Graywolf-ELM
Explorer
Fimmtiu said:
Thanks for the info. She'll have a little more meaning to me now.
GW
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 29 Jan 2014)
Thanks for the info. She'll have a little more meaning to me now.
GW
Shemeska
Adventurer
Fimmtiu said:
Yep, at this point in the game it had been around 5-6 years post Faction War. My own incarnation of Nilesia here was somewhere along the lines of a wizard with some additional rogue levels added in, though still primarily a wizard. In any event, enough to be intimidating to the PC's aside from the mystique of being a former factol.
Shemeska
Adventurer
Be shocked and amazed as I update!
Having done so she gave the faintest of bows as she gave her introductions, though in truth, few of the companions required her name to recognize her nor the the scope of whatever it was that they themselves had now become embroiled in.
“Factol Alisohn Nilesia. You all have my thanks for the righting of an injustice. Who sent you? My faction? Or did Rowan send you all?” subdued insanity danced in the factol’s eyes as she smiled at some memory and stepped forwards.
The factol glanced to the box stuffed into a sack at Nisha’s waist, “I see you recovered my belongings. Again, my thanks to you all.” She extended her hand expectantly to the other tiefling who faltered and handed over the box without a word. The entire group was clearly still in some manner of shock.
“The rulers of the fortress will be coming, they don’t wish to lose me. They view me as something of a prize since they recognized me when the orcs did not. Their guilt is not in question, but I have judgment to provide to them before I may leave.”
Nilesia slipped on her rings, quickly donned her robes and gave her blades each a few quick and precise passes through the air to test her skill and hunger sapped strength. At first unsure of herself, within a few deft slashes and cuts through the air she seemed satisfied with herself and a level of skill that garnered respect from her rescuers. The factol glanced at her spellbooks longingly before slipping them into an inner pocket of her robe and sifting quickly through a small bag of spell components nestled in another pocket of the black garment.
“I still have spells in memory, but I’ve had no components for some time. Still, the goblins thought it wise to place my cell inside a blanket of antimagic. Guilt leads to overprotective sheltering of crimes, and I have lingering crimes to punish when we are away from here. You will have to tell me what changes Sigil has seen since I last saw it. Someone in my faction has my blood on their hands and I will find them for what has happened to me.” She grinned with a look of eager anticipation of bloodshed that would have made a Tanar’ri feel warm by comparison.
“It will be good to see Rowan again…” she smiled and gained a starry eyed glitter over her expression before casting a glance down the hallway and making for the exit from her cell. Her rescuers paled slightly at her last phrases.
“She doesn’t know, does sh…” Aren glared at Nisha and silenced her verbal train of thought as all of them exchanged nervous glances.
“Obviously no, she doesn’t. And frankly I don’t think now is the time to break the news to her about what happened. She doesn’t have a faction anymore, Darkwood is dead, and she was sold into slavery by someone, probably Darkwood himself. He never loved her, but she was, and is, clearly still head over heels in love with him. She’s BARMY!!” Aren’s voice rang clearly inside the minds of her companions without her lips moving as they followed Nilesia out into the hallway. They all exchanged nods of agreement on Aren’s thoughts on the matter.
Fyrehowl’s ears twitched slightly as they moved to enter the corridor and Nilesia held up one hand suddenly and glanced down the hallway. She muttered something harshly under her breath and turned the corner out of the cell.
“Factol I…” Clueless glanced at the Factol, only to find her vanished, nowhere to be seen, as several figures came into view turning the corner into the hallway. Five hobgoblins in ornate armor and carrying spears advanced before several goblins with a brilliant bluish tint to their skin. None of them wore armor, or much more than loose fitting clothing, but each of them had a small crystal hovering about their body as they approached. Behind them, towering over even the hobgoblins was another of the blue colored goblins. However the larger one was naked, heavily muscled, and with a slight dog-like shape to its face. Its four arms were already making small motions in the air and fiendish looking spikes jutted at random from its back. It turned its luminescent, reddish eyes towards the group and bellowed out a mixed bestial roar and command to its subordinates to attack.
As the half-fiend roared, Toras, Clueless and Fyrehowl charged to meet the Goblins. They had gotten perhaps ten feet before a blue glow erupted from the forehead of the goblin leader and an invisible force detonated in their midst. Without a sound the walls and floor vibrated with concussive force and the three were dashed to the ground, dazed and bloodied from the attack. As they struggled to regain their feet the more mundane goblins advanced, weapons out and one of their blue skinned kin touched a small gem on its forehead. Instantly there was a glowing green mass of semi-transparent filaments that burst into being around Nisha and Aren, wrapped around them and suddenly growing more solid and tangible. Nisha squirmed and rolled forwards across the floor, shedding most of the sticky material before it hardened, but Aren was not as quick in her movements. In seconds the material had formed a solid cocoon around her as she toppled to the floor, struggling but making little progress in freeing herself.
As the group struggled to make themselves ready for the next attack, with only a bloodthirsty, crazed scream as a warning, Nilesia reappeared at the rear of the group of goblins as her invisibility spell dropped and she charged one of the psions, wreathed in a circle of blue flames and swinging her glowing, black bladed sword. Three quick cuts to the back of one of the blues and a sharp stab into the arm of one other and she vanished again. In her passing, the one blue that had taken the brunt of her attack was left crumpled on the floor and struggling to staunch the blood pouring from its back, its other companion was more stoic in its endurance of the shallow stab on its arm, but still it cradled the limb and was hampered in its movements.
