CC: Realities

Life, Achievement/ Win

The Fractured Pack regroup and commit fully to Louisa Prescott and the Tertalak.  Many clues are connected in time for another problem to be realized.

Elsewhere this morning in the predawn twilight, Sigismund slowly pulled himself out of the cave he had managed to find in the night before collapsing in exhaustion from his flight from Captain Moore. Rest, or rather unconsciousness, had cleared his mind for rational choices once again. Hearing the calls in the wood of citizens beckoning back lost survivors, Sigismund made his way towards but around Craven Cove. Finding some bodies along the way, he scavenged what gear he could before burying them in shallow graves. By dawn he arrived at the rally point and waited there for no one to show up. Eventually, he gave up on that plan and began stalking the jungles around the Manor and the slave compound trying to make use of his time. Eventually, one of Hali's messages came again and a meetup was arranged.
  Now, through the evening there were talks of abandoning Sigismund for abandoning them. There were discussions of merit, worth, loyalty, and expectations. Of what Sigismund must have experienced in Craven Cove and what misteps should be taken in stride as reality. When the party regathered, there were questions raised as to what happened that Sigismund played off as strategic separation, saving the trio from Captain Moore's wrath. In the end the subject was put to bed for more pressing matters, what to do. After much deliberation, it was decided that the only path forward was a direct assault on Shadeshore Manor. Louisa Prescott must be put down and they cannot risk attempting to fight the Tertalak at night again. Whatever had recalled it last night was not luck that could be relied upon again.
  The guards at the manor had increased since yesterday but with the combination of the heroes' assault and the revelations of Captain Moore's condition, this wasn't really a surprise. The party hit fast and strong. The initial facade of assassinating the guards at the house and getting in to the manor before Prescott knew they were there was broken when the front gate guards saw the heroes crossing the open ground over the estate. Bursting through the garage, it was a full on assault.
  As the heroes took out the manor tunnnel guards on oneside and the incoming gate guards on the other, Lady Prescott showed herself on the front balcony. The Lady gave into her guards doom easily and willing subjected some of them to her freezing, drowning magic to encompass more of the Fractured Pack in it. After doing so, she retreated into her bedroom once more as the Tertalak crawled out of it's hiding space in the Reading Room.Hali summoned her Awkaened Tome into her room to summon her aberrant Byakhee as Anna Flew up top to hammer into Prescott. The tertalak's sludge form wrapped around the building and grew to it's a full size upon the side of the house. It sent a deluge of tentacles at Hali and Byakhee. While tearing through Byakhee, Anna's mantle of yellow protected her entirely from it. Louisa Prescott looked on in horror. At Anna's imperviousness to the greatest power of her creature.
  Down Below, Buck and Sigismund dealt with the onlaught of guards, dropping them one by one with perfectly placed arrows, whirlwinds of daggers, and crud assassinations. From there, they turn ther attention to the Tertalak, firing at it at a distance and charging up to close the distance, the two extremes of martial combat.
  Within Prescott's Bedroom, the woman was torn apart. Blasts of eldritch energy from the tome spirit, Anna's thundering blows, a resummoned Byakhee, Prescott had the upper hand only at one point where she worped Anna's summoned entangling tentacles against the party but that was it. She used both a potion on hand and scrambled away to a bureau drawer for another before beginning to collapse under the force of the triumverate of Hali, Byakhee, and Anna. In a last desperate play, she teleported from the room. Hali, who had been slowly moving up the stairs inside the home, heard Prescott apparate in the locked, cobwebbed room beyond the gallery that the party had not entered. Sigismund yelled for Hali to finish this but she found the Gallery door locked as well. Instead of breaking through, Hali simply walked back down the stairs, whispering words pettiness, doom, and pity to the woman crying above. As her dissonant whispers played out, Hali telepathically felt the dying woman's sobs in reply.
