Session #29

Well this session was about standard.

Jeff was unable to attend because his work went him on another training trip. This time to Las Vegas. Poor guy.

Joe cancelled at the last minute. He'll probably deny it, but I think it's because he's got a ladyfriend. I guess we'll find out next session.

Map

We last left the heroes as they rested up in their adopted bedroom.
During that time 3 of the group leveled.

Krieg becomes a level 12 cleric.
Thunderclease reaches level 11 (2 ftr/9 brb).
Valden becomes a level 11 cleric.

Every group should have 2 clerics (in addition to covering the other 3 base classes of course).

Well the group has been trying to find clues about both Tyrus (the big evil dragon) and the mysterious lady that keeps appearing and begging for their help, but so far they're coming up short on answers.

In come the use of Augury & Divination spells. The DM has made it more than clear to the party that these kinds of spells should be used sparingly, but he considered this a legitimate use for it.

Krieg first cast Divination.
"Where can we find the 'Dark One'?"
"Five switches you must seek for the Dark One to be free."

Much discussion followed on what this meant. The consensus was that the switch they found on the statue of lady in distress is probably the one that the spell results are referring to.

Valden cast Augury.
"Will freeing the Dark One harm the garrison?"
"Weal...Woe...Weal...Woe."

That answer didn't give them the warm fuzzies.

So they set about finding the 4 remaining switches.

First they return to...

Room J55 (not on map): The last time the party was here, it was the first time they saw the long-haired lady. There was also a statue of her here in an alcove, and an empty alcove on the opposite side of the room.

A thorough search of the statue came up with no switch. But the party decided to give moving the statue a shot.

It took over 15 minutes to slowly push the heavy statue into the other alcove.

Once the finished, the steam in the room showed another illusion. But this time not of the long-haired lady. It showed an azer, happily toiling away in a mine, trying to get some gem out of the stone. Then the illusion focused on a small sack at the azer's feet. Exposed from the sack was a shiny sphere.

Then the scene changed to one of a stone pair of female hands, outstretched to hold something spherical.

(If that's not an obvious enough hint, I don't know what is.)

So now the party has to find an azer with a shiny orb.

Room J83 (both): Broken angel statues.

Room J42: Heart attack for the party. They open the door to this room and find thousands of gems ranging in value from 50gp to 250gp.

The party smells a trap, so Torin searches the area without touching a gem. He comes up with nothing, so Zorak casts Detect Magic.

Every single gem radiates magic. An easily made spellcraft check later and Zorak determines that each gem has an Alarm spell cast on it.

The party realizes that these gems belong to the azers. And since they don't want to make enemies of the azers, the party leaves.

Room J41: The party didn't actually get to see the inside of this room. Torin heard some voices on the other side of the door. Long story short, the 3 azers in the room barricaded themselves and told the party to scram.

Room J39: The party intended to talk to the azers mining here in the hopes finding the shiny orb. They were able to do that and better.

When they entered the room this room all of the previous times, the azers gave them a less than warm reception. But since the party killed all but 2 of the fire giants and aided in the release of their own kind, the azers considered them friends (kind of).

After some friendly talking, the party was able to get some information about the azer's leader Terr'kaal, Ter'kaal's god (some big mean looking dragon), and Torin traded his Ring of Climbing for the mithril orb the party saw in the vision. And since the azers had no need of gold, they gave the party pver 4000gp that was left over from the fire giant queen's treasure.

With a thanks, the party moved on.

They tried to get near the river of lava nearby, hoping to scout out that area. But they had another run in with the magma and steam mephits. The party offered the mephits their new gold, but the mephits would hear nothing of a metal as a reward for murder.

Room J37: Thorough searching practices found the secret door to this room.

This room seemed very familiar to the group. Four statues, 2 dragons (1 attacking and 1 sleeping) and 2 lions (also 1 attacking and 1 sleeping), were set up in this room. All of the statues were on swivels.

The beautiful, long-haired lady reappeared and said:
"I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum."

No, wait. That's not right.

Oh here it is.
"Help me great heroes! Help me escape this terrible curse! Only you can save me from the dragon by turning the lion's wrath on its slumber."

Stifling a yawn, the party solved the puzzle and they heard a song to west, like before. They also heard a click in the door to the south.

Room J38: (Ignore the 4 left J38 rooms) The party found in this room another statue of the lady they've been trying to save.

