Search Posts
"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."
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."
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."
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?"
Xiddik has basically two potential fates from here, one happy, one less-so. The happy ending is that Xiddik Stygealys is allowed to return to Crying Leaf, her good name restored, and gets to reunite with her buddy Gisiel. She gets a home either in Crying Leaf or in a nice cave beneath or nearby Crying Leaf, and mostly ventures into the Darklands to help out travelers rather than as a formal job. She might continue to adventure with the party from time to time, but she'll probably part ways here for a bit, to go off and finally finish the song she's been writing over the course of her role in the campaign—and do a little grieving for her dead sister, all those of the Bonescale tribe who were killed or enslaved by the drow, and everything she's lost or forgotten about her own tribe during her quest for revenge. She might later reunite with her comrades in the party in a tavern in Crying Leaf, or on another trip into the Dark Down Under where they need a guide once more. She becomes a bit more of a bard than a ranger, and lives the long life a kobold can technically lead. Maybe she even reunites with her kobold brethren and reconnects a little. The less-happy ending is that Xiddik never really recovers from actually winning. Xiddik fully expected to get killed on her vengeance crusade, and she might not be able to stop trying. She's Captain Ahab as much as she is Deekin. She might just keep hunting drow and picking uneven battles until something finally gets her. Maybe she scores a heroic death, and she might later reunite with the party in the form of them coming upon her grave in Crying Leaf. This is the bummer ending and probably won't happen, but I wouldn't mind the opportunity to sort of roleplay her sorting through some emotions here in the battle's aftermath, if people are up for it. In a general sense, I wouldn't mind the party getting to reunite with some NPCs, like the drow kid we rescued (however grudgingly on Xiddik's part) and his dumb cat.
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.
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!"
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.
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.
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.
"Best not to dwell on it." Kidding! I'll post my action in a bit. :P
"Pretty?" Xiddik seems almost indignant. "It's a terrifying needlebeast! You are as bad as the surfacers who say is cute."
Maintaining her illusion with the insufferable smugness of the partymember who doesn't have to worry about being attacked, Xiddik continues to play her ocarina.
Xiddik's face begins to go red from lack of air as she continues to play her ocarina.
Xiddik begins to play her ocarina, striking up a jaunty and cheerful tune. She stays out of the room for now, quite content to avoid injury to herself while she maintains the illusion.
As the door is about to burst open, the prettier Asht yells, "Fearless leader! What happened to the plans for your ?!" "Ah, yes," the prettier Xiddik says, pointing to the door.
Xiddik concentrates very hard as Randall describes the room to her. She closes her eyes and clenches her tiny clawed hands into fists, shifting in her glamored red dress. She knows she has to get this just right. No repeats of the previous incident. Nobody stuck inside pillars. Behind the doors, to the east, appear five terrible figures with a flash and a popping sound. A half-man, half-cave bear monstrosity the size of a horse, roaring as the effects of seven different spells swirl around his person, whirling a greataxe in each hand. A humanoid figure of pure fire, with absolutely fantastic hair, ioun stones swirling around his head as three small orange beads dance between his fingertips. A thin, almost wispy halfling dressed head-to-toe in tight-fitting black robes who twirls an unrealistic number of glowing knives in his hands, grinning widely as his form dissolves into wispy shadows. A halfling in flowing white robes, her wild hair (comprising almost the same volume as her) crackling with electricity as hundreds of fiery shurikens whirl around her. And a sinuous, extremely well-dressed kobold reeking of acidic chemicals (considered highly attractive to other kobolds), three pairs of curving goat horns rising from her head as she raises her ocarina. Acidic spittle flies from her toothy maw and wings unfurl behind her as she shouts, "Now, team! The False Firiel's eyes glow with white light as she lets out a scream, and a wispy form to the west of her rises out of the floor on the western side of the room and takes solid form. It is the size of a great mastiff, covered in horrible, long quills dripping with venom. It licks its chops, slobbering green ichor that burns the floor wherever it lands. It has six eyes, each rapidly changing color, and row after row of quill-like teeth. It releases an ear-piercing scream and pounds the floor, causing the stones beneath it to crack. Around it rises the sounds of ominous Aklo chanting. Aklo: "WHEN SPINES OF STEEL RISE FROM THE DEEPS
OF PHANTASMS OF GROETUS'S ETERNAL SLEEP FLEE! FLEE! REPENT, YE SINNERS, AND SHED THE LIGHT! SURRENDER THOUGHT, WILL, SOUL AND SIGHT! FOR EYES SHALL BLEED AND THROATS SHALL BURN WHEN THAT SPAWN OF ROVAGUG RETURNS" — Passage 98:55 of the Book of Rovagug, "Lullaby to the Rough God"
Xiddik hesitates, her tail twitching with excitement. "Everyone ready?" she asks. "When I place this, we want to move fast to take a vantage from the distraction."
