Wandering Wolves: Triumph of the Demons

Dravago 13 - Dravago 15, YK 1000

As William moved to the door to watch out for whatever trouble Elias' arrival heralded, Brand and Lysander attended to Elias, restoring him enough to wake him. He explained that he and the Young Wolves had been guarding a Morgrave Expedition into the jungle for the last few weeks, but that they had been ambushed and taken prisoner by the Emerald Claw in the last week or so.

The Emerald Claw kept the Morgrave team working, looking for artifacts, and Elias confirmed that he had heard the term "Operation: Ascendance" mentioned by one of their leaders. However, this all became a moot point when demons swarmed the camp, killing indiscriminately. The other Young Wolves told Elias he had to go and get help, had to find the Wandering Wolves in Stormreach, and he reluctantly fled.

He didn't know how long it had taken him to reach Stormreach, but he knew that he had to find out what had happened to the expedition and his friends.

William heard a commotion in the common room downstairs, and Lysander came out into the hallway to join them, the two of them heading down to see what was going on. They found Sergeant Natobe of the Watch, who was looking for the Wolves, and asked that they come with him to see the Coin Lord.

The Wolves traveled with Natobe and saw that Stormreach was somewhat deserted-looking. Citizens were being swept into the nearest building, and William noticed that the usually lackluster Stormreach Guard was working with more urgency. They also saw that the Iron Watch, the elite warforged units, were out in force. Lysander remarked that it didn't look like Stormreach at all.

When they arrived at the Stormreach Recruiters, they found the offices transformed into a temporary war room. Maps were up on the walls, and a bald dwarf with a black and silver braided beard strode through in his mithril chain shirt, barking orders. He was introduced to the Wolves as the Coin Lord of Stormreach, Yorrick Amanatu.

Yorrick told the Wolves that they were facing a demon invasion. Not just demons invading physically from the wilds of Xen'drik, but possessing and transforming citizens psychically. That's why they had gathered everyone together, so that they'd be easier to watch for signs of corruption. He wanted the Wolves to go out into Xen'drik and find the portal bringing the demons here and shut it down. In the meantime, the Storm Lords, along with House Lyrandar and Orien, had agreed to close off Xen'drik to avoid the invasion getting to Khorvaire. The ports were closed, teleportation circles were inactive and there was no way of getting on or off the continent for the moment.

The Wolves were given a charter to work for the Stormreach Watch, and Brand warned Yorrick that he should watch out for "Operation: Ascendance," as he suspected the Emerald Claw had something to do with this demon invasion. Yorrick offered to get them whatever help they needed, and the Wolves made preparations for their journey into Xen'drik.

Sgt Natobe to procured antivenom and healing potions for the Wolves and for Elias Volan. Brand left a message drop for Yanesh Hite, sent a Sivis message to Saia Borath, who was currently on Khorvaire, and sent another message to Lady Elaydren, asking her to send the Sea Dart to Xen'drik for use as an emergency escape vessel. Pel sent a message to Captain Vron and to Chance warning them about the situation

After a day and a half of travel, during which they found a number of dead animals, and a dead drow hunting party, indicating that the demons were on the move, the Wolves reached the Morgrave Expedition site. The site was full of carnage, as everyone had been killed, and a handful of demons were still going through the wreckage. Brand and Pel went to reconnoiter the camp, but Brand misstepped, and one of the Mezzodemon guards spotted them. Their leader, a grotesque Solamith, tore one of the disembodied souls from its bodies and threw it at the ground near Pel and Brand, where it exploded, burning Pel with demonic flame.

As Pel's armor flashed and turned him invisible, William gulped his antivenom and rushed forward to meet a swarm of carnage demons, Mezzodemons and an Abyssal Eviscerator that were coming into the jungle after them. Lysander drank his antivenom and fired an arrow into one of the carnage demons, killing it with one shot, as Brand and Luggoth downed their antivenom and moved to join William on the front line.

As the Solamith pelted them with flaming souls from its own body, the Wolves engaged the other demons, changing the energy on their attacks to deal with the demons' variable resistance. William killed the remaining carnage demons with a swipe of Vendetta, and then set in on one of the Mezzodemons, as Luggoth began struggling with the Eviscerator, which grabbed him first and then pulled Lysander in as well.

