"Gargoyle form please. This is too easy. I smell an ambush." Greta answers, sniffing the air warily.
Nodding in Greta's direction, he casts fly on Dmitri and Einar before turning her into a four-armed gargoyle.
As the party ascends, flying, Crummock, Dimitri and Einar spot 6 large purple dragons roosting among the ledges, and point them out to Mr Whiskers and Greta.
Mr Whiskers recognizes them as Rift Drakes who are as savage and brutal as the lands they hunt. Their strength and savagery often make them seem like mere deadly beasts, but rift drakes simply delight in battle more than most drakes, frequently clashing even with other members of their own kind. They rarely deign to talk with other creatures, often doing so only as a cruel game in which they make more and more outrageous demands until their victims realize the drakes are toying with them or the manipulative drakes grow bored.
As a standard action, a rift drake can spit a ball of caustic gas that bursts into a cloud upon impact. This attack has a range of 60 feet and deals 5d10 points of acid damage to all creatures within the resulting 15-foot-radius spread. Additionally, any creature damaged by this attack is affected as though by the spell slow for 1d4 rounds. A successful Reflex save halves the damage and negates the slowing effect. Once a rift drake uses its breath weapon, it cannot do so again for 1d6 rounds. The save DC is Constitution-based.
Three times per day as a swift action, a rift drake can draw on its draconic heritage for a boost of strength and speed that allows it to take an additional move action that round.
A rift drake applies 1-1/2 times its Strength bonus to damage dealt with its bite attack, and it threatens a critical hit on a 19-20.
They are resistant to acid, and immune to paralysis and sleep.
Mr. Whiskers casts Communal Resist Energy to protect his friends from the acid. He moves so that he can get the last two.
As the matryoshka doll splits, Vigliv begins to speak, "You have taken Baba Yaga’s fate into your hands. The first test is past, but many remain. You must now reclaim a symbol of her power. Know that the demon lord Kostchtchie and the witch queens of Irrisen were not Baba Yaga’s first attempts to elevate some mortal to supreme power to rule in her name over lesser peoples. There was another before, a great warrior called Bremagyr, whom Baba Yaga made a queen over a vast empire on her own world. Yet when the Queen of Witches sought the obeisance due her from this petty empress, Bremagyr forgot from whence her power came and refused to do honor unto Baba Yaga. Where Baba Yaga had raised her from warrior to queen in a year, she laid Bremagyr and all her empire low in a night. Never again has the sun risen or set over the crumbled empire of Bremagyr, as a lesson to all who would come after and seek Baba Yaga’s power but refuse her obedience."
"Bremagyr is now a shadow of the queen she once was, cursed to forever haunt her iron fortress of Vashliq, which was cast down by Baba Yaga and brought inside her Dancing Hut. Yet some vestige of Baba Yaga’s power still lies within Bremagyr, and only with the destruction of the dead queen will you be able to obtain that power and continue on your quest. Now go. Follow Baba Yaga’s guidance. Find the Canyon of the Drakes and enter the lost fortress of Vashliq. When you have reclaimed Baba Yaga’s power, bring it back to this sacred pool to unlock the next secret of the doll that imprisons her.”
Einar strikes the drake with a mighty blow to the heart, and it shudders and dies. Two of the remaining drakes fly up and fire their acid blasts at Einar while the other 3 fire it at Geist.
The acid blasts are all absorbed by the shield Mr Whiskers placed on the party.
Mr. Whiskers flys out of the dragon's charge lane and casts Haste on everyone except Einar.
I was sort of expecting Einar to go charging off on his own, but it was still worth it to protect us from acid.
Greta moves up to the nearest drake and starts stabbing it once with her Ranseur. The rest of her strikes are deflected either by its armor, or miss out of sheer bad luck.
Einar manages to catch a rift drake on its shoulder and it shrieks in pain.
Crummock casts Divine Favor on Geist, who then pounces!
Meanwhile, Dimitri calmly attempts to blow-up some drakes...
The drake Greta attacked snaps at Geist as he pounces in, but its teeth clang harmlessly off Geist's breastplate.
Geist then rips it apart.
Dimitri riddles a drake with bullets and it crashes down onto the ledges below, then kills another drake with a single shot to the eye, lodging into its brain.
The other drakes fly in closer, but do not manage to get to the party.
Crummock grins, then directs Geist to pounce on one of the drakes.
Meanwhile, Dimitri calmly attempts to finish them off...
Dimitri and Geist finish off the last two drakes.
Crummock, Dimitri and Einar spot an elf skeleton on one of the ledges. Only the rib cage and left arm remain, but a +2 arrow caching light shield is still strapped to the skeleton’s arm. The party gets onto ledge where they saw the cave from the bottom without further incident, 10 minutes later. Mr Whiskers determines with his knowledge in all things arcane that the cave leads to another demiplane within the Hut. Crummock feels empathic instructions from the matryoshka doll to enter the cave.
