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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 1745922" data-attributes="member: 9626">The Nightmare Prince: The Final Battle!Beyond the library, there was a gleaming metal room, though any relief about the room’s sterile appearance and general lack of horrifying decorations was ruined by the metal racks leaning against the wall, the pool of acid, and the hideous, scarred, demonic creature that was waiting for them.  Roryn and Viett charged towards the creature, while Robin fired a hail of arrows at it and Tal supported them all with magic.  However, when Nathee tumbled into the room as well, she suddenly attacked Viett!  He was so shocked by this sudden treason that he barely resisted the full attack of Nathee’s, which consisted of almost a half dozen perfectly-positioned shots to vital areas, and somehow included a tail.  To make matters worse, as Veran and Alkurvas struggled to enter the room to help, Sigmund suddenly started chuckling behind them.  His body suddenly grew and warped, until he resembled a hideous, tentacled demon!Meanwhile, the original demonic threat had a few surprises of its own.  All of the “scars” it had suddenly opened, and the party realized to their disgust that its body was actually covered with dozens of tiny mouths!  About ten massive, bladed tongues started lashing out of the mouths, and it used another pair of tongues on the soles of its feet to stride towards Roryn, and begin flying him with its tongues.  Roryn and Robin began to attack the creature, while Viett did the best he could to hold of the sudden attack of Nathee, and Tal tried to help.  However, she was literally too fast to even be touched, and all they could hit was her cultist robe disguise.  However, after it was ripped a bit, it was clear why Nathee had turned on them, for her entire body was filled with mechanical implants!  Mostly likely, she had been using illusions and the robes to hide her alterations, and the deep gnome’s ability to avoid magical detection had prevented the party from noticing.  She managed to repeatedly attack Viett yet again, and finished this series of attacks by driving her mechanical tail right through Viett’s throat, killing him!Meanwhile, Alkurvas was surprisingly holding his own against the monster that was once Sigmund.  Even when Sigmund is able to hit, Alkurvas just shrugged off the blow like nothing happened.  Just then, Veran demonstrated she had some surprises of her own, when she concentrated, and apparently summoned a Balor into the room!  The party was just about to attack her for being yet another traitor, when the Balor started attacking Sigmund!Meanwhile, Roryn and Robin were still fighting the many-mouthed monster.  The creature had managed to retreat to the corner of the room after being almost killed by Robin’s arrows and Roryn’s enraged attacks.  He did this easily enough by springing himself across the room by retracting and suddenly extending his feet tongues, but Roryn charged right after him.  The demon responded by taking a deep breath, and then breathing fire out of every mouth at once!  However, Roryn didn’t slow his charge at all, since he still remembered the death of his brother, and wanted revenge.  The sooner this demon was destroyed, the sooner he could focus on his real enemy.  He leapt right into the dome of fire that surrounded the beast, and finished it with one last decapitating cut.  However, no sooner did he finish off the monster, than the tentacled creature teleported into the room, in a desperate attempt to flee the Balor!  Roryn didn’t bother dealing with this new threat, but Tal and Robin were able to end the life of the miserable creature, letting the entire party plus their very unusual Balor ally focus on Nathee.Despite this seemingly unbalanced situation, Nathee managed to hold her own for what seemed like forever.  Even the Balor couldn’t get any good hits in, though he did prove himself useful when he was able to dispel the many magical effects her mechanical implants granted her, letting Robin and Roryn finally finish the creature.  And so, the attempt by the party to avenge their fallen comrade has resulted in the death of two of his relatives, although in Nathee’s case, it was almost merciful to save her from enslavement by the Nightmare Prince.The party had to continue on, but before they did, they had some questions to ask Veran.  She had clearly seen this coming, for she began her explanation without prompting.  “Yes, I know what you’re going to ask.  My real name isn’t Veran, it’s Venymaran.  Though it goes against my better nature, everything else that I said is true.  But I did leave one thing out.”  As she said this, her form changed as well.  Wings grew out of her back, and horns grew on her head.  None of the surviving party members knew what she was, exactly, but Alkurvas was able to identify her immediately.  “A succubus,” he said with a strangely satisfied tone, as if he always really knew.“Correct.  However, I am not your enemy, as I said.  I want Khaspar dead even more than you do, and after he is, I need your protection to survive Bas’ vengeance.  