Frei's Memories: Day 19

Rift crossing: Outskirts

We departed into the rift from Nebel under Azaezul's advice. True to our expectations, the soulstone antenna kept the duskriders away from us long enough for us to drive them away. Azaezul led us through a mostly gravitationless field of fog and debris. Surrounded by rumbling, grinding stone there in the nebula, I knew we didn't have a chance of finding our way without the daemon in the lamp. I wasn't crazy about trusting him, but it seemed like our only option. On our way through the debris field, we encountered a hostile group of twisted human-like creatures. To our surprise and disgust, they attacked us by firing their own venom-coated bones at us! Ark and her friends helped us flank them and we easily reduced the abominations to puddles of goo.

Not long after our battle with the abominations, gravity reintroduced itself. Fortunately, Azaezul lead us to a mysteriously intact road leading deeper into the rift. The reintroduction of gravity caught me a bit by surprise. Azaezul insisted that Erebus tries to pull everything down into itself. If that's true, falling off of the lonely road is certainly a life-ending mistake. Soon we a approached an old stone temple, completely infested with abominations. My team charged into the complex with Ark providing backup. Even though we tried to neutralize the abominations a quickly as possible, an abominable priest managed to summon a hideous, decaying demon at one of El's old altars. Hypatia summoned her banishing blade and sent the fiend back to wherever it came from. After the area was fully under control, we did a bit of looking around. It turns out the abominations were worshiping some sort of un-El being. Considering how nasty un-Bahamut is, I shudder to contemplate the real existence of an un-El. Azaezul seemed to get quite a kick out of our collective fear. He said, "Those killed by Iblis are doomed to serve him."

Beyond the temple, we found a wall of angry shadows blocking our path. The umber wall stood between two black obelisks, like the one we saw in Erebus. The "Oblivion Gate", as Azaezul called it, was put there by the old gods to block off the rift in both directions. It appeared that the abominations had tried several times, unsuccessfully, to cross. Hypatia courageously wielded our shadowstone and parted the shadows. We passed through, but Hypatia and the shadowstone seemed drained. There didn't seem to be any going back, so we pressed on in darkness and silence on a strange stone road through the middle of the rift.

Rift crossing: Oblivion

As we walked through the rift, the emptiness gnawed at us. It still gives me the shivers to think that the creator of our universe fell to his death though that place. I'm frankly surprised there's anything in there at all. The origin of the road is a mystery. Azaezul was close-lipped about it. There's a black hole in history between El and Iblis's battle and the eradication of the gods and primordials. I wonder if there's anyone who knows who has managed to hold on to sanity.

The sounds of crashing rocks shook us from our contemplative pace. A storm of stone came raining down on us. A few stone were so large that they punched right through the road, which regenerated itself (which horrified and pleased me at the same time). We ran as fast as we could and quickly arrived, beaten and bruised, at a lonely guard post. Inside, we found a half-elf from Zerthadium. We as emaciated and half insane. We gave him some of our provisions and had a short chat. We ascertained that he was the sole survivor of an expedition into the rift. He didn't seem to know Victor, nor could he remember much. He seemed capable, but a bit crazy. I had some reservations about taking him with us, but we couldn't leave him. We would have spoke longer, but a flood of life-draining shadows started seeping into the room. We fought them the best we could, and even stunned them with the soulstone antenna, but it was no use. They drove us back out into the pounding cacophony.

Rift crossing: The Fortress of Decay

Still being pounded by stone rain, we ran into a set of sturdy stone gates. The gates controlled one of the entry points to a huge stone enclosure, large enough to contain a whole city. Spike teleported through the arrow slit at the top of the gate, bashed some abominations, and opened the gate. We stormed the gates and eliminated the guards before they could kill Spike. We took a moment to heal and rest in the guard houses. It seemed as though the city was deserted to we took our time. We found some journals from the abominations. They seemed to be waiting for someone to break through the Oblivion gate so they could escape the rift and spread the disease of their master, a being they reverently "Papa Nurgle." Following Azaezul's directions through the city, we came across a patrol of hideously diseased goblins who mistook us for Nurgle's apostles. We played our good fortune the best we could. Mal sacrificed one of them and the half-elf sent the rest on a pilgrimage to nowhere.

As we proceeded deeper into the city, the buildings started being coated in a noxious slime. As we neared the town center, we discovered a whole colony of Nurgle's plague bearers. They gave us a friendly greeting and offered to infect us so we could joint their number. We passed on that offer, of course, and asked for their leader. When the welcome wagon went to summon their local priest, we made a break for it and tried to get through the colony. Unfortunately for us, we entered a new world of pain when we encountered one of Nurgle's demon friends, an Angel of Decay. She summoned her master and blasted us with clouds of maggots and filth, infecting some of our number with the plague. She tried to use the disease to command my team, but I guess the infection was too fresh; it wasn't enough to save her from our wrath. With Ark and friends slaughtering abominations left and right, we pressed in on the Angel. About that time, the most disgusting creature I've ever seen fell from the ceiling. A huge mass of diseased flesh, it's abdomen exploded and entrails dragging, approached us and offered us safe passage in exchange for Azaezul.

