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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 2813241" data-attributes="member: 11697">*CAW!*    Odesseron’s familiar squawked out a warning at their approach, causing the Red Wizard and several other figures to turn and face them.    The Thayan, along with a trio of apprentices and several heavily armored bodyguards stood clustered at the summit of one of the secondary mounds. Mirroring the feathered scavengers high above in the sky, they stood in a circle around something there exposed to the cold, dry air, the scent of death wafting out around it.    “Does the issue of agreed upon boundaries not make sense to you?” Odesseron asked angrily. “This mound is halfway inside the territory we’d agreed was mine alone.”    “Birds.” Marcus said.    “Excuse me?” The Thayan asked. “Are you daft?”    Inva calmly pointed up into the sky.    “We saw that circle of birds and assumed that someone had died.” The tiefling said. “We came to help in case you needed it.”    “I have undead bound to my command.” Odesseron replied. “Didn’t it occur to you that a dozen partially rotted bodies might attract scavengers, even if they were still moving?”    “I mean I was all for leaving you here to whatever horror you might have released from a mound but…” Inva muttered to herself before Phaedra nudged her side.    “What the hell are they all circled around?” Francesca whispered to Marcus. “And that smell…”    Phaedra nodded to the fighter and whined ever so slightly as she covered her nose with the cuff of her robe. She’d noticed it too.    Odesseron exhaled and put on a courteous smile as best he could. “Your concern is appreciated, but it is not necessary.”    “What exactly happened?” Velkyn asked.    They peered over towards the top of the mound as one of the Thayan’s apprentices moved away from where he’d been standing. The younger wizard was gagging, his nose and mouth covered by a sleeve, and the reasons for such were readily apparent.    The corpse of a tattooed man in half-plate armor lay spread-eagled across the top of the barrow mound, dozens of massive gouges and slashes puncturing his armor like it had been foil, cutting down into his mangled flesh. The wounds alone would have killed him in short order, but they were the least of it. Anywhere that his armor failed to cover, anywhere that he had exposed skin, his flesh was bubbled and boiled outwards like something had taken root and sprouted from inside. Withered growths of some sort of fungus still penetrated up from his cheeks and hands, black and dead as he was, rustling against the morning’s chill wind, blowing a horrific scent out over the mound complex.    “One of my bodyguards was a fool and went off alone to search one of the mounds last night.” Odesseron said with a shrug. “He might have been trying to dig on his own, or he might have thought he heard something.”    “Do you have any ideas what might have done this?” Velkyn asked. “Something in the mound? Or something else out here that we might need to be aware of?”    “At this point I really don’t care.” He added coolly. “He’s dead and I’m down a guard.”    Odesseron’s apprentices were staring awkwardly at the corpse, two of them especially, glancing back at one another with looks of worry and guilt.    “Can we at least help you in some way?” Velkyn asked.    “If you’d like, I can try to restore him to life.” Victor suggested, stepping forward and glancing in the direction of the corpse.    Myras shook his head. “That won’t be necessary. I have a priest of Kossuth with me.”    They’d never seen a cleric of the Firebringer with the Thayans, nor did they see one now. But the faith of the Lord of Flame was potent in Thay, so it wasn’t at all inconceivable that the Red Wizard had traveled to the Great Dale with one of them. Still, the refusal of help was a bit quick and more than a bit cold.    “There’s nothing that I’m overly concerned about.” He continued. “I lose a guard, nothing exactly unexpected given the surroundings. It’s not something that I require aid with, and it’s certainly not something that I’m going to be losing sleep over.”     “Hell if he’s not concerned about the mound.” Phaedra said. “After the other night and the central mound, I certainly am.”    The half-loth stared up at the sky but sent her mind reaching out towards the interior of the mound like a surgeon’s probe seeking out infected or cancerous tissue. Something was down there, she could feel a mental presence, though it seemed to be suppressed or possibly recovering after its expenditures during the night before.    “Anything down there?” Inva asked, leaning in and whispering to Phaedra as surreptitiously as possible.    She didn’t respond immediately, but continued to concentrate on the mound, feeling around the edges of the entity bound into the hill. Fury; the sound of claws whistling as they cut the air; the flap of wings; a mental image of a man being savaged by a bloody beak amid a cloud of feathers and spores…    “There’s a Vrock down there.” Phaedra telepathically voiced to her companions.    