This is the last of the Paragon Path tales that I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!
The journey back to Fjornik was a quiet one, everyone wrapped up in their own thoughts. Only the rhythmic beat of the horses’ hooves disturbed the silence, a silence which had been hard won.
Faces flashed before her eyes. Maran. Ena. Doe. Even Vile, she thought with a snort. He was a bastard, but he didn’t deserve to die like that. The last weeks weighed heavily on her, and she knew the others were feeling it too.
“We won, didn’t we? We’re heroes.” she said aloud, more to herself than anything else.
Toofi looked round. “It doesn’t feel like it, though,” she said quietly.
Read MoreThis is one of the Paragon Path tales I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. As a bit of back story to this one, we left Ostardva's story hanging at the point when Tiamat, the evil dragon goddess, had offered him a place as her paladin. We kept the suspense up until the very end of Heroic Tier about whether his Paragon path would be as an evil paladin or as a righteous one, or turning his back on the path of a paladin altogether. Enjoy!
“No.”
The word echoed around the cavernous chamber. Ostardva, stood on one of Tiamat’s long, sinuous necks, stared defiantly at the five immense dragon heads, arrayed in front of him.
The central one, the red one, started backwards a little, as if surprised.
“No? Just like that? You disappoint me, child of Arkhosia.” The five heads spoke as one, a woman’s voice but with a hint of growling bass in it. The sound was like a hammer-blow, every word a storm to be weathered.
Read MoreThis is one of the Paragon Path tales I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!
Futch frowned as he walked away from the others. No-one seemed in a particularly celebratory mood; they had won the war, beaten the Lich, but at a high cost. Hundreds had died, thousands perhaps. Ostardva, Gieve, the others on the airship.
Maran.
He gritted his teeth and clenched his fist, fighting the surge of frustration that threatened to boil over. To have been so far away, and not able to do anything, or even know about it... It wasn’t fair. He wandered through the streets, barely aware of the direction his feet were taking him, lost in thought.
Finally he stood in front of the southern gate, looking out over the plains. The gently sloping path that lead to Varikause and beyond lay in front of him and, with one backwards glance at Fjornik, he shifted.
Read MoreThis is one of the Paragon Path stories I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!
Kali stood in the confusion of the city. In a way, ruined as it was, it felt more comfortable to her; instead of stone formed into buildings and walls, it was more like the hillsides of her childhood, rough and unformed.
She rubbed her shoulders at that thought, feeling the roughness of her own skin. It was still odd to her; she’d grown used to the small slices and nicks, the little pieces of skin that grew back harder than scars should, but the final battle against the Lich had been devastating in more ways than one. Hundreds had died, an entire city fallen into a pit, friends and travelling companions blasted into nothingness. In the darkness and heat of the cavern under Ortmund, revealed at last, they had battled the Lich and emerged victorious. She flexed her hands, remembering the freezing cold and biting pain that had stung them as she had grabbed at whatever was inside its armour, holding it in place so that Toofi could deliver the death blow. The backlash of energy had flayed her torso open, revealing a rougher layer beneath the skin that ached still.
Read MoreThis is one of the Paragon Path stories I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!
The bar was loud, uncomfortably so, but Toofi had found a quiet corner in which to sip her mug of ale. Fjornik was coming back to life, more so now that the threat of the undead horde was gone, and it was good to not have to watch her back all the time.
The events of the last few weeks were still large in her mind, though. Memories rose unbidden; fabulous journeys into other realms, the weird feeling of controlling a body much larger than hers, and a grinning face pressed up against crystal.
Read MoreI do a lot of writing that never sees the light of day to the big wide world. It's consumed on an almost weekly basis by five people instead. I DM a group for a Fourth Edition D&D game, set in the world of Poisonroot but borrowing a lot of things from proper D&D (like races, dragons, magic, gods, planes...) We've been playing for over a year now, coming up on 18 months on and off. We can't meet every week; it's staggering that six busy professionals can get together anything like regularly, really. But we get together enough to see a story.
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