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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shilsen" data-source="post: 3999256" data-attributes="member: 198">Ah, Luna! What would we do without her? No, don't answer that. It's liable to make the other PCs cry.* * * * * * * * * *Besides the Mournland itself, what catches the Angels’ attention is the sight of the members of the expedition, setting up camp a few hundred feet away. “Weren’t they supposed to be waiting for us?” asks Gareth. Korm shrugs, “Maybe they got tired of waiting.” Meanwhile, Luna glances at Nameless, whose anti-magic field she has stepped out of. A thin coating of fog clings to the outside of the field. “You might want to turn that off. It looks like you brought some mist with you.”“Really?” asks the alienist. “I was wondering why things are foggy in here.” He dismisses the spell. For a second, the fog which covered the hemisphere just hangs there, and then it swiftly flows inwards. Tendrils of mist flow around Nameless, stretching and expanding until they envelop him from head to toe, so that he has his own personal little cloud, extending about a foot from his body. The misty covering makes his shape and outline indistinct, but it also cuts down on visibility for him. “What the hell?” says Nameless, waving his arms around, but the fog sticks to and moves with him.“Interesting,” says Six. “Looks like this place has a lot of surprises for us.” Nameless shrugs. “I’ll see if I can do something about it later. On a positive note, I can sense where the dimensional seal is.” He points off towards the northeast. “Any idea how far?” asks Six. “No,” the alienist replies. “I just get a direction. Maybe I’ll know more when we’re closer.”Corven has been walking over to the group while they have been talking, and when he arrives he asks, “What’s up with Nameless?”“No idea,” says Gareth. “Have you ever heard of something like this?”“Someone with a personal bit of the Mist? Never. So what happened to you guys? I was beginning to wonder if we lost you. We waited for an hour after you left before beginning to send others through. Everyone who was supposed to come through, except five of the Dhakaani, who seem to have disappeared.”“How long were we in there?” asks Six.“A little over four hours. Didn’t you know that?”Six glances back at his companions, who corroborate what he thought. “We thought we were in there for a little over an hour.” Corven looks surprised for a moment and then smiles grimly. “Welcome to the Mournland.” Then he looks past the Angels. “What the…?!”Turning around, the adventurers see a figure step out of the Mist, garbed in the distinctive spiked armor that the Dhakaani wear. Garbed in the armor, however, is not a hobgoblin but a skeleton. The figure marches smartly out of the Mist and then drops on its face. The skeleton begins to fall apart instantly, the bones dissolving into a soft mush, which then turns to dust and blows away. Right behind the first skeleton, connected to it by a rope looped around their waists, emerges a second armored skeleton, which also collapses and melts away. By the time Corven and the Angels reach it, a third skeleton has emerged and is moldering on the ground, and a fourth follows suit. The fifth and last figure to emerge is not a skeleton but a hobgoblin, armed and armored like the others. He marches out as smartly as the others and then collapses like them. Corven catches him as he falls, grunting with the effort, before the Angels help him. The hobgoblin does not resist in any way, and when they look at his face they find that both of his eyes are milky-white and absolutely blind. Whatever happened to him – and his companions – in the Mist, there is no way to know, since he seems completely incapable of any response. The Angels carry the afflicted hobgoblin to where the rest of the expedition are working, many of whom have stopped and are watching worriedly. While a pair of healers check on the Dhakaani, Corven says, “Four casualties coming through the Mist.” He looks at the almost comatose hobgoblin. “Five. I’ve heard of worse. And better.” He takes a deep breath and then asks, “Have you decided what you will be doing?”“We’re going to be heading … well, thataway,” says Nameless, indicating the direction in which he senses the dimensional seal to be.“Hmm. That actually works out for us. Very well, actually. You said you were willing to accompany and protection one of our groups, until their paths and yours diverged. That’s the general direction of the Lord of Blades’ camp, which our largest party – and the one going deepest into the Mournland – will head towards. If you’re traveling with them, I’ll feel a lot better about their situation. They should be ready to leave in an hour. Does that work for you?”