Evil Below
Summary
Adventure: Evil Below
GM: Michael Young
Season: Winter 794 WK
Night: Someday
Level: Level
- Party
- Time on adventure
- October 1, 1993 AP to October 26, 1993 AP.
- Employer
- Robin of the Merry Men
- Mission
- clean out a small castle that had been left behind by some religious type
- Pay
- Lots
Scribe Notes
The scribe notes can be found in the Seagate Times in Issue 8
We had been retained by Robin of the Merry Men fame to clean out a small castle that had been left behind by some religious types. They were the kind of religious types that tank around everywhere in heavy plate, mortifying everybody else's flesh. After they had taken it off Robin, (who had taken it off them, who had taken over the title in some fairly swift legal manoeuvre) they had gone down into the crypt to check it out. Bad move. Those that had survived packed up their boats and buggered off.
We were supposed to go down there and deliver eviction notices to whatever was lurking about down there. Ughbash and I flew the party North over confederation Bay. Except for Callas I managed to cast Shadow Wings successfully. For some reason I could not coordinate my arms while casting on her, even in Rank 20 darkness. Some say she emerged quite flushed.
We had to take cover from a storm and camped the night somewhere near Sihan. In the morning we flew on to the castle, where we met a Merry Man, lurking dolefully outside it, in the village nearby. He reckoned there were all these nasty things in the air, which sounded like gargoyles from the description. After organising ourselves, we snuck off to Robin's woodland encampment. Look a tree, look a bird, look a bit of grass. When we got there, Robin wasn't around. We talked to the intrepid woodsmen, and found out there were all these really venomous snakes wandering about.
Ughbash immediately fell to the ground in the throes of an orgasm. The intrepid woodsmen stepped away from his writhing body and said that Robin would be back soon, with any luck All the mages, except Gerald (not that he does any real magic anyway) began summoning these snakes. Callas managed to summon a quite large blunt headed snake, and several eyebrows were raised. It turns out that these snakes had been enhanced magically. They seemed to be more venomous and fertile than your average snake, and we wondered if Meg (a harmless hedge witch of my acquaintance) might know more.
We spent the night in the rustic charm that is the bedless, roofless, wet splendour of any woodland setting. Robin arrived in the morning, and told us that he and his men had gone inside after the Templars had cleared out, and they had been harassed by these gargoyles and been frightened by undead. He wanted us to go down there and give them a damned good seeing to.
We were led out of the forest and into the village. From there, we snuck up to the castle. We made it through the gate, when all Hell broke loose, and I use the phrase advisedly. Hordes of gargoyles descended on us, in waves and we were all forced back into the gatehouse.
Shoka and I sallied out to draw the gargoyles in, while Ughbash smashed them over from behind, and Brightflare provided artillery support. Meanwhile, other gargoyles snuck up on Vychan, and were doing for him. He had a particularly bad day, and was forced back out of the gatehouse and onto the drawbridge. Gerald floated around and observed this. Callas cast as many Trollskins as she could. By the time Gerald told us about Vychan and his dancing partner, two more had come to the party and were all over him like a love potion. We regrouped inside the gatehouse and Shoka and I leapt to Vychan's aid, evening the odds somewhat.
I had managed to jump on my gargoyle while it was in the air and it flew off. I had little concern because I had cast Shadow Wings on myself, until they were DISPELLED. There was lots of frantic casting, and bugger all fighting after that. I jumped off the critter and into the moat, and in a cruel twist of fate set off my supply of grenadoes. This palled into insignificance, however when Brightflare cast Dragonflames at one of the suckers, doing 75 damage and the bloody thing just blinked.
Vychan DAed one of these things for its GTN, and got Vroc. These are a kind of half-devil, so you know what their return address is going to be.
