Chiana, Regnor, Aletha, and Corvus had all gained in power at the beginning of this session. Chiana tapped into her vampiric heritage and gained additional alacrity. Aletha deepened her fey pact, gaining the ability to dazzle captives and force them to tell the truth for a limited time. Regnor learned to make his great axe strikes more deadly, and improved his combat footwork and resilience. Corvus had deepened his devotion to the Raven Queen, but did not reveal his new powers to the rest of the group.
In the morning Aletha instructed the second group to go out and find two of the final undead locations, one of the taverns in the Devil's Thumb district and the other somewhere on Fortune street. She would take Regnor and Chiana with her to the wharf in search of the last location in Cadavra's notes. Corvus spent the previous night at the temple of the Raven Queen and would not be joining them right away.
Word on the street said that the Dev'shirs owned many salt processing plants in wharftown. They checked for these first. After spending some time wandering about in the fish stink district, Chiana spotted a dead fish logo on the sign of a salt storage warehouse that matched a drawing in Cadavra's journal. The front doors were padlocked shut. One corner of the building had dirty and cheap glass paned windows, but they were obscured by dark canvas tacked up on the inside. Closer inspection showed that the windows were latched on the inside, but could be unlatched with a carefully applied blade.
Frustrated by the padlocked front door, Regnor headed around the side of the building to look for another entryway. Meanwhile Chiana borrowed Aletha's pact blade to try and open the window. She began to work the blade between the frames when suddenly a putrefied arm shot through the canvas, shattering glass, and snatched at her sleeve. Chiana dropped the blade in shock and backed away as the torso of a zombie leaned out to swing wildly at her. She drew her new bow, launched an arrow, neatly skewering it, and it fell heavily out of the window and onto the muddy street.
Aletha stepped up the to vacated window and ripped down the canvas blocking her view of the room. As she did two more zombies clawed at her. She ignored their flailings and blasted them to rotting bits. More zombies swarmed the window, grabbed Aletha and dragging her through the it and into a small office where others could rip and bite at her.
At the sound of smashing glass Regnor turned and ran back around the building. He could not squeeze into the office so turned his attention to the padlocked door again. He decided to use brute force to break through it. Chiana took a shot through the window and destroyed the zombie holding Aletha who was then able to misty step to the far corner of the small office and blast another zombie. Chiana climbed into the office and killed the final zombie.
A single door, latched from this side, led out of the office and into the warehouse proper. The zombie bodies looked to be those of common warehouse workers, apparently slain and revivified by Cadavra. Aletha listened at the inside door, but could only hear Regnor attempting to break down the front door. Regnor smashed through the door, boldly strode into the dark warehouse and shouted "Come get some". The interior of the warehouse was filled with a maze of stacked barrels of salt fish and sacks of salt. The whole place smelled like rotting flesh and briny fish.
A pair of skeletons stepped out of the shadows and shot at the Dragonborn fighter with bows, but their arrows bounced harmlessly off his new armor. Aletha quickly opened the office door and blasted one of the bow wielding skeletons to bits. Chiana moved out into warehouse, turned a corner, spotted another skeleton and destroyed it with psychic force. Regnor charged the other archer skeleton and cut it to pieces.
The Aletha and Chiana slowly worked their way around the maze of the warehouse, spotting and destroying the weak skeleton minions. Regnor tired of the hunt and with a mighty shove, toppled a tower of barrels, causing a domino like reaction throughout the whole storage room, crushing the remaining skeletons under a heap of stinking fish.
Satisfied that they had dealt with this pocket of undead, the guild went in search of the other group in the Devil's Thumb district to see if they had had any luck yet. The Devil's Thumb was a sprawling entertainment district where taverns outnumbered just about every other type of establishment. Being fairly early in the day still, the streets were mostly vacant. On one of these ale and vomit soaked streets the group was approached by a pair of figures in dark robes.
