After our recent adventures the party camped for a couple of days to regain their strength, bury Lalu, cook stew, hunt, and exchange stories, while Bubo learned spells from the scrolls. The others also filled Bubo in on the story of the cat, and Darion gave him Rovan’s necromancer-dagger (magic +2), while he took up Lalu’s magical shortsword (+1).

But then four lizardmen were observed: two coming straight toward our camp, two staying farther down near the lake. We quickly prepared an ambush — and botched it. Completely. In our surprise round, each and every one of us missed our targets, and Heidel even dropped his warhammer a good deal away.

Luckily we won init on the second round and now Darion cut Lizard 1 in half, while Heidel pummeled the other with his mighty dwarven fists. The surviving Lizard chose to run, but Darion wanted to avoid him coming back with reinforcements and cut this one down as well.

The other two were gone — apparently they had heard the fight. So reinforcements would come anyway. Darion wanted to move our camp into the dungeon, in the secret room, while Apoqulis argued for a camp under the open sky, for more freedom of movement. The others were not sure, but when Bubo leaned toward dungeon camp too, Apoqulis suggested a camp 2 miles away from the lake. Certainly far enough to discourage the lizard people. We agreed and so we set out to a new camp site, where we finished our rest and prepared spells.

Coming for the Shadow

Hezeroth had slunk away and was not around, but we were used to that already. We moved to the dungeon and carefully picked a path through it to get back to the room with the throne. All the way we expected calamity, but met none — until we heard hissing voices from the room with the Nazgorian statue.

There were suggestions of retreating and hiding, but Darion and Heidel did not want to hide. They just waited here in the dark for the voices to go away the way they had come. Apoqulis suggested attacking them, but Darion was against that, because the door was a bottleneck. If we go through, they are at an advantage. So we waited.

More Lizards

Suddenly opened the door and came to us. Lizardmen trooped up into our room and Darion immediately attacked the first of them.

Darion cut down one lizard, then Bubo backstabbed the other with phenomenal success. The third (and last) was some sort of Über-Lizard who took longer to take down, and who managed to wound Darion twice; although he rolled very low damage, and Heidel healed Darion back.

Rickety stairs

Otherwise we found no resistance on our way to the supposed Shadow Devil Lair. We took the rickety stairs one by one and gathered up in anteroom, where we prepared our torches and Apoqulis cast “Light” on two silver coins in order to maximise light sources. It was an oppressive atmosphere, with the torchlight playing tricks on our vision and

Then Bubo opened the door, and Vaeva and Darion moved in with their torches. Chittering giant rats bustled between wrecked cages, dark shadows clung to the corners of the room — and there was also our mark: The Shadow Devil, a being of smoke with glowing eyes, massive wings, sharp teeth, and horns, ready to devour us.

Smoke, Morph, and Deception

Vaeva and Darion promptly ignored the rats and went for the big boy, without success, while Apoqulis cast the third light spell on another coin and flipped one to Bubo and one to Heidel.

The Shadow Devil tried to envelope Darion and smother him, while Vaeva attempted to stick a firebrand into the creature. The Devil hit, but luckily did only 1 damage. Bubo also joined that melee and attempted to backstab the Shadow Devil; alas he was seen and it was only a normal attack. And yet: The nimble Elf hit! First time wound on a wing, and at the same time proof of concept: Yes, magic weapons absolutely CAN wound the Shado Devil.

It became also apparent that all the light that we brought physically hurt the creature: It smoked and flaked and shrieked in pain from too much.

Heidel took a moment to go after the rats and smashed the first one: Splat! Massive damage.

The second giant rat went some distance away and began to polymorph.

In the next round we all missed again against the Shadow Devil, and yet, it began to seriously boil and smoke under our relentless light source attack. Light was very obviously the strongest anathema to the creature. It struck at Vaeva — and again, did only very light damage. Lucky us! And Bubo managed to land a second hit with his magical dagger.

Heidel decdided to throw his warhammer at the second, polymorphing rat.
Critical Hit, and Max Damage!
Splat! The mighty dwarf OBLITERATED the polymorphing rodent.

Then Darion missed the Shadow a third time, and the others also missed it. Dangerous… after all, what if that creature finally found its range and started to roll serious damage? How long would we hold out then? We had to finish this!

Suddenly a voice cried out from the wreckage of the cages: “Help me! Help me!”
A young girl, trapped under the rusted and bent garbage?
Darion dismissed it as nonsense, and Apoqulis seemed to be of the same mind, as he called out to the others to ignore it and concentrate on the monster!

All the light finally set the Shadow Devil itself on fire. And then Darion decided not to swing his sword around any more, but to take his torch and physically step INTO the Shadow Devil, and stab it right there, a physical attacker within a non-corporeal entity.

Lalu’s magical short sword stabbed at the general area where a physical creature would have a heart … and SHRIEK!!! The shadow flailed, flaked, and disintegrated in a cloud of Ashes — and when the dust settled, it revealed Darion with the torch and short sword right in the middle of it.

Aftermath

We tried to loot, but found little here. Definitely no little girls hidden under a pile of metal. It had, indeed, been a ruse. However, weird scribbles and runes covered wall and floor, and Apoqulis tried his best to copy those down for analysis by Father Thelbain at some point.

The second rat was in the process of transforming into something very unpleasant: something with wings and a poisonous stinger tail and teeth. Potentially paralyzing or even deadly, had Heidel not taken it out this could have done us very dirty.

Finally we retreated from this place, taking some of the ashes and parts of the dead flymonster with us, partly as proof, partly to avoid them re-forming and re-raising.

We made our way back to the village, where Father Thelbain had left to return to Morgansfort, but all was well. In addition, Morgansfort had just sent 12 guardsmen with a capable commander to keep watch and secure the village. We informed those about our run-ins with the lizardmen.
They also brought news from Morgansfort: The arsonist (hm-hem) Goblins were back and attacked more caravans from the north with ever more gusto.

And remembering the Devil-sighting from the southern woods, those were confirmed by repeated sightings now. Something Devil-ish was roving this countryside.

In addition, our welcome was much warmer now than earlier. The villagers had learned to respect and trust us. And the village elder gave each of us 200 gold pieces, to a total of 1000.

Onwards, into the wild

Hezeroth remained hidden for the moment; and so we chose to follow the cat’s lead, wait for Hez to show up again and to then fulfil our end of the bargain and bring him to this castle Stormwing, where his master was waiting. And where, potentially, the relationship between that master and the devil — foes? rivals? partners? identical? — would maybe come to light.

Regardless, our path was clear: We had to keep our word given to the mysterious cat-impersonator. We had to go east into the wilds.

Our XP gathered allowed some of us to level.
Not Darion, yet.

Soon, though.

The Tale of Morgansfort