Surprised by the factol’s sudden attack and her just as sudden disappearance, the goblins faltered for a moment, disorganized and dazed. Nisha took the opportunity to draw her blade and begin cutting Aren free from the psionic entanglement she was trapped within. Rising to their feet in that moment and charging forwards were Clueless, Toras and Fyrehowl, blades drawn and faces grim. The lupinal, quicker than her two other companions, struck first. Her first cut bit deep into the shoulder of one of the goblins and a second thrust to his side drew blood as well, tearing through both armor and flesh alike. Off balance and in pain the hobgoblin barely raised his shield as she leapt for his throat and clamped her jaws down with a wet crunch; her opponent went instantly limp.
Clueless struck next, darting up into the air as his wings suddenly sprung into motion. Several of the hobgoblins made jabs at him with their spears but he deflected them and cut at the heads of several of them. In the confusion of suddenly facing an aerial opponent as well as having lost one of their front guards, Toras managed to shoulder his way past to attack one of the psions. As he charged one of them he swung at it a single time and nearly cleaved its arm off when it raised it up defensively. It fell backwards and spit out a single curse at him, somehow manifesting a power despite the pain of effectively losing a limb.
As Toras was struck by a burning ray of light that made him stagger backwards in pain, the half-fiend turned its attention to him. It gestured with its hands and a second pulse of light manifested from its forehead to send a wave of concussive force against Toras and Clueless both. It cackled and looked around the vanished factol.
Clueless was flung backwards by the half-fiend’s blast and took a moment of lying on the floor before he managed to recover. Fyrehowl was already on her feet and carving through the hobgoblins with ease while Toras had somehow managed to stay on his feet despite the two attacks against him. The fighter backhanded one of the hobgoblins, killing it in one stroke, before finishing off the psion whose arm he had already separated from its shoulder as its head joined the other limb on the ground.
The half-fiend roared as most of its fellows were left dead or dying on the ground. It closed its eyes and vanished in a burst of light, only to reappear several dozen feet away to hurl another, larger blast of concussive force at its opponents, this time not caring that it killed the remaining two of its hobgoblins in the process. Toras dove to one side as Fyrehowl ducked to avoid the rippling wave and they both seemed to avoid most of the blast, though it left them bruised and dazed in its wake.
It was at that moment as the psion prepared to unleash yet another attack that something glimmered on the ceiling and dropped behind it into a crouching position. The sound of first one blade and then another being sheathed in flesh could be heard next as the psion stumbled forwards and coughed a spattering of blood across the floor. Nilesia stood behind it, calm and composed with both her sword and dagger dripping with the half-fiend’s blood. She looked expectantly to Toras as the psion stumbled forwards, dazed and stunned from the wounds the factol had given it. The half-celestial could only comply with her unspoken order as he followed up her attack by burying his own sword in the fiendish goblin’s chest.
“Good, you have some measure of skill. I commend you on that.” Nilesia stalked forwards like a hunting predator before swiftly severing the head of the half-fiend without so much as a sound apart from the snap of vertebrae and the sharp report of steel on stone as her blade grazed the flagstones before she whipped it back in a spray of blood across her face. She didn’t seem to notice it at all and left the gore to speckle her face like hellish freckles.
“They’ll have more of those, though the fiend-spawn was their leader as far as I can tell.” The factol remarked as she glanced down at the blues. As she looked back at the half-fiend, her newfound companions made no comment at the soft giggling chuckle that escaped her lips. They ignored her out of a mixture of respect and fear as they gathered their wits about them, as most of hers seemed to have fled with her sanity some time previous.
While Nisha examined the planar compass that would tell them the direction to their exit, Aren cast a few quick spells to heal the worst of the wounds they had all suffered in the fight, and Clueless quickly picked at a number of the items their attackers had been carrying. Nilesia made certain of matters by going from corpse to corpse and brutally, but efficiently, slitting their throats with a single thrust of her sword. She looked up at the others, the flames of her fireshield flickering and dying down, spattered in blood but with a calm, almost pleasant smile upon her face, “Let’s go, shall we?” The others could only smile and nod as they hurried down the corridor the stairwell back towards the tower.
As they ascended the stairs, the sounds of more goblins in pursuit echoed up from below, a mixture of angry barked orders and bellows of shock and dismay as it seemed that one group had discovered the bodies of at least some of their leaders down below. Hearing the sounds of the goblins behind them, Toras emerged from the trapdoor and up onto the roof, shouting back for his companions to hurry. He looked around quickly and then willed himself to rise into the air to flee. Nothing happened…
“What the hell?” and then he glanced over the lip of the ramparts to look directly into the central eye of the Spectator orb and two of its thralls as they began to move into flanking positions on the tower and where their targets were clambering out into view.
“Stay under the cover of the walls out here, the damned beholders are pinning us down. Flying isn’t an option…” Toras shouted as the others clambered out onto the top of the tower and took cover.
Nilesia glanced down the stairs into the tower and began to softly chant before hurling a bolt of lightning down the stairwell. Screams and agonized dying curses filtered up from the lower reaches of the tower as a half dozen advancing goblins danced spasmodically and died amid a cloud of ozone reeking smoke. “Take care of the beholders, I have the goblins handled…” the factol’s statement was calm as she glanced down the stairs, though her face was contorted in a fanatical grin.