The taller of the two called out, "We've been looking for you, Regno, or shall I say Regnor. I've been looking forward to dealing with you once and for all." He revealed himself to be the Tiefling assassin, Traenor. Regnor had played Traenor as a fool when they had met at the Famished Froghemoth Inn earlier in the week when they were both looking for the grave-robber Latimer. Traenor had escaped their first encounter and had nursed his wounds while plotting his revenge. Using his position with the Slayers' Guild he had brought some allies to deal with the troublesome Dragonborn and his friends.
The robed figure with Traenor was a greataxe wielding cultist doombringer with horrific tattoos covering his face. The doombringer grinned evilly at Regnor and hefted his axe in anticipation of the coming fight. On the roofs behind the party another pair of robed figures came out of hiding. The first was a human cultist with a longbow, and the second appeared to be a devil covered in spines poking through its robe.
Regnor let forth a might battle cry and charged the doombringer. They exchanged verbal threats and vicious blows. Regnor used his newest ability, Unbreakable, to resist some of the physical damage the doombringer was dishing out. Traenor placed his warlock curse on Regnorand then hit him an eyebite, effectively blinding him to the assassin's presence. The spined devil, technically known as a spinagon, projected flaming spines from its skin. Some of these spines struck Chiana and then injected poison into her system. The archer took aim at Aletha, but his arrows fell short.
Aletha used her curse and eyebite on the spinagon, keeping herself safe from its attacks and moved around the street to gain concealment from her other enemies. She laughed cold heartedly at the archer who continually failed to hit her. Chiana retreated to a corner of the alley in an attempt to hide from the burning spines of the devil and the arrows of the archer, while striking Traenor with her bardic magic. Regnor could not see Traenor so he directed his acid breath in his general direction, but was only able to engulf the doombringer.
Traenor moved around behind Regnor, who still could not see him, drew a poisoned short sword and stabbed the Dragonborn in the back. Regnor shrugged off the effects of the poison, but his wounds were taking a toil on him. The spinagon spread its wings, shredding its robes, and flew over to the eaves above Chiana, plaguing her with more poisoned spines. The archer continued to fail miserably and pinning down Aletha.
Aletha dealt more damage to the spinagon with eyebite and curses. Chiana used her psychic abilities to cause Traenor to blunder past Regnor, but the weakened warrior missed his opening to get in a free shot. The doombringer and Traenor teamed up on Regnor and knocked him unconscious. Chiana, however, was able to revive him with a majestic word. Regnor took a moment to get his second wind and bolstered by the power of his magical lobster bib was almost fully recovered by then.
In the rounds that followed, Aletha killed the spinagon while the archer continued to miss her. Regnor dropped the doombringer, who seemed to welcome his own death. Traenor began to panic seeing his allies failing him, took a step away from Regnor and blasted him with eldritch power. Chiana took a moment to heal herself and recover from the poison effects. Regnor closed with Traenor and bloodied him with a critical hit. Traenor used a reactive teleportation ability to trade places with the archer on the roof and get away from the fighter. From the safety of the roof he continued to rain down eldritch blasts on Regnor. The archer was surprised to be face to face with the Dragonborn so he drew his sword and took a wild stab at him, but failed.
Aletha used her own warlock powers to blast Traenor, killing him, and his lifeless body tumbled down from the roof and onto the wet pavement below. The archer surrendered. They bound him and made him helpless so Aletha could use her new power to compel him to answer their questions.
The man's name was Dale, but he was known as "Dark-death" among his cult friends. He was a fairly new member of an Orcus death cult who met regularly in a small worship hall in the bazaar of the gods. He had only joined them because it was hard to find honest work these days. He and the doombringer had been hired by Traenor to hunt down and kill Regnor. His cult often worked with the various Slayer's guild cells in Punjar. Traenor was the leader of one of these cells called "SG-7" although Dale did not know where this cell's headquarters were. Dale mentioned that the Orcus cult leader might know more.
Aletha was able to convince Dale that it was in his best interest to leave his cult and see if there were any jobs available at the temple of the Raven Queen. She told him to ask for Corvus. After Dale left the party searched the bodies and found 500 gold coins in Traenor's purse.
1 comment:
oh dale, what will you do next?
Post a Comment