The Severed Hand

Round 1 Summary

The party easily mows down these orcs. One of them does get close enough to wound Ug - and, oddly, the orc chooses to bite the goliath. The teeth barely puncture Ug's thick skin (after resistance, Ug takes 4 damage), but Ug feels a supernatural confusion slip through his rage and make his eyes dart back and forth erratically, every turn of his head making the surrounding walls sway (Confounding Bite makes Ug grant advantage to his enemies for this next turn.).

Even those companions close to the dying orcs feel an aura of madness emanate from these unnerving creatures (Details below on the aura these orcs give off). As the last one falls, another handful of orcs (Orcs 1-4) appears at the end of the corridor. Behind this new group lurks a dark figure (Seer), the edges of its form oddly blurred and indistinct.

As the party forms up to meet these new threats, the wall of the corridor next to them bursts open, revealing a hulking creature (Ogre) that at one point must have been an ogre - but now its skin is translucent, like glass, perhaps. It does not seem at all brittle or frail, however, as it shoulders its way into the corridor, thick hands reaching for those party members in the rear half of the group.

Round 2 Player Phase!!

Round 2 Summary

Alalla and Erevain stand to face the orcs while Ug ducks back to deal with the glass ogre. The blows on the front line are quick and vicious, and Alalla downs two of the orcs in the blink of an eye. The maneuver costs her, however, and Erevain is unable to react fast enough to keep the orcs at bay. When Ras and Fergy's spells rumble through the hallway and finish off the remaining orcs, Alalla realizes she has taken three bite wounds (Al takes 28 piercing damage). While she has certainly sustained worse physical injuries in her adventures, these ones send a disrupting confusion through her mind, and she finds it difficult to focus (Attacks against Al have advantage for the next round).

As stone and ice hammer the hallway in front of the party, the heroes catch a glimpse of the blurred form flicker from side to side. Almost, as debris and hail smash the place, it seems as though reality itself warps around the figure, lessening the destruction this being might have otherwise taken (It passed one save and failed the other, also it resists cold damage).

Meanwhile, Ug turns back to face the ogre. While its skin is transparent, the muscles beneath all appear to be in working order. It pounds at Zenithral and Fergy with heavy blows, knocking them each to the ground (Zen takes 14 bludgeoning damage, Fergy takes 12, and both are knocked prone). It reaches next for Ras, but Ug arrives just in time, his icy hammer colliding with the hulking thing's fist. A ringing peal cleaves the air as the creature's hand crunches. Ug presses his advantage and deals two more tremendous strikes to its shoulder and chest, but then the ogre responds with a punch to Ug's face (after resistance Ug takes 6 and is knocked prone) that sends the barbarian to the floor -

- but just before Ug hits the ground, the blurred seer lifts a hand. Time and space bend and then tear, and Ug is ripped from reality. With the barbarian suddenly vanished, those closest to where he disappeared feel a sudden explosion of psychic backlash (Fergy, Ras, and Zen each take 37 psychic damage). The ogre's skin shines with purple light as it absorbs the energy, then condenses it and refracts it outward, blasting the nearest heroes once more with the same energy (Fergy, Ras, and Zen take the 37 damage AGAIN). Caught in the midst of the psychic feedback, Fergy, Ras, and Zenithral find themselves in immense mental anguish... and with a glass giant still looming over them.

That peculiar squeal of metal on stone sounds again from behind the party, and an armored hulk of a figure (Collector) steps into view. Horrific spikes jut out from its armor, upon which hang the impaled bodies of elves and orcs - most dried and withered with age. Its helmeted head turns to look upon the battle, and then it lumbers forward into a charge, coming up on the rear of the party.

- Ug hits the ground and lifts his head to find himself not before the glass ogre, but instead in another corridor close by. While he doesn't remember what might have happened to him in between, he realizes it's probably better that he not think about it. Flashes of light and the clang of weapons through the holes in the walls indicate that the fight is still ongoing, but making his way back to the party in time to be useful will prove extremely difficult.

Round 3 Player Phase!!!

