Nalar looks up at the ceiling and weaves a sigil in the air, disappearing in a flash of light and materializing above the forcesheild.
Nalar transposes himself with the air above the sphere as Braelex heals up. Vuloo stands without getting taken back down immediately and continues to actively dodge.
Relan knocks the mastiff out with his first punch.
Andel moves in and glitterdusts the pack around Vuloo blinding another
; fail
; success!
The mastiffs continue to savage at the halfling, missing many times, but the unblinded one brings him to the ground and slams him with his tail. Additionally, the southern one finishes by sniffing the air to the south and turns to engage Andel.
; ; miss
; ; miss
; ; miss
; ; miss
; HIT!; ; TRIP!;
; HIT!;
Vuloo again uses the blessing of fervor to stand up and then he continues to remain on total defense.
Andel takes a 5' step and then fires his shock bow at the mastiff attacking Vuloo. He uses the blessing of fervor to take an extra attack.
RElan re-readies his pole-arm as he moves into the room.
Nalar fires down from perch at the dark hound attacking Vuloo, streaming gouts of fire shooting from outstretched hands.
5
Dominate Person
Dominate Person
4
Charm Monster
Dimensional Anchor
3
Heroism
Heroism
Fireball
Fireball
Fireball
Fireball
2
Hideous Laughter
Mirror Image*
Create Pit
Scorching Ray*
Scorching Ray
Scorching Ray
1
Memory Lapse
Shield
Magic Missile
Magic Missile
Braelex becomes visible again as she throws the last three of her fire bombs. She aims their trajectories carefully to avoid burning Vuloo.
;
;
;
Nalar sends two searing bars of fire at the unblinded mastiff and burns it immensely.
Braelex throws three bombs at the northwestern one, destroying it finishes it off with a fire bomb incinerating the nearby one and doing more damage to the unblinded one.
; success!
; success!
; success!
Andel fires and misses twice and Relan and Vuloo reposition. The two remaining in the pack continue to harry at Vuloo. BUt this time the halfing is able to dodge all the attacks.
; miss!
; miss
; ; miss
; ; miss
Out of bombs, Braelex fires her crossbow, using the blessing to get a rapid second shot off.
; plus
; plus
Braelex drops the northern hound and the second shot damages the southern one.
Vuloo withdraws to safety.
Andel fires on the remaining hound.
Relan steps and full attacks the remaining mastif.
Relan cuts down the final mastiff with ease.
The party breathes a sigh of relief and picks up the discarded armor and weapons of the Dark Rider. As you do so, you hear a voice cut through all your minds.
Mine! I shall return for them
This weapon looks like the barbed spine of a humanoid. A spine flail functions as a +2 flail that deals slashing damage and has reach. Unlike most weapons with reach, a spine flail can be used against adjacent foes. On a critical hit from a spine flail, the victim must succeed at a DC 15 Fortitude save to resist being permanently blinded by the blow.
Spine flails are favored by powerful dullahans, who harvest the spines from their first victims. The undead riders have a particular affinity for their personal spine flails, and often maintain a supernatural control over their weapons, causing them to appear or disappear at will.
Value: 13,616gp
It echoes off the walls of your brain and then fades away. The Dark presence you felt when here and in the Rider's vicinity has diminished significantly but it resides in the back of your soul. He is down, but not defeated ... you know that you need to move with haste to act while he is reforming. [ooc](Knowledge Religion for more information)
I know some lore of these creatures. Relan discusses some obscure points of dullahan lore with Nalar, attempting to assist his recall of information.
"What... what's happening?" Braelex asks nervously, joining the others. She gulps down an extract, becoming somewhat indistinct.
Relan and company come up with an agreement that dullahan reform over time, generally the next night after they are destroyed; however, the Dark Rider is deeply connected with the demiplane and is apparently pulling negative energy to accelerate the process. You don't know how long it will be before it reforms, but it will certainly be much faster than normal.
Vuloo moves to the western door. "My friends, if what you say about the dullahan is true, we don't have much time. We need to recover the Sihedron fragment before it reforms."
He quickly detects magic and scans the doors for danger.
If it appears safe, he opens the doors.
Braelex nods, "We should heal up before moving further in, though." She joins Vuloo, searching for traps.
Vuloo channels to heal everyone.
Vuloo pushes the doors open. The long chamber beyond is completely sealed, its walls of bare stone. At the far end, the domed ceiling rises above a twenty-foot-tall pillar that is part organic, part horribly mechanical. Half-emerging from the marble of the pillar, set back to back with each other, are the kneeling, desiccated corpses of three angelic beings, their wings spread and mouths open in silent screams. From their eye sockets run articulated metal shafts that curve up to the top of the pillar, where their pointed ends emit a soft glow. Floating in the air above the pillar, seemingly suspended in the radiance, is a triangular shard of metal. Nalar feels a strong tug from the Shard of Lust.
Andel stares at the corpses in horror. "These are astral devas. Thread carefully, anything capable of subjugating these angels to such horrific torture is powerful indeed."
"This is totally fine. No danger here," Braelex quips. She moves in, searching carefully for danger.
Before anyone touches anything anything around the shard, she'll examine the pillar.
Braelex finds no traps, but the entire structure thrums with magic and the sides of the pillar glisten with wetness.
