Avoiding the blast by taking to the skies, Theo decided to make sure that thing wouldn't fire again, conjuring a barrage of meteors onto the turret.
"Rudrik, get clear!" he called, holding the spell just long enough to give Rudrik a change to get out of the blast radius.
"Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Oh, Eternal Rose that stings," Nime says with a scrunched face. Her normally blue skin is now covered with ugly purple blotches.
She brings her hands together, summoning a deafening thunderclap, centering it on the horn, but arranged to strike as many of the enemies as possible while avoiding her friends.
Shenuska looks positively affronted - not that anyone can see that. She skims away from the group so that another blast of fire won't catch her as collateral damage, but not before reaching out to crush the runegiant's mind.
Rudrik is detonated into an exploded bit of chunks.
Calendula rushes at the Hellstorm Plume beside Rudrik, throwing her sword into it.
Theodric unleashes a meteor swarm at the turret, battering it with explosions. It doesn't seem to do to much damage, though, and the giants caught in the blasts are unharmed by the flames.
Calendula heals herself before rushing up beside Rudrik. She slices into the barrel of the turret, further damaging it.
The rune giant resists Shenuska's psychic crush, though it is still wounded.
Nime's thunderburst shatters the damaged barrel, preventing it from shooting any more flames! It also batters the sun giants on the parapet.
Terribly wounded, Rudrik withdraws, seeking healing from Nime.
The sun giants hurl darts of burning sunlight up at Calendula. The rune giant tries to dominate Shenuska!
"Oh, my precious boy," Nime fusses over the injured half-orc. "Here, this will make it feel better." She lifts his visor and leans in to give him a kiss with burnt lips.
Calendula easily heals the damage done to her by the giant, her burnt, delicate skin not even scarring. She continues to attack the tower recklessly.
Shenuska simply ignores the magic, it doesn't have a chance to latch onto a mind as powerful as hers!
She gestures and wraps the two giants in confusion.
Whatever giants Shen missed with her spell would find themselves having a little trouble moving, as Theo reached in to start messing with their mind's connection to their body.
"Thanks Blue," says Rudrik. "I sure needed that."
Then he's off again to try to finish the turret.
Theodric's spell paralyzes two of the three sun giants. Shenuska manages to confuse the rune giant! Calendula and Rudrik move in on the sun giant that isn't paralyzed, badly wounding it.
The giant quick draws a heavy mace and swings wildly at Calendula, not hitting the paladin. The rune giant bashes himself in the face with the hilt of his sword. The other two sun giants remain paralyzed!
Calendula edges around the giant to flank with Rudrik and cuts into them.
Nime calls out to the giants.
"Cease your hostilities!"
Between Calendula and Rudrik, the sun giant falls. Shenuska sends Iron Shen in to finish off the paralyzed giants before they can recover.
The rune giant resists Nime's spell, but just floats there babbling incoherently. You move into position around the confused giant then, with a combined effort, quickly take it down before it can retaliate!
Spiral stairs lead down from this room, but they end after one full revolution at an impassable wall of writhing green moss--an impenetrable barrier of anima mundi. It doesn't look like you'll be able to leave without finishing your task here--defeating Alaznist once and for all!
A hall leads away to the northwest, once you feel prepared to continue on...
"So, we have to fight our way through the mountain until we face Alaznist." Shenuska says. "And in the process we will be facing numerous minions no doubt. If the entire mountain has been sealed by anima mundi... what is the flow of time like here? I wouldn't be surprised if we exist entirely outside time at the moment - an attempt to resolve the paradoxes of our existence with Alaznist's... we must proceed slowly and cautiously."
Since almost all of her spells remain in effect however the psychic is keen to move on. You can all feel her impatience like a drumbeat inside your heads.
Nime spends a few moments - and some charges from the wands in her bag - to ensure that everyone is up to full health before giving Shenuska a nod that she's ready.
The hall leads to a crumbling chamber that has a ceiling some forty feet high. Swaths of rubble have been pushed to the walls to make room for several oversized bedrolls. The remains of cook fires and the miscellaneous gear of a soldier’s encampment sit in the center of the chamber.
Currently camped here are five sun giants, though there are bedrolls for a dozen more. They currently spar with a massive construct, an enormous wood-and-metal giant that wields a scythe, a wicked spiked wrecking ball, an immense pick, and a huge crossbow.
The construct is pure combat - Rudrik should be able to handle it easily. Shenuska's mental voice comes across clearly. Wait for my signal.
She flies invisibly into the room and targets as many sun giants as she can with Confusion
Calendula nods and waits, not knowing where to direct her agreement with Shen invisible.
Frustrated by his foes' non-flammable nature, Theo shifted to plan B and conjured a massive golden dragon's claw in the air and sent it at the nearest of the sun giants .