“Yes,” says Nameless, “I think that we….” Then he stops, looks at Six and grins. “Actually, why am I answering? What do you think?”Surprised, Six looks at him suspiciously. “What do you mean?” “I did say that once we get in the Mournland you can display your tactical genius to us. So you might as well start making the decisions. Take it away, Six.”The warforged looks at him for a few seconds and then shrugs. “Fine by me.” He turns to Corven, watching with an amused smile. “That sounds fine.”The Angels proceed to help the expedition set up its camp. Tents and makeshift huts are raises, a protective fence is set up, a screen of scouts is sent out (in pairs), and the groups that are to go out this day prepare themselves. An hour later, the group that will head for the Lord of Blades’ camp is ready to leave. It consists of eight artificers and scholars, ten hobgoblins, and eight warforged. The Angels speak to the leader of the group, Lamaan d’Cannith, and after some discussion, decide that they will travel about five hundred feet in advance of the group, so that they will be the first to encounter any trouble in the way. The leader of the Dhakaani contingent, Suur Dhakaan, a burly hobgoblin whose face and arms are covered in tribal tattoos, and Saber, a female warforged who commands the others, are informed of the arrangement too. Finally, Corven bids the Angels goodbye, wishing them best of luck, and they head off into the corpse-land that was once Cyre, the Jewel of Galifar.The Angels head over the rolling plains that make up this area of the Mournland, with the expedition party following once they have built up enough of a lead. Nameless skims the ground with his overland flight, intermittently rising into the air to scout the area they are passing through. Though his range of vision is severely limited by the undulating landscape, his personal covering of fog and the fact that he doesn’t risk getting close to the Dead-Gray Mist overhead, the aerial view does give the group some warning of what is ahead.As the expedition camp recedes behind them, the Angels find more and more corpses dotting the landscape around them. There seems little or no commonality to them. Some are alone and others in groups. Some have clearly died from their wounds, some from other causes which apparently range from starvation to suffocation to fear, and some of them have no evident cause. The one thing that is constant is that every body seems perfectly preserved.Luna stops at sight of the first large collection of bodies. “Let’s search them! Nameless, is there anything magical on them? Maybe they’ll have something interesting on them!”“Luna, we are not stopping to search every group of….” Nameless stops and looks at Six. “You want to explain to her, boss?”“Somebody should have told me this was part of the job,” says Six, before addressing Luna. “We really don’t have time for this. And the less we interfere in the Mournland, the better.”“Damn! Why do I never get to have any fun?” wails Luna.“Because when you have fun, Khorvaire cries,” says Korm, before turning and heading away. “Amen!” says Gareth and follows, as do Six and Nameless quickly. Luna follows, grumbling loudly.As the group continues onwards, they begin to encounter more of the strange sights that they have heard are so common in the Mournland. The first building they see is what looks like a farmhouse, far off to the side of their path, but it is a little difficult to be sure, since it looks like it was flattened by a gigantic weight. A few minutes later, they pass a large pool of water, which has an oily slick on the surface. As they walk by, the surface seems to clear, and they see their skeletal forms reflected in it, except for Six. “Oh, that’s nice,” says Korm. Six nods. “I knew I would like this place.”Nameless, who has given the reflection a look and then ascended to scout the area again, calls down. “Heads up, people! Living spell on the way.”“Ooh!” Luna’s excitement is obvious. “Where? Where?!” Nameless points at a low hillock nearby, about forty feet above the level his companions are at. “Coming up from the other side.” He frowns. “From everything I’ve learned of them, they’re like oozes, with an ability to sense things only within some fifty or sixty feet, and that one was easily five hundred feet away. And it turned around and headed right for us.”“Can we outrun it?” asks Gareth.“No. It’s at least twice as fast as Luna and you. And if we bypass it, the expedition will probably run into it.” Nameless looks at Six. “So, what’s the plan?”“I propose running at it and hacking it,” says Korm.“No!” says Six. “We back up, let it come over the top, and fill it full of arrows. Why do you think I had Nameless enchant all of those arrows?” Matching actions to words, Six backs away from the location the living spell is supposed to appear at. “Will spells work on it?”“Yes. They have some resistance to magic, but not enough to bother us, I think. It looks like a fire spell, but that won’t make it actually immune to fire, so your flame strikes will work on it, Luna.”“But I don’t want to kill it!” protests Luna. “I want to keep it!”“We already covered this, Luna – it will not work! It’s mindless, uncontrollable, and violent.” Nameless hesitates and grins. “Yes, I know that makes it sound just like you, but it won’t work. Trust me. Please trust me. For once.”Gareth, meanwhile, has readied his bow, muttering, “I can’t remember when I used this last.” As Six hands him half a dozen enchanted arrows, Korm says, “Give me some too.” The paladin looks at him in surprise. “You have a bow?”