They nodded back as surreptitiously as they could as they continued to babble with the Thayan. Meanwhile the necromancer’s apprentices and guards stayed virtually as quiet as their undead servants.    Down in the mound, the Vrock seemed pleased with itself. It had relished the slaughter like a parched and delirious man stumbling upon a river. The manic glee of the fiend was disturbing to say the least, even to Phaedra who was well aware of the activities of half of her family, but of course she wasn’t used to probing into their inner thoughts like she’d been sifting through those of the Vrock.    Outside of the mound, discussions weren’t going anywhere.    “But suffice to say, despite my immediate loss of one somewhat trained swordsman, I have little else to deal with.” Myras said bluntly. “And that little else does not require outside aid.”    “Suit yourself.” Victor said with a shrug. “We were only trying to help.”    “Your intent is appreciated.” Myras reiterated. “But unnecessary at this time. I suggest that we meet tomorrow morning to discuss anything we each find.”    There was little more to be said, given the cold and generally standoffish or downright confrontational attitude the Thayan had. He didn’t want their help, he didn’t really want them around, but it was too much of a risk to really do anything more than ask to be left alone.    And so with the Red Wizard’s cool demeanor fresh in their minds, and further evidence of the latent, lurking danger of the mounds fresh in their minds, they wandered back to their side of the barrow complex.    As it was, the morning passed without incident as the group completed their surface surveys of the mounds they’d been allocated. Given their earlier indications of an evil presence lingering beneath several of them, and given what they knew or suspected regarding the inhabitants of two of those mounds, they examined those few in much deeper detail as the morning passed into the afternoon and the winter sun passed its zenith in the sky.    “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t the only bloody telepath in this group…” Phaedra muttered as she stood at the edge of the dry, brittle grass that marked the boundary of the mound that the ruined keep of Ephraim Barlow stood upon.    “Because frankly, the things around here aren’t pleasant. Tanar’ri never are. Poking them doesn’t make them nicer.”    With a bit of a sigh, the she reached out her mind to the interior of the mound, probing cautiously below the foundation of the old manor house. Expectantly, something stirred to her touch and answered back.    You’re different than the others… A ragged voice, very nearly a squawk, whispered back to her.    Others? Phaedra asked back.    …others to chase, others to terrify, others to feed upon… others that I have or will feed upon…but you smell of yugoloth…    So you say. Phaedra replied, not entirely feeling comfortable with the very nearly chummy tone the Vrock was adopting.    You could release me… The Tanar’ri suggested bluntly.    Why not leave yourself? What keeps you here?    The grass of the hill rustled with a backwash of anger translated to telekinesis.    We cannot… the spells that shackle us, the dweomers on binding stones, they are sewn into our hearts…    Again the grasses rustled and Phaedra could, for a moment, glimpse an image of the bound fiend being cut open by the clergy of Nergal and what amounted to a spiritual loadstone being slipped inside. It was not pleasant, and the Vrock seemed somewhat surprised at her discomfort with the sensations; so unlike a yugoloth who might have gloated, prodded, or commiserated on its way to getting something. Sensing that on the Tanar’ri’s end, Phaedra stepped away from the edge of the mound and withdrew her mental contact.    Shaking her head, both to clear her mind of the lingering traces of psychosis that pervaded anything of Abyssal origin, and to simply express dismay at the demon, Phaedra walked back over to where Velkyn was standing and watching. Behind her, back at the ruin that crowned the barrow like a headstone for its tanar’ri prisoner, the wind whistled through the empty shell of the old keep like the hissing of a rejected paramour.    “Any luck?” Velkyn asked.    “Yeah, there’s a Vrock down there.” Phaedra replied. “Not a very happy one either.”    The wizard nodded. “Victors been mapping out the dweomers on some of the other mounds while you’ve been out here, the magic looks to be entirely divine based.”    “The Vrock claimed that the priests buried here bound him and others, other Tanar’ri, into the mounds.” Phaedra replied.    “Between you and Victor, we might hopefully have an idea what to expect from the mounds here by the end of the day.” Velkyn added.    “Point me to the next one then.” Phaedra said with a shake of her head. “It’s not exactly pleasant poking at a Tanar’ri that’s been sitting down there for a few thousand years, but it gets us what we need to know I suppose.”    “That is does. They’re Tanar’ri, nobody expects them to be pleasant conversationalists.”    “Trust me.” Phaedra said with a chuckle. “They’re not.”    Several hours later they had a much clearer catalog of the mounds, detailing the extent of, or at least the potency of their wards lurking below the surface, and the identity of any bound fiend they might possess. All in all, it was a mix of Vrocks, possibly a succubus, and then the presence cloistered within the central mound that they left well enough alone for the time being, but which seemed to be watching them. Phaedra felt it out there at the fringes of her mind, watching, listening when she made contact with the other fiends bound to the lesser mounds of the Barrow complex. That one, whatever it was, was subtle if it wished to be.    Just before sunset they found something more.    “Son of a…” Marcus said as he tossed his shovel off to the side. “Why couldn’t we have found this earlier in the day?”    Victor shrugged at his brother as he and the others continued to dig. They’d found a stronger density of magic along the southern flank of the mound within which they were fairly certain a succubus was bound. Digging into the earth at that point they’d hit stone only a few feet down, the top of a retaining wall or buttress to structures deeper still.    “Well at least you’ll be able to see the undead when they come out of the tomb for you when you’re on your watch tonight.” Inva said, resisting the urge to fling a spade-full of dirt over in his direction.    As the light shifted from yellow to deeper colors of the spectrum, they managed to clear away enough of the sod and the packed, cold soil to uncover the top of an archway and the start of a recessed, stone door sealed with plaster. Flecks of paint still decorated the tomb entrance while lines of bizarre script, more resembling collections of scratches and chop marks, danced in neat rows between what would have originally been painted illustrations.    None of them spoke ancient Untheric however, but they could guess at the content regardless.    “So who wants to assume that we’re all cursed for having dared to excavate this place?” Inva asked with a bit of sarcastic cheer.    “Considering the magic on that door, I wouldn’t joke…” Victor said with raised eyebrows a smirk and a half chuckle.    “Anyone happen to speak… whatever language that is?” Velkyn asked.    “I was hoping that you would.” Phaedra replied. “If you don’t, hell if anyone else does.”    Velk shrugged and glanced at the cuneiform engravings, and also at the magic laced through the mound and culminating at the door that was virtually humming.    “Not a clue where to begin.” He replied. “But if we’re cursed, I’m calling dibs on the disintegration.”    “I’m calling dibs on your stuff then.” Inva said as she stepped up next to the wizard from behind.    “You’re being mighty friendly.” Velk said.    “You can hope for curses all you like, I’ll be letting something besides me open that door.” Inva replied. “Like one of lich-bait’s zombies.”    Velk studied the tiefling’s face.    “You want to get the Thayan involved in this tomorrow?” He asked.    “We might as well.” She said. “I would say he’s got more warm bodies to throw at the wards, but they’re anything but, but the intent still stands.”    “If we can’t find what we came here for in the first place, we might be able to get his help in figuring out where that might be.” Velkyn added. “I’d appreciate the help in dispelling any magical traps.”    “And you’re almost assured of having them.” Inva replied.    “We can go talk to him in the morning.” Victor said, stepping away from the mound and joining the other two. “But for the moment, it’s about dark.”    “I’ll go start a fire.” Velkyn said. “Any ideas for dinner are welcome.”    “Any chance you can ask your deity for specifics Victor?” Inva asked the cleric.    “We won’t be hungry.” He replied. “But we’ll see if I can get something beyond warm gruel tonight.”    Inva followed after him as they abandoned their picks and shovels at the half uncovered door.    “If we’re well fed and happy,” She called out. “It’ll make the inevitable death at the hands of the vengeful dead much more pleasant!”***    Hanging low on the western horizon, situated over the southernmost extension of the cursed Rawlinswood, itself burying the ruins of ancient Narfell’s greatest cities, the nuclear furnace of Toril’s sun boiled like a demon’s rage even as one waited for it to vanish and bring with it the embrace of the winter’s night.    Deep within the cold, sealed depths of Nergal’s crypt, Severesthifek opened his eyes and gazed outwards from beyond the wards, from beyond the deific strictures, from beyond the pain of the binding stone sunk deep into his heart by the priesthood of long-dead Nergal and Gilgeam. Severesthifek gazed out with rage and hunger, feeling the darkness as the sun retreated over the western horizon and surrendered the Great Dale to him and his own long slumbering in unquiet tombs beneath the barrows’ soil.    Call to them Zrekstallithrik… The Balor called out to the first of his servants bound into the lesser mounds.    