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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Skyscraper" data-source="post: 3329557" data-attributes="member: 48518">The Axis Crystal artifactAfter having defeated their enemies in the encampment during the sand storm, the party was joined by the old tough fighter that used to work for their enemies. Since said enemies had been possessed by evil souls (of an origin yet unknown to the players), the (soul-wise independent) fighter had been forced to accomplish acts that went against his morals for some time. Joining a group that had shown valor in battle against him and fidelity towards their friends, was a relief for him, although the loss of his long-standing employers was a shock. Markus is his name, and hitting people with his large warhammer is his game <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> He also has a slight tendency on the bottle... aggravated by the recent events.This being said, the adventurers returned to the castle of Behröd that they had recently attacked, took it for their own until someone else tries to claim it, and there they discussed with the now recovering prisoners. With about 20 people about, they set up a plan and decided to split the group. A first group would remain at the castle, hire some soldiers, and try to gather scattered survivors from their home town that was attacked at the very beginning of the campaign. A second group including their long-standing friend Volchenkov the fighter-wizard and their new ally Veonia the hobbit rogue, would go to the large city of Muluk in the desert, where the existence of the Cult of the Lost Souls is known to them. And a third group formed of the party of adventurers themselves together with Markus, would leave for the castle of Krak Al'Niraan to try to recover an artifact that would apparently be used by the Lost Souls to possess other creatures against their will.A short recap of the party of adventurers:Thorak: male dwarf fighter 5 - barbarian 1 - cleric 1Krapounia: female human sorceress 4 - barbarian 3Yorrick: male human rogue 6 - fighter 1Milfin: male halfling cleric 6And the non-player character Markus, who's a 6th level fighter.So to Krak Al'Niraan they go, where they plan to infiltrate the castle as guests since Markus is known to the castle occupants. However, they decide to split up because they're afraid that Krapounia the stunningly beautiful black-skinned and silver-haired woman, and Thorak the dwarf, might be recognized by someone. They also decide to set up an ambush: the three that will infiltrate the castle will ask the occupants for help against fictional enemies that are presumably attacking their other castle Behröd, and will bring back hopefully a handful of enemies that they'll all gang up on at a given location along the road. They heard that most of the garrison of castle Krak Al'Niraan has left, so they figure that after killing a few of them, taking the castle should be manageable. (Ah, those players <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )Yorrick, Milfin and Markus are received relatively courteously at Krak Al'Niraan, well sorta. The castle castellan who manages the place in the absence of the big boss the Duchess of Nideriam, is a huge brute of an half-orc paladin who acts nothing like a paladin (he's possessed). But the surprise lies somewhere else: the castle still has over a hundred soldiers guarding it! They'll never manage to take it as they had hoped. This garrison is on its teeth however, due to the presence of a camp of Zealots nearby. The latter are a group of para-religious extremists that refuse the existence of the gods (the kingdoms are controlled by the clergies) that have the reputation of being loose canons.Anyway, the plan being already set in motion, and with their two friends waiting outside, they plow ahead and meet with the half-orc paladin who they convince to help them (well, to help their dead enemies in reality, who are the paladin's allies). In fact, the half-orc decides to send one of his opponents within the castle to help the party, namely an elf wizard who strives to take his place as the castellan. She'll be accompanied by a dozen soldiers led by a seasoned captain, Jamel. The half-orc paladin is satisfied with his decision, not caring if she lives or dies.In the castle where they remain for the night, they meet with a bunch of other people, including another guest named Elisa of Mehdi, a baronness who's cousin to a hero of the region. They learn a few things and tie a superficial, albeit useful, alliance with her.The rogue was hoping to explore the castle nightly, but the half-orc paladin doesn't trust them even if they're accompanied by Markus, and he sets a sentry at their door.So they bide their time, but during the night, there is some action in the corridor outside of their room, and when they open the door, their sentry is dead and a dark elf is standing at the window! He sees them, and jumps out, using a rope to skilfully climb the wall of the inner courtyard. As soon as he's out the window, more guards storm into the corridor, obviously looking for the dark elf intruder. The adventurers tell them that he's gone for the roof, and the guards pursue.And the sentry is dead...The rogue is outta there. Taking only his essential gear, he starts exploring the castle. Going down, he finds the prisons, then a temple (both of them guarded, he doesn't push his luck to explore either), and finally climbs up a spiral staircase which appears like any other that he's explored in this large castle, but in mid-ascension, he realizes (through a lucky die roll) that he's probably skipped a storey. Might be nothing... but he decides to search for secret doors, and he finds one! And the right one too: therein lies a secret library within which he finds a host of super relevant information. Indeed, Krak Al'Niraan is the center of operations for the cult of the Lost Souls, and here is where they keep their plans.The rogue realizes that he's found something important without having read everything, but he's pretty darn nervous about being found here. So he takes what he considers to be the most relevant notes, and sets fire to the library!  