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terryclothLast night was the D+D game at work, where we started playing another module, 'Bastion of Broken Souls'. It started with a random demon attack...
Actually, that's not quite true. It started with a plague of not-quite-stillborn babies, who were listless and unresponsive. Conner and Erdann tried to look into the matter, Erdann by talking to some druid friends (who were able to tell him that it was happening to animals too, but not much else) and Conner by communing with his god.
Ogma was reticent. For many questions, he simply remained silent; for others, he informed Conner that 'The Ban of the Unborn Cannot be Set Aside'. Conner was able to discover that some clue would soon present itself to them.
Which it did, outside the inn they were staying at, when a random demon appeared and attacked, teleporting out of nowhere and thwacking Conner with its tail, wrapping him up in its coils.
Conner teleported out of the grapple, but didn't go far. It acted quickly and closed with him, then unleashed its full fury of chains and tail on him, killing him and grappling his corpse.
May ran out to try to save his body by touching it and teleporting, but couldn't beat the demon's SR. So he stayed touching Conner to try to do the same to the demon in return.
Erdann and his puppy tried to attack the demon with no success, but the party was saved as a rogue appeared from nowhere and backstabbed the fiend. She seemed startled to see him, and tried to flee with Conner, but May made his save against the teleport, and she decided to actually leave rather than stay and face the party.
Then May teleported to the temple to get Conner ressurected, leaving Erdann to interrogate their unexpected 'ally', who told the druid that he was Nurn, a servant of Hrathrediel, who opposed Aameul, a Lord of the Abyss and master of The Cathezaar, who they'd just fought. He'd been following her because his lord had ordered him to oppose Aameul's plot, which the Cathezaar was pursuing, to find the descendant of Dydd and use him to somehow double his power.
So after raising their cleric (again), the party scried on the Cathezaar, and teleported to her abode to do her in. They did not arrive in the place they expected, instead appearing in a dusty, seemingly abandoned room with two heavy iron doors in different walls. After peering cautiously around the room, Erdann moved to open the south door, setting off a trap which dispelled the party and then chilled them with a wave of cold.
Spurred into action by the trap and by the feeblemind spells appearing from no obvious source, the party moved to leave the room. Erdann cast rusting grasp on the East door, revealing a similarly abandoned staircase, and May knocked the south door, revealing a depraved mess of filth, corruption, and pain, with scattered corpses and other horrors that revealed it as a demon's den.
No one actually left the room in time to avoid the second wave of dispelling and cold, but as soon as they realized the trap reset *every round* the party quickly swarmed into the den, where a pair of Nalfashees waited for them. The Nalfashees summoned Glazebrus to aid them, and then Nal and Glab alike were wiped out by a single Horrid Wilting, except for one who resisted the spell and was killed by Conner's holy mace.
Erdann quickly opened the next door, which was neither locked nor trapped, and there was their quarry, the Cathezaar, just finishing up her preparations for combat. Slithering up, she wounded Erdann (although he was resistant to the piercing damage from her chains) but couldn't grapple him, as he was too large. The party flung everything they had at her, to no effect, Erdann's wolf even rushing past her to flank and still having no effect.
So after tailslapping Conner as a parting gift, she animated the chains that filled the room and tumbled away to retreat around a corner. The animated chains attacked Erdann's wolf 23 times, hitting every single time and ripping it into very very small wolf-gobbets. [~650 damage out of the wolf's 200-some hp]
Now Erdann was pissed -- he filled the room with a firestorm, destroying all the chains, and furniture, and furnishings, and basically turning it into a socrched wasteland (but failing to harm the Cathezaar). May decided to press the attack by running in and eyebiting (he had an eyebite up which had passed her SR, but hadn't yet had any effect on her) and magic-missling the demon -- sickening her and slightly wounding her, the sickening being the important part, as it negated her dex -- which reduced her AC by *10*.
This was somewhat foolish, as she acted next and was still hasted -- so she walked up to May and dealt 150 damage with her attacks, and grappled him, not killing him only because of the Bear's Heart he had up. The grapple rendered him unconscious and helpless, however, and she was still mostly unhurt.
Conner and Erdann decided to fix that. Conner whacked her several times with his mace -- able to hit her now reduced AC, and doing the first serious damage she'd taken. Erdann healed May, which brought him awake long enough to eyebite her again, putting her to sleep.
And it was over. Conner coup-de-graced the fiend with one mighty blow of his holy mace. Crunch went her head. Nurn, who'd been mostly useless through the fight, commended the party on their deed -- Aameul had lost his right-hand demoness, and would now have to fall back on his Balors.
