Seeking Out Nightmares and Finding One

Life, Trauma/ Loss

The Fractured Pack finds the Shrine of the Slumbering Nightmare and starts the dominoes of a tragedy.  Four companion's heated press into the shrine ends with only three fleeing from it.  They seek a hole to hide in by there can be no true rest around this Shrine.  When the nightmare finally ends, reality must be faced.

The Fractured Pack followed an uphill gradient on their travel. Despite this, the closer they got to their destination, the more standing water they found. Not flowing, just rising up from an unnatural watershed. Hali took this as good news as they were seeking a supernatural force. By the end of the day, the Fractured Pack found themselves stumbling upon pillars, walls, sparse cobblestones that grew in regularity until it formed a stone walkway. Then they found the center of their search, a temple that descended into the ground. A 15 ft pitted entryway down a steep set of stairs that connected the upper promenade to this descent into the temple structure. At the base reverse dais, they found a second, narrow staircase the lowered into the ground like a cellar. Narrow stone doors parallel to the ground blocked the descent after the first few meters.
  Examining the doors, they were incribed with a monstrous cephalopod horror, bat wings and dragon claws. A thin silver line was inscribed around the door and across the center seem. Anna, Buck, and Hali ascended the promenade stairs once more to allow Broxon to open the door, ready for what may happen. Heaving upward, space swirles and broken in front of him and out poured a creature of horrifying appearance. Melted, blubber fleshy was broken by a hundred eyes and mouths. Tentacles thrashed about and ground all around it contorted under it's influence. The stones melted and became sticky. They bulged and buckled like rubber. Reality itself rebels at this melted creatures mere presence. Hali knew what she saw: a handservant of the Slumbering one, a Shoggoth of twisted flesh, babbling maws and piercing eyes.
  Broxon's immediate presence on it brought him to a maddened, confused state. Anna sent in Fluffins and Hali conjured a slaad-like Byakhee to join Broxon but all quickly fell under the maddening sentience of the Shoggoth. The trio either lashed out madly at each other or fumble to even remain existant. The Shoggothe emitted a caustic haze that damaged Fluffin's visual receptors, blinding it.
  Hali heard the babbles and understood them. Commands to submit, fall to the void, to give all over in despair. The genasi called out spite towards the creature, belittling it and it's master. The Shoggoth took note and slathered it'self forward across the ground. As it pursued upwards, the maddened Broxon fled into a corner of the anti-dais. Anna took flight and the ladies assailed it with blasts of fiery and eldritch energy. During this, Buck took dotting shots, sliding out from behind pillars, skirting the edge of the pit, and finding cover in the jungle brush.
  As the Shoggoth clambered next to Hali, she raised her defenses to withstand the slamming pseudopods. Hali then sent a wave of rolling fire into and through the shoggoth, tearing holes through it and rolling it backwards. Buck took the opportunity he saw with the fleshy monsters expanded out to fire and arrow at it's core. Hissing and squealing, another warp in reality spiral as the creature was rent back to where it had come.
  The companions saw to their wounds, discovering that Flufflin's eyes were for the moment unrepairable. Anna would be able to do something about them in the morning but for the moment she did not have the right tools enchanted for the job without doing a complete rebuild with parts she didn't have.
  After consolidating forces, the companions determined to delve within the shrine. Descending stairs into darkness, Anna lit a torch which has light on a partially flooded grand entrance hall with the stairs descending straight through the middle. To halls left this chamber, to the left and the right. From the left, a clicking, shrieking, babble could be heard. From the right, nothing. Behind the stairs and between these two halls was a statue of the great Slumbering one standing before a set of double doors. The Statue held rusty orange items in both hands: A trident and a pair of scales made of orichalcum.
  Hali and Buck incanted out divination spells to better take in their environment but this drew the attention of the shrieking creatures. A wave of thigh-high rabble poured in like coral and geod growing mad toddler with lipless maws of fangs. Broxon richocheted his hammer about, bouncing it and recoiling it up and down, splattering through a host of them. It was almost... anticlimactic. That is until a larger creature joined. Going from half-height to almost double height, this second creature had six human-like arms that ended in a tri-tipped claw. Down the blue carapaced body was two rows of hooked anthropoid appendages as if this creature was half man and half shrimp. The mangler charged Broxon, took a readied shot from Buck, and then rapped around the dwarf. All six clawed hands groped about the dwarf, wedging through armor gaps as it's elongated head shrieked next to Broxon's ears. In a single moment, the creature dropped the dwarf who tumbled facedown into the water.
