Session 62: A Battle Won; an Ally Lost
General Summary
The Battle Rages On
The session began in the midst of combat with The Oni. This mysterious L’huine or perhaps Spirit had recently assumed the form of Kaswink's grandfather, Crudge. This bugbear was riding a horse and wielding a lance while charging directly towards Kaswink. His lance pierced her flesh as he asked her, as if making fun of her reliance on her friends' healing abilities, "THIS REALLY HAS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH KASWINK. IS IT YOU OR YOUR FRIENDS THAT I FIND SO POWERFUL?” With that, Kaswink was unable to heal for a round, and things were looking pretty rough all around. The Oni's presence seemed to be causing you all to experience unusual adrenaline levels, resulting in either a need to fight this "person" or a need to run away in terror. Despite this, you managed to defeat Crudge, and his bugbear form reverted to be The Oni once more. The Oni continued his assault on Kaswink each round while giant gusts of wind, lashing spirals and even the familiar maddening breath of a spiral dragon dealt with the rest of you. Wings and tails would sometimes manifest in the darkness as well, and The Oni even spent an attack against DAN as the stack of halflings charged at him. DAN's efforts payed off as well, and they were able to cut through The Oni's body to the point that the sound of bagpipes could be heard deep within the mysterious "priests" body. They latched onto that sound and used all their might to pull free what they suspected to be their long lost brother, Steve.
The Oni was growing in strength as combat continued. Each time he returned to his original form he had more attacks to work with, and things were getting a bit spicy. He teleported Kaswink back to himself, getting ready for some weird Oni thing. When she arrived back in front of The Oni, she had been transformed. The journey there was described as her body being pulled, stretched like taffy, changed into smoke and spiral, arching over and through the battlefield before arriving in front of this demonic presence far larger than she was before. Easily 20 feet tall, three horns, darker fur, and The Oni just laughed at his creation. "YES! YES! THIS IS IT! CAN YOU FEEL IT, KASWINK!? ATTACK ME WITH ALLLL OF IT!" Kaswink didn't hesitate to attack The Oni with her newfound strength after The Oni did some meager attacks of his own. Her powerful, giant strikes along with the rest of you's guys's attacks easily destroyed this Oni, and he was soon found lying motionless on the ground. Kaswink's final blow against him was used to pierce through The Oni's mask, splitting it in half and revealing the madness that lay beyond it.
Kaswink's Death
Frode, seeing that Kaswink was being a bit weirder than normal, used his pent up suffering to dispel the magic that seemed to be affecting her. The energy left her, and she shrank back down to normal Kaswink size, but then she lost muscle mass, her horns, and soon she seemed to be no different than any other bugbear commoner. The energy that seeped from her dripped into the ground until it moved across the battlefield towards The Oni's corpse. Familiar, manic laughter filled your ears. The Oni's body shifted, and then it disappeared into a cloud of smoke and spirals that expanded into a massive face shrouded in chaotic energy.
Bonus Track: Kaswink Dissolves
The left arch is nothing but blinding light. It hurts to look at, though it starts to grow on you in the sense that it is actually soothing. For the first bit of observing this arch that seems to be all it is, but then you start to hear something in the light. It’s something you might experience trying to sleep at night while a neighbor a few walls away is watching something at a volume that you can just barely hear, though is loud enough you strain to hear the words. Though, it is also something like synesthesia, like you are literally hearing the light. The light sounds like a feminine voice singing a sad song, a flawless song just for you. You somehow understand what she is saying despite there being no real words for you to interpret.The center arch was rather empty for you at first. You could guess that this is because you had finished your mortal business and didn’t really have a clear goal or driving force behind you. The emptiness of the central arch changed over time though. It starts out as a single ring, a circle, white and standing out wonderfully in the darkness. The ring breaks, a single line cuts through one section, and one end of this now broken ring begins to move towards the center of itself, creating a perfect spiral. Another circle appears above and to the left of the first, it also breaks and begins to spiral. Then another circle to the right of the second, same thing, breaks, spirals. This happens again and again with more and more circles, more and more spirals, and all these spirals begin to make a shape: A Mask. The mask itself breaks, it gets sucked into the depths of this gate, spaghettifying into gods know where, being absorbed into something. As it is absorbed like this it leaves behind something different: A face, a familiar face that reminds you of your grandfather, your father, yourself, Croak… but mostly the Oni. This Oni face is whispering in someone’s ear. You can’t quite hear what it’s saying, but you could find out if you got closer.
