Report: Kidnapping of Kore
General Summary
Jene, Robin, Demirkan Rune, Stiks, and Basillio showed up at my house in the early morning hours with two goals, to rescue Kore, the daughter of Ilene and Harys, and eliminate Riki-Visha the evil goblin shaman who had proved to be a hindrance to Gravesend for quite some time. Jene gave one of his rousing speeches, which I admit have gotten a lot more tolerable as of late, but Demirkan countered with an even more inspiring sermon of delicious foods. We packed up our gear and headed into the caves nearby, took the secret passage down to the Torovian ruins and happened upon a large insectoid creature, which was identified as a rust monster, but it scurried away quickly. We got to the entrance of the cave, and I scouted the large goblin army just before Jene set the signal for our other team to lure them out of the fortress. The Goblin King, a rust monster, several bats and scarred goblins, and more than a score of green goblins fled down the mountains to engage. Unfortunately a bolt of lightning shot from the top of the tower and soon after Hireek showed up and took off after them. I do hope the decoy group are able to succeed in their task without any casualties, their actions were necessary to give us a chance.
Left in the courtyard were less than a dozen scarred goblins along with the scarred husk of a bugbear who appeared to lead them from the back of a rust monster. We came out of the tunnel cautiously and started to get into position when they noticed Rune and took up arms to meet us. I came out of the shadows and plunged my scimitar into a goblin’s arm, but he quickly turned around and knocked me to the ground with the back of his weapon after I dodged the blade. Stiks and Rune rushed to meet the bruteish goblins in combat and held the line long enough for Robin and Basillio to propel a series of arrows and bullets into the rust beast, killing it almost instantly. The grotesque bugbear fell off its mount and bounced off the ground before arising and channeling some hideous necrotic energy into me and Stiks. My eyes began to bleed profusely and could barely defend myself as I became surrounded by goblins while Stiks plowed through the pain as his internal organs began eating away at him from the inside as he continued to clash his flaming sword against goblin blades. A quartet of goblins on the ruined tower turned their ballistas around at us and while I could not see anything myself, it was clear that the battle had turned in their favor.
*Boom* Magical heat that I know very well scorched over my head and an explosion roared up above followed by Jene’s exclamation of satisfaction over his mastery of fire magic. *Bang*. The sound of Basillio’s larger gun echoes through the mountains as the bugbear is left with a sizable hole in his decaying body. *Thunk Thunk* Robin climbed the wall and began exchanging arrows with the goblins who were forced to drop their burning ballistas for bows and while she took a few arrows in her arm she powered through and returned fire dropping two goblin corpses from their perch in retaliation. *Thud* Back on the ground level Rune flips a goblin off its feet and pins it down beneath his shield looking around for another one to disable. And I remain back against the wall, sightless, using every bit of defense to keep myself alive and hoping that the sounds that I am hearing mean that things are turning back in our favor.
The sound of crackling energy roars around me as two goblin shamans in the back begin summoning ribbons of fire that shoot off towards Robin and Basillio, but a protective prayer keeps everyone safe for the moment. Stiks, struggling against the pain of his flesh filling with decay, pushes up to the bugbear and swings at it with a flaming sword just as Jene summons his spiritual sword and the two blades cut into the decaying hulk together. Robin takes out another archer, leaving only one up on the perch, but before she can finish it off she is hit by another ribbon of flame. A second flame strikes Stiks, but Rune seizes the initiative and rushes over and flips the casting shaman it to the ground. Suddenly Basilio is gone from his defensive cover and is standing just behind the bugbear. *Bang* Another powerful shot echoes as his gun fires a projectile so forcefully that it breaks in the process, but lightning fast he pulls out a second handheld gun and fires again leaving matching holes in the bugbear and a shaman. Stiks finds the right opening in that chaos and plunges his flaming sword into the neck of the bugbear, which slides off into a pile of flesh on the ground ending the internal torment he was suffering.
The blood in my eyes suddenly stops pouring out and I am able to wipe away the last of it just in time to parry a rusted sword as the remaining goblins thrust wildly, not yet aware that their champion had fallen. I attempt to right myself while the goblins notice their worsening situation and slash deeply into one with a flaming scimitar, but a scream above me emboldens them again as Robin takes another shot from an archer and falls to her side as her life blood drips down the ruined wall. Not a second later Gloria zips from Jenes shoulder to the site of his injured aunt and a wave of golden energy washes over her, shattering the arrows that felled her and closing her wounds. Almost unfazed, she picks up her bow and drops the last archer before catching her breath.
