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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CPaladin" data-source="post: 8308720" data-attributes="member: 7030144">Session 11 (August 22, 2020)15 Tar-SkardThey have possession of the mouth of a tunnel traveling east into Shadow.They start to head into the tunnel. Mreep, Ashaltir, Ulgorio, Runor, Aleep, and Bartix bringing up the rear. The tunnel is crudely built, with wood supports that would be easy to collapse, and it exits a long distance away—about 1000 yards. It emerges into the gray haze of the Shadow, with no real sunlight, dust everywhere, and a large hulking fortress some quarter-mile away, with limp banners hanging from its ramparts. There is some speculation that the castle may be where the priest was from. The fortress is north of them.To their east, further into Shadow, they see three groups moving in the distance.The group decides to head towards the fort; some of the party are confident in their ability to handle threats, some are afraid of the dangers of Shadow. The group tries to be stealthy and to sneak up.The fortification is gray, as is the plain of dust. There are repetitive thumps, thuds, and ringings from within the fortification. As they approach, Mreep notes that there are humanoid figures scattered about the top of the wall, marching back and forth. They’re not regularly spaced, but they’re definitely patrolling the wall.At that point, the group decides to head back to the Circle to report.The return to the Circle is uneventful. The same captain, still on duty, greets them.They report. The captain says, “One of the dragonfortresses. We should seal that up. I wonder if that’s how the priest is travelling back and forth.”The captain considers. “We could seal that up immediately. Or we could temporarily leave it open, and you could ambush the priest the next time he comes through.”Everyone agrees to ambush the priest.They return and set up a cold camp at the mouth of the tunnel. A small chubby humanoid with little tiny wings flies out of the tunnel mouth and looks around, and he takes a deep breath. Runor and Bartix are staring at him. Runor is absolutely sure this is a quasit, the least powerful form of demons. They’re very minor demons.Bartix tries to sneak up to grab him. He bounces up and grabs him. As he’s being dragged to the ground, he’s saying, “Hey, what are you doing? Now you’re lying on top of me in your armor and driving all the breath out of me. Hey look. I haven’t taken any souls recently, or cannibalized any dogs. You should let me go.”Bartix drags him back to their camp.“Oh, don’t take me back to the Circle! They’ll incinerate me. It will be no more Bigglesnoz.“That’s a dragonfort in there. That’s where my lord is, like your lords are in the Tower. My lord is a mighty demonlord. His name is Nightwalker, a servant of Orlodu, the Worm that Bores Beneath. He has ruled that fortress for… millennia.”Nightwalker has an army. It varies in size. You try to control a group of Eums! And occasionally he has a demon knight, but they then ride off across the border because they don’t believe that they need to wait for the doyles.They ask some more questions about Nightwalker. He’s a demon, like all the lords of the dragonfortresses except the great black dragons. (Runor fakes casting a spell to force him to tell the truth.)Nightwalker started getting more powerful, but before he reached Balor status, he became a Lord. He stopped getting personally more powerful as much as he could, but started controlling more stuff.Nightwalker became the lord of the fortress when he destroyed the previous lord, a minor Balrog, and now he’ll be lord until someone else destroys him. That’s how the lords of the fortresses work, except the ones held by the great elder dragons, which are too powerful for them to destroy.They have a discussion about how the quasit can reform. He agrees to try, but may be lying.They keep watching the tunnel mouth.They hear the clanking of hooves coming out of the tunnel. Skeletal winged horses rise up out of the tunnel mouth, pulling an old style chariot, with a single human, in black robes, with a holy symbol of a coiled worm. The horses quickly settle back to the ground—they can’t fly very well. The horses start trotting slowly towards the fortress/dungeon where they dealt with the necromancer. The priest pays them no mind, but seems to assume the quasit is part of the guard posted by the Shadow to defend the tunnel.The group attacks the priest, and the last attack on the surprise round is enough to defeat him. The driver, a skeleton, collapses.The priest was alive but bleeding out, and they finish him off and take a trophy. (He was a 9th level priest.)They bury the bones of the skeletal driver. They also detach the skeletal pegasi and try to take them with them.They return to the Circle. The Seneschal of the Tower comes out to thank them personally on behalf of the Hastur, and gives them 50 silver each, and then sends a team out to collapse the tunnel. They have 2 undead pegasi, that can be ridden. They also still have a captive quasit.[End Session 11]</blockquote>

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