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Life continues belated.
So we regrouped, and started off towards the thorn again. Going back would be no good. We were getting into the populated areas of the cavern.
We were sneaking along, and we got to the ruins of an old city. There was an avenue going the way we wanted to go, so we went skulking along it. Then we saw a huge mob of goblins coming towards us, with some trolls, and they were dragging wagons and everything. Karas pulled his cloak up over his head, and we all hid, and Adosar made images of skin-beasts next to Karas, and he went up and shouted at the goblins and trolls.
They were sort of perplexed, and he shouted at them some more, and shouted at them a lot, and the image of the skin-beasts made a rumbly noise, and there was more shouting, and then the trolls seemed to make a decision and smacked the goblins until they all went off down a side street.
We kept going. Renn helped Niador hide better and move more quietly for a bit, and then she went to scout ahead and I helped him instead. There wasn't much else to fight through the city, and we avoided everything, and then we got to the edge of the cleared area around the stalagmite where Fingul was lairing. It was . . . strange, like it didn't want anyone to go near it. It loomed at us.
There were shadows, of course; they detached themselves from the walls and started floating towards us, high up in the air. They circled around, flapping like towels in the wind. Well, big, black, very quiet towels. And they attacked us, shrieking horribly. We killed one, and then the other one ran away, making images of itself so we couldn't hit it. I couldn't pick out which one was real, even with Semtek's eyes. The one we killed didn't have any obviously magical bits to cut off and take with us, so we just left it and approached the tower, looking up a lot.
There was a big flight of steps, and it led to a door, which was a little bit open. I asked Adosar if it was dwarf-work, and he said it was. I feel a little better about that than I would if it were Alar work.
We went into the building. I changed cloaks to the protection one. Renn made lights with the gloves Adosar made for her, and I took a moment to make my finding-magic on the sword I have. I think the feeling of the place confused my magics, because I had to do it again before it worked.
We went down the corridor. It was a long way, and we kept walking. I just knew Fingul was ahead of us, which isn't much reassuring. Eventually, we saw a door, which was also a little bit open.
The shadows came pouring out at us, and we fought them. Adosar shouted at Karas to chant, and he did, and we pounded on them a lot, until they went away. (Session quote: "I will chant ineffectively." --Shane) One of the shadow-demons summoned more of the little beasts, but not enough.
On the other side of the door was a big room. I mean a big room, it would probably hold the entire encampment from home. And the cows. Only there wasn't any grass, so the cows wouldn't have liked to have been there. We went into the middle of the room -- there were arches all around it -- and I tried to figure out where Fingul was. Straight down. Um.
Adosar figured that if they'd wanted to take something up or down it would be in the big doorways, so we checked the big arch on one side; it curved down. We checked the big arch on the other side, and that one went up. So that settled which way to go. More shadows came pelting down the stairs as we were about to go, so we killed them. They asked me if I could ask the building where Fingul was, but I was afraid that having him stuck in its basement for all this time might have made it a little crazy, and I don't know if I want to talk to crazy walls.
We started down. And things came out of the walls, soul-sucking things. They hurt Niador pretty badly before we killed some and drove the rest of them off, and he was very wobbly. We had to use the magic out of the staff to help him, some.
By the time we got to the bottom, I had to make the magic again, so I did. And there was the hallway in front of us, with nothing there, and he was ahead. I couldn't tell how close he was.
We went down the hall, and there was a door there. Somewhere through there. I gave Renn three of the spell maps, and took three, and we protected everyone against cold magics. And then we opened the door.
The room on the other side was an awful mess. And something moved in it. A really big spider. Not a natural spider, either; something from somewhere else. Renn tried to get us to back up out of the room, but it spat at us, huge masses of webs, and I got caught and Adosar got caught and the door was all gummed up. I know that webs should burn away, though, so I tried to command them to do so, and they wouldn't, it just smouldered.
