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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joe Jolly" data-source="post: 7618276" data-attributes="member: 6870626">17 Calistril, 4718 - 2 Desnus, 4719 - Demons and DragonsOne cold, winter morning, as Timeon held court to listen to the day-to-day tedium of ruling a kingdom, which bored his bride Dakota to tears, one of the courtiers abruptly shouldered his way to the front of the assemblage. “Bow, mortals!” he cried, throwing wide his arms. “Beg for mercy! For the Court of the Two Queens has come!”As his words echoed throughout the throne room, his form began to shimmer and fade from view, revealing a monstrous, dog-headed behemoth, with a pair of lobster-clawed arms in addition to two normal appendages. There was a brilliant flash of fire, sulfur and brimstone in the middle of the chamber, and as the smoke from it cleared, three more glabrezu demons strode forward, flanking a pair of huge, red-skinned women, whose torsos ended in serpentine coils, and whose six arms all wielded vicious-looking swords of various shapes and sizes. The twin demons coiled around one another, and when they spoke, it was in unison with one voice.“So the Devil God and his running dog bitch Naburus want a mortal realm of their own do they? And you... you must be their mortal dupes. If this realm is worth stealing, maybe we should take it for our own. Slaves! Skin these wretched mortals alive. And bring me that crown. The Two Queens will soon be the only law in this cursed land.”The other courtiers began running, screaming, in all directions for the nearest exits. When some of them drew too near the demons, they were unceremoniously cut down in their tracks. Dakota instantly grabbed Timeon and lifted him effortlessly from the throne before shoving him through the hidden door concealed behind it. S’Zara, the elder of the two mariliths by one minute, slithered across the throne room floor towards Kelvin. The Dannister wizard casually waved one hand and time stopped for everyone save himself, Dakota and Tardaesha. The reprieve allowed his siblings to properly gird themselves for battle, and once they had done so, he waved his hand again. S’Zara continued her charge, but Kelvin was not where he’d been only a moment before. Instead he stood upon a high balcony, where he wove a spell of disjunction about their enemies. Instantly all of their magical wards were stripped away, leaving them all too vulnerable. Katarina took that opportunity to leap from the shadows and onto the back of one of the glabrezus, driving her blades into it repeatedly until it fell twitching to the floor. S’Zara looked around, perplexed at the sudden absence of her quarry. It was only then that she realized she had larger concerns. Tardaesha now stood directly in front of her, and Dakota flanked her on one side, with Roger on the other. “Well played,” she smiled as the deadly trio moved in for the kill.Kelvin conjured a disembodied, gigantic fist of force and sent it hurtling towards Iggerath, the second marilith. The fist punched and pummeled her, whirling around her and disorienting her. As she spun to try and attack it, Dakota sent a deadly barrage of arrows into her chest and back. She collapsed in a heap next to her sister. Kat returned to the shadows and watched as her companions mopped up the rest of the glabrezus. While they were preoccupied, she slipped quietly to one of the fallen mariliths and surreptitiously dipped the Hadean signet ring into the pooled blood.___________________________________________________________________The mercenary soldiers of Talingarde’s new “army” were becoming restless. The army was a loaded gun. The truth was that twenty thousand thieves, cutthroats and criminals were never going to simply settle down and become peaceable farmers. It was a fine thing to say that they were going to Talingarde to start a new life. The truth, most of those men were not going to be happy pushing a plough. Far more likely was that they would eventually return to their previous livelihood as bandits and legbreakers. The only difference – on the mainland, there was a well disciplined military to keep them in check. In Talingarde, the military had largely been either slaughtered or fled. The mercenaries were the military.It was Leothyn Barca who came up with the solution. “These men don't want to work the land,” Barca observed during a privy council meeting. “They want to be thugs. Fine. Let them. Just make sure they are our thugs. Draw up a list of all the chieftains, commanders, ring-leaders and so forth of this rabble you call an army. Make those men lesser landed nobility, their station dependent on how many men they lead. The rank and file become their soldiers. The men aren't farming. They're guarding farmers who will provide their money and livelihood. If only the kingdom had a region that was completely devastated and almost empty of nobility...”As it turned out, there was such a region. The Borderlands from Balentyne to Daveryn was where the majority of the fighting during the Fire-axe's campaign had taken place. “Send the restless part of your army there to settle and rebuild,” Barca suggested. “That should keep them from turning bandit. And as nobles and soldiers, they'll be armed and ready should you need them again.  