Dead Man's Dome

In their trek across the arctic, the party had stumbled upon what seemed to be a Gate to the Elemental Plane of Cold. It was sucking what little heat remained in this polar climate, and making what was already a dangerous journey even more so. Koya Summoned a small earth elemental to go investigate the Gate, but as it approached, a trio of Ice Elementals rose up out of the ice pack to defend their turf. The one in the center was far larger than his kin, and stepped forward and promptly stomped Koya’s earth elemental into oblivion.

Several people wanted to simply flee at that point, but the intense cold had frozen their wagons’ sleigh runners fast to the ice, so they had no choice but to defend the caravan. Bella, Sawyer, and Sandru began firing arrows, but the shafts glanced off the elementals’ icy exterior, barely chipping them. Sandru began singing and advanced on the nearest of the smaller (but still Large) elementals, which strode forward to meet him. The bard dodged its first swing, but the second fist caught him squarely in the midsection, and he barely kept his feet. Zhustin tried to gather as many party members around him as possible, and cast a quick Haste spell, while Nicki jabbed Shinjiro with the Wand of Mage Armor. Sandru rushed to Ameiko’s side, anxious to protect the princess.

Marie startled everyone by suddenly sprouting a pair of enormous white wings from her back and taking to the air. They weren’t sure where she’d learned this trick, but they had to admit there was something inspiring about seeing her angelic form flying over the battlefield. Koya offered a Prayer to Desna to aid the party. Bella dashed forward, slashed her rapier at the Ice Elemental on the right, then sprang away out of reach again. Sandoval stepped back a step, lined up the angles, and unleashed a wave of Crushing Despair against the Greater Ice Elemental and his minion on the left; he was gratified to see the Greater Ice Elemental’s face contort with anguish, and tears of ice start to fall from its eyes. Unfortunately, the other elemental seemed unperturbed, and lashed out again, battering Sandoval with both of its frozen fists.

Nicki leaned back in his wagon seat, seemingly unconcerned. He was confident he could handle these creatures of cold. Using his rod, he unleashed an Empowered Fireball that caught the Greater Elemental and the one on its right. The roaring flames reduced the smaller elemental into a pool of water that quickly froze to an icy glaze on the ground. Unfortunately, another Ice Elemental rose up out of the snow in front of Bella, and the rogue barely dodged its surprise attacks. Sawyer rushed to help Bella, slashing at it with Suishen. The sword glanced off its hard surface, but still did damage, aided by Suishen’s flaming blade. Marie called down a Flame Strike against the Greater Ice Elemental, then flew behind the newcomer, providing flanking for Bella.

The Greater Ice Elemental seemed to have had enough; it sank down into the snow pack and disappeared. That still left its two minions. Shinjiro stepped in and tried a Stunning Fist against the one attacking Sandoval; he injured it, but didn’t stun it. Sandoval, badly injured, backed away. His Harmonizing Echoblade had taken up his song of Inspire Courage, so Sandoval began singing Inspire Greatness to bolster Shinjiro, and then cast Mirror Image on himself. On the other side of the field, Koya Summoned a Lantern Archon, which lashed the elemental with rays of searing holy light. Bella planted her feet and, taking full effect of the Haste spell, slashed the elemental four times in rapid succession. It staggered, barely holding on. Sandru stepped up and stabbed it with his sword. The blade barely penetrated its surface, but it was enough to send it collapsing into a pile of ice cubes.

That left everyone free to focus on the one remaining, which was now trading blows with Shinjiro. Sawyer charged and Suishen’s flaming blade cut deep. Marie flew in and bashed it with her adamantine mace, which seemed to have no difficulty with its crunchy exterior. Zhustin unloaded a pair of Scorching Rays, and it disappeared in a cloud of steam.

Nicki was still on his wagon, but his air of confidence now seemed a little forced. He’d been surprised to see the Greater Ice Elemental drop out of the battle, and he wasn’t convinced it was really gone for good. He was right to be worried. Without warning, the huge elemental suddenly shot up out of the ice directly beside the sorcerer. Apparently it didn’t appreciate being hit with fireballs. Its first blow sent him crashing to the ground, where it stomped on him with one of the huge blocks of ice it called feet. When it raised its foot, there was a bloody splatter on the snow with what was left of Nicki in the center.

