 DM Note: Odd session this - only two players, and their characters as far apart as they could get... one up a tower and the other in a hole in the ground. |
Gorfang hefted his swords and considered his options for a moment. Three more Fae Mhor warriors faced him, swords at the ready; behind them were ranged Sevrith's acolytes, already beginning the process of spellcasting. Sevrith herself was right at the back - typical of a Fae Mhor leader - with a singlestick in one hand. She also looked as if she was preparing to do something magical. She looked the main threat - and the main challenge!
With a roar, the orc charged across the tower room, shouldering the three warriors out of his path like ninepins. One was sent to his knees; the others swiped at the running fighter with their swords, Gorfang's riposte slew one as he passed, and he carried on directly towards the Priestess Sevrith, whose face took on a very startled expression.
The acolytes released their spells, and four jets of violet fire shot across the room. Gorfang's speed spoiled their aim, and only one struck home, searing a painful burn across his shoulder. In his single-minded assault, he barely noticed it as he hurtled across the tower to confront the priestess.
The dark elf was raising her arm, preparing to do something with a ring on her finger, but Gorfang struck first, his twin blades dealing wound after wound. The priestess shrieked, and changed to trying to cast a healing spell - too late as the khopesh of Aklimah crashed through her helmet and sprayed her brains across the tower floor.
A moment later, one of the survivors tried the old favorite - darkness. Velvet night enveloped the tower, and Gorfang paused, considering the Rod of Daylight he'd so carefully and expensively laid in for just this eventuality. Then it struck him; while his foes were many, he was one. If he hit anything, it would be an enemy - so was it worth it? Chuckling grimly, he turned on the spot, striking into the darkness with his two blades.
More than half of his blows cut nothing but air. His warrior skill and a good idea where attacks on him were angled from allowed him to strike home some of the time ... and when he did connect, a foe died. After a minute or so of sightless, gasping struggle, the attacks stopped coming, and the orc scooped the Rod out of his pack and triggered it.
The floor around him was strewn with bodies, which was as it should be. However, there was a survivor, a single acolyte standing rather sheepishly around half-way across the room. She'd just drunk a potion, and was eyeing Gorfang carefully. The orc turned to advance on her, and her eyes widened. Dropping the bottle to shatter on the floor, she dashed across to the window, vaulting over the sill and out into the night air. Gorfang hurried over and looked out... and down.
Clinging to the wall with impossible facility, the acolyte was scrambling down the sheer side of the tower. Gorfang nodded to himself. A potion of Spider Climb, most likely. Unhurriedly, he swung his bow off his shoulder and reached into his quiver. As he nocked his first arrow, however, a strange reluctance to offer violence to this person stole into his mind. It was so unlike what he should be thinking at this point that he instantly recognized it as a spell effect of some sort, an impression heightened a moment later as the Fae Mhor grinned nastily up at him as if daring him to try and attack her.
With a snarl, Gorfang shook off the effects of the Sanctuary spell, and loosed four shafts at the shocked dark elf. Three sank into her belly, and her back arched in pain for a moment before she collapsed and went limp, dangling from the wall as the effects of the potion continued to prevent her from falling.
Satisfied, Gorfang turned back into the room, and started to loot the bodies.
Lynien, 
confident she was alone indulged herself, just for a few moments, in the joy of plunder, running gold through her fingers, juggling gemstones, trying on various pieces of jewelry. One item in particular attracted her attention; a single glove, embroidered, jewelled, articulated. Easily the most valuable item in the hoard, she reckoned its value well into the thousands. She tried it on, just in case it had some obvious magical powers, but other than fitting perfectly, it didn't do anything. Without any ability to detect magic she couldn't pinpoint enchanted items, but she could make some good guesses. She tucked the glove over her belt and carried on sorting.
After half an hour or so, she'd collected all the gemstones into a bag and stuffed it into her backpack, and isolated a small pile of what she tentatively considered probable magic items. The best of the jewelry was gathered into a heap and shifted down the tunnel to where she'd identified a probable shaft to the surface. The coin, though plentiful, she couldn't begin to cart away.
As she dropped the last load onto her pile, it struck her there was something odd about the hoard. It took her a moment to work out what it was; but then an image of Gorfang's face flashed across her mind and she had it. In all the dragon's treasure, there were no weapons at all, nor any armour - nothing. Incredible! All the legends of dragonhoards spoke of failed dragonslayers leaving their mail, and their weapons, and their bones, to swell the monsters' hoards. Setram must have had the pick of Amberlan's treasures if he was here here when it fell. Nonetheless, there was nothing. Gorfang isn't going to be pleased, she thought absently, or he isn't going to believe it, followed rather more disquietingly.
