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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Werewolf_26" data-source="post: 282759" data-attributes="member: 1317">The party does not get a great deal of time to rest as. . . An invitation to go to Sir David Azril’s keep was recieved by Delta, Deamoni, and Jun. Sir David had married the wizardess Jade, who used to work for Deamoni before she went off on her own. Jade and Deamoni had remained friends over the years although they don’t keep up with each other very much. The Azrils were a powerful family in the large city of Volmiria, due to their lineage. Sir David’s grandmother was the villainous Sarah Young, who was the high priestess of the goddess of conflict, Sarran. She had died about two years ago and left her fortunes and businesses to David’s father. David’s father shared the same interests as his grandmother, but David did not. Ms. Young arranged for a small keep to be built for her grandchild and his wife, rather distant from Volmiria, so David’s father would not have to keep an eye on him (enemies trying to find and kidnap his son for leverage, holding them hostage, etc.). David and Jade moved out to this Keep, recruiting a rather large number of people to move out there as well. The Keep was located near several natural resources people would be intersted in, it was not difficult to start up a small village, which Sir David hoped would become a small town soon. The Prince of Vidrake (the kingdom the village was in) knighted David and charged him with protecting his village with all the resources he had available. War with the dwarves was coming and all of the towns could use a mighty protector. Each invitation was brief, telling the subject of the letter that Sir David needed their aid rather desperately and that they were to arrive as soon as possible. The trio of heroes arrived at the keep via teleportation spells. The Keep looked rather strange. Its stone was a dark charchoal gray, with lengthy spires rising out of the towers and ramparts, like horns of some great beast. The mortar of the stones had a red tinge to them, as if they had been recently mixed with blood. The party proceeded into the keep, even though it reminded them of the architecture of several evil places they had visited over the years. Inside the Keep, as they were lead to a waiting area by the guards, they found several pieces of artwork about the home. Decorative suits of armor, weapons, furns, ornate candlabras, and very detailed small statues. Deamoni was reminded of the statues that the Princess of Vashon had created. Carefully, she checked the small statues bases for the mark of the Princess. It was there as plain as the nose on her face. Sir David met with the party not long after their arrival. He explained to them that Jade had been rather busy since they last met with the party. The Green Wizardess had been striking at the forces of the Dwarves, capturing the different types of creatures under their banner so that she could study them. The Strange Skeletal creatures, dwarves, humans, halflings, ghouls of unusual size, and centaurian-lion creatures were among their ranks as well as several new types of undead. One such undead, a strange reddish colored wraith, struck Lady Jade and drained her of her memories. She lost a great deal of her life force, but she defeated the creature. After the battle, however, she was still troubled. Terrible nightmares afflict her, preventing her from gathering the proper energies to prepare her spells. While she is a terribly powerful wizardess, she is weakend because of the random nature of these nightmares. The last enemy scout that was capture admitted that he was one of many searching for the Green Witch that had been assaulting their forces. Several special forces had been assigned to destroy this terror. The dwarf proclaimed that it would only be a matter of time before the dwarves found out where she was hiding and destroy this tiny village. With his wife’s spellcasting abilities under attack and the enemy closing in, Sir David pleaded with the heroes to help defend his town from these monsters and to find the source of his wifes nightmares. An out of breathe guard interrupted the meeting to announce that ghouls were sighted nearing the opposite side of the town. Quickly, Deamoni and Jun left to destroy the creatures, with Jun’s husband Tom quickly following. When they reached the other side of the village, they looked out at the quickly darkening horrizon. In the distance, they could see creatures quickly moving towards the town in two small groups. It seemed the ghouls were taking an extremely long time to get to the town when Deamoni realized, "Those aren’t ghouls, they’re giants!" Night quickly settled in on the heroes as the giants moved in closer to the town. One of the groups broke away and headed for a stray farm house, while the others spotted Deamoni and Jun. They rushed towards their prey with great speed. The horrorible truth was clear when the giants closed with Deamoni and Jun; their hands were elongated into large claws, teeth long and sharp, and the hideously long tongue of a ghoul was present. When the huge ghouls closed into melee range, their stench confirmed that they were infact ghouls as the guard said earlier, but they were GIANT ghouls. The first group of ghouls went down rather quickly as they were foolish enough to melee stupidly and brutishly with Jun and Deamoni. While Deamoni could not harm the ghouls very much., she kept them very busy while Jun hacked them limb from limb. Tom was still in the distance, approaching slowly due to the wieght of his plate armor. The Second group of ghouls started approaching before the first group fell. The second group was much more