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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 8048198" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 29: THE HELLFORGE</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: </p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Cramer Appleknocker, gnome cleric 9</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Jhasspok, lizardman 3/barbarian 2/fighter 4</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Khari Hammerslammer, dwarf fighter 9</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Marlo Pendragon, human sorcerer 9</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Utred "Buckets" Butterflinger, dwarf barbarian 9</p><p></p><p>Game Session Date: 23 July 2020</p><p></p><p>- - -</p><p></p><p>The group decided on posting one member on guard detail for two-hour shifts during the night, but nothing disturbed them in their <em>ironsilk tent</em>. Marlo, having taken the last shift so she could get an uninterrupted block of sleep, was about to rouse the others when she found Lauren stumbling out of the interior room in which she'd been sleeping. She walked as if in a daze and as Marlo approached her, concerned, she saw Lauren's eyes were rolled up in her head, showing only the whites. The rune-tattoos on her face and body were glowing slightly.</p><p></p><p>"Are you okay?" asked Marlo, touching the other woman on the shoulder. As if awakened by the contact, Lauren snapped out of her trance and her eyes resumed their normal look, the glow of her tattoos subsiding.</p><p></p><p>"I believe there is a good possibility," the diviner replied, "that I will die today." She gave this dire prediction in a rather matter-of-fact tone, her attitude one of slight puzzlement rather than panic or terror. Cramer exited his own interior room of the tent as the two women were talking and Lauren turned to him with another prophetic statement. "Although the far lane by which you travel cares little for mortal contrivances, today it would behoove your friends' strikes to be aligned with the higher powers." Despite not yet wearing his <em>helm of comprehend languages</em> - he'd just crawled out of bed, after all - Cramer was immediately able to translate Lauren's statement from "prophecy-ese" into a warning he'd better prepare enough <em>align weapon</em> spells for everyone today, as they'd likely be fighting the forces of evil.</p><p></p><p>"But what about your impending death?" pressed Marlo, more concern for the event in her voice than was present in Lauren's.</p><p></p><p>"A scar-faced man will stand before me, as I am stabbed in the back and then shoved into a pit."</p><p></p><p>"I'll start getting my day's spells ready," Cramer announced, returning back to his interior room in the tent. The others were roused and started getting dressed. The cleric had just finished praying for his day's allotment of spells when Jhasspok and Utred heard the unmistakable clomp of booted feet approaching. "We got company!" the burly dwarf called to the others.</p><p></p><p>Sure enough, pulling back the front flap of the <em>ironsilk tent</em>, Utred could see a ring of armed and armored men surrounding them. If they were as evenly spaced all along the tent's perimeter as the men he could see before him, there were likely a dozen or so of them ringing their dwelling.</p><p></p><p>One of the soldiers commanded, "Come out and explain your trespass upon the lands of Ossirna."</p><p></p><p>Marlo knew that to be her cue. Stepping forward, the <em>circlet of persuasion</em> on her brow, she smiled pleasantly at the stern men in their armor of reddish metal. "Good morning, gentlemen," she said. "We are on our way to seek an audience with the leader of your fine land, to warn him of an impending attack upon the surface world by the drow and seek to bring him into an alliance of kingdoms eager to send the dark elves fleeing back to their Underdark holes." Cramer, hanging back unseen in his own quarters in the tent, quietly cast a <em>detect evil</em> spell from his day's allotment and sensed evil from the other side of the tent's outer walls. He nodded sagely to himself - it confirmed his suspicions.</p><p></p><p>"Are you from Durnhill?" demanded the soldier doing the talking for the Ossirnan forces.</p><p></p><p>"No," replied Marlo. Deciding that a full explanation of where they were all originally from would be too confusing and not relevant to the current conversation, she explained, "We are from Greenvale. We edged along the outskirts of Durnhill to get here, but we have no dealings with that kingdom, for they seek to capture one of our traveling companions." At this, Lauren stepped forward, turned about, and pulled her hair to the side, exposing the tattoo upon the back of her neck: the shattered hourglass, laying upon its side, spilling the sands of time upon the ground.</p><p></p><p>At the sight of Lauren's neck tattoo, the men visibly relaxed. "Very well," said the captain of the troop of soldiers. "If you'd like to pack up your tent, we'll escort you to the capital for your talk with our king."</p><p></p><p>The soldiers were visibly impressed with how quickly the group was able to pack up their gear, for they hadn't expected the <em>ironsilk tent</em> to fold itself up upon verbal command and be placed inside a <em>bag of holding</em>. Just that quickly, the Greenvale envoys were ready to go. Cramer took his customary seat at the front of the wagon, the others got in and, surrounded by six men in front and six men behind, they started their trek to the capital city of Ossirna.</p><p></p><p>It was a journey of several hours, but they eventually came to a stop before a grand palace. The guard captain stepped forward and explained the situation to an armored woman who had come forward from the castle as Lauren and the five heroes exited the wagon. "Welcome to Ossirna," said the guardswoman, introducing herself as <strong>Maelina</strong>. "If you will follow me, I will escort you to the king." Cramer's <em>detect evil</em> spell had long since expired, but he felt he could pretty much sense the no-nonsense evil coming from the female guard captain without having to rely upon any such spell - she looked like she'd decapitate any or all of them at a moment's notice, were she but given the order. He noticed they hadn't been asked to surrender their weapons before being brought inside the palace and wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.