He leaves hurriedly, and returns to his room. They hear more commotion as the castle guards find and fight the fire. They're not aware of it, but a druid lives in this castle. He conjures a water elemental, and together with create water spells from the several clerics that also live here, the fire is rapidly extinguished. Not before most of the library was destroyed however. The castle occupants are not sure who set fire to the library, but figure it is probably the dark elf they saw.Next morning, after more social activities (they briefly meet the druid, a psychotic weirdo with a plumed cape and big tatooed bird wings on his back and arms that everyone calls "the Shaman"), they leave Krak Al'Niraan with their escort of a dozen or so. They had not anticipated the escort to be so numerous, and they start to be pretty nervous about how the ambush is going to unfold.When they arrive at the ambush spot, Krapounia the sorceress-barbarian starts the hostilities by casting a fireball from a scroll she found. The dwarf enlarges himself to giant-size and attacks, and the other three party members attack from behind. The chaos and surprise serve them well, as the entire group of soldiers is completely disorganized at the outset. Jamel the captain of the guard is taken down in short order, the adventurers cleave through the soldiers and when seeing that the situation is lost, the Lost Sould elven wizard decides to flee to save her own life.However, the rogue adventurer intelligently takes his horse and returns at a position near castle Krak Al'Niraan where he's see her if she returns to the castle (there are hills and a cliff nearby that prevent easy access from most directions). When he indeed spots her, the closes in, and shoots her down with his longbow. No survivors. On her, he finds what he'll find out later to be a skeleton key that opens all doors in the castle.The rogue returns to his friends, who have concealed the corpses. They take the rest of the day to read the notes from castle Krak Al'Niraan and learn all sorts of relevant stuff, and next morning decide to return to Krak Al'Niraan because they now know that the Axis Crystal (the artifact that i talked about earlier, that allows creature possession by Lost Souls) is indeed at castle Krak Al'Niraan. Several plans are made to infiltrate the castle again.At Krak Al'Niraan their plans go up in smoke however, since they find that the castle is besieged! More than that, the main gate has been opened, and fighting is going on inside the castle grounds, on the watch towers, and so on. The Zealots have attacked!They decide to take advantage of this situation, and find their way into the castle after having fought a group of guards on top of the castle and a group of Zealots in the castle grounds. Inside, they follow a spiral staircase along the main dungeon tower, on top of which they found a strange apparatus that they had initiall thought of as a warmachine of some kind when looking from afar. On closer inspection, it's rather a static object, that looks like some strange 20-foot metallic fork. In the tower runs a tube that links this apparatus to something else down below, the tube filled with silvery-colored liquid. (They smashed the tube.)Following the tower, they end up in a lower chamber filled with fog. Strange. The cleric thinks quickly and believes this might be a spell: using his knowledge skills, he identifies it indeed as a spell known to him: there's a spellcaster around! The cleric tries to dispel the fog, but doesn't succeed since the spell proves too powerful (he does dispel two other buffing effects on creatures that lie within however, without even knowing it!) Just after this spell is cast, they are all engulfed in a pillar of flame that hits them right on. Ouch! They're all injured, except the rogue who successfully escapes the pillar of fire due to his evasion ability. They heard the spell being cast inside the fog-filled room before it detonated, so they decide to enter and find the spellcaster.As the dward moves forward, a large dire ape falls on them from above and starts battling the dwarf. The dire ape is a very large ape with long hair all over its body, and bony protrusions at his elbows, knees and shoulders. And he hits hard. The dwarf still kills it with the help of some others. They also find the spellcaster: it's the crazed Shaman, mouth drooling and glazed red eyes, who conjures up a fire elemental to help him fight the intruders and sends a few other spells flying their way. One of the last spells that he'll cast, before being cornered and killed, is another flame strike, repeating the pillar of flame from before, that will prove to be fatal to the dward who's been damaged too much in this combat! He falls to the ground, dead, as he misses his saving throw against the incendiary spell of the Shaman.It is with a heavy heart that the adventurers realize that one of the main characters of the group has been killed. Everyone throws in a good word and an emotional thought for the dwarf, including a poem by the hobbit cleric (emails were exchanged in-between gaming sessions).The adventurers decide to continue their quest nonetheless, knowing the importance of it. Indeed, the notes they found suggest that the Lost Souls are trying to possess an important number of creatures by taking control of the Axis Keys, large stone-like dolmens that can apparently open up the Axis Stones, doorways to other dimensions.The Shaman's room yields information relating to the fact that he was responsible for using the power generated by sand storms in the Zone (a nearby magical area of the world) to channel this energy and use it to provoke the possession ritual with the Axis Crystal (the artifact). The silvery liquid would appear to be a conveyor of some kind for the sand storm energy.In this room, they also meet with a half-orc - no, not the paladin, but rather a fighter 3 -cleric 3 named Rogan (a.k.a. the new player's character) who has business of his own at castle Krak Al'Niraan that i won't go into. Rogan is an honorable chap, very strong, wielding a spiked chain and sporting heavy full plate armor. After a brief discussion and a few divination spells, they join up as if they had been best friends all their lives <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />They continue exploring the castle and end up at the temple, after a few turns and some directions from the rogue from his previous nightly exploration. They hear combats here and there, but apart from the ones they had outside, no other fights for them for the time being.The temple is guarded by a few soldiers and an ogre. The latter wields a huge morningstar, and quickly appears to be the most idiotic creature capable of speach that they've ever seen. They spy on the guards for a while before laying the smack on them. The combat goes well, even if the strong ogre does land a few hard blows.The temple doesn't contain anything important on a more thorough search, and they refrain from looting it since that was part of their problems at the former castle Behröd.However, they do use a few divination spells, and find the temple to be good-aligned as could be expected from this god, but however a large brazier with burning incense therein, located at the center of the temple near the altar, irradiates a strong evil aura. They wonder what this might mean. The half-orc fighter-cleric, Rogan, decides to take the brazier out of the temple, without touching it - he uses a rope. But he's not quite satisfied, and he decides to throw some holy water into the burning incense. This provokes a strong reaction as smoke starts to emanate from the brazier in large quantities, and when they hear a screaching scream from a distant place, although it comes from the brazier right next to them, they knock it over and start to run! As well they might, since they know from their spells that this brazier uses conjuration magic, the kind that brings creatures from elsewhere...They run and run, and end up near the prisons. They wait for a while, and realize that no one is apparently pursuing them. Before going to the prisons, they investigate a suspicious fire wall (which is, arguably, suspicious in its very essence) that ends up being illusionary. Behind, after dispatching a flesh golem guardian, they find a room where the possession ritual occurred, but the Axis Crystal is not there! Damn! (Hehe <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ).They go to the prison, where the guards are more numerous and ready to resist intrusion: the hobbit opens the door, is greeted by a few crossbow bolts that injure him badly, and closes the door! After some healing and more preparation, they charge in. There, two ogres are supported by 3-4 soldiers, but the adventurers take them out in good order in the large main prison block room. They're not even finished with the soldiers that a group of Zealots shows up, martial art specialist apostles supported by fighter initiates. But the adventurers prevail against them too.They then hear more sound from behind the closed door from where they came, as armored creatures are noisily approaching. They plant themselves in front, and as soon as the door opens a few of them intend to hit whatever shows up. One can't even hold his greatsword and hits directly into Elisa of Mehdi, the baroness who was a guest of castle Krak Al'Niraan the night before! The combat is prevented however, and she and her gnome cleric ally barge in, frantically telling the adventurers to get ready for "something horrible coming this way". She screams towards the corridor for her bodyguard to catch up, but when he shows up, he's screaming in agony as unnatural plants are literally sprouting through his skin! He dies on the floor, covered with icky vine-like plants all over him, in a final scream of pain.The adventurers have an idea of what that "something horrible" might be. It's... whatever was called in when they threw holy water on the evil brazier from the temple.The corridor to the prisons is the only way out of this huge room, so the adventurers quickly heal themselves in the few seconds that they have, and close the door. The fighters position themselves around the door to gang up on anyone that would enter, the rogue prepares his bow, spellcasters cast a buff spell - it's all they have time for.Then, a horrible screaching scream from behind the door. Two seconds of silence. And before the bewildered eyes of the adventurers, the door is torn off its hinges and propelled fifty feet into the room as they feel a wave of raw magical energy move into the large prison block room from the corridor. And there, twenty feet behind the empty door opening, stands a 10-foot tall bipedal bird-like creature with a large hooked beak, feathery wings, bird claws at the extremities of his long, thin arms and legs, grey oily feathers partly covering its body over dark scales. The creature shifts its concentration from the wave of energy it let off to remove the door to the people inside the room, its malicious dark eyes set upon all that are there, dark pools of evil promising death and worse things still. They feel the hair rising on their arms and cold sweat coming down their spine at the very sight of this otherworldly creature.It's a Vrock demon.The rogue reacts quickly with his bow at the ready, and hits the creature with a couple of arrows, but realizes that his arrows barely injure the creature! The creature itself protects itself with magic, casting a spell that creates 5 illusionary images of itself that shift around it all the time, preventing the onlooker from actually differentiating the real from the illusions.Then, as everyone waits for the creature to