The Drow War: Episode 22 - Planequake |
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Cast of CharactersFëanáro Calaelen, Elf, Male, Arcane Archer Lady Lorenna FireEye, Human, Female, Mystic Theurge Sir Alfric, Human, Male, Rogue Gibora, Half-Orc, Female, Bear Warrior Levithix ux Bahamuti, Dragonborn (Half-Elf), Male, Wizard From the journal of BrottorWithout warning the ground begins to tremble and shake violently. At the same time there comes a sound like thunder followed by the roar of rising wind. We see visions of images for a second then they are gone. There are screams from around, people think it is the end of the world. It is the rifts that had appeared previously are now happening on a larger scale. We think we are in the middle of a planequake! There is general panic going on, some people get sucked through rifts away while random people get dropped onto our plane. There is infact a giant mismatch of devils, demons, angels and other random planar stragglers. A rift opens up over Levee and he only just leaps out the way. There are a lot of rifts and many are staying open! Steady rifts are blue, but there are black rifts around. Jessault heads to the church to defend it against the evil and get as many people in there as possible. I draw my hammer and get stuck in. A human babbles to me about terrible tentacles, I go hunting. I find some horrible tentacled troll thing. Levee flies up to a rift and examines it. It will probably be 2 way. Its steady but it won't be permanent, over time it will shrink. The black ones are less gateways more an entophic fissure - it erodes reality around it. From the journal of Countess Rubina MMH
Hack, Duck, Slash, Roll, Stab, Spin, Kill, Cleave, Twang ("Oi Cal, that one was a bit close!"), Bounce, Cut, Parry, Miss (bugger), Maim (Ha!), Jink, Eviscerate, Wohooooo! This is great! Eventually after 1/2 an hour of absolute carnage the sides seem to come down to demons/Devils vs. Angles, etc. Levi has found out that as the larger rifts are slowly shrinking "Rubina's Interdimensional Import/Export Corp." may not be a go-er. Alfric ponders charging the sides rent to se our plane as a battleground. Levi comes across the Xoth Sarandi Citizens Concerned About the Sudden Appearance of Trans Dimensial Rifts, Demons, Devils and Associated Phenomena (also known as XSCCASATDRDDAP, from now on known as an angry mob) who claim that a old women is responsible and is a witch and should thus be drowned as one, leaving aside the fact that the world is stuffed full of mages, clerics etc. so all are surprised that being a witch is that bad a thing, there seems to be no evidence that he weights the same as a Duck! There are a load of clerics (which look like terminators/cylons) stopping the crowds (they won't let her be killed without a trial) she isn't helping her case by cackling. The archer (who has had fly cast upon him) picks up the witch and ask's where she wants to be put, she says just in the street somewhere (his chaotic nature showing itself). The crowd is understandably annoyed but Terri's powers of persuading (and the massed ranks of screaming beasties) persuade the crowd to fin d shelter instead of carrying on the argument. The Holy Vacuum cleaners are not impressed with the mess in our plane, Rubina points out that it was quite ordered until they turned up!! (and the demons, etc. as well but no need to bring logic into witty retorts). Back at Lorenna-stadt Lorenna's students are being ripped apart by a big black, evil looking gribbly with BIG claws (the crowd cheers!!) as it attackers it's blows as well as slicing them up also cause them to shrivel up. Lorenna tries to summon an earth elemental the, crowd goes quiet waiting to see what comes back (given that plane shift, teleporting, etc. is considered a Bad ThingTM), luckily what she actually summoned turns up, the idea is that it will give enough me for the students to escape and Lorenna Teleport out. The big gribly attacks and the summoned earth elemental and after a load of failed fort. rolls is left with bugger all con and close to death (Lorenna is starting to get a rep. on the ethereal plane, at some point they may stop answering the phone and/or unionize). However Lorenna keeps failing to summon elementals allowing the gribbly to eventually start butchering students. She is starting to realize that either the planequake or whatever is causing the planequake is acting to prevent summoning creatures. It does spot Lorenna and starts to move towards the tower door, by this time the students that are left have run into the surrounding woods (left for the beastie to hunt down later once it's killed the hippy, mmmmmm sport). Lorenna turns into a dire hawk and fly's above it, unfortunately as she flies off she gets caught in a cone of cold and does TWENTY EIGHT DAMAGE, (no-one is impressed). Lorenna lands