</p><p></p><p>"Please wait here," said Maelina, opening the door to a waiting room, the tone of her voice making perfectly clear this was not a request. She indicated Lauren. "You will come with me to see <strong>King Velkis</strong> at once, concerning a private matter about the organization." Maelina wasn't aware of it, but the heroes before her were already aware of the Seekers of Eternity and their individual, bickering factions and knew immediately that was the organization of which she spoke.</p><p></p><p>Cramer, Marlo, and Utred looked helplessly between themselves. They knew this was likely a trap; judging from her stoic expression, Lauren likely knew this was a trap as well. (Khari, on the other hand, was looking around the room, disappointed that this waiting room didn't have any refreshments; a nice, frothy ale would hit the spot right about now! And Jhasspok saw a shelf of books against the wall, which led him to idly wonder if any of them might have pictures of fish in them or if they were just filled with those boring, scribbly letters which somehow made words. Neither of them had any inkling they were now inside a castle likely filled with enemies.)</p><p></p><p>There was little likelihood Marlo would be able to talk their way out of this, so she did the one thing she could think of to do: she surreptitiously dropped her toad familiar Truffles into the pocket of Lauren's robes as the diviner brushed past her to follow Maelina to meet with the king. Lauren, Marlo knew, was a sorcerer like herself, even if those tattoos covering her body channeled all of her arcane power strictly into divination magic; as such, it would not seem suspicious if she carried a familiar with her, and although Lauren had no familiar these Ossirnans were unlikely to know that. Truffles could at least be a means by which the heroes could learn what all was going on here, as the toad shared an empathic link with Marlo.</p><p></p><p>Once Maelina and Lauren had exited the waiting room, Cramer lost no time in casting <em>align weapon</em> spells upon each of the heroes' primary weapons, as Utred explained to Khari and Jhasspok just what they were up against here. Marlo, in the meantime, by concentrating on the link with Truffles, was getting a general feel for the local layout of the castle: Lauren hadn't been taken far, for the king was in a receiving room just a dog-leg away: out the door, to the left, and around a corner to the right. She passed on this information to her friends, wondering if they'd be taken to see the king or if they'd have to try to go rescue Lauren on their own. "We shouldn't have let her leave, not after having foreseen her own death like that," Marlo said, worried for her fellow sorceress.</p><p></p><p>"Wasn't much we could do about it," grunted Utred. "Not unless we was ready to take on their whole guard at once."</p><p></p><p>"It may come to that, I fear," added the gnome. "But if needs be, I have a <em>teleport</em> spell prepared. I can get us out of here if we all stick close together."</p><p></p><p>"I dunno if we're gonna be gettin' any help for Greenvale from these guys anyways," piped up Khari. "Mebbe we should just leave."</p><p></p><p>But before Cramer could reply Marlo gave a sudden cry of alarm, mirroring a cry of shock and pain from Lauren that they could hear through the closed door of the waiting room. That was all Khari needed to hear: it was apparently on! Channeling the power from his <em>earth glide warhammer</em>, he dropped through the floor and raced in the direction of Lauren's cries, having to pop up into the hallway because he sensed while underground there was no floor beneath him just ahead: apparently there was a lower level below where Lauren and this king were. As he turned around the corner, he saw several things all at once: Lauren was wincing in pain and blood stained her lower back, where she'd apparently just been stabbed; Maelina, with blood on the tip of her sword, had her hand upon Lauren's shoulder and was pushing her toward a ten-foot-wide pit in the floor at her feet; a scarred man with a crown upon his head sat on a throne on the other side of the pit, watching the fun with an expression of intense satisfaction.</p><p></p><p>Without slowing his momentum in the least, Khari barreled into Maelina, swinging his warhammer into her and attempting to topple her into the pit instead of Lauren. It took some doing, but the nimble guard captain managed to deflect her momentum sideways, avoiding the pit but only by dropping onto Lauren's unconscious body; the tattooed diviner had collapsed to the floor from her wound.</p><p></p><p>"Envoy of Greenvale!" called the king on the throne. "Any further attacks upon my Royal Guard will be taken as an act of war!" The disdain in his voice was palpable; he apparently didn't appreciate the fact his entertainment was being waylaid from its intended course.</p><p></p><p>Utred realized Cramer hadn't had time to cast the <em>longstrider</em> spell he usually cast upon himself to allow him to keep up with his much-taller companions, so the burly dwarf picked up the little gnome and carried him along as he burst through the waiting room door and raced down the hallway towards Khari. Marlo cast a <em>fly</em> spell upon herself from a scroll she'd purchased earlier and flew past them both, headed toward Lauren and Truffles. Jhasspok followed, trying to grab Lauren out from underneath Maelina, who was struggling to regain her footing without toppling backwards into the pit.</p><p></p><p>But just as the lizardfolk had started pulling the limp form of Lauren toward him, Maelina yanked her from Jhasspok's grasp - she was much stronger than she looked! - and tossed her over the edge of the pit. Truffles leapt from the diviner's pocket at the last moment, scrabbling across the floor in a scramble to get away from being trodden upon. Jhasspok found his eyes following the toad's path without conscious volition and had to forcibly bring his attention back to the matter at hand. Khari, from his viewpoint at the pit's edge, could see a pair of goatmen in the large room below them grab up Lauren's unconscious - hopefully not dead! - form and start to drag her away.</p><p></p><p>"Ossirna will never join in a proxy war between <em>gods</em>," King Velkis told the group before him, putting as much disdain as possible in the final word of his sentence. "You are free to leave if you wish - or you can try to save the traitorous bitch if you think you can manage to do so." Again, the tone of his voice betrayed the low level of confidence he had in their chances to perform that second option.