Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 6-3-08 -ZOMG!-)

[Shemeska]

Originally Posted by omrob

Early on, with all the Clueless stuff, was evocative of one of my favorite DnD PC Games - Torment.

Thanks for the praise *smile*

Oddly enough, I'd never played PS: Torment till after I'd been running the game. However, don't worry, Clueless's stuff is rather different from the amnesiac plot of that game.

[Shemeska]

[This was written late in the week mostly, and I've not had time to edit it at all. Next week I plan on going back through to make some edits as well as revise the last update as well. But I figured you'd all appreciate an update now rather than waiting most of next week for me to tweak the grammer. Apologies if anything looks funky in the sentance structure.]




In an instant Sigil was gone and replaced with a singular moment of darkness, a sensation of weightlessness and instant, terrible cold. Barely a moment later and it was gone as they all emerged onto a surface of pitted iron, a patch of ground upon the flat surface of a massive cube floating in the endless expanse of Acheron’s first layer of Avalas. Overhead the sky was pitch black but dotted with distant cubes, all in slow states of motion hung there in the sky like bloated modron corpses under a new moon.

Fyrehowl shivered despite the warm temperature emanating from the metal underfoot. The celestial was clearly uncomfortable within Acheron, but she was not the only one of the five to appear so distressed. Both Toras and Nisha looked anxious to be gone from the plane and while the fighter did his best to stomach his discomfort, the tiefling was actively pacing and hoping from thin hoof to thin hoof. Her tail fully betrayed her feelings as it whipped from side to side fitfully.

“I really, really don’t like this plane… where’re we going fuzzy… you… celestial lady… Fyrehowl, yeah. Where’s the compass point?”

Fyrehowl smiled despite her unease with the conflict of her very being with the nature of Acheron. She took out the compass and held it in her hand, then spun in a slow circle before pointing off in one particular direction. That direction wasn’t to a point on the current cube, rather it went up slightly, roughly in the direction of another cube that drifted distantly in the sky. “That way, maybe that cube off in the distance. Shall we fly, or …?”

She let the question hang and looked at her companions. Clueless was looking away and towards a glimmer perhaps a mile distant that cut across the face of the cube, drifting more or less in a line towards the direction the lupinal was pointing towards.

“I think the Styx is over that way if we don’t want to fly, I don’t think all of us can.” Clueless said as he pointed towards the infernal river.

“I can solve the can’t fly part, but I only have so many of the potions for it. I don’t carry around more than I expect to use in a week or so. I work alone usually, no sense to carry more.” Nisha pointed towards the small satchel slung around one shoulder that dangled near to her hip.

They bantered some more, discussing the benefits and risks of going by way of the Styx. Fyrehowl seemed adamantly against it, but the others seemed to think it was best, despite the dangers involved. Finally, despite the lupinal’s ill ease with travel upon the black, infernal river, they set out across the warped steel surface of the cube face towards the serpentine river as it cut its way across the landscape.

Some twenty, uneventful minutes later the group stood upon the banks of the Styx where it had worn smooth and deep the metal of the cube by untold millennia of passage. The water ran unexpectedly fast, surging along in places to send up a mist of syrupy water. The water itself was black as the void above them, foul smelling and thick with hints of shapes reaching out of the currents to snatch at anything foolish enough to swim its depths. Nisha blinked hard and shook her head as they stood upon the bank, Toras and Fyrehowl both stood some feet back from the bank, while Clueless and Aren stood close to the edge, only inches back from the water. The mist off of the river made them pause and shift as its memory sapping influence sought to insinuate itself, only a few seconds of this made all of them step further back from the bank.

“So, what now? I don’t see anyone sitting around with a boat looking friendly and wanting to give strangers rides.” Nisha sat near the bank and questioned aloud to her companions.

Clueless looked back at her, then back to the river with a vague nagging feeling in the back of his mind concerning his own loss of memory. He said nothing, but at his pause, Fyrehowl spoke.

“You just need to stand near the bank and hold out a coin, the fiends know where you are. If they want to ferry you, they’ll appear. Don’t expect them to be trustworthy though.”

The others nodded and waited near the edge. Nisha began playing with the same copper piece she had before at the inn and Toras held a pair of stingers in his hand. Aren looked over at him, “They’ll take your money, but you do know that’s going to burn them to touch, yes?”

Toras smirked, “That’s why I’m paying in silver…”

“You try that at a few bars in the Hive I know of, wow… they won’t take kindly to you. Just don’t get us capsized ok?” Nisha mused up at the half-celestial.

Barely a minute had passed by when the waters some distance upstream seemed to flicker slightly and the ripples across the surface heralded the sudden appearance of a previously unseen skiff. Seemingly emerging from the river itself, or out of thin air, a slim, flat-bottomed skiff drifted with the currents downstream. Standing motionless at the back of the craft was a tall, rail thin figure wrapped in a tattered brown robe. It held a boatman’s pole cradled in its arms but the craft seemed to move of its own accord down the river without any action on the ferryman’s part.

“Why is it I suddenly feel more like flying?” Nisha’s tail twitched nervously as the boat drifted closer, slowed its approach and came to a silent rest on the metallic riverbank.

The boatman stood motionless in the skiff, only lifting its cowled head to reveal the jaundiced, skeletal face of a Marraenoloth. Twin burning reddish eyes seethed silent and malign from its skeletal eyesockets as it slouched forwards slightly, resting its weight on the pole in its arms. It seemed to be waiting for some word or request from the group.

Aren spoke first, “We need to buy passage from here to –that- cube there. Can you take us there?” she pointed up into the sky at the distant cube. The Yugoloth ferryman turned to look up in the direction of her hand, then back to her with its emotionless gaze. It said nothing, but stepped to the side and extended one of its hands out to her, palm up as if waiting for payment.

