Episode 37 - The God Below

Sword of Air

Episode XXXVII

The God Below

Or “Black Auk Down”

Starring:

Alex as Mherren the Malevolent
Zach as Lightstrike the Epic
Aneta as Haji Baba the Grand
Dan as Zimlok the Lightbringer
and
G Pops as Literally Everyone Else in the World!

A Sword of Air Adventure

WRITTEN BY: EVERYONE; PRODUCED BY: NOBODY; DIRECTED BY: THE FICKLE DICE GODS OF YORE

Our desperate heroes tear through the membrane at the last moment before their imprisoning obsidian sphere crumples and implodes. They stagger to their feet, to find they are in a cavernous tunnel whose veinous, livid walls appear to be made of living flesh. Stumbling onwards, still in shock at Elovyn’s untimely and gruesome demise, they turn corner after corner of intestinal folds, following the slow bass of the faint and intermittent heartbeat, until Lightstrike spots a mote of light ahead.
The speck grows, gradually taking form as a beautiful humanoid with gleaming, silvery skin and white, flowing hair. The creature’s eyes glow with an unearthly lustre, as does the rune upon Lightstrike’s forehead. From its shoulder blades large, white-feathered wings unfurl, and the tabaxi is bathed in a heavenly radiance as it calmly approaches.
Mherren backs away, uncertain and uncomfortable in this celestial aura. Squinting into the light, he realises to his astonishment that it is Elovyn – whole, serene, and benevolently smiling.
She smooths Lightstrike’s cheek with one gentle, ethereal hand, and speaks softly, but with a quiet and awesome power:
“Lightstrike, Runechild of my beloved deity. Do not weep for me. And do not despair, for all is not lost. Since my death I have seen wondrous things. Before I met you, I feared my God was dead forever. I clung to the hope that the growing warmth of the Eye at Sparrowkeep was an indication he still had some presence in this world, but in the depths of my heart I feared I was deluded.
“But you gave me hope. And now that I have passed on, I have seen so much more.
“In the woeful days of the Great Darkness, my Lord Arden sacrificed his godhood to the Night Mistress, Hecate, so that his divine body would be sundered and his heart bound, to keep eternally shut the planar door to Tsathoggua’s prison. Thus, Light and Dark repelled the Shadow, although Hecate was unscathed, and Arden stripped of his place in the divine pantheon.
“But I have seen… I have seen for certain that he is not gone. Not entirely. You see, before his sacrifice he made fragments of his godhood physical, and broke them up into crystalline pieces we know as the eight Soul Shards. These he gave to the seven living Avatars of the Lords of Light.
“One, to the Avatar of Khors, the Father of Nations, the New Sun, who took his place in the pantheon when Arden passed. One, to the Avatar of Selune, Lady of the Moon, Goddess of the Elves. One, to that of Bahamut, Platinum Lord of the Dragons of Wisdom, the only Elder God to cling on to his seat amongst the Ascendant gods after the Arcane Age was passed. One, to Tyr, the Lawgiver; one to Desna, Lady of the Heavenly Stars; one to Sarenrae, Goddess of Healing, Renewal, and Redemption; and one to the Avatar of Mael, Elder God of the Oceans Deep.
“Each Avatar carries within them the seed of their deity, and as such the gods can work through them and influence the mortal realm from beyond the Godsveil, behind which they are trapped in their domains within the Outer Planes. And each Avatar gave their Soul Shard containing Arden’s essence to their own god, to keep safe his essence for when the time came for his return.
“The time is nigh. The Shadow stirs again. It grows restless. It corrupts the very being of Father Sky and Mother Earth. It seeps into this world and perverts it, sickens it, blackens even the noble hearts of the Elves.
“Each Avatar gave their Soul Shard to their own deity, ensconced in their unreachable domains. All except for one. Mael had already been banished in the Great Struggle against the Demon Lords thousands of years ago. An entire continent was drowned in the wake of his destruction. His Avatar could not reach out to him, and so pledged to serve Arden and keep the fragment safe, and thus the Seventh Soul Shard remained in the material plane.
