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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 8689452" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 31: NIGHT AFTER NIGHT</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Alewyth Putterpye, dwarf priestess of Aerik 7</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Thurloe Pulver, human fighter 3/wizard 3/spellsword 1</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Wakuren, half-orc cleric of Cal 3/paladin 4</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Xandro Silverstrings, human bard 5/rogue 2</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Zander Quilson, elf sorcerer 7</p><p></p><p>Game Session Date: 9 July 2022</p><p></p><p> - - -</p><p></p><p>The heroes were about an hour down the road from Devlinshire when they heard the furious pounding of hoofbeats behind them. Thurloe and Xandro wheeled their horses around to face the approaching riders; they were a pair of guardsmen wearing the uniforms of the Devlinshire city patrol. Alewyth looked back behind her with a look of worry on her face, wondering if they'd have to fight these men and not particularly looking forward to the battle if they were, for the men were the official representatives of the Dukedom, with all the power of Duke Virgil Devlin himself behind them. Alewyth certainly did not want to find herself on the wrong side of the law, even if she didn't particularly agree with the law in this case.</p><p></p><p>"Good afternoon, gentlemen," said Wakuren pleasantly as he brought Mica and Perseverance to a halt at the side of the road, allowing the two guardsmen to pass. And pass they did, but immediately thereafter they spun their mounts about so they were facing the five dreamwalkers and their various mounts.</p><p></p><p>"Good afternoon, folks," replied one of the guardsman, holding a hand before his eyes as if trying to block out the sun. "Man, it sure is bright out today, huh?" Zander's brows furrowed in puzzlement, for the day was somewhat overcast.</p><p></p><p>"We've come with a warning," said the other guardsman, likewise holding up his hand as if shielding his eyes from the nonexistent glare of the sun, currently hidden behind a cloud. "Apparently there's a band of ruffians about - we've been sent to look for them and to warn those we meet to be on the lookout."</p><p></p><p>"Ruffians?" echoed Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>"That's right, ma'am. Two humans, an elf, a dwarven woman, and a half-orc broke into a compound just outside the city and destroyed a couple of undead critters animated at the orders of the Duke himself. Now, you and I might not see anything particularly wrong about killing undead abominations, but the Duke's mighty upset and has branded this band of five as terrorists. You five keep an eye out, now, you hear? They should be fairly easy to spot - the dwarf woman's apparently riding around on a large goat of some sort." Squinting at Alewyth, astride her dire goat mount Pyrite, the guardsman added, "That's a mighty fine horse you've got there, ma'am - what I can make out of it in this blasted sunlight!"</p><p></p><p>"I-- thank you," replied Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>"The Duke's special hobgoblin forces are being sent out to scour the surrounding area as well as us, so you might consider taking some of the back roads if at all possible," suggested the other guardsman. "Them hobbers, they don't always differentiate between the races all too well - why, they might not even recognize the five of you as all being human, like we do."</p><p></p><p>"So you folks take care," the other guard added, spinning his horse back around. The other followed suit and then the two of them spurred their mounts on and were off, racing down the road at a full gallop.</p><p></p><p>"What was that all about?" demanded Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>"They're off doing their job, only it's a job they don't particularly want to do - bring us in for killing those three dread warriors," Thurloe explained. "This was them giving us a heads up about the Duke's hobgoblin forces. I'd say we'd do best to hurry on our way and take the first side road we come to!" He brought Horse to a full gallop and the others followed suit.</p><p></p><p>About another twenty minutes down the road they met up with another rider, this one approaching them from ahead. It was an elderly woman dressed in a noblewoman's riding gear, sitting rigidly upright upon a pure white horse that trotted leisurely down the road. She sent her mount off to one side of the road so the two parties could pass each other and the five dreamwalkers slowed down their own mounts so as not to crash into her. As she got to within a dozen feet of Thurloe - who was at the head of his group's procession - she asked him, "Excuse me, can you tell me how far away Devlinshire might be? I have some business there, but I've never been this far west before."</p><p></p><p>"It's probably a couple thousand miles behind you," Thurloe replied with a grin. "But, if you keep on heading the way you're heading, it's only about an hour and a half away."</p><p></p><p>"Very droll," replied the nobleman with the barest hint of a smile. She produced a gold coin from a purse at her belt and passed it to the young swordsman. "But thank you." Thurloe took the proffered coin and gave it a quick lookover: it had a man with a pointed beard on one side and a lit torch on the other; not the common currency used in these parts, but likely as spendable as any other golden coin. He absently dropped it into his own coin purse and kicked Horse back into motion. However, he let the mount amble forward instead of continue the full-out run they'd started before, Thurloe not wanting to appear to be in a hurry while the noblewoman might take notice.</p><p></p><p>"What's up?" asked Zander, bringing Eddy up to the spellsword.</p><p></p><p>"That lady's heading to Devlinshire," Thurloe explained. "She meets up with any hobgoblin guardsmen, she'll be able to give them a good description of the lot of us - and there's not likely to be too many groups riding around with our particular makeup." He looked over at Wakuren as he said the latter, for in truth there weren't too many half-orc cleric/paladins of Cal on the entire continent, Wakuren likely being the only one. "Reckon we'd best find some side roads, pronto."</p><p></p><p>"Looks like there's one up ahead," Xandro offered, squinting into the distance. "And it looks like it heads north, which is kind of where we want to go anyway." Their next dream victim, according to Mogo, was to be found in the small village of Snail Valley, northeast of their present location. The side road followed the course of a small brook for a bit, and although it likely added a half hour to their travel time, they found themselves in Snail Valley a good four hours later. At least that was what the wooden sign on the side of the road declared: "Welcome to Snail Valley" it read, with a picture of several rather happy-looking snails painted along the edges for good measure.</p><p></p><p>Finding the specific location of the dream victim was easy, as Snail Valley was a small community and everyone knew little six-year-old <strong>Rosie Picklemeyer</strong> had fallen asleep about two weeks ago and hadn't been able to be awakened since. The valley's druid, <strong>Abitha Crow-Talker</strong>, had done what she could but determined there was something magical going on beyond her abilities and had suggested waiting to see if Rosie came out of it in her own, for she didn't seem to be suffering any deleterious effects from the prolonged sleep. Riding up to the Picklemeyer cottage, Alewyth knocked on the door and was met by Rosie's parents, <strong>Jarko and Petunia Picklemeyer</strong>, who gave the strangers puzzled looks at first but welcomed them into their home with open arms once the dwarven priestess explained they had come to waken Rosie from her sleep.</p><p></p><p>Xandro brought Rosie out into the common room, wrapped in a blanket, while the others took their places in a circle around her and Wakuren explained the process. Zander activated his <em>jade cooshee</em> and set him up on watch detail; they'd had one too many surprises in the past and didn't want anything happening to their sleeping bodies while they were in the Dreamlands freeing Rosie. In fact, Thurloe kept silently indicating to Wakuren he wanted the half-orc to check out the Picklemeyers' auras to see if they were evil, and Wakuren gave Thurloe a frown and a silent head shake. However, Thurloe wasn't sure if that meant "No, they aren't evil" or "No, I'm not going to check because that would be embarrassing and just what's wrong with you, anyway?" Knowing Wakuren, it was probably that last one.</p><p></p><p>Once everything was set up - Rosie's brow now adorned with a too-large leather headband holding a dreamstone to her temple to aid in the dreamwaking procedure - each of the five calmed their breathing and fell asleep. Jarko and Petunia looked at each other, hopeful but puzzled how this was going to help their daughter, but neither wanted to make any noise to wake these strangers up if they could possibly wake Rosie.</p><p></p><p>One by one, the dreamwalkers found themselves in the Dreamlands, being met by their individual dream guides. "Hey, kupo!" cried Calliope upon seeing Alewyth appear in a dream about baking in a kitchen. "Are we ready for the next dreamer already, kupo?" asked Mogchamp to Xandro as he began dreaming about throwing rocks into a creek. Similarly, Moki met up with Zander and Kupek greeted Wakuren, then they all met up together at the Hall of Doors, a visualization of endless hallways filled with individual dreams. There hovered Mog, their dream moogle trainer, and beside him Doc, Thurloe's moogle dream guide. But of Thurloe there was no sight.</p><p></p><p>"Where's the other one, kupo?" Mogo demanded.</p><p></p><p>"No idea, kupo," replied Doc. "I felt the others going off to meet up with their dreamwalkers, so I hung around waiting for Thurloe, but he never showed, kupo."</p><p></p><p>"Maybe he's having trouble falling asleep," suggested Wakuren.</p><p></p><p>"Maybe that isn't really him - maybe he's been replaced by a doppelganger," suggested Zander Quilson, coming up with a ridiculous suggestion just to scare the others but then realizing it was a distinct - if unlikely - possibility.</p><p></p><p>"We should wait for him," decided Alewyth, but as the minutes went on and the spellsword didn't show, she began to get worried. "Do you think something happened to him back on the Material Plane?" she asked.</p><p></p><p>"The cooshee's there to look after him," Zander pointed out. "If the Picklemeyers decided to attack him or something, he'd wake the rest of us up."</p><p></p><p>"We'd better go check on him," suggested Xandro. "But as long as we're here, we might as well take a peek at Rosie's dream and see what it is we'll be getting into."</p><p></p><p>"In you go then, kupo!" replied Mogo as he opened the door to Rosie's dream and the four dreamwalkers stepped inside.</p><p></p><p>"Hello," Rosie greeted them as they walked into her dream. She was wearing her mother's dress clothes, including a bonnet that kept falling down over her eyes that she kept pushing back out of the way. "<strong>Mr. Bear</strong> and I were just about to start our tea party. Would you care to join us?"</p><p></p><p>"She makes really good tea," put in Mr. Bear, a stuffed animal Rosie's mother had made for her when she was born but which here, in her dreams, was as alive as any of the newcomers to her dream.</p><p></p><p>"Perhaps just a quick sip," suggested Alewyth, "but then we should see about getting you back home. Your parents are very--" But then she was cut off by a horrible wailing coming from the next room.