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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 1448570" data-attributes="member: 9626">Quercus Jones and the Temple of DoomThe party continued on this new path, hoping to catch up to the strange cultists before it is too late.  As they traveled, True Light ended, and Second Light began, throwing the region into perpetual near-twilight again.  But the party didn’t have the luxury of an early rest tonight, so they pressed onward.  Suddenly, a few hours into Second Light, they were surprised when a pair of glowing crossbow bolts emerged from the darkness in front of the path, flooding the area with light.  Four yellow-robed figures stepped forward, and wordlessly attacked.  The first two, which appeared to be one human and one elf from what the party can tell, raised long swords and charged the party, while the other two held back.  Quercus and Flix entered melee, while Tal and Tsine held back to attack with long ranged attacks.  Yet something about this fight felt wrong to the party, for while their adversaries were clearly less experienced warriors, the heroes were barely able to land a hand on them.  It was as if the shock of this strange new life, coupled with all the things they learned today, has finally caught up with them.  And in the rare instance where they could harm their enemy, one of the yellow robed figures would just heal them, while the other used arcane magic to keep them at bay.  Again, Quercus fell to the combined attack of the wizard’s magical orbs and the fighter’s blades, and Tal was almost killed when the yellow robed figure, finally out of magic, tried to stop his heart with a mere touch.  However, the party finally was able to put their improved training with weaponry and skill at dodging potentially lethal attacks to use, and outlasted their enemies when their spellcasters simply ran out of magic and joined the first two enemies in melee.  When all of them were killed, they were stripped of their belongs, which included the typical weapons, armor, and mundane items most neophyte warriors used, along with a strange pair of scimitars as large as a needle for each of the four cultists.  The party also took their robes, thinking they might be used as a disguise or a tool for further research on this cult.  They followed the footprints of this group farther down the path, and then noticed that it ended at a strange mound of earth.  At first, they thought their journey was essentially over here, since they didn’t see any other tracks leading to or from the mound.  However, their senses told them that there must be something here, and after taking an extensive amount of time searching the area, they found a secret door inside the mount itself.  They couldn’t, however, find a way in, so desperately, they simply tried knocking.  Fortunately, they had the foresight to put on the robes first (though Flix’s was clearly too long for him, and he hid behind the rest of the party an attempt to hide this fact,) for the path below was guarded.  One of the guards looked at the party.  “What happened?”Thinking quickly, Tal responded, “We, um, ran into some problems.  A few people followed our trail, but we took care of them.”One of the guards nodded, and looked to Flix.  “And what happened to him?” Flix was the one to speak up this time.  “Um, I got caught in a reduction spell.  It should wear off pretty soon.”The guards, remarkably, bought it.  “Well, come in and hurry.  The high priestess is holding services in the audience chamber.  But before you go, you will of course have to make the sign of respect.”The party silently panicked, before Tsine remembered the miniature scimitars and that the cultists all had a few strange scars on their forearms.  Desperately, he stabbed his own arms with the blades!  The guards looked on nonchalantly, and there were a few tense moments before one guard spoke up.  “Okay, but remember, the priestess is pretty strict about how this is supposed to be done.  You got to do it the right way or she’ll regard it as insubordination and well, you know what the punishment for that is.”  He pantomimed a sweeping motion on his own forearms, and the rest of the party gratefully followed suit, though it was painful and added to their already deep wounds.  The party proceeded down the stairs, and into the underground temple.  From there, they followed the sounds of noise to one doorway, and cautiously opened.Inside, there were fifty or sixty cultists.  Most were wearing yellow robes, though some had red, black or gray robes.  All were looking upwards at a balcony, where a woman in a red-trimmed yellow robe was exhorting towards the crowd.  Behind her was a strange man with black, yellow-spotted hair, a shriveled-looking humanoid with a strange tail, a spiny, nervous humanoid, four more yellow-robed figures, and one orc, which was bound and currently lying on an altar.  The wounds and soft groans he was emitting indicated he was in great pain, but the party could only look on in horror.  The final thing on the ledge was a statue of a woman with dark hair and a deep blue gown.  The statue was also wielding two scimitars, and had a cruelly wicked grin.  The priest continued whatever sermon she began before the party arrived.“We, the Devoted of the Great Bas The Despot, wish to offer you a sacrifice!”  At her words, the orc was strapped to a wall.  The priestess continued, “We offer this one to you today, and, forty-eight hours from now, we shall offer an even greater present.  One of your own betrayers has been given to us, and we shall offer her to you!”  At this point, the other priests started chanting prayers to Bas, though it looked like the red and black-robed cultists were less enthused than the others, and the gray-robed ones looked genuinely uncomfortable.  The priestess then spoke one more time, “All power to Bas, the least appreciated and greatest of the Twelve!”  With that, she and the four other robed figures drew scimitars, and simultaneously stabbed the orc, killing him!OOC Notes: Thus ended the first real adventure of the new party.  The next one turned out to be far shorter than the last, but it had some good moments, and introduced a new player.</blockquote>

Verification