(31 days total, 14 days until the New Moon)
The Rescuers
The two of them chased by different hunting parties, Diana and Relic met a week ago down the western roads into the Black Forest. Certainly not wanting to enter the heart of the Kingdom, their pursuers' relentless harrowing forced the issue. United by a common plight, the two fast became traveling companions, eventually finding themselves almost drawn to Provia. Making camp outside its bustle, they risked entering one night for fresh supplies and possibly a map, intending to make for safer lands. And boy did they pick the wrong night, as the Hand attacked and Crowperch was burned.
The pair were goodhearted enough to want to help, even as the screams of dying nobles (men, women and children) wafted over the rest of the city like so much ash and cinder. They braved the firestorm and found a grizzly mess on the ground floor of the manor. They managed to usher four children hidden in a broom closet to safety, then returned to brave the second floor of the now-burning manor.
Saving the Innocent
Diana and Relic burst into the library where Giers, Hulda, Portia, Kaylan and Thamior had just finished their fight with Gosha. Jeda had ran upstairs to the third floor, Kasimir's Suite, without heed. Portia was busy working on the locked door Erig had hid behind.
Introductions were very brief, as the sound of fire, the billowing of smoke, and the cries for help on the third floor urged Diana and Kaylan up to help. The rest of the group, considering leaving before the burning manor came down on them, resigned to follow. On the way up, the cieling of the stairwell nearly collapsed. Hulda leapt up and supported the crumbling structure with sheer muscle, urging the others to hurry with a grim look, but unwilling to pass off the burden to Relic when he offered.
Making it to the third floor, the group found it choked with smoke and in essence a large hall with doors to either side, all closed, some locked, nearly every one hot to the touch, and four of them with screaming behind them.
The first was a door with poor, burning children behind it. Kaylan and Thamior managed to get the door down, and the two whisked them to safety downstairs. Giers attended the second, where two sisters were trapped behind a fiery canopy bed. He carried each of them to the second floor, checked on Hulda, and practically flew back up. Diana attended the third, where it sound like a family was trapped behind, but the door was blocked by fallen debris. She tried to force it, then enlisted the paladin, but neither could budge it. Urging Giers to the fourth room at the end of the hall, Diana called on a frosty blast to explode the barrier, where upon she directed a grandfather, his son, a wife and a newborn down to the second.
Meanwhile, Relic attempted to kick down Portia's troublesome barrier, but heartland oak was strong. Portia pouted as the lock was now dented, and on top of it she was getting a growing collection of children dumped on her. Trying to keep them calm while she finally got the lock open, some were eventually whisked downstairs with Diana's fleeing family. The boggart appealed to Erig to help save his kin, which eventually got the young Norsman out of hiding and carrying two little boys down the stairs.
Portia quickly went about trying to find a safe alternative to having to cross the fiery fields and dragon skys in order to eventually leave this place.
The Master Bedroom
Giers and Kaylan were the first to enter the room at the end of the hall, followed shortly after by Thamior, then Diana and Relic. It was an expansive master bedroom with a great set of windows revealing the conflagration over the entire hill, where men ran screaming for their lives as Imperial Dragoons picked them off with fire, jaws and lances. And hanging like a red, winged moon was Yathnoc, reveling in the destruction.
Lord Kasimir Bertrum watched the destruction of all his holdings from his bed, strangling the sheets, a withered old bigit gone mad. In the corner were five terrified Gloriandeline slaves. But the most notable persons in the room would had to have been the circus master DeWitt himself, leaning against the window smiling at the new arrivals, his pallid companion Crematia beside him, along with a host of familiar circusfolk and a particularly strange freak dressed as a red-velvet devil jester with a fiery sword sheathed down his throat.
Jeda, Ispar and Blackguard Mnessi were poised to attack them.
They're MINE
Kaylan and Thamior were drawn to the plight of their elven kin, commanding the slaves to come with them to safety and freedom. Poor souls, their thousand years of servitude had made them cowards, especially scared of the crazy old master in the bed. Kasimir flung pillow and blanket at Kaylan, vowing the elves were his. Just like the rest of his ancestral holdings, they would perish by fire. His ranting scared the elves immobile.
