Struggle and Strife- A scarred lands storyhour

[Lars Frehse]

Back into hell- part 3 of 4

As Niklas resisted the strange shadow, four three-dimensional shadows stepped forward, separating themselves from the general darkness amidst the trees. These too attacked the companions.

Trepat shot lightning into the first two of the approaching shadows, weakening one and destroying the other. As he dodged the arm of that shadow, feeling the supernatural cold breeze of death brushing past him, he saw how Torn, who was being attacked by the remaining two shadows, was hit by one of them. The black arm of the shadow seemed to simply pass through the halforc's armour, as if he were nothing more than a breeze going through a net. Torn jumped back, freeing himself from that arm, but he was noticeably weakened.

Meanwhile, the shadowlord and Niklas were still locked in their deadly struggle. As both, shadow and man, were trying to get control of his body, Niklas jerked around, dancing a comical and off-beat dance that belied his dire situation.

Torn was still battling his opponent, but Trepat had by now overcome his shadow, and at last he was in a position to help the monk. He stepped past Torn and then shot a barrage of magic missiles at the shadowlord. Where the projectiles of pure energy hit, they punched holes into the shadow, which was by and by substituted by the real one.

As the second volley of missiles hit the shadow, Niklas ripped free. The shadow moved over the jungle ground, heading for the underbrush, but Trepat shot his magical missiles once more, and with the sound of a very faint scream, the shadow dissipated.

They stood alert for a little longer, fearing more threats like the shadows, but as their breathing relaxed, there was no sign of any danger, except for the twisted forest itself. They took care of Torn's injury, which was invisible on the outside, and moved on.

For the rest of the day, all they had to fight were gnats, mosquitoes, leeches and other mundane nuisances. When night fell, they settled down, and on the next morning, they reached their goal at last: Glivid Autel.

From their position in the jungle, they only saw a sheer rock wall rising up in front of them and the foliage above them blocked away the view. But Trepat sent his raven up, and the bird was able to give them an impression of the place, which they wanted to enter.

Piercing out of the surface jungle, which was steaming under the morning sun, a gigantic stone spire rose into the sky. The spire was almost a mile high and on it's top, there was a circular mesa, which was about four hundred yards in diameter. On this mesa, protected from most of the dangers of the forest below by it's sheer elevation, was Glivid-Autel, the necropolis that was run by the vilest necromancers, diabolists and sadists in Ghelspad.

Only a quarter of the city, which had been founded within ruins, had been rebuilt. There, in dirty and poor surroundings the "citizens" of Glivid Autel were trying to make a living. In order to keep them in place, undead and necromancers were patrolling the rest of the ruins. There was little danger that anyone trapped in this place would flee anywhere else. Even if a refugee would somehow succeed in safely making it down the vertical rock face, he would still be facing the horrors the Hornsaw offered them. Instead, people stayed where they were, choosing squalor, poverty and fear of the rulers of the city over the downright terror that awaited them below.

Trepat's raven returned. After he had given his description of what he had seen, Torn said:" I think it would be best if we would scale up the spire."

Niklas nodded:" I still have two potions of spider climb... I could take Trepat on my back. I don't think we should waste any of those. If we find the elves, we will have to find a way to get them down, after all."

Trepat agreed, and shortly afterwards, they were climbing up the rock. As they scaled past the treetops, it was soon clear that even for a skilled mountaineer, the rock was nearly impossible to climb. About halfway up, Trepat, who was clinging to Niklas' sweaty back during their ascent turned his head to look down. The Hornsaw below looked like a green, misty ocean, and as Trepat felt vertigo creeping up his spine, combined with the realization of what would happen should they fall, he turned his head back to stare at the back of the monk's head.

Upon reaching the plateau, Torn sneaked a peek over the edge, and saw that there was nobody close-by right now. The walls of the inhabited part of the town were some one hundred yards to the right, and right in front of them were the partially standing walls of an ancient house. He signalled Niklas to take a look themselves, and they didn't need to exchange any words regarding what they were to do next.

Like one man, they pulled themselves onto the rocky surface and covered the few yards between the edge and the ruin in mere seconds. There, they finally had the chance to get a closer look. The ruins around were looted. The rocky surface was strewn with rocks, and in the cracks and fissures, mosses, grass and sometimes even small scrubs were growing.

For the next hours, they stayed in hiding while Trepat's crow took a look around. Judging by the bird's observation, it looked like the necromancers were lairing underground in the rock. At least every patrol of undead and necromancers either emerged or disappeared through one of the many trapdoors, which were at certain points among the ruins.

