| The World of Teréth End - Chronicles - Othic |
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"Too often days swiftly pass / Weeping in the evening grass / There just is not enough time / Forthings you dreamt you'd do / The hours still drift by. "Too many years, too high a cost / Too many lessons earned but lost / And still you complain all the time / Cursing the days before you / Lamentng the days gone by. "And finally laying in your bed / Staring skyward, nearly dead / It all floods back one last time, / The chances that you left behind / But alas there's little left to do / ... but cry." Dirimoran song  |
Terrors of Cenotaph, Part I Ghul hunting begins in earnest. Tharad'Zor is dispatched and his house secured. Dana is discovered in the basement. The company regroups in the corner house to escape the coming storm. Waves of ghul attackers arrive with the night, howling in the streets, bursting through closed shutters. The party withstands the first assault. Bear placed his mailed hand on Mishara's shoulder stating, "We didn't walk all this way in the cold to let you kill everything. Stand aside." Grinning, Mishara lowered his arrow as Bear, Aren, and Vindin moved into position. Bear rose his clicking crossbow and fired at the approaching ghul. With a sickening slurp, the quarrel buried itself into the creature's body. The ghul's eyes turned skyward and it pitched backward to the cobblestones. The other ghuls scattered to alleyways and a side street amiss bow fire but many managed to escape. Dammon led Jak into a nearby building, away from the group. Inside, they found a terrible statue sewn from human hides with distorted heads sewn into the shoulders and chest. Stepping through a door to the rotted statue's left, Jak entered a long room with a heavy dining room table and a man seated at the far end. At Dammon's insistence, Jak charged the seated figure, planting his spear into its chest. The figure gasped and trembled. Suddenly the room was filled with a thick green smoke that burned at Jak's mouth and nostrils. Dammon cast an Asalayd's Wind from the hallway, churning the cloud aside. Jak plunged his spear again and again into his obscured foe, keeping his mouth and eyes closed tight against the erupting cloud. Stepping through the doorway Dammon cast another spell to push the poisonous cloud aside revealing Jak poised above the skewered and motionless form of Tharad'Zor. Jak raced through the house, but finding nothing further of interest left to find the remainder of the group. Dammon grabbed a jeweled staff from the fireplace mantle and settled-in to the long task of perusing bookshelves. In Jak's absence, Dammon and his conscience moved throughout the house, opening locked doors, and exploring all corners of the place. In a dark basement chamber, he heard the voice of child. Unlocking the room he found young Dana standing at the bottom of an old square well, now lined with the parts of those that came before. Helping the girl out he escorted her upstairs to the bedroom while he continued skimming through the books he'd found. Outside, Alcerra organized the soldiers and instructed them to search for ghuls house by house. Within the half-watch, a large section of northern Cenotaph had been searched. Although the sounds of footsteps and creatures scrambling away through the debris of ruined houses was frequent, no ghuls were found. Jak found the soldiers as Bear was climbing onto the town wall to survey the surrounding countryside. Thunder boomed in the distance and Bear reported that a storm was moving through the Oth. Alcerra, desperate to rout and destroy the ghuls, commanded that they find the cemetery, though none knew where it might lay. Jak suggested that Dammon had been there once, but Alcerra insisted that they should not waste time. Soon the soldiers and group were climbing over the stone wall. Circling Cenotaph to the north the group looked across vast untended farms, land that had been abandoned for decades, but no cemetery. A road or two wandered out across the hillsides but only farms and the distant river could be seen. As the thunder and rain approached, Jak convinced the group to return to the house where Dammon was holding-up, suggesting that it was the most defensible location in the town. Reluctantly, Alcerra agreed to this and the group moved back through the walled town. The group knocked on the locked door as the rain began to fall. Dammon opened the door and welcomed the wet group inside. An unearthly howl echoed through the streets. Locking the door the group assembled in the dining room and made plans to start fires in all of the house's fireplaces, to close all shutters and windows, and to post soldiers throughout the house. Lightning flashed outside and the rain began to fall heavily in the town. Within the dining room, Alcerra said that Dammon was a 'thief' and suggested starting fires in the fireplaces with the books about the room. Dammon replied to this with an insult to Draun. Alcerra lowered her trident to skewer the insolent mage, but Dammon raced back through the kitchen and locked himself in the rear bedroom. That evening, tapping was heard against a few of the shutters and soon all. The group gathered and moved to the upstairs believing that area to be more defensible. Opening a window upstairs, they saw dozens of the misshapen creatures milling and hopping in the square below. Bear and Mishara fired into the queue but the ghuls scattered. Moving from window to window they continued this sniping until the ghuls moved away. Soon, some heard footsteps running across the roof of the house followed by something slamming against the slate shingles and rolling down. The noise continued for some time. Bear suggested that something might be tearing the chimney apart so the fires were stoked as high as they could be with the dwindling wood supply. Looking through the upstairs a hatch was found leading into an