The Middle of Elsewhere (D&D 3.5 campaign)

Our D&D 3.5 "Ghourmand Vale" campaign, DMed by my friend Dan, is fast coming to a close - he has three more adventures planned for the next three Wednesday evening game sessions, and then he returns the DM reins back over to my son Logan. Logan has decided his next campaign will be called "The Middle of Elsewhere" and it has an interesting premise: there's a small village that, for reasons unknown and not understood, plane shifts on the same day every year, landing on a random (?) plane, where it remains for the following year. The village is surrounded by a bubble of breathable air no matter where it ends up, so the inhabitants of the village (whose name has also been lost to the mists of time; the inhabitants have taken to calling it "Elsewhere") won't suffer any ill effects from having suddenly been plunked into the middle of, say, the Elemental Plane of Water for a year.

This situation has some unusual side effects. As a result of the village's frequent plane-hopping, there are creatures from a wide variety of planes who have decided to "come along for the ride," so to speak. And anyone born in Elsewhere picks up traits from the plane the village was on for the majority of their gestation time, which means everyone born in Elsewhere ends up with a template. The template does not automatically affect the newborn's alignment or mental outlook in any way; you could run a good-aligned PC with the half-fiend template, for example, if your PC simply had the misfortunate of being born in Elsewhere while it was parked on a layer of the Abyss for a year.

So our first choice, as players, was to decide what templates we wanted our PCs to have, and we'd be starting off at whatever level allowed everyone to have a PC of the same general power level as the others. As it turned out, we all chose templates with a +2 Level Adjustment, so we'll be starting this campaign at 3rd level, running 1st-level PCs with a +2 Level Adjustment.

My character is Avoroth Bleakborn, a fiendish human cleric of Boccob. He's neutral evil, because I wanted to take this opportunity to run an evil character in a manner in which he'll still work well with others. Of course, I intend for Avoroth to start out as a complete and total prick, looking down upon others and thinking he's the smartest one in the room (no matter what room he's in and who else might be in it with him). I intend for him to mellow over the course of the campaign, and eventually learn the value of teamwork, but to begin with he'll see himself as the obvious leader and the other PCs as expendable pawns. (I'm patterning him after Kerr Avon from "Blake's 7" - an insufferable character if there ever was one.) His campaign goal, as a cleric of the God of Knowledge, is to discover how to "steer" Elsewhere to he can take it to only the desirable planes. Avoroth doesn't have any "standard" fiendish features like horns, a tail, or cloven hooves - he looks like an ordinary human, save for his sharklike eyes, which are all black. Here's what I'm using for Avoroth's image:



Dan decided to also run a human PC, but his is a druid with the shadow template, as Wilbur Von Schattenwalde was born on the Plane of Shadow. Logan's decided that any time Wilber uses a summon nature's ally spell, the summoned creature will show up with the shadow template, but any animal companions will have the template of whatever the local plane was when it was called into service. As we're starting the campaign at the end of the year-long visit to Mount Celestia, Wilber's original animal companion will be a Medium celestial viper named Goldie. Here's the image Dan selected for Wilber:



Dan's wife Vicki opted to run a celestial elf witch, Amris Goodwitch, using the wizard character class. (Vicki prefers to call her wizards "witches" - I think it might be a Harry Potter thing.) She has a celestial owl named Pivot as her familiar. Here's the image she chose to represent Amris:



And when this campaign was first being envisioned, we'd expected my nephew Harry to be playing with us, and he had tentatively decided to run a half-vampire elf ranger who was born on the Negative Energy Plane. He never did come up with a name or settle on an image for his PC, but in the end it doesn't really matter, as he'll be starting college in the fall and doesn't wish to join in either this campaign or my own next one, which should also be starting up in the next month or so. So it looks like we'll be running just the three PCs, who will be part of an exploratory team that checks out the new plane once Elsewhere arrives at its new home for the year. Logan's said there will be several "time jumps" in the campaign; we'll likely spend something like 3-6 adventures on a given plane before we fast-forward to the end of that year and Elsewhere finds its next new home. That will allow him to use a lot of different planes over the course of the campaign.

It ought to be an interesting run!

Johnathan

I recall playing a snobbish PC named Pompus Assintent. He was a spoiled son of a noble but came around after several levels.

We play our first session tonight...but first, a lineup change! Joe, son of our players Dan and Vicki (and a former regular player in our other campaigns, until he went off to college), has decided to roll up a PC for this campaign, especially after Logan emphasized that if he ever wanted to run a PC in this campaign, it would be best if he were there at the beginning, even if it meant his dad running him in his absence. And that's exactly what will happen tonight, as Joe's on the late shift tonight at the place where he works and will miss our first session.

But here's his PC: a fiendish orc fighter named Gonkle Bu'Onk. Logan did some last-minute scrambling to get him into the adventure (and figure out his heritage - how a small band of orcs ended up in Elsewhere before Gonkle was born), but we're all set to go. Here's the image of Gonkle Joe sent me:



Johnathan

ADVENTURE 1: FINALS WEEK

PC Roster:

Game Session Date: 23 July 2025

- - -

Shift Day was fast approaching; the town of Elsewhere had spent close to a year parked on a layer of Mount Celestia, a realm of permanent midnight, with clear, bright stars overhead. Today was the start of Finals Week, when the new recruits who had spent the year training to be planar scouts would demonstrate their mastery of the training they'd received over the course of the last year, or would spend the next cycle still in training, honing their skills until they had proved their worthiness to be one of the "first contact" teams to be sent out to explore whatever new plane the town had shifted to that year. They'd be the ones seeking out new allies, gathering intelligence on potential new adversaries, determining the availability of local food animals and edible plants, and everything else that went along with keeping a disparate populace hale and healthy for the next year in their new, strange environment.

Lined up in the training yard of Scout Headquarters, the newest band of four trainees stood at attention, ready to begin their testing. An open-topped wooden barrel stood before them. Wilbur Von Schattenwalde, a human druid born on the Plane of Shadows, wore his weathered leather armor and held a scimitar in his hand; before him was Goldie, a viper he'd acquired shortly after his graduation from the first druidic circle. Goldie was named for his bright, glinting scales; as a celestial being, Goldie was as bright and colorful as his master was dark and shadowy.

Beside them stood Gonkle Bu'Onk, a rather dim-witted orc born on one of the fiendish planes; despite his fiendish heritage, he had rather enjoyed the past year on Mount Celestia, since he greatly preferred the constant midnight to days with a bright, burning sun that hurt his eyes. He wielded a warhammer and was eager for the testing to begin, to show off his combat skills. That's where he was most likely to shine; he left the more intellectual aspects of the scout training to those better suited to them. That was why they were always sent out as teams of four, or so they'd been told.

The human standing next to Gonkle wore an expression of irritation on his pinched face; this was Avoroth Bleakborn, a human born when Elsewhere spent a year parked in Hell, and more than anything else he just wanted to get on with it. He knew fully well he was prepared in his role as a planar scout, and just hoped the morons he'd been saddled with wouldn't bring him down and force him to waste another year in training with them. He wore a chain shirt and wielded a quarterstaff, but as a cleric of Boccob he preferred not to have to rely upon either; Avoroth felt his place was on the back line, directing the expendable members of the team with his superior intellect and vast knowledge of...well, just about everything, really. Everything worth learning about, in any case.

The final member of the team stood beside Avoroth, and her attitude was the exact opposite of his: while he was brooding and prickly, Amris Goodwitch was bright and perky. Mount Celestia was practically home to the elven witch, who had been born on a celestial plane herself. Perched upon her shoulder was her familiar Pivot, a celestial barred owl who observed the events around him with unblinking eyes. Right now, he was staring at three of the town's four leaders, here to observe and/or judge the scout trainees' performances at their assigned tasks.

The first of these observers was Father Solaire, a grizzled but well-respected solar. At his side was Obsidian Omega Shi, a kolyrut inevitable, a mechanical construct roughly the size and shape of a man. But it was the third of the three leaders who would be overseeing this first test: Lady Kalistra slithered to the center of the testing yard and explained the exercise. "This first test will appraise your combat training, to see if your fighting instructors have wasted their time over the past year, or if you've actually picked up a modicum of martial prowess." The marilith demon twisted her serpentine body, turning her back upon the trainees. "As you can see, I have four of my wrists bound together behind my back, leaving just my primary sword hand for fighting and a free hand for documentation." She turned back around to face her foes, her gleaming longsword in one hand and a marking stick in the other. "At the command, we will fight each other: you must strike me ten times before I am able to take you out. Each of you will dip your weapon of choice into the barrel of green paint, so any hits upon me will leave a mark." As a marilith, her scaly body was able to ignore most blows; the paint-marks would be an easy way to document attacks that at least managed to hit her, even if they dealt her no damage.

One by one, the four scout trainees dipped their weapons into the green paint. Lady Kalistra held up a green-tipped rod she bore in her off hand. "I will mark myself when I am struck by attacks other than your weapons," she said. "That's the test: ATTACK AT WILL!"

Amris wasted no time, firing off a ray of frost spell that sent a chilling beam of cold energy flashing at the marilith demon. But Lady Kalistra didn't even need to dodge for the ray to go sailing past her head. Avoroth, not wishing to be chided by the leaders for a "poor attitude" (again), choked back the withering comment he wished to make. But Pivot leaped forward and took wing, flying in a wide arc around the courtyard, setting himself up for a strike from the rear against the trainee's demonic foe.

Avoroth held up his symbol of Boccob and bestowed a bless spell upon the rest of the group, remaining in place at the back while giving them a combat benefit that would hopefully encourage them to leap into battle against an obviously superior foe. (The cleric had no doubts: if this battle were for real, the marilith could easily take out all four of them without breaking a sweat, even with four arms tied behind her back.) Wilbur likewise opted to remain where he stood, casting a summoning spell that brought a shadow owl into the impromptu arena; it manifested behind Lady Kalistra's head and swooped in for a strike with its talons, making the first successful attack upon the demon. Lady Kalistra smirked and made a green line upon her right arm with the paint-covered rod she held in her left. "That's one," she marked off.

Goldie slithered forward, seeking to bite his fellow serpentine creature. Before he could get close enough to bite her, though, she struck out with her flashing blade and cut him along the side of his neck. The viper took the blow and then struck forward, getting in a hit with its venomous fangs, although the demon's only reaction was to make a second mark upon her arm. "Two," she intoned, "both from animals the druid sent out to do his fighting for him." Then she almost absently brought her sword down upon the serpent, dropping it unmoving to the ground with a single, second blow. Wilbur looked worriedly at his bleeding viper companion and darted a glance in Father Solaire's direction; he assumed the solar would step in with healing spells if it became necessary, although he very much doubted that would have been a consideration had Lady Kalistra had her own way. But Father Solaire looked stoically on, giving no indication he was going to step in; either he was planning on seeing how the team would react to this situation, already knew the serpent would be fine for now - or, at worst, Goldie was already dead and there was nothing to be done about it.

Gonkle screamed an attack roar and charged forward, brandishing his warhammer. But his attack likewise missed, and the marilith's smirk grew wider. Amris fired off another spell from where she stood, this time a magic missile that unerringly hit its target. "Three," announced Lady Kalistra, making a third mark upon her arm. Then Pivot dived in from behind, and she upgraded her tally to "Four."