Toras risked another glance over the rim of the tower, looking to one side as Fyrehowl glanced over the opposite side. “How’s it look over there?” Toras asked, fishing around in a pouch at his waist.
“One of them on this side, but they’re just holding position to keep us pinned here. Probably thinking we’ll be overwhelmed by the goblins from down below. Too bad for them it’s not going to happen.” The lupinal said as she ducked back down for cover.
Clueless gripped his sword and looked over to Toras as the half-celestial took out a large metal ball studded with spikes in a pyramidal arrangement; an oversized caltrop. “What’s that… oh…” he said as Toras smirked and stood up to hurl the unconventional weapon direction into the eye of the spectator beholder. It struck dead on and impaled itself up to the ball on one of the three-inch spikes just off the center of the spectator’s pupil. It let out a startled scream of pain and surprise while it turned away from the tower as blood began to well up and cloud over its iris in a smeared reddish haze.
"The problem with being covered with eyes is that getting things in your eyes really hurts…” Toras remarked as he dove for cover as suddenly deprived of the spectator’s leadership and coordination the other two beholders moved forwards to bombard the tower with their own eye-rays.
One of the beholders grimaced wickedly as it approached in closer range and swung half of its eyestalks towards the party, even as the spectator writhed in agony. Streaks of color and lines of distortion passed through the air and struck at its targets, narrowly missing some of them, though Toras, Nisha, and Aren were barely struck. Toras gritted his teeth and dove for cover as the offending ray caused his exposed skin to blister and erupt in angry red welt wherever it touched. Nisha collapsed to the ground with a scream and clutched at a deep furrow cut into her shoulder, though she had managed to avoid being disintegrated by the attack. Aren was struck in the back by a single ray and seemed for but a moment to stiffen and turn slightly grayish before she dropped to the ground breathing heavily and shaking off the effects of the petrification attack.
Nilesia glared at her rescuers as they bore the brunt of the beholder’s attack before she stood up and flung out her hand at the other eye tyrant approaching them from opposite the first. With a few arcane syllables a cone of glittering, silvery frost ignited from her outstretched fingertips to envelop the beholder in its chilling embrace. The beholder, its central eye closed in order to hurl its eye rays at the tower only saw the incoming spell at the last minute and could only attempt to dodge. It was only partially successful and the cloud of frost crystallized across nearly ¾ of its body with a sound of shattering, cracking ice and tearing exposed flesh. Though it was still clearly alive and howling in agony, several of the tyrant’s gas sacks had to have ruptured in the attack as its ice-covered body began to quickly lose altitude and drift off to one side abruptly.
Nilesia returned to cast a withering gaze at the others before Fyrehowl stood up and repeated the same gesture as the factol had done. While the lupinal’s spell was more an innate ability and lacked most of the arcane gestures and all of the incanted words, the effect was the same as a cone shaped burst of freezing mist billowed out to strike the beholder. Having seen the fate of its companion though, it was not struck as heavily and managed to avoid any crippling damage, though several of its eyestalks hung limp and covered in a layer of ice, frozen and nonfunctional. As Fyrehowl dove back for cover and the tyrant raised another four stalks in her direction Clueless tossed a wand to Nisha.
“Try and get that to work, it should take out the beholder if you can. Trust me!” he said to the tiefling as she caught the wand and turned it over in her hands with a curious, if slightly perplexed look upon her face. Abruptly the curiosity turned to mischievous intent as she stood up and pointed it directly at the beholder. All the others saw, taking cover as they all were, was a brilliant flash of red and orange flickering light and the boomed sound of the fireball’s detonation at close range as the shockwave passed over the tower’s top. Nisha dashed to the edge of the ramparts and looked down with an impish grin and a wave, soon joined by her other companions as they watched the beholder’s frozen and charred corpse plummet downwards before landing with a sickeningly wet crunch and bursting from the force of the impact upon the lower walls of the keep.
“You’ll have to buy me one of these when we get back to Sigil you know, I like it.” Nisha said with a briskly twitching tail as she handed Clueless back his wand. Nilesia was by this point casting a flying spell upon herself and looking down the stairs. Fyrehowl perked her ears and joined her, “I don’t like that noise… they’re bringing something heavy up those stairs. Lets go.”
“I couldn’t agree more, as much as they deserve for us to stay and slaughter them to the last… another time.” The factol sighed with far too obvious regret at having to leave with some of her captors still alive.
As the companions and their rescued Mercykiller alike rose into the air above the fortress they looked around at the scene below. The spectator was still floundering about in the air, hurling a half dozen rays out at random, most of which struck the cavern floor below to send goblin slaves and guards alike running for cover as the beams kicked up scatterings of rock and gravel, and occasionally killed one them unfortunate enough to have been in its path. No longer any real threat to themselves, they ignored it and made for the exit.
The group retreated with the swiftness of foxes fleeing a henhouse and dashed overhead of the field of petitioners and furnaces. Nisha glanced nervously at the planar compass every few seconds as they passed into the more confined space of the exit tunnel.
“Sodding luck… the portal isn’t on this damn cube! Back the way we came in!” she shouted out to the others as she flew as quickly as possible back towards the exit passage back up to the cube’s surface. As she and the others continued, Nilesia turned backwards and loosed a fireball onto the field below to detonate in the midst of a rapidly organizing group of guards making a hasty pursuit. The blast of the explosion was barely a ripple on the air by the time it reached them, such was the speed of their flight. The Factol’s gaze lingered on the carnage and she cackled with manic delight before turning back to gaze over the tunnel. As she sped up to the rest of the party, Fyrehowl glanced at her warily but said nothing.
