|
Scotty walks up and goes to open the door to the bedroom. The doorknob feels slightly cold, but otherwise the door is not locked nor hard to open. Upon entering, you find a bedchamber that has been subject to intense cold.
A sheet of ice covers the floor of the opulent bedchamber, and the walls drip with layers of glittering rime. Soft, faint light through the frost-covered windows accentuates icicles dripping from a canopy bed. Your breath condenses before your eyes and hangs in the air momentarily before dissipating. An ornate fireplace occupies the east wall, and burns with cold, blue fire. On the opposite wall, you can barely discern the shape of floor–to-ceiling bookshelves under the thick frost that has transformed the room into an ice cave. A desk and several salon couches lay overturned in the middle of the floor.
Unfortunately you are not the only occupants here, as a bright blue insect-like creature brandishing a large spear stands in the back, with two large dogs enveloped in bright blue flame standing on either side of the doorway.
One of the hounds breathes on the people in the doorway.
Reflex DC 21 for half from Scotty, Koraq, Géatan.
Hound 2
Scotty
Hound 1
Gelugon
Koraq
Géatan
Ralph
|
"Before we enter we could have used the one way window.. That his fonction to prevent this ahhh. The next question is alive or not alive."
-Posted with Wayfinder
|
Spell-like abilities
SR
Regeneration
Special Abilities
Quest
Favorite Color
Spell-like abilities
SR
Regeneration
Special Abilities
Capitol of Assyria
"I was wondering when I would meet you. I didn't think I would need to introduce myself but your presence suggests otherwise. I am the Sword Arm of the Dawnflower; tasked with ridding the world of evil like you. Run while you can, or learn why my sword is named Wrath. *Scotty relays any info his Knowledge gives him* Ralph, bind the creature so it can't escape. I will rid the world of it. Permanently."
Smite Evil on the Gelugon
Move 30 feet to be adjacent to the Devil. Draw Scimitar as part of move. Starting with an up/left angle avoids any AoO from Hound 2 (Scotty has partial cover from the wall in his original position).
Cast Bless Weapon on his Scimitar.
|
|
Scotty maneuvers in to avoid the quick hound, but it appears that the devil ahead is faster than it seems.
plus
Will DC 23 or you're slowed.
The gelugon clicks and laughs. Then you hear in your mind "It's such a shame. My tool tried to warn you about interfering with other's business, but it seems that you have no clue as to the scope of your actual power. Allow me to correct that notion for you."
He then casts a spell and a blast of cold goes out from him and into the hallway.
Reflex DC 20 for half from Scotty, Géatan, and Koraq.
He then flies further into the room.
The other hound acts and lets out its own breath of freezing cold.
Reflex DC 21 for half from Géatan and Koraq.
Hound 2
Scotty
Hound 1
Gelugon
Koraq
Géatan
Ralph
|
|
The slaves are most grateful for all the help you are able to provide them. When you mention the Bellflower Network, a couple of their ears perk up, and one of them gets really excited. When you ask about the documents, many of the slaves are reluctant to say anything, but the excitable one drops the potato she's holding and spurts out "He's got a secret compartment behind his bed! He hides all his important stuff back there." The other slaves look at her weirdly, but she says to them "Don't you understand? The Bellflower Network is coming! We'll be out this hellhole soon!" The other slaves give her wary looks, but this time with a slight tinge of hope.
|
|
Koraq evades the hounds' blasts , but the devil's is far more effective.
Koraq waits, nodding to Ralph before moving in to punch a devil in the face.
-Posted with Wayfinder
|
"May your god protect you..."
As soon as Scotty gives Ralph the nod, the room is awash with flame as Ralph summons his power and eschews the incantation in favour of a flick of his finger and a pronunciation of the spell's name.
"Dawnflower's swift baptism."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"There's a second one coming, Scotty! Get to the far end of the room!"
Ralph readies a second, lengthier incantation as he levels his metamagic rod.
As a salute to Scotty's courage, Ralph reaches not to the plane of fire or the pits of the abyss, but to the outer plane of Niravana itself to muster the flames for his next spell. The floorboards beneath his feet begins to smoulder a little as the air around him shimmers from the intense heat around him.
"Fires of Nirvana, Flames that purify,
Gather and consume these unrepentant souls."
"Dawnflower's Full Cleansing!"
x1.5=75
|
|
Koraq shakes his head and places himself between the devil and Scotty's body, placing a gloved hand on the paladin's chest.
"Heh, you owe me one, now!", the half-orc teases.
"Well, time to do my job.", Koraq cracking his knuckles as he nimbly walks up to the devil.
"Alright, let's dance, ugly!", Koraq taunts as he begins to wrestle with the devil!
|
|
Géatan shoots at the gelugon, his first two arrows becoming a cause for concern for the devil.
Koraq runs in, very narrowly avoids an AoO, successfully pinpoints its weakness, and manages to grab a hold of the surprisingly slippery ice devil.
The ice devil looks around and says telepathically to everyone "Ah, there are more of you than it appeared. I'm impressed. Perhaps my correction shall come at a later date." He then attempts to teleport away.
