2023/03/29: Hunt for the Lord of Nightmares Part 1 Report
General Summary
Knight, Daedalus, Buzz, Terana, Sunderfury, Zaran
Members of the Shadows of Existence came together once more, this time to fulfill their promise to the Dream Naga Queen and end the Lord of Nightmares once and for all. (And, just as important, to halt the assassination attempts the Lord was beginning to send against Knight.)
Before heading to Shisui, the party decided to visit Terana's sister, a powerful diviner who they hoped could give them more information about their target's whereabouts and defenses. They learned that his real name is Ssitor, and he is (or was) a naga prince who is slightly related to the Dream Naga Queen. He is a bad, bad family member. He wants to take over and kill or oppress everybody, and he's been working with the dream equivalent of bandits to accomplish this, going around the dream realm and causing problems and killing people.
Attempts to divine his location give lots of weird results. The most intriguing was the "Caverns and Castles of Darkness". He moves around a lot to avoid being a target. Further divination revealed that he is 312 years old. He is one of the most powerful dream controller/casters that the dream nagas have had in generations. Has a lot of allies on the bad side of dreams and nightmares. In effect, he has pretty much endless little minions.
A powerful dream blade, one imbued with lots of dream mojo, is required to hurt him. He also has a whole bunch of unspecified magic defenses.
The party thanked Terana's sister and her husband for their aid and hospitality and went on their way. The next step was to travel to Shisui. They decided that the most fitting option was to have Lume (Terana's intelligent sword Lumenciel) transport them via dream travel. Sure, he hadn't used the ability much, but most of the attempts had gotten where they were aiming, so it should work great!
The timeless run along a pathway through endless ocean hit its first obstacle when the group was attacked by what appeared to be a cardboard cutout of a sea monster. Buzz, Knight, and Daedalus braced to hold its charge or used magic to try to halt it, and Terana did her best to quickly befriend it and avoid a fight, but Zaran and Sunderfury were so stunned by the illogic of the creature that they did little beyond rubbing their eyes in astonishment. When the creature hit, the other four adventurers managed to hold firm, but the two dragons weren't so lucky; the impact blasted them off into the sky in a quite literally cartoonish fashion. And as soon as that was done, the cardboard sea monster proclaimed that "Maybe you aren't so bad", turned around, and disappeared off into the ocean of dreams. The four remaining adventurers were left watching it go and trying to find their still-flying party members in the distance in the other direction.
A short debate followed. The two dragons didn't seem to be coming back, which meant the four who remained had to either go on without them or try to adjust the dream path for a rescue mission mid-journey. As much as they didn't want anyone to get left behind, the latter was deemed inadvisable; Lume's dream travel wasn't too reliable to begin with, and if they changed course now, he had no idea where they'd end up. Better to get to Shisui and launch a rescue from there than to get themselves lost in the dreams as well.
After an indefinable span of running time, a second obstacle presented itself in the form of an angry flag of the Empire of Shisui. This time Buzz took full advantage of dream logic. While the rest of the remaining adventurers tried to immobilize the flag, he put everything he had into dreaming it into a useful back banner rather than an enemy. In a twist of illogic, it worked.
The party arrived safely in Shisui, and promptly set to figuring out how to reach and (if necessary) rescue the errant dragons. Buzz went ahead and opened a phoenix gate to wherever they were.
The dragons, meanwhile, had found themselves flying through the dream sky unti suddenly punching out into material reality. They were over the ocean, with water as far as the eye could see in all directions. As they were getting their bearings, they sensed movement in the water below them: Something very big was down there. They climbed to get some distance before it broke the surface.
The creature that appeared was a pale sea serpent of immense proportions. They'd rarely seen serpents so ugly; it had a twisted, armored face that only a mother (or Terana) could love. Zaran considered summoning fog to block its line of sight, but noticed that it barely seemed to have useful eyesight. It did have a sense of smell, though, so he summoned a stinking cloud instead.