You can imprison me, or do whatever you want, but I’m happy just not being brutally killed by Bas’ minions for now.  Now don’t think you’ll be rid of me now; you swore to your goddesses you’d protect me, and my true nature doesn’t change that.  Besides, you need me if you ever want to defeat Khaspar.  I know his weaknesses.”Reluctantly, the party agrees to take her along for now.  After all, only Roryn, Robin, and Tal remained of the original party, and only she and Alkurvas was left among their other allies.  They were in no shape to turn down any aid.Beyond the interrogation chamber, there was a spiral staircase that led up and down.  Venym commented, “Khaspar will likely be at the top floor by now, preparing his defenses against you.”  With that in mind, the group decided to head down.  In the floor below them, they found what looked like another prison, but it was currently empty.  Further down, there were a number of strange iron chests, but there would be plenty of time to investigate them later.  Finally, on the floor below that, which was a basement at least a few hundred feet below the rest of the Manor, they found a strange cavern dominated by a strange machine.  And there at the top of a chute that led into the machine, they finally found Galeron!  Roryn and Robin quickly broke him out of his restraints, while Alkurvas investigated his wounds and confirmed that he was not another shape shifted or mechanical enemy.        “Galeron, I’m glad to see you’re safe!” Tal enthusiastically said, after Alkurvas confirmed he was who he appeared to be.  However, his expression soon darkened.  “Um, we do have some bad news, however.  I’m afraid that Thorrun…”    “I know,” Galeron curtly said.  “The Nightmare Prince bragged about it.  We can bring him back later, however.  Our first task is to finally bring justice to Khaspar.”    Venym nodded.  “However, we can’t do it today.  Those enemies in the library and interrogation chamber weakened all of us, and your priest will be useless in a fight unless we can get him his equipment back.  I propose that we search the treasure chests from the room above us, and then rest here tonight.  Khaspar will be prepared for us, of course, but he’s too arrogant to run from the fight itself or let his minions finish us off.  He’ll give us our chance.”    Introductions were made between Venym and Galeron, which went about a poorly as expected, and then the chests were looted.  Even they weren’t safe; the chests themselves were magnetized and released blasts of ice and transformative magic when opened, but a few appropriate spells made short work of the chests’ defensives.  Galeron’s equipment was indeed in the chests, and once he was freed, Galeron was able to finally restore Danae and her familiar to health, though Grockith was still completely comatose.  In addition, the mechanical implants had so infected Danae’s mephit familiar that when he was healed, he found he was missing an eye, a leg, and an arm!  Danae decided to tuck the poor maimed familiar into a magical planar pocket until he can be healed.  Galeron was also able to use his remaining spells to heal the health and life force lost by various party members, though he refused to heal Venym.  She snarled at him angrily, but there’s wasn’t much she could do.  After all, she needed the rest of the party, and it’s not like Galeron made a vow to help her like the others did.  She again let them rest in her rope-tricked hiding spots, and as they rested and prepared for the next day, she explained what she knew about Khaspar to them.    “Khaspar is a wizard, but he has many special powers.  For one thing, he is a half-machine, like many of his servants.  He also had made a pact with elemental beings from the plane of water, and is now nearly completely composed of water and ice.  He isn’t so powerful that he totally transformed, so he lacks any weakness to water, but he is nearly immune to cold effects and many other things.  Also, his own cold magic will be much more powerful, so expect him to surround himself with freezing temperatures and use a lot of ice magic.  If you have any way to set up elemental defenses to cold, I would use them.”    With that, the party rested for the night, with the exception of Alkurvas.  He explained he had to leave for now, to prepare for the fight as well, but he’ll be back in the morning to help the party finish this.    Meanwhile, back in the storage room, another, much different prisoner of Khaspar was just regaining consciousness.  His name was Sinael, and back in Methosilang, he was known to be a master thief.  He had heard about this Nightmare Prince through rumors, and decided that anyone with the power to call himself royalty must have some really valuable treasure.  In retrospect, this was probably a mistake, as he was easily captured.  Khaspar had him shipped into storage, after bathing him in a chemical that kept him frozen and unconscious, with the intent on performing some terrible experiments on him when the time comes.  However, he had forgotten about Sinael when the party first rose to greater strength, and Sinael had been trapped here ever since.  Well, he had been trapped until now.  