"Bloody Hell," grumbled Avoroth, racing forward to attack the marilith with his quarterstaff, seeing as only Gronkle was apparently willing to go face their foe in hand-to-hand combat. (Plus, he didn't have any attack spells at the ready and didn't wish to appear fearful of getting his hands dirty in a fight.) But his charge fared no better than had the orc's, and he took a hit from the marilith's sword across his shoulder blade, staining his tabard with blood and doing nothing to lighten his bleak mood. Then Wilbur finally decided to join the fray, getting in a hit with his scimitar while Lady Kalistra was focusing upon Avoroth. "Five," intoned the marilith, sending Avoroth's mood to even blacker depths: was he no more than bait, to be sent forth as a distraction while his lessers racked up points? He stepped back and cast a cure light wounds spell upon himself, closing up the seeping wound across his upper chest.

Gonkle swung again at his foe, flailing wildly and coming nowhere near to making a mark upon the demon's scaly hide. (The flecks of green paint he sent flying wildly in all directions didn't count.) But Lady Kalistra swung her blade at the orc and made a solid connection against his armor, showing him how it was done.

Amris cast a second ray of frost spell, sending it flying over the marilith's head and eliciting a snort of derision Avoroth couldn't hold back. But then the combatants finally started working more like a team, ganging up on the marilith from opposite directions; Gonkle finally scored his first hit, and Wilbur got his second - even Avoroth managed to strike the marilith a glancing blow with his quarterstaff. But it was Pivot the owl who got in the tenth hit, and with a final call of "Ten!" Lady Kalistra reached her sword blade behind her back and severed the rope binding her other wrists.

"Congratulations on your first victory," replied Father Solaire, stepping forward and applying a healing spell to Goldie, bringing him back up to full consciousness and perfect health. "Your final test will take place in an abandoned shrine, two and a half days directly northwest. Your test will be administered there. Leave now, if you please."

"Immediately," echoed Obsidian Omega Shi. Surprised at the brusqueness of the order, they were mollified somewhat when they saw backpacks of supplies had been set aside for them; each strapped on a pack and they began their trek at once.

"I would suggest," observed Avoroth dryly to Amris as they left the village, "you rely more heavily upon magic missile spells. You seem to fare better with spells that do all the targeting for you."

"Thank you for the concern," replied Amris, doing her best to ignore him. Some people insisted on dwelling upon the negative!

The rest of the first day was uneventful, and they made camp under the same stars they'd been trekking under all day. It was the next morning, probably close to noon or so (although it was difficult to determine for sure when the sky remained at midnight all day and all night), when they faced their next bit of excitement. Passing through a field of scrub brush and the occasional felled tree, they were attacked by a trio of canines. "Blink dogs!" surmised Avoroth, judging from their having just appeared out of thin air like that; he'd read of the beasts but had never seen one for real. Amris frowned; she thought she'd heard some mumbling behind her before the dogs showed up, but she couldn't be sure. But she cast a magic missile spell at the closest of the dogs, and Pivot swooped in from behind to finish it off with a slash of his talons. It popped away, strengthening the cleric's belief they were facing a small pack of blink dogs.

"Hey," called out Amris, a sudden thought crossing her mind. Since this was a celestial plane they were on, perhaps these were simply local celestial dogs. "Try playing with them," she suggested. "Maybe if you throw them a stick, they'll stop and chase it!"

"Sound advice, save for two points," argued Avoroth. "One, you're a flighty elf; two, you're a woman. I tend to distrust suggestions from either." He stepped forward and swung his quarterstaff at the nearest dog, clobbering it in the side of the head and causing it to howl in pain. A wicked smile spread across the cleric's face, which lasted up to the point both remaining dogs focused their attacks upon him, smiting evil for good measure.

"Hang on," called out Wilbur, rushing forward to attack the nearest dog with his scimitar. He swung at the dog but it missed as the dog dodged to the side - not blinking away, as would have likely happened had these been blink dogs as Avoroth had erroneously surmised. Goldie fared a little better, biting one of the dogs with his venomous fangs, although the canine was able to resist the worst effects of the poison. But Gonkle was there beside the golden-scaled serpent, and he finished the second dog off with a blow from his warhammer that crushed its skull. It, too, vanished upon death.

There was the sudden sound of whispered words behind the group, and then suddenly another trio of celestial dogs appeared nearby. Amris slew the last of the original three with a magic missile spell, while Avoroth stumbled away and cast a cure light wounds spell upon himself. Blasted dogs! he cursed to himself.

The three new arrivals all raced to Wilbur, growling and snapping. But the midnight realm was practically made for the shadow druid, and he easily evaded their snapping jaws by sliding into the shadows, making it difficult for them to tell where exactly he was. One by one, the group slew the celestial dogs, teaming up and focusing their attacks upon one at a time. Before too long, they were all dead, leaving no traces of their existence but trampled grass where they'd fought.

"We're not done here," snarled Avoroth. "There's an invisible spellcaster around here somewhere - spread out and find him!"

"Whoa, whoa - hold off!" called out a squeaky voice. "It's me!" Dropping his invisibility, the spellcaster was revealed as Proctor Dorjin Fizzlegold, a one-legged, axiomatic gnome with an intricate mechanical leg at the end of the stump where his original left leg ended. "I'm just here to follow your progress on your travels to the shrine, and to assess your capabilities against a thematically appropriate summons to test your combat ability in a real-world situation. Hence, celestial dogs on a celestial plane."

"I believe the four of us are 'thematically appropriate' foes against invisible, busybody gnomes," threatened Avoroth, but he knew he couldn't do anything to back up his threats, for the gnomish Proctor was part of their evaluation. "Come on," he snarled, "let's be off!" And he strode forward in the way they'd been headed, straight northeast from Elsewhere. If the gimpy gnome wished to follow along, he'd better be able to keep up.

On their third day of travel, the group arrived at the shrine. It was carved into the face of a low cliff, with wide, stone stairs leading up to a central chamber flanked by statues of angelic beings. "Wait, that's not right!" declared Dorjin, who had in fact kept pace with the scout trainees and arrived at the shrine beside them. "There's a body lying there in the entry chamber!"

Sure enough, there was indeed a body lying on the floor in the chamber ahead. Amris immediately sent Pivot out to reconnoiter the area, while she cast a detect magic spell. "The whole area ahead is magical," she told the others. Avoroth cautiously approached, expecting trouble. Behind him, Wilbur cast a shillelagh spell and followed suit, stepping up the stairs and entering the shrine beside the cleric of Boccob.

"He's alive," announced Avoroth. "But look at the bite marks on his neck. Two here, like those of a vampire, but far too many others - a ghoul, perhaps? In any case, I'm surprised he isn't dead."

"That's the proctor who was supposed to set up the challenges here in the shrine for you to overcome," Dorjin said.

"So this isn't part of the test?" asked Gonkle, who had followed behind.

"It most certainly is not!" declared Dorjin, who started tending to the fallen man's wounds. But Avoroth had his doubts; this could very well be part of the test, to see how they reacted to unexpected situations. He wouldn't put it past them to try something like that - he'd probably have done something similar, had he been in charge of testing new recruits.

There was a pile of colored stones all around the victim, where what had likely been a mosaic had collapsed, revealing passageways to the right and left just behind the entryway. There were sounds of scraping coming from both branches of corridors ahead. Somewhere off to her left, she knew from her detect magic spell, was an almost overpowering source of magic, but it was closer to the outer steps than to the corridors just ahead.

"We'll check it out," promised Amris as she stepped through the hole in the back wall and stood in the intersection of passageways. There was no light in either corridor, but that wasn't a problem for the celestial elf, who had been born with natural darkvision (as, indeed, had all four of the trainees). There was a lone skeleton off to the right and several approaching through a dog-legged corridor to the left. Opting to clear out one direction first, the witch cast a magic missile spell at the lone skeleton, destroying it with a blast of force energy. Avoroth, glad to see the elf could handle a single skeleton all by herself, faced the other direction and raised his symbol of Boccob, ready to send a blast of negative energy their way that he hoped would allow him to successfully rebuke them.

The skeletons attacked the cleric in a sudden rush, clawing at him without any weapons in hand. Both of the nearest missed him, and when he invoked Boccob's name he managed to successfully rebuke the three that followed in the first two's wake, causing them to cower before him. (Avoroth decided he liked having mindless undead cower before him - they, at least, knew their place in the presence of their betters!) But then Wilbur stepped up behind the fiendish cleric and toppled the first skeleton with an overhand blow from his shillelagh. Gonkle, excited at the prospect of combat, crushed the second skeleton with a powerful blow from his warhammer. The three scout trainees noted the fangs each skeleton sported, otherwise appearing to be the animated skeletal remains of a human.

Amris stepped behind her male companions and sent a magic missile spell blasting into one of the cowering skeletons in the rear. Avoroth, sensing now was the time for hand-to-hand combat (and fearing if he attacked those cowering before him, it would remove the effect), backed off behind the others to let them get to it. But then another skeleton and a different undead creature stepped within view, in the chamber behind the remaining cowering skeletons: a ghoul, its rotting flesh hanging off its festering body, and sporting an impressive set of fangs more suited to a vampire than a mere ghoul.

Wilbur cut down a fanged skeleton with another blow from his magically-enhanced shillelagh, while Gonkle did likewise, smashing another skeleton with an upthrust hammer-strike that knocked its skull from its vertebrae. With the cowering skeletons out of the way, Avoroth stepped forward again past his fellow recruits and slew a skeleton with his quarterstaff, while the fiendish orc took out the last of the skeletons with another crushing blow from his warhammer. Now they faced only the oddly-fanged ghoul, who approached as if not the least bit concerned about the uneven odds against him.

Amris held an acid splash spell at the ready and unleashed it when the ghoul suddenly surged forward, piercing its fangs into Gonkle's unprotected neck - the half-witted orc hadn't expected him to be able to move that fast, and he easily slipped past the fighter's feeble defenses. Gonkle froze up in sudden rigidity as the ghoul's paralysis took hold; fortunately, his tough, orcish constitution was able to ward off the effects of the undead thing's ghoul fever disease.

Wilbur was stuck behind the paralyzed Gonkle and Avoroth, who held his staff at the ready, so - unable to advance and engage the ghoul in melee combat - he cast a produce flame spell and tossed a gout of flame past his two companions at the ghoul. The tiny ball of fire hit the undead flesh with a sizzling sound that made the druid a bit queasy.

Gonkle's muscles were all clamped tight, leaving him standing up and unable to move. The ghoul pulled him forward towards himself and then tossed him casually aside; the orc fell face-first to the stone floor and broke his nose. The ghoul then went after Wilbur - who had wriggled forward beside Avoroth - with claws and fangs, but the druid's shadowy nature protected him from all three attacks. Amris, all out of attack spells, resorted to throwing her dagger at the ghoul, but it failed to hit its target.

Avoroth prepared a cure light wounds spell, ready to use it offensively against the ghoul - if he could only get that glory-hound druid out of the way first! Wilbur gave the ghoul a good whack on the side of its festering head before slinking back behind the cleric of Boccob. Avoroth reached forward to try to channel healing energy from his spell into the ghoul's undead body, but the damned thing dodged his groping hand and slashed at him with a set of ragged claws. He swore in anger at the attack, but the claws dealt him little damage and he managed to overcome the paralysis that so often followed a ghoul's rancid touch.

Amris, seeing an unused dagger hanging on Avoroth's belt, grabbed it up and threw it at the ghoul, once again failing to hit it. But then Wilbur surged forward, getting in the final blow with his shillelagh. The ghoul exploded into a black, ashy mist that floated for a moment in midair before heading deeper into the shrine - straight for the general area of overwhelmingly powerful magic Amris had detected shortly after their arrival at the shrine.

Not wanting to follow the drifting mist of the slain vampire/ghoul thing into an area of unknown relic-level magic, the group returned back to the shrine entrance (Gonkle's paralysis had, by then, run its course), stepping through the hole in the collapsed mosaic. There they saw Dorjin had awakened the human proctor they'd found unconscious at the entrance to the shrine, the horrid wounds on his neck all healed up.