attic, which Jak volunteered to climb through to investigate. In the cramped attic he could see something flash past a break where the chimney and roof met. The next time it past he thrust his spear through the break but hit nothing. Soon a claw reached in, tearing a large chunk of mortared stones from the chimney. He stabbed forward and the thing let out a terrible howl. Fear seized Jak's heart and the peasant hero fled, pushing his way past Mishara he raced through the house. The group found him cowering and whimpering in a corner about the horror of the creature's sound. Mishara, deciding to investigate further, stuck his head through the ceiling hatch. The creature was upon him instantly, its gaping mouth biting at his head. Mishara dropped into the room below, alerting the others that the creature was inside the house. The soldiers gathered in the hallway. Jak, having overcome the short-lived fear, joined the others to kill the creature. The emaciated wolf-like monster turned the corner and was met with a spear and trident. The whuld was destroyed. The wind rose, throwing the rain upon the house shutters. The night advanced slowly. Toward midnight Bear called that there was motion in the square. In the distance, a group of ghuls had gathered to limp and hop about on the square's far side. As Bear's crossbow began clicking to readiness a sole ghul was seen shuffling across the open square. Mishara called out for the creature to stop, but none could hear it words from that distance. Closing, the creature asked about Tharad'Zor. Mishara was evasive, but Jak called out "We killed him!" Perplexed by this the ghul asked why the 'evil' group had come to their town. The response further perplexed the undead spokesman. The ghul began a string of condemnations at the window onlookers, finishing with "We will feast on your bones this night." Arrows and quarrels rained down from the window and the ghul was pinned to the street. In the distance, the ghuls yipped and screamed while scattering out of view. Vindin called out that things were moving below. People rushed down the stairs to hear the footsteps of the creatures racing from the house through the opened front door. The strange smell of scorched air hung in the back room. Aren called from his window perch at the house front that they were gathering in the street below. From his sill seat the archer leaned from the window and fired down with his bow, picking the creatures from the wall. Jak, Bear, and Mishara raced to the dining room where they saw the slats from all three forward shutters being ripped away from the outside. Jak rushed to the first window, smashing his spear through the heavy glass, and thrusting his spear through the broken shutters. On the far side, something yipped and fell to the street below. Bear and Mishara opened their windows, standing back to fire on the invaders. Vindin and Alcerra raced downstairs to help. Soon the shutters exploded inward and rotted ghuls poured through the windows. Jak stood fast, stabbing at the invading tide with his chanting spear. Alcerra arrived in the rear, spreading holy water about to create a Circle of Protection. Dammon exited the rear bedroom, slipping through the secret door into the kitchen. Wave after wave of ghuls poured through the windows, upsetting the long dining room table. Dammon cast a gale force Asalayd's Wind sending several of the ghuls flying from the room, out through the broken window in front of Jak. Bear shot another standing atop the overturned table, it too fell backward but was sucked out through the window before it could fall far. Mishara, more cautious than normal, fired carefully placed arrow shots through the melee. Soon, the first wave trickled down and the remaining ghuls bound back through the shredded shutters and broken window panes. The group had won a small respite, but none believed it would last very long for the night was still young. (We left off with Tressta in the hallway; Alcerra and Dammon in the kitchen; Dana in the rear bedroom; Bear, Jak, Mishara, and Vindin in the wrecked dining room; Aren in the above sitting room; and the rotten oozing bodies of ghuls strewn everywhere) 13 Mar 1999
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Navigation People Dana (Com1) Introducing Ghuls: The
4th century journal of Sharrom the Journeyer
reveals this about ghuls. "In the lands of the goddess Amra-Dalàsia,
along the high road to Evermith, I
met a man eating another man who had fallen from his horse. When
I approached he regarded me curiously, his maw dripping the juice sucked
from the horseman's cracked skull. I realized at this close distance
that the eater was not a man at all, but rather a monster with the rotted
semblance of a man. Seeing that I was not armed the despicable creature
continued his feast, stopping now and then to answer my questions regarding
what had befallen the poor horseman. It seems that the ghul had
frightened the man's horse sending him to the old flagstones. Indeed,
in the distance, the 'loyal' riderless horse grazed in the lush grasses
as it were like any other pleasant day. Despite its unholsom appetite,
the monster was most conversational and alleviated my fears that I might
be its next meal. It explained that though insatiably hungry (except
following a particularly well-rounded meal) it was also quite lonely for
decent conversation. The 'life' of a ghul it explained was
loathsome and that other ghuls were not good company because when there
were more than one there was never enough 'food', and when there was not
enough 'food' (ever) the only thing they could bear to discuss was how
to get more 'food'. It sighed somehow and gave a wide gesture of
despair, one that it most certainly had seen performed by one of its victims."
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| Ref. PHB (Player's Handbook), © Wizards of the Coast  |
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