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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 1661627" data-attributes="member: 9626">The Hunters of NightmaresThe party returned home, stopping only briefly to pick up Fenthrip, who was running low on food and was getting fairly desperate at this point.  Tsine teleported them just outside of the city, since Tebryn and Grockith weren’t officially citizens of the city, and thus couldn’t be teleported straight into it.  Once there, the party spent almost a month identifying and selling the treasures they earned during their long journey, and then buying or making new supplies.  They also had to wait for Shekuldellstra to receive their message and respond.  During this time, they rarely even left the city, since they knew the Nightmare Prince and his servants will be looking for them, and they preferred to wait inside the protective barrier that their goddesses (regardless of their origin) provided.  However, the town itself wasn’t much better.  People were far more suspicious of the party and of each other compared to last time, the interview process needed to get Tebryn and Grockith into the city took almost as long as Fnipper’s did (which was impressive considering that neither of them threatened to kill a large percentage of the city,) and Lerissa was never apparently available to see them.    After about a month, the party received a note from Quercus’ sister.  In the letter, she admitted she was worried about Quercus, who was growing increasingly distant since he started living with her.  He was becoming obsessed with their father, and she was worried he might soon leave to find him.  However, she also had some help for them.  Her sources were starting to dry up now that she has been reformed for an extended period of time, but she does know of a Bas temple that is still active as of a few days ago.  However, it was two weeks away and far to the northwest, near the center of the Undead Empire’s area of control.  It was even inside a swamp fed by a putrid river known as The Corpsewash, which was filled with undead monstrosities.  Nonetheless, she believes that they might be able to capture a cultist there and force it to reveal the location of the Nightmare Prince’s manor, which he almost never leaves.  Once there, they have to look for black-robed cultists, as they are in the same sect of the Bas worshippers as The Nightmare Prince is.  However, Shekuldellstra warns the party to be very careful when dealing with him.  Even when she was evil, she was afraid of his sadism and the twisted genius behind his plans.  He might even be the most evil of all of Bas’ Strife Masters!    Despite this fact, the party had many personal reasons to deal with him, and after making a last few purchases and plans, they left for this next journey.  The first week could be spent underground, safe in the tunnels, but they soon had to return to the surface right in the middle of the Long Waste, where again anything could be waiting for them.    However, the first hints of the danger the party was up against began long before that point.  While still in the tunnels, and even when resting in the various village inns that dotted the path, the party began to have nightmares.  It began the same way for each of them, suggesting that these nightmares might not be totally coincidental.  Each party member, in his dream, was wandering through a dark forest, and was being pursued by something.  The “something” was vague and unknown, but in their dream-state, each of them knew it was hostile and would certainly be their death.  Finally, each one came to a forest clearing, which a strange box was set in the center of.  Each of them felt compelled to open it, and was immediately set upon by the darkness within, which coalesced into his greatest fear!    Robin thought of the Zhovvut, the strange three-eyed monster that it had fought back at the mountain.  The way it was able to look into his mind and steal his very soul terrified him.  Tsine feared losing control of his magic, which was an ominous portent indeed since the magical disease was growing ever stronger within him. Grockith thought about his mother, a gold dragon, and was terrified of the thought of her death.  Fnipper took longer to get the dream than most, but when he did have it, he thought of the drow that destroyed his village.  Tal feared the possibility of the world becoming further unbalanced.  Thorrun had the fairly simple fear of vampires, apparently since he had a nearly deadly encounter with them shortly before meeting Galeron.  Galeron himself simply was afraid of letting down his church, and failing them in the quest against evil.  Finally, Tebryn feared Lolth, the evil goddess that terrorized his race back on his home plane.    Besides the nightmares, there was little danger in the trip, at least at first.  On the second day of their journey above ground, they fought a few of the fairly weak undead generally called wights, but it was a quick fight that posed no threat to the party.  However, a second battle on the fourth day was far more dangerous.  As they were traveling, a massive rumbling was suddenly getting closer behind them, as if a group of larger creatures were running at them at high speed.  