Chapter 12: The Living Darkness

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What Has Come Before

The heroes of Riddleport have ventured to Devil’s Elbow, and island off the coast of Varisia and the site of a recent meteorite impact. That “skyfall” was result of foul drow magic that drew an asteroid down from space and smashed it into the planet.

Several expeditions set forth from the city seeking to secure the skymetal that crashed into the Devil’s Elbow. Most met with disaster. The first two groups to reach the island – one backed by a crimelord, the other a dwarven crew with the blessing of the overlord, were slaughtered by bizarre tentacle-maned lion creatures and transformed into equally strange zombies. An expedition sent by the Cypherguild – which the heroes joined – nearly met a similar end. While the heroes investigated the crater on the eastern shore of the island, the mage contingent headed to the abandoned town of Witchlight.

The heroes spent several hours exploring the crater. They found far less skymetal than they expected, but they also discovered a possible reason: there were boot prints through the crater of a size and shape the strongly implied they were left by elves. Or, more likely, dark elves. After the investigation the heroes decided to rest for the night, finding an excellent (if impromptu) lean-to formed by trees blown sideways by the meteor’s impact. That night they were attacked by the lion creatures. Most escaped the fight no worse for wear, but the dwarven rogue Tholyr suffered a particularly nasty bite and later became ill.

Meanwhile at Witchlight the wizards ran into the lion-creatures as well, losing nearly half their number in the attack. Their fallen returned as zombies, and it was only the intervention of the heroes – who had seen the eruption of a pyrotechnic spell from Witchlight’s namesake lighthouse – that saved the survivors.

The Story

As told by Skender:

"We met up with Clegg, explored the Eastern Tower at his request while he moved to Witchlight in hopes of one of us capturing a tentacle lion, Jorm found an intelligent cold-magic sword, we fought the wraith-spirit of the island's previous founder, discovered he was into kinky bird-sex, learned of his siren lover's lair in a sea cave between the Eastern Tower and Witchlight, found it was now the lair of some drow and a shadow demon, got our asses kicked and ran away from said shadow demon, and made our way back to Witchlight with our tails between our legs (likely in the wee hours of the night) to find that Clegg et. al. had encountered more tentacle-lion-larva zombies and more people are likely infected."

Treasure

  • Winter, +1 intelligent frost cold iron long sword

Experience

Full XP

Passive XP