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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
The Adventures of the Knights of Spellforge Keep
- Thread starter Dr Midnight
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Gotta say I was a long time Dartan fan, but since Spellforge, Vek has trumped him. I'm a powergamer myself so it could well be that I appreciate the big dogs. I think Dartan failing to repaladin kinda dumped him for me.
Gryph was okay and all but never really came close to Vek in my heart. I gotta ask though, do you guys use healing and Doc just fails ta write it in? Or are you so busy concentrating on offense that it just doesn't come into play?
Ziona, do you have stoneskin? If ya don't you REALLY should. And fer the love of God PLEASE git that poor half orc some boots of striding and springing!!!!
-Immort
Gryph was okay and all but never really came close to Vek in my heart. I gotta ask though, do you guys use healing and Doc just fails ta write it in? Or are you so busy concentrating on offense that it just doesn't come into play?
Ziona, do you have stoneskin? If ya don't you REALLY should. And fer the love of God PLEASE git that poor half orc some boots of striding and springing!!!!
-Immort
Dr Midnight
Explorer
Just got back from tonight's game, it was fun. Some hard enemies and great roleplaying, and an encounter that had even Vek floundering for a useful tactic.
Some recommended reading to bone up on for the next session's writeup: Sessions 36 & 37
Maaan, if you guys thought Vek was munchkin/powergamey before, wait till you read what he gets from the end of this session.
Some recommended reading to bone up on for the next session's writeup: Sessions 36 & 37
Maaan, if you guys thought Vek was munchkin/powergamey before, wait till you read what he gets from the end of this session.
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Dr Midnight
Explorer
Am writing right now... it's a tough chapter. I plan to have it up within the hour. Sorry about the delay.
Dr Midnight
Explorer
SESSION 47
Godsday, 18th of Patchwall
SINS
“Jamison.” Kizzlorn’s voice was wafer-thin and controlled. “I want to ask you this, and I want you to answer me.”
The wizard looked at each of the Knights, confused, as they floated above Spellforge Keep. “Kizz, I don’t understand. Where’s…”
“Did you kill my parents?”
“What? I-“ and it all came crashing in on him.
NINETEEN YEARS AGO
The henchmen began searching the cavern for the treasure. It was an immense place to search, but the sun above splintered through the icy ceiling and shone down, lighting every crook of the room. After a moment, one of the henchmen walked back to the dark man standing at the entrance to the lair. “There’s nothing here.”
“It’s here. Keep looking.”
“I’m telling you, there’s noth-“
“Die.”
The man clutched his chest and fell backwards in agony. He lay there, dead. The others didn’t stop looking, not even for a moment, as the man in black stepped from the shadows and glowered at them all. Jamison Crow wore his hair parted on either side of his head. His black facial hair formed a hinted smirk at the edges of his lips.
“It’s here… it’s just hidden. If I can’t pay people to find it, I’ll have to find it myself.”
The workers stopped what they were doing in relief. Jamison stepped forward and cast a spell that allowed him to detect the presence of magic in the cavern. He found it and turned to its source. He walked and let the item call him from its hiding spot. He walked up to a wall at the west end of the cavern and put his hand to the ice. “It’s behind this.”
“Want us to smash it down, boss?”
“No. You’ll just damage something useful. I’ll do it.” Jamison pointed two fingers at the wall and said a word. A jet of flame erupted from his hands and blasted the wall, quickly melting the ice and creating a widening concave space. A hole opened at the furthest part of the pit he was melting, and he opened the hole with more careful flame. He stepped through the water into the darkness beyond.
The wall of ice he’d melted had been roughly seven feet thick. “Clever old beast,” Jamison said to himself of the dragon that had hidden his treasure here. He walked further back into the hidden cavern and found the piles of gold sparkling in the blue darkness. Garnets and emeralds and sapphires glinted from their places dotted around the piles. Some were melted into the ice of the walls themselves. Jamison walked right by the gold. He didn’t pay any attention to the swords and armor he saw. He gave only a halfhearted glance to a wand, and kept walking. There, at the back, he found it.
