Aporeu chronicles Issue 46: Looking back it's so bizarre (it runs in the family)
Stories from the adventurers
This week
they got in, did their thing and made a profit. That's a good mission if you ask me.
Looking back it's so bizarre (it runs in the family) by Thamior
It had been a while, since i had a mission. I took my time working on Alyrs old home and I thought it would be good for me to go back on mission, so I decided to look into the possibilities. There was a mission available for an organization called “The Family” which I didn’t know at that time. When I arrived at the guildhall I met my fellow adventurers for this mission. There were Ranra, Joop, Lindal and Elveira. Of which only Elveira was new to me. I had mixed feelings with this group, seeing Joop already shot me in the back once, but Ranra is someone I can communicate with, seeing she is a druid as well. After a moment of talking to Loïs, she send us to Kiresri, who is quite a person. She actually seemed to be afraid of me and my companions. She was afraid we would bring in any type of filth and she also seemed to think we were. So after getting the letter for this quest, we were send out immediately. I myself had a feeling of distaste in her office. Much too clean to actually live in. Anyway, we were send on our way to the contact of this quest, namely Matt. Also known as The Nephew. We were send to a location on a market. Luckily my fellow quest members knew the route to the rendezvous point. Apparently it had something to do with something Elveira did before. When we arrived at the rendezvous point we were taken into a part of the city which itself seemed to be some kind of warehouse. There were a lot of boxes stashed in the entire quarter. It took some time to get at Matt’s office. It had some strange cage standing in the back, but it wasn’t mentioned by anyone, so I ignored it as well. Matt explained to us there had been a problem with the gate and the access to it by the organization he belonged to, namely The Family. And that was a problem, because there was a new world they wanted to trade with. So we got our mission documents for a mission to this new world and we needed to set up trading connections if possible. Also we would be getting a bonus on our mission reward if we would take an exotic weapon with us for Noth. A bugbear and the leader of the thieves guild. The family made a bit of trouble with them and now they wanted to make peace by offering this exotic weapon to him. After we left the city quarter of The family, we ran into Denise. Another member of The family. And an enforcer for them. Someone who punished people for not doing something The family had ordered them to do. She was a bit on edge it seemed and was eating a lot of pickles. But apparently she was pregnant, so that would explain both. When we left Denise, Elveira had the idea to go to a contact of her. This contact came from the world we needed to travel to and she could explain a lot about this world. This was generally considered a good idea, so we left together to Lenna. A inhabitant from this new world. Who told us about the diplomatic issues on this world. There live two factions which have been at war with each other for millennia already. Apparently they both thought of each other that the other group worshiped a false god. One group contained orcs, humans and everything in between, but quite big all of them. The other group, which was Lenna’s group, contained humans and shapeshifters. Almost all of them could change into an animal. Lenna could change into a bear, which I, of course, liked a lot about her. Unfortunately she changed into a bear once, while walking around outside and it scared people off. So most of the time she stayed in her room at the inn. Elveira talked to her and convinced her to come with us to her own world. So we got to the gate with the six of us. Elveira showed the papers to the guard standing at the gate and filled in the blanks of information to the guards. It would seem Elveira is quite good at bending the truth to the point of breaking and then just breaking it if need be. Now I must say, Elveira came up with quite a good story on why we would be going through the gate. So in the end the guard gave the coordinates of the gate in the other world and we got through. The first thing we notices as the fact we were all standing on a very old battlefield. There were skeletons everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. As far as the eye could see, every spot on the ground was covered with bones from skeletons. The gate itself was build upon a mountain of these skeletons. Standing at the bottom of the mountain were two groups. One of the orcs and one of the changelings. Before we went down the mountain, Elveira wanted to do some kind of ritual to see if she could connect to the ancestors of the dead bodies, so she did this ritual and immediately Elveira started changing. Her eyes started to look green, her skin as well and she was talking in something which looked like Sylvan. I saw this first and broke her contact with the skeletons, hoping it would help, and it did. Her left eye still has a patch of green, but further there has been no change of the body. So we went down the mountain and at the bottom, both groups were beckoning us to come their way, but because we already had contact with Lenna, we decided to go to the group of changelings. Coming at their side we were welcomed by Caldeum. The leader of the group waiting for us. Caldeum knew Lenna and he send her back to the camp and escorted us himself to the warcamp, to the leader of their group. Coming at the warcamp, we were informed to put away our weapons before entering the command tent of the leader of this group, Ellaria. A female with a blindfold. Her eyes appeared to be bleeding and she told us she was blessed by Timuviel, their god. She told us she could see perfectly, even with her bleeding eyes and I believe her because of her responses on the things we did. She told us there had appeared a second false god, beside Alana, which was being supported by the other group. Gunda, the new false god, had a group of supporters not far from our location and Ellaria asked us to get rid of them and give her any information on what their motivation was to follow Gunda.