deadly than the first. As they divided to conquer their foes, they used their impressive size and strength to knock Jun from her feet repeatedly, keeping her from striking at them. Deamoni was quickly cornered and pinned. Things were going badly for the heroes at this point. Slowly, Jun was able to overcome their reach and benefits from size, allowing her to cleave through the giants. By this time Deamoni was already wounded terribly and on the verge of dying. Seeing that Jun was a grander threat than the dying elf at their feet, the remaining giants charged Jun. Tom finally arrived to aid Jun in the destruction of the final creatures. After a quick bit of healing, Tom, Jun, and Deamoni made their way back towards the keep. In the stretch of the half mile between the vilage and the keep, another danger showed itself. Much to their horror, a strange black creature shimmered into view. The hellish creature was larger than that of most grand houses, had four strangely colored eyes, and eight barbed legs. A great demonic spider now stood before them and their well deserved rest. But what was such a creature doing here? They had little time to find out, as it opened fire with strange beams of energy from its eyes. A blue ray of energy shot past Deamoni, who narrowly escaped the full brunt of the ray. A gray ray shot out at Thomas, who appeared unshaken by the effects of the ray. Jun quickly rushed up the the creature, but her swing was wild and unaimed. The next round, Deamoni pulled out her wand of fireballs and sent a blast at the gargantuan creature. The flames of the fire ball washed over the creature like water over a rock, leaving the creature unharmed. The creature then used another ray to shoot at Deamoni. She narrowly dodged the ray again, but felt horribly cold just from being near the blast. The ray that shot down at Lady Jun was much more devestating though. A thin red beam struck the earth at her feet and a column of flames sprung from the spot on the ground the ray had touched. Grasping her sword in agony, Lady Jun unleashed a horrible flurry of attacks on the gaint spider creature. Her greatsword cleaved through its torso, legs, and head with amazing speed, quickly reducing the creature to a pile of rubble. The corpse of the spider-creature fell to pieces infront of them, then the pieces of the corspe floated skyward with a strange red glow and disappeared. With the battle over, Jun went to Tom to see if he was alright. He didn’t respond to her voice. Jun called for Deamoni to come and help her with Tom, she didn’t know what was wrong with him. Deamoni drew near him, raised the visor on his helm, just as the magic was finishing its work. Thomas had been turned to stone by the creature. Jun now had two concerns that wieghed heavily upon her mind. The first was the restoration of her husband to a living, breathing human. The second was finding where the Dwarves had taken her equipment when she was captured. Deamoni was busy trying to make sense of everything that had happened and hoped that she would be able to get a good nights rest. Their enemies were setting up to add to the parties current troubles. Storm clouds moved in as Jun and Deamoni hauled Tom into the keep. Deamoni and Jun were taken to their temporary rooms in the Keep. The town’s adept was summoned to bind and tend to their wounds. Deamoni welcomed the adept’s skillful aid in healing her, but Jun was still feeling uneasy. Jun refused to have the adept look at her wounds and insisted on keeping her armor on. Deamoni relaxed, waitning for Jade to arrive so she could speak to her about the evening’s events. Jade entered the rooms rather late in the evening, after dinner had been served to the adventurers. Deamoni wished to know what was going on from Jade’s point of view. Jade said that she had been attacking the dwarves to find out what kind of creatures they had at their disposal. This alerted the Dwarves to her presence and they had decided to send a group of powerful creatures that they believed would be capable of destroying a powerful spell caster. Her memory loss was due to a strange wraith that suprise attacked her one evening she was exploring the country side. It was searching around an ancient tomb that Jade had only recently discovered. Undead seemed to be gathering outside of the place, like moths to the flame. She narrowly escaped death and returned home, only to find that spells she once found easy to cast were completely unavailable to her now. This disheartened the Lady, but she continued to search for the creatures the dwarves were unleashing upon the kingdom from their mountains. Soon the nightmares started, which reduced her abilities a great deal. She has no knowledge of whether or not she will be able to gather the energies necessary to prepare her spells every morning. The entire scenario is rather frightening to her. She dismissed the adept from watching the adventurers, stating that she would check up on them as needed instead of the healer. Jade then requested for Jun and Deamoni to gather near. Jade: "I feel that I must tell you a secret, but you must swear that you will not resist the spell that I cast afterwards. The secret is to remain with us and no one else." Deamoni: "What kind of spell is it?" Jade: "It wards the people against scrying effects. Do you agree?" Deamoni and Jun gave rather vacant nods and shugs, but never acknowledged a yes or no to Jade’s question. Jade: "It is rather clear that we have not produced an heir in the little more than two years that we had been married, David and I. It began to concern me, so I started visiting temples and praying to the deities for an answer to this problem. Through my journeys to the various temples, I found a cleric that said she could help