We fought the thing, and it was nasty. (Session quote: "Does a twenty . . . seven hit?" "Oh, I hope so." --![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
keshwyn, me) It was huge and powerful and it hit hard, and I could feel it being poison, but the charm I made against poison stayed. We fought it for a long time. I think what saved us was Karas getting into the room and waving his arms at it and attracting its attention while the rest of us hit it. Eventually it stopped trying to hit him -- I guess it couldn't, or he was really lucky -- and tried to hit Ta'Nial, but we eventually killed it. When it died, I put the charm against poison on Niador too, since it had bitten him.
There are several different sorts of hunting. There's stalking something when there's a trail, and then there's having a blind, and waiting, and waiting. The thing about waiting is that when something finally shows up, even when you're waiting for it to show up, sometimes it surprises you that it showed up right then, you're not ready to react even with being prepared.
At least I think that's what happened.
We broke into the room on the other side of the spider. Karas went one way, and Ta'Nial went the other, and we kept coming in, scattering so his cold magics couldn't hold everyone. Ta'Nial ran up and swung his blade into the shadow-cloaked form that was Fingul, and hit him. Somehow, I find that very satisfying, that an elf should strike the first blow in this war since they sat out the last one.
We gathered, and I ran up, and Karas ran faster than me to come around and hit him on the other side. There were magics gathering, and we hit the shadow several times. Adosar was shouting for people to get out of the way of his next magic, and then came the cold and wind, and I felt it blunt against the magics of my map and fold around me and it wasn't as bad as I remembered from when we fought him in our dreams. Niador fell down, though. (Session quote: "Niador! Step left! ...Not what I had in mind. . ." --Adosar)
Adosar let loose one of his bolts of lightning, with a tremendous crack, louder than I've ever heard it before (and it can't be because it was inside, because I was there when he shot the ceiling at Lord Stashen's). And the shadows ripped away from it, and what was there wasn't even human-looking, but a strange sort of stretched-out thing, almost like one of the skin-beasts, and then it faded and collapsed into dust.
There was a clap of something, and people got knocked back -- Niador, who'd been woken up from nearly getting killed, got knocked out again -- and then there wasn't anything there. Adosar and I found a lot of interesting rocks, some of them almost fused into the floor of the place, and some magic dust. I have one of the rocks with me right now; Adosar says it'll make me more me.
All that was left of Fingul was his skull, which had a malevolent aura about it. We put it in a bag.
We used the magic whistle our escort gave us to send a message, and looked around for other things that we might want to bring out. The message we got back said that it was sort of chaotic outside, and we decided to leave rather than wait for someone to investigate the building. The building didn't feel like it was repelling people anymore, it just felt lonely.
I patted it on the wall on the way out, and told it that it would have people to make it all right soon. I don't know if it heard me.
We went out. Karas shouted at some goblins again, and they got out of the way, but there wasn't much to stop us. And there were no shadows at all. At least not that I could see.
We got back to our escort, and started back to the elf city. Adosar gave me a potion to help me with the poison when my magic ran out, and I needed it, because I felt sort of sickly afterwards, except for the magic that was making me stronger. Renn healed me of that the next day, though.
Adosar noticed that I still have sort of mica flecks hidden in my skin. I told him that the spell he put on me to give me some of the resilience of rocks didn't wear off.
That seemed to disturb him a lot.
And I discovered, to my agitation, when I started to write this, that I had several session quotes that I don't remember why I wrote them down. Which somewhat derails my tendency to use the session quotes as a guideline to what happened in the session. Clearly I need to be better organised with this summary thing.
- Session 1: The wind and the dust go 'round and 'round
- Session 2: Oh no. . . I just realised I named my horse 'Charlie'. . .
- Session 3: Look, you got beaten up by a RICH ogre.
- Session 4: Chief.
- Session 5: Roight, Brain, but next time you're wearing the dress.
- Session 6: Today was a very ranger day.
- Session 7: God is dead. Long live God.
- Session 8: More gaming.
- Session 9: Stick 'em up! Put all your arithmetical operators in the bag!
- Session 10: An Interlude Full of Irritating Cats
- Session 11: Psycho Killer Cybermuppets and Other Magical Explosions
- Session 12: Rich beyond our mildest delusions (Excuse me, sir, could you spare an orc?)
