An Acolyte's Plight

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## Familiar Faces

Heading back to Zaldran after a little rest, the party agreed to take on the job offer. Zaldran was very happy, and filled them in on more of the details; he wanted to march his army over to the walls of Gravenham in around three days and reclaim the town. However, Thelanzer appeared to have some sort of machine that was creating a giant cloud of darkness over the town, making it very hard for them to fight in due to the enemy's increased strength in darkness. Zaldran wanted the party to sneak into Thelanzer Industries and shut down the machine, exposing the vampires to the blistering heatwave and providing a significant advantage for his army to take control of Gravenham. While apprehensive about Zaldran claiming another town, the party were still happy to help as they wanted to take down Thelanzer Industries. He told them that they had some time to themselves before they set off for Gravenham, and also that someone had arrived in the town looking for Mirik not too long ago. They set off to find this mystery person.

After some searching, Mirik found a man in clerical robes with a bald head and a lovely ginger beard; Cardinal Dannell. Mirik introduced his friends to the Cardinal (he seemed a little unimpressed), and Dannell asked if there was somewhere more private they could talk. They all headed back to the farmhouse and sat down round the dinner table. Dannell asked the other members of the party if they were religious, to which they all said no. He seemed a bit disappointed, so turned his attention to Mirik. He began questioning Mirik about his dreams, asking if the angelic guide had said anything else to him. Mirik replied that Pelor had instead been talking to him and sending him visions and guidance, to which Dannell seemed concerned.

Dannell revealed that the gods do not send visions directly to their followers; during the Divine War, the prime deities swore an oath to never return to the material plane to prevent endangering it needlessly. This extends to direct contact with the material plane, and thus they often have celestial underlings spread their messages and warnings to those living on the material. Blessed children such as Mirik are also known to be assigned a specialised angelic guide to help them along their path, who will often speak to the child in their dreams. With this information revealed, he questioned if Mirik was actually seeing Pelor himself or perhaps he was confusing the dawnfather with a similar-looking figure, but Mirik seemed adamant that it was. Dannell sighed, and warned him to be wary of his dreams, as it was highly unlikely to be Pelor contacting him. They moved onto talking about the Divine War, in which Dannell revealed that the churches of Ketterdam were rather confused about what was going on with it. The betrayer gods that were seemingly involved should be imprisoned on an entirely different plane (Carceri), so it was a little worrying that they had managed to escape to Acheron. Regardless, it seemed that the prime deities had a fairly solid grip on it, despite the few arcane surges that had happened across the country, so he didn't seem too concerned about it.

Dannell turned his attention back to the rest of the group and spoke a little more with them as they regaled him with their adventures. They eventually got onto the subject of Zaldran, and he revealed that this was the first he was hearing of an invasion in Grimmholm. He said he would inform the authorities of Ketterdam when he returned, but since the populace seemed to be free to do what they wanted and no obvious signs of war had occurred, he was not sure what the cause of action would result in. Dannell suddenly gave out a scream of surprise as the party turned around to see the Innkeeper standing in the kitchen. He turned to Ahsatan, and told her that he had the contract ready for her to sign. He asked her a few general questions about herself, including asking for her name. Ahsatan told him "Ahsatan", and suddenly found that she could not call herself as such as she had just given it to him as part of the deal. He handed over the newspaper, and told her that she would get her name back eventually, then left. She decided to take on the name "bungle" instead until her previous name was returned to her. Confused, Dannell got up to leave and gave Mirik a couple of Sending scrolls, should he ever need to contact him again. With a few days of downtime available to them, the party spent some time working on some different things.

## A Few Days Rest

Exploring the refugee camp a little more, they found that everyone had been moved from their houses into small tents that were scattered around like a massive festival. Some larger tents were set up to establish a mess hall, but it was only really occupied by hobgoblins. A marquee was set up to house the market square, and included various tables set around it with merchants selling their few wares. Zaldran also offered for the party to have a better place to stay, and provided them with a large tent to sleep in.

Carric wanted a glass eye and a jewelled horn for a cool spell. He asked Zaldran if he had anything anywhere, and he said he would send a letter back to Fort Surob to see if they had any glass eyes. Carric commissioned a wooden horn from a woodcarver. and found a jeweller to encrust it with gems. He also tried to play some music to liven up the human residents mulling around, but did not get much success unfortunately. On the final day before leaving for Gravenham, a hobgoblin delivered a letter containing a suitable glass eye. It was sent by someone called Yegoth. Excited to try his new spell, Carric went back to the woodcarver and asked him for a location to look for. The woodcarver, having carved a beautiful tree, asked to see the tree in the Meusewood that he had been inspired by. Carric cast Clairvoyance, and magically looked at this tree on the edge of the Meusewood. He saw various squirrels and birds climbing over the trunk and the branches in a very peaceful scene. As the spell came to an end, he saw the animals quickly rush away, but could not hear or see anything. Thinking nothing of it, he thanked the man and went back to his tent to sleep for the night. Carric also sent some magical messages to various people across the few days.

Bungle got to work on her bike, managing to find some workers to help her strengthen the frame and construct a wooden outer casing for it. She spent the whole three days working on this, and ended up with a fairly sturdy looking vehicle. Honestly cannot remember what Kiira did, but I'm pretty sure she just looked for a scarf or something. Mirik just vibed.

## Attacked in the Night

The party eventually gathered back into their tent and began to settle down for the night. Kiira finished her nightly routine and was about to snuff out the candle when she saw a silhouette standing in the corner of her room in the shadows. She froze, and turned to take a closer look. There was nobody there. She snuffed out her candle and went to sleep. Not too long after closing her eyes, she felt something cold and smooth sliding across her. She grabbed it instinctually, and felt it bite her hand, feeling a slight tingle of venom. It was a snake. She sighed loudly, and said something along the lines of "Fuck you Emota, you bitch". To her surprise, a voice in the darkness responded "I wouldn't call me that if I were you..." and Emota rushed towards the blind Kiira. She tried to paralyze her, but Kiira shrugged off the effect and burst out of her room into the main tent. She screamed as loud as she possibly could, waking up the other party members who instantly got up to fight. The oncoming scuffle was short, with Kiira quickly escaping out of the main tent leaving Emota to get wailed on by Bungle and Mirik. Outside, she screamed some more to try and attract some hobgoblins to come to help. Various guards came running past, but seemed to ignore their scuffle and instead head straight towards to the direction of the town. She listened for a bit, and heard a distant noise of what sounded like a giant flock of screaming birds. Concerned by the noise, she turned back to the tent just as Emota stepped outside. Kiira rushed up to her and sunk her rapier into Emota, leaving her to explode into a pile of snakes once again.

The others came outside to hear the same screaming noise which appeared to be getting louder. In the moonlight, shadows were seen as several large creatures seemed to be flying overhead. The sound of flapping leathery wings descending caught their attention, as they turned around to see a large bat-like creature land nearby and screech at them, with another one landing behind them. More screams broke out from around the refugee camp, as the swarm of giant bats descended onto the town...