Chapter Eight: The Virid Coronation

Leth steps into the strange portal. As it rotates around him, he begins to feel an intense pressure all around his mind and body. Everything goes dark. His thoughts drift aimlessly in an empty, dreamlike void for an unknowable length of time.

He awakens retching on his hands and knees in a pool of freezing, slushy water.

"There's more! More came through! Run! Run!" somebody screams. He hears the slap of feet running on cobblestones.

Leth stands up and feels a rush of dizziness; wobbling, he tries to fix his eyes on something, but it's nighttime and he struggles to focus his vision in the darkness. The people who were screaming -- three of them -- seem to be running toward a large stone building that looks vaguely familiar. Firelight from somewhere nearby illuminates his immediate surroundings. He seems to be in the midst of the wreckage of some shattered structure of stone and wood. Zangua and Felor are here too, not far from him, looking just as shellshocked. Zangua is lying next to a large piece of painted plaster, rubbing his eyes. Felor is coughing next to a fallen statue of a female divinity.

There is some din in the near distance. Screaming and shouting and stomping and crunching sounds all mixed together.

Anyone, feel free to make an Insight or Perception check.

Though disoriented -- he feel as though he's just been rudely awakened from a twelve-hour nap -- Zangua understands that they must be back in Hazard. He gets up and realizes he is standing in the middle of the blasted ruins of the Shrine of Culsu.

He glances around as his eyes adjust. There are mangled bodies in the surrounding plaza, a guardsman and a few others. To his right, he sees a few people cowering behind the pillars of Ziu-Pater's temple some distance away. Three others are running towards them. The plaza is otherwise empty, but in the distance he hears shouting and screaming and other unidentifiable noises.

Away from you, toward the temple.

The running men don't answer, but one figure tentatively leans out from behind one of the pillars. Leth thinks he recognizes her as the same priestess of Erat who confronted them on the last night they were in this place, when they fought Adan Tuell and encountered Gorham for the first time. She seems to have a brief whispered exchange with the man hiding beside her, and the she steps forward.

"You there! You men," she calls out to the party. "Whence have you come?"

While the priestess awaits her answer, you hear a crashing, booming sound to the east. There are bells ringing through the city.

"The witch-man who flies through the air, singing and laughing? His destination is the Isle of Ilhaz, or so I gathered from his deranged words. The alleys are too narrow for his retinue of fiends and the monstrosity they carry upon a bier. He led them south, to the Avenue of Commerce that leads to the Great Drawbridge." She hesitates. "And if you have followed him here to stop him, I will pray to Erat to guard your lives and intercede with the Lord Ziu-Pater to grant you success."

A few more people come running out of the alleys to the east, two of them clutching small children in their arms. One man sees the priestess and drops to his knees, crying, "Mother, help us! Sanctuary, please! It is the end of all and everything!"

The priestess casts one last glance back at the party, then jogs off to comfort her people.

Do you want to follow the route she thinks they took, or try a shortcut through the narrow alleys leading directly east?

Maybe a shortcut? What do you guys think?

Domarc could probably take us a shorter way but idk if he's here or if we left him in the sunken temple lol

Alright, let's have a Perception, Investigation, or Survival check from each of you -- player's choice.

I think maybe we're not gonna find a shortcut.

Leth and Zangua lead the way, but soon find themselves running down a dead-end street where a young woman is consoling a boy of about eleven years. "Did you see it...what was it..." he keeps stammering. "It was horrible...what was it?"

"I don't know, I don't know," the woman says. "It passed us. We're safe now..."

To your left, an older man stands on the roof of a two-story building, his gaze trained intently to the east.