save

.vscode/settings.json

@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@
         "Alustriel",
         "bedeviler",
         "beholderkin",
+        "Bloodgate",
         "Brog",
         "Brugrock",
         "Burgest",
@@ -27,6 +28,7 @@
         "darkvision",
         "Datalog",
         "Deathkiss",
+        "Deathkisses",
         "Deathrun",
         "demi",
         "dichrome",
@@ -59,6 +61,7 @@
         "harfbuzz",
         "Hergatha",
         "hidpi",
+        "Hogar",
         "homebrewed",
         "Hornblade",
         "Iggwilv",
@@ -70,12 +73,15 @@
         "Laeral",
         "Lantan",
         "Lantanese",
+        "laquered",
+        "lichdom",
         "Literata",
         "lodpi",
         "Luruar",
         "Luskan",
         "Luskans",
         "Magists",
+        "magocratic",
         "Mayola",
         "Methrammar",
         "metropoleis",
@@ -121,14 +127,17 @@
         "spellbook",
         "spellcraft",
         "spellplague",
+        "Szass",
         "Taern",
         "teleporter",
+        "Thay",
         "Themberchaud",
         "Thunderspells",
         "tiefling",
         "Toril",
         "Torilian",
         "Torilians",
+        "undeath",
         "Underdark",
         "undescribed",
         "unexpecting",