Out of sight of the main cavern floor the group approached the point at which the tunnel sharply sloped upwards. The guard posts that lined the floor and walls of the tunnel were brightly illuminated now by a series of spells and brilliant torchlight. The metallic tips of crossbow bolts and at least one ballista were visible as the group closed the distance between themselves as the goblinoids defenders. As they grew to within the distance of the torchlight there was a loud blast of a horn from one of the fortified guard posts and the sudden sound of something heavily scraping the floor of the cavern as it launched itself up into the light.
Rising up from the floor of the cave with a sudden and unexpected burst of speed was a gray-green reptilian form with thin, membranous wings. The draconic bulk of the creature hovered in the thin light drifting down from the opening of the tunnel, several hundred feet above. Ruby colored eyes sparkled and it roared, rust colored mist drifting from its own maw. Goblins raised crossbows and aimed them down the passage from where they huddled defensively behind the rust-dragon as it blocked the center of the passage with its bulk.
Clueless’s eyes went wide as the dragon rose up and its roar buffeted him and his companions. Toras’s eyes grew wide as the beast’s throat convulsed slightly and it prepared to breath a cloud of metal corroding gas. The bladesinger tilted his wings abruptly to one side and veered to the wyrm’s right as a dozen crossbow bolts cut the air and hurtled towards him. All of them missed horribly as the goblins deliberately aimed low to avoid hitting their own pet drake. Clueless cut upwards at the last possible moment and slashed with him sword at the rust dragon’s flank and underbelly. The blade met resistance from the beast’s scaled hide and then bit deep. The dragon roared and shook its head, breaking its concentration as it swallowed the belch of rusting gas it would have breathed out in the next several seconds.
Seeing his chance and already ahead of the others except for Clueless, who was now barely dodging the beast’s claws and a swipe of its barbed tail, Toras raised his sword and charged directly for the dragon. Already distracted by the pixie-winged pest to its one bleeding side, the rust dragon made no attempt to defend against the fighter till it was too late. At the last moment the dragon whipped its head around to snap at Toras as he charged through the air, but as it did so it felt the sudden, oddly cold sensation of the fighter’s greatsword buried to the hilt in its neck. The blade had to have hit the beast’s spine and snapped it almost instantly because almost as if in slow motion the dragon’s eyes glazed over, its limbs went slack, a death rattle of greenish brown gas passed from its lips, and it plummeted to the group as goblins on the cave floor screamed in terror and scrambled to avoid its body.
In the momentary break in the crossbow cover of the tunnel as the dragon’s corpse crashed into the ground below, the group darted for the exit. As fast as they could fly they ascended the quickly sloping passage and within minutes broke out above the surface of the cube. All eyes went to Nisha as once again she paused, hovered in the air and consulted the planar compass. “There, that cube,” she pointed towards a broken, pitted cube hanging in the distance, alone in the darkness.
“Pray for no company along the way, I’m eager to get back somewhere safe…” Nisha shivered slightly as they all hurtled through the void towards the location of the portal promised to them to exist somewhere ahead. It took them nearly two hours of constant flight to reach their destination where they paused on the rusted iron surface as Nisha surveyed a crevice leading down into the cube’s guts. The sides were lined with stone concretions that seemed composed of, or carved into the likeness of weapons of all types, chariots, parts of ships, siege engines, and other things unrecognizable. All of them turned to stone and plastered together in the darkness.
Toras looked over the edge of the crevice, “You sure its down there Nisha?”
“Yeah, that’s what the compass says. Not the first time I’ve said it today, but … you go first?” she gave a weary smile and looked down as the compass gave a soft hum the closer it got. Clearly something at least was drawing the compass.
The group drifted down the cleft in the cube and into a surreal place that resembled the graveyard of some massive battlefield frozen in time and turned to stone. Bizarre shapes that had once been weapons on the battles of prime material worlds now stood broken, shattered and tossed aside here amid the fragments of other devices best left undescribed. If the tools of war could have souls, this would be their perdition.
Toras poked his sword at several of the petrified weapons that stuck up at odd angles from the bulk of the stone. Clueless looked around with a soft sense of awe at the surroundings. Nilesia smirked.
“The mines of Marsellin make this all pale by comparison. You have no idea of the things that we’ve dug out of the rock there. Or the things that have dug their way –out- of the rock either.” The factol walked on, largely oblivious to the same sense of wonder that her companions displayed. “Where is the portal you said you had waiting for you?”
Nisha glanced towards a ragged square-shaped outcropping of rock on the other side of the chasm from where they now stood at the bottom of it. “There…” she said as she approached it. The planar compass began to shine with a pale, flickered blue light as it neared the proximity of the space bound on the face of the rock. The portal activated as Nisha touched the surface of the stone and the others gathered alongside her.
“Let’s go, we’ve done our part of this.” Clueless said as he stepped forwards through the portal, but not to where he was expecting.
Meanwhile in Sigil…
Having done so she gave the faintest of bows as she gave her introductions, though in truth, few of the companions required her name to recognize her nor the the scope of whatever it was that they themselves had now become embroiled in.
“Factol Alisohn Nilesia. You all have my thanks for the righting of an injustice. Who sent you? My faction? Or did Rowan send you all?” subdued insanity danced in the factol’s eyes as she smiled at some memory and stepped forwards.