But Nicki wasn’t quite done for. He drew what might be a final breath, and with flecks of blood flying from his lips shouted, “I curse thee with the fires of Hell!” Instantly, a column of churning Hellfire shot up from the ground beneath the elemental’s feet. The air was filled with sulphur-laced steam, and when it cleared, the Ice Elemental was no more.

The party’s clerics gathered around Nicki’s broken body, and their combined ministrations were sufficient to get him back in working order. Zhustin and Bella moved to investigate the Gate. It had gone dark when the Greater Elemental died, and they could already tell that the intense cold in the area was lessening. The gate itself was a stone circle sunk deep into the ice, perhaps all the way to bedrock. It was engraved with writing in some language that no one recognized. Concerned that this might be linked to Katiyana’s plot with Sithhud, Zhustin didn’t want to leave it in working order. He Summoned a Large Earth Elemental, and set it to doing as much damage to the Gate and its foundations as it could. When they left, the stone circle was a shattered, sagging ruin.

Nicki’s Story

When the caravan made camp that night, Nicki was unusually subdued. As everyone else chewed their jerky and replayed the day’s events, he stared into the fire. His near-death experience seemed to have done something to him. Without looking up from the fire, he suddenly spoke. “How many of you have had dealings with nobles?” Conversation around the fire died as heads turned to Nicki. When no one responded to his question, he spoke again. “Let me ask a different question – do you understand the difference between Zhustin’s magic and mine?” Again, no one responded, although Zhustin leaned forward with interest. Nicki continued, still staring into the fire. “Zhustin has to use spellbooks to learn his spells, but I don’t.”

“Oh, you mean Zhustin can read and you can’t!” Bella quipped, but Nicki continued staring solemnly into the flames and Bella's smile died on her lips.

Nicki shook his head. “No, I have someone in my ancestry who’s … magical. Powerful.” He looked up for the first time, and one by one looked at each member of the party. “Let me tell you a story. A story about ‘nobles’ and what they’re really like. What they’re really capable of. Let me tell you a story about a boy named Roderick Genterre.”

And so Nicki told his tale. His name, as everyone had already surmised from their encounter with the Inquisitor right after they left Sandpoint, was actually Roderick Genterre, and he was from a noble family with links to Cheliax. But what none of them knew, what none of them could ever have guessed, was that the man he’d known as his father was not, in fact, his father. His real father was a devil from Hell. Nicki’s – or rather, Roderick’s – grandfather, Lord Genterre, had made a pact with a devil. In return for arranging his son’s marriage into the wealthiest royal House in Cheliax, Lord Genterre agreed to allow the devil to rape his son’s new bride on her wedding night. The offspring of that union was little Roderick. His mother took her own life the day he was born.

When Roderick’s bloodline began to manifest through sorcerous power, Roderick’s step-father, who apparently still carried guilt over what had been done to his bride, arranged to have Roderick’s tutor pretend to kidnap him, hoping that if the boy simply disappeared, he would be safe from the plots and manipulation that his families – both human and infernal – had in store for him. That’s how he had come to join Sandru’s caravan, all those months ago in Magnimar.

When Nicki finished his story, he looked at his friends earnestly. “The reason I’m telling you this now, is … Well, we’re on the downhill side of our journey to Minkai. When we get there, we don’t know what to expect when we try to put Ameiko on the throne, but there will be politics, and factions, and behind them all will be nobles. Men like my grandfather. Men you can’t trust. Nobles only care about themselves, and increasing their power, and they’ll do anything to achieve that goal. You just need to understand what’s ahead of you, and what sort of men you’ll be dealing with!”

Nicki may have thought that the main point of his story was ‘Nobles aren’t to be trusted’, but others picked up on other small details. Like the fact that his father was a Devil. Helgarval was practically screaming inside Marie’s head. “I told you, mistress! I told you from the very beginning! He can’t be trusted! You can’t travel with Hellspawn! You need to leave him here, stranded alone in the arctic, and hope that the cold kills him while you put as much distance between him and you as possible!”

