[sblock="Skill Challenge - Nighttime Visitations"]Success!
Overall Progress: 10 successes, 2 failures[/sblock]
Turtlespine Mountain
As you crash into the forest canopy following the hooded mischief-makers, they once again pick up the pace, flitting through the trees at break-neck speed. To make matters worse, you are once again running uphill on an ever-steeper gradient. It takes the full extent of your endurance, as well as Ferris' command of tracking and local geography just to keep pace with the shadowy villains.
As you move further and further up what you come to realize must be the slope of a mountain, you notice that your quarries have begun to follow the remains of a path. It zigs back and forth up the mountain slope in a series of seemingly endless switchbacks. Here and there along the way you notice, by the pale light of the moon, crumbling pillars, archways, and statues, all clearly of Eladrin make.
The breakneck pursuit and the chill mountain air continue to eat away at your energy reserves, but just as you are beginning to think you couldn't possibly keep up the chase much longer, you burst into a clearing on top of the mountain's summit, and are brought up short by a narrow chasm directly in front of you. Your fleet-footed antagonists move across the divide unimpeded though, seeming almost to walk on top of the shadows that pool in the rocky divide. They run toward a figure that stands waiting for them on the other side of the chasm... It is Dhakanmirr.
The Rripangu elder stands naked in the light of the waxing moon, save for his hairstring belt/loincloth, obviously untroubled by the chill mountain air. He holds in one hand a cruel-looking, curved dagger, and in the other a silver hand mirror, of the type women of the Isles use when combing out their hair; both are decidedly odd accouterments for a chieftain of a remote tribal people. His eyes widen in surprise, and then furrow into a scowl as he sees you come crashing through the mountain forest undergrowth.
"Fools!," he chastises his diminutive minions as they reach his side, "You were followed? This could undo all that we have worked for!"
Dhakanmirr lifts the arm holding the dagger, pointing in your direction, and as he does so, the four cloaked figures turn their gaze upon you. Their faces are the stuff of children's nightmares, and you realize to your horror that only one of the half-sized villains has eyes. The rest stare at you with empty sockets.
[sblock="Arcana or History 10"]The creatures you've been following are dark ones, creatures native to Lauto's realm of Herebos, commonly featured in stories Dauntonian parents tell their children about bad things that happen to kids who stay out past curfew. Why three of them are eyeless however, is a mystery.
[sblock="History 15"]Dark ones typically serve the shadar-kai of Herebos. It is extremely unusual to see them in the service of a human.[/sblock][/sblock]
"Stop them!," cries Dhakanmirr as he makes a slicing motion with his dagger through the night air. As his blade passes, the very shadows themselves come alive, seeming to reach out toward you with dark mouths and fingers. "Hekthesh," says Dhakanmirr, addressing the only one of the evil little men with his eyes intact, "once you have disposed of this rabble, meet me at Baerdun. The time of the ritual is nigh!," and with this the Rripangu elder steps sideways into the shadows and is gone. The wicked little men draw their swords as the shadows themselves seem to swarm around you.
OOC: Initiatives Please!
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