- Session 13: Let's go visit the Spartans! I hear Switzerland is lovely this time of year.
- Session 14: Into Barney
So we regrouped, and started off towards the thorn again. Going back would be no good. We were getting into the populated areas of the cavern.
- "And we all sound like mice."
"Cats."
"Very quiet."
"Mice are prey."
"Spoken like a lion."
- - Renn, Karas,
teinedreugan, Karas, ThiaraWe were sneaking along, and we got to the ruins of an old city. There was an avenue going the way we wanted to go, so we went skulking along it. Then we saw a huge mob of goblins coming towards us, with some trolls, and they were dragging wagons and everything. Karas pulled his cloak up over his head, and we all hid, and Adosar made images of skin-beasts next to Karas, and he went up and shouted at the goblins and trolls.
They were sort of perplexed, and he shouted at them some more, and shouted at them a lot, and the image of the skin-beasts made a rumbly noise, and there was more shouting, and then the trolls seemed to make a decision and smacked the goblins until they all went off down a side street.
- "That sounded very impressive and completely incomprehensible."
"I learned a lot of fancy swear-words when I was learning goblin."
- - Thiara, Karas
We kept going. Renn helped Niador hide better and move more quietly for a bit, and then she went to scout ahead and I helped him instead. There wasn't much else to fight through the city, and we avoided everything, and then we got to the edge of the cleared area around the stalagmite where Fingul was lairing. It was . . . strange, like it didn't want anyone to go near it. It loomed at us.
There were shadows, of course; they detached themselves from the walls and started floating towards us, high up in the air. They circled around, flapping like towels in the wind. Well, big, black, very quiet towels. And they attacked us, shrieking horribly. We killed one, and then the other one ran away, making images of itself so we couldn't hit it. I couldn't pick out which one was real, even with Semtek's eyes. The one we killed didn't have any obviously magical bits to cut off and take with us, so we just left it and approached the tower, looking up a lot.
There was a big flight of steps, and it led to a door, which was a little bit open. I asked Adosar if it was dwarf-work, and he said it was. I feel a little better about that than I would if it were Alar work.
We went into the building. I changed cloaks to the protection one. Renn made lights with the gloves Adosar made for her, and I took a moment to make my finding-magic on the sword I have. I think the feeling of the place confused my magics, because I had to do it again before it worked.
We went down the corridor. It was a long way, and we kept walking. I just knew Fingul was ahead of us, which isn't much reassuring. Eventually, we saw a door, which was also a little bit open.
- "We've been in bigger things, but it was World Peak."
"Clearly Alar like to lair in very large rocks."
- - Adosar, Thiara
The shadows came pouring out at us, and we fought them. Adosar shouted at Karas to chant, and he did, and we pounded on them a lot, until they went away. (Session quote: "I will chant ineffectively." --Shane) One of the shadow-demons summoned more of the little beasts, but not enough.
On the other side of the door was a big room. I mean a big room, it would probably hold the entire encampment from home. And the cows. Only there wasn't any grass, so the cows wouldn't have liked to have been there. We went into the middle of the room -- there were arches all around it -- and I tried to figure out where Fingul was. Straight down. Um.
Adosar figured that if they'd wanted to take something up or down it would be in the big doorways, so we checked the big arch on one side; it curved down. We checked the big arch on the other side, and that one went up. So that settled which way to go. More shadows came pelting down the stairs as we were about to go, so we killed them. They asked me if I could ask the building where Fingul was, but I was afraid that having him stuck in its basement for all this time might have made it a little crazy, and I don't know if I want to talk to crazy walls.
We started down. And things came out of the walls, soul-sucking things. They hurt Niador pretty badly before we killed some and drove the rest of them off, and he was very wobbly. We had to use the magic out of the staff to help him, some.
By the time we got to the bottom, I had to make the magic again, so I did. And there was the hallway in front of us, with nothing there, and he was ahead. I couldn't tell how close he was.
