"Firiel, come play with me!"
The wall is followed by a quickened blast of greasy darkness that explodes amid the party's ranks.[dice=Unholy Blight vs Everyone but Xiddik (DC 22)]5d8
"Best not to dwell on it."
Kidding! I'll post my action in a bit. :P
"But of course!" exclaims Fíriel, politely accepting Randall's invitation. Skipping over toward his new foe, she twirls a pirouette and calls in a sing-song voice, "C'mon, ugly, let's play tag!"
Reaching out one hand, she winks at Randall and grabs the drow's knee, freezing it to the bone!
Prickles, meanwhile, holds up one paw and studies it sadly, tilting his head this way and that as if a different angle might make the burnt patches magically regenerate.
The unfortunate warrior trapped between the heroic halflings cries as in pain and collapses as his knee if frozen solid. He's silenced swiftly by a vicious blow from Randall.
Sensing that the illusions' effectiveness has worn thin, Xiddik finally lets the illusion drop. Frantically playing the ocarina with one hand, she walks over and reaches down towards Prickles, very tentatively. C'mon, now, you monster, you can't take another blast looking like this. Don't you dare kill me.
Assuming Prickles allows her, the bard lays a scaly talon on him and releases a surge of healing energy.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Prickles, intent on the forlorn examination of his paw, doesn't notice Xiddik sidle up to him and barely touch his outer-most layer of quills with her talon. A moment later, his eyes go wide and he emits a loud "ooooooooh" of pride as he finds the right angle and the burnt patches on his paw do, in fact, magically regenerate!
As suddenly as it began, his wonder stops -- his entire body freezes as he notices the foreign contact. Ever so slowly, the hedgehog's eyes wander sideways toward the kobold, and ever so slowly, his head follows. A moment later he's staring up at the scaly talon. He licks his lips, and then his eyes wander slowly back down to his paw, and slowly back up again to the talon.
After a few seconds of staring, he suddenly makes up his mind. Turning, the prickly beast rushes headlong toward the kobold, arms outstretched... and hugs its left primary foot-digit.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Xiddik, caught flat-footed, is helpless to dodge the vicious onslaught of affection. She jerks back with a shriek, leaving Prickles momentarily dangling from her foot—andbarely manages to stop herself from reflectively punting the small creature straight out of the drow storyline and halfway into Legacy of Fire.
Instead, she stares at the little beast in shock. Slowly, carefully, she lowers her foot back to the ground.
With a hesitant, trembling talon, she reaches down and finds herself petting the hedgehog's nose.
Meanwhile, behind her, some stuff is happening with a bunch of bloodthirsty drow demon worshipers trying to destroy the world or whatever.
Were-Njord wrenches and squeezes the demon-bird trapped in his clawed grip.
Njord brutally ragdolls another one of the demons while Xiddik, in a touching display, starts to overcome her entirely rational fear of bladed surface monsters.
The lesser drow warriors trapped within the field of tentacles finally succumb to the rough handling. The warriors outside Asht's grabby spell descend on the divided heroes. They're supported by the surviving vrocks - one flying over the wall of blades to attack Njord while the other pursues troublesome Asht in the hallway.
The black acid spreads to cover Allevrah's whole body, eating away at her flesh! In an effort to make her really dead, and make himself and his friends not Vrock-meal, Asht'el sends a volley of force-bolts at Allevrah, then touches Xiddik and Prickles and magically transports them to where their friends are, behind the whirling wall of blades!
Allevrah screams in pain, beginning to regret underestimating Asht'el's spellcasting prowess. Between the creeping acid and the volley of force missiles, the drow matron looks worse for wear. Despite the disruption, she manages to work another spell that vanishes her in a puff of brimstone from her position amid the flailing tentacles. When she reappears on the other side of the blades some of her acid burns have mended.
Randall spots the drow warrior's backup weapon hanging from his belt - an especially well-crafted dagger.
Fíriel does a little twirl as she dodges between the drow blades to end up opposite Randall (with a drow between them). She curtsies to him briefly, then draws a little rune in the air and reaches out as if to invite the drow to dance.
Prickles, meanwhile, trundles forward and raises his masked visage, grinning fiendishly at Allevrah!
Noticing that the drow is tracking Firiel's movement, Xiddik lends a little help.
She's actually running out of breath a little, and finally stops her performance. But the music continues to echo and seems to only rise in tension as she races toward the priestess, ducking under the claws of the vrock as best she can, to stand before Allevrah. Her eyes blaze with pure hatred as she gazes up at the enemy—the enemy, her enemy, finally in the flesh and bleeding real blood. Xiddik is almost trembling. Her glamered red dress is sticky with blood and black muck.
But when the kobold speaks, it is in a completely different voice—the dry voice of First Daughter Alicavniss Vonnarc, the drow matron who betrayed Allevrah's location and plans to the group less than a week ago.
"'Where dear Allevrah sees vengeance and glory, I see calamity and the impulses of the lowborn,'" Xiddik echoes viciously, her tail twitching with murderous anticipation. "'A lowborn trollop. A mad snake. The hateful surface elf, Allevrah.'"
Though she quotes precisely, only those who were also present will recognize some slight... liberties with the context.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
With a bit of timely magical aid, Firiel skips past the blades of the drow and into position to work her spell. With Randall providing a distraction, she touches the side of one of the warriors and delivers a lethal shock. He screams in pain before crumbling to the ground between the halflings flanking him.
Xiddik's imitation/recitation is undeniably skillful and minus the matron's cruel sneer perfectly captures the words and tone of the First Daughter. The kobold's tactic hits the mark causing Allevrah's anger to boil over into some mixture of blind rage and utter shock. Noting the reaction from their master, the remaining demons and drow similarly freeze as they watch the confrontation unfold.
