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Report: Portents of Flame and Shadow
Topic Started: 9 Mar 2012, 02:47 (362 Views)
Ceryndra Silverflame
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Alice Morris
Greetings my fellow Athesians. I apologise for the delay in bringing this report to you; I found myself rather busy in recent times, however I can now tell you what occurred on our excursion to the Dark Plains to rescue Her Eminence Cardinal Donnaire Torres, who was kidnapped a short time ago. In the group were myself, Markus, Eron, Shadowstrike and Varis.

The Monastery

We went to meet Bishop Cleto Juarez Ubina of the Church of Pelor, who, after ascertaining that we were not deceiving him at all, took us to a magically-hidden monastery, inside which our sending stones stopped working. We were asked to swear never to reveal the location or existence of the place, and agreed immediately. As we were taken through the monastery, we overheard a small disagreement between Cardinal Florenzio of St Heironeous and Cardinal Hennig Bachmeier of St Kord over our involvement in the rescue effort. Cardinal Hennig believed that "outsiders" would cause more problems then would be solved, however Cardinal Florenzio defended our presence as Knights of the Mailed Fist and friends of the Knights. Cardinal Hennig left, telling Cardinal Florenzio that he would blame him should things go badly.

Cardinal Florenzio joined us and Bishop Ubina, telling us he was grateful for our help in the matter. Cardinal Torres had been taken as the latest in a series of kidnappings across areas of the Dark Plains not controlled by Unity Island. Looking at a map of the kidnapping locations, it seemed there was no pattern to them, and the people who had been taken prior to Cardinal Torres were peasants, farmers and travellers, people whose disappearance would not be immediately noticed or missed. Any attempts to scry on the kidnapped were fruitless.

We were taken to the healer Jaime (who some of our heroes have met before) to see one of his patients, a young woman named Renata from a nearby village, who had been with Cardinal Torres when she had been kidnapped. She had been found unconscious in a field near her village with the Cardinal's two guards (both of whom were found dead, their throats cut). She was being kept asleep by a powerful enchantment, which Varis was able to dispel to wake her - I noticed as he woke her that dark energy left her body and was absorbed by the aura inside the monastery.

After Renata had been calmed, she told us that she had been having disturbing dreams for a while before the incident (since going to some ruins of a church). In the dreams she had been dragged underground into Hell, surrounded by the screams of tortured souls, and these dreams continued as she was unconscious. Renata had sought Cardinal Torres' help in ridding herself of these dreams and the two, as well as the Cardinal's guards, had gone to the field to do the necessary ritual. Renata had an aura of guilt around her, clearly worried that she was responsible for the Cardinal's disappearance.

Renata described to us that the energy in her mind had begun to lift with the ritual, and that then something (some strange kind of energy) "escaped" and that two tall, black-eyed figures wearing black had appeared from the darkness, killing the guards and taking Cardinal Torres, before Renata herself was knocked out by more energy. Renata claimed to recognise one of the figures, that he had been a man from another village but that his eyes had not been black then.

We found ourselves with a few leads: Lord Armino, whose estate was several miles away, was, according to Bishop Ubina's spy, not a friend of the Church because of his political ambitions, which the Church apparently got in the way of. However there was no evidence of his involvement in the kidnappings. We gathered more information through Varis' rituals: upon scrying one of the guards' armour, we found that the black eyes could have been caused by enchantments (and there have been rumours of devils or demons able to do this to people or disguising themselves in this way). We also found that the culprits were not the mind flayers we have fought before now, as the gaze of the attackers was calm and collected, but not blankly staring.

The Ruins

We decided to make our way to the site of the kidnapping, and after some searching found tracks leading to the church ruins Renata had mentioned. Here we found a stone altar, the ground around which had been cleared. Before we could investigate any more, we heard a sound and saw a man running towards the ruins being pursued by an inordinate number of rats, whose strength seemed to grow with its numbers, and who acted almost as one entity.