“Thank you.” Aren said as she nodded to the rest of her companions and placed a small gem into the palm of the Marraenoloth. It closed its hand and allowed her to step into the boat before repeating its stance for Toras. When it opened its hand for the fighter however the priestess’s gem was gone even though none of them had seen the fiend stow the gem anywhere visible.
Toras placed both of his coins in the palm of the ‘loth which then curled its hand around them and let him step into the boat. As he passed by however, its gaze followed him for a moment before it turned to accept payment from Fyrehowl.

The lupinal paid the fiend its money in gold and never once turned her gaze away from staring directly into its face, unwavering and slightly confrontational. The fiend said nothing, nor did it give her a response as it allowed her to enter the boat. Nisha paid next in a number of small gemstones that another ‘collector of donations’ might have noted to have apparently come from rings or other jewelry, pried from their original settings.

Finally Clueless was the last standing upon the bank of the river, waiting to pay the fiend for passage. He paused as his hand closed around his severed purse strings still hanging upon his belt. He stiffened and shut his eyes in frustration, only now remembering that he hadn’t a copper to his person. Still, the fiend was rigid with the same hand open for payment, two small discolorations on its flesh from where Toras’s silver coins had touched its palm.

“I can’t pay you, I don’t have any coin. Can one of my companions pay for me?” he seemed wary and self-conscious. The boatman didn’t move but kept its hand open for him as Fyrehowl began to take out several coins to pay for the bladesinger. As she did so, the ‘loth turned on her and shook its head. Angrily she put away her coin.

“How is he supposed to come with us if he doesn’t have coin, and we can’t pay for him?”

The Marraenoloth smiled grimly and touched its pole upon the edge of the bank as if to push the skiff off into the river and leave Clueless behind.

“Wait! I can’t just, I mean…” Clueless looked alarmed and so did his companions at the ferryman’s threat. Then, something odd happened. The boatman turned rapidly to look at Clueless and paused, gazing at him. He had the sudden impression that the fiend was looking -through- him, not at him. It canted its head slightly at an angle, blinked its crimson eyes and withdrew to the front of the craft to allow Clueless room to enter.

Not one to reject such an offer, he jumped about the ship and took a seat next to Fyrehowl. All of his companions looked curiously at the boatman’s back as the vessel moved away from the riverbank and rapidly moved downstream with the current.

“You’re one with words, I just hope he doesn’t drown us all now. I’ve never known them to give free rides either.” Fyrhowl bared her teeth and silently scowled at the Marraenoloth’s back as the craft sped down the river. Beside her, Clueless sat and wondered what in the hells the last minute or so meant. He couldn’t well answer it.

The boat moved across the face of the current cube till the group could see the approaching end of the current face several miles downriver. At the edge gravity seemed to flip over to the new orientation and soon they made the transition without so much as a jolt. Unexpectedly though an hour later the vessel sped off down a tributary to the sound of raging water. The boatman gave no warning and suddenly the vessel passed through a pocket of mist and churning water. The boat rocked and there was the sensation of weightlessness for a moment of two before the skiff re-emerged onto the river seemingly on another cube entirely.

Toras looked up, “The sky is different, we’re on a different cube. What does the compass say?”

The tiefling took out the compass and glanced at it. “This is the right cube I think. It’s starting to get warm actually.” She turned around in her place next to Toras and felt out the compass points for a direction. Finally, she pointed in a place roughly fifteen degrees off from where the vessel was headed. The compass –had- been held by the lupinal, and she hadn’t given it up as far as anyone had seen. Fyrehowl said nothing but quickly checked her other pouches for their proper contents.

“This is our stop.” Toras said to the fiend’s back as the vessel was already slowing and drifting towards the edge of the bank. As the boat alighted on the bank and stopped, the Marraenoloth gestured to the shore and turned away from them, making as if to put out onto the waters again. The party complied with its unspoken wish and stepped out onto the shore of rough, knobby iron dusted with reddish black rust.

Nisha held out the compass again with a pointed grin at the celestial. “That way. Getting pretty close it seems.” Behind her, the boatman and its skiff silently glided away with the current. Almost imperceptibly it glanced in their direction as it drifted away without a sound, its eyes glimmering like hot steel.

As the group traveled further from the Styx, the steel of the cube became warped and disrupted. From a distance it might have seemed as if some massive hand had reached down and crushed and bent the surface. And considering the unending wars of extermination between the orcish and goblinoid pantheons on the first layer of Acheron, the cause of the damage might have been less natural than deific. Regardless of the proximate cause of the warped metal, the normally flat surface of the cube was folded and rippled into a series of sharp hills, valleys and vales. A perfect place for hiding troops from the sight of armies marching on the flat surfaces of the cube, or even from hostile forces in the next valley over.

An hour later, having traveled in the direction of the compass’s more and more urgent pushing, the five crept along the base of a series of sharp, shallow hills. Halfway along their length, the lupinal stopped and perked her ears. She signaled for the group to pause as she strained to listen to some otherwise imperceptible sound that eluded her companions.

“There’s something ahead, I’d guess a camp or a group of people. I can barely make out some fires, maybe some drums, pack animals maybe, iron shod boots on the cube surface… try and be quiet once we get near the top of the ridge ahead.”

Toras drew his sword as she signaled the possible danger ahead. Aren sighed slightly and took out her wand again as Clueless drew his own blade. Nisha played with the compass some more.

“Yep, whatever we’re looking for, that seems like where it is. Umm…” she looked at Toras specifically. “Yeeeeaaaahhh… it might be nice if we could be quiet and all sneaky like for this? I don’t do sieges, and well, even all of us couldn’t if there’s lots of people on the other side of the hills here. I can make us all invisible, and if you can fly, all the better.”

Nisha passed around a number of vials and potion bottles, all of them in a different style and color of bottle, none of them likely paid for in the first place. Clueless spread out his wings and muted their colors to a pure, deep black without any other illumination as Fyrehowl lifted slightly off the ground. Toras looked up at the both of them and smirked as he quaffed two of the potions Nisha had given him. He too began to hover slightly as he faded from view.