He suddenly regained consciousness in the tube, which had broken and slowly started leaking the preservative fluid in the fight with the hydra.  It now was empty, so Sinael easily but cautiously escaped it and the box it was in.  From there, he heard a strange music to the south, and was compelled to follow it.  It soon led him to a strange drow bard, who introduced himself.  “My name is Alkurvas.  I had heard about your plight recently, and helped engineer you escape.  Right now, I am traveling with a party that seeks to end Khaspar’s reign personally, but their last expert on stealthy and the hidden blade was, well, not on their side in the literal sense.  They need someone who can help them, and if you do succeed, not only will you have your freedom and your revenge on the man that sealed you away here, but also a goodly sum of the wealthy he possesses.”    Sinael was interested, especially after hearing this last part, and willing let Alkurvas lead him to the party.  Once the party woke, Alkurvas introduced the party to him and him to the party, and then vouched for his trustworthiness.  The party still performed a very thorough series of tests on him, of course, but finally accepted that he seemed true enough, and he too was ready for this final battle.    After final preparations, which included Galeron providing energy resistance spells on nearly everyone in the party (except for Venym, of course, and Alkurvas, who said he didn’t need one,) the party again climbed the spiral stairway, until it ended at the fourth floor.  Carefully, the party opened the door, and was immediately blasted with stinging cold air.    The room beyond the stairs was freezing, and gave the same hum of the strange technology that much of Dragovigis had.  Four glass windows line the right wall, and though the cold of the air has made it impossible to see through the windows, there were clearly four dark shapes on the other side.  Khaspar’s elven bard cohort was leaning against the left wall, seemingly unconcerned about the fight at all, while it appeared that Khaspar himself was standing in the middle of the room, waiting for the party!  However, when the party poured into the room, ready to fight, Galeron (who had prepared a True Seeing spell before the fight started out of concern for just this sort of problem,) realized that it was an illusion, and the real Khaspar was flying in the air above them!  As he warned the party about this, Khaspar responded, and the fight began in earnest.    Before the party could react further, the glass walls on the right side opened, and four creatures emerged from them.  Two of them appeared to be failed experiments, and they fell out, apparently dead.  However, the other two were far more active.  One appeared to be a chimera, except that it had the now standard mechanical implants, and the normal goat head was replaced with a bull-like head, similar to those that gorgons have.  The other monster looked like a salamander, except made of ice instead of fire, and it had another eight strange snake-like heads in addition to its normal head.  Sinael began to move towards and then up the wall, to tray and catch Khaspar, while Danae and Tal fired long-range spells at the gorgimera.  Roryn also charged the gorgimera, while Venym flew over it to help by using magic from above.  However, she flew a little too close, and the monster breathed a jet of strange gas on her.  She tried to scream, but it ended immediately, as her body turned to stone, and she went crashing to the ground.  Meanwhile, Khaspar chuckled from above, and cast a spell on Roryn.  Immediately, the mind of the enraged dwarf was snapped like a fragile twig, and he began to look on both friend and foe with an expression of insanity.  The fight had only begun, and two members of the party were lost.  It wasn’t looking good.    Meanwhile, Mortanis, Khaspar’s cohort, took one look at Alkurvas and shrunk back with an expression of hatred and fear.  Alkurvas walked up to him while unsheathing his sword, and the two spent essentially the rest of the fight attacking each other.  Alkurvas ended up being out of the fight as well as a result, but at least he was able to keep one of Khaspar’s most powerful allies out of the fight.Elsewhere, Galeron moved up to attack the Salamander, and Robin and Tal hammered at the gorgimera from a distance.  Khaspar used the delay in the party’s rush to fly out of the room through a hole in the eastern wall.  He fired a cold-substituted delayed fireball into the room, but Danae knew it for what it was and yelled for everyone to quickly get out of its way.  She also created a wall of force around the upper hole that Khaspar just escaped out of, forcing him to make any further attacks through the normal ground-level door.  This proved to be a wise move, for while Roryn was still insane, he currently was mad with hatred, and attacked the first thing he detected, which turned out to be Khaspar (though still invisible, Roryn was able to hear him.)  The attack so caught Khaspar off guard that he fired one last attack, a cold-altered chain of lightning, and fled out of the room entirely.  This gave the party the chance it needed to finish off the gorgimera and salamander.  