The Age of Worms - Morrus' Campaign - Finished 6th August!!
Inconsequenti-AL
Breaks Games
Eccles said:
I love that mental image.
Brain eating ghosts and cowbells ftw!Was definitely Endos week - the dice wanted those spells to kill/maim and ruin everything!
3V1L_N3CR0
First Post
ouch
what spell did Endo use on that Djinn
what spell did Endo use on that Djinn
Eccles
Ragged idiot in a trilby.
Janga was restored to life using the scroll we had bought only two days previously, and the loot was captured from Zuethos and his party. To my considerable consternation, Endo managed to emerge from a brief scrum clutching the severed Hand of Vecna as well as the Robe of Eyes he had pulled off the cleric’s body.
After a couple of teleport spells and a spree of shopping, we found ourselves back on the island standing in front of the portal. We had managed to find Flynne in the Free City, and he had greeted Bob with a few professional questions about his choice of weapons. Closer scrutiny by the sharp-eyed elf showed signs of make-up, and after a few minutes, we realised that the ‘halfling’ was in fact a goblin, cunningly made up to look like a more ‘acceptable’ race. However in our party consisting of a slow, heavily armoured gnome cleric to the god of travel, a dragon-scaled elf, a 6 foot Halfling, a half-orc necromancer and a single human bard, the goblin was barely even remarkable.
Having triggered the magic of the portal once again, Fez again started to back away from it. I dashed to catch him up, patting him on the shoulder as I arrived.
“Fez,” I remarked. “You dropped your flail a while ago, you realise.”
As the barbarian panicked, I dropped the offending weapon into one of my extradimensional pouches and cast a spell.
“Yeah,” I continued. “It’s just through this portal.”
I followed the barbarian through the dimension door and then straight through the portal to Tilagos beyond. He was still swearing at me for fooling him again as I returned his cold iron flail to him.
.oOo.
The four watchers stood solemnly in a semicircle in front of the portal. Tilagos, however, almost smiled as he congratulated us. “You have done well,” said Tylanthros as he approached. “No one has ever succeeded in all of the Trials before. You have proven yourselves worthy.”
“You have proved nothing!” Sayren-Lei suddenly interrupted, stepping forward and shouldering past his brethren. “Slaughtering beasts and Velsharoon-worshipping dogs! Worse, you allowed the Roc King to perish! The trial asked specifically for his living feather, yet he was nonetheless killed!” The other three watchers stared at their brother in shock.
“We didn’t kill the dumb bird,” shouted Endo in irritation. “It was the cleric and his band.”
I tried to interject and placate the fey lord, but he wasn’t having any of it.
“You are no heroes and I declare that none of you shall taste the waters of the Fountain of Dreams,” he shouted with spittle flying from his lips. “I contest your doubtful accomplishments, and demand trial by blood! Only if you pathetic mortals can defeat me shall I consider you worthy of the final secrets of the Order of the Storm.”
“Sayren-Lei has the right,” Tylanthros sighed. “We may not interfere.” Then, bowing, he, Beskawahn and Thadimar retreated some three hundred yards away to watch as Seyren-Lei backed away with his broad-bladed spear waving towards us all. He was a tall figure clad in gossamer-like armour. A cloak apparently fashioned from nettles was wrapped around his shoulders, and a cloud of insects swarmed around him. Over his shoulders poked the four elementally themed banners.
As was so often the case, Flynne was the first to react – he fired an experimental arrow towards Seyren-Lei. As the fey moved to one side, the rustling nettle leaves of his cloak moved almost faster than the eye could follow. The edge of the cloak somehow managed to snatch the arrow out of the air, before twisting and flinging the flame-enchanted missile straight back at my comrade. Distracted as he leapt to one side, Flynne’s other two shots went wide of their target.
Bob’s arrow, however, slammed into Seyren-Lei’s chest with pinpoint accuracy. The many enchantments on his arrows flared into life. Three of the four banners on the fey’s back glowed suddenly, and lightning, fire and ice were all sucked out of the arrow, to flare or crackle up over his shoulders into the banners.
As Seyren-Lei ducked away from Bob’s other arrows, we began to get nervous.
.oOo.
Seyren-Lei gestured, and the ground twisted at his beckoning. A tremendous mass of 6 inch long centipedes spilled out of the ground, from our feet and easily covering ten feet in every direction around us. As we yelled in surprise and pain at the hundreds of tiny bites savaging our ankles and calves, Endo backed away chanting. Once he was 40 feet behind us, he concluded his spell and opened his mouth. A massive spew of acid poured from his mouth and gushing around us all, washing over the creatures and destroying them all – they shrivelled and collapsed around us.