As each person in the party enters the cave entrance, there is a strange rainbow coloured shimmer and then the person vanishes into thin air.
The party find themselves in a large opulent tent made of heavy silk, its walls and roof supported by a dozen sturdy teak poles. There is no sign of the canyon or the cave entrance they just came from, just the blank silk wall of the tent behind them.
Despite two silver braziers giving off warmth and smoke from a pungent incense, the tent’s interior is still uncomfortably cold, and its walls whip and snap against gusts of icy wind. The tent is luxuriously outfitted with cushioned beds, camp chairs and tables, and amenities such as fine cabinetwork around the walls, rich wall hangings and a large silver hookah.
A horned warrior, twice the size of a human, decked in rich finery and jewelled rings of genie nobility greets the party.”Greetings. I am Mametqul. Please be welcome to my humble camp. My servants,” he gestures at the six surly human women dressed in coarse robes and veils who scowl at the party, ”Are here to attend to your needs. Would you like some refreshment?”
Mr Whiskers recognizes the horned warrior as a Sepid div.
Warlords among the divs, sepids spread fear, slaughter, and despair wherever they pass. They foster battles, incite rebellions, and seek heroes to slay, destroying all that which gives common people hope. With their falchions in hand, sepids often stand at the fore of the foul legions they raise.
Sepids delight in twisting the truth, but while all divs are liars, sepids make themselves predictable by always doing the opposite of what they claim, and wise opponents turn this knowledge to their own advantage.
DR 10/cold iron and good. They have SR and are immune to fire and poison, and can see in darkness.
Mr Whiskers also realizes unlike the other demiplanes, this demiplane is NOT dimensional locked.
Mr Whiskers also realizes that 4 of the humans have 2 weak auras of divination around them, while the other two have moderate auras of divination around them. Mametqul himself has a weak aura of divination around him.
Seeing the looks of distrust on the party, Mametqul heaves a sigh. "Yes, I know I am a Sepid Div. You should know that Baba Yaga has servants from all across the Great Beyond by now."
Crummock eyes the creature carefully, then takes a seat, Geist curling up at his feet.
"Aye, well, that be true. Tell us what ye know."
Mametqul offers the party cups of extremely strong coffee and bids them to takes seats as he takes a few puffs of strongly spiced tobacco from his hookah.
He then walks over to the tent entrance where he pushes the flap aside, revealing that the tent sits on the edge of a cliff. Beyond the cliff edge lies nothing but a vast, dark expanse of roiling chaos. Far out in the void, a shadowy vortex slowly swirls, intermittently illuminated from within by sudden flashes and streaks of color. Bits of the rocky cliff edge crumble in the howling winds and are dragged out into the vortex where they disappear, as if the maelstrom were slowly eating the land bit by bit. In the distance to the west, the ruins of a large fortress cling to the edge of the cliff, as if it were also slowly being consumed by the vortex.
Looking out upon this vista, Mametqul relates the following to the party, “Queen Bremagyr established her empire with Baba Yaga’s help over a thousand years ago. We stand now in what is left of her capital of Vashliq. The final battle of her conquest was fought on this very cliff above a vast fertile plain of fields and sprawling towns below. This was the breadbasket of her empire, and the fortress of iron and stone that she built was its crown jewel.”
”Baba Yaga gave Bremagyr her empire and demanded only her fealty in return, but Bremagyr became drunk on the power of her newly won realm and believed it was by her might that it had been established. Bremagyr spurned Baba Yaga and threatened to turn the might of her empire against her if she ever returned. Instead, Baba Yaga called upon the might of the cosmos, struck Queen Bremagyr down, and wrested her capital from its very foundations to be placed here in this void within her hut. Baba Yaga captured Bremagyr’s soul and imprisoned her here in her fortress, to watch as her empire slowly decays into nothing, just as her power has.“
”My role here is simple. I watch Vashliq’s destruction and observe Queen Bremagyr as she howls her rage at the void. When the time comes, my retinue and I shall depart and report on the soul-rending anguish that has occurred here—a fitting punishment that brought the queen to this end. Now, however, it seems that Baba Yaga needs to reclaim the power that she invested here to imprison Bremagyr’s soul and realm. For you to recover it, you must venture into the fortress of Vashliq, where Bremagyr still waits in her throne room. Bremagyr’s crown holds the power of Baba Yaga that you seek. Destroy Bremagyr, pass her Crown to me so I may use it to open the portal for you to return to Grandmother’s Cauldron.”
Mametqul is telling the truth!
Crummock looks thoughtful.
"Seems straightforward enough. What sort o' resistance can we be expectin'?"
"The plains are haunted by devourers riding nightwings. I have never entered the ruined fortress myself so I do not know what the defences are."Mametqul answers.
