Caleb took a few moments to take in the bizarre surroundings in this new place, glancing briefly up at the sun-eye before resolving not to do so again. He looked to the shrieking sound, and soon realized that what he’d assumed were scrap piles were anything but. He made his mind up on what to do as they began to move nearer, not knowing what exactly they were but recognizing an intent to kill when he saw it. Quickly he half turned, poking his head through the portal long enough to shout at the group on the other side. “Two hostiles close, gonna need help.”

His warning delivered, he pulled his head back through and wasted little enough time taking aim at the nearest thing, firing three quick shots for what, on a creature of flesh and bone, would be vulnerable spots.

Ooc: rolling initiative, then expending a point of grit to make a sharp shoot deed, allowing my attacks to target touch ac for the round, and reducing my current grit to 3. Following that, I will make a full attack, supplemented by rapid shot for an extra shot. The result of my initiative is 17, and the results of my attack rolls are 21, 12(forgot to delete that 1 on the second roll, whoops), and 16. Damage for individual shots in the event some of them missed are 17, 9, and 17 magical piercing damage. If these creatures are within 30feet, the results of my attack and damage rolls all increase by 1, and my clustered shots feat means damage is totaled before applying DR.

Bristle rushed in the moment Caleb said he needed aid. When she spotted the foes, the cleric stood between Caleb and the enemies, and verbally signaled her bear to do the same. She held her shield high and prepared for an inevitable attack as she studied the forms of the creatures before them. In the Infernal language, she called out to the enemies, "What is your purpose?" However, she felt she probably already had a good guess.

---

Move: Stand between Caleb and the foes.
Standard: Total Defense (+4 dodge bonus for the round)
Free/Swift: Order bear to help her, use a Knowledge roll (with Guidance), speak Infernal.

Knowledge:
14:41, Today: Bristle Chonk rolled 19 using 1d20+7.  Knowledge: Planes, with Guidance - Daemons?

Initiative:
14:42, Today: Bristle Chonk rolled 6 using 1d20-1.  Initiative.

Hester stepped into the portal along with Bristle and stands beside Caleb.  On entry, she adjusts her sleeves so that her clothing appears to be gaily coloured rags.  She says nothing but stands ready to cast a spell should the answer to Bristle's question be hostility.

21:00, Today: Hester Darkeye rolled 25 using 1d20+8.  Initiative.
Holds until opponents make a physically hostile move, then casts grease on the feet of the one on the left.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:02, Wed 28 July 2021.

"Why not just exit the portal then?" Voh'ren mutters to himself. However, he follows the others into the void. As he does, he draws his falchion with a practiced ease and prepares for the worst...

OOC:

20:21, Today: Voh'ren Wildheart rolled 13 using 1d20+2.  Initiative.
20:23, Today: Voh'ren Wildheart rolled 18 using 1d20.  Knowledge-Favored Enemy?

Making a Favored Enemy Knowledge roll. If the creatures are Evil Outsiders, then it's 20. If they are Undead, then 22.

One of the metallic creatures speaks in a voice of grinding metal, in Abyssal. "We ensure that the fallen angel is not disturbed. And she is not expecting company."

One of Caleb's bolts lands true, but seems to do little more than add to the clutter of detritus that is its neck. At the same time, the one on the left stumbles on the suddenly slick ground, but otherwise seems untroubled.

In response, a volley of daggers flies out at Caleb and Hester, though all of them go wide, sailing off into the distance. The other daemon simply stands still. "Turn and go, mortals. This place is not meant to be fouled by such as you."

"Genthodaemons," Voh'ren says softly to the others as he recognizes the jagged, barbed demons. "The foot soldiers of Abaddon. Born of those who kill for no other reason than because they were told to. They'll resist elements, and can't be hurt by acid or threats of death. Simply fighting near them invites maiming and death, especially if you fight them hand to hand."

Voh'ren sheathes his falchion.

"I'd recommend asking them for an audience with their leader," he advises the others, "and accepting their offer to return to our plane while we await her arrival."

"I think they missed because they chose to", said Hester.  "I agree with Vohren"

Bristle nodded in agreement with Voh'ren and Hester. "I'll let them know," she said to her allies in Common.