But Marie was unpersuaded. “I’m not so sure, Helgarval. He hasn’t done anything truly evil.”

“Nothing evil? He certainly enjoyed having that walking corpse follow him around for days on end! And didn’t he torture some people back before you found me? Mistress, if you could only remember the true reason you’re here, you’d know that he is a threat to you and all you care about.”

Everyone else had been watching with fascination, seeing only Marie’s side of what was obviously a spirited argument. But somehow, little Spivey seemed to have heard both sides. She fluttered up to Marie, and spoke up. “I’m afraid I have to agree with the angel,” she said timidly. She glanced fearfully at Nicki, then drew herself up to her full one-foot height. “Whenever a denizen of Hell speaks, they’re either lying, or telling you half-truths for their own ends. We can’t trust this creature, and would be better off without him.”

Marie was silent for a long while. Everyone else watched tensely. They sensed that Koya and Ameiko would follow the cleric’s advice, and so Marie held Nicki’s fate in her hands. At last, she shook her head sadly. “No Helgarval, I have to disagree. I’m not convinced he can’t be redeemed.” Everyone let out their collective breath. Nicki – or should they call him Roderick now? – was still a part of the party.

Dead Man’s Dome

After the battle at the Gate, it seemed that the party might at last have put the dangerous part of the trip behind them. Oh, they still had challenges. They got off course following a mirage for a couple of days, and lost time working through rough terrain or crossing crevasses. But for the next month or more, nothing tried to eat them or slice them into little pieces. The weather held good, although still bitterly cold. And the southern sky began to grow lighter for a few hours each day. The sun had not yet reappeared, but it was making its presence known.

And then the clouds gathered again, and the wind began to pick up. Snow began to fall, light at first and then heavier, and it seemed that another storm was building. They checked the lashings on the wagons, and prepared to weather yet another arctic storm. Then one of the scouts came running back to the caravan. He was shouting something in Erutaki, and pointing back the direction they had come. When they heard him, the other drivers’ eyes grew wide, and they began lashing the yaks. Ulf intercepted the panicked scout, and interrogated him in Erutaki. Then he turned to the party. “He says there are undead behind us!”

Bella sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. We’ve dealt with them before,” she said wearily.

“You don’t understand!” Ulf replied, and for the first time, there was fear in the grizzled guide’s eyes. “He says there’s an army of undead following us. Hundreds of them, maybe more!”

That got their attention. They looked around the flat expanse of the ice pack, and imagined trying to fight off hundreds of enemies who could not feel pain, or fear. Ulf seemed to read their minds. “We don’t want to get caught out here. If we’re going to make a stand, we need to head for Dead Man’s Dome – it’s our only chance!”

As the caravan slowly picked up speed, Nicki shouted to Ulf. “Um, what is this ‘Dead Man’s Dome’? It doesn’t exactly sound like someplace you’d go to get away from undead.”

And so Ulf told them the legend of Dead Man’s Dome. “Long time ago, there was a watchtower built to guard the only pass off the High Ice down to the lowlands below. It protected the caravans travelling the Path of Aganhei, and the few settlers living out here. Then, a couple hundred years ago, there was an uprising of one of the giant clans. They began attacking the settlements and caravans, and folks took refuge in the watchtower. But the giants were marching on it, and they knew they’d never be able to hold them off.

“So one man volunteered to buy them some time. No one knows his name – he was just a hired guard for one of the caravans. But he stayed in the tower while everyone else snuck out some secret exit. He kept lights burning in the tower, and made lots of noise, and fired ballistas off the battlements, and made the giants think everyone was still inside. Then the hero lured them into the tower, and when they were inside, did something to collapse it all down on them, burying them, and himself, in the ruins.

“All that’s left today is a steep hill and a few piles of rubble. It’s not much, but it’s the most defensible ground for 50 leagues in any direction.”