Eventually, we dicked them and then spent about an hour checking over the keep. Gerald had floated off somewhere and had to be towed back Small loss, small gain. We found the entrance to the crypt (dah dah DAH), and checked it out six ways to breakfast, and found out the place held an aging curse. The place had been tom about a bit, presumably from the Templars attempt at spring cleaning. Ughbash was really unkeen on stepping into the cursed area, and wanted to see if there was another way in. I snuck in to see if there was some other way in, and found a congregation of assorted lesser undead. We fought about two dozen of these critters, and had them clicked, when some other critters that none of us had ever seen before appeared. There were a couple of the vrocs that we had faced outside, two frog-headed things from Hell, and a homed, clawed, fanged thing that probably owns Hell. This was not the party's brightest hour, nevertheless we managed to hold our own and the tide was definitely turning in our favour, when the Spectre turned up. Typical undead, always trying to be fashionably late. Under cover of Ughbash's Blackfire, the Earth mages cast Tunnelling and we bugged out. Fuck, we thought, this is a bit out of our league.
We decided to go and see Meg and see if she can help us in any way. I put on my best begging clothes and we went off to her place. When she met us, we told her all about her neighbours, and she said she could make us some restoratives and lend us some amulets to be getting on with. We camped outside again, and prepared for the next day.
In the morning, Ughbash and I Summoned some wolves to take with us into the crypt. We went down to see Meg, and she gave us all this magic stuff, and we set off to Undead central.
We set the wolves to scouting around the area when we arrived. After a few minutes, Ughbash lost his link with one of wolves. At the time, one of my wolves was investigating a doorway. In front of our eyes it was consumed and turned into a pile of ash. A great silence descended on the party We decided that since the spectre knew we were coming, we might as well try to tunnel into the crypt from somewhere on the surface, seeing as resisting Whitefire was something the party as a whole had given up for Lent, and we might be able to approach it over an area it hadn't warded. Vychan and Callas cast Tunnelling and we made it into the room beyond the crypt. We snuck up to a break in the wall and surprised two man sized flies. Brightflare cast Web of Fire on them and we dicked them. We discovered that the walls of the complex were curving around. Gerald displayed an unusual degree of usefulness and spotted a permanent Illusion covering a pit. Shoka had had enough of this, and asked the Earth mages to cast Tunnelling into where they thought the centre of the complex was.
We came in behind as large a group of extra-planar entities as you could wish to meet, and smashed them over something chronic. The party was having a good time sending them all home, and in the centre of a magical circle the most gorgeous babe I have seen in a long time was involved in a magical combat with an undead of the translucent variety. Brightflare, Shoka and I kept trying to get closer to her to set her free, ( there was a fair bit of elbowing and shoving going on, I must admit) but we couldn't get any closer because we were all engaged.
The babe was calling out piteously to us to free her from this durance vile, and the party was sweating blood to do that, when the misty dude told us not to believe her, she was Wicked. Everyone except for Gerald was hoping this was true, and he told us that there was something strange going on. We told him he should get a social life, but he said we should check her out. Sadly, on closer inspection, the babe turned out to be covered in warts and scales, and Gerald was right. What can you expect from a man without hormones.
Brightflare groined his critter mightily, with a vicious knee in the nether regions, while Shoka dropped his glaive in a spectacular fumble and then was Feared by one of these half-devils. Gerald was being severely dealt to by one of the homed devils, and I was levitated. I grabbed onto Gerald and cast a Healing spell on him, and then it went black. Ughbash was controlled by a Binding Greater Undead spell, and was playing Murder in the Dark with us. Vychan engaged the homed devil at the front, while I attacked it from the ceiling. Shoka bumped into Brightflare on the other side of the chamber, and Brightflare cast Firelight on his shield.
In the meantime, Ughbash had lurked off and was giving Callas a hard time, although she resisted his poison womanfully. Shoka pulled out his battleaxe and engaged the devil that had turned me into ceiling mildew, and covered Vychan while he downed a Healing potion. Once he was healed, he leapt into the fray, while Shoka got some healing in.
Callas eventually succumbed to Ughbash's venomous assault, and he slunk off toward Brightflare. He cornered Brightflare and closed with him. Brightflare valiantly resisted the orc's salubrious attentions, but sadly could not bring his knee to bear. Vychan was brutally wounded by the devil and dropped to the ground, leaving Shoka to battle on with the fiend, trading blows with it until he slew it. Then he turned to find Brightflare crumpled in a heap, in the dark embrace of our party leader. Quickly pulling out a healing potion, he restored Vychan to consciousness, and told him to heal me. Shoka picked up his glaive and charged down Ughbash, doing for him in two fell blows. Vychan, instead of healing me, had decided to cast Tunnelling on the magical circle.
