"Actually ... I think that's our line," Dewdrop declares with a hand on one tiny hip.
She follows up with a sunlight blast.
Remy rushes up to the strigoi and glimpses their vulnerability before unleashing a flurry of blows!
Dewdrop blinds the strigoi with her beauty before scorching them with a powerful blast of light! Remy moves in, kicking and stunning the vampire. It shakes off the stun before casting a spell to drain your blood!
Dewdrop screeches in pain as the blood is pulled from her small body. In response, she sends another blast of sunlight.
Though Dewdrop's spell misses, Edric lands a mighty blow, and Remy connects with two kicks. Despite draining some vitality from you, it's not enough for the strigoi to weather your fury. Their body evaporates into shadows, which flow into one of the coffins nearby. You are able to open the coffin and finish it off for good.
"Those things are really becoming annoying," the sprite says with a harrumph as she attempts to return order to her mussed hair.
"I hope there's not too many of them."
A quick application of magic returns color to her pale skin.
A small chamber at the end of the hall holds a broad stone table and a luxurious padded armchair. Books and scrolls cover nearly the entire surface of the table, and fill shelves built into the walls. In a wide alcove to the east sits an elegant stone sarcophagus decorated with inlaid gold and carvings of an unsettling spired cityscape.
The stacks of documents and books found here will take several hours—perhaps days—to study and examine, Amid these notes are several additional treasures, including a half dozen soul gems worth 500 gp each that are being used as paperweights. An unlocked coffer under the desk holds 2,800 gp. This coffer bears Pharasma’s symbol.
Additional books here include dozens of more recent texts stolen from the city. A significant amount of these books include details of Ileosa’s reign, taking particular note of her cruelty and vanity. A page in this stack lists the queen’s personality traits and concludes Ileosa is “a fitting replacement for the failed Runelord Sorshen, and someone infinitely easier to control.”
Dozens of other books detail various aspects of Infernal law, the transition of souls through the afterlife, and the nature of undeath. This collection is worth 600 gp in all.
There is also a dagger tossed into a corner under several stacks of books. This is a +2 greater striking greater disrupting dagger with a bone hilt and a blade engraved with a spiral motif.
That's Odd! Dewdrop notices something unusual about the south wall in this chamber. A thorough search reveals another secret door there.
Unable to resist a deep dive into esoteric lore, Dewdrop spends a few minutes tossing various tomes and scrolls into her magical bag for perusal at a later time, along with the coffer filled with coins and the gems.
She holds up the discovered dagger, offering it to either of the others.
"Through there?" she questions, indicating the secret door.
When Edric expresses interest in the rune bound to the dagger, Dewdrop shrugs and glances around as if checking for eavesdroppers.
"I know a shortcut way to do this, but it probably won't last so," she says, holding up the dagger. "And don't tell anyone."
She spends a few minutes incanting over the bound rune and eventually it pops off into her hands. A few minutes more of chanting over the lizardman's axe allows her to affix the rune to the warrior's weapon.
"There. Just don't get it wet ... or muddy ... or cut bacon with it."
The secret door leads to a secret hall, another concealed door at the end of which opens into a room. A cube of red stone and black metal measuring several feet across floats a foot off the ground in the center of this room. Ornate runes embellish the black metal plates, but the entire device lacks any sort of seam, hinge, catch, or lock.
Deewdrop recognizes the similarities between this cube and an ancient, magical Thassilonian parlor puzzle known as a paradox box—containers featuring sliding slats that allowed letters of a word to be rearranged into anagrams. By solving the anagram puzzle, one could open the box to access its contents.
Unlike a typical paradox box, which normally has enough room on its face for a single word, the paradox engine’s sides contain enough space for an entire verse. Translated from Thassilonian, the verse, which is repeated on every side, reads “Eurythnian shadows forever outshine Azlanti light.”
The sprite's tiny face scrunches up in thought for a bit and she considers one of the staffs she carries.
"I think we're going to have to come back to this," she says finally. "I don't know how to open it other than magic and the magic that I currently have to get past its defenses isn't strong enough."
She shakes her head, not happy at leaving a puzzle unsolved.