The party quickly set up a defensive position, and sure enough, a small army of ogres and hill giants rose up behind them!  They appeared to be led by an unusually strong-looking hill giant with black scales for skin and a vaguely reptilian appearance, and a troll with metallic skin in places and metal needles for teeth and claws.  Their giant leader merely bellowed, “Nothing personal, but I have to kill you,” before he and his entourage charged the party!    Leading the attack was the mechanical troll, who began to yell in a furious, but metallic and hollow, voice as he ran up to the party.  Robin and his latest animal companion, a wolverine, moved to the front of the party and began to fire at the throng of giants, though he focused on their giant leader instead of the troll.  Tsine also began to fire into the horde, though he used a storm of magical ice instead of arrows.  Grockith, meanwhile, moved to intercept the troll, and struck him with one powerful attack before the troll could respond.  However, the injury began to heal almost instantly, as wounds usually do on trolls, and it appeared that the creature’s mechanical parts partially absorbed the blow, making it a fairly minor injury overall.  Thorrun also moved to the front of the group, and prepared to attack the lesser hill giants, ogres, and dire wolves, that made up most of the enemy team.    Almost immediately, the ogres and giants swarmed over Thorrun and the rest of the party, though Galeron’s unfortunate cohort received the worst of it.  Galeron quickly moved up to help his struggling friend, but it didn’t look good.  Tebryn, who knew Galeron far better than he did the rest of the party, also moved to help his friend, but he preferred to stay a few steps back, and attack the giants with magic whenever possible.    Meanwhile, Fnipper tried to sneak behind enemy lines, to help Robin fight the half-dragon giant.  However, when he got near, he was suddenly cut by something, but he couldn’t tell where the attack came from.  He warily moved away from the giant, to engage his invisible opponent.  However, while his training gave him the uncanny ability to evade attacks without even seeing his attacker, he didn’t expect the sheer volley of attacks that came at him.  Massive, invisible clubs were trying to slam into him, and succeeded once, more of the strange blades flew at him, and just when he thought it was over, he was almost knocked off his feet by a giant tail that struck him just across the chest.  Fnipper was terrified by this point.  Was he surrounded by an army of invisible warriors?  Unknown to him, all his attacks came from one enemy, a half-mechanical ettin who had four tentacle blades and a giant metal tail grafted to him, vastly increasing his already impressive number of attacks.    The fight soon broke down to these miniature battles.  Robin fought the giant leader, Grockith did battle with the troll, Tebryn, Galeron and Thorrun tried their best to keep the rest of the horde at bay, and Fnipper attacked his invisible foe, all while Tsine and Tal tried to weaken their foes with an almost endless number of lightning bolts, magical volleys of missiles, fireballs, and any other bit of magic they could find.  Very slowly, the tide was turning against the horde or lesser servants, but at a heavy cost.  Fnipper’s luck finally ran out, and one of the tentacle blades went straight through his chest, leaving him alive but with little time remaining.  Robin’s companion was crushed by the giant’s mighty club, and even Grockith’s unusually strong rhino was killed when the enraged troll leapt on top of it, grabbed onto its head with both of its claws, and literally sliced it off with one mighty rend!  Curiously, this happened after Grockith leapt off the rhino, and left it to fight the troll alone to help Robin finish the giant.  This struck Galeron as strange.  It was noble to help a comrade in arms, but leaving a beloved and loyal companion to face certain death alone was not normal paladin behavior at all.    Between Grockith and Robin, the leader of the giants was killed, and the Ettin was revealed for what it was shortly after this point, thanks to Tsine’s magic.  Suddenly surrounded by a half dozen angry foes who were eager to avenge their lost companions and rescue the dying Fnipper, the creature was quickly blasted and ripped apart.  That left only the troll barbarian, who was barely scratched at this point.  However, just as he was about to do to the same thing to Grockith that he did to his companion, he was stopped by an invisible wall.  Tsine smiled.  His spell worked perfectly.    Now trapped by a wall of force, the troll could do little but howl in anger, while the party healed itself.  Finally, when they were ready and the troll had tired itself, Tsine removed the wall and the party charged at it as one.  It too was soon torn apart, but the party, having heard about the regenerative properties of trolls, wasted no time in trying to destroy the remains.  Frustratingly, it seemed to resist fire, possibly as a result of defenses built into its mechanical armor, but Tsine was able to finish him with magical fire, finally ending the threat.    However, this deadly badly temporarily delayed their journey.  