It was beautiful. It sat atop a curled pedestal of ice. He reached out and put his hands on either side, and gently lifted it from its cold throne. The orb was maybe eight inches in diameter and perfectly spherical. Milky white shapes swam in its glasslike form, and opalescent colors bloomed all around its surface, depending on how the light hit it.
Then, from the cavern behind him, the sound of weapons being drawn and the clattering of armor as bodies repositioned themselves. “Whuh- who are you?”
“Who are YOU? Stand aside or die, fiends. Our business is not with you. Today, we’ve come to end the dragon’s life.”
“Stay where you are- BOSS! We’ve got company!”
“So kill them,” Jamison replied. He knew the henchmen could barely overrun a small horde of orcs, but this would give him time to properly store the orb. He didn’t need his lackeys anyway… they’d turned out to be useless wastes of food, as ever. He listened to the sounds of combat in the cavern behind him as he gently opened the empty Bag of Holding he’d brought just to carry the orb with. He placed the orb inside and closed the bag, then tied it securely to his waist. He walked out and looked again to the cavern, to see what was happening.
A group of adventurers was easily mopping the floor with his henchmen. One was a powerful looking mage wielding a wand of lightning. Another was a long haired dark man clad in simple half plate armor, slashing with a large sword. Another was a woman cutting and slicing with twin sickles, wearing a symbol of Pelor about her neck. Beside her was another woman, with long dark red hair and a commanding presence. The most striking one of them was the man who appeared to have a dragon’s head, and white scales covering his body. He finished the last henchman off with little trouble and asked “What happened here? FATHER! Come out and face us!”
“I don’t think he’s here,” the red haired woman replied.
The woman with the symbol of Pelor around her neck asked “So who commanded these thugs to attack us?”
“No one did,” Jamison said as he walked slowly out of the nook into the light. “I ordered them to kill you, but as you can see, no one follows directions anymore.” He sighed and smiled at them.
The mage nervously asked “Where is Acessiwal?”
”He’s safely several hundred miles to the south of here right now. Why? Did you come here to defeat him? Are you ‘adventurers’… on an ‘epic quest’? Is that what you’ve come for?”
The Pelor woman looked confused. “This can’t be right.”
The half-dragon yelled “Tell us where he is. Tell us now.”
Jamison smiled and relished the moment. “Shan’t.”
The red haired woman stepped forward and lifted her sword angrily. “We don’t have time for this… Tell us what we want to know, or you’ll meet the same fate as your friends. Who are you?”
“Me? Why, I’m the man who did this.” He held his hands out before him and bathed them in lightning. The heroes screamed and burned. The Pelor woman regained her footing first and tried to run forward. Jamison pointed at her and swept his arm aside, and the woman flew across the cavern to smash into the ice wall. She lay still.
“Kyla- NO!!” The dark-haired man screamed and advanced. Jamison flew above his sweeping sword’s blow and cast a spell on an icy stalactite, which grew at an alarming rate straight down. It lengthened and plunged down into the man, pinning him to the ice and killing him.
He floated over the others and watched as the wizard cast a spell upwards at him. Jamison smiled as his many artifacts absorbed and dissipated the power of the magic. He then put his hands back down and a hellstorm of fiery bullets shot down, peppering them. The half-dragon fell.
The remaining man yelled “Kat, he’s too powerful- hold on, we’ll teleport-“ he held out his hand, and the woman reached for it… but their hands bumped something invisible between them. Jamison’s Wall of Force spell separated them. The man would have to teleport without the woman- whom, he noted by the rings on their hands, was his wife. How amusing.
“No- NO! Raff, you go ahead!”
“NO, I WON’T LEAVE YOU!”
She cast a fireball upward and it bounced harmlessly off of the mage to strike the ceiling. “YOU HAVE TO! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!”
“Correction,” Jamison said. “…’Think of the ORPHANS’.” He blasted them with lightning and held it there, watching and laughing, as they died beneath him. He floated down.
The woman with the Pelor symbol around her neck coughed weakly. Jamison walked over and stood above her. She was bleeding very badly, and he could see there was no need to finish her off when he could watch her life seep away by the heartbeat.
Jamison looked down and shook his head with the slight smile that had become his trademark as the scourge of Greyhawk. “Ahh, let it never be said that Jamison Crow didn’t stand laughing over his enemies as they lay dying at his feet.” He chuckled and watched her eyes. In them he saw something: a flash of recognition.