"Bugger," he said," I've backfired." 'What?" said Shoka. "I've backfired my Tunnelling spell." 'Didn't I tell you to get people up?" said Shoka shortly. "I thought it might be more interesting if I Tunnelled out the circle." "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH," said Shoka. Shoka thumped Vychan, and they got people up.
The misty dude had been doing things to Warts and Scales, and he told us to get the Hell out of here, because he couldn't hold her much longer. With a staunch disregard for our safety, we asked the misty dude how we could make Alusia safe from this nightmare creature. Taken aback by our valour, he told us to "find the Sword of Disenchantment. And lets have less bloody backchat."
Then skeletons started to pour into the room. Shoka held them off while Vychan cast Tunnelling in the right direction this time. I was still on the ceiling and I dropped greek fire grenadoes on the entrance so they could only come through one at a time. Gerald floated.
When the Tunnelling went off we got Brightflare and Callas, who had been paralysed by Ughbash, and the ore himself, and dragged them into the Tunnel.
Unfortunately, I had to hold off about 50 ghouls while the party ran for it. Once the party got out of the Tunnel, I followed them, and we limped back to Meg's place. At Meg's cave, we put Ughbash in a dark pit of snakes ( he liked that) and decided to appoint a new leader. Vychan reckoned that it would have to be Shoka because he was the only other orc in the party. Callas said that she thought I was an orc, which just goes to show that she's not all bad.
I was sent back to Seagate to get some magical supplies, and lots of Necro Counterspells, while the rest of the party heals up and gets rid of any binding effects. We asked Meg if she knew anything about the Sword of Disenchantment. She reckoned that it might be the sword that belonged to a Storm Giant she knew of. She said that she could transport us part of the way there, but we would have to make it the rest of the way on our own, and we would have to leave by midnight of the following night at the latest.
We planned to tell Robin of our intentions, and give the critters in the crypt a bit of a thrashing, to keep their numbers down. So, the next morning we set off to Robin's camp and got hombly dicked to the song of the lark ascending.
Two Nightgaunts, a Wight, a Spectre, and fifteen assorted devils ambushed us most foully as we entered the forest. Everybody got hacked down except for Ughbash, who was throwing Blackfires around like there was no tomorrow, and tied them all up in trying to cut him down. Meg chanced along ( we had left her cave about ten minutes previously) and started throwing around ranged healing spells that restored forty odd points at a whack. Then she cast these other Chain Lightning spells and put big holes in things.
Unfortunately, I got fried by friendly fire and was our only casualty. Most of the devils got trashed, and we managed to take out a Nightgaunt and the Wight. Afterward, Meg very kindly Raised me, but then we couldn't go down into the crypt and reduce their numbers a bit, because we had to go and find this magical sword.
At around eleven o'clock of the next night we went back to Meg's place and gathered around a stone chair. Meg started performing a ritual and just before midnight, we were attacked by some more devils. These had Shadow Wings cast on them, and attacked us from above. We fought these off, and then the Spectre turned up, which was bad luck for it, because Brightflare and Ughbash had just doubled some pretty nasty spells and were just looking for a target. Before we could put the boot in, Meg's ritual finished and we were flung hundreds of miles North. The ritual dropped us off on top of a small hill, in the middle of some standing stones. While we were bickering about whether to hole up for the rest of the night or move off right away. We had been told there was a reasonably aggressive dragon in the area, who regarded the sky as his own. He also thought the ground belonged to him, and we were led to believe that he collected rent off the water. Not wanting to attract his attention, we thought it would be better not to fly from the knoll to the forest, but could not make up our minds as to whether we should move during the day or night. At this point, we noticed a man who had stepped around from behind a standing stone. He said his name was Innes, and I was immediately drawn to him, because he had a hump. He reckoned he'd had this dream, and in it he'd learnt that there were these heroes who would need his assistance. He seemed very polite, so we told him that we hadn't seen any, sorry. No, no, he said, it meant you. The party looked at each other, looked at Gerald, and shook their collective heads.