Of course the region will need to be cleared of monsters as well. More’s the pity.”___________________________________________________________________Master Mallory Hawthorne, true to his word, summoned Katarina to a clandestine meeting at an out of the way inn in Matharyn late one evening. There, he paid his debt for being appointed to the council by notifying Kat that there was a underground resistance growing throughout the country, and one of its main cells was operating right in the city! Hawthorne had sent his own son, Gregory, to infiltrate the rebels, and he gave Kat the location of the safe house.Katarina proceeded to stake out the supposed safe house. For three nights she did not sleep nor eat, but finally her patience was rewarded. She saw two men enter the house, stay for a time and then leave. This process repeated every three days. One of the men was always the same, an older gentleman who looked strangely familiar to Kat, thought she could not place him. She observed this exchange for over two weeks before finally trailing the older man back to the Church of Iomedae. She waited again until he left the church three nights later, then stole inside and carefully searched his quarters. The man’s name was Father Marius DeMascas, and he was an inquisitor. He looked familiar because he was the twin brother of Father Dorian DeMascas, who was the former king’s bodyguard and had died at his side at the hands of the Knot. Marius had been tasked by Solomon Tyrath, Bellinda’s High Inquisitor, with fomenting revolution and discontent against the new royal regime. Kat discovered several letters intended for other rebel cells, and she inscribed an invisible arcane mark on each of them so that the recipients could be scryed upon. Over the next several weeks, Kat journeyed to Varyston, which turned out to be the location of a particularly large rebel cell. By infiltrating the faction, she found further incriminating evidence of their plans to foment full scale revolt, including several images of a white unicorn, Bellinda’s personal symbol. She reported all of these findings to her siblings, and one moonless evening, on what came to be known as the Night of Long Knives, Tardesha sent their mercenary forces to Varyston, where the murdering marauders burned the entire city to the ground. The same night, the safe house in Matharyn was raided, and all its collaborators were dragged to the streets before being burned alive on great pyres before the temple of Asmodeus. Marius DeMascas’ death was made to look like a suicide, and a letter was planted in his belongings implementing him in the round-up of the rebels. After that night, there was no more talk of revolt in Talingarde.___________________________________________________________________The sounds of destruction reverberated throughout the royal palace of Matharyn. ‘This is it,’ Kelvin thought to himself. ‘Bellinda has finally come.’The wizard quickly stopped the flow of time around him and made his way to the throne room, where the sounds seemed to have been emanating from. When he entered the vast chamber, he saw that the roof had been torn completely off, allowing sunlight to spill down in brilliant shafts. Kelvin instinctively drew away from the light, which shown even brighter, reflected as it was from the burnished gold scales of the massive dragon that reared in the center of the room. Kelvin could tell it was female, which puzzled him, because Bellinda’s draconic heritage sprang from a silver dragon. Then his eye was drawn to the armored figure which stood before the dragon, black blade in hand. It was Roger, and he was alone. Frowning grimly, Kelvin turned from the ruined chamber. He had to alert the others before Roger was torn to shreds. “I AM HERE TO AVENGE EIRAMANTHUS!”The great gold wyrm’s voice boomed throughout castle.“HE WAS MY MATE, IN BODY AND IN SPIRIT! BLOOD CALLS TO BLOOD!”“Just to let you know,” Roger snickered from beneath his great helm, “you weren’t the only one.”The dragon’s eyes blazed with fury, and she launched herself at the anti-paladin. Her claws tore thru his armor as if it were made of parchment, and her enormous fangs pierced his cold flesh like swords of fire. Roger knew he couldn’t stand toe to toe with her. He just had to hold her off for a few more seconds until the others arrived. He hoped...___________________________________________________________________Kelvin, Tardaesha, Drax, Hillary and Dakota gathered in a circle, hands joined. The vampires all had heavy, hooded shrouds draped about them as protection from the sunlight they knew would be streaming down into the throne room. Kelvin spoke a word and they vanished, reappearing one heartbeat late in the center of the destroyed chamber. Roger was down on one knee, his sword held defensively above him as the dragon reared up for a killing blow. Before she could strike, however, Tardaesha flew at the wyrm, her own dark blade flashing. The unholy power of Asmodeus flowed through her as she smote the dragon, opening a gash in its neck that cut almost halfway thru. The dragon shrieked, blood geysering from the wound. Before Tardaesha could press her attack, the great wyrm vanished.