Yesterday we played some serious D&D (wasn't all that serious).
Recall that our heroes, plus the other party that rolls with them sometimes, were walking around Lake Donn to see if they could find what became of Brian, the missing villager. The shore of the lake varies from a gentle slope to a slight drop-off, but in any event the lake smells stronger of swamp as they walk around. They get to the far side of the lake and Dara spots a copse of trees facing the lake, and sees what seems to be a person tied to one of the trees. She relates this to the others, and Aisling calls out "Brian! Is that you?"
They hear something chuckling in the trees next to them. They turn just as three gnolls burst from the trees! Zook has time to shoot one with a crossbow bolt before the battle is joined.
Dara calls up a flame blade, while Aisling casts Bane on the three gnolls. Belle nocks and arrow and fires, but it's too close and she misses. Fearg rages and starts laying about with his war pick, and Keenan moves around the battlefield to get a better angle on the gnolls for a burning hands spell. But Clara...
Clara feels that someone loves her, and she loves that someone. She turns and starts swimming out into the lake. A winged figure erupts from the trees and flies over the lake towards her, and the characters recognize the succubus they found back in Fiadh.
Belle fires and arrow at her, and Zook tries to blind her with magic, but she resists. Aisling throws a cloud of daggers in her way and she hits it, and drops into the water. Clara swims toward her, joyously, ready for her kiss...
Zook, thinking quickly, hits the demon and Clara with a magic missile, and Clara snaps out of it. She punches at the succubus, and the demon recoils. "I told you I'd see you again," she says, and takes to the sky away from Clara.
Clara turns and swims back to shore, where the battle continues. Between Zook's magic missiles, Keenan's spells, Dara's flame blade, Fearg's rage and Aisling's encouraging drumming, the gnolls are defeated. The demon, though, flies back over to the trees.
The heroes regroup a bit and start heading over. They find that the person that Dara saw "tied" to the tree is in fact nailed to it. Long sections of flesh have been flensed from his body and are hanging up in the nearby trees, drying. He is quite dead...but he raises his head and spouts something in Abyssal. Dara catches the word "flesh", but nothing else, and the body becomes inert again.
The characters talk a bit about what to it ("Is he dead? I mean I know he's dead, but...") and the body lifts its head again and repeats itself, but in Abhaila this time: "Upon my flesh will be written the coming of the hordes of the Infernal, from the depths of cursed water they will rise." At this point, Clara moves around the tree to find some dry kindling to maybe burn this shit and sees Belle in a passionate kiss...with the succubus. No one noticed Belle sneak off (but then, she is a ranger).
The succubus drops her, and Belle collapses to the ground, her flesh fish-belly white, the veins around her eyes black. Aisling grabs her body and pulls it back into the clearing, away from the demon, and gives a healing word, but she doesn't stir (she is breathing, however). Fearg rages again and charges the demon, and Clara flips through the air and kicks her in the head. Brian's body pulls itself off of the tree and lurches toward Aisling, but then changes targets and goes for Belle.
Aisling leaps on Belle to shield her, and Zook stabs the zombie with his dagger. It continues to beat on Aisling ("NO GRAVE CAN HOLD MY BODY DOWN"), but then Zook puts a crossbow bolt in the back of its neck, and it falls dead. Again.
Meanwhile, the succubus taunts the others and nimbly defends against Fearg's wild strikes with its wings (seriously, I could not land a hit with him), striking out with claws. It takes off and flies into the clearing, apparently looking to finish Belle off, but Aisling again protects her. The heroes fight the succubus with everything they have - magic, steel, wood, guile - and finally Dara lands the killing blow with her quarterstaff (and the shillelagh spell). The demon stumbles back into the water, and says "oh, no, you've defeated me again," and vanishes into fire.
The heroes take a breather, and Clara notes that they'll probably see the succubus again, since when it's "killed" it just returns to the Hells. Fearg muses that normally succubi aren't that ambitious; something generally has to summon them. The heroes recall that Orcan also summoned a cambion and a nightmare in the Enclave, so maybe he summoned this succubus as well? More information is needed.
Keenan and Zook stay at the clearing and dig a firepit in which to dispose of the remains of the zombie and the flesh-tangles hanging from trees. The others help Belle back to town, and they deliver the bad news to Cormac. The rest of the town of Watershed is happy, though, that the disturbing dreams will end and that their town won't be menaced by a demon. Aisling has them draw some water from their wells (they don't drink the lake water, obviously) and washes off the zombie bits.
In the morning, Belle is feeling much better, though the black veins around her eyes remain ("she should stop eating ilithid tadpoles," one of my players noted). The two parties discuss their next move. They want to know more about demons and try and see if they can figure out what's happening, and Zook suggests that they head for Cian, the largest city in Abhaile. If there are demonology experts anywhere, they're probably there. Belle says that her brush with death has her wanting to visit her home to the east, in Osclaimid, so they two bands part ways again, but are both sure they'll find each other again at some point.
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