Chapter Fifteen: Shadow

Inside the pit, Xa'oc notices that our shadows look like they don't match our movements, as though someone is hiding their shadows in ours.  Vex tries to mentally communicate with her shadow, but there is no response.

                  Xa'oc asks Navarro which way to go.  Navarro replies, "I don't feel the same pull as last time, but maybe if we look around we'll find something."  Xa'oc picks a direction and starts walking, and we follow for a while, it's hard to tell how long, and we eventually see something in the distance that might be buildings.

                  Vex's shadow doubles in size and then shrinks again.  Aruna tries kicking the shadow and right after she feels something moving under her feet.  Vex talks about blasting her shadow and she shudders as her shadow goes back to normal. A big winged shape emerges from Aruna's shadow and then returns to it.  Vex blasts Aruna's shadow and it starts fighting us.

                  Vex encourages everyone to attack it with their minds.  It drains Kriv's life force, and Kriv pushes it out of his shadow.  Vex's mind gets attacked by the shadow and she runs.  Xa'oc is able to hurt it with Mistsong.

                  Tenneth attacks it "WITH MY MIND" and doesn't even use defiling magic!  Vex says to him "Way to choose not to be evil!"

                  Aruna stuns her shadow and when she walks away the creature stays stuck on the ground, so we realize that we each have a shadow that needs to be killed.

                  The shadows around us erupt into "a cacophony of soft whispers and slurping noises" which Vex recognizes as "Hunger of Hadar" which is one of her spells.

                  Xa'oc's shadow bites him and he becomes poisoned.  We realize that the shadows can use our own abilities against us

                  Aruna's shadow demon chases her and melds with her own shadow, same with Tenneth.  Each of our demons has melded with our shadows and they stop attacking us.

                  We make a circle of torches and stand in the middle.  Kriv magically causes all of the flames to brighten for one minute.  We can't see our shadows anymore.  The light probably didn't do anything.

                  Vex and Aruna notice a small person walking towards us.  We do not recognize them.  It doesn't look like a halfling, it's shorter, and it has pointed ears, and a different shape, like nothing we've ever seen before

                  It says, "you're alive! you're the first alive people I've seen here, most people are not alive.  I'm from the city over there, Kalidnay"

                  We've never heard of it.  "You've never heard of it? Where are you from?  We used to not be where all the dead things are.  Our sorcerer king was Kalid-Ma, and that's why we're here.  If you got here, then I want to get out."

                  We ask it where the temple is and offer to take it with us if it takes us to the temple.

                  “When we get to the temple, I want to bring someone else, but we have to go get him, it's my brother, and I don't want to leave him here, we were somewhere we shouldn't have been, and strange things have been happening here, and no one knows how much time passes, and lately we've have visitors that were alive, but we can't talk to them because they get killed in the arena right away, and we got caught sneaking, and I escaped and he didn't"

                  We ask about the visitors that were alive.

                  “They were all kinds of creatures, including a whole lot of skinny dragonborn with tails, and they all died, and I don't know how they got here.”

                  “The head templar Thakok-An has taken over because no one sees the sorcerer king, maybe he's sleeping, and the templar runs the arena, and more is going on in the city than she wants us to know.  The story goes that we're waiting for our sorcerer king to awaken so that he can bring us back and everything will be restored to how it used to be"

                  “If you don't know about our city, how did you get that (indicating Mist Song)?  So you don't know where that came from? I know where it came from, and I think you should get rid of it."

                  Xa’oc does not want to part with the sword because he needs Navarro is inside.

                  "It's a little bit better than your mentor came out of the ghost tornado, but that's Thakok-An's personal sword and it will make you a target, and she said she still had it, but we hadn't seen it in a while.  You should leave it on the ground and walk away, because it holds souls and feeds on souls, so you need to keep feeding it."

                  Xa'oc confirms that several elves and halflings were killed with it.

                  Xa'oc says again to Kriv, "I don't mind getting rid of the sword if we can free Navarro somehow because he needs to keep training me."

                  "I'll make you a deal: if you help me get my brother out, I can make you another item and you could transfer Navarro into it"

                  Xa'oc offers his githka, which would work

                  Xa'oc believes that the gnome is acting genuine

                  "I can get you to the temple too, we just need to get my brother first"

                  Vex theorizes that Nibenay is Kalid-Ma

                  The creature is named Amara (they/them) and is a gnome.  Vex introduces us as the Heroes of Kled.  Vex asks about the cities landscape.

