1/8/1472: 02:23 – 02:50 – They
attack in waves. The first consists of crew from the Ravager;
lowly swabs wielding scimitars, more experienced soldiers, and a few
pistoleers. They are hampered somewhat by the need to climb from the
dock level (where the group can see the sails of the ship suddenly
bulge unnaturally, as a silvery-white glyph sewn into them blazes to
life, filling them with wind), using great ladders. Realising that
the cavern they stand in is too small to fight effectively, the group
descend to the next level down, dropping gracefully on the wings of a
Feather Fall, courtesy
of the barbarians enchanted band, immediately finding themselves toe
to toe with their charging foes.
This melee is
frantic and the group are hard pressed. Varracuda is blinded by a
slash that whips across his eyes, and spends most of this battle
lunging at empty air – though his blows do occasionally land,
leaving hissing, sparking wounds in their wake. The two remaining
dundiir charge in (despite Grigori trying to keep them out of harms
way). Angrun is slain by a swab, his borrowed axe clattering to the
ground as his throat blossoms with a salty, crimson spray. Enraged by
the death of his “brother” (although he then mutters under his
breath in his own tongue “not that he is my brother”), the
surviving dundiir, ploughs into combat, leaving a bloody wake as his
axe thunks into the flesh and armour of the attacking pirates.
Lia sweeps like a
vengeful angel towards the charging men, her resonant blade flashing
with unearthly speed to remove limbs, open throats and spill
entrails. As she fights, so a delicate light shines from her, its
whispering touch filling her allies with courage and focused rage.
This mantle of psychic power helps them to ignore wounds that would
normally floor them, and helps them filter out the distractions that
may slow or misguide their blows.
Bellowing a hearty
battle cry, the undead Ulnyrr joyfully wades into combat, his jagged
blade chewing through the enemy like the fangs of a great winter
wolf. Time and again the scimitars of the pirates find a way through
his armour, and time and again, he is either restored by the logic
prayers of his fellow undead, or given a mental boost, which helps
him to carry on. Soon covered from head to boot in gore, he has
helped the group advance to the ladders.
Grigori
is as much a combatant as any in this battle, the chain-sword of
Balskuss screaming deafeningly as it chews into the foe. A fine mist
of blood and fear surrounds him as he goes to his butcher's work,
each blow accompanied by loudly shouted formulocantations, which
allow him to project fields of healing power through the swirling
melee, where it finds and restores his allies, or helps them to focus
on landing deadlier blows.
Atop
the low wooden buildings that squat to the left of the main battle,
Thatari gives into his own blood-lust. The air coils and sloughs
around him as he summons unholy power; sending tendrils of filthy
flame into the enemies ranks, cursing them with misfortune or
summoning unstable beings from other universes to chew and harass his
foes. Hopes Famine
shines with a dark light in his grasp, and blood pours from his own
flesh as he feeds it some of his life force to bolster its power.
As for the
assassin, he is everywhere and nowhere at once. He takes good
advantage of the plentiful shadows to strike and melt away, shifting
at the fringes of the battle, carefully sowing his own brand of
carnage amongst his foes. Time and again the darkness rears up at his
command to swallow a screaming pirate, or coalesces into a hail of
venom-tipped quarrels that unerringly seek their flesh. Bolts of
darkness pregnant with bound malevolence blossom hungrily in the
faces and throats of men, who fall without the chance to utter a
single scream, and within the swirling darkness of his hood,
something like a smile forces its way onto the empty, black features
of the living shadow.
Were
it not for the healing powers of Lia and Grigori, the battle would be
over quickly, for the group have not had chance to recover since
their fight with the skeletons. However, they are old comrades now,
and fight as one, and it is quickly clear that the Dohr'Khustans are
outmatched and so, are doomed. With slow, hacking momentum, the group
push them back to the ladders, the docks spread some 50' below, the
Ravager moving slowly
away, Santhiel Burr clearly visible at its helm, waving madly at more
of his crew, commanding them to slow the group.
