Victory on bloody waves
Some of the Crimson Pirates ships had fled the battle upon hearing about our arrival, and more of them fled as it became clear that they would not win this battle. They headed not for the Wreck, but for the open sea. They knew that no safety could be found in their former base. Among those who fled was their strongest ship, from which the wizard Zaliax Carvanxi had cast deadly spells at our allies, and had summoned powerful demons. I would’ve loved to see a duel of magic between him and Sparkillo, but it would not happen, at least not today.
My companions and I returned aboard the Sea Wyvern. A great cheer went up among our surviving allies once it became clear that we had won the day. The sea all around us was red not only with blood, but also from the light of the setting sun.
“We did it! They turned tail like the slug-sucking scum that they are!” panted Harliss. Her leather outfit was cut in dozens of places, showing many bloody wounds, and her rapier was covered in blood as well. It was clear that she had given them hell.
“Yes, my friend,” I replied. “We won the day… The Crimson Pirates are no more. Sure, some of them will likely go back to doing minor raids on small coastal towns, but we won’t have to worry about them as a large-scale organization ever again.”
“You braved the Wreck,” she said, her eyes wide with disbelief. “And you killed Cold Captain Wyther! How did you manage that?”
I told her about our adventure in the Wreck, including how we had saved Dolmord and Liamae, and learned that Dolmord’s life was tied to the defense of the Wreck. I told her about the demons we’d fought, and the Cold Captain himself. I also told her that neither Vanthus nor Lavinia had been present. But most of all, I thanked her for what she had done today. Without her brilliant tactic, without the rag-tag fleet of pirates she had brought together, we would not have been able to infiltrate the Wreck so easily. I was pleased to have participated in this battle with Harliss. We were both powerful women of the sea, and although our paths had only briefly crossed until today, our destinies had merged and made the glorious events of this day possible. Under the light of the dying sun, we shook hands in victory.
A great many souls had been sent to Umberlee’s domain today; many of our allies had given their lives to make our victory possible. Among them were more than half of our crew, including the dwarf Stragdar, who had been with us since we had first sailed from Sasserine. Harliss, Brissa and Zan had survived, by Umberlee’s mercy. Moretta was also still alive; she had been aboard another ship along with Kaskus, who had also survived.
I was surprised to hear that Avner had fought alongside the crew, once again showing that Lagaan and Ulfgar had truly finally made a man out of him. I went to congratulate him on his bravery, but recoiled in shock: his right eye had been pierced during the fight, and half of his face was covered in dry blood. He watched me proudly with his remaining eye; he spoke not a single word. The useless, arrogant fop was gone, and the man who remained seemed hard as steel, a warrior of few words. Despite his stoic stance, I reassured him that it would be within my power to regrow his eye once I had regained my energies tomorrow.
Among our allies, many of the Dire Hunger Monks had died, and so had Rizl Tomodar, the leader of the Protectorate. Those had been our primary helpers among the various factions of Scuttlecove: Kedward Bone hadn’t helped at all, and Tyralandi had only sent a token force, a few succubi and some charmed warriors.
The survivors among the mercenaries hired by Harliss looted the corpses of our enemies, along with those of their dead comrades. I knew Harliss had promised them some hefty rewards in exchange for rising up against the Crimson Pirates, and we assured her that we would give them a share of the Crimson Pirates’ treasure for their services.
Lagaan was watching Ulfgar with a smug smile: the dwarf was fuming because he had lost his stupid kill-count contest to the nimble archer. But as he was inspecting the bodies, Lagaan suddenly drew his rapier and stabbed one of the Lemorian captains, who had been lying on the deck of the Sea Wyvern but hadn’t been quite dead yet.
“Was that someone you knew?” asked Raguhl, surprised by the rogue’s sudden outburst.
“Yeah,” replied Lagaan. “That was the third and last of the traitors who betrayed my associates in Sasserine to join the Lotus Dragons. It seems this one made it far, even becoming a Lemorian Captain of the Crimson Fleet… But he still died in the end, stupid prick.”
My beautiful Sea Wyvern had also terribly suffered during the battle. The sails were slashed, the hull had taken severe damage, and water was leaking through several holes. While Raguhl and Ulfgar helped the crew to dump the corpses of our enemies overboard, I used what little magic I still had left within me after the battle to hastily repair as much as I could, in order to at least ensure that the ship wouldn’t sink. One of the crewmen suggested that we abandon ship and claim one of the enemy vessels that were in a better state instead. He recoiled in fright as soon as he caught sight of the withering glare I turned in his direction. I made it very clear that abandoning the Sea Wyvern was not an option; it was my ship, and I cared for it like a mother for her child.
Hmm, a strange analogy perhaps… While I busied myself at this task, Dolmord remained close to me. He had protected me during the entire battle, sustaining a few wounds, but nothing I couldn’t heal. He fought well, but I could tell he was in awe of the power I now wielded. I had already been a rather powerful priestess back in Starmantle, but I had merely been Stalman Klim’s concubine, and I had wielded but a fraction of the power I had now been granted by Umberlee, as her Hierophant. I knew it was only a matter of time before I would be forced to tell him what had happened to our son… but I truly dreaded that moment, and busied myself to delay it as much as possible.
Liamae came to see me at one point and informed me that she had used the entire power of my healing wand to save people. That b%#*&! The wand had been almost brand new… I wasn’t entirely convinced that she had truly used its powers to save lives only. I bet she used it up just out of spite…
Several other ships beside the Sea Wyvern were too damaged to return to Scuttlecove yet, so we decided to remain in the area during the night and finish the repairs in the morning. Under the glittering stars, I performed a nocturnal ceremony to Umberlee, to dedicate today’s slaughter to her glory. This had been a great day for her, and would not have been a victory had she not channelled some of her energy through me to make it possible. In the distance, I saw the lights of another ceremony on the ship where Moretta was staying: she was also performing such a ceremony in the honor of our goddess. Good… At least there was still some sense left in that girl.
As part of the ceremony, I also prayed for the souls of those who had died today as our allies, for them to sail eternally in peace on the Sea of the Dead, without being tormented by our mistress. I spoke a special prayer for Stragdar, whose body we placed on one of the Sea Wyvern’s lifeboats and cast off to sea… He had been a faithful crew member throughout the many deadly perils of our travels, and it was unfortunate that he had perished today, but at least, his end had come as any worshipper of Umberlee wishes it to be, in a glorious naval battle.
Finally, weariness overcame us and we retired to our quarters, below deck, since Sparkillo lacked the energy to create a Magnificent Mansion. Much to my regret, it was quite crowded downstairs, and I had to allow some of our allies, Harliss, Brissa and Sparkillo, to join Dolmord and me in the captain’s cabin. Despite my great fatigue, my body ached Dolmord’s touch, as it had done for years, but it seemed we would have to wait for one more night to be alone at last… The tension was killing me, but on the bright side, it postponed the revelation of our child’s fate by one more night…
Hammer 6th, 1377
Return to Scuttlecove
The sun arose the following morning, illuminating the surviving ships in its golden radiance. The sky was pure blue, and throughout its azure expanse flew countless sea gulls. The lovely birds had been drawn to the location of the previous day’s battle, for among the enormous quantity of flotsam that still surrounded our wounded ships, many corpses still floated. The sharks and other terrible creatures that had floated up from the deep sea had been so thoroughly sated that there were even some leftovers for the flying scavengers…
I used my magic to do more hasty repairs on the Sea Wyvern, to enable it to sail back to Scuttlecove. But it would need much more work before it was restored to a satisfactory state. I would need to make sure the surviving crew members saw to that. I also checked up on Avner in the morning, and used one of my most potent spell to regenerate his eye, just as I had done once before for Brissa. Once the miracle was performed, he blinked in amazement. Perhaps for the first time, he fully understood the potency of Umberlee’s blessings.
For the next few hours, we sailed back toward Scuttlecove. A ragged crowd awaited our return on the docks; they seemed bewildered to see us return alive, and even more so once we set foot in the port and told them what had happened to the Crimson Pirates. None of them had ever dared to hope that the Crimson Pirates could ever be driven to defeat as they had.
In the first hours of the afternoon, I spent some time with Harliss, speaking with the captains of allied vessels, giving them some payments of gold and precious items as a reward for their help. All around us, the pirates cheered and drank as they swapped stories of the previous day’s glorious battle. Even though they all had fought bravely, they knew that the real heroes of the conflict had been us, the members of Trouble, and there was a healthy dose of respect, awe and fear when they looked at us.
For the first time since the battle had been won, I had the chance to speak with Moretta. She told me of how the battle had gone aboard her ship, and how Umberlee had answered her prayers and enabled her to defend herself against the enemy. It was clear that she was held in high regard by our goddess.
“You have done well, my dear Moretta,” I said. “It fills my heart with pride to know that the one who was once my acolyte is now such a worthy priestess of Umberlee.”
Her eyes widened in shock, as those were the first kind words I had spoken to her in a long time. Then, a smile slowly crept across her face. “Thank you, Belessa. It means a lot to me to hear you say that.”
“This place could use the guidance of a priestess of Umberlee,” I said, looking at the dirty buildings of Scuttlecove. “But it will be dangerous to stay here… That priestess will need to be strong.”
“Yes… I don’t think I’ll ever become as strong as you are, but I’ll make sure that the citizens of this place show proper respect to the Queen of the Deeps from now on. I’ll rededicate the temple of Talos to our mistress, and soon its halls will echo with the sounds of worship. And what about you? You’re going to go back to Farshore, aren’t you?”
“Yes, for a while at least. Then, perhaps, I’ll return to Sasserine. Or perhaps not. My future is less clear than it was a year ago.”
“I’m sure things are about to get complicated…” she said. “With Dolmord in the picture now.”
I smiled. It seemed that Moretta had recovered her wits; perhaps Tolin’s negative influence was wearing off at last. I had confided so much in her back during our first journey on the Sea Wyvern, so she knew me quite well.
“Yes… A lot more complicated," I replied. “It shall be interesting to see how things develop.”
A long silence followed.
“Moretta, it is quite possible that the rivers of our lives will flow apart from one another once I leave Scuttlecove,” I said. “Things will never be the same between us, they simply cannot be, but know that I will always cherish the good times we had together in Sasserine and aboard the Sea Wyvern. I will always remember my beloved acolyte of yesteryear.”
The young woman nodded. There were tears in the corners of her eyes. “I will never forget you, Belessa, but I pray that our paths will cross again after you leave.”
Back to the Wreck
Later on in the afternoon, my companions sought me out and asked me to go back to the Wreck with them to finish clearing up the place. Why they wanted to do that was beyond me, since we had already looted as much as our packs and portable hole could carry from the place, but since I knew they would get badly hurt or even die without my help, I humoured them and tagged along. Sparkillo teleported us back to a spot in the jungle that was close to the Wreck, and we flew over there.
The place was still eerily quiet and deserted. It was clear that none of the fugitive ships had slithered back into this abode. We only met pockets of resistance here and there, for the most part desperate pirates who knew their leader was dead. Some fought with desperation and died. Others threw down their weapons in surrender, begged for mercy, and also died. Only one grizzled sea dog was spared. His name was Old Ben, and he claimed to have once sailed aboard the Cold Captain’s ship, a fast and deadly vessel called the Crimson Scar, which had for some bizarre reason been commandeered by Vanthus.
I found myself once again wondering about the strange relationship between Cold Captain Wyther, that dreaded legend of the sea, possibly the most fearsome pirate in existence, and Vanthus, that treacherous upstart, who had joined the ranks of the Crimson Pirates less than two years ago. Why had the canny old captain let himself be manipulated and pushed to the side by Vanthus? Was it really just because of Vanthus’s silver tongue, or was there something more to him than all that we’d heard from his associates? We knew that the Cold Captain had been a chosen of Demogorgon himself; could Vanthus have enjoyed an even greater status in the Demon Lord’s eyes? Did he have some special, inhuman power that had allowed him to rise to fame and power like this? Was there another evil power that backed him up?
Old Ben had many interesting stories about the Cold Captain and the other Crimson Pirates, but little that mattered much in the immediate future. He described to us some of the denizens of the place, including the Yuan-Ti that laired in one of the higher ships and a nasty sea monster called an Eye of the Deep. This terrible creature had followed the Crimson Scar when it had returned from one of its journeys in the Abyss. The Cold Captain had somehow befriended the monster and had convinced it to stay in the warehouse for years, devouring the prisoners that were sometimes fed to it. It was apparently a truly dreadful adversary, and we decided to leave it alone.
Continuing our cleaning of the place, we easily slaughtered the defenders of the central tower that we had taken such great pains to avoid the previous day. Then, we flew up to the Yuan-Ti ship, where we fought more assassins of the Seventh Coil, as well as their ultimate master, a disgusting amalgam of snakes that was even larger and fouler than the Leech we had fought at Red Foam Whaling. It blasted my companions with a Blasphemy spell that completely failed to affect me, and its poisonous bites would’ve been deadly had we not all been protected by a Heroes’ Feast spell. But we killed it, and put an end once and for all to the menace of the Seventh Coil.
The ship where the harpies had been standing sentinel was now deserted – the foul winged women had wisely fled the area once they’d realized how deadly we were.
We returned to the prisons and freed Ratline Sid, who was amazed at what we had accomplished. He asked if he could join our crew, and although I knew he was not trustworthy, I invited him. We had lost many good men against the Crimson Pirates, and we would need some competent sailors and pirates to replace them. What’s more, it pleased me to know that one of our former enemies was now working for us.
Raguhl was not happy at all that I had accepted Sid among our crew, and he insisted that we free the prisoners in the cages throughout the Wreck. Many of those pitiful wretches had already died from thirst and mistreatment, but we saved those we could.