</p><p></p><p>"Oh no!" cried Rosie. "One of the snail babies is awake!" She rushed into the next room, Mr. Bear dutifully following at her heels. The room held seven cribs, inside each of which was a snail the size of a pillow, with the face of a human baby. One of them was crying something fierce, causing the others to start to stir out of their own slumber. "We need to rock him back to sleep before he wakes up the others!"</p><p></p><p>Rosie bent over the crib and picked up the crying snail baby, starting to rock it back and forth, but the damage was already done - all seven of the creatures were now wide awake and bawling fiercely. The little girl looked frantically at the four dreamwalkers - whom she'd never seen before but had instantly accepted as belonging in her dream - and did a quick count. "We don't have enough!" she cried.</p><p></p><p>"Play a lullaby on your lute of something!" Alewyth suggested to Xandro, looking down at the horrid face of a crying human baby grafted onto the slimy neck of a large snail.</p><p></p><p>"That won't work!" Rosie chided. "You have to rock them back to sleep, like this!" She demonstrated with the one she held in her arms, but with six other snails wailing there was no way she was going to be able to get this one to fall asleep.</p><p></p><p>"We need Thurloe," Alewyth deduced and Xandro was all too glad to use that as an excuse to depart Rosie's dream - he, too, was bothered by the sight of these snail/human baby hybrid monsters. "We'll go get someone else to help us get them all back to sleep," he promised Rosie, before opening the door that allowed them to exit the little girl's dream.</p><p></p><p>"If Thurloe had been here," pointed out Zander, "you know what his suggestion would have been: slaughter all the snail babies and get on with the damn tea party, if that's what it takes to wake her up."</p><p></p><p>"Probably," agreed Alewyth. "But let's all wake up ourselves and see what's up with Thurloe."</p><p></p><p>"Good luck, kupo!" encouraged Mogo as the four dreamwalkers all forced themselves awake. One after the other, each suddenly just disappeared from the Dreamlands and awoke back up in their own bodies.</p><p></p><p>The four heroes saw Mr. and Mrs. Picklemeyer start as the dreamwalkers started rising from their lotus positions. They looked over to their daughter, but Rosie was still sound asleep in her blanket. "What happened? Is everything all right?" asked Petunia.</p><p></p><p>"We had a slight problem," admitted Alewyth, bending down over Thurloe, who still sat in the lotus position, sound asleep. "Nothing to worry about, though." <em>I hope</em>, the dwarf added silently to herself.</p><p></p><p>"Check out his aura, just in case," suggested Zander.</p><p></p><p>"Doppelgangers wouldn't necessarily have an evil aura," pointed out Wakuren, but he focused his attention on Thurloe anyway. "He's clean," he reported back to the others. Then he slapped Thurloe lightly on the side of the face. "Wakey-wakey," he told the sleeping spellsword.</p><p></p><p>"Huh--what?" gasped Thurloe as he was slapped awake and the first thing he saw was Wakuren's half-orc visage smack dab in his field of vision. "What's going on?"</p><p></p><p>"Where were you?" demanded Wakuren.</p><p></p><p>"What do you mean?"</p><p></p><p>"You never showed in the Dreamlands. What were you doing, wandering about? Exploring on your own or something?"</p><p></p><p>"What? No..." Thurloe answered, his brows lowering in a frown. "I don't think so...." It was puzzling, for the whole reason these five had been chosen by the Queen of Dreams as her personal representatives on the Material Plane in the first place was because they had perfect recall of their time spent in the Dreamlands - but Thurloe couldn't remember anything that had happened since he first fell asleep at Rosie's side.</p><p></p><p>"Let me try something," Wakuren suggested, casting a <em>protection from evil</em> spell upon Thurloe and then ushering everyone back into position to try again. But this time was the same as before: the other four dreamwalkers showed up in the Dreamlands and were met by their moogle guides, but Doc was left hanging out by himself as Thurloe was nowhere to be seen. Once it was apparent he wasn't going to show up any time soon, they woke themselves back up again and slapped Thurloe back awake as well.</p><p></p><p>"Maybe something's wrong with your dreamstone?" suggested Xandro, grasping at straws. Just to be sure, though, Thurloe and Wakuren swapped headbands and they all tried a third time, with the same results. "Well, that wasn't it," the bard admitted. "You don't think the Nightmare King has found a way to separate us somehow when we're dreaming...?"</p><p></p><p>"We need to see where Thurloe's going when he falls asleep," Alewyth suggested, scooting everyone into a circle around Thurloe instead of Rosie. "Wait a minute, this won't work," pointed out Xandro. "There are only four of us around him - we need five!"</p><p></p><p>"We can put a dreamstone on the cooshee," Zander suggested, and the elven dog wagged his tail at hearing himself mentioned.</p><p></p><p>"He's not a trained dreamwalker," scoffed Thurloe. "But I'll tell you what: let's give me the 'target' dreamstone as well as the one I normally wear - maybe that'll give me a boost." He added Rosie's headband to his own and they all tried a fourth time, with predictable results. The other four were in the Dreamlands as usual, and Thurloe was nowhere to be seen. "Any ideas?" Xandro asked Mogo, explaining everything they'd tried thus far.</p><p></p><p>"Something's changed since last night, when Thurloe was last in the Dreamlands, kupo," the moogle observed. "Is he sleeping now, kupo?" Alewyth assured the moogle that Thurloe was sound asleep in the Picklemeyers' cottage. "Then let's see if we can find his dream, kupo!" said the moogle, turning to the Hall of Doors. The halls started flashing by sideways, moving at incredible speeds as the moogle dreamwalking trainer flipped through hallway after hallway. Doors sped by at increasing speeds, causing Alewyth to turn a bit green from motion sickness even though she was standing perfectly still. But eventually the doors slowed down and the hallways stopped reconfiguring themselves to Mogo's specifications and the trainer sighed, "He's not here, kupo!"</p><p></p><p>"How is that possible?" asked Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>Mogo shrugged his little kittenish shoulders. "If I had to hazard a guess, it sounds like he's been taken by a night hag, kupo," Mogo replied. He went on to explain that night hags were horrible creatures from the Lower Planes, who attached themselves to a victim and then haunted their nightmares, riding them all night long and draining them of their physical vitality each night. Eventually, with the victim getting weaker and weaker, he was transformed into a creature called a larva, which the night hag then sold to devils or demons for their own horrific use.</p><p></p><p>"But why can't we find him, if he's asleep?" asked Zander.</p><p></p><p>"Think of the Dreamlands as a large field, kupo," suggested Mogo. "Whenever anyone dreams, their dream takes place in a little section of the field, kupo. But a night hag, she digs a little hole in the field - like a gopher hole - and covers the top of it with a clump of dirt, so you can look all over the field and you won't ever find her, kupo. If a night hag has gotten hold of Thurloe, then every time he dreams he'll end up in a hidden pocket somewhere where we can't detect him, kupo."</p><p></p><p>This was horrible news, but they needed to do what they could to put a stop to it and the first thing was letting Thurloe know what was happening. They thanked Mogo, promised to keep him up to date, and returned to their physical bodies once again, where they explained to the puzzled Picklemeyers that they wouldn't be able to wake up Rosie that night after all. "We've run into a temporary problem with one of our dreamwalkers, but we'll have him fixed up soon and we'll come back to wake up Rosie as soon as we can!" Alewyth promised them.</p><p></p><p>They found lodging in one of the inns and made the best of the evening, Thurloe finally falling asleep with some trepidation knowing what was in store for him. He slept fitfully, and there was no sight of him in the Dreamlands. Unwilling to continue training only four of his five students, Mogo gave the others the night off as a free exercise to practice the dreamwalking techniques he'd already shown them. And in the morning, when they gathered together, Thurloe looked terrible: bloodshot eyes with dark bags beneath, as if he hadn't gotten any sleep at all. "Do you remember anything?" Alewyth prompted.</p><p></p><p>"Not a thing," Thurloe replied. "But I feel like crap." Wakuren tried casting a <em>lesser restoration</em> spell upon the spellsword, but it didn't seem to have any effect.</p><p></p><p>Alewyth and Wakuren prepared their day's spells, and the dwarven priestess of Aerik selected a <em>divination</em> spell to see if it could help them determine what was happening to Thurloe when he slept. Casting the spell, Alewyth received the following cryptic reply to her question, "What will happen to Thurloe when he next goes to sleep?" The answer came from the air above her,</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">"In spider's web, the night hag boasts,</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">She'll ride her prey in the land of ghosts."</p><p></p><p></p><p>"The land of ghosts: that's the Ethereal Plane," observed Wakuren. "She's got her trap set in the Ethereal Plane."</p><p></p><p>"How does that help us?" snarled Thurloe. "We can't get to the Ethereal Plane."</p><p></p><p>"No, we can't," Alewyth admitted. "But I'll bet a cleric of Delphyne, Goddess of Magic could get us there. And they'd probably know a lot more about night hags than we do."</p><p></p><p>"Where's the nearest cleric of Delphyne?" Zander asked. "I doubt they have one hanging around Snail Valley."</p><p></p><p>"There's a temple of Delphyne back in Baron's Haven," Xandro recalled. "But that's at least a week behind us. Our best bet's probably Devlinshire."</p><p></p><p>"...Where we're wanted criminals," pointed out Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>"True, true," Xandro admitted, "but they'll be looking for the full five of us, and we do rather stand out. But if just one of us were to return to the city...."</p><p></p><p>"Two of us," Wakurn countered. "I can be <em>invisible</em>, right beside you."</p><p></p><p>"And the rest of us?" asked Zander.</p><p></p><p>"We can be inside a <em>rope trick</em>," Thurloe answered. "I can cast it underneath the wagon. It'll work. Let's go, then." He was eager to be free of this night hag, if this was how he was going to feel after each night spent with her. They decided to have Xandro steer the wagon into town, with Wakuren invisible in the seat next to him. Xandro, a wandering bard, had the best reason for entering the city and also had the quickest wit when it came to talking himself out of situations, if there were any suspicions at the city gates. But his silver tongue wasn't needed; the guards asked him no questions and he steered the wagon down the street of temples, seeking out Delphyne's holy symbol on the buildings as they drove past. Wakuren spotted it and Xandro brought the mules to a halt before the structure, while Wakuren ducked under the wagon, stuck his head into the extradimensional space where the other three were hiding, and they made their way surreptitiously into the temple of Delphyne.