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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joe Jolly" data-source="post: 7428015" data-attributes="member: 6870626">15 Erastus, 4718 - 4 Rova, 4718 - Heart Of DarknessVetra-Kali waved one spidery hand and a giant vortex opened in the middle of the floor like a great maw, sucking at the combatants and pulling them towards it. Katarina rushed towards the daemon-lord, but before she could reach him, the cloud of filth and flies that surrounded him began to choke her, and dark boils erupted from her skin. Halthus added his own magic to the chaos, causing a wall of flames to leap up and engulf Hillary, Kelvin and Jeratheon. A moment later the monstrous olethrodaemon tried to disintegrate Hillary outright, but only managed to remove a sizable hunk of flesh from her back. It then turned upon Grumblejack, buffeting the big demon-ogre, who looked like a child next to the daemon, and then seizing him in two of its massive arms. “That’s about enough of that,” Kelvin snarled.He wove a spell before him, dispelling both the firewall and the chaos maw, and then hurled a ball of white flame into Halthus and Vetra-Kali. Vetra-Kali responded by conjuring two massive boulders out of thin air and smashing them together, catching Tardaesha between them. Poor Timeon cowered in a corner, trying to stay out of the way of the terrible pandemonium all around him.“I am here, my beloved,” a soft voice came from behind him.He turned and saw Dakota emerging from a swirling mist. “Stay behind me now, sweet one,” his wife purred. “I won’t let the bad men get...mph!”She grunted and doubled over as a large, black, red-vaned arrow took her in the gut. Across the room Halthus grinned at her, lowering his bow.“You are not the only one who can shoot,” he bowed. “How does that undead-baned shaft feel in your belly?”“How does having every drop of moisture sucked from your body feel, mortal?” Huma cackled as she wove a spell of horrid wilting over their attackers.Halthus’ face shriveled like a dried apricot and he collapsed, choking, to the ground.Another wall of fire erupted from the floor, catching Timeon, Tardaesha and Dakota in its flames as the olethrodaemon chortled evilly. Dakota managed to push Timeon behind her to the far side of the wall, causing her to take the brunt of the heat. Tardaesha was impervious to the flames, and strode confidently through them, but when she heard a scream from her right, she turned to see the daemon spear Hillary with another sickening green beam of light, causing the witch’s flesh to melt away in patches. Kelvin hurled another fireball in retaliation, then conjured a huge, disembodied fist which flew at Vetra-Kali and began pummeling him mercilessly. As the daemon lord fought to get clear of the fist, Jeratheon charged at him. His jaws clamped down on Vetra-Kali’s leg, but immediately the pestilence that surrounded the daemon infected the dragon. He began to choke and cough, and then his flesh began to shrivel and rot. Before he could completely succumb, Hugo grabbed one of his wings and teleported them both away.Vetra-Kali darted away from the clenched fist and flew at Roger, one of his hands encased in black fire as it touched the big half-orc. Roger’s jaw clenched in agony at the daemon’s touch, and then Vetra-Kali began stabbing him repeatedly with the vicious daggers gripped in his many hands. At that moment Katarina, still breathing heavily and moving painfully slow from her afflictions, emerged from the shadows behind Vetra-Kali. She drove her own dagger into the daemon’s neck. As Vetra-Kali shrieked and whirled towards her, Tardaesha moved in from his flank and opened a deep gash across his belly with her blade. Kat darted in again from the other side, and then Dakota joined them, firing two arrows point-blank into Vetra-Kali’s heart. Hissing and spitting, he sank to the ground, and then Hillary moved to stand over him, nursing her own dreadful wounds. Two of Vetra-Kali’s eyes locked onto her as she pointed one gnarled finger into his face. She spoke a word, and green light filled the daemon’s vision. It was the last thing he saw before being burned to dust. The olethrodaemon was undeterred by the loss of its allies. It simply meant more blood for itself. It hurled a disintegration beam at Tardaesha, which the vampiress managed to narrowly dodge away from. It slammed one mighty arm into Hillary, then trampled Huma beneath it as it sought to reach Jeratheon, who huddled in the corner where Hugo had sent him. The dragon bit at the daemon, but he was pitifully weakened by disease. Kelvin hurled a fireball at the fiend, driving it away from the dragon, and then Dakota loosed volley after volley of arrows into it. It staggered, but still managed to rake it’s sword-sized claws into Dak. Then, out of nowhere, Kelvin’s conjured fist slammed into the side of the daemon’s head, and it collapsed into a heap of slag.__________________________________________________________________Over the following month, the companions of the Knot recuperated from their battle with Vetra-Kali while Roger completed work on his phylactery. At the end of that period, the anti-paladin secluded himself while he conducted the ritual that would confer the “gift” of immortality upon him...or destroy him utterly. He did emerge, however, and when he did his transformation was obvious. His flesh had become bone white, and red flames glowed within the sockets where his eyes had been. His fingernails had lengthened into talons, and the air frosted before his lips when he spoke. Now the Nessian Knot had their own liche to counter Cardinal Thorne. It was time to go and hunt for the heart of darkness.