Night Terrors

*Go back to session list*

## Attack on the Town

As the swarm of giant bats descended, the party found themselves caught up between two of them. Thankfully, they were fairly easy to take down and some simple fire spells took care of them. Hearing commotion all around them, the party rushed through the camp taking down any bats they could see and moving civilians safely inside their tents. The hobgoblins continued to rush towards the actual town of Grimmholm, where the party could see a giant ball of bats had formed above. Seeing the bats focusing their ire on the town and less the civilians, the party rushed forward to follow the conflict.

Inside the town walls, the noise and shouting of hobgoblins drew the party to the stoneguard outpost, where the hobgoblins had formed a protective wall around the outside gate. Looking up, it seemed that the ball of bats were circling high above the building. Mirik and Carric sent some fireballs up into the cloud, illuminating the flapping beasts briefly. As the fire faded, the bats screamed out in unison and divebombed onto the outpost building. Hobgoblins began pouring out of the building as the bats clawed their way through the ceiling and the windows. The party pushed through the hobgoblin wall and rushed towards the building, entering via the gaping hole where Harmend's office once was. The muffled noises of the bats led the party through the familiar corridors up to the door into the main foyer, where swathes of them appeared to be rummaging through the armoury in the back. The party barged in and began to attack the beasts in sight, creating a disturbance among them. Carric cast Speak with Animals on himself to talk to the bats, asking them what they were doing and who they served. They responded in a hivemind-like manner, telling him that they were looking for an important item for "the king". The bats quickly changed their demeanour without warning, as Carric heard one of them say "I've got it, lets get out of here", and they all began fleeing the outpost out the front door in a giant rabble. The party were pushed against the walls as the horde began to leave, each bat repeating the phrases "we serve the king". Carric managed to peer through the swarm for whatever bat seemed to have "gotten" the unknown item, and cut through to it with a Suggestion spell. Carric told it to drop the item near the woods, as it would be safer to transfer that way. The spell seemed to get through to it, so the party quickly ran out the outpost and headed towards the woods as the horde of bats began reforming their ball in the sky and flying Northward.

Rushing towards the Meusewood, the group spotted a single bat break formation from the migrating line and dive down towards the treeline. A few other bats followed suit, curious as to the change of course. The party rushed after them, assuming this rogue bat was carrying the item to deposit as of Carric’s orders. Mirik cast fireball on the 4 bats, causing the bats to be almost incinerated and the item to be dropped into a bush. Combat with the heavily singed bats ensued, with Bungle diving onto the item to keep it from the bats little grabby hands. Clutching it in her hands, she found that the item was a heavy leather-bound book. Turning it over, she saw a familiar cover page with a "1" on the spine and the title of the book written in abyssal "The Tome of Necromancy". After quickly dispatching the current threats, the group saw the bat cloud descending to their location and had to rapidly come up with an escape plan. Bungle cast minor illusion and prestidigitation to create the illusion of the book being consumed by fire and smoke on the ground in an attempt to trick the bats into thinking it was destroyed. The real book is passed to Kiira, the fastest and stealthiest runner, and the group split up to skirt around the edge of the forest for the best chance of the book being snuck away safely. Dashing through the woods, the party wait until the screeching of the bats is nothing but a mere whisper until stopping. They wait a few moments to see if anything attacks them, but eventually make their way back to their tent. Kiira waits around in the outskirts of the forest to make sure the bats have all flown off before bringing the book back to meet the group in their tent. Exhausted, they put the book in the bag of holding and go to sleep to decide what to do the next day.

## The Tome

In the morning, Mirik decided to try and destroy the book using a burning hands spell. As the flame burned around the cover, a strange green glow emitted from it and a deadly pulse of necrotic energy was released, hurting the party. The book however, remained untouched. Mirik tried again with a higher levelled spell as the other members of the party backed away, but the same thing happened. The book continued to remain untouched. Bungle and Kiira got to work scribbling over every page with ink, melting wax into the paper and even tried to cut the book with a carpentry saw. Bungle also shouted "what is your deal" at it in abyssal. Unsurprisingly, the book remained untouched, and all the ink and wax used to deface the book completely disappeared. Carric cast detect magic to have a look at the book, but it did not show up any magical signals. He recalled that there are methods that exist that can prevent forms of magic from being detected, and also that cursed items often avoid giving off a magical essence. Agreeing that the book was probably indestructible, they decided to send a message to Dannell and transfer the book to Ketterdam. He was a bit shocked at the mention of the book, but agreed to come and collect it in an hour or so. Bungle summoned her demon by razor-scootering herself. Thankfully, without the buzz of combat, he was very calm and collected. Bungle asked him if he could learn anything from the book, so he scuttled over to it and gave it a read. He confirmed that the scrawlings were incomplete rituals or too illegible to be understood. He then turned his attention to the rest of the party, and began conversing with them telepathically. Whilst a bit ominous, he didn't necessarily come across as threatening, until Kiira attempted to read his thoughts with her hat. He shut down her attempt and seemed to try something similar back on her, but it didn't work. Dannell eventually arrived and was immediately startled by the presence of a demon. Bungle offered some reassuring words, and he cautiously turned his attention to the book.

Looking at the tome, he confirmed that it did indeed appear to be a very powerful and dangerous item. He said that he could probably find someone in Ketterdam to take it, but it would likely be locked away somewhere deep. He picked it up and placed it into a bag, barely willing to touch it himself. He thanked the party for handing it over, and headed off out of the tent to go home. Carric snuck after him to see where he went, and saw two people in clerical robes standing either side of him. One of them grabbed the other two's hands, and they disappeared in a flash. Carric pogged very hard.

The party went about their day getting ready to depart at some point later in the day. They came across Zaldran and asked him about the attack, to which he revealed that the horde was very likely to have been sent from Thelanzer to raid their supplies. After doing an inventory check, he found that a lot of weaponry and armour was stolen, as well as an unnamed book. He said that his army will be ready to leave in a few hours, but Carric asked if they (the party) could leave early to scout ahead. After some consideration (and a strong persuasion check from Carric), he agreed to pair the party up with a small band of worg riders: trusty steeds that could traverse stretches of land quickly. He confirmed that he would send the riders round to their tent when they're ready, which might take a couple hours. Excited at the prospect of riding some large doglike creatures, the party headed back to the tent and waited for their steeds to arrive...