The Dark Beckons
General Summary
Alda finds herself in a cold, foreboding, unrecognizable yet familiar forest. Onyx scenery sucks the light out of the surroundings, rendering the world colorless and dim. A dense fog limits her field of vision to just a few feet. She is lost. In an attempt to orientate herself she climbs a tree, but the lifelessness of the area has left the tree rotten. Bark slides away under her hands with the slime of decayed vegetation. The trunk beneath writhes with an infestation of maggots.
Alda has only one path to follow, the distinctive pull in her gut of destiny. She heads forwards.
Somnis reunites with the party after doing some reconnaissance in the city. They are clearly unwelcome there and must move on. One of their members is missing and needs to be retrieved anyway so there's not much sense in hanging around. Having traveled to the Shadowfell before, Somnis leads the party south toward the The Wading Forest, purposely being vague so as not to challenge the courage of his friends. For a small fee, they are able to pick up a ride from a passing bus and get off at Furvah, where Gao is confident they can pick up transportation south.
Gao was right of course, having friends in the reconstructing town. Shortly after arriving he finds a half-built pub called The Fallen Rose & The Eternal Flame with a warm glow and cheery air spilling from it tarpaulin doors. Inside a proper oak bar has been set up with beers on tap and a well stocked liqueur cabinet, and behind it a lanky human boy, with a smile on his face but tiredness in his eyes, jokes with some of the patrons. Aeden has fulfilled his dream of his own pub. Upon seeing Gao he excuses himself from his conversation and greets him as a brother, pouring a sake as he does so. The two catch up, and reminisce, and after reciting his current woes Gao is offered assistance with transport by Aeden. He personally only has his push bike, but the local Zavaleta Transportation guys owe him a favour, and he arranges for them to travel in the next truck headed south.
Truck driver Pete takes the party aboard and agrees to stop at Notso Bar, an Inn on the boarder of The North and also next to the Wading Forest. The back of the truck is filled with out dated technology that even the average person won't have used for a couple of years now, and Ignatious' family haven't used for over a decade. The journey is easy, and they are well rested when the truck comes to a stop. Notso Bar is a quaint little diner in a retro style, serving hot coffee, burgers and pie. As it is early in the day the diner is empty so the party leave it be and head straight into the forest.
Following the legend, Somnis leads the party deeper into the forest where a dense mist makes orientation a challenge, and then turns left, and left again and left again and left again. After one too many left turns the party finds themselves at the shore of an inky black pool. They begin discussing the path forwards when Somnis' head snaps back. A rope around his throat. A small grey impish creature is trying to garrote Somnis. The party leap into action and quickly slay this would be killer. They decide the best way forwards is to go through the lake to the other side. The ground under the water is soft, gives way easily but grips the feet as they try to move forward. Somnis topples first, and with a splash is engulfed by the mud. Surprise knocks Ignatious off balance and he too is taken by the mud, and as Gao lunges forward to save his friend, he too collapses beneath the water.
With a gasp, they find themselves face down on mossy, putrid ground. All around them is black and dying. They have made it to the Dark Continent.
Checking their PMVs they notice some new features have appeared. An application called Planar Positioning System and another tagged Find Your Friends. They identify a blip on the map to be them and deduce the second blip is most likely Alda, and so they head off in that direction.
Alda pushes through the brittle undergrowth, continuing ever closer to the whistle in her mind. She is a person of singular fixation. Her path is troubled though when a second whistling sound peels away from the first. Her gut is telling her to continue forwards, but there is now a second whistle to the left. This complicates things. But not for long, her gut draws her forward. The second whistle separates further left. And further still. Alda continues ever forward.
Then something catches her eye. A light. I almost seems warm, without even a hint of hue. Her curiosity overcomes her and she leaves her path. It is fortunate that she does as she comes across the hut of her memories. She gingerly pushes open the door and creeps inside. It seems as though noone is home, but she feels almost comfortable in the building. Knowing her pursuit is more important than comfort she turns to leave and the door collapses away. In it's place fire burns and pillars rise. Alda finds herself standing in the hellscape of Gao's sanctuary, the Azure Sanctum, though azure it is not in the greyscale lands.
