Holy Inquisitor Vanessa Sky-Crucible Hamlet
Vanessa sat in the rowdy tavern sipping on a shot of whisky. She appraised herself in the dusty mirror. The gently wavering blue and green of the magical illusion set into this establishment's ceiling played along her long straight hair so red it made you question if it was natural. The half-drunken men nearby kept giving her looks as if they had finally worked up the courage to speak to the unparalleled beauty armed to the teeth and covered in a simple but fine grey cloak.
She brushed her hair back and coyly winked at a man who had obviously just come from the dungeon, gore still coating his face. Appearances mattered in her line of work, and this was the one she felt would be best for this brief line of inquiry. A middle-level maiden, here to look to exploit drunken men for free dungeon information. Not helpless but not unapproachably powerful. If anyone here knew who she really was or what she looked like under the thousands of gold worth of enchantments and illusions, they would have stared at the ground in fear, not winked back like the brutish man walking up to her now did.
He had a slight swagger to his step, adjusting his halberd a bit before leaning on the bar next to her. “Aye, see, I caught yer eye lassie, Be you looking for companionship, or do you need something else? A lady as beautiful as you wouldn’t be here without reason,” he said with surprising pleasantness and cunning.
Oh good, he's clever but not as clever as he thinks. She mimed a startled, slightly flustered expression. “How could you tell? Maybe I just need some new party members or a drink!” She swirled the glass slightly.
He grinned, confident he had pinned her real intentions down. “Ha! Well, lassie, like I said, too pretty for this damn place.” He gestured at the brawl unfolding behind them in the glass arena.
She faked a frustrated huff and whispered conspiratorially, “Fine, I’m going into the dungeon tomorrow, and I keep hearing rumors about new monstrosities….” She trailed off leadingly.
He held out a hand. “Aye, I fought them. Pay the piper; your wink ain’t enough for a blow-by-blow, lassie.”
She “begrudgingly” handed him a coin, and he, true to his word, began giving her a detailed description of the new monster. How they seemed to only live for violence and death, the tendency for them to snowball up to nearly level twenty if left alone for too long, ravaging entire sections of the fungal forest, leaving themselves the only thing in an area to fight if you wanted essence. Honestly an impressively savage beast that sounds formidable for its level. More importantly, it doesn’t match anything I’ve ever seen or read of, meaning it’s probably truly an original creation.
She let him prattle on a bit more, his guard dropping by the sentence as he ran the gold coin between his fingers, pleased with how his night was going. She leaned in once again conspiratorially, placing her hand on top of his. He smirked, leaning in closer to hear what she was going to whisper. “Such a monster, terrifying truly. But tell me, what do you know of its maker, The Paladin of the Forsaken Lands”? No one nearby noticed the flare of her skills, muted as it was by a half dozen rings on her hand. She dove mercilessly into the man's mind, sifting through his thoughts after she asked her question like a desperate researcher in a disorganized library.
Then she found it as she clutched his hand and mind tight a thought that he tried to shield, a memory of a figure wreathed in roots, and fear he didn’t want to share. There we are. Let's see if this aberration is truly worthy of attention.
She smiled, her true features shining through for the briefest of heartbeats. “Fine then. Let’s make this quick; I need to go scoop my newest protégé with his savior complex out of the dungeon ahead of schedule.” Her grip tightened around his hand, nails digging in and drawing trickles of blood. His eyes frantically danced around, looking for aid, but no words would escape his mouth as the inquisitor shoved her way past his mind and slid into his sanctuary to continue the interrogation somewhere more private.
Vraxious—The Forsaken Lands
Vrax was having the time of his life right now. Cautiously exploring the storied streets of an ancient city. He, Torvald, and his monsters had swept through five blocks like a plague at this point. The Gliders were circling above, terrorizing small groups of Bogarts.
By the time Vrax and Torvald descended upon the screeching patrols the gliders toyed with, there wasn’t much left to actually fight. Occasionally the maddening chortles of a noblewoman would echo from somewhere in the near distance as the Dreadfeast found another poor isolated soul. Mostly mages, it really seemed to hate the bogarts that could use magic with a particular fervor.