</p><p></p><p>"We might just surprise you, <em>Your Majesty</em>," Cramer replied, putting an equal amount of disdain in his own final two words. Then he followed up with the casting of a <em>summon monster</em> spell, causing a celestial bison to manifest in the room below. The bison immediately charged forward, bringing his powerful horns stabbing into the closest goatman and smiting him with a blast of holy energy for good measure.</p><p></p><p>It was a good 20-foot drop into the pit below. Khari didn't want to break an ankle or anything, so he ran through the southern wall using the power of his <em>earth glide warhammer</em> and from there went straight down through the solid rock, exiting from an outer wall of the larger pit room below. He saw the celestial bison goring one of the goat-headed humanoids; as that one bleated in pain and terror, however, the other one continued dragging Lauren toward a large crack in the far wall - a narrow tunnel, now that Khari got a better look at it, from which reddish light spilled forth. There was a much larger goatman in the vast cavern on the other side of the tunnel, easily twice as tall as the others, working at a massive anvil with an equally massive hammer in his hand. A pool of bubbling magma separated this enormous, horned figure from the cave opening.</p><p></p><p>Utred lacked a means of making it safely down a drop of 20 feet but also lacked any worries about the dangers inherent in doing so. Dropping to the lower pit, he raced toward the nearest goatman and swung his greataxe at him, the axe-head imbued with Cramer's <em>align weapon</em> spell. The blade sliced deep into the goatman's flesh, severing through any protections the beast might have otherwise had.</p><p></p><p>At the sounds of battle, the Hellsmith turned from his anvil and, seeing the dwarf impeding the delivery of the virgin sacrifice he needed to forge hellsteel weapons and armor for the mortal allies in the world above, snarled in fury and marched through the shallow magma pool, his hooves feeling none of the heat and none of the hair on his shaggy legs catching fire.</p><p></p><p>Marlo scooped up Truffles from the floor and flew down into the pit below, casting a <em>magic missile</em> spell at the fiendish ibixian the celestial bison had just gored, which caused him to bleat involuntarily from the pain of her rapid-fire spell-strikes. Jhasspok followed Marlo down into the pit, attacking the same goatman with his spell-enhanced battleaxe once he'd landed painfully on the lower floor and hobbled over to the attack. The lizardfolk's blade pierced the ibixian's flesh, drawing a line of blood across his chest that stained his shaggy fur. These beastmen were made of stern stuff, but the heroes were beginning to whittle them down!</p><p></p><p>The ibixian whirled around to face Utred, striking at him with a hellsteel blade of his own, while the other one continued dragging Lauren into Hell. He'd gotten her through the narrow tunnel and into the larger chamber beyond.</p><p></p><p>The only Greenvale envoy still upstairs at this point, Cramer cast a <em>fly</em> spell upon himself and dropped down into the pit, seeing the fiendish ibixian dodge another attack from the gnome's summoned celestial bison. Then, with the grating sound of stone on stone, the pit opening above Cramer was somehow sealed off, for the ceiling above was now a solid, smooth surface. <em>That</em> was certainly discomforting!</p><p></p><p>It was getting crowded around the fiendish ibixian, what with Utred, Jhasspok, and a white-furred celestial bison all lined up to attack him. So Khari <em>earth glided</em> beneath the four, popping back up behind the oblivious goatman. However, rather than attack the unsuspecting foe - and he'd have had a good shot at him - Khari continued down the tunnel beyond, hoping to rescue Lauren before that other goatman had a chance to do anything else to her. Besides, he was sure the others could handle that first goatman. (And he was right: Utred dropped him almost immediately thereafter with another powerful blow of his greataxe.)</p><p></p><p>But then the Hellsmith waded to the edge of the lava pool and brought his <em>unholy warhammer</em> crashing down upon Khari Hammerslammer, who found himself getting "hammerslammed" for once. (He found he didn't like it.) Reeling from the attack, Khari almost toppled over but at the last moment found the strength within himself to stay on his feet.</p><p></p><p>Marlo <em>empowered</em> a <em>magic missile</em> spell and sent the five darts of energy blasting into the fiendish ibixian dragging Lauren; she was worried at the trail of blood the unconscious diviner was leaving behind her as she was dragged about. Jhasspok pushed past the sorcerer and sprinted through the passageway, bringing his battleaxe crashing down into the goatman's side, finally dropping him at last. Lauren's head dropped to the ground and she lay there, unmoving save for the discernible motion of her chest as she breathed - she was still alive!</p><p></p><p>Cramer flew through the narrow tunnel, realizing as he did so he was entering an entirely different plane of existence. Using his <em>prayer bead</em>, he cast a <em>cure serious wounds</em> spell upon Lauren, sealing up her stab-wound nicely.</p><p></p><p>Khari retaliated against the Hellsmith, bringing his own warhammer crashing into the side of the goatman's knee. And now the others rushed forward into battle with him, Utred swinging his greataxe into a meaty thigh. The Hellsmith responded in kind, smashing Utred with his oversize warhammer and goring him with a swipe of his curving horns. He also took a swipe at him with a smaller weapon of some kind, appearing dagger-sized in his huge hand but more the size of a longsword if Utred would have wielded it (something he swore he'd soon do - it was an intriguing-looking weapon he'd love to add to his arsenal) - but he missed. Had it struck its target, the Hellsmith knew, the foolish dwarf would have been <em>dimensionally anchored</em> for an hour and unable to use plane-shifting magic to escape from the plane of Hell.</p><p></p><p>Marlo sent another <em>empowered magic missile</em> spell blasting straight into the Hellsmith's face; at his size, ranged weapons and spells were the only way to reach him that high. The numerous attacks were starting to take their toll, enough that a final charge by Jhasspok, swinging his battleaxe for all he was worth, finally eviscerated the Hellsmith, who dropped his weapons and fell backwards into the pool of magma. Utred had the presence of mind to grab the <em>dimensional branding iron</em> weapon from the Hellsmith's unfeeling fingers before it too fell into the magma, from where it would likely have been unrecoverable.