Fearing that Innes might be a dragon in human guise, the party DAed him till he glowed, and he was grudgingly allowed to travel with us. If only we knew then how much more useful he was than Gerald, but then weevils have more use than him. We decided to hole up for the whole night and day, and travelled on the night of the seventh. We headed North across a plains, and through an ancient battleground. The party decided to pick up the pace when a mist started to rise, and the hills looked more like barrows. We loped heroically on for an hour, when we came upon a stone cabin beside a small lake. A storm was brewing, so we decided to stay the rest of the night in the cabin.
Morning broke to the sound of Gerald going for an early morning swim with the unnatural denizen of the lake that had Charmed him. Couldn't have been much of a challenge. Shoka leapt into the water to save Gerald, while Vychan attempted to cast Hands of Earth, and backfired. He was also Charmed, but he was held in his own spell, so it didn't matter too much. In the meantime, Shoka was having a very bad time with the watery bint, and Gerald was slowly drowning. I was woken up by this time, and I cast Shadow wings on myself. Even as Shoka was exchanging blows with the pool of evil, even as Gerald's lungs filled with water, I was winging to their aid.
Shoka insisted that I lift out Gerald first, over my strenuous objections, and struck out for the shore. While I was returning, Ughbash flew out with Shoka's glaive. I dropped Gerald at the hut, while Callas cast Trollskin on Shoka, where he had fallen on the shore.
Mist rolled in from the lake, and the party made for the hut. While we were in the hut bravely checking our fallen comrades, Brightflare heard her call him outside our shelter. But Brightflare staunchly resisted her feeble seductions.
Ughbash and I realised that she must be outside somewhere nearby, and snuck out to try and do her over. I stumbled across her first, and she was bloody good, not to mention her particularly appealing dearth of apparel. She would be certain to win any wet tunic competition you care to name. While she was taking me on, Ughbash gave her something special from behind, and she turned into a pool of water. Ughbash burst into flames and rolled all over the pool. Pretty embarrassing, really.
We decided to finish our healing in the forest, and left Foolish, foolish party. You don't need to know the pain we suffered in travelling through this green hell for the next six days. Suffice it to say that it lived up to all my expectations of the outdoors.
There were the biggest Venus fly trap I have ever seen, huge, obnoxious fungi, greenhags, quicklings, greenapes, black willows and direburrs (plants that jump at you, and stick needles into you). On the thirteenth, around midday, we stumbled onto a small cottage. We had just finished off a score of greenapes, and were staggering about looking for a place to rest up at the time, so this was a welcome discovery. The first one we had since entering the forest. This place looked like it had once been the home of an alchemist or herbalist. The party swarmed inside, on the off chance of finding funky magical items, and indeed we did find much that had lain undisturbed. But no sooner had we checked the place out, then a great rift opened in the ground. The roof beam fell and crushed Brightflare's pelvis, immediately dropping him. Gerald fell into the rift and was lost to our sight. Brightflare's unconscious body slid into it as well, but he refused to succumb to gravity's embrace. Everybody tried to grab him (notice how they don't bother with Gerald) and manage to pull him out, which was lucky, because the rift started to close. Gerald floated out. We decided the house was another forest denizen called a carnivorous cottage, and left.
We camped some distance away on the grounds that we could probably outrun it, and Shoka set about finding some herbs to heal Brightflare.
It didn't look like he'd be able to move around by himself, so we arranged a kind of stretcher to carry him on.
While we were organising this, we were attacked by quicklings. They hid up trees and threw things at us and then they would move off and throw other things at us. Big, sharp things. We smashed them over with really tough magic, and Ughbash managed to capture one. He turned out to be some sort of quickling prince, and we kept him as a hostage. They left us pretty much alone after that.
After travelling through the forest for a couple more days we realised that we had come to its edge. We released the quickling, who departed a wiser, weaker little sod than he had been before. We rested here overnight, and over that time, we heard various large winged things, flying above us. We didn't know what time of day would be good to leave the protection of the trees (hah), so Brightflare used his Crystal of Vision to read our fortunes. He saw a large winged shadow, and eight manticores. We reckoned that travelling at night was our best bet, although nobody wanted to put money on it.