                  “We had a lot of streams, a big river near the city, a lot of grass. Before we go there, we're going to have to cross a river, and I have a boat... which I'm going to drive since you don't know what a river is, and we want to be careful because I'm wanted, and I'm recognizable because I was apprenticed to the sorcerer-king's blacksmith (which is why I can make another vessel like Mist Song)"

                  “Because I had a position in the city I know where we have to go, but the water is dangerous, so we have to hurry across it.  I also know when the guard change will happen, so we need to be sneaky, but we don't have mul or thri-kreen in the city, except for the ones that got killed in the arena."

                  Vex asks if Amara has any knowledge about the shadow creatures.  "I don't know how to fix your shadows.  Everything in the city is locked down, there's a forbidden dangerous library in the temple that might have something that can fix our shadows."

                  Amara calls Mistsong "the Mournblade."

                  We're going to have to figure out how to sneak through the city.

                  “You’re the first alive people I've found outside the city, because the alive people in the city get thrown into the arena"

                  "They all say we are preserving energy, but people keep going missing, until the alive people started showing up, so I think the alive people are being used to do something to the city, because souls are a fuel source being used by Thakok-An.  I'm not really sure what will happen to people who die outside the arena."

                  “There aren't any ports to the city because we didn't used to be a city, but the arena is close to the cliff's edge so that they can throw off people who don't co-operate"

                  "Everyone in the city knows everyone by this point, so even Vex and Tenneth will stand out as not living here, especially since we're more alive"

                  “The people in the city don't really pay attention, except for the soldiers and templars, but the regular people won't really notice us.  The guards don't really have a way to chase us very well if we escape past the river because they don't have boats, and they don't build anything or improve the city, they are just stuck how they are, unless they take them from the other city"

                  "The other city is called Artan-Ak, they can grow crops there, so we take their crops because we can't grow crops because we're stronger than them, so that's where the boats would come from.  I never questioned any of this when I was inside the city, but things started changing when alive people started showing up, and now that I'm outside the city I can think better"

                  "The alive people who came into the city didn't get brain fog until they died.  The alive people were captured, but I'm not sure how, including some recent halflings and one angry one with big red hair."

                  Kriv can make us very hard to notice, and we could sneak through the city

                  The arena is in the lower-left of the city, and people waiting for the arena are in a dungeon next to the area, and the temple is in the middle. We take a short rest before we leave.

                  We intend to climb sneakily up the cliff in order to reduce the chances of us being spotted, then we'll smash and grab the brother and flee back across the river.

                  Kriv gets the great idea that the guards in the city use weapons made of metal.  We'll need metal in order for Amara to build a new vessel for Navarro's soul.

                  We get onto the boat, the water is completely black and opaque and a little sludgy, and we reach the cliff face without incident.

                  We start climbing, and Vex falls, and Kriv uses psychic hammer to catch her with a psionic draconic claw, then Kriv just ties Vex to himself in case she slips again just like Princess Buttercup.  Then Amara falls and Tenneth tries to catch them and succeeds.  Then Aruna slips, and Xa'oc catches her.

                  Kriv uses a psychic "pass without trace" that makes us hard to notice, and we all huddle close to him as we sneak.  We don’t sneak very well.  We get noticed by two guards.  We attempt to murder them swiftly and brutally.  Xa'oc charges them, and Xa'oc's shadow also tries to bite a guard.

                  Vex tries to blast them and misses, then her shadow reaches out, and the guard grabs his head in pain.  Aruna charges a guard and hurts them, then Aruna's shadow tries to punch the guard, too. Amara pulls a boomerang from their bag and throws it at one of the guards and catches it.  Kriv charges the injured guard and cannot pierce their plate armour, but Akra kills one.

                  Tenneth charges the other guard and clubs them with his club, and then his shadow attacks the guard and hurts it.  The remaining guard runs away and Xa'oc chases them down, and Vex shoots them in the back, and Vex's shadow copies her, then Aruna closes in and cannot pierce their armour, then Kriv closes and hamstrings the guard, then Akra kills this one, too.

                  We take all of their equipment: 2x plate armour, and 2x greatswords, except that Amara takes the metal components they need.