Pel and Brand kept moving, changing targets, as William focused on finishing off a Mezzodemon before moving in to help Luggoth with the Eviscerator. Pel, Brand and Lysander fought with the other two Mezzodemons, dealing with their skewering tridents and poison breath.

The Eviscerator continued to tear into Luggoth, bloodying him and allowing him to shift forms, and Brand moved over to help, stabbing both swords through vital spots in the demon's anatomy, weakening it enough that the next blast of soulfire from the Solamith, aimed at the entire group, killed it.

The Wolves turned their attention to the last two Mezzodemons and finished one off with the assistance of more friendly fire from the Solamith, which also had the unfortunate effect of nearly killing Elias Volan, who was way out of his depth with these demons.

After stabilizing Elias, they closed in on the Solamith itself, nearly at full health thanks to its regenerating properties. William hit it with Vendetta and dazed the creature, allowing Brand to move in and flank, and Luggoth and Pel closed in on the other side of it. Meanwhile, Lysander kept up the arrow fire on the remaining Mezzodemon, and Brand finally teleported over and finished it with Whitehearth with a circling strike.

With the demons destroyed, the Wolves and Elias searched the camp. They found some art objects recovered by the Morgrave team, as well as a pair of magical hero's gauntlets. They also found bodies of the Emerald Claw and the Morgrave expedition, but they did not find the bodies of the Young Wolves. Luggoth spotted tracks of other demons leading back into the jungle, and guessed that they had carried the Young Wolves off.

The Wolves took a brief rest, with Lysander singing, and Pel took the time to consecrate the Emerald Claw bodies to prevent them from being raised as undead.

Brand began to get a sinking feeling as they traveled, as he realized that the tracks were leading them to Hackrazet's farm. Shortly thereafter, they found themselves at the farm, and saw that the Orien guards had been slaughtered. An enormous glowing portal was situated right in front of the barn, and the Young Wolves, unconscious, were strapped to some kind of wheeled platform right in front of it. Standing guard was a twenty foot tall Goristro demon, which spotted Pel as he attempted to move closer.

The Wolves launched some strikes at the Goristro, and saw a pair of firestorm elementals moving out toward them as well. After activating a mechanism that sent the Young Wolves through the portal, Hackrazet leaned out of the barn and taunted them, but Pel realized that he was subtly telling them that they needed to get into the portal.

Using a variety of acrobatic ability, invisibility and brute force, the Wolves managed to force their way past the Goristro, although Elias Volan was critically wounded in the attempt. They dove through the portal one at a time, uncertain what to expect, and Pel came last, carrying Elias on his back.

They landed, scattered, on the other side of the portal, and stood up to see the Dead-Gray Mist all around them. Clearly, they were in the Mournland. The approaching patrol of warforged seemed to confirm this, except that the warforged were supported by some strange clouds of whirring mechanical horrors, one of which was shooting out electrical and psychic energy that connected with the warforged from time to time.

As the warforged got closer, the Wolves saw that they weren't quite right either. They had pustules all over their bodies and some of them had malformed tentacles. Lysander thought they looked somewhat familiar, but he couldn't quite place it, other than to recognize that they had been touched by Xoriat, the plane of madness.

Lysander destroyed two of the swarms of creatures with disturbing visions, and Pel destroyed one with a quarrel from his crossbow, while Brand threw a tethercord to hold one of the warforged warriors back. The warforged roraed and snapped the tethercord almost immediately, although it held him back long enough for Brand to get into a better position.

The larger cloud blasted them with psychic energy, and they realized that it was repairing the others. However, with two of the warforged firing off spells and the others moving in to swing with their swords, the Wolves were forced to deal with them first. Luggoth and Lysander spent much of the fight stunned by the psychic attacks, which made for a much tougher fight for Pel, William and Brand.

As Pel slashed his rapier through the last of the smaller clockwork swarms, he recognized the form that Lysander had been trying to place: It looked like Xulo, the evil sentient creation pattern that had killed him in the underbelly of Xen'drik so long ago.

