Crossing the Planes
Crossing the Planes
They say that your life passes before your eyes when you are facing death. All the Sensates I knew said that the mind went into overtime seeing if you missed something. The priests said that there wasn't any pain and it’s a peaceful experience. The Dustmen all claimed that you were dead already, and the True Death awaited those who could empty themselves of emotions and attachments.
Sodding clueless berks they were.
The snoring continued through the night as I lay in my bed, my eyes drooping. I had done my prayers hours before and now I just wanted to sleep. But it appeared that somewhere during the fight, ‘Big-D’ had broken his nose. For three days on the road while I took watches, I could not recall the noise that now came from the bunk nearby. I was seriously thinking about breaking it again when sleep finally won out.
I woke again sometime after dawn. The Fingerpainter had originally camped himself by a small writing desk near a bed, but apparently, he never bothered to use it. He sat slumped in the chair, with only the lightest of murmurs to give any indication of still being asleep. Big D was silent, as it appeared that someone had nearly smothered him with a pillow. But the occasional movement told me that he still was among us.
That meant the Knight was the only other one awake, and he was quietly looking at a large piece of parchment. He had acquired a cup of something, and he took a sip as he continued to read. “Morning Myrai,” he spoke glancing in my direction.
I groaned, “Thanks for the pillow,” and I pushed myself up by my arms. “I didn’t think it would ever get quiet last night.”
“Well, Beepu wasn’t using it,” and he turned to look at the unconscious warrior on the bed. “Might have to rebreak his nose again. A good hard right to counter the left punch to his face.”
“Don’t think so,” as I sat up and started pulling on my boots. “The punch hit him here,” I pointed to the upper part my head. “I bet he broke it when he landed for his dirt nap.”
“Hmm, you’re right. Doesn’t really change the solution does it?”
“No, and I doubt he’ll enjoy fixing it,”
The Knight shrugged, “Somehow I bet he’s had it done before. We’ll let him rest a bit longer before we do that.”
I nod, and finish with the lacing at the back of my boot and reach for my leather bodice. Grabbing it I start to fasten it around me when the Knight asked, “Did you need a hand with that?”
I looked at him with a cocked eye and replied, “Usually that line works better at night…but I’m fine.” I tried to hide my smirk as I threaded the leather strips through the eyelets in the armor.
“Probably right, but we all need help occasionally.”
“Probably; but I’ve been putting on my armor for the better part of a year. Pretty sure I have it down now. But…thanks.”
“Sure thing.” And for a moment it was quiet as I finished fastening on the armor. Then he asked. “Who were you praying to last night?”
I paused in putting on my gear and looked at him, “Kelemvor.”
“The god of the dead? That’s not a casual god to pray to.”
“Life isn’t casual, and it tends to be cut short.”
“That’s a bit cynical don’t you think?”
I stop a second and think. Images of Markell and Elisna and so many others come to mind. I shake my head, clearing the thoughts away. “Probably, but after losing enough people you care about…it’s comforting. You don’t need to seek death, nor does death come to find you. It’s here always with us. So, there isn’t a need to pray for it. You pray to honor the dead, and not to join them… yet.”
“Ok…that’s still a bit grim.”
“Maybe. But looking at you, you’ve seen the underside of this…place. Tell me the truth; doesn’t everyone pray to see another day?”
“I guess…but they usually don’t pray to death itself.”
“Somehow I find comfort in it. It doesn’t matter to me what others do or don’t do in comparison.” and I finished putting my blades back in their normal places. “We should wake the others and figure out what we are doing next.”
The Knight was putting the parchment back in his pack, “Well north of here for certain. I was thinking that we should stop at the outpost that the Waterbaroness setup. Get information, and make sure we don’t step on any toes.”
“Makes sense to me. What was that you were reading?”
“This? Some old notes I wrote a while ago,” he said nonchalantly. Too nonchalantly. But he clearly didn’t want to discuss it, so I let it drop.