Working in close concert, I cast a spell of hastening, before Janga teleported himself and Fez up close with the fey warrior. Coughing as he swallowed insects, Janga began retching, but Fez grinned as he chewed on the stinging swarm and started hacking. The nettle cloak lashed out to try and snag Fez’s scythe, but the massive blade simply clipped the edge of the cloak off and carved on into the enemy warrior. Three of Fez’s strikes struck home, but the fey seemed to ignore some of the damage.
Deactivating much of the magical powers of his bow, Bob shot at the fey several times, but his arrows seemed to largely glance off or do the tiniest of scratches to the gossamer-clad form. Flynne’s shots similarly failed to do much at all, and Seyren-Lei slashed repeatedly at Fez with the broad-bladed spear, whose blade was wreathed in lightning. Inflicting a deep wound, he snarled a word of power, and Fez abruptly vanished. Looking down at the spot where the barbarian had been standing, I could see a large, angry-looking grey-skinned toad.
Endo was quick to react to this, and cast a spell of his own, gesturing and causing toad-Fez to swell dramatically. He shot upwards until he stood, all claws and leathery flesh of an annis hag, towering over Seyren-Lei.
Experimentally, I cast a spell of my own to turn Flynne invisible, but judging by Seyren-Lei’s idle glance and sneer, the fey was able to see through the spell. Meanwhile, Janga stumbled away from the swarm of stinging insects, still retching. Fez, however, was happy to act despite the insects. Switching to a flail which had grown with him, he smashed downwards with the cold-iron weapon. Although Seyren-Lei’s wounds had been healing, the swift flail-blows left huge bloody wounds on the fey’s lithe body.
Again, Bob’s arrows mostly left tiny rapidly-healed scratches in the fey’s body, though one of them managed to slam into a pressure point causing considerable pain, but the fey warrior was still able to continue. He snarled a spell at Fez, but the savage shook off the magic with a snarl of his own, before gritting his filed teeth at the pain of another slash from the crackling longspear.
Whilst Endo cast a spell, announcing “I wish that my next spell succeed”, I tried unsuccessfully to dispel any magics on the fey, and Flynne moved closer before firing a single cold iron arrow, which struck deeply into Seyren-Lei’s flesh. Meanwhile, whilst simultaneously being healed of all his injuries by Janga, Fez slammed down again and again with his cold iron flail.
Speckled with Bob’s tiny arrows, Seyren-Lei cast two spells in rapid succession, healing himself of a good deal of the damage and then vanishing from sight. From behind me, however, I could hear Endo yell “he’s still there”. Confident that some power of the magical Robe of Eyes that Endo was wearing would let him see through the invisibility, I dropped a mass of glowing magical dust over the area the fey had been standing in. This was followed by Endo’s spell – “Endo’s Dirge of Deathly Drums”.
Wreathed in glittering dust, we could see Seyren-Lei’s glowing form stamping his feet in time with the ghostly drummer Endo had summoned. As he was distracted, he was impaled by arrows from Bob and Flynne, and hammered to the floor by Fez.
As he fell to the ground, the other three fey figures swooped in. With a series of gestures, Seyren-Lei was restored to full health and life, and he turned and bowed to us.
“I must concede,” he announced grudgingly. “You have the power, and you have the right to the Fountain of Knowledge. More, I grant you the Watcher’s Gift.” Saying this, he turned and gathered the four banners from his shoulders, plucked the large fluttering pennants from them, and handed them to us. Assessing their power, we were swift to pass them amongst ourselves as Tylanthros gestured grandly.
“You have earned the right to return the lore of the Order of the Storm to the world,” he told us. “The Age of Worms is upon us, and what the powers of old began so long ago now falls to you to complete. Drink deep and remember. Dream the dreams of the ages.”
We turned where he was pointing, and could see the air shimmer as a vast stone fountain materialized before us. Our minds were assaulted by a rush of memories both alien and familiar, and an almost overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. As we each drank deeply from the fountain’s ice-cold waters, the memories intensified, and the world around us went dark as we floated; timeless and adrift, through endless darkness.
.oOo.