In the evening, when it was dark enough for them to feel a little safer, Niklas said:" The elf had told us that he had been held captured under the city. I think we have to go through one of these trapdoors."

"Sure" Torn answered, "let's hope that we will get the right one, though. I wouldn't want to end as an experiment in some fiendish laboratory!“

Again, they sent up the crow. When it signalled them that a patrol had just come past, and that they were now safe, they ducked amidst the rubble and headed to one of the trapdoors nearby. Torn sprinted ahead, and to his surprise, found the door open. He pushed the heavy wood up, and a few moments later, he and his friends had disappeared into the rock.

 

[Nightfall]

Lars,

Great stuff man! Btw I know you've already run this adventure...but maybe if you want to get the PCs in deep trouble, have them face off against a death magic mage that was taught under Taason the Black...cause I just found out the old bastard is STILL alive. (Taason is a favorite of mine. Anyone that kill an entire army with just a word is certainly my kind of fella! )

 

[Lars Frehse]

Thank you for the praise. As you will see, this time it was only a short expedition into the place, which was all about avoiding any opposition. I think the characters still need to get a little bit stronger in order to really fight the big ones in Glivid Autel.

 

[Nightfall]

True. Taking on the forces of Glivid Autel is certainly not a job suited to near mid level character. 12-14th level, sure, but only then cause they'd be facing some weaker wizards and sorcerers along with demonlogists, and others.

 

[Lars Frehse]

Back into hell- part 4 of 4

Torn slipped in after them and gently closed the heavy trapdoor. They found themselves in a corridor, which had been hewn into the rock, and stairs were leading down into the bowels of the spire. Torches were set in the walls at regular intervals, and the corridor was absolutely silent.

"I'll go first" Torn whispered to his friends and went down the stairs. After twenty yards, they ended in front of a corridor that lead left and right. Torn looked around and seeing no one, he signalled his friends to come down to him. Following a hunch, they turned right into a long, narrow and cool corridor. Twice they passed stairs leading up, until they saw the corridor taking a left bend.

Just then, they heard marching feet coming from that direction. Immediately, they headed back and went up the last stairs that they had passed, praying to the gods that whoever came marching wouldn't be heading into their direction.

Torn cowered in the shadows, and to his relief, he saw the patrol, which consisted of a dozen ghouls and two necromancers, walk past their corridor. The friends waited a little longer, and once they were sure that the patrol was gone, they continued their way down the corridor.

After the turn, it ended in front of another intersection. In front of them was a heavy metal door, and to the left and right, at the end of small, twenty feet long corridors there were two more metal doors. In front of both of these doors, effectively blocking each corridor, was a vaguely humanoid form. Both looked alike, were slightly taller than an average human, and it looked like they were made from ash.

Looking left and right, Niklas said:" I think we should try this door here first. Those two fellows don't look that inviting to me".

Torn nodded, but as just he hunkered down to get a good look at the lock in front of him, Trepat nudged him: "Shhh! Don't you hear that?"

The halforc stopped and listened, and really, there was the sound of a child crying. The crying stopped, and was substituted by what seemed to be a melancholic elven lullaby.

"I think it comes from behind that door", Trepat said and pointed down the corridor to their right.

Torn pulled out his spiked chain, and turned to Trepat:" All right then. Cover our backs!"

They stepped into the corridor, and immediately, the ash-construct in front of them came to life. It stepped forward and punched at Niklas, who felt the supernatural strength of the golem as he had all the air knocked out of him. The monk punched back, but wherever his fist hit his opponents, all they did was pass through lose ash. It seemed as if the thing was able to harden it's limbs when needed, like when it struck with it's fists, but stayed immaterial like ash in the rest of his body, making it nearly impossible to damage it.

Seeing that his chain merely pierced through nothing, Torn took Trepat's magical scimitar while Niklas took a beating. Trepat had meanwhile found out that his magic was without effect against the thing. So he boosted the strength of both the halforc and the human, but then Niklas was hit square against the skull, and he crushed to the ground.

Now only Torn could effectively fight this soulless and menacing opponent. He went into a rage and swinging the scimitar with both hands, he chopped away at the golem. He was oblivious to the crushed bones and bruised flesh where the construct hit him and then, suddenly, it was over.

The golem exploded in a cloud of ashes, and the corridor was silent again. Trepat had already nursed Niklas back to consciousness, and now he urged Torn: "Quick. Tanil knows how much time we have left".

