Under a Dark Sun(2nd Ed. AD&D)

[Kazilan]

Bas wiped blood from his forehead and examined the clearing. While they were victorious, he couldn't say they had fared well. Everyone bore injuries, Balth and Anne the worst, so they would receive his spells.

The druid moved to Anne's unconscious form and casted a healing spell over her injuries, then he switched to Balth and used a second spell on him. He would reserve his final spell for whichever of his companions was in the worst condition after the initial healing, before slumping to the ground to rest and recover from the drain of continuous spell casting and blood loss.

[ 03-23-2007, 02:47 PM: Message edited by: Kazilan ]

[PurpleXVI]

Ulik, Lorath, Evon

While Ulik retired to whatever chamber he had chosen as his to pursue his magic, Evon assisted Lorath in the clean-up work, helping him toss barrels of spoiled food over the battlements. Neither of the two were brawny, but together they had enough strength to get the job done, and after only a few hours they had cleaned out the fort's various pantries and store rooms of everything that seemed dangerous or unpleasant to eat.


Anne, Bas, Tamora, Balth

After the initial healing, which Balth was profusely thankful for after he managed to dislodge the corpse he was trapped under, Anne was the most badly hurt of Bas' allies. His magic, in the end, managed to completely heal the wound on her abdomen, but the hole through her left hand was more difficult.

He closed the skin and stopped the bleeding, but the entire hand remained an unpleasant purplish bruise-colour, as well as becoming slightly swollen.

(Anne is healed for 4 and 8 hit points, she now has 22 remaining.
Balth is healed for 6 hit points, he now has ?? remaining.)

The druid's contact with her wounds, which was required for the healing, as well as the invigorating surge of energy his spells sent coursing through her body, jolted Anne to something resembling consciousness. His magic hadn't affected her blood loss, and so she was still somewhat groggy, but unless she chose to lie down again, she was awake.

Most of Tamora's arrows were buried deep in her targets, and even though she carved all of them out, most were damaged by their passage through muscle and bone. She did, however, manage to recover two intact arrows, and all of the arrowheads.

Once she was done with that, Balth grabbed the corpses by their legs or arms, whichever was closest to hand, and dragged them off to the edge of the clearing, explaining that he'd rather not wake up covered in maggots and flies from having spent the night next to a corpse. Since he and Tamora were the least injured members of the party, he offered to take the first watch, there was still a lot of the night left.

[Armen]

Tamora

Her grisly task complete, Tamora stored the spare arrowheads in a pouch. She watched gratefully as Balth dragged the bodies to one side. “Thank you for that,” she said, “and thank you for taking the watch. I shall return to my meditation soon.” She indicated the rapidly cooling forms across the clearing. “Unless they are taken in the night I intended skinning one of the smaller animals at dawn. Do you know anything about the uses, forest dwellers might have for the creatures . . ?”

Tamora went over to where the others were lying. She knelt down next to Anne and put a hand on her shoulder but looked into the distance as she spoke. “I wanted to thank you for your courage tonight. I know you aren’t a trained warrior but you fought like one.” She looked Anne in the face and smiled. “How are you feeling?”

[Kazilan]

Bas propped himself to a sitting position and closed his eyes, trying to force away the pain and focus on connecting with the spirit of the land. He was mentally and physically drained and had not felt such a strong desire to connect with nature in a long time. He was aware of Balth and Tamora moving about in the darkness, and felt safe through their presence.

After his meditation, the druid would take some time to tend to his wounds, then offer to take a watch from whomever was on duty. If his offer was refused, he would attempt to get some sleep.

[dplax]

Anne

She cradled her injured hand, trying hard not to concentrate on the pain, but she could not exclude the unpleasant, throbbing feeling from her hand.

"My hand still hurts, but thanks to Bas I now feel a lot better." she replied. "It wasn't courage I had tonight. It was more a mixture of foolishness and fear. I paid the price for both," she said, indicating the wound on her hand. "If there is one to thank for victory in the battle, it is you, Tamora. You killed two of the creatures yourself."

[Caleb808]

Per Neb: "Ulik falls asleep effortlessly, the blood loss making him slow and groggy enough that he's out by the time he hits whatever cot or bed he's found to have his dream vision on.

His dream is dark and shadowy, and it feels like he spends an aeon flitting up and down the flooded corridors of the complex with something unseen constantly on his heels. Eventually he reaches the door, though never having seen it before or had it described, he sees exactly what Lorath saw, his vision granting him that.

The roots slide aside quietly as he approaches the door, and he realizes that Lorath and Evon are by his side, the elf taking the lead as they enter the vault beyond. Then he begins to wake, and the following images are chaotic and jumbled. He sees spheres like the ones he found before, the ones that held dormant symbiotes, hundreds of them, some cracked, some dark, some scattered across a stone floor and others piled upon each other haphazardly.

As he wakes, one last image remains in his thoughts, that of an ancient-looking human hand reaching into a pool of murky brown water which fizzes and bubbles, then drawing out what looks like a sword shaped from bone. As the blade emerges from the liquid, it begins to gibber and howl, panting and moaning like a starving demon who's just seen a monastery full of unarmed nuns.

Once he's out of bed, he finds Lorath and Evon on the battlements, throwing barrels of spoiled food into the moat."

Ulik approaches Lorath & Evon and describes his dream to them. "I'm open to interpretations, but it seems The Other you met earlier will be following us and someone besides ourselves will be getting the only item worth claiming beyond the door. Armed with this foreknowledge, we can lay a trap and prepare ourselves to better defend that sword. But if we fail, we'll probably unleash a horde of symbiotes and a powerful artifact will fall in to the hands of someone who isn't supposed to have it. So..."