"This wasn't the challenge you were supposed to face," admitted Jalmod, "but I would hazard saving a proctor's life merits full marks and a successful completion of your final task. You have my gratitude."

"Good," replied Avoroth, as brusque as ever. He, for one, was glad the silly testing was now over, and he could get on with exploring the new realms as a planar scout. "Shall we go, then?" It was still two and a half days back to Elsewhere, and the cleric was eager to get back well before Shift Day - it wouldn't do to be left behind on Mount Celestia when the plane shifting town went off to its next destination.

On the way back, Jalmod explained the lore of the shrine and the mosaic that had been intact until the ghoul attacked him through the wall. The Blood Emperor had been a feared vampire who led an extraplanar army of undead on an assault of Mount Celestia. Apparently, he had become something more powerful than a standard vampire, causing the celestial armies, upon his defeat and death, to seal his ashes within a pillar of divine daylight. A previous party, Jalmod informed them, had uncovered a dagger hidden within the mosaic, the removal of which had likely, unknowingly weakened the seal. And that allowed the vampire to possess members of his undead army - sealed in the shrine with him - so he could try to find a way out of his tomb. "Stone masons will be sent to more permanently seal away the daylight tomb," he promised.

"Whatever," dismissed Avoroth. The disposition of a vampire on Mount Celestia had no bearing on his life; it could rot forever in its burning tomb or succeed in escaping to terrorize the local celestials once more - neither outcome made the slightest bit of difference to the cleric. For soon enough, he and all of Elsewhere would be off this miserable plane of midnight goodness, hopefully to somewhere more to his liking.

For Shift Day was fast approaching, and when it came, these four would be one of the scout teams ready to go meet the challenges of their next year-long home.

- - -

Joe ended up having to work the late shift on the day we went through Logan's first adventure in this new campaign, so his dad ran Gonkle as well as Wilbur. (That'll be the fallback plan whenever Joe can't make it to a game session.)

So, this went slightly differently than I had expected! I had envisioned us starting out being assigned together as a team, so I had a little speech prepared for Avoroth to give to his "underlings" (basically explaining how he was so much better than they were and they'd all find life so much easier if they just obeyed him without question - that sort of thing), but we started off having already gone through almost a full year of training, so that speech fell by the wayside. I resorted to making snide remarks whenever anyone else failed at a given task (while ignoring my own PCs' failures, naturally!), but I had alerted the other players ahead of time that my PC was going to basically start out as a big jerk and then mellow (well, a little, in any case) as the campaign progressed. Dan didn't mind at all, in part because he likes when we get into character between combat sessions and in part because he was reveling in the abilities Wilbur has as a 1st-level PC (namely, DR 5/magic, cold resistance 6 - which will increase as he levels up - and nine-tenths concealment via his shadow blend in conditions other than full daylight). Despite having a fiendish orc fighter on the team, I think Wilbur's going to be a front-line "meat shield" for us!

ADVENTURE 2: SHIFT DAY

PC Roster:

Game Session Date: 30 July 2025

- - -

"I'm going to miss that serpent," mused Wilbur, as Goldie went slithering away. A creature of the celestial planes, it would have been selfish of the druid to keep him in his service, not knowing where they were going to end up next. Best for Goldie to make it back to his own plane before Elsewhere shifted elsewhere.

"We should get into position," grumbled Avoroth. It was getting close to midnight, and while the rest of the population of Elsewhere seemed content to continue on with the festivities - the night of Shift Day was a time to celebrate the successful passing of another year of existence on another strange plane, a time for rejoicing over another year's survival, and a time for prayers that the next year would also be a good one - the grumpy cleric just wanted to get on with it. He had never been one for partying, or even socializing, for that matter, and as a newly-trained scout party about to go on their first mission, he didn't want his teammates to mess things up because they all wanted another cup of ale.

"Relax," chided Wilbur, downing his drink. "We have plenty of time to get into position. It's just over there, at the edge of town." There were two "zones" surrounding Elsewhere: the inner zone, about a mile in diameter and centered on the central buildings, was an area where no planar aspects manifested - during the time Elsewhere had floated for a year in the Negative Energy Plane, none of the plane's life-sapping effects reached into the heart of Elsewhere; and the outer zone, a torus another mile in diameter all around the central town proper, which consisted mostly of farmlands, where the crops were raised when Elsewhere sat on a plane that allowed for such growth. (Surplus grains were stored in vast silos inside the central part of the town, protected from the planar effects during years when raising new crops wasn't feasible.) On Shift Day, at midnight when the three-mile-diameter bubble around Elsewhere and its surrounding farmlands shifted to a new planar destination, the various scout teams were situated just inside the inner zone, where they'd be safe in case the town ended up somewhere dangerous like the Negative Energy Plane, ready to go forth through the farmlands and onto the new plane itself, if it was deemed safe to do so.

"Still," replied Avoroth. "Better early than late."

"He's right," added Amris, setting down her own cup of wine. "It wouldn't do to start our first mission late to the game." Avoroth was actually surprised that the flighty elf was taking this so seriously, and his estimation of her raised a fraction of a inch. Amris looked around. "Where's Gonkle?" she asked. They found the fiendish orc guzzling a small keg of beer while those around him egged him on, chanting "Chug! Chug! Chug!" The group of onlookers all cheered as the orc finished off the keg and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, giving a self-satisfied burp.

"Let's go," urged on Avoroth, and the orc, seeing the frown on the stern cleric's face, opted not to argue. He gathered up his weapons and followed them through town to their starting station.

"We've been assigned due north," commented Avoroth once they found their station. The other scout teams were all stationed roughly equidistant around the inner bubble, and would thus expand out in all directions once the shift occurred. They had strict orders as an official scout team:

1. If possible, extend a defensive perimeter out to the edge of the outer bubble, to protect the farmlands keeping the inhabitants of Elsewhere fed throughout the year.
2. During the first day, find and mark a local landmark outside the outer bubble for divination and teleportation purposes.
3. If immediate defense is not needed, go out and search for food, available resources, and potential threats. If a threat was found, one that couldn't be dealt with by the scout team alone, report immediately back to Elsewhere.
4. If peaceful inhabitants were found, negotiate trade under the guise of being an extraplanar caravan, without giving away any details about Elsewhere's existence. If successful, report back to Elsewhere.
5. Repeat the above steps as needed throughout the year, but always remember to return to Elsewhere before the next Shift Day.

"Everybody got all that?" asked Avoroth, after they'd gone over their orders for the umpteenth time.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," grumbled Gonkle. He was already regretting having guzzled that beer so quickly, and was looking forward to a nap more than exploring new lands, if it came down to that. But midnight came all too suddenly, and in a wink the skies above - the star-filled permanent midnight of Lunia, the first layer of Mount Celestia - were replaced by dark clouds, pitch black tinged with the occasional bit of red at the edges, like bloodstained wool from an ebon sheep. The level of ambient light thus plummeted, although that didn't prevent any of the four from seeing just fine, as their various heritages had provided each of them with innate darkvision.

"Let's go!" commanded Avoroth, who in his own mind was the obvious leader of their scout party. They rushed forward through the wheat fields, trying to ascertain what they could about their new home from what they could see thus far: dark, red-hued clouds.

"Well, it's not an energy or elemental plane," surmised Wilbur. "Nor is it the Plane of Shadows."

"Fire!" called out Amris suddenly.

"No," sighed Avoroth wearily. "We've just excluded any of the elemental planes - including the Elemental Plane of Fire."

"No, you idiot," countered the celestial elf, pointing ahead. "There's a fire ahead, in the fields!" Avoroth scowled - he didn't like being called an idiot, and the fraction of an inch he'd recently elevated his estimation of the elf witch was instantly removed from consideration, with a commensurate dropping in her mental rating by a significant factor - but he too could see flickering flames in the wheat fields ahead of them. Elsewhere must have plunked down close enough to some unknown enemy that was setting fire to their wheat! They wouldn't even have to leave the environs of Elsewhere before meeting up with their initial foes!

"Pivot: scout and report!" commanded the elf, and her owl familiar leapt from her shoulder and took to the air, raising in elevation to get a better vantage point. Gonkle, fully sober now at the anticipation of a decent fight, ran forward, warhammer gripped in his hands. Wilbur followed suit, but one of the advantages of having been infused with planar energy from the Plane of Shadows was it gave the human druid an enhanced speed, and he quickly overcame the armored orc. He squinted, for he thought he could make out a few foxlike shapes jumping through the flaming fields ahead.

Amris ran forward as well, keeping pace with Gonkle as her familiar called back his findings in the secret language they shared. "There are four foxes in the fires ahead," she called to the others. Avoroth ran up along the other side of Gonkle, recalling that hell hounds - fire-breathing canines from the pits of Hell - occasionally preyed upon fell foxes, red-furred creatures whose tails blazed with flames that caused the beasts no harm. As he ran the odds that they were on one of the Nine Hells of Baator - and part of his mind was occupied with trying to figure out which layer they were on, if that were indeed the case - another part of his mind puzzled over why so many scholars insisted upon alliteration when naming creatures. The practice was beyond his sensibilities.

The fell foxes darted through the wheat fields, their blazing tails setting fire to the stalks of grain as they passed. Two paused in their panicked flight to brush their tails against the humanoids they suddenly found in their way. Fortunately, both Gonkle and Avoroth, being fiendish in nature, had a natural resistance to fire, so they were unharmed - but the mere attempt sealed their fates. Gonkle bashed the fell fox before him with an overhead swing, bringing the head of his hammer upon that of the fox, knocking it to the ground in an unconscious heap. Wilbur, however, with his druidic training, took a moment to observe their behavior and deduced the fell foxes weren't running towards the scout team to attack; they were merely fleeing from something they feared behind them. He stepped away from the fell fox running his way so as not to get set ablaze - unlike Avoroth and Gonkle, he had no innate resistance to flames - and pulled out a dried sausage from his food-stocks in a pouch at his hip. "Here you go," he said soothingly to the frightened fox. It wasn't apparent whether or not the fox understood the druid's words, but it at least picked up on his soothing tone and the offer of food was too good a thing to pass up. Wilbur called out his findings to the rest of his group.

He was too late to prevent Amris from casting a ray of frost at the fell fox attacking Avoroth (not that it mattered, as with every other casting of that spell thus far, the blast of cold went way far astray from its intended target, eliciting a derisive snort of disgust from the cleric she had been actively trying to help). And while Avoroth heard the druid's advice that the fell foxes weren't trying to attack them, he actively chose to ignore it and brought the end of his staff down upon the head of the fell fox that had tried setting his cloak ablaze with its stupid, flaming tail. The fox dropped into unconsciousness at the cleric's feet, and he took a step sideways, placing himself directly in the path of the fourth fox, so he could likewise whack it when it got within range.

But then Pivot called out that he saw a larger fell fox just ahead, further north - where some rather unfoxlike howling could be heard.

The fox approaching Avoroth darted off sideways to the east, while the one Wilbur had been feeding darted its ears up and looked over at its two downed siblings, who were being killed while they lay helpless by the two fiendish humanoids, human and orc.

Having ensured his first foe was dead, Gonkle sprinted north, where there was an even bigger foe to be had. He ran straight through the flames burning the wheat, not the least bit concerned they might engulf him. Wilbur opted to leave his new friend to race over to the larger fox - a dire fell fox, he noted as he got closer - who was fighting off a hell hound while protecting the prone body of a humanoid figure nearby. There were two dead hell hounds in the vicinity, and Wilbur could see the fox had already suffered quite a few wounds of its own. He cast a shillelagh spell as he closed the distance between them. Amris followed, not quite as fast as her human druid companion.