Knowing to look for a switch, Torin found it easily. But he decided to not touch it because of what happened Krieg when he touched the last statue.

So it was decided that Thunderclease would be the one to flip the switch.

Instead of a Harm spell, a Dictum spell was triggered. Although it messed with the party, the end result was for the party to spend a few minutes recovering.

Room J36: The third and final room of fire statues. The party did some quick searching of this room, found nothing, and moved on.

Room J76 (all): Some statues, but not of angels, an ogre.

Room J45: The party new there was something in this area, the map screamed it, and the azers told them that Terr'kaal in the area.

But the party was not quite expecting what happened. They had to enter this large room to see what was going on.

Twenty azers were kneeling and chanting before a statue of a red dragon. Then ogre dressed in ceremonial robes, and 2 azers holding cauldrons stepped from behind the dragon statue.
One cauldron was full boiling magma, the other full of gems.
The ogre began chanting and shoved a hand into each cauldron.

Then the party was spotted.

Round 1: Standard early maneuvering and buffing. The ogre and his 2 azer aides remained where they were. Several of the azers charged the party (and these weren't the standard chump azers either).
The party split around the column; Torin & Valden to the north, and Krieg, Cleez, & Sen to the east.
Zorak cast Haste and hung back.

Round 2: Zorak was able to maneuver and get a Cone of Cold that hit the majority of the enemy. That alone took out over half of the azer warriors and hurt the ogre and his aides.
Thunderclease and Senmonious charged the ogre, both doing some decent damage.
Valden & Torin were blocked in by a trio of azers, but were able to double team them one at a time.
Krieg cast Prayer and was able to include most everyone on the battlefield.
The ogre and his aides seemed oblivious to what was happening around them and to them. Then the ogre changed into huge fire elemental.
The azer warriors cut into Valden pretty good, including a crit with a greataxe.
Krieg was suddenly left all alone with 3 azer warriors. They brought him down to 30% of his hp.

Round 3: Zorak cast Greater Invisibility on himself.
Torin and Valden brought down their first azer.
Thunderclease and Sen wailed into the fire elemental, doing massive amounts of damage together.
Krieg casts Heal on the defensive and botches the roll, ruining the spell.
The azers deal much less this round. But Krieg is down to single-digit hp.
The once-ogre fire elemental moves away into the northwest corner of the room.

Round 4: Zorak maneuvers himself once again to do some nasty damage with a Cone of Cold.
Torin and Valden are able severely hurt another azer.
Thunderclease chases after the fire elemental.
Senmonious rushes to the aid of Krieg and brings one down.
Krieg steps back and casts Cure Critical Wounds on himself.
The azers chase after Krieg, but are unable to hit him this time.
The fire elemental slams Thunderclease a couple of times, but the damage is laughable by comparison to the damage it has taken.

Round 5: Another Cone of Cold from Zorak and the elemental explodes into a fireball. Then it turns into a flaming cloud and floats up near the ceiling.
Krieg attempts to blast the cloud with a Flame Strike, but to no effect.

The rest of the azers are cleaned up handily, but the flaming cloud moves at incredible speed out of the room and out of sight.

The party immediately sets out to loot and heal.
Their biggest find yet is over 650 gems ranging from 50gp to 250gp.

Then 5 minutes later the entirety of region J is wracked by an inferno of fire, dealing 15d6 damage of fire to everything and everyone (no save).

Luckily for the party, they had plenty of fire protection.

Afterwards the party went through a secret door they found that luckily led them back to their home.
For some reason the party felt it to be bad idea to face the other, friendly azers after fighting the others.

The party returned home and rested.
And then the rest of the party leveled.
Zorak is now a level 12 sorcerer (now armed with Disintegrate).
Torin added a level of...Brian will let us know next week.
Senmonious is now a level 10 paladin.

Is region J almost done?
We'll see.
(Man I hope so.)

Session #28

This was another one of those nights where not much happened in an action kind of way. Most of the night was spent by the party trying to figure out what to do next. (Read that as filling in the map.)

Map

The DM goofed; he thought the party had returned to the efreeti bedroom to get some rest. When really, they had no such ability at the time. Moving forward meant facing the wyvern. Moving back was impossible because the door was barred shut.
The DM did not realize this until sometime Monday.
Oh well...it happens.

So the party magically was back in the efreeti room resting. And when that was done...

