[Alliance] Chapter Four: Session Twenty-One
Appearing Characters: Arthas Menethil, Elissa Cross, Remnii, Seria, Tol'vas Moonshadow, Uther Menethil, Velameestra Windrunner, Zap Rusthammer
June 18th
As the crazed saurids in the chamber ahead click, emerging from the shadows, the party prepares to fight. Arthas charges forward to meet the creatures, readying his axe. He tries to carve into the first saurid that approaches, but it darts out of the way of the blade. Another one screeches and jumps onto Arthas. Others surge forward and he is rapidly starting to get swarmed, and their sheer number knocks him onto his back.
Seria charges from the backline and mauls the closest saurid, leaving it a limp corpse on the ground.
Vel jumps onto a wall and runs along it to peer over Seria’s hulking form. She holds out a hand to use sapping sting, wispy necrotic energy wafting off of one of the saurids on Arthas before it drops to the ground, dead.
Saurids continue to swarm Arthas. Tol’vas summons a beast of land to aid Arthas, the wolf-like creature materializing over the corpse over the saurid that Vel had just killed. He then casts shillelagh. The wolf snarls and rips into a saurid, leaving the creature dead. However, another saurid scurries forward and lips on the corpse of its fellow, hissing at the wolf.
Elissa skirts around Seria and kills one saurid, and then leaves a second critically wounded with a slash of her blade.
Remnii casts mind sliver, and the creature she targeted drops unconscious. Uther pushes to the front line and knocks a saurid out with his hammer.
Arthas gets to his feet.
His first attack misses, but his second cleaves straight through two of the saurids and nicks a third. Remnii creeps forward and uses another mind sliver, killing a saurid with the spike of psychic energy.
Seria smacks a saurid aside into the wall, giving her enough room to move forward and smack a second to the ground. The last saurid attempts to flee, but Arthas grabs it and hacks his axe through it.
It seems the coast is clear for the time being.
Elissa looks over to Arthas.
He wipes some dirt and blood off his arm.
There is a constant drip of water in the background, and as they look around it seems the caverns are quite verdant even in the deeper shadows of the caves. Some of the mushrooms look to be breeds that are toxic, though others were supposedly safe--however the druids had warned them not to eat anything without purifying it first.
Vel creeps forward, still on the wall, and she sees two large stones that seem to act like a gateway to a larger cavern. She can hear the rushing of water in the distance. There are pieces of writing around the stones. Far ahead, there is more light dappling from the ceiling, and there are also shadows of flickering torches.
There seems to be a shadow of another large raptor far into the other cavern.
The air has a simultaneous warmth and chill. Vel drops off the wall and examines the writing.
Tol’vas approaches with his summoned wolf and examines the writing. The messages seem to indicate a protective mantra to ward off danger and unkindness from within the caverns. However, most of the writing has been defaced by claw marks and old dried blood. The mantras have long been deprived of their energy.
The group continues to get closer, watching the stalking raptor, and other figures seem to appear and disappear again. They seem to be hunting fish in the river, but it’s hard to gauge how many there are.
Vel enters the room and starts to wrap around to get onto the ceiling. She doesn’t see anything in the water, but the raptor on the far side stops and looks up. They start to click at her, but they don’t seem to have any desire to approach her.
She makes it to the ceiling, and she can see a campfire to the west.
But then she hears a hiss. She turns, and she sees a long, serpentine, snake-like creature lunging at her. It bites her in the leg, and she winces, and then starts to fall. However, there’s a flash of light, and she almost goes blind for a second. Something grabs onto her leg, and she is now hanging upside-down.
There are death roes from the snake that attacked her, and it hits the ground, a spear in its chest.
Vel swings around to look up at a figure above her, one she wasn’t expecting to see dangling from the ceiling by dirty boots.
It’s Zap Rusthammer.
Zap helps her back onto the ceiling so that they can climb back down.
Vel returns to the group with Zap in tow. He is much the same as before, with messy red hair spattered with various stains and motor oil. He now has golden armor embossed with blue and gold lions. However, it’s covered in stains.
He presses a button and small wind-shield wipers wipe across his goggles, but it makes little difference.
Uther looks absolutely dumbstruck.
Uther rushes over and scoops Zap up into a hug.
Uther looks instinctively at Vel.
Zap then sees Elissa as well as he continues looking around, who is staring at Zap with her jaw dropped. He also recognizes the other human in the group as king Arthas, though he doesn’t have armor and is wielding two axes.