  As Louisa Prescott's death commenced, the house itself shuddered. The boards warped and paint pealed. Stains grew across the house and water began to leak from the building itself... and then it begand to pour, in gushes and geysers, it poured forth. The Tertalak, began to bubble and churn, growing and recoiling on itself as it's mortal master dies and the aberrant creature became unleashed.
  As water began to pour from the house, upstairs in Louisa's bedroom Sigismund realized that is late arrival to the party was met with far worse conditions. He whirlwind attacked with his cutlasses against the growing and surging creature to find new dangers waiting for him. The creature splattered with every hit attack causing acid to coat everything surrounding it it.
  Outside, the companions witnessed the water levels surging incredibly quickly. A barrier, not too dissimilar to the visual one Prescott had made last time, surrounded the house and kept the water contained to the immediate property, to create a filling tank to drown the companions. Anna flew to the souther border and placed her hand against the field. It flexed against her push but did not immediately permit exit. There was a chance the party could flee but it would require each of them to break through the barrier, something that was not guaranteed and with each successful escape would further doom anyone who failed to get through.
  As the water level rose, the Tertalak flew from the chamber into the driveway before jetting through the water like an octopus through the tunnel to the back gardens. As it mingled with the waves, the party saw it rebuild itself in the liquid similar to how it had rebuilt itself in the shadows the night before. Buck and Anna took to the lower roof of the garages as Sigismund flung himself through the sitting room window to the waters beneath. Despite his bravery and unrelenting pursuit of his foe, he was equally met with a flurry of tendrils and tails damaging and disorienting him before Tertalak jetted away to the opposite side of the gardens.
  As the water levels surged upwards, currents pulled the companions toward the Tertalak and battered them to hazard held spells. Sigismund climbed back onto the balcony with the elevating waters as Hali joined him in the sitting room. The sitting room filled to the ceiling as the water level rose. Hali's genasi lineage filled her lungs with air on her own as Sigismund was forced to swim outside and eventually climb to the manor's roof. Once above he could plink down with arrows.
  The Tertalak remained low near the ground, utilizing the depths to heal and as a defense from anagging arrows. It would jet it to attack before retreating again far swifter than the party could keep up. Hali's attempts to disorient it and send it fleeing only aided in it's speed and positioning. It was kiting the party as dry footing was slowly eaten up by the supernatural tides. At this rate, it was a one-sided battle of attrition where the Tertalak's water environment protected it from ranged assaults and and it recovered in moments from any damage done it it all the while the danger of drowning grew greater and greater. The party had to change tactics.
  The first concern was to deal with environmental danger. Anna produced three mechanical devices that produced fixed pockets of air arouind her, Buck, and Sigismund's heads. The next concern was the was mobility. Hali utilized her scepter of the Yellow King to take on cephalopod appendages to allow for water movement as Anna and Buck dove into the rising waters to attempt to corner the Tertalak. The Tertalak aided in this problem as it raised another. Time and again it sent out its surging line of acidic tendrils to not only wash it's targets with acid but to reel them back in adjacent to it (another new danger of it's unleashed presence). Twice Buck dodged this attack fully to twice over watch a friend get snagged behind him and tumbled through the water toward the Tertalak.
  In these assaults, Hali was brought under and in doing so her genasi breath no longer saved her from the environment. The companions attempted to keep her up while pressing heavy and hard on the monster. Instead of fleeing, the Tertalak now stayed. While it would not willingly take a beating from one companion, it would happily allow it with all of the companions around it. Every blow spilled more acid through the waters to eat away at everyone... well everyone except for Anna. The mustard fur and feather guarded her from the greatest danger of the Tertalak and its enhanced form merely enhanced the relative boon that the King in Yellow had granted.
  As Hali was battered unconscious once again in her retreat from a coming cloud of eating death, Sigismund's renewed proximity allow him to cut through the beast a hundred times but doing so brought him to edge of consciousness in the burning waters. Despite the effort, the Tertalak remain virulent as it started to soak much of that damage back up from the waters around it.