The latter was doing massive damage to Galeron, but nearly all of it was cold-based, so Galeron laughed it off.  Further, Galeron had prepared a fire shield before the fight, which not only minimized the cold damage he took, but burned the salamander with flames every time it tried attacking.  Soon, both it and the gorgimera were dead, and the party was able to continue on, while leaving the mad Roryn, petrified Venym, and distracted Alkurvas behind.The next room, however, was no safer than this one.  The floors were all sloped downward, and the entire place was filled with a strange gas that not only blocked their vision, but also ate away at them like acid, though it appeared to be entire cold.  The party stumbled carefully around the room, as they watched their cold defenses slowly get eaten away.  Fortunately, all of them could either fly at this point or were very careful and lucky, for none slipped on the ice as they made their way down the slope.  This proved to be very fortunate, because the bottom of the slope was filled with spikes, which would have undoubtedly pierced anyone who was sliding involuntarily down the slope!  At the bottom, however, they discovered that Khaspar had left them another surprise.  The wall to the next room was blocked by another wall of force, and the only one would had the means to destroy it was Danae.  She didn’t prepare any disintegration beams to destroy it, but as a guilded mage, she could draw from the spell pool periodically, and use that to gain the appropriate magical power and destroy the wall.  However, it took a while, because it was very hard to concentrate and draw from the pool, not to mention actually use the spell, as the cold from the room and the fog started to get past her magical buffers and sting her skin.  Finally, however, she got through the wall, and the party dashed into the next room.  Finally, they had found a room that was a normal temperature again.  However, Khaspar wasn’t in the room.  Instead, there was a hole in the ceiling with a ladder that presumably let them reach the fourth floor again (after the sloped room dropped them back to the third,) and another one of the short demons like the one seen from the ambush at TIE’s mountain chained to the floor.  It looked at the party with both hatred and a little bit of fear and sorrow, perhaps because it was trapped by the chain.  Very carefully, the party explored the room, fearing more traps or Khaspar’s reinforcements.  This fear was well justified, for as soon as Robin got near the demon, there was a “click” noise, and a massive weight dropped out of the ceiling and onto the creature!  It died instantly, and released a massive wave of negative retributive energy, which further struck everyone in the already weak party.  As the party was recovering from the damage, and the disgust of the thought that Khaspar would slaughter his own minions to harm the party, Sinael continued to walk across the ceiling, and thus was the first one to get to the ladder and start climbing up the shaft.  Tal, his familiar, Galeron, and Robin were also near the ladder, when Khaspar leaned over at the party, and smiled.  He cast a spell while holding up a strange magical rod, and it enhanced the strength of his already powerful cone of cold, which blasted down the shaft and expanded at the bottom, hitting Sinael and all of the gathering throng around it.  Sinael was able to evade the blast by suddenly diving between the ladder rungs, but while many of the other heroes were able to partially dive out of the way of the blast, all of them were caught in it at least a little.  Tal and his familiar were hit by the blast the worst, and the cold completely seared a few layers of skin of Tal, while numbing him completely.  He collapsed on the ground, dying, and his familiar was even worse.  The ice had frozen her completely solid, and she fell to the ground, and shattered in a number of broken, and quite dead, pieces!As Galeron healed Tal, Sinael and the others quickly scrambled or flew up the shaft, desperate to finish this before things got even worse and more of them were killed.  Khaspar had anticipated their charge, however, and flew farther back into the next room.  As soon as they reached the top, Galeron immediately recognized it for what it was; the viewing chamber where he first saw Bas.  The window was currently open when the party arrived, so all of them got a chance to witness the horror of Bas first-hand, but the room also contained a new addition by Khaspar: a hideous golem stitched together from the flesh of dozens of dragons.  The party prepared to deal with this new threat, when another figure joined the fray, and for once, it was an ally.His name was Zethar, and he was a Ghaele Eladrin.  Or at least he will be one day, but for now, he was still merely an apprentice.  However, before he could finish his training, he was called by his superiors.  “Zethar,” they said, “It’s time for you to go to the plane that we have been assigned to watch over.”“But almighty ones,” he said, “I haven’t finished my ascension yet.  Can I handle the threats that exist beyond our home yet?”“It appears we have no choice.  