“And the Eighth Soul Shard? The eighth Shard was struck by the Hammer of Volund, and shattered into a hundred thousand slivers, which formed the stars of the Astral Sea and created from their holy light the Angels – the Devas, Planetars and Solars of the gods.
“I am one such Angel now. That is why I beseech you not to weep for me. I am a Deva, a Holy Messenger of Arden (but, let’s hope, not a right diva, since her holy ascension – DM)… and you, Lightstrike. You are destined to become a Solar, a demigod, Holy Champion of the Lost Lord of Light!
“There is yet an Avatar of Mael upon this world, who carries within him the last Soul Shard, and so is a servant of Arden, too. He is a Planetar, an angel more powerful than I, who knows well your fate, for he trained you from when you were very young. His people call him the Water Dancer, and he lives beneath the ocean waves, amongst a lost civilisation as ancient as the Elves.
“But you, Lightstrike, you know him as Master Light Touch. This name was never explained to you, and in your deference, you never questioned it. But he has been touched by the holy light of Arden. He takes many forms, but you will know him when you meet him, and he you. His true form is not dissimilar to my own. I bid you seek him out. With the Seventh Soul Shard of Mael you can help restore Arden to his rightful place.
“But beware! If you find the Heart of Arden and remove it from its lodging in order to restore Arden’s Light Body, which you surely must, a great and unholy horde shall be released from the Prison of N’Kai. Tsathoggua himself, the Great Toad, shall walk upon Shenn.
“You must first find the Sword of Air, and enlist the help of all the powers of Light and Dark who might help you, should you trust them enough, to have any hope of defeating this Army of Shadow. Bring forth the Dragons if you can, and even the Devils from the Nine Hells, along with any others you might find who are willing to come to your aid. But be careful dealing with the denizens of the Abyss. They are not bound by the laws of Order as are the Devils.
“Avenge me, Lightstrike! The heartbeat you hear now is not that of Arden. I spoke true when I perished, for Arden speaks through me. Dagon, the God Below, is all around. You must make him bleed to see his true face…”
And as she speaks these fateful words, she turns to face a growing shadow that creeps around her and above her. She takes to flight, and swings at the creeping darkness with a huge and dazzling mace of pure, white light, beating it back. She glances back, and gestures towards Zellingar.
“He is a good man. Perhaps he has been led astray by his father, but he may be of some use to you in seeking out allies for our cause. Do not dismiss him lightly, though I know he may seem strange. His father’s plans are repugnant to me, but he has in his possession an elixir that would help you to unleash a powerful enemy of the Great Old One.
“Go, my Runechild! The shadows proliferate, but I can hold them back, for now. Do not weep! Avenge me! Avenge me!”
As the vision fades, she casts something towards Lightstrike. Instinctively he reaches out his hand to catch it, although it appears to possess no solid form. But when he opens his fist, he is holding an object of solid gold. An amulet, which bears the sigil of Arden, and three runes of summoning.
Lightstrike clutches the amulet and wordlessly swears a Vow of Emnity towards Tsathoggua and his minions, and takes a Sacred Oath of Vengeance in the name of Arden. He is still Lightstrike the Rogue, Arcane Trickster, and Vorpal Headsman. But he is more than that now: he is a Holy Paladin of Arden, the Sundered One, the long-lost Elder God of Light!
Somewhere out in the deepest trenches of the multiverse, the sleepy, bulbous eye of a gargantuan, slumbering entity flickers open.