Room J62: Another prison room holding a wyvern. But instead of an angry one, there was a sleepy one. He was half awake and grasping hold of a golden coffer.

The party smelled a trap and left.

Room J63: This was another prison that had been broken out of, as 2 of the large bars were missing.
But there was a large lever on the center of the back wall.
Torin investigated the lever in attempt to determine its exact use. Not having the same skills as Dalron had, he could not determine a thing.

Thunderclease and Senmonious attempted to pull the lever down, but could not budge it before Krieg and Valden advised them to stop.

Room J65: Another prison room, this time it contained another wyvern (all wyverns being the same gargantuan fiendish versions). The wyvern was feasting on the fleshy thigh-bone of some unfortunate beast.
It looked at the party, howled evilly...and the party left.

Room J67: The northern area of this room was actually a large pit. Torin and Sen investigated towards its edge. But the edge collapsed and Sen came down with it.

He fell 100' for some damage, and then landed on some jagged bones for more damage (about 70 overall).

Sen had to remove his armor, and the party had to use their Immovable Rod and 3 ropes to get Sen back up.

Next the party had to use their Wand of Detect Secret Doors to find one of the many secret doors that seem to dominate this prison.

Room J74: After using their Wand of Knock the party found a hallway with alcoves containing statues of angels. On the floor near the statues were several gems worth 10-50gp.

Room J73: A set of angels with diamonds for eyes guarded this end of the hallway with their traps. The traps were actually quite cruel for something that angels were supposed to have designed. Trap #1 was a Hold Monster spell. Trap #2 was a Delayed Blast Fireball spell.
That means that the unfortunate shmuck who failed their save versus the Hold Monster spell would most likely see a small ruby drop to the floor and 30 seconds later it would explode in their face.

Sadly Torin made his save and returned to the party...which then got to some surprising fireworks.

The party then dispelled the trap and moved past it.

Room J58: This was an almost-fight. The party found the door to this room, but could not find a handle. Without searching, they just used their Wand of Knock.

Inside they found a web-filled room and several rasts protecting their queen and her eggs.

The rasts quickly swarmed the party but worked mostly at pushing the party out rather than attacking them.

The party got the hint and moved on.

Room J59: When the party listened at the door to this room, all they heard was the "gentle sounds of the breeze". Since the DM said this in a bored tone, the party thought he was being sarcastic.

He wasn't.

The party moved into the room, until Sen was hit by something he couldn't see.

So the party backed up and Torin scouted out the room, starting with the northern alcove. Then something hit him in the back for 10 points of damage. When he spun around to find to see what hit him, something hit him in the back again for 19 points of damage.

Torin got the hell out of there.

Valden solved this part of the riddle with an Invisibility Purge.

A large iron pendulum with a greataxe on the end lazily swung back and forth across the room.

Krieg prevented further problems by trapping the trap in the southern alcove with a Wall of Stone spell.

The pendulum clanged against it once, bounced a couple of times, then stopped.

The party moved on.

Room J82: Another pair of angels stood here. Each held a spear and a shield, both could be easily taken from the statues.
As always, the party smelled a trap.

Perhaps it was the flavor text.

Detect Magic showed the each statue as magic, but there was no distinction between the items or the statues.

Well Krieg needed a shield, and Thunderclease felt like getting him one. So he said something to the angel about him being part of the garrison.
And then he took the shield.

The response was a small bright ruby that fell from the now empty hand of the angel.

Zorak shouted that it was a Delayed Blast Fireball spell, so Cleez ran for it.

Boom. No damage to anyone.

And the shield wasn't magical either. So Cleez put it back.

Room J57: We ignored these rooms. There was originally a bunch of small spiders in the hallway, with rasts in the rooms. But since the rasts were only 25hp, and their only tactic was to swarm to "whittle down" the party, it would have been a fruitless combat. I could have thrown 50 rasts at them and they would have cleaned up.

So we just said the rooms were relatively empty. Of course any treasure in the room was removed as well.

Room J50: Another secret door that the party had to use their Wand of Knock on.

Once inside the party found a room smelling of sulfur, a statue in the corner, and 4 closed doors.

Sen did a quick but thorough scan for evil, and found nothing.

Once the frontline of the party stepped into the center of the room all 4 doors opened, and behind 3 of them was a very large rast.

