12/29/2007
Paul V - T'ba - Thief/bard/gnome
Paul H – Lum – ½ ogre/fighter/GESSAR!!!
Andrew - Ayrkin - "human"/fighter/"mage"
Chris - Rook - Thief/Fighter/half elf
David – Ch’vere – Cleric/Human/Ver’l
NPC/DOA – DublUP’e - cleric/human/tarim – Mike
During the night watch of Lum and DublUP’e neither noticed a strange occurrence in one of the tunnel walls as it rippled with waves of heat and trickled like molasses. Before the Party realized, whips of chitin exploding from giant ant lion like creatures snatched them and yanked them through the wall into (what they realized) was another plane.
They found themselves in a series of volcanic caves whose air was clotted with a charnel odor, the copper tang of fresh blood, and the sweet smell of torn flesh. Acrid smoke burnt their eyes and brimstone stuffed their lungs. Cries of pain and combat and the crash of distant weapons layered their surroundings. Aside from the half dozen ant lion-like creatures (whose carapace, where exposed to Moon Barrow’s air, burned and smoldered), were a dozen metal clad, demonic visaged creatures. Their left arms ended in armored scythes and their right hands clenched crude, battered maces.
One of them rumbled at the Party, that they had been brought to serve in the victory of the eternal war and they would be treated fairly in this honor. To the consternation of the Party, this declaration was met by a battle howl to Gessar (!) as Lum charged into the midst of these giant foes. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, the Party engaged their captures. A bloody and tense battle ensued as their foes thick, heavy armor blunted their weapons and exhausted their magics. Between judicious use of magic, heals, regenerations, Wyrdsongs and bloody minded stubbornness, the party managed to kill or ‘disappear’ all their opponents. In the battle DublUP’e was killed.
Looking out the cave mouth, they could see a great valley surrounded by high escarpments. Thousands of cave mouths screamed in the faces of the cliffs and 1000s of conscripts were being forced to scale down their faces to the maelstrom below. A seething flux of bodies covered the plain as far as they could see. Bodies locked in mortal combat. Mounds of rotting dead rising hundreds of feet into the air; a storm surge of blood, flesh and metal. Magics blossomed and blackened across the struggling fields. Ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a thousand thousand struggled and died across the plain. The noise of it was suffocating. Turning their backs on it, they fled back to the deeper recesses of the cave followed by its roar.
They also discerned during the battle that the tail end of the ‘ant lions’ seemed to be able to penetrate the veil between the worlds. Using this observation, the Party managed to get back to the Moon Barrows with one significant difference – they didn’t arrive at the point from which they originated! Any gear (including pack animals and trading goods) that they did not have on their persons was lost. Rook flew back on their trail but couldn’t find how far away they were and taking the better part of valor the Party fled to the Western exit.
Along the way, Rook told the Party of a vision which showed him a blue flowered island in the Seethe and a tisane being made from it that might cure the Plague they left behind with the Erianan.
Using a forced march, the Party found egress from the lava tubes and found themselves looking down a gentle slope furred with knee high grass that lapped down ten miles until it abutted against a great, tormented body of cerulean water. Across the surface, strange bi-hulled boats skipped liked water bugs and single story settlements spotted the shore. Each settlement had a northward facing wall and sheep, goats and domesticated antelope grazed in the nearby fields. Corn, wheat, rye and vegetables sprouted in scattered plots.
The Party walked down the gentle slope.
Meeting ended.
