Nebulous
Legend
Ok, as we're about to finish this campaign arc i thought i'd post our sessions publicly. As usual i include lots of pics which slow it down, so i'm posting these in chunks rather than a single thread. I really liked Thunderspire Labyrinth. I hope you guys/gals do too.
Side Trek (I): Xenoseth’s Revenge
Time. All this time. By now, he could barely remember how sunlight felt on his skin. He had been enslaved for that long.
A year? Two years? More? Down here time had little meaning. The dark elves used their own measure for the years, hourglasses and magical implements that ticked away the endless march of days, but Xenoseth only had intuition.
He pressed his forehead against the bars. Nearby, he could practically smell the nervous anticipation of the dwarves in adjacent pens. They were newcomers, brought in by the drow just the day before. And a feisty group too. They had all carried the same implements— a bright silver shield polished to a high sheen, and keen axes already notched from battle. Most seemed of the same quiet temperament, except for one dwarf with fiery red hair who must be their leader. His cursing never faltered for a moment, not until the dark elves peppered him with half a dozen sleep darts, but even then he mumbled threats.
Xenoseth had watched them take the dwarves to the slave pens, knowing that it would not bode well for them at all. The enmity between dark elves and dwarves was legendary, and although Xenoseth despised the drow himself, the drow in turn considered him some kind of curious anomaly.
And a magnificent warrior too, for he had fought often since arriving in Mor’loth’achek.
Xenoseth was a rare shifter. At least, so he’d been told by others knowledgeable about such things. His mother had always told him that he was just her funny little boy, glossing over his odd features, but he had always suspected something more. She finally told him the truth one day when he was ten years old. By then the tell-tale symptoms were showing themselves with the onset of puberty. His fingernails had lengthened and sharpened, and he found a light fuzz of scratchy black fur covering his skin. He felt a strange affinity for cats, often spending hours upon hours with them, and the salty tang of raw meat was enticing. And the fact that he had no father like other children in the Blue Bear Tribe raised the question of who exactly held that role. Among the Blue Bears family was special, and lack of that parental unit offered wide speculation for weakness.
So his mother told him, but kept the explanation simple, and he did not fully understand until later, not even until after her horrible death.
His father was not a human at all, but a were-panther, an evil thing that had forced itself upon her. She lived though, and apparently, Xenoseth had inherited some of those lycanthropic traits. Now, years later, his human side had been nearly subverted. He stood six feet three inches tall, with smooth black fur covering nearly all of his body. What had originally been mistaken as a facial malformation proved to be an elongated snout and whiskers, not unlike that of a cat. He could only be mistaken as human from a distance, and his appearance had caused problems in more civilized regions, but the Blue Bear Tribe found it something to rejoice; it meant that the blessing of the primal gods flowed in his veins. For those reasons Xenoseth had rarely traveled outside of the tribe, and would still live there with his mother now…
…if not for the gnolls.
“You! Cat man! How long you been trapped?”
The gruff dwarf voice grabbed Xenoseth’s attention. It was the red-bearded dwarf in the holding cell across the hall.
“A hundred times longer than you,” he answered quietly.
“Aye, you have that look about you. I am Mallus Silvershield, and these are the proud remains of my Silvershield Brigade. Say hello, Brigaders! Ho!”
“HO!” the other five dwarves chanted in unison.
“The bastard dark elves caught us by surprise, whittled us down from twenty to what you see here. Oh, but we cut a swath through them, we did. They’ll not bloody forget us anytime soon.”
Xenoseth had no doubts about that, especially considering what was about to happen. The drow slavers had told him previously what to expect today. Unlike the usual battle in the gladiatorial pits where he was expected to fight to the death against other slaves, today the drow wanted Xenoseth and the dwarves to work together.
[GM Note: Xenoseth is a 5th level barbarian/Mallus a 3rd level Fighter Battlerager/ the five dwarves are 3rd level Improved Minions. One player controlled everyone].