“She’s teleported!” Kelvin shouted. “Gather to me! I can find her!”The others rushed back to his side as he closed his eyes in concentration.“Got her!” Kelvin hissed. “We go, now, while she’s still wounded!”The Knot teleported once more, reappearing in a cavern the size of a cathedral. The gold dragon crouched there, waiting...and she was not alone. Four individuals stood around her. One was a priest dressed in the full regalia of Iomedae. He dropped his hand from the dragon’s completely healed neck just as the Knot arrived. Another man wore robes emblazoned with the insignia of the White Unicorn...Bellinda’s crest. A beautiful woman in full plate armor that shone like the sun stood immediately before the dragon, a great golden sword in her hands and angelic wings sprouting from her back. Lastly, a huge bear, stood on its hand legs, clad in armor, with a massive axe gripped in its almost human-looking hands. “I knew you’d follow me,” the dragon chuckled. “Just as I’d planned. Now, as I promised, you will pay for your crimes and I will consign your wicked souls to Hell!”Moving with a speed that belied her size, the dragon pounced like a cat, pinning Kelvin beneath her bulk and then seizing him in her jaws. She gripped him with both foreclaws and ripped his body in two. The wizard dissipated into a cloud of noxious, yellow mist. Roger rushed in, but the dragon’s head whipped towards him, biting him savagely. Tardaesha closed from the other side, striking quickly before darting back out of reach. Hillary saw the were-bear and the angel closing in. She focused on the lycanthrope, opening her third eye as she wove a hex in the air. The beast stopped in mid-stride and collapsed to the ground, snoring in deep slumber. Before Hillary could try the same thing on the angel, the white-robed sorcerer used his own magic to hurl rays of scorching flame at the witch. Then the angel was among them. The holy power that emanated from her drove the undead members of the Knot back, the light burning them. She raised one hand, and searing fire burned there. She hurled it first at Hillary, and then at Tardaesha. It burned their flesh as if the sun itself had alighted upon them. Dakota fell back from the angel’s assault and melted into the shadows. She saw that the dragon was bearing down on Hillary, and she loosed a barrage of arrows, trying to distract the beast. Though all of her shots struck home, and the dragon wept blood from its wounds like tears, it never slowed. Hillary turned just as the wyrm struck her. She fell beneath its claws, crumbling to dust as her spirit was forced back to its phylactery. Roger scowled as he watched Hillary discorporate. He knew from previous experience that it would be some time before her body reformed. He had no intention of going thru that painful process again. The dragon was enraged, but she was also grievously injured. Her anger had blinded her to her own peril. ‘More’s the pity,’ Roger thought.He rushed towards the dragon, deftly dodging great swings of her tail and the beating of her wings as he closed in. She began to rear up as he approached, but with a final lunge, he drove Helbrand straight into her chest and found himself drenched in her golden blood as her heart exploded. Tardaesha, her burned flesh slowly starting to regenerate, moved away from the angel and towards the sorcerer, whom she saw was preparing to cast another spell. She reached the man before he could finish the incantation, and cut him to ribbons in the blink of an eye. She turned and saw that Roger and Dakota had cornered the priest. Just as they closed in for the kill, however, the man conjured a sphere of golden energy around him, which encompassed Dak and Roger as well. In an instant, all of their magical wards and protections failed. “Clever,” Tardaesha hissed.She watched as Dakota backed out of the sphere and aimed her bow.“But my sister is more clever still.”Dak fired, again and again. The priest’s own defenses had likewise been suppressed, and he was just as susceptible to being pin-cushioned by arrows as the next mortal. He went down under the barrage. Roger was still inside the anti-magic field when the reawakened werebear charged in and bowled right into him, burying its axe in his shoulder and almost severing his arm. Its powerful jaws clamped down on his other arm as he fought to raise Helbrand. As it bore him to the ground, the brute suddenly went stiff, and then limp as a sword blade abruptly sprouted from its chest.“Your’e welcome,” Tardaesha grinned down at the liche as she offered him a hand up.That only left the angel. She held her sword in a guarded position as the remaining members of the Knot circled her warily. Finally, she raised her blade.“Know that you have been judged,” she intoned, “and there will come a time when your penance will come due.”She vanished in a final flash of brilliant flame.</blockquote>

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