__________________________________________________________________Using her powers of divination, Tardaesha had determined that the lair of Nythoggr lay at the uttermost northern end of Talingarde’s island. The companions undertook the journey overland, and when they finally arrived at their destination they were unimpressed. The cairn at first glance seemed massive but disordered – little more than a jumble of loose stone forming an enormous hemispherical pile with a diameter of almost five hundred feet. Only closer examination revealed that it was a great earthen mound buttressed by pylons of stone and could only be an intentionally built structure. Not only that, but it was fantastically durable. With walls that were twenty feet deep at their shallowest, the idea of digging through the structure by manual means was unthinkable. Kelvin also determined that the stones were magical, and prohibited dimensional translocation. They would have to do things the old-fashioned way.Katarina volunteered to take point and scout ahead. There was only one obvious entrance into the cairn, and it was shored up by three cyclopean rough hewn monoliths that framed the entrance and held back the loose stone atop the dome. The entrance was not unguarded. Three ancient stone guardians stood at attention just inside the front entrance. These statuary guardians were formed in the shape of long forgotten pagan deities carved by the original prehuman builders of the cairn. It was child’s play for Kat to sneak past them unseen. Beyond the entrance lay a large and irregular chamber that was choked with boulders and stones and other fallen debris. It was not a wet cavern filled with delicate formations. Instead it was a great open pocket in the cairn that looked like it had almost collapsed more than once. In the back of the room, hidden by debris, was a great tunnel that led down into darkness. Kat leaned carefully over the edge to peer into it, and then suddenly recognized it for what it was – a purple worm breaching site. The worm that did that must have been massive, though there were also signs that the breach was made centuries ago. Kat eased back into the darkness and kept moving. The pathway through the cairn was a spiral, circling round and round as it wound inward. Kat suspected the prize they sought lay in the center, so she ignored several side passages. At one point the passage became lined with a large cluster of stalagmites. Kat stood for a long time staring down the hall until she finally saw what she’d suspected. One of the stalagmites moved ever so slightly. Ropers. Loathsome creatures that disguised themselves as stony outcroppings to lure in the unwary, then unfurled poisonous tentacles to ensnare their prey. Kat crept right through the middle of the group, barely stirring the air as she passed. Beyond that stretch of hall, she came to an intersection. To one side, three large jackal-headed statues stood before a heavy iron door. Kat filed the location away for further investigation and then continued on.She came to a nearly circular chamber that was filled with particularly ancient pre-human bones. A broken slate tablet had fallen near the center of the room. There were crude pictograms and paintings in the style sometimes seen in caves throughout the isle. As Kat moved closer to study it, a ghostly apparition suddenly appeared in the chamber. It seemed to be a brutish subhuman creature with a heavy brow in savage warpaint, and yet there was a profound wisdom in his eyes. He spoke a language long forgotten and spoken by no living soul, and after he made his pronouncement he faded from view. Kat stared for a moment, puzzled, and then something even odder  happened: a strange symbol appeared in the air, and it seemed to seethe with anger and retribution. Kat’s eyes grew wide as she recognized the deadly warding symbol, and she turned away at the last instant before it exploded with a blinding flare.Deciding not to investigate any more nooks and crannies, Kat made directly for the center of the cairn. There was no light source in the vast chamber, though Kat’s enhanced vision allowed her to make out the details well enough. The massive dome, more than a hundred feet across and almost ninety feet high, was adorned with thousands of bones from the ancient lost peoples who had built that place.  The dome was dominated by a broken stone obelisk adorned with the sacred iconography of the ice elves. Heaped at the base of the obelisk was the legendary treasure of the linnorm – a vast hoard of gold, silver, amber and magic. Nythoggr himself, resting upon his mound of treasure, was a beast of legend. He resembled nothing so much as a great emaciated serpent. He was bone white, and his massive bulk was pitted and scarred with a thousand wounds and cuts, yet they had all healed. He would be no easy beast to slay, though it appeared as if countless had tried. His head was crested with horns and bone spurs like a great crown. His eyes pierced the darkness and his great nostrils flared, ever sniffing for intruders. When he moved it was utterly silent save for the occasional rattle of disturbed bone. Kat had seen enough. She crept as silent as death from the tomb._____________________________________________________________________Kat reported her findings to her companions. Tardaesha listened in silence, and when Kat finished, she simply nodded and headed towards the entrance. The others followed. There was no point in further delaying the inevitable.  They would either procure Thorn’s phylactery or be destroyed in the attempt.When they reached the stone guardians who stood before the tomb’s entrance, the massive statues animated and each of them spoke a single, powerful word of warding. The echoes of the pronouncements deafened Roger, Kelvin and Huma, and then the guardians attacked. The Nessians quickly dealt with the constructs, and left them in broken pieces as they entered the labyrinthine darkness of the cairn.</blockquote>

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