Sschindylryn Rises?

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Tanlaus
Quality Control
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Joined: Thu Jul 18, 2019 8:15 pm

Sschindylryn Rises?

Unread post by Tanlaus »

Nephym woke with a start, knives already in hand. It took him a moment to realize he was in a bed, and mostly unclothed. "Where did these knives come from?" was his first question, followed by "where am I and who's body is that on the floor?" As he looked around the room it started to come back to him... empty bottle of Menzobrazzanzen Azure on the table, map of the caravan route between S'shamath and Ched Nasad on the wall, stack of explosive traps in the corner, and three hundred blood soaked gold coins laying around the body. "Right, the heist... what were we arguing about anyway?" He stared at the body for a moment but nothing came. "Must not have been important. Oh well." He gets out of bed, gets dressed, and sets one of the traps by the door before leaving. "Best to just... do away with the evidence."

Outside he found himself in the Darkwoods, which put him in a bad mood. "No heist, no coin.... well enough for breakfast at least," he thought as he snagged a passing slave trader's coin purse with his tail, "this is a terrible way to start a cycle." He purchased a few slices of mushroom bread with roathe butter from a kiosk near river then headed for the portal back to S'shamath proper. An explosion rocked the district as he reached it, but he did not stop or turn around. "Better just to go. Much better."

Apparently the explosion drew a lot more attention than he anticipated. Could be the number of traps he left in the place did more damage than he intended. Could be the fact that his recently deceased partner was a former member of the bureaucracy. Or it could be that someone finally figured out who he used to belong to. Whatever the answer he thought it best to leave town for a bit, which is how he found himself in Mist Lake, staring out into the water, feeling sorry for himself. Until he saw a boatman preparing to cast off.

"Where are you headed?" Nephym asked.
"Up river." The drow answered. He didn't seem much interested in conversing with a tiefling. Nothing new there.
"How about a passenger?"
"Boat's full."
It was completely empty.
"How about a hundred gold coins and a passenger?"
That got the drow's attention.
"Coin first."
Nephym paid the man and hopped on the boat. It was a long ride to the ruins, he was sure he'd steal it all back by the time they arrived. And steal it back he did, along with thirty extra coins he used to secure passage back when he emerged again.

His plan was to head into the ruins, kill some of the cannibals lurking among them, take their stuff, and head back to the lake, slightly richer and in a much better mood. "Quick and easy," he thought to himself. "What could go wrong?"

Everything apparently.

Everything was different about the place. No cannibals to be found and the few bone golems he ran across seemed slightly worse for the wear. It didn't take long to find out why.

He stuck to the shadows as he entered the halls out of habit, and it probably saved his life. There was a priestess there along with several male guards. These weren't unruly cannibals. Their armor was well maintained and polished. They scouted the place with discipline, much more typical of a proper Qu'ellar. They all wore some kind of signet ring as well. Nephym's first instinct was to steal one of the rings to study it, but getting closer he realized they were probably quite valuable and decided he needed to have them all.

So he killed everyone.

Wasn't easy, the priestess was well armed with divine magic and her guards were Blackguards, calling up the bones littering the floor to rise and aid them, but he managed by flitting from shadow to shadow to keep them from getting their bearings.

Pressing on into the halls he ran into several more groups, and even got ambushed by one while killing a necromancer that seemed to be hiding in a back hallway. He only survived that by calling his own shadow to help him fight. Together they emerged victorious and the tiefling pocketed another handful of rings.

After the ambush he decided it was best to leave. Whatever was going on seemed much bigger than anything he could deal with alone. And his pack was getting full anyway.

The trip back through the ruins was quiet but down by the river he found the boatman dead on the shore and another ambush waiting for him. Nephym set all of the traps he had recovered in the ruins, had Shadow reveal himself, and the idiot guard with their idiot undead charged, dying before they got close. Meanwhile Nephym hopped between shadows, stepped out behind the priestesses, and killed them both before they could ward themselves.

After adding to his collection of rings, Nephym kicked to boatman's body into the river- not before fleecing it of course- and headed back to Mist Lake.

There, sitting calmly on the dock, he was finally able to study the rings. He had recovered twelve in all and they bore the same insignia, Qu'ellar Szind.

"Whatever is going on, it's big."
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