“Yup!” The Gatekeeper grins from ear to ear, reaches into his magical haversack and pulls out a weapon.Six looks at the giant implement skeptically. “Did you just take a branch and tie a rope to it?” Gareth adds, “Branch? I’ve seen smaller trees!” Korm waves his bow at them dismissively. “Bah! I’m no good with bows anyway, and you mentioned the whole archery thing earlier, so when we were in Sharn I picked up a big bow*. At least when I hit it’ll do a lot of damage. Now give me some arrows!”The discussion is finally interrupted by the appearance of the living spell over the top of the hillock. It is a shapeless mass, nearly a dozen feet across, mostly transparent but shot through with streaks of crackling flame, and it leaves a trail of scorched earth and grass behind it. Even though the Angels are nearly two hundred feet away from it, the creature heads right for them, picking up speed as it advances. Right into a volley of arrows. Though Six is the only accurate archer among the three, the living spell’s large shape is difficult to miss, and its structure provides little resistance to the magical arrows, which rip large chunks out of it. Spells from Nameless and Luna complete the job and only seconds later, the creature slow, then halts, and finally falls apart into a grayish sludge.“Phew!” Luna waves a paw in front of her muzzle as an acrid stench wafts from the remnants to them. “That’s foul!” The others give the remains a wide berth as they prepare to head on, but Nameless flies over to hover over them. Then, to the disgust of the others, he reaches down, picks up a sliver of the gray goop, and pops it in his mouth.Korm looks at the others. “And you say I eat weird sh-t!”“What?” says Nameless. “It smelled appetizing and I was curious.”Six just shakes his head and turns away. I know it’s that eating that screws them up! And the shitting. And the sex. “That’s just wrong, Nameless!” complains Luna. “First you won’t let me keep it. Then you make me help you kill it. And then you eat it in front of me! I’m just glad I don’t have a pony or a kitten. Who knows what you’d do to it?”At this point, a voice interrupts, “That was very impressive! All of you are clearly very skilled.”The Angels spin around, weapons coming to the ready, to see a well-dressed elf walking towards them, garbed as if he were coming from a high society party. He has a friendly smile on his angular face and is twirling a flute in his hand, the back of which displays a clearly visible dragonmark. “Undead?” asks Six quietly. “I don’t know,” says Nameless in a similar tone, “But he detects strongly of necromantic and universal magic.”The elf walks up and asks pleasantly, “What are you doing in the Mournland? Few travelers pass through here.”Nobody answers the question, and instead, Luna asks bluntly, “Who are you? And what are you doing here?”“I am a member of House Phiarlan,” he answers. “I was caught here on the Day of Mourning and I promised the Traveler anything as long as he’d let me survive. He did. And this is my home now.” Gareth studies him carefully. The paladin knows that, like House Cannith, House Phiarlan used to have one of its major enclaves in Cyre, which was lost on the Day of Mourning. Coincidentally, every major Phiarlan member of the enclave was outside Cyre on that day, which has led to suspicion in various quarters about whether the Phiarlans knew what was coming. He also remembers the tales he has heard of those who gain gifts from the Traveler, whose gifts always come with a hidden price. Gareth considers trying to detect thoughts but settles for simply detecting evil, not wanting to risk what happened at the ziggurat of R’lyeh. To his gaze, the entire landscape has a faintly evil aura to it, but the elf does not detect as such.“We’re just passing through,” says Korm. “What do you want with us?” The Phiarlan smiles, and replies, “You are welcome here. I will be happy to show you around my home.” As he speaks, each of the Angels simultaneously notices that his eyes are completely black, with tiny specks in them. As soon as they do so, they each feel a strange ennui for a moment, accompanied by a faint tickling in their minds, the combination of which prevents any action. The elven eyes seem to expand and fill the watcher’s view until they cover the entire horizon. As they expand, the watcher realizes that the eyes actually consist of a completely dark sky full of stars. There is a sense of vertigo and the Angels feel themselves falling forward into the dark expanse.And then suddenly the eyes are gone, as are the Phiarlan, only the soft whisper of fading flute music to show that he had been present. “O-kay!” growls Luna, looking around suspiciously. “Can we just blast the next person we see here?”The Angels proceed onwards, keeping a careful eye out for the Phiarlan, but he does not reappear. Instead, the next strange experience they have is a shower of rain. For a certain given value of rain.The first sign of it is something hitting Luna’s head and bouncing off. “Hey!” she says and looks up, only to have something smack into her eye. “Hey!” Blinking to clear her vision, Luna looks down to see what it was, having heard it land on the ground. “HEY! I got hit in the eye!” She points at the object. “By an EYE!” The others look down to see what seems to be a human eye lying on the ground, complete with eyelids and lashes, a little piece of bloody fiber extending from its rear. It blinks slowly up at them. As they look at it, more objects begin to pelt down around them, some bouncing off, others hitting particularly hard surfaces like Gareth’s armor and exploding with a soft sound, spraying jelly everywhere. “Let’s move!” The Angels hurry forward, covering their heads, ignoring the feeling and squelching sound of eyes exploding beneath their tread. The rain becomes quickly heavier and they speed up as well, till they are running. After nearly half a minute, they burst out of the rain. Having taken a few steps to make sure, they look back to see an area over five hundred