Call to them Leaeryx… Call to them Dwurcallisz… Call to them Ingella… He continued, whispering to the bound minds of the Vrocks and Succubi that had shared his imprisonment for millennia.    Call to them. Gather them. Shepherd them from their tombs and your gnashing maws. Fill them with your hunger, fill them with your rage and set them loose from their shackles and into the night.    The darkness stirred as the Balor’s corporeal form shifted and twitched and his mental presence smiled as in the depths of the other barrows, a chorus answered back to him in hungry obedience. Together they smiled, incorporeal fangs gnashing, mouths slavering, tongues tasting the air as they called out to the darkness surrounded them there in the depths, uprooting the souls of those condemned to the darkness as well, suffocated in the name of a dead god by the hand of another.    They pulled them from their unquiet rest and scattered them like bitter seeds upon the night wind, there to take root and there to feed, but not upon the rays of a winter morning’s sun; no, nothing so prosaic, nothing so passive, nothing so merciful…***    “No! Stop! Dig down into the mound itself, not the area around it.” The young Red Wizard hissed at the undead he’d been set to watch over through the night.    “We’re excavating a tomb, not digging ourselves fortifications to defend against drunken Rashemi…”    Dakros shook his head as the Ogre zombie grunted and altered its pattern of digging while a trio of animated goblinoids carried on with their own tasks without paying their companion any attention whatsoever.    “You’re agitated.” The wizard’s companion said to him.    “Pensive is more like it.” Dakros replied.    “Something like that.” Khezen replied. “But guilt really isn’t like you.”    “I don’t have a clue if Myras is asleep or not, so for the moment nothing about what happened the other night.” Dakros said.    Khezen sighed and ran a hand over her head, bald and tattooed just like her lover’s.    “True.” She said. “I suppose it wouldn’t go over well to admit that we sent Aloth out to be killed just so we could let the dead dig while we f*cked without a living audience.”    Dakros smiled at the memory, even if it was soured by the fact that they’d probably gotten the man killed as a direct result of their little fling.    “No, no it wouldn’t.” He replied. “But Myras hasn’t seemed all that upset over it. He even animated the body.”    “I really should be used to the idea of that.” Khezen said. “It’s a waste to just bury him and not keep the corpse around to work, but knowing him beforehand, and knowing how he died, it still feels strange to have him down there with a shovel next to the ogres and hobgoblins.”    Dakros nodded.    “Which is why I sent him off as far as I could so it wouldn’t be a constant reminder.”    Though it was there for only a moment, neither of them noticed a spot of darkness drift across the sky, its passage marked by a moving void in the night’s field of stars. They were too busy glancing at the familiar looking, if slowly rotting, body of their master’s former bodyguard, unflinchingly swinging a pick at the fringe of one of the mounds.    “Is it getting colder out here?” Khezen asked, looking up at her partner and gathering her robes about her a bit more tightly.    Dakros exhaled, sending a cloud of vapor out sparkling into the night’s air.    “Come to think of it, yes, it is.” He replied. “Did you memorize anything that might help? I gave up abjurations a long time ago…”    Khezen shook her head. “Light I can do. But none of it makes any actual heat. And a fireball isn’t exactly the right way to light a fire to stay warm. I’m f*cked when it comes to conjuration.”    “Well my little evoker, a fireball’ll keep you warm the rest of your life.”    “But I don’t exactly intend on using it on you now am I?” Khezen replied with a laugh, not noticing the presence of more and more holes across the starfield draped above them.    “I figure that you won’t.” Dakros said, smiling. “Not so long as we’re still apprentices to Myras and I’m still useful to you I suppose.”    “Then come here and kiss me.” She replied with a sly chuckle. “I’ve got a trio of those memorized, so I think I might need some more proof of your use. Plus you’ll keep me warm if you sit close. I…”    Her voice stuttered.    The stars were virtually gone, the vault of night nearly a solid sheet of darkness, and the darkness was moving.    No time for a warning, Khezen began to cast.    “9 Hells woman!” Dakros shouted as he watched the smile vanish from his lover’s face and she began to whisper the phrasing of a fireball.    The fiery bead streaked past him though, never aimed at him but behind him, detonating with a blossom of crisp and potent flame. The darkness shrieked and Dakros turned to look, eyes wide, just before a trio of black and immaterial hands sunk into his chest.***    Phaedra yawned and poked at the fire, sending sparks leaping up into the darkness. The half-‘loth was bored, and seemed to want nothing more than to simply have something to do.    