Tormeron's events: the Stories

[Gergel]

The reason Adrenus summoned his associates to Redridge was a fairly simple and straightforward one. Gnolls had recently started to attack the town of Lakeshire. There had thus far been no casualties, little property damage, and mostly just food stolen. Nonetheless, Adrenus suspected that something more sinister might be at work.

A few minutes' walk away from the town the travelers came across their first gnolls. Aroona quickly captured one that was running away in panic. In broken and halting Common, the story unfolded.

The gnolls' territory had been conquered by a "big bad". The creatures were now desperate for food and thus had no choice but to raid Lakeshire and steal humans' food. Thelarwen inquired about the "big bad" in a surprising show of kindness, swearing to destroy it if the gnolls promised to leave humans in peace once they had regained their homes and food.

The group proceeded north. Signs of destruction aimed at the gnolls were everywhere. A hillside with burned gnoll corpses strewn around. A pack of imps that were fighting with a small group of gnolls, and winning. Thelarwen leaped into the fray and cleared the demons before they could completely destroy the gnolls, thereby once again earning their groveling, almost pitiful, gratitude.

An encounter with two doomguards became the first proper battle. One fell quickly to Clara's backstabs. The other raised a quite powerful shield of fel magic, and it took some time for the group to punch through it in order to kill the demon. During that time something managed to possess Jarec in an attempt to change his perceptions and make him see everyone else as demons. There was a brief mental struggle, but the druid's own willpower combined with a healing spell by Aroona suppressed the influence. For now.

Just at the border of the Burning Steppes the group found a badly injured old woman lying on the side of the road. She, too, was being possessed by a demon, just like Jarec. And like Jarec, after a helpful spell from Aroona she had the willpower to suppress the influence for the time being. The demon responsible for the possessions, she explained, was itself a weak being, but controlled a number of minions. Its main party trick was apparently demonic possession. As the old woman explained, there would be many people and creatures trying to block the way to the demon lord. Not all of them would be truly evil, just possessed by a demonic minion. To truly free them, Jarec and the woman herself, it would be necessary to kill the demon lord behind it all. And then she directed the group towards Blackrock Mountain.

A few brief encounters slowed the group's progress towards the demon lord's lair. First a man in Stormwind Guard uniform, who demanded that the adventurers turn back "by the order of the king." As the man was clearly being influenced and controlled, Thelarwen spent little time and effort on attempting to reason with him, instead opting to simply pull him from the horse and knock him unconscious with a quick, careful blow to the head. Aroona did the same trick to an armoured gnome who attempted to stall them by challenging Equanimity to a duel. Now free of interruptions, the party finally proceeded to the gates of the Blackrock Mountain.

Their path was blocked by a huge massive fat demon. The battle was fierce. Thelarwen tore into the enemy with her swords (the holy blade to destroy the demon's tiny bat-like minions as well as its fel shield spell, and the runeblade to cut bloody swaths into the demon's flesh), Aroona went into bearform to shred the demon's legs. Equanimity turned out, surprisingly, to be quite good at firing various holy offensive spells, as well as protecting himself and the entire group from the demon's magic blasts with blessed shields. Chepi blasted the demon's entire leg apart with a well-aimed and powerful chaos bolt. As the demon's shield dropped, Clara did what she does best (stabby-stabby!) on the demon's back. Oh and Adrenus was there too.

And after an extensive and bloody battle, which everyone surprisingly survived more or less intact, the demon was injured sufficiently badly that it tumbled over the edge of the walkway they were battling on, and fell to its doom into the Blackrock lava. Splurch.

It was clear, however, that this demon was not the weak but manipulative master the old woman had been talking about. Finding this master was a goal that was still ahead of them.

(To be continued next week. However the assumption is that there is actually no week-long delay in the event and it picks off immediately where this week's event left off, with the party proceeding deeper into Blackrock in search of the demon lord.)