PrP: Shadows Over Alexandros
Log Info
- Title: Shadows Over Alexandros
- Emitter: Yokai
- Characters: Yokai (ST), Aodh, Sasha, Lysa, Safiya, Zant
- Place: Border Between Alexandros and Desolation
- Time: Mar 2, 2017
- Summary: Long grow the shadows of Desolation, encroaching ever more over the distant reaches where it borders Alexandros in the East, causing theorhetical theory that something comes from that harbour of criminals and chaos. The militia have asked for volunteers to assist in patrolling a small portion of the periphery that they might put to rest some of the local murmurings and casual fear-mongering that has begun to kick up in result. Apparently they take it just seriously enough to want definitive answers, but not seriously enough to warrant the diversion of some of their units for the purposes of investigation.
- Signed up: Aodh (Brg2)* Sasha (Clr4)* Lysa (Pal4)* Safiya (Pal3)* Zant (Mnk4)*
- APL: 4
- Encounter 1: 4 Shadows (CR 3 Each)
- Encounter 2: 4 Skeletal Champions (CR 2 Each)
DM:
It's been a long road.
The militiamen that have been tasked with guiding you out into this place have been relatively silent as the group progressed some by ship and some by wagon -- apparently the simplest route into a very remote location. Some information has been managed by the group in their idle conversations if only through the snarky, sarcastic remarks that have been bantied about in response to what the adventurers might have said to one another.
One: They seem to think it's all the imagination of people with nothing better to do with their time than conceive of a threat on the outskirts of their country.
Two: They don't have much respect for Adventurers in general, but are grateful that they're not the ones that have to hang around out here waiting for the shadows to creep 'ominously' toward their glorious home.
Three: There are maps and provisions in the wagon that these intrepid heroes may use to fuel themselves in what is, most certainly, going to be a gruelling game of 'What was that?' that's certain to last at least a day or two.
When they arrive, they're quickly offloaded by the soldiers that make mention of drawing the short straw at least a dozen times throughout this venture forth; bedrolls and rations, flint stones and torches, all the things that anybody might need in order to make camp and settle down for an evening.
That said, it appears to be evening now.
Strange, it doesn't feel that late.
It's probably because this place is always dark; a mountainous terrain that looms above a secondary threat to the sun, as the massive prison that makes its home well beyond the home of civilization hangs on the horizon like the executioner's hesitantly eager blade.
It's cold and dry up in the rocky valleys of the range, but the biting wind that whistles by is kept mostly at bay by a thicket of alpine evergreens -- not only a shelter from the bitter nip, but a strange stopgap refuge from the eerie sounds that played out during the steep climb to get here, making it hard to tell if something is coming.
And, surely, something is coming.
Once the team has been depositted, the soldiers say something about having something better to do, suggest that they will be in the area, and trundle away down some stony path.
"Try not to get hurt." One states in his casual retreat.
"Look out for anything spooOOOooky!" The second walks backward and away, so that the others might see the appropriately chilling, wiggly-fingered gestures he makes as he creeps backward with the finest example of crazy-eyes you could hope for keeping his brows high and pupils thick in the fleeing light of the torch his compatriot carries.
Their laughter is a foul and mocking thing as they leave the party to it's business.
Zant somehow still manages to take all of this in stride, through the travel here. Even with the obvious murmurs of discontent about the presence of the adventuring lot-- and the whole nature of the job in general. Still-- someone like Zant doesn't really get a choice in wether to take a job seriously or not. It all has to be done.
But, it is the last statement that the soldiers leave them with that has Zant peering back over his shoulder at them with a mild measure of exasperation, and his brow slowly twitching. "...Somehow," he murmurs once the guards are out of hearing range. "...I get the feeling that this is going to be a pretty long night." A heavy sigh, then, and then his usual good cheer is back again in the form of a smile he offers to his compatriots. "Well! Should we set up, then?"