She then effortlessly switched from speaking Infernal to replying to the Daemons in Abyssal. "We shall do as you ask for now. But it is imperative that we speak with the fallen angel, Crocutiel. Tell her Ascal the Whisperer has returned, and we seek to strike her down." Bristle then nodded to her fellow party members, signaling that she thought it appropriate to step back through the portal into the thin mountain air.

Hester nodded and waited for the others to step through into the mountain air before finally, and reluctantly, she does the same.

Even Firea agreed with Voh'ren's assessment on this one as the he explained what they were up against. Then followed the others.

[OOC: Catching up on my rolls here.

23:30, Today: Firea rolled 22 using 1d20+3.  Fort DC 15.
23:30, Today: Firea rolled 18 using 1d20+3.  Fort DC 16.
23:30, Today: Firea rolled 5 using 1d20+3.  Fort DC 17.

I only missed one save so the Restoration spell should have made me all good.

23:34, Today: Firea rolled 12 using 1d20+2.  Initiative.

If it's still needed. :) ]

The two genthodaemons exchange a look and a few words in Abyssal before one says, tone wary but not hostile any longer, "We will tell the Fallen. Wait outside."

Out in the cold mountain air, the portal remains open, but provides little comfort from the thin air and growing chill of the mountain as the sun dips towards the horizon. Without the exertion of climbing to keep you warm, the chill becomes more pronounced, and as minutes tick by, you start to wonder if you have been left here to die from exposure on the mountain's barren summit.

Finally, perhaps an hour later as the shadows grow long, a skeletal hand reaches through and beckons. Stepping back into the dark world of Abaddon, you find yourself face to face with a skeletal figure in dark robes bearing a quarterstaff. The daemon, which Bristle recognizes as a thanadaemon, a powerful daemon representing death by old age, nods courteously.

"My Lady Crocutiel will see you now. Follow me, please." He turns and walks along the stone, staff clicking against the stone with each measured step. There is no sign of the two metallic daemons who met you before.

A hundred yards or so along the stone bluff, you reach a wide river, hundreds of feet across, with a small skiff bobbing in it. "Step aboard, and mind you stay in the boat. These waters are not welcoming to your kind." The thanadaemon steps onto its skiff, and once everyone is aboard, pushes it out into the water.

Perhaps ten minutes pass on the water, the gently lapping waves of the dark river (how deep is it? you cannot see the bottom) never quite splashing into the boat. Ahead, you see an island in the river. The boat docks at it, and the thanadaemon beckons you off.

Ahead, around a curve of the island, a figure sits, her feet dangling off the edge of the small island. Her toes are mere inches from the water. Cloaked and hooded, she is anonymous, but there is an aura of power around her, as well as a deeply unsettling feel that can't be placed. If Abaddon feels like standing in the presence of Death, this feels like standing in the presence of Horror, and cuts just as deep. It's as though something in you knows that you are looking at something awful, something out of nightmares, and it is screaming at you to flee before the monster sees you.

"You carry her seal. Sarenrae's. They still use that symbol? Funny." Her voice doesn't match that horrifying aura. It sounds smooth, melodious, sweet as honey, and emotionless.

She turns, and you see under the cloak. She has the build of a bipedal hyena, but she is cadaverously thin, and her fur solid black. Her eyes, too, are solid black, a black so deep you could lose yourself in them for years.

"Welcome to my humble abode. You'll pardon the lack of hospitality. I don't often have visitors." A chuckle spills out, bitter as bile. "Can't imagine why."

"Heh." She said simply as the being she saw actually wasn't the being she expected to see. "Interesting." She continued, just as simply, as took in the being with more curiosity.

Caleb had fully meant to fight his way through the daemons, but listened, albeit hesitantly, to Bristle and Voh’ren, walking backwards, keeping his weapon trained on the creatures as he stepped through the portal.

He waited impatiently, and had nearly resolved to go back in and find the fallen angel by himself if he had to when the thanadaemon came to fetch them. He followed near the front, arbalest loaded and ready as they walked back through the portal. He was first off when they arrived at the island, scanning the gravel beach for movement as the others exited.