Round 1: The rasts went last, and the entire party prepped up for combat. Thunderclease got the first hit in for maybe 30 points of damage, but the rast didn't even notice. It had 184hp to start with.
When rast's action occurred, the party realized in how bad of a shape they were in. One rast almost grappled Cleez, and the other 2 ripped into Valden pretty good.
Round 2: The party discussed retreat, and even blamed Cleez for their situation because he swung first. But none of that mattered. The rasts move twice as fast as anyone in the party, and Cleez's swinging first meant nothing to a triggered trap.

Well this DM was ready for a TPK. These rasts were specially modified by the original garrison and they were powerful.

The only thing that could have saved them was something incredibly clever.
Or something simple.

Senmonious spoke in the language of celestials and stated that they were members of the garrison. The rasts, being smarter than an animal (barely), understood the language and since their smite evils did not work, returned to their rooms.

But they eyed the party closely until the party left.

Room J80: Another pair of trapped angel statues. This time they find a dead azer. Dead from burning apparently.

Torin able to determine that there is a trap, and it's from a pressure plate. But he is unable to disable it.

Dispels don't work this time either.

Last option...Torin makes a run for it, hoping that his evasion will protect him from harm. Usually it would, but a natural 2 isn't enough.
16d6 points of divine fire damage later, Torin has triggered the trap and the party rushes through...and then heals Torin.

Room J55: This room is as hot as the area near the lava river. Steam rises constantly from the floor. Then the steam swirls and forms a shape of a beautiful, longhaired woman.
She says "I am Starsha of Iscandar"...oh no wait...that's not right.
She says "I have no time. I am trapped. You must restore the balance."

Then she disappears, leaving a room with 2 alcoves and a statue in one of them.

Torin investigates the statue and finds out that it can swivel on its base, and that the statue can be moved if great strength is used. The party attempts to move it, but only gets it 5' before they say "screw this" and give up.

Room J81: Another pair of trapped angels. The party turns around.

Room J79: Another trapped angel. But this one just emits an Alarm spell. But the party has killed most of the critters that would come...

Room J75: More statues with gems scattered at their bases. The party collects the gems and leave.

Room J78(both): Statues that are now in ruins.

Room J44: This room contains a small and active volcano. Torin investigates the room and finds nothing but smoke. A small blast of magma fills the room with fire, but the party doesn't notice thanks to all of their protection spells.

Room J76: This is not the statue of an angel, but rather a statue of an ogre. This statue also has some gems on its base.

Room J40: This room holds 4 statues, a boar charging, a boar sleeping, a pheonix at rest, and a pheonix preparing for flight. All are on swivelling bases.

Once the party enters the room cools and the apparition of the beautiful, longhaired woman returns and says...
"To be in love can be the greatest feeling that a girl can feel."

Gah! Dammit! Why does this keep happening?

Ok, she really says, "Help! There is not much time left. You must direct the boar's advance to stop the flight of the pheonix."

So the party turns the charging boar to face the pheonix preparing for flight.

The door to the north clicks and opens.

Room J46: This small room has nothing but lichen and a statue of the woman.

Torin searched the statue and found a small switch on the back.
Krieg decided to flip the switch and got smacked with a Harm spell.
End result, Krieg had 1hp left. Temporary at best with this healing-heavy force.

But also there was some singing coming from somewhere west in the region.

The party searches again, but finds nothing.

Room J28: This room is identical to J29 that the party had found several session ago. Whenever someone nears one of the statues an Incendiary Cloud fills the room. So the party just rushes through the room, letting their protection spells deal with this any damage.

That ended the session.
Not much actually happened, but a lot of the map was filled in.

Next session...I don't know...but whatever it is, it will be interesting.

And now I need to go find so more bad anime quotes.

Session #27

Yeah yeah, I know I'm falling behind on the blog.
Summer isn't exactly a slow time for me.
So you'll just have to forgive me if I end up late every-so-often.

But I will note that the Bodycount is up to date, the character info is up to date, and in case you hadn't noticed yet, I added a few little extra things to the page.

The FAQ is some reprinting of previous stuff, adding some new stuff, and some things discussed in a few forums I've seen.

The quotes are just some general comments overheard at our table that I remembered.