They had talked for a while, but eventually Inva had wandered away to spend some time alone out beyond the edge of the campfire.    Alone, the tiefling sighed and glanced up into the night sky. She had to admit, the quiet still of the place was comforting when combined with the darkness cloaking the place. Some people, like Victor, might have found it desolate and threatening, but Inva found it comforting, though her own faith might have had more than its own share of influence to that end.    The last time that she’d been on Toril, and it had been some time, she’d been on the other side of Faerun, far to the southwest of where they currently were. Calimshan was hot and dry, but the deeper reaches of its capital, down away from the sun and into the literal and metaphorical shadows, it was much cooler and more to her liking. But during her time on the streets of that place, she’d had a chance to see the stars twinkling high above. Say what you would about the city, the points of light in the sky had a grace all their own, even given the naming convention of many of them as ‘Tears of Selune’. Those stars then had dusted the sky in much different patterns than they did currently in the night above the Great Dale, but they still held the same beauty.    Laying on her back, exposed to the chill and the darkness, vaguely listening to the pop and sizzle of the old wood in the campfire, Inva wasn’t expecting what happened next. Gazing up, the stars were suddenly obscured as if something had drifted over the veil of night, a godling passing its hands over the stars, blocking them from the view of the mortals below.    “What the hell?” The tiefling said as she sat up, still keeping her eyes focused on the stars.    More of the stars were obscured as something, multiple things even, cloaked them from view. The figures were moving, drifting to the west and descending down towards them.    “Sh*t!” Inva hissed. “Phaedra, turn around and wake everyone up!”        What happened next was a blur of shouts, muffled crashes inside tents, curses and hurled spells as the night itself seemed to come alive. Shadows, multiple dozens of them, swept down from the sky with a hunger born not of the natural world, sweeping immaterial claws and seeking to feed on life and strength itself, bleeding those elements away at a touch.    They came from the sky, silent as the darkness itself, and they reached up from the ground itself, a second flock of them having apparently walked through the frozen earth itself to catch their victims unaware. Voices cried out as the latter shades grasped at their legs, sucking at their stamina. Spells cut the air, prayers were whispered and powers were invoked, illuminating the night and striking down the shadows where they could, though half the time they simply passed through them without any effect whatsoever.    In the end, virtually as quick as it had begun, Victor ended it with a shout and a blaze of light, snuffing the creatures’ unlife with an invocation to his deity. But the damage was already done. Their camp was in disarray, they were depleted of spells and sleep, and the shadows’ hunger had not gone unsatiated. Victor would spend more of his prayers healing his companions when they were finally certain that the immediate danger had passed.    All the while, the summit of the central mount itself was crowned by an aura of flickering, flashing lights and distant screams, shouts, and several great detonations were heard. The Thayans had been targeted as well, and despite their master’s claims, they had never been accompanied by a cleric.    And through it all, something watched and reveled in the pain and chaos of it all.    Severesthifek was smiling.***    As dawn broke and the morning’s light washed over the Great Barrow, Victor exhaled and turned to face his group from where he’d been on his knees, prostrating himself towards the rising ball of fire on the eastern horizon. He’d been brief about it, forgoing all but the most crucial devotions, stripping his morning period of prayer of most purely ceremonial elements and only filling his mind with what might be immediately needed.    What was needed of course lay to the east as well. A slim trail of smoke rising from the far side of the barrow complex, curling up against the swelling sun, was more than enough morbid reminder that they had not been the only victims of attack by the restless dead the night before.    “We should get going.” Victor said, brushing his knees and furling some of his vestments within the prayer rug he’d been kneeling on.    “They’ve got a necromancer or two with them.” Marcus said. “They might be better off than we were.”    “Did you hear the same screaming that I did earlier?” Inva asked. “We’ll see how they are.”    “And hopefully they don’t mind our concern this time around.” Velkyn said with a sigh.    