</p><p></p><p>Their meeting with the clerics there was both good and bad. Good, in that they knew some lore about night hags and had spellcasters capable of casting a <em>plane shift</em> spell for them (for a suitable donation, of course); bad in that none of the clerics powerful enough to cast that spell currently had it on hand - the group would have to meet again the next day to have the spell cast upon them. In the meantime, they'd prepare a scroll of <em>plane shift</em> so the five heroes would be able to return to the Material Plane when their extraplanar business had been completed. That meant another night's depredations at the hands of the night hag, but it couldn't be helped - and at least Thurloe had no memories of his time spent in the night hag's dream trap. He opted to sleep inside the extradimensional space of a <em>rope trick</em> spell, hoping against hope the night hag wouldn't be able to find him if he fell asleep in an entirely different dimension, but he awoke the next morning knowing that nothing had changed: he felt even worse, with aching joints and bones as if he were sick with the flu.</p><p></p><p>But at least today they'd hopefully be able to deal with the situation at hand. They returned to the temple of Delphyne ready to do battle with the night hag and get Thurloe released from her thrall. They paid over the money requested by the clerics, the lead cleric cast the spell herself, and the five heroes were shunted through the planes to end up on the Ethereal Plane. And although the Ethereal Plane was in theory endless, the head cleric had theorized that since the night hag's "dream trap" was attuned to Thurloe, his arrival on the plane - even in physical form - should be at least nearby where they wanted to be.</p><p></p><p>And such indeed seemed to be the case, for the five heroes found themselves in a misty world with an enormous black structure before them. It seemed to be carved from an immense, black gemstone, rectangular in shape but with the four corners cut off on the diagonal, forming a lozenge shape. The structure stood a good 20 feet tall and was more than twice that wide and four times as long. A pair of solid-looking doors sat in the middle of one of the shorter sides of the structure, and as the others started casting their standard array of "prepare for combat" spells, Xandro pulled out his lockpicking tools and applied himself in earnest to the task of getting past the locking mechanism.</p><p></p><p>Alewyth cast a <em>magic circle against evil</em> spell upon herself, following it up with a <em>bless</em> spell upon the assembled group. Thurloe cast a <em>mage armor</em> spell on himself, used his wand to cast a <em>shield</em> spell upon himself, and then passed the wand over to Zander so the elf could do likewise. Zander also cast a <em>mage armor</em> spell upon himself, then cast two <em>bear's endurance</em> spells, one on himself and one on Wakuren, before casting a <em>haste</em> spell on the group. Wakuren, in the meantime, contented himself with a <em>protection from evil</em> spell and the <em>invisibility</em> provided to him from his magic ring.</p><p></p><p>"How's that lock coming?" asked Thurloe, eager to get on with it.</p><p></p><p>"Just got it...now!" replied Xandro, opening the door and putting away his tools. However, there were two guardians on the other side of the doors and they charged forward at the intruders to their mistress's secret realm. These were vaguely reptilian creatures, with scales of an iridescent blue and complicated, three-part jaws that allowed their trifold mouths to open wide and snatch up prey. The first one sprinted in a dash for Xandro, but Thurloe cut it down with his bastard sword as soon as it stuck its head out of the door. It crashed to the ground at the spellsword's feet. The other one snapped at Thurloe, but he managed to duck back from its snapping teeth and stabbed forward with the blade of his sword, skewering it through the chest. Just that quickly, both ethereal marauders were slain. Alewyth stepped up, <em>Sjondra</em> at the ready in case there were any more of these strange creatures, but it looked like there had just been the two. Warily, she stepped inside the structure.</p><p></p><p>Ahead, in the interior of the rectangular building, stood what at first looked to be a giant igloo, although closer examination showed it had been crafted of webbing, not ice. Most of it sat in the back of the building, a 40-foot-diamter hemisphere with a long, sloped projection sticking out towards the doors of the gemlike structure. Unseen by any of the heroes - who weren't in a position to be able to see the interior sides of the upper dome on either side of the "entry tunnel" - a pair of phase spiders, each the size of a large horse, hung upside-down ready to pounce on anyone who entered their lair.</p><p></p><p>Thurloe advanced down the entry tunnel cautiously - the interior was murkily lit in some unknown fashion, but he was getting a disturbing sense of <em>déjà vu</em>, as if he'd been inside this dome before. And if this was indeed the night hag's dream trap, then it made sense that he had in fact been here; he just had no conscious memory of it.</p><p></p><p>Zander stood at the beginning of the tunnel, not yet ready to enter. He brought the words to a <em>lightning bolt</em> spell to the forefront of his brain, ready to cast the spell if anything were to show up and look menacing. The Delphynian clerics had warned the group that fire and cold were useless against a night hag, so he was hoping a blast of electricity would be just the thing. Xandro, in the meantime, pulled the <em>Dardolian lute</em> from his back and began playing his song of inspirational courage. If ever there was a need to set fears to bay, this creepy place was it!</p><p></p><p>Alewyth cast an <em>aid</em> spell on herself as she stepped forward down the entry tunnel. But Wakuren was there ahead of her, stepping boldly into the dome and examining the 10-foot-diameter metal disk he found on the floor in the center of the curved structure. It had arcane runes along its surface and probably served some sort of purpose similar to a <em>teleportation circle</em>, he guessed - maybe this was how the hag entered the structure, although that wouldn't explain why the front door was locked. If there was a lock on the door, you would expect she'd have the key. Perhaps, he ruminated, this was the device that lured Thurloe to this specific destination when he fell asleep. He turned to ask Thurloe if that had been the case, and was surprised to see not only the spellsword right there behind him - the half-orc hadn't heard him approach - but a pair of giant spiders drop down from the ceiling and attack, mandibles dripping with venom.</p><p></p><p>Of course, as Wakuren was still hidden behind the <em>invisibility</em> spell of his ring, both spiders attacked Thurloe, the only foe they saw. But Wakuren popped back into view as he brought the bottom of his shield crashing down upon the mottled abdomen of the nearest spider. Back at the entrance, Zander took a step to the side to better line up his field of vision and cast the <em>lightning bolt</em> he'd had ready to fire. It zapped through the first phase spider to have successfully bitten Thurloe, but then the second one scrabbled up and bit the spellsword as well. Thurloe's bastard sword came crashing down upon the head of that one, cleaving it through, right between its largest pair of eyes, and it fell to the ground, eight legs twitching spasmodically. Alewyth ran up to the remaining spider and slammed it with <em>Sjondra</em>, and then Zander finished it off with a <em>scorching ray</em> spell, figuring the night hag might be immune to fire magic but a giant spider likely wasn't.</p><p></p><p>The spiders slain, Thurloe went back to examining the plate on the floor. "I remember this," he said. "I didn't before, but now that I'm here, I remember this whole dome thing, and this plate on the floor. This is where I'd end up when I fell asleep." He turned and faced the back of the dome. "And the night hag would come for me from the back, over there." Everyone looked around the dome, but there was no sign of the night hag. And then Zander's keen elven vision picked up a bit of metal tucked in among the webbing at the base of the dome, along the floor. Pulling away at the strands keeping it in place, he saw it was a metal oil lamp, of the kind stories attributed to magic genies and the like.</p><p></p><p>"Yes!" Thurloe cried when he saw the lamp. "She'd touch it, and she'd say something, and then we were someplace else - inside the lamp, no doubt."</p><p></p><p>"What did she say?" prompted Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>"Hang on, I'm thinking. 'Entrer,' 'antrar,' 'eintrar'..."eintret!' She said 'eintret!'"</p><p></p><p>"Gather together," Wakuren told the others. "This probably works like a <em>teleport</em> spell - we should all be in contact with each other." Huddling together, Thurloe touched the lamp and said "Eintret" - and suddenly, they were elsewhere.</p><p></p><p>Thurloe was standing on another round, metal plate on the floor, much the same size and shape as the one in the middle of the phase spider dome, and this too was in the middle of a domelike structure overhead, but there were three openings and one closed door along the cardinal points around this dome, which was not constructed of webbing but rather seemed to have been carved out of a pocket of stone. It had the same rough dimensions as the web-dome, though: about 20 feet tall and 40 feet in diameter. The hemisphere looked vaguely familiar, but then Thurloe didn't have any more time for sight-seeing as they were under attack.</p><p></p><p>Xandro had been standing to Thurloe's left when they <em>teleported</em> into this extradimensional space, and as a result he had been the closest to the open stables on the eastern side of the reception area. Charging out of the straw-filled stables came a pitch-black horse with a flaming mane and hooves, snorting steam from its flared nostrils. It raced forward and reared up, striking the bard with a flaming hoof that sent him staggering backwards a step or two. The group recognized the creature as a nightmare, having met up with one before in a dream.</p><p></p><p>Thurloe stepped away from the nightmare, not out of fear but out of recognition: the closed door, he now recalled, led to the night hag's bedroom, where she would ride him all night long, cackling in glee at his pain. Nightmare be damned, the others could deal with the hag's horse - he wanted payback from the evil fiend who had been sapping his physical vitality for two nights! Knowing instinctively the door was unlocked, Thurloe flung it open while casting a <em>mirror image</em> spell upon himself, causing there to be not one spellsword but four identical ones crowding the doorway. Thurloe couldn't help himself; he called out, "Hi, honey - I'm home!"</p><p></p><p>"Why, indeed you are, dearie - couldn't stay away, could you? And you brought friends! Oh, this is going to be quite an interesting session, I can already tell!"</p><p></p><p>Zander Quilson cast a reliable standby, <em>magic missile</em>, at the nightmare rearing and kicking at Xandro. As expected, the missiles struck unerringly into the monster horse's flank. Wakuren ran around to the back of the beast, putting all of his considerable strength into the force of his swing as he brought the pointed bottom edge of his <em>shield of Cal</em> stabbing into the horse's side, causing it to scream in pain. The attack brought the half-orc back to full visibility, but that had been a good trade-off as far as Wakuren was concerned. On the other side of the nightmare, Xandro stabbed at the beast with his longsword, catching it just behind its front leg. In return, it focused its attention on the bard, lashing out at him with its flaming hooves and snapping at him with its wicked teeth, which were far sharper than the teeth of a horse had any right to be.