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Thronehold
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On the other end of the Khyber portal Ratty and the other refugees that
had gone through rested for a day. Having his first good night of sleep
not under a rock in many years, Ratty managed to remember that his real
name is Lii Marde. In the morning everyone took stock of their
situation. He also renamed "puddy-tat" to just plain Kitty, and
performed a ritual to make Kitty his animal companion. In addition to
Lii there were 8 members of Daask that had escaped. None of the Daask
members were leaders, primarily thugs and enforcers, and on finding out
Lii was a spellcaster he was made the unofficial leader of the group.
Two of the Daask members seemed a little more capable the the others.
Lii learned their names were Lurtz and Cletus. No one had ever been in
the Khyber before and didn't really know much about it besides the fact
it was dangerous. Lii happened to know there were other exits out of the
Khyber but the only one he even had a general clue as to it's location
was rumors of one in the Demon Wastes thousands of miles away. Given the
situation he decided he would be better off entering Sharn and hoping
the danger caused by the orb had passed. The others decided to go along
with him feeling they would be safer staying with him then going off on
their own. They stepped through the portal into a very thick mist that
kept them from seeing clearly. What little could be seen they could tell
there was a lot of destruction. Lii had seen that two of the Daask
members seemed a little more competent then the other five who seemed
like common thugs. Asking their names one of the more apparently
competent said his name was Lurtz while the other said his name was
Cletus. He didn't bother asking the names of the other two as they
looked like mindless thugs. He had one of the thugs lead the way but as
soon as he entered the room the portal was in he started floating up.
The thug floated gently to the top of the ceiling where he was able to
walk around. He shouted back that he was okay. Another thug stepped into
the room, expecting to float to the ceiling, but instead floated to one
of the walls. As the entire party stepped in one at a time each one
floated to away. Lii noticed that someone would fly to the ceiling, the
right wall, the left wall, then the ceiling again. Lii also noticed that
Kitty, who was right next to him, floated in the same direction he did
when he stepped into the room. The party quickly discovered that they
could easily step from ceiling, to wall, to floor without problems and
shouting through the mist they managed to all make their way to the exit
and into the next room. As the party entered the next room the same
thing happened. This room was actually a very large cavern in the cogs
so everyone floated for awhile before reaching their wall or ceiling.
After Lurtz and Cletus had floated to different walls, Lii had two of
the thugs step into the room at the same time to see if they would go to
the same place together. They both flew towards opposite walls at
incredibly high speed. Lurtz and Cletus yelled that the thugs had
splattered next to them. Again the group made their way out of the
cavern and back together again.
When they reached the end of the caverns the group started talking about
what had happened and what they should do next. The lack of people and
corpses as well as the high amount of destruction visible everywhere
indicated that whatever had happened had forced everyone to evacuate for
some reason or had killed them all. Seeing the edge of the mists some
people mentioned it looked like what they had heard the dead gray mists
of the mournland looked like and people strongly suspected a 2nd
mourning had happened in Sharn. Regardless, it was pretty obvious there
was no rescue going on so they were on their own and needed to leave
quickly. They discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the
different exits out of Sharn, the front gate, the lightning rail, the
airship docks. Lurtz spoke up and mentioned that this section of the
cogs was below Dursa and the closest exit from Dursa is the shipyards
down below in Cliffside. He suggested they make their way up to the
cliff and then down to Cliffside to escape. Lii and the rest of the
party agreed that would be the fastest way out so they began heading in
that direction.
The party eventually entered a courtyard located in lower Dursa and
found the passage out blocked by a large blob that was a congealed mass
of corpses. It didn't seem to be moving or threatening. One of the thugs
tried poking it with a stick. As soon as the stick touched it the blob
opened up a maw, snagged the stick, and devoured it. The blob started
moving towards the party. The blob moved very slowly and after waiting
about 15 minutes the blob had finally moved far enough out of the
passage into the courtyard that everyone was able to simply run past it.
The party continued on their way into a residential tower full of
buildings inside of it. One of the thugs suggested there might be
something good to steal in the houses, or maybe even some weapons, but
everyone else felt it was best to keep moving out of Sharn as quickly as
possible. Up ahead someone in the party noticed what appeared to be a
survivor up ahead walking towards them. The party moved forward towards
them cautiously. As they got closer they stopped and noticed that his
eyes were completely white and he was walking slowly towards the party.
The party then noticed a large number of individual with white eyes.