Xenoseth growled deep in his throat. He felt the old rage building. Outside, cheering could be heard, spectators waiting for the entertainment to begin.
“Look, we don’t have much time. What fighting style do your men use? The drow want us to unite and kill whatever is out there.”
Mallus’s beamed at the question. “The Brigade is highly trained! They’re formation fighters, using shields to maximum effectiveness. They fight in a tight-knit group, trying to surround foes and avoid flanking maneuvers themselves. I trained them well. HO!”
“Good,” Xenoseth said. “When the pens open they will have deposited weapons to use. Suit up fast. Stick close to me and we might leave here alive.”
“And do you fight well, Cat Man?” Mallus asked.
“Well enough.” It was true.
They heard gears clanking behind the walls. The bars of their pens shuddered and rose, and Xenoseth quickly ducked underneath and found the weapons cache. His favorite falchion was there, a heavy serrated blade that could easily hack through bone and flesh. The blood had not even been wiped clean from his last battle against the troglodytes, and the sword still stank.
“At arms, brothers!” Mallus ordered, and the dwarves fell upon a pile of axes and ragtag armor, most of it butchered from past battles. Xenoseth shrugged a hide hauberk over his chest and buckled it, simultaneously gazing out the final gate. When it opened they would have to enter the battlefield, or whatever was waiting there would come to them. It was dim outside save for uncountable magical glowglobes that cast a multihued pattern of red, green and blue light over the arena. Hundreds of drow hovered anxiously above the floor on black basalt walls so they could look down at the arena. Bridges connected the battlements allowing them to access different areas of the combat zone.
And then Xenoseth saw her, the demonic priestess of Lloth, some hideous four-armed thing unmatched in her cruelty. He had once seen her come down in person to slay the lingering survivors after a match, and she seemed to relish every bloody moment. If she was what followers of Lloth aspired to be, he thought they must all be as insane as they were cruel.
Xenoseth had no more time to contemplate. The gate began to clank open, and a new wave of cheers and jeers washed over them.
“Tiphon, scout left. Marwell, scout right. You three, stay close. Cat Man, bring up our rear.”
Xenoseth complied as the advice was sound enough. Two dwarves immediately exited, their shields and axes held close to their chests. Xenoseth heard another gate opening nearby, undoubtedly to release a beast into the fray. He wondered what it would be, and knew that the drow had a virtually limitless supply of contestants…
He did not have to wait long. Tiphon choked out a cry of shock, then: “Around the corner!”
Something twice as tall as a man lumbered toward them. Not flesh and bone, but rather a pasty white mass of webbing bundled together into humanoid shape. Eight glowing blue eyes focused on Tiphon and poisonous mandibles clacked, oozing vile ichors down its chest. The dwarf surged at the thing with a battle cry and sank his axe into its gooey hide. The blade pierced deep, but the monster’s flesh was as sticky as its namesake. The axe buried itself and became stuck, despite how Tiphon strained against it. The monster swung at him, and the handle of the weapon jerked from his hands, disarming him.
“At the beast!” screamed Mallus, and his Brigade leapt into motion, systematically falling into position around the abomination.
The monster raked its claws down Tiphon’s face, and then picked the poor dwarf up, his stubby legs kicking futilely, and buried sharp mandibles into his arm. It tossed him away, and clutching the wound, Tiphon staggered up still alive, trying to suck the poison out before it killed him. Xenoseth did not know if their natural resistance to poisons would help or not.
Multiple axes hacked into the monster but it felt no pain, issued no gasps, and a razor-clawed hand sent a Silvershield hurtling through the air, his throat slashed and gushing red.
“I thought you said you could fight!” shouted Mallus to Xenoseth. “Get in there!”
Xenoseth had flanked to the south, scanning the area for more enemies and not happy with the various closed cages he saw. Unpleasant things chittered and surged against the bars, eager to be released and feed.