Light was restored to us amidst a rush of noise. Yelling, screaming and the clash of sword on shield. We were standing on a flat rocky outcropping on the edge of a wind blown bluff – I could recognize it as Rift Canyon, but somehow less barren than I might have expected. The trees were being smashed by powerful blasts of magic, however, and titanic legions were trampling the undergrowth into the mud.
Away on the horizon, we could see cities lying in ruin, smoke still rising from crumbling spires as humanoid armies struggled vainly against innumerable legions of the undead which swarmed over the lip of the chasm near our feet. Amongst the tens of thousands of worm-infested corpses writhed titanic centipedes of bone; 40 foot tall scorpions clad in jet black chitinous armour. Other vast undead monstrosities writhed amidst the armies, some still spawning other forms of undead, whilst others crackled with the powers of spells which played over them.
Overhead, a colossal skeletal dragon, scraps of red flesh still hanging from its bones, flew. It gyred and twisted on the air, alternately yelling out massively powerful spells and commands to the troops below.
“You have arrived,” called out a voice, and we spun to see four familiar looking humans looking at us. A younger version of Tylanthros stood before his colleagues, clad in homespun brown robes and clutching a staff. Behind him was a crate.
Showing no signs of recognition, Tylanthros continued.
“The heroes of prophecy, your timing has been perfect. We have been successful in our task; Dragotha’s phylactery is ours. However, his minions pursue us and we must hide it. You must hold off the spawn which claw at the rock beneath us.”
As he spoke, a female in a glittering long silver dress stepped forwards. Somehow, despite our having fallen back in time many centuries, Lashonna strode forwards. “I shall engage Dragotha and his children myself, but I cannot defend against his Swords. They come too, scrambling up to our location even now, along with…something else. Something most unnatural…an abomination. You must hold them off, for all is lost if you fail…” With that final pronouncement, she spread wide her arms and transformed into a magnificent silver dragon. With a single, tremendous beat of her wings, she launched into the air and soared off towards the distant dracolich. As she winged away, Tylanthros spoke again. “We go now, to hide the phylactery within its cradle in Kongen-Thulnir. Save us from the Swords of Kyuss, or the Age of Worms shall doom us all!”
As the undead swarmed over the edge of the small rock plateau, we turned to face them. Ten of the worm-pocked Spawns of Kyuss lurched towards us, under a withering hail of fire from Flynne and Bob. Endo then cast a powerful spell which caused all but three of the undead to halt in their tracks, unable to close on us any further.
As I unleashed a massive fireball on most of them from a staff I had been carrying for just such a purpose, they reacted by clanging their swords together, over and over. The sounds were terrible, but as they struck their blades together I could see dark surges of energy wash out from where they were focussing the powers. In an instant, all 10 of the undead were fully healed, and Endo was twisting in the air under a barrage of the deadly attacks. Each of us writhed and twisted trying to escape the appalling deadly energies.
Janga responded in his own way with a massive curative spell, which healed us of much of our wounds whilst opening lesions in the undead which were pawing the ground in an effort to get closer to us. At that point, Flynne invoked the powers of his banner and called a pillar of flame down on their back ranks wounding many and destroying two, and my second tremendous explosion tore four more of them limb from limb.
Invoking the powers of his own banner (claimed so recently from Seyren-Lei), Fez was clad in skin which was as hard as stone, and he stepped forwards swinging his flail, which was itself covered in a silvery substance he had pulled from his pack. He lashed around himself, crushing the skulls of two of the fire-blasted skeletons. He then smashed yet another as it dashed towards Flynne. The two survivors struck at Janga who had flown round nearer them.
“There’s something big coming,” yelled Endo in alarm as he looked down, and at the same time Janga’s second powerful spell both cured us and damaged the couple of remaining Kyuss-spawn which were still threatening him. As I sang, Bob and Flynne fired arrow after arrow into the surviving undead, before Fez’s alchemically silvered flail carved through them both, his bunched muscles shattering both of their skulls.
As these two collapsed, there was just enough time for Endo to quaff a potion and fade from sight before yet more of the undead lurched onto the top of the plateau, and as they clambered to the top they were followed by a truly gargantuan undead – wormlike but easily 30 feet in length, the creatures’ massive ribs curved around a tight grey leathery sac in its abdomen. Within this, I could see the movement of other shapes, pushing against the sac as though trying to worm their way out.
The massive creature’s head was that of an awesomely large dragon which had been stripped of all flesh. It reared above the plateau before crashing to earth with a roar which shook the blood. Rotten spittle and scraps of tattered flesh pelted me as I staggered back from the creature, aghast.