Once we were done, we returned to Scuttlecove, where Old Ben entertained us with more of his tales of the Crimson Pirates, including those of his trips to Lemoriax in Gaping Maw. He acted real nice to us, but I knew his survival instincts were sharp, and that he merely had a knack for always being on the winning side, which happened to be us at the moment. He was not one that could be fully trusted.
The truth about our son
The sun slowly set over the despicable port of Scuttlecove on this first day of freedom from the menace of the Crimson Pirates.
I walked toward the Sea Wyvern in the company of Ratline Sid and Dolmord. My lover stood tall and proud at my side, still wearing the heavy plate armor we had given him. He had shaved his beard during my absence, and I noticed that his cheeks were more hollow than before. Although he was still muscular, he had lost a lot of weight during his ordeal in the Crimson Pirates’ prison. His jet-black hair hung long over his shoulder, and there was a menace in his eyes that had not been there before, even though he had already been a fierce warrior. Despite all he had gone through, though, he still managed to look strikingly handsome. Now there was a man I could be proud to have at my side… A man worthy of me.
We had ensured that Ratline Sid got the chance to clean up from the time he had also spent in captivity of the Crimson Pirates, and we had given him a silk and leather outfit we had looted from a recently deceased pirate. With a dagger, he had slightly altered its back to make room for his demonic wings. A sabre and a dagger now hung at his belt.
I gave the two men the grand tour of the Sea Wyvern, noting as I did so that the crew was making good progress so far with the repairs. Sid nodded knowingly: he realized what a magnificent ship the Sea Wyvern was, despite her recent damage.
“She looks strangely familiar, she does,” he said.
I grinned. “That’s because she used to be one of yours. We found her in Kraken’s Cove after Vanthus left her there to burn. She was flying the colors of the Crimson Pirates at the time, but of course, once we made her our own, we decorated her with Sasserine’s flag instead.”
“What about that other banner, under the flag?” he asked.
“That’s the symbol of the Meravanchi family; this is the prime battleship of Farshore, the colony ruled by Manthalay Meravanchi, my…” I suddenly stopped, realizing I was about to make a blunder and abruptly reveal that I was engaged. “… my mayor. The Mayor of Farshore.”
Thankfully, neither of the men seemed to have noticed my hesitation. I introduced Sid to Brissa (I had already introduced Dolmord the day before, after the battle) and to the rest of the crew. The Lemorian seemed disappointed that I had named her my first mate, for he had coveted that position. However, I insisted that it would be Brissa who would be in charge of the Sea Wyvern in my absence. I made it very clear that anyone who tried to harm her would meet a swift and painful death at my hand.
I then walked back with Dolmord toward the Rusty Shunt, where the rest of Trouble awaited us within Sparkillo’s Magnificent Mansion. A strange mood hung over Scuttlecove, which was reeling from the loss of so many of the independent pirate crews who had helped us and perished against the Crimson Pirates. And only a few days before that, the city had been besieged by the foul swarms that had come from the Ur-Priests’ palace. I felt that a power shift was going on in this miserable and corrupt city. The Consortium of Kedward Bone, that despicable opportunist, was the only faction that had not participated in yesterday’s battle, and as such, it was the only one that had emerged entirely unscathed from the conflict. The Dire Hunger Monks had lost many of their brothers in our cause. The Protectorate had lost their leader; I wondered if they would choose Harliss as their new leader. And if they did, I wondered if she would accept…
Dolmord and I dined briefly with the other people in the magical mansion: the rest of Trouble, the surviving Jade Ravens, as well as Avner. But soon enough, we retired to our room… We could barely contain ourselves… As soon as we were alone, our lips met, and we kissed with fiery passion before we began fumbling with the straps of each other’s armor.
Once our metallic protection and our flimsier undergarments littered the floor, we found ourselves together in bed… At long last. We had been apart from each other from so long, we had both suffered so much during the past few years… Yet dreaming of each other’s touch… Our reunion was magical, all the accumulated longing we had felt in each other’s absence flowed like a torrent of emotions and blissful sensations.
Malbrecht the foul barbarian, Brother Korvosan the cursed cultist of chaos, Norrix the righteous paladin, boyish Lagaan, my beloved Manthalay and his foul snake of a brother, Zebula, were all forgotten now that I was reunited with Dolmord, my one true love… The only man who could ever really, really please me.
For some time after we were done “reuniting”, we simply lay against each other in blissful silence, communicating not with words but with caresses and sensations. But alas, even this blessed period of calm pleasure had to come to and end… For there was much we had to say to each other.
Dolmord had many terrible things to relate about the torments he had suffered while he was a prisoner of the Crimson Pirates. Those things were deeply troubling, and I could scarcely believe that my dear lover was able to survive through them and not lose his sanity completely. Although I had at times done some terrible things to my enemies, I had never contemplated some of the horrors that were inflicted upon him. Those things were far too disgusting to even mention in my journal.
I had my share of adventures to tell Dolmord, but foremost on our mind was the fate of our son. I finally explained it plainly to him… that which I had avoided until then.
Our son had been sacrificed to Umberlee by the priests in Calimshan just after I had given birth, on the beach one night. By paying this terrible price, the goddess had restored within me the infinite potency of her divine magic.
Dolmord’s eyes widened in shock and anger, but he did not lash out at me with fist or with harsh words. A dark shadow passed over his face, and he turned away from me as he contemplated the enormity of what I had just said. For me, the pain was still sharp, but it was also distant and had grown fainter over the years; but for him, it stung as if it had just happened.
I had been afraid – no, terrified – of what his reaction would be. I was relieved that he remained calm and silent, at least on the outside. I had been carrying the guilt of our son’s death for these past several years like a huge boulder. In a way, it was my fault that he was dead. If I had not been weak in the first place, if I had not been foolish enough to fail Umberlee against Denek Drellrane’s group of adventurers, she would not have taken away my powers… And there would have been no need to sacrifice our son.
I had always been able to ease the pain by telling myself that it had not truly been my fault, not directly at least. Those zealots were the ones who had slain my son. I had done what little I could to stop them, but I had been too weak to do it. I had been a victim… A victim of something terrible.
But I knew… I knew that if I looked deep within my own soul… That if I had been given the choice between my son’s life, or my own power… The infinite power of Umberlee…
I knew I would have accepted the sacrifice.
I would have done it myself if I’d had to.
But Umberlee had been merciful… She had allowed me to play the role of a victim… So I could go on living with myself.
Of course, I did not speak this out loud. I feared Dolmord’s anger, not because he could harm me; he was stronger than me physically, but my magic was so powerful that I could never be truly in danger from him. No, because I loved him so much, I couldn’t bear to feel his anger, his hatred, especially not now that we had just been reunited; I couldn’t bear to feel that I had failed him as a lover, as a mother to his child… He was one of the few people whose opinion mattered to me.
So I cried… I cried like the poor hapless victim that Umberlee, in her great wisdom, had turned me into. I cried also because it felt so good to finally let go of this emotional burden. I had only told a few people… Moretta… Brissa… Lagaan… about my son’s death, but I had never felt the release that I felt now that I finally revealed it to Dolmord… The only one who was truly concerned.
Thankfully, Dolmord comforted me. I hope he never finds out about the dark shadow in my heart. I hope he never suspects what my decision would have been if I had been given the choice.
“We can have other children,” he said. “Now that I’m free, we can be together forever…”
Of course, that brought new tears down my cheeks.
“Keep it up, you hypocrite,” said a little voice in my head. “You’re doing great so far. Cry like a baby. Cry him a whole fricking river if you have to. You’ve been a naughty, naughty girl while the poor guy was getting tortured every day. Getting your son killed for personal gain and whoring around with every other man you ran into while you KNEW Dolmord was getting tortured and you did NOTHING to help him. Oh yeah… You’re going to need to cry an ocean to make him swallow the fact that you got ENGAGED while he was being tortured…”
Of course, the little voice was right. It was my conscience, that inner voice that had remained silent for most of my life. For some reason, the prissy little b+%#! was on the offensive tonight. But I knew she was right. I had to tell Dolmord about my engagement to Manthalay. I had to tell him… I felt so ashamed of some of the things I’d done while he had been captive, when the only thing had been keeping him alive were his thoughts for me and our son… Him, already dead, me, entirely unfaithful…
“I would like that, Dolmord,” I said in a weak voice, “but there’s more. I thought you were dead. I… met someone else. I’m engaged. But I still love you… I … don’t know what to do. I never stopped loving you, I never stopped thinking about you. And once I realized you were still alive, it was the only thing keeping me sane through the countless ordeals I had to endure, along with the rest of Trouble… We’ve faced so many hardships… It was killing me inside not to be able to come to save you, knowing all this time that you were being tormented here…
“But you finally came through and saved me.”
“Yes.”
“Who is this man… your fiancé?”
“Manthalay Meravanchi, a noble. He’s the ruler of Farshore and a member of one of the most powerful houses in Sasserine.”
“A man of power… He must be very rich,” said Dolmord in a dull voice.
“Yes… I was hoping to help him become one of the rulers of Sasserine. I… He was the smart choice… back when I thought we could never be together again.”
“Do you love him?”
I paused. “He is a good man,” I finally said. “He’s treated me well. In fact, in many ways, he reminds me of Stalman. He is… quite a bit older than me. But I’ve never felt about him the way I feel about you… My heart and my soul have always been yours. Just like they were when we met back in Starmantle… when you stole my heart away from Stalman’s grip.”
Dolmord stared deep into my eyes… it was true, after all. He already knew I was not a faithful woman. It was my lust for Dolmord that had led me to cheat on my old lover and master Stalman Klim in the first place.
“So even with this nobleman Meravanchi in the picture,” he said, “you and I can still be together… Like in Starmantle?”
I gently moved closer to him. My lips hovered near his.
“Like in Starmantle,” I breathed.
Our lips met, and we kissed passionately. We would never let anything tear us apart again.
Hammer 7th, 1377
Sasserine in flames
I woke up next to Dolmord this morning. He was still sleeping. I smiled, thinking back of the pleasurable night we had spent together… Despite the revelations I’d been forced to make, I was so happy to have him with me again.
Some time later, we joined my companions in the main room of the mansion. I caught a glimpse of amusement in Lagaan’s eyes, as it was now clear that Dolmord was much more than a bodyguard to me. Avner was also present, and he stared at me for a long time in silence, probably wondering how Dolmord’s presence would affect my relationship with his uncle.
I sat down at the main table and we tried to determine what our next step would be. We had just been tremendously victorious over the Crimson Pirates, yet Lavinia was still captive and Vanthus was still at large. We knew we could not rest for long before trying to fix that situation.
We decided to try and divine Lavinia’s location through Sparkillo’s crystal ball. The device was not infallible, though, and anyone with a moderately strong mind could easily resist that magic unless they knew it wasn’t an attack. I used a Sending spell to inform Lavinia to open her mind, and then Sparkillo observed her through the device. We all looked over his shoulder and saw that the poor woman was badly battered, disheveled, shackled in demonic iron chains and in a dark prison whose walls writhed as though made from damned souls. Was she in the Abyss? She didn’t know where she was… and could not help us find her.
Later, I asked for Umberlee’s advice through a Divination spell, and she replied:
“The heroes, mortals who stood in the way of the two-headed prince.
Where their adventure started, there it will end.
The victory or ignominious death is shrouded in the mist of probabilities.
But there waits the once dead pirate.
His forked tongue rallied to him all the Wicked of the city.
Blood flows, fire burns and grown men cry.
Belessa, your goddess’s final test awaits there.”
And with these divine words came the sense of a sinister laughter. Umberlee herself was laughing at this turn of events. The meaning of the last part of the message was clear: she was pitting me against Edvanda, and wanted to be entertained by the struggle of her two rival priestesses.
At some level, I found it revolting that our goddess would treat us like her playthings. At another level, I also welcomed the chance to destroy the loathsome Edvanda. It had been a long time coming. I would finally show her how wrong she had been to mess with me when I had first arrived in Sasserine. I would kill her, and the church of Umberlee would regain the glory it had known under the guidance of the previous wise High Priestess.
So to you, my goddess who wishes to see a good fight, my goddess who rewards my devotion with yet more danger and obstacles, I say: “Bring it on, b##%*…”
Sparkillo spent some time scrying on Sasserine with his crystal ball, and the images we saw there were disheartening: buildings were on fire, demons were roaming the streets, and a huge skeletal dragon was crouched atop Lathander’s temple. The estate of Sparkillo’s parents, the Rashi family, had been destroyed. Lavinia’s manor was shrouded by a huge black sphere.
“Our brewery, what about our brewery?” asked Ulfgar anxiously, but Sparkillo had grown disgusted with the vision and had already turned away from the crystal ball. I felt a strong sense of dread at seeing the beautiful city in this terrible state, but it must have been much harder on him, as he had grown up there.
“This is Vanthus’s doing…” growled Raguhl.
“But why?? What does he have to gain by destroying Sasserine?” asked Ulfgar.
“Why don’t I ask him?” I replied, as I started the ritual of another Sending.
My message to Vanthus was quite simple: “Why are you doing this?” Alas, he did not reply with anything constructive, merely taunting me into coming to the burning city to meet my death. Lagaan asked me to do a second sending to insult Vanthus’s manhood, but I waved him away warily.
I am beyond such infantile pranks. It is time we rid the world of Vanthus Vanderboren, and this time, for good. We will have to return to Sasserine and destroy him.
Hammer 7th, 1377 (continued)
Dragged into the Abyss
For the rest of the day, my companions and I discussed various strategies to save Sasserine from Vanthus’s clutches. Sparkillo believed that the undead dragon was in fact a dracolich, a very dangerous creature. What’s more, he suspected that it was the infamous Hookface, a red dragon that had terrorized the city of Cauldron, not far from Sasserine, and had been driven out or slain (depending on the stories) by a band of adventurers a few years ago. It seemed that the dragon had somehow come back from death in a similar way as the arch-villain in our own adventure, that unholy bastard Vanthus.
