Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2447342" data-attributes="member: 143">Short update tonight, but I'm building up to a long one for Friday. Plus I thought this revelation deserved its own post. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />* * * * * Chapter 431When Dana chased the fleeing hag, she really didn’t have a clear idea of what she was doing; on the one hand, she was too seasoned not to know that she might be running into another trap.  But the buzzing in the back of her mind triggered by her spell was still there; she knew that Benzan’s wedding ring, the focus for her earlier locate object enchantment, was nearby, in the general direction of the annis’s flight.  And where the ring was located, Benzan might still be…So she chased after Slouva, darting through the door just in time to see the hag exit through a portal on the far side.  The chamber was fairly spacious, maybe thirty feet by sixty, with another door on the far wall in addition to the one that the annis had used.  It looked like a workshop, dominated by a huge table apparently fashioned of bone, with a thick cover of stitched flesh stretched atop its surface.  At the corners of the table bone hands about twice the size of a man’s were extended, shaped like claws, with what looked to be faces stretched out over the tips of the fingers.  Several large glass vats were stationed along the walls, most filled to the brim with a reddish fluid from which rose a harsh chemical odor.  Above the vats shelves were crowded with clear jars and pots that held body parts preserved in fluid. But of more immediate concern was the fact that she was not alone in the room.  A pair of the huge golems were already moving forward from the flanking walls toward her.  Dana’s stomach clenched in disgust as she got a good look at them; like the others outside their hides appeared to have been stitched together from the flayed faces of hundreds of diverse beings.  The nearest was already close enough to swing at her with an unnaturally long arm.  The priestess dodged, but even so took a glancing blow that knocked her roughly to the side, almost dropping her into one of the vats.  “Look out, Dana!” came a warning from behind.  Mole’s voice; apparently the gnome had followed her in here.  She spun around and leapt back as a massive limb shattered the vat.  Cold fluid washed over her legs, and a body that had been submerged in the vat fell out onto the stone floor of the chamber.  Her breath froze in her chest as she realized that the face of the dead person had been removed, and she felt a terror building inside her as the familiar outlines of that mutilated body impressed themselves in her mind. The hulking table was jostled aside by an onrushing golem as it rushed toward her.  She turned, and got a good look at the golem’s face… or rather, at the features of the face that had been stretched over the oblong shape of its head… She screamed, as the distorted visage of Benzan, her husband, looked down at her.  A moment later, the golem’s fists slammed into her chest, and everything went mercifully dark.</blockquote>

Verification