The party starts to make camp together for the first time as the evening sets in. Little dark bats are out early scooping up insects. Fresh water is plentiful from the stream and its burbling is a calm background noise accompanied by the croaking of amphibious night songs.
"I can't see in the dark, but my vision should be good enough to see as long as the moon is out, I will help with the watch." After the camp is made, Syfer sits down by a tree, waiting for something else to need to be done.
The party decides to camp with the tireless NR4ZN taking sentinel throughout the night, the others taking sentinel turns starting with Syfer then Inamar when it turns dark.
Later that night, but before dawn, during Gravan's shift, he and NR4ZN hear a low gibbering sound off in the distance away from the stream. It is broken by whines and half understood vocalizations.
NR4ZN's
Spoiler:
audio receptors pick up multiple subharmonics that render contradictory information. His processors focus inward discovering irrational number algorithims and try to compute them, drawing more and more of his processing power. Error messages start to flash as a large percentage of his input analysis is devoted to analysis that spins out increasing transforming results that divert more processing power to analysis. NR4ZN is fascinated http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionS...htm#fascinated by this effect.
and he goes still.
The sleep of the others becomes disturbed and uneasy by the noises.
Rooth
Spoiler:
Rooth's dream turns into a deep nightmare about rotting otherworldly jungles where all becomes putrefication. Rooth senses there is a rot that gets under her skin and festers, corrupting from within. Rooth knows she is carrying it and that it will consume her slowly, but implacably increasing over time. Strangely there is a voice in goblin describing her thoughts about this, but it is not her voice. When it refers to herself it uses the name Gernak. Rooth is horribly fascinated http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionS...htm#fascinated by this nightmare for the present
Out of the woods, from the direction Rooth said the goblins headed a small dark figure floats spectrally towards the party, it looks like the clothes from a small humanoid. Gernak
Initiative
Gravan turns towards the strange creature, squinting. He moves to wake Inamar up, glances over her sleeping form, feels awkward, then steps towards Syfer instead. He prods Syfer somewhat gingerly. "Wake up! There's some kind of creature out here!"
Weylan rolls to a seated position and shakes himself awake while trying to figure out what's going on.
*People talking 10-20' away is DC 2, -10 for being asleep results in DC 12, so a 16 is enough for Weylan to wake up, but not enough to make out what Gravan said as Weylan wasn't quite awake yet.
Weylan rolls to a seated position and shakes himself awake while trying to figure out what's going on.
*People talking 10-20' away is DC 2, -10 for being asleep results in DC 12, so a 16 is enough for Weylan to wake up, but not enough to make out what Gravan said as Weylan wasn't quite awake yet.
Gravan's alarmed voice is enough to rouse not only Syfer who he gingerly prods, but also Weylan and Inamar as well. Rooth does not stir however.
ooc I'll go with that, though in the future I would prefer suggestions such as these in the ooc thread before posting actions.
Syfer sits up quickly, yawning, and cracks a few joints. What creature? Where? He asks, looking around as he stands himself up. Apon seeing Rooth still sleeping and NR4ZN immobile, he asks, What with them?
"Wuzzit?" Inamar asks sleepily. She rubs her eyes and blinks at Graven with reproach, then frowns and looks around for the source of that strange sound.
The dark figure streaks forward in the night and closes with Gravan. It lashes out with a spectral knife that drips drops of yellow light. Gravan ducks, his body swaying like a slender sapling bending in the wind and the knife passes over where his head was moments before, missing by inches. There is a glowing yellow sigil on the spectral being's right arm, visible as the sleeve falls back when it strikes. The babbling and gurgling is frantic.
NR4ZN stands where he was, some hissing noise comes out of his helmet.
Rooth
Spoiler:
As you look around the jungle you start to see a recurring pattern, a line with a diagonal slash across it that ends in a loop. This is seen on the bark of trees and vines, ripples of light in pools of water, the arrangement of colored leaves that have fallen on the ground. As you see this pattern again and again it disturbs you more and more. You are sure, though you do not know why, that it is connected to the underlying corruption.
Rooth thrashes in her sleep, a disturbed look on her face.
Gravan's stance widens and his flesh transforms, becoming brown polished overlapping slats of wood. His hair turns into large cap-like plates resembling the scales of a pine cone. His eyes glow green and his mouth becomes a sharp slash across the wood of his still basically humanoid appearing face. His arms hang longer and a twinning tail, resembling roots, sprouts behind him. He thrashes at the dark spectral figure but it proves too swift for the newly plant-transformed gravan to hit.
Syfer and Weylan spring to their feet and draw weapons, a set of metal bagh nak claws the chiao pulls tight onto his hand, while a brilliant spike of psychic energy erupts from Weylan's fist illuminating the scene with light.
The spectral nature of the foe becomes clearer as its dark misty form reveals no features. It flails in return at the woody creature it faces. Its arm streaks through the plates on Gravan's transformed head without resistance, the dark knife and glowing sigil passing deep into Gravan's brain and out the other side, leaving no physical evidence of its passing.
Gravan
Spoiler:
The passage of the creature's touch feels like it burns into your very soul and warps your mind. You gain insights into a horrific corrupt layer of reality just beneath the surface you are used to dealing with. The creature, you sense, is a manifestation of this other reality and its corruption flows strongly from the sigil. Gravan suffers four wisdom damage.
NR4ZN
Spoiler:
NR4ZN begins experiencing system errors from the processing overload and subroutines begin a rerouting and terminate process function on individual subroutines.
"Graven!" Inamar blurts in dismay. She scrambles to her feet, and the glyphs on her skin blaze with cold blue light as she lifts a hand as if to reach out to the stricken companion.
Instead though, something blue and violet and composed of swirling light rockets from the palm of her hand and bears down on the gloomy muttering spirit!
Inamar gestures and something blue and violet and composed of swirling light rockets from the palm of her hand. It bears down on the spectral being but the creature flashes to the side as the light streaks past.
Linear Mode
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