The creature opened its massive jaws and I could barely move for fear of what was about to happen; then a series of tiny arrows sparked off its skeletal frame. The massive beast roared and twisted, snapping at Bob with scythe-like teeth which clamped down on his leg. The creature’s magical powers caused the goblin archer’s leg to stiffen, as the bones fused partly together.
The little archer yelled in pain, as the massive monster’s ribcage cracked open. The leathery sac writhed as a set of long claws began to tear its way free from within. Amidst a shower of filthy and wretched fluids, three huge forms collapsed to the floor around the skeletal monstrosity. Each of them twitched and unfolded, and the already crowded mesa-top was filled to bursting point with three huge skeletal dragons. As they shook themselves free of their unnatural fluids, two of the Kyuss-spawn were shoved off the top of the rocks. They fell silently to shatter into dozens of wet pieces amidst the battle below.
I dashed away from the monstrosity, blasting the mass of foes behind me with another shot from the dwindling resources of my staff of fireballs. I was alarmed to see the waves of fire simply wash over the three skeletal dragons. Fez was swift to capitalise on the fire-damaged skeletal warriors by laying about himself with the flail; within a trice, two more were smashed and a third seriously damaged.
Endo flew back off the rock, being careful to stay below the level of the aerial fight between Dragotha and Lashonna above us. He started to chant the words of a powerful summoning spell as he went, and then with the dreadful sounds of clanging swords, some of the Kyuss spawn sent reaving blasts of negative energy, which reinforced the other undead on the mesa whilst causing terrible damage to us once more.
Calling on his most powerful restorative magics, Janga cured Bob of all his many ailments, and the diminutive goblin archer then dashed around the edge of the mesa, using the power of the cloak to let him run along the rock walls, firing up and across at one of the skeletal spawn. His arrows were followed by Flynne’s, and the blasts of undead and evil-slaying magics from his powerful bow slew the one injured by Bob and damaged another.
Suddenly the huge monstrosity slithered, scratching at the rock to bite at Fez; the huge teeth slammed over his shoulder, and with a rattle it sucked at his marrow. I could see his face turn grey with the terrible damage, and his shoulder seemed suddenly incredibly stiff and hard to move.
The creature (which Endo later told me was a ‘Boneyard of Kyuss’) had by this point fully birthed the three skeletal dragons, which slithered messily across the rocks to chew and slash at Janga and Fez.
Almost all the resources of the powerful staff of fireballs were spent as I triggered it once again to immolate four more of the spawn shattered under the power of the blast. Fez hacked down one of the few last spawn standing, before slamming his flail again and again into the vast undead which was the Boneyard of Kyuss. Chips and flakes of bone flew from the 10 foot wide dragon’s head on the creature’s body, which was followed by a lancing green ray from Endo. The Boneyard shook off the worst of this spell of disintegration, but it still drilled a deep furrow across the beast’s ribcage.
As Janga healed himself, Bob and Flynne fired up at the monstrosity, ignoring the ‘lesser’ undead dragons around us. I could see Flynne practically screaming in frustration as he fired a powerful arrow of slaying up at the Boneyard, which had no more effect than cracking off a rib.
Rearing in pain, the beast slammed down once again, but came up empty as Fez deflected the vast teeth with his hovering rock-shield, as Bob also escaped largely unscathed from the unbridled savagery of one of the undead dragons which slashed, clawed and slammed down towards him.
As Endo summoned an enormous earth elemental to join in the melee, I blasted it once more with another tremendous gout of fire, feeling the staff to be almost entirely empty. The summoned elemental raised both hands over its head, and crashed them down atop the draconic skull of the Boneyard, which shattered into a dozen pieces under the titanic strength of the elemental and the entire beast collapsed to the floor.
As we turned to deal with the last spawn and the three dragons, I could hear a shriek from above. Looking up, I saw Dragotha’s rotting teeth slam closed on the draconic true form of Lashonna. She wailed and fell, thousands of feet from the sky above deep into the chasm. I did not hear her touch the ground.
At the same time, gazing around, there was no sign of the four druids and their heavy burden. We had done it. They had escaped to hide the phylactery, and the knowledge of its whereabouts, so that we might find it again in many hundreds of years time.