and I accepted her aid. Recently we found that a child would soon join our family, but then the nightmares started." Jade then began to make the arcane gestures for the spell she was wanting to cast on them. Deamoni searched her limited knowledge for what spell matched the gestures that Jade was using. She quickly realized that Jade was casting a "modify memory" spell on Jun and herself. Both adventurer’s attempted to resist the spell, but Jun found herself sitting near Jade and Deamoni for no apparent reason. Shrugging, Jun went back to her room to watch the statue that was her husband a few hours ago. After casting her spells, Jade smiled, wished Deamoni goodnight and headed out the door. The spell had not taken effect on Deamoni. Deamoni waited for Jade to move down the halls of the cast a bit before exiting her room to follow. She knew that "modify memory" was not something that Jade could cast, unless she had researched a version of it for herself. Suspicious of her friends behavior, Deamoni shape-shifted into a wolf, using the ability of scent to track Jade to where ever she went. The scent lead Deamoni to a room not too distant from their own. It seemed to be another guest room. Deamoni pressed her ear to the door to listen. Light footsteps could be heard through the door. It seemed that someone was pacing, towards the door and away from it. A woman’s voice could be heard quiet clearly; it was Jade on the other side of the door. She was talking to herself, but only when she finished pacing to one end or the other. Near the door: "I didn’t know that he would summon them here." Distant from the door: "Yes, I did not expect him to do such a thing either, but they are here now and we must make the best of it." Near the door: "What shall we do? The Heroes of the Realm are in our home now." Distant from the door: "We need not worry. They count me as a friend and no harm will come to us." Near the door: "Thomas has been turned to stone. They will seek to cure him as soon as possible." Distant from the door: "Then perhaps the nightmares will cease tonight. I shall take care of curing the cleric." Near the door: "And what do we do about the heroes?" Distant from the door: "Perhaps you will lead them to the tomb where I can not enter. They are especially good at finding ways to enter dangerous places. The undead there will be no match for them as long as we cure the stoned priest." Near the door: "I’ll lead them there then. I hope that everything goes well." Distant from the door: "I’m sure it will." Then as the pacing neared the door again, the lock began to turn. Deamoni quickly hid from the person exiting the room. Jade walked down the hall, away from the guest room. Deamoni moved back to the door, checking it for other scents. To her suprise, Deamoni only found Jade’s scent. It was rather strong, unusually strong infact. The wolf returned to deamoni’s room for the night after following Jade to her bedroom. All was quiet for the Adventurers, until rather early in the morning. Deamoni heard a creaking noise in her room, that sounded like the door. Lifting her head to look, she saw that her door was still closed. She stood up and limped over to the door to investigate it. The door offered no resistance to her hand. She grasped at the handle of the door several times with her hand passing through it and the door each time. Deamoni then chose to walk through the illusionary door. She continued to her brief journey to Jun’s door, which was just a few feet ahead. Deamoni began tap and knock on Jun’s door to check if it was real as well. Jun approached the door and opened it, finding Deamoni standing in the hall looking rather puzzled. Deamoni, "Just checking if your door was real." Jun, "Huh?" Deamoni, "My door’s an illusion. Kinda odd ain’t it?" Jun, "Yeah." Deamoni, "Well, Good night." Jun, "Good night." Deamoni walked back down the hall to her door. Instictively she reached for the handle, even though the door was an illusion. The handle was not an illusion this time. In fact, the door was locked. Deamoni cried out, "Oh great. Someone made an illusion of my door, walked back into my room, and locked me out of it. What is going on here?" The elf walked back to Jun’s room, since it had a door that went between the two rooms, she could enter her room through that door. Jun opened her door again, "What’s going on now Deamoni?" Deamoni, "The illusion isn’t an illusion now, so I’ve gotta enter my room through the side door. Sorry to trouble you." Unfortunately for Deamoni, the side door was locked as well. She rapped on the door for a few seconds, calling for whoever was in the room to open the door and explain what was going on. There was no answer. After waiting a few more seconds, Lady Jun pulled out her Chime of Opening. The door quickly opened, revealing that Deamoni’s room had been sacked. The only thing missing from the room was her armor. Infuriated, Deamoni shape shifted into the wolf form again and sought out the scent of the theif. The scent did not betray a method of escape from the room, which meant travel magic was involved. Hoping that the theif had used Dimension door, or some other lower level travel spell, Deamoni began to search the castle for the theif’s scent. Jun, worried about the increase number of spell casters in the area, locked her door and the door that lead into Deamoni’s room. After about ten minutes, she heard the noise of metal-on-metal in Deamoni’s room. It was the familiar sound of a weapon being drawn. Lady Jun backed into a corner of the room and kept her eyes focused on the doors, because there were no windows in the rooms they were in. Jun heard something that sounded like an arcane chant in Deamoni’s chamber. She raised her greatsword and shield towards