Date: 10 Sunsebb, 610 CY Attendance: Wulrakas (solo), Jareth, Virgil ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recap: One - Evacuations are underway in the town of Edgefield, as Drawmij and his army begin their push towards the city. Wulrakas, separated from Karil and Cat amidst the chaos, is found by Rexi after he disposes of a few wayward demons. Rexi informs him of Drawmij's plans to capture the city in hopes of finding Jericho. Wulrakas recounts Jericho's death, and the gem he left behind. Unfortunately, it seems that Jareth was last in possession of the gem. Wulrakas returns to where they all split up, back at the campsite just outside of town. There he finds a charred body in the fire pit, and another slumped against the tent. Investigation reveals that the man is still alive, and that he is none other than the black-cloaked man that they chased down to this spot before Edgefield was attacked. The Man in Black says that Jareth was taken, and he joins up with Wulrakas in hopes of killing the "creature" that injured him and took Jareth. The two find a strange tree in a clearing. Wulrakas kicks the trunk and a secret passage is revealed. Descending into it, he's attacked by the Man in Black -- who is not the Man in Black at all, but in fact Shalashka the Raksasha. It seems the Raksasha has given up on Drawmij's "plans" for saving the world from Yothagos, that it's all hopeless, and that he's ready to embrace death in order to escape Oerth and return to his home plane. Wulrakas obliges him, and retrieves Jareth's unconscious body once the Raksasha is slain. They return to Rexi's demiplane and Wulrakas lays Jareth down next to Virgil. Despite repeated attempts, Jareth is unable to wake up... just like Virgil. Two - Jareth finds himself in a dark cell covered in cobwebs. Using his darkvision he's able to make out a form to his left... a man who has not been seen awake in some time. Virgil. Virgil, meanwhile, is finally able to move after who knows how long. He's been in this prison for an untold amount of time, shackled by some unseen force. The two men begin looking for a means to escape. They have no gear, or even clothes for that matter, so it seems a difficult challenge to escape through their locked prison door. Luckily Jareth is able to find a sharpened stick tangled in the cobwebs, which he uses to pry open the lock. Outside, they see another cell, as well as a rack of black robes. Both men don the robes and turn their attention to the cell. Inside a large man with a makeshift mask paces around, stepping in the blood of two mutilated corpses. He tells the Virgil and Jareth that he will help them escape so long as they open his cell, but before they can decide, someone approaches. Taking refuge around a wall, the men see a woman in a hooded robe sit at a nearby chair and peruse a book. After fifteen minutes or so she sets the book down and walks off. Jareth reads the book, finds out the man in the cell is a cannibal serial killer. They opt not to release him and instead descend the nearby staircase. There, they find lit hallway with a mirror facing some pictures. Jareth is scared of the mirror and slinks around it, not looking into the reflection. Virgil does catch a quick glance, however, and the reflection is not the same as what's behind him. Before he can make anything of it, the hooded woman approaches. Jareth fumbles and smacks into the wall in his haste to hide, and the woman gets close -- close enough to reveal milky white eyes and a face Virgil has not forgotten. Tabitha, the woman they saved from the old farmstead, the woman who was burned alive and whose ashes Virgil still hauls around to this day. A fight ensues with the thing wearing Tabitha's face; Jareth removes his robe and uses it as an improvised weapon, strangling the creature and kneeing it in the face so hard that it's nose shatters. She drops a gem, an obvious arcane focus, and Virgil snatches it up. He then banishes the thing. Returning to the mirror, its revealed that the image reflected has one snuffed torch and a missing painting. Jareth remembers that the painting lay in the cell of the cannibal. They go back to his cell and fight him through the bars. He's killed by a ray of frost through the skull. The two men break open the cell and retrieve the painting, and Jareth grabs the serial killer's shank and one of the cell's missing bars. They solve the puzzle in the mirror room and trudge on after a door opens down the hallway. In the next room, an unnaturally large tiger paces around, snarling viciously. Virgil uses his dancing lights to distract it, long enough for Jareth to sneak in. Inside the lavishly decorated room, Jareth retrieves a scroll and returns to Virgil. Neither men are able to read it, however, so they begin to devise a plan to deal with the tiger. They decide to draw him through the hallway with the dancing lights and then remove the painting, effectively smashing him in the door (that will hopefully close). Their plan succeeds, partly due to the fact that the cat's head is so large that it can barely fit through the open doorway. With its neck stuck against the partially closed door, Jareth stabs it in the eye with the bar retrieved from the serial killer's cell, lodging it in the tiger's brain. Virgil finishes it off with a disintegration spell (doing the exact amount of hp damage required, based) and the tiger turns to dust. Both men are suddenly jolted awake, laying next to each other on a bed in Rexi's demiplane. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Experience: Wulrakas - 10,000 XP (327,750 XP total) Virgil - 60,000 XP (222,850 XP total) LEVEL UP - 16 Cat - 0 XP (268,500 XP total) Jareth - 10,000 XP (268,500 XP total) LEVEL UP - 18 Karil - 0 XP (215,000 total) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