With a gut-wrenching feeling, we fell forwards through time once more, to stand on the island of Tilagos. However this time the island had been changed. The portal was ruined, showing the signs of a millennium or more’s aging. The storms ringing the island had ceased abruptly, and the island itself was barren and ruined. We turned to Janga, and the little cleric cast a spell which would take us to the Free City, where we could celebrate, and from there, back to Mage Point where we could discuss matters further with Manzorian.
After a couple of teleport spells and a spree of shopping, we found ourselves back on the island standing in front of the portal. We had managed to find Flynne in the Free City, and he had greeted Bob with a few professional questions about his choice of weapons. Closer scrutiny by the sharp-eyed elf showed signs of make-up, and after a few minutes, we realised that the ‘halfling’ was in fact a goblin, cunningly made up to look like a more ‘acceptable’ race. However in our party consisting of a slow, heavily armoured gnome cleric to the god of travel, a dragon-scaled elf, a 6 foot Halfling, a half-orc necromancer and a single human bard, the goblin was barely even remarkable.
Having triggered the magic of the portal once again, Fez again started to back away from it. I dashed to catch him up, patting him on the shoulder as I arrived.
“Fez,” I remarked. “You dropped your flail a while ago, you realise.”
As the barbarian panicked, I dropped the offending weapon into one of my extradimensional pouches and cast a spell.
“Yeah,” I continued. “It’s just through this portal.”
I followed the barbarian through the dimension door and then straight through the portal to Tilagos beyond. He was still swearing at me for fooling him again as I returned his cold iron flail to him.
.oOo.
The four watchers stood solemnly in a semicircle in front of the portal. Tilagos, however, almost smiled as he congratulated us. “You have done well,” said Tylanthros as he approached. “No one has ever succeeded in all of the Trials before. You have proven yourselves worthy.”
“You have proved nothing!” Sayren-Lei suddenly interrupted, stepping forward and shouldering past his brethren. “Slaughtering beasts and Velsharoon-worshipping dogs! Worse, you allowed the Roc King to perish! The trial asked specifically for his living feather, yet he was nonetheless killed!” The other three watchers stared at their brother in shock.
“We didn’t kill the dumb bird,” shouted Endo in irritation. “It was the cleric and his band.”
I tried to interject and placate the fey lord, but he wasn’t having any of it.
“You are no heroes and I declare that none of you shall taste the waters of the Fountain of Dreams,” he shouted with spittle flying from his lips. “I contest your doubtful accomplishments, and demand trial by blood! Only if you pathetic mortals can defeat me shall I consider you worthy of the final secrets of the Order of the Storm.”
“Sayren-Lei has the right,” Tylanthros sighed. “We may not interfere.” Then, bowing, he, Beskawahn and Thadimar retreated some three hundred yards away to watch as Seyren-Lei backed away with his broad-bladed spear waving towards us all. He was a tall figure clad in gossamer-like armour. A cloak apparently fashioned from nettles was wrapped around his shoulders, and a cloud of insects swarmed around him. Over his shoulders poked the four elementally themed banners.
As was so often the case, Flynne was the first to react – he fired an experimental arrow towards Seyren-Lei. As the fey moved to one side, the rustling nettle leaves of his cloak moved almost faster than the eye could follow. The edge of the cloak somehow managed to snatch the arrow out of the air, before twisting and flinging the flame-enchanted missile straight back at my comrade. Distracted as he leapt to one side, Flynne’s other two shots went wide of their target.
Bob’s arrow, however, slammed into Seyren-Lei’s chest with pinpoint accuracy. The many enchantments on his arrows flared into life. Three of the four banners on the fey’s back glowed suddenly, and lightning, fire and ice were all sucked out of the arrow, to flare or crackle up over his shoulders into the banners.
As Seyren-Lei ducked away from Bob’s other arrows, we began to get nervous.
.oOo.
Seyren-Lei gestured, and the ground twisted at his beckoning. A tremendous mass of 6 inch long centipedes spilled out of the ground, from our feet and easily covering ten feet in every direction around us. As we yelled in surprise and pain at the hundreds of tiny bites savaging our ankles and calves, Endo backed away chanting. Once he was 40 feet behind us, he concluded his spell and opened his mouth. A massive spew of acid poured from his mouth and gushing around us all, washing over the creatures and destroying them all – they shrivelled and collapsed around us.