Theodric's clenched fist pummels a giant, leaving it stunned! All three giants caught in Shen's confusion resist the spell!
The giants quickly move to form a firing line along the west wall (60 feet away). They fire burning rays of light from their atatls. The warmonger fires its automatic crossbows, ammunition magically appearing, and hurls a rock! Several of Theos' mirror images are destroyed, leaving only 3 left!
Nime centers another clap of thunder upon the construct and the gathered giants.
Lacking any area effect spells that the giants can't just ignore Shenuska swoops back over the group and enhanced everyone with Haste!
Now moving with alacrity, Rudrik launches himself into the air to race toward the warmonger with its automatic crossbow.
Theo's fist continued its assault on the giant as he moved to perhaps closer than was safe, but their disregard for fire was forcing his hand, and unleashed a blast of sonic force on as many of them as he could.
The warmonger swings its wrecking ball at Rudrik as he closes with the huge construct, but he shrugs off the blow and delivers a powerful slice of his own!
Nime's thunderburst badly batters two of the giants and the construct. Theo's fist pummels its target again but doesn't stun it. His shout proves quite effective against most of the foes!
Calendula moves in to flank the construct with Rudrik, trying to help take it down.
The construct focuses its many weapons on Rudrik, landing one hit with its scythe-arm. The giants attack Theo again but all come up short of the sorcerer's impressive defenses!
Shenuska turns her invisible wrath on the giants and attempts to disintegrate one of them.
With no one showing any real signs of injury and the enemies in close proximity to her friends, Nime falls back on a simple blessing.
Rudrik barely feels the counterattack of the warmonger as he brings Tannaris down on it again, hard.
With no better option thanks to their fire resistance, Theo just kept up the deafening blasts, working to maintain his distance thanks to the extra speed from haste.
The giant resists Shenuska's disintegrate, but combined with another punch from Theo's clenched fist, he falls!
Most of the remaining giants resist the shout!
Calendula and Rudrik continue to hammer blows on the construct, but the tough thing still stands tall despite the massive damage done to it! The construct slams Rudrik withs its wrecking ball and a fist while the giants miss Theo yet again!
Nime moves in a little closer and sends lightning arcing from her hands towards the metal and wood monstrosity.
Rudrik drops Tannaris and falls out of the sky.
Calendula continues smashing into the construct, unimpeded.
Nime zaps the construct with lightning, then Calendula hacks it to pieces with her sword! It topples to the floor, hitting with a resounding crash! Only the giants remain.
Shen makes an annoyed dismissive gesture that no-one can see and splatters force missiles across the nearest giant's face.
Directing his conjured fist to a new target, Theo looked to the remaining giants and, with a gesture, forced its body to seize up.
The giants resist Theo's fist and his paralysis spell. Again, they fail to have any success at trying to hit the sorcerer.
After a few more rounds of fighting, you prove victorious, taking down the badly wounded giants!
Theo's grasp of magic had reached a degree even he found worrying, at least at the potential thereof. More specifically, one spell he had figured out needed the diamond they found as a material component.
"Don't mean to sound greedy, but do you mind if I have that amulet and the diamond? The former just because it's a better version of the one I've got, but the diamond will let me use a powerful spell in case of emergencies. It's not unlike that one we saw Alaznist use to summon that whirlpool monstrosity thing earlier, though I get the feeling what she used there was an even more powerful version."
That there can even be a stronger version of this spell is something I'd rather not dwell on... especially since I wouldn't be surprised if Sorshen can use it too - she was around for longer and was much more powerful than Alaznist before all this temporal monkeying about got started.
"By all means." Shenuska says, waving a negligent hand. "When we face her we'll need all the powerful magic that we can get!" She doesn't seem overly interested in any of the items, besides it not as though they're going to be able to sell them easily!
Nime's eyes light up at the sight of the diamond. "Of course," she replies to Theo's request, but her eyes never leave the stone. "Can I hold it just once, though? It's so pretty."
Once you have recovered from the fight, you move on to the next room. A fire pit burns with strange blue flames in the center of the large room.
Three demons lurk here, more minions of Alaznist! Two of them are hulking shemhazians, while the third is a blood-red vrock that holds a burning musket! The vrock shrieks and orders her bodyguards into battle!
Rudrik steps forward to present himself as a target while focusing on his defense.
The vrock casts a spell to protect herself with mirror images while the shemhazian demons hang back, afflicting everybody they can see with negative energy!
With a click of her fingers Shenuska wipes away the mirror images.
Before preparing more anti-magic, should it be needed.
Nime narrows her eyes at the hulking demons. "Go home," she commands them firmly.
Calendula grits her teeth and powers thru.
One of the shemhazian demons is banished, while the other remains!