Scotty
Gelugon
Koraq
Géatan
Ralph
|
|
"How about we correct things right now instead, bub??", says Koraq, still angry holding the devil down.
"Now, even though you hurt me, I got friends who wanna take a shot at you first. Now let's go say hi!", Koraq dragging the ice devil with him so both Scotty and Geatan have easy access to finish off the foe.
|
|
Koraq is really good at rolling just barely what he needs to in order to hold on to the Gelugon.
Géatan hits with his first and third arrows, knocking the Gelugon out.
A cursory search of the room will find that in the far end of the room, there is a body that has been broken up into many different parts. Each of the parts still looks relatively fresh, but frozen.
|
|
"I hope, he have also a good life assurance."
"Don't forget our devil regenerate. Let's search for the Skull."
-Posted with Wayfinder
|
|
"I believe I can take care of the regeneration. Will one of you kindly ensure that the devil is sufficiently wounded so that he will expire permanently once I disable his regenerative ability?"
Assuming someone does coup de grace the gelugon until he is properly in the negatives, Ralph will use spell study to cast burst of radiance on the gelugon, using the web and resist energy spells as fuel.
"What skull are you referring to, Geatan? Do you mean Keel's skull" Ralph asks as he uses a prestidigitation cantrip to gather the body parts as best he can. "These remains are beyond a raise dead spell to restore, with or without the skull. But a resurrection spell should still be able to bring him back. I propose we preserve a few pieces for that purpose and then cremate the rest of the remains, lest they be used to create some form of undead."
Once Keel's body is taken care of, Ralph will also ask the others to search the room for that portal that the imposter mentioned earlier (as well as just searching the room in general for useful items or information).
|
|
"Yes Ralph, I mean the skull.. I think there a spell to speak to the dead. You have it?"
-Posted with Wayfinder
|
|
"Ralph, save your spells. I can put a permanent end to this Devil."
Burned and bloody, Scotty limps his way over to the unconscious Devil. He burns the creature with the holy fire from his sword to stop it's regeneration before charging his ultimate attack.
"I hope you can still hear me. Your cowardly tactics only slowed me down. Still, my allies were able to bring you to your knees without me. I warned your tool that you were no match for us, but it seems that you have no clue as to the scope of your actual power. Allow me to correct that notion for you."
Coup de grace with Scotty's ultimate attack:
For good measure, Scotty runs the remains through with his scimitar, letting the holy flames burn at the corpse while we sort out our business in this room.
"If you will excuse me for a moment, I am in rather urgent need of healing. Was anyone else injured?"
Once healing is sorted, Scotty helps search the room. He immediately checks for the hidden compartment behind the bed.
Once he has that, he does a general search of the room.
|
|
"Yes Ralph, I mean the skull.. I think there a spell to speak to the dead. You have it?"
Ralph sighs.
"The pieces of Keel's skull are lodged within the frozen flesh and I care little for extracting it. Furthermore, his skull will serve no purpose that other parts of his body cannot serve for present purposes. The spell to speak with dead requires a body that is far more intact than this."
"Ralph, save your spells. I can put a permanent end to this Devil."
"Always happy to. One can never have too many spells ready in reserve."
"Yeah, that damned thing tried ta give me some frostbite!" But he smiles a bit. "But I think Ralph outta use this wand on me.", Koraq giving the wizard a blackened stick stained with the hint of imp blood.
"Not in front of the paladin, Koraq," Ralph mutters as he takes the wand and pokes Koraq in the side with it. "Though between you and me, using a devil's blood to heal the damage caused by a devil seems very appropriate. I wonder if we will be able to convince Scotty that using devil-blood to heal goes some way to redeem the devil..."
|
|
Going to cremate most of the remains of Keel won't be a problem as long as you don't tell anyone that's what you're doing.
Searching the bed, Scotty is able to find a hidden catch that allows the headboard to swing back. Behind he finds a portrait of a fair-haired Taldan woman in a crushed velvet dress, a braid of her hair resting on the frame. A gold ring with Kyalla's name inscribed along the inside hangs from the wall on a thin silver chain.
Searching the rest of the room, Ralph finds that the desk contains a false-bottomed drawer. Inside contains a journal. One page is of note, along with a letter tucked inside the journal.
|
|
"Oh how charming," Ralph comments impassively as he reads the journal and letter with a bored scowl. "It appears that two of our illustrious Decemvirate members were in a forbidden romance. Keel even knew that Hestram frequently used the Maze. It would not surprise me if Keel was the one who revealed the Maze to Hestram to begin with."
"By the way, Scotty, there is some mention here of a slave trade that might be on interest to you," he adds as he hands the journal over to the paladin.
"Now, from the contents of the letter, the portal to Kyalla should be close by..." Ralph muses as casts detect magic and scans the portrait, the ring and the walls and floor around the bed.
|
|
"Not in front of the paladin, Koraq," Ralph mutters as he takes the wand and pokes Koraq in the side with it. "Though between you and me, using a devil's blood to heal the damage caused by a devil seems very appropriate. I wonder if we will be able to convince Scotty that using devil-blood to heal goes some way to redeem the devil...""Yeah, that damned thing tried ta give me some frostbite!" But he smiles a bit. "But I think Ralph outta use this wand on me.", Koraq giving the wizard a blackened stick stained with the hint of imp blood.