The remaining three goblins halted their attacks and began to flee towards cracks in the wall, but after only a few steps they turned around with a sigil on their forehead and a renewed urge to fight, even if it was forcibly thrust upon them. Three more bangs and one goblin dropped while the other two began bleeding as they fought on. Rune bashed one down to the ground and held it in a magical fore that Jene set until it stopped moving. The last one spent a little too long defending itself from Jene’s spiritual sword that it didn’t see Stiks leapt two feet into the air, coming down with his flaming sword and nearly splitting it in half from neck to navel. I closed my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief as silence filled the ruins of Bastion for the first time in nearly a minute before opening them fixated on the tower that surely housed our quarry and the lone door that lead inside thinking about how I needed to start pulling my weight if we are going to get to the top.
—
I cracked the door open, perhaps a little too quickly, and a tripwire sprung, causing several glass vials to shatter on the floor and sending a shockwave that engulfed Stiks and Rune as well as myself. The laughter on the other side was enough to rouse Stiks into gear and he burst through the remains of the door and hooked a goblin sword with his axe before following through with his flaming sword. Five additional goblins rushed in ready to mob Stiks and from the doorway I knew I had to act fast.
The tower was truly a hive of goblin sensibilities. Despite being four floors high, the middle two floors had partially crumbled away leaving a jagged chute that peered from the third floor all the way to the bottom. The bottom floor was covered with all of the grime and rubbish that had been pushed down over the many months, broken chairs and tables, decrepit bookcases with nothing of worth, chains and hooks, slabs of meat and rotten food, and six angry scarred gobins. Worse though were the three pairs of evil eyes glaring down from the second floor yelling orders at the goblins on the floor and getting ready to loose magic down on us.
I pointed my scimitar up towards the upper level and a tiny mote of shadow whisked up into the spot where the center of the second floor would be. A goblin shaman clenched his first and attempted to unmake the spell, but I flicked my wrist and held his abjuration magic at bay just barely long enough. *Whoosh!* The mote exploded into a brief puff of smoke as magical tendrils wrenched almost every goblin from both the first and second floor into the center of the hole, and moments later they all came crashing back down on the ground level in a pile before Stiks. As they scrambled to get up, behind me I heard a shout “Thanks for getting them all together Mr. Ryth” and a roaring fireball soars over my shoulder into the pile of goblins sending flaming bodies around the room. Most stayed down this time.
Rune and Basilo barged into the room, and the few goblins that made it back to their feet now had to deal with a sharp cleaver and a pair of bullets. The bottom floor was clear, but more spellcasters started looking down at us from the second and third floors, and me and Stiks raced to the stairs. Robin must have spoken something in beespeak as her swarm gathered around her legs and torso and lifted her up towards the second floor. Me and Stiks made it to the second floor just as Robin rose high enough to spot a pair of shamans and an archer hugging the wall and pelted one of them with arrows. The shaman reacted by quickly stamping his staff into a rune made of blood on the floor and suddenly he appeared on the other side of the room, standing on a second matching blood rune where he lobbed a fire blast at Robin.
Then it all happened in a blink of an eye. A dark cloud descended over Stiks, his eyes glazed over, and he took two steps and leaped back down to the ground floor. Landing behind Basilio, Stiks grasped his flaming sword and plunged it deep into the gunner’s back. Basilio didn’t even manage to turn around before an axe came down on his skull and knocked him out. Stiks didn’t relent and readied his sword for a fatal blow, but Rune came rushing back down the stairs and got his shield between them just in time. Jene followed close behind shouting, “Mr. Stiks, what are you doing?” and for a moment glowed with a golden aura before speaking with a divinely stern voice "Stiks! As Champion of the true faith I release your mind from the shackles of this curse!" Stiks’ puppeted body got ready for another swing at Rune, but the sword fell to the floor instead when Stiks regained control of himself and realized what he had just done.
Stiks stood still for what seemed like forever, staring at his blood soaked hands, wondering how much of it was his friends. Jene put a hand on his shoulder, “You were being controlled by a spell Stiks, goblin magic did this to Basilio, not you. Get back up there and make sure it doesn’t happen again.” “I’ll get him back up, don’t worry” Rune chimed in and channeled a bunch of holy energy into the body on the floor. Stiks picked the sword back up, nodded, and silently ran back to the fight raging above.