“Try not to bump into each other, invisibility doesn’t let you see anyone else you know. And there’s a story there I’ll have to tell you later.” Nisha likewise quaffed two potions and soon the entire group was aloft and hidden from view. Silently, riding the wind they edged over the top of the ridge.

Stretching out below them, situated on the other end of the small bowl of a valley was a walled encampment. Orcs sprawled across the camp and groups of dozens of them marched in squads outside the hastily erected fortifications. Each of the four corners of the site had a squat observation tower, more for noticing anyone approaching over the hills than seeing beyond them so as not to reveal the location of the camp itself beyond the valley. Disorganized clusters of tents surrounded cookfires and several small wooden buildings seemed to comprise the barracks of officers and perhaps weapons storage.

However, that was not the site that most garnered the group’s attention. Their gaze, and the pull of the compass in Nisha’s hand was drawn towards an iron building sitting on a small, artificial mound at the center of the camp. The building was surrounded by guards at its single gated entrance, and a great banner was erected overtop of it, emblazoned with a symbol of a crushed goblin skull within a field of red with black watery curls surrounding the primary image. Orcish runes recounted recent victories in battle by the Blood River orc clan.

Cloaked by Nisha’s potion, Toras’s voice whispered to the others, “There’s a lot of them, but I think we can distract them enough to get into the center building. Looks like their clan trophy room and treasury. Anything important would be there, and looks like our package is there as well. Any ideas?”

Aren spoke up, “They’ve got a mix of mortals and petitioners for what its worth. I can tell anyways.” Fyrehowl nodded unseen.

“Looks like there’s a number of clerics walking around as well. Hopefully they expect something large, like a siege, and not a smaller pack… group, like us.”

“Pack? We must be growing on you.” Clueless chuckled back and tried to reach out to poke the lupinal. He only grabbed on thin air though.

“Well, I think that…umm… what in the sodding hells is that?!” Nisha’s train of thought derailed suddenly as the far side of the camp erupted in chaos. Beyond the far wall of the camp the sky was lit with the telltale flashes of teleportation magic and screaming goblins and hobgoblins descended on the orc encampment. The companions could only stare and watch in abject shock as an explosion suddenly erupted on one of the guard towers and it toppled inwards. The camp became a mass of screams, shrieks and bellows as the goblin raiders poured into the camp to meet the larger, but haphazardly organized orcs. Blade met blade, and more often than not, flesh as the mixed mortal and petitioner forces clashed openly.

In the chaos, the guards surrounding the center building rushed from their posts to repulse those goblins that had breached the walls. As they did, a number of teleportation flashes burst near the rear of the building. The orcs seemed not to notice, but the companions did.

“Oh pike it! They’re getting in where we need to be! Best distraction ever, move!” Nisha lamented as she flew over the walls towards the fortified building with the rest of the party in tow.

They reached the outer door as an explosion shook the building from its rear and the sound of tortured steel rang over the din of battle. Hurriedly, Nisha picked at the lock for several seconds and it fell to the ground as Toras battered against the frame. Unlocked, the door fell inwards with the force of his blow, likely weakened in some way by the damage to other side of the structure. Several flashes of light washed over the group as they barged inside to nearly stumble over several dead orc bodies and listen to the scream of others outside rushing towards their location.

The inside of the building, peppered with soot and burning iron as it was from the explosion that had torn a rough hole in the back wall was a sight to behold. At least seven barrels sat on the ground, each of them packed to overflowing with silver and gold coins. Open crates filled with iron and gold ingots stood opposite them on the other wall. A pile of carved and decorated goblin skulls, each inscribed with the name of the former owner stood stacked above a pile of stolen weapons, heraldry, banners and standards taken in battle from a goblin clan identified on the banners as the ‘Venom Fangs’. The standards on the items on the floor matched those borne by the goblins currently attacking the campsite.

“What’s the compass say? Which of these is it?” Fyrehowl shouted as she and Toras moved to block the entrance against the group of five orcs rushing the hill to fight what they seemed to presume were goblins.

Nisha’s now visible face was a mask of large, overwhelmed eyes and a giddy grin as she looked at the wealth surrounding her. She blinked and shook off the luster lust as she examined the compass. Giving a confused look she glanced back to Clueless and Aren as she moved to the back of the room and stopped near to the hole blasted in the iron wall at the rear.

As Nisha fervently looked for the object they had come for, orcish bellows at the main entrance were suddenly cut off as Fyrehowl and Toras turned visible, their swords impaled solidly in the chests of two orcs. Those behind them screamed curses and rushed the doorway. Three fighters fought against the lupinal and half-celestial, hard pressed despite their larger numbers. Behind them however a single orc dressed in vestments of Shargaas the Nightlord pointed into the room, directing a towering, heavily tattooed companion that hefted a massive greataxe.

Aren turned visible as she stared intently at one of the orcs. He blinked, suddenly confused and looked at his sword then up at Fyrehowl. He started to apologize for mistaking her for a goblin when Toras cleaved through his arm and into his upper chest, dropping him in a bloodied pile.

Fyrhowl had slashed one of the other remaining orcs as the larger one laughed and approached, greataxe in hand. Behind him, the cleric was waving his hands and chanting a spell in deep, intoning language. Shouting a curse he hurled his hand out towards the party as a black wave burst outwards in the center of the room. Fyrehowl faltered and her defense dropped as she grimaced in pain from the spell, Toras seemed to mostly shrug it off as he parried the first whistling cleave of the largest orc’s axe. Clueless likewise seemed to mostly shrug off the spell’s effects as he rushed forwards, flying over the heads of the orcs at the door in an attempt to reach the spell hurling cleric.

Behind them all, Aren and Nisha seemed to be out of the range of the spell’s effect. Over the fighting Nisha shouted in frustration. “Pike it all, they took it!” She glanced at the ground and several items scattered there, then back to her party.