Avoroth took a moment to bash in the skull of the downed fell fox that had tried to set his cloak ablaze, having failed to acknowledge the cleric as a superior being to its own unworthy self. Once convinced it was dead - and would never repeat its insulting attack upon his person - he turned to see what all the fuss was about to the north. The hell hound snapped at the dire fell fox with its jagged teeth, but the nimble fox darted away just in time. But then Avoroth had to turn his attention to the west, where the first fell fox had dropped the remains of Wilbur's proffered dried sausage in indignation of seeing the fiendish cleric having killed its litter-mate, and it leaped at Avoroth, snarling and biting at him with its own vulpine jaws. Its bite did little damage - but it put an evil smirk upon the young man's unholy face as he mentally sentenced this lowly beast to an immediate execution for its ill-considered attack.

Gonkle raced ahead through the flames, wishing he were as fast as Wilbur, who was already almost at the dire fell fox's side. It bit at the hell hound, getting in a healthy nip before backing off again. Wilbur swung his spell-enhanced staff at the hell hound, but missed. But Amris was now well within range to get a good look at the hell hound and target it with a magic missile spell, even as her familiar darted in from above, slashing the back of its neck with his talons.

Avoroth knocked the fell fox back with his quarterstaff, getting in a good blow to the side of its head that sent it reeling into immediate unconsciousness. "Attack your betters, will you?" the cleric sneered as he moved in for the kill.

The hell hound backed off, seemingly in retreat - but it was just to be able to catch Wilbur, Pivot, and the dire fell fox in a gout of flame it belched forth from its open mouth. The owl easily pivoted out of the way; the dire fell fox was immune to the hound's infernal flames; and Wilbur, having no such immunity, took the full brunt of the attack but was surprised at how little of a brunt it actually was - hardly scorching his clothes, and burning his flesh no worse than a slight sunburn.

The dire fell fox was smart enough to realize it was badly hurt and that these two-leggers seemed to be here to help it, so she stayed back to guard her mistress's body - a body, she was saddened to see, was no longer breathing. But then Gonkle arrived on the scene. charging the hell hound and smashing at it with his warhammer. It reeled from the blow, barely able to remain on its feet. Wilbur swung at it with his shillelagh and missed, and then Amris finally hit a foe with a ray of frost spell (the first time in four castings - good thing Avoroth wasn't close enough to comment on it!), staggering it from the icy attack. It was Pivot, with another talon rake across the back of its head, that dropped it, allowing Gonkle to finish it off with a final blow to the skull. And while all of that was going on, Avoroth concluded his death sentence of the fell fox who had unwisely bitten him, while the fourth - the one who had veered away from the cleric - made its way back towards the dire fell fox.

Wilbur cast a cure minor wounds spell on the dire fell fox to demonstrate his trustworthiness, and the creature allowed the others to tend to his mistress. Once it was apparent she was dead and beyond all help, the dire fell fox allowed the others to gather up her belongings: a backpack, black-and-gray staff, a blob of clay, and the shattered remains of some sort of mechanical device, all of which Amris, with a detect magic spell, determined was magical in nature, although the aura of divination magic surrounding the shattered device was fading fast.

"Orc! Get over here and help me with this!" called out Avoroth. Seeing an end to combat, he was busy stamping out the fires the fell foxes had inadvertently started with their flaming tails. As the only pair of the scout party with an innate resistance to fire, they were the best suited to this duty, although Amris and Wilbur helped as best they could by kicking dirt upon the flames. Once this was dealt with - no sense in allowing their fields of grain to go up in flames - they examined the slain woman and her belongings with greater detail.

The staff, Avoroth determined, was a shadowflame runestaff, allowing a wielder to channel a fire-based spell through it, turning the flames of the spell black and infusing it with negative energy. It only made sense for that to go to Wilbur, who already had access to more fire-based spells than Avoroth, whose fiendish nature forced him to prepare any healing spells he wanted to have on hand ahead of time, rather than being able to convert them on the fly like a good-aligned caster could do.

The backpack was a variant of a Heward's handy haversack, which not only held extradimensional spaces that could hold more than should be able to fit into a backpack of that size, but also placed any animal or vegetable matter placed inside it into stasis. This apparently included living beings, which was determined when Amris, looking inside each of the individual pockets, found four fell fox kits snuggled inside. (The backpack was quickly given the nomenclature "Heward's even handier haversack" and Avoroth offered to carry it, although the others balked at his further offer to "rid them of the furry vermin inside.")

Amris found a journal inside the haversack, and a quick perusal told her the purpose of the blob of clay: when fashioned into a replica of a spellcaster's familiar, having it on hand allowed the caster to share spells with her familiar or imbue it with attack spells for it to deliver to targeted foes without the familiar having to be in contact with his mistress; in effect, it was a sort of "familiar voodoo doll" linking mistress and familiar while physically apart. This, naturally, went to Amris, who immediately began molding it into a likeness of Pivot, adding a plucked feather to it as a token.

But it was the smashed mechanical device that held Avoroth's interest, for the journal indicated the woman, Asharen, a flame genasi witch, had been an Elsewhere scout who vanished some years ago when she'd failed to return to the town before the next Shift Day and had been left behind. Separated from her wandering birthplace, she'd built the device, which not only apparently had been able to track Elsewhere's current location among the planes, had actually been able to determine its future landing spot on a new plane! This tied in very nicely with the cleric's long-term goal: the figure out how and why Elsewhere shifted through the planes as it did, and hopefully find a way to actually "steer" it to where they wanted to go. He claimed the device for himself, vowing he'd create diagrams of each piece, how they were connected, and try to puzzle out its workings on his own before turning it over to the leaders of the town.

"If she was one of our own," said Amris, "we need to bring her body back to Elsewhere, so she can be reunited with any family she might have had. Pivot, return to the town and inform them who we've found and that we're bringing her back for burial." The owl hooted his acknowledgement and took to the skies. Gonkle, easily the strongest of the four scouts, gathered up Asharen's body and started back the way they'd come. The dire fell fox and the last of the four smaller foxes (other than the four kits left in stasis in the haversack) followed behind.

"Tomorrow," promised Wilbur, "I'll prepare a speak with animals spell and you can tell me your name," he said to the dire fell fox. "You can accompany us on our travels, like you apparently did with Asharen." This apparently sat well with the two foxes, who made sure not to set any more grain on fire with their burning tails.

Avoroth followed, his quarterstaff at the ready should they accidentally burn up any more of the wheat. For he had a feeling they'd want every bit of grain possible in the coming year; the cleric wasn't sure exactly what layer they were on, but given the presence of the fell foxes and the hell hounds, he was fairly certain of one thing: they were in Hell.

- - -

This was a rather short adventure, but it had been intended to be short, since we leveled up to 2nd level after we finished up. (We started at 6:30 PM and finished up a little after 8:00.) Joe had to work the closing shift (same as last week), so his dad ran Gonkle for him again. And Logan made up not only the fell foxes but all of the treasure we got, knowing brand-new treasure is always a treat to experienced players who have seen most of the standard magic items from the DMG throughout the years.

I can't help but find this funny: today, the day I posted the update where Elsewhere plane shifted to a layer of Hell, there are exactly 666 views of this Story Hour.



Johnathan

ADVENTURE 3: THIS IS HELL

PC Roster:

Game Session Date: 3 September 2025

- - -

Having returned to Elsewhere with the body of Asharen, the missing planar scout accidentally left behind years ago when she failed to return to the plane-shifting town before Shift Day, the group opted to make a day of it. Wilbur began the bonding process with the dire fell fox, who - after the shadow druid cast a speak with animals spell - informed him her name was Tamaskan. The others were discussing their future plans when they were approached by a simply gorgeous, young-looking elf. Her hair looked to have been crafted of pure, spun sunlight, so brightly did it shine even while underneath a wide-brimmed hat. "Ah, there you are, Amris," she said.

"Instructor," Amris replied. Aurora Sunbeam had been her arcane instructor for the majority of her spellcasting career; a member of a sect of witches who had some delvings into the druidic mysteries.

"Thank you for returning Asharen's body," she said. "As a member of our coven, we wish to inter her with the other fallen members of our group. However, there is the subject of her belongings." Despite himself, Avoroth flinched; he absolutely did not want to turn over the broken device Asharen had created, that apparently not only tracked the current position of Elsewhere but could even predict its future journeys. He was certain there were hints as to its inner workings in the slain woman's journals; furthermore, he was absolutely certain he'd be able to decipher the intricacies of its mechanisms and get it back into working order, given enough time to study the device.

"I understand the importance of keeping our planar scouts well-defended and well-armed," she assured the group. "For that reason, I have no issue with her staff being passed along to one of your number." She actually frowned a bit at that statement, not really thrilled with a mere druid having taken custody of Asharen's shadowflame runestaff instead of it going to a full member of her own coven, but even she realized Amris was merely at the beginning of her arcane journey and was not yet ready to join. In time, though....

"However," and here she looked directly at Avoroth, "I am sure you can undertand Asharen's diary and the remnants of the Elsewhere Compass are too important to risk losing in the field." Before the cleric could voice an objection, she added, "But of course, you will be allowed to study them during the times you return from duty." Avoroth seethed inside, but he was forced to admit the logic behind her request - it would be a terrible tragedy to lose the Elsewhere Compass before he could get it working again, and the town was the safest place to keep it.

"Very well," the cleric of Boccob replied. "But I should like to spend the rest of today examining them both before we return to the field." Aurora instantly agreed.

After completing his bonding ritual with Tamaskan, Wilbur told the rest of his group what the dire fell fox had told him: there was a cave where she and Asharen had lived in for the past three months. There was supposed to be a treasure hidden there, but the planar scout had been unable to unearth it during their time there. "Seems like a worthy first objective during our tour of duty," Wilbur explained. "We're being sent out to check out the local environment, in any case."

"Agreed," replied Avoroth curtly. "We can leave tomorrow, at first light, if you wish - but today I will be examining the Elsewhere Compass."

"Actually..." interrupted Gonkle. He went on to explain that as this layer of Hell actually had a varying day and night cycle - unlike the endless midnight they'd lived under during their recent year-long stay on a layer of Mount Celestia - he'd rather wait until twilight the next day, so the bright daylight didn't hurt his eyes.

"Fine," instantly agreed Avoroth. "That will give me more time to study the device. Until tomorrow at dusk, then." And with that, the cleric was gone.

"So," asked Wilbur the following day, when the Hellish sun was setting in the distance, "did you get your doohickey up and running?"

"It will be a matter of time before it's back to proper operations," snapped the grumpy cleric. "Not only is the device broken, but the descriptions of its workings are scattered throughout the woman's journals...you'd think she'd have taken the precautions of diagraming everything out in one place, but no...." Then he saw the shadow druid's smirk and realized he'd merely been joshing the cleric, not expecting him to have accomplished his task in so short a time. "Let's be off," Avoroth said.

After finally leaving the borders of Elsewhere - they'd discovered Asharen within the fields of crops surrounding the town - they noticed the terrain had sharply changed to a barren, rocky landscape. They selected a lone, twisted husk of a tree to be used as their "marker" - Avoroth used his dagger to carve a simple emblem (a star with an arrow pointing straight above it, indicating "North Star," the unofficial name he'd given their quartet of fledgling planar scouts); none of them could teleport there quite yet, but any other scouts with such an ability to do so could use that as a known area just outside the boundaries of Elsewhere's local town limits.

After a few miles of trekking through the literally hellish landscape, they heard voices in the distance, frantically calling out names in the Infernal language. "Sparky!" "Ember!" "Sinfeaster!"

