Session 08 "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"

**Session 8 recap *“smoke gets in your eyes”***

Finding your way under
Kymall’s you battled your way through a trio of lizardlike people, killing them
all and then calling in back up from the Order of the Dawn immediately after.
With an unconscious human male prisoner in tow, you debated whether to go on
ahead or leave, finally decided to go on. As you crept further (Grahm rather
loudly) you encountered a room with hanging cages a fire that seemed to have
started small, and gotten smaller, and three piles of bedding, ones that you believe
belonged to the lizardfolk you had just felled.

From this room there were
three other passageways, besides the one you had taken here. Grahm, Dorn, and
Tanek each started to walk down a different path before you heard Grahm let out
a blood curdling roar—like a wild animal, aggressive and guttural. This sound
was joined by the sound of his scraping pike along the ground and walls of the
tunnel. This got everyone’s attention, and all proceeded to follow him down the
path he’d taken. However, you quickly lost sight of each other as even though
the area seemed to be lit by some distant points of fire, the passageway and
everything beyond became thick with smoke.

Quickly you found out you were
not alone in the smoke. Somethings or someones were trying to pick you off. You
heard them conversing and taunting you in the smoke as they tore into you, at
first with crossbow bolts. Grahm, Tanek, and Dorn in particular began to take a
lot of damage, and many of you, especially Rhys were almost entirely incapacitated
by the thick smoke.

You heard others coughing in
the smoke, and eventually found your way to a prison cell, and when Dorn opened
he, he felt all the attacks from the unseen assailants focus on him, and then a
voice in the smoke give an order to “go get Alane”.

Meanwhile in the cell Dorn had
opened, Rensig confirmed that these indeed were nobles that you had found.
Nobles who seemed disoriented and coughing. Tanek began to lead the first one
he could find out by the hand. Dorn attempted to use his whip to lead another
one out, but in the thick smoke unable to see where he was whipping exactly,
only ended up awkwardly striking someone who came at him enraged. It was the
half-orc noble you had seen at Waukeen’s promenade and then later at Kymall’s
and he was none to pleased about being locked up and then attacked, and seemed
very wary of his would be rescuers. As were the other nobles who were choking
on smoke, had heard a guttural roar and a weapon scraping before the sounds of
crossbow bolts and battle in the space just beyond. Then after having their
cell opened further heard the sound of a whip crack and then a scream as some
strangers were now in the cage with them.

Dorn decided that the best bet
was to get out of the smoke--he started to make his way back in the direction
you had come from but was struck down by a foe who seemed very comfortable in
the smoke. A man who seemed to have bark like skin, goggles, and a sword of
pure fire. The fire of his blade sent Dorn to the brink of death, but Rhys
recovered from his coughing just in time to bring Dorn back to life with his
healing hands.

Meanwhile, Grahm and Muffy
continued to get a better scope of the room you were in. Muffy did so while
invisible and she came across a second cell full of prisoners. Unable to get
them out of there shed called for help to get this other cell open. Grahm,
moving in that direction already actually barreled into the invisible Muffy
knocking her to the ground.

Eventually Bucky also made her
way to that cell to assist in getting it open. However amidst the smoke and the
chaos, she was not having much luck picking it. Grahm was also hitting the lock
with his pike everytime Bucky took her lock picks out to start again.
Eventually Dorn, back from the brink of death, showed up to try to help as
well, but had no more luck than Bucky, even though he had opened the other cell
with lock picks that had been up his ass with relative ease.

A woman in the cell seemed
impatient, saying she must find the soverign, Hazim Alibikar. Frustrated by her
inability to get the lock Bucky dug deep and finally did get the cell open, and
these prisoners (who had not just been whipped by their would be rescuers) were
all too eager to leave.

Feeling the situation was in
hand, Dorn again went to leave, all the while Tanek had encountered some
opposition as he went to take the noble out of the room. The man with the
goggles and bark skin. Tanek soon found that he had brought a club to a fire
sword fight. Rhys tried to help, but kept getting smoke in his lungs, falling
to his knees again. The man in the smoke seemed to be getting the upper hand on
everyone, and as Dorn went to aid his comrades he was again taken out by the
man’s fire sword.

Your best efforts were
seemingly all for not, this mysterious figure being all but obscured by smoke
and with a thick bark hide, you weren’t getting anywhere against him. It was
then that Rensig having a general sense of his allies in battle with an unseen
foe, and it not going at all well for them, began to weave his spells of harmonic
frequencies, and pierced the mind of the enemy, doing massive psychic damage to
him and terrifying him completely as terrible haunting whispers entered his
foes mind. The man with the bark skin immediately began to flee, Tanek whacking
him with his club as he did. The whack was met with a return bolt from a
crossbow which struck Tanek in the clavicle. Rhys finally catching his breath
again called out for Muffy in the smoke.

As Muffy approached looking to
come to her partner’s aid, she saw Dorn’s body, unconscious and charred, prone
and dying. Using her magics she brought him back to life. Dorn escaping from
the jaws of death for a second time in under a minute. All the while, Rhys had
now gotten between Tanek who had been on the receiving end of the fight, and
his attacker, the bark skinned man. Rhys’ sword however, found no purchase, but
he did manage to push the man back with his shield, out of the thickest part of
the smoke. Tanek screamed “hit the deck Rhys!” as he grabbed the bolt sticking
out of his clavicle and loaded it into his own crossbow, and even with thick
smoke obscuring his vision and the much taller Rhys in his way took the shot.
The bolt, just barely missed the back of Rhys’ head, caught the wig Rhys was
wearing and carried it along with a tremendous amount of force, directly into
the brain of the assailant striking him dead.

You and the prisoners then
made your way out of the smoke, back the way you came, Dorn standing watch in
one of the other passageways as everyone clears out of the smoke and into this
humid chamber that seemed to be some sort of place where beasts were kept in
hanging cages.