Up a level, I continued the fight alongside Robin and her swarm, arrows and blades cutting down the remaining two goblins. A lesson was left unlearned from Stonespire though as I got too close to a workbench and a metal chain quickly coiled around my leg and tightly restrained me. Across the room a second chain grappled Robin and a trio of Goblin thugs burst into the room just as Stiks and Jene made their way up the stairs. Not wanting to be knocked out of the fight again I blinked out of the chains and up to the third floor where three big brained goblins turned to face me. I cut one down quickly and the chains around Robin fell limp to the ground, but another looked at me and cast a spell and suddenly I knew exactly how Stiks must have felt moments before as I, against my own will, headed back to the second floor looking for humans to sink my blade into instead of goblins.
The other cerebral goblin spent a second gathering a big chain of lightning in his hand before lobbing it down at the barely recovered Basilio who had just come up the stairs. Rune saw the spell first and held up his cleaver like a lightning rod and magically redirected it all to himself, grunting through the pain. Basilio took the opportunity and blasted two goblins, killing one, and also kept moving forward up the tower despite still being gravely wounded. Jene finished the last thug off with a chilling spell, and Stiks sprinted towards the stairs to the top just as I came down to meet him.
I was only able to knick Stiks with my blade before he hooked it with his axe and locked it in a parry to the side. He silently stood there overpowering me for several seconds, agonizing about his own mind controlled sins, hoping that he could prevent any more friendly fire from happening. Fortunately Robin let an arrow fly that tore into one of the shaman’s oversized brains and as it keeled over dead and fell two stories down to the ground my autonomy was regained and I nodded at Stiks before we both ascended to the top. As we got back to the third floor a lone shaman faced us and teleported from one blood rune to another across the room and was clearly getting ready with another spell to throw at us. Fortunately a gunshot echoed from below and the goblin stopped what it was doing and clutched its shoulder. Stiks seized the moment and dashed to the final goblin coming down hard with his axe and his flaming sword and swiftly ended the last threat in the room. We all stood at the door that headed to the top floor of the tower and without a word all silently agreed to take a few minutes to recover before climbing to the top and putting an end to the goblin tyrant.
As we got to the top of the stairway Stik’s opened the door to a small room with what looked like a single large bat hanging from the ceiling, but as it dropped to the floor it became clear that it’s face actually had goblin features mixed with a large bat’s jaw, and while it had twisted bat wings, its feet appeared as humanoid legs. It clearly had the mind of a raging beast and Robin and Basilio were quick to want to put it down, both firing multiple times at it. It howled in pain, louder perhaps than any sound I’ve heard before and I steeled myself hoping that I would not also lose my hearing. Stiks and Rune rushed in close to try to contain it, but each time their blades connected it only seemed more enraged. It bit down on Rune leaving a serious wound in his arm and then attempted to strike at him again. Jene chilled the abomination with his magic and I slashed at it from behind, hoping to the distract the beast, but while it left Rune alone for a second it screeched again. Stiks got a solid strike with his sword and then readied his axe to hold it back as it ravaged again. Though as much as it had ferocity, numbers were not on its side, and bullets, blades, arrows and axes tore into its flesh and as its frantic attacks slowed down Jene again coated it with frost magic and it slumped over twitching for a moment before lying still. It was a curious sight, but wasn’t worth pondering as we could hear Riki-visha on the other side of the wall, and he clearly knew we were there as well. It was time to end this.
The final room was locked with magic, but fortunately I’d been studying this exact kind of magic for weeks. A few moments later I was able to disable the magical and physical mechanisms and we took a quick breath and burst into the final room. In the dim light of the top of the tower to find Riki-visha himself stood opposing us in a gigantic blood rune, and looked at us almost to welcome the confrontation that had been brewing for many months. Flanking him were two burly scarred guards, an archer, another cerebral shaman, and a half dozen other runes scattered about the room. He started by uttering a spell in his horrid voice and a great darkness started to seep in through the cracks in the boarded up windows and our vision grew weaker and weaker. I had no desire to be totally blind a second time today and used everything I had to abjure away his spell, and after a split second struggle the spell broke and a dim light poured back into the room.
