The Dark Radiant Rises - 10/11/2022 - A Kavel Perspective

Portal Plaza - Thicc Bois Begin

Archie heard that some other adventurers followed up on his adventure to the Sunset Spines where he found Desathrax’s lair. One of these adventurers was the thicc-muscled badass before me in Portal Plaza; Varga, my half-orc, fighting, sustainable-raiding (her words) friend. Now that a whole bunch of Desathrax’s dead minions had been taken care of, Varga decided she’d also join the crew that would take care of the chief. Good stuff. We discussed some things since we last saw each other in Phlegethos. I told her Kruger said hello and that he mentioned that when he was training her, he noticed she can go beyond exhaustion. I described it as going past a second wind, more like becoming a zombie and being unstoppable. She did not see it the same way. She described her ability to keep going as more of a rage against failure, or even death. So zombie, right? But, she didn’t see it that way.
After the chit chat, we wondered who else would join us, and noted we had the beginning of a thicc crew. So we flexed and posed; the two somatic components to performing the Thicc-Boi calling ritual and…


Portal Plaza - The Thicc Bois

… Ivan slid into view!

My human, berserk thicc-boi friend had joined us - the ritual always works. Ivan was wearing the gauntlets he got from Phlegethos. Good bling. He asked if there would be any ‘softies’ joining us today. I said we did a Thicc-Boi ritual and he arrived. So, we should do another one. And we did…


Portal Plaza - A(n adjacent) Thicc-Boi Rises

… comrade Delilah, my half-elf, shadowy blade master friend joined us. She is not thicc, but she is very thicc-adjacent. So, good. I last saw her, many months ago, when her dragon dad gave me a dragon tattoo on my right bicep which held a one-off casting of the Hex spell.

Well, we were one person short of a standard adventuring party. But, we were strong on thiccness and thiccness-adjacency. So, we were a very badass party. I did check though, I asked, “who amongst us does healing magic?” Unfortunately the response was no one. The response wasn’t completely silent though, because Varga started talking about being blessed by a deity or something like that. She seemed quite motivated, and really, really up for a big, challenging fight. Wasn’t sure if this was a good thing. At the same time; maybe I should have gotten a blessing? Although, had I asked Mendal, he probably would have said, ‘I made you that heavy kettlebell didn’t I? What more do you want?’

The attendant at the portal said we should go to Kundar instead of straight to the lair in the Spines, because someone was going to meet us in Kundar.


Kundar

It was my blue-scaled, investigative sorcerer friend, comrade Derthaad! We did, actually, have a full adventuring party!

Always good to have unlimited lighting bolt spells available in the party. Derthaad had been researching Desathrax all week here in Kundar. He discovered that the wannabe god is vulnerable to metals outside of the typical dragon spectrum, so iron, tin, lead and such. The others were pleased to hear this.

“Shit!” … I was not pleased to hear this!

I smash the enemy barehanded now. I still had my old weapons, but I needed a workaround.

We found the nearest blacksmith in Kundar. I asked for knuckle dusters or horseshoes if they didn’t have the former. I was told they did not have the former in my size, so I took the latter, and resolved to try punching things whilst holding one half of a horseshoe in each hand. Derthaad was a bit more ambitious with his iron request; he wanted all the leftover shavings and off cuts. The blacksmith kindly wheeled out a ton of metal off-cuts and slag in a barrel. I could lift it - of course. But, really I could only carry half a ton comfortably. So, I carried just over half the barrel away with us. Ivan offered to help, or rather he offered to demonstrate that he too had made some gains recently. I told him the estimate for the weight, which I’m certain was three times the amount even his strong human body could manage. He still insisted he could lift the barrel, even though we both knew he couldn’t. My thicc-bro is so strong, and yet has a superiority complex. His ego needed a way out. I offered it. I said, he should let me know when it’s his turn to carry the barrel, and I’d hand it to him. He agreed to this, which was perfect, since he then never asked to carry the barrel and we avoided an embarrassment.

A priest called Cornelius from the temple of Bahumat, and another priest from the temple of Tiamat greeted us. They thanked us for agreeing to fight the growing god, and gave us a piece taken from the lair, which would help in the teleport spell getting us to the lair.

It was time to reach the lair.


The Sunset Spines - Desathrax’s Lair

We teleported into the antichamber that Archie described. We could hear a bellowing roar from within the main chamber. Bits of the ceiling were falling off. Derthaad reasoned that this must be Desathrax trying to smash his way out of the mountain - it was the only way out for him.