The factol glanced to the box stuffed into a sack at Nisha’s waist, “I see you recovered my belongings. Again, my thanks to you all.” She extended her hand expectantly to the other tiefling who faltered and handed over the box without a word. The entire group was clearly still in some manner of shock.
“The rulers of the fortress will be coming, they don’t wish to lose me. They view me as something of a prize since they recognized me when the orcs did not. Their guilt is not in question, but I have judgment to provide to them before I may leave.”
Nilesia slipped on her rings, quickly donned her robes and gave her blades each a few quick and precise passes through the air to test her skill and hunger sapped strength. At first unsure of herself, within a few deft slashes and cuts through the air she seemed satisfied with herself and a level of skill that garnered respect from her rescuers. The factol glanced at her spellbooks longingly before slipping them into an inner pocket of her robe and sifting quickly through a small bag of spell components nestled in another pocket of the black garment.
“I still have spells in memory, but I’ve had no components for some time. Still, the goblins thought it wise to place my cell inside a blanket of antimagic. Guilt leads to overprotective sheltering of crimes, and I have lingering crimes to punish when we are away from here. You will have to tell me what changes Sigil has seen since I last saw it. Someone in my faction has my blood on their hands and I will find them for what has happened to me.” She grinned with a look of eager anticipation of bloodshed that would have made a Tanar’ri feel warm by comparison.
“It will be good to see Rowan again…” she smiled and gained a starry eyed glitter over her expression before casting a glance down the hallway and making for the exit from her cell. Her rescuers paled slightly at her last phrases.
“She doesn’t know, does sh…” Aren glared at Nisha and silenced her verbal train of thought as all of them exchanged nervous glances.
“Obviously no, she doesn’t. And frankly I don’t think now is the time to break the news to her about what happened. She doesn’t have a faction anymore, Darkwood is dead, and she was sold into slavery by someone, probably Darkwood himself. He never loved her, but she was, and is, clearly still head over heels in love with him. She’s BARMY!!” Aren’s voice rang clearly inside the minds of her companions without her lips moving as they followed Nilesia out into the hallway. They all exchanged nods of agreement on Aren’s thoughts on the matter.
Fyrehowl’s ears twitched slightly as they moved to enter the corridor and Nilesia held up one hand suddenly and glanced down the hallway. She muttered something harshly under her breath and turned the corner out of the cell.
“Factol I…” Clueless glanced at the Factol, only to find her vanished, nowhere to be seen, as several figures came into view turning the corner into the hallway. Five hobgoblins in ornate armor and carrying spears advanced before several goblins with a brilliant bluish tint to their skin. None of them wore armor, or much more than loose fitting clothing, but each of them had a small crystal hovering about their body as they approached. Behind them, towering over even the hobgoblins was another of the blue colored goblins. However the larger one was naked, heavily muscled, and with a slight dog-like shape to its face. Its four arms were already making small motions in the air and fiendish looking spikes jutted at random from its back. It turned its luminescent, reddish eyes towards the group and bellowed out a mixed bestial roar and command to its subordinates to attack.
As the half-fiend roared, Toras, Clueless and Fyrehowl charged to meet the Goblins. They had gotten perhaps ten feet before a blue glow erupted from the forehead of the goblin leader and an invisible force detonated in their midst. Without a sound the walls and floor vibrated with concussive force and the three were dashed to the ground, dazed and bloodied from the attack. As they struggled to regain their feet the more mundane goblins advanced, weapons out and one of their blue skinned kin touched a small gem on its forehead. Instantly there was a glowing green mass of semi-transparent filaments that burst into being around Nisha and Aren, wrapped around them and suddenly growing more solid and tangible. Nisha squirmed and rolled forwards across the floor, shedding most of the sticky material before it hardened, but Aren was not as quick in her movements. In seconds the material had formed a solid cocoon around her as she toppled to the floor, struggling but making little progress in freeing herself.
As the group struggled to make themselves ready for the next attack, with only a bloodthirsty, crazed scream as a warning, Nilesia reappeared at the rear of the group of goblins as her invisibility spell dropped and she charged one of the psions, wreathed in a circle of blue flames and swinging her glowing, black bladed sword. Three quick cuts to the back of one of the blues and a sharp stab into the arm of one other and she vanished again. In her passing, the one blue that had taken the brunt of her attack was left crumpled on the floor and struggling to staunch the blood pouring from its back, its other companion was more stoic in its endurance of the shallow stab on its arm, but still it cradled the limb and was hampered in its movements.
Surprised by the factol’s sudden attack and her just as sudden disappearance, the goblins faltered for a moment, disorganized and dazed. Nisha took the opportunity to draw her blade and begin cutting Aren free from the psionic entanglement she was trapped within. Rising to their feet in that moment and charging forwards were Clueless, Toras and Fyrehowl, blades drawn and faces grim. The lupinal, quicker than her two other companions, struck first. Her first cut bit deep into the shoulder of one of the goblins and a second thrust to his side drew blood as well, tearing through both armor and flesh alike. Off balance and in pain the hobgoblin barely raised his shield as she leapt for his throat and clamped her jaws down with a wet crunch; her opponent went instantly limp.