“So… you’re Crow.”
“Yes. I’m not surprised you’ve heard of me. You know, everyone’s going to know my name some day. Children will weep to hear it, and women will scream to know it, and… what are you reaching for, there? Don’t you know the battle is over? You’ve lost. You’re about to die.” The woman withdrew from her tunic an odd medallion. It bore a sun symbol on it. She held it before her tremblingly. “Oh, come on. I’ll let you get this one last shot in, but after that-“
The woman coughed up some blood and said “The old… woman… said I’d use… this… again.” She yelled something and Jamison was flushed with pure white light. The medallion was like a miniature sun in her hand, and she was its golden-eyed wielder. Jamison gasped from the light and felt it shine straight through him. It felt like his veins had turned to fire. He fell to his knees and choked for breath.
When the light cleared, the woman was dead and he was alone in an ice cavern full of corpses. He looked around and knew what he’d done. He knew what the last few years had been… he knew what he’d done. His mouth hung open in disbelief and horror, and he looked at his hands, seeing them blood on them for the first time since he’d been turned to evil back in his adventuring days, years back.
All the things he’d done, and all the things he’d planned to do were clear in his head. So much murder… Plus, this thing in the bag hanging from his belt- if he’d managed to use this, then… it was too monstrous to think about. He began hyperventilating and stood up, backing away from the body. “I… It’s… I can’t…” His voice echoed off of the ice walls and mocked him.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew the black stone he’d found in the Crater Ridge Mines, so long ago. It had bade him to turn against his friends… to kill them. He’d listened to it. He’d continued to listen to it, letting it warp him completely. It had slowly turned him into an evil man- and it had happened because he had picked it up. He never did have much sense.
He remembered not caring when the pretty girl he’d come to admire died in his arms. “Hannah…” Suddenly furious, he sobbed and hurled the stone across the chamber. He untied the bag from his belt and withdrew the orb he’d come here to find. The orb could mean horrible things for all of Greyhawk if his accomplices got their hands on it. “They cannot have this,” he said to it. “They MUST NEVER HAVE THIS.”
He made a choice, then, and replaced the orb in the bag, and the bag on his belt. He knew exactly where he had to go, and he ran from the cavern with tears on his cheeks and death in his wake.
PRESENT DAY
“Oh,” Jamison said softly. Kizzlorn stared at him, waiting for his reply. Jamison looked around at his friends and saw the looks on their faces. The flaming sword of Imix dropped from his hands and plummeted to the moat below, where it splooshed with a hissing sound.
The snowflakes swirled past him as he looked at Kizzlorn, who was in almost every way the mirror image of the woman he'd killed on that day... the sorceress wife who'd begged her husband to leave for the childrens' sake.
Jamison put his shaking hands up to his face and wept. “Oh… oh my god… yes. Yes, I did.”
MORE TO COME…
Godsday, 18th of Patchwall
SINS
“Jamison.” Kizzlorn’s voice was wafer-thin and controlled. “I want to ask you this, and I want you to answer me.”
The wizard looked at each of the Knights, confused, as they floated above Spellforge Keep. “Kizz, I don’t understand. Where’s…”
“Did you kill my parents?”
“What? I-“ and it all came crashing in on him.
NINETEEN YEARS AGO
The henchmen began searching the cavern for the treasure. It was an immense place to search, but the sun above splintered through the icy ceiling and shone down, lighting every crook of the room. After a moment, one of the henchmen walked back to the dark man standing at the entrance to the lair. “There’s nothing here.”
“It’s here. Keep looking.”
“I’m telling you, there’s noth-“
“Die.”
The man clutched his chest and fell backwards in agony. He lay there, dead. The others didn’t stop looking, not even for a moment, as the man in black stepped from the shadows and glowered at them all. Jamison Crow wore his hair parted on either side of his head. His black facial hair formed a hinted smirk at the edges of his lips.
“It’s here… it’s just hidden. If I can’t pay people to find it, I’ll have to find it myself.”