Elissa runs over to hug Zap as well.
Remnii looks a bit dumbstruck.
Zap then looks over at the massive bear.
Seria grunts, and Zap grunts back at her.
Remnii’s smile suddenly falters.
Remnii blinks, and then nods.
Arthas leans over to Uther.
Uther chuckles.
Vel blinks, looking at Tol’vas at the term, as it’s not one she’s familiar with.
The group peers into the larger cavern again, and the raptors on the other side still seem to be watching them, but have not yet moved to engage.
A mechanical squirrel leaps out of Zap’s backpack and onto his head. It has a tiny little beret. Upon seeing the squirrel, Vel smirks.
The mechanical squirrel makes a squeaking chirp of gears grinding. Vel looks back to the rest of the group.
Arthas illuminates his axe again and steps into the cavern next to Vel. The raptors look over at them. They seem to be watching closely, but they don’t approach. They don’t seem to want to cross the land bridge over the river.
Zap looks in the river, and he notes huge, brightly colored fish darting in the water. They seem to be in a frenzy. He feels an itch on his shoulder, and he smacks at it. A mosquito had bit him. There are other creatures all over, and a snake hisses angrily at him, though it doesn’t close. Everything seems to be more aggressive.
Tol’vas notes the raptors would be attacking them if they could reach them, but they seem unwilling to cross the river or the land bridge.
They head in the direction of the campfire, and they see dozens of snakes swarming over the camp--forming a strange pattern. The legs of a kaldorei woman are visible beneath the writhing mass. She is sitting against a torch, and her eyes are rolled into the back of her head. Her hands are held out, palms up, and the snakes are biting her again and again.
She’s still alive.
The woman’s veins are quite defined.
Remnii notes that there seems to be a ceremonial, ritualistic aspect to this.
Remnii is clearly unnerved. Tol’vas sends his bestial summon in, and the snakes don’t seem to care until the wolf enters the confines of the camp. Then they start to hiss.
Vel holds her hand out, using toll the dead. Three of the snakes immediately convulse and die, and the swarm shoots to life. The woman’s eyes roll forward.
Arthas closes immediately and readies his axe. The raptors across the river start to click, and they are all pacing--like wolves stalking their prey. However, none cross the bridge.
The woman does not answer, as she’s panting, her eyes darting around.
Zap heads over to the bridge and starts to prepare a freezing trap. Elissa moves to back Zap up.
The herald of the fang leaps to her feet, snakes cascading off her, and she reaches out. The veins on her right hand grow black, and she swings at the summoned wolf, but it ducks out of the way of her hand.
Uther moves next to Elissa and prepares a firebolt.
The gravity in the area starts to get strange. Zap, as he starts to prepare his trap, suddenly get barraged by a bunch of bolts from his kit. He ducks out of the way, and the bolts go flying into the sky, and then fall to the ground.
He scoops the bolts back up.
The swarm of poisonous snakes start to swarm the summoned wolf. They bite and hiss, but the wolf growls and snakes them off.
Tol’vas uses wrath, and several snakes are blasted off with raw nature energy. He then uses shillelagh. The wolf continues to maul the snakes, biting straight through two of them before it kites around to the other side of the night elf woman.
Noting the raptors are still not crossing the bridge, he abandons the trap and pulls out a gun--firing at the night elf woman. His gun is a dwarven revolver that looks about 50% bigger than it should, and when it shoots, steam discharges. It makes the sound of a machine struggling to life, but it’s being held together by bolts, magic, and dwarvish gumption. The second shot clicks weakly, and he opens it up, pouring some sand from the chamber before reading another shot.
Tol’vas uses wrath again, destroying the last of the snakes with an explosion of nature magic. The summoned wolf follows suit, attacking the druid. Elissa backs up the summon, hitting the woman with the hilt of her blade. Uther attempts to smack the druid with her hammer, but both swings go short.
The Herald of the Fang mutters that she can’t die before her ascension, and she casts cure wounds on herself.
Vel closes, brandishing her blade as she uses frigid strike, wreathing the woman in chilling energy, though her second attack gets deflected aside. Arthas also closes, managing to knock the woman unconscious.
Elissa offers to negate the poison in the woman, but Tol’vas says he could take care of it. He uses lesser restoration, and the woman’s veins seem to go clear, and her panting slows. He then binds the woman, and Tol’vas slings her over the summoned wolf, who then lopes back to the other druids to leave her with them.