charge into the room, the impetuous Krapounia the barbarian sorceress decides to charge it outside in the corridor. But the creature is much too strong for her to take on alone, and before anyone can even react, they witness in horror as spores erupt from the demon and ugly vines start sprouting from Krapounia; and simultaneously, the demon launches a deadly series of attacks, its powerful claws and beak tearing into the unarmored Krapounia inexorably until she falls down on the floor, dead.The adventurers quickly regain their composure after the death of their comrade, however, since their own lives are at stake. They continue to throw missile weapons at the demon, successful hits mostly eliminating illusionary images of the demon. As the last image disappears, the demon suddenly teleports into the room, behind everyone, near the scared gnome cleric. It was barely injured. This battle was not going well.Melee combat against the Vrock ensued, furious. The demon has a high damage reduction ability against mundane weapons, and only on very hard hits did the adventurers and their allies manage to injure the powerful Vrock in any significant way. The rogue set up a flanking position, allowing him to deal more damage due to his sneak attack ability. But the turning point came from Markus (before he was beaten down to unconsciousness) and Elisa, as I rolled in front of everyone two powerful critical hits by them, which killed the demon.So... Krapounia... Another player character death. Against the most powerful foe they had had to deal with up to now. That was a hard blow to the group, and to our campaign too. Indeed, four of the five initial player characters are now dead.Everyone recovered, and the player who had Krapounia as a character was really stunned by her death. This had been a favorite character for him, and he took some time before finally announcing that he would not make another character, but rather take on the role of Markus the old fighter. Fair enough.After freeing the prisoners that Elisa and her gnome ally decided to try to escort out of the castle, their group was down to:Yorrick, male human rogue 6 - fighter 1 (single initial player character still alive)Markus, male human fighter 6Rogan, male half-orc fighter 3 - cleric 3Milfin, male gnome cleric 6The cleric player left the country then, so his character is not really controlled by a player anymore but remains with the group.Taking a couple of prisoners among the soldiers that guarded the prisons, the adventurers continued on their quest after gaining some very relevant information on where the artifact might be kept (the soldier knew nothing of the artifact, but knew where in the castle was kept the treasure). They changed location to another underground portion of the castle, behind another illusionary firewall, where they found the always pleasurable treasure room. After dispatching its undead guards and a few wards and traps, after finding a few secret doors and illusionary walls, and after taking a few pieces of gold and platinum along the way, they found what they were looking for: the sceptre-like Axis Crystal.Out of the treasure room, surprise! They were ambushed by a pair of drow, dark elves come for the artifact also! That combat almost turned sour. The surprise wasn't complete however, as a few dead corpses lead the adventurers to the conclusion that combat had recently occurred here.There were only two drow, a female rogue and a male ranger, but they initiated combat by throwing a web from a wand they had, towards the group of adventurers. Two of them would be caught in its sticky strands for the entire combat, namely Markus the fighter and Miflin the cleric.Meanwhile, Yorrick the rogue escaped the web and started throwing arrows against the two drow. Rogan the fighter-cleric closed in for melee, and hit the drow rogue hard on his first attack, almost killing her on the spot. (The two drow were already injured from previous battles.) The ranger ran in to help her, summersaults and flips galore, and landed one then other attack from a flurry of sword strokes and brought Rogan down to... 1 hit points! The drow rogue backed off from Rogan, using her ally for cover, and tried finishing Rogan off with another wand of hers that emits a ray of fire, but the spell fizzled without effect as she missed her use magic device skill. Can't get'em all! Yorrick finished the drow ranger off with an arrow, and the drow rogue escaped, casting another web to help her in the process.The adventurers then managed to flee the castle, manoeuvring around a few opponents including a towering half-ogre/half-fiend who had his hands full killing a bunch of Zealots. Still, it appeared like the latter were in control of most of the castle grounds.The trek to castle Krak Al'Niraan is now a thing of the past. The adventurers have the artifact named the Crystal Axis, but they've lost two more of their allies: Thorak the dwarven fighter and Krapounia the human sorceress-barbarian. May their souls rest in peace, the price was high.And now? Who knows... Perhaps back south to castle Behröd among friends, to heal their wounds and plan what to do. Perhaps up north towards Kal'Ferra to the Pilate school, where some ancient lore and knowledge might be found to answer some of the questions that remain. Or perhaps out west towards the far-away capital city of Belial, where the Lost Souls, dark elves and other groups (oh, yes, many other groups!) are all converging for an important reason: the last Axis Key is to be set in that city. Depending on who sets it, it might open the Axis Stone portals to the millions of Lost Souls that would possess just about every sentient living being, to the dark elves that were banished in millennia past in Hell for having tried to control the world, to the demons that would simply destroy everything and everyone in their wake... Decisions will have to be taken, fast!Sky</blockquote>

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