The
pirate party that heads for the docks is small, and mostly consists
of lowly deckhands and swabs. However, they are lead by a fearsome
brute; a monstrous Urgorgori (Ogre, or in the Trade tongue, Ogger).
It stands half again as high as Shnecke, and the gangplank bends
alarmingly under its prodigious weight. It appears almost obese, its
head small in comparison to its bulging body, but everyone knows that
most of that bulk is muscle, bone, thick skin and hardened blubber.
It wears mangled chainmail, and wields a maul so large that it seems
too big for it to bear. However, it soon shows this perception to be
an illusion, as it puts the thing to deadly use.
The first member of
the party to strike at the Urgogori is Jaeger, a bolt of shadowy
energy striking it with the force of a runaway cart...
...The brute
apparently doesn't notice it hitting...
Upon spotting the
massive enemy, both Shnecke and the dundiir gives whoops of savage
joy, and throw themselves off the cliff to float down and land next
to it (the barbarian swipes at a Dohr'Khustan who was climbing up a
ladder, as he passes, sending him screaming downwards to land with a
final crunch, broken and dead far below). The dundiir, using the
momentum of his fall, lands a hideously deep blow on the Ogger, his
axe biting deep into its armour and managing to draw a little blood,
and the barbarian hacks at its massive belly, sending links of mail
pinging across the ground, and leaving a light scratch on the beasts'
bulbous gut.
On the cliff,
Thatari seriously dents his companions already low opinion of him by
calling upon a truly insidious power of the Hopes Famine,
which draws life energy from them to power his next attack. Wounds
suddenly appear on all his allies, the blood that issues forth
turning to a coiling crimson energy, which is absorbed into the
potent, thrumming implement. His face oddly calm, his form wreathed
in a bloody aura, the warlock unleashes a terrible, mewling mass of
chaotic power towards the Urgorgori, which spreads like a timelapse
of mould growing, through the air, to strike the monster. That gets
its attention, as the spell chews at its flesh, leaving numerous
bitemarks over its body.
By this point, the
swabs have arrived, and Santhiel's first mate – a masculine woman
bearing a fine looking rifle – has turned her attention to the
group.
The last of the
freed dundiir is slain; a bullet from the first mate's weapon
dropping him with nary a sound to the floor. Grigori drops down
besides the barbarian, and Balskuss' chainsword goes to work at the
Urgorgori's side, chewed armour and pieces of mangled flesh arcing
out from the grim wound he inflicts.
And then the
Urgorgori - one Gangor “Head Eater” - attacks. Within a hearbeat
both Shnecke and Grigori are on the floor, 15' from the brute, close
to death; their chests misshapen and crushed, their ichor pouring
blackly onto the stones. The swabs are kept back by the assassin who
sends bolts hissing towards them, killing all he has in his sights,
and Lia soon drops down to support her stricken allies.
Still blind, the
swordmage gropes for the ladder leading from the dock to the cliff.
He finds it, and realises that someone is still climbing it (it's one
of the original pistoleers, who, having seen his allies cut down is
trying to make his way back to the safety of the Ravager).
Blinking through agonised tears, Varracuda gives a grim smile,
and with a grunt, pushes the ladder away from the wall, taking the
screaming Dohr'Khustan with it. It takes him down with a
bone-crunching smash, and ends the life of an unlucky swab who is too
slow to get out of the way.
Prone and dazed,
Grigori, his pain almost too much to bear, utters his most potent
formulocantation of healing, an aura of fractal radiance suddenly
blazing around him, to lash at his nearby allies; mending bones and
torn meat, stopping bleeding and reversing deadly swelling. Shnecke
gasps in pain and shock, and gives a grim smile – only to be almost
kicked unconscious by the Ogger.