Then Shoka suggested that Innes summon the manticores, so that we could lie in ambush for them. Innes seemed to think this was an excellent idea, and summoned heaps, when all we really wanted was to have them arriving one at a time. Anyway we trashed them and were having good time dealing to these critters, when things got very bad. A large winged thing flew over the top of us and dropped a Rank 20 Ray of Cold, a Rank 20 Lightning, and a breath weapon doing eighteen points of damage to most of us.
It trashed me and flew off, whereupon we realised it was some kind of winged chimaera. Finishing off the rest of the manticores, we got everybody together, and healed them up. We moved around to some more defensible position, and summoned the chimaera.
Ughbash had cast a Rank 20 Darkness spell, and he and I were lurking in there, when the bloody thing crept up on me, and did for me from behind. It charged out of the Darkness and ran down Shoka., knocking him off his feet. Vychan confronted it, and smashed it brutally about the head. While Shoka was getting to his feet, Vychan laid the beast low. Callas cast Trollskins on those people who had been dropped by the critter, so that they could be healed later.
After we picked up Brightflare and piled him on his stretcher, we staggered off and hid out till daylight.
The next day we started to climb into the foothills, and it became colder. Snow had started to fall and make life difficult for us, and in the middle of the afternoon, we were set upon by two behirs. Vychan boldly closed with one so that the rest of us could position ourselves to attack these things. These behirs cast lightning bolts from their horns, and the giant planned to stop at least one of them dealing these things out by wrestling with it. Before we could come to his aid, however, he was crushed to death as it wrapped around him. Shoka had put paid to the other behir, but we couldn't kill the one on top of Vychan fast enough. We dragged Vychan's body with us further up the ravine, when we come to a shattered gate made of stone. We decided to rest here, because it was getting quite windy, and this would provide some shelter. The weather got a lot worse, however and we were snowed in for the day. We heard pipes and drums in the distance, but when we went out to check them out, we couldn't find anyone in this wilderness.
The next day we headed out into the snow. We couldn't see far because of the snow, but we made quite good time. At around six o'clock we decided to look for a camp site for the night, when we heard a dog barking behind us.
It was dark so I went Unseen, and cast Shadow Wings on myself. I flew back down the way we had come, to find some giants looking over the stone gate that we had stayed in. There were about six large dogs that were sniffing around where we had been, as well. Anyway, one of the giants spotted me, and pointed at me. I circled some distance away from them, and tried to appear unthreatening. The giant that had been holding onto the dogs (also giantsize), released them, whereupon they flew after me. I tried to lead them away from the party, but they were twice as fast as I was.
When I got back to the others, I warned them about the dogs, and Brightflare cast Web of Fire at them. Soon the giants arrived, and I approached them to try and parley with them. When I got to within forty feet of these dudes, I DAed them for their GTN, and got Spriggan. Ughbash had spotted a couple of these dudes trying to creep up on us in the snow, and gave warning. I started to fly away, but before I could gain any useful height, one of these spriggans sconed me properly, and sent me spinning through the air. Much of this fight is a blur, because I had to be Trollskinned three times but it seemed to me that things were definitely looking up, when we heard pipes and drums.
The spriggans tried to make a break for it, but couldn't get away, because our whole battlefield was surrounded by korred. The korred arrived just in time to help us finish them off, and took us back to their home. It turned out that they wanted Callas to perform some Earth magic stuff for them, and in return, they would heal us up, even Vychan. This seemed like a good plan so we happily accepted their hospitality.
After Vychan was restored, the korred set us on the path to the Storm giant's castle. This was a huge flight of stairs, cut into the side of a mountain. We climbed up them for three days, which was cold, wet, nasty, and we nearly got trashed by aggressive snow. Finally, we got to the top of the mountain, just as our food ran out After getting up the sodding thing, the giant bastard on the gate wouldn't let us in. We had to offer Callas' services to the big jerk before he'd pass us through.