Many were outside, walking towards the party, like the first one. Many
others were inside the buildings looking out the windows at the party
but not moving. Lii cast a flaming sphere spell at the first one, which
was directly in the way they were trying to go however it passed
directly through it without harming it so the party assumed these were
some sort of spirit or ghosts. Lurtz happened to recognize one of these
ghosts as someone he knew, though not well, and tried talking to them
but he got completely tongue-tied and the ghosts didn't seem to capable
of hearing the party anyway. Cletus fired his pistol at one of the
ghosts but the bullet passed right through it without harm.
The ghosts passed harmlessly through the party members but in the middle
of where the party was they started to merge. The party bolted away
right as the ghosts merged to form a blob monster similar to the one
before. One of the thugs wasn't fast enough and the monster devoured
him. The rest of the party sprinted as quickly as they could up through
Dursa towards the cliffs. They saw many blob monsters and even more
ghosts coming together to merge into blob monsters. The blobs were slow
so only those in the parties path were a direct problem. The party had
to occasionally go around some of the buildings when a blob blocked
their direct path but they continued running as quickly as they could.
Lii began getting tired and fell back a bit but still managed to mostly
keep up with the party. Eventually they reached the stairway up to the
cliff level of Dursa, however there was another blob blocking the way.
Lii cast a flaming sphere at it. The flaming sphere didn't directly hurt
the blob, but the blob did move back to avoid the sphere's touch. Lii
positioned the sphere so that the blob bisected itself into two pieces
on either side of the passage with the sphere in the middle. The party
jumped over the sphere and ran up the stairway. One of the thugs landed
in the fire and got burned but survived. While running up the stairway,
Lii shapeshifted into the same form as Kitty to become invisible.
The top of the stairway opened onto a plateau. The destruction here was
severe as the towers that should have been on the ground were completely
gone with bits of rubble strewn around the area. The party could see the
destruction spread right and left for quite a ways and was completely
clear and open all the way to cliff ahead of them. Fearing a trap, but
seeing no better alternatives, the party began making towards the cliff.
Glancing behind them the party saw a large number of ghosts coming up
out of the ground and through the walls of the towers to merge together.
Unlike the previous times ghosts continued to merge even once it became
a blob and it continued to get larger. Eventually it started forming a
humanoid shape and resembled a golem. The party was still a ways from
the cliff when it stopped forming. The golem turned out to be incredibly
fast as it rushed them very quickly and gobbled up two thugs at once.
While the golem was busy eating their comrade the rest of the party
continued to sprint towards the cliff.
Lii, still in invisible cat mode, was moving too quickly as he reached
edge of the cliff to stop and went over the edge. Lii quickly
shapeshifted back to human form and cast meld into stone to insert
himself into the cliff face he was falling past to stop his descent. The
rest of the party was not aware of this, they only knew Lii had vanished
sometime back near the stairs, and only heard the yowling of a cat turn
into swearing from something falling fromt he cliff. Looking down, Lurtz
and Cletus saw that the stairway down to Cliffside had mostly collapsed
with the destruction of Sharn and the only way they could think of to
get down was to try and climb the cliff. Although the cliff was very
sheer there were some handholds and outcroppings from where the stairway
used to be. Cletus wasn't certain about his climbing abilities, but
while he thought about it, the golem snatched the last thug and began
devouring him. Cletus decided the cliff was the safer option and started
to climb down the cliff. Almost immediately he slipped and fell down.
With no way to stop his fall he fell completely to the bottom of the
cliff and Lurtz shuddered as he saw Cletus land perfectly on the top of
a spire, pierced clean through, and killed instantly.
Lurtz considered his options but seeing the golem seemed to be finishing
it's meal and unable to think of anything else he began climbing down
himself. Unknown to Lurtz, Kitty began climbing down the cliff as well.
While Lurtz climbed down, Lii ended his spell and began climbing down
again. He slipped and fell almost immediately again. He summoned a
porpoise underneath him hoping to land on it and soften his fall. The
porpoise started thrashing in mid-air and drifted out from underneath
him. As he fell, Lii spotted a very small break between the boardwalks
of cliffside and aimed himself in a dive directly for it. He dove
perfectly through it into the water underneath, the porpoise splattered
onto a concrete walkway. Kitty quickly climbed down safely. It went up
to the splattered porpoise and began eating it. Looking up Lurtz saw the
blob golem looking down at him from the top of the cliff but it made no
move down the cliff or drop anything down on him. Lurtz climbed down
more slowly and carefully then Kitty did but he managed to make it all
the way to the bottom. Cliffside appeared to be completely deserted, no
survivors or obvious monsters but the surviving party didn't spend any
time exploring. They went straight to the docks to find a boat. All the
ships were gone but they did manage to find a small rowboat. Without
question they got into the boat and started rowing out into The Hilt.