The Chronicles of Risan: Part the Twenty-Eighth

After falling terribly ill while my companions essayed more attacks on the compound, I came round to find that they had progressed hardly at all, barely achieving more than clearing the way for our final assault. So, picking up after ourselves (and some members shaking off some Mummy Rot), we headed in.

We came to a big black gate, and stepped through... into Destiny! Or rather, into some priest of Orcus’ view of being big-up himself. He demanded, in the name of Orcus, that we must be dead before we continue. While others tried to point out ways in which they were dead, I told him I follow the Raven Queen and he could stick it. He left me alone.

But then we faced Orcus himself, or at least an Avatar thereof. He presented us with a choice, to serve him and kill the vampire drow and give him the sword, to ask for mercy, or to dare defy him. Yep, still with the Raven Queen, so told him to stick it as well. He didn’t take kindly to that, but whatever. (Some others bent their knee, but claimed that they weren’t evil. I don’t believe them.)

Once past his grand idiocy, we entered the vault? hall? dungeon? overly-complicated room structure? proper. We spotted a large room with a big black statue, so we tok the obvious course of heading off to a side room to clear the place out first. While we did encounter some ghouls, we soon found out we weren’t alone.

Vampires. Boneclaws. Lich. A swarm of bats that became a Vampire Drow. More ghouls. Oh yeah, we were getting things easy! It was a huge amount of pounding… and yet we weren’t really that seriously stressed. In some ways the Lich was more annoying that the Vampire guy, but still, while I got close to dying, never once were any of us down and we just moved around smacking them all silly.

Once he was down, we got the sword. (It very nearly became a horrendous monster to fight, but some greater power than our fictional world intervened to stop that irritation.) We were presented with a choice of Orcus’ claw to hand it to him, or his eye to stick it to him. Poke, poke, poke! With the Keeper now on our side, we got out of there without further problems.

That said, when we got back to the Drow area, we found someone else had taken care of Ulvrain (or whatever her name was) for us, but they didn’t find the treaty… we did! Ha! Whatshername who hired us was happy to get it back, and we were happy to get the money (along with the other loot).

It was a conclusion, of a sort, but now what fresh adventures await us? I hear tale there’s something else going wrong in the Shadowfell with someone or something else trying to also usurp my Queen’s power...

[END]