After a handful of tense seconds, she speaks. “Surface elf? THAT B~+&% WILL BURN WITH EVERYONE ELSE?! I have sacrificed everything to see justice done. That life is dead to me! And so are all of-”
Allevrah's furious trembling suddenly stops and she lurches slightly almost toppling over. At her feet, Prickles' magic surges through her acid-scarred form. She stares down in confusion at the masked hedgehog. "You... pest..." she chokes before the life leaves her eyes and she falls to the ground alongside her slain minions.
A heartbeat later, her remains are consumed by demonic green flames.
Prickles roars loudly(ish) and turns his masked visage toward the rest of the drow, as if daring them to challenge him!
Xiddik watches in stunned silence as the priestess slowly falls to the ground. For a moment, she says nothing, watching the green fires rise and burn her enemy into ash.
" 'Everything' is nothing," she spits. Her voice breaks as she screams into the flames, "NOTHING! YOU GAVE UP NOTHING!"
Randall risks a glance over his shoulder to see what's going on and is completely confused to see Xiddik screaming into a burning pile of rags and apparently no sign of the leader. Desna's stars, where did she go now? And what's gotten into Prickles - he's full of himself right now, isn't he?
Asht'el reaches up to brush the hair from his eyes, confused by what he's just seen, only to realize he's seen it clearly all along - Prickles has just slain Allevrah! He looks down at his right hand, which has cast so many spells at the fell, fallen priestess, and says with great eloquence, "Wha...?"
It's over. It's all finally over.
Xiddik slowly turns, watching the other drow flee. Her tail twitches. Her breaths are shallow, her teeth bared. Her clawed foot scrapes back into the stone, bracing to give chase.
It can't be over. It's never over.
Witnessing their mistress's defeat and her remains consumed by her demonic patron, the morale of the surviving drow warriors vanishes in an instant. Some look on the heroes with a mixture of terror and awe. Most drop their weapons and flee for their lives. Their allies, the remaining demons, aren't far behind them.
Soon the party is alone in Allevrah's throne room with a small army's worth of slain dark elves and demons. But even if the battle's over, the heroes' quest isn't quite complete. Amid Asht'el's field of flailing tentacles, the final Aboleth rune remains. Despite being incomplete it pulses with dreadful terrible power. Until the final rune is destroyed, the threat of a Second Darkness remains.
”Asht’el, those tentacles, can you make them go away? I need to have a look at the glyph and don’t want to get smacked by a stray squid-arm.”
Xiddik yanks her tail blade out of a drow warrior's throat with a hiss. She whirls around, looking for further victims for her wrath. There is no one left.
She reluctantly turns to the rune. "Is... that the last?"
Randall studies it from a distance and nods, ”So it would appear, my fearless friend.”
Xiddik gives a short, yap-like laugh. "Funny, isn't it? One of these made the drow long ago. In a way. The sky came down on your heads, and down the elves come to join us. It took just a few sigils. Just a few old godless fish to bring about the lives and deaths of so many. And now, just one sad, angry elf to bring about an end to my world—and almost to yours."
The bard stares at the aboleth rune intently, her face expressionless, her tail still. "What a world to save."
”And while she was prepared to fight off an army with her soldiers and demons, a uniquely gifted hedgehog brought her low. Life is full of irony. I hope you are able to enjoy it someday. I know you still feel a lot of pain. I don’t know what happened, but know that I wish to always be there when you need a friend.”
Xiddik reaches over and puts a hand on Randall's shoulder, then pauses, as if puzzled by something. She sighs. "Out of magic. Sorry about the burns. You know, I did not even get hit in this battle. Ha. 'Ire-nee', right?"
She paces around the rune, double-checking it for traps as Randall readies to work his craft once more on the apocalyptic magic.
"You're a thief, aren't you? It's funny. I never asked about any of you. Surfacers don't use those tools like we do."
”Well, my past does include some midnight requisitions. I have had reason to hone skills you don’t want the local officials knowing - or proving - you’ve honed, if you know what I mean. However, I’ve found it quite satisfying to use these skills to get the better of our common enemies.”
Fíriel stands from wiping her hands clean on a fallen drow, and walks over to stand beside Randall. She smiles at Xiddik, and adds softly, "We'll both be here when you need friends. Don't disappear on us, alright?"
"Well...that's all-right, suppose. I suppose." Xiddik watches the hedgehog dancing behind Randall and Firiel. "I can't very well disappear, can I? No spell slots for it. Besides..." Her tail twitches. "When Ash't gets back to the drow child, he will need someone who actually knows how to manage a displacer beast. They get very hard to manage without material sedge to chew on, for one. We wouldn't want the beast to eat your group's mascot."
Working together, Randall, Firiel, and Xiddik carefully puzzle out the eldritch workings of the Master Rune. Moving with meticulous care, the trio scratch out tiny portions of the rune piece by piece, slowly unraveling the potent magic bound within it. Unlike the lesser runes, this one offers no defense against its destruction. It appears Allevrah never anticipated her enemies storming the seat of her power to undo her machinations... or perhaps the alien magic possessed enough intelligence to recognize its own defeat and inevitable destruction.
Finally, the magic of the rune is broken and its pulsing glow quickly dims to darkness. The markings composing the remainder of the Master Rune crack like aged paint and blow away on an unseen breeze. The battle is well and truly over.
With the danger passed, the heroes are free to explore the rest of Allevrah's citadel. Much of it is marred with blasphemous iconography but Allevrah has collected a kingdom's ransom worth of gilded furnishing, exquisite tapestries, and magical treasures. They find no resistance in the fortress's occupiers. Of the surviving drow, most have already fled into the Darklands and the few that remain are quick to throw themselves at the party's mercy. There is no sign of the demons as they wasted little time in abandoning their allies via powerful teleportation magic.