"Oh, crap," grumbled Avoroth.

"What?" asked Gonkle, who, despite his fiendish heritage, did not speak the Infernal language.

"Those three hell hounds we helped slay the other day," the Boccobian cleric explained. "There's a search party out looking for them."

"Pivot: recon," Amris commanded to her owl familiar. With a silent flap of his wings, the celestial owl took to the hellish skies.

Before long, a band of six fiendish goblins crested a rise just ahead. They were approaching the four planar scouts from directly ahead; Avoroth realized if they continued on their present course, they'd no doubt stumble onto the crop fields of Elsewhere, and then the town itself. He also realized of the scouts, he and Amris were the only two who spoke Infernal, and it would be best if he didn't leave things up to a flighty elf...it looked like, once again, if he wanted something done right he'd have to do it himself - it was a constant burden of being so superior to everyone around him.

"Who the Hell are you?" Avoroth snarled in the goblins' direction. No doubt Amris would have tried something stupid like exchanging pleasantries with the fiendish goblins; she might know the language but she had no idea about how things were done on the fiendish planes. One always began with a show of strength. "What the Hell are you doing?"

"We're looking for three escaped hell hounds," growled back the lead goblin. "And so are you, now - you work for us, or the wrath of Grelthax the Vile will fall on you as well."

"Pretty big talk for such a puny goblin," retorted Avoroth. "Especially since we outnumber you."

"Pfah!" spat the goblin leader. "There are six of us and only three of you - and one of you's an Uplander! What the Hell are you doing traveling with an Uplander?"

Avoroth recognized the infernal term for a celestial being, and realized he meant Amris. He also noted the goblin's count was off by one and assumed he hadn't spotted the shadowy druid - Wilbur could wrap himself in shadows fairly effectively, even when not attempting to do so. "You mean our slave?" he sneered, nodding his head in Amris's direction. "She's not as completely worthless as she might look. And with our fox, that makes four of us" (he opted not to count Wilbur in their number - why give them a heads up to his existence?) "against the three of you. You note I'm assuming it takes two of you to make a full person, and I'm probably overestimating your worthiness at that. So call it four against two."

"Screw that - attack!" called the goblin leader. He and two others began running forward, while the other three fitted arrows to their shortbows. That suited Avoroth just fine, as he'd already worked out they were too close to the border of Elsewhere to be allowed to live for long. He stepped forward and readied his quarterstaff, letting the goblins come to him.

Wilbur cast a magic fang spell upon Tamaskan and cautiously advanced, weapon at the ready. The dire fell fox charged the goblin leader, knocking him over and ripping at his exposed throat. Just that quickly, the fiendish goblin scouting team was down one member; it was all Avoroth could do not to laugh.

A second goblin warrior advanced upon Tamaskan, screaming vile obscenities that made Amris blush. Its weapon struck the fox on her back, curring open a gash that bled into her fur. The third went for Avoroth, dodging the cleric's quarterstaff and carving a gash in his leg. Avoroth started swearing himself, but he did so in the Common tongue; he might have been born on a fiendish plane and studied the language and customs, but Infernal was not his native tongue.

Gonkle ran up to aid Avoroth, swinging a blow down at the goblin's head with his warhammer. But the little warrior dodged the blow with practiced ease. By then, the goblin archers had all aimed at their targets and let fly with their arrows in unison. Two went whizzing by harmlessly, but Amris was struck a glancing blow on the side of her arm as the arrow went by, staining her sleeve with blood. She returned fire with a magic missile spell while Pivot swooped down upon him from behind, and the twin attacks left the little archer staggering on his feet, struggling to remain standing.

Avoroth, furious now, slammed the side of his quarterstaff into the face of the goblin warrior who had the effrontery to strike his better, breaking his nose with a satisfyingly wet sound. Wilbur charged after the goblin but missed with his own weapon. Tamaskan, in the meantime, went running after the second goblin warrior, bloodying him up a bit and ducking the return attack. The broken-nosed goblin had no better luck trying to hit Avoroth a second time; his weapon clacked upon the cleric's wooden staff, bouncing off harmlessly. But he did manage to avoid Gonkle's next attack - it was turning into a bit of a scrum, with three of the heroes all after the one goblin warrior.

The one archer tried hitting Pivot with his club and only succeeded in knocking himself out, while the other two archers fired off arrows but once again failed to hit their targets. Amris fired off another magic missile at one of the archers and her familiar, seeing this, targeted him as well with his talons. They managed to practically knock him out as well, leaving him trying to keep his balance instead of falling flat on his face.

Avoroth missed another strike against the bloody-faced goblin warrior, and Wilbur's attack fared no better - sometimes, it seemed, enemies who were that short had an unfair advantage against those who had trained sparring against normal-sized people. But then Tamaskan joined in the fight, slamming the warrior to the hard ground and biting down hard at the base of his neck. He stopped moving after that.

But now the sole remaining goblin melee fighter set his sights on Avoroth and attacked. He didn't get very far; Gonkle clobbered him with his warhammer and he went down hard. Of the two remaining archers, one clobbered himself trying to shoo off Pivot, and the other one continued to prove his utter worthlessness by failing to hit a target for the third time in a row. Wilbur charged at him and took him out with one hit from his scimitar.

Avoroth cast a cure light wounds spell upon himself and set the others to slitting throats to ensure the goblins were well and truly dead. "Leave us two for interrogations," he said. He cast cure minor wounds spells on the two they'd saved for questioning (the cleric made sure those who had attacked him were not among their number - they had earned their deaths) to prevent them from slipping away due to their wounds. Gonkle slapped them awake after they'd been stripped of their weapons (crappy goblin manufacture, he noted - not worth keeping, even if they were way too small in any case) and Avoroth led the interrogations with a gleam in his black, sharklike eyes. The goblins folded almost immediately, and the group learned the goblin camp was one of many belonging to Grelthax the Vile, a particularly nasty barbed devil. Their camp was a couple days' travel to the northeast. ("Good," surmised Avoroth. "Another scouting team's problem, then.") It took a month for Grelthax to hit all of the camps under his rule, and he wasn't due to return to the goblins' camp for another couple of weeks, by which time the goblins had hoped to find and return his three pet hell hounds, who had jumped their leashes and escaped from the goblins' supervision. If he found out his three "babies" were gone, he'd likely slaughter the entire camp.

"Well, I have good news and bad news for you, then," advised Avoroth. "The bad news: we killed your three precious hell hounds and left their corpses to rot in the rancid, hellish air. The good news, however, is that you won't receive any punishment at all from Grelthax."

"Because you're going to kill us," surmised the goblin, looking ahead to their likely fates.

"Because we're going to kill you," affirmed Avoroth with a sharklike grin. He gave a nod to Gonkle, who raised his warhammer on high.

"Just as well," sighed the first goblin. "You couldn't do anything half as bad as what--" He never got to finish his sentence; Gonkle's warhammer finished it for him. Amris looked uncomfortable at the slaying of helpless prisoners. "Think of it as a mercy killing," advised Avoroth, before adding, "...slave," with a smirk. Amris just continued glowering at him.

Then she jolted upright as Pivot, flying reconnaissance once more after the fight against the goblins had been completed, announced over the link he shared with his mistress that three people were approaching. She warned the others, and they began dragging the goblin corpses behind some nearby rocks. Here the goblins' small stature came in handy, as it didn't take a very big rock to hide a goblin body.

The clomping of marching footsteps in unison presaged the arrival of three hobgoblins. Avoroth put it upon himself to do the talking for the group. "Who the Hell are you?" he snarled. The hobgoblins ignored him, marching angrily forward. Gonkle stepped protectively in front of Avoroth, holding his warhammer in a readied stance. Amris used her familiar doll to channel a touch of fatigue spell onto her owl familiar, even though Pivot was still flying overhead.

Finally, the group was close enough for the hobgoblins to reply. "Where are the little ones?" he snarled in the Infernal tongue.

"No idea," replied Avoroth. "You should learn to keep better track of your children."

"I thought I might have heard someone going that way..." advanced Amris, pointing off to the east and hoping to lead the trio away from Elsewhere...and the hidden bodies of the six slain goblin troops they were obviously looking for.

"Six goblins, headed your way - you couldn't have missed them. If they'd have met up with you, they'd have pressed you into service." He turned to the two warriors under his command. "They killed the goblins. Kill them!" With that, the warlock leader cast an eldritch blast of energy at Gonkle. "Start with the orc - maybe he'll have enough trinkets on him to appease the Overlord."

Wilbur hurriedly cast a cure light wounds spell on Tamaskan. (Somehow, Avoroth hadn't deemed it necessary to see to the wounds of a mere animal, despite her proven combat prowess and usefulness to the group at large.) The dire fell fox snarled and readied herself for combat as the two hobgoblin warriors moved up to strike. Avoroth and Gonkle took up defensive postures, weapons at the ready. Then Pivot came diving down out of nowhere to attack the warlock's face, scraping at his exposed skin with his talons and releasing the readied touch of fatigue spell. But the hobgoblin shrugged off the spell's intended effects, remaining as strong as ever.

Amris, disappointed but not depressed, carried on the fight with a magic missile to the hobgoblin leader's face. That, at least, he couldn't stoically resist! He responded by shrouding himself in a darkness spell, moving around his henchmen so they wouldn't be impeded. He himself seemed fully able to see within the magical darkness, stepping over the uneven ground with an uncanny surefootedness.

Wilbur charged forward in a burst of speed, dodging a hobgoblin's longsword but likewise missing with his own scimitar attack. Tamaskan leaped forward and snapped at the same hobgoblin, to no better effect. He cut into her flank with his longsword, eliciting a howl of pain, while the other one went for Avoroth but missed. The cleric's follow-on strike with his quarterstaff likewise failed to hit, however - as did Gonkle's attempted warhammer bash. Amris, all out of magic missile spells, used an acid splash spell against the nearest hobgoblin warrior, burning his face.

Safe inside his hemisphere of darkness, the hobgoblin warlock cast another eldritch blast, this time striking Wilbur. (Unlike the goblins earlier, he seemed to have no trouble focusing upon the shadow-clad druid.) Wilbur cut down a warrior with his scimitar, then whirled to face the warlock hidden in the bubble of darkness while Tamaskan focused upon the remining warrior. He attacked Gonkle but missed, and Avoroth likewise missed in his attempt to whack him on the head with the end of his staff. But while he had been dodging the cleric's weapon, Gonkle shifted his stance to the side and brought his weapon-head crashing down upon the bald pate of the enemy, dropping him instantly.

Amris tried casting an acid splash spell at the warlock hidden inside the bubble of darkness, and the sounds of cursing coming from inside told her she'd been successful. The darkness suddenly advanced her way and engulfed her at top speed, as the warlock charged her; unseen inside his impenetrable darkness, he'd pulled the keen unholy falchion he wore on his back and it was only by the purest luck that his strike missed, for if it had hit she'd have almost surely died. But now with the two warriors down, there was just the warlock left to fight, and as one, the others rushed into the bubble of darkness with weapons drawn and waving about. Several of the wild blows struck true, but it was Gonkle who landed the killing strike. Once it was apparent the darkness effect wasn't going to immediately go away upon the warlock's death, they exited the ebon hemisphere and stripped what items of value they could from the slain warriors until the darkness invocation ran through its normal duration and eventually expired. The warlock wore studded leather armor (magical in nature, Amris declared after casting a detect magic spell) that offered better protection than the shadow druid's own combat leathers, so he swapped out the old for the new. Gonkle took the fiendishly powerful falchion, being one of the only two of the group who could safely wield it (and Avoroth having no desire to go through the combat training to learn to properly wield the damn thing).