</p><p></p><p>Alewyth cast a <em>spiritual weapon</em> spell and sent the dwarven warhammer flying at the night hag, where it shattered upon her innate spell resistance, much to the surprise and consternation of the dwarven priestess. The night hag, <strong>Hesperna Vanderdaark</strong>, ignored the shattering weapon and came in close to grab at Thurloe, but the image she grabbed was one of the spell effects and it popped into nothingness at her touch. "Playing hard to get, are we, sweetie?" she crooned at Thurloe, giving him a smile that put his hair on edge. He channeled his <em>torc of the titans</em> to put some extra power behind his swing - for her nightly depredations had left him fatigued - and sent his bastard sword slicing into her age-hardened skin.</p><p></p><p>Zander dropped his <em>jade cooshee</em> on the floor and called out the command word that brought it to life. "Go help Thurloe!" he told it, and it dashed off to do his master's bidding, snapping at Hesperna, to admittedly little effect. But then Alewyth pushed past Thurloe and swung <em>Sjondra</em> into the night hag's side, trusting <em>this</em> dwarven warhammer at least wouldn't shatter upon the night hag's touch. Then she stepped back and remembered the spell she'd prepared to ensure the night hag didn't get away; fortunately, her <em>dimensional anchor</em> spell took full effect, trapping Hesperna right here in the room with the rest of them - if she wanted to escape, she'd have to push her way past the entire group and get to the disk on the floor of the reception dome.</p><p></p><p>Wakuren slew the nightmare with another bone-breaking blow of his shield upon the flaming equine's spine, and with the ebony-skinned beast out of the picture Xandro fell back to playing his song of inspirational courage on his lute. After all, it was getting crowded there in the hag's bedroom. Hesperna, tired of playing around with Thurloe, took a step back and flung out four <em>magic missiles</em>, hitting him (although that missile was harmlessly absorbed into his <em>shield</em> spell), popping his two remaining <em>mirror images</em> into nonexistence, and causing the cooshee to yelp in pain as a side bonus. But Thurloe stepped forward and used another dose of enhanced strength from his magical torc to power another swing of his bastard sword. Zander cast a <em>lightning bolt</em> spell at Hesperna, but it too had no effect as it was absorbed be her hefty resistance to most spells. The cooshee continued nipping at her ankles, trying to trip her to the floor, but she was having none of it. Alewyth pressed the attack with <em>Sjondra</em> and now Wakuren entered the room, slamming his shield into the night hag's side.</p><p></p><p>That finally made up Hesperna's mind. She'd arrogantly thought she could handle Thurloe and his band of companions, but now too many of their attacks were getting through her defenses. As much as she hated to admit it - or put her long-earned treasures on the line - she needed help, and fast. With that realization, she darted back to her bed, yanked out a footlocker from beneath it, and popped open the lid. Alewyth was close enough to see what was inside it: nearly half a dozen writhing worms, each about the size of her forearm.</p><p></p><p>Thurloe pressed on the attack, as a close grouping of <em>magic missiles</em> flew over his shoulder to break apart into nothingness when they reached Hesperna, another victim of her innate resistance to spells. Alewyth swung again with her warhammer, but hardly made enough of an attack for the night hag to even notice. Her focus was on Thurloe, her current project and, with any luck, the sixth of her larvae, after which she'd be off to the Lower Planes to sell them off for a good deal of coin. But first she had to survive, trapped as she was on this plane and unable to simply <em>plane shift</em> away to the Material Plane. She gave serious thought toward abandoning her magic lamp and escaping back to the Ethereal Plane, where she could likely lose these five heroes in the mists.</p><p></p><p>But then Wakuren made the whole issue moot by bringing the edge of his shield crashing into her face, driving her nose up into her brain while simultaneously snapping her neck. Hesperna coughed up a bubble of blackish blood and fell to a heap in her own extradimensional bedroom.</p><p></p><p>However, that didn't mean the fight was all the way finished just yet. One of the larval creatures wriggled out of the footlocker, inadvertently exposing one of the chest's magical properties, for as soon as it was out it grew eightfold until it was as long as a man. It opened wide its circular mouth and spewed forth a small rain of wriggling maggots at Thurloe, covering the spellsword in flyspawn. He involuntarily stepped back and started brushing the maggots off of him, while Xandro stepped forward and slammed the lid back down, imprisoning the other four larvae. Alewyth killed the one that had gotten free with her dwarven warhammer.</p><p></p><p>"Is that it?" Thurloe asked, still wiping maggots off of his body and crushing them underfoot with his boots. Alewyth aided him in his task.</p><p></p><p>"It looks like it," Zander answered. "The rest of the stable's empty, and all I see in the other rooms are a bunch of tables and a pool of water." A quick search confirmed the rest of the extradimensional space was clear of enemies. Closer examination of the lab revealed a few magical items Hesperna had apparently crafted there in her lab - a bag of <em>dust of illusion</em>, a vial of <em>elixir of truth</em>, and a vial of <em>salve of slipperiness</em> - and a brief check-out of the pool revealed it not only cleaned the bodies and clothes of anyone entering its waters, but full submersion resulted in gaining the equivalent sustenance as if one had just consumed an entire meal. And Hesperna had a second, smaller chest stored under her bed, this one filled with gems and coins, including several of the gold coins with the pointy-bearded man on one side and a lit torch on the other.</p><p></p><p>"Guys," said Xandro excitedly. "Do you know what this means? <em>Mobile headquarters!</em>"</p><p></p><p>"It'll need some cleaning out, first," muttered Alewyth, looking at the squashed maggots on the floor of Hesperna's bedroom and the full-size corpses of the slain larva, nightmare, and of Hesperna herself. She gave a shiver of disgust.</p><p></p><p>Figuring out how to leave was easy enough, as the word "AUSSTEIG" was carved in the middle of the metal disk in the reception dome. Sure enough, by stepping on the plate and saying the command word, one was shunted to stand adjacent to the magic lamp, in this case back under the web-dome inside the black lozenge-shaped building. Alewyth and Xandro had brought the footlocker with them, and they allowed the other larvae out one at a time for the sole purpose of slaying them. But that done, they opted to keep the footlocker - one never knew when you might need to crawl inside and get shrunken down to one-eighth your normal size. It would be a good way to smuggle a bunch of people out of a building or something, that was for sure, even if it didn't seem to have any effect on non-living matter placed into the chest.</p><p></p><p>"Let's get out of here," Thurloe said, eager to be back to the Material Plane. More than anything else, he was eager to get back to the Dreamlands, just to prove to himself he could. But Xandro held him off for a bit. "You know," he said, "phase spider silk can be sold for a hefty sum to those interested in making magic items. <em>Portable holes</em>, for instance." Even Thurloe, eager as he was to see the end of this place, had no compunctions about hanging around long enough to cut down chunks of the phase spider silk that made up the "igloo dome." It was just a shame they wouldn't be able to return back here once they left, since the scroll of <em>plane shift</em> Alewyth had received from the clerics of Delphyne was only good for one trip back to the Mortal World.</p><p></p><p>Once they'd cut and stowed all they could carry, Alewyth unrolled the scroll, read the words contained therein, and the five of them returned to the Material World, back inside the temple of Delphyne. There, they got directions to a few local businesses where they might be able to sell phase spider silk, and hurried off to load up the wagon with the handfuls they had been able to take with them (and the footlocker, which they had stuffed full as well). Then, it was back to invisibility for Wakuren, back to the interior of the magic lamp for Zander, Alewyth, and Thurloe (where the dwarven priestess quickly put the men on cleaning detail), and Xandro was back to driving the wagon out of Devlinshire and back over to Snail Valley.</p><p></p><p>The Picklemeyers were happy to hear that the "slight issue" had been taken care of and that the five dreamwalkers were certain they could awaken their daughter Rosie for sure this time. And, after each of the dreamwalkers got to experience for him- or herself the "joys" of rocking a crying, baby-faced snail to sleep in their arms, they all enjoyed a quick cup of pretend tea with Rosie and Mr. Bear, after which time the dream started collapsing around them. "Time to wake up!" called out Wakuren, and the six woke back up on the Material Plane all at once.</p><p></p><p>"Where's Mr. Bear?" Rosie asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. Jarko dashed back into her room to grab the stuffed animal while Petunia grabbed her daughter up into her arms and buried her in a hug.</p><p></p><p>"We can't thank you enough," Jarko told the five dreamwalkers as they prepared to depart.</p><p></p><p>"Here, I'd like you to have this," Petunia said, handing over a silver ring. "It's been in my family for three generations and it's got some kind of magic in it, but it's only of any use to a spellcaster and I don't have any such abilities. Perhaps you can use it." Wakuren tried declining, but Petunia was adamant. "We've not much else to pay you with," she insisted. "Please. Put it to good use." Eventually, Wakuren agreed, if only to make the Picklemeyers feel better.</p><p></p><p>"What's your deal?" complained Thurloe when they were back outside heading to their wagon and the riding animals. "When somebody insists on giving you payment, you take payment!"</p><p></p><p>"Kind of like that gold coin that 'noblewoman' gave you on the road?" Wakuren asked.</p><p></p><p>"Yeah, I suppose."</p><p></p><p>"You realize that noblewoman was the night hag in human form, and the coin was probably some sort of focus device that allowed her to reel you in like a fish," the half-orc pointed out.</p><p></p><p>"What? Did you read her aura? Was she evil?"</p><p></p><p>"I didn't look," admitted Wakuren. "It's not polite to go around assuming everyone's a potential source of evil."</p><p></p><p>"I quite agree," said the little gnome sitting on the front seat of the wagon. He held a burlap sack on his lap.</p><p></p><p>"Wangle!" exclaimed Alewyth. "What are you doing here?"</p><p></p><p>"Possible delivery," he replied. "Were you still interested in that pair of <em>boots of striding and springing</em> you put a down-payment on? I understand you've come into some money recently." Alewyth chose not to press how the gnome knew so much about her personal business, but she answered in the affirmative. Wangle Turdblossom reminded her of how much she still owed on the boots, she turned over the coins from her share of Hesperna's treasure and the money they'd made off of the phase spider silk, and the gnome handed over the burlap sack. "Wear them in good health," he advised, then scooted down from the wagon and ambled away, whistling a merry tune.</p><p></p><p>"He's a strange little fellow," Wakuren observed.