Without losing any time, Torn examined the door, and after finding and disarming a trap that would have filled the corridor with poisonous gas, he picked the lock. Fearing a trap, he and his friends readied their weapons and pushed open the heavy iron door.

Immediately, they were hit by the foul odours of humanoids who had been locked into a confined space. There were about two dozen elves in there, fearfully crouching in one half of the room, and their filth and excrements was piled up in a corner in the other half of the room. All of them were dirty, starving and shielding their eyes from the weak light of the torches in the corridor.

"Don't be afraid", Trepat said, stepping into the prison cell, "we are here to help you."

One of the women, who was holding a starving child in her arms, looked up: "Trepat? Is that you?"

Trepat recognized her right away:" Cymola, yes. I am so glad to see you again".

He rushed forward, ignoring the dirt, and embraced his cousin. Soon, other elves stepped forward, and Trepat found that half of the elves who were captured here were his clan mates who he hadn't seen in four decades.

They had to keep their reunion short for now, though. Torn interrupted them:" I am sorry to disturb, but we are not safe yet. Are there any spell casters among you?"

One elf stepped up: „Yes, I am a wizard, but my spell book had been taken from me. If I would have it, I could cast some polymorph spells to transform me and some others into hippogriffons..."

"Actually", Torn interrupted, pulling out a tome out of his magical bag of holding" we do have a spellbook with those spells. Do you think you would have enough time to prepare the spells?"

"I do think so. The patrol had just been here an hour or two ago, and I estimate that they usually come here in once per day. At least I think so- the passage of time is hard to be judged down here. It is definitely worth a try".

The elvish wizard settled down to study the book, and after a few hours, the friends lead the prisoners out of the corridor and into the ruin at the edge of the city where they had hidden before. There, Trepat used three scrolls he had gathered over the years to turn three of the elves into hippogriffons. Then, the wizard transformed another elf, Torn, Trepat and himself into hippogriffons, too. Two or three elves mounted each of the griffons, and they flew of into the night.

When the sun rose on the next morning, they were just crossing the Broadreach River. On the far bank, several of the Butterfly elves were already awaiting them. The hippogriffons landed, and right away, the weakest elves rolled into the sand of the bank, and the butterflies took care of them. For now, they were safe. At least as safe as one could be in a place like the Hornsaw Forest.

Two days later, the wizard had transformed all the griffons back into their original form. They were all resting in a butterfly-camp deep in the woods, and one evening, as the friends were laying on their back, looking up to the stars above, Niklas said:" There is one thing I don't understand. How had we been able to find the elves so easily? That was a big place. It almost feels as if some unseen force had guided us... And I don't like that idea..."

 

[Nightfall]

*bad post* *very, very bad post*

 

[Nightfall]

Sweet! I love the fight with the Ash Golems. Hopefully they figure out what's going on. Cause I think I have an idea...but it's just speculation at this point.

 

[Lars Frehse]

Oh, don't worry, they will eventually find out... I am lagging behind with this storyhour, and just last session, an entity admitted prodding them in a certain direction...
But all in due time. Now, of to the next update!

 

[Lars Frehse]

Vacation- part 1

Looking up to the merciless sun above them, Ben once again silently cursed himself under his breath- after all, there was no reason at all for him to be here in the Festering fields.

He thought back to when the latest follies had started. It was back in the Hornsaw forest, in the camp of the Butterflies. Trepat and he had already decided that they would return to the Ganjus and go to Vera Tre. This way, Trepat would be able to look for his relatives among the elves there, and Ben could talk to his fellow incarnates, possibly even their leader.

However, one night a couple of days ago, they were settled around a cosy campfire, and Niklas and Torn had been studying a map of Ghelspad the monk carried around with him at all times. They were silently talking to each other, apparently discussing something on the map, and Ben didn't pay them much heed and looked up to the stars instead, enjoying the tranquillity of the summer night.

After a while, Torn called out for Ben, Jan and Trepat to join them, and when everyone had gathered around the map next to the crackling fire, Torn pointed the big and fleshy index-finger of his right hand to a spot on the map. At first, Ben didn't see what the orc was pointing at, and instead studied the cracks in the halforc’s dirty fingernail, but then Torn announced: "Hollowfaust!", and Ben saw that it was really the city of Necromancers Torn had been pointing at.

"You see" Torn explained "If we follow down the Hornsaw and then turn westwards, we will get there in no time at all. We had never been as close to this place before as we are now, and that would be a perfect opportunity."