"You needn't concern yourselves. My vows are not yours, and it does amuse me to know that a devil's blood is being used to heal those who destroyed one."
Scotty glances through the journal and letter.
"Well, kind of him to confirm what we already knew about Hestram's targets. Seems that the fool Keel let him in on far too many of his secrets. We should finish our business here before his misplaced trust gets his lover killed as well."
|
|
Given that this is your third time jumping into one of these portals, the sensations shouldn't come as much of a surprise. While the sensation of varying shades of purple are still a little hard on the eyes, they're getting easier to deal with. While the sensation of being jolted around like a unsecured package bouncing around in a carriage flying down Pothole road is hurts, it doesn't hurt quite as much as it used to. In fact, some of you may even be starting to gain a sense of the passage of time through the portal and figure out how much time has actually passed while you're still in it.
While you may be getting used to those sensations, what's new this time is that right before you are about to be expelled from the portal, you see a bunch of big black blobs with jagged edges. The portal initially directs you into the path of one of the big black blobs which causes you to crash hard into its unyielding surface. As you're starting to look yourself over and make sure that nothing was broken, the portal seems to pull you away from the black blobs and then smash you into a slightly different spot. The portal seems to repeat this multiple times, like a drunk trying to get a key into the doorknob, until finally it manages to get each of you through one of the holes between the big black blobs and expel you out the other side.
Upon being expelled from the portal—a framed portrait much like the one you entered in Cheliax—your lungs fill with foul-smelling smoke. As your eyes grow accustomed to the thick air, you find yourself in a smoke-filled wicker hut, looking out a doorway at a cyclopean monolith in the shape of an upraised six-fingered hand several dozen yards away. When you look behind you, the portrait is slashed in a similar pattern to the jagged black blobs that you encountered in transit. From what you can tell of the portrait, it appears to be a picture of some greenery or hedges or something of the sort.
|
|
"If you do not want to walk back to the Woodsedge Lodge, Koraq, you simply need to ensure no irreparable harm befalls me," Ralph comments with a wry smile.
"It is a good thing Hestram knows as much about disabling portals as he does about personal hygeine," he continues as he examines the damaged portrait. "However, Soth mentioned that Hestram had been gone for some time, so we may already be too late..."
Ralph activates his ring of invisibility and then flies out of the hut to get a better view from above.
|
|
Koraq takes a look around the hut, and on a closer look the hut shows clear signs of struggle and ransacking: the contents of several chests have been emptied onto the bed and the floor, and a mirror on a small dressing table has been shattered. Rudimentary scrawls and handprints in blood and mud cover the interior south wall.
Flying out from the hut, Ralph sees that the smoke appears to be coming from the various huts. Most of their roofs have been burnt off, and some walls have been reduced to smoldering ruins. Even at a distance with a lot of your line of sight blocked by smoke, he can still see that there are some dead bodies poking out of the huts.
The exception to the burned huts is the one all the way to the left. While half the roof has been destroyed, smoke is not actively pouring out of the hut, which allows Ralph to easily see that inside contains a library, most of the books having suffered significant water damage.
As for the significance of the six-fingered hand, Ralph isn't sure. It's obvious from the ground that the arm is covered is covered in carvings with various different runes. With little effort, Ralph is able to identify the runes as a combination of Abyssal and Polyglot. In the air he can get closer to the top of the statue, where it becomes more apparent that the monolith's fingertips each are carved to resemble a different kind of monkey or ape.
|
|
"Interesting. It appears that this place was under attack, but it also appears that someone with access to magic might have attempted to summon water to rescue that library. Or perhaps it was merely incidental to a magical battle? Either way, it's worth investigating."
"As for this statue, between the abyssal scrawls and the monkey motifs, I would not be surprised if this had some link to Angazhan, and to Hestram by extension."
"Scotty, Koraq and Geatan, would you mind investigating that former-library whilst I investigate these writings and the statue? Scotty, could I also ask you to check that monolith in the middle of the camp for any evil influence?"
Ralph decides that a methodical investigation of the site would be best. He returns to the hut the party first arrived in and begins by searching the hut for magic using a detect magic spell, and then checks out the scrawls in the hut.
His next stop is the statue, which he will scan for magic. If there is no magic on the statue, Ralph will attempt to read the writings on the statue. Ralph will not read the writings yet if there is magic coming from the statue. That will depend on my findings. If there is no magic, Ralph speaks Abyssal but not polyglot.
Finally, Ralph will join the others at the library to see what they find.
|
|
Scotty will be actively scanning for evil. He'll focus on the monolith at Ralph's request.
"I agree with Ralph that we're likely dealing with monkey cultists again. Ralph, do you think we might be able to pull something off similar to our last encounter with the cultists in the maze where a show of 'superior power' turned them to our side?"
Scotty will aid searching wherever needed.