Back at the door, Fyrehowl, sickened by the cleric’s spell, took a spear jab in her left shoulder as one of the several thrusts at her broke through her defense. Toras bellowed and swung at the orc chieftain, wounding it heavily and wiping the smirk of arrogance from its face.

Clueless dove at the cleric, slashing his sword up the length of its forearm and disrupting its spellcasting. Landing behind the wounded orc and ducking into a crouch, several upward thrusts silenced its screams to its patron deity as it slumped heavily to the ground.

The death scream of the cleric gathered the attention of the chieftain, and with its brief look of concern behind it, its greataxe dipped slightly as Toras jabbed his blade between its ribs. It jerked and turned to look at him, then the blade lodged in its ribs. It seemed incredulous as it tilted forwards with blank, glazed over eyes, dead.

As the cleric and chieftain lay dead, the resolve and moral of the remaining two orcs failed and they died by Fyrehowl’s blade as they turned to run. Toras touched some minor wounds he had taken in the fight, then helped steady Fyrehowl who grimaced at the wound in her shoulder. Aren touched the wound and whispered a soft prayer to her patron, calling on her to close and heal the wound. Her hand began to glow with a pale rose light and in seconds the wound had vanished.

“Better?” the priestess asked. Fyrehowl nodded, “Thank you. We should hurry though, they’ll be sending more soon.”

Outside the battle still raged and dimly, the lupinal’s ears perked to listen for the sound of other approaching orcs or goblins. “We need to leave now, there’s more coming this way. What’s back there Nisha?”

The others glanced warily at the door and approached the tiefling where she crouched on the floor next to an iron ring in the wall. A broken length of chain and a single snapped leg shackle dangled from it next to a small spattering of blood. The compass in her hand flashed with an intermittent light.

“The what was a who… and the goblins took her.” She frowned and her tail jerked side to side in irritation. A chorus of disappointed groans echoed from the others.

“Does the compass point to where she is now?” Clueless asked with some concern in his voice.

“Yeah, looks like they teleported to another cube. More flying for us at the very least, and it’s down.” She pointed towards the floor. “Either the bottom of this cube, or maybe even the next layer of the plane. This isn’t going to be as easy as we’d hoped.”

Nisha stood up and held out a long wooden case with a lock dangling open at its side, “This was chained to the wall too. The compass hums when it goes near some of the stuff in here so it looks like it was the stuff of the prisoner here. Grab some of the gold and we should leave.”

The inside of the case held several items lain over the top of a folded black robe that swirled with runes burned into the dark velvet. A long, golden etched sword and a matched, red bladed dagger lay on top of the robe along with a set of simple but visibly glowing bracers and a pair of sparkling rings. Nisha pushed the robe to one side to reveal a slim leather spellbook or two underneath the robe.

“Somebody had themselves a wizard…and our employer evidently wants them. I’m not so sure I want to meet them though.” The tiefling frowned as she closed the case and slipped it into her satchel.
“Why is that?” Aren asked curiously.

Nisha pointed back towards her satchel as she moved to quickly dump coins from one of the barrels into it. “Because that robe was a black Archmage’s robe. Doesn’t do a think for a mage who isn’t evil, in fact, I think it hurts anyone who isn’t. And the dagger was poisoned. Lovely huh?” Then Nisha’s greed quickly got the best of her.

For a frantic minute or two, the group gathered as much of the gold and silver as they could before they rapidly bolted from the building. Outside the orcs were beginning to rout the goblins that had begun to teleport back from where they had come from. Presumably they had spellcasters with them capable of the task. In seconds though, the five had flown beyond the range of the archers and any spellhurlers from the orc encampment and were moving with rapid speed to the east across the face of the cube, skirting the land as much as possible.

The compass drew them onwards and as they approached the rim of the cube it became readily apparent that their target had been taken to another cube entirely. In fact, based on the direction the magical bauble was pointing them in, their path led down into the void past the point where the cubes hung solid and whole. Down in the darkness, the cubes began to appear broken and battered, incomplete and unwhole; somewhere in the depths of Thuldanin their quarry was waiting.

[shilsen]

Ah, an update! Nice way to start the weekend.

As I mentioned before, I'm running a planar campaign too and am thinking of allowing some of the spells from the 3e MotP, with a few tweaks. One which I can see being very helpful for (and detrimental to) both PCs and NPCs is Zone of Respite. I put up a question about it here. Care to comment?

[solomanii]

Shem I am curious, did this adventure start at level 1? I assume this is before savage species came out, so are these overpowered PCs (as in high ECL so it takes more xp to level) or did you use something similiar to Savage Progression?

Keep up the good work.

[dal673]

Hi Shemeska!
I've followed your posts here at the EN boards and at WOTC's MotP and Planescape boards.
For quite some time now I've read your story here and I really love it!
My party's just escaped Ravenloft (well 2 out of 4, the others died in the final battle against Azalin's most powerfull allies over the Rift Spanner) and are up in the planes now.
I will DEFINATELY use some of your masterful ideas here...

Keep up the good work! I'll check this page 2 to 3 times a week.

Greetz,

Dennis

[Clueless]

Started at level 10 roughly - 10 to 12 along those lines.
And for all over a year and a half plus change playing... we're level 22 now.

[Shemeska]

Odd, for whatever reason I've not been getting the reply notifications for the thread here. Otherwise I would have responded before Clueless did.

Yes, they started around level 10 or so, and I did my own little ad hoc ECL determinations for some of the characters. The lupinal and the succubus being the prime examples.

And don't worry about checking so often, I'll only have the time to update 1/week at the moment, though I might speed up over the summer. We'll see. *grin*

[solomanii]

Topic notification has been disabled.

[solomanii]

This is unacceptable Shem! Update!