The arch on the right is dark, just filled to the brim with visually impenetrable darkness. Some of it billows out and around the gate like inky mist. It kinda sucks you in, like a black hole not allowing even light to leave its grasp. More than just literal gravity pulls at you though, there’s some level of subconscious draw to this gate that compels you towards it, and then you hear the sound of chains. They sound like the kind you put around your weapon, the kind you’d find in a prison or maybe a weird maze in your mind. Along with these chains you also hear the sound of weeping. It sounds similar to the singing voice from the other door, and it is eventually joined with the very soft sound of a bell, chiming away as if some hour has just begun. It chimes 12 times…the last three chimes are accompanied by a small amount of chains rattling. These chains become deafening as the last chime rings and hangs in the air, sustained for what feels like an eternity in this …unusual place. This arch makes you uncomfortable in more ways than one, but something about it feels…important, relevant to a part of your cause. While the other arches might give closure, offers, eternal whatever this one feels like responsibility. The responsibility looms overhead, under your feet, and the crying stops before an ear-tearing sob cries out into the area around you. The path of responsibility calls you forward, and you take it.
The steps you take into it feel no different than the steps before, like you were walking down a hallway… and you notice you aren’t immediately blinded despite how dark the archway was. Rather, the darkness covers your feet first…it drips on your head and slowly creates stains that run down your face, shoulders, body…and it is in this moment you realize you aren’t wearing your armor. You don’t have any of your gear really, but this darkness is slowly soaking you like rain falling from the sky, each step splashes it up onto your shins and it spreads from those points too. After a few almost compulsive steps, you find yourself completely blind at long last and it feels weirdly comforting. It feels similar to the times you would meditate and find yourself in darkness, and the crushing dread of never getting out of this place begins to crawl back into your mind because of this connection… Do you continue moving forward or perhaps try something else? You chose to continue moving forward.
Each step forward is heavier than the last. This liquid is up to your knees at this point, not just the parts that have been spreading over your body, but there’s depth completely submerging them. It makes it harder to move your legs, but beyond that it is becoming harder to differentiate between your legs and this darkness. You slowly feel yourself becoming one with it, losing all perception…losing yourself. Do you continue? It’s up to your hips now. Your form feels like it is both dissolving in all directions, like a liquid, but also you can still consciously move them forward even without any feeling in them. It is an uneasy feeling to be sure, and tears start to fall from your eyes uncontrollably. It’s up to your shoulders now, your arms held above the surface of this liquid, your heart no longer beating, your lungs no longer feeling filled with air, your sight is not of darkness, your taste not of some recent meal or the saliva in your mouth, your hearing not of the water being pushed by your body…the only sense you have left is touch, and it is flowing and extending through the water around you. This is death. This is the end. There isn’t an afterlife to hang out in, no reward for your efforts with your Patron or any other deity, no joy or suffering. The liquid covers your head, and the last bit of senses holding on flow away, out into the dark, inky liquid. The last thing you feel is another tear pass from your eye, flicked by an eyelash, hitting the oil that was once your ribs.