</p><p></p><p>"Gnomes, taken as a whole, generally are," Alewyth remarked.</p><p></p><p> - - -</p><p></p><p>In all of my years of gaming, I don't think I'd ever used a night hag before, so I specifically wrote this adventure just to be able to use one - especially since the night hag's "dream haunting" ability meshed so nicely with the main concept of this campaign. Since night hags target evil and/or chaotic individuals for their larva conversion, Thurloe became the only logical target, since we don't have any evil PCs and he's the only one with a chaotic component to his alignment.</p><p></p><p>For Rosie's dream sequence, I had seven tabs open to YouTube on my computer, each ready to play an hour of the sound of a baby crying. As soon as the first snail baby started crying, I activated one such link, then started playing the other six when the one's crying woke up the others. It was a marvelous cacophony, but one the players begged me not to use again when they returned to Rosie's dream after getting Thurloe rescued from the night hag.</p><p></p><p> - - -</p><p></p><p>T-shirt worn: My solid gray T-shirt (to represent the Ethereal Plane).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 8689452, member: 508"] [B]ADVENTURE 31: NIGHT AFTER NIGHT[/B] PC Roster: [INDENT]Alewyth Putterpye, dwarf priestess of Aerik 7[/INDENT] [INDENT] Thurloe Pulver, human fighter 3/wizard 3/spellsword 1[/INDENT] [INDENT] Wakuren, half-orc cleric of Cal 3/paladin 4[/INDENT] [INDENT] Xandro Silverstrings, human bard 5/rogue 2[/INDENT] [INDENT] Zander Quilson, elf sorcerer 7[/INDENT] Game Session Date: 9 July 2022 - - - The heroes were about an hour down the road from Devlinshire when they heard the furious pounding of hoofbeats behind them. Thurloe and Xandro wheeled their horses around to face the approaching riders; they were a pair of guardsmen wearing the uniforms of the Devlinshire city patrol. Alewyth looked back behind her with a look of worry on her face, wondering if they'd have to fight these men and not particularly looking forward to the battle if they were, for the men were the official representatives of the Dukedom, with all the power of Duke Virgil Devlin himself behind them. Alewyth certainly did not want to find herself on the wrong side of the law, even if she didn't particularly agree with the law in this case. "Good afternoon, gentlemen," said Wakuren pleasantly as he brought Mica and Perseverance to a halt at the side of the road, allowing the two guardsmen to pass. And pass they did, but immediately thereafter they spun their mounts about so they were facing the five dreamwalkers and their various mounts. "Good afternoon, folks," replied one of the guardsman, holding a hand before his eyes as if trying to block out the sun. "Man, it sure is bright out today, huh?" Zander's brows furrowed in puzzlement, for the day was somewhat overcast. "We've come with a warning," said the other guardsman, likewise holding up his hand as if shielding his eyes from the nonexistent glare of the sun, currently hidden behind a cloud. "Apparently there's a band of ruffians about - we've been sent to look for them and to warn those we meet to be on the lookout." "Ruffians?" echoed Alewyth. "That's right, ma'am. Two humans, an elf, a dwarven woman, and a half-orc broke into a compound just outside the city and destroyed a couple of undead critters animated at the orders of the Duke himself. Now, you and I might not see anything particularly wrong about killing undead abominations, but the Duke's mighty upset and has branded this band of five as terrorists. You five keep an eye out, now, you hear? They should be fairly easy to spot - the dwarf woman's apparently riding around on a large goat of some sort." Squinting at Alewyth, astride her dire goat mount Pyrite, the guardsman added, "That's a mighty fine horse you've got there, ma'am - what I can make out of it in this blasted sunlight!" "I-- thank you," replied Alewyth. "The Duke's special hobgoblin forces are being sent out to scour the surrounding area as well as us, so you might consider taking some of the back roads if at all possible," suggested the other guardsman. "Them hobbers, they don't always differentiate between the races all too well - why, they might not even recognize the five of you as all being human, like we do." "So you folks take care," the other guard added, spinning his horse back around. The other followed suit and then the two of them spurred their mounts on and were off, racing down the road at a full gallop. "What was that all about?" demanded Alewyth. "They're off doing their job, only it's a job they don't particularly want to do - bring us in for killing those three dread warriors," Thurloe explained. "This was them giving us a heads up about the Duke's hobgoblin forces. I'd say we'd do best to hurry on our way and take the first side road we come to!" He brought Horse to a full gallop and the others followed suit. About another twenty minutes down the road they met up with another rider, this one approaching them from ahead. It was an elderly woman dressed in a noblewoman's riding gear, sitting rigidly upright upon a pure white horse that trotted leisurely down the road. She sent her mount off to one side of the road so the two parties could pass each other and the five dreamwalkers slowed down their own mounts so as not to crash into her. As she got to within a dozen feet of Thurloe - who was at the head of his group's procession - she asked him, "Excuse me, can you tell me how far away Devlinshire might be? I have some business there, but I've never been this far west before." "It's probably a couple thousand miles behind you," Thurloe replied with a grin. "But, if you keep on heading the way you're heading, it's only about an hour and a half away." "Very droll," replied the nobleman with the barest hint of a smile. She produced a gold coin from a purse at her belt and passed it to the young swordsman. "But thank you." Thurloe took the proffered coin and gave it a quick lookover: it had a man with a pointed beard on one side and a lit torch on the other; not the common currency used in these parts, but likely as spendable as any other golden coin. He absently dropped it into his own coin purse and kicked Horse back into motion. However, he let the mount amble forward instead of continue the full-out run they'd started before, Thurloe not wanting to appear to be in a hurry while the noblewoman might take notice. "What's up?" asked Zander, bringing Eddy up to the spellsword. "That lady's heading to Devlinshire," Thurloe explained. "She meets up with any hobgoblin guardsmen, she'll be able to give them a good description of the lot of us - and there's not likely to be too many groups riding around with our particular makeup." He looked over at Wakuren as he said the latter, for in truth there weren't too many half-orc cleric/paladins of Cal on the entire continent, Wakuren likely being the only one. "Reckon we'd best find some side roads, pronto." "Looks like there's one up ahead," Xandro offered, squinting into the distance. "And it looks like it heads north, which is kind of where we want to go anyway." Their next dream victim, according to Mogo, was to be found in the small village of Snail Valley, northeast of their present location. The side road followed the course of a small brook for a bit, and although it likely added a half hour to their travel time, they found themselves in Snail Valley a good four hours later. At least that was what the wooden sign on the side of the road declared: "Welcome to Snail Valley" it read, with a picture of several rather happy-looking snails painted along the edges for good measure. Finding the specific location of the dream victim was easy, as Snail Valley was a small community and everyone knew little six-year-old [B]Rosie Picklemeyer[/B] had fallen asleep about two weeks ago and hadn't been able to be awakened since. The valley's druid, [B]Abitha Crow-Talker[/B], had done what she could but determined there was something magical going on beyond her abilities and had suggested waiting to see if Rosie came out of it in her own, for she didn't seem to be suffering any deleterious effects from the prolonged sleep. Riding up to the Picklemeyer cottage, Alewyth knocked on the door and was met by Rosie's parents, [B]Jarko and Petunia Picklemeyer[/B], who gave the strangers puzzled looks at first but welcomed them into their home with open arms once the dwarven priestess explained they had come to waken Rosie from her sleep. Xandro brought Rosie out into the common room, wrapped in a blanket, while the others took their places in a circle around her and Wakuren explained the process. Zander activated his [I]jade cooshee[/I] and set him up on watch detail; they'd had one too many surprises in the past and didn't want anything happening to their sleeping bodies while they were in the Dreamlands freeing Rosie. In fact, Thurloe kept silently indicating to Wakuren he wanted the half-orc to check out the Picklemeyers' auras to see if they were evil, and Wakuren gave Thurloe a frown and a silent head shake. However, Thurloe wasn't sure if that meant "No, they aren't evil" or "No, I'm not going to check because that would be embarrassing and just what's wrong with you, anyway?" Knowing Wakuren, it was probably that last one. Once everything was set up - Rosie's brow now adorned with a too-large leather headband holding a dreamstone to her temple to aid in the dreamwaking procedure - each of the five calmed their breathing and fell asleep. Jarko and Petunia looked at each other, hopeful but puzzled how this was going to help their daughter, but neither wanted to make any noise to wake these strangers up if they could possibly wake Rosie. One by one, the dreamwalkers found themselves in the Dreamlands, being met by their individual dream guides. "Hey, kupo!" cried Calliope upon seeing Alewyth appear in a dream about baking in a kitchen. "Are we ready for the next dreamer already, kupo?" asked Mogchamp to Xandro as he began dreaming about throwing rocks into a creek. Similarly, Moki met up with Zander and Kupek greeted Wakuren, then they all met up together at the Hall of Doors, a visualization of endless hallways filled with individual dreams. There hovered Mog, their dream moogle trainer, and beside him Doc, Thurloe's moogle dream guide. But of Thurloe there was no sight. "Where's the other one, kupo?" Mogo demanded. "No idea, kupo," replied Doc. "I felt the others going off to meet up with their dreamwalkers, so I hung around waiting for Thurloe, but he never showed, kupo." "Maybe he's having trouble falling asleep," suggested Wakuren. "Maybe that isn't really him - maybe he's been replaced by a doppelganger," suggested Zander Quilson, coming up with a ridiculous suggestion just to scare the others but then realizing it was a distinct - if unlikely - possibility. "We should wait for him," decided Alewyth, but as the minutes went on and the spellsword didn't show, she began to get worried. "Do you think something happened to him back on the Material Plane?" she asked. "The cooshee's there to look after him," Zander pointed out. "If the Picklemeyers decided to attack him or something, he'd wake the rest of us up." "We'd better go check on him," suggested Xandro. "But as long as we're here, we might as well take a peek at Rosie's dream and see what it is we'll be getting into." "In you go then, kupo!" replied Mogo as he opened the door to Rosie's dream and the four dreamwalkers stepped inside. "Hello," Rosie greeted them as they walked into her dream. She was wearing her mother's dress clothes, including a bonnet that kept falling down over her eyes that she kept pushing back out of the way. "[B]Mr. Bear[/B] and I were just about to start our tea party. Would you care to join us?" "She makes really good tea," put