Random Ramblings of Maggot in no particularly sensible order

Party: Me (Maggot), Wolf, Lupus, Puke, Garret, Thumper, Ezekial, Aruna, Cuddles, Kevralin, Harlequin, Lancorrin and Finn.

Our mission was to go have a look at the Dark Well to see what was going on with it after all the bad stuff going on with the Catacombs of Asherai Agoth.

The party was also given two different missions, us brown boys having do to some secret op to recover the C*** ring so as to enhance the C*** and to find a “tart”, as Bael called him; a waggler called Tanis who disappeared while transporting some dark faeries around on a previous mission that they hadn’t come back from. The dark faerie wagglers had something to do with some scrolls or something like that. They had a bling-heavy spick-merchant turn up and tell them stuff while we got Bael to give us our info, He also decided that Thumper was being a bit wussy hiding behind a shield so he relieved her of it. Being a cunning individual she had a spare.

We travel in Yana’s Hut. We met a Morgothian on the way who said they had a force in the area. We also ran into some strange sort-of-undead-but-not creatures that were magical in nature but drained life. At the well we fought a bunch of these things plus a big, nasty Agothian undead (a soul reaper? something like that) which we defeated by power hammering it. It turns out that the Dark Well is know a permanent portal to the plane of the sleepless dead. It went to the realm of Yort as it happened.

Yort is a bit of a weird place, not exactly PotSD standard issue. Without blesses we heard the spirits of the Ord (a type of Orc) talking to us and some of us went a bit weird but it was fine on the whole, until one morning when a bunch of Agothians teleported in, thanked Puke and gave him a Cause Mortal Wounds 8 for his trouble. I only laughed a bit ‘cause I was sleeping in the bunk next to his at the time. Seems he’s been a bit of a naughty boy.

Anyway, this Yort place is where the Chorian originally comes from and as it was being consumed by Agoth it was playing out an ancient story involving the Ord and the Zelnin (dark faeries) over and over. During the day, the living versions of the Ord were about and their king told us we could go in some competitions to win the c*** ring. The daytime versions only remember four days then forget and go back round the cycle again. He also told us about a shiny present full of food that the Ord champion presented to the besieged Zelnin as a gift for the Zelnin champion fighting so well. In fact the food was poisioned by the Ord advisor and they all died horribly. Oh well. The present got destroyed and scattered but is made up of a mask, hood, a box, 4 plaques and an engineer’s bag full of tools and bits. In the night the Ord show up as spirit versions who remember being around for a very long time. At various points a thing looking like the Chorian turned up and dark-fire bolted the hell out of us so we figured it wasn’t really him. In the end it turned out to be a physical representation of his scythe. He, Anubis and the Valkyrie had scattered some tokens of themselves around as a safeguard with a bunch of minor ones (some of which we’ve recovered) and a major one each. The Chorian didn’t want to come here for some reason. We might have found out why but I forget. So on future missions we have to go to Dalehoven to retrieve the Valkyrie’s chariot and Axos to get Anubis’ feather. Anubis mentioned a pyramid on Murandir but I mostly ignored that as he was rambling. Anyway, if we get all the bits we can reform them back to how they were.

While blundering about we met some Ord who’d take us to the Ord King who could tell us stuff. The Ord aren’t keen on our dark faeries so in a moment of sheer genius Thumper orders them to hop on one foot to show how servile they are. Very entertaining. I think Lan enjoyed the hopping a bit much actually.  Apparently Thumper had a duel with one who was well ‘ard (he broke all of  Cuddles’ bones with one hit!) but I missed it ‘cause I was invoking. After that we ran into some members of Kevralin’s house who were particularly rude and wouldn’t talk to her and even cast stuff on here. I imagine they’ll get theirs at some later date. Possibly a boating accident.

Where was I? Oh yeah, we wanted to get into the Zelnin’s refuge, I think to loot and murder mostly but there might have been another reason. The first time we tried to get in we got attacked by a dark faerie bint called Lena I think but we chased her off. We also had a bit of a fight with their champion and some drone-like creatures. We tried to use a password but just before we did it had gone dusk and the place changed and we couldn’t get in.

On the way back to the base we ran into the spirit form of the advisor and we killed his minions and chased him off.

In the morning most of us didn’t have blesses on so we got possessed by zombie warrior spirits so we each had to have them beaten out of us. I have to say that I took no pleasure at all in vigorously beating the snot spirit out of the possessed Kevralin. I had to keep hitting her while she was on the ground just in case it was still in there. It was the safe thing to do. Well, it was. Really.

Anyway, nice work on Zeke’s part to be blessed in the first place and to use a neutrality to undead to help sort it all out.

After talking with the Ord King we figure if we reassemble the shiny present we’ll be able to get in.

At some point while we were wandering about looking for bits of it we came across the Zelnin champion and lots of dark things doing blindness. He was pretty tough and took us ages to put down.

Also while searching for bits we ran into a big bunch of Agothians with the spirit form Ord advisor leading them. As we were on the PotSD when we killed them they got back up as spirit creatures which was a pain. We chopped up his boys and chased him off. We found lots of bits of the shiny present which we took back to our base.

Later on we ran into some disease ridden thing with a follower in a mask (part of the shiny present) and a bunch of the spirit creatures. A big mosh followed and we put him down but as he fell his minion took the death and gave it to me, at which point I promptly fell over dead. Bugger. Apparently there was a fight with some Agothians while Cuddles was resurrecting me. We got the mask and hood for the shiny present at least.