on top of her animal companion and TP's to XS. Levi checks out what is happening elsewhere and finds that the elves in typical sensible fashion (says the fellow elf) choose to concentrate on defending their island because that is where the conclave meets. After a while Terri, Rubina and Cal start to get bored as there is not really anything of a challenge and start to discus where they will go for lunch. Whilst wandering along killing evil stuff they round a corner and find a beautiful women bound to a pillar by chains and asking to be released. Cal the randy sod is all for releasing her straight away, Rubina in a fit of jealousy advises against this (and telepathically calls upon Levi), Terri says "So there is this beautiful bird all chained up and no [witnesses] around?", Cal moves within range and Terri starts to question her. Cal tries to shot the locks off WITH HIS BOW!!!! but pings off, he tries again with more arrows this time breaking one of the chain this time. Rubina tries to stop Cal releasing her by standing in the way but the noncy ranged specialist with his noncy ranged class features keeps succeeding in hitting her (bloody non cy ranged people, morally suspect I say). Finaly Cal stops after Terri ask's him too. The chained up Tramp says she was chained up because the towns folk blamed her for causing all these rifts, Terri seems to think she is telling the truth. Rubina cuts her down in order to put her in a sack to cover her shame (and make sure that Rubina is still the most attractive women in the square). Rubina steers Cal away from her saying "Lets kill something you don't need that Human Tramp, she probably had a a dose anyway." As soon as she gets to the road she grows bat wings and fly's away, Cal shoots her with an arrow of death whilst Rubina moves to match her, however Cals arrows kill her. Behind we hear a scream of rage from a big black pissed of demon (presumably her boyfriend). Rubina moves in and attacks doing a fair amount of damage (although he is immune to fire and cold with an AC of 50), the demon responds with a meteor storm which deals 99hp. Levi turns up and time stops, he first cures Rubina for 13hp (woooohoo), Immunity to fire for everyone then drops a load of spells on the demon, Terri runs to get Lorenna and Alfric. Rubina wakes up and uses dance of a thousand cuts on it then hides round a corner. The demon hits and grabs Levi but Levi TP's behind it and casts a (sadly ineffective) Anti-magic ray at it. Cal fires an arrow at it and does some damage. Meanwhile Terri finds Lorenna and Alfric, Lorenna casts mass fly on them all and sets off (and will take 7 rounds to get there). We meet up and heal and Lorenna gets a sending from the Elves in the conclave that they want a chat. An Angelic delegation wants to meet us and are annoyed about the planequake which Hell has taken advantage of and attacked all over. They advise us to work with the heros from other worlds; as no one really knows what is going in we should knock up Lord fNut of Arithmia.
From the journal of BrottorThe tentacled thing grapples me and resists my wall of fire. Despite several attempts I am unable to break its grapple on me and the mouths on its tentacles drain my strength. My attempt to use the decanter of endless water to jet it away fails and I am forced to use my inate healing. Realising there is no way I can escape these tentacles I use Word of Recall to escape. We meet up, we wait for the planequake to end then grab some gear and Levi opens a gate. Arithmia is a pleasant to look at, there are outcroppings of rock rising from the water with structures on them instead of multiple separate buildings each one is a single one giant structure. The nature of the plane maximises divination spells and calms emotions. There is nobody around so we fly around and enter the structures on the nearest rock, the interiors are empty and abaonded. We move to another rock, its the same result. Levi, Alfric and Terri fly up to look around, Rubina goes swimming. Alfric eventually spots a tower with bones at the top and a floating sphere above them. The sphere is of stone a lot darker than the rest of the plane is is rotating slowly on its vertical axis. Beneath it are the charred remains of several inhuman creatures. Rubina insults the sphere. Cal flies down to the ground with the bones and is not zapped. I examine the bodies but can't tell what they are, Cal throws a bone at the sphere, we determine that the bodies had been blasted apart by energy. Cal calls out to the sphere from the ground under it. The sphere stops rotating and starts glowing red. Cal hears a voice in his head "who are you?" "I am one of the starborne, here seeking answers to the planar rifts. And my name is Cal." "Why do you exist?" "I exist by the will of Newith, Master of all things" "Can you be certain?" "I have faith and