[Clueless]

We've kidnapped him. If you want to see updates... deliver 20 million jink in unmarked coinage to a small hovel in Plaguemort, you will find the address attached to this scroll. Do not go to the Sons of Mercy. Do not go to the Hardheads. Do not contact celestials, if you want to see Shemmie alive.

( )

[dal673]

I'll still check the site regurlarly... ;-)
BTW, do you know when your next post will be, Shemeska?
(hoping that my contribution to the 'kidnappers' of Shemeska will keep their promise...)

Greetz,

Dennis

[Shemeska]

It'll be sometime this week, hopefully sooner rather than later. I was done with the majority of the next update as of 4am Saturday morning, but I didn't like the flow of it and it seemed a bit rushed. So in the name of quality control and 'not wanting my players to beat me up for misrepresenting their characters' I'm sitting on it for the moment till I have time to revise it.

I'll make up for the delay by writing more onto the end. And I guess I should add that I had intended to run a varient of this plot at GenCon this year possibly, so belated spoilers.

Or I could run a varient of the Pandemonium plot I'll get to writing up here in the storyhour eventually some time down the line... and my players can cringe at the memories of that one. Muahaha.

[Shemeska]

With a slight bit of trepidation as the five looked at each other, they hurled themselves over the edge of the cube face to fly down into the ebon void. The air grew chill as they flew further and further into the darkness and away from the last cube. The continent sized block of metal receded at a rate far quicker than it should have, and when it began to grow suddenly distant and far off there was a slight shudder in the air as they passed the ephemeral dividing line between the first and second layer of Acheron.

Fyrhowl looked over at Nisha as they flew onwards. The tiefling seemed even more disturbed than before, shivering every so often and looking distinctly uncomfortable.

“Are you ok there Nisha?” the lupinal asked. The tiefling shrugged and looked around at the broken, weathered cubes and the other less distinct shapes that hung like dulled ornaments on sackcloth around them near and far.

“No, the planes getting to me. I’m about as chaotic as they come, and well, Acheron isn’t… I’ll be fine though. It’s just going to make me feel a bit sick if we stay here much longer. If that’s all I feel though while we’re here, that’s fine. Believe me, it could get a lot worse than it has.”

Perhaps the plane heard the Xaositect (yet though she it to hadn’t that companions she was mentioned her) and sought to pick out the chaotic irritation blundering about upon it, or perhaps true to form for the tiefling, things simply happened by random chance just because and without any real reason. As she and her companions flew down in the dark, following the direction of their planar compass, something saw them and acted.
Turning visible at the last possible moment as it dove screaming out of the void, a green skinned, thin winged beast careened towards the group with a mind-piercing shriek. Seated upon its back in a cushioned saddle sat a richly robed, tiger headed humanoid. Before they could react, the Rakshasa loosed a spell from a wand in one backwards-pawed hand and its Yrthrak mount bellowed a cone of deafening sound.

A tiny flaming bead closed the distance between the companions and their attacker, growing larger as it sped towards them before exploding in their midst with a pyroclastic roar. Already in motion, they avoided most of the flames, but none of them escaped unsinged or unhurt.

“Oh son of a bitch!” Toras exclaimed as he glanced at the rider and its mount wheeling around for a second pass. Nisha’s eyes grew wide as she recognized the type of fiend attacking them and she dove downwards and away from the group should it loose another area affecting spell.

Clueless and Fyrehowl, both of them used to flight, and attacking while doing so, shot off to intercept the Rakshasa as Toras hovered next to the priestess as she began to invoke the name of her patron power. Halfway to the fiend, the bladesinger and the lupinal saw two spells strike at the greenish, screaming mount. Tiny, flaming barbs shot out from a wand in Nisha’s hands as a golden burst of light erupted on the Yrthrak. The mount stumbled in its flight, slowing down long enough for the two fighters to close within striking distance.

The Rakshasa bellowed a string of curses in heavily accented infernal, all of the words being half roared and half spoken. A bolt of lightning struck out at clueless and Fyrhowl as the fiend held up one paw, half an invocation for the magic, and half in a crude gesture. The bolt flung wide as the Rakshasa’s mount jerked in pain, barely missing Clueless as he rolled to his left and slashed at the mount with his sword. The blade bit deep on the creature, as it made no attempt to avoid. In fact, the Yrthrak seemed to be still in some state of shock or disorientation following Aren’s spell.

The fiend roared again and slashed with a black bladed scimitar at Fyrehowl as her sword carved into the mount twice in long slashes across its flank before a third slash buried itself into its back. A spray of black blood drifted out, falling into the void and the mount screamed madly in pain, convulsing as it died.

Abandoning his shuddering mount, the Rakshasa hurled himself off the mount and into open space, hurtling downwards in a flying rustle of black robes flapping in the updraft. Fyrehowl moved to return to the other three party members as the fiend fell out of sight, still snarling impotently in fainter and fainter outbursts. Clueless however did the opposite and hurled himself downwards, chasing after the sorcerer with his sword out and aimed for its heart. The half-fey’s black wings shimmered in the darkness and swept back behind him as he sped downwards towards the fiend. A second later he struck and nearly skewered the fiend through to the hilt of his blade.

The fiend choked and spasmed as Clueless perched atop him, driving the blade in deeper till the hate in the Rakshasa’s eyed dulled and died as it did too. Before launching himself back up with a flurried beating of his own wings, the bladesinger paused to snatch at several rings on the fiend’s hands and grab the wand clutched in its rapidly hardening deathgrip.

“Hmm… have to look at these later…” he muttered to himself as he looked up at his fellows in the distance slowly retreat as the corpse of the fiend slowly plummeted into the void. A moment later and he was speeding back towards them with the Rakshasa’s former possessions stuffed into his pockets.

Back together, Aren was slowly healing the burns suffered by the group during the ambush. There were winces as her spells took effect, but soon enough they had all mostly recovered. Nisha was fiddling with the compass again, regaining her sense of direction and bearings.