Pole arm in hand, Relan stands ready to defend. Someone make a decision. he says, worried about the passage of time. I'd quit this place and soon.
Everyone stands around and looks at the pillar ... the tightness and pressure of darkness and evil magic pushes from all around you.
"Dammit," Braelex curses, then flies up and takes the shard off the pillar.
Braelex grabs the shard and there is an audible pop. Immediately the three angels at the pillar’s base suddenly shriek in mortal pain. Their bodies convulse and thrash, their faces rip from the metal fixtures in their eyes, and then they slump to the ground and swiftly decay away into mounds of foul-smelling corruption.
All around you the entire Dark Forest shakes and thunders, as if struck by a minor earthquake. The air quality grows strangely stale, and the glowing twilight outside dims.
You suddenly feel a wave of coldness pass through them as a pulse of potent necromantic energies momentarily wash out through the room.
Every living creature in the chamber must succeed at a DC 20 Fortitude save or gain the curse of living death.
Your flesh grows pale and gangrenous in appearance and exudes a foul-smelling stench of decay (–6 penalty on all Charisma-based skill checks opposed by or made against living creatures); you react to positive and negative energy as if you were undead—positive energy harms you, and negative energy heals you; against spell effects and magic item effects that have different specific effects on undead (such as an undead bane weapon or a searing light spell), you are treated as both undead
and your original creature type (taking the least advantageous choice in resolving effects)
The shard is made of a pale metal that feels light and chill to the touch. As you grab it you are overwhelmed by a powerful appetite. A voracious hunger and overwhelming thirst hit you.
Make a DC20 Will save or consume all food and drink (including potions) you have on you immediately. If you succeed you are good for another hour before having to save again. You must eat and drink a full meal every hour to not make the save.
As long as the Shard of Gluttony is carried, you can use vampiric touch as a spell-like ability once per day, gain +2 insight bonus
on saves versus necromancy spells, and increase your maximum hit points by 1 point per Hit Die.
Vuloo will use his Fortune feat to re-roll the save.
"Ugh, to the abyss with whatever that was." She immediately starts digging in her back, taking out and chomping on the first piece of food found. "Famished!" She grabs one of the many extracts on her bandoleer, seemingly at random, and gulps it down thirstily.
"Ever get one of those thirsts you can't quench, no matter how much water you drink? Too much salt or something." She continues chomping down her rations.
Where is that terrible smell coming from?
Vuloo inadvertantly takes a step away from Relan, "You look horrible and smell even worse! May Sarenrae free you of this terrible stench."
He casts dispel magic on Relan.
Vuloo's spell is rebuffed ... there is no residual spell to remove. Something else is required.
Relan looks over himself and notes I don't feel right either. What has happened?
Vuloo shrugs at Relan, "Some sort of curse. I can't seem to remove it. This may have to wait until we get back to the library. Are you able to continue?"
He turns to the others. "We have what we came for. Let's get out of here."
Braelex chugs down another extract. Her stomach makes a loud gurgle.
"Fine, but can we stop to make lunch. I'm starving!"
Vuloo turns to the others. "We have to find a way off this demi plane. Possibly we can travel back the way we came in? If not, there has to be a portal here in the keep. Perhaps we should explore the lower levels and see what's here."
"Let's check the rest of the place. Maybe they have a kitchen." She gulps down another extract. "And what about the..." Her voice fades as her body disperse into a cloud of mist.
Vuloo shakes his head as Braelex disappears. "Is it me, or is she acting a bit strange?"
He shrugs and then walks down the stairs into the adjoining room and opens the southern door.
Andel opens the northern door.
Andel opens the northern door ...
This stone room is almost completely bare of furnishings, the walls and floor simply blank gray stone. In the center of the room stands a statue of a headless armored man holding up a whip of linked vertebrae and seated astride a rearing horse that bears an expression of fiendish ferocity. On the western wall hangs the only other decoration in this room: what appears to be a harp or lyre made entirely from the corpse of a small humanoid.
Vuloo simultaneously opens the southern door
This curving room is almost completely taken up by a recessed bath in the floor, the pool leaving only a narrow lip of stone around the edges of the dark water. From the door, steps lead down into the pool, and the whole chamber is only half-lit by tiny, flickering flames near the ceiling.
I can continue Vuloo, but I am not happy about it. Perhaps there will be some advantage to fighting our way out of here with this affliction. He notes. And perhaps we will discover a way to remove it while here.
Looking into the room with statue he offers I see no reason to leave this stature in tack. Why not destroy it?
Gaseous-Braelex floats around Relan, making affirmative shapes and pointing a misty tendril at the statue and hideous harp.
Relan notes You know Braelex was not acting this way until she picked up the shard. I wonder if there is an ioun stone that would balance out the negative effects the shard? Unless someone stops him he pulls his Adamantine Dagger and ignoring the harp, begins to break apart the statue.
Vuloo scans for danger and then detects magic on both rooms. If it appears safe, he'll move in to study the harp more closely.
"Relan, I agree it is distasteful, but we have better things to do. Help me search these rooms."
I just had the thought that perhaps this statue is tied to the fiend's ability to return...
Relan starts to damage the statue with his incredibly hardened dagger, although it is immensely slow going.
Vuloo detects moderate necromancy in both rooms, from the pool and the harp. He also detects faint abjuration and moderate enchantment from the harp in the northern room.