2023/06/28: Following Necrosa's Trail Report
General Summary
Knight, Buzz, Lillith, Union, Zaran, Kal'vus
Currently in the Rook: Elder titan who controls destiny, the king of Blackmoor, a primordial dragon, Calantha ("leader of the four horsemen of the Renedge apocalypse", not through any special trait but she just knows them and they listen to her)...
The first three aren't even in the top five most dangerous individuals in Castle Fallingstar. Largely because the True Order lives here.
Anyway, the party has returned and received the missive from the king of Leithien. There are seven dungeons near Leithien's borders, all hidden by effects like those created by the stealth device. The party needs to hit them.
Other parties are assembling and preparing to head out. A grizzled, bearded elven ranger came over to Lillith. He had new intel: Necrosa's minions have proven detectable by dryads, and Leithien has a dryads available to attach to parties. Lillith took him up on the offer.
Ik-chuk is now a psychic rogue. Buzz had given him a +3 katana, while the executive had been given a +5 staff. Lillith gave Ik-chuk a +5 ring with 25% MR and a pair of +5 daggers. Knight, Buzz, and Lillith gave or loaned some additional magical gear to both Ik-chuk and Union.
The Alvidarian party headed out before the Shadows.
The ranger returned, introducing a meek-looking woman (5'2" or 5'3") in an elven cloak. Illease the Dryad. Her tree has been beset by monsters. She can sense the evil of the creatures and can give the party some direction. She also has some druidic abilities. She actually meeped when the ranger pulled her over. She is notable for her extremely quiet voice. Pretty, cute nature spirit. She's a hamadryad.
Ik-chuk: Half-nezumi, half-rannit. (Japanese ratfolk, some other kind of ratfolk.) Used identify on him to check.
Lillith tried to find out which party was going where and ended up coordinating it herself. The Shadows ended up heading for the farthest facility. The Alvidarians went for the middle. The other three parties prepared for their own targets. One group of bases was going to be left alone initially. They'd be handled by whoever finished first, if that group didn't need to go and rescue another.
Before they left, Union went to ask Ythomb if he knew anything about the ancient fractal shortsword Union had picked up. Only new info was that Union had to use the sword a lot if he wanted it to be important.
Zaran flew most of the party toward the base. Knight was fast enough to fly himself, and acted as an agile escort.
Partly mechanical bird things bouncing around in the trees below? Cyber-dire-corby ninjas? Very quick. Charged up from the trees when the party began descending. Knight landed on the first of ten before it could get its attacks off. He tore through it, but it was closer than anyone should have been comfortable with, and it scrabbled at him with what appeared to be extra bladed limbs before it went down.
Zaran tossed a firebolt at a second, but the bolt was largely diffused by the same sort of defensive effect that Knight had struggled with. Lillith pulled out the chair of awesome fireworks and launched missiles at two of the unidentified hostiles, three at the one Zaran shot and four at another.
Two bursts of four blasts of necromantic green energy launched at Knight. Knight casually sideflapped. The blasts dissipated into the distance. Buzz dodged another four. Lillith barely needed to think to dodge her own. Union, Ik-chuk, and Kal'vus also dodged. Zaran only got past three.
Zaran could feel the energy of the remaining blast tearing at his very life force. It wasn't enough to kill him, but it wasn't going to heal easily, and it hurt.
The dryad was even less dextrous, and less lucky. She got hit by two. She screamed and fell limp, either unconscious or dead.
Buzz saw the dryad drop, and he is not a subtle man. He responded with a miracle via Phoenix Gate. He touched the dryad's hand and said no. She woke and began to sit back up on Zaran's back, glowing brightly. Zaran, being unable to see her, started to get concerned about the unknown glowing warm thing on his back.
Kal'vus tossed a wind attack at one and charged another. Like with the rest of his party, his first four attacks seemed to be deflected or negated, but the rest landed solidly. He hacked the thing apart.
Union, true to form, manifested improved concealing amorpha, giving him some cover. Illease, meanwhile, had been planning to call lightning, but with the empowerment by Buzz she chose a different tack. She called a flame strike, and it consumed one of the corbies pretty much entirely.
Zaran felt unclean as a certain rat-man climbed around and hid inside his crevices.
The dire corbies were flying fast, beginning to go past the party rather than directly at them. For most, catching up to the corbies would be a hard chase. Knight was fast enough that he just appeared suddenly in front of the next in line and eviscerated it just like the first.
Zaran and Lillith tossed more projectiles. Zaran missed this time, not quite getting the lead right. Lillith had better aim. Arrows were spread across half of the surviving corbies, breaking the shields on two and damaging the one on the third.
The corbies accelerated and dove into melee. Buzz took two solid slashing hits. A second corby spiked himself directly into Zaran's chest. Two more charged Kal'vus, taking him by surprise with their speed. He was saved by his divine toughness, but took a lot of slashing. The last two went for Illease, but Ik-chuk threw himself in front and intercepted one in midair. He managed to deal some wounds, but he took a near-gutting in return. The other corby got by him but was mostly fended off by the fire around Illease. The monster was beginning to melt as it tried to reach her.