And so begins a
truly painful battle. The group spend as much time falling back and
healing as attacking, as Gangor is a monstrously powerful enemy, and
his blows are enough to kill thirty ordinary men with a single
strike.
Santhiel briefly
joins the battle when he realises that most of his crew are either
dead or ashore, and that escaping on the ship is no longer a viable
option. He quickly recapitulates however, and tries to bargain with
the adventurer that dogs his every step.
Unfortunately for
him, that adventurer is Jaeger, and there simply is no bargaining,
and Santhiel dies on board his ship, trying to breathe through lungs
rapidly filling with blood, and already filled with more steel and
shadow that anyone could survive.
The first mate is
taken down quicky, and the remaining crew members either flee or are
murdered.
As for Gangor, he
simply refuses to give up, and even outnumbered six to one, is a
monstrously potent foe. In the end, were it not for the psionic
mantles of Lia, the healing logic prayers of the cleric and the sheer
bloody minded determination to succeed of the rest of the group, he
would have walked away victorious.
The battle ends
when Varracuda suddenly blinks, and realises that he can see. Through
a haze of tears and blood he spots the massive enemy, and his
darting, ducking, stabbing allies, and bringing his blades to bear,
he calls upon his elemental heritage to wreathe them in snarling,
flickering arcs of lightning. He leaps forwards, all his frustration
and pain behind the nimble blow, his blade finding the notch at the
base of the Urgorgori's throat. Putting everything into the blow, and
sending a blasts of lightning down the blade, the swordmage strikes a
fatal blow, the massive humanoid suddenly dropping its maul,
stumbling back and staring stupidly ahead as a cloud of coppery steam
issues from the cauterised, critical wound.
“Morg*.” He
mumbles under his breath thickly, before stumbling back towards the
waters of the harbour, and dropping to the floor with a crash.
He dies.
02:51 – 10:00 –
Everyone is utterly spent. The group decide to claim the Ravager
for themselves, and decide that they will seek the assistance of
the sailors they freed in sailing it away. Although they know the
cult will soon seek them out, and that there are two more pirate
vessels to destroy yet, they chance a proper rest – mainly because
no one is capable of carrying on in their current state.
During this time,
Grigori enacts a ritual on the Shadrakuulite symbol that Santhiel
still wears around his thick neck. Calling upon the powers of logic,
and opening his mind to the echoes of the planar skin, he demands to
see any encounters the symbol may have had with the Great Maw of
Shadrakuul...
“Santhiel is in the sickening
chamber at the bottom of the spiral stairs that leads to the tunnel
to the Gulguthydra lair. He's jabbing around at the carving on the
floor next to the bottom of the stairs, and Grigori briefly sees his
fingers enter the eye holes of a particularly monstrous carving. At
once, a well crafted hidden door slides noisily apart...”
“Next he sees a vertiginous view
of black waters, alive with sharks, seen through the boards of a
rickety bridge. Santhiel is clearly kneeling (in worship?) and....”
“Oh Gods no.”
Breathes Grigori, his waxen flesh turning paler still. “Anything
but that.”
“What?” Asks
Shnecke thickly, his face a mass of ugly, necrotic blisters where his
dead flesh has bruised, “What did you see?”
Grigori runs over
the vision one more time before telling them...
“The field of
vision shifts as Santhiel stands to face the maw...a monster straight
out of the most terrible and terrifying tavern tales. It floats
without assistance; an armoured sphere of black and purple chitin,
crowned by ten twitching eyestalks. A huge mouth filled with crooked,
inwardly curved fangs drools and slobbers, whilst above it, set in
the front of the sphere, a single balefully shining eye twice the
size of a man's head stares hungrily at the pirate.”
“Oh Gods,”
Gasps Grigori again, “The Maw is a Xareth'Chelde. An Eye Tyrant.
It's a feckin' Beholder...”
Suddenly, no one is
smiling.
* This translates
roughly as “Mum”.