We formulated a plan that was ingenious in its simplicity: teleport to Sasserine and fight the bad guys. Alas, that attempt was thwarted by the fact that teleportation magic seemed to be unable to “lock on” to Sasserine anymore. Sparkillo, although he was baffled and frustrated by his first few initial attempts, soon treated this like an experiment, and finally told us that Sasserine was most likely being drawn into the Abyss by some sort of dark magic.
Ratline Sid, who had been present during our discussions, offered a backup plan: he could show us how to use the Wake Stone we had found in the Wreck, to allow us to navigate the Sea Wyvern to Sasserine quickly. Although that was a bold plan, it presented three drawbacks. First, the Sea Wyvern was still badly damaged from the fight against the Crimson Pirates. Second, we would have to travel through Gaping Maw. Third, the arrival of the Sea Wyvern in Sasserine’s harbor would quite likely alert Vanthus’s minions of our presence.
Nevertheless, due to a lack of other feasible options, we chose to go along with this…
Hammer 9th, 1377
The Wake Portal
Two days later, we began our journey. I had spent the previous day using a lot of magic to patch up the Sea Wyvern, until I finally felt that it was in good enough shape to go through this perilous voyage. We left Scuttlecove that morning with a crew that included a number of new sailors, hardy souls who replace those who had perished in the recent battle. Also with us were Ratline Sid, Brissa, Dolmord and Avner. The three remaining Jade Ravens, Zan, Liamae and Kaskus came along as well, and they carried with them the bones and ashes of their leader Tolin, hoping that some day, they would be able to bring him back from the grave.
Once we had reached the deep waters, Sid showed me, Brissa and Sparkillo how to trigger and control the Wake Stone. His manipulations caused the item to pulsate in a crescendo of crackling magic, and soon, the entire ship was surrounded by harmless but eerie lightning. The air around us seemed to grow darker, and a shimmering and swirling circle of magic appeared before the Sea Wyvern. At his signal, I brought the ship through… and it felt like we were sucked into a magical vertical whirlpool…
We emerged on the other side in a maelstrom of furious waves and howling wind. The seas of the Gaping Maw were treacherous to navigate, and I was reminded of some of the worst storms that Umberlee had tossed our way. Unfortunately, I knew that this storm was special and not under the control of my goddess. We were in the realm of Demogorgon now, and he had complete mastery over his plane.
“I’ve never seen such bad weather down here!” shouted Sid over the raging storm.
Lagaan grinned maliciously. “Demorgogon must be mad that we killed his Crimson Pirates!”
Indeed, now that we were in Gaping Maw, we had judged it prudent (if perhaps a bit superstitious) not to call our hated two-headed enemy by his real name. Lagaan had been calling him “DemoRgogon” in a derisive manner for some time now, and now we all used this demeaning nickname for the duration of the trip.
For about an hour, we had to fight against the storm. I was at the helm, and with my great skill, I was able to keep the mighty Sea Wyvern topside up and to survive even the most aggressive and enormous waves. I had some help from my companions, especially Ulfgar and Raguhl with their inhuman strength and endurance. Sid was also very useful thanks to his skill as a sailor, but also because he had a magical connection to Lemoriax by his demonic nature, and was able to help us keep our bearing.
The experience was quite unsettling. Even though we had been through bad storms before, I had always felt a connection to my goddess. In here, though, we knew we were at the mercy of our enemy. A myriad of subliminal fears and uneasy feelings nagged at the consciousness of everyone on board.
Eventually, though, we left the worst of the storm behind us and began making our way in the direction that Sid indicated. Apparently, he would be able to lead us to another magical node we could use with the Wake Stone to lead us to Kraken’s Cove. Indeed, the Crimson Pirates had been navigating to that location for years, and that was the reason that the corrupted fish had started appearing there, long before the influence of the Shadow Pearl that Vanthus had broken, in fact.
“So is it true you feel a connection to Lemoriax at all times?” asked Lagaan.
“Yes… It’s right over there,” said Sid, pointing port side.
Avner eyed Sid curiously and asked him about his transformation into a Lemorian; but the half-demon only glared back in silence. It seemed it had been such an unpleasant experience that he did not wish to discuss it.
The merchants of the Sapphire Gryphon
After a few hours of smooth, if somewhat unnerving, sailing, we spotted a ship approaching us. It was a strange vessel, blue with transparent sails. It hovered some short distance above the waves. Sparkillo recognized it as belonging to a strange race called the Mercanes, powerful merchants that travel across the planes to sell powerful magical items. They approached us peacefully and invited us on board their vessel, the Sapphire Gryphon.
“So those guys have tons of magical items for sale, right?” grunted Ulfgar.
“Indeed, they are among the wealthiest beings in the multiverse,” replied Sparkillo.
“Then if we killed them… we could take all their stuff!”
“I would advise against it, my friend. Mercanes are quite powerful and know how to defend themselves against all kinds of would-be planar looters.”
The Mercanes were tall and thin, with blue skin and long elven-like ears. They were most gracious and seemed intrigued by the presence of denizens of the Material Plane in this inhospitable environment. I saw that they eyed our magical equipment with expert eyes and great interest, and I felt that they could identify the properties of our belongings with a mere glance.
Their leader introduced herself as Aloire, and I did the same for myself and the rest of the group.
“Well met, Captain Belessa Darkwave,” she said.
“Cold Captain…” corrected Lagaan, who was trying to convince me to adopt the honorific title of our fallen enemy.
We ended up staying a few hours on that ship, despite the fact that our crew had to wait nervously back on the Sea Wyvern in the mean time. The Mercanes had many potent items for sale on their ship, and assured us that they could bring us almost any magical item that we could ask for within an hour, as long as we showed them we were able to pay for it.
I thought about various items that could make me more powerful, but I finally asked for something that would be even more useful to me in the long run: some sort of item that could stop, or at least reduce, the process of aging. For some time now, as I had neared the beginning of my thirties, I had grown increasingly afraid of growing old and seeing my great beauty fade year after year. Fortunately, the Mercanes were able to fetch for me a phylactery of long years: a wonderful item that will allow me to slow down the passage of time tenfold! After asking them very specific questions to ensure they were not trying to trick me or that there would be no undesirable side-effects, I paid them the enormous sum of twenty thousand gold pieces they asked for it.
Lagaan asked for a similar item, as he was still bitter about losing several precious years of his short human life to the touch of a ghost. I didn’t have enough to afford a second such item for Dolmord, but I might seek out the Mercanes again in the future should our upcoming battle against Vanthus end in victory.
Raguhl chose a magical ivory figure of a warrior that would enable him to summon a golem-like being to help us once per day. Ulfgar ordered a very powerful holy dwarven axe from the Mercanes.
“I don’t understand,” said Raguhl, “how can you bear to let go of your current axe? It’s a powerful weapon, and it’s seen you through so many battles!”
“Yes,” conceded Ulfgar, “but the other one’s going to be so much more powerful!”
Raguhl grunted. “A true warrior would never show such disrespect to his weapon.”
The dwarf ignored him, but watched as a Mercane approached him with a concerned expression on his face. “What is it? Can’t you find the weapon I asked for?”
“Oh no, sir, we can find it all right,” replied the blue-skinned creature. “We’re just worried that you might be unsatisfied if you found yourself unable to use the item.”
“Huh? Hey, I’m a powerful and proud dwarven fighter, buddy, I’m the reigning champion of the arena in Sasserine! For sure I can wield it!”
“Well, we’re not doubting your skill, sir, it’s more your… morality that’s raising questions. You see, a holy weapon can cause great harm to someone of evil dispositions…”
“Yeah, that’s why I ordered it, to hurt the bad guys.”
“But we’re worried that perhaps… you yourself… might find it painful to wield it.”
“Huh? What? Are you accusing me of being evil?”
“Well….” said the outsider evasively.
“What the hell? I’m not evil! Tell him, guys!!” he said, turning toward us, but we all avoided the unpleasant situation by pretending to be busy inspecting the rest of the Mercanes’ wares.
Night falls over the Gaping Maw
Eventually, we parted company with the Mercanes, happy with our precious new items. We sailed for a few more hours. We were surrounded by darkness, yet somehow this was ‘day’ according to Sid. Indeed, as time wore on, we noticed that it got even darker and darker, into some kind of ‘night’. I soon felt the effects of fatigue starting: since I stopped wearing my ring of sustenance a few months ago, my body needs sleep and food just like that of any other person.
Brissa took over at the helm, and Sid remained with her to give her directions. At least, that’s what he said. I noticed the way he looked at her in recent days. I think the half-demon finds my friend quite fetching… And I wonder how Brissa’s going to respond to him. She’s playing hard to get for now, but she hasn’t knifed him yet, so I would take that as a sign that she finds him to her liking as well.
Hammer 10th, 1377
He’s no angel
Dolmord tossed and turned throughout the entire night. He was sleeping very fitfully, the poor thing. In the morning, he woke up tired and in a dour mood. When we went on deck, we noticed that everyone wore glum expressions: it seemed that every crew member had been plagued by terrible nightmares… except me. How strange.
I relieved Brissa at the helm and we continued navigating on this second day on the dangerous waters of the abyss (which, according to Sparkillo, are the home of fiendish krakens among other things…).
A few hours later, we came within sight of a strange and disturbing “ship” made of a clot of blood and meat stretched over a frame of bone. At its center shone the bright light of a bonfire. I maneuvered to avoid the “ship”, but as we passed it, we saw that an angel-like creature wreathed in flames was kept captive inside an iron cage aboard it. It was guarded by two large purple demons with four arms, which Sparkillo called Bloodfiends.
The angel-thing pleaded from afar to be released, but I ignored it and kept sailing away as fast as the Sea Wyvern could manage. The crew was relieved to be getting some distance from the weird ship, but Raguhl was growing more agitated.
“That angel needs help! We should go back and help it!”
“Absolutely not!” I replied. “Besides, it’s not an angel, it’s some kind of devil I read about it a book,” I lied.
“Err… I agree with Raguhl,” said Ulfgar. “We should go back and help that thing.”
We all turned incredulous eyes toward Ulfgar, who hadn’t ever shown such altruism in the past.
“Wait a minute,” I said after a moment. “You’re just saying that to convince your axe that you’re Good, aren’t you??”
The dwarf blushed furiously and clumsily tried to dodge the accusation, but I could read him like an open book.
“It’s a moot point, in fact,” said Sparkillo, “because Belessa is partly right. That fiery being yonder is no angel, my dear Raguhl, but rather a demon of great power.”
“There!” I said victoriously, and we finally sailed out of sight from that disturbing scene.
Some time later, we started navigating along the coast of the Screaming Jungle. Even though it was only dimly visible on the horizon, we could hear the terrible animal cries coming from within. They set our nerves on edge.
“Are we there yet?” frequently asked the crew members from our guide, Sid. But it seemed we would have to spend at least one more night in the Abyss before reaching the next Wake Portal node.
This time, Sparkillo created a Magnificent Mansion on the ship, in the hope that the crew would be able to be sheltered from the nightmares within that neutral extra-dimensional space. Indeed, it worked for the first part of the night. But we had set up watches in case of an attack, and at some point during Ulfgar’s watch, danger came looking for us.
“We’re under attack!” roared the dwarf after stepping from the Sea Wyvern’s deck and into the magical mansion. We were all woken up and immediately began scrambling to go and defend our ship.
Hammer 11th, 1377
Return to Kraken’s Cove
It turns out that the Sea Wyvern was attacked by a trio of monstrous aberrations that unleashed a barrage of deadly spells such as Horrid Wilting, Destruction and Blasphemy on us and on the poor crew members stuck on deck: Brissa, Avner, and one of our sailors, a man named Zerulfar An’Karrabrim. Thankfully, Brissa survived long enough to drag Avner’s unconscious body back into the magical mansion, where they were healed by Liamae (none of the Jade Ravens bothered to leave the confines of the secure shelter to come to our aid). Alas, poor Zerulfar was not so lucky and ended up as a pile of smouldering ashes. What’s more, Lagaan was forced back to the Material Plane by the vile magic of our enemies.
Once the creatures were destroyed, we returned inside the mansion and healed ourselves. Liamae used a Sending spell to contact Lagaan and learned that he was safe for now, but in a desert with no visible landmarks.
We went back to bed, woke up a few hours later, and we traveled the rest of the way up to the Wake Portal that led us to Kraken’s Cove. Ratline Sid had guided us well. Once we were back on the primal plane, we learned that Lagaan would reach the city of Calimshan in a few hours. In the mean time, I contacted Lord Lorchester by magic and learned that he was now located in the old Lotus Dragons hideout. I also contacted Manthalay, and he asked me to come get him by Sparkillo’s teleportation magic. The elf and I returned to Farshore, where Manthalay was getting ready to go to Sasserine with us. However, I had something important to tell him first… alone, so Sparkillo left to give us some privacy.
I told him that we had saved my old lover Dolmord in our recent assault on the Crimson Pirate base. At first, Manthalay seemed to be perfectly fine with that and went on a long monologue about how it was fine that I’d had lovers before him, and how we would soon rule Sasserine together. For a time, I was pleasantly surprised at how well he was taking the news that I was planning on keeping Dolmord as a lover on the side.
It’s only just before we left for the Sea Wyvern that he really understood what I had meant; how much Dolmord really meant to me. He in fact did NOT take that well at all… Saying that he would never let his honor be stained like this. We had a brief argument about the whole thing. He was a fool to be so inflexible. He really cannot afford to make me angry or cast me aside. Finally, I just shrugged and said: “Fine… You can stay here, then, while we retake Sasserine.” And Sparkie and I returned to the Sea Wyvern without him.
Upon our return, we saw that the crew members were staring to the side of the Sea Wyvern at a dark spot in the distance.
“Tell me, Ulfgar,” I asked, “What do your dwarven eyes see?”
“Looks like a ghost ship,” he replied,” surrounded by fog.”