Working in close concert, I cast a spell of hastening, before Janga teleported himself and Fez up close with the fey warrior. Coughing as he swallowed insects, Janga began retching, but Fez grinned as he chewed on the stinging swarm and started hacking. The nettle cloak lashed out to try and snag Fez’s scythe, but the massive blade simply clipped the edge of the cloak off and carved on into the enemy warrior. Three of Fez’s strikes struck home, but the fey seemed to ignore some of the damage.
Deactivating much of the magical powers of his bow, Bob shot at the fey several times, but his arrows seemed to largely glance off or do the tiniest of scratches to the gossamer-clad form. Flynne’s shots similarly failed to do much at all, and Seyren-Lei slashed repeatedly at Fez with the broad-bladed spear, whose blade was wreathed in lightning. Inflicting a deep wound, he snarled a word of power, and Fez abruptly vanished. Looking down at the spot where the barbarian had been standing, I could see a large, angry-looking grey-skinned toad.
Endo was quick to react to this, and cast a spell of his own, gesturing and causing toad-Fez to swell dramatically. He shot upwards until he stood, all claws and leathery flesh of an annis hag, towering over Seyren-Lei.
Experimentally, I cast a spell of my own to turn Flynne invisible, but judging by Seyren-Lei’s idle glance and sneer, the fey was able to see through the spell. Meanwhile, Janga stumbled away from the swarm of stinging insects, still retching. Fez, however, was happy to act despite the insects. Switching to a flail which had grown with him, he smashed downwards with the cold-iron weapon. Although Seyren-Lei’s wounds had been healing, the swift flail-blows left huge bloody wounds on the fey’s lithe body.
Again, Bob’s arrows mostly left tiny rapidly-healed scratches in the fey’s body, though one of them managed to slam into a pressure point causing considerable pain, but the fey warrior was still able to continue. He snarled a spell at Fez, but the savage shook off the magic with a snarl of his own, before gritting his filed teeth at the pain of another slash from the crackling longspear.
Whilst Endo cast a spell, announcing “I wish that my next spell succeed”, I tried unsuccessfully to dispel any magics on the fey, and Flynne moved closer before firing a single cold iron arrow, which struck deeply into Seyren-Lei’s flesh. Meanwhile, whilst simultaneously being healed of all his injuries by Janga, Fez slammed down again and again with his cold iron flail.
Speckled with Bob’s tiny arrows, Seyren-Lei cast two spells in rapid succession, healing himself of a good deal of the damage and then vanishing from sight. From behind me, however, I could hear Endo yell “he’s still there”. Confident that some power of the magical Robe of Eyes that Endo was wearing would let him see through the invisibility, I dropped a mass of glowing magical dust over the area the fey had been standing in. This was followed by Endo’s spell – “Endo’s Dirge of Deathly Drums”.
Wreathed in glittering dust, we could see Seyren-Lei’s glowing form stamping his feet in time with the ghostly drummer Endo had summoned. As he was distracted, he was impaled by arrows from Bob and Flynne, and hammered to the floor by Fez.
As he fell to the ground, the other three fey figures swooped in. With a series of gestures, Seyren-Lei was restored to full health and life, and he turned and bowed to us.
“I must concede,” he announced grudgingly. “You have the power, and you have the right to the Fountain of Knowledge. More, I grant you the Watcher’s Gift.” Saying this, he turned and gathered the four banners from his shoulders, plucked the large fluttering pennants from them, and handed them to us. Assessing their power, we were swift to pass them amongst ourselves as Tylanthros gestured grandly.
“You have earned the right to return the lore of the Order of the Storm to the world,” he told us. “The Age of Worms is upon us, and what the powers of old began so long ago now falls to you to complete. Drink deep and remember. Dream the dreams of the ages.”
We turned where he was pointing, and could see the air shimmer as a vast stone fountain materialized before us. Our minds were assaulted by a rush of memories both alien and familiar, and an almost overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. As we each drank deeply from the fountain’s ice-cold waters, the memories intensified, and the world around us went dark as we floated; timeless and adrift, through endless darkness.
.oOo.
Light was restored to us amidst a rush of noise. Yelling, screaming and the clash of sword on shield. We were standing on a flat rocky outcropping on the edge of a wind blown bluff – I could recognize it as Rift Canyon, but somehow less barren than I might have expected. The trees were being smashed by powerful blasts of magic, however, and titanic legions were trampling the undergrowth into the mud.