“Hey Foggle,” I said turning to the golden owl perched on the desk. “Wake up your master; I’m sure he wants to get moving.”
The mechanical owl was standing watch, with its head revolving constantly in circles. Now, it blinked its eyes and turned to stare its head at the Fingerpainter silently. Then the wizard yawned and opened his eyes saying “…alright, alright what is the…Ah! Morning!”
I looked at the owl; normally it just said “Beeepooo” in the most obnoxious way possible. But now I realized that it could communicate, without saying anything. I wondered how much of a conversation could be had with a mechanical construct. Or did the magic involved create a connection with…something.
For now, it was beyond my ability to do anything like that. But I wanted something. The Fingerpainter stretched his arms, jumped down off his chair and then settled his disapproving gaze on the sleeping “Big-D.”
“Well, why is Daneath just lying there?” he said shrilly.
“Most of us were trying to get a decent night’s sleep, and it took a bit to get him to quiet down,” the Knight said.
“What noise?”
I blinked, “What noise? The herd of gehreleths didn’t keep you up? How can you sleep through that?”
“Well…my father snored so I guess I got used to it.” The gnome shrugged. “And what’s a gehreleth?”
“It’s an unpleasant group of beings in the lower planes; and they are obnoxious to everyone,” I replied. “You really don’t want to meet any of them.”
“Well, might as well get this over with,” the Knight said, and he promptly shook the sleeping warrior. He snorted and sat up, bleary eyed looking at us.
“Whud are you looking at? Ah crap…how did I break my dose again?”
“You don’t remember?” I said incredulously.
“Noe. I…I…remember goin to duh ring. Who’d I fight?” he asked as he knitted his brows together trying to remember.
“It was…a fight that most others won’t forget, Big D.” the Knight said
“Big D? Who choze dat name?”
“You did! Crowd loved it, the fight was spectacular. One for the ages.” The Knight said beaming.
“Oh. So, I wun?”
“Not so much. But it was a great bout!”
“Right. Hey, wherze my codpieze?”
I pointed to the desk, “It’s over there…might need to see a smith about it though.” I said.
On the desk, lay the iron protector of his apples. But it had a sizable dent now the size of a childs fist.
“Whad duh? Whad did I fight?”
“Well,” I said trying to find the right words “Someone with a reputation for…low blows. Anyway, we should get moving.”
“Whud? I need dis fixt!”
“Your codpiece? We can find a smith.”
“Noe, my doze.”
The Knight looked at him and said, “Well sit on your hands and tilt your head ba…”
“I noe how dis works. Just doo id!”
CRUNCH!
--------------------------------
Minutes later we left the “Lusty Bard,” with Big D shaking his head.
“I can breathe better now, thanks. But need to find a smith still.”
“Tell you what. Why don’t you two,” and I pointed at the humans “take care of repairs and learn the chant about goings on north? I’m kind of curious about the Hate Night party coming up. Might be a way to get work later.”
“More delays! And what do you propose I do?” the Fingerpainter said.
“Provide me an escort of course. You can help me find the higher end merchants that might know about the local goings on.”
“I am not a tour guide!”
“No, but did you want to hang around the smithy, or see there is anything else to learn here?”
“Sounds fine to me, let’s meet back midday in the main market,” Big D said, “Shouldn’t take too long with a hammer and we won’t lose too much time. We’ll see you then.” And the two humans strode off.
“Wait..wait…” and the wizard half-heartedly started to chase after the humans and then stopped. He turned and came back to me scowling. “This is a waste of time. Wait…You want an invitation, don’t you?”
“Pretty much.” And I turned and started walking toward the direction of the gate that let up to the next tier of the city.
“What do you expect to do at a party like that?”
“Well I hope to meet people who need stuff done and have jink to melt. Probably have time enough to get to where you want to go and come back.”
“You mean ‘have money to spend?’ Well…as long as it is a follow-up thing to do.”
“You got it. And I suspect that you and I are going to need lots of jink for supplies in the future.”