Clueless struck next, darting up into the air as his wings suddenly sprung into motion. Several of the hobgoblins made jabs at him with their spears but he deflected them and cut at the heads of several of them. In the confusion of suddenly facing an aerial opponent as well as having lost one of their front guards, Toras managed to shoulder his way past to attack one of the psions. As he charged one of them he swung at it a single time and nearly cleaved its arm off when it raised it up defensively. It fell backwards and spit out a single curse at him, somehow manifesting a power despite the pain of effectively losing a limb.
As Toras was struck by a burning ray of light that made him stagger backwards in pain, the half-fiend turned its attention to him. It gestured with its hands and a second pulse of light manifested from its forehead to send a wave of concussive force against Toras and Clueless both. It cackled and looked around the vanished factol.
Clueless was flung backwards by the half-fiend’s blast and took a moment of lying on the floor before he managed to recover. Fyrehowl was already on her feet and carving through the hobgoblins with ease while Toras had somehow managed to stay on his feet despite the two attacks against him. The fighter backhanded one of the hobgoblins, killing it in one stroke, before finishing off the psion whose arm he had already separated from its shoulder as its head joined the other limb on the ground.
The half-fiend roared as most of its fellows were left dead or dying on the ground. It closed its eyes and vanished in a burst of light, only to reappear several dozen feet away to hurl another, larger blast of concussive force at its opponents, this time not caring that it killed the remaining two of its hobgoblins in the process. Toras dove to one side as Fyrehowl ducked to avoid the rippling wave and they both seemed to avoid most of the blast, though it left them bruised and dazed in its wake.
It was at that moment as the psion prepared to unleash yet another attack that something glimmered on the ceiling and dropped behind it into a crouching position. The sound of first one blade and then another being sheathed in flesh could be heard next as the psion stumbled forwards and coughed a spattering of blood across the floor. Nilesia stood behind it, calm and composed with both her sword and dagger dripping with the half-fiend’s blood. She looked expectantly to Toras as the psion stumbled forwards, dazed and stunned from the wounds the factol had given it. The half-celestial could only comply with her unspoken order as he followed up her attack by burying his own sword in the fiendish goblin’s chest.
“Good, you have some measure of skill. I commend you on that.” Nilesia stalked forwards like a hunting predator before swiftly severing the head of the half-fiend without so much as a sound apart from the snap of vertebrae and the sharp report of steel on stone as her blade grazed the flagstones before she whipped it back in a spray of blood across her face. She didn’t seem to notice it at all and left the gore to speckle her face like hellish freckles.
“They’ll have more of those, though the fiend-spawn was their leader as far as I can tell.” The factol remarked as she glanced down at the blues. As she looked back at the half-fiend, her newfound companions made no comment at the soft giggling chuckle that escaped her lips. They ignored her out of a mixture of respect and fear as they gathered their wits about them, as most of hers seemed to have fled with her sanity some time previous.
While Nisha examined the planar compass that would tell them the direction to their exit, Aren cast a few quick spells to heal the worst of the wounds they had all suffered in the fight, and Clueless quickly picked at a number of the items their attackers had been carrying. Nilesia made certain of matters by going from corpse to corpse and brutally, but efficiently, slitting their throats with a single thrust of her sword. She looked up at the others, the flames of her fireshield flickering and dying down, spattered in blood but with a calm, almost pleasant smile upon her face, “Let’s go, shall we?” The others could only smile and nod as they hurried down the corridor the stairwell back towards the tower.
As they ascended the stairs, the sounds of more goblins in pursuit echoed up from below, a mixture of angry barked orders and bellows of shock and dismay as it seemed that one group had discovered the bodies of at least some of their leaders down below. Hearing the sounds of the goblins behind them, Toras emerged from the trapdoor and up onto the roof, shouting back for his companions to hurry. He looked around quickly and then willed himself to rise into the air to flee. Nothing happened…
“What the hell?” and then he glanced over the lip of the ramparts to look directly into the central eye of the Spectator orb and two of its thralls as they began to move into flanking positions on the tower and where their targets were clambering out into view.
“Stay under the cover of the walls out here, the damned beholders are pinning us down. Flying isn’t an option…” Toras shouted as the others clambered out onto the top of the tower and took cover.
Nilesia glanced down the stairs into the tower and began to softly chant before hurling a bolt of lightning down the stairwell. Screams and agonized dying curses filtered up from the lower reaches of the tower as a half dozen advancing goblins danced spasmodically and died amid a cloud of ozone reeking smoke. “Take care of the beholders, I have the goblins handled…” the factol’s statement was calm as she glanced down the stairs, though her face was contorted in a fanatical grin.
Toras risked another glance over the rim of the tower, looking to one side as Fyrehowl glanced over the opposite side. “How’s it look over there?” Toras asked, fishing around in a pouch at his waist.
“One of them on this side, but they’re just holding position to keep us pinned here. Probably thinking we’ll be overwhelmed by the goblins from down below. Too bad for them it’s not going to happen.” The lupinal said as she ducked back down for cover.
Clueless gripped his sword and looked over to Toras as the half-celestial took out a large metal ball studded with spikes in a pyramidal arrangement; an oversized caltrop. “What’s that… oh…” he said as Toras smirked and stood up to hurl the unconventional weapon direction into the eye of the spectator beholder. It struck dead on and impaled itself up to the ball on one of the three-inch spikes just off the center of the spectator’s pupil. It let out a startled scream of pain and surprise while it turned away from the tower as blood began to well up and cloud over its iris in a smeared reddish haze.