The stranger identified himself as Luciano, a man who had recently been sent out of Unity Island for doomsaying in the marketplace. He warned us of great peril to the kingdom and a great darkness beneath the earth. He told us about his investigations and that he had a great many notes about his investigations, a copy of which he promised us should we help him. He also promised us a book called Una Descripcion de Tres Flagelos ("A Description of Three Evils") by the scholar Amancio, which apparently tells of a great darkness that "fights the flames of devils" and talks of two patterns of darkness. The first is identifiable as the flayers, who were involved in the tightening of rulership by one of the lords in the Plains, and who were described as having tentacled faces and "interfering" in matters before the descriptors disappeared.

The second pattern of darkness was the society-destabilising kidnappings, which were carried out by an unseen but not unfelt group, and the disappearances were often linked to the flayers. Survivors of search parties sent to rescue the people told of horrors in the dark deep underground, and and a second search party (sent for those who did not return from the first) never returned. After this, the Dawn King would not send any more men to seek those who had gone, as the enemy was not understood well-enough. Amancio writes that those who were affected by the groups had noticeable damage to their minds, and thinks that demonic energies were involved. He also notes that the two groups were against one another, and looked to "undo one another's work" unless devils appeared, in which case they would band together.

As well as this, the book contains some sort of prophecy. The flayers fear that their power over the Plains will dwindle, and in its place "the other darkness" will rise to consume Athesia. Luciano told us that he feared that this was to happen because of the events at the Spire a few years ago. He added that he had been researching routes taken down below, and found that there were churches and cathedrals built over the sealed portals. The ruins we stood in were the last of seven he had found, and he said that the portal could have been corrupted, as others had. He said he would not go with us, but that he could offer us a mind stone of sorts, that would allow him to see what we saw and then help us in that way instead. Varis attached the mind stone to his own head, offering himself as the seer, and we sent Luciano to Unity Island to wait for us there, though he showed reluctance to enter the magic-proof cell there.

The Journey Below

We moved the altar aside and found a set of stairs leading down under the ground. Walking down these and along the corridor at the bottom, we found the words "Defenders of the light, stand firm" in Old High Plains on an archway, before entering a room full of statues, all with a modified symbol of Heironeous on their chests (like Heironeous' hand symbol, but clutching a strange symbol). Behind one of the statues was a purple portal, where Pelorian portals are usually white. We established that it had been corrupted by the energy from our cleansing of the Avatar with Varis' ritual, and that the black-eyed kidnappers had been pushing past the statue in front of it, where others had been lifting the seal held by the portal-statue and answering a question. After a couple of attempts at answering the question of who sought entry to the portal, we were able to get past with the words from the archway.

We found ourselves in a series of dark tunnels. After some time traversing the tunnels we found a fork, with a small group of dead goblins, who appeared to have been struck by one another's weapons. We followed one of the tunnels and found ourselves at the edge of a huge cavern, at the bottom of which we could hear a faint splashing sound. Before us stood an immense monolith emitting a faint light, around which we could also see life that seemed out of place underground: there were vines and lizards, things we would expect on the surface but not here, and the monolith seemed to be making this possible.

Calling upon our spirit eagles, we found our way down to a narrower tunnel, which grew steeper as we walked along it, causing several of the party to lose their footing. At the bottom of the tunnel was another cavern, inside which was another monolith just as massive as the last one, but there were many differences here. The ground was dry and sandy, criss-crossed with walls of fire as far as the eye could see, and the base of the monolith (which itself seemed wreathed in fire) was surrounded by a vast castle. A wind blew and our skin felt cut by the sand that blew about us. Beyond the castle we could see two armies fighting. Growing closer to the battle, we ascertained that demons and devils were those locked in battle, and that the devils appeared to have control of the castle, sending troops back and forth between it and the battle with carts or wagons of some kind. This may be the centuries-old war known as the Blood War, in which demons and devils fought, the devils having originally been created as warriors against the demons but later being corrupted by the demonic energies. Beyond the battle we could see a spiral staircase around the walls of the cavern and feel the abyssal energy of portals, presumably to Hell itself.

