Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plane Sailing" data-source="post: 1065065" data-attributes="member: 114">The Blessed ReturnsThe current party roster is as follows:Trajan 2nd Fighter/5th Jazumai/3rd  Sword SaintAnne-Marie 6th Fighter/2nd Monk/ 1st DuellistMeliamne 7th Elven Bard *Arilyn 8th WizardEarly in the morning, Trajan is woken by a female voice speaking inside his head.“Where is my Dala? The door swings wide and I want him. Bring him to me now or face the consequences”Trajan simply responds to the Sending  “he died”. He quickly gets to his feet and rouses the others. “We’re likely to have trouble any time now”Suddenly four sickly emerald green blobs appear, floating and pulsating in the air above them. Pustules on their surface pop, and thin jets of hot acid squirt out towards individuals as they circle around.Trajan and Meliamne prepare their bows, while Anne-Marie makes a prodigous leap, covering fully 30ft and striking at one of the blobs en-route. Her rapier pierces it and it pops and vanishes. Meanwhile another five of the pulsating blobs wink into existence.A desperate dance ensues; Arilyn starts launching magic missiles, although cowed before the aura of menace exuded by the creatures. Trajan’s arrows slip through the blobs without causing any harm. Meliamne is gradually taking them down with her magic bow, as is Anne-Marie with her startling acrobatic leaps.Suddenly the air is clear again, as the last of the blobs wink out suddenly. Nobody is untouched by the painful acidic scars, and Trajan calls upon Asura’s healing might to make the worst of the damage better.There is one thought on  everyone’s mind. The Blessed. Furthermore, she has increased in power enough to summon creatures capable of teleporting to a location which she is scrying. They are going to have to deal with her now before she becomes more powerful. Racking their brains, they remember information from the ruined temple of elemental evil that suggested she was heading towards Rastor. Trajan remembers it as a proverbially “backwoods” mining community in Morannon. Meliamne can supply some additional details, in particular that there used to be some communication with a dwarvish community up in the mountains near them a few hundred years ago – the last time he came through this way.The decision is made to head off to Morannon directly, rather than proceeding back to Knightsbridge as planned. Crossing the border into Morannon in the farmlands is relatively easy, but they join the road before they approach the town of Olduvor for the night.On the road they met a young man with a small mule-wagon loaded with some bolts of cloth and spices heading in their direction. They strike up a conversation with him and find he is a Southlander called Bannon. He seems to turn his hand to any number of different activities – sometimes a merchant, sometimes a bounty hunter, sometimes a dilettante. He is soon accepted into the company as an equal, declaring that the cloth business has turned to dust recently anyway. They arrive at Olduvor just before dusk, and they are viewed with suspicion by the guards, with their slicked-back black hair. Trajan’s diplomacy gets them inside, and they decide to make their way into a central plaza, where they find a tavern named the Sly Rat. It is overpriced and quite dirty, and the locals scowl at them over the tops of their mugs of ale.Meliamne decides to lighten the atmosphere in the way that he normally would in the woodland parties he is used to, so he starts conjuring sparkles and musical notes from his fingertips. The response of the patrons is remarkable, as with a cries they all leap up and attempt to squeeze out through the door, all at once. The innkeeper comes over with fear on his face, sweating heavily. “I’m very sorry, gentlemen, but I’m very much afraid that I was mistaken when I offered you rooms earlier. I’ve double checked and there are none actually free”He’s wringing his hands.“Please don’t think badly of me sirs, but my patrons have all fled scared and I fear that the very worst might happen. In fact I think I’d better be closing up now, if you’d be so kind as to drink up. Please my lords?”He is obviously distressed, and they leave a pile of Marks on the table as they get up to leave. Entering the square there is quite a large crowd of people who are standing, watching the inn. The others are going to try to sneak away but Meliamne doesn’t want to leave the innkeeper out of pocket, and he sings a song which captivates the crowd, and weaves into it a suggestion that the inn is OK and that there had been a mistake by someone who was drunk. As he retires, he smiles to himself as he sees the crowd start to dissipate, some going back into the Sly Rat.They retrieve their horses and manage to find their way through the unlit streets towards a coaching inn, named The Royal. Even more expensive, the party remain particularly circumspect and low profile, and avoid drawing any attention to themselves this time. They knew that Morannon was a country of dark secrets and old magic, but they little imagined that there might be such a strong reaction as they had seen here this night.The next morning they set off for Rastor, and arrive in the evening to find it like a wild west outpost, along with saloon. Gathering information suggests that the mining is going down, but there are strange ochre-robed priests up at the crater ridge mines are hiring new toughs.Trajan remembers that these were the guys that were linked with unspeakable evil and working with gnolls back in the moat house last year – back when the company comprised Lysander, Azrin, K’tan and M’ir and he had just joined the company.Apparently although most of the traffic is through the main door into the old crater ridge mines, there are groups of these priests who use a lesser door to the North of the complex. A plan is laid to ambush some and steal their robes, so that they can sneak inside.</blockquote>

Verification