After a lot of grovelling, we finally manage to convince the Storm Giant King to give us the loan of his magic sword, if we could pass three tests. After flying through with streaming colours, Vychan said he'd bring the sword back after we'd finished with it. Rather you than me, mate. Then the King summoned a cloud to carry us back to the standing stones. As we were getting onto this cloud, I noticed something odd about it, and when I DAed it for GTN, it came up Cloud Dragon. Gerald decided to cast some resistible Illusion spell, and the dragon resisted. What an egg. He was lucky he wasn't fried egg.
We travelled back to the stones, and the King performed the same kind of ritual that Meg had, and lo we ended up back at the stone chair.
We went off to Meg's cave to see what had happened while we were away, but she wasn't there. We decided to go to the keep to clean out the crypt, having nothing better to do, when, as luck would have it, we ran into Meg. We hailed her and went over to see how things had been going, when she turned into an ape-like monstrosity and cleaned us up with her glaive. Vychan and Shoka engaged it with weapons, while the rest of the party hosed it down with every damage spell we could find. One of the mages ( not Gerald), DAed it for its GTN, and we discovered it was yet another kind of devil. Anyway, we trashed it.
Thinking that the devils had done for Meg, we raced down to the keep. When we got there, we were attacked by more vrocs. Ughbash cast a Darkness spell, while Vychan and Callas cast Tunnellings into the passages. Callas tripled her spell, and we just managed to get into the complex. We charged into the place, disdaining the threat of Whitefire wards, and made for the central chamber. We cast some more Tunnellings, and cut through the walls. There we found the place crawling with devils, and what wasn't crawling was flying. Until this point, we hadn't run into any hellspawn, but breaking into this room made up for the shortfall.
Callas caught three in Hands of Earth, and we Lightninged the others. Then the scaly pricks used their talent magic, and we were bollixed. Those of us that weren't asleep weighed about as much as a woolly mammoth, and we weren't even invisible. We kicked people awake as fast as they went to sleep, and then I climbed up my mate Shoka, so he could get traction on the floor and move. Gerald, it will surprise you to know, was laying about with the Sword of Disenchantment with a will, doing what Illusionists do best. In fact he was going at it so well it was more like the Turnstile of Disenchantment. Me, Shoka, Vychan, and Innes were forced out of the room by way of the Tunneling, and we had to make our way round to a break in the wall further to the East The others had to hold them off till we could get in there and pull their fat from the fire. Still, they gave the kind of showing any Guild member would be proud of with the limited abilities in their possession. Entering thought the break, the rest of us flung ourselves on whatever extraplanar entity was nearest and dispelled them with silvered steel. Brightflare preferred to banish them with Dragonflames, 'cause he didn't want to get his armour dirty. Fat chance. Gerald, Ughbash, and Shoka bailed up the mother of all demons, and then Gerald sent it home. At last we could turn our attention to the mere fifty odd slightly-less-than-Greater demons we had to clean up.
Things were going well, and there was a fine time in the old crypt tonight, when Gerald broke the Sword. The King of the Storm Giant's Sword. The Sword that sent demons back to Hell. Ignoring this trivial setback, the party soldiered on, slaying demons left and right. This had more to do with their numbers and positioning, and less to do with any superiority we might own. It is always darkest before the dawn, and suddenly it was. Rank sixteen plus. Then there was an ominous five seconds of successful magic resistances with no obvious effect.
We decided to bug out, which was very hard 'cause we couldn't see which way to go. Executing the contingency plan we had arranged for just this event, we panicked toward daylight, all except Ughbash who was caught in a quandary. Hardly anything remained to be done in the catacombs, we reckoned, so we left.
We headed back into the bloody greenwood cathedral, to bring the boss up to date. We told Robin what we had done after we got out, and had a good look 'round for Meg. We found her hiding out some distance from the keep. She had had a run in with them after we left, and hied her thitherward to avoid calamity. There was much bloody rejoicing when we got back to the Guild, especially when we found out how many Whitefires we resisted, and none of us stepped out of the pub for three days. Most of us had forgotten how.
Here end the scribe notes of Scratch, found written in beer on the floor of the Skull Tavern.