The party looted 'the bitch' and her lair, and found much treasure, and her journal, which had survived the firestorm only because it was hidden in a secret compartment of a desk that had absorbed most of the damage as it was incinerated. The journal implied that Aameul and Hrathrediel were both demon lords somehow connected to Demogorgon, which put Nurn more clearly in the light that the party had been assuming he was in the whole time (they'd let him come along because detect evil had shown 'not evil' and detect chaos had shown 'chaotic', which implied he was actually not evil and not just protected from divination).
"Hrathrediel a demon lord? I find that hard to believe, although I suppose I couldn't rule it out," was Nurn's excuse.
The journal also explained that she was, indeed, searching for the descendant of Dydd for some reason, and that more information on it could be found in the 'Church of the Elements'.
Which Erdann recognized. It was on his home plane.
So, back to the plane of sheep. Nurn was ditched, and they gated to the Isle of Sheep, which still had sheep but no longer had a village. Wind Walking towards the Forest of Chirinide where the Temple was said to stand, they saw that the plane was going to hell, or perhaps Limbo -- it was no longer shrouded in chaotic mist, but the landscape in the distance made no sense and was obviously otherworldly, and the sky was striped in assorted pastel colors, and an ARMY OF SLAAD beseiged the last remaining human city.
The forest of Chirinide was overgrown and monstrous, and shrouded in smoke from burning forest fires, but Conner Found the Path to the Temple of Elements, where dozens of powerful druids and treents defended a simple ring of stones, in which stood a sapling. And an elf, as its interpreter.
After assuring the army of druids that they meant no harm, they interrogated the sapling via its interpreter. It couldn't answer most of their questions, but it could explain the Dydd angle -- Dydd and most of his family and friends had been killed fighting a great wyrm red dragon, but had mortally wounded the dragon in the process. The great worm, Arshadalon, had staved off death by grafting a living demon in place of its own heart, but this was only a temporary measure at best. Arshadalon and Dydd were still linked, however, and any descendant of Dydd -- of which Conner was apparently one -- could weaken the wyrm by calling on the bond with a specific incantation.
They made the elf repeat the incantation five or six times, until she finally wrote it down on some paper and gave it to them.
The sapling was also able to tell them that it, as well, received only silence from the gods when asking about the Ban of the Unborn, but nature was able to tell it that 'The Dreamer Reveals what the Gods Conceal', probably a reference to the Guild of Sleep, which was known to move, but at last check had been in the city currently under siege by Slaadi.
So, using a crystal ball they'd stolen from the Cathezaar, they scried on 'The Dreamer', and saw a beautiful woman suspended in midair, in a room painted to look like the open sky, with illusion-enhanced frescoes with moving creatures among the cloudscape. "Come to me," she mouthed to them, so they did.
"Why do you seek me?" she asked. They told her the questions they sought answers to, about the Bastion of Unborn Souls (that had also been in the Cathezaar's journal) and the plague, and everything. "I can answer those questions, but I would need to be awake, and this dream is too beautiful to abandon. I'm sorry, but you must leave now."
The party didn't leave, so she attacked, along with her pets, which leapt out of the fresco to take three dimensional form, as dire tigers and a winged triceratops.
The party didn't want to hurt her, so Erdann did some subdual damage to her while Conner and Abbey attacked her pets. May didn't trust Abbey not to kill her, however, so he trapped himself in a wall of force bubble with her, to fight it out Mage to Mage.
He quickly regretted that decision, as he was unable to affect her with any of his nondamaging spells, and she kept dispelling and disintegrating him -- getting all his buffs, including his permanent blindsight.
["How many of those does she have memorized?!" "Um... she's a sorcerer, Ed."]
Eventually, he dropped the bubble, about the same time as the pets were finished off (they were incorporeal, and did wisdom damage, but Conner had a ghost touch mace, Abbey was too quick to be hit, and the wolf had enough wisdom to endure their attacks easily). Erdann and his wolf tried subduing her (while May sat back restoring his dispelled buffs), so she put them in force cages. Then Conner and Abbey finished her off, with what *should* have been subdual, but she screamed and vanished anyway.
The party immediately scried on her again, with the crystal ball, and were shown a sarcophagus-like device opening, and a withered hag inside slowly getting to her feet. No wonder she'd preferred to stay sleeping!
last session, different module next session
Everyone seemed to have a pretty good time, despite some frustration on my part trying to find where in each section the clue to the next was supposed to be found.
