Long Shadows

Group Three returned from the siege of Deep Elandrin with the dead body of Aria's father, Lord Tagren, in tow. They sought out Tika Quartermoon from the allied Torchwood party and asked her to perform a raise dead.

Tika agreed to cast the spell in exchange for the party's donation to the Church of Pelor. They provided her with the necessary diamond dust and Tika began the incantations. As the casting came to its climax, however, Tika felt a vast emptiness and a strong headache. "The spell has failed," she informed the party. "This man's soul is not available for raising."

Aria was disturbed at this news because it meant her father's soul had to be either trapped or destroyed. Either way, there was nothing any of them could do about it. She made arrangements for a discreet buriel in her family's tomb outside the monastery and took Lord Tagren's monk's belt for her own.

There would be little time to reflect, however. The party received an urgent summons to the Adventurers' Guild, where Tideborn Nostrigari presented them with a very old document. Upon learning the names of the three who imprisoned Azazel, Nostrigari had sent messengers to the other illumian cabals asking them to search their libraries for data on those names. The library at Loreguard Cabal in Nessen had responded by sending a journal entry from Yumair Otenko, a high-level samurai from two centuries past.

This journal entry, dated from the year 937, related how Otenko's party, while searching for an artifact called the Chalice of Dark Secrets, had encountered a creature named Uriel in a land called Porphatys. It described Uriel as similar to an aboleth but much larger and stated that Uriel spoke to the party telepathically, in their own voices.

The encounter did not go well for Otenko's party. The wizard attempted a spell, possibly charm monster, and was immediately disintegrated. The cleric attempted a spell and became Uriel's mind slave, dropping his holy symbol and kneeling before the creature. Otenko and his rogue companion, Durden, were allowed to flee and did so at top speed.

A little research revealed that a few days after writing that journal entry Otenko had committed seppuku and Durden had dropped out of sight permanently. Perhaps more importantly for the present, Otenko and his companions had been 16th level at the time they encountered Uriel, yet they'd been swept aside so easily. And now, the party would need to seek out Uriel themselves.

Porphatys, the party learned, was the fifth layer of a plane called Carceri, the prison plane of the multiverse. Carceri and its layers were laid out in an infinite string of small orbs. Finding the specific orb on which Uriel's cave lay would be difficult without guidance.

Fortunately, the party had such guidance. Otenko's journal mentioned that they had tracked the Chalice to a storm giant Lyrandor who made his home in Porphatys in a place called the Black Iron Keep. Further, the journal told how Otenko's party had found the right orb by boarding a mystic transport, the Ship of One Hundred, and making an offering of gems along with their requested destination. The party reasoned that on reaching Porphatys they could use the same means. After ensuring they had a good supply of gems available since they had no information on the amount needed, the party gathered around Mrs. Wilkins and used their amulet of the planes to transport themselves to Porphatys.

The place was as desolate as Otenko's journal said. The party appeared on a barren sandbar surrounded by black seas. A steady fall of black snow burned their skin with acid. And all around them a mob of semi-corporeal souls begged and promised anything if the party would take them away.

Strontium cast planar attunement on the group to protect everyone from the acidic environment and they headed for the dock on the other side of the sandbar. Eager petitioners followed them, continuing their constant stream of entreaties, but the heroes knew better. Carceri is a prison plane -- the souls condemned there can never leave and should never be trusted.

In time a ghostly white caravel pulled up to the dock and lowered a gangway for the heroes to board. There were no crew and few passengers, yet the ship raised the gangway and proceeded as soon as the party had boarded. Mrs. Wilkins located the bridge and dropped 500gp in gems into a trough in the center while focusing on the group's wish to be taken to the Black Iron Keep. It took a total of 2,000gp in tributed gems before the ship responded. There was a shimmering all around, a slightly disorienting sensation similar to the feeling of a plane shift, and the ship pulled up at another anonymous island dock to let the party out.

The heroes ignored the new batch of petitioners and dove into the water to begin searching for the keep. The ghostly ship had served them well, though -- it only took an hour or two for them to locate the decrepit structure. Rather than coming too close, they got their bearings and headed east for their real objective, the cave mentioned in Otenko's journal. They found it and were a little intimidated by the large size of the cave's opening.

About 300 feet in, Quinn spied a ring of glyphs subtly marked in the tunnel wall. A detect magic revealed only the presence of abjuration and divination magic. Seeing no immediate threat, Caenus simply swam past the glyphs. As soon as he crossed the plane between them the tunnel took on a bright violet glow but there was no harmful affect that the party could detect. They continued.

Another 200 feet in the tunnel opened into an impossibly huge space. It looked like a vast otherworldly city. Ridiculously tall buildings sported impossibly long spires that stretched up for thousands of feet. Dramatic curves and sharp edges were everywhere.

And in the center, floating still, was the largest creature this party had ever encountered. It did look like an aboleth: a long, fish-like body; four tentacles extending from the front; a fish-like tail trailing behind; three eyes stacked one above the other; all suspended in a cloud of mucous emitted from huge glands on either side of the body. But this creature was gargantuan, and its hide looked almost petrified rather than soft and slimey.