"Well then," said Avoroth once the group had determined the hobgoblin warriors had nothing more of any value on them, "let's continue on our way. The cave was this way, correct?"

"Yep," conceded Wilbur, healing his dire fell fox's wounds with the application of a curative spell. "Tamaskan, lead the way."

Tamaskan was more than happy to do so, and the others followed in her wake.

- - -

The dice were rather unfair to us during this session, as the players almost universally rolled low and Logan, the DM, got four threats, one of which became a confirmed crit. But the last attack roll against Amris just barely missed her and she survived the encounter alive; had it hit, she'd have taken 2d4 + 2d6 points of damage, and if it had been a critical hit (it crits on a 15 or higher), that would have likely slain her outright. But now Gonkle's got the weapon - I feel better having its power on our side, not being used against us.

ADVENTURE 4: THE SINISTER LAIR

PC Roster:

Game Session Date: 10 September 2025

- - -

Two days after leaving the slain hobgoblins where they lay and staying to a northern trajectory, the group of planar scouts encountered a cliff wall towering some 50 feet above them. Tamaskan led them along the cliff face, heading to a cave opening at the base of the stone. Before the cave stood a pile of rotting bodies, food for swarms of hellish flies and a place for them to lay their nasty eggs. As the group approached, they saw a bone devil coming towards them from the other direction; it dragged two more humanoid bodies by their ankles, one in each skeletal hand. Tamaskan ignored the bone devil, bounding happily over to the cave opening and looking back to see if the others were still following; they, in turn, had stopped advancing and held their ground with weapons readied, waiting to see if they were about to enter combat with a bone devil - a creature, they reasoned, who would likely wipe the floor with the four of them. Still, Gonkle raised his warhammer and called over to the fiend, threatening it if it tried anything with them.

Fortunately for them, the bone devil ignored the orc's threats and simply tossed each of the two corpses onto the pile of festering bodies. Then it turned away, headed back the way it had come.

"Did you see that?" Avoroth whispered to the others. "That bone devil was no longer alive - I think it was a zombie."

"A rotting corpse in charge of piling up rotting corpses?" asked Gonkle. "That doesn't make any sense."

Avoroth approached the festering pile and gave the bodies a quick look-over. There were representatives from a wide variety of species, with both demons and devils counted among their number, although a good deal of them were fiendish humanoids like Gonkle and himself.

Amris sent Pivot to do aerial reconnaissance, ensuring the undead bone devil didn't suddenly return, while she and Wilbur approached the cave. It was a fairly shallow cave, curving in an arc for about 20 feet before ending in a flat, vertical surface that looked to have been carved from the rock of the cliff. There looked to be some words engraved on the flat wall, but their attention was drawn to the pair of little humanoid forms battling it out near the back wall: a winged imp and a hunched quasit. Neither was able to deal any appreciable damage to the other, so their "battle" had devolved into an alternating slap-fight and pushing contest. They were putting their all into it, though, as if the results of this battle would sway the outcome of the Blood War itself.

Avoroth approached and loudly cleared his throat, demanding their attention. "Stop that ridiculous fighting and attend to your betters!" he commanded. They stopped fighting immediately, startled by the authoritative tone in the cleric's voice (although the quasit, creature of chaos that it was, took the opportunity of the brief cease-fire to slap the imp on the back of his head when his attention was elsewhere). "Ah!" cried the imp. "My reinforcements have shown up!"

"Piddlewhiskers!" chortled the quasit. "These are obviously the forces I called forth to deal with the likes of you!" (Neither the imp nor the quasit had done any such thing; each was simply trying to bluff the other into thinking he'd soon be in over his head.)

"Enough!" demanded Avoroth. "You will cease talking unless it is to answer my questions. Now then, which of you can tell me about the pile of corpses over there?"

"I'll tell you everything you need to know about them," promised the quasit, "if you'll first slay this troublesome imp for me."

"And why would I do that?" sneered Avoroth. "He's the local denizen, and more likely to be able to tell me about the surroundings nearby. You, as an intruder to this hellish realm, are less likely to be of any use to me at all."

"Yeah!" immediately agreed the imp. The quasit, however, not liking how this encounter was playing out, bounded like a monkey and leaped into the air to attack the Boccobian cleric, biting at him with his venomous fangs. Avoroth clonked him on the top of his head with his quarterstaff, but the quasit still managed to get in a healthy bite at the cleric's unprotected neck. Fortunately, not enough venom made it into the cleric's bloodstream to do any harm.

Amris shot a ray of frost spell at the quasit but, characteristically, missed by a mile. Avoroth sighed; when would the silly elf ever learn to stick with magic missiles? They, at least, did all of the targeting for you. But then Gonkle, Wilbur, and Tamaskan all got their licks in against the hapless quasit, using a warhammer, scimitar, and bared fangs as appropriate. As a demon, the quasit enjoyed a manner of resistance to physical damage, but the multiple attacks were enough to drive it back from Avoroth and slide into invisibility.

Avoroth figured it would try to escape and vowed not to allow that to happen; it had attacked his person and now it must die! He stepped back and raised his quarterstaff like a club, listening for the sound of the invisible quasit trying to sneak past him. He heard the sound of batlike wings flapping and recalled quasits could alter their forms; swinging for all he was worth, he hit the quasit-bat a glancing blow and it made it past him. "Imp!" called out Avoroth. "Track down that quasit and bring him to me!"

"On it, boss!" agreed the imp, and took to the air. Once outside the narrow cave, he struck off in a random direction, never to be seen again. Cursing wildly, Avoroth dropped his quarterstaff at his side and raced after the sound of flapping wings, leaping into the air and bringing his arms together, hoping to grab on to his invisible tormentor. But he caught nothing but empty air, and landed face down on the ground while the taunting laughter of the receding quasit rang in his ears. Brushing off his robes, he grabbed up his staff and stormed back to the others.

They, in the meantime, had been examining the inscription carved into the back wall. It was in the Infernal script (a language familiar only to Amris and Avoroth among the group), and it read:

"Secrets rebuke the propagators of false truths."​

Click to expand...

"Tamaskan said Asharen never did figure out what that meant," offered up Wilbur.

"Asharen apparently couldn't read Infernal, nor could she channel negative energy," scoffed Avoroth, channeling a surge of negative energy through his holy symbol of Boccob, aiming it at the back wall. The wall moved silently to the left, revealing a series of rooms beyond. "The clue was in the word 'rebuke'," he sneered, stepping into the unlit chamber beyond. Amris followed, instructing Pivot over her link to keep an aerial watch over the vicinity.

The entry corridor was a 10-foot-wide passageway leading to a central chamber composed of five pillars carved to look like the skeletal fingers of a massive hand reaching down from the ceiling. A stone orb lay on the floor, smashed to pieces (each piece still glowing slightly) where it landed when it fell from the ceiling, who knew how long ago. Between each adjacent set of fingers stood the opening to a different chamber, four in all besides the entryway.

The chamber on the right, Avoroth saw, was a small library filled with shelves of books reaching to the ceiling on every wall and also in the room's middle, forming a shape like two H's standing side by side. To his left stood a small study, while forward on the left stood what looked to be an alchemical lab, its arcane paraphernalia dusty from disuse. Straight ahead was the largest room, a necromancy lab from the looks of it, with dead bodies lying upon stone slabs, waiting to be given the unholy semblance of life. Also present in this room, and partially visible form where Avoroth stood, were a small number of humanoid skeletons, standing upright.

The skeletons wasted no time in attacking. They surged forward, three of them ganging up on Avoroth while three more followed behind, not attacking the cleric only because there was no room for them to do so in the now-crowded corridor.

There were the sounds of spellcasting in the library, and a wave of energy surged throughout the chambers. This was a desecrate spell, empowering the undead in the spell's area of effect and bolstering their combat abilities.

Avoroth fumbled with his holy symbol as he stepped back, sending a second surge of negative energy through it in an attempt to rebuke these undead - perhaps, he thought, he could get one or two of them to obey his commands. But the negative energy fizzled out nearly as soon as it exited his Boccobian symbol, with no effect whatsoever upon the skeletons. Avoroth cursed aloud at the unpleasant turn of events.

Tamaskan rushed into the chamber, snapping at a skeleton threatening Avoroth and clamping her teeth down upon a shin bone. Gonkle finished it off with a skull-bursting overhead smash of his warhammer. He then expertly cleaved over to the next skeleton, cracking a few undead ribs in the process. Wilbur stepped up and swung his runestaff at the second skeleton, but missed.

Then, behind the skeletons, four zombies shambled forth. They had been further back in the necromancy lab, hidden from view until now. They were unable to attack - the skeletons were all in the way - but their very presence caused the heroes to realize this was a tougher fight than they had expected.

Amris cast a spell that destroyed the second skeleton. (Avoroth noted with approval it was a magic missile - finally!) But the remaining skeletons were all moving up to attack their foes, dealing a great amount of damage to Avoroth and a lesser amount to Wilbur and Gonkle. Then an undead cleric stepped out from behind a stack of books and hit Avoroth with a quarterstaff of his own; when the cleric went to face his undead counterpart, he saw the rotting flesh, the heavy plate armor beneath his tattered tabard, and the unmistakable holy symbol of Boccob, God of Knowledge, hanging on a chain around his neck. Avoroth's brow frowned in puzzlement, but he was forced to back off from combat so he could cast a quick cure light wounds spell upon himself.

Tamaskan leaped into the space Avoroth had just vacated, snapping her jaws at the undead cleric. Her flaming tail came forward to brush against his ancient robes, setting them instantly ablaze.

From that point on, there was a whole lot of back-and-forth fighting in the cramped intersection between the five rooms of the hidden lair. The undead cleric was forced to follow Avoroth's tactics and heal himself with an inflict serious wounds spell, but he had no sooner completed his spellcasting than Tamaskan was biting him again, and Gonkle was adding the swinging business end of his warhammer to the mix. Tamaskan finally brought him down, allowing the flames to burn his no-longer-active corpse.

Avoroth had terrible luck against the skeletons, but as soon as they had been taken out and he switched over from his quarterstaff to his dagger, he had much better success against the zombies. Amris kept up a string of combat spells from the back ranks, and Wilbur and Gonkle stayed in the front ranks, slashing with their bladed weapons and using their bludgeoning weapons against the skeletons. Gonkle in particular was a whirlwind of combat action, swinging his weapons this way and that and occasionally striking more than one foe with a single blow from his warhammer or falchion. But eventually, the undead were overcome, although Avoroth had had to back off again once to deliver a much-needed cure light wounds spell to Gonkle, who seemed to be oblivious to his wounds in the heat of battle.

Patting down the fire that threatened to completely engulf the undead cleric, Gonkle noted the full plate armor he wore underneath looked to be a decent fit for him, and started unbuckling it piece by piece, swapping out his own damaged armor for this new set. Amris obliged the orc by casting a prestidigitation spell to clean it up a bit. She also cast a detect magic spell that indicated that while neither the undead cleric's armor nor his quarterstaff were magical, a book he had on his person most definitely was. Avoroth claimed the quarterstaff, which had been expertly crafted and had Boccob's emblem carved into it, for himself, and likewise took possession of Boccob's tome of knowledge once it became apparent that was what it was. But the others weren't too disappointed, for in the necromancy lab there were a pile of black onyxes valued at 4,000 pieces of gold, and Avoroth judged about half of the alchemical equipment in the smaller lab was still perfectly usable. All of that went into the extradimensional space of the Heward's even handier haversack Avoroth carried on his back. However, when he tried adding the arcane tomes and scrolls from the shelves of the library, they each teleported back to place as soon as he tried stuffing them into the pack. "We'll have to leave them here for now," he sighed, "and get someone with a bit more spellcasting power to dispel this magic effect."