Rubbing his chin the gnome nodded, “That actually does make some sense. We can afford to make conta…hey, aren’t you going to put up your hood?”
I looked at him,“No, I don’t want to hide while I am here. I only covered up because I didn’t know where I was and what to expect.”
I strode through the marketplace, heading to the gate to the upper tier. Weaving between the ramshackle stalls, I began to get the impression that I was getting attention. Most of course only saw my hair. The merchants ahead who saw my eyes however, they fell over each other trying to offer me goods; masks, fruits, everything. I just smiled and let their tongues behind me tell the tale. In Sigil, I was just a funny looking Aasimar.
Here, I was a bit more than that.
The district in the middle tier was much more well to do. Less merchants in stalls, and more in small shops. Buildings were of stone with slate roofs, instead of wood and straw. The merchants were friendlier as well…not that smiles my direction was rare.
But as friendly as they were, the information I was looking for was somewhat disappointing. Invitations to the Waterbaroness’ were of course already distributed. The one seamstress I spoke with basically was swamped with last minute changes to orders for the grand ball, only three days away. She had no idea how someone could get an invitation now, let alone a dress.
The Fingerpainter did manage to spent some quality time in a couple of shops that had various tomes for sale. Nothing seemed to spark his interest and he seemed to be flustered overall in the…lack of organization of the shops. Not that his proposed solutions made any sense either; assigning numbers on the back of tomes, where the numbers meant a particular topic didn’t seem much better.
Eventually we returned to the lower market to meet up with the humans. We were eating some type of bird meat on a skewer, when the pair strode up to us. The first thing I noticed was Mo was back. It only dawned on me then, that I hadn’t seen the creature for days. But now I saw it bounding across the top of stalls, and landing on the Knights shoulder. After that, I saw it drop something into the hand of the Knight; something shiny. I smirked; our Knight of the Post had a squire of the post.
The second thing was Big-D himself. As I watched him approach, it was obvious that he replaced his codpiece. It could have been that it was larger than before, or the way he walked. But it probably had most to do with the metal used was a bright polished silver, instead of the dull iron of before. It…stood out.
“Nice work,” I said as they approached. “Nothing obvious to draw attention.”
Big D frowned, “Pounding out the metal caused it to crack, so this was all that was handy in a pinch. The smith seemed very happy to do it and it didn’t cost me.”
“A generous smith? Sounds suspicious.”
“Not really,” said the Knight, “He was a winner in last night’s betting, so he was more than happy to support ‘Big D’.”
“Stop that…still a silly name. I can’t believe I gave that as my fighting name.”
“Anyway,” I interrupted “Did you learn anything about goings on north of town?”
“Not much more; there is a camp a couple of hours northwards where they range out. Got a contact name. And oh, it’s real recent. It was only setup in the last month or so.” Said the Knight.
“Well that is enough to get started. We have wasted enough time here!” the gnome said in his most commanding voice.
“I can’t argue with that, beats banging around here,” I said. “Might as well start walking.”
The others nod, and we started making our way through the crowded streets back to the main gate to the city. As we walked, I kept seeing Mo darting from the Knights shoulder, to lamps, stalls, gutters, and back. Always moving. I then asked the Knight; “Where has Mo been? I don’t recall seeing him for days.”
“Oh…mostly in the top of my pack; he was sleeping most of the way here. I think he was bored. Once we got here, he perked up and darted off. Didn’t see him till this morning.”
“Interesting. Also…this might sound silly but…what is he?”
“What Mo? He’s some sort of monkey. Why?”
I stopped in the street. My eyes opened widely, and I stared at Mo on the Knights shoulder. And I just couldn’t control myself.
I started laughing. I finally got the joke.
The Knight stopped and looked at me mystified, “What? Why is that funny?”