  There was a quick flurry of movement from Anna and Buck to save Broxon and dispose of the rest of the little grue still in the chamber with others flooding in. Hali trusted her companions as she approached the statue, seeking to deface it. Drawing a pickaxe, she smote down on the statue to no avail. In bringing her full attention to the statue, though, the cold blue eyes pierced into here, threatening to take over. Despite this, she steeled herself and felt the approval of her patron seeking to aid her to keep the influence at bay.
  As her companions finished off the grue, a cephalopod headed priest emerged through the double doors behind her. Not opening the doors and walking through, meerly phasing through the stone doors. It bade her to submit to the Slumbering One, leave all she had in reverence to it and be gone. Hali refused, attempting to surge electricity through the form but found it to only be an illusion. To spite it, she instead clambered up the statue resisting it's pull, and stole the trident from it's grasp.
  What follows is a mad flurry of moments that escalated and sidestepped, but never gave ground. Broxon attempted to charge the priest not knowing the creature to be an illusion. The hammer whiffed through. In rage he turned to finished his angered assault on statue for the chill blue eyes to radiate over the dwarf, bringing him to a paralyzed stand still. With Broxon out of the battle for the moment, other players joined. More grues and another mangler rushed in from the left hallways in shrieks and squeals as the right hall became filled with shambbling frilled and quilled fish people.
  Hali, Buck, and Anna found themselves needing to deal with many problems at once. Buck had taken an archers perch back up on the stairs. The Mangler charged up to him to lock him in melee away from his party. Hali temporarily committed Byakhee to hold the right hall, trading slams for retaliatory venomous quills. Anna bobbed in the air, alight over the stairs and around to where she was needed. And then the double doors opened to reveal the true Nightmare Priest. It assailed the party with horrific slams of it's tentacle-etched rod and volleys of psionic burst coral projectiles. Whenever the party tried to assault it, the found their arrows or arcane blasts pummeling into an underling, the priest shifting space itself trade places with a loyal servant. As the party fretted, they also challenged, and besmirched. Hali stole the orichalcum scales, and after a seeming eternity of fighting, Broxon Broke free of the statue altar's mental hold.
  The trio called out about flight, but the dwarf wouldn't have it. Now when he had been outed time and time again against this enemy. He charged into the darkness of the deeper shrine, following the Priest of the Slumbering one as it continued to castle itself deeper. Hali blazed a trail through the waters upon a dragon's stride as Anna and Buck found themselves not only cleaning up the previous underlings but having more continuing to filter into the fray from the deeper tunnels of the shrine.
  With a song of Ysgard and Tempus upon his lips, Broxon was brought under by the heavy smiting blows of the tentacle engraved rod, the psionic coral, and seemingless tide of underlings. Hali attempted the same play as with Ripus, letting Broxon take the beatings and raising him up with her offset dweomer of Wither and Bloom. What wasn't accounted for was that she didn't have the defenses of last time. There was no windwall to hold off the stirges. Charging from a back corridor was another of the manglers that battered through her and onto Buck. As Broxon was dropped get again, Buck watched as the priest lowered it's rod onto Broxon's head, the tentacles unfurling to wrap around. In dismay at the choice, he heaved Hali out of the water, shambled towards Anna in desperate need of escape.
  The artificer, cloaked the two from visual sight to take to wing herself. The trio climbed the steps back out into the outer temple. Night was falling. Having escaped the interior of the Shrine of the Slumbering Nightmare, the companions only remaining choice was continued flight. Buck took a moment to bring Hali back to consciousness. He used the steep set of stairs as a brace as he hiked Hali up, fumbled his fingers around the invisible woman's center of mass to find the solar plexus and administered the needle ha had been granted from his pact with Norzim. Once Hali was up again, the invisible pair rushed off into the jungle as Anna had taken flight through the canopy above.