He decided the secret lair made a perfect place for the group to camp out in overnight, once the undead bodies had been dragged outside and added to the pile of corpses. While the others were tending to that detail, he had started reading scraps of a diary the undead cleric had been keeping, learning that he'd been slain and reanimated against his will as a corpse creature by a lich cleric of Vecna, God of Secrets. This had been the lich's lair at one point, but he'd been destroyed many centuries back. Fortunately, Boccob had seen fit to continue to provide the now-undead cleric with spells in his new form. The diary never gave the cleric's name; eventually Avoroth learned the lich had enjoyed tormenting the corpse creature and refused to return his name to him; how his name had been lost was still unclear, but it had been a great source of anguish for the undead Boccobian cleric. Left being forced to obey the lich's command to stay within and guard the library, the cleric felt his mind slipping from boredom over the centuries.

"So, what's the plan?" Amris asked Avoroth, which pleased him, although he made sure not to make any outward sign of it. But at least she was learning who to go to for the answers among this ragtag group of Elsewhere scouts.

"We rest up here overnight," the cleric replied. "Then tomorrow, we start back to Elsewhere. We'll want to inform them about the stash of arcane knowledge stored here, so they can send someone capable of freeing the books and taking them back into town. Our own libraries were lost in the fight against the fire elementals all those years ago; this might well be a big start on replacing some of the knowledge that was lost."

"Sounds good," affirmed Wilbur. Avoroth almost snapped back at the druid - of course it sounded good, Avoroth had come up with the plan! - but he kept his thoughts on the subject to himself. And he had better things to do than argue with underlings; there was a whole library to peruse! Avoroth knew he'd be getting very little sleep that night....

- - -

Boccob's tome of knowledge is a handy bit of magic for a Boccobian cleric: not only does it allow Avoroth to use all Knowledge skills untrained, but it also grants him a +2 bonus to all Knowldge checks, and - best of all - by channeling a rebuke undead blast through it, he can "reverese the polarity" and convert any previously prepared spell into a cure spell instead of his normal inflict spell (as he's an evil cleric). Nice!

ADVENTURE 5: AN ORDINARY DAY IN ELSEWHERE

PC Roster:
Game Session Date: 17 September 2025

- - -

It was a three-day trek due south back to the town of Elsewhere. Halfway there, a voice spoke out of the empty air - a voice Avoroth recognized at once as the imp they'd discovered having a slap-fight with the quasit that had had the audacity to bite the Boccobian cleric and then flee before it could be slain for its effrontery.

"Hey, boss," the disembodied voice said from mid-air. "I've been tracking that quasit, like you said. It's been headed due south, and I've come across a trail of dead bodies - hobgoblins and goblins - it passed by on its way to this really strange town I never seen before. I'd've entered the town, but I didn't like what little I saw of it. There was a snake lady with six arms - I ain't messin' with no snake-lady with six arms!"

"An eminently practical attitude," Avoroth agreed, knowing full well the snake-lady in question was none other than the marilith Lady Kalistra, the leader in charge of combat training of the town's scout recruits. "Do you happen to know whether the quasit made it to this strange town?"

"I gotta assume so, although I didn't actually see him enter. He mostly stayed invisible."

"Very well. We shall go check out this 'strange town' and see if we can't find that damned quasit. You have served me well...what did you say your name was?"

"Xylath," replied the invisible imp, likely giving a false name - but one that could be used perfectly well in a summon monster spell to specify this particular imp; Avoroth filed the name away for possible future use. "You ever decide you need a familiar, just give me a call!" Avoroth agreed he'd do just that and heard the flapping of batlike wings as the imp went about his way, off to seek redder pastures.

"Idiot," mumbled the cleric under his breath - as if he were a mere wizard, like Amris, fumbling around with his nose in a spellbook trying to figure out how to cast spells. No, he was a cleric: a conduit through which the power of a god flowed!

The rest of the trip was uneventful, and on the early morning of the third night of travel - they preferred hiking through the dark hours, as bright sunlight hurt Gonkle's weak, orcish eyes - they passed through the grain fields surrounding the town of Elsewhere. The four scouts noted the three hellhound bodies had been removed since their last time passing through this area; no doubt they'd been added to someone's stewpot and their hides turned into leather. "Waste not, want not" was the Elsewhere creed, for one never knew when they'd be spending the next year in an area of complete inhospitality, like the Negative Energy Plane or the endless deserts of some Abyssal layer.

Once arriving at the town itself, they spoke to a guardsman about their findings. "You'd best report to Father Solaire," recommended the guard. "He'll want to know about your findings."

Father Solaire, the solar who served as one of Elsewhere's four leaders, listened intently as the group of scouts told him of the barbed devil Grelthax the Vile and the dozen or so camps of fiendish humanoids he cycled through on a monthly patrol (giving him the approximate location of the one camp they knew about, far outside the arc of their assigned responsibility), as well as the location of the secret lair of the long-dead Vecnan lich and the walls of books that teleported back to their shelves when you tried to stuff them into an extradimensional space for transport. "They'd make a decent start to a replacement library for the books the fire elementals destroyed," Avoroth pointed out.

"An excellent point," agreed Father Solaire, recalling the time, many shifts ago, when Elsewhere had been discovered on the Elemental Plane of Fire and had been attacked by a raiding party of local elementals. The library, and several other of their buildings, had not fared too well before the elementals had been driven away or slain. "You have done well, for being so new to the job. Please, keep the black onyxes as a reward for your discoveries. We'll send a team out to recover the books, and we'll warn the appropriate scout teams of the fiendish camps and the barbed devil. In the meantime, please go see Angalvir the Blacksmith, as he'd like a field test of a new item he's created that might prove useful for future scout parties." The group all knew Angalvir; he was an azer who had joined the plane-shifting town's members during that year on the Elemental Plane of Fire, and he made the majority of the armor and weapons used by the town guards and the scouts going out to explore each new plane.

When they arrived at Angalvir's shop, things were not as they would have expected. Usually, the sounds of the azer's hammer striking at the anvil could be heard from blocks away, but this time all was silent. Once they were within sight of his shop, the reason for this uncustomary silence became readily apparent, for Angalvir was not stationed at his anvil: he was dangling a foot above the ground, gripping desperately onto an immovable rod hanging in mid-air. Below him, a vast number of rats leaped and tried to catch hold of his boots or his pants in an effort to get in a bite or two. The swarm of rats was made up of a variety of types, but the majority of them had a celestial appearance; not surprising, for the town had spent the last year parked on a celestial plane and any rats born in town then would have taken on that aspect during their gestation. But celestial rats were just as hungry and fearsome as any normal rats, and these seemed determined to get to the dangling blacksmith. Seeing the approaching group, he called out for help.

Avoroth was the first to react. He cast a bless spell on the group and moved forward, quarterstaff in hand, hoping to lure at least some of the rats away from the blacksmith by providing them with an alternate target. Gonkle charged at the swarm of rats, crushing a swath of them under the head of his warhammer. Surprised at the sudden attack, the rats in the immediate vicinity of those crushed to death started to flee, draining off about half of the overall number of rats in the blacksmith's open-air shop.

Wilbur advanced next, but he was looking warily about, wondering if these were local rats that had just happened to target the azer blacksmith for their next meal or if they had been summoned by someone. He cast a shillelagh spell on his runestaff and caught a bit of motion in the nearby alleyway; looking over that way, he saw a quartet of larger vermin: dire rats! They were squeaking to each other, and the shadow druid couldn't help but notice each of them looked rather distinctive, with one obviously possessing a celestial heritage; one containing fiendish features; a third having traits from the Elemental Plane of Earth (for the jagged bits of stone piercing its furry body were quite a giveaway); and the last in all aspects seemingly no more than a normal dire rat.

Tamaskan raced up beside her new druidic master and growled at the quartet, readying to attack any who might venture their way. Amris came up behind the dire fell fox and cast a magic missile spell at the first dire rat she saw: the earth element one. It leapt up in shock at the sudden blast of force energy and then, staggered by the magical assault, opened a hole in the street blow it and earth glided away. Pivot, in the meantime, took to the air to see if there were any other threats in the immediate area.

Over in the blacksmith's shop, the remaining rats split into two swarms, one heading for Avoroth and the other going for Gonkle. Avoroth stepped back and slammed at the swarming rats with his new masterwork quarterstaff, crushing a skull or two and sweeping a slew of them away with the staff's tip. Gonkle stood his ground as rats swarmed over his body, ignoring their numerous bites as he concentrated on crushing them with his hammer, but he found when rats are crawling over your face, it becomes rather difficult to focus - or target your hammer-blows.

The fiendish dire rat charged at Amris, instinctively recognizing her as a celestial being and channeling smiting energy into its bite. Fortunately for the witch, she was able to step aside at the last moment and the vile creature's jaws snapped shut on open air. Then Pivot swooped down, raking his talons across the rat's back in defense of his mistress. The celestial dire rat, in the meantime, went for Wilbur, while the ordinary-looking one snapped its jaws at Amris, catching her in the leg with its sharp incisors. Amris yelped in surprise and fought off the pain, concentrating on the combat at hand.

Wilbur spun in place and slammed his runestaff - currently empowered with his shillelagh spell - across the back of the ordinary-looking dire rat's neck, and while the blow was a solid one, the druid didn't feel as if the rat had quite felt the full effect; it was if it were somehow able to shrug off some of the impact. This inherent resistance to physical damage, he realized, was quite common among extraplanar creatures, but the fact that this dire rat had no extraplanar features puzzled him.

Tamaskan didn't worry about any of that; she simply bit down on the back of the celestial dire rat's neck and slew it, giving its corpse a shake for good measure before dropping it, lifeless, in the street. The tip of her flaming tail set the creature's fur ablaze, and soon the smell of burning rat flesh permeated the local atmosphere.

Amris skipped back a few steps, casting another magic missile spell at the fiendish dire rat as she did so, but still it refused to die. Pivot channeled his own smiting energy into his claws and gave it another good rake, but that attack likewise wasn't enough to drop the Hellish rodent. It went for Amris again, recognizing her as its natural foe.

Gonkle, in the meantime, was now a standing mass of rat bites in orcish form; blood dripped down his body from literally dozens of gashes all over his exposed skin, but he didn't seem to notice, so intent was he in crushing his enemies. Avoroth used his quarterstaff to the best of his abilities, but fighting off scores of individual creatures took some time, and the going was fairly slow. But together, he and Gonkle slew enough of the rats that the remainder opted to flee with their lives rather than stick around and get slain themselves. A few of the wiser (or hungrier) rats grabbed up a slain body of one of their brethren and dragged it off for future consumption, once it was safe to do so.

The normal-looking dire rat snapped at Wilbur, but was unsuccessful in its attack - possibly because the shadow druid instinctively cloaked himself in darkness, making his actual position difficult to determine in the midst of heated combat. But it seemed to react to its failure with an unnatural intelligence, far more than that of a simple, animalistic rat. A sudden realization hit the druid: "It's a wererat!" he called to the others. That explained why it didn't have any planar traits - but was it a local Elsewhere inhabitant, or someone wandering in from the fields of Hell? Those were questions for later; for now, Wilbur slammed at the likely wererat with his spell-enhanced runestaff, but once again he missed. Tamaskan slapped her flaming tail against the dire rat's back, but her fires failed to set the creature's fur ablaze at she had done with the celestial rodent.

