This island really bugs me...

Aelerion wasn’t able to tell us much about Vertinia that we didn’t already know. Most of the continent was under the sway of Asmodeus, a fact we had inferred from Yvala’s info and the new ruling class of tieflings. Any pockets of resistance were so crushed and isolated after 100 years of fighting that they would be of little help to us in Perinor, never mind the fact that they would be nearly impossible to contact. Aelerion did know of one group we might be able to contact. A group paladins who worshipped Bahamut, lived on a small outlying island named Trion to the south of Vertinia.

Though the island wasn’t labeled on Captain Plate’s charts of the coastline, Aelerion was able to point out the correct island easily enough. Deciding that Vertinia held nothing more for us, we instructed Captain Raccan to set a course south. Yvala, knowing that the continent could only offer her a quick death, opted to remain with the Order. We made good time and came upon the island in a few days.

The lush green island rose out of the sea like a gemstone and I found myself wishing I was on one of my father’s ships returning to Farport. Pushing down my homesickness, I checked through my pack again as the crew readied the longboat to go ashore. Strangely enough, we’d received no signal of any kind from the castle, despite the fact that we could see them as easily as they had seen us approach. No banners flew from the turrets and no people had been seen on shore. Nevertheless, this had to be Trion. No other island on the small strand showed signs of habitation, much less a base of paladins. We decided to trek overland to the castle, even if all we found were remains.

Despite the fact that there was no harbor on the island, we found that wide swaths of jungle forest had been cleared to form a sort of crude road. We proceeded cautiously down the road, Markas in the lead, hoping to find some sign that the paladins Aelerion had spoke of were still on Trion. We hadn’t been walking long, maybe twenty minutes at most, when we came across a swirling cloud hovering over a dip in the road. After watching the cloud for a minute , Kalena and I decided to move in closer to investigate. As we moved in we heard buzzing. The cloud, it turned out was actually a thick swarm of flies hovering over a tiefling corpse. Odd, I thought, a body without the stench of death. Markas drew his sword and Kyri notched an arrow in her bow as I knelt down to examine the body. The corpse was brutally mutilated. The eyes and jaw had been torn out and a crude symbol of Torog, the crawler beneath, was carved into his chest. The horns, skin color, and stature of the corpse told me it was one of the new Capellite tieflings, a suspicion Yvala confirmed when she wandered up to look over my shoulder. But perhaps the oddest, and most unsettling, fact about the corpse was that it was fresh, not more than 3 hours old at the most.

A hiss from Kyri drew me out of my contemplations about where the tiefling could have possibly come from. My eyes followed the line of her arrow down the path to where a human stumbled about in a dazed manner. His shaved head and black robe made me uneasy, but not nearly as much so as the dagger in his hand. He raised his head and appeared to see us for the first time. He cocked his head to the side for a minute, then continued on toward us.

Markas stepped forward, brandishing his sword and blocking the stranger from getting to the rest of the party. “Can we help you?” he asked. “Who helps the wicked when the world is swallowed whole?” the stranger replied. Markas glared at the man, no doubt suspecting he was the cause of the corpse on the road. “Are you lost?” Markas asked. The stranger gave our paladin a mad smile as he took his dagger and placed it against his palm. “We are all lost. Merely meat for Torog’s maw.” “Enough of this talk of the Crawler,” Markas snarled, “Now, are you looking for something?” The stranger laughed and carved something into his hand. He threw it up and I could see the symbol of Toreg dripping blood down his forearm. In a high pitched voice he screamed. “The name that speaks, the frozen tongue, the wounds that bite, the thousand young!"

As he finished his last words, glittering beetles began to spill from his eyes and mouth. More poured out from the bottom of his robe. The body of the cultist – for its obvious now that’s what he was – crumpled to the ground and more beetles crawled from the pile of skin. The beetles swarmed toward the party and I was glad that my years of training already had my new mace pulled from my belt loop. The beetles were evil, quick, and dangerous, but we dispatched of them after a fashion. Several thunderwaves, courtesy of Kalena, helped immensely in dispersing the swarms. To my utter disgust, when I went to wipe the bug guts from my armor, I found that the beetles had reverted to their former form of internal organs and that my armor was covered in human guts. It didn’t take long for the rest of the party to recognize this horror. I heard Markas throw up in the bushes behind me. Wiping the bug guts and slime off our armor, we looked at the revolting sack of human skin. The only weapon he had was a dagger, which to Yvala’s delight was found to be coated with poison. She tucked it in its sheath and secreted it away about her person for later.