Kaylan and Thamior defied him, eventually inspiring one of the elves to run into Kaylan's arms and begin sobbing. Thamior rushed to end this despicable situation, cutting off both of Lord Bertrum's arms before Kaylan incinerated him by Kalinda's phoenix fire.
The five slaves then fled downstairs and out of the manor, risking their lives across the fiery estate for freedom.
DeWitt Now
DeWitt, handsome and charming as ever, welcomed the group, especially pleased to see the face of his missing captive Giers. The circus master admitted that he had been the one behind the kidnappings, though what he wanted now were the Hearts. He was quite interested where the little green one was just then, and more so her green gem.
Giers charged, but the circus master was much more than he seemed, catching the paladin by the throat and spinning him around hard against the window pane. Offended by the brazen attack, DeWitt began strangling Giers.
Relic came from behind, arm raised to punch DeWitt from behind, but the circus master turned Giers into the punch, sending the ethrey crashing through the window and onto the burning lawn. He then backhanded Relic across the room and through a wall, proving himself supernaturally strong.
Kaylan rushed to the window to make sure her love was okay, even as Jeda pounced on Crematia, and Ispar and Blackguard Mnessi fought the fire eater and his host.
Ashes to Ashes
Before DeWitt could snatch Kaylan, Giers could climb back up, Thamior intervene or Relic fully recover, an explosive blast of dragon fire blew off a section of the roof. The raining debris, coupled with the already fire-weakened floor, caused the entire manor to pitch on its side. Everyone went sliding across the room, even as the floor broke apart into fiery pits. Jeda and Crematia fell down one, followed by a burp of flame, then joined by a furious DeWitt, the scrambling Ispar, the fire eater and the bodies of the fallen circusfolk and blackguard. The place was coming apart around them, the flame growing ever higher.
Cellar
Portia, meanwhile, continued her search for an alternate escape route, banking on Kasimir's paranoia having dug a tunnel or something. Unfortunately not, she found, having scoured the basement. She lifted some spirits and collected a rusty, mounted katana she hoped was the right one, and moved for the front door as the cieling fell around her.
She found Giers outside, clearing a way back in for the others. She joined the efforts, even as smoke and licks of flame shot at them. Once a path was made, the two dove back inside to help the others. The manor was groaning, supports and whole walls snapping apart, fire roaring hungrily.
Escape from Bertrum Manor
Those on the third floor hopped fallen beams, braved walls of fire, cleared chasms of broken flooring and the clouds of thick, black smoke to make it to the stairwell. Hulda, sweating and tired, spent her last ounces of strength to keep the cieling from caving. The group passed underneath her, Relic again offering to take the burden, Hulda again denying him. Everyone moved down the second floor, even as what remained of the third crumbled in a gust of cinder and ash. Hulda leaped away at the last possible moment, running for the next stairwell on the heels of the group.
But the way was blocked when the cieling on the second collapsed in front of the exit. Through alternate routes and a lot of muscle and dexterity, the group forced their way down to the ground floor, reunited with Portia and Giers, and burst from the crumbling, blazing manor.
Death-Defying
They weren't out of the estates yet, now faced with a long sprint over burning yards and gardens, blackened groves, crumbled low walls and melted iron fencing, to a breach in the outer wall. All the while swarms men bolted, half of them on fire, screaming for their lives. Imperial Dragoons circled and swooped, spewing fire at random and occasionally swooping in for a more visceral kill.
The initial fleeing was chaos, the group all moving in their own ways, tripping and scrambling and getting caught in ditches, fire and debris. However Portia arose as the one to follow, her acrobatic skills, coupled with her great knowledge of stealth and perception, marking a path through the pandemonium. The group ran along side and behind her, pointing out pitfalls and directing the train this way or that as benefited their greater stealth and speed. Timing circling dragons and fiery breaths, hopping hidden holes and finding perfect shadows, the group exploded across the yard.