After resting from a day's hard march, Gao prompts the party to get on the move again. He's spotted something almost familiar up ahead. Their PMV indicates Alda is not far. Breaking through the treeline, Gao sees his Sanctum before him and an Elderly Lady lost among the flames. Gao sprints forward, Ignatious and Somnis hot on his tail. Too close, as the floor gives way and none of them are able to do anything but fall with it.
Alda wanders around the burning, yet in one piece, sanctum hunting for the whistling sound. She corners in an alter that stands at the center of the sanctum. After a thorough search and finding nothing, she kicks the alter in frustration and the alter peels back on a hinge like a lid. Beneath, a set of roughly hewn steps lead downward. At the foot of the stairs she finds an open, empty jail cell and nothing else. A brief search reveals nothing else so she turns to leave and comes face to face with a wraith.
A fight ensues, in which both side deal powerful blows, however it is Alda who is overcome and she slips into unconsciousness. When she wakes, she is chained up inside the cell, the wraith hovering outside.
Gao, Ignatious and Somnis come crashing the the ground, 20" below where the floor was. They are in a poorly dug out corridor with seemingly two dead ends. After a bit of investigating their surroundings they discover the dead ends at both ends are faked, the dirt making up the wall is barely an inch thick. Gao erupts through the first dead end and comes face to face with a wraith. Through the wraith he can see Alda chained up in a tiny jail cell. It takes just a single hit to finish off the already weakened wraith, and they are able to easily spring Alda loose.
Alda had been locked up for about 4 hours with nothing but the two whistling sounds rattling around her head.
The party continue to explore and find that the other dead end leads to a pit of skeletons. Some of the skeletons seem twitchy so Gao empties some holy water he acquired over the pit and put an end to their twitching. Alda, fixated on the whistling in the area, which seems to still be originating from the alter, ascends the stairs again. Half way up the stairs however she realises something is wrong as the stairs begin to tilt forwards. As though the stairs were hinged at a point vertically inline with the top step and horizontally inline with the bottom step, the stairs tipped. The top step became the bottom step, and the bottom the top, and Alda was knocked forwards so she was facing head first down the stairs. She peered forwards into the corridor that had appeared ahead, draped in darkness, and saw something shifting. She immediately about turned and ran back to the party, tilting the stairs back to their original position as she does so. Everyone decides this needs exploring and so they head up the stairs, tipping them over to face the darkened corridor. In the black, a huge orb-like creature shifts. Both Ignatious and Somnis identify it as a beholder. They are wrong. A tentacle lashes out at them. The fearsome form of a Balhannoth attacks. A ferocious battle ensues, wherein Somnis is rendered unconscious twice and Ignatious is and he stays down. Gao gets knocked down, but with a bit of fortune comes to without assistance. When he does so, he finds himself in the grip of one of the creature's tentacles, but instead of staring down it's gaping maw as he was before blacking out, he stares into an empty corridor. He can feel the creature but he cannot see it. All of a sudden, the creature reappears with its tentacle millimeters from Alda's face. She dodges out the way and launches a scorching ray at one of the creatures many appendages. It's enough to sap the last of the creatures energy and it slumps to the floor.
As soon as the beast is motionless, the second whistle in Alda's head stops. The new applications on the party's PMVs disappear. Trudging up the steps back to the surface, what once was the Azure Sanctum is morphing into the trees and undergrowth that matches their surroundings. The party is exhausted, but Alda is relentless and marches off after the original whistling sound. The rest of the party takes an hour of respite.