I put the barrel down for a second, and joined everyone else in some pre-battle preparations. Derthaad casted the Enhance Ability spell on himself, me and Delilah, and we felt the magical invigoration. Surprising really, since I always feel at peak conditioning, yet Derthaad’s enhancing spell can still make me feel more vigorous. Delilah doubled down by drinking a potion of Heroism. Watching her reminded me of the tattoo her dad gave me - it was finally time; I ‘casted’ (I guess, I casted?) the Hex spell, and the tattoo vanished, as I prepared to mark Desathrax with the Hex’s curse, when I saw him. As I turned to face Derthaad to ask him a question, I could have sworn I saw Ivan down a potion and hand a little bag to Derthaad. But, Ivan denied this. I asked Derthaad how I should curse Desathrax, thinking that my sorcerer friend would benefit the most from the Hex’s power. Derthaad said, “make him weaker to psychic attacks.” I was a little revolted. I hate psychic attacks myself, but it made sense, so cursing the big bad’s intelligence was my goal.

Prepped, we entered the main chamber.


The Main Chamber

Just like Archie described it, the main chamber was a descending set of stone cliffs of large platforms down to the centre where there was a gigantic pit. Unlike how Archie described it though, they were no acolyte zombies. There was, however, a very strong presence of Desathrax from the pit.

We walked from the entrance to the main chamber, down a slope through the different cliff platforms to the giant pit to have a look down. We couldn’t see anything but pitch black. There was noise though. More thumping, which we could really feel now that we were closer to the source, as the ground really vibrated. And there was a low gurgling sound from the darkness, followed by the words, “so you're the ones they’ve sent. How interesting.”

An extremely gargantuan sized dragon paw slammed onto the top of the pit. It was soon joined by another one. Emerging from the centre of the paws, was the biggest dragon head I had ever seen. It must have been around 60ft across. Luckily, the rest of the dragon was too big to climb up into the chamber. Although I could see additional heads in the shadow of the pit’s darkness. The head that I could see in front of me, towering above the platform directly in front of the pit, was both red and platinum in colour. The two colours were split down the middle vertically, as if two very, very large dragon halves had been stitched together. Dead dragon halves! From wounds around the head, I could see the tell-tale signs of unlife - black flames flickering. The platinum half’s eye was black flame. The two heads in the shadow came forward to greet us too, these were blue and the other one white. Much smaller than the combined central head, which had more to say to us, “I don’t see much point in wasting time here…”

As Desathrax finished his last sentence, he opened his mouth and breathed radiant flame on all of us.


Pit Fight in the Sunset Spines - Super Taxing Slot!

A lot of good ‘casting’ the Hex spell cursing the towering dragon’s intellect was, when I failed to get my battle breathing going. With no rage readiness the radiant flame scorched me with a wave of intensity. A much greener me would have died. Ivan and Varga were equally torched with unholy ‘holy’ light. Derthaad - ooooof. Derthaad needs to find cover… or use whatever magical evasive skills Delilah possesses. She was untouched and darting around the pit and up the nearest cliff as if nothing had happened.

Desathrax snarled with pain, as a magical bolt flew into his face bursting with a magical light - I didn’t realise Ivan had a crossbow on him. I’ve only ever seen him swing Barbara, his greataxe. Desathrax’s eyes turned down to look at Ivan. Desathrax opened his mouth and snapped his teeth down at Ivan to bite him as if a lion was biting a tiny mouse. Ivan wasn’t swallowed up, but the teeth hit him almost as hard as the radiant flame did. Despite the injury, Ivan retaliated. But, he wasn’t holding Barbara at the moment, so instead he wound up a punch and managed to miss Desathrax’s massive face with it. I saw Ivan’s head remain still as his eyes shifted to look over at me. I let the expression on my face say for me, “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” I may have shaken my head as well. To be fair to Ivan, he’s used to swinging a greataxe, he probably misjudged the distance for unarmed fighting.
Desathrax on the other hand, did not misjudge distance, because he is so massive, he kind of can’t. I felt an immense claw slash at my chest and a tail came out of the pit and smacked Varga.

Flame attack followed by a claw. I was actually hurt. I snapped out of my glaze, and quickened my breathing. Battlerage state reached, I sought an advantageous position for me and my barrel of slag metal. Barrel in hand, I propelled myself into the air with my flight legs and soared up to 40ft to get on top of Desathrax’s head. I leapt further inwards to get right on top of the fake god’s head. I was somewhere in the middle front of the top of the dragon’s head. Right on top of the split between the red and platinum. This close, the split did not seem perfectly sealed. Good. I hoisted the barrel of slag above my head and then smashed it down into the seam between the two dragon halves, burying some slag pieces into the seam while the barrel exploded and splintered. Steam poured out of Desathrax as he bellowed. It seemed Derthaad was right about iron - Desathrax is not a fan.

