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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 197546" data-attributes="member: 150">Spire 2: Crys and UlrichCrys and Ulrich were a pair of fairly-good intentioned mercenary adventures from Perrenland that had been traveling together since they were rookie adventurers. They fell in, most recently, with a dwarf mercenary named Brottkill. Brottkill ran a team of adventurers who were very effective -- they were all survivors of many campaigns and had the scars and stories to prove it. Brottkill was a brute, and purely self-interested, but as long as they were lined up on his side of the fence they were fine. They did some adventuring for hire, mucking about, trying to walk the line as much as possible between their sensibilities and the requirements of the work Brottkill found for them. And then the letters from Anathe began to arrive. Crys and Ulrich saw a few of them one night, when Brottkill left them out. Anathe wanted to hire Brottkill and the rest of the team to help on a quest -- and to help deal with a troublesome group of "meddlers." Anathe was a dragon priest -- a member of a faith that was also growing in strength in your neck of the woods, but not yet to the point where it was trying to eclipse other faiths. Crys and Ulrich, along with the rest of Brottkill's team, traveled by ship to Dyvers. It's an impressive city, but what was more impressive was the construction work going on at the time in the temple district. Their new employer, the Dragon Faith, was building a city within the walls of Dyvers, absorbing several blocks into a complex that would be larger and taller than the magister's palace when it was completed. While their ship approached the port, they were handed unifirm tabards -- crimson with a black claw figure embroidered on the front and back. Brottkill explained that while they were in Dyvers they were member's of the Dragon Faith's official city guard and military unit, the Claws of the Dragon. While wearing the uniform they would have very broad powers to create and enforce their own justice in the city, but they were mostly being provided to allow them to move freely in the city.Crys and Ulrich were taken to a barracks of sorts, in the heart of the great construction project. Walls were going up everywhere, but the barracks area was one of the first sections of the site that had been completed. They were provided comfortable if spartan living quarters. The team was only in Dyvers for a few days. They went on a couple of patrols, mostly just long hikes around the city. Most people in the street gave them a lot of space on the street, and there didn't seem to be much trouble going on. THey met several NPCs that they would be working with in the future. Most importantly, they met Anathe, a Megolomaniac who dressed in white at all times and traveled with a pair of slim, heavily robed attendants that they later discovered were drow assassins. He was passionate about the faith, and was the driving force behind a lot of what was going on in Dyvers -- certainly, there were others in the faith, even some that outranked Anathe, but Anathe was the one who had the strong connection with the dragon Sear, still trapped beneath the earth's crust, who was financing the construction in Dyvers. Anathe had Brottkill and the rest of the team attend a opulent dinner once they arrived -- a dinner which made Crys and Ulrich very uncomfortable. Everything was grand -- the food was spectacular, the room, in the base of a half-constructed tower in the section of the dragon compound they were calling the Nursery (for reasons too chilling to consider). The evil that Anathe wore like an invisible cloak was troublesome enough, but even more problematic was the way the rest of their troupe of companions, including Brottkill, reacted. They were not bothered.At dinner they learned from Anathe about the group of meddlers -- the "spittlemarch crowd", and a bit about their capabilities. Now they are calling themselves the Dyvers Dragoons. They have a pathetically small company -- more a squad or platoon -- and some popguns that Anathe dismissed (although you sense a bit of frustration and jealousy there). There are currently four of them -- and their supporters, the alchemist gnome Solen, the Cleric Pavel, and the wizard's Valet, Minimonk. The core members of the group are a Dwarf named Irk -- a terror with an axe that Brottkill was especially interested in, an Elven Arher called Eli, and a pair of halflings, a wizard named Uri and a burglar named Pah. Anathe bitches furiously about them -- about having seen Irk and Eli dead, and still they come back, time and again. They refuse to learn. And now they have a flying ship, which will make things very interesting.Towards the end of dinner, one of the Drow attendants entered the dining hall and whispered in Anathe's ear. Anathe smiled, ushered the dark figure out of the room, then turned to the rest of the group. "It is time. We need to sail on the midnight tide. Gather your belongings and be ready to go in 30 minutes.""We must make a long journey -- undertake an important quest for the faith and it's advancement. The flying ship gives the dragoons an advantage in getting to the site -- our advantages are surprise and knowledge, for the dragoons have only begun to try to determine where we are going. They will try to follow, but my agents have taken steps tonight to insure that they are distracted for a few days, if not more. We will face them eventually, of that I am sure, but we need to leave them here, if we can, and slip away tonight."As for our mission, I'll tell you more about it tomorrow morning, on the ship. Their group made it's way back to the barracks and gathered your things, while the regular Claws drank and diced and groaned in their