Allen prepared to counter the mage's next spell. Sunderfury, seeing how the mage had responded to Terana's coin attack, pulled out a bag of gold coins. Pulling out a fistful, he said to the mage "Do you want to surrender, or do you want us to use the rest?" The mage looked paler, and let out an audible gulp.   Zaran zapped the man with a sunbeam. It unfortunately didn't blind him, but he certainly didn't enjoy the burning. And the sunlight. Buzz followed up with an arrow of light using the life arrows from the fox village, which was similarly not enjoyed.   Knight closed the last set of portals and tried to open a new, better set. However, he found that there was a bit of dimensional instability. When he opened the new portal, instead of opening one hole next to him and another near the mage, the two ends warped together and formed one big portal in front of him, pointing to somewhere grey and misty. Apparently, doing this repeatedly in one place is likely to cause instability and new portals will likely open to the same place as the first.   Mage suddenly seemed confused, then terrified, then exploded. Big roiling fire spread across the room. Allen and Teremech countered successfully. Apparently Reela Su had stolen the man's staff while he was distracted, and there was a contingency on it that would make him explode if he lost it. (Probably given to him by his boss.) Then Terana dropped back out of the fire path and succeeded on a tumbling check to not smack into something.   Staff proved to be the key to the next room. In next room is peasant bedroom with sleeping little boy. Terana picked him up. Boy needed to wake up. Terana pulled out a runed adamantium bucket full of wine, but Allen handed her his waterskin before she could pour it on the boy. Terana poured Allen's waterskin on the boy.   When she asked if anyone wanted the bucket, an unfamiliar voice spoke up: "I might take you up on that." Suddenly, something crawled out of Knight's chest and Knight died. Knight was also aware of this, and may not be dead? Everything got hard to move in for everyone, like trapped in nightmare. The Lord of Nightmares had just arrived in response to his spell being broken.   Teremech looked like he skated along the ground, grabbing Knight's mask and nail before they could hit the ground. He locked eyes with the LoN from across the room, and the resemblance was remarkable. Family? The LoN was carrying a twisted staff.   Zaran, dragon that he is, ignored the nightmare immobilization. He deemed this the time for divine intervention. Or rather, overpower intervention. With a draconic roar, there was a flash of brilliant white light, and everything disappeared. It looked suspiciously like a nuke.   The party woke up several hours later. Buzz was first. He saw a familiar peasant's room. Sunlight was fading in the distance out the window. The party was passed out around the room as if they'd been very drunk, or in a bad fistfight. Buzz bounced Terana off Zaran repeatedly to try to wake the former, but the latter woke first. Terana was very floppy.   Outside, in the distance, there were trees. Also grass. Apparently, the castle was now in Shisui. Or rather, they were in a small village in the boondocks of Shisui. After some discussion, and the realization that Teremech wasn't with them, they decided to head back to the Naga Queen and see if there were any updates. (Also, apparently this was the bedroom of the kid who had been taken, and now he was out helping his family in the fields.)   Before that, they sent Sunderfury to go check that the kid was okay. He was. He also seems to have a silver symbol of Ao on his forehead. It's making him pretty popular with the other kids. (Terana has the same symbol on her forehead and has for a while?)   (Ao and two other overpowers are the primordial beings behind pretty much everything.)   Group went into the dream realm. Met the naga who had been working as a guide for Knight before. The naga was rather concerned about what had detonated the Caverns and Castles of Darkness and why there were grey dragons flying everywhere. Zaran and co. explained. Apparently it had been two days since the group left for the Caverns.   Also, apparently Knight's "death" earlier was Lume manually doing a dramatic death in Knight's place because some sort of spirit lady with eyes full of nails crawled up through him and ate her way out.   (Some banter about Lume's perspectives of stab wounds, how accurately he represented Knight's innards, etc.)   When they got to the queen, they gave a report and ended up with Deadalus giving a full musical and drawn presentation. Given the effort we put in and the collateral damage (or at least collateral effects), she decided it would be best to call the debt fulfilled.   Apparently the dragons that were created and that are wandering around are anywhere from friendly to highly hostile. Dream dragons, nightmare dragons, daydream dragons... It seems that all the power the Lord accumulated had to be distributed somewhere, and given that Ao was involved, it went into giant dragons.   Thing that "killed" Knight is a thing known from stories. A creature of primordial darkness. Hopefully she'll forget Knight exists. Known voidbeast that resides in the depths of nightmare. Apparently we scared the LoN badly enough that he went to the effort of recruiting her. It didn't help him much.   And with that, the group headed back home. (They stopped by the Temple of Ranthael on the way to break the cursed head. They had to get the head priest, but they managed to break it. It gave off enough good mojo that they were very happy about it, and they offered either an enchantment on a weapon or four minor magic items.)

Rewards Granted

3 xp to all, a small collection of magical gear.

Missions/Quests Completed

Kill the Lord of Nightmares.

Character(s) interacted with

Dream Naga Queen, Teremech , The Lord of Nightmares

Notes

Need to update Daedalus to Deadalus.   Zaran has a collection of "dum-dum darts". These are like Malthoronam's Irish arrow. They like alcohol.