Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 1734221" data-attributes="member: 9626">The Nightmare Prince: Not So Beautiful MusicAs Galeron looked on in horror, Khaspar continued his ranting.  “You do realize that no matter what happens here, you and your country are doomed.  You could escape, or you could even kill me, and for what?  As you can see, my goddess is unstoppable, and growing more powerful by the second.  Soon, she will be free, and able to destroy your empire by herself.  And when she does, I’ll be there aiding her until the end, where I shall take her place as the deserving ruler of this world.  And what can you do to stop it?  You can’t kill Bas and all of her servants by yourself.  And good luck getting Methosilang to help.  Nobody of worth believes your stories of a twelfth goddess.  Our spies have seen to that.  You will be all alone, unable to do anything until your inevitable deaths.  Only by helping us now will you spare yourselves from a long and painful demise.”    Despite all of these threats and prophecies, Galeron would not talk, so Khaspar again took him away.  He chuckled as Galeron was taken back to his prison, and said, “You should know that next time we speak, you shall see my worst.”    Meanwhile, Galeron’s friends and rescuers were being led through a hallway by Sigmund.  Eventually, he stopped at a door and said, “The treasure should be in there.”  Roryn used his favorite method of door-removal to enter the room, and found a number of strange and clearly magical objects, including a pair of wings, a ring, and a bastard sword.  The party decided to deal with them later, however, and placed them in a bag of holding for now.  On their way back to the other door, they checked the other doors in this hallway, but they all appeared to be just bedrooms, albeit far nicer ones than normal cultists would be expected to have.  Tal speculated, “These probably belong to Khaspar’s Elite soldiers, like that assassin we fought back in the art gallery, or that priest from the chapel.  At any rate, they all had little but their normal furnishings, possibly because any servant of the Nightmare Prince would likely be far too paranoid to leave anything of value off of their person.  The party continued on after a cursory examination.    The second door from the stairway, however, was far more interesting.  It led to a hallway with four more doors.  The first two were just more bedrooms, but the third appeared to be a very strange prison.  After Nathee took a few moments to easily pick the lock (Tal and Viett had managed to restrain Roryn this time,) they found their way into a room filled with tiny cages, which each appeared large enough to hold a single prisoner of human size.  Most of the cages were inhabited by people, but all of them appear to have been reduced to emotional vegetables by Khaspar’s tortures.  They hide their eyes from the party as soon as they open the door.  However, there was one exception to these prisoners.  One angry-looking woman was trapped in a cage that was itself surrounded by a magical circle of protection, which Viett realized was used to prevent a creature from teleporting or plane-shifting away, and was usually used for summoned outsiders!  As soon she saw the party, she immediately turned much friendlier, and directing her response specifically to Robin, she called out, “At last, I am freed!  Good sirs, can you help me escape from this cage.  If you do, I promise I will help you get revenge on The Nightmare Prince!”This obviously struck a few of the heroes as a little suspicious.  Tal, however, couldn’t perform his normal role as party diplomat, as he was working to try and calm the other prisoners.  Instead, Robin took over, with Viett providing him with information as he spoke.  “My, err, bard friend here says that you appear to be trapped in a summoning circle.  May I ask why?”The woman responded, “First of all, the name is Veran, and I won’t lie to you.  I was once a worshipper of Bas.  However, she betrayed me by agreeing with Khaspar’s request that I assist him on a project of his.  He merely wanted a chance to abuse and humiliate me, since he wouldn’t dare try this against the Lady of Blood or Blade of Minds.  He is a sadist and a misogynist of the worst sort, and he just wanted a chance to prove that he was my superior.  I’m a decent sorceress myself, but I couldn’t oppose him and his entire force, and Bas never once responded to my please for aid.  As a result, I decided to reform and serve her no longer, and I’ll start by killing that bastard Khaspar.  However, I will only help you if you swear on the names of your goddesses that you will protect me both here and afterwards.  If we do kill Khaspar, Bas will label me her enemy, and she always spares no effort to make an example of traitors.”After hearing her story, the party disengaged to discuss the issue.  Nathee and Sigmund were both a very suspicious, and Sigmund in particular thinks that she’s really working for Khaspar herself, but everyone seemed convinced by her story, though it also looked like she was hesitating or hiding something.  However, she also seemed to have a slight speech impediment, and she deliberately tried to hide her mouth when speaking, and Viett speculated that Khaspar must’ve done something to disfigure her that she’s ashamed of, which could explain her attempts to hide something.  They eventually decide to free her.  Viett destroyed the circle and dissolved the cage’s door, free her.  The delighted Veran said, “I think I have a way to help you already.  I notice that all of you are extremely wounded.  I can use magic to hide us in a number of small planar pockets, where you can rest in relative safety.”The party hesitated at this as well, since they knew Galeron can’t wait forever for them, but they also realized that the Lipidos took a lot out of them, and they’d be no good to Galeron if they were killed while trying to rescue him, so they took her up her offer.  They hid their portable holes, bags of holding, and other personal pocket dimensions inside a wall that Tal stone shaped a hole into using his staff, and rested for the night.The next morning, as they left the prison, they were surprised to find someone waiting for them outside.  Fortunately, it was Alkurvas, their bard friend whose help got them into the Manor and let them bypass the trap that claimed Galeron.  “It appears that you have been having quite a lot of problems reaching Khaspar.  Fortunately, I will be able to help you from here on, if you want.  Your animals are safe, and you are very close to Khaspar and Galeron, but there are still many obstacles left.  