*

“Did we miss something?” puffs Zimlok as he, Babs and Zellingar come running up to join Lightstrike and Mherren. It would seem Elovyn’s lengthy speech had taken hardly any time at all (“Well, it didn’t feel like that to us!” I hear you moan; apologies for the overly long exposition there – DM).
“Oh, nuthin’ much,” mutters Mherren, looking over at Lightstrike, who is still half-entranced, and holding tightly to his heavenly amulet.
“Jolly good,” says Zimlok cheerfully. “Let’s not hang around, then.” And he poles off confidently through the gigantic, throbbing guts of whatever unnatural being they find themselves now trapped inside.
Haji Baba slits open the peristaltic, fleshy walls as they continue, collecting some of the black, half-congealed blood that oozes out of the wound into a vial for some nefarious and esoteric druidic purpose. (Sometimes you just creep me out, Babs – DM). All the while, the low, slow heartbeat is getting louder…
They splatter through endless tubes and tunnels, and strange, cathedral-like spaces. One such chamber is ankle-deep in blood; another, kidney-shaped, is flooded with yellow, brackish water. Both liquids begin to churn ominously as the adventurers pass through, and spiral upward from a central vortex as though forming some chaotic, sentient creature – but our heroes press on quickly before anything can manifest.
Crossing another great hall of flesh, this one filled with yellowed bones and rotting vegetable matter, Mherren suddenly feels a tug on one ankle. Looking down, he sees to his horror a tendril of living compost wrapping around his other ankle, and before he can even yell out he is yanked off his feet and pulled towards a shapeless mass with a yawning, toothy maw.
The warlock unleashes a gout of fiery magic, and Haji Baba, seeing his imminent danger, sends out a sonic blast of thunder. Lightstrike holds the Talisman of the Derro Savant to his chest and a thin-bladed, black sacrificial dagger materialises and hovers in front of him. He whistles a command, and it shoots off to impale the shambling mound of half-digested matter. Zimlok closes a magical glasshouse around most of the plant monster’s form (a missed gardening/greenhouse-related quip there, no doubt, although I can’t think of one – DM), but what remains of it opens another gaping mouth and continues to drag Mherren towards it.
What follows is a firestorm of druidic lightning bolts, eldritch blasts, and miniature magic meteors, but this bizarre creature is relentless and ravenous. The hideous maw now looming before him and threatening to swallow him whole, Mherren douses himself in magical oil, and his body ignites and expands to that of an enormous, raging fire elemental. Within seconds, the thing is cinders. As is most of the rest of the room.
And Dagon, the God Below, is awoken by a serious bout of indigestion.

*

Onwards our doughty heroes plough, until finally they reach their goal. At the centre of an enormous pericardial space, lit by the eerie, psychedelic glow of alien moulds and fungi, beats a gigantic, black heart. The very antithesis of the Heart of Arden: a heart of purest darkness.
Lub-dub.
The floor is thick with blood, which begins to swirl as in the previous chambers, and rises to form a vaguely female shape.
Lub-dub. “Welcome,” she purrs, as two more entities appear behind her – a hulking blood elemental and a tiny, darting lightning elemental. “I am Razazel, the living essence of Dagon, the only part of his consciousness to remain aware in his eternal slumber. He has been bound here for millennia, as have I, since before even the time of the Immortal Pharoah, patiently waiting like the rest of his kin of Yuggoth for the Age of Shadow to return. But you! You will enabl– ”
Snick!
“Yeah, whatever,” says Lightstrike, casually tossing his returned vorpal boomerang as he watches her head roll and her form collapse back into the floor with a slosh of finality.
Lub-dub.
Mherren the Fiery charges at the remaining blood elemental and the two giants go at it toe to toe. Zellingar and Haji Baba attack the elekron with magical flame and vine.
Zimlok singularly fails to cast Leomund’s tiny hut.
Lub-dub.
Lightstrike hurls Whisper at the elekron, but upon contact with the metal blade the elemental only fizzes with humming electric voltage and grows larger.
Mherren and the blood elemental continue to exchange devastating blows, and Haji Baba fries it with a bolt of lightning. Zellingar’s scorching ray fizzles, but Lightstrike conjures a chromatic orb of acid and dissolves the waning blood elemental in a bubbling mess of screaming unholy ichor.
Zimlok singularly fails to capture the elekron in his glasshouse. The panels smash harmlessly together and shatter with a pitiful tinkle as the elemental zips out of the way to engage with Mherren.
Lub-dub.
“Right. Well, now I’m getting really blimmin’ annoyed!” pronounces Zimlok in his best, terrifyingly majestic wizardly voice, and fires a series of tiny meteors at… er… at… Mherren?!
But there is method to his madness, for as the meteors explode they add fuel to Mherren’s fire and destroy the elekron outright.
Mherren plops out of his fire elemental form. “Erm… thanks… I think?”
Lub-dub.
“The heart!” cries Zellingar. “We must destroy it!”
And the companions set to work, hacking and slashing at the huge and odious organ. Eventually they break through its endocardial wall and a viscous, black flow of alien, atrial blood throbs out and slides to the floor.
Lub-
Lightrike finds himself recalling the cursed Ichor Tree in the Feywild, as quickly they are up to their knees in a thickening, ferrous, dark ichor. Poor old Babs is up to her hips, and she flies into a rage as she begins to tear at the sides of the chamber with her diamond-edged sickle. She breaks through, and they all tumble into the blasphemous gullet of the Buried God.