Mr Whiskers remembers that a nightwing is an undead flying bat-like creature is shaped from utter darkness, its eyes tiny red stars in the blackest night. They have DR 15/good and silver.
Greta remembers that devourers are undead creatures that look like dry, hovering corpse chest forming a prison of jagged ribs, within which is trapped a small tormented ghostly form. They have spell resistance and can devour soul. And they fly.
By making a touch attack as a standard action, a devourer can deal 12d6+18 points of damage as if using a slay living spell. A Fortitude save reduces this damage to 3d6+18. The soul of a creature slain by this attack becomes trapped within the devourer’s chest. The creature cannot be brought back to life until the devourer’s destruction.
They also have the following SLAs:
At will—animate dead, bestow curse, confusion, control undead, death knell, ghoul touch, inflict serious wounds, lesser planar ally, ray of enfeebled entry, spectral hand, suggestion, true seeing, vampiric touch.
The desolate cliff edge is devoid of all save the crumbling foundations of buildings that once stood here but have now fallen into fissures or succumbed to the howling winds that scream across the plain. To the north is the great void with its slowly swirling vortex of annihilation, and to the south and west stands a range of jagged volcanic peaks. A broken fotress stands at the base of the mountains where they reach the edge of the cliff.
Crummock gives Geist a scratch behind his right ear, then nods to the others.
"Well then, that be where we need to go; let's get to it!"
He then begins to amble his way across the plain, Geist at his side.
The party hasn't gotten too far on the plains when they are, predictably, ambushed by a devourers riding a nightwing.
The bat is surprisingly quick and attempts to bite at Einar as he moves in, but only manages to land only on his plate armor.
The bat backs off some, then reaches out to Einar.
Einar begins to dematerialize. Mr Whiskers realises Einar has been planeshifted!
Welcome to the negative energy plane. Please wait while I come up with a suitable encounter^^
The devourer throws a confusion at the party.
No one is affected by the confusion spell!
Einar finds himself in a dark, cold place and sees an umbral mass unfolds a tangle of spidery legs and horrible mandibles, rising up to a monstrous height to bring its cluster of glowing red eyes to bear.
It's about 50 feet away. It moves closer then throws a shadowy Web at Einar.
An entangled creature gains 1d4 temporary negative levels while entangled, and can attempt to escape with a successful DC 28 Escape Artist check, or may try to burst the web with a DC 28 Strength check. The negative levels granted by an umbral web vanish as soon as the entangled character escapes from the web.
Each 5-foot-square section of web has 15 hit points and DR 5/—.
He feels the dreadful place drain his vitality.
Crummock winces when Einar disappears.
Dimitri, however, simply unloads on the bat.
Heartened by Dimitri's display, Crummock casts Divine Favor and Grace on Geist, who then pounces on the bat, hoping to finish the job!
How do you hit something 20ft away with only 10ft reach?
Dimitri blows massive holes in the shadowy substance of the nightwng, and it tumbles to the ground, pinning the devourer underneath it.
Geist pounces at the prone devourer, his claws and teeth flashing, wounding it severely.
Einar easily cuts his way through the Web with his first strike.
Mr. Whiskers is slightly ditrcted by Einar's disappearance. How in the heck are we going to find him now?
Seeing the devourer pinned, Mr. Whiskers casts a Magic Missile at it.
The magic missiles bounce off a dark coloured shield.
Einar cuts through the web and draws his spear. The creature backs off 5 ft and throws MORE web at Einar.
Einar feels the accursed place drain away his vitality.
Greta moves in and stabs at the devourer, killing it.
Rifling their bodies results in nothing of value.
Once the monsters are dead, Mr. Whiskers rushes over to where Einar was shifted and looks for any remnants of the magic, hoping it may give a clue as to where the giant fellow went.
While looking, he says "Crummock, Einar was plane shifted. Do you have any ideas how we might find out where he was sent? If he says your name, will that tell you where he is?"
Crummock nods.
"Aye, if he does that, I'll know *precisely* where he be... unfortunately, I be havin' no way to get to him faster than Plane Shift and Wind Walk, for the moment."
Tilting his head in thought, Mr. Whiskers says "If you shift to the right plane from where he left, shouldn't we be relatively close? I know small errors can get magnified, but unless that creature had a specific location in mind I would expect Einar to have shifted to the nearest adjacent planar point."
Shaking his head, he says "I don't think we will be wanting to go into that castle today -- not after this!"
Crummock hears a voice in his mind, echoing through the universe. He realises it's Einar, calling him for help and Crummock realises that Einar is in the negative energy plane!
Einar stabs his way free of the webs, and manages to stab the spider once, but his second stab bounces off its chittinous exoskeleton.
The spider backs off and Einar stabs at it.
It stays a safe distance (40ft) and spits more Web at Einar.
Einar manages to fight off the place's attempt to drain his energy.