We learned that this was the Crystal Twilight, an infamous ship with an undead crew who acted as jailors for a vampire lady who was kept prisoner inside her coffin in the hold. We decided to avoid them.
Later, Sparkie went to get Lagaan, who brought back a camel in his new portable hole. He offered the animal as a gift to Avner. The nobleman sneered bitterly. He seemed quite jaded now, about the state of things and life in general. I told him that we might have to kill his father if he stood in our way. He didn’t seem to care, but said he trusted his father to put many traps in our way and perhaps even to kill us. That sweet Avner, always so endearing.
“Tell me, Ulfgar,” I asked, “What do your dwarven eyes see?”
Nice touch :)
Hammer 12th, 1377
The Lotus Dragon hideout
In the morning, Lagaan used a mysterious lock of hair to summon a nymph he had befriended earlier. Her name was Zarvynia and all men gawked at her like idiots when she appeared in all her naked splendor. She seemed bound to repay an old favor to Lagaan and promised us the help of all manner of fey and woodland creatures to retake Sasserine. She was aware of what was going on over there: the city was being dragged into the Abyss and Vanthus, as a death knight, was drawing all the undead of the region to him, probably including the crew of that ghost ship we had seen earlier. Probably the deadliest of his minions was the dracolich we had observed in Sparkillo’s mirror. Zarvynia confirmed that this was what the red dragon Hookface had become after being slain by adventurers in Cauldron.
Under Vanthus’s baneful influence, the dead had risen from Sasserine’s graveyard, and now large numbers of foul zombies and skeletons prowled the streets of the beloved port. A few dozen demons were also present, sent at Demogorgon’s behest both to serve and to keep an eye on Vanthus. It was much easier for them to enter Sasserine now that it was halfway to the Abyss.
We decided to leave the Sea Wyvern in the “safe” location of Kraken’s Cove and to fly to Sasserine under a Wind Walk spell, just us five members of Trouble. As we made our way there, we noticed that we were definitely leaving the material plane, as the sky turned red and even the sheep in the fields began looking positively demonic.
We finally reached Sasserine. Portions of it were still on fire, and some demons and other menacing shadows hovered over it. The city was now bathed in an abyssal twilight, even in daytime. Here and there, frightened citizens hurried from one building to the next, trying to avoid the notice of the foul invaders. Still in gaseous form, we flew toward Dead Dog’s Alley and went down the well that we knew was one of the entrances to the former Lotus Dragon Lair, where Lord Lorchester led a small group of rebels.
It felt strange to be back in that dungeon after almost two years – we had come such a long way since then! It felt just as strange to see the haggard appearance of the survivors who had taken refuge there. There were a few priests of various religions (though no worshippers of Umberlee), but it was a tough-looking woman, a gladiator named Brillith, who led us to Lord Lorchester. The old nobleman gave us a quick rundown of the situation: there were fifty men-at-arms and around twelve nobles hiding in the complex. They were desperately trying to avoid being discovered by the undead forces and had repelled a few minor attacks already.
Among the surviving nobles were a few faces I recognized from the Dawn Council: Anwyn Arabani, the half-elven woman at the head of that family; another half-elf woman, a priestess of Shaundakul named Laralli Woarali; and Dhalven Miomar, a merchant guildmaster. Dhalven seemed very unhappy at us; for some reason, he was under the impression that Sasserine’s woes were entirely Trouble’s fault. We tried to reason with him, describing all the good deeds we’d accomplished over the past two years, even showing him our most recent trophy (Cold Captain Wyther’s head), but the fool refused to acknowledge our good intentions.
Lord Lorchester then explained that some of the city’s old leaders had joined Vanthus, some openly and others covertly. Vanthus had, apparently, just barged into the city one day and claimed Castle Teraknian as his own. Edvanda and Lord Dracktus had joined him, and it was suspected that Zebula Meravanchi had as well. And now, it seemed that whatever was dragging Sasserine toward the Abyss originated from inside the castle. None of the agents that Lord Lorchester had sent to penetrate Castle Teraknian had succeeded. It was protected by a magical barrier similar to a wall of force, and only those with special magical keys could enter.
The rebel forces had made a special prisoner in recent days, and Lord Lorchester wondered if perhaps he could help us. He warned us that it was some kind of revenant formed from the corpse of Father Thergar, the leader of the foul Chaos cult that had destroyed Fort Blackwall. A few of my companions groaned at this. It was yet another one of our enemies who had somehow found a way to be reborn as a powerful undead.
We followed our host to the jails. Thergar was held prisoner in a dark cell, bound in heavy iron chains. His skin was gray and his eyes milky white, and he still bore the scars of our last encounter: a deep axe wound from Ulfgar in his chest, and the thick gash on his throat where I had murdered him with my sacrificial knife.
Thergar seethed with rage and told us that his Mistress had brought him back from the beyond in order to contact us. This mistress was not the Queen of Chaos herself, but rather the she-b###% who possessed a crystal that contained part of Lagaan’s soul. She was apparently a powerful Slaad, but not one of the dreaded Death Slaad. Thergar claimed that we shared Vanthus as a common enemy, that his mistress had foreseen this day all along, and that she could’ve easily killed us with a mere thought, but had chosen not to. I wasn’t sure if he was just bluffing, but Lagaan and Ulfgar clearly didn’t take him seriously and chuckled at his bold claim. Before he could tell us what his mistress had in mind, though, he went completely berserk. Lord Lorchester had warned us that he was lucid only part of the time. Thergar breathed a cloud of black necromantic energy on us that threatened to drain our energy, but fortunately, we all resisted this attack. Lorchester closed the cell’s barred window, but Thergar was still raging loudly behind it, rattling his chains with all his might.
If looks could kill
Lord Lorchester informed us that Thergar had been captured about two days ago, and that he’d had many episodes of howling rage since then. The old man was worried that the noise would alert the undead roaming the city. In fact, this is precisely what happened just a few moments later. We heard screams and sounds of battle coming from further in the tunnels: the complex was under attack.
My companions rushed on ahead and I struggled to keep up with them in my heavy armor. As it turned out, our enemies were deadly undead called Bodaks, beings whose very stares cause death. Several of Lord Lorchester’s men had already perished in the initial assault. Within moments, Ulfgar and Lagaan also lay on the ground, struck down by the power of these fiends. They had attacked before I’d gotten a chance to shield them from the deadly magic. I protected Raguhl, Sparkillo, Lord Lorchester and myself with Death Ward spells, and we battled the invaders. Raguhl was an engine of destruction, mowing down the wicked undead with his glowing greatsword. Sparkillo approached Lagaan’s body and retrieved his Sunblade, a potent weapon against undead. He activated its special power, and the radiance of sunlight surrounded him, sending our enemies fleeing. I followed the mage toward an underground lake where he followed one of our enemies and slew it with the Sunblade – the first time I’ve ever seen Sparkillo hurt someone with a weapon!
It only took a couple minutes for the three of us to slay the seven Bodaks who had invaded the complex, but they’d had the time to kill nine of Lord Lorchester’s men. We returned to look at the bodies of Ulfgar and Lagaan and were relieved to see that they had miraculously, but barely, survived the deathly assault. I healed them as best as I could, and we carried their still-unconscious bodies to the barracks.
“That damned Thergar is still making noise in his cell!” growled Raguhl. “He’s going to drawn the attention of all the undead in the city!”
“Then we should silence him for good,” I replied.
“But Belessa, he said he had important information to tell us,” said Sparkillo.
“So?” I replied with a shrug. “If his mistress is so powerful that she can kill us with a thought, then surely she can be bothered to come and give us this allegedly vital information about our common enemy in person. We can’t afford to have that fool keep on alerting the undead, otherwise everyone here will die.”
“She’s right, Sparkie,” said Raguhl. His massive fists clenched over the hilt of his sword. “This time, I’ll cut him up in such tiny pieces that even that Slaad won’t be able to bring him back.”
The three of us headed to the jails, and Raguhl went about his grim business. Guildmaster Dhalven Miomar showed up with three guards and loudly accused us of being the cause of the recent Bodak attack. I tried to reason with him, explaining that it was actually thanks to us that the entire complex hadn’t been wiped out, but he was very stubborn and even began to get rude.
I was really out of patience at that point. I fixed him with a freezing glare and spoke the terrible words of the Destruction spell. He shrieked in agony as a swirling black void eradicated him, and within moments, all that remained of him was a pair of smoking boots. The three guards stared at us in shock.
“Anyone else got a problem with Trouble?” I asked.
They all shook their heads.
About an hour later, a black-clad spy came back to the complex. Lord Lorchester informed us of his findings: Zebula Meravanchi had a key to Castle Teraknian and could be found at his estate, but only for a short time, for he was on his way out to somewhere else. We would have to try and catch him there before he left. Thankfully, around that time, our two other companions regained consciousness. While he had been out, Lagaan had received a vision of his ‘friend’ the Slaad. She had told him she would give him back his soul if we killed Vanthus, who was currently within the black sphere that surrounded the Vanderboren estate. But the only way inside there was to go through a portal in the basement of Castle Teraknian.
Ulfgar looked at us with bleary eyes.
“OK. We go kill Zebula at his manor. Then we go kill Edvanda and Dracktus at Castle Teraknian. Then we go kill Vanthus at his mansion and we free Lavinia. Got it. Let’s go.”
Adventurers two, Hookface zero
We left the former Lotus Dragon base and headed toward the Meravanchi mansion. We were in gaseous form due to my Wind Walk spell, but even in this barely noticeable form, Sasserine’s most vigilant guardian, the dracolich Hookface, detected us. He pursued us and we fled, carried by the quick magical wind. Our minds were once again linked by Sparkillo’s Telepathic Bond, and we formulated a quick and bold plan: we would draw the dragon out of the city to ensure that he would face us without the aid of the other undead guardians.
It was on a small rocky island that we stopped and began reforming into our solid shapes as the dragon flew toward us. As we did so, we noticed that a handful of elves had, by some wild misfortune, made their camp on this island. When the dracolich appeared and began battling us, those poor fools got caught in the crossfire.
I used my magic to protect the group for the dracolich’s paralyzing gaze and touch. Sparkillo shielded us from his approach and his first blast of deadly fire with a Wall of Force. As he did so, Lagaan summoned the ultimate power of his Nimbus Bow and, all of a sudden, we found ourselves in the eye of a powerful hurricane. Even the mighty undead dragon was forced to land, for he could not fly against such a strong wind. Once he was on the ground, Raguhl, Ulfgar and Lagaan rushed him. There was a terrible battle between our warriors and Hookface. The elves tried to come to our aid, but some of them were slain by the dragon, while others cowered in fear from his frightful presence. Sparkillo summoned a gigantic magical fist to aid the warriors, and Lagaan struck as he had never done before, his deadly holy rapier and undead-slaying Sunblade causing severe wounds to our foe.
Hookface fought terribly well, but in the end, he fell under the unstoppable barrage of punishment that was dealt by Raguhl, Lagaan and Ulfgar.
Once the fight was over, Lagaan stopped the hurricane. Sparkillo and I went to save those among the elves who had been blasted over the edge of the island and into the sea, me with my ring of telekinesis and him with his big giant fist. I then healed the wounds of my companions, and at the same time, one of the elves also healed those among his group who had survived. Their leader was a thin woman named Arawin; they came from the distant elven woods of Cormanthor. Arawin had come to Sasserine to study among the Witchwardens, but she and her friends had fled the city once it had been overrun by Vanthus’s forces. Since then, she had tried to study a way of battling their influence by magic, but alas, most of her research papers had been scattered by Lagaan’s fierce storm. Still, she and Sparkie were wary that the dracolich would be able to use a phylactery to rejuvenate into a new corpse in a matter of days, so Arawin offered to seek out his lair near Cauldron and look for clues about the nature and location of such a phylactery.
Zarvynia says “hi”
Some time later, we found ourselves at the doorstep of the Meravanchi Mansion. Lagaan took Avner’s appearance with his hat of disguise and knocked at the door. A powerful booming voice came from behind and asked our business. We pretended that Avner had come back to see his father. The guards seemed suspicious and said they would check with the boss.
After a few moments, Sparkillo used a Knock spell to open the door, and we entered the lavishly decorated residence. Two heavily-armored fire giants stood guard in the entrance hall. They were menacing at first, but we were able to chat with them for a bit and learned that seven of these giant warriors, as well as a derro sorcerer, worked for Zebula Meravanchi. We offered the giants a large bribe to turn against Zebula and the derro. The giant chief accepted and led us upstairs.
Zebula was, of course, furious to see that his guards had shown such disloyalty. He was also not very pleased to see us alive, especially not Lagaan who mentioned that Zarvynia “said hi”.
Unfortunately, our cunning plan of bribing the guards was easily turned against us, as all of our cunning plans inevitably are, by the derro spellcaster who mass-charmed the giants into attacking us. We ended up having to fight the giant chief, his sergeant, the derro and Zebula all at the same time. The two giants were very powerful. They severely wounded Raguhl and Ulfgar, and one of them almost killed Lagaan, knocking him out cold.
Thankfully, the derro’s demise was swift, as he was sliced into several pieces by Raguhl’s sword. Zebula attempted to use invisibility to avoid retribution, but I countered that easily with an Invisibility Purge spell. The panicked nobleman rifled through a heap of scrolls on the table, looking for one that could provide him with a way out of this predicament, but his search was interrupted by the raging lizardman, who subdued him most brutally.
Meanwhile, Sparkillo had blocked the staircase with a Wall of Force to prevent the other giants from attacking us. He caused our two remaining opponents great harm with two Cone of Cold spells. Once they were dead, we heard the sound of the other giants destroying the floor below us to try and gain access to the top level of the manor, where we had fought. As soon as they destroyed a section of the floor, Sparkillo blasted them with more frost spells, and then Ulfgar floated downstairs with his ring of Feather Fall and finished the job.
