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Message: <blockquote data-quote="andrew_kenrick" data-source="post: 1124633" data-attributes="member: 6870">The eastern slope of the hill is little more than a blood-soaked morass in which most of the party now wades, surrounding the charred and dried patch where the body of Aristarxis lay until a moment ago.  The bodies of  three dark paladins lie sinking slowly into the mud nearby but of their master, the fallen paladin Lord Errowin, there is no sign.  An eerie calm begins to descend on the surroundings, but the party remain alert.  Heb, the elusive, fey-like elf, stalks the battlefield, his keen eyes scanning for signs of Errowin and his features concealed by the shroud of invisibility he has conjured about himself.  He considers their situation for a moment.  It had escaped his attention, that Errowin had been with them all along, masquerading as Morgaine, and it had needed the promptings of a stranger – Mallisent – to reveal the truth.  He begins to mentally sift through the truths that had been revealed to them scant minutes earlier.  Lord Errowin was Captain Morgaine, or at the very least had been impersonating him.  He had used a magic item – a torque – to alter his appearance as well as protective wards to prevent detection.  On arriving in the gnoll settlement earlier in the night Mallisent had ushered the party into his quarters and weaved spells about the place to prevent their conversation from being scried upon.  He had then come out and said it – that the party must flee the paladins’ escort because their captain was none other than Errowin.  The party had disputed this accusation at first, but the more they had thought about it, the more it seemed likely.  Morgaine had been eager – almost too eager – for the party to get to Murkady without any sort of delay and knew more than he should have about the party and its history.  Heb chastised himself for not piecing it together himself sooner.Suddenly there is movement from behind Mallisent’s iron wall and two more dark paladins emerge, up to their waists in mud.  The party cannot act swiftly without getting mired themselves, but this does not sway them.Fervil speaks up so the dark paladins can hear.  “Your master has fled, Hiranans, if you truly are who you claim to be. You need not fight us, we do not oppose you.”  They appear unswayed and eager to fight on to the death.  The party are only too happy to oblige, Owyn and Waldair wading onwards through the quagmire to attack them.  Elsewhere, above the battlefield, the two mages, Ertai and Niltsiar circle on magical wings, the illusionist searching for the invisible Errowin whilst the conjuror scans the ground below for targets and threats.  Ertai spies Errowin emerging from the ethereal and shapechanging into a gnoll.  The illusionist mentally notes which gnoll is Errowin.  Fyanilin, well hidden in the darkness, severs the spine of one of the dark paladins with a well aimed arrow.  The girallon and its fiendish ape pack-mates close on the one surviving dark paladin, pummelling him into the mud with their flurried claws.The gnoll-like Errowin begins to appeal to the other gnolls for help, inciting them to draw their axes and bows and rally about him.  Seeing this turn of events, Niltsiar charms the leader of the gnolls in an attempt to sway the gnolls away from fighting for Errowin.  Ertai aids him by illuminating both Errowin and his nightmare with a well placed glitterdust, lighting them both up like candles and blinding Errowin’s mount.  Heb, unsure whether the rest of companions have spotted the glowing gnoll, snaps out of his contemplation and asks Aramil to attempt to dispel the magicks effecting Errowin.  He then hurries over to Mallisent and Niltsiar to attempt to garner their assistance in un-enchanting the fallen paladin. Niltsiar beckons for the charmed gnoll’s attention, before appealing for his aid against Errowin. “My companions and I are good people, attempting to defeat this creature,” he gestures at the Errowin-gnoll.  “He is an untrustworthy foe, and whatever bargain he made with you he will not keep. He is just using you in this, an extreme time of need for him, then he will turn on you and vanquish you and your clan. Help us destroy him, or at least stay out of the fight so that innocent lives may be spared.”  The gnoll leader looks inspired, although none of his clan are on his side, and hefts his axes and leaps to attack Errowin.  The gnoll leader is surprised as he is joined in combat by a host of apes.  Fervil shudders briefly and leaps into the air, ‘shaping into a red kite as he does so.  