Looking out over the trees we could see a thread of smoke on the path ahead and headed in that direction, looking for answers about the corpse and the cultists. The clearing ahead revealed a set of four ramshackle huts and two campfires. Unfortunately, instead of paladins we found more black-robed, crazy, bug cultists. They were in the middle of doing ritualistic cultist things, but as soon as they spotted us, they rushed toward us. Kalena acted quickly and threw a cloud of poisonous gases out over the front half of the camp. She caught quite a few but two groups of four remained untouched. They gathered together, one group in a circle and one group in a cross. Both groups could be heard chanting “Gone the mind and gone the body, gone the sin and gone the wanting. To the bones and ash return. Sun will die. World will burn.” As one, they raised poisoned daggers and slash their own throats. “Did we just see a cult suicide?” questioned Yvala. Markas shrugged. “Well, it sucks to be insane,” he remarked. I shook my head. “I’m thinking something bad is coming. Nothing good that I know of comes from ritual suicide.” Kalena managed to move her cloud and catch some more of the crazy cultists, but as soon as she did, two grells appeared where the groups of cultists had fallen.

The grells were disgusting slimy things that looked like giant brains with squid like beaks and tentacles spilling from the bottom. With unnerving speed, they flew toward us. One managed to grab Kalena. A couple of blows from Markas and I released the wizard while Kyri, Vixi, and Yvala took out the other grell before it could capture anyone else. Kalena’s cloud removed the remaining cultists before a third grell could be summoned. Luckily, none of evil beetles appeared as the majority of the cultists in this camp were too old to pull off the spell. A search of the hovels turned up nothing more than ritualistic garbage and a few more poisoned daggers. Asking Yvala if she wanted to take more daggers was like asking her if she wanted to steal something, a guaranteed yes.

We kept to the pathway since it continued on toward the castle. We had gone roughly another two miles when we ran into a third group of Toreg cultists. They were probably priests of the cult, as these ones had more ornate robes and a few pieces of jewelry. One stood apart from the rest, directing some of his acolytes to rush up and block our path while calling others toward him. Kyri shot an arrow at the leader but the long range meant the rest of the party could only watch as the lead priest and seven of his students formed a full symbol of Toreg. He gestured wildly to his group as he chanted, “Feed the teeth, feed the tongue. Feed the horror yet to come. Feed the dark and feed the night. Feed the claws and feed the bite.” As expected, they slashed their throats, spilling blood onto the ground.

Out of the corner of her eye, Kalena saw a group of four trying to form a cross. “Hurry and break the groups before they can chant,” she warned as she tossed a fireball at the group. Yvala downed another with a quick crossbow bolt. A hulking gug pulled itself from the blood-soaked dirt and human corpses. Its four arms waved wildly as it roared and grabbed for one of the cultists. Apparently, they couldn’t control the summoned creature very well. The cultists gave it a wide burst as it lumbered toward us. “I’ve had enough of these stupid cultists and their slimy bugs!” said Vixi as she threw an eldritch bolt at the beast. I could hear Markas murmuring a prayer to the Raven Queen as I channeled the might of Kord into my own strike. The remaining cultists joined up with the gug, but Yvala and Kyri made a couple precise strikes to take them down. A well placed bolt from our frustrated warlock finally caused the gug to explode, coating the party yet again in a layer of slimy guts.

This time the bodies yielded some pretty good gear. We took what was useful, including several pendants and a pair of gloves for Vixi. As Yvala exchanged her armor for a better set found on one of the leaders, she commented, “All these cultists are starting to bother me.” Kalena grinned mischievously, “Are they beginning to bug you?” Yvala glared at Kalena. “I so hate you right now for saying that," I said as I threw a gob of bug slime at the cheeky wizard.

Mount Calathon

Polyxena Thanaphe was quite possibly the most annoying person I had ever had the unfortune of meeting, and that included all the brainless warriors that make up the majority of Kord’s followers. She did nothing but complain as we made our way from Mason’s Rock to Mount Calathon. First it was that we didn’t bring her silks and other treasures with us as we fled the city. Then we heard all about how she had been mistreated by her keepers and how we were continuing this trend of mistreatment. After she grew bored of that subject, she moaned on about how tired she was. When we finally reached the base of the mountain and were forced to abandon our mounts, she complained about the state of her shoes and how tired she was.

Around dark the party decided to stop and set up camp. The holy aura surrounding the mountain was irritating to any creature of devil or demon decent, meaning the tieflings of Vertinia. This was a bit of luck for the Order, since it meant we wouldn't have to be worried about any of the locals coming across us by accident. Unfortuneatly, it was also giving Yvala, Vixi, and the princess major headaches, so they sat while the rest of us went about our tasks. Markas set up a perimeter, I built a fire, and Kalena and Kyri set about preparing supper. When Kyri gave Polyxena her pie, the snotty brat turned her nose up at it. “I want her to go and find me something,” she said haughtily pointing at me. Tired and thoroughly disgusted with her behavior all day, I rolled my eyes and replied back, “Are you insane? I'm a cleric, not a ranger. I wouldn't know poisonous mushroom from a safe one if I depended on it. So unless you feel like retesting my healing skills, I suggest you eat what the ranger gives you.” The princess scowled at me before storming off in a fuss to the edge of the firelight. I slumped down next to Yvala. “Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut and just fed her the mushrooms around here. At least, then he mouth would be too swollen to talk.” Yvala snickered and gave me what might have been a smile.