acl.cool/site/draft/umbral8.dj

@@ -1,2 +1,41 @@
-Umbral Gaze 8: The Deathkiss
+# Umbral Gaze 8: The Deathkiss
 
+In Waterdeep, Almuth, Cleric of Eldath, seeks out the Unblinking Patrol, going corner to corner, store to store, asking around until he finds his answer. The joke Gottlob played earlier is hot in his mind, and he intends to ensure that the Paladin is disciplined for his indiscretion--- _nobody_ impersonates _Eldath_ and gets away unpunished! At last, Almuth finds what he's looking for: the Unblinking Patrol have their base in the lower Trades Quarter, nestled above a lovely little potions shop. Their sigil emblazons the back door, an eye and morningstar.
+
+Having located the door in question--- a sturdy, well-painted affair--- the Cleric knocks and is greeted by a yellow eye that peeps through a sliding port well below his own eye-level. Another such port lies a foot or two upward, but that one remains steadfastly shut. A gruff and slurring voice demands to know the Cleric's business, and on receiving a suitable answer regarding a member of the Patrol, its owner, a swaying, bright-eyed dwarf, opens the door to usher Almuth up a narrow flight of stairs and into the apartments-read-base of the Unblinking Patrol.
+
+The sparsely furnished main room is clean but for some piled boots and half-full bottles. A rack's worth of weapons hangs ready at one wall; at the other rests a sturdy lacquered table with chairs for ten, but none are occupied at the moment. On toward the back, the room opens on a hallway as the rest of the headquarters disappears behind hanging curtains and oddly-angled walls on which placards of minor honors and images of former members are the only adornment. The dwarf--- Hogar, as he introduces himself, presently acting captain of the Patrol--- sits heftily in a rocking chair before he prompts the Cleric to continue, and flies into a half-coherent rage when Almuth relates his story of Gottlob's little joke. Members of the Unblinking Patrol generally get along, but Hogar and Gottlob have never been too fond of one another. An hour of ploddingly furious writing later, a chiding letter is produced, and the dwarf seals it in wax before handing it to the Cleric to be delivered upon his next encounter with their mutual acquaintance.
+
+{.thematic}
+***
+
+For the first time since Lord Silverhand inducted them to their beholder-beholden course, the party converse with the Xanathar. Laeral's council chamber glows with its usual array of light, and on that long, low table again rests the pearl orb from which the crime lord's voice now issues. The next beholder Laeral wishes them to subdue set it's sights near Waterdeep--- very near, indeed, so that the Xanathar could not help but to have taken notice. He explains this now from his little floating avatar as it rises above the table, a conduit and tiny image of the beholder's own vastly more intimidating presence.
+
+The target is a Deathkiss, a lesser beholderkin, but a dangerous one all the same. Deathkisses are flesh-made realizations of beholders' nightmares, of bleeding out and a bloodless death. The creatures take on characteristics vampires, as often so inspired, and the drain the blood from their victims as in the dreams from which they sprang. An image, projected from the Xanathar's *avatar*, of a rat's corpse shriveled and twisted in unnatural rigor-mortis, makes a fine example of what Deathkiss victims can expect. The party must be on the lookout for any so-afflicted creatures as they track their prey.
+
+Silverhand produces a map to the most recent precise location: an old castle of the Red Wizards[^wizards] nestled in the Forlorn Hills, the so-called "Bloodgate Keep". Unlike any before, today's mission has another aspect, one peculiar to the mode of its object's discovery. A team of scouts and scholars sent to the castle some weeks ago failed to return by their appointed deadline. Concerned officials of Waterdeep ordered a search party dispatched, a pair of well-respected adventures in the city's employ, but this latter group failed too. One member managed to return, who reported an ambush that saw his comrade drained of blood and left the original party--- after whom they'd both been sent--- still nowhere to be found. Under the sobering influence of stories and acutely aware that their mission may be more likely to wind up as "retrieval" and "rescue", collecting a wagon the open Lord provides and taking their pay and their bundles of provisions, the party sets off, southward, to meet the objective in two days and one night.
+
+Darkness threatens as the party stop to make camp, the glow of backlit brambles and spiky shadows of lone conifers a melancholy scene in orange and black. After dinner, Gottlob approaches Carmal with an indignant glare that preempts any greeting. He tosses the paper from earlier into Almuth's lap, which he read in private after the party disembarked, and bids he read what pointless shit the dwarf wrote thereupon. It's nothing but a string of drunken insults; Gottlob almost had to laugh when he saw it first. Though tensions are high, neither of the two wishes to be at the other's throat--- that makes for bad adventuring, in any case--- and ultimately, reason prevails. Perhaps both of them overreacted, a bit. Neither meant to offend the other. Satisfied for the time being, with only the faintest glimmers of lingering resentment, each heads off to catch some much needed rest before the excitement that is no doubt to follow.
+
+{.thematic}
+***
+