And so a desperate race began. The drivers whipped the yaks as hard as they could, but the beasts were built for endurance, not speed. And they had already been struggling through the harsh polar winter for months. They were at the end of their strength. They began to stagger on exhausted legs, long trains of frozen spittle hanging from their gasping mouths, their flanks flecked with blood from the driver’s lash. Ulf sent scouts back to keep tabs on the pursuing army, and they reported that the gap between them was steadily closing. And then the scouts didn’t return, and Ulf didn’t send more in their place.

The storm grew around them. The wind intensified, and the swirling snow reduced visibility to a few dozen yards. Above the howling wind, they began to hear the sound of feminine laughter high up in the clouds, laughter tinged with madness. There was something familiar about that laugh. The more they heard it, the more it sounded like the fiend Katiyana. But they had killed her, back in the Storm Tower. Hadn’t they?

At last the ground began to rise, and they struggled up the sides of a steep hill. Its top was a small flat area no more than 50’ in diameter. The remains of broken walls poked up through the snow on its perimeter, but they rose to only a few feet in height and offered little protection. They arranged the wagons to block the biggest gaps in the walls, and put Ameiko and Koya in the center, then settled in to wait.

The minutes stretched out into hours, and with each passing moment the tension grew. There was no sound save for the panting of the exhausted yaks and the moaning of the wind. Then they realized that the moaning sound wasn’t only the wind. Somewhere, out in the blizzard, countless voices were joined in a low, mindless moan. They peered out into the snow, and slowly forms began to emerge.

It was like nothing they had ever seen. The Zombie Horde was made up of hundreds of individuals, in varying stages of decay. They fully encircled the hill, and as they began to shuffle up towards the party’s last line of defense, they were met with volley after volley of arrows. Each arrow found a mark, but for each creature that fell, a dozen more trampled its body into the ice in their inexorable climb to the summit. Overhead, a peal of triumphant laughter echoed through the clouds.

On the southern side of the hilltop, a strange figure rose up out of the ruins. It was a ghostly warrior, clad in battered armor and clutching a notched sword. He locked eyes with Sawyer across the summit, and gave a grim nod, as if to say ‘You take that side – I’ve got this one.’ then turned to face the approaching threat, swinging his sword to unlimber ghostly muscles not used in centuries.

As the horde climbed, the party made their preparation. Zhustin cast Haste as Sandoval began singing and Koya offered up a Prayer. Marie unfurled her wings and took to the air, while Spivey flew out above the horde to cast Channel Divinity from above. Ameiko planted her flag in the center of the hilltop, and Shinjiro went to her side; his family had been her family’s bodyguards for generations, and if he was to die, it would be defending his princess.

Nicki wasn’t about to sit around and wait for the zombies to come to him. He decided it was time to show them how they did things in Hell. With a flourish, he cast an Empowered Fireball on the masses marching up the northern side of the hill. Marie did the same with a Flame Strike on those attacking from the east. When the smoke cleared, dozens of undead lay smoking on the ground, but the rest kept coming. They clambered over the wagons and rubble, and dozens of hands and mouths began clutching and tearing at each of the defenders. Despite the overwhelming numbers, they seemed to be holding the horde in check to the north and east, but from the south and west, they just kept advancing.

Nicki wrested himself out of the zombies’ grasp, and fired off another Fireball as he staggered back. Combined with his earlier attack, it seemed to break the will of the portion of the horde coming from the north. While there were still many dozens still moving, most began to wander off aimlessly, leaving only a few rabid individuals still attacking. Marie cast a Channel Divinity over the group to the east with the same result; the horde there began to break up.

To the south, Bella and the ghostly warrior were struggling in vain to hold back the encroaching mob of undead. Unable to hold back, Ameiko rushed to their side, adding Whispering Shrike to the fray. Shinjiro seemed to be in shock at the sight of so many attacking corpses; he shook his head and rubbed his eyes, trying to convince himself it was all an illusion, but alas it was all too real. Koya pushed past the paralyzed monk and added her own Channel Divinity to assault the undead masses, while Zhustin cast Fly on himself; he didn’t know how this was going to end, but he certainly didn’t want to be ripped apart while still alive.

The PCs earned 1,600 XP for the night, putting them at 77,055 XP, with 105,000 required for level 10. We’ll be at Leo’s next week, and I’ll be there in person.