The group still felt incredibly conflicted about their favor to Enox. Dust consulted their auger bones to find out some information about Enox. They learned:

  • Enox does not need to have his grimoires on his person to cast spells from them
  • Enox does not use psychic magic to cast spells without verbal components
  • Enox does need to use a verbal incantation and a spell implement outside of the tower

The group does a collective vibe check on Enox - after all, what if he’s actually a cool guy, besides the eye stuff? If he were to become a god, they’re unsure if that would be a bad thing. He has fire, arcane, and life magic primarily and most of the mages from the tower know those. They debate a lot about the implications of Enox rising to godhood and can’t really come to a common consensus. Dust believes anyone ascending to godhood is going against the natural order of things and is inherently wrong. Cyrus is conflicted, and mostly wants to learn more about the entire process and Enox’s past before coming to a good conclusion. Dick and Noid kinda hate the guy regardless of his godly plans and want to stop him in doing anything. Either way, can all agree they don’t want to use Cyrus’s sword, Doribari, to find the key yet.

Cyrus follows up with his captain with Noid to see what happened with the Anubin problem while Dust and Dick go out into the desert to test Dick’s new wings. Cyrus’s captain had sent out a 30 man group to deal with them, but only one came back - which is impressive given he lost his eyes and was near death because of how dehydrated he was. The group is still keen to try and kill the Death Mask before it’s too late. Cyrus and Noid are able to buy the services of four mercenaries. Cyrus also speaks to Umira and is able to convince her to bring herself and four wizards. After gathering all these resources together, Cyrus is able to make a convincing enough plan to his captain to successfully requisition eight guards, as well as a fully stocked wagon and caravan guards (who will not be participating in the fight, they’ll just be protecting the wagon). Dick and Dust are able to verify that Dick does in fact have wings, and those wings do in fact work.

The Crags

The trip to the plateau was fairly uneventful, besides Noid skillfully playing Darude Sandstorm the entire way sufficiently annoying the party.

After a week of travel, unfortunately a week after the new moon, the wagon parks itself just outside the denser part of The Crags. The sun is high and the sky is a pale blue. The group prepares to move forward through the rocks. It is eerily quiet as Dick climbs some small cliff sides to scout ahead. Cyrus orders the mages in the middle of the group of warriors with Dust bringing up the rear. They approach the plateau slowly and steadily. Noid and Dick are able to spot a small tower built in the middle of the plateau and they fly ahead to investigate. Around the tower are swirls of dried blood in an odd pattern. Noid gains an insanity upon seeing the hideous sight, the endless swirls just seem off. It is an inconceivable amount of blood. Dust sends Préath forward to scout ahead and see if there’s any Anubin along their path.

After nearly 30 minutes of silently and slowly making it through The Crags, the group has not seen anything. No animals, no insects, no Anubin. Préath found nothing ahead, besides the horrible swirling pattern and tower. Dick and Noid drop some ropes on the side of the plateau as the group has to begin the sheer 40ft climb. While some of the mooks begin climbing up, one of them falls 30 feet and breaks several vertebrae. Dust is able to stabilize him with their magic, and smokes some lotus petals to regain their spell slots. Two soldiers guard him at the base of the plateau, ready to take him back with them with the rest of the group.

Noid takes a closer look at the blood pattern and realizes that the blood has not moved AT ALL in the week its been since the new moon. It hasn’t been disturbed by the wind, an animal hasn’t scurried through it. It is perfectly preserved. Dick attempts to pull the blood and drag it out of its pattern, but upon closer inspection, it isn’t quite blood. His finger drags through the sand, but the red doesn’t move out of the pattern. When he picks up clumps of the red sand and moves it outside the pattern, it ceases to be red. Its like the sand that sits in those specific spots appear to be red. The party decide to investigate the tower closer, though its less of a tower and more of a perfectly rectangular obelisk. Cyrus appoints the guards to keep watch outside in a circle around the pattern. Umira and another mage come closer with the party. Noid keeps flying above the tower and notices that the sand doesn’t shift as the several guards walk through the pattern.

The Occult Obelisk

Dick approaches the tower and touches it. The second he gets close, he realizes something about the tower that puts him on edge and gets close to shattering his perception of the obelisk. Are those… could that be..? Almost without thinking, he lifts his hand and drags his finger along a jagged ridge design, which seems incredibly familiar, but Dick’s mind doesn’t let him make that comparison until his finger reaches the end of the ridge. Where he finds a face, screaming in distorted pain. “The tower is people.” he whispers and steps back, taking in the fuller scene. “The tower is people.” Barely at a speaking voice now. He was touching the spine of a person, contorted in impossible angles around thousands and thousands of other bodies. “The tower is people!” He screams and jerks back out of fear, getting the attention of the rest of the group. The rest of the group take a closer look, determined to find the cause of this. It appears they were nailed and chained together, while still alive, and were petrified together all at once through some unknown, but surely forbidden magic. Noid can see the intricate details of a man who’s back appeared to have been broken and muscles dissolved to create a sharp corner in the side. The sides of the pillar are perfectly straight, as the Anubin had hacked off features deemed unnecessary. Noses, fingers, and even whole limbs were hacked off to create the perfect smooth edges and 90° angles. The 30 guards from the last expedition out here are not among the bodies in the tower - probably being kept somewhere else to prepare for next month’s tower.