"Yes. That is an old rule, actually: Make sure the cleric dies first." Xiddik pauses, head tilting slightly. "Of course, is usually referring to an adventuring party..."
"I only have a few spells left," Xiddik says uncertainly. "I am not sure how much to use here, but they seem like a serious threat. I could create another, um... I think it transliterates to 'tiny hut', but it's the spell I cast before that created a sort of screen. It could cover us from ranged strikes. Or I could just create some sort of illusion. Maybe fake so we, um... teleportal? I fake us teleportaling on the other side of them, so they all get confused and go to fight the fake-us. Then we can strike on the not-guarded leader." Xiddik thinks carefully. "I did something like it once long ago, but it was a smaller illusion. And it, um, did not work then." The kobold rubs her arm, as if recalling an old injury. "But am better at illusions now."
Xiddik's tail twitches in mild curiosity. "Do you remember the fight with the rock genie? Where they surrounded what we were thinking was the genie, but was really a drow in disguised? When you said they surrounded her, I at first thought it was that—that she would be disguised when we went in, for another annoying trick. But maybe is just a normal fight. With drow. That would be nice."
Xiddik looks around uncertainly, as if expecting the ceiling to come down on her at any moment.
Hissing nervously, Xiddik unleashes everything she's got... at the blind vulture ineffectually batting at her. Priorities, and all that.
Xiddik raises her bow and fires off several quick shots, ending her song as the tune continues to echo through the cave.
Xiddik pauses in her song for a moment. "Oh, that was a spell?" She gestures at the vrock whose magic she interrupted. "I just sought to stop that terrible dancing."
Xiddik's eyes squint in concentration as the colors and noise rattle her pea-sized dinosaur brain in its skull. wrongwrongWRONGWRONGWRONG— In desperation, she manages to adjust her song, and reworks the chaos hammer's anarchic sound into her melody—an exceedingly classical, operatic, conventional musical number to render the chaotic sound null and void. At least for her. She continues her performance as she opens fire at the dancing vrock.
"That is the thing about demons, Randall," Xiddik growls, whipping out her ocarina to cue up a tune. "They're all spellcasters." And she begins to play. This song is unmistakeably a drinking tune—an elven drinking tune, actually. Xiddik's tail is tapping, and she seems ready to lower the ocarina at any moment to whip out her bow and burst into song.
Xiddik claps her hands and sings a little ditty, renewing the good hope spell.
"Ah... I hate this." Xiddik's laughter finally starts to ebb, and she shakes her head ruefully. "Everything is terrible, and we are all going to death. What a mess. What a mess." She glances at Randall. "So, what next?"
Prickles accidentally taps Xiddik's very sharp tail attachment, and is dolefully sucking his cut paw when Xiddik whirls to face him. Xiddik stares at the beast, her reptilian eyes appearing torn between anger, fear, and something else. The kobold bursts out laughing—actually laughing, which is not a terribly common habit of hers. The sound is sort of reminiscent of a chick's peeping. She crouches down, giggling like mad as she stares at Prickles. "I—your p-pricklebeast, Firiel—" She shakes her head, tail twitching behind her wildly as she cackles. "I—oh—oh, f#&$..." The Darklands guide's laughter, like a squeaky wheel rolling down a cliffside, continues, long after what would be socially appropriate. It's almost like she can't stop.
"And your other halflings might not let you play their halfling games," Xiddik says with a knowing nod.
Xiddik nonchalantly takes a step to the side away from Prickles.
|
