Cult of Aois III

Read Part II.

Osvald the assassin was lost again to turbulent dreaming. Again he found himself hiding in a nightmare; the very dungeon the heroes are delving into. Every night this assassin found himself hiding from the Ogre while it sang it's vile rituals to summon the dead.  Were these the souls the assassin had sent to death? But one night the assassin saw Faylor burst into the room to challenge the Ogre, and so took the chance to escape.

In the attempt, the assassin was slain by the scything bones of the Ogre's skeleton guardians. In his dying breath the assassin begged for life, and a demon of these cursed halls whispered back. The assassin did not pass on. Instead he was transformed into a spirit of shadow and jealous hunger. He realized then, that he would never wake from this. I used the Wizards' World 'vampire' class as an inspiration, although I plan to modify the model significantly.

Faylor was desperate to defeat the ogre and so opened the black chest. Faylor found that for him -- the price of opening resulted in the obliteration of his connection to magic. Thus forth Faylor walked the caves as an explorer not a mage (the player wanted to change classes without sacrificing his character's backstory). But the trauma of the transforming experience knocked Faylor unconscious. In the chest, Luukol found black barnacled spear wrapped in seaweed. In the chest Aever found a shield with a gargoyle's mein carved into the front. Luukol and Aever desperately held back the ogre, but only until Faylor regained his senses, at which point the heroes retreated.

Even with the assassin reinvigorated by demonic energies, the heroes dealt the ogre a death by guile rather than brawn. The heroes retreated into the low halls and set up a spear tipped choke point in the room of the collapsed statue. Jareth's unconscious body was found here, along with his familiar who was desperately trying to drag him from danger. Luukol and Aever managed to toss and pin the ogre with polarms while the assassin and Faylor loosed their arrows from the shadows. The unconscious Jareth was treated after the ogres final howls. Seeing as the assassin proved to be a true ally in the fight, the other characters invited him to join the descent. Faylor found a crawlspace in the statue's rubble which led to the Ogre's original chamber.

The ogre's elvish accomplice claimed to be the ogre's prisoner not its ally. Faylor was particularly distrusting of the elf, but Aever managed to convince the party to allow the mysterious elf at least a weapon for defense. A spring bubbled beneath the stairs, forming a river which fell in quiet waterfalls from an open-top plateau. To the south a decrepit outpost winds further into the depths. To the north a massive kiln in the shape of a helmet sits outside a door. The door is at the base of a cliff face with numerous winding caves in the lofty heights. Listening behind the door, Jareth heard the goblin tongue.