I recover a bit, wiping some tears from my eyes, “I just got the point of a particular insult used in
Sigil.” I said in between laughs. “When you see a fiend that looks like they have been on the wrong end of a scrap, you sometimes hear another group say ‘So, looks like you got beaten by the monkeys’” I was still chuckling and caught my breath and continued; “But I didn’t understand why they would be so insulted, and why it implied it was a bunch of primes that did it.”
“Because you have never seen a monkey?”
“Close…Seen one or two…but never knew that’s what they were called. It’s hilarious.”
“If you say so…now come on, or we’ll lose the others.”
-----------------------
The road north was really not much to speak of. Really. It barely qualified as a road, being just gutted tracks of wagon wheels with weeds in between. While we were in some hills that came up to the riverbanks near Yartar, now it was flattening out into plains, with only an occasional rise here and there. Even the trees were becoming sparser and sparser the farther north we went.
Eventually, we saw wisps of smoke ahead of us. We continued north, and we saw what appeared to be a stockade in the distance. As we approached, it became clear that this was both very new and very hastily assembled. Once at the doorway, it was apparent that this wasn’t really a defensive fortification. It was square, with wooden palisades, with two buildings within. One of the building appeared to double as a wainwrights and tack house. Another seemed to be a bunk house, and this one had smoke drifting up from a chimney. There were several wagons, and draft horses within the fort, waiting for the next load to carry south to Yartar. There were only two guards at the entrance, and there was only one “tower” which was more of a trestle assembly in the middle of the encampment with a platform at the top, where a lone, miserable looking, guard was posted.
It wasn’t designed to keep people out; it was designed to keep things inside of it with a barred door, and guards at the only exit. The fearsome elk tribe had never beset it; brigands never tried to rob it. It was untested, and guards in front of it unconcerned, even as we approached.
Once at the entrance to the stockade, the humans approached and introduced themselves, and quickly head to one of the buildings within. That left the Fingerpainter, Foggle and I waiting on the outside.
The Fingerpainter was doing tweaks to Foggle. He had a small pouch open with various tools he used to keep Foggle going. As I watched, it was clear that Beepu saw this machine as something more than a mechanical contraption. The care he took, the apologies he gave when a tool slipped, and the gentle caresses of his hands as he polished it.
“There’s a bit of magic infused into it, isn’t there? It’s not just clockwork.” I said watching the Fingerpainter work over the owl.
“Well…yes. The familiar spell binds it to me, so we can converse. I can even look through its eyes if need. But the bulk of it is artifice. Something my family has been doing for centuries. Especially my father.”
“I thought your father was more of a wizard?”
“Oh he wa…is. But he had many interests. His devices infused magic into them as well, but usually the devices helped focus or intensify the magic used.”
“Like planar magic?”
The gnome nodded and continued his work on Foggle, “That was what he last was working on. I have some of the notes, but not enough to reconstruct what he was doing. That’s why I want to find him. It has been two years since he has been home or anyone in the family has heard from him.”
“Makes your urgency understandable,” I said slumping and leaning against the palisade. “I was once that way about my parents.”
The gnome didn’t even turn, but his tone changed to a curious one, “
“What about your parents? You mentioned your father briefly, but you did not elaborate. You have not spoken in a while?”
“More like ‘ever.’ I was given up at birth as an orphan by my father. He swore the ones that took me in to secrecy and left.”
The gnome stopped and turned from where he sat on the earth, “Secrecy? About what?”
“About him mostly. I mean I know he was a celestial of some type, but what kind, what his name was, and anything about my mother. The two bleakers who took me in swore an oath, and they both died when I was young. So, I can’t ask them.”
“So, a…say an angel, dropped you off and that’s all you know?”
I nodded, “Yep. When I got older, I tried to dig up what I could. But with little to go on, it was just dead end after dead end. My parents are a deep dark. Nothing at the Hall of Records, the Factol of the Gatehouse, I even tried asking around the Great Gymnasium for a day before they threw me out.”
“Threw you out?”
“I didn’t pay to go in, so I don’t blame them. I was probably more of a pest then anyway. But it’s strange.”
