Anomalies of Ice and Shadow

Disaster / Destruction

Myska's Menagerie unearth a herald of an elder evil and the ringing of chains in Fozz's head spell doom.

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In the morning, a knocking from bellow brought the sight of an elvish man in mottled whites, grays, and browns. Hamon Umedi curtly introduced himself. Conversation dashed through many topics as the party talked well above his station. Chupta desires for traps where beyond the mundane purposes, wanting them instantly placeable and available as an instant battlefield remodel. Hamon built hunting traps for specific creatures in passive environments. The party spoke of dragon hunting. While Hamon was knowledgeable of the greatest extent of folk lore and placing the general area of the Forgotten Breath, he knew nothing of hunting, slaying, and the activities of any through his areas. Conversation veered towards Scizzord and personal conflicts. It seemed that Hamon had been pointed here under Nish's vague ideas that he could help you but that overall was wrong. But then a small pebble was sent tumbling that gathered into a notable snowball of potential.
  Crush made mention of lighting a metaphorical bonfire for Scizzord to see to drawn the enemy to the party. Hamon misunderstood, clarifying if you had already been doing that or this was for the future. This line lead to Hamon reveal an austere location he had found a tenday or so back about a hundred miles to the north. A small dell in the woods, empty of snow and covered in ice, as if the snow of area had all been quickly melted and then left to freeze over once again, no claws, no scorches, no destroyed trees. The party gained the location and flew out that morning, taking under a day and a half to get there.
 