Noid flies to the very top of the obelisk and finds a perfectly square hole at the top. There are limbs sticking out in the inside, as if the Anubin only cared about how the tower appeared from the outside. Since it is midday, the sun is directly ahead and shines to the very bottom of the tower as Noid spots a suspiciously large hole at the bottom that fades off into inky blackness. Through some rudimentary measurements, the group finds that the tower is exactly 15 feet tall. It is a perfect rectangle. The group decide they ought to destroy the tower with some pickaxes, hammers, and climbing equipment. They want to see what’s at the bottom, and are able to unanimously agree that if their own bodies were stuck in the tower, that they wouldn’t want it to be left standing. Dick and some of the guards put a decent amount of damage into the tower, but Noid decides to weaponize their sorcerer exploding abilities to help take it down. It isn’t successful immediately, as the guards add some ropes to secure the tower and hopefully pull it down themselves, but this isn’t quite enough. Noid tries one more time to explode at the base, and is able to demolish it. The tower crumbles, the extremely brittle not-quite-stone quickly folds in on itself as it topples like a tree.

The Worst Combat I’ve Ever Experienced

Note: I didn’t edit this section as much as I normally do. My brain deteriorated over the course of combat and I think its funny to preserve that. The details of combat also don’t really matter anyway. Enjoy.

As the sand settles, Dust approaches the hole at the bottom of the base and looks deep into the dark pit. An arm suddenly shoots out! A clawed hand throws Dust backwards and catches the entire group by surprise! An ungodly amalgam of limbs forced into the shape of a beast, leaking blood and pus. It consists of several conjoined jaws into a huge swirling maw. Noid is rendered immobile as they begin uncontrollably vomiting. The group rallies to fight it, Dust hexes it dealing small amounts of damage, while Cyrus applies holy water to his great sword and charges it, narrowly missing. It screams, vomiting viscera and unusable body parts. Umira is rushing the other wizards off the plateau - they are young and unable to fight back.

Horrifying sigils appear around the beast’s mouth as it begins uttering an ancient language, as Dust’s eyes begin bulging in their head with a steadily growing pressure. Dick attempts landing small hits on it and flying out of its grasp. Noid is still incapacitated, dry heaving on the ground. The red sand gets sucked towards the beast and it sends out a psychic blast to creatures surrounding it, further harming Dust. Dick while flying above it, smashes a bottle of holy water onto its back. The demon uses voidstep to teleport near Dick midair, where it sticks its arms out in an attempt to “GET YOU”. Cyrus is able to cleave into the demon with his blade doused on holy water, bones, guts, skulls fall from the fresh wound. Dust begs to be dragged away by the nearby guards, and they grab them. Dust musters up just an ounce of courage to attack it one more time, triggering it to immediately voidstep in front of them. Another psychic wave breaks out, the guard pulling Dust begins bleeding out of his eyes and mouth and collapses.

Noid is able to get over their vomiting fit and they charge toward the demon. Dust begins running away from the creature, when it voidsteps once again to chase Dust down. It slashes once again and Dust is knocked unconscious. Dick and Cyrus run up on the beast and punch and slash respectively, dealing a decent amount of damage to it for the first time. Umira is able to finally join the fight and heals Dust and Dick. The pressure in Dust’s head finally subsides, as they are able to stave off the effects of vision’s end and they’re standing again.

Cyrus whiffs fucking again. Carver has let me reroll almost every fucking attack this entire combat because I keep rolling 2s. I’m losing my fucking mind. I’m actively going fucking insane. I don’t even care about this shit anymore. I’ve rerolled every fucking attack and I’ve only been able to hit once. Anyway, the demon hits and does a measly fucking 9 damage to Cyrus and knocks Dust down again. Dick double fists the fucker, doing some good ass damage, and flies away like a fucked up chicken. Umira heals Dust enough that they are standing yet again.

Cyrus misses and then rerolls and then misses again. Dick and Dust do some bullshit. I don’t know, it fails. The mercenaries finally do something, they’re shooting crossbow bolts at the demon. It doesn’t do any damage. The demon picks up Cyrus and puts him in its mouth and eats him like a bug. What an idiot. Fuck me. It teleports away. Again. Yippee. Noid does some GOAT shit. It trips the demon, knocking it prone for the next three rounds. It explodes! And deals a nice chunk a damage to the demon. Noid also uses close the gap, teleporting the party more than 5 yards away so the psychic blast bullshit doesn’t hit them. The demon flops around like an ugly disgusting fucking fish. Fucking blobfish. Fucking bastard blobfish. It can’t do shit. It teleports into melee range to us and flails around vaguely doing damage. Fucking whatever, Cyrus’s armor is goated and the fact he even took damage here is a footnote. Cyrus hits it big time. Fucking dragon slayer dice style. He slices its stomach open as it thrashes and screams. Dust rips and tears with magic. Dick kills it eventually. The idiot pattern goes away. Whatever dude.

We level up. We get no loot. Nearly net zero information gained here.