Actually, that's not quite true. It started with a plague of not-quite-stillborn babies, who were listless and unresponsive. Conner and Erdann tried to look into the matter, Erdann by talking to some druid friends (who were able to tell him that it was happening to animals too, but not much else) and Conner by communing with his god.
Ogma was reticent. For many questions, he simply remained silent; for others, he informed Conner that 'The Ban of the Unborn Cannot be Set Aside'. Conner was able to discover that some clue would soon present itself to them.
Which it did, outside the inn they were staying at, when a random demon appeared and attacked, teleporting out of nowhere and thwacking Conner with its tail, wrapping him up in its coils.
Conner teleported out of the grapple, but didn't go far. It acted quickly and closed with him, then unleashed its full fury of chains and tail on him, killing him and grappling his corpse.
May ran out to try to save his body by touching it and teleporting, but couldn't beat the demon's SR. So he stayed touching Conner to try to do the same to the demon in return.
Erdann and his puppy tried to attack the demon with no success, but the party was saved as a rogue appeared from nowhere and backstabbed the fiend. She seemed startled to see him, and tried to flee with Conner, but May made his save against the teleport, and she decided to actually leave rather than stay and face the party.
Then May teleported to the temple to get Conner ressurected, leaving Erdann to interrogate their unexpected 'ally', who told the druid that he was Nurn, a servant of Hrathrediel, who opposed Aameul, a Lord of the Abyss and master of The Cathezaar, who they'd just fought. He'd been following her because his lord had ordered him to oppose Aameul's plot, which the Cathezaar was pursuing, to find the descendant of Dydd and use him to somehow double his power.
So after raising their cleric (again), the party scried on the Cathezaar, and teleported to her abode to do her in. They did not arrive in the place they expected, instead appearing in a dusty, seemingly abandoned room with two heavy iron doors in different walls. After peering cautiously around the room, Erdann moved to open the south door, setting off a trap which dispelled the party and then chilled them with a wave of cold.
Spurred into action by the trap and by the feeblemind spells appearing from no obvious source, the party moved to leave the room. Erdann cast rusting grasp on the East door, revealing a similarly abandoned staircase, and May knocked the south door, revealing a depraved mess of filth, corruption, and pain, with scattered corpses and other horrors that revealed it as a demon's den.
No one actually left the room in time to avoid the second wave of dispelling and cold, but as soon as they realized the trap reset *every round* the party quickly swarmed into the den, where a pair of Nalfashees waited for them. The Nalfashees summoned Glazebrus to aid them, and then Nal and Glab alike were wiped out by a single Horrid Wilting, except for one who resisted the spell and was killed by Conner's holy mace.
Erdann quickly opened the next door, which was neither locked nor trapped, and there was their quarry, the Cathezaar, just finishing up her preparations for combat. Slithering up, she wounded Erdann (although he was resistant to the piercing damage from her chains) but couldn't grapple him, as he was too large. The party flung everything they had at her, to no effect, Erdann's wolf even rushing past her to flank and still having no effect.
So after tailslapping Conner as a parting gift, she animated the chains that filled the room and tumbled away to retreat around a corner. The animated chains attacked Erdann's wolf 23 times, hitting every single time and ripping it into very very small wolf-gobbets. [~650 damage out of the wolf's 200-some hp]
Now Erdann was pissed -- he filled the room with a firestorm, destroying all the chains, and furniture, and furnishings, and basically turning it into a socrched wasteland (but failing to harm the Cathezaar). May decided to press the attack by running in and eyebiting (he had an eyebite up which had passed her SR, but hadn't yet had any effect on her) and magic-missling the demon -- sickening her and slightly wounding her, the sickening being the important part, as it negated her dex -- which reduced her AC by *10*.
This was somewhat foolish, as she acted next and was still hasted -- so she walked up to May and dealt 150 damage with her attacks, and grappled him, not killing him only because of the Bear's Heart he had up. The grapple rendered him unconscious and helpless, however, and she was still mostly unhurt.
Conner and Erdann decided to fix that. Conner whacked her several times with his mace -- able to hit her now reduced AC, and doing the first serious damage she'd taken. Erdann healed May, which brought him awake long enough to eyebite her again, putting her to sleep.
And it was over. Conner coup-de-graced the fiend with one mighty blow of his holy mace. Crunch went her head. Nurn, who'd been mostly useless through the fight, commended the party on their deed -- Aameul had lost his right-hand demoness, and would now have to fall back on his Balors.