So we set out to the hideout of this new group. They had there base at the skeleton of a large dragon and we could enter there lair, by walking through the dragon skull. So we went to this location.
At the start of this lair we were welcomed by flying arrows. Apparently they did not expect visitors and were told to great everyone with arrows. The welcoming party contained members of both groups on this world. Humans and shapeshifters as well as orcs. We worked through the welcoming party without a lot of troubles. Partly because of Ranra’s steeder form, which jumped upon them. I myself made one of them cower into surrendering and after the fight we retreated a bit to get some rest and to talk to our captive.
She told us about the inside of the lair, or at least, from the upper level, which was where she was allowed to go. So we heard about the sleeping chambers and the cells, but that was about all the information she had for us. After giving us all the information she had, we let her go, to get rehabilitated in the community. We don’t know if she did go back, or just to another location of the worshipers of Gunda. But we did not want to kill her without her attacking us. On her information we decided it was best if just a few of us would go inside.
At the first room there were some guards sleeping. In a backroom and when they opened the door to inspect the room, the guards woke up, so they closed that room with a rack with cheeses on them. It was a lot of weight, so the door was completely shut and after getting the rest of us, the group decided to set fire to the mattresses so we could overpower the three guards who had been sleeping there. It didn’t take Lindal long to set fire to the mattresses from outside the room. The room apparently filled with smoke quite fast, because it didn’t take long for the guards to shout for help. We let them out and captured them in the cells a little further down the corridor.
Next room. We heard a lot of noise and knew there were people inside, so we decided to warn them to surrender, but as soon as I opened the door, they attacked me. Two persons were inside, a man and a woman. Even after telling them again to surrender, they did not stop and with a few direct blows to the head and torso, we killed them both.
So we went on down. At the bottom of the lair we entered a chamber with a statue of some kind of elf. It was well made, but much too big to take it with us, so we ventured into the next chamber. This contained the information we were looking for. There was a stack of books standing on a desk with some kind of prophecies. Apparently it was foretold these changes would happen and we took the books to take them to Ellaria.
Suddenly we heard a growl coming from one of the next chambers and on inspection we found some kind of animal on which had been experimented a lot chained to the wall. Ranra decided to talk to it and see if we could help it. She talked to it and found out it used to be a bear, but was now much larger than it was before and mutilated. It wanted to be put out of it’s misery and Ranra started killing the animal, which took quite a while for her to do, although the animal was chained to the wall.
After it was killed we wanted to inspect the next room. It contained a large hole in the floor with a lot of bones next to it. Someone kicked a piece of bone in the hole and luckily it was just a bone and not a person, because what happened next was something I will not forget for a long time. A huge worm came out of the hole crunching the bone with its large teeth. We knew we couldn’t kill this monster so we left the room immediately.
When we got back in the room with the books, there were two figures standing in another doorway. The elf standing there started to sing, which brought change. We all seemed to be entranced by her singing, cause everyone stood still during it. At the end of her song she got dark wings and her left hand had changed into a claw. She was beautiful and hideous at the same time.
So we started fighting, which was quite impossible to do. There was a hallway which only had room for one person at a time, so there was no way we could enter the hallway and fight in there. There was also a corner in the hallway, so it was impossible to shoot through it. So we fought. First I killed the changed elf. I ripped out her wings, which she didn’t really liked. Elves should not have wings. Anyway, we killed the changed elf and after that we had a few other enemies coming at us through the hallway. One by one we killed them all after which we were left with only the sorcerer. He took a lot of health from every one of us, but in the end it was he who had his last breath. I don’t know exactly what he did, but it looked ominous. He seemed to be bringing together all three gods in a attempt to kill us all. Luckily he did not succeed before we took him down.
I don’t know what I need to think about these devoted people, if they are willing to blow us up without good reason. We did not attack them, they attacked us.
Anyway, we went back to Ellaria and gave her the books, which got us some gold. And a sword for Noth, which got us some gold from the nephew as well. All in all, a good mission and a good reward.
Sounds like a nice place to visit.