In my travels, I have learned some secrets of the art of magical healing, which I can use to aid you a little.”The party readily accepted his aid, and recovered as many of their remaining wounds as they could.  However, Alkurvas could do nothing to improve the condition of either Grockith or Danae.At Veran’s direction (and the simple fact that it’s the last way to go,) the party entered the last room of the hallway, and found themselves in perhaps the most complicated and bizarre room yet.  The room was elegantly furnished, and a light but catchy music filled the air.  Tal, relying on his years of bardic practice, noticed that there was a strange, repeating nature to the song, but he couldn’t exactly place his finger on what it was exactly.  Meanwhile, the room also was filled with strange mechanical figures, similar to the figures that animate on a cuckoo clock, though much larger.  Each figure also was far more horrible than the typical clock’s, and appeared to be ready to disembowel each other, flail around while being burned by a carved fire, laughing at suffering victims, and so on.  A lever was set in the far wall of the room.  Understandably distrusting, Viett moved the lever telekinetically while the party was safely on the other end of the room.  As a result, the walls around the middle of the room folded inward, blocking the area with the lever from the rest of the room.  The music’s tempo picked up considerably, and the party could here a rumble from the blocked side of the room, as if a large machine suddenly began to operate.  “I think I heard of this device,” Veran commented.  “I never got a chance to use it, since I was imprisoned by Khaspar too quickly, but I think it operates as an elevator to the third floor.  But be careful!  Khaspar would never create something this complicated for no reason.”The party waited about ten minutes, and the apparent elevator returned, for the walls pulled back again.  Cautiously, all of them entered the elevator side of the room, and pulled the lever.  The walls again closed around them, so only twelve of the figures were on their side.  The room began to rise, and it felt like it was also slowly circling around them.  As the party prepared for whatever could happen, one of the statues suddenly slid to the side, revealing a tiny, but apparently empty, alcove.  As the party pondered what this meant, the statue slid closed, and two more statues slid open.  These, however, were not empty, and each appeared to hold a strange man with horns and red eyes.  One of them suddenly cast a spell, which apparently tried to transform Robin, but it failed.  Before the party could respond, the statues slid close again, and then two more opened, revealing an empty room and a three-eyed demon, identical to the one fought on TIE’s mountain.The gaze of the monster had a number of immediate effects.  Robin suddenly screamed in terror, and was shaking for the entire rest of the fight, as his worst fears suddenly came to life again.  Veran was caught in the gaze of the creature, and screamed as her life force began to get sucked out of her.  Even worse, Fnipper’s daughter also was caught in the gaze.  Her eyes widened in a look of ultimate terror, and she immediately dropped dead!The fight continued like this for a long time.  Every few seconds, the doors would open to reveal one of the three-eyed demons (and there appeared to be two of them) or one or more of their fiendish wizard enemy.  To make matters worse, only one of the wizards appeared to be real, and the others were apparently some kind of illusion.  And then things got even worse when Fnipper’s daughter stood up again, apparently as some form of undead, an attacked the party!  However, Roryn showed little concern about the issue and destroyed her, theorizing that she was already dead, and she couldn’t be resurrected nor could her spirit find peace while trapped as an undead monster.Things started looking up for the party when Robin, desperate to avoid the eye monsters, dashed into one of the openings as soon as it moved, without even looking who was in it.  He ended running headlong into the wizard!  Obviously, it was too tight in the space for either to perform normal tactics, but the far stronger and more skilled Robin was able to grapple the wizard and then pummel him into unconsciousness.  As the sounds of fighting reverberated from the walls around them, the rest of the party realized that Robin clearly got the real wizard, so they ignored the illusions and concentrated on the demons.  Things also improved when Tal finally was able to recognize the pattern in the song, and could start figuring out which alcoves would open at any given time, and what would be behind them.  The party was able to finish the demons with ease at that point.  Shortly after both of them were killed, a tired Robin exited the alcove, carrying a bloody and beaten wizard with him.  He looked at the corpses of the demons, and felt his fear finally leave him.  Meanwhile, as the party got their bearings, Nathee walked up to the beaten wizard and brutal slit his throat.  The others looked at her with shock, but she shrugged.  “He and his group were responsible for killing my grand-daughter.  He deserved to die.”A minute later, the elevator reached the next floor, and the wall again slid open, revealing a new room.  The party continued on, knowing that they were finally getting very close to their nemesis.OOC Notes: Okay, here’s the deal with the party’s many coming and going players.  Galeron was captured as part of the plot; anyone would have been captured if they took the elevator, unless they had a really good plan.  Grockith fell into a coma because his player just didn’t get along with the other players.  There were some fights, and he just decided to stop coming.  Danae’s illness actually came from her player missing a game.  Normally, I just let other players take over for them, but she was updating her character over the week, and we couldn’t find it.  Roryn’s player also went missing, but we didn’t know why, so for now, he was being played by Chris, who also was playing Viett.  Galeron’s player was playing Nathee until he could be rescued.  She was a character I created, so the party still didn’t know what her deal was.  Sigmund, Fnipper’s daughter, Veran, Alkurvas, and the crazed cultists were all NPCs.  All of them were placed into the game beforehand, though I didn’t expect Alkurvas to return to help the party when I first made the adventure.  He was more an NPC out of necessity, after losing so many players and characters for a few games.  As for the new characters, well, they were all recruited in a Manor dedicated to evil.  Anyone care to guess if all of them are really trustworthy, and if not, which one or ones are traitors?</blockquote>

Verification