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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 1030003" data-attributes="member: 41">77—Sadly, fighting with and fighting alongside do not always mean the same thing.The party regroups within the city just out of darkvision range from the guards at the entranceway.  Taran and Merkatha relate their intelligence, and Elgin states the obvious.“We’re attacking the tower.”“Yeah,” Taran says.  “Always go kill the glowing thing first is what I always say.  You think these evil priests would get the message eventually.”Thelbar instructs his companions to hold hands, then teleports them to the walkway surrounding the top of the tower.  The green light is both disorienting as well as sickening, and seems to be oozing from the very stone of the place.  The building seems to vibrate slightly, and a faint howling can be heard, as if a great wind were blowing on the other side of the stone wall.Elgin reaches out to the unseen dawn many worlds away, and summons a gloriously beautiful winged celestial who greets him affectionately, then stone shapes a hole in the tower wall.  As soon as the breach is opened, a powerful gust of wind sucks into the tower, and a wide shaft of ghoulish light beams out from the opening.  As Elgin prepares the group with last-minute protective magic, Thelbar buries the nearby barracks with a series of rock to mud spells.  The luckiest dwarves are able to escape the destruction, but many more are drowned in torrents of clinging mud before they can escape.  Alarm bells begin to ring across the city, and the normally quiet place is soon filled with shouting dwarven voices.As  Thelbar completes his destruction of the duergar military, the celestial gazes into the glowing interior of the tower with a horrified expression on its face.  To its superior true seeing, the tower is seen to be completely hollow, and the whole shaft is given over to a whirling maelstrom of semi-substantial souls.  The wind from their passage gushes out from the opening in rhythmic pulses, whipping the celestial’s robes about haphazardly.“The torment,” the celestial whispers.  A lone tear runs down his cheek, and the party is suddenly struck by waves of a palpable righteous anger that emanates from the holy being and seeps into the adventurers, suffusing them with an unquestioned moral imperative.A lone dwarf stands at the bottom of the tower, regarding the heroes above with a level stare.  The dwarf clutches a glowing war hammer, and hunkers down within a suit of fantastically carved and decorated plate armor.  He is accompanied by three similarly equipped bodyguards.  Strangely, none of the four are duergar—they are hill, or mountain dwarves by the look of them, although the central figure has unhealthily gaunt features, his skin reflects the light with a slightly reflective patina and is pulled tightly across his bones; flat, black eyes stare out from beneath thin and patchy eyebrows and his beard hangs dull and lifeless across his chest.  <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Metagame note:  My DMs actual description was, “His face is gaunt and pulled tight—like Demi Moore.” </li> </ul>This is the Uqeraq, servitor and sometime confidant of an ancient fertility goddess driven mad through undeath; that he chose to face his fate within the very receptacle where his most profane harvest is stored seems ominous enough, but if they are frightened, the Champions of the Risen Goddess give no sign.Merkatha fires an arrow at the staring dwarves, but the shaft is snatched up by the maelstrom, and whirls harmlessly around the inside of the tower.  The rest of the party flies down into the tower, as Thelbar prepares the way with an arc of chain lighting, followed by a fireball.  The dwarves absorb this barrage stoically, then fan out and form a semi-circular protective perimeter around their gaunt leader.Her archery useless within the interior of the tower, Merkatha remains on the tower walkway, and begins sniping at important-looking dwarves in the city below, hindering their efforts to rescue drowning soldiers or restore order.  The souls trapped within the tower begin to pour out of the opening, which seems to cause a general panic to rise within the dwarven city.Taran and Gorquen demonstrate that even such dedicated dwarven defenders as these are no help against a foe who can simply fly over their position, and before the dwarves can respond, they have flanked the Uqeraq in a classic pincer attack.  Elgin is deposited on the floor of the tower by his celestial companion, and the two of them begin laying into their dwarven enemies, preventing them from collapsing upon Taran and Gorquen.  As Taran expected to recognize the face of his old adventuring companion upon confronting him, he is disappointed.  This dwarf could be anyone—Ishlok’s memory-charm holds fast.  