faith implies certainty" "what is faith?" "faith is belief" "what do you believe?" "I believe we are here to find the answers to the planar rift and lord fNut. Are you fNut or can you show us where to find him?" At the question the glowing increases in intensity. "what is death?" "A stage on a journy" "and where does the journy lead?" "no idea. These questions are becoming tiresome." The glow increases again and the pulsing increases speed. "Tell me why I should no destroy you?" "Because there is a greater threat than any of the us currently in the planes." The sphere opens out, in the centre is a tablet. The words on the tablet arrange themselves into words. "Congratulations on passing the test of the sphere. We are sorry we arn't home right now, if you want to survive please meet us in the skull of Pathar." There is a map of the planes on the back. Jessault has heard of Pathar - his a dead God, primary god of a defunct religion who created everything. Absorbed in his creation he neglected his worshippers and by the time he realised it was too late. The gods of his panthon had left him, his clerics had died and even the words he had created had starved and died off without the attention oftheir creator. He went mad and consumed himself, starting his hands and feet until all that was left was an eyeless head floating through the planes. In the morning we Heros feast then Gate there. We find outselves floating in blackness. The only salient feature is a bright point of light some distance away. We fly towards it. Its a massive jewel that could accomodate a palace with room to spare. Beneath it is a huge skull. As planes go it is extremely stable in terms of movement, it probably isn't effected by the rifts. We can see people moving around inside the skull. As we approach a group of men approach on banesteeds. The men look wary and their armour is old and damaged. They tell us this is neutral ground and if we start a fight everyone will kick the shit out of us. We tell them we've come to see fNut. One of them leads us into the gods skull. In the centre of the skull is a great amplithreatre where the neck once joined. We have an hour before the meeting so we have a look around. There are factions (result of Brottors detect evil):
The meeting begins when Lord kNut calls the meeting to order. He bits everyone welcome. The worlds we inhabit are being destroyed which causes the planes around them to cave in. The question is who is doing this, why, and how do we stop them. First we need to look to our own security. The top of the skull is open but anything could be in the lower levels. The girl speaks for bodyless Ao. He detected creatures below this part of the skull when he created the dwellings. There are some witty comments before Lord kNut asks for volunteers to go looking in the lower levels of the skull for beasties. Nobody is sure what is destroying the plane, the Velvet speak up that its the Drow, we agree. From the comments we learn that Ao is pretty mad. There are various legends about plane destroying artefacts. There should be legends and prophecy about it that people need to research. During discussion the plane spiders let us know that all the destroyed planes have so far been small ones. Joblist
From the journal of BrottorThe meeting breaks up into differnt groups. Rubina goes to talk to bodyless Ao. He doesn't know what it is in the lower skull just that he felt something there. After the discussion the skull goes to wash his hair. We get one of Higraves huntsman to show us some of the entrance to the lower parts of the skull. The entrances are all narrow. We go speak with Jasmeria about what they sensed down there, they are fairly hostile to us given we thwarted their plans with Kawhore. Jasmeria sensed creatures exactly 100 feet below the dwellings. We buff up and teleport down. We are in a cavern that is humming with a single word chant "Thren", it is being chanted by stone things all around us on ridges of bone. There is a riased circle marked with hyrogylphs in the centre of it is a spiral staircase leading up. Cal lets rip with a hail of arrows while they use dispel magic to remove many of our buffs. Rubina dances round one and cuts it to pieces. Jessault misses with his lightning bolt and I cast Divine Might on myself. Levee is amased when his spell fizzles against the creatures. He follows up with a cone of acid. Cal shoots one with his bow as they move in and attack us, their attacks hurt. Jessault has to withdraw and I attack the creature that charged him while Rubina slashes another one to death. Alfric and Terri each flank one and attack it. One attacks levee and he imprisons it in a forcecage. The creature dispells the forcecage and comes back for levee. Cal is being attacked by 2 of them, there is a rip, a scream and suddenly I'm covered in poncy newith worshiping elven