“Where’s it pointing towards? I hope we’re not running into a cube full of those things…” Fyrehowl said to the rogue as Toras gripped his sword and muttered a soft, “I wouldn’t mind it…”

“Somewhere I’d rather not be? Which is about anywhere on this sodding plane?” she mused and flicked her tail to one side derisively.

“Oh it’s not that bad. Well it is, but you get to kill things and know that they’re all better off dead. You just can’t pass that up when you have the chance.” Toras smiled as Fyrehowl did the same and nodded, “Yeah, well there is that. I can’t say it isn’t true…”

Aren simply shrugged and Clueless chuckled, but with that momentary pause they moved in the direction indicated by Nisha. The planar compass, attuned to their target, drew them closer and closer to one specific cube that hung in the void, battered and forgotten. Deep furrows scarred the surface on three sides as it slowly spun and drifted, reflecting dim light and casting deep, long shadows over a pitted landscape burrowed through with holes like a rotting apple of cast iron hurled into the night to be feasted upon by great steel worms.

The air was silent as they neared the surface and one of the larger holes that burrowed deep into the core of the cube.

“Umm… damn. You go first Toras.” Nisha said as she paused at the lip of the cave mouth. Toras raised an eyebrow and looked down into the darkness.

Fyrehowl and Aren scanned the depths of the hole before shaking their heads in concert. “It’s deep, but there’s nothing down there that I can see.” The lupinal said.

“I really hope whatever made this hole isn’t down there… goblins I can deal with, but anything that ate its way down into there… no.” Clueless breathed deeply as he snuffed the faerie fire dancing over his wings before following Toras downwards.

The cave was steep but oddly smooth as the party descended into the depths. After several hundred feet the air grew warm and slightly humid. Patches and dots of rust were speckled across the walls around them from the moisture, and somewhere far off in the distance they could make out the faint sounds of rushing water. Fyrehowl’s ears perked to the noise.

“Well that’s not natural. Not for this layer of the plane anyways. And it smells… it smells nauseating almost, and there’s soot on the air as well. I’d say more but its too far off still.” The lupinal sniffed at the air and looked curiously at her companions as they continued.

A quarter mile down the tunnel, the passage began to widen and the sound of faint water became a closer rushing of a river or waterfall. A slow and lazy mixture of warm steam and thin smoke wafted up from the depths the closer they grew to their target. Fyrhowl paused abruptly, moments before she and Nisha stopped the others with a frantic waving of the tiefling’s arms and a finger over the lupinal’s lips.
“SSssshhh! G-o-b-l-i-n-s. A-h-e-a-d. B-e, q-u-i-e-t.” she mouthed as she pointed towards two lips of stone some thirty yards or so down the tunnel where it began to curve into a horizontal passage rather than a vertical shaft.

The others looked towards the spots the tiefling had motioned towards. Painted to resemble normal stone, and largely obscured by several outcroppings of iron saturated rock sat two guard posts. Manning their bases and roofs were a half dozen goblinoids each, armed with pikes and wicked looking crossbows that glimmered in the darkness.

Unspoken between them, the five crept slowly and laboriously against the cave walls above the sentries, hoping to avoid detection. The guards seemed bored and utterly at ease at their posts. In all likelihood the cube had never before been under siege by their orcish enemies, and their lax attitude worked to the advantage of the companions as they made their way past.

Creeping along at a snails pace now, the tunnel gradually became filled with a flickering greenish glow that filtered through a haze of smoke and steam that clung to the roof like a flowing, living thing. The sounds of rushing water grew louder along with the sounds of repeated blows of metal against metal. As the tunnel opened into a large cavern, the source of the noise, light and heat became clear.

Bisecting the cavern was a rushing black surge of syrupy water, likely a wayward tributary of the Styx. Lines of goblins made their way from the river, collecting buckets of the foul fluid, and made their way towards several squat buildings to one side of the infernal waterway. Furnaces built into the structures belched gouts of roaring greenish flames into the air along with rushes of smoke and steam that cast brilliant but harsh, flickering, and sporadic surges of light and shadows across the cavern. Another, longer line of goblins and non-goblin slaves stretched from the furnaces towards the far side of the cavern to collect raw ore cut from the cube itself.

Sitting upon a rise in the cavern floor and stretching nearly to the roof above, watching over the whole of the forgeworks below, sat a double towered keep of bluish black steel and dressed stone. At the rear of the party, Nisha looked at the planar compass and muttered, “No, it couldn’t be one of the slaves. It had to be someone stuck in the heavily defended and fortified keep. Wonderful.”

Clueless held back a snicker at the tieflings obvious enamored feelings about the plane and their current task. “Do you have any more invisibility potions? I really don’t think we’re going to just waltz past all of those slaves, their handlers and any guards watching from that keep and… ! Get down, they’ve got beholders!”

The bladesinger ducked back behind a ragged chunk of rust frosted iron at the opening of the cavern. Drifting slowly into view from behind one of the clouds of smoke that rose from the furnaces was a pair of chitinous orbs, each dotted with eyestalks and a single central eye. A number of soft curses resounded from the companions as they snuck glances out to count a total of three eye tyrants patrolling the area, along with one slightly different and larger example.

“What in the Nine Hells is that one?” Nisha asked, pointing to the larger variant orb.

“Not good, they’ve got a spectator… it’s probably directing the others, keeping them in telepathic contact with each other. Sometimes they can see through illusions.” Fyrehowl growled softly after answering the tiefling’s question.

“It’s a pretty regular pattern of patrols they’ve got. I think we can wait, go invisible and then make a run for it. We can make it assuming we can find a quick way into the keep. And… you do have more invisibility potions, right Nisha?” Toras said quietly with some confidence.