</p><p></p><p>"Fall back to the pit room," commanded Cramer, leading by example as he flew back to the basement level beneath the king's throne. Everyone gathered up around him, including a now-revived Lauren.</p><p></p><p>"It looks like the premonition of your death didn't come true," remarked Marlo with a smile.</p><p></p><p>"Not everything I foresee comes to pass," admitted Lauren. "I'm glad this was one of those times. But thank you," she said, looking around the group. "Thank you all."</p><p></p><p>"Hey!" cried out Khari, looking up at the ceiling and noticing its smoothness for the first time. "Where'd the hole go? How're we s'posed to get out now?"</p><p></p><p>"I can <em>teleport</em> us away," Cramer reassured the dwarven fighter.</p><p></p><p>"All of us?" pressed Marlo, more savvy in the ways of magic spells than the others.</p><p></p><p>"Well no, not all at once," admitted Cramer sheepishly. "I can take myself and three others."</p><p></p><p>"I will wait for the second trip if you like," offered Jhasspok.</p><p></p><p>"It's...not that easy," Cramer explained. "I can only cast the spell once at all, all day today. Anybody I leave behind I won't be able to come get until tomorrow. And I doubt the Ossirnans will let anybody left behind just sit here patiently to be picked up the next day."</p><p></p><p>"No tellin' what all might come crawling outta that pool of lava, neither," Utred observed. "This is Hell - all sorts o' devils could easily travel through lava, easy as you please."</p><p></p><p>"That's Hell over there?" Jhasspok asked, eyes wide in surprise. Nobody had told him about that! He looked around expectantly at the others. When nobody picked up on it, he asked, "Where is the metal man? Isn't there a metal man we're supposed to find in Hell? I'll go look for him!"</p><p></p><p>Marlo grabbed the lizardfolk by the shoulder as he passed to stop him. (It was a good thing her <em>fly</em> spell was still active or it would have been hard for her to reach.) "Hell is a really big place," she informed him. "You know all the places we've been to since coming to the surface? Hell is like that, only much, much bigger."</p><p></p><p>"It's not just that cave?" Jhasspok asked, deflated. He'd thought they were about to fulfill one of the prophecies about how to defeat that tentacle-monster-god-thing they were destined to fight.</p><p></p><p>"No, Jhasspok," Marlo confirmed.</p><p></p><p>"Let's get back to all of us getting out of here," replied Utred. "We can't be leaving anyone behind - they'd be dead before we can get back to 'em. What about the <em>bag of holding</em>? Could we stick some of us inside that, an' you take it with you when ye <em>teleport</em> away?"</p><p></p><p>"That would work," agreed Cramer. "But there's no air inside a <em>bag of holding</em>."</p><p></p><p>"I can hold my breath," offered Jhasspok. It wasn't a foolish suggestion, either; as a lizardfolk, he could hold his breath for quite a long time - it was one of the things that had made him so well-suited as a fisher slave. "That's one - how many more do you need?" Jhasspok had already forgotten how many people Cramer could <em>teleport</em> and didn't want to have to do the math to figure out how many that meant he couldn't.</p><p></p><p>"We'd need one more in the bag," Cramer mused.</p><p></p><p>"I'll go," Marlo volunteered.</p><p></p><p>"Where we gonna <em>teleport</em> to?" Utred asked. "Back to the wagon?"</p><p></p><p>"I'm afraid we've lost the wagon," Cramer frowned. "It's likely already been impounded - and even if it wasn't, we'd end up having to fight our way through the entire kingdom of Ossirna. Nope, better we get out of Ossirna entirely."</p><p></p><p>"But that means backtracking the way we've come!" said Marlo. "You'd need to go someplace you're already familiar with!"</p><p></p><p>"Not necessarily," interjected Lauren. She raised a hand and placed it on Cramer's forehead, then closed her eyes and concentrated. Her tattoos flared momentarily as she placed an image of the Azure Glade directly into the gnome's head: a field of unnaturally blue grass. "Focus on that image," she told the cleric. "Once we're there, I'll be able to get my bearings and we can head to my grandfather - he'll need to know of Velkis's betrayal."</p><p></p><p>"What about the horse?" Jhasspok asked.</p><p></p><p>"We're leaving him behind," Utred answered. "There's no helpin' it."</p><p></p><p>"But the meat--" the lizardfolk began, before Marlo shushed him and got him to step into the <em>bag of holding</em>. She took a big breath and followed suit, then Cramer closed up the bag, gathered the others around him, and said the words to his <em>teleport</em> spell.</p><p></p><p>Moments later, Marlo and Jhasspok were released from the extradimensional space inside the <em>bag of holding</em>. "The grass is all blue!" Marlo gasped, astonished at the sight.</p><p></p><p>"Where are we?" Jhasspok asked.</p><p></p><p>"We're in the Azure Glade," Cramer stated proudly.</p><p></p><p>Jhasspok was puzzled. "I thought that was four days away by wagon," he said.</p><p></p><p>"It is. It's much faster when we <em>teleport</em> directly there." That only confused Jhasspok further. If they could <em>teleport</em>, why had they bothered with horses and wagons all this time? That didn't make any sense!</p><p></p><p>"Cramer only just recently learned how to cast the <em>teleport</em> spell," Marlo explained, seeing the confusion on the lizardfolk's reptilian face. "As time goes on, he'll get even better at it, and be able to bring more people with him." That at least made a little sense to Jhasspok; after all, it had taken him many months to get as good at catching fish as he was, so he could imagine it might be similar with casting spells.</p><p></p><p>But Khari had an even simpler explanation. "Magic is weird," he stated.</p><p></p><p>That, at least, Jhasspok could agree with completely.</p><p></p><p>- - -</p><p></p><p>Logan deliberately seeded Lauren's "death prophecy" so we'd assume the scar-faced man was Syngaard and the back-stabber was Orion, two of our PCs from the previous/concurrent campaign, "The Durnhill Conscripts." But at least we (the players, not the current PCs) can rest easy knowing that King Velkis and Maelina will be slain by the Durnhill heroes towards the end of that campaign.</p><p></p><p>Logan was also concerned for a bit there we were going rescue Lauren before she even got dumped into the pit, given that the bulk of the adventure was planned to take place below ground, in the pit area and the pocket of Hell where the Ossirnans get their hellsteel forged. It ended up being a good thing Cramer couldn't <em>teleport</em> us all away at once like Dan had originally thought, before he re-read the spell description and realized he currently had a "three passenger" limit. (And he wouldn't even have had access to the <em>teleport</em> spell had he not been a cleric of Fharlanghn with Travel as one of his two domains.) But it all worked out.