As she mused, her alert ears picked up a whisper of sound. It was coming from down the pipe, in the direction of the sinkhole at its' end. She concentrated, and after a few moments picked out the sound of several sets of approaching feet. Too light for men or bugbears, and too graceless for Fae Mhor. Whatever they were, they were probably a problem. She triggered Maedar's Ring once more, disappearing from sight, and scrambled as high up the rough curved side of the tunnel as she could.
Along the tunnel came five figures, and seeing them she realized why the footfalls had seemed familiar. They were slitheren ratmen. Four were of the same stamp as the thugs she'd encountered before, but the fifth, the evident leader, was of a different type. Far better dressed, in well-made leather armour and carrying a well-made rapier, he moved with a skilled grace that she recognized; he was thief-trained the same as she was. A moment later all five stopped in amazment, and Lynien ground her teeth silently - they'd spotted her heap of treasure. The leader gestured two of his henchrats forward, and they advanced past her to the loot. Putting down their weapons - spiked chains - they knelt and began examining the booty. They had their backs to her, were disarmed, and she was invisible. Lynien couldn't resist it. She dropped to the tunnel floor behind them and struck with Treytas in one hand and the Shadowdagger in the other. Both ratmen keeled over, fatal wounds at the base of their necks, and Lynien retreated to the wall and squirmed up it.
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The ratman leader, Roland, chittered in alarm, and sent his remaining followers forward. These advanced with their chains whirling, filling the corridor with a blur of sharp metal. Lynien could see that she'd be struck as they passed where she was... but that the weapons didn't come much lower than knee-height to the ground. Slipping down from the wall she dropped prone and watched the rats walk past her. As they reached their slain comrades she surged up from the floor and slashed them both down from behind. The first one she killed outright but the second merely lost a leg and lay screaming and bleeding on the stone.
Rapier in hand, Roland advanced at a trot, his blade flicking side to side trying to locate the invisible foe he was sure was there. Lynien picked her moment, and sprinted past him to attack him from behind; but as she spun to face him she saw him do likewise and realized his senses had located her at last. His blade weaved as he peered towards her. Then he spoke. "I think we're here for the same thing," he commented. Yeah, my treasure, thought Lynien sardonically, but didn't speak - no point giving her position away. "I have more men on the way," continued Roland, "and you can't possibly carry it all. But between us we could; and then you could get a bigger share."
Lynien lunged and Treytas slashed a flesh wound on the ratman's chest. "So that's how it is, eh?" he quipped, and slashed in return, drawing the tiefling's blood. Lynien riposted, and her blade tore across the top of Roland's head, severing one of his upstanding pointed ears. Roland screamed in fury, his earlier poise gone, spun and fled down the corridor towards the dragon's lair. Lynien knew she could catch him, but declined to try. Instead, she swigged a flask of Boom Boom and laid a Glyph of Warding on the treasure to discourage any other thieves. Having no ink to hand, she dipped a finger in the blood of a slain foe and drew the magical sigil with that. As she did so, something deep in her racial memory resonated, and a strong feeling of rightness stole over her; blood was exactly the right medium for this action.
Gorfang emerged onto the roof of Sevrith's tower, and looked around. The ruined city of Amberlan was laid out around him on all sides like a map, alight with chaos and destruction. To the west, the battle between the forces of Rhorelian and Gimeth was over, but flames and demonic ectoplasm were scattered across the entire area. Gimeth's Chaos-braced tower had slagged down into a pulsating, foetid mass of raw chaos matter, and victory fires burned up and down the Tower of Rhorelian.
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To the south, the domain of the dark healer and assassin Tvia lay cold and silent, but to Gorfang's best guess, Méabh was slinking through it, preparing to draw destruction down on it. A little east of that, a wide swathe of ruins had been changed from grassy mounds to steaming ash in an instant, and scattered fires burned fitfully where the dragon had struck. Though he didn't know it, Eloy lay huddled behind a broken spiral staircase in the midst of it, recuperating from the dragonfire that had nearly claimed his life.
Thoughts of the dragon drew Gorfang's eyes to the tower of Afendalind. As he looked at it, the dragon Setram soared up from behind it, curling gracefuly in flight as he spiraled up the tower. The tower was already deeply afire, flames roaring from several gaping holes that hadn't been there before. As the orc watched, Setram smashed another piece out of the side of the tower, sending chunks of stone tumbling to the ground below. In the flickering light of the fires, he could see bugbears and Fae Mhor fleeing in all directions, and a moment later the dragon rolled over in the air and coughed an eye-aching gout of flame across them. Thin screams rose into the night.
Gorfang raised his bloodied weapons and roared his exultation into the night.
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