A dragoon took notice of Portia's expert moving and swooped down to swallow the tender morsel. However the little boggart's agility was so great she avoided the attack, grounding the dragon and throwing it into a violent roll as it misjudged its mark. In that split second, Portia plucked a single red dragon scale in triumph.
It looked as if they were clear, until Thamior's selfless act of acting wounded so as to draw aggression off the others worked all too well. The wounded red, its rider dead, crawled for Thamior, even as Giers attended what real wounds Thamior had with some applied pressure and a forceful dragging for the opening. As its shadow cast over the the two, there was a sudden, explosion of fire, the red's last ditch effort to kill, which only managed to singe the ethrey and feladrin's tuckuses.
A Horrible Fate
Yathnoc landed, crashing into the ruins of the manor in all his seismic glory. Shimmering with heat like the open caldera of a volcano, the grass and trees withered and the nearest metal melted. Nearly as large as half the estate, he threw out his wings and thrashed his tail, taking out everything on the ground within a few hundred feet of the manor.
As the group passed out of the outer wall, some might have noticed he'd two very small purple dragons squirming in his grasp. Giers rued he wouldn't be able to kill those two himself, then fled after the others into the night streets where militia and night watch tried to keep control of the utter panic that had taken the entire city.
Making Acquaintances
In the small woods between manor houses, nearly in the shadow of Blackdelve, and temporarily away from the chaos, the group took a moment to catch their breaths. Diana and Relic were able to introduce themselves properly.
Kaylan seemed eager to send them on their way, siting the danger of what lied ahead, but Diana was entirely unwilling to brave the streets and the dragons with just her and Relic. Strength in numbers seemed a wise move, which Giers echoed. The cleric's anxiety only grew when she identified the fist-sized purple gem on Diana's belt and the marked orange glow beneath Relic's jacket. Hearts.
Momentarily overwhelmed, she sat down and revealed how she'd inherited her mothers ability to attract Hearts like a magnet. Ghisidhran had told her as much, and that her Uncle, Dazeen the Uniter, who was buried at the bottom of Blackdelve in ageless slumber, was the one able to unite all the Hearts and bestow the collector with the Power of Creation. Portia suggested they simply kill Dazeen and save the world, provoking a moral feedback from more than one in the group. Just where did greater good end and evil begin?
Relic and Diana were a little lost, prompting Giers to muster is oratory skills for a telling of the scions' adventures thus far. Diana was a bit confused by the Hearts parts, but Relic was enthralled, finding himself thankful he'd met up with such a group. Though the group explained the Hearts were gems corresponding to the known planes that, when united by Dazeen could greant the collector the power of the old creator goddesses, the finer mechanics were still drawing blanks for the dark girl. Truthfully the finer mechanics weren't entirely well-known to any in the group, suffice to say uniting was bad.
Concerns also shifted to Blight and Reedthagn's ultimatum, a deadline fast approaching and which spurred the group into this flooded dungeon in the first place. Kaylan really, really didn't want to see Ghisidhran again. He'd taken a finger... her life could likely be next. No doubt he was furious over his imprisonment.
Given the situations, Diana and Relic were accepted into their numbers. Giers had a funny feeling about Diana, though, the way she dressed, spoke, even her mannerisms. Little memories of Isabella began to surface. Likewise all in the group got an off vibe from Relic and the constant, low hum he generated. His lack of pain during the DeWitt fight and the heavyness of each step and movement marked him plainly as inhuman, but just what none of them could say.
Thamior's Arcana
After discussion and explanation of the Hearts, in so much detail as the group knew, Thamior studied the magical auras of their two new additions. Schooling in his organization was quite thorough, and included magic, something that came naturally because of his feladrin heritage. Quietly studying the belt and jacket glow a bit, he learned the purple Heart was attuned to aberrant magic. If he had to pick a plane, he'd guess the Void, called by some the Far Realm, the least-known of all the regions of the universe, tied to cosmic horrors and alien civilizations well-beyond mortal reckoning. The orange glow was attuned to elemental magic, a strong and roiling force likely born of the Elemental Chaos, the plane of genies, archons and elementals. He decided to keep the information to himself for now.
