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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy" data-source="post: 9771550" data-attributes="member: 4036"><h3>4/2/22</h3>During the journey Grath pauses in his study of the tome Alexander had bestowed upon him and instead ponders a skull Gribitz had deposited in the bag of holding.  It had belonged to one of the adventurers that had fallen in their exploration of the dangers beneath Alexander's tower.  Thinking he can perhaps provide closure to the loved ones of this adventurer he summons back the memory of the departed spirit to the skull.   He questions it and learns about the deaths of some of the treasure seekers who met their end at the hands of any number of terrible traps and creatures within.  One of the adventurers was a knight of a southern order that Grath asks Rho about.  Rho doesn’t recognize the order but he’s heard the name before, he thinks they might be in a village in the Sandlands.Rho is unnerved a little by the whole conversation, Gribitz is absolutely terrified that after spending a few days immersed in a book (Gribitz's frequently warned about nightmare) suddenly the priest is displaying mastery over the dead and forcing them to answer his questions.  Grath tries to reassure the goblin and the two have a brief interchange about the nature of life after death that one participant may or may not comprehend.  The wagon rolls on uneventfully and the party camps once more in one of Grath’s magical sanctuaries.  Gribitz converses inanely with various birds and scampering critters aroudn the chosen campgrounds as well as a few plants with Stick’s help.  Some old trees share ancient wisdom that is utterly wasted on the small goblin mind.The next day the party comes up on a very obvious ambush, a murdered horse and looted cart shattered on the road to block the way.  Rho even spots one of the hobgoblins lying in wait before they spring their trap.  Grath attempts diplomacy.  Unnatural twilight forms and swirls around him and he lifts ominously into the air, the semi-darkness following him, as he calls out that this doesn’t need to come to death.  Whatever reassurances he had offered Gribitz the previous day about how the tome of "wisdom" wasn't affecting him is immediatley called into doubtin the goblin's mind.At a gesture several of the hobgoblins making up the ambush reconsider and lower their bows.  A spellcaster emerges and speaks for them, negotiating the terms of a truce.  Minutes go by and the twilight fades from around Grath, his form descending once more to the earth.  The hobgoblin arcanist speaks as if he believes he is negotiating from a position of power but Rho is limbering up his shoulders even as Grath is inquiring what manner of toll would allow the party to pass without bloodshed.  Gribitz has climbed under the wagon and is performing a ritual that makes little faerie mushrooms spring up in a circle around him that burst into tiny invisible pixies.Grath makes several offers but the hobgoblins continually demand more.  Negotiations break down as Grath comes to realize that this is going to come to blows regardless.  He sighs and offers them instead a bead from his Necklace of Fireballs that he throws directly at the spellcaster.Who is only 15 feet away from the cart.The party's Awakened horse and friend, Yip, as well as several of the summoned faeries are instantly annihilated in arcane fire and as the forest itself is set ablaze in the nearly point blank explosion.  Grath is unprepared for the waves of fire followed immediately by waves of guilt that explode over him. Rho shrugs off the heat and hops off the cart striding directly into the blaze. He climbs up a rocky shelf the hobgoblins had perched on before slamming into the front of the spellcaster’s ranks.  Grath summons up an immense amount of necromantic energy to inflict boils and sores on a hobgoblin only to have the singed hobgoblin arcanist Counterspell his magic.Several pops of pink and purple light flash about many of the hobgoblins, Confusing them.  Taken as a whole, the hobgoblins are well trained and equipped and are skilled fighters.  Rho and Veldra fight hard into their midst with blows and arrows raining down on them.  Grath is distracted by his guilt and his guard isn’t what it could be, he is rapidly slashed and stabbed and slides to the ground gripping his wounds as his blood seeps forth.Veldra interposes herself and while warily eying the soldiers.  She manages to reach a glowing hand out to Grath clearing his mind and slowing his bleeding.  She continues fighting even as a dusting of faerie magic settles onto Grath and his form swells immensely, growing hairier and taking on a terrifying visage Grath takes on the enormous form of the Spirit of the Jungle.  One of the injured hobgoblins drops his weapons and flees in terror at the sight.Another one steels itself and ducks and weaves as it approaches and slashes upwards at the 20' tall towering Spirit.  Some of the others are still Confused but others are forming up and pressing Veldra and Rhoseth dearly.  The Spirit of the Jungle smashes the ever loving naughty word out the hobgoblin that had the gall to engage it.Gribitz reaches deep into his bag of tricks, throwing everything he can at the hobgoblin detachment causing masses of vines and thorns and roots to rip forth from the ground and try to bind and hold the soldiers.  