When Lysander and Luggoth recovered from the psychic attacks of the larger swarm, the Wolves were able to regroup and destroy the other warforged. The swarm tried to flee, but was unable to escape Lysander's compulsion and arrows and William's blade.

William suggested that they find a defensible position where they could rest, but after a bit of scouting, Brand wasn't able to find much of anything. Lysander found a hill that they could hide behind to a degree, and realized that he recognized Brelish flora on it. He guessed that they were a few hours from Silver Lake, near the Wolves' Reward, and that they definitely weren't in the Mournland, despite the presence of the mist.

William and Lysander created circles of defense against aberrations and undead and William set up his Eye of Alarm to create a defensive perimeter. Pel watched them all for signs of infection by the mist as Brand went back to hide their tracks. Unfortunately, after about three hours, they spotted a patrol of warforged, foulspawn and a beholder coming their way, and they had to abandon their makeshift camp and keep moving. Exhaustion and the despair of the Dead-Gray Mist began to set in, and the patrol was catching up. Lysander detected extremely strong illusion magic to what he believed was the north, and Brand tried to lead them toward it, but he was exhausted and ensorceled, and the lack of landmarks lead him to taking them in the wrong direction.

As they closed in on the patrol, a dark portal opened up next to them and a changeling dressed in the garb of a follower of the Traveler told them he could take them to Safe Haven. With no other choice, they jumped into the portal, with William expressing more than a little doubt about this decision.

The changeling introduced himself as Eress, and they realized that they were in a completed, albeit abandoned, version of Galifar's Hope. They also deduced that they were in the future, which was confirmed when Eress took them to one of the suites where they found a very old Lysander waiting for them.

Lysander's dragonmarks were glowing constantly, and it was clear he was using his powers for something. He explained what was going on, but in an enigmatic manner, explaining that he was worried about changing the future too much.

Lysander and Hackrazet had sent a message back to Hackrazet's younger self to open the portal and bring the Wolves to this future. The Dead-Gray mist was now everywhere, and all the dragonmarked creatures had been rounded up by the Xoriat-tinged forces controlled by Xulo, the sentient creation pattern. In the western part of Khorvaire, the Lords of Dust were warring with Droaam, the last holdout kingdom, while Lysander's resistance, made up mostly of a Cult of the Traveler that Brand and Pel had founded.

Lysander suspected that giving them this knowledge of the future could result in an even worse future, but he and Hackrazet realized that they were losing, and that the future couldn't really get much worse, so they decided to take the chance. Now that the Wolves had seen that Xulo was a threat, he hoped that the early warning would help them deal with him before he rose to the prominence he had here. He gave them a handful of gifts from their future-selves, including a holy symbol of the Traveler,
a Belt of Breaching from the Eldritch Knights, a ring of protection and a stalwart belt. Then he began explaining how they would get back home. He had set up a portal at Whitehearth, within the Mournland, now the only place on the face of Khorvaire not surrounded by the Dead-Gray Mist. He had rigged a special lightning rail engine at Passage that Brand could activate and take them to the edge of the Mournland, where they would find an elemental land cart to take them to Whitehearth. Only a dragonmark could activate the time portal, and all the dragonmarked heirs were gone, so Lysander reasoned it was safe enough until they got there.

The portal had lead the forces of Xulo to Galifar's Hope, and Lysander was informed that those forces were at the gate. He sent Eress to take the Wolves down to the dock, where they boarded a battered Sea Dart and descended into Silver Lake. As they left, the Wolves looked back and saw that Galifar's Hope was cast in illusory flame, a pretense that had clearly kept it safe up to this point, but now Xulo knew the truth. They knew as they left that Lysander had sacrificed his safe haven and probably most of his resistance to get them these clues about Xulo.

The Wolves were battered and bloodied from their fights, Brand at the very edge of exhaustion, but they didn't have time to take much of a rest. As they pulled up to the dock as Passage, they saw through the periscope that Kuo-Toa guards awaited them. Brand used his dragonmark to give himself the ability to walk on water, and then they pulled the Sea Dart right up to the docks, diving out to engage the Kuo-Toa.