“Yeah, not many more. But I carry extra, this week anyways. This gnome in the Lower Ward wasn’t… I mean to say, this potion making fiend in the Hive wasn’t being careful with his bags when… don’t look at me like that, all of you.” Nisha replied with a grin equivalent to a child being caught with their hand stuffed into a jar of cookies. She flicked her tail in the lupinal’s direction as she handed out potions.

Toras looked at her in a mildly disapproving manner before glancing at the keep and commenting on their plan of action, “The gate’s pretty well sealed up it looks like. How about one of the towers there? They don’t look defended and there’s a stone lip around the top of them. So unless there’s guards stationed at the top, it’s probably a safe spot to hide till the beholders make another pass through the area. I’d bet there’s got to be some sort of entrance on the top there as well.”

“Sounds good to me. Ready? On the count of three.” Nisha nodded, quaffed a potion and faded from view to leave only a faint impression in the dusting of rust on the ground, subtly moved and broken by the shifting of her tail.

“Two, One, Three!” and with the tiefling’s out of pattern count, they bolted from behind their hiding space and launched themselves out across the cavern as the beholders moved out of direct line of sight. The smoke that billowed out across their path burned their skin and stung their eyes with fragments of burning coals and stray sparks of forge iron. But undaunted, they sped across the cavern, upwards towards the keep, to bolt over the lip of one of the towers just before the roving squad of eye tyrants returned to gaze across where they had just been.

The group sat motionless on the iron-laced stone of the parapet until the many-eyed guards passed overhead before more closely examining their surroundings. The lip was broken by arrow slits angled out towards the main entrance to the cavern, and an iron trapdoor sat in the center of the floor. Otherwise the ramparts were unoccupied and undefended.

“So, this time are you going to let me pick the lock?” Nisha asked, looking up towards Toras as she bent over to examine the trapdoor.

“I wasn’t planning on it, no.” he replied matter-of-factly as he nodded down towards the trapdoor where Clueless’s green steel sword was tapping at the obvious lack of a lock on the latch.

“Oh… good, you noticed… yeah,” she stuck out her tongue at first Toras then Clueless, then turned to the other two women and repeated the process for good measure. “Showoffs. Fine go right ahead, do my job for me.”

She gave an amused smile as the trapdoor swung open, and then cursed as the entryway gave off several multicolored sparks. “And this is why you let me check these things…pike it… they set an alarm spell on the other side.”

Fyrehowl and Clueless jabbed blades into the opening as the heavy plate was moved to one side to show a set of stairs leading down into the main structure of the keep. Magical torches burned in their sconces at regular intervals down the stairwell, but otherwise nothing marred the progression of steps as they descended downwards.

“I hope noone was paying attention to that ward…” Nish sighed and kicked at the trapdoor. “Hells, we’ll know soon enough.”

Blades drawn, they descended the stairs quickly, trying to be as quiet as possible, all but Toras floating rather than walking. The fighter was too large simply said, and would have collided with the ceiling above him considering the fortress was built for goblins, perhaps hobgoblins at the largest.

The stairs ended at a shallow portal into a connecting chamber between several hallways. Walking out into the hallway, still cloaked from vision, Nisha consulted the compass and pointed down one of the halls at an iron portcullis and several chatting hobgoblins.

“Go kill the hobgoblins, we gotta go that way…” Nisha whispered under her breath. Several seconds later Clueless, Fyrehowl and Toras suddenly reappeared as blood marred the stone of the passage and the guards collapsed with looks of shock on their faces. Clueless gazed down the passage warily and Fyrehowl sniffed at the air with curious intent as a pair of invisible tiefling fingers grabbed a ring of keys from one of the corpses, and then fished around quickly for two coin purses with a soft whisper of success.

Nisha unlocked the gate hurriedly and Toras raised it with a rough heave for the group to pass. Nisha paused to kick at one of the corpses, returning to visibility as she consulted the compass and floated down the corridor, going directly to where it pointed as quickly as possible.

“You couldn’t very well follow me if I was invisible…” she said as Clueless shot her an odd glance. Behind him, Fyrehowl’s ears perked back in the direction they had come from.

“There’s footsteps coming from down two of those corridors we ignored. Pretty distant, but there’s a good number of feet behind them.”

Picking up speed now, the group passed several empty, mundane cells and one that contained a rotting orc corpse, before finally pausing in front of a massive steel door with an oddly glowing lock plate that seemed to swirl in random patterns of color. Nisha stopped and landed with a number of soft, abortive clip-clops of her hooves as she skidded to a halt in front of the door, to look at first the compass, then the door.

“And here we are… so now just who are you we’re here to get?” she pocketed the compass and took out her lockpicks and sat down in front of the cell door.

Fyrehowl glanced down the hallway again with concern as the sound of footsteps grew closer and the others began to notice it as well. Toras glanced at the group and walked down the hallway, back towards the portcullis. “If someone comes this way, I’ll stop them or warn you all. I’ll be back.”

Before he did so, Aren took out her holy symbol, kissed it and made a sign in the half-celestial’s direction, blessing him. Toras smiled and gripped his sword with slightly more conviction than before as he walked off.

Paused to pick the lock on the door, Nisha stopped and put down her picks to quaff a small vial. She shook her head at the evidently bitter taste and then narrowed her eyes to examine the door and the lock.

“Strange… there’s not a drop of magic on the door, not even the lock. Ten stingers in an osyluth’s palm that whoever’s behind here’s sitting in the middle of an anti-magic field…” she wrinkled her brow some more and poked at the lock tentatively. It warped and distorted as she touched it, her pick simply sliding into it for an inch or two and moving around. She might as well have been attempting to pick a lock made of jellied arborean apples. Her head tilted curiously to one side as she poked at the lock some more, fascinated by its behavior. Down the hallway the sound of footsteps grew louder by the second.

“Weird, seen of I these never one… oops, sorry. Bad habit… but hells, if someone cared this much to bottle you up, I’d really like to meet you. Or maybe not; doesn’t matter if can’t pop the damn lock though.”