the noise, preparing to destroy whatever burst through the door. Instead of the door bursting open, the locks on the door slowly turned, allowing the door to creek open. Looking into Deamoni’s room, Jun saw nothing. Then a scratching noise occured on the other side of her main door. Jun called out for the beings to show themselves. The Voice behind the door answered, "Hello Lady Jun, we’ve been watching you for a long time. We were looking for the best time to collect the prize we are being paid for. We’ll give you an option; you can give us what we came for, or we will take it from you, its your choice." Jun, "What is it that you want?" The Voice, "Well, we are being paid rather well to recover your sword hand. The ears of Deamoni are also on the list." Jun, "Wouldn’t a lock of hair or something suffice?" After her statement, a dark cloak was drapped over the statue of Tom and a small empty vial hit the floor. Someone was in the room with her. The Voice, "I’m sorry, but our instructions said that we had to get at least something in the neighborhood of a cube of flesh. Flesh only. So either you cut off your own hand, or we take it from you. Please be reasonable, after all, I’m certain you can get it repaired. You do know a large number of powerful clerics. It would only be a temporary set back. We really don’t want to fight you, but you have 18 seconds to decide." Jun spent the next few seconds trying to recall her past, as she didn’t recall whether or not she had ever fought competant opponents alone before. The assassins the dwarves sent were rather inept compared to the villains she was facing now, or at least it seemed that way to her. No encounters came to mind, which began to worry her. Slowly, she drank a curative potion, as she was still wounded and knew she was about to be in a fight. Before she could answer a small pin-point of light struck the doorway between her room and Deamoni’s. The pin-point burst into a ball of flame that consumed the room. The flames scorched the outside of Jun’s dragon hide armor, but didn’t harm her a great deal. Jun quickly looked for the source of the fire ball, but was unable to get to the door as a hail of arrows shot from the upper corner of the room. A warrioress dressed in dark breastplate and equipped with a bow rained down a volley of arrows at her. One of the arrows pierced her armor, sending a great amount of pain through her body. Jun needed time to think. She quickly brought forth a potion and disappeared from view after drinking it. The Archer called out to the spell caster, "She’s gone invisibile on us!" The Voice, now apparently a spellcaster of some sort, answered, "Ok, Plan B." With that, the Archer flew out of the room. Jun was now carefully kneeling by Tom’s statue on the other side of the room, she saw a transparent shimmer enter into the room and burst. She knew what this was; they were attempting to dispel the magic of the potion. But since they were firing blindly into the room, the spell caster was doing a general area dispel. This worked in Jun’s favor partially; the spell failed to get to the invisibilty spell, but it managed to drain the protective magics from her armor. Jun then moved to her main door, opened it and stepped through, as quietly as possible. She was not quiet enough however, as she soon found out. The Archer shouted, "Got a target!" and let loose another volley of arrows. Even though she was firing blindly down the hall, the archer was an amazing shot. The first arrow grazed past the bridge of her noise, giving her both a good look at the wicked broad heads on the arrows and a bit of "rope burn" as the fletching on the arrow moved past the tip of her nose. It was now Jun’s turn to act. Slowly, she raise a small marble sized globe in her hand, which was prieviously on her necklace. Carefully, lobbed the marble down the stone hall and backed through the door, into her room again. As the marble hit the floor it burst in the same manner as the marble of energy did the preivous round. A flash of fire burnt through into Deamoni’s Room and the hallway. Disturbed by the thunder, Delta rose from his bed in the castle and began to wander it, looking for the pantry. The mage flew into Deamoni’s room to get a better perspective on their target. Jun was huddle in the corner of the room, looking carefully for the first target she could get a swing at. Extending a wand towards Jun, the mage sent 5 bolts of energy into Jun. These caused her some pain, but alerted her to a possible target; the wizard was flying lower to the ground than the archer. The Archer however, was not about to let Jun leave the corner. She kept up an impressive rate of fire, striking Jun with another arrow. This one did not land in her, but rather clinked off a small bit of her armor and cut her shin. Delta then rounded the corner to see a flying archer firing into a room of the castle. In normal response to such an event, he drew his sword, lept at the archer, and cut the bow string. The Archer frantically cried out, "Its HIM!" and flew towards the mage. With a rather quick incantation, the archer and the mage disappeared from view. Deamoni eventually found her armor, as it had been stolen and ditched in a broom closet. The events here were becoming more and more puzzling to her. She then returned to her room, to find Delta and Jun discussing something. Jun told Deamoni how her attackers wanted her hand and Deamoni’s ears. They hoped that sun rise would come soon, as this night seemed like it was going to last forever. The sun did rise for them without any more difficulties. ____________________________ One more to go before they are up to date. Werewolf_26 "Red Wizard shot the food."</blockquote>

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