sleep. Crys and Ulrich looked for an opening to try to break away from the group, but almost as if he suspected they might be a problem Brottkill was always on hand, herding them like sheep to the docks, and onto the waiting sloop.Anathe was only a few minutes behind you, notably traveling without his drow companions, but with a new companion -- a half-dragon he introduced as Eldgrim. And if Crys and Ulrich had a bad feeling in the pit of their stomach before, this made them downright sick. Eldgrim, the son of the great Dragon Sear, was scarred and bent physically, but still strong and fierce, For most of the long journey north across the Nvy Dyv, the great inland lake, he paced the deck of the ship, not sleeping, muttering to himself. The only one who was able to get him to eat was Anathe, who was conciliatory to him but rolled his eyes behind Eldgrim's back. Elgrim was already a loose cannon, and things hadn't begun to get interesting.It was a pretty terrible journey -- the ship was small and uncomfortable, the company was antisocial at best. The good news was that once they had left port and the journey was well under way, Anathe called all of his hired guns together for a meeting so he could explain the quest.The bad news was the quest itself. He planned to head deep into the former bandit kingdoms -- now a heavily contested possession of Iuz and his empire -- to the great rift. There, in the great rift, he planned to find, in the ruins of an old temple of an ancient dragon cult, a great wyrm called Ashardalon. It was his intention to make contact with this great wyrm, wake it from its sleep, and bring it out into the world to help the new Dragon Faith to conquer the world. Sear was sending special greetings for Ashardalon in Anathe's care, Anathe was quite sure that it would only be a matter of his being able to speak a few words to the dragon to make it all work out.Of course, it wasn't going to be easy. Part of what made the trip interested for Crys and Ulrich was that, while Anathe drove his team like crazy, trying to cover ground on the way to the rift, it was not possible to travel as members or employees of the Dragon faith. Iuz has made of himself a demigod, and within the borders of his land he tolerates no other gods. Luckily the way had been paved. They arrived in port, and the ship, stripped of all markings of the Dragon Faith, was greeted by a young, comley woman named Terressa. Terressa was an agent of Anathe's, and had been traveling the Bandit kingdom for weeks, preparing the way for Anathe and his team.Their company consisted of 20 riders -- Anathe, Eldgrim, Brottkill, the Crys and Ulrich, and the rest of your team, and twelve hand-picked members of the Claws of the Dragon, each a master with the chose weapon of the claws, the double bladed sword. Anathe was given a map, some notes, and directions by Tereessa, who had struck bargains with local warlords here and there, to aid and speed your travels. Anathe used magical messengers to keep in touch with Terressa as you rode on. Crys and Ulrich gathered, piecing together clues, that Terressa was meeting with a network of spies she had developed, and was keeping an eye out for a flying ship, and plotting with several of the warlrds to try to capture the ship should it appear.One day, just two days before they would reach your goal at the Nightfang Spire, Crys and Ulrich watched as the usual morning sparrow arrived with a tiny message for Anathe. Anathe, who had shown nothing to the group besides supreme confidence and assurance about the mission, blanched for a second, before recovering himself and putting on what was now clearly a show of bravado. Brottkill voiced what all were thinking. "News from Terressa?Anathe grinned. "They're coming. They're here. They made good time to catch up with us, but that doesn't matter. We will beat them to the spire, and be waiting for them, and Ashardalon will make short work of them.Two days later they arrived at the Spire. Anathe split off half of the group -- ten Claws -- and had them set up a base camp outside the spire. Then, as there seemed to be no way in to the spire except down from the top, the group began to scale the tower.As they reached the top a tentacle reached out and grabbed on of the two claws traveling with the group, and rended him into meaty chunks in a matter of seconds. A terrible, other-worldly being Crys and Ulrich had never seen before flew out of the shadows at the top of the tower and attacked their party. The team managed to kill the thing, but the battle was fierce, and most, if not all of you were in bad shape after the battle. But Anathe pushed on, eager to meet the dragon. THey scaled the rest of the tower, entered from above, and found themselves in a central room.And then they attacked from all sides -- Vampires -- mostly vampire spawn, some striking from the shadows, others appearing from clouds of mist right in the middle of their party. Eldgrim, in a panick, turned and breathed fire on one of the vampires next to him, and managed to catch several of your party members in the blast. Everything got crazy and confused, and Crys and Ulrich became separated from the rest of the party. The two friends ducked into a room with a door, shut it, and managed to hide while the fight drifted away down into the tower. Eventually the sounds of fighting died down.Crys and Ulrich managed to heal each other, set up whatever defenses they could to protect themselves in their room, and holed up, not sure what they were waiting for, but sensing that they should stay right where they were. Then, about 12 silent hours later, they heard someone else dropping through the hole into the roof into the room beyond, and then the sound of fighting with the vampires.</blockquote>

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