</p><p></p><p>We actually have one ibixian D&D Mini; for the other goatman, Logan used a satyr D&D Mini and for the Hellsmith he used a D&D Mini of a Large minotaur. The part of the castle we were in and the pit below he crafted using Dungeon Tiles, and assembled the Hell section using nine Paizo Flip-Tiles from a Darklands starter set he got me for Christmas last year (and which has already seen extensive use in our campaigns since.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 8048198, member: 508"] [B]ADVENTURE 29: THE HELLFORGE[/B] PC Roster: [INDENT]Cramer Appleknocker, gnome cleric 9[/INDENT] [INDENT] Jhasspok, lizardman 3/barbarian 2/fighter 4[/INDENT] [INDENT] Khari Hammerslammer, dwarf fighter 9[/INDENT] [INDENT] Marlo Pendragon, human sorcerer 9[/INDENT] [INDENT] Utred "Buckets" Butterflinger, dwarf barbarian 9[/INDENT] Game Session Date: 23 July 2020 - - - The group decided on posting one member on guard detail for two-hour shifts during the night, but nothing disturbed them in their [I]ironsilk tent[/I]. Marlo, having taken the last shift so she could get an uninterrupted block of sleep, was about to rouse the others when she found Lauren stumbling out of the interior room in which she'd been sleeping. She walked as if in a daze and as Marlo approached her, concerned, she saw Lauren's eyes were rolled up in her head, showing only the whites. The rune-tattoos on her face and body were glowing slightly. "Are you okay?" asked Marlo, touching the other woman on the shoulder. As if awakened by the contact, Lauren snapped out of her trance and her eyes resumed their normal look, the glow of her tattoos subsiding. "I believe there is a good possibility," the diviner replied, "that I will die today." She gave this dire prediction in a rather matter-of-fact tone, her attitude one of slight puzzlement rather than panic or terror. Cramer exited his own interior room of the tent as the two women were talking and Lauren turned to him with another prophetic statement. "Although the far lane by which you travel cares little for mortal contrivances, today it would behoove your friends' strikes to be aligned with the higher powers." Despite not yet wearing his [I]helm of comprehend languages[/I] - he'd just crawled out of bed, after all - Cramer was immediately able to translate Lauren's statement from "prophecy-ese" into a warning he'd better prepare enough [I]align weapon[/I] spells for everyone today, as they'd likely be fighting the forces of evil. "But what about your impending death?" pressed Marlo, more concern for the event in her voice than was present in Lauren's. "A scar-faced man will stand before me, as I am stabbed in the back and then shoved into a pit." "I'll start getting my day's spells ready," Cramer announced, returning back to his interior room in the tent. The others were roused and started getting dressed. The cleric had just finished praying for his day's allotment of spells when Jhasspok and Utred heard the unmistakable clomp of booted feet approaching. "We got company!" the burly dwarf called to the others. Sure enough, pulling back the front flap of the [I]ironsilk tent[/I], Utred could see a ring of armed and armored men surrounding them. If they were as evenly spaced all along the tent's perimeter as the men he could see before him, there were likely a dozen or so of them ringing their dwelling. One of the soldiers commanded, "Come out and explain your trespass upon the lands of Ossirna." Marlo knew that to be her cue. Stepping forward, the [I]circlet of persuasion[/I] on her brow, she smiled pleasantly at the stern men in their armor of reddish metal. "Good morning, gentlemen," she said. "We are on our way to seek an audience with the leader of your fine land, to warn him of an impending attack upon the surface world by the drow and seek to bring him into an alliance of kingdoms eager to send the dark elves fleeing back to their Underdark holes." Cramer, hanging back unseen in his own quarters in the tent, quietly cast a [I]detect evil[/I] spell from his day's allotment and sensed evil from the other side of the tent's outer walls. He nodded sagely to himself - it confirmed his suspicions. "Are you from Durnhill?" demanded the soldier doing the talking for the Ossirnan forces. "No," replied Marlo. Deciding that a full explanation of where they were all originally from would be too confusing and not relevant to the current conversation, she explained, "We are from Greenvale. We edged along the outskirts of Durnhill to get here, but we have no dealings with that kingdom, for they seek to capture one of our traveling companions." At this, Lauren stepped forward, turned about, and pulled her hair to the side, exposing the tattoo upon the back of her neck: the shattered hourglass, laying upon its side, spilling the sands of time upon the ground. At the sight of Lauren's neck tattoo, the men visibly relaxed. "Very well," said the captain of the troop of soldiers. "If you'd like to pack up your tent, we'll escort you to the capital for your talk with our king." The soldiers were visibly impressed with how quickly the group was able to pack up their gear, for they hadn't expected the [I]ironsilk tent[/I] to fold itself up upon verbal command and be placed inside a [I]bag of holding[/I]. Just that quickly, the Greenvale envoys were ready to go. Cramer took his customary seat at the front of the wagon, the others got in and, surrounded by six men in front and six men behind, they started their trek to the capital city of Ossirna. It was a journey of several hours, but they eventually came to a stop before a grand palace. The guard captain stepped forward and explained the situation to an armored woman who had come forward from the castle as Lauren and the five heroes exited the wagon. "Welcome to Ossirna," said the guardswoman, introducing herself as [B]Maelina[/B]. "If you will follow me, I will escort you to the king." Cramer's [I]detect evil[/I] spell had long since expired, but he felt he could pretty much sense the no-nonsense evil coming from the female guard captain without having to rely upon any such spell - she looked like she'd decapitate any or all of them at a moment's notice, were she but given the order. He noticed they hadn't been asked to surrender their weapons before being brought inside the palace and wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. "Please wait