Not a minute later, a scream arose from Polyxena’s direction. Two shadowhunter bats were swooping down at her as dark creepers popped up from the bushes. We made quick work of the beasts, once we figured out that they could do less damage to us if we remained within the ring of light thrown by the campfire. And once again, Polyxena threw bolts of green fire about without having any recollection of doing so afterwards. At the end of the skirmish, Kyri grabbed the brat by her arm and slammed her down next to the fire. “Move from this spot, and we’ll let them take you,” she threatened. Thankfully, the rest of the night was uneventful.

We broke camp just after dawn and were able to reach the peak by midmorning. The temple itself was surrounded by a shimmering twisting grove that threw off an eerie silver and blue light. Circles of blue lightning danced across the surface and we could see portions of the maze rearranging itself. But before we could approach the grove, a set of spectral guardians rose from the ground. They launched themselves at our party but our fighting skills were more than a match for the spirits.

Kalena and Vixi used their knowledge of the arcane to bring us safely through the maze in less than half an hour. Once on the other side, we were able to see the temple in its full glory. Though overgrown and uncared for, the temple had once been a glorious place. A large dark pool was surrounded by rock columns glowing with the mark of Corellon. We approached the pool carefully; as we did the water began to bubble and roll. A black dragon the size of a horse splashed out of the pool and howled. The fight was long and quite frankly frustrating. The coward kept releasing a cloud of magical darkness that it kept hiding in. In the end, either frustrated or bored, it flew off, leaving us to explore the temple and call Aelerion. We opened the locket and set it on a rock near the pool as cool blue light spilled forth from its face.

This time, instead of appearing as a five year old boy, Aelerion appeared as a boy of 9 or 10 with wings sprouting from his back and a bow and quiver of arrows at his side. I noticed a large linen bag slung over his left shoulder. He landed on the ground next to the party and clasped his hands together excitedly. “Great, you made it here! Now we can get the princess ready for her special day.” Polyxena preened at the angel’s words. Aelerion ignored her and continued speaking to the party. “You see, Tiamat’s forces are spread pretty thin on this world. You saw the bulk of them during the invasion of Perinor. Now she’s looking for allies herself, and plans to enter into a divine duality with another evil god, similar to the duality that Corellon and Sehanine shared many centuries ago. This will bolster her power, expand her sphere of influence, and allow her to take over more of the world, Perinor included. But we’re going to stop that.” At this point he smiled wickedly and looked over Polyxena for the first time.

“You see, Polyxena here isn’t the one we need. This deposed tiefling heir is actually an avatar of Zariel, the devil princess who Tiamat threw out of hell when she took over Avernus, the first plane of Hell. I’m here to offer her a chance at revenge by entering into the duality herself, thereby blocking Tiamat’s union. But for the god to be interested in changing his wedding plans, the princess must first possess his heart…” Aelerion trailed off and reached for his bag. With morbid fascination, I watched as he pulled out a desiccated, still-beating human heart. “This is the heart of Vecna. I think you know what to do,” he said with a wink.

As a one, we turned to Polyxena. Her skin had blanched and with an “Eeep!” she turned on a heel and ran for the shimmering maze. “Oh hell no!” I said aloud as I gave chase. Out of the corners of my eyes, I could see Kalena and Yvala – the other two members of the party that had been mistreated as much as myself - running after the girl as well. Yvala caught up first, and tackled the girl to the ground. A spell apiece from Kalena and myself knocked the brat unconscious. Grabbing Polyxena under each arm, we dragged her back to the alter stone by the pool. We laid the girl out on the stone and someone commented on the situation. “Should we really be cutting this girl’s heart out?” Setting my face and gripping her arm harder, I replied, “We’re in the middle of a divine war. Sometimes hard choices have to be made. And this one is for the good of Perinor. Now cut.” I looked at Aelerion as I said the last part.

Aelerion made quick work of replacing the girl’s heart with the Heart of Vecna. He motioned for us to release our hold and magically healed the incision. As we did, Polyxena transformed into her true form. She grew to a height of ten feet, bat wings sprouted from her back and her horns became more prominent on her forehead. With a smile she traced the scar down her chest, smiled, and vanished. Marcas looked at the location she had disappeared from and said, “Wow, not even a thank you.” Yvala looked at him incredulously and said “Not killing us was her thank you.”