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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 9551580" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 68: DID YOU SEE THAT?PC Roster:  Ageratum Purslane, halfling rogue 16             Alistair Mandelberen Pastlethwaite, human sorcerer 16             Chaevaris Noarunal, elf archer 16             Harlan Starblade, half-elf paladin 16NPC Roster: Orchid, elf druid 16Game Session Date: 8 January 2025 - - -Orchid stretched as she sat up and got out of bed, where she'd spent her elven reverie over her first night back home in Ghourmand Vale after their extended excursion on, under, and in the vicinity of the great lake called the Nyr Dyv.  It was good to be home, and her loyal timber wolf companion Shushitan seemed glad to have his mistress back home again.Stepping outside the stone keep they used as their headquarters, and allowing Shushitan to head over to the side of the building to do his morning business, Orchid was approached by Purly, the hired hand they employed to take care of their riding mounts.  "It sure is good having you back, Miss Orchid." he said.  "Things have been really weird around here while you were gone.""Oh?  In what way?" asked the elf."Well, them birds, for one thing," Purly replied, pointing to a small group of ravens perched in a nearby tree.  "They're there all hours of the day, just watchin'.  And they don't even flinch if you throw stones at 'em."  He picked up a small rock from the ground and, to the druid's consternation, tossed it at the birds in the tree.  As he'd said, they just sat there, continuing to focus their gaze upon the two.  But then, as if by some silent signal - as if they'd proven their unflappability at having stones tossed their way - they all took wing at once, flying away towards the center of Ghourmand Vale."Weird, as you say," Orchid frowned.  "They didn't make any sounds at all as they flew."  Orchid well knew her elven hearing would normally be able to pick up the sounds of a handful of birds flying away from that distance.  Still frowning, she returned to the interior of the keep and made her way to the top floor, to awaken Harlan.  Bringing the paladin outside, she asked him to see if he could sense any evil.  As she'd suspected, he picked up a diminishing aura of evil in the area of the tree on which the ravens had been perched."What else besides the birds have been 'weird' during our absence?" Orchid asked Purly."Well, there've been a bunch more beggars around than normal," the groomsman answered.  "Blind, too, most of 'em, and sick to boot.  And the funny thing is, the clerics, like Father Barbados, they haven't been able to restore their sight none.""That is indeed very unusual," Harlan agreed.  If their blindness resisted the efforts of a remove blindness/deafness spell, there was more to it than a simple loss of sight - some other type of magic was likely at work.  "Where have these blind beggars come from?""No idea," admitted Purly.  "Most of 'em been hanging out around the Topsy-Curvy Club, but nobody really goes in there anymore - they say the place is haunted.""Let's get the others," suggested Harlan to Orchid.  "I think we need to look into this."Not long after, the five adventurers pulled on the reins of their various mounts a half block from the streetside entrance to the Topsy-Curvy Club, a combination bar and burlesque house that had been a front to a local thieves guild.  The place was a lot more rundown than when the heroes had last been there."Check out the rooftop," suggested Ageratum, as she sat astride her pony Munson.  Sure enough, five black ravens peered down from atop the building.  Unlike normal ravens, these made no cawing noises, nor did they move around - they stood perched where they were and stared down in an eerily silent vigil.  Then, as before, some unknown signal passed between them and they all took wing at once - flying through the rooftop into the building's interior."I say!" declared Alistair.  "Ghost ravens?""Let's cast our battle spells, then move in," suggested Harlan, climbing down from the broad back of his celestial pegasus Nova.  He empowered himself with the spells bull's strength, eagle's splendor, magic circle against evil, and death ward.  Alistair cast a maximized flame arrow spell on the group's assembled ammunition, linked the five of them together mentally with a Rary's telepathic bond spell, and granted the five of them darkvision.  Orchid cast her traditional longstrider spell, then cast barkskin spells upon herself, Harlan, Chaevaris, and Alistair.  Ageratum applied a vial of silversheen upon her secondary short sword, then faded into greater invisibility with a touch of her magic bracelet and spider climbed up onto Carruthers' shoulder after the sorcerer brought him out of their extradimensional dwelling.  He gave the shield guardian its open orders: "Attack anyone attacking any of us, or anyone we're attacking, or anyone any of us tells you to attack."  That done, the group entered the building, leaving Nova, Shushitan, and Alistair's grackle familiar Ambrose with the horses.Carruthers was the first to enter the tavern, which smelled of rot and mold and was completely cast in darkness; fortunately, the shield guardian had been designed with innate darkvision and could see just fine.  Perched invisibly on its shoulder, Ageratum guided it to the back of the tavern and towards a set of wide steps she knew led down to a wide hallway filled with ceiling-supporting columns.  Chaevaris followed right behind them, an arrow already nocked in her bow.  She went down the stairs, seeing nothing of interest but already smelling an awful stench of death and decay.  She strained her ears to see if she could hear anything, and picked up a wet, slurpy sound coming from ahead and to the right, where she knew there was a smaller corridor intersecting with the wider hallway.  