After I was done healing my companions, we made sure that Zebula was securely tied up and gagged and we took the time to search the mansion. We found a great many valuables there, but most interesting of all was a magical brooch that showed each of us a different magical image in its reflection. I saw tentacles writhing out of a swirling sea, but the others seemed to see other parts of Gaping Maw. According to Sparkillo, this bizarre item is the key that will grant us access to Castle Teraknian.
Hammer 13th, 1377
Zebula speaks
We ended up spending the night in a Sparkillo’s Magnificent Mansion that was summoned inside the Meravanchi manor. We took the time to rest, but maintained a guard at all times, among other things to keep an eye on our prisoner, Zebula Meravanchi.
The previous evening, Sparkillo had charmed him by magic, and had learned a little bit of moderately useful information from him. Zebula hated us all because Lagaan had stolen his nymph sex-toy. He was apparently not the one who had placed a bounty on our heads. I guessed we had Edvanda to blame for that.
Zebula had been pulling strings in Sasserine for a while now, using to his own advantage the problems caused by Oblivion’s Embrace last year, and Vanthus’s arrival more recently. However, he had recently decided that Sasserine’s translocation into the Abyss might in fact present a small obstacle to his ambitious politican schemes: indeed, even if he became one of the main rulers of the city, there would soon not be much of a city to run. Of course, it had taken the idiot quite a long time to come to that obvious conclusion. Edvanda was also not pleased that Vanthus was bringing the city to Gaping Maw; instead, she was trying to convince him to bring it to Fury’s Heart, where Umberlee dwells. I was certain that Vanthus would never agree to such a thing. But then, Edvanda has always been a delusional fool.
The chaos cultists who had spread the Oblivion’s Embrace drug throughout the city, madmen like Father Thergar who worshipped the Queen of Chaos, had for some reason helped Sasserine’s defenders against Vanthus and his demons and undead. However, they had been unable to stop him from gaining control of the city.
Edvanda and Zebula were some of the citizens who had allied with Vanthus. Another one was Emil Dracktus, that murderous scumbag who called himself a nobleman. Lagaan had every intention of killing him and taking his place once all of this was over.
Zebula had been in the process of leaving Sasserine altogether when we had attacked the mansion. His little derro magician had devised a way to teleport the entire manor to Calimshan with a ritual. Sparkillo was quite disappointed to learn that the derro had left no grimoire behind.
“Sorcerers!” he said with a snort. “Such amateurs, they never properly document their findings! And all the while, the academic burden of furthering the cause of the arcane arts rests solely on the shoulders of poor wizards like me and the Witchwardens.”
“The Witchwardens are no more,” said Zebula grimly. “The head of the order was turned into an undead by Edvanda.”
“Lux Seoni?!?” exclaimed Sparkillo, “I am aghast!”
“Well, so is he now, I guess,” replied Zebula.
“She,” corrected Sparkie. “That is truly a shame. She was a brilliant theoretical magician. Not to mention her sublime physical beauty as well. I will never forget that magnificent tattooed body…”
“Well, he serves Vanthus now.”
“She.”
“Yeah, she serves Vanthus.”
“Do you have any idea what kind of undead she is now?”
“I don’t know much about those things. I think he’s a unique type of undead.”
“She.”
“Yeah, she. Listen, are you going to untie me, friend Sparkillo?”
“Later, my friend. Patience…”
Zebula grimaced. “How the hell did we become friends in the first place, anyway?”
“We’re both noblemen… In these dangerous times, we all have to stick together, don’t we?”
“But your family was weak.”
“They were not!!” replied the elf, clearly outraged.
“Yeah, they were. If you knew anything about politics in Sasserine, you’d know that.”
“I do know a lot about politics. I read all the books about it!”
“Bah, you don’t know anything. You’re powerful, but the rest of your family was weak. That’s why they were crushed. But say, didn’t you have an undead in your estate before that happened?”
“Yes, a fine fellow: a talking skeleton. He’s the first nice undead we met, actually. Nice undead are so rare, you know? I’m going to turn into one, one day, when it’s my time to leave this life. Have you heard about non-evil elven liches? I want to become one of those. Anyway, that won’t be for another few centuries. It’s more of a long-term plan I’ve got.”
“Well, your talking skeleton is in my basement now. I was going to use it to lure you here.”
“Awesome! I missed my super-cool talking skeleton! But hey, did you really want to lure me here?”
“Yes, to kill you… Well, maybe not you, my friend… but the rest of Trouble. I was going to turn them into zombies and have them clean my latrines.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound very fair…” replied the elf. “We’ve done nothing wrong to you. In fact, your son Avner loves us. He’s been adventuring with us as of late. Do you remember how useless he used to be, always whining and hiding from fights? Well, I have good news for you: Lagaan and Ulfgar made a man out of him! Yep, that’s right! They put him in a box, well actually, that was Belessa’s idea, and then they brought him on the boat, and then, for about a week, they beat him up, and then when we got to Scuttlecove, they sent him to the brothel with Tyralandi – who’s got no eye for true beauty, by the way – and then he became a man! When we fought the Crimson Pirates, he didn’t wet his pants, he didn’t even hide in a box like he used to! He fought with his sword! He even lost an eye, well I guess that’s not such a good thing, but Belessa grew it back with her magic. See? Trouble is full of nice people! Belessa heals people, Lagaan and Ulfgar are excellent trainers and they’ve got their brewery, and me and Raguhl, everybody loves us!”
Zebula turned a withering gaze toward the rest of our group.
“I loathe you…” he spat.
“All right, it’s sleepy time for you, your lordship,” said Raguhl before punching the obnoxious nobleman in the face.
Soon afterward, we all went to sleep as well (but in a less brutal way).
Punctuality or death
Shortly after we all woke up, but before I had the time to summon our daily sustenance of Heroes’ Feast, we were suddenly brought back within the Meravanchi mansion when someone dispelled Sparkillo’s magical abode in a most impolite way. We turned furious glares toward the culprit, who was an attractive red-skinned female demon clad in a tight leather outfit. She wielded a scimitar and a sickle and her hair was arranged in two dark pigtails that looked strangely out of place on such an obviously sadistic fiend.
“Which one of you is Meravanchi?” she asked in a nonchalant tone.
We all nodded toward the battered, bound and gagged nobleman.
“Very well, I have been sent to kill him for missing yesterday’s meeting at Castle Teraknian,” said the woman.
“Kill him?” exclaimed Sparkillo, clearly taken aback. “What kind of organization punishes tardiness with such draconian measures?”
“I’ve got my orders,” replied the red-skinned assassin.
“Don’t worry,” said Lagaan, “we were planning on getting rid of him anyway… We’re going to give him to someone who used to be his prisoner. I’m sure she’s got a pretty nasty fate in store for him.”
“So he will die?” asked the assassin.
“Yes,” replied Lagaan.
“Slowly, I hope?” asked Ulfgar with a raised eyebrow.
“Of course,” assured Lagaan with a grin.
We learned that this woman was called S’Shara and had been sent by Vanthus to kill Zebula. Since we were worried that she would leave and report our presence to her master, Sparkillo tried to sneakily cast a Dimensional Anchor on her. Unfortunately, it failed pathetically to bypass her spell resistance.
The fiend’s face was twisted by a grim smile.
“You see,” she said,” I am a reasonable demoness. Most of the time, I don’t let negative emotions get in the way of business.” She drew her two weapons. “Unfortunately for you, this is not one of those times!”
A difficult battle followed against this powerful foe. She was extremely agile, and therefore hard to hit. She also possessed a plethora of demonic offensive and defensive capabilities that made her very difficult to kill. She was able to dispel magic at will, to fly, to turn invisible, her blades were poisoned and she was surrounded by an aura of despair. However, with a little perseverance, and the help of Invisibility Purge and Silence spells, we were able to fight her in close combat, and our warriors finally overcame her. When Ulfgar struck the killing blow, she melted into a puddle of sickening black goo.
Thankfully, her precious magical items had survived the transformation. After cleaning them by magic, Sparkillo identified them and we distributed some of them amongst ourselves. I inherited her lovely black leather gloves, which will increase my agility – a welcome improvement!
Revenge of the nymph
After I healed the wounds we had taken during the battle, and once we had taken our usual magical breakfast, Lagaan summoned Zarvynia again and handed Zebula to her. We saw a dark side of the fey this time, and we got the satisfaction that, as her former captor and tormentor, Zebula would meet a very gruesome death at her hands. She used her magic to take the nobleman back to wherever she had come from.
We then made our way, once again in cloud form, toward Castle Teraknian. We noticed that Sasserine looked less chaotic than the previous day, perhaps due to the disappearance of Hookface. We also saw that a horde of skeletons and zombies were trying to get inside the black sphere covering the Vanderboren estate. We took it as a sign that Vanthus was within. In the distance, we saw that the high tower of Helm’s temple in the Cudgel district had been partly demolished, and that a group of Vrocks now nested there. They would have to wait, though: we wanted to strike at Castle Teraknian first to gain entrance to Vanthus’s abode.
The castle’s main entrance was guarded by two huge Lemorian Golems. We approached the side entrance, the one that I had used most of the time back when I worked for the Dawn Council. The golems approached us as we materialized back into our solid forms, but once they detected Zebula’s magical key, they returned to their posts without attacking us.
The formerly splendid castle was in a sorry state and strongly influenced by the Abyss. The side door now had the appearance of a huge demon’s mouth, and inside, the passageways were dark. The walls oozed dark blood. The room where scribes had once worked was now teeming with restless spirits, condemned to write about death and suffering for eternity. We made our way toward the stairs that led down to the vaults of the castle, which we had visited so long ago with Lavinia, back when we had tried to reclaim her parents’ fortune. We hoped to find a portal there that would take us inside the black sphere.
However, the way was barred by an enormous filth demon that wallowed in a pool of stinking sludge. The creature lurched grotesquely in our direction, and we knew that we had an unpleasant fight ahead of us…
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LOL - Filth demon! Reminds me of the Golgothan in Dogma :-)
This ending in Sasserine is great - your DM has really pulled together all the cool stuff and made something personal from it.
hehe, I'm not sure what adventure that filth demon is coming from, but the DM did have a picture to show us (and of the assassin demon too). I think he is taking a lot of things here and there from the numerous Dungeon magazines he accumulated over the years.
Yes, our DM is really making a grand finale in Sasserine with a lot of the elements that he introduced throughout the campaign.
The price of crossing me
To say that the fight was messy would be an extreme euphemism. The first attack that the monster did was a deluge of excrement over the entire group. I do not wish to delve deeper into the specifics of this battle; I have already written too much about it. Suffice it to say that we defeated this opponent and moved on with the rest of our adventure after Sparkillo cleaned us up with his magic.
The next room was the council chamber where we met several of our main enemies. My eyes immediately locked on my nemesis, Edvanda Balak, but others also stood in the room, plotting together. One of them was a gray-robed dwarf with bloody fists. Another was a female Babau demon who wielded a halberd. Yet another was a skeletal creature in mage’s robes: Lux Seoni, the mistress of the Witchwardens, along with a construct known as a Shield Guardian. Standing before them, on the central platform of the room, was Lord Emil Dracktus. His appearance was somewhat changed from the last time we’d seen him: he now looked like some sort of half-demon.
Just as the battle started, Edvanda and I were surrounded by a chaotic swirl of colors and were teleported into a very different place by the will of Umberlee herself. We found ourselves in a bubble deep down in the watery depths of Fury’s Heart, in the very court of Umberlee. Edvanda and I watched each other in a silence that was heavy with the weight of our hate for one another. Her dark eyes glittered evilly as she prepared her spiked chain for battle. She was dressed in a dark full plate armor and her skin was also of a dark color not unlike those of the Olman people.
We knew that our omnipotent mistress was watching, eager to see two of her mightiest priestesses locked in mortal combat.
Unfortunately for her, the fight was risibly short.
Edvanda lunged toward me with a battle-cry, but I was faster than her, thanks to my new magical gloves, and as she approached, I unleashed the might of a Slay Living spell on her thick body. She immediately stiffened and her eyes went wide in shock and pain. She gave a hoarse cry of agony and toppled over.
She was dead…
My laughter echoed all around the water bubble as I stood triumphant over the body of my slain foe.
But Umberlee was not pleased: I had finished the fight too quickly. She reached her dark fingers around Edvanda’s soul and wrenched it back into her body, reanimating the withered husk into a foul undead monstrosity that lurched to life toward me.
I turned an amused smile toward the dark presence I knew was lurking at the edge of our watery arena.
“Oh, mistress,” I said merrily, “I’ve always told you that Edvanda was unworthy of your attention.”
I lifted the unholy symbol of Umberlee’s twin waves high, and the Edvanda-zombie craned her neck and gazed at it in adoration, unable to attack me.
“See how easily she breaks when presented with your symbol! Surely you could not be satisfied with such a meek sheep as one of your high priestesses!”
With a teasing laugh, I moved around the bubble, directing Edvanda’s movements as if she were my puppet. I made her dance for our mistress.
How long that dance lasted, I cannot tell for sure, but when I finally opened my eyes again, I felt a profound sense of satisfaction at knowing I had defeated my hated enemy; but even more, I felt Umberlee’s blessing on me more strongly than ever. I knew I had passed yet another milestone in her eyes by slaying Edvanda.
The violet ray
I was back in the council chamber of Castle Teraknian. Around me were the remains of a brutal battle: some of the benches and tables were broken in pieces and blood covered sections of the floor. I saw the mangled corpse of the Babau demon in one corner, and the broken fragments of the Shield Guardian in another. Sparkillo and Lagaan were searching a heap of dusty robes that I realized had recently belonged to the lich Lux Seoni. They had suffered only minor wounds from the battle; Ulfgar was covered in burns, but his life did not seem in danger. Some distance away, I saw a large armored warrior made entirely of ivory and I recognized the magical statue that Raguhl had recently bought from the Mercanes in the Abyss. The lizardman himself was nowhere to be seen, though.