Vrax had held off on using his garden, saving it for when they inevitably encountered something truly dangerous. Also, he really didn’t want to try and catch sunshine in this maze of half-collapsed structures. They climbed up a surprisingly intact structure and peered past unmoving rusted windmill blades to get a clearer picture of the route to the nearest of the two monolithic towers that presided over the city.
What he saw took his breath away; only a few blocks farther a sprawling town square lay, hundreds of strides around, all of it covered by the remains of a massive fractally angled glass dome set just below the tops of the neighboring roofs. Water features still spouted inside, some showering through the many gaps in the dome's crystalline surface. The massive garden square still teemed with the remains of the last age's wonders. Set in the very center was a colossal flat boulder hovering a man's height off the ground with dozens of small structures artistically carved from its top half, the remains of an ancient market. It was all a single flowing glorious piece of stone untouched by time, though now blanketed in thick patches of yellow flowering vines.
And dirtying this ancient wonder were hundreds of Bogarts, crude tents, and paintings, covered the once beautiful surface of the marbled boulder carved into a miniature village unto itself by hands far more skilled than Vrax’s own. The largest structure, set slightly off from the center, had been crudely hacked open to allow the construction of an awful shrine moored to the large structure's unyielding marble; it was a wooden effigy. It was crudely shaped like a man with a beast's horns; hundreds of rotting animals and monsters were nailed to it in sacrifice, and something had accepted the sacrifices. Vrax’s skin crawled where his stigmata touched him, and the symbol on the Dreadfeast’s tail burned green with wrathful flames.
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“Well, that’s fucking awful, but I bet there is still some unpicked-over loot down there.” Torvald said, oblivious to the divine turf war happening next to him.
Whatever that thing represents, it is not on my side. "Torvald want to besiege a bogart camp with hundreds of enemies? I’m going to be honest; my god is currently having a shitfit over that shrine too, and if we are going to keep exploring this city, I want that thing gone.”
“Hell yes, I do. It’s basically a giant bowl filled with essence to me, but this is going to be one of those times we actually need to use a plan, isn’t it…” Torvald said, tapping his foot impatiently.
“Yes, it is, buddy, but don’t worry, I bet you and I will get to deal with the big shit while the critters clear out all the little ones, and I have a shit ton of dandelions right now, and we are in the fucking forest, so if those are what get someone, they shouldn’t have been here anyway.” Vrax chuckled and looked to where the sugar gliders had cautiously alighted on the Dreadfeast's back. They had been getting along swimmingly the last few hours once the Dreadfeast realized they fought using terror like it did, so if it followed them around, it would end up on a battlefield that empowered it. It probably also didn’t hurt that he gave them both tiny adapted collars.
Vrax still wasn’t sure exactly how that worked, but the Dreadfeast definitely got something out of being around scared creatures. He really hoped it wasn’t just how it amused itself and instead did something tangible.
Vrax Checked what he had to work with; hopefully Sunshine was back in fighting form.
[Stigmata Garden 12/12]
[Razor Retriever Hive]
[Razor Retriever Hive]
[Acidic Lurker]
[Acidic Lurker]
[Maneater Daisy]
[Sunshine]
[Adapted Vein Diver]
[Adapted Vein Diver]
[Adapted Vein Diver]
[Adapted Vein Diver]
[Adapted Vein Diver]
Vrax gave one of those mad smiles of his he had when he thought of something truly inhumane and looked to Torvald, already summoning a dandelion onto the ground next to himself. “Okay, so here’s the plan…”
Torvald stood on the edge of the grand market boulder, holding a massive, rough burlap sack that was wriggling violently. “This is a fucked-up plan,” he muttered to himself but gave Vrax a thumbs up when he met his gaze, showing that everything was ready to go.
Vrax slid through the growing shadows as the light filtered in rays through the cracked dome overhead. Threading his way between the tightly nestled alleyways separating the compact buildings and stalls. He ducked into a thick conflux of the yellow vines as a group of chattering bogarts turned down the alley he was in. The vines wrapped around him in such a way that he and his robe simply looked like a pile of overgrown refuse. Vrax let them pass, giving the Dreadfeast a stern look as it peeked over the edge of the roof hungrily, obviously considering ambushing the small group.
They continued winding through alleyways until he reached the center of the market, coming out of an alley and taking shelter behind a line of stinking tents, just in front of the towering effigy.