As I waved away some of the steam, I saw Delilah dart in from out of nowhere and stab Desathrax from the pit platform below. Twice! In super rapid succession. Looked painful. But, Delilah looked a little disappointed that her strikes didn’t have the desired effect? She didn’t fixate though. She vanished from sight.

To my right, Varga stormed in full rage and started slashing with her sword. I saw Manny, Varga’s magical dog, on one of the cliff platforms, as if spectating from the middle seat of a raised theatre. What the hell was he doing here? As if that wasn’t perplexing enough, Steve - Derthaad’s familiar gecko - mounted Ulhar - Derthaad’s summoned dragon - and they flew over to join me on top of Desathrax. Steve dismounted Ulhar and started running around the top of Desathrax’s head… was he helpling?


Facing a Very Large Dragon - On Top is Safest(?)!

Desathrax slapped the ground with one of his paws, sending four pillars of black fire towards my comrades on the pit platform. They mostly did well to avoid the on-coming magical fire. I did best though, simply by being out of range, yet at the same time really close-up.

Ivan went mental with his axe swings, missing the first but slashing a terrifyingly painful and magically enhanced slash with the next one. Desathrax’s face twitched in pain, as Ivan went into a berserker frenzy, pleased with the way his second strike landed.

Once again, Desathrax responded to Ivan’s greataxe attack with a bite. The percussive force of the teeth hitting Ivan seemed to do much more damage to Ivan than the piercing tip of the teeth. Ivan was in a frenzy, but that must have hurt him immensely. And yet, the frenzy was probably responsible for why he was able to retaliate so quickly, even if the axe slash missed that time. I was being a little too attentive, spectating what was happening below, as I managed to miss sight of one of Desathrax’s unmissable large claws swiping at me. Similarly, Desathrax’s favourite tail victim, Varga, was struck again by the tail.

I took out the horseshoes I bought in the Kundar blacksmith and hammerfisted them straight into Desathrax’s head where the two halves, red and platinum, met. Delilah darted in and out again stabbing Desathrax close to where Ivan stood, before vanishing once again.

I heard the sound of a familiar horn I heard blow in Phlegethos. Seven orc barbarians appeared! Good stuff. Although, last time there were eleven. ‘Four of them not feeling it?’ I thought to myself. The other four should have turned up, because when Varga followed up her horn blow with her motivating battlecry; we all felt invincible.
Varga continued to slash away at Desathrax’s right hand side, while her orc barbarians spread out and began attacking Desathrax from all over. Some even appeared on top of Desathrax with me. It was getting crowded up here.

Ulhar, I guess, decided to show off to all the orc barbarians, whose blades were not penetrating Desathrax’s hide very well. Ulhar clawed chunks of undead flesh out of the false god, while Derthaad tried to take advantage of the Hex spell’s intellectual diminishing effect by attacking Desathrax with his Psychic Lance spell. The spell wasn’t hitting as well as it normally did.


Ulhar-ax!

The blue and white smaller heads of Desathrax starred a hole into Ulhar. I saw Ulhar shiver and shake in an attempt to resist. In spite of Ulhar’s attempt to resist, black flames began to burst out of his body, as Steve jumped off. Desathrax possessed Ulhar. This was not good.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Ivan downing one of the two superior healing potions he bought in the city, before slashing deep into the front of Desathrax’s face with Barbara with extreme frenzy. The damage, however, did not throw off Desathrax’s aim, as he breathed radiant flame straight on to Ivan, and hit Derthaad and Delilah, and some orcs in the blast radius as well. Ivan slashes harder than I smash, but his body isn’t as conditioned as mine. The superior potion barely did anything for him, it seemed, as he was once again bathed in painful, radiant flames. Derthaad similarly awash in radiant flame, which thankfully he appeared to have some level of magical protection against. Delilah - disappeared again! I could have sworn she was behind Derthaad. But, it was only because I turned to look at Varga, that I noticed Delilah had joined me on top of Desathrax! Is she faster than Sorrel?!

Varga may have gone unscathed from the prime head’s breath attack, but the smaller blue head breathed lightning on her, scorching her left shoulder up.