You have no idea if you’re moving forward. Though, you get the idea that you might be simply because the one thing left of your perception is fading, and your mind -which was letting you know that you aren’t perceiving anything- loses that perception. There is not just nothing, but there’s an inability to perceive that nothingness as well. You were gone somewhere between 0 seconds and a billion years, but something pulls you back to your senses, quite literally, and the first thing you’re able to perceive again is sound. The sound of chains, the sound of weeping, and the sound of this oil rushing past your ears as you are pulled deeper. You feel this water rushing past your flesh as well, tactile senses returning. The next sense returned to you is sight. The vision beneath you is a pinpoint of light however far away, and you can watch as it gets closer and closer to you over the course of what feels like half an hour, and as it gets closer the crying and chains get louder, then it is joined with yet another piece of this puzzle: a cackling, maddening laugh, a voice that’s like nails on a chalkboard, distorted and dreadful. It seems to be celebrating a deal being made, congratulating someone on a great choice, and it is suddenly cut off. There is no noise besides this water rushing past your ears before it is interrupted with a painful, earsplitting cry of sorrow. Time has passed and the point of light has grown to the size of a familiar orb, no more than a few feet wide, far, far smaller than in the vision you had of the cliff, or the one in the desert even, and without the swirly, spiraly darkness stuff. Instead, it looks to have darkness running down the central orb and the rays of light that it is emitting. They’re like tears made of the strange oil you’re covered in, and they’re staining this strange, sentient light. “Where has He gone? Please, bring him back to me… please, I beg of you, where has he gone?” Beyond this orb, there is something on the ground. It looks like something was dragged down a nearby hallway. Stone walls, each a strange beige-pink kinda like the clouds or the hallways in the maze you passed through to get to the spirit world. The bricks are arranged in unusual ways, with random sizes and shapes, and you can see more torches further down the hall.
The last corner you round leads you into a deadend, a room with torches and chains that is strikingly familiar…though where you would expect to see a chained man you instead see the back of a hulking, tall figure with three massive horns protruding from its head. Its garb is a simple robe, tattered and draped over this frame, its hands are currently filled with the task of chaining up an unconscious and emaciated man. This hulking brute turns after a latch clicks in place, shadows from the ground grab at your limbs, and a fiendish visage twisted up and yet…familiar in more ways than one is attached to the head of this giant. The face is elven, or…at least it was, it is literally twisting off from where it should be, hovering a few inches to the left and churning in and out of existence. Its eyes glow both from the holes of its true face and from where they should be on its head… it doesn’t speak, only grinning, as its face unfurls and rearranges on its head becoming a hag, becoming your guide, Croak, before becoming a porcelain white mask with spiraling filigree lining its sides. He speaks, a voice that carries a familiar chittering, screams, and when you hear him you are both where you’re standing on this side of the room and standing directly next to him…your ears pulled from you and into his space. His limbs begin to deteriorate, morphing into shadows that drip from his impressive body and to the ground. They form into different creatures, and the more he creates with these shadows the more the man behind him shrinks and cries in pain. The shadows that bound you pull you closer to the ground. You used the last of your strength to wrap a chain between yourself and the starving man. Your head was passing through this stone floor, your face and vision temporarily capable of glimpsing the infinite sky around you before a light both blinds you and pulls you into a quiet comfort. The maniacal laughing of the beast above begins to fade as it echoes around you, and you fall…
You pass through a great deal of air, free falling through the sky. You find yourself above the strange clouds that covers most of this world and you can see a gorgeous, clear sky. The beauty isn’t able to really be enjoyed much as the horrific feeling of freefalling is suddenly replaced with the horrific feeling of colliding with more of the wretched black watery or oil or whatever it is you were surrounded in earlier. You feel an accelerated version of everything you experienced before falling, and then you’re beneath the clouds. Falling again, falling closer and closer to the ground, the inevitable impact causing a great deal of panic, but you manage to catch a glimpse of something before it all stops: A caravan. Carriages, carts, tents, boxes…quite the massive caravan, and whatever it is… it’s pulling into a small town far to the northwest of your own base. The same direction that Kaswink once claimed a strange old man resides. Your weird soul body dissolves, it feels like it’s all shifting around a seed where your heart once was, pulling it to and fro as it falls slower towards the ground.
What will come of Kaswink? What's up with that caravan? What's up with that Oni guy? And what of the Spiraling Dark? The World has Changed, but more on that next session...
Notes
The big Oni form was rather anticlimactic, wasn't it? It almost seemed like it should've been stronger.
It almost seemed like it wanted to die.
In-game Date:
Daulok 23, 308
Daulok 23, 308
Report Date
06 Mar 2023
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