Above her, Clueless held his ear to the door, straining to listen for any clue of the occupant of the cell. He gave a curious look and motioned over to the lupinal to try to do the same. She pressed one of her own ears to the cold steel to try and came back with an odd look. “Sounds like someone’s chanting or repeating something over and over again behind the door. It’s faint, so they’re either whispering or there’s a space between the door and their actual cell.”

As Nisha made more and more frustrated noises and abortive attempts to pick the door’s ever shifting lock, somewhere in the depths of the keep the peal of an alarm bell was raised and reverberated through the walls and echoed down the halls.

“Hurry up! Somebody knows we’re here! That someone’s probably the entire sodding fortress.” Toras ran back towards the party, drawing his sword and glancing back over his shoulder. Nisha glared up at him in abject frustration.

“I’m picking the piking lock as fast as I can! I don’t think I can pick it, it’s made of some sort of chaos matter. Normally I’d think that was pretty swell, but not when I need to open it and I’m guessing that it won’t take a set form of tumblers till you think a certain thought. If I knew what that was I’d have a chance to pick it. But I don’t, and I’m not a psion or a gith so there’s not a fiend’s chance in Celestia of me popping it! I can’t, so if you have any better ideas, go right ahead.”

Nisha spat at the door and slumped backwards angrily in defeat, staring at the glowing liquid metal patch on the iron door. A chorus of muttered curses and sighs echoed amongst the group, but in their concentration on the door, none of them looked back at Clueless.

Standing at the rear of the group, the bladesinger’s eyes suddenly glazed over. He tilted his head to look at the door, sneered, and then, without incantation or gesture, hurled a single burst of green pulsing light at the door. The disintegration ripped the door from its hinges and incinerated it into dust before it was flung inwards more than several inches. Slowly the rest of the group looked backwards in shock at Clueless who simply stood with one hand raised out to the door, looking confused at what had just occurred. His eyes were no longer glazed over as they had been just moments before.

“Well why in the nine hells didn’t you do that before?!” Nisha exclaimed as she stood up.

“I… don’t have a clue…” Clueless answered honestly, feeling perplexed than he tried to let show. He didn’t know the spell he’d just seen himself cast, and when he had, he was only a spectator in it all, watching himself rather than doing it. Shaking it off he moved towards the open cell door.

Past the door was a long stone corridor that ran some twenty feet towards a single dimly lit and cloistered cell. A frayed mat of rags lay in the center of the small cell upon which its sole occupant sat. Nisha glanced at the person, then at the planar compass, and finally nodded to the group who walked to the edge of the cell’s entrance.

Sitting in the center of the cell, perfectly still and with their back turned to them was a single woman dressed in ill-fitting rags. She was thin, exceedingly so, likely from lack of food. Still it was obvious that she had once been in prime physical condition since her muscles were lean and taught despite her circumstances. Her skin was a pale, milky white that turned to a tiefling’s gray/green hue in places, almost a blue pallor in the dim light of the cell. Her ears were thin and pointed, further betraying the blood of a fiend running in her veins, but otherwise she would have passed as a human with tangled locks of brown hair mixed with reddish highlights tied in a loose knot at the back of her head.

Nisha’s eyes suddenly grew wide in their sockets at her first unobstructed glance at the other tiefling. Her tail was rigid and her mouth quivered slightly in nervous fear as the others crowded around to look and meet the prisoner.

Still unmoving as they approached her, she sat there, calm and seemingly meditating. In between soft, measured breaths she was carefully and deliberately reciting a series of mantras.

“I will uphold Justice before all else, purging the multiverse of those who break the law.”

“In all situations I shall weigh the rights and wrongs with a clear and impartial mind.”

“I shall decide where Justice must fall under the law, and I will mete out that Justice with a firm and unyielding hand.”

“I believe in the righteousness of my faction; we alone answer to the higher law of Justice.”

“I will not pass judgment on good or evil, only on law-abiding and law-breaking, for therein lies wrongdoing.”

“I will punish the guilty as the crime demands.”

“I will be diligent in my pursuit of the guilty, and while so engaged I shall remain innocent of any wrongdoing in the eyes of others.”

“I will never release a lawbreaker until his sentence has been carried out.”

Nervous glances were exchanged behind her as she paused from her recitations, rose to her feet and turned to face her rescuers. The glimmer of madness danced in her eyes as she looked at each of them in turn, all of whom were painfully aware of the identity of the woman standing in front of them.

[Shemeska]

[shilsen]

I can't believe nobody thought of throwing a rock to distract the beholders

[Zappo]

Argh, Shilsen beat me. Yay for updates!

[Shemeska]

Originally Posted by shilsen

I can't believe nobody thought of throwing a rock to distract the beholders

Because if the DnD movie taught us nothing, it's that throwing a rock always works.

[Shemeska]

For anyone following the storyhour, I'm not likely going to have an update till early next week. I've got final exams this week, plus I've got to prep for my normal campaign, plus the oneshot game I'm running for North Carolina Gameday IV this weekend.

Chunks of the next update are already written, but I've got tons of other things that I need to pay attention to first. Be patient with me and sometime soon I'll update twice in a week.

[Graywolf-ELM]

I just pop'd in to have a look and see if this was something I might enjoy reading. It is, but forgive my ignorance, who is that in the picture?

GW

[Fimmtiu]

Originally Posted by Graywolf-ELM

I just pop'd in to have a look and see if this was something I might enjoy reading. It is, but forgive my ignorance, who is that in the picture?

Alisohn Nilesia, the former factol of the Mercykillers faction. She's mad as a sackful of rabid squirrels, and had a major role in instigating the Faction War that saw the factions banished from Sigil. (if you're using the Faction War module, anyhow.)

According to Factol's Manifesto (IIRC), she was a LE female tiefling Wiz8, but at this point in Shemeska's game she'll have had many years to advance.