The ivory construct was babbling some incoherent gibberish over and over…
“1377-01-13 11:04:21,710 [warning] Listener process: command input module not found.
1377-01-13 11:04:21,711 Timeout while trying to connect to master Raguhl. Please verify the master link configuration file. Trying again in 3000 millirounds.
1377-01-13 11:04:21,714 com.golem.impl.network.masterConnectionException: Raguhl: master not reachable.
1377-01-13 11:04:21,718 current_number_hostile_opponents_detected = 0
1377-01-13 11:04:21,722 Reverting to default behavior algorithm.”
“Where’s Raguhl?” I asked.
“That lich hit us with a weird cone of colors,” said Ulfgar, “it drove me nuts for a little while, but Sparkie cured me. It made Raguhl disappear, though.”
“Ah, Belessa, how delightful to see you!” said Sparkillo. “I trust your fight against Edvanda went well?”
“Yes, quite,” I said with a smug smile.
“Good for you,” said Lagaan. “Dracktus got away like a sissy…”
“As the dwarf got away too, in gas form. He was a vampire,” said Ulfgar.
“As Ulfgar was saying before,” added Sparkillo, “my former headmistress, Lux Seoni, who was turned into a lich-like undead abomination, may her soul rest in peace, used a mighty Prismatic Spray against us, which barely harmed Lagaan and me, but alas, which hit Raguhl with a dreaded violet ray.”
I waited for a moment for the wizard to elaborate, but he did not. Clearly, he wanted me to ask. “… and what does the violet ray do?” I said, humoring him.
“Ah, it is a well-known fact that the violet ray is one of the most dangerous. I fear our scaly friend has been forced into one of the outer planes against his will; but to which one specifically, I cannot yet say. Perhaps you could contact him via divine magic?”
I used two Sending spells to get some information about Raguhl’s location. He was alive, which was a good thing, I guess, but his first set of instructions was maddeningly vague: he was in a dark cave. Great, that really narrowed it down since we were trying to locate him in the multiverse.
He then gave a more specific description of the stone walls around him, and Sparkillo recognized them as a specific region within the elemental plane of earth. Still, it could take us weeks, months, or years to find the lizardman.
But just as we were starting to wonder if we should just abandon him there, the massive barbarian suddenly materialized in the council room. Much to our surprise, we noticed that a beautiful golden-haired angel-like creature was with him. We learned that her name was Celeste and that she worked for Raguhl’s holy patron, Gwynharwyf the Whirling Fury, one of the Lords of Arborea. Apparently, this major power of the higher planes had been following the deeds of Trouble for some time, just like Umberlee, and she too was trying to help us as we fought the agents of the foul Demogorgon. Unfortunately, for reasons having to do with the politics of the outer planes, she could not help us directly in battle, but as soon as she had noticed that her champion Raguhl was stranded in neutral territory, she had been able to intervene by bringing him back on the right path.
Well, that was very nice of her and it saved us a lot of wasted time. The angelic Celeste kissed Raguhl on the cheek, and then she disappeared in a puff of sweet-smelling smoke.
The ivory construct was babbling some incoherent gibberish over and over…
“1377-01-13 11:04:21,710 [warning] Listener process: command input module not found.
1377-01-13 11:04:21,711 Timeout while trying to connect to master Raguhl. Please verify the master link configuration file. Trying again in 3000 millirounds.
1377-01-13 11:04:21,714 com.golem.impl.network.masterConnectionException: Raguhl: master not reachable.
1377-01-13 11:04:21,718 current_number_hostile_opponents_detected = 0
1377-01-13 11:04:21,722 Reverting to default behavior algorithm.”
Oh my... Very good joke.
Hammer 13th, 1377 (continued)
The tormentor
We had heard that the portal we sought was deep below Castle Teraknian. We found the stairs that we had taken so long ago with Lavinia, when we had escorted her to her family’s vault, only to find it already ransacked by Vanthus. As we began our descent, we could see that a dull red glow radiated from far below. It illuminated everything around us in an abyssal light.
The way down took much longer than we remembered. Sparkillo speculated that it might be due to the distortion of the Abyss. We passed two landings that led into sections of the complex that housed the vaults of noble families. While some among us, especially Lagaan, might have liked to plunder them, we had more important things in mind. Everything around us reeked of the abyssal taint, and even the doors themselves seemed to be made of damned souls.
After passing through a magical electrified portcullis thanks to Sparkillo’s magic, we finally reached the bottom of the stairs and emerged into a large cave. We saw the portal we sought at the back of the cave, but it seemed to be turned off. Of more immediate interest was the enormous snake-fiend who stood in the center of the room: a dreaded Marilith demon. Her ophidian body was probably about thirty feet long; six muscular arms sprouted from the sides of her muscular, yellow-skinned humanoid torso. Her ugly face was a picture of evil. It seemed that we had interrupted her during a torture session, and she was not pleased about it. Indeed, all around the room were kept unfortunate citizens of Sasserine, all of them horribly maimed and impaled on metal spikes. Each of them wore a necklace of barbed wire around the neck. Their faces were twisted in silent grimaces of anguish and pain. Among them, we recognized a few people we knew such as Zasker Grankus, the master of the arena and Tormagald Gred, a high-ranking priest of Helm from the Cudgel District. One of the prisoners did not look human at all, and was rather a sort of angelic creature.
But the most pitiful of the prisoners was a man hanging upside-down in the center of the room: he had been the current focus of the Marilith’s unwanted attention. He was so bloody that it seemed as though he had been flayed alive. Although we couldn’t identify him from such a distance, we could see that he was a strongly built human… and I had a horrible premonition about his identity.
“More toys to put in my cages!” said the Marilith in an unexpectedly male baritone voice upon seeing us.
“”You will die, demon!!” replied Raguhl defiantly.
Of course, a battle swiftly followed. Sparkillo identified the Marilith as Lillianth, a general in Demogorgon’s armies. She was a dreadful foe indeed. She summoned a Blade Barrier to try to separate half of us from the fight, but Sparkillo and I were able to dodge it and be on the same side as the warriors. Raguhl’s ivory warrior was caught in the furious swirling storm of swords, but it survived its attacks and immediately began regenerating the damage as it advanced to help its master against the demon. This thing is a most useful construct indeed.
Raguhl and Ulfgar rushed the Marilith while Lagaan shot arrows at it. Lillianth was not only almost impossible to hit, but also very resistant to most weapon damage. Sparkillo used his magic to bolster our warriors. I tried to dispel some magic on the demon, but with no effect. Raguhl received the brunt of the Marilith’s countless weapon attacks, and he was severely wounded many times. Thankfully, he had activated his magical crown that absorbed some of the damage. I frantically prayed for his healing, and barely kept him alive.
Sparkillo suddenly cried out in pain: he had been attacked by surprise by none other than Lord Dracktus. The bastard had likely been shadowing us, waiting for the right opportunity to strike. However, he failed to cause our wizard any serious harm, and Sparkillo retaliated immediately with a Feeblemind spell that reduced the shady nobleman to a gibbering simpleton.
Then, Lagaan attacked the Marilith from behind with his holy cold iron rapier held high. He deeply pierced the demon, whose attention was still focused on Raguhl. Before she-he-it could slay the lizardman, the Marilith was slain by Lagaan’s deadly strikes! Once again, the cunning little man showed that brute force is not always the best strategy, and without him, we might not have vanquished this terrible enemy.
After the battle, I hurried to the center of the room, my gaze drawn by the flayed man there. As I approached, I felt my heart constrict in horror, for things were as I feared: this poor man was Norrix, the paladin I had met a year ago. He was trying to cry out in pain, but no sound emerged from his mouth. Sparkillo indicated that this was likely due to the magical barbed wire necklace that had been placed on him. After ensuring that it wouldn’t cause him too much harm, I removed the necklace, and now we heard his howls. I summoned my most powerful energies to heal his tragically tortured body… and felt no answer from my goddess!
She was blocking me… refusing to grant me the power to heal Norrix… a paladin.
THE B@$#~!!!!
I closed my eyes and fought back the urge to scream blasphemies that would surely cost me dearly… When I opened them again, I had regained my calm, and took out a wand of healing from my belt. Using many charges from this simple device, I was able to heal the most important wounds from Norrix’s body. Raguhl also helped me to clean him by washing him with his decanter of endless water. Norrix’s eyes remained closed… he had lost consciousness despite my healing.
Raguhl and I then proceeded to free and heal the remaining prisoners while the others examined the portal and the possessions of our enemies. The prisoners told us their stories, but we learned nothing new of any real importance. The most interesting captive, other than Norrix, was surely Abalarian, who was in fact a trumpet archon whose trumpet, meaning part of its soul, had been destroyed. This frightened creature was still badly scarred from the many years of captivity from the Marilith. Its diaphanous wings were tattered and broken, even after I was done healing it. It was but a shadow of its former self, unable to use its magical powers yet; unable to even return to heaven. I comforted it, smiling inwardly at its pain. I saw in this wretched outsider the chance to sow the seed of corruption… and perhaps turn it into a servant of Umberlee. Such a being could prove very useful to my fickle mistress.
By then, Sparkillo and I had used most of our magic, and we were both very tired. We did not feel up to the challenge of facing Vanthus without resting first. Sparkillo was so drained that he couldn’t even summon a magical mansion. We did not dare leave the prisoners here, nor could we risk traveling all the way back to the Lotus Dragon hideout. Instead, Sparkillo summoned two shelters with Rope Trick spells, and we spent the night in those cramped, uncomfortable and shapeless inter-dimensional spaces like we used to back in the day, before he had become powerful enough to create shelters that were more comfortable. Since there were so many of us, we had to use two different “holes”. My companions and I took refuge in one, along with the archon, Norrix and the now near-brainless Lord Dracktus (who had been disarmed and tied up). The rest of the ex-prisoners were in the other hole, and those among them who could fight were given some of the Marilith’s weapons.
After assigning some people to stand watch, the rest of us went to sleep. I snuggled against the still-unconscious and scarred body of Norrix. I could do nothing more for him at the moment, and my very soul ached in empathy for the pain that he had suffered through the Marilith’s torture. I had given him what help I could for now, even though my own goddess had tried to stop me. Now, I could only hope that time would mend the rest of his body and soul. I gently kissed his cheek when no-one was looking, and I fell asleep holding his hand in mine…
She was blocking me… refusing to grant me the power to heal Norrix… a paladin.
THE b*#@*!!!!
Your DM is quite the evil one... I can see that he has summoned every loose thread, big or small, for the grand finale.
Are you writing at the same pace that you are playing, or are you farther into the game?
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Your DM is quite the evil one... I can see that he has summoned every loose thread, big or small, for the grand finale.
Are you writing at the same pace that you are playing, or are you farther into the game?
Yes, he's tying all the loose ends in this adventure. I'm writing at the same pace that we're playing. We're now playing once a week, but on a week night, so the games are shorter. That, and at the level we're at, the fights are super long, so that's why there's not much happening in every game besides one or two mega-fights and a bit of role-playing on the side.
The campaign is almost over. Our DM said there are only a couple games left.
After that, it seems we'll probably play a small "bobo" adventure just for a change of pace, and then we'll start Curse of the Crimson Throne with brand new PC's. It's going to be a big change for us, since we've been playing the same characters since august 2007.
Still awesome as always, Moonbeam!
Still awesome as always, Moonbeam!Thank you very much :)
As far as the dungeon magazines are concerned, there's quite a ways to go in the campaign. I guess your DM isn't gonna have you go through all that.
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As far as the dungeon magazines are concerned, there's quite a ways to go in the campaign. I guess your DM isn't gonna have you go through all that.
I think he's taken some elements of the "Into the Maw" adventure and put them in this customized adventure. But yeah, the campaign will soon end, so there won't be anything from the last 3 adventures, though. Once we're done, he'll verbally give us an overview of the last 3 adventures, what would've happened if we had played them. I'm curious to see what there was in store for us in the rest of the campaign. I know a bit about it (the DM gave me a few spoilers), and I'd been wondering how things would go for Belessa in the Abyss.
Just to give you a heads up... we just finished this week's game... and the next journal update will be very... strange.
Looking forward to it.
The madness of the mirror
It all began very suddenly.
I found myself in the entrance hall of Vanderboren Manor. I was surrounded by heroic-looking figures; they were my friends and companions, but strangely, unbelievably, some of them were visible twice. Ollikraps looked around in surprise until his gaze stopped on a very similar – but much more arrogant-looking – elven mage who wielded the same frost-imbued staff as his. Ragflu lifted his heavy shield, which was adorned with the lawful symbol of Helm, in protection against a similar-looking dwarf, whose shield bore no symbol I could recognize. A bit further, a massive lizardman and a cunning-looking archer looked at us warily – they reminded me of my own companions, but I knew they were not them.
At the center of this crowd, however, was the woman who immediately drew my attention. It was me! Or at least, a corrupted, evil version of me: tall, with long jet-black hair, she wore a heavy armor that was of a dark shade of blue and decorated with symbols of sharks. At her neck hung a medallion in the shape of the twin waves of the evil goddess Umberlee – one of the greatest enemies of my beloved mistress, Sune.
I felt a profound and irresistible urge to destroy that woman – she was my nemesis… She had to die! My sole purpose was to kill her!
Apparently, Ollikraps and Ragflu felt the something similar toward their own look-alikes, and a battle immediately started against the five other adventurers. The fight would’ve been about even if our two missing companions had been present, but we were outnumbered.
The evil cleric of Umberlee – Belessa – cursed when she saw us appear, immediately understanding our nature, which I would only realize some time later. She called to her goddess and summoned a Wall of Stone behind us, blocking the way to what I later learned was a terribly dangerous magical mirror: she wanted to prevent her two other allies, Raguhl and Lagaan, from looking at their reflections in this devious device.
