Session #13: To become a Beast

General Summary

Kiwigap'awa travels along the road, uncertain of a true plan. Eventually she realizes she needs to stop to rest. However, in the middle of her hidden sleep in the woods, she is noticed and confronted by a group of men, at least one in heavy armor from what she can tell in her blind state. She transforms into a small creature to slither away, but the man stops her and begins to ask her her purpose. Unconvinced of Kiwi's words, the man ends up knocking her to the ground, and in her near unconscious state, Kiwi feels a searing pain against her temple akin to being branded like cattle.
After she wakes up from this event, she finds she has been left alone in the spot. Unaware of what happened, she begins wandering when out of nowhere, she feels as some weird transformation has occurred within her, and she travels at an immense speed in a random direction. In this form, Kiwi fights and kills some unknown individuals before being knocked unconscious yet again.
Meanwhile, the rest of the party is dragged along in their carts to the Pits, without Kiwi beside them. They eventually arrive at the pits where they see its works in action. Various entrenched areas are dug and filled with combatants of all kind, whether that be humanoid, beast, or monsters of any kind. There they can see the Destroyers seeking to gain favor, embodied by an orc warrior who uses a blade to cut through multiple other humanoid opponents, and the prisoners fighting for their lives, embodied by a middle-aged human man fighting off beasts with a katana.
Kriv and Finn are dragged away to be placed at another fighting pit while Hope Netherrain is placed in a cell by herself separate from the one containing Luthrin Arcaidis, Kuro, and Alex. However in her cell is one person on their side pressed against a wall, and soon enough the man cutting into beasts with his katana is brought in as well.
Hope talks to this man and learns that his name is Arnold, and he is a Hellrider from Elturguard who was captured by Dreus's forces. It also seems that Arnold has a weird habit as he takes the long reeds that grow in the small lake area around this pit and chews on them. However, Hope is soon pointed toward the person in the corner as neither Arnold nor Hope has spoken to them, so she heads over to check on this person; as Hope turns this female figure around, she realizes it is KIwi.
However, Kiwi had seemingly been drastically changed. Her blindfold remained covering her eyes, but she was unable to take it off as black tendrils seemed to grow out of her eye sockets and wrap themselves around the blindfold. bonding it to her head. Other than that however, no other drastic change as Hope assumed was apparent. Hope attempts to soothe the fears of the scared Kiwi before the three of them and the three others are dragged to fight in the pit.
Before being thrown into the pit, everyone was stripped of everything except for their clothing, and their gear was thrown into the center of the arena. However, beasts were also in the arena with meat placed atop the center. A worg and a lion dashed for the center and fought mostly while a crocodile and its sahaguin rider tried to fight against the enemy, but via the party and Arnold's daring moves against these combatants allowed them to win with gear mixing between them. However, in this fight, it was also apparent that Kiwi's abilities had been morphed with the tendrils that had bound her eyes forever. She shot tendrils from the earth that struck into everything it touched and siphoned something from them without hurting them, however, as this occurred, small little orange eyes appeared, glowing through her blindfold, and Kiwi gained the gift of sight.
After this fight, the party got a short intermission to begin gathering their gear, and they notice a large man speaking to a noble watching the fight from a central platform before they were forced to face the cackles of a pair of gnolls and their pets bound to them. Arnold managed to slay the fiendish gnolls dretch by throwing a hand axe at it and nearly died against the gnoll of fiendish strength before the party managed to slay everything once again.
Finally, the large man they previously saw, seemingly has enough as he steps up and demands an end to this. Hope challenges him to a duel to free her friends, and the man accepts, jumping into the pit as the crowd begins to chant his name: Beist! Beist! Beist!
Beist and Hope fight, the former transforming into a brown bear to savagely strike out at his opponent, eventually defeating her. However, Kiwi broke the rules of the fight by healing Hope, and after she fell unconscious, Luthrin decided to fight anyway. A fight ensued with Beist and his pet brown bear and owlbear. Hard fought, everyone in the group luckily managed to survive and Beist and his beasts were slain.
As the crowd booed the spectacle and seemed ready to enter the pits to slay those who would dishonor their deal, the noble stepped up and announced to everyone in earshot that he did not care about whatever sense of honor they have. He already had a deal with Beist and everyone should stand down.

Missions/Quests Completed

Survived their first fight in the pit

Character(s) interacted with

Whoever the armored man was who bound Kiwi to this strange entity.
Arnold, the Hellrider.
Beist, the savage.
The Noble

Report Date

29 Sep 2019