+Early the next morning, their little procession winds across fields and thickets against a crisp breeze that hearkens autumn and turns against them at every bend--- horses, wagon, centaur and llama. A cluster of dots among battered khaki triangles appears on the horizon, way off down the road. Party members are unsure what they see at first, but as the cluster grows nearer and its contents more resolved, Waterdhavian crests are plain are plain on the lids of abandoned luggage and flaps of wind-dashed tends, an unsettlingly familiar sight to behold. Drawing upon the thrashed encampment, our heroes conclude that they stand amidst the ruined tents of the original party sent to map and uncover the secrets of the old Red Wizards' keep. All are a bit uneasy, but Gottlob more so than any, for as the wagon slows, he watches a gnarled, shadowy, half-incorporeal talon **** from the ground at the side of the wagon against which Almuth leans and make a clawing swipe at the Cleric's armor. It seems to flutter for a moment in the chill wind before returning to the ground even faster than it emerged. All happens too fast for Gottlob to react, but as discomfiture overtakes his features, the satyr is puzzled to notice none of his company reacting in kind. Saw they nothing of the shadow?
+
+A few seconds more, and their disengaged faces confirm his suspicions--- only he noticed the claw. Unsettled, the portly paladin relates his strange experience to Almuth, and is glad to find the cleric doesn't think him crazy. Such things smack of witchcraft and monsters, things with which the Cleric has had no small experience. Perhaps it is a sign as to what exactly befell the earlier party here. Rummaging through belongings left in the few standing tents, Carmal finds some books that might be salvageable--- one, in particular, piques his interest for its weight and robust construction. With some assistance, the Bard manages to restore the book to a should-be-readable state by the power of "mending" and "prestidigitation", but an opportunity to appreciate its words will have to wait. The party's presence must have sounded some sort of alarm, for a Deathkiss chooses this moment to emerge, bobbing from some bend or nook just paces up the road.
+
+At once, the party is thrown into action, but they are well prepared against this foe. For once, the briefing was remarkably complete, and the knowledge of deathkisses the Xanathar imparted will serve the party well in this encounter. Two vampire spawn flank the ghastly aberration, but they are little fish by comparison; Almuth "turns" them with his holy symbol and a word. Free to engage their primary target without interference, Carmal and Louisa show no restraint. Each casts powerful magic upon the creature as it presses in among the party and tries to entangle all within its willowy, sucker-tipped tentacles. Carmal's irresistible dance is a perfect match with Louisa's mental prison, trapping the beholder in an imagined hellscape of blistering snow and blinding light as its tentacles beat out a rhythm in around it to no song in particular. The creature flails desperately, reaching out to escape, but its transgression into the snowy fields sets off Louisa's magic, and the creature dies to a psychic flurry that shreds its mind from the inside out. One vampire died in the action, and the other flees across the open field. The party will chase him down when they've recovered the bodies; there's nowhere for a vampire to disappear, out here.
+
+Impressed with themselves that the beholder could do so little to resist their attacks, and feeling rather satisfied that they managed largely to avoid any injuries themselves, the party carries onward up the road toward--- they assume--- the abandoned keep of the red wizards. An abundance of caution leads Gottlob to perform the spell ofg telepathic binding gifted to the party by Tasha--- who knows what they might find inside. Sure enough, a castle soon looms, and they head through its vaulted entryway with Gottlob to the fore. In a rear nook of the antechamber lie piled four corpses that the satyr wastes no time in "locating"; his gaze sweeps the area both for threats and for items of concern. In short order, he finds the former: at the wall of the next inward chamber, a gaunt figure clutches a meaty tome to his chest; a blood red cloak hangs limp about his shoulders in the lifeless air that surrounds him. The party stop just beyond a short passage letting on from the vestibule to confront this unsettling stranger, who speaks a warning in silky tones as they approach.
+
+> I have no interest in defeating you here. Stand down and allow me to leave in peace.
+
+By the man's side, a _second_ deathkiss levitates, and by his garb, his build, and his comportment, the party can only surmise that a red wizard stands before them. As is common with their ilk, he bears the unmistakable traits of a vampire: pale skin, unblinking eyes, unnatural height and grace, and the pointed teeth that peek from behind his lips with every placating smile. Not inclined to let such creatures live, but eager for information, party members play along, trying to keep him talking. They learn that the vampire acts on orders from Szass Tam himself, chief of the Red Wizard's cult, to retrieve a tome he already seems to possess, but Almuth makes a bold gambit--- a false offer of servitude--- that betrays the party's intentions, and the Vampire attacks.
+
+The second deathkiss surges forward, walloping[^wallop] the Cleric with all its might, as though to settle a score on its master's behalf. Almuth takes it standing, but his vitality is dangerously depleted. The vampire grapples Carmal, fangs at his neck, who polymorphs himself into a Tyrannosaur to escape the undead clutches, and Gottlob's aura of protection makes returning the bard to his natural form an insurmountable prospect for the Red Wizard. Psychically reaching out to his wounded comrade, not to let their earlier spat get in teh way of a good plan, the paladin plies Almuth for his amulet of the planes. A plan has sprung into Gottlob's mind that he just can't let go. Almuth passes him the artifact, and though he tries it several times, the satyr can't seem to work it--- his plan to drop the whole scene smack into the river[^fey-river] Arran remains only a figment of hope.
+
+[^wizards]: The [Red Wizards of Thay](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Wizards_of_Thay) are a cult of magocratic wizards dedicated to the arts of undeath. To extend their lives, their more powerful members turn to lichdom and vampirism, almost without exception.
+
+[^wallop]: It rolls two attacks and lands a crit on each.
+
+[^fey-river]: