Chapter 34: Nightmare World

[OGRE MAGE]

Bo will use his magic to attempt to summon crows or some other avian species to him, settling on rats as a last resort, speaking with them and trying to secure their aid in watching over this area while the group rests.

He could also use his Stone Shape or Repel Insects to make their area safer or more comfortable for the night, if necessary.

“I am grateful for these gifts from your Trithereon Ingrid, though I will never get used to the taste of conjured food over its natural counterpart.”

“Is anyone injured or feeling sick?”

Bo is more cautious about the other vagrants in the building, but offers the same to them if things seem safe enough and any are in need of obvious aid.

[ravenn4544]

Mouser huddles in the cold and darkness, miserable. He sees the vagrants even more miserable coupled with hopelessness. With little to do, he opts for generosity. Quietly and discreetly he'll make small conversation after deftly passing silver to those he speaks to so only they notice.

If that fails, he readies a spell (Friends) to ensure folks see things his way...

[SocraticLawyer]

Urdur thanks Ingrid profusely for the fresh food and water.

If the group waits out the night here, Urdur offers to use his magic to make himself and Telkis invisible, so that the group will not be quite as conspicuous. Urdur also offers to take a watch.

With any available time outside of resting and keeping watch, Urdur studies the mystical tomes in his possession, as well as his spellbook. He's sure that, with reasonable access to a good library, a few weeks of research, the right mix of mercurial components, and a little luck... he could really expand his spellbook. He sighs, knowing that it'll be a long time before he has that chance, assuming he and his friends live through the next few days.

[Inferno]

The Burned Out Workhouse, Blackchapel, Hookhill, Gran March, Greyhawk
Day Four. Night. Tuesday, December 27th, 576 CY







The doomed heroes hide from a city that hunts them in a desolate, crumbling ruin of a burned out workhouse.

Like blessed saints performing miracles in holy scripture, Ingrid, Jerome, Long Bo and Mouser go amongst the forgotten, forsaken wretches that huddle there and feed the poor, heal the sick and bestow upon them coins of silver.





Women fall to their knees and grown men weep with gratitude.

Streetwise and hardhearted, Faron makes sure the dispossessed see his sword. Then Bo negotiates a flock of crows to stand watch over their place of shelter, and notices Ingrid needs healing. White-haired Jerome shares a vagrant's bottle, eager to forget the things he's seen. Urdur quietly offers to make himself and Telkis disappear! (Response, Telkis?)

Then, by flickering candlelight, Urdur recklessly delves further into things Man was not meant to know. The occult scholar explores frightful new passages of the dream journal the dark gnome had brought back from the Dreamlands. Penned by the mysterious Lord Blackchapel, noble-borne occultist and unseen master of the mansion that can shift into that otherworldly realm, it reveals startling and hideous truths about Man's existence:

"The Oerth is changing. The thin veil of this reality is being overthrown by the true reality beneath, that of dreams, or what is considered dreams by the ignorant.

"All existence on this planet is infected by the ancient presence of the Great Old Ones, terrifying and alien gods of impossible power. Our brains, altered by their eldritch influence over millions of years, still carry deep within them that which we can neither perceive nor name with our conscious minds.



"These primal forces that predate humanity, they permeate us, pervade us. They are in our blood, our bone, our minds. They made us! Ia! 'Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not!' 'They exist between the spaces we know!' 'Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold!'"

Amongst the last entries, Lord Blackchapel's final revelation is made manifest:

"It comes clear at last. The Dreamlands is not another physical world or dimension. The Mythos infects the mind. That is where They exist, inside all of us. Its unspeakable gods slumber there, in the human subconscious! That is why we may glimpse Them in our dreams.
"Our nightmares are not invading the waking world. The Great Old Ones reside in our subconscious minds and are invading mankind's consciousness!"

Reeling with alarming comprehension, a new, dreadful realization blossoms in Urdur's beleaguered mind!...

The mysterious dark ritual of black magic that Lord Blackchapel wrote of, aligned with the Old Feast Days and involving multiple human sacrifices, are the crimes of the Hookhill Ripper!

Urdur discovers the murders of the Hookhill Ripper are human sacrifices in a vast occult ritual to shift all human consciousness, and therefore the entire world, into "the Dreamlands!" And the final human sacrifice in Lord Blackchapel's ritual shall be made by "the Hookhill Ripper" in four nights!

Midnight looms when Urdur shares his dire discoveries with his doomed companions! And suddenly, as one, the murder of crows cries in eerie unison with Urdur's every word.


Replies?! (and everyone please roll your Wisdom or lower on 1d20 and post your replies regardless of the outcome. Socratic, please roll twice.)





PC Status:

Faron, Human Thief 5: Move: 9", AC: 4, HP: 22/22
Grey Mouser, Half-Elf Magic-User/Thief 4/5: Move: 9", AC: 5, HP: 21/21, Spells: 3/3 1st lvl, 2/2 2nd lvl
Ingrid Esthof, Human Cleric 5: Move: 6", AC: 3(1), HP: 14/25, Spells: 1/5 1st lvl, 5/5 2nd lvl, 2/2 3rd lvl
Jerome, Human Paladin 4: Move: 9", AC: 3(1), HP: 23/23, Laying Hands: 0/1
Long Bo, Human Druid 6: Move: 9", AC: 2(1), HP: 41/41, Spells: 5/6 1st lvl, 2/4 2nd lvl, 2/2 3rd lvl, 1/1 4th lvl
Telkis Brassfang, Gnome Fighter 5: Move: 9", AC: 0, HP: 37/37
Urdur Shimmerstone, Gnome Illusionist 5: Move: 12", AC: 4, HP: 15/15, Spells: 4/4 1st lvl, 2/2 2nd lvl, 1/1 3rd lvl

PC Magic:

Protection From Evil, 10' Radius (Jerome)

Player Resources:

Tale of Terror (the story so far)
A Dark and Terrible World (maps)
Blasphemous Iconography (the story so far in images)
Desperate Struggles (clues and player notes)

[jemmus]

Faron holds his chin in his hand down. Worse than I even imagined. They're in our minds. And it's not murder by an evil lunatic, but human sacrifice. He looks around at the company. I don't guess anyone knows a good joke?

Wisdom 8 [3d6]=9

[ChubbyPixie]

Save vs. WIS (8): [1d20]=13

Though disturbed by Urdur's reading, Telkis submits readily to the idea of being rendered invisible, immediately recognizing it as a better plan than his two-gnomes-in-a-trenchcoat idea, which he'd only thought of when he remembered a funny story his grandfather used to tell.

[OGRE MAGE]

Bo looks to the crows with interest, wondering if these horrible Great Old Ones infects the minds of denizens of the natural world as well. He shudders at that thought before adding his opinion.

"So the house itself had no bearing on what we did, as these horrors seem to exist only in our minds? What a truly frightening thought, even after all the things we have seen so far."

Unsure what to do next, the druid thinks quietly to himself for a moment.

Wis Check (15) [1d20]=6

[ravenn4544]

Mouser can only remember - to a degree - his own time spent reading ancient evil. He shudders in fear - or regret?

wisdom (9) [1d20]=14

[Scott308]

Ingrid Esthof - Human Cleric

"Well, at least now we know the two are connected, and we know when the next murder will happen. Now we just have to figure out how to stop it. At least we have four days to do so."

Roll under Wisdom (18): [1d20]=18

[jemmus]

Faron says to Long Bo, I understood as the physical horrors are real. The victims are truly, bodily dead. But there are no two dimensions. The mansion is not a ruin here and splendid in a "Dreamland" dimension. Which would mean... during the Old Feast Days, the mansion remains a ruin-- but we go into "Dreamland!" Our battles with the fiends are in our minds, in the parts of them that dream. But the battles are no less real, or deadly. If we die in the dream, we are dead.

But maybe that's what you already said, friend Long Bo. Sorry. He contemplates the metaphysics of it, the paradoxes, the conundrums.... But at last gives up to focus on the thing that he can be certain of: If the last sacrifice isn't stopped, we will all live forever in world of our dreams, the mind of our dreams. And the Old Ones will have their way with all of us. Generation after generation, forever.

[SocraticLawyer]

Urdur is shaken to the core, disturbed by the crows, the dark revelations, his own mind, the illusion of the mundane.....

He doesn't know if he will sleep tonight, or indeed ever again. But he ensorcels first Telkis and then himself against the prying eyes of mortals. He will then attempt to sleep, although he now knows too much to expect gainful rest ever again.

Casts Invisibility on Telkis and Urdur.

Requested rolls:

Wis check (13) [1d20]=8

Wis check (13) [1d20]=11

[Inferno]

The Burned Out Workhouse, Blackchapel, Hookhill, Gran March, Greyhawk
Day Four. Night. Tuesday, December 27th, 576 CY







The doomed heroes had stared into the abyss, uncovering hideous truths and menaces to mankind's existence... and the dark design of the mysterious Lord Blackchapel.

The so-called "Hookhill Ripper" acts with terrible purpose: an occult ritual to allow the Great Old Ones who live in Man's subconscious, close enough to be accessed in dreams, to return to the world and overthrow reality. The final human sacrifice to bring about this psychic apocalypse is mere nights away.