Delilah was going towards Ulhar-ax. She had the same idea as me; we can’t have Ulhar-ax hurting us; we had to take him out. I ran up to Ulhar-ax, jumped up in front of him and wrapped his neck up in my arms. Pivoting my hips into him, I dropped my weight, and took Ulhar-ax down to the ground prone. As I squeezed my former ally’s neck tight to keep him grounded, I punched him in the head hard with a well aimed stonehand punch that reinvigorated me a little, as if Derthaad had cast Enhance Ability on me again. Delilah slashed Ulhar-ax twice with each of her blades, and I felt the large dragon’s attempt to resist my grip weaken as the slashes stunned him.

From my prone position, keeping Ulhar-ax pinned on the top front of Desathrax’s head, I heard Varga air words of disapproval at Desathrax, before hearing the impact of a gargantuan dragon’s undead flesh tear open widely from two sword slashes and the bludgeoning impact of a flail. I felt the ground below me drop a few feet, as Desathrax’s head slumped. He was still fighting, but seemed very hurt. Derthaard took advantage of the pain, and twinned his Psychic Lance spell, one at Desathrax, and one at his possessed summon, Ulhar. I saw the black flames on Ulhar-ax vanish, just before the light faded out of Ulhar's face. And then, Ulhar vanished, and I was no longer pinning a large dragon to Desathrax’s head.


The Tide of Battle Turns - And Then Turns Again!

The slamming paw came down again hurting Varga, Ivan, Derthaad and some of Varga’s orc summons. But, Ivan with reckless abandon and a great frenzy brought Barbara back round and down in a mighty slash, opening up another tremendous slash on the front of Desathrax’s face. Black flames died down. The gargantuan face fully slumped on the lip of the pit this time.

“Is. Is he dead?” Ivan asked. And unfortunately, a black flame reignited in the platinum half’s eye.

“You think it’s that easy to kill me?!” Was Desathrax’s re-undeaded response, just before he exhaled radiant flame across the entire platform level with the pit, killing many of Varga’s orcs. And both Derthaad and Ivan went down unconscious. This radiant flame was finally too much. Little gecko Steve vanished.

I looked at Varga, who was closest to Derthaad, and receiving a concentration of icy flame breath from the white dragon’s head. She pointed at me to go to Ivan. She had Derthaad. I leapt off of Desathrax’s prime head with my flight legs and flew down to Ivan with haste. I saw him earlier buy two superior healing potions, and I saw where he puts his items. I rummaged around in his vest. I found the second superior potion… and a potion labelled ‘Hill Giant Strength’! Next to it was a vial of powder labelled, ‘Exhaustion-Away’! This fucking gains and performance cheat! As I uncorked the superior potion, a semi-conscious Ivan mumbled, “don’t… don’t look at my items.” Since he had his mouth open, I poured the potion down his mouth and said, “we can talk about ‘extracurriculars’ later. Get up. Grab Barbara. Slash Desathrax!” Ivan all set, I propelled myself back up on top of Desathrax. Probably should have carried Ivan up here too?

As I landed on top of Desathrax, radiant fire from his wings struck; me, Varga and Delilah. So that was what the radiant flames felt like? I shrugged away the pain. Delilah had little to shrug off, because she somehow limbo’ed out the way to avoid the flames entirely, and then managed to set her feet and slash the top of Desathrax’s head a couple of times, followed by two lightning quick unarmed strikes - good stuff! It wasn’t Dwarven MMA, but it was good.

“God sake! Why am I the one always healing wizards again!” Varga suffered a slashing claw attack from Desathrax, as she abandoned her stance to get to Derthaad and pour a superior healing potion down his throat. “Use them!” She then said to our sorcerer comrade, as she pointed to her remaining orc summons, and then went back over to Desathrax and swung her flail at him.

Derthaad stood back up, and unleashed a powerful Psychic Lance at Desathrax, forcing the false god to resist the power of the spell with magical energy. The Hex was finally working. And the Psychic Lance was definitely working.


If It Works - Spam It!

Desathrax must have finally gotten pissed off with the people on top of his head, as he headbutted the side of the pit wall in an effort to shake us, and have some falling debris hit us from above as bits of the ceiling came down. Whatever I got hit with, I shrugged off no problem. Delilah? It’s probably clear by now that Delilah does not get hit. She looks well conditioned, but she’s no beast like me. What she has are really fast feet and an uncanny ability to dodge out of the way of danger.

Ivan, back on his feet, swung Barbara at Desathrax in rapid succession. But, having recently regained consciousness, his blade alignment was off. Desathrax retaliated, biting Varga, and clawing at the rest of us. As Desathrax retracted his paws, Ivan took a retaliative swing and cut Desathrax across the forearm, as Varga slashed into the right side of his face some more.