Speaking of Agothians, the next evening we came across a bunch of them doing some Ritual to summon a Vir. The trick to stopping the ritual seems to be to not kill any of them. Weird idea, I know but that’s how it is. I’d suggest any groups coming across these guys in future just power drain them into the ground or something similar. We didn’t know this at the time so we chopped them up so the ritual succeeded - incoming Vir.

They had some kind of spirit of pain with them that spirit wracked a few of us. It also used a feeble mind to turn Kevralin into a blonde bimbo and I’m still trying to decide whether it was an improvement or not. It also beguiled some of us. I was writhing in pain on the ground at the time but I think Cuddles did a bunch of remove pains on it which took it out.

The Morgothians turned up one evening and tried to get the hut off us and we jobbed most of them but one got away. Stinking Morgul Wraiths. They got theirs.

We assembled the shiny present and us brown boys carried it down to the refuge. The “Chorian“ turned up and gave us a hosing down with big bolts of dark-fire again. Finn got into the shiny present, pretending to be the golem that carried it. They let him in at which point things go a bit strange and the group gets split into two groups: brown boys in one and dark faeries/other wagglers in the other. Us brown boys end up inside (the Zelnin think we’re Zelnin too) and the story of the siege and other dodgy goings on of the Zelnin family get played out with a few of us being possessed by spirits one after the other to play our part. At one point I woke up on the floor feeling like I’d been run over, then backed over, by a cart. It seems I’d been playing the part of the Zelnin champion who got to duel the nigh-unkillable Ord champion who’d been dipped in a river of lava as a child. Oh yeah, there were some scrolls in there too but we ignored those and used them as beer coasters. I think the wagglers got some magic out of them or something. Anwyay, the story unfolds that this Lena bint had been knocked up by one of the Ord and her son, Lenzin Dor, is the product. He’s a Dork, literally and figuratively. He’s a half Zelnin (Drow), half Ord (Ork) mummy’s boy and a nasty little piece of work and no mistake. Basically all the Drow have been doing nasty, backstabbing stuff as usual so he’s all bitter and twisted. It turns out his mother Lena died in the poisoning and he ate his way out of her womb. Well hard. She came back as a revenant to raise him and basically kept him in a box and taught him to trust nobody. But the real interesting bit is that Lenzin was the Chorian’s original form.

After all that malarkey was over we ended up outside doing some Ord challenges of stealth, courage, diplomacy etc. My favourite was the diplomacy where I think we set the bar for all future diplomatic missions. We had to convince four Ord to leave the advisor’s service. A rousing song so they didn’t know what was going on, one “Death”, one “Maim” and two throat slits later they were completely convinced.

The last task was to go into the heart of flame or something like that. When we appeared in there all our magic went down. There was a brief silence as we considered the Drow group who had just gone through the same test followed by a chorus of laughter. We then waded in and completely murdered the bunch of Ord who’d massacred our waggler group. We found the tart, Tanis, in there but he teleported away after thanking us. We assume he went back to the towers.

After the fun had finished the Chorian turned up, first as Lenzin Dor, then as himself this time. He asked us a bunch of stuff about himself and getting to tell an aspect of death that he was a Dork (and living to tell the tale) was a special moment. He gave Aruna his scythe and we went back to the base. She left it outside the door, it being somewhat dangerous, and Simian the Seer hut driver touched it and dropped dead. That’ll teach him. The other Seer wasn’t too happy but what are you going to do?

Not sure when this happened but the living version of the Ord King came and took us off for some challenges so Puke, Lupus, Thumper and Wolf had a bit of a bash in a field to see who was toughest. But the stand out part of the challenges was the insults section where Thumper totally crushed her opposition with a tirade of cutting remarks and slander. Truly she is a master of verbal abuse.

Lena and their champion turned up to have a chat about the fact that we’d weakened the plan and that Agoth would now consume it. (well you’ve got to make these tough decisions sometimes, don’t you?) A fight kicked off which was pretty messy with lots of mass cause mortals going off and nasty semi-spirit creatures. We staggered back to the base knowing we had to get the hell out of there before the plane got swallowed.

Then the s*** the fan. A few weird Agothian undead turned up and one grabbed the scythe. I power hammered one to death but we didn’t seem to be able to do much to the other ones. In the end Finn ended up using a sorceror’s dispel on one I think which got rid of it. Another one (soul catcher?) walked around saying our names and making a grabbing motion towards us which didn’t look good. I’m sure that’ll come back and bit us in the butt at some point.

Aruna had tried to grab the scythe “of death” off one but couldn’t get it out of it’s hands so Thumper thought she’d give her a hand with predictable and fairly amusing results. Cuddles tended her so it was fine. We eventually got the scythe but during the fight Garret went down and Zeke was tending him in his little ward. We had to do a mad scramble to get in the hut as we were leaving and Zeke left his ward to get Garret in. I’m not sure exactly what happened but Zeke didn’t make it in and I think he got left behind which is not good. Zeke’s a good bloke and I’m hoping something will be done to find out what happened to him and to get him back.

So apart from the unfortunate loss of a party member we achieved our aims. That’s all the stuff I remember and it’s all mixed up but you get the point.