On the other side of the barrow complex, Odesseron’s camp was like a potters’ field whose gravediggers had already passed away. Half a dozen bodies lay strewn across the ground, skin blue and taught across their bones like something had snatched them up and sucked the life out of them. By the looks of the dead, all of them dressed in the same style of armor, the same as the man who had died atop one of the mounds a day earlier, they were, or had been, the red wizard’s bodyguards.    Every single one of them was now dead.    Several tents lay half broken, their contents scattered in a swathe where the tent’s occupants had stumbled out to die in the night.    “So much for not needing our help…” Velkyn whispered as he continued to survey the scene.    The undead of course were still there, all of them simply standing where they had last been ordered. A few of them were still digging trenches while others stood still and awaited new orders from the Thayan or his apprentices. But by all appearances, none of the Red Wizards had any current inclinations to bother with their servants.    Myras stood in the outlined doorway of an invisible shelter or extradimensional pocket, disgust and rage plastered across his face. The man’s apprentices, all five of them, stood in a semicircle facing him, facing his tongue-lashing and his wrath.    The apprentices looked haggard, two of them appeared to have gotten little or no sleep. Of that pair, one of them was shaking, trembling from the cold and only barely keeping his feet while the other did her best to support and comfort him. They seemed more than fellow students of a common master.    Odesseron groaned and turned to face the approaching group.    “The night has not been kind to anyone.” He said, gesturing with a level of unhappy flippancy to the destruction of his camp.    “So it would seem.” Victor said. “We were attacked overnight and we heard the sounds of a fight from your side of the mound. The undead that attacked us, we figured they did the same to you as well.”    “I know that we were going to meet this morning anyways.” Velkyn said. “But we came earlier to see if we could help.”    “I find myself lacking all of my guards.” Odesseron said, grimly motioning to the bodies of his former protectors. “But more undead will have to do I suppose.”    “Didn’t you have a cleric of Kossuth?” Velkyn asked.    The Thayan narrowed his eyes, scowled and ignored the question entirely. There had never been a cleric with his group, but it seemed to gall him to have to ask for help. Requiring help implied weakness or some fault on his part for not being prepared, and given the cutthroat nature of the hierarchy of Red Wizards in his native Thay, Odesseron wasn’t going to easily accept aid.    “I could attempt to raise your men.” Victor said. “But honestly, given how they died, it’s probably not within my ability to do.”    Odesseron shrugged. “Not to be then…” The way his men died made it impossible to easily return them to life, but honestly the Thayan seemed more relieved that it left him in a position to not have to turn down outside help.    Victor meanwhile turned to look at the apprentices, especially the one who was trembling and shuddering.    “Your apprentice.” He said. “I can help him though. If he’s been touched by the shadows that attacked us both, I can restore most or all of what they leached from his body.”    Myras shook his head.    “Leave him.” Myras said, shaking his head. “He was on watch when the shadows attacked.”    Still shivering, Dakros twitched at his master’s withholding of healing and the insinuation of fault on his part.“He’ll learn a lesson.” Odesseron flatly stated.    Velkyn blinked in surprise at the refusal. The Thayan’s attitude towards his apprentices was a callous one, treating them little better than orphans he had to put up with when he wasn’t using them to his direct benefit. It was that lack of concern for their well being that struck Velkyn as being overly cold. Odesseron didn’t seem to have the slightest respect for them, and while Velk’s own teachers might have been that harsh, or even more so at times, they would have done so out of motivation to better the student, not out of a complete lack of respect or concern.    “But the dead are dead, except the ones in my control, and the living are still alive.” The Thayan continued. “But given what happened to us both over the night, I think the dynamic between our groups needs to change a bit for our mutual good. Walk with me, let’s discuss anything we both might have found, and then what to do about it.”    And that was that. The Red Wizard turned from his apprentices, leaving their well being as an afterthought, as he walked closer to the other group to confer with them in greater detail. Behind his back, his circle of apprentices felt virtually forgotten, and only barely better off than the corpses littering the ground. Next to her lover who would be weeks in recovering to his fullest, if he survived that long, Khezen seethed with abject rage at their master’s obstinacy. But such was their lot in life, and it was unlikely to improve in the short term.***</blockquote>

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