Her last thought was, as always, for the survival of her group. She could’ve tried to destroy me. She could’ve protected herself against the terrible spell she surely knew I was about to unleash upon her. But she thought of the group first. And for this, she was terribly punished. After having read her extensive journal, it is clear to me now that, throughout her entire life, she felt unappreciated, persecuted, misunderstood…
My Destruction spell hit her with the full might of my rage. In that instant, I was completely focused on her annihilation; but now that some time has passed, and that my troubled mind has settled into reality, I fervently hope that she did not suffer in that brief moment in time during which she was wiped out of existence. Because she did not deserve to.
In the time it had taken for me to cast the prayer that had slain my enemy, poor Ollikraps had been surrounded by the enemy warriors and quickly cut to shreds. His bloody elven corpse collapsed to the ground. The dwarf fighter and the rogue turned their attention toward my dwarven ally, but the lizardman looked at me with a bewildered expression. He had seen what I had just done to Belessa, and in his eyes was a strange mixture of horror and relief.
“Belessa, there is no need for us to fight,” he said, having been informed telepathically of the nearby mirror’s nature by Sparkillo. “Join us, join us against Vanthus! The evil version of you is dead, we can be allies now!”
Now that my nemesis was gone, my mind reeled, struggled to find a purpose, tried to determine what should be the next course of action. One of my friends had just been killed, another one was being beset by our adversaries, and yet, I couldn’t bear myself to harm these people who looked so much like us. I was still under the delusion that we had been on a crucial mission against a fiend named Vanthus, and now that lizardman who looked so much like the black-scaled reptilian tyrant in my own group, offered an alliance.
I called for a truce. I pleaded with them to stop attacking Ragflu the dwarven defender. But they did not heed my words. Ragflu fought valiantly – he was almost invulnerable. But he was still driven by his insane urge to kill his opposite, Ulfgar, and there were four of them against him. They tried desperately to capture him alive, but his powerful ring of Freedom of Movement prevented them from doing so. They saw only one option: to kill him. I tried to help, but my own paralyzing spells failed to affect his nemesis, Ulfgar. Finally, after a long battle in which he truly gave them hell, badly wounding his dwarven double, my companion fell under their powerful weapons and the fiery blasts of their wizard, Sparkillo. I will never forget the look in his eyes, as he fell, as he stared at me with incomprehension and disappointment: always, he had been able to count on my magical healing. But I had failed him in this final fight. I had not called upon Sune to heal him.
“Stop! STOP!!!” roared Raguhl at his companions so they would stay their blades. “Give her a chance to keep him alive! He can join us against Vanthus too!”
I hurried to Ragflu’s side, fighting back the tears that welled at the corners of my eyes. I quickly whispered a simple healing prayer to stabilize his wounds and prevent him from dying of internal bleeding.
“It’s done!” I said in a voice choked by emotions. I looked at all of them and saw much hatred in their eyes.
“You f!+%ing whore! What have you done to Belessa???” roared Ulfgar, raising his axe in my direction.
Lagaan also glowered at me balefully, while Sparkillo seemed completely confused, looking from the smoking remains of Belessa and back to me. The only one among them who did not seem overly hostile was Raguhl.
“Calm down, guys,” he said. “Don’t you see the opportunity we have? She came from a mirror of opposition! That means she’s Belessa’s opposite! Her soul is pure! She can join us in our quest… She’s just like Belessa, but better!”
“B+~$++$*…” growled Ulfgar.
“Raguhl is correct, mostly,” said Sparkillo. “Her magical equipment is of ephemeral nature and will vanish within the hour, but this pseudo-Belessa is a true being, just like Belessa is… was…” he added sadly.
“So will you really help us?” asked Lagaan, looking at me.
“I… err… Yes, I think.” I was still very confused at that point. My mind was still struggling with the enormity of the situation. I was in the process of realizing that I had in fact just been born. That I had not existed until a minute before. That the only reason I existed was because fate had brought an evil priestess called Belessa Darkwave through a portal to the Abyss, in a twisted version of Vanderboren Manor, in front of a mirror of opposition, and that bad luck, her eternal enemy, had deemed that she would perish at my hand.
“So you’re just like Belessa… you can do what she can do?” asked Lagaan.
“I… I’m not sure. I’m a priestess of Sune, so my powers are surely different from hers. But I’m very surprised that you would be allied with such an evil priestess. Why?”
“Belessa might not have been a little angel,” conceded Lagaan, “but we liked her as she was. So if you’ve got her powers, show us and resurrect her.”
“What?” I asked him with wide eyes. “I can’t… I can’t do that!”
“What if we give you the proper motivation?” asked Ulfgar threateningly.
“It’s not that I don’t want to… I can’t bring back someone who’s been destroyed by this kind of magic!”
“So Belessa is dead for real?” asked Lagaan with a grimace.
“Yes,” Sparkillo and I replied in unison.
A moment of heavy silence followed.
“Well here’s what I do with your friend, then!” said Ulfgar grimly as he brought his axe down and chopped off Ragflu’s head.
I howled in shock as the rest of the group berated Ulfgar for his brutal, treacherous and needless act – but I would later learn that it wasn’t his first. Just as Ragflu had been lawful and honorable in my unreal reverse-world, Ulfgar in this world was a cold-hearted and spiteful killer.
My memory of the following minutes is kind of hazy. The undeniable evidence that I was just a reflection of the real Belessa clashed with all these memories in my mind; the hopes, dreams and fears that felt as if they had naturally accumulated within my soul over a period of thirty years. Sparkillo explained the theory to me, but most of his words were just background noise to the storm of my inner thoughts. Apparently, there was no way back for me into the world that I knew – or thought I knew. I couldn’t go back through the mirror, because there was nothing to go back to. My version of the world (the Remembered Realms) did not exist. But as I had slain Belessa, the “original” version of me – I had gained her aspect of reality. I was now as real as she had ever been… Not just a magical creation. I could breathe, eat, live, age, and die… Just like a regular person.
I had taken her place in this existence…
I had become the new Belessa…
An impostor in Trouble
The next thing I remember, I was standing over the smoking remains of the one I had killed. Nothing remained of her except her equipment. The beautifully engraved armor, the trident that shone with a blue flame, the heavy shield, the sapphire-encrusted unholy symbol…
“You seem to be having trouble coping with all this,” said the lizardman at my side in a low growl. In this world like in the previous one, he was always painfully blunt.
I turned toward him with wide eyes. “How could I not??” I exclaimed.
He nodded wisely, and there was pain in his eyes. “If it makes it easier for you, know that she was an evil person. I am relieved that it was you, and not her, who survived.”
I shook my head. “How can you say that? She was your companion… Through so many adventures, she saved your life!!!” I was appalled that the barbarian could turn his back on this woman so quickly. How could he so readily admit me among their ranks? After all, I was nothing but a murderer…
I saw that my words cut deep into his soul. I was too confused at the time and missed the tell-tale signs of a gentle soul, as my predecessor had so often done in her time. It would take more time for me to truly get to know Raguhl, and to appreciate him fully. Some time to realize how deep our friendship could become.
“It pains me that she died,” he admitted after a moment. “But I know that, had we survived this quest to the end, we would have fought each other to the death. One of us would have killed the other. I am glad that I never had to raise my blade against her… But that instead I will be able to count you among my allies… And perhaps, one day, among my friends.”
He gestured toward Belessa’s possessions: since mine were about to vanish out of existence, I was expected to take over my victim’s belongings. And I had to be quick about it, because we were so close to facing Vanthus in combat. Meanwhile, the others were busying themselves discussing tactics involving the mirror of opposition: they wanted to shrink it and keep it. Sparkillo, however, warned that it could not be used against Vanthus or Demogorgon: undead and demons were immune to its effects.
Raguhl helped me to swap my clothes and armor with Belessa’s. It was an insane and ridiculous situation, to stand there naked next to the enormous barbarian – thankfully, I knew that he had no attraction to human females, and besides, after two long years of adventuring and sleeping in close quarters with these people, I had very little to hide from them anymore. Even though we had just met, they knew me quite well already.
“So do you have all of Belessa’s memories?” asked Raguhl while we were doing this.
“Yes, I think so.”
“So you know of our mission… to slay Vanthus?”
“Yes… I know everything. I remember how you got here, through the portal. You killed a Marilith, and freed some prisoners, including the paladin Norrix.”
I suddenly stopped and paused to remember the horrible state that Norrix had been in. How come the “evil” Belessa had loved him? How come he had loved her back? I remembered the pain in her heart when she had seen him at death’s door, and how she had kissed him before falling asleep. There had been good things in the heart of this other Belessa; she had not been totally rotten. Even if Raguhl and the others hadn’t seen it… She hadn’t been that bad. I felt it within me. I knew it. And now that the madness of the mirror had faded, I hated myself for having killed this woman.
However, I forced myself to continue. “After we woke up, we were beset by strange daemons. The prisoners remained in hiding inside Sparkillo’s Rope Tricks, but as the rest of us fought, the daemons and the Rope Tricks faded. Sasserine had finally stopped travelling and had settled into the Gaping Maw… Demogorgon’s domain.”
“Yes,” said Raguhl as he helped me fasten the dead woman’s breastplate around my torso. “And do you remember what happened after?”
“We met Vanthus in this hall. He taunted us, and we learned the origin of his powers. At his uncle’s farm, long ago, he had read a magical book… A book that enabled him to summon Demogorgon. The demon-lord killed his uncle and burned the farm. From that point on, Vanthus was his, he turned to evil and committed countless atrocities under Demogorgon’s influence. And now he’s back as a Death Knight, and we have to kill him. He left the room just as one of his shadow-servants uncovered the mirror of opposition… causing me and the doubles of Sparkillo and Ulfgar to appear… ”
Now that I thought back about it, I had heard a distant laughter when I had killed Belessa. It had been Vanthus. I felt a profound surge of anger at this memory. How dared that bastard laugh at Belessa’s death? We would make him pay dearly… I was surprised to feel such anger: perhaps there was still a tiny bit of the real Belessa left alive in me after all.
I was now clad in Belessa’s dark armor. I called upon its glamer magic to turn its appearance into something less sinister, in shades of gold and silver. Raguhl and I returned to the others, who still looked at me with ambivalent expressions. I was holding Umberlee’s symbol in my hand, wondering what to do with it.
“I’ll take that,” said Lagaan as he grabbed it. He held it delicately, as though it carried great sentimental value, and he placed it into his pocket.
“At least you’ll have something to remember her by,” said Ulfgar.
“Yeah,” replied the rogue sadly. “Plus, there’s that copy of her at Porphyry House just in case…”
Along with all of Belessa’s memories came visions Lagaan making love to me (or should I say, to her?) in Tyralandi’s bed. The two adventuring companions, despite their frequent conflicts, had grown quite close in recent days. I wondered if Lagaan would ever see me as something other than the murderer of the true Belessa.
“So what’s your name, lady?” said Ulfgar. “Do we just call you Belessa?”
The name “Asseleb” was the one that immediately came to my mind, but I quickly dismissed it, now realizing how truly silly it sounded in this world. “Yes, please. Call me Belessa Lightwave.”
The dwarf grunted sourly. “Sounds gay.”
The name “Asseleb” was the one that immediately came to my mind, but I quickly dismissed it, now realizing how truly silly it sounded in this world. “Yes, please. Call me Belessa Lightwave.”
The dwarf grunted sourly. “Sounds gay.”
Wow, and again WOW. Extra brilliant. There was talk about Belessa's redeeming for a long time, but that? What an unexpected twist!
I particularly LOVED the way you wrote that piece, from Asseleb's point of view and with a flashback to previous events. You are the king. Really.
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Wow, and again WOW. Extra brilliant. There was talk about Belessa's redeeming for a long time, but that? What an unexpected twist!
I particularly LOVED the way you wrote that piece, from Asseleb's point of view and with a flashback to previous events. You are the king. Really.
Thank you very much. It means a lot to me, especially coming from you!
We were all very surprised when this happened. The DM was especially surprised when I said I chose not to use an Action Point to prevent Belessa from dying.
I have mixed feelings about the entire thing, but since redemption was a notion I had been toying with for a long time, and the dice (my eternal enemies) decided to roll a natural 1 on that particular saving throw, I decided to go with it. I just wish this event had happened earlier in the campaign. Now we're so close to the end that I don't think I'll be able to fully develop this new good-aligned Belessa as much as she deserves. And I also feel like crap knowing that the real Belessa, after all that she went through, died... So yeah, I'm as confused about this issue as Belessa is, I tried to reflect that in my journal entry.
*sniffles, blows nose in hanky*
We'll miss the crabby girl. Good stuff!
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I think I would have rather had Ulfgar killed then Belessa! Interesting plot twist though. I hope you guys are victorious in the end. Too bad the group doesn't have a strong connection with Lavinia.
Thanks! By the way, Ulfgar's player wasn't present at that session, so it was me and Lagaan's player who decided that he killed his double. It seemed like the kind of thing he would do, but we'll see next week if he agrees. ;)
I agree about the Lavinia connection. As I said before, I think if I had been playing a good-aligned non-reptilian male character, I would've tried to get closer to Lavinia. But at least now Belessa is Good, so they can be friends. ;)
(here I am assuming of course that we will survive and be able to save her ;) ).
Hammer 13th, 1377 (continued)
Vengeance for Penkus
We caught glimpses of the shadowy beings that served Vanthus in his twisted Abyssal manor. We heard their whispers behind every corner, from every pool of darkness. I protected everyone in the group against death magic, because I was sure that we could get greatly weakened, or even killed, if we came into contact with these fiends.
After breaking through the wall of stone that the magic of my nemesis had erected, we found that the mirror of opposition had disappeared. If any of my companions had contemplated using it on me to get their old evil Belessa back, this spelled the end of their nefarious plans.