Aodh rocks in the wagon as it goes, his form wobbling and almost teetering here and there, and his knuckles would be white if they weren't made out of metal and thus incapable of showing such strain in the manner that fleshies are capable of. So, he grips on tight to keep himself in place and without toppling.
Then the Wagon comes to a stop, and they're more or less dropped off as the wagon and it's soldiers depart, leaving Aodh and the others with the supplies for the night. There's a single toned note escaping from Aodh, which one might astutely presume as minor irritation as the War Golen lumbers around the supplies, rooting out bits here and there. "Statement: Campfire required. Night encroaching." The Golem declares, as it begins to build said campfire, before using his left forearm to assist him in sparking some flint, getting the campfire going and getting some actual heat and warmth into the air. The chilly wind might be blcoked by the evergreens, but Aodh has some capacity of care for those flesh-units that are stuck with him. "Statement: Campfire created. Proceed."
Safiya rolls her eyes as the soldiers take their leave, blowing out a long, aggrieved sigh. "Between the Void Wyrm, the Iron Tide, the bloody demon menace, and whatever happens to fall on the heads of the villages, you'd think they'd treat this a bit less like a cruel joke. Well then." Plucking out a logbook, quill, and inkwell, the armored gnome begins to scribble away. Name, Date, Time, and a series of two-letter codes scratched under the 'Complaint' column.
The book closed with an audible *thump,* she seems to perk up a bit. "Indeed!" She says to Zant, clanking toward the supplies and parceling out the rest of the non-campfire goods for individual use.
While here, Lysa is quiet. She stands watch over the current area, ignoring the jest and jeers of the soldiers as she peers ahead... focusing on feeling what may or may not be approaching. How will she do that you ask? Well, every Paladin can sense evil when they put their minds to it. That's what she is doing. Merely watching ahead... into the near distance and searching for auras of evil.
Sasha looks back at the soldiers in a bit of disapproval before she looks to everyone else. "Soldiers like that don't see the real work when it's done....."
DM:
To say that the night grew long would be terribly misleading; the hours, however, have dragged like a bucket through turbulent waters. It doesn't get any darker than it was, but it does grow colder as the time passes, and what sounds can still be heard through the barrier of trees becomes a more active myriad of nocturnal predators lending their harrowing calls through the distant deep of the alpine stretch.
Torches and campfire do enough to keep the chill at bay, stilling the shadows in their unerring approach, so subtle that the shift may be invisible to all but the most keen of men. Through the silence, undeterminate in direction of origin, a sigh is let out as though by the wood itself; a sound of surrender, the whisper of defeat, the rattle of relief in visible drift, as though it were all over.
Finally... over.
When that sigh cambers through the crisp chaparral, it's as though the entire brake has met an untimely end. There is nothing in those long moments, stretching on in breathless quiet for lingering minutes that insist upon those gathered a sort of reverent silence most commonly reserved for mourning masses.
Riding the coat-tails of that singularity of silence, however, something does stir within the stygian approach once kept so timidly at bay by the flame that had been lit by the war golem. This stirring is a catalyst, something churning within the paladin's guts just the same as it does out there in the twilight, something wicked and sick, something terribly wrong, and something quite clearly inherently evil.
Fingers of rippling shadow creep long into the flame's light, oozing from the darkness in trembling need, the sound of softly exhaled memories of bliss trickling in through that barrier that had kept the calls of the forest from offering alarm.
Finally, from behind it all, an idle creeking like naked tree limbs brushing against each other, burrowing its way in on the wake of those wistful sighs.
Sword drawn the moment she sensed the presence of evil, Lysa states aloud, "My friends. Being moving in towards me. Make them come closer that I may draw the power of the sun to burn them all."
The deepening shadows have the plate-mail speedbump... not precisely on edge. Watchful, certainly, her beetle-black eyes roaming the encroaching darkness. "Nothing to fear my left poleyn," she mutters, unlimbering her flail... And starts, whipping around just as bony fingers skitter off her pauldron. "Alarm!" she calls, chains singing as she swipes her flail at her attacker's skull. "The dead march, 'ware!"
