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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kid Charlemagne" data-source="post: 15981" data-attributes="member: 93">Aboard the Waterbug, in the Retic Sea, January 24th, AE 420Just as Aris notices the Egg, a sahuagin leaps down from the aft deck, and skewers the diver.  The Egg slips from his grasp, and begins rolling across the deck.  Aris scampers to his feet, and rushes after it, but the ship pitches unexpectedly, and he loses his balance, and the Egg slips over the deck and back into the water!Aris pounds his fist on the deck for a few moments, and then turns to deal with the immediate problem of the sea devils.  The brunette woman from beneath decks is plugging Sahuagin with bolt after bolt from her crossbow, and Brennen, Reana, Batista, and Gavin are fighting off over a dozen of the creatures.  Jalea has made his way to the Waterbug as well, and is picking a few off with bowfire.Another image comes to Aris’ mind, and he spins to look back in the water.  He sees a four-armed sahuagin, and in a flash his perspective shifts, and he sees himself through the sea devil’s eyes.  The creature then blows a call on his conch shell horn, and sinks beneath the waves.  The other sahuagin break off and dive into the water.Jovah surreptitiously has cast detect evil and determined that the brunette radiates quite strongly.She walks up to Brennen, and after casting a distrustful glance at the rest (seeming to linger longer on Aris than the others) addresses him.“Who are you, and what do you want?  I don’t mean to seem ungrateful for your help, but we could have handled this ourselves.”“I am Sir Brennen D’Loxor, and these are my companions.  We were just in the area and trying to help.”The foppish man speaks up.  “My name is Mauricio DeLaGuarde, and I hired this ship.  We’re doing salvage work, and we’ve claimed this area and anything on the sea floor belongs to us.”Jalea calls out from the front of the ship, “you might want to bury the hatchet, guys.  There’s another ship off the port bow, and something is coming this way from it.”By this time, the sun has completely set, and Aris and Reana strain to see a strange flying creature heading their direction – extremely fast.  The brunette woman curses softly under her breath, and gracefully swings herself down below decks.  Jovah, curious as to what she’s up to, follows.As the flying shape comes closer, Jalea sees that it ilooks like a huge skeletal vulture with tattered wings.  Aris moves up to zap it with a lightning bolt at his earliest convenience.Below decks, Jovah sees the woman run back along the length of the ship towards a cabin.  She pauses long enough to pound on a couple of crates near the cabin door.“Wake up!  Time to move!  We’ve got action!”  She disappears into the cabin, and Jovah stops to watch, joined shortly afterward by Reana.  The woman emerges from her cabin, buckling on a sword belt that hold two shortsword scabbards.  She draws her blades and advance towards the ladder; both blades are blackened steel, and reflect none of the ship’s lanterns light.Above decks, it is possible to tell that the massive skeletal vulture is bearing mulitple riders. “They’re Drow,” Jalea says.Aris lets loose his lightning bolt and a few of the riders fall into the sea.  The vulture manages to make it the deck before dying, and the party comes face to face with five Drow, including one that Batista immediately recognizes, even after ten years.It is Thetra, the Drow who killed Batista’s mother and would have killed Batista if Vershanion hadn’t saved his life.Batista lets his fireball arrow fly; but just before it hits Thetra, it reverses course and impacts on Batista instead.  The Drow laughs mockingly, and fires off a stream of flame at Aris.  Aris returns fire with a magic missile, but it has no effect at all on the Drow.  Batista and Gavin are set upon by several of the other Drow, but some are trying to help their fellows out of the water, so the odds aren’t all that bad.  The brunette leaps up on decks again, and Reana carefully follows her.  The Drow charge the woman, ignoring Gavin and Batista for the moment.  Thetra lets off a flame arrow at Aris, but the bladesinger avoids the worst of it and returns fire with another lightning bolt.  Thetra fares poorly with that one, and looks fairly injured as he retreats behind several of the other Drow.Spells are flying in all directions now, and various people are affected by hold person, summon insects, magic missiles and other magics.  Batista tries desperately to get through the line of Drow to get at Thetra, but is rebuffed.  The shortsword-wielding brunette seems to hold her own against her foes.Suddenly it occurs to Aris, those aren’t blackened steel, they’re adamantine.  They’re Drow shortswords!Below decks, Jovah sees the tops of the two crates pop off, and two graceful, albino skinned, white haired elves slip from over the edge of the crates.Drow in my world are albino skinned rather than black-skinned.  In that regard, they can be sometimes mistaken for grey elves.“Uh, oh,” the luck-priest mutters.Aris is confused by the apparent contradictions; he’s fighting Drow alongside someone who is wielding Drow weapons.  Perhaps they are a hunter of the Drow like him?  Having not seen the two Drow below decks, he isn’t certain.The Drow that came from the Vulture are having a bad time of it, and are getting beaten badly.  Thetra tries to make an escape, beginnig to cast a spell, but before he can complete it, he receives another shot from Aris, this time a wall of fire that springs from the deck and cuts the Drow group in two.  Thetra goes down, and the rest of the Drow either are killed or forced into the water.  It turns out they don’t swim very well, and Aris makes no attempt to help them.Brennen turns once more to the brunette, but she is having none of him now.  She slashes the fighter hard with both short swords, hitting much harder than Brennen thought she would.  She then turns towards Gavin who is also nearby, and throws a crystal orb that breaks at his feet in a flash.  Gavin finds that he is paralyzed.  Mauricio tries to help her, but Batista cuts him down in a whirl of steel.Then she seems to go into overdrive, and her swords swirl about her even faster than Brennen’s.  She lands three more blows, taking a couple from Brennen in the process, and leaps below decks.Jovah is hiding from the two Drow below decks, and sees her come down and yell something in a language he does not understand, but believes to be Drow.  The two Drow move to support her.  Both are male, one quite powerfully built and lean muscle, the other more bookish and wielding only a dagger.  Behind them, the shadows appear to deepen, and the lights below decks fade.Reana and Brennen come below decks, and are met by a flame arrow from the bookish Drow.  Both are now also moving at preternatural speeds, and the warrior-drow draws a longsword and twirls it about him.Just before Brennen and Reana reach their opponents, they vanish – but not completely.  “Look out!” Jovah yells.  “They’re still there!”All that can be seen of the three is a blurry disturbance in the air, as invisible whirling blades cut deep into the two fighters.  Aris and Batista reach the fight, and Brennen and Reana fall back.  The shadows are extraordinarily deep towards the cabin, and the invisible foes fade into the darkness.Jovah tosses one of his continual light rocks into the shadows and they disperse.  There is no sign of the enemy."Those were Drow...? Why were they fighting each other?"  Brennen asks, gamely trying not bleed all over the hold from his multiple shortsword wounds.</blockquote>

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