Vrax gently scooped the Gliders from his pocket. “Go play,” he whispered, lightly tossing them on top of a nearby stall as he dashed right. He reached the side of the large building and began edging upward using the vines like a helpful ladder. Hand over hand he went, a growing feeling of wrongness pervading his being as he grew closer to the effigy. He quickly reached the roof and crept to the edge to survey his prey, the effigy now causing an almost static hum in his skull.
The line of tents had obscured the dark activities happening among the circle of stalls here surrounding a large auction platform. Gore coated the platform as an assortment of beasts were brought out one after the other and slaughtered with a spine-prickling chant. Each time “Vo Ro!” echoed from a hundred mouths as a dagger fell onto a squirrel, then again “Vo Ro!” as the dagger cut the throat of a bound goblin, the voices falling like hammer blows against Vrax’s psyche.
The majority of the camp was congregated here around the central platform, although nearly a hundred more were scattered through the tiny stalls and tents nearby, and a dark malignancy lurked here somewhere that Vrax hadn’t identified yet but could feel. There was lots of cover and places for them to fight defensively or disengage if they had to, but no matter how he looked at this, this was insane. Two adventurers and a handful of horrors versus a small army.
At least they are dumb, slow, and low-level. There is something here other than this fucking idol, though I don’t know how I know, but the way I feel like I’m being stalked by a cougar isn’t natural. We have a damn good chance, especially with the changes I made to the dandelions. I need to never ever use these again outside the forsaken lands unless I can get them “back in the bag.” On that note… Vrax peeked off towards the right edge of the square near a squatter and wider than most storefront. A Bogart was running screaming from an alley chased by something dark.
The gliders were perched like demonic gargoyles above the screaming bogart, presiding over the violence as things escalated, hands extended and twitching, pulling strings only they could see. Vrax could see the slight shimmer of hellfire in their eyes and the face-wide toothy smiles from all the way across the square. Okay, not really loving how much their intelligence makes them savor this. The Running Bogart made it to just the edges of the circular crowd before a shadow of tentacles and teeth crashed into it, splattering it across the marble and a good chunk of the crowd before fading to black fog. The Gliders smiled wider as the panic set in and their phantasms became far more tangible.
All across the crowd Shadowy figures emerged; a swarm of bat-like wraiths harried an entire section of the crowd, becoming more real by the moment as they tore hunks from the crowd. A shambling Goliath of bone and blade rose on two bowed legs and began swinging a scything tail through the crowd. As the screams continued to rise to a fever pitch, the bogarts began making some headway against the bats, scattering them into ethereal darkness bit by bit. The first true opponent made themselves known.
An orb of black light exploded from within the goliath, misting the entire square in the remains of the ethereal fear. A floor below Vrax, a Bogart in a bone raiment held a staff out over the crowd. Screaming commands in its guttural language. Another sweep of its hand scattered sourceless black explosions through the air just above the crowd. Annihilating most of the bats and beheading more than one of its unfortunate allies. Vrax identified the dark mage [Bogart Voidcaller Tier-1](lvl20)
Fuck. I can’t strike yet; I need to wait for Torvald! As if answering his summons, the Dreadfeast oozed up the lip of the ledge, the Bogart voidcaller directly before it.
“I’m afraid that won’t do!” The noblewoman’s voice cooed in the bogart’s face as it grabbed him bodily with all six wicked hands, sinking them into the torso and each arm. It Raised the bogart high over the ledge and pulled, tearing one arm off after the other like it was plucking the legs from a bug. All the while cackling madly and licking at the wounds, “Hahahahahha. HAHA!” The few below that were able to see the mage being slowly dissected froze in confused horror, half raising weapons, unsure if they should run or fight.
The Dreadfeast wasn’t done; the mage still screamed in its grasp. It cocked its head wickedly for a moment, then plunged its entire head through the mage’s chest, peering out the other side down at the crowd below. It used a new voice at a volume that didn’t seem possible. “There are no gods left here, only monsters…just the way we like it…...” A distinctly inhuman voice hissed across the courtyard.
Vrax was so focused on his monster’s performance he didn’t notice when Torvald positioned himself on the tall building opposite Vrax’s own and opened his sack full of bound bogarts. “This is fucked up!” He shouted loudly as he dumped a dandelion into the sack and gave it a good shake.