Watching and waiting, Lysa holds her sword in hand. She waits, waits.. steps a half pace back from one shadow.. waits a bit more and when all of the enemies that she can percieve have attacked their targets, she lifts her sword high in one hand, and her solar disk looking symbol in the other, "Even in the darkest night, the sun burns on brightly!" she calls out, radiance flashing outwards from her to sear the undead.
Sasha, just as Lysa channels her radiance at the skeletons and shadows, does the same with her own blue energy pulse radiating out and searing the skeletons as well.....
A low tone escapes from Aodh as the Skeletons and Shadows breach through the night and come towards the grouping. With his own attention shifted towards the blasts of light that come from Sasha and Lysa, the War Golem doesn't notice until the last moment, barely avoiding being run through by the Skeleton that comes charging towards him. "Alert: Undead. Statement: Engaging. Entering combat." blurts the monotone voice of the Golem, as he plants his heavy boot-foot into the earth. His spiked chain gives a single whirl, and he then casts it towards his opponent.
The positive damage from the channeling obviously has done its work, as Aodh's spiked chain smashes through the skeleton's spine and somehow overcomes the nefarious energies that hold it together - causing it to tumble apart in a pile of bones and dust. The Golem sweeps his chain back, before continuing to whirl it in a sharp circle, causing it to emit a high pitched tone as the Golem's red sight comes scanning and panning. "Clarification: Multiple Undead."
"Seriously, skeletons?!" Zant grumbles out upon this turn of developments. "Why is it always skeletons?!" He is apparently not pleased. He doesn't look any more pleased when a grouping of skeletons comes up to him and he's forced to stomp his foot down, and throw his fists into a sudden, rapid array of punches that smash through the ribcage of the skeleman and snaps the thing's spine up finally. "ORA!"
And then there's the sudden flash of energy-- the Sun. he doesn't even bring his arm up to shield his vision, instead calling out with a grin, "Do that again!"
DM:
As the group begins to stand to face off against this foul foe, blades stab out from the shadows; longswords, gleaming as though they were aflame as they catch the desperate light of that one bastion against the seeming impenetrable dark of this place -- most swing wide as the skeletal champions that weild those weapons step free in a shaggy, stuttering step that brings them into battle. There are no sounds of aggression or upset at the way they skirt just shy of many of the combatants that have answered the call of curiousity, merely the unnerving and unnatural creeking of bared joints and chattering clack of jaws opening and closing as though they nibbled upon some tasty little morsel.
Shadows rise from the ground, their seeking, too-long digits reaching and caressing for the unguarded legs of the adventurers, glowing eyes seen amidst the rocky grounds of the campsite as they try their level best to stay away from the flame whilst still seeking the tantalizing warmth of the living that have intruded upon this, their latest point of conflict. The only thing that seems to rock them from their near soundless and inhuman seeking is that damnable light!
There is a piercing shriek that splinters out into the voices of many, hissing and wailing into the muted night as it tears through their unnatural essence, causing a wild lashing of their limbs to snap out at anyone nearby, though none manage to find purchase. The skeletal figures warp momentarily at the second wave, the scent of their dead remnants, those tatters of mummified flesh burning away rich and heavy on air turned stagnant. No sound escapes them, but their jaws do hang open as though they screamed with anguish, left in empty-socketted horror as their head twitches this way and that in some clumsy attempt at understanding what it is that's happening to them.
They're clueless.
"BACK!" Safiya roars, her flail bursting aflame as it arcs toward the attacking shadow. This time, her strike is true, and the white flames cling to the darkness. "BACK TO THE VOID THAT COUGHED YOU OUT!"
Blade and symbol still held aloft, Lysa repeats her feat... radiance seeming to rain down upon her, spreading out in waves... she gets a fairly good bruising from a stab to her breastplate, but she sucks it up and holds her ground.