And then Buzz pulled out the magic missile Uzi and filled those last two attackers with the magic equivalent of lead, before drawing a Pokeball and summoning swarms of angry bats on top of each of the surviving four. Zaran was wondering why he suddenly couldn't see his midsection.
The corbies expected that the wounds they had dealt to Kal'vus were fatal. He took advantage of this. He bladedanced through them, severely mauling them in return. They weren't dead yet, but if they followed him in his bladedance, they soon would be.
Union tried to empower his sword so he could stab one of the corbies on Zaran, but he took it too far. He promptly passed out, but his sword was very glowy.
Ik-chuk was climbing all over the closest corby, holding on with his teeth and a pair of daggers. He wasn't doing much damage, but he was thoroughly distracting it. Illease tried to faerie fire that corby to help, but what she got instead was an enormous blast of faerie light that hit the enemies, the party, and some woodland creatures down below. No one took damage, but everyone was impressively glowy. Knight ignored this and arrived to help Ik-chuk and Illease, tearing apart both of their opponents with casual ease.
Zaran continued his glide, heading towards Kal'vus. He cast a mass cure wounds when he was in range. He managed to catch all the wounded in his radius, and Kal'vus found himself ready for round two.
Lillith put her weapons away and drew her instrument. With a blast of epic music, she commanded and inspired the bat swarms. They descended upon the last two corbies. Within moments, there was nothing left but horrifying memories. The rainbow-glowing bats dispersed into the trees below. Illease apologized profusely for hitting everyone with the faerie lights.
The group descended into the forest, with Buzz and Kal'vus entertaining themselves by taking apart a horde of normal corbies that were swarming at ground level. They did their best to avoid harming the vegetation; some of those plants are Illease's friends.
With that, the immediate threats were dealt with, but Illease said that she was still sensing something to the north-northwest. The party headed in that direction. On the way, they ran across a number of weak but horrifying zombie-like cybernetic monsters. They weren't a challenge, but they were deeply disturbing.
The party continued into the mountains to one of the base locations. Zaran did a fly-by and Illease pointed the party to a small crevice down below. Zaran couldn't land there easily, so Knight and Buzz ferried people down. (Kal'vus commented cheerfully that he'd "brought his own wings" and hopped off Zaran's back on his own.)
Lillith pulled out the stealth-detecting magnifying glass. With it, she was able to locate a vault door in the side of a nearby rock face. She discovered that looking through the glass at the door let her step into the hidden dimension, and the rest of the party was able to hold onto her in a chain to follow. Once inside, Lillith set to finding and removing a whole variety of horrible traps and alarms on the door. Ik-chuk pitched in to help at times, and turned out to be pivotal for getting past one of the alarms.
The center of the door collapsed back into a set of stairs leading into darkness. Caution initially ruled, but Lillith quickly figured out that they only had about 45 seconds from the time the door finished opening to reach the far end, or else they'd be crushed as the stairs returned to the door. The staircase was about 60 feet long.
Room at far end had only one exit, a runed gateway apparently psionically guarded. If anyone went through the arch, they'd be sent somewhere else, and may never return. After some analysis, Buzz ferried the party one by one to the other side with his at-will dimension doors. On the other side they found themselves in a long, winding natural cave. It hadn't been visible from the previous room, and no one on either side could see people on the other. Still, it didn't seem immediately dangerous.
The inside of the cave was covered in Old One runes, apparently telling a story about the stars and depicting various (horrifying) Old Ones. Apparently this was some sort of Old One observatory of the stars.
Farther along, two giant stalagmites that didn't seem to fit properly on the ground they sat on. Beyond them was some sort of clockwork portal. The more knowledgeable members of the party suspected that the stalagmites were urophions, crosses between ropers and mind flayers.
Kal'vus advanced, prepared to defend. When he got close enough, Kal'vus got the sense that the stalgmites turned towards him, even though he couldn't see it with his eyes. Even closer, he heard a word in his head: "Dub'nis". He decided it was time to retreat.
Knight, with his two layers of mental immunity, made a go of it, but he retreated after one of the immunity-granting devices, the soulblade, started to turn liquid-nitrogen cold. The party considered going straight to ranged combat, but the stalagmites seemed passive, so they had time to consider other options. They started calling people on Lillith's contact list to see if anyone knew the proper response.
Eldrin was the one who got them information. It turned out that "dub'nis" was the Old One word for the deep dark, the void, the nothingness and absence of sensation in the deep earth. The real word can't be pronounced properly by humans; it sounds more like some weird "blurp".
Rewards Granted
2 xp
Character(s) interacted with
Created Content
Notes
Zaran has a fly speed of 32.
Kal'vus
Union
Zaran
Lillith
Buzz Gizmo
Knight of Darkhome
Report Date
28 Jun 2023
Primary Location
Secondary Location
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