Tsine took some time to memorize the terrain around them, then teleported the party to Necropolis.  There, Grockith hoped to have his mount restored to life, while the party divided up the treasure that they earned from their attackers.  Grockith was able to find someone capable of restoring his mount to life, but the process didn’t go precisely as expected.  When it was restored to life, his rhinoceros mount was suddenly covered mechanical parts, much like the troll that killed it was!  The rest of the party was understandably suspicious, but Grockith liked the changes to his mount, especially the now much larger steel horn!  The party decided to rest here for the night, and then have Tsine teleport them back to the site of the battle tomorrow, where they can finish their journey.  As they went to their rooms, a tired and still wary Fnipper told the others, “If I get another one of those nightmare dreams, I think I want to change my answer!”    The next day, the party prepared to continue their journey.  Despite Fnipper’s comments, none of them received another one of the strange nightmares, though after his latest attempt to kill them, the Nightmare Prince wasn’t far from anyone’s mind.  The next two days of travel were uneventful, except for one thing.  Right in the middle of the first day of their renewed journey, Tsine suddenly started to look extremely sick.  Galeron and Grockith both tried to use their powers to cure this disease, but neither of them seemed to have any effect.  After repeated attempts to stand up failed, Tsine groaned, “I don’t think I can travel any more with you until I can recover from this.  I want to help you, but I think all I can do now is slow you down.”    Tal calmed his friend down.  “Don’t worry, Tsine.  Take all the time you need to recover.  We can at least find this temple without you.  Will you be all right by yourself, though?”    Tsine tried to nod, but gave up.  “Don’t worry.  I still have enough strength to teleport me back home.  And I have a friend in town that can take care of me, and if worse comes to worse see if the temples have any stronger magic that can heal me if time isn’t enough.”    And so, for now, Tsine left the party.  Tal, however, had a horrible feeling, like this would be the last time he would see his friend like this again.    In the third day of their travels, the Long Waste finally started to end, as the swamp began.  Though the party as a whole, and Robin in particular, were relieved to see wilderness again, the swamp was so foul that it wasn’t much improvement, and the entire place reeked of death.  This also reminded them that they were still in a very hostile realm, which was proven later that day, when the weather turned foggy and they passed a series of shallow pools.  The faces of the dead appeared in the water around them, but unlike a similar scene in a different story (heh heh,) these faces were attached to still active, and very hostile, undead!  As the monsters rose up around them, the fog itself coalesced before them, turning into a humanoid figure made entirely out of fog.    Robin was the first to react, and he led his new companions, a bear and a wolf, into battle against the first of the undead.  Tal, however, realized that these were just larger versions of the drowned, breath-stealing monsters he had fought back at the river battle long before, and since he was now the last person from that group to still be in the party, he shouted a warning to the others about what to watch out for.  He then fired at the fog monster, only for his magical ball of sonic energy to fly right through it, without any noticeable effect.  However, his warning was hardly needed.  Thorrun, Grockith, and Fnipper attacked the swarm of giant sunken, while Tebryn helped with magical artillery, and almost half of them were already dead when Galeron finally was able to finish his prayers to his goddess, which destroyed most of the surviving sunken in a blast of holy energy.  Only the fog creature posed a threat at this point, when it managed to grab Tal in a fog tendril, and began to suck the blood out of him, turning the creature a deep crimson color.  However, by now, it was surrounded, and it was soon reduced to a bloody pool by the combined forces of the party.  The party spent some time to search the area for treasure, and then continued on.  They knew that at this pace, they’ll find the temple in a matter of hours, and that was where the true danger began.    OOC Notes: Yes, I know, another missed update.  Fortunately, I don’t have much to do to actually update the current adventures for a few weeks, so I won’t get nearly as burned out with the campaign for a while, I think.    However, to speed things up a bit, I’ll probably be removing these OOC Notes from now on, at least as a regular feature.  I thought that it would help encourage discussion, but I fear it might have done just the opposite.  I’ll probably do at few of them as needed, but not as a regular feature.     Oh, as you might have noticed, this will be Tsine’s last game for a while.  The player had to quit for time reasons.  However, I found a new player very quickly this time, so the party will get back to full strength very soon.</blockquote>

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