Away on the horizon, we could see cities lying in ruin, smoke still rising from crumbling spires as humanoid armies struggled vainly against innumerable legions of the undead which swarmed over the lip of the chasm near our feet. Amongst the tens of thousands of worm-infested corpses writhed titanic centipedes of bone; 40 foot tall scorpions clad in jet black chitinous armour. Other vast undead monstrosities writhed amidst the armies, some still spawning other forms of undead, whilst others crackled with the powers of spells which played over them.
Overhead, a colossal skeletal dragon, scraps of red flesh still hanging from its bones, flew. It gyred and twisted on the air, alternately yelling out massively powerful spells and commands to the troops below.
“You have arrived,” called out a voice, and we spun to see four familiar looking humans looking at us. A younger version of Tylanthros stood before his colleagues, clad in homespun brown robes and clutching a staff. Behind him was a crate.
Showing no signs of recognition, Tylanthros continued.
“The heroes of prophecy, your timing has been perfect. We have been successful in our task; Dragotha’s phylactery is ours. However, his minions pursue us and we must hide it. You must hold off the spawn which claw at the rock beneath us.”
As he spoke, a female in a glittering long silver dress stepped forwards. Somehow, despite our having fallen back in time many centuries, Lashonna strode forwards. “I shall engage Dragotha and his children myself, but I cannot defend against his Swords. They come too, scrambling up to our location even now, along with…something else. Something most unnatural…an abomination. You must hold them off, for all is lost if you fail…” With that final pronouncement, she spread wide her arms and transformed into a magnificent silver dragon. With a single, tremendous beat of her wings, she launched into the air and soared off towards the distant dracolich. As she winged away, Tylanthros spoke again. “We go now, to hide the phylactery within its cradle in Kongen-Thulnir. Save us from the Swords of Kyuss, or the Age of Worms shall doom us all!”
As the undead swarmed over the edge of the small rock plateau, we turned to face them. Ten of the worm-pocked Spawns of Kyuss lurched towards us, under a withering hail of fire from Flynne and Bob. Endo then cast a powerful spell which caused all but three of the undead to halt in their tracks, unable to close on us any further.
As I unleashed a massive fireball on most of them from a staff I had been carrying for just such a purpose, they reacted by clanging their swords together, over and over. The sounds were terrible, but as they struck their blades together I could see dark surges of energy wash out from where they were focussing the powers. In an instant, all 10 of the undead were fully healed, and Endo was twisting in the air under a barrage of the deadly attacks. Each of us writhed and twisted trying to escape the appalling deadly energies.
Janga responded in his own way with a massive curative spell, which healed us of much of our wounds whilst opening lesions in the undead which were pawing the ground in an effort to get closer to us. At that point, Flynne invoked the powers of his banner and called a pillar of flame down on their back ranks wounding many and destroying two, and my second tremendous explosion tore four more of them limb from limb.
Invoking the powers of his own banner (claimed so recently from Seyren-Lei), Fez was clad in skin which was as hard as stone, and he stepped forwards swinging his flail, which was itself covered in a silvery substance he had pulled from his pack. He lashed around himself, crushing the skulls of two of the fire-blasted skeletons. He then smashed yet another as it dashed towards Flynne. The two survivors struck at Janga who had flown round nearer them.
“There’s something big coming,” yelled Endo in alarm as he looked down, and at the same time Janga’s second powerful spell both cured us and damaged the couple of remaining Kyuss-spawn which were still threatening him. As I sang, Bob and Flynne fired arrow after arrow into the surviving undead, before Fez’s alchemically silvered flail carved through them both, his bunched muscles shattering both of their skulls.
As these two collapsed, there was just enough time for Endo to quaff a potion and fade from sight before yet more of the undead lurched onto the top of the plateau, and as they clambered to the top they were followed by a truly gargantuan undead – wormlike but easily 30 feet in length, the creatures’ massive ribs curved around a tight grey leathery sac in its abdomen. Within this, I could see the movement of other shapes, pushing against the sac as though trying to worm their way out.
The massive creature’s head was that of an awesomely large dragon which had been stripped of all flesh. It reared above the plateau before crashing to earth with a roar which shook the blood. Rotten spittle and scraps of tattered flesh pelted me as I staggered back from the creature, aghast.
The creature opened its massive jaws and I could barely move for fear of what was about to happen; then a series of tiny arrows sparked off its skeletal frame. The massive beast roared and twisted, snapping at Bob with scythe-like teeth which clamped down on his leg. The creature’s magical powers caused the goblin archer’s leg to stiffen, as the bones fused partly together.