I didn't care for Azaezul, but doubted we would be able to complete the crossing without him, so we finished the Angel and charged the hulking mass. Quaku shot it in the eyes, but that only blinded it for a moment. The thing's bloated flesh seemed impervious and it entangled Mal in it's intestines and drew him into its innards. Spike leaped into the disgusting mass and retrieved our priest. I vomited. Then, Quaku did something that completely horrified me. He charged right in to the monster's guts and buried himself in it's abdomen. There, he planted the the origami tree we lifted from Helmut's place. Explosively, a 40 ft. oak tree formed, ejected Quaku, and splattered the monster everywhere. The blow to their master reduced most of the more afflicted abominations to piles of goo. Azaezul assured us that Nurgle was not finished, but it would take a week or more for him to reform. We set to work slaughtering the remaining abominations. We cleared as much of the colony as we could, but we had to make haste---those of use suffering from the plague had to get out of there. On our way, we met Kain, one of Azaezul's old friends. He lead us directly to Nurgle's high temple in hopes we could destroy the plague lord for good. In the inner sanctum, we found the most horrifying thing I had yet seen---a hunk of El's decaying flesh. There wasn't a damn thing we could do about that. We left Kain behind as our ticket back inside and got the Hell out of the Fortress.

Rift crossing: The Maze of Ith and the Umbral Sea

We passed through a maze of roads that continuously shifted and reformed. It seemed to go on forever, but Azaezul seemed to always know the way and we escaped. He said the maze has many, many exits, but most of them are terrible, leading to more and more places just like the Fortress of Decay. As we marched on, Azaezul was quiet. I wonder if he was thankful. Though I was previously afraid that handing Azaezul over to Nurgle would have resulted in Nurgle releasing Azaezul, I'm certain now that things would have turned out very, very badly for our little demon in the lamp if he fell into Nurgle's vile clutches. Don't read me wrong! I don't think we can trust him; I think we can use his rivalry the other rift lords against him.

The silent of the rift gradually gave way to the ominous sound of a waterfall. As we continued down the road out of Oblivion, it seemed as though a thousand oceans were falling down, all around us, cascading into Erebus. The road became a long causeway over a swiftly flowing pool of dark water. We walked for hours until we came upon a channel and dock with series of stairs and aqueducts on the other side. We used another piece of magic origami to summon a boat to ferry ourselves across the umbral sea and to the stairway out of the rift.

I have never been so happy to see the sky, even as bleak a sky the one on the other side of the rift. We stood on a platform over the ocean as it fell into the abyss. The sick members of the crew shivered and vomited. Luckily for us, the platform was equipped with a bright beacon, which we immediately activated. Within a few hours, a heavily armed ship with Zerthadian markings arrived. Put the sick members of our number into quarantine, but since we were so far away from Nurgle, the priest and the dragonborn had little difficulty curing the infection. It was a long trip. I couldn't stop thinking about my family and what manner of things Victor would want from us . . .

Frei's Memories: Day 18

The "Genie" Lamp

The great big dragon was very happy with us for the way we handled her business partner so she decided to devote some resources to helping us with the Magic Lamp that had been tantalizing us since we found it. Katja made us a huge, multiwalled magic circle to contain whatever came out of the lamp and we summoned the genie. Well, the creature inside was certainly NOT a genie. A huge demonic creature sprang from the lamp and attacked us. I was very, very worried, but Katja's barrier prevented the demon from reaching us. After bashing the barriers a bit longer, the demon collected itself and had a nice chat with us.

The wolf-headed beast introduced itself as Azaezul, one the original El betrayers. In his own words, "They locked me in the lamp for the same crime that got the fat dragon trouble---Deicide!" If we are to believe what poured out of his mouth, it seems he personally witnessed the battle between Iblis and El that created the rift and is quite proud of it. After that charming introduction, Azaezul promised us all sorts of things, from crossing the rift to freeing Katja, in exchange for releasing him. He tried to intimidate us to get his way, but he made a huge mistake. He started trash talking and threatening Katja and she wasn't about to tolerate it. Burning a positively huge amount of essentia, Katja hexed the demon, reducing his size and power so much that she felt it safe to lower the barriers and hand him over to us.

Azaezul seemed a lot less threatening after being reduced to gecko size. We threatened to put him back in Katja's vault for all eternity and he changed his tone. He promised us that he knew a way across the rift and he would guide us through just as long as we let him travel with us. We made the deal with the demon and put him away. Katja warned us that the curse she place would only last about three weeks (so we should be very careful to find a safe place to store him then!).

Not long after dealing with the devil, Ark and friends returned from their search with some books from Eibelstat. Katja worked with us to learn a few helpful tricks to get by in the rift, including a way to use our soulstone to keep the duskriders at bay. Then we had a nice dinner, got some rest and prepared ourselves for the harrowing adventure to come. While I was fretting about what we would find on the other side of the rift, it occurred to me that Katja has been spending an unsustainable amount of resources on us. She hasn't gotten down to selling her personal possessions, yet, but that can't be far away. Azaezul promised us we would find a way to get her out of the Obsidian prison on the other side of the rift. I hope it's not a lie. Even more, I hope it's really the right thing to do; Katja is a very shrewd, very dangerous creature.

Azaezul:
The demon in the magic lamp tries to act as scary and psychotic as possible, even to the point of absurdity. Although I sometimes find myself laughing at him now that he's small, I have little doubt the sick bastard really does get his jollies from watching things suffer and die. We must not let him lull us into a sense of security. I firmly believe he will take advantage of us in any way he can.