here," said Maelina, opening the door to a waiting room, the tone of her voice making perfectly clear this was not a request. She indicated Lauren. "You will come with me to see [B]King Velkis[/B] at once, concerning a private matter about the organization." Maelina wasn't aware of it, but the heroes before her were already aware of the Seekers of Eternity and their individual, bickering factions and knew immediately that was the organization of which she spoke. Cramer, Marlo, and Utred looked helplessly between themselves. They knew this was likely a trap; judging from her stoic expression, Lauren likely knew this was a trap as well. (Khari, on the other hand, was looking around the room, disappointed that this waiting room didn't have any refreshments; a nice, frothy ale would hit the spot right about now! And Jhasspok saw a shelf of books against the wall, which led him to idly wonder if any of them might have pictures of fish in them or if they were just filled with those boring, scribbly letters which somehow made words. Neither of them had any inkling they were now inside a castle likely filled with enemies.) There was little likelihood Marlo would be able to talk their way out of this, so she did the one thing she could think of to do: she surreptitiously dropped her toad familiar Truffles into the pocket of Lauren's robes as the diviner brushed past her to follow Maelina to meet with the king. Lauren, Marlo knew, was a sorcerer like herself, even if those tattoos covering her body channeled all of her arcane power strictly into divination magic; as such, it would not seem suspicious if she carried a familiar with her, and although Lauren had no familiar these Ossirnans were unlikely to know that. Truffles could at least be a means by which the heroes could learn what all was going on here, as the toad shared an empathic link with Marlo. Once Maelina and Lauren had exited the waiting room, Cramer lost no time in casting [I]align weapon[/I] spells upon each of the heroes' primary weapons, as Utred explained to Khari and Jhasspok just what they were up against here. Marlo, in the meantime, by concentrating on the link with Truffles, was getting a general feel for the local layout of the castle: Lauren hadn't been taken far, for the king was in a receiving room just a dog-leg away: out the door, to the left, and around a corner to the right. She passed on this information to her friends, wondering if they'd be taken to see the king or if they'd have to try to go rescue Lauren on their own. "We shouldn't have let her leave, not after having foreseen her own death like that," Marlo said, worried for her fellow sorceress. "Wasn't much we could do about it," grunted Utred. "Not unless we was ready to take on their whole guard at once." "It may come to that, I fear," added the gnome. "But if needs be, I have a [I]teleport[/I] spell prepared. I can get us out of here if we all stick close together." "I dunno if we're gonna be gettin' any help for Greenvale from these guys anyways," piped up Khari. "Mebbe we should just leave." But before Cramer could reply Marlo gave a sudden cry of alarm, mirroring a cry of shock and pain from Lauren that they could hear through the closed door of the waiting room. That was all Khari needed to hear: it was apparently on! Channeling the power from his [I]earth glide warhammer[/I], he dropped through the floor and raced in the direction of Lauren's cries, having to pop up into the hallway because he sensed while underground there was no floor beneath him just ahead: apparently there was a lower level below where Lauren and this king were. As he turned around the corner, he saw several things all at once: Lauren was wincing in pain and blood stained her lower back, where she'd apparently just been stabbed; Maelina, with blood on the tip of her sword, had her hand upon Lauren's shoulder and was pushing her toward a ten-foot-wide pit in the floor at her feet; a scarred man with a crown upon his head sat on a throne on the other side of the pit, watching the fun with an expression of intense satisfaction. Without slowing his momentum in the least, Khari barreled into Maelina, swinging his warhammer into her and attempting to topple her into the pit instead of Lauren. It took some doing, but the nimble guard captain managed to deflect her momentum sideways, avoiding the pit but only by dropping onto Lauren's unconscious body; the tattooed diviner had collapsed to the floor from her wound. "Envoy of Greenvale!" called the king on the throne. "Any further attacks upon my Royal Guard will be taken as an act of war!" The disdain in his voice was palpable; he apparently didn't appreciate the fact his entertainment was being waylaid from its intended course. Utred realized Cramer hadn't had time to cast the [I]longstrider[/I] spell he usually cast upon himself to allow him to keep up with his much-taller companions, so the burly dwarf picked up the little gnome and carried him along as he burst through the waiting room door and raced down the hallway towards Khari. Marlo cast a [I]fly[/I] spell upon herself from a scroll she'd purchased earlier and flew past them both, headed toward Lauren and Truffles. Jhasspok followed, trying to grab Lauren out from underneath Maelina, who was struggling to regain her footing without toppling backwards into the pit. But just as the lizardfolk had started pulling the limp form of Lauren toward him, Maelina yanked her from Jhasspok's grasp - she was much stronger than she looked! - and tossed her over the edge of the pit. Truffles leapt from the diviner's pocket at the last moment, scrabbling across the floor in a scramble to get away from being trodden upon. Jhasspok found his eyes following the toad's path without conscious volition and had to forcibly bring his attention back to the matter at hand. Khari, from his viewpoint at the pit's edge, could see a pair of goatmen in the large room below them grab up Lauren's unconscious - hopefully not dead! - form and start to drag her away. "Ossirna will never join in a proxy war between [I]gods[/I]," King Velkis told the group before him, putting as much disdain as possible in the final word of his sentence. "You are free to leave if you wish - or you can try to save the traitorous bitch if you think you can manage to do so." Again, the tone of his voice betrayed the low level of confidence he had in their chances to perform that second option. "We might just surprise you, [I]Your Majesty[/I]," Cramer replied, putting an equal amount of disdain in his own final two words. Then he followed up with the casting of a [I]summon monster[/I] spell, causing a celestial bison