The Wolves came out fighting, and discovered that some of the Kuo-Toa were using nets to try and drag them into the water, while others unleashed a psychic scream and their priest used a spell to cause Pel's lungs to fill with water. Brand stayed at a distance, running across the water and directing Whitehearth to attack, while Luggoth and William took the fight directly to the Kuo-Toa soldiers.

Pel fired his lightning crossbow into the water, electrocuting three of the Kuo-Toa, as another used his dredging hook to grab him and drag him off the edge of the pier and into the water. Brand moved in on the net wielder, knocking him over and then stabbing his eldritch blade through its chest, and William moved in to finish it off with Vendetta, sending its head rolling into the nearby water with a plop.

As Lysander peppered the Kuo-Toa troops with arrows, Pel climbed back onto the pier and attacked the other net-wielding Kuo-Toa, which used its dredge hook to push him back into the water, allowing another one to swim underneath him and stab him with its sword.

Whitehearth and Luggoth tore into another soldier as William drew two more in next to him. Pel, bolstered by a Majestic Word from Lysander, swam to the pier and fired his hand crossbow at the Kuo-Toa that had dumped him in the water, but as he began climbing up and firing again and again, the Kuo-Toa spun and leaped out of the way, trying to avoid the kill shot.

William was battling several soldiers and taking a bit of a beating, although Lysander did his best to keep him healed and in the fight. Brand teleported in, switching places with William, allowing William to close in on another soldier and finish it off with an appalling crunch.

With two of their number remaining, the Kuo-Toa attempted to flee, one by means of the water and the other by running into Passage. The Wolves were able to catch up and kill the one headed to Passage, but the other swam out too far for anyone but Brand to catch, and he was too weary and wounded to risk chasing it alone.

After tossing the bodies of the Kuo-Toa into the lake, William climbed to the top of a nearby building to look out at Passage. He saw that the inhabitants were mostly foulspawn and aberrations, with the Xoriat-tainted warforged acting as guards. Lysander used his dragonmark to cast an illusion of all of them as various Foulspawn, and they began making their way to the lightning rail station.

Brand's knowledge of Passage, along with Pel's knowledge of how to best use back alleys and shortcuts, got them to the lightning rail station fairly quickly, where they found the train car guarded by numerous warforged. Luggoth, unable to speak Deep Speech but able to portray anger convincingly, walked over and began making loud, threatening noises and gestures at the warforged, convincing them to move along and letting the Wolves board the car.

Once inside, they went to the front, where Brand tried to snap the lightning reins to life. Unfortunately, as he had never done this before, only seen it done, he was able only to spark it to life for a brief second, drawing a great deal of attention. As foulspawn and warforged gathered outside, William and Luggoth moved to guard the door against any intruders.

Pel fired his lightning crossbow into the elemental ring as Brand tried once again to snap the reins, and he managed to bring the ring to life fully, as Lysander turned various controls to get the car rolling on the lightning rail track, crashing through a few of the bolder foulspawn and warforged in the way.

The car built up to what Brand estimated was about twice the speed of what lightning rail trains were usually capable of, and he taught everyone enough about the basic guidance of the train that they could take turns watching the reins. Then they all took to the cabins for a long, well-deserved rest.

After about eight hours, they all gathered at the front of the car to make the turn onto the tracks leading toward Starilaskur. Moving at breakneck speed, they almost didn't make the turn, and they were slammed up against the walls of the car, but they managed to turn and get onto the right track.

As they approached Starilaskur, the car began slowing down, despite the orders Brand was giving it. As they closed in on the station, Brand realized that someone else was controlling it. This gave them pause. First of all, there weren't supposed to be any other dragonmarked individuals, and secondly, there weren't supposed to be any powerful enough to override Brand.

The station appeared abandoned and disused, and Brand, knowing the layout of a lightning rail station, suggested that they sneak in through the cargo hold and see what was going on. Pel and Brand made their way into the darkened cargo hold, and though Brand thought he heard something, it wasn't soon enough to prevent the Nothic guarding the area from using mind rot on both him and Pel, pushing them out onto the station.