The exit from this room leads into a sumptuous chamber. Elaborate clustered columns and ribbed vaults of the ceiling, combined with thick red carpet running from the southern doorway, draw attention to a richly engraved, red stone doorway in the northern wall—a doorway that appears to be filled with a smooth mass of stone emblazoned with a single, sinuous rune--the Thassilonian rune for lust. To the east and west are fifteen-foot-wide alcoves whose pointed archways stretch nearly forty feet overhead.
While the western alcove is empty, the eastern one contains a grisly apparatus of metal framework, smoldering incense burners, glass tubes filled with blood, glowing crimson crystals, and strips of raw flesh—all arrayed around a coffin-like enclosure. Reclining within is a red-haired woman’s partial corpse, the torso open to reveal its missing organs. All that remains is a slowly beating heart, its pulse filling the room with a low, rumbling repetition, as if from the heart of a titan as it struggles to return to life. The hollow shell of a body is instantly recognizable as none other than Queen Ileosa!
With her keen mind, Dewdrop surmises the purpose of the device: to restore Ileosa to life while siphoning her soul from Hell through tiny metaphysical cracks in the legalese of her Infernal contract. The process is nearly complete.
An attractive strigoi woman in a red dress stands protectively in front of the device. Great wings of shadow spread out behind her as she regards you with black eyes. "Congratulations on making it this far," she says. "Your tenacity and combat prowess are nothing short of amazing. I believe you would make excellent allies, should you be willing to join me. Once I seize control of this city, you could be my personal guardians, researchers, and assassins. I would reward you rather handsomely for your services. What say you?"
Dewdrop raises an eyebrow in Remy's direction.
"I think he missed his calling as a diplomat," she says with a grin before turning to face the undead horror.
And so the battle is joined! Edric's fierce battle cry gives the strigoi brief pause, but she flaps her wings and takes to the air before staring into the iruxi's eyes in an attempt to dominate him!
"No sense saving this till last," Dewdrop mutters with a shrug before blasting out her strongest ray of sunlight.
Remy lets out a shout as she channels her ki to wind jump! She rises up into the air and swoops around to flank the strigoi with Edric. Two powerful dragon tail kicks leave the vampiric woman stunned!
The monk fails to find purchase in mid-air, dropping back down to the ground after her attacks.
The strigoi dodges Dewdrop's beam of light and narrowly avoids Edric's attack, but she reels from Remy's assault. Hissing in anger after recovering from the stunning kick, she targets the monk with a powerful spell, banishing her to an extradimensional maze!
Suddenly, the hollow shell of Queen Ileosa lurches inside the coffin-like enclosure. Her mouth opens in a silent scream that reveals vampiric fangs!
The strigoi sees this and cries out in Infernal, her tone angry and frustrated.
"Oh, did we spoil your plans?" the sprite says with a smirk, not really mussed that her most powerful spell missed.
She turns to the newly rising vampiric ex-monarch.
"And you! You've had your bloody chance. We've already got a queen with fangs, thank you very much!"
Another blast of sunlight streaks out, targeting Illeosa.
Dewdrop again displays an unerring lack of regard for aim.
Dewdrop's searing light misses, but Edric lands a hit on the strigoi. She casts a spell to try to transform Dewdrop into a harmless animal!
The shell of Queen Ileosa bursts free from her bindings and drops to the floor. The hollow corpse hisses and pounces on Edric, biting his neck and feasting on his blood!
"Oh, puh-lease!" Dewdrop rolls her eyes in scorn. "I'm from the first world. Do you really think that transformation magic will ..."
The rest of her words are garbled and twist into the bleating of the tiny lamb that's taken her place.
While Remy and Dewdrop are indisposed, Edric annihilates the strigoi with a brutal assault! Her body dissolves into shadow as she slithers along the walls, seeking her coffin.
Meanwhile, Ileosa's shell hisses and snarls, leaping up in the air in a futile attempt to get to Edric and feast on his blood!
Ileosa's shell makes Edric pay for his mistake, tearing at him with fangs and claws!