“DIE YOU STINKING BASTARD!” roared Mallus Silvershield, and drove his axe deep into the web monster’s back. So great was his fury that Mallus ripped the blade right back out, despite the sticky adhesive. This proved a constant problem though, and the dwarves found themselves barely able to hang on as their weapons were pulled from their grasp. Another dwarf went down under its claws, split from belly to navel.
Then Xenoseth saw the adjacent cage opening, the thing inside gripping the bars with slimy green tentacles. It was also much larger than a man, wearing an iron-shod domed helmet and standing on cloven hooves. It groped through the bars, trying to use its extensive reach to snag a dwarf and pull it closer.
“Look out behind you! Finish the first one!”
And upon her spider-clad throne on the parapets, he saw the vile draegoloth rejoicing in the mayhem below.
Realizing he had done little to contribute so far, Xenoseth called upon the potent forces of his lineage. Rage bubbled within him, the call of the primal wild, and in a slick motion so fluid and seamless that it seemed nearly illusory, Xenoseth transformed from humanoid to panther form. If his allies were bewildered, they showed no sign. He darted past them and lined up a charge on the web monster, intending to rake it to pieces with his powerful hind legs and foreclaws.
[GM Note: the way the wildshape works doesn’t make him nearly as effective as a real panther, but it’s a balance-issue thing].
Roaring, the panther leapt effortlessly through the air and tore a huge chuck of webby material from its shoulder…only to become instantly stuck.
Ohh…that was a stupid thing to do, he thought.
Snarling and thrashing, Xenoseth squirmed against his enemy, but he was stuck fast, and the monster easily slashed its talons across his shoulder. Blood spurted up, merely a scratch as far as the shifter was concerned (he had suffered much worse) but then the thing’s mandibles pierced him. Hot, blazing poison poured into his veins, stinging needles of agony that made his heart wobble and vision blur. He had to pull himself off or this beast would bite him to death.
Applause erupted from the crowd as the battle proceeded, with everyone injured by this point, and the helmeted abomination had yet to enter the fray. As soon as it did though, a snaking tentacle ten feet long wrapped around a Brigader’s neck, pulled him off his feet, and squeezed hard. His head swelled purple, eyes bugging from their sockets, and with a sickening crunch of bone and cartilage, his lifeless corpse was tossed aside.
“HO!” bellowed Mallus, and a final axe strike cracked the web-thing’s spine. The creature fell to its knees and then tumbled over, destroyed, but pulled the panther down with it.
Their attention turned to the helmed horror, and Mallus wasted no time raining blows upon the monster’s flesh, but it uttered nary a whimper of pain either. Xenoseth managed to pull himself off the dead thing and warp back to normal form, but his keen ears detected the tell-tale clacking of gears, and he instantly spotted a distant gate opening. Something hulking and cruel crawled under the tines, its shape only vaguely humanoid. Arching a demonic head to the sky, it crowed once, twice, and then raced toward them.
“Another!” the shifter warned them. “Watch your backs!”
The helmed horror proved to be a brutal combatant, though not much worse than the web monster, and at least it could not disarm them. Xenoseth’s enchanted falchion carved a chuck of flesh from its abdomen and viscera squirted out in a wide berth, coating the barbarian’s black fur. The monster staggered under the blow, and Mallus Silvershield followed up with a mighty wallop to the back of its head, so powerful that the metal dome cracked. Their goal was to lay it low before the third foe flanked them, but they were too slow, and the galloping, dog-like thing pounced upon the final Brigader. Claws and fangs severely wounded the dwarf and he pulled back, trying to intersperse his shield between them.
Raging now, blood pumping in his ears like a river, Xenoseth slashed at the helmed horror’s abdomen in a ruthless series of cuts until it finally succumbed and toppled over, its meaty body thudding to the ground amid a new round of raucous cheers. The spectators now threw black flowers, luminescent mushrooms and even small baubles, but the slaves had no time to notice. The demonic thing in their midst was a flailing weapon of claws and teeth, and Xenoseth knew that he could not prevail if they released every foe in the arena. The largest ones were still penned.
