Last night we played Blue Rose, and the characters scored a victory...with, perhaps, some lingering problems.
Last time, we left off as a pack of shadow mastiffs emerged from the...um, shadows. They lunge at the characters, except for Whirlpool, who's presently underwater swimming towards a door. Kisha engages a mastiff with her staff and holds her own handily, while the dogs do some nasty bites unto Pansy and Arlen (although Arlen conjures a psychic mace and brains a mastiff as well). One mastiff tackles Dobbin and bays, sending fear down the spines of the party, but they hold themselves together and fight on.
Meanwhile, in the water, Whirlpool comes across a glowing, translucent figure - one that looks vaguely familiar. The specter swoops towards him and runs a hand through his chest, freezing his blood. Whirlpool responds in kind, casting Cold Shaping and driving the specter back. The specter flies up through the ceiling, and Whirlpool, a bit disquieted, swims down and opens the door. The water starts rushing out and Whirlpool has to swim hard against the current, but manages to avoid getting sucked in.
Back in the room with all the shadow-dogs, Kisha continues to avoid being bit and Pansy and Dobbin continue to not avoid it. Pansy, in particular, is bleeding and struggling but still trying to protect Dobbin, so Dobbin manages to draw attention from the mastiff biting her dog and takes them both on. Arlen finishes off the mastiff he's fighting and runs to help, and Whirlpool emerges from the tunnel and tridents the heck out of a mastiff. Arlen uses healing magic to help Pansy, and together the characters destroy the last couple of mastiffs.
They take a breather and Whirlpool tells them about the specter he saw. Kisha recognizes the description - that sounds like Vans Ebban, whose tragic history she learned in Verdaunen. But if Vans is a specter, he's not a lich, though it's not undead don't sometimes cluster. The party decides to descend and follow the tunnel.
The specter blocks the way, and asks Arlen, who is in the lead, what they want. Arlen says they want knowledge, and the specter agrees, moving out of the way.
They find themselves in a big round room, the floor still wet, no living things in evidence except a few unfortunate cave fish. A single shaft of moonlight pierces the gloom, and Kisha tells Arlen (in accordance with the prophecy) to stand in it. He does...and immediately feels voices telling him to open the gate. Figuring that this is unwise, he resists, but the force of all of the spells that the party has cast since being in the tower pushes back, and the shadowgate opens. The specter of Vans Ebban appears, laughing, saying that they're about to get the knowledge the want. They hear footsteps in the distance - a darkfiend is coming.
Kisha remembers that a shadowgate can be forced to implode by overloading it with magic, and she, Arlen, and Whirlpool summon their arcane power and channel it. The specter appears and swoops around the room, screaming in rage and trying to kill Arlen (the most powerful adept), but Dobbin tries to fight it off. The characters manage to pump enough power into the shadowgate to shatter it, and the edges of the room implode, creating a vortex that threatens to suck them all in.
Kisha dives into a side tunnel and holds on for dear life. Whirlpool jams his trident into the wall and hangs on. Dobbin, Pansy, and Arlen are sucked towards the eye of the storm, but Arlen casts Move Object, grabs all three of them, and yanks them down towards Whirlpool, allowing them to form a chain and hold on long enough for the storm to abate. Vans Ebban is sucked in, screaming all the way, and the collapse to the floor.
Arlen, Kisha, and Whirlpool feel a tickle at the back of their mind. Arlen and Kisha ignore it, but in Whirlpool, it finds a handhold. "Train your body," says the darkfiend. "Perfect your strength and speed. You will serve me all the better."
Horrified, Whirlpool relates this to his friends, and they all head out, leaving the tower behind and going back down to the village. There, they find that the Finest have already packed up the wagon and are hustling them out of Sundown. On the road, they learn that there's something wrong in the village - the Broken Circle cult (a cult dedicated to prolonging life by any means necessary) was mentioned. The Finest are going to need to investigate this place later, but not with the Mask around.
Gyell tells Whirlpool that a darkfiend has forged a psychic connection with him, and it's possible to break it, but he doesn't know the spell necessary. Someone in Aldis surely does, though, so on they go.
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