to manifest in the room below. The bison immediately charged forward, bringing his powerful horns stabbing into the closest goatman and smiting him with a blast of holy energy for good measure. It was a good 20-foot drop into the pit below. Khari didn't want to break an ankle or anything, so he ran through the southern wall using the power of his [I]earth glide warhammer[/I] and from there went straight down through the solid rock, exiting from an outer wall of the larger pit room below. He saw the celestial bison goring one of the goat-headed humanoids; as that one bleated in pain and terror, however, the other one continued dragging Lauren toward a large crack in the far wall - a narrow tunnel, now that Khari got a better look at it, from which reddish light spilled forth. There was a much larger goatman in the vast cavern on the other side of the tunnel, easily twice as tall as the others, working at a massive anvil with an equally massive hammer in his hand. A pool of bubbling magma separated this enormous, horned figure from the cave opening. Utred lacked a means of making it safely down a drop of 20 feet but also lacked any worries about the dangers inherent in doing so. Dropping to the lower pit, he raced toward the nearest goatman and swung his greataxe at him, the axe-head imbued with Cramer's [I]align weapon[/I] spell. The blade sliced deep into the goatman's flesh, severing through any protections the beast might have otherwise had. At the sounds of battle, the Hellsmith turned from his anvil and, seeing the dwarf impeding the delivery of the virgin sacrifice he needed to forge hellsteel weapons and armor for the mortal allies in the world above, snarled in fury and marched through the shallow magma pool, his hooves feeling none of the heat and none of the hair on his shaggy legs catching fire. Marlo scooped up Truffles from the floor and flew down into the pit below, casting a [I]magic missile[/I] spell at the fiendish ibixian the celestial bison had just gored, which caused him to bleat involuntarily from the pain of her rapid-fire spell-strikes. Jhasspok followed Marlo down into the pit, attacking the same goatman with his spell-enhanced battleaxe once he'd landed painfully on the lower floor and hobbled over to the attack. The lizardfolk's blade pierced the ibixian's flesh, drawing a line of blood across his chest that stained his shaggy fur. These beastmen were made of stern stuff, but the heroes were beginning to whittle them down! The ibixian whirled around to face Utred, striking at him with a hellsteel blade of his own, while the other one continued dragging Lauren into Hell. He'd gotten her through the narrow tunnel and into the larger chamber beyond. The only Greenvale envoy still upstairs at this point, Cramer cast a [I]fly[/I] spell upon himself and dropped down into the pit, seeing the fiendish ibixian dodge another attack from the gnome's summoned celestial bison. Then, with the grating sound of stone on stone, the pit opening above Cramer was somehow sealed off, for the ceiling above was now a solid, smooth surface. [I]That[/I] was certainly discomforting! It was getting crowded around the fiendish ibixian, what with Utred, Jhasspok, and a white-furred celestial bison all lined up to attack him. So Khari [I]earth glided[/I] beneath the four, popping back up behind the oblivious goatman. However, rather than attack the unsuspecting foe - and he'd have had a good shot at him - Khari continued down the tunnel beyond, hoping to rescue Lauren before that other goatman had a chance to do anything else to her. Besides, he was sure the others could handle that first goatman. (And he was right: Utred dropped him almost immediately thereafter with another powerful blow of his greataxe.) But then the Hellsmith waded to the edge of the lava pool and brought his [I]unholy warhammer[/I] crashing down upon Khari Hammerslammer, who found himself getting "hammerslammed" for once. (He found he didn't like it.) Reeling from the attack, Khari almost toppled over but at the last moment found the strength within himself to stay on his feet. Marlo [I]empowered[/I] a [I]magic missile[/I] spell and sent the five darts of energy blasting into the fiendish ibixian dragging Lauren; she was worried at the trail of blood the unconscious diviner was leaving behind her as she was dragged about. Jhasspok pushed past the sorcerer and sprinted through the passageway, bringing his battleaxe crashing down into the goatman's side, finally dropping him at last. Lauren's head dropped to the ground and she lay there, unmoving save for the discernible motion of her chest as she breathed - she was still alive! Cramer flew through the narrow tunnel, realizing as he did so he was entering an entirely different plane of existence. Using his [I]prayer bead[/I], he cast a [I]cure serious wounds[/I] spell upon Lauren, sealing up her stab-wound nicely. Khari retaliated against the Hellsmith, bringing his own warhammer crashing into the side of the goatman's knee. And now the others rushed forward into battle with him, Utred swinging his greataxe into a meaty thigh. The Hellsmith responded in kind, smashing Utred with his oversize warhammer and goring him with a swipe of his curving horns. He also took a swipe at him with a smaller weapon of some kind, appearing dagger-sized in his huge hand but more the size of a longsword if Utred would have wielded it (something he swore he'd soon do - it was an intriguing-looking weapon he'd love to add to his arsenal) - but he missed. Had it struck its target, the Hellsmith knew, the foolish dwarf would have been [I]dimensionally anchored[/I] for an hour and unable to use plane-shifting magic to escape from the plane of Hell. Marlo sent another [I]empowered magic missile[/I] spell blasting straight into the Hellsmith's face; at his size, ranged weapons and spells were the only way to reach him that high. The numerous attacks were starting to take their toll, enough that a final charge by Jhasspok, swinging his battleaxe for all he was worth, finally eviscerated the Hellsmith, who dropped his weapons and fell backwards into the pool of magma. Utred had the presence of mind to grab the [I]dimensional branding iron[/I] weapon from the Hellsmith's unfeeling fingers before it too fell into the magma, from where it would likely have been unrecoverable. "Fall back to the pit room," commanded Cramer, leading by example as he flew back to the basement level beneath the king's throne. Everyone gathered up around him, including a now-revived Lauren. "It looks like the premonition of your death didn't come true," remarked Marlo with a smile. "Not everything I foresee