She warned the others over the telepathic link, then activated her ring of invisibility and faded from view.Within a moment Orchid was right there beside the archer, in the other corner of the corridor, listening to hear the slurpy sounds for herself.  Alistair lagged a bit behind, casting a shield spell on himself now that it seemed combat with some unknown foe was imminent.  Harlan passed him by on his way down the stairs, taking point between the two elves, his Starblade out and ready to strike.Ageratum sent Carruthers on ahead as she stepped over to the side wall and, using her cloak of arachnida, traversed her way across the ceiling.  <I'm moving up to the side corridor,> Chaevaris warned the others over the link, then positioned herself so she could see down the narrow corridor.  There, in the room at the bottom of a few short steps down, stood a monstrosity of rotting flesh: a massive, nine-foot-tall being built like a celestial, but one made of rotting meat, which sweated gooey blobs of rank, black ooze which sloughed off its body as it shambled its way towards the invisible elf.  Telepathically describing the creature, Chaevaris moved further down the wider hallway, getting herself a full 20 feet or so away from the intersection where the angel of decay would emerge if it continued on its path.But then Orchid moved up to where she could see the shambling monstrosity, and she cast a wall of fire down the narrow corridor, to bisect the area on which the rotting monster stood.  But the druid's spell came up against some sort of interference from the angel of decay, and the flames, which sprouted up along the area she'd indicated, refused to alight under the shambling corpse, and it continued on its way, the flames flickering out as it approached and then rising back up after it had passed.  The end result was the fire had absolutely no effect upon the rotting angel.Alistair joined the others in the hallway, casting a haste spell upon all but Chaevaris, who had moved out of range, but he knew full well his friend "Elfy" could activate her magic boots if she wished to join in the benefits the others enjoyed from his casting of the spell.  Harlan cast a resist fire spell upon himself and moved to the very end of the wall of fire, ready to race down its length to get to the angel of decay passing effortlessly through the burning flames.  It had trudged up the steps by that time and was about to enter the wider hallway in which each of the five heroes - and Carruthers - stood.  The shield guardian swung at the angel with a massive fist but failed to connect.Ageratum was a bit more successful as she moved forward, sling whirling at her side, and sent a "pebboulder" crashing into the angel of decay.  Upon impact, it reverted to a full-size boulder, the entire thing aflame from Alistair's flaming arrow spell.  The damage the undead angel took was minimal, but it was at least a start.Still invisible, Chaevaris pulled the carpet of flying from over her back and unrolled it in midair, where it hovered at knee height.  Then she leaped upon it and rose it to about 10 feet high, the midway level between the hallway's floor and ceiling.  Orchid cast a sunbeam spell, aiming her first ray at the angel of decay and hitting it in its center of mass.  Rotting ooze sprayed from it upon impact.  Alistair pulled out his metamagic rod and channeled a maximized chain lightning spell at the undead abomination, but he failed to overcome the thing's inherent resistance to spell energy and the electrical blast fizzled away to nothingness, much to the young nobleman's distress.Then Harlan stepped forward into the wall of fire and brought his Starblade slicing deep into the angel's gut.  His first strike bore with it holy energy channeled straight from Pelor, and it carved a great chunk from the monstrosity's torso, which fell to the floor with a wet, splurching sound.  But the paladin wasn't done yet, for he swung the blade of his longsword back and forth into the rotting angel, carving lines of pain in its decaying body.  It retaliated to the best of its ability, striking out at the half-elf with its claws and buffeting wings, managing to catch Harlan once with a set of ragged talons.  Fortunately, the paladin was immune to diseases, for who knew what kinds of nastiness the angel's decaying flesh could produce?  But the blobs and gobs of flesh falling from the angel of decay were spreading, and they encompassed the floor upon which stood Carruthers; instantly, mold and rot started appearing along the outer surfaces of his lower legs, spreading slowly across his feet and shins.Over the sounds of combat and the crackling flames, Chaevaris, perched upon her flying carpet, heard the unmistakable clank of metal armor coming from around the corner behind her.  She warned the others over the link as Ageratum sent pebboulder after pebboulder flying at the angel of decay, finally dropping it after her deadly barrage did its work.  After collapsing to the floor in a tangle of limbs, decay seemed to overcome the body in a rapid fashion, causing it to fester and mold, rotting away until nothing was left of it.  Fortunately, this included the goo on Carruthers, and the shield guardian's innate repair system was restoring the wooden parts that had rotted away during the festering assault.Reaching the point where the wide corridor turned to the right, Chaevaris saw another massive, undead creature, this one about the same size of the angel of decay but encased in heavy armor, and lacking the angel's wings.  It was armed with a pair of pointed morningstars, one in each skeletal hand.  Surprisingly, the five ghostly ravens accompanied it, spread out in an arc before the storming, undead giant.  