Act 2 / Episode 3 - Night Terrors (October 9, 2014)

Late in the night, Jiri and Mischief both heard strange cries coming from the inn stables, as though an animal were alarmed or suffering. It sounded like... Akiro’s baby lamb? Was someone harming the party’s beasts? Mischief promptly licked and nuzzled Shalora awake, and when she finally rose and opened the door to her room, the fox darted to the far side of the inn to scratch at Akiro’s door.

Bleary-eyed, the three companions each grabbed a weapon and stumbled to the back door of the inn, and stepped out beyond its threshold. The lamb had ceased to bleat, but the ponies were spooked and restless in their stalls. Jiri spotted a winged figure across the yard, a few feet inside the entrance to the stables. Fearful for his lamb, Akiro ran across the moonlit yard with katana in hand to confront the creature. In mid-stride, he felt an explosion of dark thoughts surging through his mind, but nevertheless maintained his focus. Sparkles the pony reared and kicked at the intruder.

The paladin engaged the winged humanoid, which fought back with a serrated, glass-like blade. Jiri moved to aid Akiro, but found himself fighting off the same mental assault that the Tian had instinctively shrugged off moments before... and the dwarf then turned in time to see another of the winged horrors swooping down towards him out of the darkness. Both companions were unarmoured and sustained minor wounds from the serrated glass blades, which channelled brief but violent shocks to their minds, but both managed to slay their respective foes with successive thrusts of their blades--the one hovering above Jiri hitting the ground with a heavy thud. 

Akiro rushed to the side of the fallen lamb, the throat of which had been cut. It was bleeding profusely, its white coat stained crimson. With tears in his eyes, the Tian warrior layed his hands upon the gash, became a divine conduit and closed the wound. The lamb opened its eyes and bleated feebly... but Akiro felt relief wash over him knowing that the gentle, innocent creature would live. Knowing how much the lamb meant to her fragile companion, Shalora had also established a life link with it. The Orem family and the two other overnighting patrons gathered at the windows of the common room, looking with alarm on the drama unfolding in the back yard.

As Shalora moved toward Akiro and Jiri, she too felt some uncomfortable presence trying to overcome her mind, but she resisted. A third night demon launched at her from the inn’s roof, but she successfully dodged its attack.  This last creature then spent a considerable amount of time apparently toying with the companions, trying unsuccessfully to weaken them with psychic attacks, flying out of melee weapon range from the inn’s roof to the stable roof. Then, while Jiri knelt to take a closer look at one of their dead assailants, Akiro unexpectedly took the opportunity to make a daring acrobatic leap onto the stable roof, using Jiri’s back as a stepping stone. The paladin landed on the edge of the roof. The night demon hissed at him, then took the air, flying out of sight beyond the roof of the inn just as Sheriff Benhovy and his constables entered the courtyard to investigate the commotion.

The night demons did not resemble anything the companions had encountered or heard about previously. They were lanky and bat-like, with long tails, four narrow eyes, and wolflike paws... was it one of these things that had left its prints on the roof of Emarthine Willoway’s home? As the Sheriff started asking questions, a loud crash -- as if something were breaking through the door or windows of a home or shop -- followed by a shrill scream, came from nearby. The Sheriff, constables, and trio of heroes raced to the scene, witnessing the third bat-thing emerge from Xemne’s Tonics to take to the sky again, flying further into town and leading its pursuers on a frantic chase...

***

Meanwhile, at Hunclay Manor, Iacobus was sound asleep after having had a nice hot bath prepared for him by Mathezic. The butler had been reluctant to return to the manor, but a few coins from the magus (and an intimidating gaze) -- as well as an assurance that the estate was now free of malevolent entities -- eventually resulted in his compliance. The magus was perhaps the most content he had been in a while -- not only was he sleeping in the bed of a powerful wizard with a wealth of arcane and astronomical tools at his disposal, but come morning he would be studying potent spells and magic items without distraction.