The workers stopped what they were doing in relief. Jamison stepped forward and cast a spell that allowed him to detect the presence of magic in the cavern. He found it and turned to its source. He walked and let the item call him from its hiding spot. He walked up to a wall at the west end of the cavern and put his hand to the ice. “It’s behind this.”
“Want us to smash it down, boss?”
“No. You’ll just damage something useful. I’ll do it.” Jamison pointed two fingers at the wall and said a word. A jet of flame erupted from his hands and blasted the wall, quickly melting the ice and creating a widening concave space. A hole opened at the furthest part of the pit he was melting, and he opened the hole with more careful flame. He stepped through the water into the darkness beyond.
The wall of ice he’d melted had been roughly seven feet thick. “Clever old beast,” Jamison said to himself of the dragon that had hidden his treasure here. He walked further back into the hidden cavern and found the piles of gold sparkling in the blue darkness. Garnets and emeralds and sapphires glinted from their places dotted around the piles. Some were melted into the ice of the walls themselves. Jamison walked right by the gold. He didn’t pay any attention to the swords and armor he saw. He gave only a halfhearted glance to a wand, and kept walking. There, at the back, he found it.
It was beautiful. It sat atop a curled pedestal of ice. He reached out and put his hands on either side, and gently lifted it from its cold throne. The orb was maybe eight inches in diameter and perfectly spherical. Milky white shapes swam in its glasslike form, and opalescent colors bloomed all around its surface, depending on how the light hit it.
Then, from the cavern behind him, the sound of weapons being drawn and the clattering of armor as bodies repositioned themselves. “Whuh- who are you?”
“Who are YOU? Stand aside or die, fiends. Our business is not with you. Today, we’ve come to end the dragon’s life.”
“Stay where you are- BOSS! We’ve got company!”
“So kill them,” Jamison replied. He knew the henchmen could barely overrun a small horde of orcs, but this would give him time to properly store the orb. He didn’t need his lackeys anyway… they’d turned out to be useless wastes of food, as ever. He listened to the sounds of combat in the cavern behind him as he gently opened the empty Bag of Holding he’d brought just to carry the orb with. He placed the orb inside and closed the bag, then tied it securely to his waist. He walked out and looked again to the cavern, to see what was happening.
A group of adventurers was easily mopping the floor with his henchmen. One was a powerful looking mage wielding a wand of lightning. Another was a long haired dark man clad in simple half plate armor, slashing with a large sword. Another was a woman cutting and slicing with twin sickles, wearing a symbol of Pelor about her neck. Beside her was another woman, with long dark red hair and a commanding presence. The most striking one of them was the man who appeared to have a dragon’s head, and white scales covering his body. He finished the last henchman off with little trouble and asked “What happened here? FATHER! Come out and face us!”
“I don’t think he’s here,” the red haired woman replied.
The woman with the symbol of Pelor around her neck asked “So who commanded these thugs to attack us?”
“No one did,” Jamison said as he walked slowly out of the nook into the light. “I ordered them to kill you, but as you can see, no one follows directions anymore.” He sighed and smiled at them.
The mage nervously asked “Where is Acessiwal?”
”He’s safely several hundred miles to the south of here right now. Why? Did you come here to defeat him? Are you ‘adventurers’… on an ‘epic quest’? Is that what you’ve come for?”
The Pelor woman looked confused. “This can’t be right.”
The half-dragon yelled “Tell us where he is. Tell us now.”
Jamison smiled and relished the moment. “Shan’t.”
The red haired woman stepped forward and lifted her sword angrily. “We don’t have time for this… Tell us what we want to know, or you’ll meet the same fate as your friends. Who are you?”
“Me? Why, I’m the man who did this.” He held his hands out before him and bathed them in lightning. The heroes screamed and burned. The Pelor woman regained her footing first and tried to run forward. Jamison pointed at her and swept his arm aside, and the woman flew across the cavern to smash into the ice wall. She lay still.
“Kyla- NO!!” The dark-haired man screamed and advanced. Jamison flew above his sweeping sword’s blow and cast a spell on an icy stalactite, which grew at an alarming rate straight down. It lengthened and plunged down into the man, pinning him to the ice and killing him.
