Orhan 3 Day 64 TE 6054

We get back to Santa Vallandra.

It's very strange. We try and set up a little council to organize the region, but there's a bunch of people who follow us around. Women bring us food and drink, young men run up to Haeraan and offer to be his squire. They're kind of ragged, but a couple of them might be worthy to be a squire. Haeraan not really interested in having a squire, however so he tells chilling tales of danger and woe. There are also some young women following Alynna around.

A small group fo women ask Alynna to teach them to fight. They offer to follow her around and be her students. She says she could get them started, but they'd need to get to a monastery. She'll happily train them for a week or so though.

Meanwhile, some kid decides to apprentice with Imre, as demons or gods or something talk to him in his sleep. Yes it seems that he hears from Scalu in his dreams. He even has a pet snake. Sigh. Imre and Haeraan work on it for a while. Oathar scares off some "'prentices" with tales of school. Imre spends a few days working with the kid. Eventually, Imre masters the demon in the snake and tells it, "Good job. Go home now." So it says, "Yes master." and goes home.

The little kid doesn't seem to mind.

Orhan 4 Day 1 TE 6054

We head out across the land.

Orhan 4 Day 3 TE 6054

Hey! We're being followed. We decide to lay an ambush. After a bit, four of the town boys and a girl show up. Haeraan and Imre convince them to go home in the morning, but they camp with us that night.

Orhan 4 Day 4 TE 6054

Haeraan casts a few extra spells on them just for good measure. Imre and Oathar put on a good show and teleport them home.

We continue on TO VOTANIA!

Orhan 4 Day 14 TE 6054

Near dusk we are travelling through the woods when we come to a clearing, where we find some ruins. Haeraan casts det enemies. Nothing, but it's the ruins of a whole city, so he can't reach most of it. We head in.

Making our way towards the center, we think it's mostly picked clean, at least above ground. At the center is a big black obelisk. Very similar to the one we found in the swamp, with the symbols with the Charon. Haeraan holds Oathar down and he reads it.

"Out of a place between the worlds, through the darkness blinding white, say the words and know the path, terror walks the black road tonight."

"Ageless gods will never tire, darkling touch steals breath away, water earth air and fire, Agoth walks the black road today."

"The sun is gone, night takes hold, wind of ice, boiling rain, twisting space and endless time, death the walks the black road again."

"Now the door stands open, the way is lit by demon glow, fire blood and blinding smoke, walk the black road now."

Then it starts glowing, so we all back away.

But, while it glows ominously, it doesn't seem to do anything. Looking around we notice a mist has flowed in from all sides. It gets more intense and we start losing sight of everything. Visibility is down to feet and the obelisk has disappeared.

We fret, bu tthen the mists retreat. We are on a vast grey savahnah. A grey twilight makes everything grey except from above. It's quite cold with icy breezes.

Imre says, "Hey! this is the first pale!" Um, now what...Imre tells us to watch out for spiders and other lurkers.

We start moving out and we encounter a big 8 foot pufferfish with eyes on stalks. It floats up to about 30 feet away and watches us.

We set off our distress beacon. Then we try a few extra languages on blinky the pufferfish from beyond the void.

We find one of those lurkers when it tries to eat our ten foot poles. Imre collects some lurker ichor as we kill it.

Then as we wander further, we discover a long black road. Ah ha! A perfectly straight asphalt road about ten feet wide. It looks wet.

Look, Oathar is on the road! The rest step upon teh road as well. We head off to the left. Blinky follows us.

We walk and walk and after a couple of hours we walk some more. After a long long time, we finally encounter a bunch of type one demons.

Alynna fumbles her terrible glaive, Oathar fumbles his bow, and then the demons take Oathar down with a single blow.

We eventually win, but it's a pretty grim thing to watch.

Four more hours pass on the black road.

We come to a giant set of standing stones. Like a portal sort of thing. Woo! 20 feet tall and 10 feet wide so the raod runs right through it. Stones are a sort of sickening pinkish white color. We detect Power, Essense, and Evil. Yuck. Gearing up our courage, we stride through! Nothing happens.

Bah.

Well, we've got this arch with blood. We build a demon bonfire under it, but that doesn't seem to help. We set the blood burning gate thing on fire. Smoke fill sit up, and we head through.

Look! We're back in the city again. Woo.

Anton shows up and is pissed. Why are we summoning him for things like this?! Oh my god!

He takes the button home and leaves. Dah!