Late in the night, Iacobus awoke to the annoying sound of flies buzzing about the room... he also felt the insects crawling all over him. He cast a spell to dispel the gloom, and found to his horror that hundreds of flies were flitting about the room, with still more coming down the chimney. Something undeniably was wrong. And he blew some flies out of his nostrils, wiped others out of his eyes and leaped out of bed, grasping his falcata as he made his way for the door in his underwear. Opening it, he called out to Mathezic, but got a far more sinister reply from the dimly lit library.

“No, I’m afraid not. Did you miss us?” crowed a familiar, yet unseen voice on the left, followed by a high-pitched falsetto laugh to his right. And then, appearing from out of nowhere, “Zorg,” the imp from the dungeons beneath the Witch Tower and Chirit, the bloated infant-fly accuser devil were upon him. Iacobus dodged the imp’s tail stinger, but Chirit wrapped his long slimy tongue around the magus‘ right wrist and bit sharply into it. As Iacobus turned to fend off another attack from the imp, Chirit summoned a swarm of rats that crawled up the warrior-mage’s legs and gnawed at him viciously. 

Overwhelmed by flies, rats, and a pair of devils, and not dressed for combat, Iacobus began to genuinely fear for his life. He ran across the library and down the stairwell to the grand hall, sustaining two other painful bites from the giggling accuser devil that pursued him. Barely conscious by the time he reached the lever that would deactivate the magic pit trap that he had reset prior to going to bed -- Iacobus turned and in desperation swung his falcata at Chirit and discharged his last shocking grasp spell as he struck the fiend. The devil shrieked in pain and then vanished. Iacobus did not see its corpse drop to the ground, but dared not linger in the manor any longer to determine whether or not he had actually destroyed the little horror. 

***

After leading Akiro, Jiri, Shalora, Mischief and the constabulary on a destructive and not-so-merry chase around town, the third bat-thing eventually fled into the night. A short time after they returned to the backyard of the inn, the companions heard someone pleading for help... and then, a bloodied Iacobus clad only in his underwear, bearing nothing else but his falcata, hobbled into the yard, just barely conscious. His skin was broken by dozens of nasty bites and stings. Shalora channeled Shelyn’s love, instantly closing the worst of her companions’ wounds. Party members then briefed each other on what had just happened at the inn, in town, and at the manor, and elected to return to the manor to determine whether the devils were still there... as well as the arcane items retrieved from both the manor and Hunclay’s cave. Shalora lent Iacobus some clothes, while she and her other companions donned their armour and adventuring gear.

***

When the party returned to Hunclay Manor, they encountered what appeared to be a hooded man with a flaming blade awaiting them in the wizard’s bed chamber, now devoid of flies and rats, not to mention devils. His voice was identical to that of the unseen being who had been ransacking the library when the companions performed their initial sweep of the manor a few days ago. He assured the heroes that he had no intention to harm them, and could easily have ambushed them had he wished to do so. Iacobus (?) countered that he had tried to kill them previously with the ice fog he had conjured, but the man maintained that he had warned the companions that they could die if they stepped into the spell’s area of effect, and some of them had chosen to ignore his warning... the fault therefore was theirs.

The man wasted no time getting to the point of his visit. He knew the companions had found a hidden cache wherein had been chests that he presumed had belonged to the wizard Hunclay. He asked whether the party had found an arcane tome called Secrets of the Dreaming Dark, whether in Hunclay manor or in the secret cache. They denied it repeatedly (and arguably truthfully, as they had not yet been able to confirm that the black, tattered tome they had found that they suspected was Secrets of the Dreaming Dark, was in fact that book). The man declared that it was essential that the party entrust the book to him without delay if they found it, for there would be dire consequences for all in Belhaim if they failed to do so. 

The man and his flaming blade then dissolved into mist and drifted up the chimney. But before he fled, Jiri had been able to determine that the man did not radiate an aura of evil... at least no evil strong enough that he could detect it. 