Amris backed off and, touching her familiar doll, activated a mage armor spell that affected both her and Pivot, despite her celestial owl having taken to the air once more. Then Pivot dove down at the fiendish dire rat again, raking it with his talons. With a hiss of pain, the fiendish rodent snapped at the owl, but failed to connect. The likely wererat lunged for Amris, catching her off guard as it had looked to be concentrating on Wilbur, only to do a fake-out and go for her quite unexpectedly. Once again, the witch felt a diseased pair of incisors bite down on her exposed leg and she cried out in pain.

With the rat swarms dissipating before his eyes, and alerted by Amris's cry of pain, Avoroth spun about and headed over to see what trouble the others had gotten themselves into while he and Gonkle had been busy saving the town's preeminent blacksmith. He readied a spell from his prepared inventory, eager to try out the power of Boccob's tome of knowledge that would allow him to convert the energy of the spell - a protection against evil spell he hadn't had time to cast yet - into pure, healing energy. But since he had to pass by the suspected wererat to do so, he gave it a swat on its head with the end of his quarterstaff; it didn't seem to do much to the rodent, but Avoroth smirked at it just the same.

Gonkle saw the fight against even bigger foes and raced over to join in the fun, wiping the blood from his eyes as he did so; some of the rats had bitten him in the forehead, and the wounds were making it hard for him to see.

Wilbur once again swung his runestaff at the suspected wererat and missed, while Tamaskan made the killing bite against the fiendish dire rat while its attention was foolishly on Pivot, who flapped just out of the creature's reach. But with it dead, the group could now focus their undivided attention on the wererat that had likely been leading the group of these other rodents, dire or otherwise. Amris backed further away from combat and cast an acid splash spell at the wererat, striking it in the face for once. (She hadn't had a great amount of success in the past with that spell, for whatever reason.) Pivot, wounded by a lucky hit from the fiendish dire rat he'd been fighting, took to the higher elevations to look for other foes, but also to stay out of range of the one foe he knew about; he was sure he'd be healed up soon enough once this combat was over with, but until then it didn't look like he was going to be needed.

With a blur of motion, the "wererat" lunged at Amris, no doubt seeing her as the most wounded and the easiest of the four to drop. It altered shape as it moved, and while the team of scouts had expected it to take on either a humanoid or hybrid form, it surprised them all by resuming a form to which they were all already familiar: that of the quasit they'd met back at the cave against the cliff-side! Its poisonous claws raked across Amris's breastbone, raking her with a set of parallel wounds while the venom dripping from its jagged talons siphoned off a bit of the witch's vitality, leaving her feeling sluggish and slow to react.

By then, Avoroth had reached her side and placed his hand over her wounds, channeling his cure light wounds spell through his magical tome and closing them up. She was still a bit woozy from the poison, but at least she didn't feel like she was about to fall over from a loss of consciousness.

With a mighty roar, Gonkle swung his mighty warhammer - and made a mighty spectacle of himself as he missed completely, the hammer's head whizzing nearly a foot over the quasit's head. But seeing they were up against the quasit - who Wilbur knew could fade away into invisibility on a whim - the druid cast a faerie fire spell, encompassing not only the small demon but also Avoroth, Amris, and Gonkle in a violet set of heatless flames. But despite this, Tamaskan missed when trying to bite the quasit.

Amris, feeling a bit better now that she'd had the worst of her wounds tended to, cast a touch of fatigue spell on her hand and managed to touch the quasit, transferring the spell's effect to him. Sadly, despite her valiant efforts, the quasit shrugged off the magical weakness, but it spun in place and went for Avoroth, no doubt wanting to take out the cleric capable of healing all of the damage it inflicted with his curative magics. (Little did he know the cleric of Boccob only had the ability to convert one more spell into a cure light wounds spell; after that, he was down to the comparatively weak cure minor wounds spells.) But Avoroth just grinned evilly at the quasit; he was glad they'd all been wrong about this being a wererat they were fighting, for its sudden reappearance gave the Boccobian cleric an opportunity to slay the one foe who'd had the temerity to attack his person and then escape without the resulting corporal punishment such an attack deserved. He ignored his Boccob's tome of knowledge and converted his last most powerful spell into an inflict light wounds spell, slapping the quasit in the face and discharging it into its Abyssal body. It failed to slay the little demon, but that was all right, for Avoroth could see the spell energy had at least torn through its little body, causing it no small amount of pain. And besides, it didn't entirely matter if the cleric killed it himself, as long as the quasit died for its unforgivable sins.

Gonkle took care of that little detail with a swing of his keen falchion, cleaving the little demon in two along its waistline.

Their battle over, Avoroth provided what healing spells he had remaining on those who needed them the most (Wilbur was able to contribute a cure light wounds spell of his own, applying it to his dire fell fox companion), and they returned to Angalvir's blacksmith shop. The azer had deactivated the immovable rod and was busy kicking rat corpses out of his area and into the street, where no doubt the local dogs would soon take care of them. But he beamed upon seeing the group, and thanked them profusely for his rescue. He gave each of them an enhancement stone - the items to be "field tested" to which Father Solaire had referred; each gemstone could be magically adhered to either a nonmagical suit of armor or a nonmagical weapon, granting it a magical boost in power. In addition, he insisted that anything in the shop could be theirs for half price. Amris took him up on his offer by purchasing a magical dagger, attaching her enhancement stone to her longsword; now she had two magical weapons at hand! Wilbur applied his to his runestaff and Gonkle attached his to his warhammer, while Avoroth opted to enhance his chain shirt; going for defense rather than offense (he'd rather let the underlings wade into battle if at all possible). Plus, he already knew how he'd be spending the majority of his black onyx treasure from the lich's lair: on a wand of cure light wounds, freeing him up from having to worry about healing spells and opening up the much wider variety provided to him by his god.

It was good to be back home!

- - -

We all leveled our PCs up to 3rd level at the end of this adventure, which means Dan and I got to pick new summonable creatures for our PCs' 2nd-level summon spells. We generally pick two from each list and I do up those stats so they're ready at a moment's notice, rather than holding up the game while we look up the relevant stats and the DM jots them down. (This doesn't mean we're only limited to those two creatures from the spell list; we can still summon anything from the list, but we try to pick the ones most likely to see game use.) I went with a fiendish wolf and a fiendish Medium monstrous scorpion, while Dan had Wilbur opt for a shadow hippogriff and a Small earth elemental. (Due to his Plane of Shadows heritage, any non-elemental he summons is imbued with the Shadow Creature template, just as Wilbur is himself.) So now I'll go make tokens of all of those creatures (five of each, for when we get of a high enough level it's possible to summon five of the same creature with one casting of the spell), and have them at hand for when we play from now on.

INTERLUDE: TEMPLE INVESTIGATIONS

Avoroth pocketed his newly-purchased wand of cure light wounds, paid for with a good portion of his share of the black onyxes they'd unearthed from the lich's secret lair. (Wilbur had offered up just short of 200 pieces of gold towards the purchase, recognizing the wand would be put to the benefit of the entire team; Avoroth had gratefully accepted, or as gratefully as he ever allowed himself to appear.) But now, with the prospect of two days back in town to heal up from their recent ordeals, he wanted to go about doing the two things he had planned for when he was back in Elsewhere.

One of these was to pore over the slain fire genasi scout Asharen's journal, in an effort to understand the workings of the Elsewhere Compass and see if he could repair it. (Never one lacking in confidence in his own abilities, Avoroth was sure it was merely a matter of time before he'd divined the mechanism's workings and managed to get it back to working order - perhaps even making an improvement here or there as he repaired it.) But as important as that was to the Boccobian cleric, he had one other item even higher up on his personal "To Do" list.

Nobody knew why the town now known as "Elsewhere" - its original name had been lost to the ages, but it had apparently once just been a normal town somewhere on the Material Plane - plane shifted to a random plane once every year, on the dot, and while Asharen had managed to design and build a device capable of tracking its current location and predicting its future movements, no one had yet discovered just how such a task was performed. Surely to move a miles-long sphere of matter containing not only an entire town but the fields surrounding it had to take an enormous amount of magical energy; nothing short of a major artifact could possibly provide such mystical energy, to the cleric's thinking. And where would such an artifact be present? Since a complete sphere of town, bedrock, and atmosphere was plane shifted each year to a random location, it only made sense that its locomotive power must be placed in the exact center of the sphere. Having consulted maps of the town, it appeared to Avoroth that the exact center of town was smack-dab in Elsewhere's sole church temple. And it was to the temple that Avoroth was currently headed.

It was said the temple had originally been dedicated to Pelor, God of the Sun, but as the centuries passed and Elsewhere's population became more and more diverse, a single temple dedicated to a single deity was no longer sufficient; with an absolute limit to the amount of space inside the town proper, the temple of Pelor became a nondenominational house of worship, with various factions taking their respective turns in worshipping their deities of choice.

Avoroth entered the church - it was currently empty, but it was always open to anyone who would use its services, even if just a place to offer private prayers. But Avoroth was not there to pray to his god; he was there to see if he could discover the means by which Elsewhere plane shifted, and, if possible (Avoroth was confident it was quite possible, if he only devoted enough of his brilliance on the puzzle), to find a way to "steer" it not to any old random plane but a plane of his choosing.

A detect magic showed no magic items currently in the church interior, but that didn't necessarily mean anything; to Avoroth's understanding, powerful relics often generated no magical auras, or at least none detectable by standard divinations. But he also realized the church was in the exact center of the circle of the town, not necessarily in the center of the sphere; it was possible the mighty engine that sent Elsewhere through the planes was underground. However, despite a thorough search (which included the casting of a detect secret doors spell), Avoroth found no passageway to a theoretical lower level of the church. It was possible there was no lower level; he'd have to have Wilbur summon forth an earth elemental to go earth gliding below the church to see if there were any natural caverns below the church where a plane-shifting relic might be hidden. He hated to have to bring the shadow druid into his musings - Avoroth hated being dependent upon others - but be it as it may, the druid would be able to call forth earth elementals sooner than he himself could do so, so he'd use the underling's abilities for his own best interests.

In the meantime, was there anything else he could learn from the temple? He mused, standing in the middle of the temple, staring at the cloth hanging over the original Pelor shrine. On a whim, the Boccobian cleric pulled back the cloth to look into Pelor's carved visage, to see what he might learn from the building's antiquity.

The carving was not one he had expected; it was laid out very much like the standard holy symbol of Pelor, with its central face and the rays shooting out in all directions. But there was something different about its facial features...with a start, Avoroth realized this portrayal of Pelor lacked the deity's traditional beard. And come to think of it, the facial features - although centuries old and thus worn down a bit - were rather feminine in appearance. Did Pelor have a sister? A female aspect? None of this jibed with what Avoroth knew of the Sun God.

But then one more feature caught his eye. The face not only lacked a beard, it also lacked the rays shining forth from the lower half of its face. And some of those rays looked rather like blades....

A half-recalled name came to the forefront of Avoroth's memories: "The Lady of Pain." Where had he heard of such a deity? He'd have to go back to his own clerical notes from his early studies in the Boccobian faith.

With a frown of puzzlement across his brow, Avoroth let the cloth fall back in place and returned to his own bleak quarters in the town. There was mystery here, and he intended to solve it.

- - -

The night of our last session, after Dan and Joe left for their house (Vicki hadn't been feeling well and opted out of the game session; Joe ran her PC as well as her own), I told Logan my suspicions that the engine driving the town and its immediate environs was likely quite literally in "the Middle of Elsewhere," and he took me through a quick one-on-one exploration of my suspicions. I ended up nowhere solid, which is fine by me, because I really don't want to solve this mystery at 3rd level when there are 17 more levels to go in the campaign, but I do intend for Avoroth to finish out the campaign fully understanding how to "steer" Elsewhere exactly where he wants it to go.