[Man Who Fights Like Woman]

Lorath, after throwing the last barrel over the battlements, turned around and dusts his hands off when Ulik had finished relating the story. "It sounds like that might be another being, but I may be wrong," he began. "Either way though, there's no guarantee that the other person I found down there won't find some way to open it, or if it is another being, that he won't find some way to open it from the inside. They have a powerful weapon in that domain, and I don't think they can be trusted with it. We've got to fight them now and make it so that they can't use this sword for their own degenerate acts so that the people of this planet don't have to fight them later."

[ 03-25-2007, 12:41 PM: Message edited by: Man Who Fights Like Woman ]

[PurpleXVI]

Lorath, Ulik, Evon

(OOC: For the sake of SPEED and since I see little preparation that the party might want to make in the fort before heading out, I am assuming you head for the vault since there seems to be a mood for that. If there's anything you want to bring for the vault that you could conceivably carry(Barrels, food, clothes, bedding, books, for example, but not the king's throne.), or some sort of preparations(Making torches, knitting warm socks, etc.), you can assume that they have been made without interruptions. Feel free to correct me via PM or the OOC thread if I am assuming too much.)

Evon agreed with the plan, accompanying his companions without complaint and even helping them fold up the portal which Ulik ended up carrying since he had first found it.

Soon they were back in the corridors of the subterranean complex they had come from, wading through deep water that had become no cleaner or warmer in their absence, soaking their clothes and chilling them to the bone.

Nothing seemed to pursue them and no symbiotes attacked them on their way to the chamber outside the door, which was as steadfastly closed as it had been when Lorath first reached it. There was also no sign of the man Lorath had encountered earlier, no eyes on stalks watched them warily from the depths, and nothing seemed to have changed about the room or anything in it.

If the three wanted to set a trap for him, it seemed like the perfect time to make such preparations.

"Are you two sure we should try fighting this Other?" Asked Evon as he dragged himself up on one of the stone slabs in the room to get out of the cold water, "There's always a chance we could get in, grab the artifact and get out again before he gets here. I'm in on any plan that isn't foolishly suicidal, though." He got up, banging his head on the ceiling in the process, and then made a distinctly unacrobatic jump to a stone slab closer to the door.


Tamora, Anne, Bas, Balth

"You could probably make cloaks from the skin, I imagine," Balth replied to Tamora's query as he washed the blood from his hands in the river, cleaning his blade at the same time, "Perhaps some sort of armor if you stacked several layers on top of each other. Aside from that, I guess the claws or teeth might make good daggers? You'd have to ask a native."

Bas, having already 'spoken' to the spirit of the area earlier, found it far more awake and willing to communicate with him this time. It didn't bring him any great knowledge, but it lulled him into his meditation with ease, letting his soul touch all of the spirits and plants around him. He felt the ebb and flow of water around the roots of plants, he felt his spirit flow with the river only a few yards from him, he was within the mind of a night bird letting out a tentative cry to it's kin almost a mile away and he could even feel the primitive existence of the flies which were laying their eggs in the corpses of the beasts he'd helped slay before they had even grown cold.

By the time Balth prodded him out of his meditation for his watch, the druid felt considerably more invigorated, some of the area's energy having flowed into him. It hadn't helped his wounds heal faster than they normally would, but whatever powers of nature he had expended were definitely replenished, apparently the night's battle had been accepted as part of the course of nature.

The night passed in relative quiet and nothing else elected to attack the party, weakened though they were. As usual, the morning was cool and the sky was clear. Descending in the west was the large moon, while the red sun was had not yet shown itself over the eastern mountain range.

Considering the distance they'd travelled and their knowledge of the surrounding area, the party eventually came to the conclusion that they were no more than one or two days from the lake and the lizardman village.

(Everyone recovers 1 HP from a night of normal rest. Bas is at 21, Tamora is at 33, Anne is at 23.)

[Man Who Fights Like Woman]

Lorath wasn't so sure that they would be able to grab the item before the other creature showed up. In fact, he wasn't even sure that the Other, as he was apparently being called now, was even gone. "I wouldn't be so sure," he said. "The Other is a sneaky creature. He could still be here, just hiding somewhere we wouldn't normally look." With that he switched to his infravision, and began looking around at the ceiling and under the water for a warm body signature. It would be best to make sure the creature they'd be planning against isn't in the room when they're making the plans, for obvious reasons.

[Armen]

Tamora

Viewed in the light of day the bodies of the creatures that had attacked them seemed smaller than they had in the fear and darkness of the night but they were still impressively large. They had been fortunate. Last night she had denied Anne’s assertion that she herself had killed two of the animals - not to flatter the human but as an undeniable fact. She recalled the relief she had felt when Anne’s attack had delayed the largest attacker long enough for her to get the decisive shots off. Looking over to where Anne, Bas and Balth were moving about the camp the young hunter smiled. They had been fortunate but they had also done well.

Returning her attention to the task that had brought her to the bodies, Tamora regarded them with an expert eye. She judged that skinning even one of them would delay them for an unacceptable length of time. She shook her head, resentful of the wastefulness of leaving such a large amount of food, skin and claw on the jungle floor. Also, she did not want to return to the lizardmen’s village empty handed. But they were not a hunting party and the events of last night had reinforced her judgement that they needed to return to the village soon.

Compromising, she contented herself to just removing the claws and teeth of the largest of the creatures. As she did so she silently offered her thanks to the spirits of the area for their protection and asked their forgiveness for squandering these gifts that they had offered her. That done, she returned to the others to help preparations for their departure.