feet wide where a shower of eyeballs continues to fall, now so heavy that the eyes are beginning to form small piles.The Angels hurry on, cleaning themselves off along the way, not wanting to wait and see if the eyes turn into anything else. “That’s disgusting!” grumbles Luna, having stopped for a moment to conjure a shower of water on herself and now moving on with seriously wet fur. “I’m beginning to get pissed off at this place!” The others promptly give her a slightly wider berth, and not just due to the smell of sodden bear.Luckily, for her (and unfortunately, for them), the next unusual occurrence is perfectly suited for Luna’s tastes. As the group is passing around another of the myriad low rises that make up this area, they hear a loud meow coming from the top of it. Walking towards them is a large tabby cat, with black markings on the fur that make it look just like a miniature tiger. She has a golden chain around her neck which holds a small metal collar. As the Angels stop and look at it, she speeds up, bounding down the low hillside and padding up to them. “Oooh!” says Luna and walks up to the cat, which looks fearlessly up at the giant bear. Then it purrs, steps forward and rubs itself against her leg. “Awww!” goes Luna immediately. “That’s so sweet! I’m keeping her!”“Oh, no – you’re not!” says Six. Luna immediately rounds on him, while the cat sits there and looks around. “Why not?” she growls. “It’s just a cat!”“That’s my point,” explains the warforged. “It’s a cat. In the Mournland. What kind of cat could survive here? That’s definitely not just a cat!”Luna just growls irritably and then looks down at the cat, which has rolled over and is batting at her paws, each of them many times the size of its entire body. “It’s somebody’s cat.” She reads the sign. “It says ‘Valthera.’ Pretty name. I’m keeping her, and maybe we’ll find her owner.”“At which point you’ll kill him so you can keep his cat, right?” grins Korm.Luna grins back but says nothing. But when Nameless asks, “Is there anything else on the collar? Like a ‘if found, return to daelkyr at …’?” she shakes her head. “Nope. Just her name. But maybe she can tell us who her owner is.” She casts a spell, allowing herself to speak with animals, and others get to enjoy the incongruous sight of Luna meowing at the cat. The cat cocks its head and looks at her curiously, before patting her on the muzzle with a paw and meowing something back. Luna grins, licks it and then shakes her head. “She doesn’t say anything. She’s just making the sounds but not actually saying anything which counts as speech for cats. Either my spell didn’t work or there’s something wrong with her.” Before anyone can say anything about that, she quickly adds, “But I’m still keeping her! She’s cute!”“You’re apparently cute too, to some people,” says Six, “But that doesn’t stop you from being incredibly dangerous, you know. Cute doesn’t mean safe. Remember the little gnome girl in the red riding hood in that tower in the Demon Wastes?”Korm shudders. “Eww! That’s a memory I didn’t need recalled.”Luna is about to argue, when Gareth interrupts, “Um, guys!” The paladin points up at the Mist above them and some distance away. Maybe two hundred feet ahead and off to their right, a huge segment of the ceiling of thick fog has receded, forming a roughly cylindrical hole which extends upwards some five hundred feet but shows no end to the Mist. Halfway up the size of the cylinder a gigantic creature, which resembles a partly translucent manta ray with a couple of hemispherical protrusions on its underside and a long flail-like tail extending behind it, is floating gently across the hole.“Luna!” Six says urgently, “Don’t flame strike it! Actually, don’t do anything to it.”“I wasn’t about to,” Luna growls sulkily, watching with the others as the creature makes its way across the hole and disappears into the fog on the other side. The hole in the Mist begins to flow together too.“Note to self,” says Nameless. “Fly closer to the ground.”“See, Luna,” Six turns to the druid, “Now that – whatever the hell it was – is normal. For the Mournland. I don’t want to see it again or meet it, but it seems perfectly in keeping with this place. But a cat, on the other hand, makes me go – wait, that’s not right!”“Listen! You bums won’t let me get a living spell, so I’m keeping the cat. No argument about it. If you wussies are scared of her, you can stay at a distance.” She turns and pokes the cat, sending it rolling end over end. “But I won’t. Because I love you. Yes I do. Don’t you love your mummy Luna too?” She picks up the cat in a giant paw and kisses it. “Yeth, yeth you do!”Korm gazes sadly at the giant bear kissing and making baby talk with the cat. “I think we just made the Mournland more insane. Let’s go.”The group moves on, with the cat following them, either being carried by Luna or walking along. It seems extremely friendly and attempts to rub up against a couple of the others, but that just makes them a little more paranoid. The fact that it seems singularly unfazed by any combat they engage in doesn’t help matters. When another living spell approaches and is annihilated from a distance with magic and arrows, the cat watches with interest and then begins to lick itself.* The player (Atlatl Jones) decided that since he was going to take a non-proficiency penalty anyway, he was going to pick up a composite greatbow.</blockquote>

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