The party looted 'the bitch' and her lair, and found much treasure, and her journal, which had survived the firestorm only because it was hidden in a secret compartment of a desk that had absorbed most of the damage as it was incinerated. The journal implied that Aameul and Hrathrediel were both demon lords somehow connected to Demogorgon, which put Nurn more clearly in the light that the party had been assuming he was in the whole time (they'd let him come along because detect evil had shown 'not evil' and detect chaos had shown 'chaotic', which implied he was actually not evil and not just protected from divination).
"Hrathrediel a demon lord? I find that hard to believe, although I suppose I couldn't rule it out," was Nurn's excuse.
The journal also explained that she was, indeed, searching for the descendant of Dydd for some reason, and that more information on it could be found in the 'Church of the Elements'.
Which Erdann recognized. It was on his home plane.
So, back to the plane of sheep. Nurn was ditched, and they gated to the Isle of Sheep, which still had sheep but no longer had a village. Wind Walking towards the Forest of Chirinide where the Temple was said to stand, they saw that the plane was going to hell, or perhaps Limbo -- it was no longer shrouded in chaotic mist, but the landscape in the distance made no sense and was obviously otherworldly, and the sky was striped in assorted pastel colors, and an ARMY OF SLAAD beseiged the last remaining human city.
The forest of Chirinide was overgrown and monstrous, and shrouded in smoke from burning forest fires, but Conner Found the Path to the Temple of Elements, where dozens of powerful druids and treents defended a simple ring of stones, in which stood a sapling. And an elf, as its interpreter.
After assuring the army of druids that they meant no harm, they interrogated the sapling via its interpreter. It couldn't answer most of their questions, but it could explain the Dydd angle -- Dydd and most of his family and friends had been killed fighting a great wyrm red dragon, but had mortally wounded the dragon in the process. The great worm, Arshadalon, had staved off death by grafting a living demon in place of its own heart, but this was only a temporary measure at best. Arshadalon and Dydd were still linked, however, and any descendant of Dydd -- of which Conner was apparently one -- could weaken the wyrm by calling on the bond with a specific incantation.
They made the elf repeat the incantation five or six times, until she finally wrote it down on some paper and gave it to them.
The sapling was also able to tell them that it, as well, received only silence from the gods when asking about the Ban of the Unborn, but nature was able to tell it that 'The Dreamer Reveals what the Gods Conceal', probably a reference to the Guild of Sleep, which was known to move, but at last check had been in the city currently under siege by Slaadi.
So, using a crystal ball they'd stolen from the Cathezaar, they scried on 'The Dreamer', and saw a beautiful woman suspended in midair, in a room painted to look like the open sky, with illusion-enhanced frescoes with moving creatures among the cloudscape. "Come to me," she mouthed to them, so they did.
"Why do you seek me?" she asked. They told her the questions they sought answers to, about the Bastion of Unborn Souls (that had also been in the Cathezaar's journal) and the plague, and everything. "I can answer those questions, but I would need to be awake, and this dream is too beautiful to abandon. I'm sorry, but you must leave now."
The party didn't leave, so she attacked, along with her pets, which leapt out of the fresco to take three dimensional form, as dire tigers and a winged triceratops.
The party didn't want to hurt her, so Erdann did some subdual damage to her while Conner and Abbey attacked her pets. May didn't trust Abbey not to kill her, however, so he trapped himself in a wall of force bubble with her, to fight it out Mage to Mage.
He quickly regretted that decision, as he was unable to affect her with any of his nondamaging spells, and she kept dispelling and disintegrating him -- getting all his buffs, including his permanent blindsight.
["How many of those does she have memorized?!" "Um... she's a sorcerer, Ed."]
Eventually, he dropped the bubble, about the same time as the pets were finished off (they were incorporeal, and did wisdom damage, but Conner had a ghost touch mace, Abbey was too quick to be hit, and the wolf had enough wisdom to endure their attacks easily). Erdann and his wolf tried subduing her (while May sat back restoring his dispelled buffs), so she put them in force cages. Then Conner and Abbey finished her off, with what *should* have been subdual, but she screamed and vanished anyway.
The party immediately scried on her again, with the crystal ball, and were shown a sarcophagus-like device opening, and a withered hag inside slowly getting to her feet. No wonder she'd preferred to stay sleeping!
last session, different module next session
Everyone seemed to have a pretty good time, despite some frustration on my part trying to find where in each section the clue to the next was supposed to be found.