Mercifully, the rhythmic screaming of the crows subsides. Overwhelmed by dire awareness and dread, the unfaltering adventurers succumb to exhaustion and sleep fitfully this night.

Faron, Mouser and Telkis suffer from strange dreams. Lost and alone in an icy labyrinth of depravation and squalor...



... they are chased by something they dare not look upon. Despite their panicked flight through streets without ending, it looms ever closer, ominous and inescapable!

Ingrid, Long Bo and Urdur dream of something that should be deeply buried that has woken up and crawled into the conscious regions of their minds, rewriting the very cells of their brains.



The Dark Mother, the Great Old One that has haunted their dreams since Briarsgate! Reawakened by their contact with the Dreamlands, now it slithers through a labyrinth towards a frightful becoming of full and awful manifestation. Through sheer will, Ingrid, Long Bo and Urdur drag themselves out of their nightmares. They will not succumb to monsters. Their minds are their own... for now.

The doomed heroes awaken at dawn from their horrific dreams but find no relief.

Three days remain... until the world's ending.


Plans?! (Let us now draw things toward their terrible, inevitable conclusion. What are your plans for the next three days, please?)





PC Status:

Faron, Human Thief 5: Move: 9", AC: 4, HP: 22/22
Grey Mouser, Half-Elf Magic-User/Thief 4/5: Move: 9", AC: 5, HP: 21/21, Spells: 3/3 1st lvl, 2/2 2nd lvl
Ingrid Esthof, Human Cleric 5: Move: 6", AC: 3(1), HP: 15/25, Spells: 5/5 1st lvl, 5/5 2nd lvl, 2/2 3rd lvl
Jerome, Human Paladin 4: Move: 9", AC: 3(1), HP: 23/23, Laying Hands: 1/1
Long Bo, Human Druid 6: Move: 9", AC: 2(1), HP: 41/41, Spells: 5/6 1st lvl, 4/4 2nd lvl, 2/2 3rd lvl, 1/1 4th lvl
Telkis Brassfang, Gnome Fighter 5: Move: 9", AC: 0, HP: 37/37
Urdur Shimmerstone, Gnome Illusionist 5: Move: 12", AC: 4, HP: 15/15, Spells: 4/4 1st lvl, 2/2 2nd lvl, 1/1 3rd lvl

PC Magic:

Protection From Evil, 10' Radius (Jerome)

Player Resources:

Tale of Terror (the story so far)
A Dark and Terrible World (maps)
Blasphemous Iconography (the story so far in images)
Desperate Struggles (clues and player notes)

[SocraticLawyer]

Urdur feels his grasp on sanity becoming more tenuous. Even for one as experienced as he is with the manipulation of reality via illusions and phantasms, the little gnome nevertheless remains shaken to his core.

He uses the next few days to turn anyone in the party who wishes to do so invisible, including himself. He continues to pour over the pages of both his own spellbook and the occult writings in his possession.

Urdur urges the rest of the group to prepare as best they can for the showdown that is coming. With little in the way of funds, Urdur has no supplies to purchase for himself. He suggests flasks of oil and holy water for any in the party that have the means to acquire such things.

When the time comes, he joins the party as they attempt to stop the final human sacrifice that will rip this world open. He prays their resources are enough to do so.

[jemmus]

Faron thinks Urdur's suggestion is a good one. He goes to the abject people his companions befriended and asks, Excuse me, friends. Do you know where I might buy some holy water and flasks of oil?

[Scott308]

Ingrid Esthof - Human Cleric

With three days before the big night, the young cleric has something she needs to take care of. In the morning, Ingrid will use some of her water to clean herself up before removing her armor and weapons and changing into her fine clothes. She will then make her way to the temple of Tritherion, making sure her holy symbol is tucked into her clothes to avoid unwanted attention.

"I don't know when...or if...I'll return. But if I'm going to be able to help defeat an ancient evil, I need to atone for my past behavior and make sure I am not in Tritherion's disfavor. Hopefully, a well-dressed young woman traveling by herself will be able to avoid the eye of any law enforcement who may be looking for us.

[OGRE MAGE]

Doing what he knows best, Bo asks the other denizens they helped if there are any animal sanctuaries in Hook Hill, maybe a zoo or the like. Anything to do with animals, really.

If no such place exists, he does what he can to gather information from the animals he can find; rats, birds, alley cats, whatever. He hopes to learn a few tips about how to deal with this abnormal situation with the dream world and the monsters in our minds.

After Urdur makes him invisible, the druid feels more comfortable speaking with the poor urban animals stuck here in this miserable natureless environ, without any looky-loos or a-hole constabularies watching his magical conversations.

[ravenn4544]

Mouser

During the times others are away and he is left to hold the ‘fort’ he’ll study and keep watch. He’ll leverage friends and hold portal and dancing lights to secure those he likes and distract those he doesn’t.