in Mr. Bear, a stuffed animal Rosie's mother had made for her when she was born but which here, in her dreams, was as alive as any of the newcomers to her dream. "Perhaps just a quick sip," suggested Alewyth, "but then we should see about getting you back home. Your parents are very--" But then she was cut off by a horrible wailing coming from the next room. "Oh no!" cried Rosie. "One of the snail babies is awake!" She rushed into the next room, Mr. Bear dutifully following at her heels. The room held seven cribs, inside each of which was a snail the size of a pillow, with the face of a human baby. One of them was crying something fierce, causing the others to start to stir out of their own slumber. "We need to rock him back to sleep before he wakes up the others!" Rosie bent over the crib and picked up the crying snail baby, starting to rock it back and forth, but the damage was already done - all seven of the creatures were now wide awake and bawling fiercely. The little girl looked frantically at the four dreamwalkers - whom she'd never seen before but had instantly accepted as belonging in her dream - and did a quick count. "We don't have enough!" she cried. "Play a lullaby on your lute of something!" Alewyth suggested to Xandro, looking down at the horrid face of a crying human baby grafted onto the slimy neck of a large snail. "That won't work!" Rosie chided. "You have to rock them back to sleep, like this!" She demonstrated with the one she held in her arms, but with six other snails wailing there was no way she was going to be able to get this one to fall asleep. "We need Thurloe," Alewyth deduced and Xandro was all too glad to use that as an excuse to depart Rosie's dream - he, too, was bothered by the sight of these snail/human baby hybrid monsters. "We'll go get someone else to help us get them all back to sleep," he promised Rosie, before opening the door that allowed them to exit the little girl's dream. "If Thurloe had been here," pointed out Zander, "you know what his suggestion would have been: slaughter all the snail babies and get on with the damn tea party, if that's what it takes to wake her up." "Probably," agreed Alewyth. "But let's all wake up ourselves and see what's up with Thurloe." "Good luck, kupo!" encouraged Mogo as the four dreamwalkers all forced themselves awake. One after the other, each suddenly just disappeared from the Dreamlands and awoke back up in their own bodies. The four heroes saw Mr. and Mrs. Picklemeyer start as the dreamwalkers started rising from their lotus positions. They looked over to their daughter, but Rosie was still sound asleep in her blanket. "What happened? Is everything all right?" asked Petunia. "We had a slight problem," admitted Alewyth, bending down over Thurloe, who still sat in the lotus position, sound asleep. "Nothing to worry about, though." [I]I hope[/I], the dwarf added silently to herself. "Check out his aura, just in case," suggested Zander. "Doppelgangers wouldn't necessarily have an evil aura," pointed out Wakuren, but he focused his attention on Thurloe anyway. "He's clean," he reported back to the others. Then he slapped Thurloe lightly on the side of the face. "Wakey-wakey," he told the sleeping spellsword. "Huh--what?" gasped Thurloe as he was slapped awake and the first thing he saw was Wakuren's half-orc visage smack dab in his field of vision. "What's going on?" "Where were you?" demanded Wakuren. "What do you mean?" "You never showed in the Dreamlands. What were you doing, wandering about? Exploring on your own or something?" "What? No..." Thurloe answered, his brows lowering in a frown. "I don't think so...." It was puzzling, for the whole reason these five had been chosen by the Queen of Dreams as her personal representatives on the Material Plane in the first place was because they had perfect recall of their time spent in the Dreamlands - but Thurloe couldn't remember anything that had happened since he first fell asleep at Rosie's side. "Let me try something," Wakuren suggested, casting a [I]protection from evil[/I] spell upon Thurloe and then ushering everyone back into position to try again. But this time was the same as before: the other four dreamwalkers showed up in the Dreamlands and were met by their moogle guides, but Doc was left hanging out by himself as Thurloe was nowhere to be seen. Once it was apparent he wasn't going to show up any time soon, they woke themselves back up again and slapped Thurloe back awake as well. "Maybe something's wrong with your dreamstone?" suggested Xandro, grasping at straws. Just to be sure, though, Thurloe and Wakuren swapped headbands and they all tried a third time, with the same results. "Well, that wasn't it," the bard admitted. "You don't think the Nightmare King has found a way to separate us somehow when we're dreaming...?" "We need to see where Thurloe's going when he falls asleep," Alewyth suggested, scooting everyone into a circle around Thurloe instead of Rosie. "Wait a minute, this won't work," pointed out Xandro. "There are only four of us around him - we need five!" "We can put a dreamstone on the cooshee," Zander suggested, and the elven dog wagged his tail at hearing himself mentioned. "He's not a trained dreamwalker," scoffed Thurloe. "But I'll tell you what: let's give me the 'target' dreamstone as well as the one I normally wear - maybe that'll give me a boost." He added Rosie's headband to his own and they all tried a fourth time, with predictable results. The other four were in the Dreamlands as usual, and Thurloe was nowhere to be seen. "Any ideas?" Xandro asked Mogo, explaining everything they'd tried thus far. "Something's changed since last night, when Thurloe was last in the Dreamlands, kupo," the moogle observed. "Is he sleeping now, kupo?" Alewyth assured the moogle that Thurloe was sound asleep in the Picklemeyers' cottage. "Then let's see if we can find his dream, kupo!" said the moogle, turning to the Hall of Doors. The halls started flashing by sideways, moving at incredible speeds as the moogle dreamwalking trainer flipped through hallway after hallway. Doors sped by at increasing speeds, causing Alewyth to turn a bit green from motion sickness even though she was standing perfectly still. But eventually the doors slowed down and the hallways stopped reconfiguring themselves to Mogo's specifications and the trainer sighed, "He's not here, kupo!" "How is that possible?" asked Alewyth. Mogo shrugged his little kittenish shoulders. "If I had to hazard a guess, it sounds like he's been taken by a night hag, kupo," Mogo replied. He went on to explain that night hags were horrible creatures from the Lower Planes, who attached themselves to a victim and then haunted their nightmares, riding them all night long and draining them of their physical vitality each night. Eventually, with the victim getting weaker and weaker, he was transformed into a creature called a larva, which the night hag then sold to devils or demons for their own horrific use. "But why can't we find him, if he's asleep?" asked Zander. "Think of the Dreamlands as a large field, kupo," suggested Mogo. "Whenever anyone dreams, their dream takes place in a little section of the field, kupo. But a night hag, she digs a little hole in the field - like a gopher hole - and covers the top of it with a clump of dirt, so you can look all over the field and you won't ever find her, kupo. If a night hag has gotten hold of Thurloe, then every time he dreams he'll end up in a hidden pocket somewhere where we can't detect him, kupo." This was horrible news, but they needed to do what they could to put a stop to it and the first thing was letting Thurloe know what was happening. They thanked Mogo, promised to keep him up to date, and returned to their physical bodies once again, where they explained to the puzzled Picklemeyers that they wouldn't be able to wake up Rosie that night after all. "We've run into a temporary problem with one of our dreamwalkers, but we'll have him fixed up soon and we'll come back to wake up Rosie as soon as we can!" Alewyth promised them. They found lodging in one of the inns and made the best of the evening, Thurloe finally falling asleep with some trepidation knowing what was in store for him. He slept fitfully, and there was no sight of him in the Dreamlands. Unwilling to continue training only four of his five students, Mogo gave the others the night off as a free exercise to practice the dreamwalking techniques he'd already shown them. And in the morning, when they gathered together, Thurloe looked terrible: bloodshot eyes with dark bags beneath, as if he hadn't gotten any sleep at all. "Do you remember anything?" Alewyth prompted. "Not a thing," Thurloe replied. "But I feel like crap." Wakuren tried casting a [I]lesser restoration[/I] spell upon the spellsword, but it didn't seem to have any effect. Alewyth and Wakuren prepared their day's spells, and the dwarven priestess of Aerik selected a [I]divination[/I] spell to see if it could help them determine what was happening to Thurloe when he slept. Casting the spell, Alewyth received the following cryptic reply to her question, "What will happen to Thurloe when he next goes to sleep?" The answer came from the air above her, [CENTER][/CENTER] [INDENT]"In spider's web, the night hag boasts,[/INDENT] [INDENT]She'll ride her prey in the land of ghosts."[/INDENT] "The land of ghosts: that's the Ethereal Plane," observed Wakuren. "She's got her trap set in the Ethereal Plane." "How does that help us?" snarled Thurloe. "We can't get to the Ethereal Plane." "No, we can't," Alewyth admitted. "But I'll bet a cleric of Delphyne, Goddess of Magic could get us there. And they'd probably know a lot more about night hags than we do." "Where's the nearest cleric of Delphyne?" Zander asked. "I doubt they have one hanging around Snail Valley." "There's a temple of Delphyne back in Baron's Haven," Xandro recalled. "But that's at least a week behind us. Our best bet's probably Devlinshire." "...Where we're wanted criminals," pointed out Alewyth. "True, true," Xandro admitted, "but they'll be looking for the full five of us, and we do rather stand out. But if just one of us were to return to the city...." "Two of us," Wakurn countered. "I can be [I]invisible[/I], right beside you." "And the rest of us?" asked Zander. "We can be inside a [I]rope trick[/I]," Thurloe answered. "I can cast it underneath the wagon. It'll work. Let's go, then." He was eager to be free of this night hag, if this was how he was going to feel after each night spent with her. They decided to have Xandro steer the wagon into town, with Wakuren invisible in the seat next to him. Xandro, a wandering bard, had the best reason for entering the city and also had the quickest wit when it came to talking himself out of situations, if there were any suspicions at the city gates. But his silver tongue wasn't needed; the guards asked him no questions and he steered the wagon down the street of temples, seeking out Delphyne's holy symbol on the buildings as they drove past. Wakuren spotted it and Xandro brought the mules to a halt before the structure, while Wakuren ducked under the wagon, stuck his head into the extradimensional space where the other three were hiding, and they made their way surreptitiously into the temple of Delphyne. Their meeting with the clerics there was both good and bad. Good, in that they knew some lore about night hags and had spellcasters capable of casting a [I]plane shift[/I] spell for them (for a suitable donation, of course); bad in that none of the clerics powerful enough to cast that spell currently had it on hand - the group would have to meet again the next day to have the spell cast upon them. In the meantime, they'd prepare a scroll of [I]plane shift[/I] so the five heroes would be able to return to the Material