She looks down at the river, and she notes an underpass the river seems to be feeding from. Tol’vas takes a cautious step on the bridge, and nothing happens.
Vel and Tol’vas start to head in the other direction while the group stays at the camp. The raptors on the far side are drooling with a crazed look in their eyes. They can see sunlight streaming from the ceiling. The river also seems to feed into another underground channel.
Vel and Tol’vas reports back to the group and Zap suggests they scout in the channel the river feeds into. Both he and Vel walk on the ceiling, and she can hear a faint humming from Zap--which may have been Nutters.
The stream gets lower and lower, and they see a completely dark chamber with a singular beam of natural sunlight. There doesn’t seem to be any creatures of note aside from a bat or snake. They see a stalagmite marking a path that heads west into the caves. Where the sunlight comes in, they can see lush, beautiful foliage with brightly colored flowers and mushrooms. There seems to be a narrow hole where the light is coming from.
Vel looks in the stream, and where the stone wall connects to the base of the river, there’s a crack about 1 foot wide where the river just flows into some sort of underground reservoir far into the deep blackness. Some of the fish swim in and out.
Vel smirks in the dark.
Vel and Zap start to head back to the group.
Meanwhile, Tol’vas had crept closer to the river to get a better look at it. There is a large footprint that has been worn over by the water. They were mostly faded, but they are rather recent given the speed of the river would wash them away soon. There also seems to be scratch marks, like a creature marking its territory.
He returns to the group as Vel and Zap also return, as does the summoned wolf--now devoid of the night elf.
Vel explains what she and Zap had seen.
Elissa had spoken with the summoned wolf and she informs them that the druids will take care of the woman.
At that moment, one of the larger raptors races across the bridge, but then stops at a splash, and turns around--its tail beating one of the smaller raptors off the side. The smaller raptor screeches and clambers up to dry land, starting to squabble with the larger raptor. However, the larger raptor bites it, and it screams and backs off to the shadows to lick its wounds.
They opt to head to the west, as the footsteps of the large creature seem to be going in the other direction.
He puts a box on the ground, which expands into a boat on the water at the base of the stairs. Tol’vas changes into the form of a giant viper. Remnii, Arthas, Uther, and Elissa get into the boat, while Seria and Tol’vas swims, and Vel and Zap stick to the ceiling. The frenzied fish seem to be following them, but none are attacking.
As they emerge from the channel, nothing seems to have changed. Zap refolds his boat up.
She creeps forward, and the passage is completely dark. There is foliage growing, and it seems to be curving.
Tol’vas, still in snake form, follows close behind her. Arthas stays toward the back with his flaming axe. At the end of the passage, Vel and Tol’vas see five stones jutting from the ground, as well as the flickering light of more campfires. There are low voices in darnassian, and the sound of hissing.
Tol’vas slithers forward, and Vel creeps onto the ceiling. There are a few night elves, and they seem to be extracting venom from the snakes and transformed druids. The Blessed of the Fang druid is facing away from them.
Vel reports back to the group on the situation, and Arthas and Uther shut off their lights. They all start to creep forward. Then Tol’vas hears hissing, and stirring.
A Herald of the Fang starts to speak an incantation behind one of the raised stones.
Zap backs his back to a wall and sneaks his way in. He then fires two shots into one of the large snakes. Seria growls and starts to run forward. She gets ready to leap, but her foot gives way, and she falls into a hole that had opened under her. She hits the ground hard, and there is the sound of snakes hissing--she’s now surrounded by them. She grunts and clambers back out of the trap, the snakes falling off her.
A winged serpent darts straight at Seria, sinking its fangs into her shoulder before it soars further into the cave. Tol’vas attempts to bite it, but it misses. He then uses roar, releasing a loud hiss.
Vel runs along the ceiling, cutting through the flying serpent with two strikes of her blade.
The cavern bursts into life as the other druids and snakes that were surprised start to respond to the situation. The Blessed of the Fang stands up and turns. Her eyes are thick and serpentine, and behind her back there are three tails. Her body is covered in patches of scales, and her hands end in long claws.
She pulls out a longbow and shoots at Tol’vas, but the two arrows collide into the stone pillars. Seria closes on the nearest snake druid, and she mauls the creature. It’s looking in critical condition, hissing in pain. She then heals herself with a surge of nature magic.
A Herald of the Fang holds her hand out, and blows a kiss at Tol’vas. Toxic gas flies at him, but he is able to resist the effects of the spell.