  Buck saw the doom that was coming if this wasn't ended immediately. In another 10 seconds both Sigismund would be down and not getting back up. From there it was a death spiral as all of the work that the four had done would not be maintained with two fighters left , for however long that number remained true. Utilizing the focus Sigimund had drawn to himself at the brink of death, Buck swam around the Tertalak and conjuring tremoring vibration along his silver sai. Slashing it through the core of the beast, the shockwave that was centered in the Tertalak's core exploded outward to destroy the beast (a critical hit sneak attack Booming blade with the silver sai).
  With the death of the Tertalk, the supernatural dweomer of the depths broke and the ludicrous amount of water poured out thunderously across the estate ( 6.5 millions gallons / 10 times the volume of an olympic swimming pool / over 27,000 tons). A spare moment prior in the combat had one of the Fractured Pack wondering if there was an illusion effect on the outside of the water containment to hide this as well. With the upturning of trees and the ravaging of the greenery about the estate, it was easy to tell that this was not a private affair. Calls could be heard from the slave's quarters and a congregation was forming. Working fast, the companions would need to complete their business and be gone before any form of investigation or counter assault could be launched.
  The immediate attention was put towards the Tertalak's remains. Almost the entirety of the beast had disseminated with the killing blow. The only thing that remained was a sinlge lengthy tapered tendril though it was uncertain with this was an appendage or a core essence of the creature. The tendril was taken up for later use as a weapon or for crafting with it. Within the Manor, the companions found the same degredation within as they had without. The walls, furniture, and décor was more than sodden but vastly decayed. The companions would later manage to gather some of the salvageable finery: Crystal goblets, silverware, procelain, and the like.
  Heading upstairs, they broke through the gallery door and into the blacked out storage room to find the waterlogged cobwebs now laryering across the decaying room like a glistening slime. Towards the outside of the room unseen by Hali's previous peeping with a bed with an open coffin placed upon it. Within the burial box was a waxy voodoo-dollike like facsimile of a man with a face matching the noblemen in the gallery's portrait. The faux man wore find clothes in his casket bu they were open at the chest where the sculpture had been opened up like an autopsy revealing a a faxe heart riddled with holes. Draped across this macabre seen was the dead Louisa Prescott, hand still clenching onto the stake she had been using to stab the ghastly facsimile during her panicked sobbing death.
  Within the dead lady's private study, the quick search by Buck and Sigimund found two items of note outside the basics of daily life in Craven Cove. The more prominent item found was a scroll of the spell Dream. In conjunction with this magic was a dream journal that served more as a psychiatrist's dossier for all her servants nightmares that she personally made worse as a means of worship to the Slumbering Nightmare This domination and mental destruction of the staff would make them more subserviant and explain why the butler crumbled under Sigismunds previous pushes to go get help despite doing so relatively poorly. Hali left a not in this chamber to the general populace which read:
  “Your "Settlement" was built with the aid of Abberant forces.
For this it will fall thusly.
Your "Allies" have all but disappeared”
  Later discussion of the Louisa's room of death, connections to her private journals found at the shipwreck, and these artifacts of her domain brought final clarity to what drove the woman to this place in life. Her early life was as a vampire's thrall to be used as the next social face/figurehead of Baron Harewell's rule so no one would question his eternal presence despite being a human. Despite being rescued from that living nightmare, the horrors continued to attack her in her dreams. It was in this place darkness that the Slumbering Nightmare had found her and guided her to find his shrine. In service, her power grew and she used it to create Craven Cove. In her desperation during the assault, she had magically fled to a room of her own nightmares to beseech her great old one to save her. Before her calls and suffering could be heard, Hali had put an end to it.
  Having learned what they could from the home, the Fractured Pack fled back to the woods. Sigismund would lead them to the cave he had found the night before. Two things of note happened with this flight though. First, Hali conjured up her floating disk to bring both the coffin and the corpse of Louisa Prescott with her.