Remy finally escapes from the maze! She quickly assesses the situation before moving in to kick at the bloody shelll!
Both Remy and Edric lands hits on Ileosa's shell. As Edric flies to safety, the corpse turns to Remy and attacks! Remy dodges away from her fangs, making the shell close the distance to her, where it strikes her with a claw.
Edric swoops down and lands two hits, while Remy kicks Ileosa's shell twice. With the final blow, the hollow corpse immediately melts into a pool of blood, at the center of which lies her still-beating heart. A moment later, a crimson ghostly shape—Queen Ileosa’s soul—rises from the heart. After the soul shrieks in relief at escaping from Hell, it rises through the ceiling and vanishes while the heart dies and rots!
The release of energy disrupts the polymorph spell, restoring Dewdrop to her normal form.
Dewdrop simply stands there for a few moments with a look of shock on her face.
"S-she ... she transformed ... me," she declares in a stunned voice.
"She transformed me." Her voice grows louder.
"SHE TRANSFORMED ME!!" she shrieks in anger, rising slightly into the air, her wings buzzing like an angry wasp. Her face twists into rage before she tears off after the fleeing shadow.
Remy shrugs. "You got better," she offers as consolation.
You follow the strigoi's shadow form back to the sarcophagus in the previous crypt. There, within her sacrophagus, her body lies. She appears to be dead: she doesn't breathe, her body temperature matches her surroundings, and she doesn't react to pain or other stimuli. But there is one one anomaly: the shadow cast by her “dead” body shifts and moves slightly, its edges twisting and active.
You will need to bring her into direct sunlight or running water to put a permanent end to her. But before you have a chance to do so, a puff of brimstone heralds the arrival of a powerful devil! The humanoid devil has five horns protruding from his forehead that bears a resemblance to a crown. He has bronze toned skin, black hair, cloven feet, and clawed hands. His sclera is a pale yellow with no visible iris or pupil, and he carries a staff tipped with a pair of metal tines.
"Mortals! I am Lorthact the Unraveler, the Dwimmerlaik, the Ur-Magius, the Diabolus Mystere. You are meddling in affairs beyond your comprehension. I demand you lay down your arms and submit to your punishment!"
Her anger at having been transformed against her will has waned very little and the sprite turns to direct it at the newcomer.
"Fat lot you know," she declares with a hand upon her hip. "I'm Professor Dewdrop Rosethorn - the only person to ever get a perfect six-hundred score on her philosophy final. And that was under Professor Milton, I'll have you know. I submitted my doctoral thesis to the Arcanotheign itself. So there's very little in this world that I can't comprehend."
She gestures dismissively at the man.
"So just toddle off to whatever level of Hell you escaped from and leave us to turn this bloodsucker into so much dust. If you bother us any further then we might just turn our wrath upon you and you wouldn't want that."
|
By some miracle of self control Edric doesn't charge the devil. Yet.
What he does do is sneakily move around the devil, aiming to get out of his line of sight while Dewdrop talks. He believes in honorably battle - but striking first and putting your axe in the other guy's least defended areas is just good sense!
"You will regret your choice to oppose me!" Lorthact declares.
Though Remy's battle cry gives Lorthact pause, he still moves swiftly! He casts a spell, attempting to drain the moisture from your bodies!
Suffering the full effects of the infernal spell, Dewdrop takes a moment to heal herself.
Remy resists the spell. She moves to flank Lorthact with Edric, glimsping the fiend's vulnerability and kicking him!
Lorthact avoids Edric's attack, but Remy lands a solid blow, stunning the fiend! He regains his senses and angrily attacks the monk with his staff! The devil badly batters the monk and drains her willpower.
"You are a stain upon the very ground you walk upon, foul fiend!" Dewdrop cries out. "The earth itself revolts at your presence."
She gestures and, sure enough, the ground itself seems to tremble. The nearby lichen shifts away from the devil and stones leap from the ground to strike at him.
With another wave of her hand, flower petals appear out of the very air to swirl around the Unraveler, their very edges sharpened by her words.
Remy manages to invoke her wholeness of body to heal some of her injuries. She then continues to kick Lorthact!