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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Skyscraper" data-source="post: 3955034" data-attributes="member: 48518">Let's get outta here!After their attack on Krak Al'Niraan, the group of adventurers is joined by a human wizard (played by a new player) named Rituk. He was specifically looking for them, coming from Hamelyn, the town that was attacked early in the campaign to set everything in motion. Rituk is looking for the Lost Souls also, result of a background story that intermeshes with that of the other adventurers. Ah, coincidences <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=":)" />The group of adventurers is now composed of the following:Yorrick, male human rogue 7 - fighter 1Markus, male human fighter 7 (NPC)Rogan, male half-orc fighter 4 - cleric 3Milfin, male gnome cleric 7 (NPC)Rituk, male human wizard 7After leaving Krak Al'Niraan, they flee to a nearby half-abandoned village to buy horses. In that village, they learn that the Zealots have taken control of the castle, and that a group of them is actively looking for the adventurers. Crap! They buy horses and flee cross-country. They manage to loose the pursuit.They head towards an abandoned windmill where an important prisoner is apparently being kept by the lost souls. They found this information in the secret library of castle Krak Al'Niraan.They arrive near the windmill which stands on the edge of a deep ravine. Its wind arms are partly tattered or broken and lazily and unsteadily turn: it has obviously not been used for years.The adventurers apparently feel courageous or are simply unconscious. They walk up towards the windmill in the bright light of the afternoon, not trying to hide in any way. They are greeted by arrows. They pick up a fight against the few opponents that are there: dwarves, all of them! This is surprising, as dwarves are very infrequent. They find half a dozen seasoned warriors, including three fighters, one paladin mounted on a hippogriff (a flying horse of sorts), one cleric and one rogue.Combat is violent but goes rather well for the adventurers. The dwarf paladin on his flying mount, a couple of fighters and eventually the rogue even move outside to land some blows, but eventually retreat inside the windmill. There the big rotating crushing stone wheels of the windmill prove to be somewhat of a hindrance during combat, but no one gets hampered by them significantly. It comes down to a single dwarf fighter who puts his back to a corner on the second storey of the windmill and challenges the PCs to fight him. Which they do. But a few holes in the ground make things complicated to get at him and they have to take him on one at a time. Rogan the big half-orc cleric decides to cast a spell on himself and enlarges to giant size – which is a large giant as far as he's concerned. He weighs 280 pounds in normal circumstances, not counting his full plate mail, and now he's up to about eight times that! Rogan climbs up a window from outside, squeezes into the windmill and walks towards the dwarf, decided to finish this once and for all. However, the old windmill floor can't take that much weight and the half-orc falls through the floor! The dwarf fighter is finally taken care of and the adventurers rescue the prisoner: a young dwarven boy.This is no ordinary boy however. This is the dwarven prince of a far-away kingdom! The adventurers learn that the dwarves, reputed to have locked themselves up in their underground city centuries ago, have in fact migrated to another kingdom, the existence of which was unknown to everyone (well, almost everyone). It appears that his bodyguards, the now dead dwarves that guarded him, had turned on him and kidnapped him. The Lost Souls (who were behind this scheme) used the prince to have the dwarves follow the orcs across the seas and battle them. Short background: the orcs are allied with the dark elves, and both the latter and the Lost Souls are trying to control the Axis Keys to control the crossing from other planes of existence for their own nefarious reasons. The dark elves/orcs and the Lost Souls are on opposite sides.A sandstorm rises while they are in the windmill, resting from the recent fight. The wind gushes at high speed outside and they know the local storms well enough to remain indoors until the storm passes. However, the storm triggers the artefact that they now own, the Axis Crystal. A portal made of light is opened in the chaos of the ongoing storm and they are sucked in through the portal.They find themselves in a world very similar to the one they know, but somehow slightly different. No sun shines in the sky, but pale light surrounds them. They reach the village where they came from, but there is not a single inhabitant to be seen. In fact, no creature except for themselves appears to be there! There is only an eerie silence. Except... they