  Knowing they didn't have the energy to go far, the winged woman scout for a cave to hide out in. The companions fled for more than a mile but less than two before such a cave was found. The trio got into the enclosed space before the invisibility fell from Hali, the genasi asking everyone to buy her time. Within the mouth of the cave, she began a ritual to conjure forth her protective dome, though far faster than before. Rather a slow methodical placement of phantom pages from her tome, both her arms went to the sides as tome floated in the air, pages tearing out on their own to build the hut rapidly (Awakened Spellbook feature of the scribe).
  As this happened, Buck collapsed against the wall, Anna moved to the back of the chamber. It was only once the invisibility dweomer was dropped and Hali turned back from her work to look at her companions that she realized that someone was missing. The news was broken. Rapid processing began. Partial, haptic, and layered with many emotions. Most forward in their grief was Buck. The shifter was dejected. He had been delaying saving the people of Craven Cove on the hope that nothing was, trying to live in an optimistic fantasy of the situation. He had been procrastinating saving people and now he has done something that led to someone else's death. Whether the fault or the blame was merited, that did not matter. Buck could not rationalize the situation.
  Hali offered up a solution to the problem. She had done what her patron wanted in gathering more orichalcum in the form of the stolen trident and scales relics. She could beseech the Yellow King for aid. Hali was unsure if it was within the Yellow King's domain but it was worth a shot. With this, though, there was risk. If the Yellow King would do this, Broxon may not be the same on his return. The Yellow Sign leaves it's own marks and the Broxon that is returned may not be the Broxon that left.
  With this knowledge, the party debated what was right and proper. Buck's own emotions poured forward into the debate while Anna's reservations, the suspicion and judgment she had made of Hali's patron back in Lushbrume held forward here. From Buck's perspective, “[Broxon] just renounced Tempus for us. For us to not die for him. To travel with us. I don't think he would be abandoning us for another type of warrior's death.” A push to do what he could to save Broxon. Anna tried to make a counter point of stealing away Broxon's afterlife in Ysgard. About how furious Broxon would be. Buck merely responded, “I want him to be mad at me.”
  With her logical and softer point failing to get the desire she wanted, Anna then leaded into her prejudiced. Straight forwardly stated, she opposed Hali's patron claiming the situation was not natural. Hali merely retorted with, “Druids resurrect things all the time.” Despite Anna wanting nothing to do with this, Hali ushered Buck to sit across from her, setting her tome to levitated between the two of them, and coaxed Buck through the ritual. She told the shifter that something of worth would have to be given. Buck produced his original bow, the one his father had made for him. The genasi began her call.
  “ Oh Yellow King, your humble servant (said with annoyance) I humbling ask your assistance to bring back Broxon, however you see fit, as well as assistance in defeating your enemies. With this request we make these offerings. A weapon most prized historically by his closest friend and one who would be willing to do anything to bring him back and the orichalcum trident and scales of the false slumbering one.”
  The three offerings were made, placed over the tome to be absorbed downward through the binding between the pages of the open book. As this finished, the headband Hali wore began to glow a dirty yellow. It extended down over her eyes and pull back across her head to form hood. The mantle merged with her yellow robes and extended further behind here smothering her. Shadows and writhing forms escaped from the back of the cloak hinting at a greater presence beneathe though Hali's lower face still shown from under the cowl. From the inside of the hood a hundred voices echoed out in the All Speech.
  The voices questioned why they should aid in the revival of one companion when another had already been promised. Hali negotiated with entity surrounding her, playing up the value of having another follower, one as powerful as Broxon. The entity granted boons accordingly. First, emerging from the cracked tome was an orichalcum rod, an arcane scepter that flared near the top to form the silohuette of the robed entity, hood hooking back down reminiscent of a bird's beak. The Sceptar of the Yellow King was granted to aid in Hali's work and as a reminder of the promises given. For Broxon, they would have to retrieve his body as well as the true treasure of the Shrine of the Slumbering Nightmare. Locked, hidden away within were the bones of the ancesters. To revive Broxon, they would have to lay the bones over the fallen companion.
  With boons given, the outer mantle that anointed Hali disintegrated off of the genasi. After such a long discussion on if they should try to save Broxon, this step forward was a way but not a solution. The Fractured Pack was in no form to just hike back down into the shrine. The remainder of the evening was ruminations on finding help. They could turn their attention to Craven Cove, rescue those people and hopefully find aid. They could return to Jijiado in hopes of pulling on the good will Buck had garnered with Mesarth. Conversations of possibilities were sprinkled with Anna's disdain for what they were doing but they needed to do something. Despite the plans, the worries, the preparations, none would come to pass though. They needed rest and that would change everything.
