D&D: Victory at the Enclave

Tally-ho! Here's last time.

Our heroes are at the Enclave of Thorns, wherein a dangerous new philosophy - Ghrian Trí Duillegoa - has taken hold. It's dangerous, of course, because it espouses leaving the borders of Abhaile, which is a no-no. Besides, Orcan, the founder of said philosophy, did leave the border, and came back with a voice in his head - always concerning.

And now Orcan has stolen the Abyssal Scroll, the one that described creating gnolls from new animals, and is attempting to flee!

Dara has raised the alarm, and Zook is with her. Clara is nearby in the woods, foraging, and Aisling and Fearg were just chatting with Sionnach (the warden of the Enclave) and Riona (the Archdruid). Everyone rushes to intercept Orcan - Sionnach and Dara both cast an entangle spell to trip him up, but he seems able to walk right through it with no impediment.

Zook, however, throws a blindness spell on him, and his eyes go milky white. Clara fires her bow at him and sticks the arrow in his shoulder. He turns, and screams one word: "Izzuthan!"

A pillar of fire erupts from the ground, revealing a beautiful young man with immense bat-like wings astride a black horse with a fiery mane. Aisling bites her lip (she's a sucker for a pretty face, and this creature, while clearly demonic, is very pretty), but Clara doesn't hesitate. She rushes in and punches the demon (it's actually a cambion). Sionnach calls a lightning bolt down and strikes the cambion and the horse, and Dara enchants her staff and Riona does likewise, and they close on the nightmare, but it body-checks Riona and knocks her down (and somewhere across the multiverse, another evil horse whinnies in respect). Zook, figuring it worked once, casts another blindness spell on the cambion, and it goes blind! 

Aisling throws a cloud of daggers around Orcan, and yells at him to "Drop the scroll!" Over the quiet metallic sounds of the daggers and the sound of chaos as druids react to all this, she hears him respond "I CAN'T!" Aisling finds this a strange thing to say - does he mean he physically can't, or he won't...? 

Orcan casts a spell, but with no noticeable effect. Zook tries to target him with a scorching ray, but when he does he sees a shaft of sunlight around Orcan that grows so bright he can't focus. Confused, Zook throws a magic missile at the demon instead.

Aisling drops the cloud of daggers, and Fearg rages and charges in with his war pick. He strikes at Orcan, and Orcan responds with a thunderwave - it blasts Fearg back and rings Aisling's bell.

Meanwhile, Clara is engaging the cambion hand to hand, but every time she strikes it there's a small shower of sparks, as though he is protected from such mundane attacks. Dara whacks him with her shillelagh, though, and that seems to work just fine. Zook considers hurling fire at them, but (rightly) figures fire isn't going to do much to a demon, so switches back to magic missiles. Whatever spell was protecting Orcan is gone now, so he targets him. Three darts slam into his back, and Orcan falls dead.

Zook is taken aback - he didn't really mean to kill him. Aisling rushes in and grabs the Scroll, and holds it up, and the cambion turns and speaks to her in Abyssal. Dara isn't exactly fluent, but she understands it. It's asking for orders. She relays this to Aisling, and Aisling yells "GO HOME!"

The cambion nods, mounts the nightmare, and both of them vanish.

Everyone takes a breath. Aisling explains what happened to Riona and Sionnach, and they figure this is pretty good evidence that whatever Orcan brought back from beyond the borders, it wasn't benevolent. They order the scroll to be burned (Aisling is happy to get rid of it, it's already turning her fingers red and itchy).

A bit later, Riona approaches Dara when she's alone, and says that Sionnach has advised that the druids who followed Orcan be banished. Dara thinks that's a little extreme, and Riona agrees. 

That night, the druids build a fire and destroy the scroll (the heroes swear they can hear a faint scream...). She explains that Orcan left the border and brought something dangerous back, and while they're not sure what he intended to do with the scroll, it was clearly evil and demonic in nature. She says that the druids who followed his religious teachings will be allowed to stay, but they need to make a re-dedication to the druidic faith and the Enclave of Thorns.

Most of them nod and meekly agree, but Nuada (whom you'll recall is one side of the love triangle with Orla and Dara), stands up and and disagrees. He says that this is wrong - Orcan's philosophies never involved demonic or anything like demonolatry, and something terrible happened today. And with that, he turns and leaves. 

(As Nuada passes by the heroes, Zook says quietly that he agrees with one thing: Something terrible happened today.)

The meeting breaks up, and everyone goes their separate ways to rest and talk. Belle and Keenan touch base with the characters (they arrived too late to be part of the fight). They ask what the characters are going to do next, and Clara suggests they try and figure out where the Abyssal Scroll came from - gnolls aren't generally intelligent or magically adept enough to make such a thing. Belle and her people are going to head northeast, maybe head out towards Cian. They decide they'll all travel together for a while (if there are more gnolls, they want to fight them together!). 

Later that night, Dara sits next to Orla to comfort her. Orla says that whatever happened today, she agrees with Nuada - this was all highly out of character for Orcan. She's known him for years, and while he's always been a bit of a maverick, that's a far cry from being a demon worshiper. "There's something broken about this," she says.

Dara nods, but doesn't have much to offer in response. She knows what she saw. She tells Orla to be safe and stay here in the Enclave, and she has to follow her own path. Orla kisses her, and hopes that one day her path will lead her back here.