The Blackgate Chronicles
Session 1, Part 1 – Under the Knife
Oathday, 5th Gozran, 817
Rhynn struggled with the red-shrouded men as they bound each of her wrists in heavy rope.
Is this it? Is this how it ends for me? I had only just started this life of mine!
As the wizard was being bound, a woman, also draped in red robes stepped forward. “Your blood will feed the Cardinal Mooooon!”
Rhynn sighed.
The chief crazy amongst the crazies.
The priestess smiled and caressed Rhynn’s hair. “Cardinal, like the mooooon… Such delicate features. I do believe you’ve the touch of the fey in your blood. Delicious!” She licked her lips.
“You’re insane!” Rhynn spat.
The woman smiled and nodded once as she raised a curved dagger overhead. She began to chant as Rhynn was forced backward and splayed across the top of a large tree stump in the woods. Rhynn gasped as she looked upon the night sky. There hung a red moon. A moon that she had never once seen before. A moon that did not exist.
“Impossible!”
~
Shepherd Thawn stopped his run to take a brief respite against a tree. Sweat dripped from his grey hair upon his weathered face. At this pace, his lungs burned.
Indua preserve! He looked upon his shaking hands.
Surely my companions suffer more. They’re not used to moving this fast through the wilds…in the dead of night no less!
Bushes cracked as the Northman stumbled through, torch in hand. His face was beet-red, his breath ragged.
“Halloran, take a moment,” Thawn said, his own breath slowing.
Halloran nodded once as he leaned and fell to one knee, his heavy chainmail chimed with the thud. He looked close to vomiting. “Rhynn…” was all he could say. His head hung low, as he steadied himself upon his warhammer.
The ranger nodded. “We’re not far now. These tracks are fresh. We’ll make it, but you’ll need your breath in you when we catch them.”
He’s strong, but he carries a lot of weight with that armor.
The warrior, T’bidi, arrived next. “Why have we stopped?!” she asked as she balanced herself upon her spear. She was also clad in heavy chain armor, but she kept to her feet despite heavy breath and sweat drenching her dark skin.
Thawn saw the trembling in her legs, but the look in her eyes was one of determination. “Just a moment, so we’ll be ready to fight.” He looked about. “Where is Lemarc? All of this started with him.”
“I am here,” the voice came from the shadows.
Thawn flinched.
How does he do that?
“We don’t know why these cultists hound us…or why they do anything for that matter,” the thief continued as he slid out of the shadows into the light of Halloran’s torch. “We only know they’ve abducted our wizard.” He mopped sweat from his curly black hair with the back of his arm and looked about.
“This map better be worth it!” Halloran challenged.
“Let us hope,” Lemarc said as he nodded. “Shall we?” He gestured forward.
Halloran climbed to his feet and shouldered roughly past him.
“It would seem so.”
~
Rhynn fought back tears.
I am a child of the Spark. Will I join with it in the afterlife? It? Him? Her? So many questions left unanswered. Where are they?!
Each of Rynn’s wrists has been tightly bound in heavy rope. At the end of each, a cultist leaned and pulled. Her shoulders screamed in pain. The priestess – still standing over her with that ceremonial dagger brandished high – droned on, but her voice seemed distant, so lost was the wizard in her own mind as she stared past the red moon into the depths of space beyond.
From ebon maw spat ‘cross the cold, hither did come the hates of old…
A distant shout brought the priestess up short. No, not a shout, but a dying scream. Rhynn found herself smiling.
“See to the interlopers!” the priestess screeched. “The ceremony is not yet complete!”
~
From Lemarc’s point of view, it appeared that the cleric’s warhammer had found its way to grey pudding as Halloran bellowed and dropped a thunderous blow upon the face of a cultist. “Röth!” he bellowed.
For what he lacks in grace he makes up for in fury.
The thief moved forward, sliding through the deep shadows provided by the canopy of leaves overhead. He saw the dark silhouettes of the cultists coming in from multiple directions as they descended upon Halloran, T’bidi, and Thawn who was far out ahead, charging deeper into the woods.
While the Northman wailed upon a trio of cultists to his right, T’bidi was completely surrounded in a sea of red robes to his left. He heard the shepherd call Rhynn’s name once from beyond.
Choices, choices.