  Within the cave, within the dome, Buck and Anna had their sleep. Hali, eternally awake, unresting, sat and waited. She had sent out Byakhee to patrol. She watched, and waited. The darkness fell heavy and hard in the jungle. A thousand creatures could be heard in the shadows though everything muffled. A thousand eyes could be felt though none seen. The darkness held it's own pressure against Hali in her protective shell. Despite hiding, they were not safe. Her companions began to fret in their sleep and did not stop. Hali studied them and took notes but did not disturb their distress.
  Tossing and turning, sweating, gasping, shivering. It would not be a restful night for the two that needed sleep. Within their dreams they found only nightmares. The horrors of the depths, torments of icy waters and eternal drowning. With it came the voice of the Slumbering Nightmare's priest with a promise that they too would be abandoned to their fates as they had abandoned their friend.
  In the predawn gloom of the jungle, a thunder cloud rolled and both companions awakened in pain and terror, unrested and underoptimal. Standing out among the gloom of the jungle was the unwelcome host. The priest had come to finish the job with the remainder of his shrine: a pair of grues, a pair of manglers, and a pair of pterois.
  The companions called out in defiance as the small horde charged in. The companions tried to hold up Hali's protective field to utilize both it's impenetrable nature and the advantages of the enemies only seeing the paper, but it would not last long. The priest summoned a whirlpool around the outside to eat away at the paper and dispel the effect. From there it was a mad scramble across the field.
  The priest was the primary threat of both magic and menace but not the most immediate. Two manglers were already on top of the Fractured Pack, creatures that had dropped Broxon in six seconds. Hali used a considerable amount of power attempting to keep a contorted from of Byakhee on the battle field simply to absorb the blows of the manglers while they were dispatched. It took to whole forms and must of Fluffin's reserves but the party held out.
  Getting at the priest was another game entirely. With the space warping capability, they first had to dispatched the lesser enemies for any reliable shots. Even a quick volley at all targets from Hali's blasts wouldn't work, that just killed an underling faster. Buck was chased by the quilled fishy laborers as he placed his shots about the battlefield elsewhere and Anna Lashed out with sword and flame. Slowly, it whittled down to just the Priest. With that, though, he summoned a globe impenetrable darkness filled with freezing temperatures and acidic tentacles to harass both Hali and Anna. The two worked their way out but the priest stayed in. Holding his concentration on the effect, nearly half a minute went by as the depths blessed creature lurked in the darkness sending out tentacle-etched rod blows a the enemies within reach before beginning to volley out the pisonic coral comets.
  The Fractured Pack did everything they could do deal with him within. Volleys were blindly sent back in, Anna greated large gusts of winds with her winds, and Buck even lobbed in a fire apple to explode as he skirted the outsides. In the end though, it was the endless cold and acidic tethers that eroded the priests mind and caused the darkness to drop. Not soon enough, though, as Hali was felled by a volley of the psionic coral comets.
  In rage, Buck charged. But not in his usual direction. In such times, the medic usually charges to the aid of the fallen. He left Hali on the ground. He charged the priest in rage and sorrow and desperate fervor, hate upon his lips. He swiped and snapped but was not a close quarters fighter. Anna winged in to aid but continued to retreat, taking the opportunities of Buck's distraction to get in a booming blade but never stayed for long, swiftly getting out of the situation. She attempted a booming blade and retreat to bait the priest into the destructive discharge but he had seen it fell his pterois and did not need to move, able to send highly destructive volleys himself. No, Buck would have to finish this up close. No one else was willing to stand toe to toe with the nightmare but you can't run from a nightmare. It follows wherever you go. Buck was not a close quarters fighter, but you don't need to be up close to face your fears. You merely need to plant your feet, steady your aim, and not waiver.
  And like that the arrow was through the creature's heart. Anna tended to Hali calling out a swarm of spiders to stitch her wounds back closed. The nightmare was over. Despite that, the worst was yet to come. After the nightmare comes the dawning world of reality, and dealing with everything that entails.