After a 15 minute march, the whistle feels near, Alda is almost optimistic when, snap. A bear trap closes around her leg. The pain isn't too bad but it anchors her in place. She tries to pry herself free but a combination lock stops the trap from opening. She sits and begins trying codes. 45 minutes pass, and it occurs to her this might be Harold's trap. She tries a couple of significant dates. Upon entering her birthday, click, the trap opens. As she clambers to her feet, a short hooded and magnificently bearded figure emerges from the mist.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
Alda has only one path to follow, the distinctive pull in her gut of destiny. She heads forwards.
Somnis reunites with the party after doing some reconnaissance in the city. They are clearly unwelcome there and must move on. One of their members is missing and needs to be retrieved anyway so there's not much sense in hanging around. Having traveled to the Shadowfell before, Somnis leads the party south toward the The Wading Forest, purposely being vague so as not to challenge the courage of his friends. For a small fee, they are able to pick up a ride from a passing bus and get off at Furvah, where Gao is confident they can pick up transportation south.
Gao was right of course, having friends in the reconstructing town. Shortly after arriving he finds a half-built pub called The Fallen Rose & The Eternal Flame with a warm glow and cheery air spilling from it tarpaulin doors. Inside a proper oak bar has been set up with beers on tap and a well stocked liqueur cabinet, and behind it a lanky human boy, with a smile on his face but tiredness in his eyes, jokes with some of the patrons. Aeden has fulfilled his dream of his own pub. Upon seeing Gao he excuses himself from his conversation and greets him as a brother, pouring a sake as he does so. The two catch up, and reminisce, and after reciting his current woes Gao is offered assistance with transport by Aeden. He personally only has his push bike, but the local Zavaleta Transportation guys owe him a favour, and he arranges for them to travel in the next truck headed south.
Truck driver Pete takes the party aboard and agrees to stop at Notso Bar, an Inn on the boarder of The North and also next to the Wading Forest. The back of the truck is filled with out dated technology that even the average person won't have used for a couple of years now, and Ignatious' family haven't used for over a decade. The journey is easy, and they are well rested when the truck comes to a stop. Notso Bar is a quaint little diner in a retro style, serving hot coffee, burgers and pie. As it is early in the day the diner is empty so the party leave it be and head straight into the forest.
Following the legend, Somnis leads the party deeper into the forest where a dense mist makes orientation a challenge, and then turns left, and left again and left again and left again. After one too many left turns the party finds themselves at the shore of an inky black pool. They begin discussing the path forwards when Somnis' head snaps back. A rope around his throat. A small grey impish creature is trying to garrote Somnis. The party leap into action and quickly slay this would be killer. They decide the best way forwards is to go through the lake to the other side. The ground under the water is soft, gives way easily but grips the feet as they try to move forward. Somnis topples first, and with a splash is engulfed by the mud. Surprise knocks Ignatious off balance and he too is taken by the mud, and as Gao lunges forward to save his friend, he too collapses beneath the water.
With a gasp, they find themselves face down on mossy, putrid ground. All around them is black and dying. They have made it to the Dark Continent.
Checking their PMVs they notice some new features have appeared. An application called Planar Positioning System and another tagged Find Your Friends. They identify a blip on the map to be them and deduce the second blip is most likely Alda, and so they head off in that direction.
Alda pushes through the brittle undergrowth, continuing ever closer to the whistle in her mind. She is a person of singular fixation. Her path is troubled though when a second whistling sound peels away from the first. Her gut is telling her to continue forwards, but there is now a second whistle to the left. This complicates things. But not for long, her gut draws her forward. The second whistle separates further left. And further still. Alda continues ever forward.
Then something catches her eye. A light. I almost seems warm, without even a hint of hue. Her curiosity overcomes her and she leaves her path. It is fortunate that she does as she comes across the hut of her memories. She gingerly pushes open the door and creeps inside. It seems as though noone is home, but she feels almost comfortable in the building. Knowing her pursuit is more important than comfort she turns to leave and the door collapses away. In it's place fire burns and pillars rise. Alda finds herself standing in the hellscape of Gao's sanctuary, the Azure Sanctum, though azure it is not in the greyscale lands.