comes to pass," admitted Lauren. "I'm glad this was one of those times. But thank you," she said, looking around the group. "Thank you all." "Hey!" cried out Khari, looking up at the ceiling and noticing its smoothness for the first time. "Where'd the hole go? How're we s'posed to get out now?" "I can [I]teleport[/I] us away," Cramer reassured the dwarven fighter. "All of us?" pressed Marlo, more savvy in the ways of magic spells than the others. "Well no, not all at once," admitted Cramer sheepishly. "I can take myself and three others." "I will wait for the second trip if you like," offered Jhasspok. "It's...not that easy," Cramer explained. "I can only cast the spell once at all, all day today. Anybody I leave behind I won't be able to come get until tomorrow. And I doubt the Ossirnans will let anybody left behind just sit here patiently to be picked up the next day." "No tellin' what all might come crawling outta that pool of lava, neither," Utred observed. "This is Hell - all sorts o' devils could easily travel through lava, easy as you please." "That's Hell over there?" Jhasspok asked, eyes wide in surprise. Nobody had told him about that! He looked around expectantly at the others. When nobody picked up on it, he asked, "Where is the metal man? Isn't there a metal man we're supposed to find in Hell? I'll go look for him!" Marlo grabbed the lizardfolk by the shoulder as he passed to stop him. (It was a good thing her [I]fly[/I] spell was still active or it would have been hard for her to reach.) "Hell is a really big place," she informed him. "You know all the places we've been to since coming to the surface? Hell is like that, only much, much bigger." "It's not just that cave?" Jhasspok asked, deflated. He'd thought they were about to fulfill one of the prophecies about how to defeat that tentacle-monster-god-thing they were destined to fight. "No, Jhasspok," Marlo confirmed. "Let's get back to all of us getting out of here," replied Utred. "We can't be leaving anyone behind - they'd be dead before we can get back to 'em. What about the [I]bag of holding[/I]? Could we stick some of us inside that, an' you take it with you when ye [I]teleport[/I] away?" "That would work," agreed Cramer. "But there's no air inside a [I]bag of holding[/I]." "I can hold my breath," offered Jhasspok. It wasn't a foolish suggestion, either; as a lizardfolk, he could hold his breath for quite a long time - it was one of the things that had made him so well-suited as a fisher slave. "That's one - how many more do you need?" Jhasspok had already forgotten how many people Cramer could [I]teleport[/I] and didn't want to have to do the math to figure out how many that meant he couldn't. "We'd need one more in the bag," Cramer mused. "I'll go," Marlo volunteered. "Where we gonna [I]teleport[/I] to?" Utred asked. "Back to the wagon?" "I'm afraid we've lost the wagon," Cramer frowned. "It's likely already been impounded - and even if it wasn't, we'd end up having to fight our way through the entire kingdom of Ossirna. Nope, better we get out of Ossirna entirely." "But that means backtracking the way we've come!" said Marlo. "You'd need to go someplace you're already familiar with!" "Not necessarily," interjected Lauren. She raised a hand and placed it on Cramer's forehead, then closed her eyes and concentrated. Her tattoos flared momentarily as she placed an image of the Azure Glade directly into the gnome's head: a field of unnaturally blue grass. "Focus on that image," she told the cleric. "Once we're there, I'll be able to get my bearings and we can head to my grandfather - he'll need to know of Velkis's betrayal." "What about the horse?" Jhasspok asked. "We're leaving him behind," Utred answered. "There's no helpin' it." "But the meat--" the lizardfolk began, before Marlo shushed him and got him to step into the [I]bag of holding[/I]. She took a big breath and followed suit, then Cramer closed up the bag, gathered the others around him, and said the words to his [I]teleport[/I] spell. Moments later, Marlo and Jhasspok were released from the extradimensional space inside the [I]bag of holding[/I]. "The grass is all blue!" Marlo gasped, astonished at the sight. "Where are we?" Jhasspok asked. "We're in the Azure Glade," Cramer stated proudly. Jhasspok was puzzled. "I thought that was four days away by wagon," he said. "It is. It's much faster when we [I]teleport[/I] directly there." That only confused Jhasspok further. If they could [I]teleport[/I], why had they bothered with horses and wagons all this time? That didn't make any sense! "Cramer only just recently learned how to cast the [I]teleport[/I] spell," Marlo explained, seeing the confusion on the lizardfolk's reptilian face. "As time goes on, he'll get even better at it, and be able to bring more people with him." That at least made a little sense to Jhasspok; after all, it had taken him many months to get as good at catching fish as he was, so he could imagine it might be similar with casting spells. But Khari had an even simpler explanation. "Magic is weird," he stated. That, at least, Jhasspok could agree with completely. - - - Logan deliberately seeded Lauren's "death prophecy" so we'd assume the scar-faced man was Syngaard and the back-stabber was Orion, two of our PCs from the previous/concurrent campaign, "The Durnhill Conscripts." But at least we (the players, not the current PCs) can rest easy knowing that King Velkis and Maelina will be slain by the Durnhill heroes towards the end of that campaign. Logan was also concerned for a bit there we were going rescue Lauren before she even got dumped into the pit, given that the bulk of the adventure was planned to take place below ground, in the pit area and the pocket of Hell where the Ossirnans get their hellsteel forged. It ended up being a good thing Cramer couldn't [I]teleport[/I] us all away at once like Dan had originally thought, before he re-read the spell description and realized he currently had a "three passenger" limit. (And he wouldn't even have had access to the [I]teleport[/I] spell had he not been a cleric of Fharlanghn with Travel as one of his two domains.) But it all worked out. We actually have one ibixian D&D Mini; for the other goatman, Logan used a satyr D&D Mini and for the Hellsmith he used a D&D Mini of a Large minotaur. The part of the castle we were in and the pit below he crafted using Dungeon Tiles, and assembled the Hell section using nine Paizo Flip-Tiles from a Darklands starter set he got me for Christmas last year (and which has already seen extensive use in our campaigns since.) [/QUOTE]
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