*

The Company of Nerdventurers flee before the rising tide of blood. Zimlok stumbles, but Lightstrike races back for him and yoinks him squawking along by the scruff of his neck.
“I’m not leaving you!” he rasps huskily and melodramatically at the kenku, momentarily believing himself to be an action hero in some Yoreywood Mummers’ Play.
Suddenly there is an almighty tremor, and an intake of burning hot air rushes through the great trachea of the God Below. A deafening wail of pain fills their ears as they burst into its mouth and struggle to find their balance upon its rolling, purple, stagnant tongue with its taste buds like huge, severed pillars. Before them towers an enormous wall of comb-like baleen plates.
Another shudder, as the corpse of Dagon is seized by death throes and launched from its amniotic bath of molten magma. It bursts forth from below the planet’s crust in a violent eruption of rubble and boulders. Our heroes are thrown to the ground, and barely resist being swallowed back down its caldera-like gullet.
“Its teeth! Break its teeth!” hollers Zellingar, hugging desperately to a giant taste bud.
Zimlok clambers to his feet. He puffs out his feathered chest and adjusts his wizard’s hat. This time he will not fail. Oh no – for he is Zimlok the Lightbringer, and he brings certain death to the forces of darkness!
KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM!
Two magic meteors fly from their orbit above his head and explode against the baleen plates, blowing a gaping hole in Dagon’s smile. And cool air gushes in.
Haji Baba staggers drunkenly to the opening, and her eyes widen as she looks out to see a line of rugged hills rushing straight towards her. They are hundreds of feet up in the air – and falling fast. A deadly impact is mere seconds away.
“Brace!” she yells, and Mherren and Zellingar hold on tight to their taste buds. Then she poofs into cockroach form and clambers out on to the nose of Dagon, barely keeping from being swept away by the racing torrent of air. A manic look flashes in her seven compound eyes. “Come on!” she challenges the earth as it flies up to meet her. “Yeeee-haaaaaaaaaah!!!”
At the last instant Lightstrike flings Whisper out of the gap and appears harmlessly on the ground below. Then he gulps and legs it as the shadow of a juggernaut-sized whale god expands quickly around him. He leaps clear in the nick of time.
BLAH-DOOoom!
The earth trembles, and Lightstrike turns to see a battered, bald priest of Khors roll out of the leviathan’s shattered mouth, barely breathing, his red robes in tatters. Then out sloughs the limp form of Mherren – unconscious, but alive. And over there; Haji Baba pops back into her natural form and calmly dusts down her druidic robes. (Hmmm… are cockroaches really hardy enough to survive the impact of a giant whale crashing into a mountain? Methinks I’ve been duped there, but I s’pose it was pretty darned cool so we’ll let it pass… this time! – DM)
But wait!
Where on earth is Zimlok?
Not on earth at all, it would seem.
All four look up to see a little black speck in a pointy hat vainly flapping its arms. Then, a wretched, distant squawk.
It plummets hundreds of feet and then blinks out of existence, only to reappear a moment later and continue its gravitationally induced trajectory.
… Zimlok blinks again. Nothing happens. He blinks again, and again and again – nothing! It would be a remarkable understatement to say he is disappointed not to have magically and harmlessly rematerialized post-impact in the mouth of the whale god as he’d so cunningly planned, but at least this blimmin’ blink spell could have worked. After all, he is none other than Zimlok the Lightbringer, Wizard Extraordinaire! Of all the rotten times for his magic to fail him… and this is really, really blimmin’ high up…
“Yurgh!” is the last, pitiful word to leave his mouth before he slams beak first into the mountain.