The archer raised her bow and prepared to shoot, having selected one of the holy water arrows she'd had specifically crafted some weeks ago and for which she'd not yet found a use.  Then, realizing she'd become visible as soon as she loosed her arrow, she held off on her shot, vowing to let the creature clomp its way past her towards the others so she could shoot it from behind.Orchid moved up to where she could see three of the ravens and shot her second sunbeam at them.  Upon impact, they blotted out like bust bubbles, there one instant and gone the next.  Alistair moved up beside Chaevaris and, once he could see the approaching deathbringer, cast a chain lightning spell at it, sending arcs of electricity jolting off to strike the last two ravens.  The spell hit true, but it had no effect whatsoever on the spectral birds, although the deathbringer's chest was blasted by the spell, so the sorcerer at least had the satisfaction knowing it had had at least some effect.Harlan cast a divine favor spell upon himself as he moved up by the others and got his first view of his next undead foe.  But from his angle, he could see there was another figure behind the deathbringer, this one wearing the hooded robe of a wizard or cleric.  Its hands were gnarled, mere wrappings of flesh over bone, leaving no doubt in the paladin's mind this was another undead being.  The gnarled being, a vitreous drinker whose ghoulish, undead flesh was covered in eyeballs, gazed upon the half-elf and attempted to induce nausea in him, not knowing the paladin was immune.  But Harlan was too busy fighting off the deathbringer's attacks to worry too much about the vitreous drinker.  He deflected the first morningstar with his shield, spinning to the side as he did so to avoid the second attack.Ageratum, still on the ceiling and thus seeing everything as happening upside-down, plucked a bead from her necklace of fireballs and placed it into her sling, sending it flying at the space between the vitreous drinker and the deathbringer.  An eruption of flames momentarily engulfed both undead, but they were hearty beings and managed to come out of the explosion just fine - singed, but not overly harmed.Activating her boots of speed, Chaevaris shot off a volley of five of her specially-made holy water arrows, four of them hitting their mark: the hideous, robed being with the dozens of extra eyes all over its ghoulish skin.  The other thing was just some big, undead fighter, but the vitreous drinker was just too disgusting for the elf to want to allow sticking around any longer than she could help.  Holy water flooding its undead flesh, the vitreous drinker collapsed in a pool of bubbling liquid, which soon burbled away into nothingness.  The two remaining spectral ravens winked out of existence upon the vitreous drinker's demise; unbeknownst to the heroes at this point in time, its death also released the unnatural blindness imposed upon its previous victims, all of whom suddenly had their vision restored at once.Moving closer to the deathbringer, Orchid sent another sunbeam flashing its way.  This time the spell was at its most effective, causing the deathbringer's eyes to glaze over as its own sight went black - a rather fitting situation for an undead combatant allied with a vitreous drinker, the druid thought to herself.  But then Alistair cast a maximized chain lightning spell that nearly brought the armored undead thing to its knees, and it was simplicity itself for Harlan to duck beneath its blind swings and cut it down with his Starblade."If I may ask," Alistair sighed, "just what are all these oddball types of undead doing in the Topsy-Curvy Club?  Did the thieves guild run afoul with some necromancers or something?""This might have something to do with it," Ageratum proffered, pulling a pouch of black pearls from a pocket in the vitreous drinker's robes.  Embossed on the pouch in black thread was the unholy symbol of Iuz.  "Maybe these Iuz guys were paying to take out any rivals.""That could explain why those ravens were staking out our headquarters while we were away," Harlan mused.  "And they only left upon having spotted Orchid - proof that we were back.""Hmmm," commented Chaevaris.  "Maybe we'd best keep an eye out for any of those Iuz types, if they're planning on taking us out next.""I have a few ideas about bolstering the defenses of our headquarters," Orchid said.  "I'd like to gather the components to cast a hallow spell on it.  They're kind of costly, but we can afford it.""Good idea," agreed Harlan.  "Let's do it." - - - It was nice getting back into the Ghourmand Vale groove, after nearly a month since our last gaming session.  (Vacations, holidays, and an unexpected sickness ate away at our schedule.)  And this was a nice, short adventure of just killing stuff that definitely needed killing.However, our dice betrayed us on numerous occasions.  Not only did Orchid and Alistair roll exactly one number lower than needed to overcome the angel of decay's spell resistance (to add insult to injury), but my failure had a snowballing effect: right after I had failed my SR roll, I managed to tip my can of soda onto my character sheets, the corner of my Player's Handbook, and the carpet of the man-cave in which we play D&D.  That caused a frenzy of fetching paper towels, sopping up the worst of it, and then pressing on - but I set all my character sheets and spell lists, equipment lists, etc. on the table, separately, to dry overnight and it looks like they'll all be okay.  I used carpet spray on the stain after the gaming session was over, and you can now barely see where the spill occurred.  (I'm sure my wife would be able to spot it immediately, but to me it falls squarely in the "good enough" box.)</blockquote>

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