Ben wanted to ask why they would possibly want to go to a city that was mostly populated by skeletons and other undead, but just as he was about to speak up, Ben said:" My teacher, Brother William, should still be there, as well. At the time when we left Durrover, he had been sent there by my monastry, and I would like to see him again after these years."

A breeze came up and it blew thick smoke from the fire into their direction, forcing them all to take a few steps to the right. "Alright, then" Trepat said "I had been waiting forty years to see my family, so I guess I can wait a few weeks more. I will come with you".

Ben looked to Jan, hoping that at least the Paladin would want to return to Mithril as soon as possible, but the human just said:" That's fine with me. I heard they are lawful there, so it should be a nice place".

Seeing that it looked like the issue was decided, Ben merely sighed and shrugged then, and on the next morning they were on the way along the banks of the Broadreach river.

On the map, the distance they had to travel through the cursed forest looked small indeed, however, in reality, it had taken them eleven days to reach the edge of the forest. Eleven days in which they had been attacked by all sorts critters, for example living plants, like shambling mounds or a tendrilous, which had swallowed up both Jan and his horse, before it had been hacked to pieces and the half-digested horse and human were liberated.

Then, when they had reached the edge of the forest and entered a little swamp, they had settled down for the night. Ben had been woken up rudely that night, and later Niklas had told him what had happened before that.

Late at night, when a black blanket of clouds covered the moon and the stars, Niklas, who hardly needed to sleep, and his brother Jan had been on watch. The hours crawled by, and nothing happened, until the brothers noticed two glowing lights dancing gently over the moor in front of them.

"Looks fishy to me", Niklas said after they had been observing the lights for a little while.

Jan nodded and rose to his feet. As he wrapped his right hand around the hilt of his sword which was still in it's scabbard he stepped forward and casually said over his shoulder:" Yes. I will go and take a look."

Niklas nodded, and by the time he had realized just what his brother was about to do, Jan was already wading through the swamp and all the monk saw was the back of his brother's fullplate as he headed towards the lights.

"Stop", Niklas called, but his brother was already on his way, and he paid no heed to his smarter brother. At least, Jan's exceptional luck lasted for as long as he was wading through the muck, since he always stepped on the firmer ground.

Eventually, he stood in front of the two lights, which were hanging in the air in front of him, and nothing happened. Just as he thought that maybe he was seeing a strange natural phenomenon, and wanted to turn around, arches of light and electricity shot out of the balls and hit him, almost frying him in his armour.

A moment later, he had his sword in his hand and he was swinging at one of the will o' wisps, as Niklas shouted for the others to wake up. And that was when Ben had been rudely woken up. He too got up, and as he saw the Paladin fighting in the swamps, he entertained the notion of not aiding him for a short moment. Then, however, he stepped forward and joined the fray.

After a while, with the aid of everyone of them, they had defeated the will o' wisps, even though they almost killed Jan, and now, on the second day after that night, they were riding into the rising sun, and Ben once again shook his head. After all, he could be in the cool shades of gentle Vera Tre right now, instead of swallowing dust with every breath.

They had decided to move through the hot festering fields at night and set camp during the unbearably hot day, but since the nights were rather short, they left the camp in the late afternoon, when the air around them was noticeably cooling down and rode until shortly before noon when the desert around them exploded in heat.

Every now and then, especially at nights, they encountered the residents of the Festering Fields. Skeletons, Zombies and Ghouls seemed to be everywhere, crawling out of the fissures in the ground, coming at them over the hills and dunes and attacking the friends seemingly at random. Fortunately, none of their undead opponents seemed to have any kind of organization, and so they were little more than a nuisance for the seasoned adventurers.

On their fourth morning in the plains, they finally saw the sloped shape of the Faust to the north of them. The volcano was calm that day, and only the faintest orange glow in it's crater indicated that it was alive. At it's foot lay Hollowfaust, the city of the necromancers, shielded from the outside world by 30 feet thick walls.

They approached the only gate that lead into the city, where they were eyed and questioned by the guards posted there. When the guards were finally content, they gave the adventurers a short introduction regarding the laws and rules of the city. One law especially caught their attention: If anyone lost his life within the city walls, the city would become the legal owners of said bodies.

"We should be extra-careful here", Torn said as they passed through the massive gate and entered the city. „I have gotten rather fond of my body."

 

[Nightfall]

Well just as long as they a) Don't leave after dark and b) don't commit serious infractions (like helping to raise the dead), they won't have much to worry about.