A cultist ran past the thief in the dark. Lemarc’s arm snapped out, dagger in hand, and he proceeded to do a cutter’s work upon one of the man’s kidneys. The cultist was already silent as he hit the ground and slid to a halt in the dark leaves.
Beyond, the din of steel could be heard as the red-robed men surged upon T’bidi. Though she was set upon on all sides, her shield and spear – as well as her heavy chain armor – turned all of their blows away.
I’m pretty good in a scrap, but that one’s a fighter!
A thrust of her spear caught one under the chin and out through the side of his head before she pulled it out to leave him gurgling on the ground. She slid back out of their circle, leapt over a fallen tree, and braced her spear in anticipation. One of the cultists charged as he screamed to the moon, scimitar swinging in a wide arc over his head only to run himself up the length of her spear along the way. T’bidi booted him off and faced the others, the point of her spear poised like a serpent ready to strike.
~
The three cultists surrounded Halloran as they cut at him with their curved blades. “Röth take you!” the cleric shouted as he stepped through their number, turned, and released a
thunderwave. The rupture left two of them reeling. The body of the third shuddered and distorted unnaturally as the surge of power liquified his innards. He dropped to the ground as a slop of flesh.
The two remaining cultists pressed forward again. One of their swings found a gap in Halloran’s hauberk and blood started to flow. The bear of a man spat blood from his thick, flaxen beard. “Time to die, Looooonatics!” he said, mimicking their ridiculous speech.
Halloran swung up…and then down upon one of their heads, reducing the man’s height by half a hand’s width. The cultist slumped lifelessly to the ground. His next swing came up and caught the remaining one in the midsection, forcing the man to topple forward. Looking across to where T’bidi was once again becoming surrounded, he shouted, “Save some for me!”
~
Thawn saw Rhynn being held upon her back. Over her, shrouded in ruddy light, a red-robed woman held aloft a dagger and chanted toward the night sky, her voice reaching ever higher. “Rhynn, hold on!” he called to his friend.
A cultist pounced upon Thawn out of the dark as he charged forward. A swipe of a scimitar drew blood from the ranger’s thigh. Thawn grimaced as he retaliated with his staff. A sudden jab to the cultist’s solar plexus left the man gasping for air at his feet.
The priestess was now staring at Thawn. She brought down one hand in a sweeping motion and a spire of red fire descended. Thawn leapt to his right, evading the magic of her spell, causing her to hiss in frustration.
He continued forward and again she called her magic upon him. “Be held!” she demanded. Red moonlight shone upon him from nowhere. Thawn quickly touched the smear of red clay that the length of his nose – a mark of his devotion to Indua as her priest – in a warding gesture. The magic of the spell rolled through and past him as he shook it off. “Stop him!” she cried. “The ceremony must be completed!”
With the priestess distracted, Rhynn acted.
Now’s my time! She kicked out…feebly. In response, the two men holding the ropes that bound her arms leaned further back causing her to groan in pain.
“Settle down you!” one of her captives said. “We’re going to feed you soon.”
Huh?
“…to the moooon,” he continued.
Thawn arrived, swinging his staff upon the taunting cultist, but the man ducked under his swing. “Priestess, save me!”
“He shall be finished!” she replied. The athame in her hand began to glow with red light as she cast
inflict wounds. When the tip of the dagger entered Thawn’s shoulder, dark tendrils raced from the wound and began to eat from his flesh. The ranger gasped and began to falter, his eyes wide in pain.
Holding his staff level in two hands, Thawn swung twice. The first strike sent one of the cultists holding Rhynn’s bindings to the ground. The second cracked into the shoulder of the priestess causing her to wince in pain.
With one hand free, Rhynn rolled from atop the stump…and somehow managed to completely entangle herself in the dangling ropes as she now stood restrained in front of her second captor.
Are you kidding me?!
Her captor smiled and began to draw his blade, a wicked gleam in his eye. Rhynn arched an eyebrow at him before uttering a word of power. A word that brought with it three purple darts that whirled through the chill air in circles before two of them pierced through the man causing him to drop to the ground as smoke billowed forth from the holes. The third struck the priestess who now stood shakily, her strength waning before a final crack of Thawn’s staff sent her to the ground.
The remaining cultists were dealt with in short order…