The little archer yelled in pain, as the massive monster’s ribcage cracked open. The leathery sac writhed as a set of long claws began to tear its way free from within. Amidst a shower of filthy and wretched fluids, three huge forms collapsed to the floor around the skeletal monstrosity. Each of them twitched and unfolded, and the already crowded mesa-top was filled to bursting point with three huge skeletal dragons. As they shook themselves free of their unnatural fluids, two of the Kyuss-spawn were shoved off the top of the rocks. They fell silently to shatter into dozens of wet pieces amidst the battle below.
I dashed away from the monstrosity, blasting the mass of foes behind me with another shot from the dwindling resources of my staff of fireballs. I was alarmed to see the waves of fire simply wash over the three skeletal dragons. Fez was swift to capitalise on the fire-damaged skeletal warriors by laying about himself with the flail; within a trice, two more were smashed and a third seriously damaged.
Endo flew back off the rock, being careful to stay below the level of the aerial fight between Dragotha and Lashonna above us. He started to chant the words of a powerful summoning spell as he went, and then with the dreadful sounds of clanging swords, some of the Kyuss spawn sent reaving blasts of negative energy, which reinforced the other undead on the mesa whilst causing terrible damage to us once more.
Calling on his most powerful restorative magics, Janga cured Bob of all his many ailments, and the diminutive goblin archer then dashed around the edge of the mesa, using the power of the cloak to let him run along the rock walls, firing up and across at one of the skeletal spawn. His arrows were followed by Flynne’s, and the blasts of undead and evil-slaying magics from his powerful bow slew the one injured by Bob and damaged another.
Suddenly the huge monstrosity slithered, scratching at the rock to bite at Fez; the huge teeth slammed over his shoulder, and with a rattle it sucked at his marrow. I could see his face turn grey with the terrible damage, and his shoulder seemed suddenly incredibly stiff and hard to move.
The creature (which Endo later told me was a ‘Boneyard of Kyuss’) had by this point fully birthed the three skeletal dragons, which slithered messily across the rocks to chew and slash at Janga and Fez.
Almost all the resources of the powerful staff of fireballs were spent as I triggered it once again to immolate four more of the spawn shattered under the power of the blast. Fez hacked down one of the few last spawn standing, before slamming his flail again and again into the vast undead which was the Boneyard of Kyuss. Chips and flakes of bone flew from the 10 foot wide dragon’s head on the creature’s body, which was followed by a lancing green ray from Endo. The Boneyard shook off the worst of this spell of disintegration, but it still drilled a deep furrow across the beast’s ribcage.
As Janga healed himself, Bob and Flynne fired up at the monstrosity, ignoring the ‘lesser’ undead dragons around us. I could see Flynne practically screaming in frustration as he fired a powerful arrow of slaying up at the Boneyard, which had no more effect than cracking off a rib.
Rearing in pain, the beast slammed down once again, but came up empty as Fez deflected the vast teeth with his hovering rock-shield, as Bob also escaped largely unscathed from the unbridled savagery of one of the undead dragons which slashed, clawed and slammed down towards him.
As Endo summoned an enormous earth elemental to join in the melee, I blasted it once more with another tremendous gout of fire, feeling the staff to be almost entirely empty. The summoned elemental raised both hands over its head, and crashed them down atop the draconic skull of the Boneyard, which shattered into a dozen pieces under the titanic strength of the elemental and the entire beast collapsed to the floor.
As we turned to deal with the last spawn and the three dragons, I could hear a shriek from above. Looking up, I saw Dragotha’s rotting teeth slam closed on the draconic true form of Lashonna. She wailed and fell, thousands of feet from the sky above deep into the chasm. I did not hear her touch the ground.
At the same time, gazing around, there was no sign of the four druids and their heavy burden. We had done it. They had escaped to hide the phylactery, and the knowledge of its whereabouts, so that we might find it again in many hundreds of years time.
With a gut-wrenching feeling, we fell forwards through time once more, to stand on the island of Tilagos. However this time the island had been changed. The portal was ruined, showing the signs of a millennium or more’s aging. The storms ringing the island had ceased abruptly, and the island itself was barren and ruined. We turned to Janga, and the little cleric cast a spell which would take us to the Free City, where we could celebrate, and from there, back to Mage Point where we could discuss matters further with Manzorian.
Mathew_Freeman
First Post
Another titanic battle!
I'm loving the action in this story - so much fun to read about!
I'm loving the action in this story - so much fun to read about!
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