Larrel transported them directly back to Kuldahar, so they could re-supply and re-stock before making their way to Dorn’s Deep. After briefly tussling with Orogs, they entered the surface caverns. The caverns were full of Mushroom-folk, Ettins, and other hostile entities. They briefly bartered with a rather unpleasant and reclusive wizard, and recovered the body of his missing apprentice in exchange for information about the entrance to Dorn’s Deep.
When they made their way to the entrance, they saw a long stone walkway over lava, leading to a dwarven fortress. The ledges overlooking the entrance looked like the perfect spot for an ambush…. and so they were – as Drow and their servants fired down upon them! Fortunately, Victor had anticipated this, and lured the Drow right back across the bridge into an ambush of his own.Once they cleared the entryway of Drow, and solved a Dwarven stonework riddle guarding the stairway down, they made their way into the main area of the settlement. This include a large statue of a Dwarven craftsman., Angus frowned as he stared at it. “Should be lit.” He muttered. “Should *always* be lit”As Basil translated, the spirit of a dwarven priest explained that a Necromancer seeking power had invaded the Dwarven tombs. He had quenched the fires of the sacred forge to enable him to raise the dead! What’s more he was seeking to use the power of a Vortex to the Negative Plane to become a full Lich! This could not be allowed! They would have to defeat the hordes, battle the Lich himself, find his Phylactery, and destroy it in the Vortex. All in a day’s work…Inside the dwarven tombs they battled legions of undead. Skeletons, zombies, ghouls… a seemingly never-ending stream. But when they had battled their way through the horde they mat their true adversary. And he was a different matter entirely.
No matter how many spells they slung at the Lich. No matter how many times Victor and Jim beat him down, he just kept getting back up – fully refreshed. They could not make headway against him. They took cover and hid to think of a better approach as the Lich mocked them from the entryway to the Mausoleum. Suddenly they realized that Angus was missing… and then they heard a familiar voice ring out from the tomb above… “Oi! You! Come on if you think you’re hard enough! Oh No…..It was Angus.
“What is he *doing*?” hissed Rose. “Even he can’t stand up to a Lich! Once it sees simple blasting won’t work it’ll just summon spectres or pools of acid and be done with him!” “Its an inexperienced Lich. New to the power.”, said Basil quietly. ” He’s baiting it”.
And so Angus took blast after blast. And rather than getting angry, or charging, or being frightened, or confronting the Lich in any other way it expected… he laughed. And dropped casual insults. And the Lich doubled down ever harder on incinerating him. The occasional blast got through. His armor was smoking here and there. But he sipped healing potions like brandy and refused to acknowledge the injuries.Once he was certain he occupied the Lich’s full attention, Angus did something even more astonishing. He turned his back on the Lich and ignored it entirely! “Is that all you’ve got, ya pansy!” He called over his shoulder has he sauntered down the passageway. The Lich pursued him vengefully, but Angus unhurriedly made his way to an unmarked tomb at the end of hallway.He casually disarmed the traps protecting it and retrieved the Lich’s phylactery gem from its hiding place. The Lich clawed at him – no longer able to cast spells against his aura. But still he ignored it – refusing to finish it off so it could reform and renew its assault. He wandered back up to the tomb of the dwarven hero Jamoth. Ducked inside, and then stuck his head back out and blew a raspberry. When the enraged Lich rushed inside, Angus casually tossed the gem into the vortex, made a rude gesture, and watched in satisfation as the Lich was dragged to his doom. He strolled back to his astonished companions, and remarked, “Its all the same with these barmy power-mad boggins. Ya git under their skin and all that fancy learnin’ goes straight out their haids.”They explored the rest of the tomb, and found an unexpected sight… a statue dedicated to Evayne, the daughter of Larrel! In the tomb behind it they found Evayne’s diary, detailing how the dwarves too had been betrayed – and Evayne had died trying to save them. Victor swears an Oath that Larrel will know the truth of Evayne’s final sacrifice.Once the Lich was gone, the lava began to flow through the sacred forge once more, and the priest and his bretheren could return to their eternal rest. Angus gave a brief nod of satisfaction as they headed back into the tomb to continue their quest.
5 responses to “Victorians on Ice: Upper Dorn’s Deep”
atcDave
That was all wonderful. I love Victor as the leader of this crew, and I love how you involve all the team in the story of it. Obviously Angus shines here.
Thanks! Once Angus had his moment in game the rest almost wrote itself. Was inordinately difficult to get him properly flipping the bird, but *so* worth it.
I am so often confused by what it will show and what won’t. I’d mentioned a very racy Imoen a few days back, it just really makes me wonder how its limits are actually determined?
I think I’ve mentioned before its actually got multiple filters. One works on the text and the other examines the images. You can often sneak stuff by through sorting out which one you’re tripping and weaseling around it. You can get by the text filter with euphemisms – particularly in combination with an artist style that’s prone to what you want. Getting past the image filter involves having enough other things going on in the image that it doesn’t recognize some of the things its trying to block. Its an art form either way, but its amazing what you can slip past something.
atcDave
Yeah I’ve learned some of the difference between them. I’ve only seen the first filter a couple times, but that means you need to re-write something because it doesn’t like your word choice.
the other one gets trickier. You can tell you’re on thin ice when you start getting less than four images. But even when it gives you none, if you don’t see anything obvious to change in your text it’s generally okay to just retry a few times and see if you can get anything. Just an obvious comment, it starts getting twitchier when characters are “dressed down”. As I was mentioning yesterday, if I say “tunic” it will reject more than when I say “robes”.
but it just flabbergasts me when it displays something far racier than I ever wanted. It seems like one of the areas they need to do a lot of work yet!
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