Round 3 Summary

Fergy's magic keeps Ras and Zenithral fighting despite grievous injuries. As the dwarf channels the power of chaos in this awful place, he gets an idea of just how twisted the Hand has become. Whatever went wrong here, the powerful magic shroud that permeates the air and stones must have drawn its power from something... and Fergy feels that the connection to that something is still strong. And vast. And wild. Beautiful, in its own dark and twisted way.

Behind Zenithral, the armored hulk takes more squealing steps as it closes the distance, then raises one spiked gauntlet to ram through Zenithral's spine. It pauses, though, as the half-elf works his unique combination of archery and magic. Metals squeals again as it lowers its hand, and then it stomps past the archer, impaled bodies on its armor jiggling with each step.

The flame of Alalla's fire sword winks out as she drops it and goes for her glaive, but the light of Zenithral's shining arrows illuminates the hallway. Arrow after arrow strikes the blurred figure joined by Erevain's magic missiles and a javelin from Ug, and then the figure's unearthly screams of pain rend the air. It gestures, and a strange orb of its own zaps through the air to hit the glass ogre, again filling it with psychic power to reflect on the closest heroes (Fergy, T-Ras, and Zen each take 31 psychic damage). The approaching armored figure shows no sign of being affected at all by the mental assault.

With the companions injured and the raging barbarian out of its way, the ogre lashes out once more with its glass fists, slamming both Fergy and Zenithral through the opposite wall (Fergy takes 14 and Zen takes 15). It turns, surprisingly fast, to crush Ras into the floor (T-Ras takes 14 damage) - but Ras is solid. And heavy. And growing! A moment later the druid's transformation from gnome to the king of dinosaurs is complete, and his bulk practically fills the hallway.

Even the ogre seems to pause in the face of this new development, until the armored, corpse-covered monstrosity barrels it into it. The two hulking creatures pummel at each other with inhuman strength, but one of these fighters is clearly the better. As one glass fist comes in to strike the corpse collector, a gauntleted hand catches it mid-swing and squeezes, crunching the limb (Ogre takes 33 bludgeoning and necrotic damage). The other gauntlet comes to connect with the ogre's head with enough power to shatter the thing's jaw to crystalline pieces (Ogre takes another 86 bludgeoning and necrotic damage). The corpses stuck to the thing's armor moan as the ogre writhes in pain.

The crackle of lightning shatters the air as Alalla calls on the magic of her glaive, taken from the Vale of Shadows what seems like years past. Time slows as the lightning leaps forward to strike at the seer's form - a blow that will surely kill the weakened thing! Just then, however, reality breaks once more. In one immediate moment, the seer and the ogre change places. The ogre is hit full force by the glaive, and its skin hardens to stone as it dies. What remains of its face shows an expression trapped somewhere between agony and terror. The seer appears in the midst of the companions.

This close to the strange figure, the party is startled to see not orcish or elvish features, but a face that defies any attempt at description. The way it seems blurred is perhaps less a spell of protection than simply the nature of how this creature interacts with reality itself. Whatever being this is, it does not match any plane of existence that the heroes have heard of.

It turns to survey its new surroundings, and its gaze falls on the tyrannosaur. It reaches out a blurred hand and touches Ras' scaly hide, and the contact sends a brain-frying wave of psychic energy through the dinosaur (T-Ras takes 27 damage). Ras feels his reptilian brain scoured of thought almost as if the seer is picking apart everything of what the tyrannosaurus rex is and learning from it. The ordeal is so traumatic that Ras simply shuts down, overcome by the power of this alien creature's mind (Ras is incapacitated for 1 round, and so can't concentrate on spells). Unable to focus on maintaining his magical form, the druid's shapeshifting spell bleeds away, and he falls to the ground as his gnome self, staring up at the ceiling with blank eyes.

The seer whips its head from side to side in a nauseatingly twitchy way, peering at Alalla and Erevain on one side, the armored hulk on the other, and even turning completely about on its neck to track Ug who is rapidly approaching.

Its whole body vibrates, and then it falls through the floor, passing as easily through the rubble and tile as if through water.