Side Trek (I): Xenoseth’s Revenge
Time. All this time. By now, he could barely remember how sunlight felt on his skin. He had been enslaved for that long.
A year? Two years? More? Down here time had little meaning. The dark elves used their own measure for the years, hourglasses and magical implements that ticked away the endless march of days, but Xenoseth only had intuition.
He pressed his forehead against the bars. Nearby, he could practically smell the nervous anticipation of the dwarves in adjacent pens. They were newcomers, brought in by the drow just the day before. And a feisty group too. They had all carried the same implements— a bright silver shield polished to a high sheen, and keen axes already notched from battle. Most seemed of the same quiet temperament, except for one dwarf with fiery red hair who must be their leader. His cursing never faltered for a moment, not until the dark elves peppered him with half a dozen sleep darts, but even then he mumbled threats.
Xenoseth had watched them take the dwarves to the slave pens, knowing that it would not bode well for them at all. The enmity between dark elves and dwarves was legendary, and although Xenoseth despised the drow himself, the drow in turn considered him some kind of curious anomaly.
And a magnificent warrior too, for he had fought often since arriving in Mor’loth’achek.
Xenoseth was a rare shifter. At least, so he’d been told by others knowledgeable about such things. His mother had always told him that he was just her funny little boy, glossing over his odd features, but he had always suspected something more. She finally told him the truth one day when he was ten years old. By then the tell-tale symptoms were showing themselves with the onset of puberty. His fingernails had lengthened and sharpened, and he found a light fuzz of scratchy black fur covering his skin. He felt a strange affinity for cats, often spending hours upon hours with them, and the salty tang of raw meat was enticing. And the fact that he had no father like other children in the Blue Bear Tribe raised the question of who exactly held that role. Among the Blue Bears family was special, and lack of that parental unit offered wide speculation for weakness.
So his mother told him, but kept the explanation simple, and he did not fully understand until later, not even until after her horrible death.
His father was not a human at all, but a were-panther, an evil thing that had forced itself upon her. She lived though, and apparently, Xenoseth had inherited some of those lycanthropic traits. Now, years later, his human side had been nearly subverted. He stood six feet three inches tall, with smooth black fur covering nearly all of his body. What had originally been mistaken as a facial malformation proved to be an elongated snout and whiskers, not unlike that of a cat. He could only be mistaken as human from a distance, and his appearance had caused problems in more civilized regions, but the Blue Bear Tribe found it something to rejoice; it meant that the blessing of the primal gods flowed in his veins. For those reasons Xenoseth had rarely traveled outside of the tribe, and would still live there with his mother now…
…if not for the gnolls.
“You! Cat man! How long you been trapped?”
The gruff dwarf voice grabbed Xenoseth’s attention. It was the red-bearded dwarf in the holding cell across the hall.
“A hundred times longer than you,” he answered quietly.
“Aye, you have that look about you. I am Mallus Silvershield, and these are the proud remains of my Silvershield Brigade. Say hello, Brigaders! Ho!”
“HO!” the other five dwarves chanted in unison.
“The bastard dark elves caught us by surprise, whittled us down from twenty to what you see here. Oh, but we cut a swath through them, we did. They’ll not bloody forget us anytime soon.”
Xenoseth had no doubts about that, especially considering what was about to happen. The drow slavers had told him previously what to expect today. Unlike the usual battle in the gladiatorial pits where he was expected to fight to the death against other slaves, today the drow wanted Xenoseth and the dwarves to work together.
[GM Note: Xenoseth is a 5th level barbarian/Mallus a 3rd level Fighter Battlerager/ the five dwarves are 3rd level Improved Minions. One player controlled everyone].
Xenoseth growled deep in his throat. He felt the old rage building. Outside, cheering could be heard, spectators waiting for the entertainment to begin.