We emerged into the shadowy garden at the center of the manor. We heard Vanthus’s smug, menacing voice coming from above, and we guessed that he was waiting for us near his bedroom on the upper floor. We hurried through the kitchen and, as we arrived in the central hall of the second floor, we saw Vanthus coming down the stairs toward us. He looked more menacing than ever in his unholy armor, half-skeletal as he was and wielding his sword and his sickle, which both burned with the fire of damnation.
“So this is it, Trouble,” he rumbled. “You should have perished under Parrot Island when we first met, but somehow you endured and made it all the way here.”
“We know what crimes you committed below Parrot Island, killing your closest ally,” I replied. “Know that the hand of Penkus guides us this day, and he will finally have his revenge!”
Vanthus grimaced into a hideous smile. “Fools. You’re not the lowly, dirty mercenaries you were back then, but you’ll die all the same. Your troublesome meddling ends NOW!”
And with this, five shadowy, incorporeal demons emerged from the walls and floor of the hall around us to join their master in battle. Vanthus brought his weapons together in a loud clash, and a wave of unholy fire washed over us, burning us. All around me, my companions sprang into action, but the shadow demons clawed them painfully. Raguhl and Ulfgar battled the shadow demons with their blades; Lagaan shot one of them with his Nimbus bow; Sparkillo used his magic to quicken our movements and to surround Vanthus with a Wall of Force.
One of the demons tried to blind us with magical darkness which I dispelled with a Daylight spell. Vanthus couldn’t get past Sparkillo’s magical wall, and after roaring in frustration, he summoned a nightmare to attack us. Lagaan had drawn his rapier and Sunblade and was fighting one of the demons in melee. Ulfgar and Raguhl were fighting other opponents, and Sparkillo blasted another one with Magic Missiles. One of the demons tried to gain control of Ulfgar’s body, but the dwarf resisted. A moment later, I protected us with a Magic Circle Against Evil, for I remembered that Vanthus could control minds with his magic.
Lagaan killed one of the shadow demons, but the nightmare attacked him, and his clothes caught on fire. I moved to help him and stabbed the nightmare several times with my trident. Sparkillo killed one of the demons and Raguhl badly wounded another one, causing it to flee. We were now facing only two of the shadow demons.
Meanwhile, Vanthus was smashing the stairs below him with his weapons. Great cracks formed into the stone, and soon, the stairway crumbled down, freeing him from Sparkillo’s magical prison. The nightmare then breathed a cone of flames on most of the group. I suffered nasty burns from it, and coughed from the smoke that hung in the air and made my eyes water. Thankfully, though, Lagaan finished off the abyssal horse shortly after that.
We heard Vanthus roar in anger from downstairs, followed by a chuckle from Sparkillo: the wizard had surrounded our enemy within another Wall of Force to give us more time to finish off the shadow demons. Raguhl and Lagaan killed another one of those fiends, and I summoned water with a spell to put out the flames burning Lagaan.
The last shadow demon was killed by Ulfgar and Lagaan as Vanthus escaped Sparkillo’s magical prison by breaking another hole in the floor of his own mansion. We heard the fluttering of wings getting closer. Sparkillo shot a volley of Magic Missiles at him before retreating up on the balcony. “He’s coming!” he said.
To my dismay, I noticed that the wounds my companions had suffered from the claws of the shadow-demons were unholy in nature and could only be cured in a hallowed location. I did what I could to heal the other wounds of Ulfgar and Lagaan before Vanthus returned, though. We heard Vanthus get closer, and we were in a good formation to wait for him on the second floor balcony, all together and protected in my magical circle.
“Chaaaarrggeeee!!!!” shouted Lagaan, suddenly breaking from the formation and jumping over the edge of the balcony.
“Raaaawwwrrr!!!” roared Raguhl, in the throes of one of his terrible rages as he jumped after the thief.
Our two allies landed on the floor below, and we hurried to the side of the balcony to see that they had started fighting Vanthus, who had just drunk a potion and had greatly increased in size. Raguhl slashed him with his greatsword.
“Idiots…” growled Ulfgar as he hurried down the stairs to join them.
I watched the fight from the top of the stairs, ready to heal my friends at a distance if I needed.
Vanthus was fighting fiercely, but he was flanked by Lagaan and Raguhl. When he saw Ulfgar come down the stairs, though, he turned toward him.
“You… filthy… dwarf!!!!” he spat, surely remembering that Ulfgar was the one who had killed him back in Farshore. “You will be the first to die!!!!”
Unfortunately, Ulfgar had suffered nasty wounds from the shadow demons, and Vanthus plunged his sword deep into his abdomen. Blood flowed from between his magical armor, but he remained standing. I quickly prayed to Sune to close his vicious wound with a Heal spell.
Vanthus was also lashing at Lagaan with his tail. Raguhl struck two more powerful blows on our enemy. Vanthus faltered… and was hit by more of Sparkillo’s Magic Missiles. His weapons fell to the ground as he collapsed. He had been slain by the elven wizard. For the last time in this grand adventure, we heard this cry of victory:
“SPARKILLO!!!!!”
The three warriors gathered around Vanthus, who was dying for a second time at their feet.
“I saw… what.. awaits you…” whispered the Death Knight before expiring.
A baby, a name and a soul
We knew that at least one of his weapons acted as a phylactery for Vanthus’s damned soul, so we quickly destroyed both of them. We then hurried upstairs, where we found what we had been looking for: poor Lavinia was in a sorry state, tied up in her room just like when we had rescued her from Malbrecht and the Bullywugs. Raguhl quickly freed her and held her in his arms. It was touching to see the two old friends reunited. I healed Lavinia’s wounds, but I knew that she still expected me to be the evil version of myself. She would need some time to understand what I had become, and we were still in mortal danger, here in the Abyss.
We explored the manor and found the source of the evil in the basement. A huge Shadow Pearl, bigger than any we’d seen before, pulsated there with wicked power. When we destroyed it, an earthquake seemed to rock the surrounding region and we felt that Sasserine was starting to move back through reality toward the Material Plane. We had done it: we had saved the city! A twin howl of rage and hatred was heard across the plane as we did so, but thankfully, we soon left the world of Demogorgon.
Unsure of what to do next, we went out the doors of Vanderboren Manor. There, we saw a group of menacing Slaads waiting for us. In front of them was the wicked creature that Lagaan knew so well: the Slaad who had stolen part of his soul, as well as Moretta’s child. She held the infant in her bony arms.
“You did well, Trouble,” she croaked. “You passed the test by killing Demogorgon’s emissary. Thanks to your deeds, Sasserine is now in the process of returning to its natural place on the Primal Plane. I am pleased.”
She straightened her arms and held out the baby, who started to float gently toward me. I carefully took hold of her and hugged her tight against me. She was safe now… At last.
“There are some things you should know,” continued the Slaad, whose name was never revealed. “We have a common enemy. You unearthed a terrible truth in your adventures: the Primal Plane has been seeded with Shadow Pearls. Those things were created in Golismorga with the Black Bile of the World. Their essence can turn people into savage monsters, and this pleases Demogorgon. But there’s more to it than that. I can’t say for sure what else the Prince of Demons is planning, but your world is in great danger. I know the name of someone who knows Demogorgon’s most well-guarded secret, and I will reveal to you this name as a reward for being the meddling adventurers that you are. You’ve been a thorn in the side of Demogorgon, this enemy of my mistress and the usurper of her power.”
“What’s the name?” asked Lagaan.
“Shami-Amourae”.
“Ah, Demogorgon’s former wife,” said Sparkillo.
The Slaad nodded. “I see you know your Abyssal history well, wizard. Yes, this being was the Succubus Queen before Malcanthet. Something happened to her since then, but she knows Demogorgon’s greatest weakness. You could use this weakness to destroy the Demon Lord once and for all.”
We all looked at each other dubiously. We were great heroes, we had bested terrible monsters over the past two years, and we had just slain a dreaded Death Knight and brought a city back from the Abyss, but what she was suggesting seemed insane even to us. Demogorgon was the Prince of Demons, a being almost as powerful as a god. Besides, there were other things we wanted to do first, like finding the location on the Astral Plane where poor Norrix and the other prisoners had gotten stranded when their Rope Tricks had disappeared.
We told the Slaad that we would think about what she had said. She nodded and motioned to her followers to get ready to leave.
“Hey, wait!” said Lagaan. “Aren’t you forgetting something??”
The Slaad turned toward him with a surprised expression.
“My soul…” said the rogue with raised eyebrows.
“Oh, yes, sorry, it almost slipped my mind. Here you go,” she said, handing him over the coveted prism.
Once the Slaads were gone, we looked around the manor and saw that the black sphere that had surrounded it had vanished. The hordes of zombies and skeletons that had been mindlessly trying to enter within had dispersed; we hoped they were on their way back to their graveyard where they would bury themselves. Only one undead being remained behind: Rakis-Ka, the devourer we had met in Golismorga. He had somehow made his way here, and was studying the surroundings with great interest. He was fascinated by our tale of victory over Vanthus, and he spent some time studying the broken fragments of the Death Knight’s weapons.
Is this campaign taking a long break?
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Is this campaign taking a long break?
Hi,
The campaign is over. It's unfortunate that the journal ends so abruptly, ideally, I should have written some kind of epilogue, but things were left really up in the air regarding how the new "Good" Belessa would interact with NPC's such as Dolmord, Norrix, Brissa, Manthalay, not to mention the rest of the PC's, which we did not play at all in-game, so I didn't feel the energy, motivation or inspiration to write something that would live up to my expectations for a proper ending for this long-running campaign.
In happier news, though, my friends and I started our Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign. We've played 3 games so far. I haven't posted any logs yet, because first I want to make sure I have the energy to keep another time-consuming campaign journal (on top of my DM duties since I am the DM this time around).
I hope you all enjoyed the tale of Trouble in this campaign journal despite the rather abrupt ending. Thanks to everyone who posted in this thread, it really filled my heart with joy to see that other people were enjoying our story.
Take care,
Moonbeam aka Belessa
Hi,
The campaign is over. It's unfortunate that the journal ends so abruptly, ideally, I should have written some kind of epilogue, but things were left really up in the air regarding how the new "Good" Belessa would interact with NPC's such as Dolmord, Norrix, Brissa, Manthalay, not to mention the rest of the PC's, which we did not play at all in-game, so I didn't feel the energy, motivation or inspiration to write something that would live up to my expectations for a proper ending for this long-running campaign.
Too bad. I was too lurking around, waiting for a fitting conclusion to your very , very good campaign journal. I guess I can pdf and shelve it, now...
I would be pleased to read anything about your new campaign, but I do know that writing a journal while DMing can be a LOT of work (I am myself three sessions behind in mine, but keeping up).
Best wishes to you and your players.
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Too bad. I was too lurking around, waiting for a fitting conclusion to your very , very good campaign journal. I guess I can pdf and shelve it, now...
I would be pleased to read anything about your new campaign, but I do know that writing a journal while DMing can be a LOT of work (I am myself three sessions behind in mine, but keeping up).
Best wishes to you and your players.
Thank you, and happy holiday seasons to everyone, by the way! :)
In happier news, though, my friends and I started our Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign. We've played 3 games so far. I haven't posted any logs yet, because first I want to make sure I have the energy to keep another time-consuming campaign journal (on top of my DM duties since I am the DM this time around).
Let's hope let's hope let's hope....
If you'll decide to deal with this incredible effort, I can only imagine know much time consuming can be to do something like Belessa (still to be read for me, It's not pathfinder but it's Moonbeam ^^ before or later I'll do) or RotR or Hangman's Noose stories (the best ones all arount the messageboards), you have to know that this could be a very wonderful gift for the community and that there are fans around, like me, that are waiting for this from about one year.
Happy Christmas Moonbeam
Hi Moonbeam
I just finished reading your fantastic Savage Tide journal. I'm very impressed, it was loads of fun, I even put aside Dan Brown's latest book in favor of your story.
I love what your DM did with the personal histories of the characters, especially yours, although his interferences in Belessa's life weren't always the gentlest.
When I came up on page 7 of your journal, I started to worry how you were going to fit in the last five installments of the AP; clearly you didn't because you skipped the final four. I completely understand that your DM had a burn-out (which - luckily - I haven't had so far, but knowing how much work goes into preparing and adapting an adventure, I do sympathize). Nevertheless, I was sorry to learn that you guys didn't finish the AP.
I hope your DM recovered from his burn-out. As he is still playing with you - as Varnas - I suppose he got over it. Still, congratulate him from me on an incredible campaign. And of course, grats to you for writing this wonderful journal. Thanks for giving me food to read for the past two weeks. Next: your Hangman's noose story (which I'll be adapting for my CotCT campaign as well) ... Dan Brown can wait.
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Hi Mr Vergee :)
I’m very pleased and flattered to hear that you took the time to go through the entire journal, especially since I was up against such serious competition! :)
Wow, it feels good to re-read some of the journal entries from Savage Tide. I hadn't been in that world for quite some time now. Makes me realize what a blast we had playing that campaign. Belessa was perhaps my most interesting, intricate, well-fleshed-out and original character ever. I really miss playing her!
As for our Savage Tide GM, not much has changed, it seems that Adventure Paths are still not his thing, because what he enjoys most in RPGs is the GM's creative process of making the adventure, and customizing it and tweaking it on the fly depending on the players' decisions. He feels too limited when he has to stay close to the outline of a pre-written adventure.
Anyway, I'm super happy that I took the many, many, MANY long hours to write down the adventures of Belessa and the rest of Trouble (and expand upon what wasn't actually played around the table ;) ), it's really great for me to revisit this wonderful campaign now that a few years have passed!
I hope you will enjoy my other tales, I am very proud of my take on the Hangman's Noose and of my Rise of the Runelords journal as well (if you haven't read it yet and I can keep competing with Mr. Dan Brown. ;) ).
Either way: happy reading!
Maebnoom.... I mean, Moonbeam!