The Castle

Drawing nearer to the castle, we found that its moat was that of lava, and that the carts were full of creatures, coming from the battlefield to the castle. From the monolith we could also feel a great wave of strange energy reaching out to circle the top of the structure. As we stood there, concealed in the shadow of the wall, we saw too a pair of carts with strange, funnel-shaped objects on the fronts of them – perhaps these were some sort of weapon? Seeking to enter the castle, we tunnelled in through the wall, inside of which we found a group of devils in a corridor. We fought them off, Shadowstrike dealing the final blows, and subsequently becoming somewhat more hairy.

We tunnelled through the next wall, and found ourselves on the edge of the inner courtyard, and could see clearly the carts, in which we could now see were the disembodied souls of the damned. It is usual for the devils to deal in souls, however these souls were coming from the battle itself, and the devils were fighting demons. Had the demons found a way to use human souls similar to the devils or were they using human warriors? In one of the cage-carts were live humans, including Cardinal Donnaire Torres and a group of villagers, the Cardinal herself unconscious. This cart, and the others, were being wheeled to the base of the monolith, where a large furnace was sat.

At this point, and I have very little idea of what happened but I know that it must have greatly hurt Varis, the mind stone Luciano had given us changed, and revealed some different effects to those we had already found on it. The form of Luciano appeared in the courtyard, however he now had bat wings and creatures he summoned immediately began to fight the devils that surrounded him. The evergy from Luciano was Infernal rather than Abyssal... It would seem that he was a devil leading demons, more of which appeared as we approached the cage.

Shadowstrike was able to get the cage open and, with the people from the cage, we began to run away from the scene. However, Varis decided to return to Luciano and question him. After some, apparently fruitless, discussion, Varis delayed a terraforming ritual Luciano was about to cast by an hour by removing components of it. Luciano flew into a rage and cocooned himself in cold winds. Varis and Shadowstrike then teleported in and Shadowstrike was able to steal Luciano's spell component pouch. In response, the ground grew icy and the fire walls outside began to flicker and turn to ice. In a rage once again, Luciano threw Varis into the furnace.

Then... BOOM. Shadowstrike threw the pouch into the furnace, which promptly exploded, with Varis still inside. At this point, I arrived back to the scene and was able to pull Varis out of the remnants of the furnace. When we had got both him and Shadowstrike out of and away from the castle, the Cardinal was able to resurrect both our fallen comrades. We made our way to the spiral staircase and began to leave the cavern.

A Final Encounter with Luciano

At the exit, we came to a frozen cave, beyond which we knew was our way out, however Luciano had different ideas. He appeared before us in cambion form (a cambion being something similar to a tiefling but much more devilish and always evil), surrounded by creatures of a demon/devil hybrid mix. When we managed to kill Luciano, he instead showed himself as a simulacrum, and left behind a copy of the book he had told us about. (The book is now in Eron's possession.)

Outside the cave, we found ourselves in a different place to where we had gone down into the earth, and the climate had changed. While the weather had always been warm in this southern part of the Plains, it was much colder now, more like the kind of chill you feel closer to the Mountains. The Cardinal gave each of us a coin, engraved with "Pelora Bilatzu" (Favoured of Pelor) and sealed the cave, but also explained that the seal was a temporary measure only. As far as I am aware, we have been unable to remove the mind stone from Varis' person, and he has quarantined himself in a cell for the time being.


And so concludes the tale of our excursion to the Dark Plains. We successfully returned the Cardinal to the Church, however many other questions now lie open to us.

I will see you all at the next council meeting, but for now, I wish you all the best and hope that we may overcome this strange darkness.


((Sorry that this is so late and so very long, I hope it's still readable considering I'm writing it on less sleep than usual.))
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Verak Tibor
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Charlie Lloyd
I believe, if my knowledge of the Church of Pelor is correct, that the Cardinal of St. Heironeous is Florencio Marino Ibanez. I I am also come to understand that Lord Varis is well and good now, the mind stone being entirely unlinked to him. Such a terrible thing, to have one's own sight taken for the enemy's advantage.
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