“Look, we don’t have much time. What fighting style do your men use? The drow want us to unite and kill whatever is out there.”
Mallus’s beamed at the question. “The Brigade is highly trained! They’re formation fighters, using shields to maximum effectiveness. They fight in a tight-knit group, trying to surround foes and avoid flanking maneuvers themselves. I trained them well. HO!”
“Good,” Xenoseth said. “When the pens open they will have deposited weapons to use. Suit up fast. Stick close to me and we might leave here alive.”
“And do you fight well, Cat Man?” Mallus asked.
“Well enough.” It was true.
They heard gears clanking behind the walls. The bars of their pens shuddered and rose, and Xenoseth quickly ducked underneath and found the weapons cache. His favorite falchion was there, a heavy serrated blade that could easily hack through bone and flesh. The blood had not even been wiped clean from his last battle against the troglodytes, and the sword still stank.
“At arms, brothers!” Mallus ordered, and the dwarves fell upon a pile of axes and ragtag armor, most of it butchered from past battles. Xenoseth shrugged a hide hauberk over his chest and buckled it, simultaneously gazing out the final gate. When it opened they would have to enter the battlefield, or whatever was waiting there would come to them. It was dim outside save for uncountable magical glowglobes that cast a multihued pattern of red, green and blue light over the arena. Hundreds of drow hovered anxiously above the floor on black basalt walls so they could look down at the arena. Bridges connected the battlements allowing them to access different areas of the combat zone.
And then Xenoseth saw her, the demonic priestess of Lloth, some hideous four-armed thing unmatched in her cruelty. He had once seen her come down in person to slay the lingering survivors after a match, and she seemed to relish every bloody moment. If she was what followers of Lloth aspired to be, he thought they must all be as insane as they were cruel.
Xenoseth had no more time to contemplate. The gate began to clank open, and a new wave of cheers and jeers washed over them.
“Tiphon, scout left. Marwell, scout right. You three, stay close. Cat Man, bring up our rear.”
Xenoseth complied as the advice was sound enough. Two dwarves immediately exited, their shields and axes held close to their chests. Xenoseth heard another gate opening nearby, undoubtedly to release a beast into the fray. He wondered what it would be, and knew that the drow had a virtually limitless supply of contestants…
He did not have to wait long. Tiphon choked out a cry of shock, then: “Around the corner!”
Something twice as tall as a man lumbered toward them. Not flesh and bone, but rather a pasty white mass of webbing bundled together into humanoid shape. Eight glowing blue eyes focused on Tiphon and poisonous mandibles clacked, oozing vile ichors down its chest. The dwarf surged at the thing with a battle cry and sank his axe into its gooey hide. The blade pierced deep, but the monster’s flesh was as sticky as its namesake. The axe buried itself and became stuck, despite how Tiphon strained against it. The monster swung at him, and the handle of the weapon jerked from his hands, disarming him.
“At the beast!” screamed Mallus, and his Brigade leapt into motion, systematically falling into position around the abomination.
The monster raked its claws down Tiphon’s face, and then picked the poor dwarf up, his stubby legs kicking futilely, and buried sharp mandibles into his arm. It tossed him away, and clutching the wound, Tiphon staggered up still alive, trying to suck the poison out before it killed him. Xenoseth did not know if their natural resistance to poisons would help or not.
Multiple axes hacked into the monster but it felt no pain, issued no gasps, and a razor-clawed hand sent a Silvershield hurtling through the air, his throat slashed and gushing red.
“I thought you said you could fight!” shouted Mallus to Xenoseth. “Get in there!”
Xenoseth had flanked to the south, scanning the area for more enemies and not happy with the various closed cages he saw. Unpleasant things chittered and surged against the bars, eager to be released and feed.
