2025/08/01: Animus Hunt in Northern Alvidar Part 4
General Summary
Buzz, Kelsey, Knight, Nimbus, Everett, Othar, Union
The little girl's name is Sha. She nullifies magic nearby, which means she can't be teleported out. The range is small enough that the party members left above ground could be contacted and teleported to join the underground party. The antimagic effect only reaches inches to feet away from her, so it's mostly safe for Knight to be nearby as long as he doesn't try to hug her.
Roughly 30 feet down from the first trap door was a landing with another ladder leading down. The party regrouped there.
Some discussion as to how to get down quickly and safely. Knight took point, hopping down without bothering with the ladder. Buzz hovered down. Nimbus carried Sha down. The rest came down by flying carpet.
As the group was organizing, Union noticed something odd about Sha: While he'd been able to reach her with psionics before, she was developing a null psionic field as well as time went on.
Large level area with a reinforced door. Appeared locked from the other side. He could kind of hear voices coming from the other side, clinical and detached. The rest of the party fortunately managed to land quietly enough not to alert through the door. Nimbus, listening from a distance through the door, could hear the voices well enough to interpret, with one obstacle: They were speaking in what sounded like German. Ancient Alvidarian.
The lock proved uncooperative. There was some pressure bar on the far side, keeping the lock closed. The door had a trap that banished parts of Knight to another dimension when they tried to pass through ethereally. The wall around the door resisted Buzz's Stone Shape initially, but then he cast Breach Defenses on the wall, and that let him through. The warding returned after only moments, but it was enough time for him to shape a small hole through the wall. Knight was then able to thin out their arm and stick it through the hole, fiddling around enough to pop the lock open despite the bad angle and resistance.
When the door opened, there were nine people on the other side, all staring back at the party. One in a purple robe, very pale. One very large Amazonian woman with barbed armor. Looked like the Amazonian version of a dwarven battlerager, basically. Hiding behind a table was a young man with lovely golden locks, looking very fetching and bardlike, late gothic clothing. Six warrior cultists, guys in robes with platemail underneath. The room looked like a sort of science lab, bubbling containers of water with body parts floating in them. Lots of machinery and cubbyholes beyond. Tools that border the grotesque. Clinical tables with raised sides to keep the floor clean.
Knight teleported behind the bard, preparing to put threat on the bard and parry if violence broke out. In the process, they discovered that there was a rather painful teleport ward when parts of their body didn't quite arrive where they were supposed to. They regretted it slightly less moments later as the invincibility frames granted in response to the damage saved them from Buzz's blast of wind, which blasted the entire area to ruins and hit everyone inside like a category 6 hurricane.
The minions were sent flying alongside the rest of the party (except for Nimbus, who resisted with monk powers and protected the child). The Amazonian woman and the mage next to her escaped, practically phasing through the effect, and the woman (looking somewhat impressed) began collecting people from around the room. The bard ended up on top of a thing at the back of the room. The minions, despite being thrown against every surface of the room and through a wall of debris, started to get back up.
Union tried to heal Buzz, but Buzz's contingency shield made him immune to everything. He appreciated the effort, though. Knight got wrestling-moved by the big woman in the armor, and they would have died if they hadn't chosen Stalwart Shell earlier that day. Everett, suspecting the robed mage was a vampire, blasted her with Sunray and then fastballed a vial of holy water into her forehead. Screaming and burning commenced.
Nimbus, running over to interpose herself between the wrestler and Knight, tossed a dart that healed the ex-vessel as they dragged themself off the floor. Kelsey went for the minions, having Korbane cast Heal on Knight on the way. (The "minions" were highly skilled warrior vampires in full plate armor. It's only against adventurers of this tier that they could be considered mooks.) Kelsey successfully killed the lot of them, leaving them to dissipate into brackish smoke.
The bard's effect then struck the party. Nearly everyone was immune by various means. Kelsey was the exception, but her swords recognized that she was compromised and opted to take over for her.
Othar, instantly tiring of the bard's shenanigans, flew to the bard's location and reached for his throat, preparing a darkfire claw. The bard, terrified (and vampiric), turned to mist in an attempt to escape the strangling clutch. It failed: Othar long ago gave himself silvered claws that let him hold even mistform undead as solid. The fog burned and let out a slight scream, and then it was gone.