Alvodar Bluebeard, scion of his clan, called the Cursebreaker, former King of Kor’En Eamor and the Dark Ways Beneath Her, one-time high-priest of Moradin and now Child of His Curse regards his former companion.“I would have thought I killed you when I snuffed the life from our world,” he says.  “But I see that Ishlok has given your soul a new body.  I entreat you—place it within my care.”“You destroyed my army, you f-cking traitor,” Taran spits as he hacks through the dwarf’s armor.“No, your ineptitude destroyed your army,” Alvodar says.  “I merely set a plague upon the survivors.  We are all pawns to the gods, Tar-Ilou, but we can make choices about whom we serve.  Die with me now, and I shall show you the white joy of the forever-death.”“You go on without me,” Taran grunts, as he punches Black Lisa through the dwarf’s gilded breastplate.Alvodar sighs once and collapses into a heap that instantly ages as if dead for hundreds of years.After several minutes pass, the last of the trapped souls have found their way out of the tower and are streaking around the city, and the party can hear panicked screams coming from without.  Merkatha climbs down and joins the group.“They’re routed,” she says matter of factly.  “I think we killed most of the soldiers.”The party searches both the temple and the Uqeraq’s tower, but cannot locate his phylactery.“Goddamnit,” Taran curses.  “We’re going to fight him again.”“And again, and on until we are finished here,” Thelbar says.  “Think about it, brother, if you were this lich, where would you place your essence?”“I would give my essence to my goddess,” Gorquen says.  “Ceredain has it.”“Ceredain has it,” Elgin agrees.“Fine, we’ll do this the hard way,” Taran says.  “The way I see it, we need to get his phylactery and see about bringing him back to life.”  When the party looks horrified at the suggestion, he continues.  “Real life, I mean.  We need Alvodar, not this Uqeraq.  If we bring him around, he might know the best way to deal with the bitch.”-----The group follows a set of curved stairs into the worked passages beneath the tower, and eventually discover a narrow underground passageway that directly toward the palace.  The passage ascends into a large complex, and the party can see a group of determined-looking dwarves mustering protectively before a grand double-door.Thelbar invokes a horrid wilting in their midst, and the door is suddenly unguarded.  The party bursts into the room and surprises a dozen heavily-armored dwarves, congregated around what must be their king.  They appear to have been arguing, but they grow silent when they spy the characters, and rasp weapons from their sheathes.  A pair of stone statues on either side of the door animate as well, and within seconds, the party is embroiled within a furious melee.The dwarves are tough, and Thelbar has exhausted his most potent spells fighting to this point, but in the end, the dwarven King lies dead amidst the bodies of his generals, along with the rubble that was his clan’s most potent constructs just a minute ago.As the party is looting the bodies, they are confronted by a dwarven woman, whose royal regalia identify her as the queen.  “Take what you like, you filthy ghouls,” she hisses, “and leave my kingdom.”“Your kingdom, lady?” Thelbar says with a half-smile.  “Here are our terms:  you will release all your slaves, and evacuate the city.  Upon our return tomorrow, any duergar who still remain within the city walls will be slain on sight, with no parley.  We will take your slaves from you, and you will surrender them without a fight, or we will show you no mercy at all.”  Into Taran’s head, he thinks, “we cannot afford another battle today, brother.  We must bluff from a position of power, and go quickly. ”The queen glares at Thelbar.  “You threaten me with death?”  she sneers.  “Go then, and return to this place—you shall have the jewel of my crown, and the best part of my self; given you as a gift from my own hands.  I will show you what the duergar are made of.”Taran regards a pile of dwarven innards lying just outside of their former possessor.  “I can already see what you’re made of,” he says, “and it stinks just like everyone else’s.  Do what you’re told, and flee.”-----But the next day, the party sees what the woman meant by her oath.  Every dwarf in the place is dead, either through poison, or strangled by the hands of their fellows.  Most of the slaves have been murdered as well, and the whole city is infused with a charnel stink, felt in the spirit as much as sensed by the body.  The mass suicide lingers palpably in the air; an act of total hatred and defiance.“My god,” Elgin says.  “Lathander have mercy.”“Lathander can’t help these people,” Taran says, taking his goggles from his eyes.  “Their souls are everywhere.”</blockquote>

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