“Being an orphan is already too common if you ask me.”
“It’s more than that. Aasimar usually…well their progenitor keeps tabs with their descendants and communicates with them.”
“What with letters?”
I shook my head, “No…from the other couple of Aasimar I talked to, they could communicate directly with their progeny in their heads. That they would receive…guidance directly from theirs. But I’ve never heard anything like that. So, he’s silent for a reason.” I said not saying the other possible reason. Not saying that fallen angels don’t talk to their dependents either.
“Hey, you two,” said Big D as he walked up with the Knight in tow.
“Hey. So, what’s the chant?”
The Knight frowned, “Well basically this is a collection point for goods and treasures found in burial mounds. They basically will offer a contract and you can go scavenge, bring the goods here and they pay you. But they’re stingy, based on what I say they pay a tenth of the value.”
The Fingerpainter piped up, “Can’t others just take it to another town and sell it then?”
“Well they have also scouts who are looking for wanderers; if they have tribal goods, they take them. But based on the tone, only after teaching the unauthorized looters ‘a lesson,’ it appears.”
“Ah, so organized grave robbing. How…civilized,” I said and spat in to the dirt. I knew that Kelemvor didn’t really approve of disturbing the rest of the dead from the teachings I had read. “But I suppose we aren’t looting graves. We are looking for people who seem to be at a grave.”
The Knight nodded, “Yep, which is why we didn’t sign anything.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Yeah. Since the Elk left, more and more gnolls have appeared. Seems that the Elk had been keeping the cowards at bay. But not anymore,” Big-D said. “They have been moving farther and farther south, and pretty much it’s them between us and the rock.”
“What about ‘Flint Rock’ itself?” the Fingerpainter asked with urgency.
“No one knows how to get there. And there aren’t any tribesmen to ask, not that they would tell us. So, we are going to have to find it on our own,” replied Big D.
“Well then! North it is.” And the gnome folded up his set of tools, put them into his pouch, sent his owl aloft and started marching north.
“What? We’re just going to wander around and hope we find it?” I said incredulously.
Big D shrugged, “I don’t have any other ideas. Besides, if we don’t find anything in three days, we’ll have to turn around anyway for supplies.” And he proceeded to follow the Fingerpainter.
The Knight however was quiet, looking at the other two with a look of concentration on his face. He too shrugged and muttered, “Well it’s the right direction I suppose.”
I looked skyward, and closed my eyes and said, “May Kelemvor protect them,” and then proceeded to follow them into the plains.
The road continued meandering in a northwestern direction. But we moved off the path and started heading straight north instead. This made some sense, as Flint Rock wasn’t on a road, so following that wasn’t going to get us far. The plains themselves were mostly scrub, thistle and other low bushes. And as we looked ahead we saw few hills. But we made our way towards one, to get a lay of the land ahead of us.
It was midafternoon when we had reached the hilltop, if you could call it that. It was basically a low mound, with some outcropping of rocks and more scrub. It was dry and dusty, and no signs of water anywhere. At least the grasses were low enough that we could walk through them without difficulty.
Looking around in all directions told the same story. Scrub and more scrub. And looking north, it continued to look flat. It made me wonder what flint rock even looked like, or how a cairn would stand out. It then occurred to me, that most of the groups ranging the plains were mounted, giving them a better vantage point. Since we didn’t have the means to purchase them, we had to work with what we had. And what we had was Foggle.
While we surveyed the land with our eyes, the gnome closed his eyes and was looking through Foggle’s. While he couldn’t go very high, it was high enough to give an idea of what to expect. I watched with a certain envy. I really wanted a familiar at that point; it seemed too useful not to have. But I had never heard of sorcerers having one.
Being shorter than the other two, I sat down on a rock and thought. There must be a way to find this place. Some sort of trail or markers to at least give us a clue if we were heading in the right direction.
As the wind was blowing through the grass and as the Fingerpainter was scouting above, it crossed my mind that something was…missing. I sat there quietly thinking, trying to put my finger on it.