We went down the hall, and there was a door there. Somewhere through there. I gave Renn three of the spell maps, and took three, and we protected everyone against cold magics. And then we opened the door.
The room on the other side was an awful mess. And something moved in it. A really big spider. Not a natural spider, either; something from somewhere else. Renn tried to get us to back up out of the room, but it spat at us, huge masses of webs, and I got caught and Adosar got caught and the door was all gummed up. I know that webs should burn away, though, so I tried to command them to do so, and they wouldn't, it just smouldered.
We fought the thing, and it was nasty. (Session quote: "Does a twenty . . . seven hit?" "Oh, I hope so." --
keshwyn, me) It was huge and powerful and it hit hard, and I could feel it being poison, but the charm I made against poison stayed. We fought it for a long time. I think what saved us was Karas getting into the room and waving his arms at it and attracting its attention while the rest of us hit it. Eventually it stopped trying to hit him -- I guess it couldn't, or he was really lucky -- and tried to hit Ta'Nial, but we eventually killed it. When it died, I put the charm against poison on Niador too, since it had bitten him.There are several different sorts of hunting. There's stalking something when there's a trail, and then there's having a blind, and waiting, and waiting. The thing about waiting is that when something finally shows up, even when you're waiting for it to show up, sometimes it surprises you that it showed up right then, you're not ready to react even with being prepared.
At least I think that's what happened.
We broke into the room on the other side of the spider. Karas went one way, and Ta'Nial went the other, and we kept coming in, scattering so his cold magics couldn't hold everyone. Ta'Nial ran up and swung his blade into the shadow-cloaked form that was Fingul, and hit him. Somehow, I find that very satisfying, that an elf should strike the first blow in this war since they sat out the last one.
We gathered, and I ran up, and Karas ran faster than me to come around and hit him on the other side. There were magics gathering, and we hit the shadow several times. Adosar was shouting for people to get out of the way of his next magic, and then came the cold and wind, and I felt it blunt against the magics of my map and fold around me and it wasn't as bad as I remembered from when we fought him in our dreams. Niador fell down, though. (Session quote: "Niador! Step left! ...Not what I had in mind. . ." --Adosar)
Adosar let loose one of his bolts of lightning, with a tremendous crack, louder than I've ever heard it before (and it can't be because it was inside, because I was there when he shot the ceiling at Lord Stashen's). And the shadows ripped away from it, and what was there wasn't even human-looking, but a strange sort of stretched-out thing, almost like one of the skin-beasts, and then it faded and collapsed into dust.
There was a clap of something, and people got knocked back -- Niador, who'd been woken up from nearly getting killed, got knocked out again -- and then there wasn't anything there. Adosar and I found a lot of interesting rocks, some of them almost fused into the floor of the place, and some magic dust. I have one of the rocks with me right now; Adosar says it'll make me more me.
All that was left of Fingul was his skull, which had a malevolent aura about it. We put it in a bag.
We used the magic whistle our escort gave us to send a message, and looked around for other things that we might want to bring out. The message we got back said that it was sort of chaotic outside, and we decided to leave rather than wait for someone to investigate the building. The building didn't feel like it was repelling people anymore, it just felt lonely.
I patted it on the wall on the way out, and told it that it would have people to make it all right soon. I don't know if it heard me.
We went out. Karas shouted at some goblins again, and they got out of the way, but there wasn't much to stop us. And there were no shadows at all. At least not that I could see.
We got back to our escort, and started back to the elf city. Adosar gave me a potion to help me with the poison when my magic ran out, and I needed it, because I felt sort of sickly afterwards, except for the magic that was making me stronger. Renn healed me of that the next day, though.
Adosar noticed that I still have sort of mica flecks hidden in my skin. I told him that the spell he put on me to give me some of the resilience of rocks didn't wear off.
That seemed to disturb him a lot.
And I discovered, to my agitation, when I started to write this, that I had several session quotes that I don't remember why I wrote them down. Which somewhat derails my tendency to use the session quotes as a guideline to what happened in the session. Clearly I need to be better organised with this summary thing.
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