"The problem with being covered with eyes is that getting things in your eyes really hurts…” Toras remarked as he dove for cover as suddenly deprived of the spectator’s leadership and coordination the other two beholders moved forwards to bombard the tower with their own eye-rays.
One of the beholders grimaced wickedly as it approached in closer range and swung half of its eyestalks towards the party, even as the spectator writhed in agony. Streaks of color and lines of distortion passed through the air and struck at its targets, narrowly missing some of them, though Toras, Nisha, and Aren were barely struck. Toras gritted his teeth and dove for cover as the offending ray caused his exposed skin to blister and erupt in angry red welt wherever it touched. Nisha collapsed to the ground with a scream and clutched at a deep furrow cut into her shoulder, though she had managed to avoid being disintegrated by the attack. Aren was struck in the back by a single ray and seemed for but a moment to stiffen and turn slightly grayish before she dropped to the ground breathing heavily and shaking off the effects of the petrification attack.
Nilesia glared at her rescuers as they bore the brunt of the beholder’s attack before she stood up and flung out her hand at the other eye tyrant approaching them from opposite the first. With a few arcane syllables a cone of glittering, silvery frost ignited from her outstretched fingertips to envelop the beholder in its chilling embrace. The beholder, its central eye closed in order to hurl its eye rays at the tower only saw the incoming spell at the last minute and could only attempt to dodge. It was only partially successful and the cloud of frost crystallized across nearly ¾ of its body with a sound of shattering, cracking ice and tearing exposed flesh. Though it was still clearly alive and howling in agony, several of the tyrant’s gas sacks had to have ruptured in the attack as its ice-covered body began to quickly lose altitude and drift off to one side abruptly.
Nilesia returned to cast a withering gaze at the others before Fyrehowl stood up and repeated the same gesture as the factol had done. While the lupinal’s spell was more an innate ability and lacked most of the arcane gestures and all of the incanted words, the effect was the same as a cone shaped burst of freezing mist billowed out to strike the beholder. Having seen the fate of its companion though, it was not struck as heavily and managed to avoid any crippling damage, though several of its eyestalks hung limp and covered in a layer of ice, frozen and nonfunctional. As Fyrehowl dove back for cover and the tyrant raised another four stalks in her direction Clueless tossed a wand to Nisha.
“Try and get that to work, it should take out the beholder if you can. Trust me!” he said to the tiefling as she caught the wand and turned it over in her hands with a curious, if slightly perplexed look upon her face. Abruptly the curiosity turned to mischievous intent as she stood up and pointed it directly at the beholder. All the others saw, taking cover as they all were, was a brilliant flash of red and orange flickering light and the boomed sound of the fireball’s detonation at close range as the shockwave passed over the tower’s top. Nisha dashed to the edge of the ramparts and looked down with an impish grin and a wave, soon joined by her other companions as they watched the beholder’s frozen and charred corpse plummet downwards before landing with a sickeningly wet crunch and bursting from the force of the impact upon the lower walls of the keep.
“You’ll have to buy me one of these when we get back to Sigil you know, I like it.” Nisha said with a briskly twitching tail as she handed Clueless back his wand. Nilesia was by this point casting a flying spell upon herself and looking down the stairs. Fyrehowl perked her ears and joined her, “I don’t like that noise… they’re bringing something heavy up those stairs. Lets go.”
“I couldn’t agree more, as much as they deserve for us to stay and slaughter them to the last… another time.” The factol sighed with far too obvious regret at having to leave with some of her captors still alive.
As the companions and their rescued Mercykiller alike rose into the air above the fortress they looked around at the scene below. The spectator was still floundering about in the air, hurling a half dozen rays out at random, most of which struck the cavern floor below to send goblin slaves and guards alike running for cover as the beams kicked up scatterings of rock and gravel, and occasionally killed one them unfortunate enough to have been in its path. No longer any real threat to themselves, they ignored it and made for the exit.
The group retreated with the swiftness of foxes fleeing a henhouse and dashed overhead of the field of petitioners and furnaces. Nisha glanced nervously at the planar compass every few seconds as they passed into the more confined space of the exit tunnel.
“Sodding luck… the portal isn’t on this damn cube! Back the way we came in!” she shouted out to the others as she flew as quickly as possible back towards the exit passage back up to the cube’s surface. As she and the others continued, Nilesia turned backwards and loosed a fireball onto the field below to detonate in the midst of a rapidly organizing group of guards making a hasty pursuit. The blast of the explosion was barely a ripple on the air by the time it reached them, such was the speed of their flight. The Factol’s gaze lingered on the carnage and she cackled with manic delight before turning back to gaze over the tunnel. As she sped up to the rest of the party, Fyrehowl glanced at her warily but said nothing.
Out of sight of the main cavern floor the group approached the point at which the tunnel sharply sloped upwards. The guard posts that lined the floor and walls of the tunnel were brightly illuminated now by a series of spells and brilliant torchlight. The metallic tips of crossbow bolts and at least one ballista were visible as the group closed the distance between themselves as the goblinoids defenders. As they grew to within the distance of the torchlight there was a loud blast of a horn from one of the fortified guard posts and the sudden sound of something heavily scraping the floor of the cavern as it launched itself up into the light.
Rising up from the floor of the cave with a sudden and unexpected burst of speed was a gray-green reptilian form with thin, membranous wings. The draconic bulk of the creature hovered in the thin light drifting down from the opening of the tunnel, several hundred feet above. Ruby colored eyes sparkled and it roared, rust colored mist drifting from its own maw. Goblins raised crossbows and aimed them down the passage from where they huddled defensively behind the rust-dragon as it blocked the center of the passage with its bulk.
