Twenty days had passed. In those twenty days, Waterdeep was but a shell of its former self. The elegant buildings were in ruins, and corpses littered the wrecked streets. Waterdeep used to have thousands of citizens; now, barely two hundred remained. The near-resurrection of a god had left a rift open, and all sorts of foul creatures had entered the city.

This story starts with four people waking up in the recently collapsed tavern. It had been their misfortune to have been in one of the last safe areas in the city when it had collapsed. And it had been their fortune to have survived, which is more fortune than the few others in the tavern had had.

The fighter was the first one to wake, though not by much. To his left, a rogue was opening her eyes. She pushed herself up into sitting position, holding her head.

"Ugh," she said. "What hit me?"

"Probably a piece of the roof," replied the fighter, also sitting up.

"Cute," she said in an annoyed tone.

The fighter had his head covered by a half helm, short black hair and brown eyes visible under it. He was very tall and thin. The rogue, however, had dark brown eyes and red hair down to just beyond her shoulders. She had braided the front part of her hair on both sides, and pulled them back to form a third braid down the back of her head. The fighter wore a chain shirt. The rogue wore a blue shirt with the sleeves cut off and a dark purple skirt that seemed far too short to be legal.

It was then that the two of them noticed that they were not alone. A man was standing in the middle of the rubble of the tavern. He looked over at the rogue and the fighter.

"Well, it seems that some of you are awake," he smirked. His eyes were red.

"And who are you?" asked the rogue, raising an eyebrow.

There was a groan behind them. Another man, a barbarian, was waking up. The man ignored him and approached the rogue.

"Who I am won't be your concern much longer," he said. He grinned. His teeth were pointed. "I'm looking for survivors, you see. If we're going to take this town, we can't have any."

"Leave the lady alone," said the fighter.

The man looked at him. "You're next," he said. "But I prefer to start with the more helpless pray."

"Excuse me?" demanded the rogue, drawing his gaze back to her eyes.

"Shut up, girl," said the man. He drew a wicked looking knife, holding the serrated edge to the rogue's throat. She leaned back, away from the knife, a small amount of fear showing on her features. There was another groan; an elf ranger was waking up, pulling her bow to her.

The man gave a smile as wicked as his knife. The rogue's hand closed around her bow next to her. Before she had a chance to raise it, however, a boot smashed into her attacker's face. He stumbled back, turning to the fighter, his nose bleeding.

"Ahg! You bastard!" he yelled, plunging the knife into the fighter's leg. The fighter yelled.

The fighter drew his hammer, but it made no difference, because at that moment, the wall of the tavern smashed open. A half-orc came through the wall, an axe in his hand. He saw the man and called over his shoulder, "Claire! I got another cursed one!"

"Got it, Lupin!" said Claire, entering the tavern behind Lupin. "I got the last one, you can take this one."

"Right," said Lupin, running up to the man. Before the man could react, he was missing his head. "Hey," said Lupin, turning to the four conscious people, pulling themselves to their feet. "You gotta get out of here, now. Waterdeep isn't a safe place anymore. We've just scouted the whole city, and we think you're some of the only survivors. There is a boat left in the port, it's leaving for far, far away from here. You all have to get on it or you're not getting out of here."

"The ship is leaving in fifteen minutes," said Claire. "We need to search for other survivors. We wish you luck."

Lupin and Claire departed through their homemade exit. The fighter looked around at the other three in the tavern.

"So," he said. "Introductions. My name is Jean."

"Lily," said the rogue.

"I'm Tsubaki," said the ranger.

"Randor," said the barbarian.

"Right," said Jean. "We need to get to this boat quickly and quietly. We don't want to attract unnecessary attention."

"In that case, I'll lead," said Lily, turning and moving lightly to the front door of the tavern. "Any of you attract any attention or get on my nerves and I will leave you behind. Just a fair warning." She looked over her shoulder and winked. "But if you follow my lead, you should be fine."

The black sun in the sky was nothing new, nor were the huge monsters prowling the streets. Lily looked up and down the street before darting into the shadow made by the ruin of two buildings. It was dangerous to linger in the sun too long. She motioned for the others to follow her. Jean and Tsubaki darted over silently, while Randor moved slower and made a bit more noise. Lily narrowed her eyes and hissed at him to be quiet before looking up and down the street and darting into the next patch of shade.

They kept this up with little flaw, with the exception of Randor, who had a fair bit of flaw, until the port was in sight. Jean pushed ahead of Lily.

"There's the boat we have to get on," he said. "It's leaving in just a couple of minutes. We're close enough, we can make it."

Jean ran forward, heedless to Lily calling after him, and then, suddenly, he was smashing through the wall of the building to his left. Something had burst out of the building to his right and smacked him. That something turned out to be a clay golem.

Lily raised her bow and quickly fired a shot into it. This was odd, as she had not nocked an arrow, and even so she appeared not to have any arrows on her. The arrow was also glowing bright blue.

The golem stumbled and turned towards the party. Randor grinned and ran at the golem, smacking it with his axe. As he swung, flames engulfed the blade of the axe. The golem roared as he was hit. Lily shot off another blue arrow from nowhere; Tsubaki fired two shots at once.

Jean pulled himself from the building, drawing his hammer. He charged at the golem and smacked it. Being pelted with real arrows, ethereal arrows, a hammer, and a flaming axe, the golem fell.

Lily was the first to jump over its corpse and run at the boat, which seemed about to leave the port. Tsubaki and Jean took off after her, Randor stumbling behind. They boarded the ship just as it began pulling away from the harbor. Their last look of Waterdeep was not pretty. It was masked in a dark cloud of smoke and black sun, grotesque creatures prowling the streets. Lily thought she saw Claire and Lupin fighting them off.

Yep, this is the follow-up game to Zyphre. Our DM from the last game is doing this one again, and has taken custody of Claire and Lupin. Actually, the entire old party really, though two of us will not make an appearance. We're all here with new characters. Spencer (Lupin) is now playing Jean. Andrew (Claire) is now Tsubaki, named thus because he is a weeaboo. Randor is someone completely new, a friend of the DM who's just coming in for this one campaign. And I (Lydia), am now playing Lily.

I love Lily. She without a doubt ties with/surpasses Lydia. Just you wait. She's pretty badass. Neutral Evil x3 And I'm forgetting something...

Oh yeah! Her bow! Now where's her sheet, we were just playing the follow-up for THIS game earlier, it should be near to top of the sheet pile...found it.

AnuValore, 3d6+5, crit 18-20/x2. Range 110ft. This bow absorbs energy from life around it and fires that instead of arrows. I can choose to charge my bow for one round. This absorbs my own energy (dealing 10 points of damage), but it triples the damage. Randor's axe is like this too but I forget it's name and stats. AnuSomething. I'll check with him next time I see him on SKype.

Hehe, Spencer was saying how Jean could totally kill Lily shortly after this session. I challenged him to an off-cannon duel. He hit me with his crossbow a lot, won the initiative check, and got within 10 feet of me. BUT I spent my turns charging my bow. And I critted. One-hit kill. I had 9 hp left. Good times, good times...