“This is not helping. I will have to send him higher and let him tell me what he sees. My range looking directly, is too limited.” Said the Fingerpainter, and he opened his eyes and watched the owl silently ascend.
I was nodding in agreement to what he had said when it dawned on me. Beyond the light rustle of the brush from the sporadic breeze it was dead quiet. No other noise from the plains beside our own breathing at this point. No birds, nothing moving in the foliage around us.
Nothing.
“Hey berks,” I asked and suddenly getting alarmed, “It’s real quiet. Didn’t we hear birds or animals in the brush earlier?”
The knight looked at me sharply and then cocked his head to listen, “You’re right. I remember hearing some earlier. We might of scared any off though.”
One thing about Foggle, is despite being a clockwork, it was very silent as it flew. It took that moment to land on the Fingerpainter’s shoulder and uttered an excited “Beepooo!”
“He found something that we should look at,” the gnome exclaimed excitedly. “Not far to the north!”
“How did you get that out of one ‘beeepooo’?” asked Big D, “What else did it say, that a boy fell into a well and is drowning and needs our help right away?”
“The verbal utterance is just to provide the illusion of audible communication. I just hear what he says in my mind. And no.”
“No what?”
“There is not a well.”
“Well,” I said standing up and stretching, “Let’s take a look.”
After a short march we arrived at the spot indicated by the owl. And at that point I really wish we hadn’t found it.
It looked to be waist high and was initially appeared to be a collection of round rocks and wood, shaped into a pyre. As we approached, you could hear the sounds of buzzing flies. Once I was close enough, I could see that most of the rocks were not rocks at all.
They were skulls. Perhaps a dozen, in a pile underneath and around three small wooden logs. The skulls themselves weren’t clean, most having flecks of meat and gore attached. Maggots crawled over the decaying flesh as flies landed and then took off to resume their dizzying flight around the pyre.
We didn’t say anything; we knew that the gnolls created this grisly thing. I knew a little more; it was a primitive shrine to the gnoll’s master, the demon prince Yeenoghu.
“I would have rather found a well,” I said with a mixture of disgust and sadness.
“That means there is a pack roaming about,” said the Knight. “We probably shouldn’t linger here.”
I silently nod, and we continued north. The scrub and weeds spread in all directions endlessly. In the distance another landmark, a small rocky rise was evident, and we headed towards it to get a view again with our own eyes. The owl was once again aloft watching everything from a height. The sun was maybe an hour or two away from touching the hills when we reached the outcropping.
It wasn’t a lot, random projections of granite boulders of grey and white. And the elevation was again barely above the level of the plains themselves. We started the same routine, but Foggle had not flown very high, when suddenly it dropped down to land on the Gnomes shoulder.
It startled him as well and quickly turned his head to look at the owl. Then he looked at us; “He saw something in the brush creeping towards us!”
We started drawing weapons. For the first time, my dagger felt woefully inadequate. My heart started pounding as I braced myself for an attack.
Big D had drawn his sword, “How many, which way, and what?”
The gnome glared at the warrior, “About six, a bit northeast, but he wasn’t clear on the what part. But it wasn’t humanoid.”
So not gnolls. Something else. At least with gnolls I knew what to expect. My throat felt suddenly thick and dry.
Big D nudged the Knight, and they moved together towards where the owl had indicated. The Gnome and I stayed back behind them, about twenty paces. The two had made it to a large boulder when we heard it.
There was no animal noise, no roar, nothing of the kind. But we did hear paws running fast on the ground, moving brush aside, approaching fast.
Big D was hit first, as a large dog like animal jumped at him trying to bite his midsection. Fortunately, he was able to bat away the assault with his shield and he quickly swung his sword, giving the beast a flesh wound. Nearly at the same time, two of them came at the Knight. But neither found its mark, and one received a deep wound for its trouble.