Knight, practically fully healed and about to dive after the bard themself, looked at the two remaining opponents and opted to keep the mage from getting a spell off. They chewed through the mages defenses and kept slicing, ending with the mage poofing into purplish smoke.
Union tried and failed to disrupt the big lady with psionics. He also realized what the bard was likely doing: editing memories in real time.
Nimbus and the wrestler charged each other. A flurry of blows ensued, but Nimbus came out the better. A few good strikes punched through and slew the vampire, rendering her to smoke as well.
This left the party in the rubble and wreckage of the lab. Knight asked if everyone was okay. Most of the party was intact. Othar drank one of the healing potions he'd bought from Everett, which took the edge off. Killgleam and Korbane started running a mental check on Kelsey. Buzz fabricated a collection of wooden stakes from a crate in his inventory and passed them out.
There were two doors out of the room. Nimbus went to investigate the far door, where she found a bolt locking the armored door closed from this side. It would require near-supernatural levels of strength to lift, but that was something Nimbus had on hand (literally).
The next room had living test subjects and products, stored in big liquid containers. There was a giant baby in one container and a very muscled man in another, both apparently unconscious. Othar proposed burning the room and all inside. Knight proposed checking with the dream nail. This was accepted, and Knight, Othar, and Union went to enter the "gigachad's" dreams while the other three stayed to defend.
Wooded area in sunlight. Repetitive birdsong in the distance. About 30 yards away, hidden in the trees, some tree houses. Knight went up to investigate, found the big man carving a wooden bowl with a knife. Knight pointed toward him to their friends on the ground, then hopped onto a platform to say hello. The man, seeing Knight, immediately did a flip off his own platform, grabbing a makeshift spear on the way, and landed in a defensive pose on the ground.
Othar took over the diplomacy, gesturing that it's safe and the adventurers weren't being threatening. The man seemed to be unable to understand their language, but Union was excellent at mental connection and interpretation. (In the background, Union and Othar noticed that Knight seemed to be increasingly taking on a human form while in this dream. Knight found this very disconcerting and spent most of their focus trying to ward that off.)
The man's name was Kur. Impression was that he was basically a Tarzan type, wild and living in the woods. As questions were slow in coming and Knight was increasingly uncomfortable, Knight decided that was enough, the man was sufficiently safe and innocent, and it was time to leave.
The party reconvened. Trying to decide what to do with the baby. 3' tall, semi-developed fetus. Looks slightly inhuman. Knight had a very bad feeling about entering its dreams.
Whispered Secrets:
1. The vampires are evolving by consuming rare magic blood.
2. They probably already know that you're here, although right now you're in the research facility/most protected areas of their base.
3. The first section of their base is called the grey maze. Lots of winding passages where the vampires challenge themselves and each other.
4. Second is the dark fortress. Deadly traps and undead troops.
5. Third floor is the "clubhouse", where they spend most of their time entertaining themselves.
6. Fourth floor is the "underhollows", where they rest, sometimes for hundreds of years at a time.
7. Fifth floor is where the leadership is, called the Mansion. We're currently in floor 6.
8. If they're getting all this god blood, where are they getting it from?
Buzz called Orb for advice. Weird geometries to the baby's aura. Lots of strange colors and shapes and forms. Not random so much as uncontrolled. A shard of a dead god. An atropal. Like the dead thought of a god. A stillborn concept of gods? Orb recommended dropping it into the astral plane. That is where it should be, and then it's the universe's and Anubis's problem.
Orb wasn't sure who the other guy was. Likely someone local.
Buzz started setting up his lightning pillar artifact that, among other things, could punch a hole to the astral plane. While he was doing that, Othar walked up to Knight and patted him on the back, sympathy and reassurance for their relief in not having to deal with the baby. Knight tensed, worried by the proximity of Othar's darkfire to the mass of souls that made up their body, but after two pats without harm, they relaxed and gave a nod in return. The session closed out with the party standing by as the lightning started up.
Rewards Granted
3 xp
Character(s) interacted with
Created Content
Notes
Ancient Jeritorian is roughly Latin. Ancient Meritian is basically Irish. Ancient Alvidarian is German. Ancient Kaelund is dinosaur noises.