Return to Blackdelve
The carnage of the streets, the scrambling militia men, and the night's watch began encroaching on the party in their shallow woods. The group tore open the trapdoor and passed once more beneath Blackdelve. Flooded, fungi-and-mold-ridden as ever, the dilapidated upper corridors were thankfully vacant, even the guard room in which Kaylan met her first fey crocodile.
The group took a much needed rest on the islands of heaved stone flooring amidst the brackish waters, the promise of diving, naiads and an angry dragon in their immediate future...
Matters of the Hearts
While Portia snuggled with Hoppers in her arms, the gem frog quietly slipped into his lime boggart form. Spooning a bit and making small talk, during which Portia asked him all sorts of top-of-the-head questions, Hoppers revealed his real purpose in changing was to warn Portia. Even though his wicked sister Blackheart was gone, two of his meanest brothers had found them: Strangeheart and Quakeheart. She would have to keep a careful eye and prevent them from learning how to change into people forms like he and his sister could. When Portia asked how she might stop such a thing, Hoppers realized in all likelihood she couldn't and snuggled a little closer. His parting wish was for her to be safe and cautious, then he turned back into a frog, leaving her flurry of questions unanswered except for one. Portia found a fresh, red apple under her bedroll, proof he could conjure fruit.
Similarly Diana had a moment with her purple Heart. After prayers, she curled up in her bedroll on a dry bit of floor. However the chamber was a filthy place, ridden with water bugs, worms, slugs and spiders. While the rest of the group itched and squirmed, Diana felt a sudden pulse from her belt. The encroaching bugs turned tails and scurried away, some even into the water and to their deaths.
And all the while a pulsing, orange light was covered carefully beneath Relic's jacket.
Experience: 433 xp each (10891 total)
Magic: technically speaking Strangeheart (Diana) and Quakeheart (Relic)
Money: None
Loot: rusty katana (Portia), 4 bottles of spirits and wine (Portia), a red dragon scale (Portia)
PCs:
Diana, petite, pale beauty packing some heavy arcane firepower; sister to the shadows; keeper of a purple Heart on her belt
Relic, heavy, broad brawler in man's clothing; with a refined intellect and sure moral foundation; keeper of an orange Heart beneath his jacket
NPCs:
Bertrum Nobles (husbands, wives, grandfather, children and newborn), nobles trapped and stranded on the burning third floor of Bertrum Manor; saved by the group and allowed to escape before the manor's destruction; fled across the burning estates for freedom; whereabouts unknown
Gloriandeline Slaves (5, unnamed), terrified elves freed from the crazed possessiveness of Kasimir Bertrum; fled across the burning estates; whereabouts unknown
Lord Kasimir Bertrum, see NPC List entry (dead)
Jeda, demonic tiefling warlord; possessor of the Blackheart; former group member; met Reedthagn, toppled Twisttongue, and survived the Dark One and the Hand attack with the group; struggled with her conflicting natures; grew increasingly more violent and angry; hated Giers; hated DeWitt; really hated Crematia; might have loved Ispar; (MIA during the destruction of Bertrum Manor)
Fire Eater, a new freak in DeWitt's ever-growing menagerie of circus folk; wielded a fiery greatsword he was miraculously able to keep sheathed in his throat; dressed in red velvet in the likeness of a devil jester (MIA during the destruction of Bertrum Manor)
Imperial Dragoons, see NPC List entry
Note: We need to distribute some lingering loot from Session 29 still, including a magic shield and ownership of a ship docked in Edmark (which really should be a 'group treasure' so long as someone decides to hold onto it on the group's behalf).
Cruel Ultimatum
Fourteen Days and Counting...
- Reedthagn's will must still be done and Ghisidhran's tongue placed before him in the Tesseract, lest Blight be dropped on someone's home
- The group must pass under Blackdelve, enter the resting place of Dazeen the Uniter, slay Ghisidhran and then manage a way back to the Wild and to the ancient green's cube within a cube within a cube
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