But here is our current FLGS,
Yottaquest

This is actually an old picture, by about a year. The store has grown up quite a bit since then.
I first saw it on the way to Justin's place for our D&D game, and prior to the WLD campaign. This was going to be Aaron's first session with us, and Joe wasn't in the picture yet. Aaron noticed the place, and I went to visit it a few days later.
The place had only a handful of people there, but the owner, Matt, was very nice and we chatted it up for about an hour.
Turns out that he was a lifelong gamer that had always wanted to open a gamestore. So he mortgaged his house and took a chance.
Well through good salemanship, choosing a decent location, and the rare concept of thinking before doing, Matt has turned a small bare shop into a store that is getting fuller by the day. Fuller of stock and customers.
I hate going there and leaving without buying something, but oh well.

So if you're going to be in the Cincinnati area and you fell like playing a CCG or something, stop at:
Yottaquest
7607 Hamilton Avenue
Cincinnati, OH 45231
(513) 923-1985

Yeah, I know it's kind of a free bit of advertisement, but you have to trust me on this one. I have seen some really good gamestores and some really shitty ones. This store is a good one, and it's getting better all the time. And I want to help the place out.

Ok, now onto the session itself...

Everyone was at this session, and everyone should be coming to the next one.

This was a rough night for the heroes. Read on...

Map

We stopped last week where the party had to rest in the efreeti's giant bedroom.

The party knew that they needed to get back to the garrison just to see if the "store" was up and running again.

Their only problem was getting past the thousands of mephits eager to give their brand of justice to Zorak. And dangit, the clever players found a very simple way...Wind Walk. And man it was so easy for them. The DM had to pull out his own PHB to try to poke holes into the spell (read as "try to screw over that idea")...but he came up with nothing.

So in a matter of minutes the party was able to trace a route back to region I. Then whoosh, they were off.

When they made it back to region I, they did have to return to solid form because the flesh of the region was still present, but the region was getting better. And also, the sounds of combat were still present, but not as close or often.

But otherwise, the heroes had returned to the garrison with no problems.

Their main intent was to trade in their excess equipment for something more usable to them. The party actually had many magic items, but the vast majority of them were weapons.

And luckily for the party, the "store" was back in business, and had recently been restocked after the exploits of the garrison armies. The bad news is that the available equipment was limited to what was not as needed for the army. The good news is that the garrison was offering top trade value for army usable equipment.

The heroes left with a lot less weapons and miscellaneous junk and a few good items. Most of them were handed to Zorak. Notable a Ring of Force Shield, 2 Gloves of Storing, Rod of Lesser Maximize Spell, and a Rod of Lesser Silent Spell.

Note for later use, Senmonious took the magical longsword that Dalron had when he died, but was never able to identify.

Room J71: Sen's Detect Evil once again showed the overwhelming presence of evil on the statue in this ice cold room. And since the party just can't let something like that go...

This time the entire group entered the room, so as not to be separated like before.

And a few seconds after they entered a thick wall of ice covered the western half of the room.
The party began searching the room, starting with the demonic looking statue. What they found was that the statue was in fact encased in ice. The ice was so hard and perfect that it could not be seen until you were right up on it.
Then another wall of ice covered the eastern wall.
And shortly thereafter, the northern wall.
Then a Cone of Cold blasted them.
By now the party decided that leaving was a good idea rather than being encased in ice themselves.
So they tried to blast the wall away with fire spells.
They almost succeeded, but this time the wall reformed before they could finish.

The party looked at the evil statue and decided that the only way for them to leave this room was to destroy the statue.

The ice encasing the statue had 500hp and a hardness of 20. This meant that most weapons were worthless against it. But plain old fire did full damage.
The party kicked into gear. And after a few rounds they had a system down.
Thunderclease, sadly being the smartest member of the group, realized that the spells were emitting from the statue on 30 second (5 round) intervals.

Round 1: Zorak casts a fire spell (Fireball or Scorching Ray).
Rounds 2-4: Valden uses his flaming sword, and Krieg and Thunderclease use a couple of torches that have been sitting near useless in their backpacks for the past few weeks.
Round 5: A random effect emits from the statue (Ice Wall, Ice Storm, Cone of Cold, Slow, or Freezing Sphere). After awhile Joe learned the art of counterspelling, making Zorak a perfect foil for the statue's spells.

498 points of damage later, the last inch of ice covering the statue exploded as the devil within the statue broke free.

An ice devil, or Gelugon, surprised the party and thanked the party for freeing it with a crit with its spear to Cleez.