blood. Seems someone is going to need a resurrection later. I smash my enemy with my hammer slaying it as Terri despatches his enemy with his staff. Rubina dances around another leaving only one left that we all surround. Jessault breaths a line of acid on it and it dies. Jessault and I wring out our beards into a cup so we have something to ressurect Cal later. We search the room while Levi translates the writing on the stairs. It basically translates to "KEEP OUT". So we are going up.... Then the trap triggers. A Hellball scorches us, ouch. We continue on the stairs. they lead us to a cozy looking library. There is a skeleton sitting on a chair infront of a fire gripping a white staff. There is another exit from here. Alfric tells it "we are here from the conclave above...." and attempts to talk nicely to it guessing it's a powerful mage. It doesn't reply. It is infact dead, an actual dead skeleton that we tried to diplome with! There are various detect evils and magics cast, nothing is evil but the staff is magic. Levi puts a forcewall between the staff and the rest of us and goes to pick it up, expecting the worst. He feels something cold but nothing bad happens so we move onto the books. They get loaded into the bag of holding. We planeshift to Xoth Sarandi. From the journal of RubinaWe try to raise Cal but his spirit decides that we actualy would rather not hang around with this lot (Rubina is quite jealouse). We hang for a bit, the next day Levi has to make a will save (before casting identify on the staff) he seems to pass, the staff is an uber Staff of Necromancy, unfortunatly it also the spirit of it's previouse owner who once a day can try to take over the wielder of the staff (hence the will save), after discounting giving the staff to a peasant then killing them we start trying to work out who would be able to deal with the staff. Rubina pushses for Ao (as she has somewhat of a soft spot for him), others suggest Gelnix. In the end the spell casters decide to stone shape it into the alter of the nearest temple to Vendis so that any random adventurer and/or bricklayer can discover it and free the evil epic-level ultimate necromancer (once more Rubina dispairs of hedge wizards and snake oil salesman that seem to make up the ranks of Spell casters). We then drop in on the Elven conclave who are aparantly pleased to see us but feel that we need a new
We decide to travel to the forest island plane, after some discussion Lorenna flies up to try and have a look above the canopy, she sees tree's as far as she can see with a blue sky above. Loreena tries to attract some animals to talk to, however she is turned by a squirrel, ahe then tries to turn into a squirrel because this will make it so much easier, unfortunatly she retains her charisma score even as a squirrel, the poor bstard squirrel tells her to "Jog On", indicating a direction. As the rest of the party didn't hear/understand the conversation we don't know the full details. As we pass along we hear a loud roar and our ears pick up, and something(s) big seems to be approaching. 2 Big things appear and scream out stunning everyone for 2 rounds, Rubina and the Paladin get hit for quite a bit of damage. After recovering from the stun Alfric hits one, then the creatures hit Rubina and the Paladin for even more damage, Rubina then gets her own back, Levi casts a couple of spells at them both, only the acid creating one doping any damage. Terri, moves to flank and does a bit, the Paladin gets his revenge as well loreena casts a spell that will hit next round, and brottor then hits it for a load From the journal of BrottorAs Rubina has run away from it the creature goes for me and its claw strikes cause a lot of damage, the one attacking Braxus continues to pound him. Alfric climbs a tree to escape being shredded. While up there he spots some small lizards watching. Rubina comes dancing around them going a world of slashing damage, Lorenna puts a prismatic wall between me and one of them. Terri whacks one with the baseball back of death, Levee drops a lightning ray on them then an acid ball. The creatures roar again which suns everyone bar Levee and Rubina. Levee tactically teleports us away from the creatures then imprisons one of the creatures in a forcecage. Rubina is the closest thing to the remaining free creature and it attacks her with its claws, she is now seriously injured. She darts around it slashing then Levee drops another sphere of acid on them. Before the creatures can get to us he puts a wall of force infront of it. Deciding that its too much hassle to go eat us it runs off. We recover from the stun effect and go examine the trapped one. Ter'ri has a conversation with it. It sounds pretty smart, but it is a giant cat, so its speech is rather direct: eat or be eaten. It is initally curious as to why food is talking to