I found a nice wedge bit of slag metal that was wedged painfully into Desathrax and repeatedly elbowed and hammerfisted it deeper into the false god, causing more steam to blow out with every bludgeoning strike. The blue head breathed lighting out of desperation at all of us. My stone-like skin endured the pain with ease, but Varga was at her limit and began to wobble as the lightning scorched her body. One knee hit the ground, and then her sword arm lowered. Varga was going unconscious, and then her pupils seemed to disappear, or at least that’s how it looked from where I was. And she rose back up as if she had been possessed by Desathrax, but there was no black flame emerging from her wounds. There was just rage. It was as if her body had forgotten what unconsciousness was and decided to keep on moving fueled by an uncompromising and fanatical need to keep fighting. “She does become a zombie!” I shouted. As Varga started to swingher sword at Desathrax again, I did see one break in her fanatical demeanour as she gave me a dirty look at the mention of the word ‘zombie’.

Delilah’s blades must have found the remnants of a nerve, as they pierced Desathrax’s head causing the false god to shake involuntarily in pain. It was as if an earthquake was happening on his head.

“You think you’re the only one hard to kill? Think again!” Varga shouted as she continued to carve out undead flesh from Desathrax’s face. As she did, Derthaad charged the biggest Psychic Lance spell I had ever seen him create, as the remaining orcs irritated Desathrax, as instructed, banging their blades against his mouth. Derthaad moved closer to Ivan, where he could be face to face with Desathrax, and blasted the magical lance right into the split between the red and platinum hides at the tip of the snout. The Psychic Lance, went straight through the snout and up into and through the top of the head. Desathrax’s entire snout split open as the two pieces and rest of the head once again slumped onto the lip of the pit. This time, it never moved again.


Fresh Air

Before we walked up the winding passage out through the entrance at the top of the mountain, Varga wanted some commemorative pieces. I helped chip away some tooth fragments from Desathrax’s extremely large teeth with my masonry kit.

Out on the mountain's top plateau, there was an old man who greeted us. The man had fine robes on and seven golden canaries encircled him. He had perfect platinum hair and piercing blue eyes, and also one hell of a presence about him. The old man expressed gratitude for what we had done and that he was mightily impressed with us. It turned out, this old man was Lord Bahumat, the platinum chief dragon himself. Apparently though, as a god, he’s not supposed to fight even false gods, so us intervening against someone using half his ancient dead body, really was something he supported and was grateful about. By way of thanks, he magically created matching platinum dragon tattoos for all of us on our backs that offered a magical, one-off charge of protection. The tattoo itself, spread up the back of the neck and back of the arms, was permanent… shit! I wasn’t even given a choice in the matter. After what Nathalie said about being careful accepting marks from powerful beings, I always intended to refuse a new tattoo. Now I have to explain to Nathalie that I have another very powerful person’s tattoo on my body. I don’t really want to have to use the Sending Stones to tell her that. But, I probably should.

We later also found our money purses were heavier by 20pp with special bahumat decorations on the coins.

Lord Bahumat sent his golden canaries down into the cave to retrieve Desathrax. This seemed like a non-starter to me. And yet, the seven canaries returned yanking Desathrax through the cave entrance! I didn’t understand why Desathrax didn’t exit the mountain this way, if the canaries managed to drag him out? But then Lord Bahumat split Desathrax in half and the red Tiamat side vanished into a crack in the mountain that the old man created and then resealed. Apparently that half of the dragon was for Tiamat to deal with. It then dawned on me that magic was heavily involved with extracting Desathrax out of the cave, not raw strength. Although, as if to disprove my point, Lord Bahumat hoisted his own imitation half into the air with one arm and then fell off the cliff edge with it and flew off into the distance.

Before he left, Delilah postured as if to get us into another fight with a gigantic dragon. I was rather against the idea. To be fair to Delilah, it does seem bizarre all these god rules; it really did seem like the whole mess should have been handled by Bahumat and Tiamat themselves. Lord Bahumat kind of won me round a little bit though, when Ivan asked if healing was on the cards, and the old man blew a platinum mist our way which healed all our wounds. He also offered some reassurances that the business Varga dealt with in the desert should resolve okay. Although, it sounds like someone should check in on the priests there.

Derthaad, after a breather, teleported us back to the city. He expressed concern for re-summoning Ulhar. He felt Ulhar would be upset with him for killing him. I reassured him that he was likely correct; Ulhar would be upset.