Colonel Nutters strikes a pose, and Zap throws out a box. Several parts assemble near the squirrel, creating a larger creature--it’s Colonel Nutters, but the size of a small dwarf. A compartment comes out of the back, which the smaller Nutters leaps into, and then he gets pulled into the larger battle form.
The larger mech creature charges into the battle, and Zap shoots at the critically wounded druid snake. The snake sprawls over, and then transforms into the form of a night elf who was left down on the ground.
He turns a crank on his pistol, and uses the Get Better Blaster Mark 4 on Seria, healing her with a blast of the gun, before he then rounds on the female Herald, clipping her for a good shot.
Arthas runs forward, and Vel sees his foot give way as he starts to fall. But Zap warns him, and Arthas gets a weird headache, as the sound reverberates in him, and he stumbles, avoiding the trap.
Assessing the situation, Battle-Nutters takes evasive protocols as he takes rapid-fire side steps.
Uther runs into combat, shooting off a fire bolt at the nearby giant snake.
A wind serpent swoops by Arthas, biting him.
Another druid appears. He is mutated in strange ways, the bottom half of his body now nothing but a serpentine tail. He looks at Tol’vas.
Tol’vas shakes off the voice that echoed in his mind. The summoned wolf attacks one of wildshaped druids with a snarl. A giant poisonous snake attacks Seria.
The Herald approaches the fallen druid, reviving him with a cure wounds.
The swarm of poisonous snakes wriggle out of the pit and start to swarm Seria. The wildshaped snake next to Colonel Nutters tries to attack Arthas, but the mechanical squirrel shocks it.
The shock knocks the snake’s aim off, and Arthas smirks in amusement at the mechanical creature.
Elissa runs forward, casting faerie fire from her ring. Supernatural, glimmering energy coats many of the enemies.
Vel closes on the nearest flying serpent, cutting through with her blade before she extends a hand out to another flying serpent, the echo of a banshee scream audible as she uses toll the dead--its head exploding and its body falling limply to the ground.
Remnii now enters the battlefield, casting aura of purity as a radiant aura materializes around her allies. Tol’vas uses roar and then lashes at the recently revived druid, biting him.
She reaches for Tol’vas, and her nails sink into his flesh. Another snake attacks Nutters, but it is unable to connect.
Arthas closes on one of the wildshaped druids, bringing them into critical condition.
Another Herald reaches for Seria, pumping poison into her flesh from her nails. However, Remnii’s aura offers a strong protection from the effect.
The Blessed of the Fang approaches and takes two more shots with her bow--one at Tol’vas and one at Seria. She misses Seria, but the shot at Tol’vas gets redirected to Zap and clanks harmlessly off his shield.
A wind serpent swoops at Nutters, but misses.
The summoned wolf lands a solid hit on the closest wildshaped druid. Uther goes to back up Arthas, but first looks at Zap.
He slams his hammer down on the wildshaped druid, knocking him firmly unconscious. He then rounds around the corner and slams his hammer into the back of her leg.
Seria mauls the other Herald, biting into her arm and gouging her further with her claws. Seria then heals herself.
A poisonous snake strikes at Uther, sinking its fangs into his arm. The swarm of poisonous snakes start to swarm Seria. Zap shoots at the wind serpent, and the serpent bursts into pulp. He then uses his healing shot on Arthas, before rounding his pistol at a giant poisonous snake--killing it as well.
Colonel Nutters extends sharp squirrel paws and slashes at the nearest Herald.
Elissa holds out her ring again, and a shower of sparks crackle in the air and explodes--dropping down a small rail of fire that immediately drops three of the nearest individuals, including the druid.
She moves to a position to try and keep from accidentally killing the druid.
The Promised of the Fang slithers up and makes a swing at Elissa, but she blocks it with her shield. He then constricts her with his tail, dragging Elissa with him.
Remnii carefully steps over the pit trap and heals Seria.
Vel runs along the ceiling and then leaps off of it, casting steel wind strike. She materializes behind the druids and the mutated night elves in a flourish of bladed fury, spinning her sword into a reverse grip as she slices through all of them. She fully materializes in the face of the Promised of the Fang, firmly planting her boot in his face as she lands, knocking him to the ground with a loud hiss of her own, baring her fangs as her eyes flash magenta.
Both the Promised and the Blessed are left dead on the ground, and the few remaining snakes opt to flee--the area now secured.