Stiks and Rune ran into the room side by side and Rune engaged a guard long enough for Stiks to slip past him and sink his fiery blade into the archer. Rune sunk his cleaver into the arm of the guard and channeled a blast of holy energy into the weapon as it sliced the arm clean off. Riki called out and a swarm of bats descended from the ceiling and began to head towards Stiks, servants of Hireek just like the ones that were in Stonespire. Jene, from outside the room channeled as much of his divine energy as possible into me and Robin and yelled “End this quick, so we can find Kore.” Robin took off just before me, got into position and launched a barrage of arrows in quick succession that hit the guard that stood next to Riki. I moved quicker than I ever have before and leapt over a wall of boxes, landing next to the goblin that stood stunned by the arrow wounds. I paused for a second, then attempted something that I’d never done before and grabbed the broken sword hilt that hung on my belt with my left hand and channeled my magic through it, forming a second blade of pure energy. I came down hard on the goblin with the steel of my scimitar and the magic of the shattered blade and the goblin fell. I locked eyes with Riki for a second, but the swarm of bats turned towards me and began swarming me from all directions.
While everything was going on, Basilio took his time lining up a masterful shot that pierced through several of the bats, and then drew the first blood on Riki, also leaving an enchanted zone of silence atop him. A second blast mimicked the first spreading sparks of lighting through the bats, dropping many of them to the ground. Stiks left the archer alive and turned to face Riki who, unable to speak, attempted to turn into a bat and flee. *Whoosh* The flaming sword crackled as it came down on the bats wing, knocking him to the ground and forcing him back to his goblin form. The subordinate shaman tried to unleash a debilitating blast of lightning into Stiks, but it ended up arcing into Rune instead just as he was finishing off the one handed goblin. Stiks came down again on Riki with his axe, biting deep into the goblin’s skin. Furious as ever, Stiks was ready to end this creature for good, but Riki barely managed to crawl to a blood rune and then was gone.
Across the room, Riki stood again, emboldened and spotted Jene along just outside the room he grinned and readed a spell. Necrotic energy washed over Excoria’s champion, but he held resolute and could barely feel the wilting of his flesh as he focused all of his attention on keeping the enchantment on robin and myself intact. Riki was clearly dismayed at how little this had done and rattled off another evocation while sweeping his staff across the room. Three lightning bolts erupted from it and bounced towards the ceiling before crashing back down into the chests of Jene, Robin, and poor Basilio who was knocked down to a kneel by the blast, barely clinging to life. Riki stopped to catch his breath and survey the damage his spells had done, but Jene pushed into the room staring down the goblin from only a few feet away, and in pure defiance yelled “By Celestine, you will not claim even one of us today!.” Vitality washed over all six of us and Basilio got back up ready to rejoin the fight.
I teleported across the room to strike at Riki again. Robin followed, managing to stick Riki with an arrow before the bats that I left behind swarmed all over her, latching themselves on, and sinking their sharp teeth into her neck. Riki again holds his staff out at Jene and pumps more lighting into him before a loud blast and a bullet hits him in the back. Basilio, still barely holding on, lined up another shot, but before he could fire Riki’s staff tapped solidly against the blood on the floor and the goblin was again on the other side of the room in the protection of yet another blood rune.
The protection of Demirkan Rune however was on our side as he put down the archer and began racing towards the increasingly imperiled Robin who wasn’t faring well against the swarm of bats that were draining her blood. A lightning bolt from the shaman blasted into Rune as he rushed to save her, but Stiks acted on the distraction and plunged his sword into the shamans head, ending the last of Riki’s lieutenants. Rune fell to his knees weakened by the blast, but pushed forward just enough to get his hand on Robin’s shoulder and magically restore much of the blood that the bats had extracted from her. Together they pulled one of the bats off of her, but Riki was not ready to let us turn the tide.
Lethargy crept across the room, the from the goblin’s staff towards Jene, Robin, Rune, and me, and while I tried to use the last of my magic to fight it, Riki made sure I couldn’t use that trick again and obliterated my counterspell. As an elf, I could easily fight against the sleep that knocked Robin and Jene into a slumber, but as Jene’s haste magic was once infusing me with speed, it now held me in a trance as well. Robin lay sleeping as the other bats continued to drain her and Rune cast a Santuary on her to keep her stable for a moment while turned back towards Riki. Basilio finally got another solid shot off at Riki, and from my delirious state I could see that that evil creature was truly on his last bit of fight as he returned fire at Basilio with another bolt of lightning.
