A Favor to Figment

July 17, 2007

We were looking at the drow and they were looking at us, obvious hostility, when Nail just showed up. Apparently he had been following us for some time, but always showed up where we had been shortly after we had left. His timing was pretty good though. He just walked through the portal right in the middle of what was looking to be an unfortunate encounter with these drow. He was quite surprised too.

One in the back of the drow says something that Reese replies by asking if they want us to leave. Marcus, being the bleeding heart he is, noticed they were bleeding and tosses them a potion. I suppose it helped to ease some tensions, but I thought it was unnecessary.

The drow didn't trust us, as I wouldn't either, and cast what I assume was an identify spell on the potion, verified that it was ok, and handed it to the female. She used it, but didn't seem any more convinced of our intentions.

About that time the drow in the back was shoved forward and was apparently fighting something. Reese didn't seem to have a bad vantage point and casts a spell on the common enemy. Everyone was leary of the other group, but we had a common enemy right then. I didn't have a very good view of the enemy, they looked like snakes, or something close, but I had everyone else's line of sight to gauge a good shot off the ceiling and managed to hit one and take it out. I was so stoked about that cool shot, I didn't do much else worthwhile.

After the snake things were dead, the drow turned back to us and I could tell they had no intention of keeping the truce intact. They were tensing up as if to attack us and Marcus noticed too. When they attacked, we were ready for them. This could have been really difficult, but Reese used a disintegrate wand straight down a line of four drow and took all of them out. The last one was fairly easy.

I collected all of the scrolls in the room and stored them in my malachite chest. Then we started exploring.

Down one hallway, we saw another snake-guy, apparently their called naga. I immediately fire a fire arrow at him and he caught it in his mouth! I was shocked. He said he was a messenger. We took that to mean from Figment, the shadow dragon. We figured he needed a name, so we called him Figment. After telling the messenger to go away, we tripped a trap that rearranged the walls behind us.

We rounded approached a hallway and down it, it opened into a large cavern with a black avariel surrounded by naga. This must be Figment in a shape which would allow him to walk around down here.

We immediately set out to make plans. We ended up strapping an overloaded fireball wand to an arrow. Nail tore off a door to help protect us from the back blast and I fired it right at Figment, and hit him just as the whole world exploded.

The explosion was massive. Nothing survived. As we surveyed the damage, I noticed that the avariel was still in that form, so I asked Nail if he would return to dragon form if he died, he said yes. That was not what I wanted to hear. That wasn't Figment. That's when the real Figment came out of the wall and thanked us, again, for helping him by killing an adversary of his.

Apparently Halaster was the one who banished him to the plane of shadows and he came to get his revenge. Unfortunately for him, Halaster died six years ago.

He began representing himself as a misunderstood being who had the greater good in mind, and I just my mind. I got really mad about how he and Marcus were going back and forth with a philosophical debate.

I got impulsive. I dumped every last charge in my ruby into my bow. That's seventeen charges. It was a bad idea. The arrow, the bow, and me all burst into flame as I released the arrow. Figment never even flinched. The arrow approached him, slowed down and stopped. Then it reversed, fletchings first, and came back to the bow and time just reversed to the point before charging the shot. The flames were gone and everything. Basically, it was like I traveled forward a very short time ahead and then back but retained the perceptions.

Figment told me that the weave wouldn't allow me to kill him yet. Not with the magic I have.

With that, he left us to decide our next move. He apparently has several lizardkin in his support for his plan to have dragons to come back into power to rule over all other beings.

In the northern kingdoms there are some others that fit that descriptions and we decide that's probably the best course.