Lord Channis Lauros Journal

Journey to the Dark Passage

When we left Vazud yesterday we never expected the events that led us into our doom. I’m right now outside the dark passage with my mind totally exhausted after our last encounters.
I look into the darkness with concern for the friends we lost and for the uncertain future we have ahead. It’s time to tell the story of our misery.

Everything began with a teleport spell from Malek’s arsenal that put us right at the entrance of the infamous Dark Passage. We traveled right toward the center looking for an entrance into the mountains, and we were lucky enough to find it real fast, or so we thought at that time.

The entrance was protected by some sort of Guardian, an ancient red dragon lich, better known among the scholars by his short name, a dracolich. He asked for our motives to be there, gave us some information about previous visitors, the Scarlet Brotherhood accompanied with a succubus, and warned us to use only our natural form of movement while wandering the sanctuary under his watch. We thank him for his advice and agreed with his requests. Finally, we entered the sanctuary inside the colossal mountains.

The sanctuary seemed to be a never ending maze full of dead ends and weird hidden gardens. We tried to get around without hurries but the place seemed to be huge. In one occasion we found ourselves in the middle of an avalanche and we survived by sheer luck rather than skill.

After several hours of travelling we really got bored. We decided to spend the night inside the sanctuary so the priest Addon could memorize a Find the Path spell to lead us into the tomb of Thariz Dun. The next day we started following the priest, but we decided to do it faster, so we used our supernatural flying abilities to gain some precious time. The spell leaded us into the exit of the cavern, where our problems began.

The dracolich guardian blocked our way out stating that we have broken his rules by not using our natural form of movement. The punishment for such behavior was a summary execution. Without giving us time to reply, he breathed a cone of fire from his mouth that burned us into ashes. We barely managed to survive and tried foolishly to repel such a devastating attack. Our efforts were in vain, the dracolich seemed to be invulnerable.

The reason overcame us and we decided it was time to get of the dragon’s lair. The problem was how to do it. The dracolich summoned an air elemental to attack us but Malek used his enchanting powers to convince the elemental to fight for us. The elemental carried us into a whirlwind and tried to escape. Unfortunately, the dracolich moved much faster. He dismissed his elemental and blocked our exit one more time.

Panic overwhelmed us. Malek used Sefrus to transform it into Jabair, our friend, a very old and powerful silver dragon. Malek asked Sefrus to use Jabair’s powers to get out of the mess we were involved. Jabair grabbed the wizard with one claw, with the other claw grabbed Ibizar and with his mouth grabbed the paladin Bahmut. Finally, the silver dragon took off and flew as fast as he could, toward the main corridor of the Dark Passage.

In front of the dracolich remained the priest Addon and myself. But suddenly something odd happened, Arath the priest of the sun appeared into scene, probably arriving using his travel domain powers. He summoned an air elemental to get us out of there. Unfortunately, the frightful presence of the dragon was too much for both the elemental and Arath, so he just ran away from danger as fast as they could, totally scared by our antagonist. Addon and I were alone one more time.

By instinct I just tried to survive, forgetting about our friend the priest and leaving him to his fate. I stopped time and moved as fast as I could. I was moving so fast that everything seemed to be frozen in time while I was moving. I reached Jabair and rode the dragon’s back hoping it was our only chance to escape.

Addon was left miserably and he would probably be eaten by the dragon. The priest lost morale, he threw his mace away telling the dragon it was the only magical item he had and that we were carrying several artifacts in our bags. Finally he used a spell to meld into the stones around and pray the dracolich would be greedy and chase us rather than waste time with a priest with nothing to collect for his treasure. His plan worked, the dracolich seeing his treasure slip from his claws chased the party and breathed fire over us again, almost killing Bahmut. Fortunately for us, we survived once again and left the cave. It seemed the dracolich could not left out his guarding post or his lair and remained at the entrance looking at us in complete anger.

When we were outside, an astral construct I had built to aid us reached the dracolich and started to attack the dragon with fury. The dragon got mad and in mere seconds smashed the astral construct until the golem fell apart completely shattered by the mighty creature. Lucky it was my construct and not me.

We started to get out of the Dark Passage to think our next move but a new enemy appeared into scene. An erineyes, a devil.

The fight against the erineyes

The devil attacked us with all his powers, he summoned two barbazus to delay our actions and shot arrows from the distance, hidden in the darkness of the passage. We could not even see our enemy. The devil targeted Malek. We knew the erineyes would attack Malek until killed, so we had to kill the creature as soon as possible.

We started our defense but our enemy was smarter, he used the darkness of the passage to hide from us, attacking us with unholy spells, arrows and illusions. He didn’t cause us much damage, but we realized he had all the advantages.

We started to look for our enemy using blindsight, blindsense and true seeing. Nothing worked. He managed to pass across our defenses and found Malek alone almost at his mercy. Malek managed to escape and called for help. We immediately tried to capture the devil but he escaped one more time.

Once again, panic overwhelmed us. We started to run away from the devil toward the exit, knowing we were just 10 minutes away. The erineyes chased us for some time but we were fast enough to avoid him. We reached a safe place and tumbled into the ground, exhausted.

Here we are now, in the middle of nowhere, with two of our friends lost into a maze of caverns warded by a powerful dracolich. We have no spells, no powers and we are severely wounded without a priest to heal us. We cannot even get out of here using a teleport spell, because Malek used his last one trying to escape from the devil.

As for me, I’m too tired to mount guard, and I have no more power points as to defend myself efficiently in case of an attack. I know Addon is alive because I mentally contacted a couple of minutes ago, but alive does not mean he is safe. I feel bad for leaving him at the mercy of the dracolich. As far as I remember, we have left from battles before, but it was the first time I left a friend in the hands of our enemy. I firmly promise that won’t happen again.