"--Eh?" Sounds out Zant, in initial confusion. What with the shadows coming up from the grounds and all. "...EEEEHH??" And this turns into surprise, and a brief moment of panic. "What is this now?!" His eyes rise up to follow the consequent rise of a shadowy figure over him, and he swallows audibly. "...This is bad..."
His eyes narrow immediately after, though. No time to worry. Need to focus. Slowly, he draws in a steady, deliberately controlled breath-- one that focuses something else within him, too. For a fraction of a second, his whole state is one of calm-- one that explodes immediately, as he stomps forward. "Ha--!" A fist flies forward and slams through the darkness of the shadow-- enough to leave an actual hole in the substance when the fist is pulled out. And then, his other fist follows, and the first one again, in a volley of vicious punches that scatter the shadow entirely by the end of it. With that done, he draws his foot back to straighten himself up again, with a quiet "Ora," let out, hand held in front of him, fingers up.
Sasha's prayer is still heard, but after the touch from the shadow...her words falter, and the energy isn't quite as strong as it could've been....
Skeleton down. Continual flashes of light. Aodh figures if he had a silly fleshy brain, he'd probably be getting a headache. Instead, he's watching the gradual disintegration of the shadows and skeletons from the constant washes of light that pour over them. Aodh emits a tone that stops, starts, stops, starts, and then stops. Probably some attempt at a laugh - but that cuts short when the Shadows screech. That noise upsets even the emotionless War Golem.
His boots thump into the muck as he lurches past the campfire that he'd only recently set alight, and promptly brings himself within range of the shadow attempting to badtouch Sasha. He hurls the weighted, pointed end of his spiked chain - spearing through it's form and causing it to disperse - before he then hauls the spiked chain back. "Warning: Incorporeal opponents. React appropriately."
DM:
After the light had so viciously torn through the group of undead, not twice, but multiple times, they appear to have had enough of this nonsense.
That is to say, they put on their big boy pants and actually manage to do something for a change. Those writhing limbs of the shadows grip at Safiya and Sasha, the darker of the two having their tiny gnome face palmed by the abnormally proportioned spectre, that dark tone turning a sickly pale for lingering moments, blackened veins appearing at the edges of any visible skin as they painfully shrivel beneath skin momentarily parchment thin and equally as fragile. Sasha's constitution seems greater just then -- perhaps it is the will of her God, or perhaps the first of the pair was simply hungrier than its counterpart.
The light still chars and sunders, but still these creatures continue on their tireless pursuit of that which they have lost -- that life, so pure, so real, so warm. How they long for it, how those icy fingers dark and gnarled paw and grip at everything they can get, clutching at armoured edge, drifting through plates for one stolen moment of that which was, what shall never again be.
Their sorrow is palpable.
The skeletal soldiers simply continue to chop and hack, despite the fact that what remains of their body is slowly peeled away by the prying eye of the Gods that are so watchful over this fortuitously faithful group, their moaning joints the only suggestion of their discomfort.
The shadow's chill bites deep, sapping the strength from Safiya's limbs. But one is not called to fight in Serriel's name, just to quail in the cold. Tearing away from the undead creature's grip, ignoring the rake of bony fingers against her armored back, the Veyshanti gnome whips her silver-headed flail around, driving it through the wounded Shadow and scattering it entirely. "IN SERRIEL'S NAME, GET YOU OFF THE SKIN OF THIS WORLD!"
Evading yet another clumsy strike from a Shadow.. Lysa twists her blade about and swings it as an attack... sunlight flashing off of it as she does so, wafting through the creatures of negative energy... burning yet again. Another of the creatures drops, and she remarks, "I ... I cannot be being doing that again."
Sasha is still feelin the effects of the shadow, but she still reaches forward to put her hand on the skeleton......and she stumbles....loosing the spell.