The creature gave out a sort of mournful bellow, but did little else. After a moment of thought, Sunderfury flew down to attempt communication, now that it couldn't easily locate them. It responded with strange bellowing that wasn't comprehensible, but was clearly an attempt to respond. After a bit of back-and-forth, the two dragons realized it wasn't a failure of interpretation; the creature was actually just a baby. It wasn't mature enough to talk.
At about the same time, the phoenix gate appeared in the sky above them.
Sunderfury, ignoring the giant burning hole in the sky, realized that more than anything, the creature was lonely. He relayed this to Zaran and they ended up polymorphing the giant dragon-eel-linnorm-serpent into a pseudodragon and taking it with them through the gate.
They may have decided to name it Herb.
The party discussed their brief separate adventures and Knight and Terana introduced themselves to the baby. It was very happy to have found friendly people and was busy trying to figure out how to use limbs. The party also determined that the friendly beetle Knight had picked up was not polymorphed, just surprisingly old and intelligent. For a beetle, at least. The beetle told Terana where they were and gave her the information she needed to guide the group to Reela Su's fox village.
The first sign they were near the village was when they saw several foxfolk children playing a game where one would turn into a fox and the others would try to catch them. Seeing the adventurers, two ran off while one stayed to ask who they were and where they came from. Then some parents showed up, armed with stout sticks and parental rage, and the relay chain went along until Reela Su was summoned to handle the "outsiders" once again.
The party followed Reela Su to Budo. It normally would have taken most of a day, but the party had various ways to either move fast or be carried by the rest of the group. Atop the canopy of the giant trees, Reela Su let out a fox roar (which is more like a weird squeak) to get Budo's attention. As impressively as always, the earth and trees around them shifted and changed until they formed a vast draconic shape, and so Budo greeted them.
Knight introduced the new party members and promised tea and stories about Kenju. Over the course of the following conversation, the party handled both business and pleasure: Stories about Budo's son were relayed, and the party explained why they had returned to Shisui and why, in addition to the social visit, they had come to Budo. Budo agreed to show the spellcasters how to invoke the elements and spirits in order to cast high-level arcane spells.
Budo also was willing to heal the horrible scarring that was still visible on even the baby sea serpent's pseudodragon form. The elder dragon strongly recommended the party not dispel the polymorph on the enormous serpent while they were in Budo's woods. "He's almost as big as I am..."
The party cheerfully concluded their business with Budo and headed to see the Naga Queen. They left the beetle and baby dragon safely in the woods before they went. Knight cut a doorway directly to the dream realm, where several burly naga guards were already waiting, expecting the group. They guided the party straight to the throne room.
When the party arrived, the Dream Naga Queen was giving instructions to a party of teenage human adventurers. Apparently they'd gotten into some trouble and done something they weren't supposed to, so now they had to do favors in order to get out of that trouble.
After they were escorted off, the Shadows were summoned forth. They exchanged greetings and status updates with the queen: Apparently the Lord of Nightmares had been laying low since his encounter with Knight, attacking the queen's forces and the dream realm in general mainly through an unending army of minions and proxies. The Caverns and Castles of Darkness, previously pointed to by scrying, were a viable potential hideout for him, and the queen called one of her followers to guide the party to it. She also explained the Lord's various defenses that she knew about so far and the ways he'd proven his invincibility. The party remained confident that they had several options that should have a chance.
The party bid the queen farewell, and they set off to confront the Lord of Nightmares for what they hoped would be the last time.
Rewards Granted
2 xp
Magic back banner of Shisui
Character(s) interacted with
Notes
Terana is trying to help the elves in the Greylands. The elves there have split up into small populations living in separate dimensional pockets, and not only are non of them adventurers, they're anxiously isolationist, they're extreme introvert shut-ins, they don't know how to fight, and they're having trouble keeping up a stable population. Terana needs to toughen them up and get them working with each other and others.
Deadalus
Zaran
Sunderfury Ironspire
Buzz Gizmo
Terana DelGarrod
Knight of Darkhome
Report Date
29 Mar 2023
Primary Location
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