(G282 22/07/2016 via Roll20 - JF(GM), AP) 54

(G282 22/07/2016 via Roll20 - JF(GM), AP) 54

DAY 131 (fri) cont ...

Kirk and his crew continued to explore the underground areas of the Preserver Temple.

The next door they came to had eight 'Skuttlers' in it. They were of a different design and fired sticky webs at them which slowed them down a bit, but they were no match against grenade launchers and were quickly blasted to pieces.

They had cleared the southern corridors now except for one room, that Kirk now doubled back to. Their was no door to this room, the corridor just opened out into a an area that was full of scraps of hide, broken bits of wood, bits of metal, gnawed old bones and other rubbish. Many footprints lead to a set of doubled doors.

Kirk checked the doors then opened them. A large blue skin (or Lope as the Vulcan's called them) leapt out and attacked Kirk with a long serrated sword. There was a Lope maiden and two children in the living chamber behind him.

Kirk ordered the crew to use rubber bullets and they certainly knocked the Lope chief about a bit, but he was a tough customer and did a lot of damage with his sword. He could also, every so often, exude a poisonous gas from his body that engulfed the crew and made them very ill indeed.

The combat ended (briefly) when the chief broke his sword on the wall as Kirk ducked. Kirk ordered solid slug rounds fired and the chief was blasted to a bloody heap on the floor.
A few moments later though, as if by magic, he jumped back to his feet, ran to his room and started fighting, this time with an axe!

Kirk ordered a fighting retreat and the headed back down the corridor, shooting as they went, Kirk ducking under the wild axe swings. Celes was the one that eventually dropped the chief again and they quickly tied him up before he regained consciousness.

Kirk and Celes tried to talk to the maiden in the room. She could understand them fine, but was far from friendly. The chief was laid out on the bed.
Kirk tried to reason with her, 'We mean you no harm. Just tell us where we can find a Katric Arc and we'll leave.'
'Dirty surface dweller! Fornicator of pigs! Our people use your skulls for drinking vessels and  your filthy hair to stuff pillows!' she snarled back.

Kirk shrugged and gathered the crew to leave but Murphy took him to one side.
'Why not just threaten her? She might cave in.'
'Not very Starfleet though is it?'
'Well, maybe not, but you could argue if she can give us an Arc now, then it will save more death and destruction...'
Kirk could see the wisdom of this so threatened to explode a grenade in the chief's face unless she did as she was told.

At first she snarled, 'Your bluffing!' but in the end she gave them directions to where she thought they might find an Arc. Kirk grunted, put the pin back in the grenade (it was just a Stun Grenade) and lead the crew along the corridor the maiden had told them to follow.

(G281 15/07/2016 via Roll20 - AP(GM), JF, Mira)

(G281 15/07/2016 via Roll20 - AP(GM), JF, Mira)

DAY 249 cont...

I would have dearly loved to have found out what the process was that was at work in this room. It was such a shame that we were just going through the Black Rift like a wave of death.

I watched as more bodies appeared and disappeared. One appeared on the bier next to Basil and he snatched a coin-purse from it before it disappeared again. The shadows popped up once more, but Sylvia saw four of them off again before they could do any  harm.
Yli put an arrow through one of them and Irritator finished off the last one with a Magic Missile.

After that I looked at the crude map I had been drawing in my journal of the Black Rift and came to the conclusion that we only had one tower left to check out. Since this was probably where the dragon was we prepared as much as we could and Basil sent in two 'Waves of Wolves' ahead of us.

The large chamber we came to did indeed have Despayr in it, manipulating the shadow weave in the middle. Up and down the walls were cages that held the bodies of people that looked only partially alive. Some sort of force was being drawn from them. It was all very confusing and pretty terrifying, I could see the people were wasted away, but still just alive, twitching from time to time. Some of them even groaned some words, either pleading for freedom or death.