  Second, Buck split from the group to privately investigate the situation at the slavesquarters. Buck saw the entire populous of the compound gathered together around the water trough. Scanning the slaves, his eyes unfortunately saw a familiar face, a brown furred hulk of a shifter that stood head and shoulders over most of the other slaves. A handful of guards barely surrounded them with the musketeer in the on the watchtower above. A red haired dwarven woman was heavy-handedly maintaining the crowd with assurances that either everything would be okay or they would be dead. Buck saw that the guards all had grenades which could easily tear through dozens of the slaves each in their weakened, close-quarters state. The warden had no idea what had happened at the manor but given what she had seen from outside, she was actively keeping the slaves in a hostage state until things got figured out. With no means to safely act now, Buck caught up with his companions in the woods in search of their cave for recuperation.
  Rest was needed and had. Anna rebuilt Fluffins who had been smashed to pieces by the tertalak. Hali read through the dream journal and pieced together the complete history of Louisa Prescott. She also offered the corpse and coffin into her tome. Hali also took time to write in her book to contact Jayden the crude. The correspondence went as such:
  Hali: "Did you enjoy your break Captain Jayden?"
  Jayden: “WHAT THE BLOODY HELL. AGAIN> WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY WANT?”
  Hali: "Just another Research Project for you, concerning a history and the arcane. If you do it well, it will expedite your freedom from me"
  Jayden: “Oh, please. Whatever to get you out of my bloody head.”
    Hali: “It has to do with those that fought their Pacts, and the consequences thereof"
    Jayden: “So that will help me break your- NO DON'T THINK THAT SHE'LL HEAR YOU.”
  Hali: "Get on that and you will be free."
  After the initial rest was had, Sigismund went on a short hunt before dinner was cooked. He nly returned with a single colugo and vegatables. The man attempted to teach Buck the etiquette of fine dining with the looted wares. Hali assisted by conjuring her floating disk to act as a table and made notes of phantom memories of her own properness. Laughs and catharsis were had after the diresome day. Unfortunately, it could not last.
  The first topics to glower the day was what would be happening next. The party determined to continue their guerilla tactics against Pleasant Dryden and Captain Moore. That was their only real hope to deal with the army of pirates and the werewolf. On that though, Sigismund had a request for Hali this evening. His initial questions of utilizing the dome in a confined space to block of escape seemed to be for a means of trapping the lycan form of Captain Moore if he could be captured during the day. Hali felt that if she position the dome properly in the cave, it would not be possible for a bulky form to escape. Sigismund's continued presence on needing the tactic this night enlightened her to other thoughts. She asked the man what ailed him most about this and he replied that it was the needless violence. Hali cursed the man with an incantation of fumblings and discoordination.
  As Hali prepared her dome, Sigismund stripped off his weaponry and armor, clothing and gear to be kept within the dome. He took his position deep within the cave's wedged back as the dome sprung into existance without allowing his entrance. The curved fell short of the ceiling by necessity but only a foot and a half gap remained with the jagged stone roof undulating overhead. The man separate from his friends sweated and shivered. A spasm and a crack of breaking bone. A grunt of pain and rasp of exasperation mixed with the slamming into the wall. Bones elongated, Fur grew, and skin was torn away by elongating claws. A single howl echoed in the caves and into the night.
  The werewolf slammed angrily into the dome before realizing the futility. It dug clawsa into stone and began to climb up and over. Hali took Buck's Silver sai to prod out at the werewolf to try to back it away into the crevice again but a claw lashed out onto the weapon and tore it from the woman's hand. It definitely did not like the silver but was not immediately harmed by it as the fully grabbed weapon was hurled against the back wall. The werewolf continued to pull itself up and over the dome dragging its back across the jagged ceiling. Desperate to escape, it flayed its own hide to do so toppling over toward the cave entrance in a bloodied state. The creature picked itself up and loped off into the jungle on swift legs into a darkness. The beast sought to feed it's hunger for flesh and violence.