sometimes glimpse a subtle movement at the corner of their eye, as if something or someone had moved, but when they look carefully they find nothing there.After some exploring, they end up moving towards castle Krak Al'Niraan where they believe that the key to leaving this place might lie. In fact, it will lie pretty much wherever they think it lies – they are in the Dreamworld where reality and dream coexist. This is also the world where the ancient gods were born and where they now lie after their deaths, almost powerless but still conscious. And this is a world where the Lost Souls have managed to travel. They now appear as mere shadows of what they were before. But they have some control over this plane.Moving towards the castle, they face the challenge of wind, earth, water and fire, in the form of elementals that unleash their fury on them at different steps towards their goal. The plane itself has decided to thus settle the opposing forces of the Lost Souls that wanted to kill and expel the adventurers, and Thor the old god that wanted to talk to them. They battled an air elements in the middle of a windstorm that knocked almost everyone to the ground (the halfling was in fact blown away); a pair of earth elements burrowing through the ground to pop up in the middle of the group; a water elemental in a gushing river that threatened to carry them away, the water having suddenly flooded a corridor of the castle; and a huge, very powerful fire elemental that guarded their goal.This last proved to be too strong for them, but they ran from it while some of them sacrificed themselves for the others, and reached their goal before he could take them all out.After having successfully passed the four tests, although almost failing in the end against the huge fire elemental when only two of them "lived" (no one really dies on this plane), they briefly talked to Thor before leaving the plane. Thor provided the adventurers with some insight on the purpose of the Lost Souls, telling them that they want to be set free in the material plane to possess all living beings. He also told them that the Lost Souls will be coming in through "their gaze". They were confused as to what this means, but then thought that the logo of the Lost Souls includes something alike the outline of a bat without a head with an eye in the middle. Related to their gaze? Unknown.They are thereafter expelled from the Dreamworld.Back on the material plane, everyone is there and in good shape. Anyone who had died in the Dreamworld lives here still.They decide to leave the windmill, bringing the young prince with them, and move north to Kal'Ferra, a large city where they can leave the kingdom by boat towards the city of Belial, capital of the neighboring kingdom of Is. Belial is where Lost Souls and dark elves and several other groups appear to be converging to put their hands on the last Axis Key before it is set.Of note, the young prince has a despicable character, always complaining and expecting everyone to jump when he says jump. It has provided some amusing role-playing moments <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=":)" />In Kal'Ferra, they find a ship that sails towards Belial and that accepts to take them there for a fee. While waiting for the ship's departure in a few days, they go out to accomplish a few tasks, the most notable of which is to visit Pilate, Kal'Ferra's great library. There, they find a lot of relevant background information on the Lost Souls cult, among other things that it is an old cult that has existed on several occasions over the last few thousand years. The premise of this cult is that during the Infidel Era when there were no gods, the souls of the living found no solace in the outer planes after death of the body, but rather drifted in the nothingness of the Astral plane for eternity. This is the reason why the Lost Souls want out: to be able to rest (and live in the meantime while they possess another body).The adventurers thwart a plan by another to rob the artefact that they own while they are at their inn. They capture the thief who ends up being a Lost Soul himself. Through threat and spell, he reveals some useful information on the Lost Souls and their purpose. The adventurers are starting to have a clear picture of what's going on.They also meet with a weird young woman named Blue, who has blue hair and travels with a falcon on her shoulder. (This is another new player of the group.) The group now comprises:Yorrick, male human rogue 7 - fighter 1 (single initial player character still alive)Markus, male human fighter 7 (NPC)Rogan, male half-orc fighter 4 - cleric 3Milfin, male gnome cleric 7 (NPC)Rituk, male human wizard 7Blue, female human sorcerer 7Dragosh, young dwarf prince (NPC)Blue has had experiences with a sect linked to the Lost Souls and the latter are essentially looking for her. They end up joining forces (surprise!).The boat finally takes off and sails towards Belial. It is a relatively large boat, hosting a dozen passengers but mostly being a cargo ship. A crew of over twenty mans it. The captain Erha is a woman who appears to follow her insight a lot, sometimes against the counsel of her gruff second-in-command, the old Rheor. The latter used to be a pirate but took up service on his niece's ship one day, leaving his illegal business behind him for good.The adventurers are pretty paranoid at this point. They start investigating the other passengers and even check their belongings when they're not there, looking for clues as to who might be a drow-in-disguise or who might be a Lost Soul.The adventurers are also contacted by an imp one night, on the boat. The imp presents himself as Wart. He is a small winged devil with an overdimensioned nose that sports an impressive wart, thus his (presumably unofficial) name. He proposes a pact with the adventurers: in short, money, magic and much more, for the artefact. They refuse, but go at it with diplomacy, hoping to stall the imp's master Belgoliath. They know the latter to be one who attacked Hamelyn during the initial killing spree that started off this campaign. However, Wart tells them that Belgoliath acted on a contract back then. Now, the devils only want to prevent the demons from flooding the planes, which would be bad for everyone and would lead to the end of existence as we know it.A few days after they've left Kal'Ferra, the adventurers realize that their boat is being pursued by a pair of smaller yet faster ships. They send their flying familiars to investigate, namely Blue's falcon and Rituk's pseudodragon. Both creatures come back with information on boats loaded with military men wearing the colors of the Marquise de Nideriam, the most notorious Lost Soul that owns, among other things, castle Krak Al'Niraan where the adventurers recuperated the artefact they now have.They end up first sending fireballs on the boats when they're getting too close. The sails are protected however so the damage is not as important as they would have wanted. Still, it slows down one of the boats significantly. The other boat then continues its progression, but from farther away, waiting that the first boat replaces its sail.They decide that it's the right time to attack the lone boat before the other is up and running. First, they lay their cards down in front of Erha the boat's captain and convince her that they are indeed trying to save the world. Outstanding diplomacy checks prove invaluable in this case because rarely will you see anyone falling for something like that. But Erha is predisposed to this type of argument, being someone who decides stuff based on her gut feelings. She accepts. Having seen the fireballs helps convince he that the adventurers are powerful and may be capable of winning this fight.They then send the rogue and the sorceress, invisible and flying, to lay some havoc on the boat. However, they only have time for minimal damage as a pair of griffons takes off from the boat, directed by expert griffon riders! The sorceress is almost killed by a powerful attack from one of the riders, and she finally teleports back to her own boat in a puff of smoke, by means of a magic item that allows her some limited teleportation ability.Erha's boat then turns around a full turn and takes the other pursuing boat head on! They finally come side to side and both boats throw their grappling hooks for boarding manoeuvers.The occupants of Erha's boat are the ones that do the boarding. Half of their opponents, the Lost Souls, in fact remained hidden until combat started, to then come out and surprise their opponents. (They were scared that other fireballs would fly, but none were left.) Between some of the creatures present flying, others jumping between the boats, some firing arrows, some conjuring creatures and illusions (including the illusion of a Balor demon that had quite an effect for 30 seconds before someone realized it was just an illusion <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=":)" /> ), spells flying in all directions, enlarged clerics and fighters, and a 15 vs 25 fights, it was quite epic indeed. In the end, the adventurers saved the day being by far the better combatants out there except for a few of their opponents who managed some noteworthy opposition. They took out all the enemy leaders plus most of the soldiers, and the remaining ones put down their arms. Everyone in Erha's boat then cheered them for the heroes that they had just been!That's it for now. Next: continuing the trip towards Belial. We'll see if they keep both ships or not, if they decide to attack the other ship which is now done changing its sail; and of course, if they manage to withstand the other surprises that the trip will bring...</blockquote>

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