28th of the Heart of Winter

Airship staying above the tree line, the party clambered down rope ladders into the dell. The outer stretches were snowed over once more by the center still showed ice. At least a person's height thick, only Crush's most thorough examination with his Watchers showed signs of a shadowed area beneath. Astrid pulled out the Shade Crystal, channel magic to locate Temperance Shards. Her own divination returned to readings but she felt a magnetic pull of the core crystal towards the center. Crampons on boots, she descended to the center of the ice to feel the pull turn straight down, gravity heighted on the Shade Crystal to lower down through the ice. Placing the crystal out on the snow outside the ice, she began to dig with her flail, bashing away ice in to compressing, melting powdered slush.
  Astrid's arms and lungs remained strong as her companions used magic hands and reach to scoop away the slurry, keeping their own hands dry. Slowly, the ices was beveled away, the water melting with the friction itself adding to the delving slosh to be levied out. In the end, a depression of muddied soil was revealed surrounded by shadowed impressions of chains marking the ground.
  From the cusp of the worksite, the Shade Crystal darkened, emiting out a grey light in place of it normal hue. Some of the chain marks upon the ground a began to raise and materialize into corporeal entities, twisting over themselves to bind and grab, growingint a form all its own. Astrid lungs still heaving, climbed up out of the ice to grab the greyscaled Shade Crystal. She attempted to stow it for the moment into her Handy Haversack but it resisted. Her hands fought the mental effort. Steeling herself, demanding of herself, despite the artifact's resistance, she forced it throught he interdimensional space through her iron will.
  As she looked back into the pit, the situation was worse than she thought. The chains and fully formed a sentience of their own, yes, but they were not alone. Crush and Chupta had been full witness to the chains finding another target. The shadowed marks that had not risen to form chains were also gone, having crawled across the ground to lash onto Fozz's shadow. Integrating and puppeteering, the aberrant tethers lifted the elf's shadow upward, dragging it across his body, stitching it around his legs, his waist, his shoulders. A ringing of chains emitted through the dell as the flurries and lashed, spiralling down his arms. A cowl crawled across his head and enveloping the face. The silhouette of Fozz remains before you yet no clothing, no gear, no skin visible. The hard edges of daggers, belts, and boots bulge under a new skin of powdered charcoal. Chains suture this secondary skin closed giving the impression that Fozz is still underneath until you look upon the face. The cheek bone peek outward as the eyes are sunken further back, lidless. The mouth opens twice as wide revealing onxy fangs and nothing within the maw. A hissing, snap of a vocalization emits from Fozz's Shadowspawn form.
  What followed was a time of horror and despair.
  The Battle was a rasping of moments. As the party came to realize that one of the combatants was their own, they proceeded forward the only way they knew how: By using the tactics they always had before.
Crush grew shards of ice through the battle field to slow the enemies and damage them, centeringing it about the Chain Herald. Continuing the theme of hampering and barriers, Chupta laid out an morass of purple sand, slowing the combatants as he rose into the air. The sand lingered on the Shadow Chained form of Fozz as well as many the remaining chains on the ground though failing to take hold of the herald. This proved effective when the Herald summoned up these chains to fight for him and the lingered about the environment, crawling towards their quarries.
Astrid confronted the chain devil, but the Shadow Chained Fozz confronted Crush and Chupta. The form struggled forward under the weight of chains and sand as the chains grew ever tighter, crushing to the bone around the body. The possessed body launched out chains to slam into the flying man. Despite this, the party first focused on the Chain Herald. Astrid's mighty blows bashed the creature through the spike growth, heightening her damage from the opposite side. Chupta, aerial assaults of sandslashes even more so forced the core enemy through the icy terrain, to the edge. The entity clambered out of the ice to approach a Crush in full symbiosis with his fungal from. The companions hailed blows onto the chain form as it drew it's power back in from the animated chains to save itself. Seeing this, Crush pulled on the same power that slew Jibrom and the Tribal Frost Warrior before, forming a hand of necrotic fungus to drop it with no chance of rising.
During this, though, the chained shadow of Fozz was doing equal damage. It launched chains, grapped Astrid, and siphonned off life force to heal itself from her. It had to. As the battle had gone on, the party witnessed the sun burning away large holes into the hollow, smoky creature very quickly. So effective was the chained shadow at this that it even dropped Astrid to the ground. Discarding the body, it continued on. Despite working with evewrything that Fozz knew, it did not know what would happen next because it had never happened before. Just a few days prior, Chupta had asked his companions to signtheir names in his book once more. Since then, they have had a small mote of purple sand drifting behind their ear. In this moment, the one behind Astrid's ear burst with life, managing to just barely keeper her up and conscious.
  Now, with the Chain Herald dealt with, Fozz still strode, wreathed in dusty shadow and chains locked around him. Astrid attempted to Dispel a magic aura upon him but did not find one to hold. Whatever this was, it was a presence that had an active hold of Fozz, a possession and a corruption. Fozz was burning away and needed time to fight this off. Crush drew out diamond dust attempting his restorative magic. The chains themselves grew thinner by fractions, the effect aiding the scenario but by no means fixing it. Hovering above trees, Chupta formed a sand coffin around Fozz, trying to banish away the possessing force. With sandcoffin when many links of chains. An orange glow of actual eyes could be seen beyond the smoking eye sockets but the essence still held the elf. Progress, but a ways to go.
  As the shadows continued to burn in the sun, Crush tried and emotional play to free the elf, asking him to remember when the moment in Jibrom's lab when he had kicked the tortle's shell. Crush fell down and withdrew. The shadow spawn took the opportunity to attack and rake, reaching into the shell to do damage but also using the shell to pry off chains, snapping and loosening them as he fought. Astrid attempted to lay her hands upon him to heal the elf. The Shadows merely thickened again, bolstering against the sun but doing nothing to break him free.
  The three companions broke. Each in their own way, they broke. Astrid gave into a forlorness. She backed away, unable to take more damage and feeling unable to help. Crush was done. He was mad. He would finish this. He conjured a thunderstorm to beat all others he could and smote down with lightning. Chupta wanted out. He did not want to finish this. He wanted to be gone, to save his friends and leave Fozz in the wilderness to deal with later. Chuptah attempted to haul his companions away while casting Fozz into the shadows of the Cauldron to hide.
  Astrid watched as the Shadow Chained elf panicked, overturning the cauldron to get out of the sun and she conjured a magical darkness to protect him. At the very least she could do that. Despite Chutpta's forced flight, Crush returned and Chupta dragged along behind, back to the place he had tried to get everyone to leave.
  In the protection of shadows, the Shadow Chained Fozz no longer felt the sun burning him away but did feel the loosened chains begin to constrict again. He lashed out time and again, launching chains at the woman who had saved him. With that, he tried break more chains free, desperately. But with those attacks, that battering damage, dropped the woman and dropped the globe of protective darkness. He began to sear again, whisping into smoke and blackening the snow beneath him. He was weak, he was stuck, he was hungry, he needed. So. Much.
  Words of encouragement came from Crush and Chupta to raise Astrid and push Fozz to break free, the purple sand hand pulling at chains. Crush transformed into a giant eagle to, winging by Fozz to draw his attention away from Astrid. But the food was too far. It was too late. As Fozz stood in the center of the blasted dell, he turned back fro the shadows of the cauldron as the last fringes of his form seared away in the sunlight, into ash and smoke, and vapor on the wind.
  After the battle drew to a close in the sodden dell, a slow processing of reality began. Unsureness. Hypotheses. Grasps at reality. Eventually ashes would be gathered for actions after further processing, but it was all so much.
  Astrid pulled back out the Shade Crystal to find it near translucent. A tinge of purple could be seen in place of the previous grey but she was weak. Myska was as confused if not moreso than than the companions. At first she was terrified and regretful when she learned that Fozz had been lost to the shadow and the chains. When it came to light that he had died in the sun, she somehow thought that good. Death was good because death meant Fozz's soul was still free. Had he been lost to the chains directly, he would no longer be.
  Conversation began to retrod ground you lot had covered before though she spoke less surely than in the past. Myska questioned why she had shown Fozz the entrapped entity within her spiritual realm. It did not make sense why she would show him. From Fozz it continued on to Crush.
  Myska questioned why Crush was with the group and why he had stayed. The ideas of being led under false pretenses came up and Myska did not know why that had happened. Why she had kept him if supposedly the Entity she held back had called him. Why did she even tell Crush of the entity? Knowledge of it gave it power. She shouldn't have told him. Moreso, how could Crush even be contacted by the entity if it did not know him? Knowledge was it's power but it's limitation. It should not have been able to call to Crush if Crush did not know it. Unless. Unless someone else had told the entity of Crush.
  The topic of Scizzord came up. Scizzord, the one who had been collecting the Temperance Shards with Altomari long before the group had gathered in Myska's temple. Scizzord who had a blood relation to Crush. Scizzord, who Altomari had stated that had a connection to the occult. If Crush was led astray by the entity imprisoned, someone had to tell the entity of him.
  Conversation transitioned on to futures. It was questioned if gathering more of Myska would change her personality, to introduce deciet, lying, and alternate goals. She did not know. She knew that as more of her was gathered, she remembered more of the past. Experiences change people so knowledge of experiences change people. Maybe gathering more of her wasn't such a good idea. The possibilities of Astrid returning to New Derth to have to solve the problems there on her own if the Temperance Shards were not the answer. Despite that, they knew that someone else was gathering Temperance Shards. If Scizzord wasn't gathering them for Myska, who or what was he gathering them for? Even if the unknown could taint their situation, gathering them for Myska was better than for something else.