Plane when their extraplanar business had been completed. That meant another night's depredations at the hands of the night hag, but it couldn't be helped - and at least Thurloe had no memories of his time spent in the night hag's dream trap. He opted to sleep inside the extradimensional space of a [I]rope trick[/I] spell, hoping against hope the night hag wouldn't be able to find him if he fell asleep in an entirely different dimension, but he awoke the next morning knowing that nothing had changed: he felt even worse, with aching joints and bones as if he were sick with the flu. But at least today they'd hopefully be able to deal with the situation at hand. They returned to the temple of Delphyne ready to do battle with the night hag and get Thurloe released from her thrall. They paid over the money requested by the clerics, the lead cleric cast the spell herself, and the five heroes were shunted through the planes to end up on the Ethereal Plane. And although the Ethereal Plane was in theory endless, the head cleric had theorized that since the night hag's "dream trap" was attuned to Thurloe, his arrival on the plane - even in physical form - should be at least nearby where they wanted to be. And such indeed seemed to be the case, for the five heroes found themselves in a misty world with an enormous black structure before them. It seemed to be carved from an immense, black gemstone, rectangular in shape but with the four corners cut off on the diagonal, forming a lozenge shape. The structure stood a good 20 feet tall and was more than twice that wide and four times as long. A pair of solid-looking doors sat in the middle of one of the shorter sides of the structure, and as the others started casting their standard array of "prepare for combat" spells, Xandro pulled out his lockpicking tools and applied himself in earnest to the task of getting past the locking mechanism. Alewyth cast a [I]magic circle against evil[/I] spell upon herself, following it up with a [I]bless[/I] spell upon the assembled group. Thurloe cast a [I]mage armor[/I] spell on himself, used his wand to cast a [I]shield[/I] spell upon himself, and then passed the wand over to Zander so the elf could do likewise. Zander also cast a [I]mage armor[/I] spell upon himself, then cast two [I]bear's endurance[/I] spells, one on himself and one on Wakuren, before casting a [I]haste[/I] spell on the group. Wakuren, in the meantime, contented himself with a [I]protection from evil[/I] spell and the [I]invisibility[/I] provided to him from his magic ring. "How's that lock coming?" asked Thurloe, eager to get on with it. "Just got it...now!" replied Xandro, opening the door and putting away his tools. However, there were two guardians on the other side of the doors and they charged forward at the intruders to their mistress's secret realm. These were vaguely reptilian creatures, with scales of an iridescent blue and complicated, three-part jaws that allowed their trifold mouths to open wide and snatch up prey. The first one sprinted in a dash for Xandro, but Thurloe cut it down with his bastard sword as soon as it stuck its head out of the door. It crashed to the ground at the spellsword's feet. The other one snapped at Thurloe, but he managed to duck back from its snapping teeth and stabbed forward with the blade of his sword, skewering it through the chest. Just that quickly, both ethereal marauders were slain. Alewyth stepped up, [I]Sjondra[/I] at the ready in case there were any more of these strange creatures, but it looked like there had just been the two. Warily, she stepped inside the structure. Ahead, in the interior of the rectangular building, stood what at first looked to be a giant igloo, although closer examination showed it had been crafted of webbing, not ice. Most of it sat in the back of the building, a 40-foot-diamter hemisphere with a long, sloped projection sticking out towards the doors of the gemlike structure. Unseen by any of the heroes - who weren't in a position to be able to see the interior sides of the upper dome on either side of the "entry tunnel" - a pair of phase spiders, each the size of a large horse, hung upside-down ready to pounce on anyone who entered their lair. Thurloe advanced down the entry tunnel cautiously - the interior was murkily lit in some unknown fashion, but he was getting a disturbing sense of [I]déjà vu[/I], as if he'd been inside this dome before. And if this was indeed the night hag's dream trap, then it made sense that he had in fact been here; he just had no conscious memory of it. Zander stood at the beginning of the tunnel, not yet ready to enter. He brought the words to a [I]lightning bolt[/I] spell to the forefront of his brain, ready to cast the spell if anything were to show up and look menacing. The Delphynian clerics had warned the group that fire and cold were useless against a night hag, so he was hoping a blast of electricity would be just the thing. Xandro, in the meantime, pulled the [I]Dardolian lute[/I] from his back and began playing his song of inspirational courage. If ever there was a need to set fears to bay, this creepy place was it! Alewyth cast an [I]aid[/I] spell on herself as she stepped forward down the entry tunnel. But Wakuren was there ahead of her, stepping boldly into the dome and examining the 10-foot-diameter metal disk he found on the floor in the center of the curved structure. It had arcane runes along its surface and probably served some sort of purpose similar to a [I]teleportation circle[/I], he guessed - maybe this was how the hag entered the structure, although that wouldn't explain why the front door was locked. If there was a lock on the door, you would expect she'd have the key. Perhaps, he ruminated, this was the device that lured Thurloe to this specific destination when he fell asleep. He turned to ask Thurloe if that had been the case, and was surprised to see not only the spellsword right there behind him - the half-orc hadn't heard him approach - but a pair of giant spiders drop down from the ceiling and attack, mandibles dripping with venom. Of course, as Wakuren was still hidden behind the [I]invisibility[/I] spell of his ring, both spiders attacked Thurloe, the only foe they saw. But Wakuren popped back into view as he brought the bottom of his shield crashing down upon the mottled abdomen of the nearest spider. Back at the entrance, Zander took a step to the side to better line up his field of vision and cast the [I]lightning bolt[/I] he'd had ready to fire. It zapped through the first phase spider to have successfully bitten Thurloe, but then the second one scrabbled up and bit the spellsword as well. Thurloe's bastard sword came crashing down upon the head of that one, cleaving it through, right between its largest pair of eyes, and it fell to the ground, eight legs twitching spasmodically. Alewyth ran up to the remaining spider and slammed it with [I]Sjondra[/I], and then Zander finished it off with a [I]scorching ray[/I] spell, figuring the night hag might be immune to fire magic but a giant spider likely wasn't. The spiders slain, Thurloe went back to examining the plate on the floor. "I remember this," he said. "I didn't before, but now that I'm here, I remember this whole dome thing, and this plate on the floor. This is where I'd end up when I fell asleep." He turned and faced the back of the dome. "And the night hag would come for me from the back, over there." Everyone looked around the dome, but there was no sign of the night hag. And then Zander's keen elven vision picked up a bit of metal tucked in among the webbing at the base of the dome, along the floor. Pulling away at the strands keeping it in place, he saw it was a metal oil lamp, of the kind stories attributed to magic genies and the like. "Yes!" Thurloe cried when he saw the lamp. "She'd touch it, and she'd say something, and then we were someplace else - inside the lamp, no doubt." "What did she say?" prompted Alewyth. "Hang on, I'm thinking. 'Entrer,' 'antrar,' 'eintrar'..."eintret!' She said 'eintret!'" "Gather together," Wakuren told the others. "This probably works like a [I]teleport[/I] spell - we should all be in contact with each other." Huddling together, Thurloe touched the lamp and said "Eintret" - and suddenly, they were elsewhere. Thurloe was standing on another round, metal plate on the floor, much the same size and shape as the one in the middle of the phase spider dome, and this too was in the middle of a domelike structure overhead, but there were three openings and one closed door along the cardinal points around this dome, which was not constructed of webbing but rather seemed to have been carved out of a pocket of stone. It had the same rough dimensions as the web-dome, though: about 20 feet tall and 40 feet in diameter. The hemisphere looked vaguely familiar, but then Thurloe didn't have any more time for sight-seeing as they were under attack. Xandro had been standing to Thurloe's left when they [I]teleported[/I] into this extradimensional space, and as a result he had been the closest to the open stables on the eastern side of the reception area. Charging out of the straw-filled stables came a pitch-black horse with a flaming mane and hooves, snorting steam from its flared nostrils. It raced forward and reared up, striking the bard with a flaming hoof that sent him staggering backwards a step or two. The group recognized the creature as a nightmare, having met up with one before in a dream. Thurloe stepped away from the nightmare, not out of fear but out of recognition: the closed door, he now recalled, led to the night hag's bedroom, where she would ride him all night long, cackling in glee at his pain. Nightmare be damned, the others could deal with the hag's horse - he wanted payback from the evil fiend who had been sapping his physical vitality for two nights! Knowing instinctively the door was unlocked, Thurloe flung it open while casting a [I]mirror image[/I] spell upon himself, causing there to be not one spellsword but four identical ones crowding the doorway. Thurloe couldn't help himself; he called out, "Hi, honey - I'm home!" "Why, indeed you are, dearie - couldn't stay away, could you? And you brought friends! Oh, this is going to be quite an interesting session, I can already tell!" Zander Quilson cast a reliable standby, [I]magic missile[/I], at the nightmare rearing and kicking at Xandro. As expected, the missiles struck unerringly into the monster horse's flank. Wakuren ran around to the back of the beast, putting all of his considerable strength into the force of his swing as he brought the pointed bottom edge of his [I]shield of Cal[/I] stabbing into the horse's side, causing it to scream in pain. The attack brought the half-orc back to full visibility, but that had been a good trade-off as far as Wakuren was concerned. On the other side of the nightmare, Xandro stabbed at the beast with his longsword, catching it just behind its front leg. In return, it focused its attention on the bard, lashing out at him with its flaming hooves and snapping at him with its wicked teeth, which were far sharper than the teeth of a horse had any right to be. Alewyth cast a [I]spiritual weapon[/I] spell and sent the dwarven warhammer flying at the night hag, where it shattered upon her innate spell resistance, much to the surprise and consternation of the dwarven priestess. The night hag, [B]Hesperna Vanderdaark[/B], ignored the shattering weapon and came in close to grab at Thurloe, but the image she grabbed was one of the spell effects and it popped into nothingness at her touch. "Playing hard to get, are we, sweetie?" she crooned at Thurloe, giving him a smile that put his hair on edge. He channeled his [I]torc of the titans[/I] to put some extra power behind his swing - for her nightly depredations had left him fatigued - and sent his bastard sword slicing into her age-hardened skin. Zander dropped his [I]jade cooshee[/I] on the floor and called out the command word that brought it to life. "Go help Thurloe!" he told it, and it dashed off to do his master's bidding, snapping at Hesperna, to admittedly little effect. But then Alewyth pushed past Thurloe and swung [I]Sjondra[/I] into the night hag's side, trusting [I]this[/I] dwarven warhammer at least wouldn't shatter upon the night hag's touch. Then she stepped back and remembered the spell she'd prepared to ensure the night hag didn't get away; fortunately, her [I]dimensional anchor[/I] spell took full effect, trapping Hesperna right here in the room with the rest of them - if she wanted to escape, she'd have to push her way past the entire group and get to the disk on the floor of the reception dome. Wakuren slew the nightmare with another bone-breaking blow of his shield upon the flaming equine's spine, and with the ebony-skinned beast out of the picture Xandro fell back to playing his song of inspirational courage on his lute. After all, it was getting crowded there in the hag's bedroom. Hesperna, tired of playing around with Thurloe, took a step back and flung out four [I]magic missiles[/I], hitting him (although that missile was harmlessly absorbed into his [I]shield[/I] spell), popping his two remaining [I]mirror images[/I] into nonexistence, and causing the cooshee to yelp in pain as a side bonus. But Thurloe stepped forward and used another dose of enhanced strength from his magical torc to power another swing of his bastard sword. Zander cast a [I]lightning bolt[/I] spell at Hesperna, but it too had no effect as it was absorbed be her hefty resistance to most spells. The cooshee continued nipping at her ankles, trying to trip her to the floor, but she was having none of it. Alewyth pressed the attack with [I]Sjondra[/I] and now Wakuren entered the room, slamming his shield into the night hag's side. That finally made up Hesperna's mind. She'd arrogantly thought she could handle Thurloe and his band of companions, but now too many of their attacks were getting through her defenses. As much as she hated to admit it - or put her long-earned treasures on the line - she needed help, and fast. With that realization, she darted back to her bed, yanked out a footlocker from beneath it, and popped open the lid. Alewyth was close enough to see what was inside it: nearly half a dozen writhing worms, each about the size of her forearm. Thurloe pressed on the attack, as a close grouping of [I]magic missiles[/I] flew over his shoulder to break apart into nothingness when they reached Hesperna, another victim of her innate resistance to spells. Alewyth swung again with her warhammer, but hardly made enough of an attack for the night hag to even notice. Her focus was on Thurloe, her current project and, with any luck, the sixth of her larvae, after which she'd be off to the Lower Planes to sell them off for a good deal of coin. But first she had to survive, trapped as she was on this plane and unable to simply [I]plane shift[/I] away to the Material Plane. She gave serious thought toward abandoning her magic lamp and escaping back to the Ethereal Plane, where she could likely lose these five heroes in the mists. But then Wakuren made the whole issue moot by bringing the edge of his shield crashing into her face, driving her nose up into her brain while simultaneously snapping her neck. Hesperna coughed up a bubble of blackish blood and fell to a heap in her own extradimensional bedroom. However, that didn't mean the fight was all the way finished just yet. One of the larval creatures wriggled out of the footlocker, inadvertently exposing one of the chest's magical properties, for as soon as it was out it grew eightfold until it was as long as a man. It opened wide its circular mouth and spewed forth a small rain of wriggling maggots at Thurloe, covering the spellsword in flyspawn. He involuntarily stepped back and started brushing the maggots off of him, while Xandro stepped forward and slammed the lid back down, imprisoning the other four larvae. Alewyth killed the one that had gotten free with her dwarven warhammer. "Is that it?" Thurloe asked, still wiping maggots off of his body and crushing them underfoot with his boots. Alewyth aided him in his task. "It looks like it," Zander answered. "The rest of the stable's empty, and all I see in the other rooms are a bunch of tables and a pool of water." A quick search confirmed the rest of the extradimensional space was clear of enemies. Closer examination of the lab revealed a few magical items Hesperna had apparently crafted there in her lab - a bag of [I]dust of illusion[/I], a vial of [I]elixir of truth[/I], and a vial of [I]salve of slipperiness[/I] - and a brief check-out of the pool revealed it not only cleaned the bodies and clothes of anyone entering its waters, but full submersion resulted in gaining the equivalent sustenance as if one had just consumed an entire meal. And Hesperna had a second, smaller chest stored under her bed, this one filled with gems and coins, including several of the gold coins with the pointy-bearded man on one side and a lit torch on the other. "Guys," said Xandro excitedly. "Do you know what this means? [I]Mobile headquarters![/I]" "It'll need some cleaning out, first," muttered Alewyth, looking at the squashed maggots on the floor of Hesperna's bedroom and the full-size corpses of the slain larva, nightmare, and of Hesperna herself. She gave a shiver of disgust. Figuring out how to leave was easy enough, as the word "AUSSTEIG" was carved in the middle of the metal disk in the reception dome. Sure enough, by stepping on the plate and saying the command word, one was shunted to stand adjacent to the magic lamp, in this case back under the web-dome inside the black lozenge-shaped building. Alewyth and Xandro had brought the footlocker with them, and they allowed the other larvae out one at a time for the sole purpose of slaying them. But that done, they opted to keep the footlocker - one never knew when you might need to crawl inside and get shrunken down to one-eighth your normal size. It would be a good way to smuggle a bunch of people out of a building or something, that was for sure, even if it didn't seem to have any effect on non-living matter placed into the chest. "Let's get out of here," Thurloe said, eager to be back to the Material Plane. More than anything else, he was eager to get back to the Dreamlands, just to prove to himself he could. But Xandro held him off for a bit. "You know," he said, "phase spider silk can be sold for a hefty sum to those interested in making magic items. [I]Portable holes[/I], for instance." Even Thurloe, eager as he was to see the end of this place, had no compunctions about hanging around long enough to cut down chunks of the phase spider silk that made up the "igloo dome." It was just a shame they wouldn't be able to return back here once they left, since the scroll of [I]plane shift[/I] Alewyth had received from the clerics of Delphyne was only good for one trip back to the Mortal World. Once they'd cut and stowed all they could carry, Alewyth unrolled the scroll, read the words contained therein, and the five of them returned to the Material World, back inside the temple of Delphyne. There, they got directions to a few local businesses where they might be able to sell phase spider silk, and hurried off to load up the wagon with the handfuls they had been able to take with them (and the footlocker, which they had stuffed full as well). Then, it was back to invisibility for Wakuren, back to the interior of the magic lamp for Zander, Alewyth, and Thurloe (where the dwarven priestess quickly put the men on cleaning detail), and Xandro was back to driving the wagon out of Devlinshire and back over to Snail Valley. The Picklemeyers were happy to hear that the "slight issue" had been taken care of and that the five dreamwalkers were certain they could awaken their daughter Rosie for sure this time. And, after each of the dreamwalkers got to experience for him- or herself the "joys" of rocking a crying, baby-faced snail to sleep in their arms, they all enjoyed a quick cup of pretend tea with Rosie and Mr. Bear, after which time the dream started collapsing around them. "Time to wake up!" called out Wakuren, and the six woke back up on the Material Plane all at once. "Where's Mr. Bear?" Rosie asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. Jarko dashed back into her room to grab the stuffed animal while Petunia grabbed her daughter up into her arms and buried her in a hug. "We can't thank you enough," Jarko told the five dreamwalkers as they prepared to depart. "Here, I'd like you to have this," Petunia said, handing over a silver ring. "It's been in my family for three generations and it's got some kind of magic in it, but it's only of any use to a spellcaster and I don't have any such abilities. Perhaps you can use it." Wakuren tried declining, but Petunia was adamant. "We've not much else to pay you with," she insisted. "Please. Put it to good use." Eventually, Wakuren agreed, if only to make the Picklemeyers feel better. "What's your deal?" complained Thurloe when they were back outside heading to their wagon and the riding animals. "When somebody insists on giving you payment, you take payment!" "Kind of like that gold coin that 'noblewoman' gave you on the road?" Wakuren asked. "Yeah, I suppose." "You realize that noblewoman was the night hag in human form, and the coin was probably some sort of focus device that allowed her to reel you in like a fish," the half-orc pointed out. "What? Did you read her aura? Was she evil?" "I didn't look," admitted Wakuren. "It's not polite to go around assuming everyone's a potential source of evil." "I quite agree," said the little gnome sitting on the front seat of the wagon. He held a burlap sack on his lap. "Wangle!" exclaimed Alewyth. "What are you doing here?" "Possible delivery," he replied. "Were you still interested in that pair of [I]boots of striding and springing[/I] you put a down-payment on? I understand you've come into some money recently." Alewyth chose not to press how the gnome knew so much about her personal business, but she answered in the affirmative. Wangle Turdblossom reminded her of how much she still owed on the boots, she turned over the coins from her share of Hesperna's treasure and the money they'd made off of the phase spider silk, and the gnome handed over the burlap sack. "Wear them in good health," he advised, then scooted down from the wagon and ambled away, whistling a merry tune. "He's a strange little fellow," Wakuren observed. "Gnomes, taken as a whole, generally are," Alewyth remarked. - - - In all of my years of gaming, I don't think I'd ever used a night hag before, so I specifically wrote this adventure just to be able to use one - especially since the night hag's "dream haunting" ability meshed so nicely with the main concept of this campaign. Since night hags target evil and/or chaotic individuals for their larva conversion, Thurloe became the only logical target, since we don't have any evil PCs and he's the only one with a chaotic component to his alignment. For Rosie's dream sequence, I had seven tabs open to YouTube on my computer, each ready to play an hour of the sound of a baby crying. As soon as the first snail baby started crying, I activated one such link, then started playing the other six when the one's crying woke up the others. It was a marvelous cacophony, but one the players begged me not to use again when they returned to Rosie's dream after getting Thurloe rescued from the night hag. - - - T-shirt worn: My solid gray T-shirt (to represent the Ethereal Plane). [/QUOTE]
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