Stiks managed to slash down the remaining flying bats, and turned to Riki ready to finish him. Raging he rushed forward, but a powerful bolt of lightning stopped him in his tracks and held him in place. Rune rushed forward to Stiks and put up his shield to protect him, but the goblin kept pumping more and more lightning into the pair. I looked on helplessly as Rune’s shield arm gave in and fell to his side and both were nearly paralyzed by the unstoppable storm coming from the goblin. Then it happened in a flash, Rune held up his cleaver, channeled all the pain he had just endured into pure divine energy, and launched it back at Riki-Visha before collapsing to his knees. The lightning stopped, the lethargy stopped, the bloodsucking stopped, and the mortal form of the goblin took its final breath.
Then his body cracked and twisted in on itself into an unrecognizable shape and the voice of a demon spoke through what remained of his month. The archdemon, known as Lust, spoke fairly to us and offered us preference when she returned back to this world. She only seemed mildly dissatisfied when we rejected her offer, and let it slip that Kore was not the child that she was looking for. As her voice trailed off, the being that had once been Riki-Visha exploded, collapsing the wall and ceiling in the room that we are in and putting the stability of the entire tower into question.
I unlocked the door to the back room and Rune and I came upon the girl, unconscious, but alive. Rune picked her up and walked back into the main room before three giant stones from the ceiling came crashing down before him. “Get out quickly” he shouted and Basilio and Jene headed back down the tower. Rune followed a few steps with the girl cradled in his arms, but the spells of Riki Visha had taken their toll on him, and he was worried that he might not make it in time as the stairs downward began to crumble. “I guess we need to do this the hard way.” he muttered to himself and walked back to the big hole in the wall leading to a sixty foot drop to the ground below. “I promise, at least she will survive this” he said to the rest of us as he drank a potion, held Kore tightly in his arms, and leapt off the tower.
Robin walked off the lip and descended gracefully, held aloft by her bees, and I turned back to Stiks to make sure he was fine. “It doesn’t look that far”, I lied and then used the very last spell I had to reappear on the ground next to Rune and Kore. The paladin groaned as he had taken the fall for both of them, but didn’t have the energy to stand back up. The tower started to lean to one side and large sections of the roof fell from the structure that had endured at least a century, but Jene and Basilio rushed out to see the four of us on the ground, and then we all quickly looked up to make sure that the survivors would number seven.
Stiks turned back from the window to grab the powerful staff that Riki-Visha had used to torment us, It wasn’t likely something that he himself could use, but it was a very powerful stick after all, and one that could give some insight into the endless chain of foes that oppose us. He snatched it up and headed back to the hole in the wall, but Riki had one final trick to play. As soon as he touched the staff, a dark curse latched onto him and his vision began to flee from his eyes. By the time he was back in sight on the lip of the newly made ‘balcony’ he was totally blinded, and the dangerous leap he was planning started to become quite a bit riskier. The internal floors suddenly collapsed sending a plume of dust out of the front door that obscured our vision for a second as we looked skywards, hoping that we wouldn’t lose anyone to this accursed tower. Stiks quickly decided what needed to happen if he was to make it, embraced his disability, recalled what the ground below had looked like moments before, steadied his feet, felt a breeze of the open air upon his skin, and leapt.
It wasn’t graceful, but he landed better than I could have done without my sight. He hit the ground with both feet and rolled backward, topped over his head, and lay flat only a few feet from Rune. A second later a large slab fell between the two and we all realized that we weren’t quite out of danger yet. Jene helped Stiks up, while Basilio Robin and I grabbed the Rune and dragged him and Kore and few feet back from the tower. It didn’t last more than a few seconds longer before crumbling into a huge heap of stone, barely recognizable as a tower. We had all made it out, and ended the threat of Riki-Visha, but the physical toll it had taken was great and we knew that we needed to get ourselves, and more importantly Kore, somewhere safe as quickly as possible as any surviving goblins in the woods would know something had happened here.
Robin guided Stiks to the cave and a very ragged Rune with Kore, and Basilio followed. I stayed at the entrance as Jene walked up to the ruined tower and said some things that I couldn’t make out and then made his way back to the cave in tears. We didn’t exchange any words as we rushed to catch up to the others, and fortunately our trip back to the horses was uneventful. We saddled up and began our ride back to town, hoping that the others fared at least as well as we had. This may not have been the cleanest of victories, but after Malice this was sorely needed.
Scribed by Ryth Venali
Adventuring Party: Ryth Venali, Robin Foster, Basilio Morales, Stiks, Demirkan Rune, Jene Dark
Date: 25JUN22
Report Date
25 Jun 2022
Primary Location
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