He floated over the others and watched as the wizard cast a spell upwards at him. Jamison smiled as his many artifacts absorbed and dissipated the power of the magic. He then put his hands back down and a hellstorm of fiery bullets shot down, peppering them. The half-dragon fell.
The remaining man yelled “Kat, he’s too powerful- hold on, we’ll teleport-“ he held out his hand, and the woman reached for it… but their hands bumped something invisible between them. Jamison’s Wall of Force spell separated them. The man would have to teleport without the woman- whom, he noted by the rings on their hands, was his wife. How amusing.
“No- NO! Raff, you go ahead!”
“NO, I WON’T LEAVE YOU!”
She cast a fireball upward and it bounced harmlessly off of the mage to strike the ceiling. “YOU HAVE TO! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!”
“Correction,” Jamison said. “…’Think of the ORPHANS’.” He blasted them with lightning and held it there, watching and laughing, as they died beneath him. He floated down.
The woman with the Pelor symbol around her neck coughed weakly. Jamison walked over and stood above her. She was bleeding very badly, and he could see there was no need to finish her off when he could watch her life seep away by the heartbeat.
Jamison looked down and shook his head with the slight smile that had become his trademark as the scourge of Greyhawk. “Ahh, let it never be said that Jamison Crow didn’t stand laughing over his enemies as they lay dying at his feet.” He chuckled and watched her eyes. In them he saw something: a flash of recognition.
“So… you’re Crow.”
“Yes. I’m not surprised you’ve heard of me. You know, everyone’s going to know my name some day. Children will weep to hear it, and women will scream to know it, and… what are you reaching for, there? Don’t you know the battle is over? You’ve lost. You’re about to die.” The woman withdrew from her tunic an odd medallion. It bore a sun symbol on it. She held it before her tremblingly. “Oh, come on. I’ll let you get this one last shot in, but after that-“
The woman coughed up some blood and said “The old… woman… said I’d use… this… again.” She yelled something and Jamison was flushed with pure white light. The medallion was like a miniature sun in her hand, and she was its golden-eyed wielder. Jamison gasped from the light and felt it shine straight through him. It felt like his veins had turned to fire. He fell to his knees and choked for breath.
When the light cleared, the woman was dead and he was alone in an ice cavern full of corpses. He looked around and knew what he’d done. He knew what the last few years had been… he knew what he’d done. His mouth hung open in disbelief and horror, and he looked at his hands, seeing them blood on them for the first time since he’d been turned to evil back in his adventuring days, years back.
All the things he’d done, and all the things he’d planned to do were clear in his head. So much murder… Plus, this thing in the bag hanging from his belt- if he’d managed to use this, then… it was too monstrous to think about. He began hyperventilating and stood up, backing away from the body. “I… It’s… I can’t…” His voice echoed off of the ice walls and mocked him.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew the black stone he’d found in the Crater Ridge Mines, so long ago. It had bade him to turn against his friends… to kill them. He’d listened to it. He’d continued to listen to it, letting it warp him completely. It had slowly turned him into an evil man- and it had happened because he had picked it up. He never did have much sense.
He remembered not caring when the pretty girl he’d come to admire died in his arms. “Hannah…” Suddenly furious, he sobbed and hurled the stone across the chamber. He untied the bag from his belt and withdrew the orb he’d come here to find. The orb could mean horrible things for all of Greyhawk if his accomplices got their hands on it. “They cannot have this,” he said to it. “They MUST NEVER HAVE THIS.”
He made a choice, then, and replaced the orb in the bag, and the bag on his belt. He knew exactly where he had to go, and he ran from the cavern with tears on his cheeks and death in his wake.
PRESENT DAY
“Oh,” Jamison said softly. Kizzlorn stared at him, waiting for his reply. Jamison looked around at his friends and saw the looks on their faces. The flaming sword of Imix dropped from his hands and plummeted to the moat below, where it splooshed with a hissing sound.
The snowflakes swirled past him as he looked at Kizzlorn, who was in almost every way the mirror image of the woman he'd killed on that day... the sorceress wife who'd begged her husband to leave for the childrens' sake.
Jamison put his shaking hands up to his face and wept. “Oh… oh my god… yes. Yes, I did.”
MORE TO COME…
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