The dragon took to the air, thus avoiding the dire wolves and the battle began. There was no roof to this tower, but he only went to thirty feet or so. Drashnag was the first to arrive in the  chamber, right behind the wolves, and shot up at Despayr with his bow.

The dragon started swooping about the place, doing flybys, and chomped one of the wolves in half. Since they were not much use on the ground I summoned two dire bats and sent them in. The dragon killed one of them as well, but they were serving their purpose, keeping it distracted while we all arrived. I was terrified, sure we were going to die here, but we had a lot of fire power as we all piled in and did battle.

Yli and Shump arrived and started shooting. Most of their arrows just bounced off its scales, but some dug deeply into its hide. Drashnag was the first to land an arrow on it, claiming first blood.

I chanced my arm on a Baleful Polymorph spell and it very nearly took hold, which would have ended  the battle right there. For some stupid reason I didn't go for a flying creature. I'm sure if I'd decided to turn it into a raven then that would have been that! Well, we'll never know, since the dragon managed to shrug off the spell and the fighting continued.

Basil and I started throwing Earth Bind spells at it, hoping that one would eventually catch. It attacked with its breath weapon, a cone of shadow shards that really injured everyone that was  unlucky to get in the way of it.

We all, well most of us, got caught in one of the showers and in a slight panic I carved a hideout into the cave wall with Stoneshape and hid in there with Irritator. Sylvia was badly injured but was too bulky to follow us, so ran as fast as she could back to the library. Thankfully the dragon didn't pursue her, or she would have been dead for sure.

I turned into a badger and came back out when the dragon turned to other targets. Basil tried a Flame Strike but it was shrugged off. I could see Despayr was injured. It had a despicable way of healing though. It used its breath weapon on the prisoners and slaughtered a row of them.
This had the effect of healing everyone in the chamber.

Basil summoned three hippogriffs and sent them in to take on the dragon. They harried it to the ground and wonder of wonders one of my Earth Binds finally landed!

We knew it was all over then, but no mercy was shown. Irritator blasted away with his empowered magic missiles and the other charged in with their melee weapons.

It was a Hypothermia spell that I cast that finally killed the poor beast off, a huge icy blast that killed it stone dead. Thus was the end of Despayr.

(G280 01/07/2016 via Roll20 - AP(GM), JF, Mira)

(G280 01/07/2016 via Roll20 - AP(GM), JF, Mira)

DAY 249 (15 Uktar)(November) cont ...

After the fight with the flaming skulls I was all for having a good old poke about in the library. By some magical means the books were unharmed and it looked like such an interesting place.

But well, Yli is a nice enough fellow you know, but he seems to have set himself up as the voice of caution, or to put it another way, someone who always seems to take the opposite view to me. It could be worse, I realise that, he is not as stubborn as Gurudor was or any of those other weirdos that turned up at the beginning, but I suppose I am just used to being the one in charge of this expedition.

Anyway, Yli didn't want to touch a thing and wanted to wait until we had recovered from the fight. I said that if that was the case we should head back to the 'Dragon Proof Cave' and he agreed to that.

We met the others, rested and healed ourselves. Another whole day sitting around in a cave. I cannot recommend the Plane of Shadows as a holiday destination.

I read and re-read all the books, letters and papers we had collected so far in this place.

DAY 250 (16 Uktar)(November)

I skryed the dragon again this morning, and as he was up to his usual tricks we went back to the library. Unbelievably all the skulls were back in their original places!
I gave Yli a long look, but I suppose he couldn't have known this was going to happen.

In whispers we discussed our next move. It seemed that these days our next step was always discussed between myself and Yli and the others merely followed along. Basil had hardly said a word in the last two days I think.

We decided to follow one of the paths out the library that would double back, according to my notes taken when I had used my magic to view the entire rift, and go to another area we had so far avoided.
It was the cave Drashnag had ran to when he was under the influence of the Fear spell but he could not remember what was in there.