After resting from a day's hard march, Gao prompts the party to get on the move again. He's spotted something almost familiar up ahead. Their PMV indicates Alda is not far. Breaking through the treeline, Gao sees his Sanctum before him and an Elderly Lady lost among the flames. Gao sprints forward, Ignatious and Somnis hot on his tail. Too close, as the floor gives way and none of them are able to do anything but fall with it.
Alda wanders around the burning, yet in one piece, sanctum hunting for the whistling sound. She corners in an alter that stands at the center of the sanctum. After a thorough search and finding nothing, she kicks the alter in frustration and the alter peels back on a hinge like a lid. Beneath, a set of roughly hewn steps lead downward. At the foot of the stairs she finds an open, empty jail cell and nothing else. A brief search reveals nothing else so she turns to leave and comes face to face with a wraith.
A fight ensues, in which both side deal powerful blows, however it is Alda who is overcome and she slips into unconsciousness. When she wakes, she is chained up inside the cell, the wraith hovering outside.
Gao, Ignatious and Somnis come crashing the the ground, 20" below where the floor was. They are in a poorly dug out corridor with seemingly two dead ends. After a bit of investigating their surroundings they discover the dead ends at both ends are faked, the dirt making up the wall is barely an inch thick. Gao erupts through the first dead end and comes face to face with a wraith. Through the wraith he can see Alda chained up in a tiny jail cell. It takes just a single hit to finish off the already weakened wraith, and they are able to easily spring Alda loose.
Alda had been locked up for about 4 hours with nothing but the two whistling sounds rattling around her head.
The party continue to explore and find that the other dead end leads to a pit of skeletons. Some of the skeletons seem twitchy so Gao empties some holy water he acquired over the pit and put an end to their twitching. Alda, fixated on the whistling in the area, which seems to still be originating from the alter, ascends the stairs again. Half way up the stairs however she realises something is wrong as the stairs begin to tilt forwards. As though the stairs were hinged at a point vertically inline with the top step and horizontally inline with the bottom step, the stairs tipped. The top step became the bottom step, and the bottom the top, and Alda was knocked forwards so she was facing head first down the stairs. She peered forwards into the corridor that had appeared ahead, draped in darkness, and saw something shifting. She immediately about turned and ran back to the party, tilting the stairs back to their original position as she does so. Everyone decides this needs exploring and so they head up the stairs, tipping them over to face the darkened corridor. In the black, a huge orb-like creature shifts. Both Ignatious and Somnis identify it as a beholder. They are wrong. A tentacle lashes out at them. The fearsome form of a Balhannoth attacks. A ferocious battle ensues, wherein Somnis is rendered unconscious twice and Ignatious is and he stays down. Gao gets knocked down, but with a bit of fortune comes to without assistance. When he does so, he finds himself in the grip of one of the creature's tentacles, but instead of staring down it's gaping maw as he was before blacking out, he stares into an empty corridor. He can feel the creature but he cannot see it. All of a sudden, the creature reappears with its tentacle millimeters from Alda's face. She dodges out the way and launches a scorching ray at one of the creatures many appendages. It's enough to sap the last of the creatures energy and it slumps to the floor.
As soon as the beast is motionless, the second whistle in Alda's head stops. The new applications on the party's PMVs disappear. Trudging up the steps back to the surface, what once was the Azure Sanctum is morphing into the trees and undergrowth that matches their surroundings. The party is exhausted, but Alda is relentless and marches off after the original whistling sound. The rest of the party takes an hour of respite.
After a 15 minute march, the whistle feels near, Alda is almost optimistic when, snap. A bear trap closes around her leg. The pain isn't too bad but it anchors her in place. She tries to pry herself free but a combination lock stops the trap from opening. She sits and begins trying codes. 45 minutes pass, and it occurs to her this might be Harold's trap. She tries a couple of significant dates. Upon entering her birthday, click, the trap opens. As she clambers to her feet, a short hooded and magnificently bearded figure emerges from the mist.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
Report Date
15 Jan 2019
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