Clueless’s eyes went wide as the dragon rose up and its roar buffeted him and his companions. Toras’s eyes grew wide as the beast’s throat convulsed slightly and it prepared to breath a cloud of metal corroding gas. The bladesinger tilted his wings abruptly to one side and veered to the wyrm’s right as a dozen crossbow bolts cut the air and hurtled towards him. All of them missed horribly as the goblins deliberately aimed low to avoid hitting their own pet drake. Clueless cut upwards at the last possible moment and slashed with him sword at the rust dragon’s flank and underbelly. The blade met resistance from the beast’s scaled hide and then bit deep. The dragon roared and shook its head, breaking its concentration as it swallowed the belch of rusting gas it would have breathed out in the next several seconds.
Seeing his chance and already ahead of the others except for Clueless, who was now barely dodging the beast’s claws and a swipe of its barbed tail, Toras raised his sword and charged directly for the dragon. Already distracted by the pixie-winged pest to its one bleeding side, the rust dragon made no attempt to defend against the fighter till it was too late. At the last moment the dragon whipped its head around to snap at Toras as he charged through the air, but as it did so it felt the sudden, oddly cold sensation of the fighter’s greatsword buried to the hilt in its neck. The blade had to have hit the beast’s spine and snapped it almost instantly because almost as if in slow motion the dragon’s eyes glazed over, its limbs went slack, a death rattle of greenish brown gas passed from its lips, and it plummeted to the group as goblins on the cave floor screamed in terror and scrambled to avoid its body.
In the momentary break in the crossbow cover of the tunnel as the dragon’s corpse crashed into the ground below, the group darted for the exit. As fast as they could fly they ascended the quickly sloping passage and within minutes broke out above the surface of the cube. All eyes went to Nisha as once again she paused, hovered in the air and consulted the planar compass. “There, that cube,” she pointed towards a broken, pitted cube hanging in the distance, alone in the darkness.
“Pray for no company along the way, I’m eager to get back somewhere safe…” Nisha shivered slightly as they all hurtled through the void towards the location of the portal promised to them to exist somewhere ahead. It took them nearly two hours of constant flight to reach their destination where they paused on the rusted iron surface as Nisha surveyed a crevice leading down into the cube’s guts. The sides were lined with stone concretions that seemed composed of, or carved into the likeness of weapons of all types, chariots, parts of ships, siege engines, and other things unrecognizable. All of them turned to stone and plastered together in the darkness.
Toras looked over the edge of the crevice, “You sure its down there Nisha?”
“Yeah, that’s what the compass says. Not the first time I’ve said it today, but … you go first?” she gave a weary smile and looked down as the compass gave a soft hum the closer it got. Clearly something at least was drawing the compass.
The group drifted down the cleft in the cube and into a surreal place that resembled the graveyard of some massive battlefield frozen in time and turned to stone. Bizarre shapes that had once been weapons on the battles of prime material worlds now stood broken, shattered and tossed aside here amid the fragments of other devices best left undescribed. If the tools of war could have souls, this would be their perdition.
Toras poked his sword at several of the petrified weapons that stuck up at odd angles from the bulk of the stone. Clueless looked around with a soft sense of awe at the surroundings. Nilesia smirked.
“The mines of Marsellin make this all pale by comparison. You have no idea of the things that we’ve dug out of the rock there. Or the things that have dug their way –out- of the rock either.” The factol walked on, largely oblivious to the same sense of wonder that her companions displayed. “Where is the portal you said you had waiting for you?”
Nisha glanced towards a ragged square-shaped outcropping of rock on the other side of the chasm from where they now stood at the bottom of it. “There…” she said as she approached it. The planar compass began to shine with a pale, flickered blue light as it neared the proximity of the space bound on the face of the rock. The portal activated as Nisha touched the surface of the stone and the others gathered alongside her.
“Let’s go, we’ve done our part of this.” Clueless said as he stepped forwards through the portal, but not to where he was expecting.
Meanwhile in Sigil…
Shemeska
Adventurer
Zappo said:Oooh, action.
How big was that dragon? They seem to have taken it down quite easily.
As I recall it was a young adult, whichever was in the range of 10-13 as far as CR goes. Mercurial greatswords make me rue the day I allowed them in the game. One crit and the critter says hello to a shallow grave.
Shemeska
Adventurer
Toras said:
Only lately, and you've been wandering the positive touched quasielemental planes for a while now, so my prediction is that you'll see more elementals in the near future.
And my apologies for the constructs, I was on a construct kick there for a while. You got the pleasure of being able to crit at least one Wyrm catagory dragon and that simulacrum/sentient illusion taken flesh, though in both cases it was a good thing for the party that you did crit them when you did.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
*tosses a disjunction at you just for the running irony of it all*
Clueless
Webmonkey
<shameless plug>
Shemeska's Story hour is now being mirrored at:
http://forums.planewalker.com
Freeform RP, planescape discussion and much more is also available there.
(As well as a Shemmi short story if I recall...)
</shameless plug>
Shemeska's Story hour is now being mirrored at:
http://forums.planewalker.com
Freeform RP, planescape discussion and much more is also available there.
(As well as a Shemmi short story if I recall...)
</shameless plug>