"Lysa!" Zant calls out, suddenly, and bursts up from his previous position to speed across the ground and towards her in a blur of motion-- one that's still somewhat easy to track by the trails of white and gold left behind by his scarves whipping along with the wind. And in the very next instant, he's flying through the air, with a foot thrust forward-- and through the shadow before the Sunblade, sending that one dissipating now, too.
Combat is now apparently going the way it should be - in Aodh's favour. With the Shadows removed by both blows and the holy magics of those around him, his attention shifts to the one remaining skeleton that remains standing in the face of all that is 'Good' and 'Right', aka: Not a filthy undead, thank you. You're awful. Go away!
In retaliation to the awful presence of the Skeleton, Aodh's form shifts in and he hurls the weighted tip of his spiked chain through the air - only for it to skip inbetween the ribcage. So Aodh yanks, hoping to catch something on the way out - and it slides out neatly inbetween the ribs once more. There's an audiable *creak* as the Golem's jaw drops open, before a *clunk* as it snaps shut. A singular harsh tone escapes from the Golem. "Emotion: Irritation."
DM:
It is a massacre.
At least, it would be, were these things not already dead.
There is a lingering, mournful cry that's let out when the shadows are scattered back into the darkness from wence they came -- most probably just part of some greater gestalt shadow that shalll bring havoc down upon the city at a later date -- but, for now, gone like smoke on the wind. The skeletons are wittled down like so much wood on an old man's porch, little more than shattered bone and remnants of a greater entity that existed once upon a time. If one were to pause a moment to notice, they may make out the weathered, beaten and broken insignia of Serriel emblazoned here or there, warped and mudded by their unnatural state.
Finally, only one remains. The most stubborn of skeletons, staring vacantly toward Safiya, pitch sockets almost seeming to plead with the gnome to end this terrible thing; to let the light shine where it has not dared in an age.
"I understand," Safiya pants, hefting her mace for one final swing. Her withered muscles, however, are not up to the task, merely cracking away one of the skeleton's teeth.
With the way things have been going, Lysa's sword comes down from its waving around to make sunlight. The blade is however blazing with energy. She hesitates a moment as others do their things.. waiting for her moment before she steps forward, spinning about and using her full body weight to accelerate her weapon. The blade smashes and burns its way through the remains of the skeleton.. scattering ribs, spine, and even some of the skull in her angular swipe.
She recovers from the strike and looks about, "Is that being all of them?" she asks, not like she wants more, but mostly worried, because she is quite.. tired. Worn out of magic.
DM:
Something foul is afoot.
And it isn't just the skeletons' feet.
When Safiya strikes out at the last remaining skeleton and manages to bash out a tooth, it only stands there staring at her, as thought to say 'Why? I trusted you.'. Its head turns toward the others of the party with a plaintiff moaning, jaw hanging loosely on damaged hinge, as though in utter exasperation at the events that have unfolded. It's about then, however, that Lysa comes through with a devestating blow that leaves it shattered upon the ground, jaw giving one or two final snaps shut and creeks open before it simply lay there.
There is something that sits wrong in the gut, something that speaks of ... more. A feeling on the air that doesn't dissipate when the undead are brought down, but instead only seems to impress itself all the more upon this place, swallowing up the guttering light of the fire in its tyrannical approach.
It's hours without the return of the soldiers, time that stretches on with the flame rising to nothing more than embers. Should the party eventually leave to look for them, they will find nothing more than a wagon and steed, abandoned on the path about a mile out. Hanging from the sides are bits of cloth that look as though they once belonged to a banner of some contingient, grey and gold, but without the insignia of Serriel that could have once been spied on the armour of those that were struck down in the scuffle.
No, instead, this is streaked through with crimson and black, as though someone had thrown ink across it in a violent, angled assault. When the group happens upon it, it still drips marbled red onto the stony path. Further efforts to locate the soldiers reveal nothing, and no matter how long this group of well-meant derring-do waits, they do not return. They will be forced to return to the city without their former guides, sooner rather than later.
~Fin