“DIE YOU STINKING BASTARD!” roared Mallus Silvershield, and drove his axe deep into the web monster’s back. So great was his fury that Mallus ripped the blade right back out, despite the sticky adhesive. This proved a constant problem though, and the dwarves found themselves barely able to hang on as their weapons were pulled from their grasp. Another dwarf went down under its claws, split from belly to navel.
Then Xenoseth saw the adjacent cage opening, the thing inside gripping the bars with slimy green tentacles. It was also much larger than a man, wearing an iron-shod domed helmet and standing on cloven hooves. It groped through the bars, trying to use its extensive reach to snag a dwarf and pull it closer.
“Look out behind you! Finish the first one!”
And upon her spider-clad throne on the parapets, he saw the vile draegoloth rejoicing in the mayhem below.
Realizing he had done little to contribute so far, Xenoseth called upon the potent forces of his lineage. Rage bubbled within him, the call of the primal wild, and in a slick motion so fluid and seamless that it seemed nearly illusory, Xenoseth transformed from humanoid to panther form. If his allies were bewildered, they showed no sign. He darted past them and lined up a charge on the web monster, intending to rake it to pieces with his powerful hind legs and foreclaws.
[GM Note: the way the wildshape works doesn’t make him nearly as effective as a real panther, but it’s a balance-issue thing].
Roaring, the panther leapt effortlessly through the air and tore a huge chuck of webby material from its shoulder…only to become instantly stuck.
Ohh…that was a stupid thing to do, he thought.
Snarling and thrashing, Xenoseth squirmed against his enemy, but he was stuck fast, and the monster easily slashed its talons across his shoulder. Blood spurted up, merely a scratch as far as the shifter was concerned (he had suffered much worse) but then the thing’s mandibles pierced him. Hot, blazing poison poured into his veins, stinging needles of agony that made his heart wobble and vision blur. He had to pull himself off or this beast would bite him to death.
Applause erupted from the crowd as the battle proceeded, with everyone injured by this point, and the helmeted abomination had yet to enter the fray. As soon as it did though, a snaking tentacle ten feet long wrapped around a Brigader’s neck, pulled him off his feet, and squeezed hard. His head swelled purple, eyes bugging from their sockets, and with a sickening crunch of bone and cartilage, his lifeless corpse was tossed aside.
“HO!” bellowed Mallus, and a final axe strike cracked the web-thing’s spine. The creature fell to its knees and then tumbled over, destroyed, but pulled the panther down with it.
Their attention turned to the helmed horror, and Mallus wasted no time raining blows upon the monster’s flesh, but it uttered nary a whimper of pain either. Xenoseth managed to pull himself off the dead thing and warp back to normal form, but his keen ears detected the tell-tale clacking of gears, and he instantly spotted a distant gate opening. Something hulking and cruel crawled under the tines, its shape only vaguely humanoid. Arching a demonic head to the sky, it crowed once, twice, and then raced toward them.
“Another!” the shifter warned them. “Watch your backs!”
The helmed horror proved to be a brutal combatant, though not much worse than the web monster, and at least it could not disarm them. Xenoseth’s enchanted falchion carved a chuck of flesh from its abdomen and viscera squirted out in a wide berth, coating the barbarian’s black fur. The monster staggered under the blow, and Mallus Silvershield followed up with a mighty wallop to the back of its head, so powerful that the metal dome cracked. Their goal was to lay it low before the third foe flanked them, but they were too slow, and the galloping, dog-like thing pounced upon the final Brigader. Claws and fangs severely wounded the dwarf and he pulled back, trying to intersperse his shield between them.
Raging now, blood pumping in his ears like a river, Xenoseth slashed at the helmed horror’s abdomen in a ruthless series of cuts until it finally succumbed and toppled over, its meaty body thudding to the ground amid a new round of raucous cheers. The spectators now threw black flowers, luminescent mushrooms and even small baubles, but the slaves had no time to notice. The demonic thing in their midst was a flailing weapon of claws and teeth, and Xenoseth knew that he could not prevail if they released every foe in the arena. The largest ones were still penned.