And more powerfully, Stick calls out to the Green and causes many of the tangled roots and vines to swell to a massive size spouting thorns like swords that impale many of the hobgoblins.Rho seizes the opportunity to tear through their ranks, mangling their bodies with his massive maul.  The more their numbers fail, the more hobgoblins break from the fight and flee, leaving their battle brothers to their fate.As the last one flees (under rain of boulders from the Spirit of Jungle) the party gathers back together, assessing.  The Spirit leaves Grath and his form shrinks to the bloodied and bruised man who seems so small by comparison.  His eyes are haunted as he makes his way to Yip’s blasted corpse. He pulls out an unbelievably intricate and expensive scroll with dense incantations inscribed on it.  Minutes turn into an hour as Grath passionately prays over the scorched bones of our Awakened horse paying careful detail to every ritual prescribed in the incredibly complex liturgy.  Though it is beyond his current grasp of divine magic, his passionate pleas are heard and Ilmater restores a form and body as well as the soul of Yip once more to mortal life.Grath is a wreck.  He is exhausted and lost in despair, and he sobs about having failed again while Gribitz, Rho, and Veldra make heartfelt if clumsy attempts to console him.  Even Kith tries, even more cluelessly.  She offers some of her treasured shinies to make Grath happy.  Gribitz tries talking things through with the confused Yip for a bit asking about what it was like and is reassured that this summoned from the dead by the book-tainted master necromancer, Grath, is indeed still the affable and congenial friend that has accompanied the party for so long.Rho sets about clearing the wreckage from the trail, Gribitz whispers to the earth to part and bury the remains of the previous cart's horse.  They follow the clues back to the hobgoblin encampment to find it abandoned.  The party picks through the hobgoblin tents as well as among the fallen at the ambush collecting a few valuables.  There is time spent making sure the fires are out in the woods, coaxing burned plants back to life, and putting the grounds back to right with druidic magic.A full moon rises that night after the long day's work.  Gribitz continually checks in on Grath bringing him soups, a particularly nice pine cone he found, and trying to draw Grath out of his inner conflict.  He is not successful.  Rho is also pensive, staring up to the full moon.  In the morning, the party sets out once more towards the east.After another day, the party comes across another obstruction in the road, this one due to a tree fallen by lightning.  Gribitz scouts about as a deer to find a detour around it.  While he’s gone a gnome approaches the rest of the party.  Rho waits on Veldra or Grath to speak to the bearded fellow, however neither does anything, as they are both lost in their own thoughts while Kith is asleep.  Rho curses and tries to choke out ‘Hello?’ which he immediately regrets as the gnome streams out greetings, offers, and conversation at a pace the taciturn dragonborn is unable to match.Rho’s eye twitches as the gnome just keeps rapid-fire talking incessantly, with the dragonborn barely getting a word in edgewise here and there and not really able to keep up with the rapidly changing train of thought of the gnome.  Grath rouses from his contemplation long enough to demand the gnome state his business or begone.  The gnome even gets all the way to a farewell when Rho was almost through a question but that just rekindles the gnomes interest.  Rho returns to silence, having completely given up on finding any meaning in the verbal onslaught and just hoping the burns itself out in time.Multitudes of tangents and seemingly unimportant anecdotes pour from the gnome until the gnome eventually gets around to another farewell leaving the exhausted Rho to slump in relief.  When Gribitz returns from scouting he checks on Rho to make sure he’s not enchanted, warns him not to give his name to fey creatures, then helps the party along the detour to continue onto the village marked on Grath’s map where the holy relic the bishop had told him about is enshrined.When they eventually arrive, the village is abandoned and fallen to ruin with a small hill and a crumbling church.  Gribitz gets a terrible vibe from it, it seems to be leeching the life from the Green around it. Nothing lives the closer you get to the ruins of the church.  Grath can’t make out any standing iconography or architecture that would identify the deity the temple was dedicated to.  Grath gets the feeling the temple has been defiled or desecrated somehow.  Gribitz mutters under his breath that it was probably books that caused this.Grath annoints his eyes and peers into the ethereal of the village and spots ghostly wraiths drifting through the ruins.  Gribitz talks to a crow that states the town is cursed and the dead walk it.  The party cautiously enters the ruins.  There are zombies shuffling around the entrance of the church, growling and gnashing.  Gribitz takes this as confirmation that someone has been reading books again.</blockquote>

Verification