Hemlock

Hemlock’s operators struck out on their first official mission to retrieve and catalog a dangerous anomaly. Their journey started with a letter from the ever mysterious Eldritch Eye.

A shard from the abyss hides within a locked box. Held within the vice-like grip of a holy church, its taint goes unappreciated. Unnoticed. Unrespected. Among those holy men it is wasted. They are clouded with delusions of purification and containment. These holy men will be made to taste the bitter leaves of Hemlock and be relieved of the burden they so unwittingly shoulder. It is your duty to see it done. Seek those who bare our black envelope and bring the will of our cadre to life. 

 -The Eldritch Eye

With little information beyond that, the operators of Hemlock pieced together a cryptic story that culminated in an excursion into the wintry peaks of the Coerthas region. Lead by the Dotharl Warleader Ajirai. The operators traversed the roads through white out conditions. It didn’t take long for them to pick up a trail. Blood  dripped out into a fresh trail leading deep into the woods off from the main road.

 Arshavan was perhaps the first to notice the danger that the operators were unwittingly following. Stripped tree branches far above the height of any mundane beast and tracks as large as a Roegadyn man is wide. They were in the territory of a behemoth.

Deep in a stripped wood, the weather turned for the worst. Conditions deteriorated down to 30 fulm visibility. Even worse the trail of blood they had been following went cold. It was the keen eye of Drohkya that righted the party on their path. A distant glowing light of blue deep inside a basin. The closer they came the more apparent the true nature of the basin became. At its center was an allagan tomelith. Circuits along its exterior glowed that cool blue characteristic of all of the felled empire’s creations.

Beneath the snow was hardened red crystal. Koh’a, the party’s arcanist, was the first to feel faint vibrations. They ran through the crystalline crater at a regular interval. Almost like footsteps. It didn’t take long for party to realize where they were. They had stumbled into the domain of the beast. 

Confidence was high. Solin, another Dotharl, who lacked fear like so many of her tribe ventured forth. She was the first to lay eyes upon the beast and the blood and viscera that surrounded its den. It was gorging itself upon a fresh kill. A humanoid creature.

Soon Solin’s twin Lunai, and the rest of the operators caught up with the scouting Xaela. Silently they prepared themselves to do battle with a monster. They at least had the benefit of surprise.

With a loud warcry, Lunai and Solin charged the unsuspecting beast. In the open blows, Lunai managed to sheer a horn from the head of the behemoth with their massive sword. The others quickly filed in behind them. Arshavan was the first to catch the beast’s ire. His fluid movements were no match for the force of a several tonze behemoth who slammed its side into him. He found himself reeling. Out of breath. Koh’a set the beast’s hide ablaze with an astral fire aspected orb that burst out from beneath the creature. From behind Khada ducked around the beast’s flailing tail. Her daggers struggled to piece the beasts hide, but the sharp points of her blades managed to rend and tear holes in its hide.

The behemoth, feeling threatened, fell back upon its own innate magic. Drohkya moved deftly with her enchanted blade to silence the beast’s casting in one fell swoop. Sadly it wasn’t enough, the spell completed. A swarm of comets rained down from above upon the attackers. All but Arshavan and Koh’a found themselves hit by the aetherial balls. Most were dazed from their wounds. Unable to act. 

With quick thinking on Koh’a’s part, the beast was surrounded in a whirlwind conjured from his spellbook. It’d only last for a moment, but Arshavan managed to turn Koha’s vortex into a twister imbued with astral lightning. 

Ajirai summoned forth the experiences of her past lives. In a long ritual that’d take time she began to draw forth power from her unique casting focus. Lunai jumped at the chance to offer a distraction. Thanks to the beast’s short temper, Lunai drew the beast into a frenzy. Soon she found herself gored by the beast. Its only remaining horn dug deep into her side. She clutched onto the beast. She wouldn’t be shook free from it. She’d seemingly do anything to give her warleader the opening her needed. The rest of operators moved in around the beast. Slashing and stabbing at the beast’s limbs in the hopes of crippling it.

Drohkya’s enchanted greatsword tore through the behemoth’s hide and tendons. In one clean motion she had separated leg from torso. The beast collapsed. Bloodied but not beaten. As long as it drew breath it was still dangerous. 

In one last desperate attempt. The behemoth swung out with its last good limb. With all the anger and desperation a losing beast would have. It had aims to take Ajirai with it. Solin, like her twin sister, was ever willing to lay her body to win. She caugth the beast’s blow and was sent sailing back several fulms. It bought Ajirai those last few precious moments she needed to finish drawing upon her past lives. 

The air above the behemoth turned a sinister red as a large aetherial rock birthed itself into existence. It crashed down upon the beast with the force of a meteor. It tore through the beast, quickly extinguishing the desperate throes of life from it. However before the meteor could finish unleashing its destruction, it began to dissipate. As if there was something inside of the behemoth absorbing all the aetherial energy of the spell. It wasn’t long before the meteor had fizzled out, and all that was left was the charred husk of the behemoth. 

It was Khada who took on the glamorous work of digging through the… remnants of the beast. It didn’t take her long to find the very thing they were looking for. A shard so black that it couldn’t even reflect light. Simply being around it would make someone uncomfortable. It’d make someone feel drain of emotion and energy

 Koh’a had brought the anomaly's containment device. A gold lined lockbox. As quickly as he could, he stuffed the ominous shard inside. From there the anomaly would be brought back to Hemlock where it’d recieve proper classification and storage.