When it’s his turn out, however, he makes the most of it. He’ll take advantage of his sneaky boots and sneaky skills to investigate the area around them and learn of it what can be useful - food and water locations, other exits and obstacles they can use, and interesting places or people to further use or fall back to. He is happy to jump and knock his way to avail these secret places. All the while keeping one step - or spell - ahead of any threats.

[Inferno]

Blackchapel, Hookhill, Gran March, Greyhawk
Day Five. Dawn. Wednesday, December 28th, 576 CY







The doomed heroes awaken at dawn from their horrific dreams.

Three days remain... perhaps for the world.

They set about making preparations to stop the final human sacrifice in Lord Blackchapel's unspeakable ritual to transfer the entire world into the Dreamlands.



Urdur weaves powerful illusions of the mind to render Jerome, Long Bo, Telkis and himself invisible to mortal eyes!

Unseen, the occultic sorcerer pages through bone-chilling tomes of arcane blasphemies.




Faron asks a former prostitute huddled in a corner of the burned out workhouse where he can find oil and holy water.




The bereft unfortunate replies, "Hawksmoor Church is four blocks west ov 'ere. They should 'ave both."

Ingrid cleans herself until she is unrecognizable. She leaves her armor and weapons behind and makes her way back across the polluted river towards the city center.




With every step, poverty falls away and opulence rises. Perhaps mistaken for a servant, she walks unaccosted by the local constables and soon finds a temple of Trithereon unlike any she has ever seen before.





Long Bo learns the city holds no menagerie. Veiled by Urdur's spell of invisibility, he returns to the mansion that crosses worlds and finds its black wreckage still smoldering from the mob's blaze.




In a nearby alley, he finds a hideous swarm of rats feeding on the carcass of a dog. He is thankful it isn't a baby.

Greasy black birds perch nearby, watching hungrily.

Mouser cases the neighborhood between here and the abandoned, burned down Blackchapel Manor.



He sees brothels, workhouses, taverns, slaughterhouses, con men, grifters, prostitutes, pimps, sharpers, vagrants, thugs, pickpockets and other denizens of the brutal slums of Hookhill.


Actions?





PC Status:

Faron, Human Thief 5: Move: 9", AC: 4, HP: 22/22
Grey Mouser, Half-Elf Magic-User/Thief 4/5: Move: 9", AC: 5, HP: 21/21, Spells: 3/3 1st lvl, 2/2 2nd lvl
Ingrid Esthof, Human Cleric 5: Move: 6", AC: 3(1), HP: 16/25, Spells: 4/5 1st lvl, 5/5 2nd lvl, 2/2 3rd lvl
Jerome, Human Paladin 4: Move: 9", AC: 3(1), HP: 23/23, Laying Hands: 1/1
Long Bo, Human Druid 6: Move: 9", AC: 2(1), HP: 41/41, Spells: 5/6 1st lvl, 4/4 2nd lvl, 2/2 3rd lvl, 1/1 4th lvl
Telkis Brassfang, Gnome Fighter 5: Move: 9", AC: 0, HP: 37/37
Urdur Shimmerstone, Gnome Illusionist 5: Move: 12", AC: 4, HP: 15/15, Spells: 4/4 1st lvl, 0/2 2nd lvl, 1/1 3rd lvl

PC Magic:

Protection From Evil, 10' Radius (Jerome)
Invisibility (Urdur): Targets: Jerome, Long Bo, Telkis, Urdur

Player Resources:

Tale of Terror (the story so far)
A Dark and Terrible World (maps)
Blasphemous Iconography (the story so far in images)
Desperate Struggles (clues and player notes)

[jemmus]

Faron says to the former prostitute, Thank you for the information, ma'am. He surreptitiously puts three silver coins in her hand, so as not to have them taken from her by the other denizens of the wretched shelter. He's not rich, but what use is money to anyone if the world isn't saved? He then turns and enters the street, headed west in search of Hawksmoor Church. He does his best to be innocuous, hoping that the cloak permanently stained dark with the blood of his ripped out throat makes him blend in with the impoverished souls and the brutish ruffians of the street. And the ability to blend in and remain unnoticed is the stock of of one who is a thief by trade. Along the way he watches shadowy areas in the streets-- sources of both emerging danger and possible places of refuge.

[SocraticLawyer]

Urdur does his best to remain comfortable in the hovel until the time comes to face his doom. The invisible gnome spends most of his time reading. He helps out his companions with general maintenance of their current quarters and other menial tasks as necessary.

He dreads closing his eyes for sleep, knowing as he does of the incomprehensible horrors lurking in his mind for escape in his dreams, and beyond.