Sundays - 2:30-6:00 PM Eastern The party’s uneasy alliance with the dwarf Blackbeard began under the shadow of suspicion. The Gith ,
ever analytical, was the first to voice it — that the “dragon”
Blackbeard claimed to have seen was no beast at all, but their own dragonship , lost when they crossed Death’s Gate. The realization unsettled everyone.
Though grim and weathered, Blackbeard carried himself with the weight
of his people, yet something about him gnawed at the edges of trust.
His eyes, red and fevered in moments when he thought himself unseen,
betrayed something darker. Still, he led them south through the
heartwood, promising safe passage to the ruined dwarven stronghold of Nhar-Khuldar — the last city of his kind.
The Mongrelwoman BA’caW , distrustful and direct,
pressed him about the twin rune-marked doors in the heart of the forest.
The dwarf gave her nothing. Yet when the Gith studied the carvings, his
mind recoiled and then recognized them — Sartan runes , old as creation and alien to this world. Their meaning lingered unspoken.
Meanwhile, Eduardodile , the crocodile-bodied centaur, had forged a bond with Boarz , the newly reborn owlbear warrior. Together, they honed their tactics — claws, steel, and cunning in unison. The Ogre Sek , gifted now with uncanny intellect, took the lead on the march, scouting ahead with calm determination.
But betrayal waited beneath the stone.
At Blackbeard’s urging, the party followed him into a narrow canyon trail — until the ground gave way. A pitfall ,
cunningly crafted and brutally effective. They fell into darkness. Only
Eduardodile’s druidic reflexes saved him; he melded into stone just
before the stone gave way. Jean Kléber , the Giff
marine, survived by the grace of his full plate — a masterwork of divine
craftsmanship that turned a death blow into bruises and fractured bone.
The pit was alive eerie and seemingly covered in gossamer webs and
full of unhatched eggs. Red eyes rushed towards the group and eggs began
to break, issuing forth horrid scarred runic arachnids.
From the walls crawled Runic Arachnids and Runic Centipedes ,
chittering and glowing with malevolent sigils. As the creatures struck,
Jean Kléber unknowingly had reflexively reached upward as he began to
fall, seizing Blackbeard’s beard and tearing a rune-etched necklace from his throat .
The dwarf’s eyes went wide — in that instant, all the false grief and
exhaustion vanished, replaced by naked terror. The dwarf crashed
headlong into the pit he had laid as a trap for the unwary, and began to
fight for his life, desperate to reclaim the wooden talisman on leather
thong that the Giff had inadvertently absconded with. Boarz made
quick work of the creatures. Under the careful direction of Eduardodile,
his claws and beak rent flesh and carapace. Covered head to toe in
slick ichor, the owlbear was thoroughly enjoying the fueled rage of his
carnage. Meanwhile, the Giff, Jean Kleber and the Ogre, Sek were a
comedy of errors, wildly swinging about futilely; and even discharging a
weapon to no effect. Eventually, headbutts, an axe, and a swinging club
got the battle under control, just as Eduardodile pulled up his bow to
fire, he misjudged the draw and the bow flung across the canyon, wedging
itself in a crevasse midway up the wall.
The battle that followed was chaos. The Ogre tried to use the Club of the Silk-Fang Heart as a grappling hook, flinging its webbed line upward — but the runipede shifted, and BA’caW
lost her footing. She fell hard among the writhing things below, her
body broken. She was stone cold dead - no life lingered on in her
wretched eyes.
When the dust settled and the last runic beast was crushed, the
survivors gathered around her lifeless form. The Giff, torn and
bleeding, loaded his arquebus with shaking hands and swore a prayer
through gritted teeth. Somehow he knew he would need to prepare burial
customs foreign to his drill and ceremony as a space marine; yet he knew
the words and rituals as if by rote.
Eduardodile and the Gith worked the resurrection, utilizing a scroll they had obtained in the heartwood. — and the magic began
to pull BA'caW's soul back towards her lifeless and broken body. She
was uglier than normal - her beak was broken, an eye laid out on her
cheek, and fragments of bone protruded from all sections of her broken
body .
BA’caW’s soul returned, but the body it found was not her own. Her flesh blackened to obsidian , her eyes burned cold and blue, and when she spoke, her voice was no longer screeching, but wholly halfling.
Something had changed, this little person was strangely familiar to
the party, yet none could quite put their finger on it. Suddenly, her
senses returned and she sat bolt-upright and screamed...