As the party regarded the awesome creature, their own voices spoke to them. "You've gone to a lot of trouble to find me," they heard. "Now explain why I should allow you to leave."

Mrs. Wilkins and Strontium came forward to lead the discussion. The beast quickly grew weary of Mrs. Wilkins' fluffy facade and addressed itself mostly to Strontium. It denigrated the idea that Azazel could be free at first, arguing that if Azazel were truly free the Material Plane would no longer exist and Azazel would be hunting Uriel, not the party. But when told the sequence of events in the world of late, including the coastal raids, the abduction and co-opting of heroes into villians, and the underwater war, Uriel agreed that these very strategies had been used by Azazel in the past.

While the party listened, Uriel told them the story of a war that took place before any of their race's written history:

Ten thousand of your years ago, more or less, the elder aboleths were the undisputed masters of the material world. Millenia of plotting and infighting resulted in Azazel, the oldest and more powerful of all the elder aboleths, establishing himself as the supreme being. Any who opposed Azazel were destroyed without a moment's thought.

Then your gods came into being and populated the surface and even some of the sea with new, tiny races made in their images. At first Azazel ignored these newcomers and the gods who made them. Some of us even took an interest in observing the new races, watching them struggle to learn what we had known for thousands of their years already. But eventually Azazel saw their increasing numbers as an infection of his world that needed to be squashed.

He created armies of aggressive humanoid slaves to terrorize the coastal races. The gods inspired so-called heroes, such as yourselves, so strike back and protect their people. Azazel turned these heroes into his thralls and sent them back to lead the war against their own races. His minions undermined the surface races' faith in their gods by thwarting attempts to help the coastal settlements and destabilized their governments with spies and thralls.

Eventually one of the new gods, a sea deity named Glaucus, became so enraged at the slaughter of his worshippers that he took the form of a celestial kraken and engaged Azazel directly. I was present to witness the confrontation. It was not very long.

The murder of Glaucus enraged the other young gods and the war quickly escalated into natural disasters targeting Azazel's minions. Azazel responded with similar disasters that killed the gods' worshippers. Both sides lost sight of the fact that any further escalation would destroy the world each sought to rule.

It was at this point that my siblings and I, the spawn of Azazel, realized that there was no desirable end to the war. If the gods prevailed, they would hunt all of the elder aboleths and against their combined might and we may not survive. If Azazel won, he might decide to seal his victory by removing all possible remaining threats, which would include us. So we three -- myself, Ramiel, and Gadreel -- negotiated a peace with the deities that included our promise to neutralize Azazel and leave the material plane in exchange for an end to hostilities.

Azazel was too powerful for us to confront even together, so we devised a plan to increase our power. I created a unique power stone and each of us, in turn, charged it with an entire day's psionic energy potential. By combining our own abilities with the added power stored in the stone, we were able to render Azazel helpless for a few minutes. During those few minutes we teleported him into a dry chamber under the base of mount Dudael and dimensionally sealed that chamber so that no power could allow anyone to enter or leave through any form of extradimensional travel. Azazel found himself unable to escape and, deprived of water, fell into the Long Dreaming for all time.

Based on the party's experiences, they and Uriel surmised that something had allowed water to enter Azazel's prison. That would have ended his coma, allowing Azazel to reach out with his mind, but the dimensional seal must still be intact or else Azazel would have escaped to hunt down his jailers.

Strontium asked the final important question: would Uriel be willing to recharge the galadiir?

"Possibly," the creature replied, "if you'll do something for me." Uriel explained that the storm giant Lyrandor had become an irritation that Uriel was no longer willing to tolerate. He had been on the point of dealing with the giant himself when the party arrived. Since the heroes were seeking a service from Uriel, it seemed reasonable to ask one in return. To sweeten the offer Uriel stated that he had no interest in any of the storm giant's belongings or treasure, though he wouldn't mind having the body to feed on.

Striking a deal with a creature so clearly and coldly evil did not sit well with some, but pragmatism prevailed. The group agreed to Uriel's request and swam out to Black Iron Keep.

The structure stood on a hill in the caustic ocean, its high walls showing signs of long exposure to the acidic water. The roof, the party saw, had been forcibly torn off along with part of the floor of the second story. The only other apparent entrance being a strong iron door, the party chose the up and over route.

Lyrandor was at home. The party could see even before entering that the storm giant lay on a massive bedroll, apparently asleep. Aria opened the encounter by charging toward the giant with a stunning fist ready, but Lyrandor proved to be only feigning sleep and dodged the blow.

Another surprise then made itself apparent as a large, serpentine creature with silvery skin darted in from a corner to attack Aria. It was a dragon eel, an evil and intelligent relative of the draconic race. Its vicious jaws closed around Aria and it swallowed her whole in a single gulp. As the party took that in Lyrandor stood and let loose a chain lightning centered on Caenus that radiated out to the entire rest of the party.

Inside the dragon eel's stomach Aria used her dragon breath ability to breathe fire on the creature. The sudden heat and damage caused the creature to vomit and send Aria spewing back into the battle. Audas let loose an eldritch blast against the giant and scored a crippling blow that sickened the enemy and reduced its brutal strength slightly. The eel responded by swallowing Audas.