With the attack begun, William abandoned subtlety and crashed through the main doors of the station, where he saw a massive Neogi, a pair of warforged and a Foulspawn Ragehulk. He gave a grim smile and waded into their midst, swinging Vendetta into all of them and drawing first blood.

While William battled the bulk of the forces alone, the rest of the Wolves engaged the Nothic, which used its rotting gaze and mind rot to turn them against one another and push them around the darkened cargo hold. Finally Brand used an attack to draw the Nothic outside so that they could fully see its horrible form, and it began cackling madly, and the psychic emanations of the cackle disturbed the Wolves fighting it.

Pel moved invisibly past the Nothic to help William, who was taking quite a battering from the Neogi's scythe-like claws and the swords of the warforged, but was giving as good as he got. He and Pel managed to kill the Neogi first, as it was unable to escape William and get to a distance where its ranged attacks would have been more useful.

Meanwhile, Brand and Whitehearth were able to flank the Nothic and finish it off, freeing all of the Wolves to go and battle alongside William and Pel. As Brand finished off one of the warforged, six Kuo-Toa Mad Ones emerged from the Orien lounge, but Lysander and William made short work of them. William then finished off the remaining warforged as Luggoth, Brand and Whitehearth went to work on the Ragehulk, although William moved over and finished it with an appalling crunch.

They entered the Orien lounge area and discovered a giant machine that appeared to be a blend of Cannith technology and Xoriat flesh-melding. A female Orien dragonmarked heir was bonded to the machine, which was clearly boosting her dragonmark's power with excruciating consequences. There was no way to free her, so William gave her a quick death with Vendetta, and as she died, the machine powered down, freeing the lightning rail for travel once more.

Five hours later, the lightning rail was approaching the Vathirond station, the last stop before the end of the line. Brand spotted something on the line, and realized it was some kind of House Cannith device right before it triggered, destroying the elemental ring and freeing the bound air elemental. As the elemental tore apart its prison of the train car, the Wolves got out and fled into Vathirond, where they found themselves the target of a concentrated manhunt by Xulo's forces.

Using all their skills, the Wolves managed to get out of Vathirond and into the Mournland, where they found Failin's land cart waiting for them. Brand activated the cart and they traveled along the line of mist to the west, avoiding warforged and foulspawn patrols.

At one point, when they thought they might be able to slow a bit and rest, Lysander spotted the shadow of something huge on the horizon. They looked up and saw what appeared to be a city-sized warforged, traveling on four legs, covered in arcane energy and giving off smoke and steam. Lysander identified it as using the Xulo patterns, and tried to nudge the others to go investigate, but Pel remembered the last time Lysander had talked him into investigating Xulo, and used his insight to help guess at the thing's movements and guide Brand so that they didn't cross its path.

When they arrived at Whitehearth, they found that it appeared to be deserted, as Lysander had promised. They used the keycharms they had gathered on one of their very early adventures to descend into the bowels of Whitehearth once more, and reached the experimentation room.

What they found there was evidence that it was not as abandoned as they might have hoped. The portal was open, glowing with a bright blue light, and seconds later, a once-human self-forged wearing the dragonmark of House Cannith emerged, with iron archons and warforged in tow. He gave a shriek of rage when he saw the Wolves, yelling out that they had come to close the portal, and ordered his minions to attack.

The Iron Archons and warforged put up a deadly fight, but the Wolves managed to prevail. Lysander, Brand and Pel all tried to trick the self-forged, who called himself the Mastermaker, into revealing his true identity, but he was either too clever or too mad to do so. As his last minion fell, he dove into the portal, and it shut down with a bright blue flash of energy.

Resolving to follow him, Brand used his dragonmark to open the portal, only to see that it now glowed a deep crimson. They reasoned that different dragonmarks provided different destinations, and that this horror from the future now resided in their past. Still, they were going home, and the Wolves, along with the Young Wolves, stepped through the portal to emerge out of a linked portal on the island facing the Wolves' Reward, mere minutes after they had left Xen'drik originally.