Meanwhile, the Fingerpainter and I respond to the attack in our own way. The gnome with a quick incantation threw a fire bolt at one of the wounded ones, but it went wild. I sent off a bolt of purple energy and it struck the one that just attacked our Knight. Too late we heard more beasts coming from the dense brush.
Flanking the gnome and I, two more beasts appear of the brush, giving me a better look at them. They were dirty and spotted, with a dog like face and rounded ears. Their front legs were longer than their rear, causing to lope with an ungainly stride. But they were fast, and aggressive, their jaw hung open showing heavy bone breaking teeth.
The Fingerpainter had seen them a hair quicker than I and was already moving towards a boulder. I started moving to follow him, so we could protect each other, when I first felt pain.
I screamed and then felt the snap of bone as one of the beast had dove and had a firm grip on my ankle. I fell to my hands and knees, unable to stand. My blood was spurting from the wound, and it was all I could do to shake the beast off my leg.
It didn’t try to hold on, instead backing off and started to pace, waiting. I tried to scramble towards the Fingerpainter, when the second one leaped at me. Its face and jaws brushing against my own, and I even smelt and felt the warm fetid breath against my neck. Its jaws clamped onto me, and I couldn’t breathe. I felt massive pain and the tearing of my own flesh.
Help.
My blood was spurting everywhere. I stabbed at the thing wildly, losing my dagger. I then desperately punched with my fists against the hide of the thing.
Help.
I tried to talk, to scream, but no air leaves my mouth. I could taste and feel blood fill it instead of air. The beast pulls away from my neck…taking flesh, meat and more with it. I try to scream again, but my voice is gone; stolen by the beast.
Blood…is…everwher…
Help.
Darkness grows around me, and then…
Grey.
I am lying on dusty ground, which is the color of bone. The air around me is cloudy. My throat hurts as does my ankle. But the pain is fading away. It’s quiet. But not a peaceful quiet. A quiet…
Nothing.
I feel slow and unrushed. I stand up. Why was I on the ground? But, I slowly turn myself around and see nothing beyond the dusty air. There is nothing to look at or see. No…there is something. I can see a shadowy form in the distance.
This is familiar. I stare at the shadow and slowly it coalesces into a more defined shape.
It’s a building. No, a tower. While there is light in this place, it isn’t coming from anywhere. So, the tower fades slowly into view. It is far away, and the details aren’t clear. But what I can see is that it has the sharp lines of a crystal. A crystal that is smoky and barely translucent.
This is not a place I’ve been to. It’s a place I’ve heard of. A special place. Thinking is slow here,
unrushed so it takes a moment.
This is the Fugue.
I’m…I’m…
Dead?
No one should be alone, in life or death,
Death is part of life, not an ending but a beginning
Session notes:
This is where I go off on a soap box about my opinion of 5e edition taking a major step backwards for level one survivability. I like danger and challenges (this campaign has a lot of that. Spoiler, we aren’t done here.) but I don’t like how little it takes to push a character into the rule set of “Death due to massive damage.” For the record, the leg bite was 6 hp out of 8. The neck bit was an additional 12 points of damage due to a critical. So yes, 18 points of damage.
My complaint is, it doesn’t feel very heroic. I feel the same way in the early parts of any Bethesda game where giant rats and mudcrabs are deadly beyond belief. And while D&D has helped casters a lot with cantrips, this is a bit much. I’d rather have double the hp at Level 1, and keep everything else about the same, so when a pack of goblins/kobolds/hyenas/whatever assaults you and you go down fighting, you at least can take one with you. 4e had at least a better heroic feel in THAT regard.
There was a total of 5 of the damned Hyenas, and while only a CR0, the dice really weren’t rolling in the players favor.
Rant off.
This is also where, just because you die doesn’t mean there isn’t an interesting story for everyone. This is where the DM did a great job of turning lemons into lemonade for the players.
Hats off to you sir.
Finally...Mo had a bad habit of appearing and disappearing. Foggle was always around, but it was never super super active for a while.