Mrs. Wilkins sought to soften up Lyrandor by casting mind fog to sap his resistance to mental affects. Caenus was also caught in the area, but this did not stop him from striking at the giant again and again with his halberd.

As the eel worked on digesting Audas, Strontium focused on it with a pair of lesser missile storm spells. Audas freed himself by borrowing a variation on Aria's tactic: he cast an empowered eldritch blast on the eel from inside it, and the damage again caused the creature to vomit him out. It retaliated with a tail slap and by biting Strontium without swallowing.

After spending most of the combat protecting herself, Quinn finally charged in to battle and landed a hit against the giant. Mrs. Wilkins tried to assist with a hold monster spell but storm giants have inherent freedom of movement, which negated the spell. She responded with mass whelm, which was highly effective because of the prior mind fog and left the giant teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. The combat ended soon after when Audas delivered a final eldritch blast to kill the eel and Strontium's third lesser missile storm left the giant unconscious and helpless against a group coup de grace.

The party searched the aboveground portion of the Keep and easily discovered Lyrandor's treasures, chief among which was a platinum chalice ringed with black onyx stones and stored in a crystal case. The acidic waters had done nothing but keep the artifact clean, of course, and the party planned on returning it to the Church of Tyr, who had originally sent Yumari Otenko's party after it almost 200 years before.

After healing up, which used most of the resources of the Rod of Health, the party noticed a staircase leading downward. The staircase was too small for the storm giant to have used; they followed it down expecting to find little but more ruins.

Instead, in the basement of the Keep, the heroes encountered three creatures of a sort they'd never faced before: draudnu, a form of demon. These weird creatures had three legs and three long, vicious-looking hooked spikes. They also, Audas quickly discovered, had spell resistance.

Aria moved quickly to use her dragon breath but it did no damage at all. Quinn tried the opposite energy, a freeze spell, and while this did encase one of the draudnu in ice it appeared to be taking no damage from the cold either. Caenus charged in after Aria to engage and found himself gripped with the conviction that something was now growing inside his body. It was distracting and sickening but like a seasoned warrior Caenus fought despite the sensation.

As the two free draudnu moved to attack Caenus discovered personally what the piercing hook appendages were for: a draudnu drove three of them through his skin and into the basement floor, effectively nailing Caenus in place. Then, as Strontium let loose another lesser missile storm that pummeled Caenus's opponent, the party learned that even doing damage to these creatures was dangerous -- each draudnu's body was covered with sacks that would burst any time the creature was wounded, whether by weapon or by spell, spraying everyone in the immediate area with acid.

Quinn came forward to help Caenus but failed to dislodge the hooks. Instead she found herself nailed to the floor as well, and the party discovered that after breaking off a hook in a victim the draudnu immediately grows another. And then, to add to her unease, Quinn too realized that something alien had been implanted inside her body and was growing.

Mrs. Wilkins tried another hold monster and learned that draudnu are immune to mind-affecting spells, which left her with very little productive she could do other than cast displacement on Quinn and Caenus to help them avoid more hook attacks and slow on the first draudnu as it emerged from the ice.

The fight proved more difficult than the battle against the storm giant. Caenus simply ripped himself free of the hooks, taking the damage involved in order to stay in the fight. He and Aria focused on melee while Audas and Strontium kept up a barrage of eldritch blasts and magic missile attacks. Each hit forced Aria and Caenus to duck the spray of acid. Aria's agility allowed her to avoid the spray but Caenus was burned again and again. Finally, a new spell from Strontium, moon bow, along with a flurry of fierce hits from Aria and Caenus, felled the final demon.

With four of the six heroes hosting some kind of demonic parasite within and their healing resources nearly exhausted, the party searched the basement. They were fortunate to find a collection of ceramic tiles bearing a glyph that denoted healing; as each of the wounded broke a tile they felt the benefit of a heal spell and realized that there was no parasite, simply a delusion induced by the demonic presence of the draudnu. They also unearthed a sizeable cache of coin, gems, and a very impressive suit of magic breastplate armor. If nothing else, they had certainly gained financially from this foray.

The party dragged the 21-foot body of Lyrandor back to Uriel's cave. The elder aboleth complimented the party and pledged that he would finish the recharging of the galadiir and instruct the party in its use -- after they obtain similar services from his siblings, Ramiel and Gadreel. The heroes were wiser than to argue this change in the terms of the agreement.

Having been out of contact for 10,000 years, however, Uriel was unable to say with any certainty where to find them. Ramiel, he told the party, was a nomadic type and likely roamed the Outer Planes without staying very long in any one place. Gadreel had the ability to create his own plane and had almost certainly done so, though there would likely be an opening to it somewhere on the Astral Plane.

The party left Uriel's cave feeling glad to be alive and intact. It was a little unsettling to consider that as powerful as Uriel obviously was, it took three such beings to stand against Azazel.

Mrs. Wilkins suggested a vacation. They'd spent a hellish day in the Lower Planes, after all; why not have dinner in Valhalla?

The amulet of the planes glowed and the heroes were off to feast and recover.

<MR>
3/6/08