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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 1723996" data-attributes="member: 9626">The Nightmare Prince: The Journey UpwardsSurprisingly to some members of the party, the group was not discovered and was able to awaken the next day safely.  However, everyone remembers being awakened, if only for a few moments, by the sound of a loud buzzer coming from somewhere nearby.  The next morning, Danae and the party’s other wizards prepared their spells, while the others spoke with the man they rescued from the torture chamber.  He said his name was Sigmund, and he was an escapee from the undead empire’s breeding grounds, where vampires and similar undead ate, and others were transformed into undead en masse.  He had just managed to escape when he discovered this place, and was subsequently captured by Khaspar.  He was being tortured for information about what he knew when the party arrived to save him.  He managed to see a lot about the manor before his capture, and he’d be happy to help the party find their way through the manor if it meant escape and getting revenge on The Nightmare Prince.    Once the party was ready to go and the coast was clear, the next day of exploring this twisted place began.  There were two unexplored paths to take from the Storage room: a door to the south and one to the east.  Sigmund, remembering what he learned while imprisoned, said “I know there’s some way to the second story to the south.  And Khaspar himself is will almost certainly be waiting at the top of the Manor.”  The others weren’t so certain about this latter conclusion, but the eastern path likely doubles back to the residential part of the Manor they worked so hard to avoid the first time around, so going south made as much sense as anything.    At first, the area they entered was peaceful, and completely out of place with the rest of the Manor so far.  It was an indoor courtyard, filled with plants and even children of various races playing.  Oddly enough, though, none of them were playing together, or even reacted when the party arrived.  At one point, Nathee gasped slightly, when she saw a little girl who was also a deep gnome.  “I think that’s my granddaughter!” she whispered.    The party had a brief debate about what to do next.  “I think we should take them along,” Tal insisted.  “We can’t leave them here.  Who knows what the Nightmare Prince will do to them?”    Danae shook her head.  “It’s one thing to take a few prisoners with us, but a couple dozen children?  They’d just get us all killed.  And they don’t appear to be in any immediate danger.  We can rescue them with the rest of the slaves later, once Khaspar is dead.”    The debate continued for a few minutes, but eventually a compromise was reached, where they would at least find a way out of the manor itself, and try to get the children out using that.  There were only two other doors in the room, and both of them connect to a square of wall that enters into the otherwise square nursery.  However, when Robin tried the door, the room suddenly turned dark, except for a spotlight that caught Robin and the rest of the party.  A buzzer sounded, and all the children suddenly paid attention to the party for the first time.  Suddenly, all of them rushed the party to attack them!    Fortunately, despite the horror of the situation, it wasn’t as bad as it first appeared.  Though no one wanted to hurt children, everyone realized the main priority was to escape without killing them, so they quickly switched to non-lethal attacks.  Though even knocking children unconscious with the blunt end of swords was horrifying, it was accomplished with no permanent injuries.  The attack was further proof that the children can’t accompany them now, but Tal insisted on at least bring Nathee’s granddaughter with them, in an attempt to make up for the death of Fnipper.    Once the attack was over, getting the door open was fairly easy.  It appeared to lead into a dark room, with a stairway that led onto metal walkways above them.  It appeared that this was the way to the next floor, so the party led the way, with Sigmund leading their crazed cultist friend and carrying Nathee’s daughter.  As they began to traverse the room, it became obvious that much of the darkness in the center of the room was magical in nature, making it impossible to know exactly what was in the center of the room, especially without any real clerics left in the group to remove the darkness.  Nathee and Robin listened into the darkness, but after failing to hear anything, the group tried to just reach the staircase up as carefully as they can.  They only got about halfway up, however, before the screams began.    Tal, at least, recognized them for what they were.  They sounded just like the strange jellyfish-like demon that accompanied Tanos, over a year ago.  As expected, mere seconds later, the screams rose to a deafening level as a pair of the hideous demons appeared in the room.  However, both of them were given the now nearly omni-present metallic implants, and while both of them were larger than the one Tal saw earlier, one of them was double its size!  Even worse, as the monsters appeared, the sound of another monster arriving could be heard coming from the other end of the room, though the darkness in the center of the room prevented anyone from seeing what it was.    Nathee responded first.  She sprinted up the stairs, and tumbled to the side of one of the Lipidos, hurting it, but only slightly.  Her heroism was rewarded with a strange, deafening screech from the other end of the room.  Nathee narrowly dodged out of the way, and the sonic attack left a hole in the wall where she once stood.  The larger of the two Lipidos responded next, by releasing a circle of dark energy right into the party.  Surprisingly, Sigmund managed to avoid the blast entirely, using far more agility than an ex-slave would be expected to have.  This was good news, especially since he was still protecting Nathee’s kin, but it was suspicious nonetheless.  He still quickly got out of the way of the fight, as Tal, Robin, and Roryn converted to attack their enemies.  Danae and Viett, meanwhile, fired instead in the direction of the screaming monster with their most powerful attacks.  The screams they heard suggested that their plan succeeded admirably, but before Danae could respond again, the smaller Lipido grabbed her, and injected her with some horribly fluid from an artificial tail.  The poison had a profound effect on Dane’s constitution, which was already at its lowest point from the mechanical infestation on her body, and she lapsed into unconsciousness.    Meanwhile, the larger Lipido managed to grab both Viett and the cultist they rescued from the chapel, and in a flash, it sucked the life force out of the poor man.  He screamed in agony, and that dying scream seemed to enter the Lipido itself, along with his very soul.  Viett, meanwhile, demonstrated why trying to grapple a psion was a very bad idea, and fired a disintegration ray at the creature even as barbed tentacles were rending his flesh.  The monster avoided the worst of the blast, but the continued assault by Tal, Robin, and Roryn was already weakening the monster.  The lesser Lipido responded by dropping Danae, and firing a dark circle of energy at the party just like the larger creature had done earlier.  But it wasn’t enough to save the larger monster, who finally fell to the might of the enraged Roryn’s axe.  As it exploded in an eruption of vile fluid and the smoke of souls, the party turned its aggression to the smaller creature, who wisely fled after seeing how this fight had turned against them.    The party was victorious yet again, but now there were less of them than ever.  Galeron was captured, Thorrun dead, Grockith in a coma, and Danae unconscious, the only conscious party members left were Tal, Robin, Roryn, Viett, and technically Sigmund.  As they continued on, Robin and Tal exchanged glances, and both silently realized that the only people around them that they really trusted were each other.    The dark room they were in was mostly empty.  However, as they continued down the walkway, it suddenly gave way in front of Roryn, the party’s current point man, sending him into the darkness below, which apparently contained numerous spikes.  He was able to escape the pit with minimal damage, but Nathee understandably took the lead after that, and found all the other traps on the way to the other side of the room.   They found two doors leading west there, and chosen the Southern door after Sigmund mentioned he heard about an armory that The Nightmare Prince had in that vicinity.    Meanwhile, the third stage of Galeron’s interrogation had begun.  To start this part of the interrogation, Khaspar didn’t have to say anything.  He just had to show Galeron the view from his manor.  It was overlooking a huge, dark valley that appeared to be currently (if not eternally) caught in a thunderstorm.  Galeron could see little inside the pit itself, but occasionally lightning would flash, letting him catch a glimpse at something inside the valley.  It appeared to be the upper half of a vaguely humanoid form.  Judging from the distance to the valley, it would have to be almost a mile tall at full length, and the way it seemed to be trapped and futilely struggling to free itself did nothing to remove the dread Galeron was feeling.  For as he looked upon the figure in the comparative safety of Khaspar’s Manor, he knew that he was watching Bas herself.</blockquote>

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