His resolve shook though, when he came face to hood with Crocutiel. He felt his heart seize briefly when he saw her face, and for the briefest instant he was reliving the terror of being trapped fighting in a building set alight by insurgents, caught like a rat in a trap. Then the moment passed and, placing a hand on the holy symbol, answered, his voice steadying as he spoke.

“I’m surprised I have it too. Figured a goddess of mercy wouldn’t take kindly to my asking for help, but apparently she did. I prayed, and she sent something I’m told was a Seraph to give me your name, because you’ve got a vested interest in seeing a certain witch dead. Were they right? Do you want that parasite called Whisper put down?”

While waiting on the mountain, Voh'ren makes himself as comfortable as possible. He pulls out his bedroll to use as a cushion to lean against as he sits on the ground. He takes off his longbow and checks the string, double-checking the tie and its tension.

When they are invited back into the portal, Voh'ren returns his bedroll to its place and re-shoulders his bow. Before he enters, he picks up a small pebble from the ground---something to serve as a reminder of where he is from and that whatever he faces in this realm will hopefully only be temporary. As he steps aboard the skiff, he pulls his cloak close around him and squeezes the pebble in his palm.

Upon meeting Crocutiel, the mistress of this shard of Abaddon, he stands silently. He glances over at Caleb when the fallen angel mentions Sarenrae before returning his attention to the fallen angel. Her joke, as bitter as it is, tugs the faintest of smirks from the unscarred side of the Half-Orc's face.

"It is a bit of a climb."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:09, Fri 30 July 2021.

"And such a lovely climate, too, when you arrive here. I can picture the tourism slogans already. The view is to die for." Without a pause, the fallen herald turns towards Caleb. "Want her dead? Hm. Not as such, but for reasons that will require a bit of explanation."

"I worked with Whisper, once. Long time back. Long enough back that you don't have the capacity to grasp the time scale involved in more than the most trivial ways. We worked together, fought off an orc army, saved a dwarven hold, not far from where you came through at. The two of us went to the top of the tallest mountain near it to watch the happy little dwarves celebrate, have ourselves a fucking moment. Would you believe, I thought to myself at the time that I understood now why Sarenrae liked humanoids?"

She laughs, the sound oozing out bitterly. "Fucking stupid of me. Instead, I watched in horror as Whisper's own army led the dwarves out of the hold in manacles to be used as slave labor on some project or other. I turned to her and demanded an explanation, and that's what she told me, some project or other, she didn't recall what she'd earmarked the labor for. I sought to kill her, and found her a match for my own power - and then she did the worst thing she could have done to me."

"She surrendered. Fully and honestly surrendered. Begged me to redeem her and show her what to do. While in the backdrop, I could see the slavers she called her own, ravaging lives for the sake of something she didn't care about enough even to remember."

The hyena-like mouth splits in a smile jagged like broken glass. "Sarenrae preaches forgiveness. Never strike down a foe who has surrendered, isn't that what they told you when you took up your holy mantle? One of her core edicts. I could feel it in me that day. I was called on to surrender. To forgive. And I couldn't do it. I tried to strike her down, to call down the fire of the Heavens on her, and my power failed me. I had lost the faith. I had lost everything. She laughed, and teleported away, left me on that mountaintop with the shards of my world falling around me."

Now, she turns away again, looks out over the water. "That's what I want. Not death. Death isn't enough, not remotely enough, to satisfy me. I want to burn her world down around her. I want her to feel the despair of knowing that everything she wanted and worked for and fought and bled for was for nothing, that every sacrifice she ever made was in vain, that history will revile her and spit on her name. I want her to experience that moment when everything goes wrong and will never be right again, when you're broken too badly to ever be repaired. I want to do to her exactly what she did to me. But I'll do it better."