We got ready for a fight anyway, just incase, then charged in. We saw three grey skinned women in robes, holding staves, with swords in their belts. Also in the room were six biers.

After all the trouble we'd had in the place so far, we were in no mood for nonsense, but I did call out at them, 'We are really armed to the teeth ladies so I suggest you surrender.'
I even walked up with my arms open, but since one of them had already been slain at that point the other two were not interested. Shump and Sylvia joined me, trying to convince the two remaining women to surrender, but it had no effect on them.

They were easily dealt with, two died and one ran off, but was shot and captured. On the biers, corpses would appear, then disappear a few seconds later. It was most odd.
Some corpses were old (as in had been dead awhile) some were fresh, as if just recently dead. Some were beggars, others were lords.

When a corpse of one of the women we had just killed appeared on a bier, Yli, for no real reason I could guess at, shot it!

Six shadows appeared and attacked us, draining the strength from all those they touched. Thankfully Sylvia was quick on her feet and used her powers to Turn Undead and destroyed all six on them in one go.

We all looked at the biers, but were too mindful of the library to touch anything. A richly dress corpse appeared, with lots of jewellery on it. No one went to take it though.

I looked at Sylvia, but she had no idea what this set up was. There was a table near the biers with some small amount of treasure on it and another set of shadow bellows in the south corner of the cave.

I watched the biers in fascination. A fresh body, still bleeding, with a dagger in its
chest appeared, then disappeared again. It was macabre.

Humans, lizardfolk, yuan-ti, beggars, skeletons, some naked, some finely dressed, people from all over Faerune. There seemed no pattern to it.

We go the surviving woman into the middle of the room, tied her up then healed her. I started to ask questions. As expected, and with the same sort of attitude of all the other people we had come across in this place, she was sullen and unapologetic about what she had been up to.
Her name was Beothea and when I asked her what was going on her she said,
'You'll find out when you meet the master.'
She meant Despayr, that annoying dragon that was picking us off one by one.
'He's quite irritating, I'll give him that.'
She wasn't very friendly, understandably, but at least she was talking. I felt I could get more out of her.

Then suddenly Drashnag decapitated her! Blood from her neck splashed all over my trousers as her body slumped to the cobblestones.
'Drashnag! What the hell are you doing!'
As usual I had to get Shump to translate. Drashnag just shrugged and wandered off though. Yli intervened, ever the voice of opposition, 'You were never going to get anything from her anyway. These are all really horrible people, perhaps it was for the best.'
I was rather angry with him and the one-eyed orc at that point,
'We could at least have found out what was going on in this room. But not just that, let me tell you about the Weave, Mr Yli,' I lectured, 'This stupid dragon is up to something. Meddling with things it doesn't understand. I've had nothing but days of sitting about in a cave thinking about this. The Weave can be thought of as a fabric, it is where all magic comes from, arcane and divine. That blasted dragon is ripping up the fabric with its claws like a dim-witted child with a pair of scissors. Now listen! This all started with Mystra, the Mother of all Magic. The notes of Zertharmas talk about an unravelling! They plan to create a dead-magic zone on Faerune. Think about that. Beothea must surely have known something about it. Why are they doing this? What do they hope to gain? You get a dead-magic zone by destroying the Weave... uhh! I wish I could remember form my spellcraft lessons...'
Basil, who was a master of spellcraft, would know more, but he was silent on the subject.
'Anyway,' I said. 'I know there is a thing called the Shadow Weave. It's like the Weave on the material plane, but here in this plane. How all that ties in, I don't know, but I bet Beothea would have done.'
'All we need to know, is that we need to stop them,' said Yli, seeing things in simple terms.
'Them? Who is them? The dragon? The priests of Shar and Cyric? The entire Plane of Shadows? We can't take on everyone. Maybe there is a solution to this that doesn't involve killing everyone we come across here.'
'Maybe...' assented Yli.