it. Apparently it has a mother, Levee thinks she has 3 heads and will be even larger. Not pleasant! Given its sister has probably run off to fetch mummy we want to be leaving. Sharpish! We cast fly and head after the lizards (possibly kobolds), Levee summons a pair of wolves who go check for the smell of the creatures, they lock onto the scent and we follow them in the air. We come upon a massive tree that has a lot of small sized holes in it, we think we are being watched. We try to communicate "we come in peace" etc.. but get no answer Levee goes up tot he hole and speaks in Draconic, "we are here in peace and will wait away from your tree for you to come out." The old kobold speaks, "root trippers, who are you, do you lead our enemies, why are you here? It is clear they don't understand about the planes, levee explains about holes in the sky. They invite us to dine with them. We don't detect any evil, they are a tribe that lives in the trees. They offer us feasts and will tell us their legends. The Legend of the Coming of the Gnawlers of Gnawlers It is a painful lengend for them to tell. There used to be only 2 things - runners ot be huntered and gnawers to be fled or killed from stealth. If you were up in the trees you were safe and all was good. 300 moons ago the air broke - holes appeared in the air that things came through. Things of fire and smoke that they fought for 12 moons and drove some of them back. Then the gnawer of gnawers with 3 heads appeared and killed everything that opposed her. She made her home in the ruined stones and hatched eggs whhich the kobolds tried to smash - they only managed one then things attacked them and now are destroying stuff. This was about the time the planar rifts happened on our timeline. Tale of the Pork ones A great hunter went seeking runners and found 3 strangers which he hid from and listened to. They were hunting the holy place, a holy place they would not speak of. They tried to perform the magic at the holy place so the hunter went and got all the kobolds together and they killed all 3 of the strangers and sundered the item they had and were trying to use. This was about 15 years ago, which is 2 weeks in our time. Tale of the broken stone An ancient tale of people who were different to the kobolds. They were strangers to the place who came from a door in the air. They had mages and clerics and peace with the kobolds, then one day they all died. The kobolds dont't know why.
There is some debate, Braxus and I convince everyone we want to go to the stone city and whack big mummy cat of death... the main reasone everyone agrees is there is probably ph4t loot in the city. It takes 4 days to get there, the place is nothing but rubble though at its height it must have been immense - at least as big as Zoth Zerandi. 3 features are left: the crumbling walls of a fortress or temple, 2 crumblings legs of a giant statue and a mass of uneven stone that might have been the statues head. The kobold legends said that the mother creature passed through the stone legs. We go through the stone legs and down to a giant chamber. There is mummy + 2 kids + some eggs there, they attack us while we are still in the corridor, this is probably good as it means only one of them can get at us at once. They roar, my silence spell protects us, Rubina, Braxus and I both whack the one at the entrance to the corridor then Jessault brings the ceiling down on their heads. This crushes the eggs and buries them, they are going to be pissed. Levee casts reverse gravity on the mother which flings her and the rubble around her into the air, then opens a horizontal gate under her at floor level. Dismissing the reverse gravity he lets her fall through the gate. Jessault the summons a swarm of elementals and a monolith and levee uses bigbies forcefull hand to force the other 2 into the gate, then we close it. We go searching the ruins and find an intact library buiried beneath the rubble. There are a lot of scrolls, 5 of which detect as magic. There are 3 skeletons one of which has a golden scoll case, unfortunately their robes have decayed into dust. One has a rod, and a pair of rings. There is a throne the base of which detects as necromantic. We use an earth elemental to loot stuff which triggers a symbol of death which levee counterspells Scrolls: Clone Foresight Mages Disjunction Meteor swarm Pismatic sphere Rod of the epic spells! Ring of Epic protection + 8 Ring of epic Wizardry 7!
The flask is some sort of extradimensional space we don't know what it is. We surround it with a forcecage and stick an elemental in it. The elemetnal opens the flask, and a geaser of black insects pours out. Its a RUIN SWARM! Oh dear... good thing we surrounded it with forcewalls.
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| ©2007Wilmslow Games Club Page Created: 04 November 2007 | ||||||||||