*

“A pathetic little puff of wind? Was that really supposed to help him?” shouts Lightstrike as he and Babs rush over to the crumpled, bloodied form of Zimlok.
“Well at least I tried to do something!” retorts Haji Baba as she works her healing magic on his broken body. A fall from that height by a creature without his flexible, hollow bird bones would surely have been fatal, but by the grace of the gods he is still breathing, although somewhat teetering on the edge of this mortal coil.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” yells Lightstrike, as he lays on his hands and channels the holy light of Arden.
“You know very well what I mean!” Babs yells back, as Zimlok’s eyes flutter open weakly.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!”
“…Urrrgggghhhhhh…” A gurgle, and Zimlok passes out again.

*

Somewhere in the desolate hinterlands of the Dragon Coast, a lonely campfire flickers at dusk. Beneath a rocky overhang, a revived half-orc warlock prepares to summon his belated quasit familiar from the Abyss (again). A tabaxi rogue stares into the dancing flames and contemplates his destiny. A priest of Khors carefully keeps his back turned away from his companions as he mends his torn holy robes. And a delusional kenku with a bent beak croons butchered sea chanties at the top of his voice.
“…The winds blew up, her bow dipped down,
“Oh blow, my bully boys, blow, huh!”
“Will you shut up!” hisses Haji Baba. “I’m trying to listen!”
There! Drifting up from the valley bottom, a strange melody is being carried on the breeze; a distant, solitary voice, singing a haunting song of exquisite beauty. As she breathes in the fresh air and feels the waning twilight breeze upon her skin, Haji Baba sighs in a rare moment of contentment.
“Before the boat had hit the water,
“The whale’s tail came up and caught her,
“All hands to the side, harpooned and fought her,
“When she dived down low, huh!”
“I told you to SHUT UP!”
Clonk!
“Ouch!”

*

The Nineteenth Day of Eleint 2020 in the Nurian Era, during the Season of Loende

As a pale, amber dawn rises over a smouldering campfire, the gargantuan corpse of a fallen alien god lies dead on the far side of the ridge, slumped beside a massive crater, and oozing endless gallons of thick, black blood, which form streams and begin to pool and combine as ponderous, sludgy rivers in the valleys below.
At the camp, Mherren is just in the process of organising his lengthy presentation notes on Elovyn’s research papers (ref. World Anvil: Sword of Air: Just what the h@#l is going on here?: Orc Talk), which they had recovered from K’Varn’s den in the citadel of Runor. Suddenly something catches his eye, and he looks up blinking to the west, where the sky is still gloaming, and his brutish, tusked jaw falls open in fear and astonishment.
There, hanging in the heavens amongst the fast-fading constellations, a single comet trails a blood-red streak across the vault of the sky. Like a violent gash across the heavens, its ominous portent sends a shiver down his spine. For he had only just read about it this very night! Stricken, unable to tear his eyes from the baleful object, he murmurs the sinister words of doom beneath his breath:

Look to the sky, and tremble ’neath its vault
When thou seest the comet that burns as blood,
For in its wake, without relent
Doth approach from vast gulfs betwixt ye stars
A dark planet, Yuggoth called…

*

Will our heroic fellowship be able to defy the heavenly augury in time to save the world from certain doom?
Whose is the enchanting voice that Haji Baba heard singing in the distance?
Why is Zellingar so careful to keep his back turned away from his newfound comrades? And who is his father?
Where will our heroes head next, now they have finally escaped the Cyclopean Deeps?
… And will Zimlok ever be able to top that epic fail?
Find out in the next calamitous episode of…

Ye Sword of Air!

Experience:
Razazel 2,300
Blood Elemental 1,800
Elekron 1,100
Heart of Dagon 400
Total 5,600
Award per player 1,400

Haji Baba: Vial of the Blood of Dagon
Mherren: lose temporary Flametongue STR bonus following a long rest; Quasit resummoned
Lightstrike: Ye Blessing of Elovyn Sorrowsong & Holy Amulet of Arden