He climbs swiftly before diving at the fiendish raven flapping about over the battlefield.  Ertai waves his hand in one smooth gesture, muttering a short phrase of True Archian. There is a slight ripple in the air, and Errowin grunts in pain, as wounds open in his side.  Ertai then glances at the still-ethereal but blinded nightmare staggering across the hill towards Errowin and marks it as his next target.  The Errowin-gnoll gestures subtly with one hand and the newly opened wounds close once again, prompting a grunt of annoyance from Ertai.  Owyn barks an order for the gnolls standing between him and Errowin to move out of his way.  They decline and Owyn smoothly removes the arms from one and the head from a second.  Mallisent, following Heb’s urgings, flings a hand at Errowin and the fake gnoll’s fur shrivels away from him and he is revealed as Errowin once more.  “See!” Yells Mallisent.  “See!  See the beast for who he truly is!”  Errowin’s gnoll allies look unconcerned.  Heb nods in approval and begins to track across the battlefield back towards Aramil, bending down partway there and whispering to the grass.  In response, the grass all across the hill begins to move of its own accord, wrapping itself around the legs of a group of gnolls who are attempting to outflank the party and dragging them to the ground.  As he finishes urging the grass to aid him, Heb looks to Errowin and then to Aramil, recalling the vision of the pair he had so recently shared with Aramil.  It was barely a tenday ago that Aramil had lain on the ground, sequestered out of the Real by a spectre of his past, and bound in chains of Dream Heb had looked down at his friend, and then looked again - opening himself to the gifted sight of the tattooed eye on his forehead.  He had included Captain Morgaine in his vision and had been taken aback by what he had seen.  Only now was the true significance of the vision clear to him.  He had witnessed the two as either great allies or great foes, each one having sworn his soul to a higher purpose.  Although the object of Aramil’s piety was clear, that of Morgaine’s was not.  Now, of course, it is clear to Heb why this is so – the worship of the Dark Messiah and the Void brings with it obfuscation and deceit.  Meanwhile Marenon and Gwylith have by now emerged from the stinging sleet which engulfed their hiding place and are casually picking off gnolls with their bows.  The fiendish raven attempts to escape the Fervil-kite’s clutches and begins to dive-bomb the gnoll leader attacking Errowin.  Fervil swoops after it and the two continue dogfight low above the melee on the ground.“And this is for all the pain you caused me during my captivity.” Ertai moves his arm slowly back, an ice cold smile playing across his face. The air ripples and crackles with magical energy and the gashes on Errowin’s side reopen. “Treacherous wizard! I shall make you pay for this!”  Errowin shouts back across the din of the combat.“Treachery! Don't make me laugh. I certainly did not swear any loyalty to you. Everything I did was under duress. And you WILL suffer as much pain as you caused me.”Owyn seizes upon Errowin’s distraction, stepping into combat with him and planting a solid blow across his foe’s chest with his longsword.  Errowin looks down at Owyn with disdain, shrugging off the strike.  His fiendish raven is not so fortunate.  As it changes its tactics to attack the nearby girallon, it is simultaneously struck by Fyanilin’s Dagger of Returning, the Fervil-kite and the girallon’s large fist.  With an explosion of feather and bone, Errowin feels his empathic link vanish – if the loss of his companion irks him, he does not let it show.  The girallon follows up into Errowin, leading its pack of fiendish apes with it and the fallen paladin shifts his stance to better dodge and parry the claws of the menagerie.As he does so, the bonfire to his left erupts into a great column of fire, narrowly missing the combatants and its target – Errowin’s nightmare.  Owyn shudders as he recognises Fervil’s trademark spell.  “I hate fire,” he thinks to himself, having been caught in flamestrikes and fireballs far too often.  Ertai, noticing the nightmare’s escape from the flames, remembers that he had marked it as a target. “What is a nightmare’s worst nightmare?”  The illusionist asks himself before flinging a phantasmal killer at the fiend.  The demonic horse begins to bellow with fright before collapsing to the ground, still, leaving Ertai none the wiser.  He shrugs, and then smiles as Errowin begins to shout in rage. “Adequate revenge? Not... quite... yet...”The fallen paladin brings his hands together in brief prayer and the party’s world goes out, plunged into the darkness of the Void. Errowin whispers in the darkness.   “I can see you! I see you all!” His voice seems to echo about.  “Ask yourself this Owyn - if you kill me now, who will open the gates to Murkady? Do you think you will ever see your father again if I were to die now? Is that a price worth paying to see me dead?” Owyn swings out in response, two shots clanging off of Errowin's armour, one nearly sending his shortsword flying, a third slash misses in the total darkness but the final thrust finds the target grazing Errowin across the shoulder.  “What is it to be? Would you rather see me dead or your father alive? Answer me that!”  Owyn curses in reply but does not answer.Heb shouts out to Aramil in the darkness, instinctively moving towards his horse as he does so.  Somewhere in the distance the horses begin whinnying loudly in distress.  “Aramil, can you remove the darkness?”  asks Heb.“I shall try, I shall try.”  The cleric then drops to his knees and plunges his hands into the cold earth.  “May the Lady light our darkest night and strip bare the magic foul from this land!”  The resulting dispel strips bare the magic from the land, but not entirely as planned.  Niltsiar is left the worst off – his charmed gnoll snaps out of the enchantment, all of his summoned creatures vanish back to the fiendish planes once more and the mage begins to plummet to the ground as his magical wings are dismissed by the divine power.  Yet after Rahana’s magic has scoured the area clean of friendly magicks, the inky blackness of the Void remains.  Ertai finishes off the job Aramil started, drawing on the stuff of the shadow plane to mimic the effects of a daylight spell and bringing light back into the area once more.As he moves stealthily towards the horses, Heb glances back towards the combat and his mind turns to all that he has learnt about Errowin in his time with the party.  He had never encountered the fallen paladin himself, but the tales Aramil had told him were vivid enough in his mind.  The party had first met him a little over six months previously, whilst they waited out the winter in the mining village of Duvik’s Pass, located far to the north.  He had entered the village masquerading as a Knight of Hirana, as he had been until tonight, and set himself up as the law in town.  Errowin had engaged with the party as a benevolent patron and dispatched them to do his bidding, sending them to clear out a local dungeon.  There the party had inadvertently released an entombed devil – Aristarxis – although at the time they believed it to be a genuine mistake and not as the result of Errowin’s machinations.  On returning to the surface the party witnessed Errowin battling with the devil, before dismissing it.  It was only later, as Aristarxis came to Errowin’s rescue as the party chased him from the village, that they realised that he had actually bound the devil.  Errowin’s true colours were first revealed to the party after he began to brandish his own form of justice about the village, hanging alleged criminals whose only misdemeanours were to learn too much about the knight.  Errowin’s true allegiances were not to the Church of Hirana – although he had once served the Lady of Justice – but to the Dark Messiah.  When the party finally drove him from the village with the aid, and the life, of a great white dragon they expected him to return to haunt them one day.  It was only when stopping in the port of Saam some months later that they encountered Aristarxis once more and learnt that Errowin also ventured to Murkady.  The devil threw his lot in with the party that night, promising his services in the coming war in return for the group securing his freedom from Errowin.  With Aramil finally freeing him earlier tonight, Heb wonders if the devil will honour his end of the bargain.  Heb focuses his attention to the present once more, surveying the party’s situation.  Errowin is in the process of backing away from the party, seeking an escape from the overwhelming odds.  “I do not believe that you would throw away the one chance of freeing your father from an eternity of torment to exact such petty emotions as revenge. Revenge? How would you feel afterwards? Hollow, revenge is hollow. Emotion is hollow.”  His blade draws a purple arc in the air as he brings it down in a flurry of precise strikes against Owyn, the ranger's parrying attempts made to look clumsy and slow by comparison.  Owyn drops wordlessly to the ground at the fallen paladin’s feet, scant minutes after provoking the fallen paladin into this combat.</blockquote>

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