The plane is in mortal peril, and the best chance that we have of saving it could soon be destroyed.  Now, I want you to help them, but try to avoid showing all of your power for now.  Try to work as their guardian for now, and avoid revealing your heritage to others.”“I understand,” Zethar replied.  His superiors worked their magic, and soon he was speeding towards the manor from above.With a loud crash, the window that was watching Bas shattered, and a strange figure flew in.  He looked to the party, and said, “Don’t worry, I’m here to help.”  So saying, he began to rip into the dragon-flesh golem.  Galeron and Robin helped finish the horrid thing, while Danae and Sinael went after a surprised Khaspar.  Now finally heavily wounded, he fled while creating another wall of force in front of him.  With Khaspar again gone, the party turned entirely on the golem, destroying it quickly.  The wall of force was still a problem, however, and Danae no longer had any magic left to destroy it.  However, the windows were still there, and Zethar was able to carry Galeron out one window and into another on the other side of the wall.While the others climbed, flew, or walked (in Sinael’s case,) between the windows, Galeron and Zethar confronted Khaspar again. Desperately, he fired another blast of cold out of his staff, but it didn’t even slow down the two resolved fighters.  Both struck him hard, but he suddenly disappeared in the middle of Galeron’s killing blow, and laughed as he faded away.  The party quickly regrouped, to try and find him before it was too late.Just then, Alkurvas had managed to catch up to the others.  After hearing of Khaspar’s escape, he quickly realized where the Prince could have gone.  “The machine in the basement; he must have gone there!  We have to hurry, before he can repair or even improve himself using it!”When the party had reached the basement, they saw Khaspar already in the machine, being altered by dozens of strange instruments.  “You haven’t won yet!” he yelled.  “In a matter of minutes, I’ll be back, and more powerful than ever!”  Just then, some of the instruments started behaving erratically, as if they were malfunctioning.  Blades that previously were used to attach new parts with care instead were cutting him to pieces, and other machines were ripping apart his limbs, burning him with acid, and attaching new parts to him that were so heavy, they were crushing him.  Finally, the machine expelled Khaspar again, but he was barely alive.  He was little more than a twisted, warped husk of humanity wrapped in a now-useless metal shell, but that didn’t stop Galeron from finishing him off once and for all.“What happened?” a confused Robin asked.“I think I know,” Galeron replied, as he heaved the remains of Khaspar unto his back.  Onto Khaspar’s chest, words were burned with the acid.  “I always knew,” Galeron read.  “I guess Bas had the last laugh after all.”OOC Notes: And finally, so ends the longest adventure I’ve ever written.  There were a lot of weird plot twists in this one, as you can tell.  Here are the final details on everyone’s player and character’s relationships.Eric played Galeron, and also played Nathee when he was captured.  He knew that she would eventually betray the party from the start, but managed to keep the secret for over a month of playing.  He even was disappointed when she finally died, and though there were better places that would’ve killed the party much more effectively.  I also have to give it to him for playing the tough role-playing choices that Galeron had to make very well.Chris played Viett, and eventually Roryn as well when his player left.  He also played Zethar in the final battle, since Viett was killed the game before and Roryn was a non-entity in the final battle after being driven insane.Danae, Tal and Robin were more consistent during the game, and nothing really happened to them, except for Danae’s player Jess being absent for a game, and Danae’s subsequent coma during that period.  She frequently reminds me, however, that her familiar had never left the pocket since being healed by the swarm maiming!Sinael was played by Rob, a new player.  He doesn’t show up too often in the later games, though, but he’ll play a few characters for the next few adventures.Alkurvas, Sigmund, and Venym were NPCs.  The secrets for Sigmund and Venym have more or less all been revealed, but Alkurvas’ secret will have to wait.Again, I was just glad the thing ended on a high note.  The ending was more or less as I planned, and it lasted forever.  The battle itself took an entire game session to finish.  It was rough, but it could have been a lot worse if Venym didn’t tell them how to prepare defensively for the fight.  The fact that they owe all their lives to a succubus will come back to haunt the party again.Oh, and the tongue demon is a Canor Factum, another creature I created.  Like my other unique creatures, feel free to ask for the creature’s stats if you are interested, but again it’s based on a video game idea I had, so I want you to keep my name on the creature and mention who made it when you use it.</blockquote>

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