Caleb’s face hardened like stone as he heard yet another story of Whisper’s past, another atrocity committed and a new deception revealed. He nodded grimly as Crocutiel shared her wishes with them, and shrugged before answering. “When the seraph came to me, they asked if I’d be willing to do what had to be done to end this, and I said I never leave a job unfinished. The way I see it, Whisper’s a gutless liar who’ll do anything to save her own skin, and that includes pretending to surrender. She had her chance to change her ways, and she turned it down. At this point she’s like a rabid dog, kindest thing you can do is put it down before it can hurt anyone else. Whisper has to die and be forgotten. Every hint she ever existed wiped away, and whatever she has for a soul locked somewhere where it’ll never be seen or heard from again, and you can help make that happen. Right now she’s running loose in the living world, making chaos and misery, getting exactly what she wants. You can take that from her, strip her down to nothing but a scared woman about to finally die, centuries of plotting and cruelty and treachery for nothing. All you have to do to get that is help us,” He said in as flat a voice as he could manage, hoping to appeal to Crocutiel’s thirst for revenge, if nothing else.

"Whisper is my foremother," said Hester, "and I have had to live my life learning to live with that curse printed on my body and soul down to the tiniest bit.  I would see her punished in the way Crocutiel says and I would find my sisters and free them so that we can make our own way in the world for good or evil with our ancestress not just forgotten but irrelevant."

Crocutiel looks at Caleb, her expression inscrutable. "You bear Sarenrae's emblem. You cannot be trusted with this. It's nothing personal." Another glance at Bristle. "And you have too much of her about you to rely upon. Again, nothing personal." Firea: "Far too impetuous. This demands calculation." Voh'ren: "As for you, you are too gentle, I can see that on your soul."

And then, finally, her black eyes turn to Hester, and she smiles. "You, though. You...I believe. And thus, it is you I will entrust with this." The fallen angel pulls from her cloak a simple candle, beeswax with a cotton wick. She holds it with something akin to reverence, but does not immediately pass it over. "Whisper hides within a demiplane, a pocket of reality. However, where most such are anchored to a specific set of coordinates, hers moves unpredictably within the Dimension of Time. That is how she has evaded reprisal for so long - the Dimension of Time, for reasons and by methods that you cannot fathom, is barred to all not of the mortal realm. Not I, nor Sarenrae, nor Asmodeus, nor Pharasma Herself can set foot within that world, nor send our power to it on our own. But you. You are mortal, all of you, and you can be our agents there. When the time comes, and you are prepared, light the candle. It will take you and all those with you to that alien world, and guide you through it to her hiding hole."

She looks at each of you in turn. "You are working in realms beyond yours, with powers beyond your imagination. There are rules. When you arrive in the dimension of time, you will be on the Desolate Shore, the shore at the edge of forever. Ahead will be a green meadow. Do not look at the meadow or you will be carried to it, losing your opportunity and perhaps your soul. Do not enter the water, or you will be carried over the Cataracts, excised from this world and forgotten to time itself. Instead, turn and enter into the jungle behind you. The light of the candle will protect you from the creatures of that jungle, but they will speak to you. Do not leave the light, and for the love of all that you hold dear, do not extinguish the candle. If you do, all will be lost, and you will be bound in a prison of time until the spiral ends. You will have six minutes and two seconds of light in which to march through the jungle, with just under a second left to cross the door, following the direction the candle is brightest. Do not tarry, do not make use of magic to travel - you must walk. Am I clear?"

"A fair assessment," Voh'ren replies to Crocutiel as she judges his worth and finds him lacking a required edge. After a lifetime of struggling to repress the Orcish rage that burns in his blood, it would be folly to deny it. However, he nods in agreement when the fallen angel determines Hester the proper bearer of the candle.

"But a wise choice. I don't pretend to know all of what Whisper can take from us, but Hester may have the most to lose."

Voh'ren listens carefully to the instructions and commits them to memory. He repeats them to make sure he understands them correctly.

"Light the candle only when ready, and know there are but six minutes and two seconds to complete our journey---one we must make without use of magic. Upon arrival, turn away from the shore. Keep our eyes only on the jungle, stay within the candle's light, and ensure that it stays afire. Go where the flame burns brightest, ignore what the jungle's creatures have to say, and cross the doorway by the last second."

Voh'ren bows his head gratefully to Crocutiel for granting them an audience and a chance to set things right, and then looks over at Hester to see if she agrees with the angel's instructions.