Looking through the assorted items that Iacobus had left in the wizard’s room when he fled the manor, the companions noted to their dismay that two had gone missing: the tome they suspected was in fact Secrets of the Dreaming Dark, as well as Ye Booke of Enhanced Fiendish Servitude. Iacobus was especially relieved that none of Hunclay’s spell books had been stolen. Given the conversation the party had just had, the enigmatic man clearly had not taken the missing books, which meant that the devils probably were the culprits... and the companions deduced that the devils and the man (if man he was) could not be working together. It looked like more than coincidence, though, that the bat-things had manifested at the inn around the same time that the devils had attacked Iacobus at Hunclay Manor... and their other rival must have arrived only a short time after the fiends attacked the magus. Were the bat-things allied with either the man or the devils? And why had they first targeted the animals in the inn stables?

***

The party conducted another careful sweep of Hunclay Manor and determined the following:

. no evil auras were detected anywhere in the estate, suggesting that the fiends had left the premises;

. the trap door to the observatory was open (there was no lock on it), so the imp likely entered the premises via the hole left in the glass dome;

. the door to Mathezic’s room was open, and he was nowhere to be found;

. the gate to Chirit’s prison was unlocked, and tools from the clockwork lab had been used to break the conjuring circle that had held the accuser devil;

. Maffei was still in her cell beyond the wall of light, and was not aware of anything that had transpired this night.

Jiri tossed a handful of the enhanced dust of darkness into the wall of light. The darkness and light swirled around one another, like intertwining serpents locked in mortal combat, until the light faded and magical darkness dissipated. Only the spell Iacobus had cast on Akiro’s hat now illuminated the room. 

The dwarf released the grateful shae from her cell, who reiterated how weak she felt from prior direct contact with the wall of light, how she felt as though the wizard had destroyed part of her body and soul forever. The companions asked questions again about Hunclay’s theories and why the shae was so dismissive of them. She replied that, while she was no scholar, the posited link between the Plane of Shadow and the Dark Tapestry seemed preposterous to her because the shadows of her home plane depend, to an extent, on the presence of light to cast those shadows; the Dark Tapestry, conversely, and as she understood it, was part of the material world, and was a darkness that existed independently of light. In hindsight, perhaps the darkness of the Dark Tapestry had seeped out from the realms of the Hinterlands of the Midnight Lord at the outer limits of the Plane of Shadow, to which she had never ventured, but she remained skeptical that even this was the case. After all, to her knowledge, the Hinterlands remained shadow, and not absolute darkness. She also wondered whether the void of the Dark Tapestry did not predate the emergence of the Plane of Shadow? How could one know? While the whole conversation went over the heads of Shalora and Akiro, Jiri and Iacobus deemed that the shae’s assumptions seemed reasonable.

The dusky and largely featureless woman who did not seem to have a completely material body donned her armour which, although of a unique but leather-like substance unfamiliar to the companions, definitely was material and decidedly feminine in form. The silver-blue armour--which looked more like half-plate than leather--combined with her elegant scimitar and short sword, gave the shae a bearing that was simultaneously graceful, deadly, and awe-inspiring in her otherworldly majesty. Maffei reaffirmed her willingness to accompany and aid her liberators in their upcoming battles. Yet until such day had come, she hoped to be able to hide in a place where she would not have to interact with the people of this world, who were so unfamiliar to her... and to whom she undoubtedly would be just as frightening. 

Maffei the shae

After some debate, the companions concluded that the most appropriate place for Maffei to find refuge would be, ironically, Hunclay’s cave. Jiri led her there just before the break of dawn, while the others gathered up the wizard’s magical books and items once again and returned to the inn. Shalora mused aloud on the way back that, given how the current assignment was essentially done save for the identification of arcane items that Iacobus still needed to perform, and given that the party currently had no other assignment, she would like to travel to Lady Tula's crypt. She was tired of spending time in dark, dank caves and cellars and looked forward to a journey in the open air. 

Her companions were too tired to discuss the elf's suggestion; and wherever the party chose to rest, security now seemed like little more than an illusion...