Hester puts away the candle, hiding it away carefully and curtseys to Crocutiel, a graceful, formal and deep curtsey that speaks of submission and an awareness of position.  "I thank you, oh Fallen one.  We will all do that which is needed."

To Vohren she says, "No Brother Vohren.  Hester has nothing to lose but I have the most to gain from Whisper's removal from the board."

But then she has an idea and asks Crocutiel, "Does magic work at all in that place?  I think the answer to that makes a difference to our strategy."

"Magic will work, though at times unpredictably. But the candle is a fragile working, and sensitive - it has to be sensitive. If you use a spell to fly, it may give a false reading. If you teleport the interference may extinguish it. I dislike trusting so much to so tenuous a thread, but it is a great working to open even so small a door to your destination. That candle was the work of...."

The fallen angel pauses, her dark eyes fixed elsewhere, for a moment. "Whisper has found her vessel...the girl has fled Andoran and found protectors, good. It will take Whisper at least seven hours to bring her forces to bear, and half an hour to break through the defenders. Another half-hour to secure the vessel. An hour to prepare the ritual, and however long the girl's will holds out. Nine hours and little more is the timeline, ladies and gentlemen. If you are not in her hiding place by then, she will be reborn into this world in her full power. There is no more time to dally. My boatman will take you to the other members of the pact. It will not take but minutes, on the Styx. Ask any final questions and go, speak with the others, rest. And then light the candle, and remember the rules. Six minutes and two seconds only."

Caleb had shrugged as Crocutiel said she didn’t trust him. He hadn’t expected her to, not really. He’d been making ready to return to the boat when she’d begun to stare off into nothing, and his grip nearly slacked entirely when she shared the news before tightening considerably.

If he’d been angry before, when he heard yet another tale of Whisper’s depravity, that was nothing compared to the fury coursing through him when the fallen angel informed them of what was happening. Whisper had found Robin, and was trying to take her. His veins froze and his face resembled nothing else but a statue of a wrathful angel, condemnation and hate etched into every line.

“No questions from me, call your boatman so we can get help to perform a long overdue execution.”

Bristle had been listening and observing patiently, content to examine every aspect of the fallen angel's story. But when the angel revealed that they only had nine hours left, both the changeling's green eye and brown eye opened wide with alarm. Nine hours!? Bristle had been expecting to have a few weeks to prepare, at least. Maybe even years. But nine hours? The cleric's heart began pounding heavily behind her armor and she had to manually will herself to avoid going into a full-on panic.

But she knew she couldn't afford to panic. The less time they had remaining, the less they could afford such luxuries as panic.

Instead of rushing to leave like Caleb seemed to be doing, Bristle took several deep breaths and stood firm. She spoke her first words to Crocutiel. "Before we leave, can you tell us what we should expect to find inside Whisper's little hidey-hole? Do you know of any common strategies that would be sure to fail? After all, you've fought her before." If Whisper was immune to fire, for example, Bristle was sure Firea would like to know.

The cleric looked around at her companions, noting that some still seemed a bit ragged from their trip up the mountain. She added to her questions, "And I don't suppose you have any of that angelic healing magic left in you, do you? Our trip here was not without cost, and I would prefer we all be in tip-top shape if we are going to face Whisper in nine hours." A bit of the panic she had been trying to hold back slipped from her lips at the end, but she quickly reigned it back in again.

The cleric had more she wanted to ask, but wanted to make sure she received answers to the most important things first.

"Whisper is a master of misdirection and confusion. Trust nothing your eyes can see, and prepare as best you can for illusion and chaos, as well as enchantment spells. I believe Frilogarma has been working on that, and will be able to provide a shield. Her hiding place will be...strange, a pocket of reality responsive to thought and will - a sort of lucid dream, but everything that happens is very real."

At the mention of healing, Crocutiel's face twitches into another twisted, bitter smile. "Did you know that an angel's abilities are actually closely tied to her form and nature? When I fell, I lost the ability to heal...I think Zedoran is actually more likely to be able to restore you to health than I. He is an alchemist beyond compare."