Round 1: The party is caught off guard by this a little, so Torin and Sen are not near the combat at this time. Krieg, Cleez, and Valden are right there though.
The gelugon is toying with the party, does a mere 20 points of damage to Cleez.
Thunderclease attempts to take a chunk of out it, but misses with all attacks. He uses a full power attack and that costs him 2 hits.
Zorak starts with Haste. But it does not effect Torin as he's out of range for the "no 2 of which may be 30' apart".
Valden and Krieg back away from melee to make room for others, heal Cleez, and cast their standard buff spells.
Senmonious moves towards the combat while casting a buff spell on himself.
Torin moves towards combat.

Round 2: The gelugon hits Thunderclease with his spear and his tail. Thunderclease fails both saves versus the numbing cold. The first failure dispels his Haste, the second slows him.
Cleez does not power attack, but still rolls pathetically low with his 1 attack.
Zorak casts Greater Invis on Torin, which later turns out to be pointless (it can still see him).
Valden preps himself for combat in his usual manner.
Krieg continues to buff the party.
Senmonious makes it into combat with a simple 5' step. Wielding the unidentified magical longsword, he swings at the devil with a smite evil...
(Sidenote: read about Dale and his luck in the FAQ section.)
The sword erupts with brilliant white energy of goodness. (In the hands of the fire giant queen, it erupted with fire.)
Natural 20. Crit confirmed. Multiple damage dice later and the 196hp gelugon takes 56 points of damage.
Torin scratches the gelugon for 8 points, but no sneak attack damage.

Round 3: It's mad now. It was happy playing with his new toys. But not any longer, they will pay for this atrocity. So he casts Cone of Cold since all of the party were conveniently grouped nearby.
This put the party in very bad shape, another such attack would have killed 2 of them outright, and 2 more if they failed their saves. Krieg only had 10hp.
Cleez attacks with his 1 swing, and hits for 30 points. It now has 102 hp.
Krieg spent the round healing whoever needed it most.
Valden thinking that his attack was need more than the healing, did 38 damage to the devil.
Zorak casts Haste on the party again and moved out of Cone of Cold range. Torin was now Hasted and Cleez was at regular speed again.
Torin's attacks only did 1hp of damage.
The thing still had 63hp, and there was only Sen left before it went again.
Sen did his 2nd and last smite evil...with another natural 20. Which was confirmed with a natural 20. Damage was not rolled yet (it's pretty complicated), so Dale rolled his other attacks first. His secondary swing was also a natural 20, but the crit was not confirmed. (3 nat 20's in a row are a 1:8000 probability.) And the Haste attack missed.
So Sen now had to roll a crit with a smite evil and a regular hit while using a +3 holy longsword and with some exalted feats thrown in.
Total damage dealt in the 2 hits: 84
It was at -21hp.

Thunderclease stood there with his mouth hanging open, trying to comprehend what just happened.

A potential TPK thwarted by paladin doing what a paladin does best.
Destroying evil.

This is just the first fight of the night.

Our heroes desperately needed to rest after that. So they once again returned to the efreeti room. (They made it past the brazier trap by using Torin as a decoy and exploiting his Evasion ability.)

After an unexciting rest, the heroes got back to work with...

Room J69: This room had 3 angel statues and a large brazier on the eastern wall. Once the party entered, the doors slammed shut and a gate dropped down in front of the doors; trapping the party inside.
Then some glowing words appeared on the doors, "The breath of flames blocks your path. Salvation lies in its destruction."

The room immediately began to get hotter and stuffier as the brazier burned away.
Attempts to extinguish the fire in the brazier failed.
Investigations of the angels resulted in a fireball emitting from them.

So instead of thinking about the solution to the puzzle, they used their wand of Detect Secret Doors and their wand of Knock to leave.

Room J70: This odd room was filled with a Deeper Darkness spell and anyone chaotic in the group was at -8 to their dexterity. Otherwise the area felt quite well and not as oppressive as the rest of the area.

The party made note and moved on.

Room J66: This room was split into 5 sections. Four of the section contained a gargantuan half-fiendish wyvern.
Unfortunately for the party, the secret door they came through put them into one of the occupied cages. And the party was about to find out how nasty these creatures are, as the cages occupant charged towards them.

Round 1: Thunderclease moves 5' into the room, rages, and delays his attack until after Zorak casts Haste.
Wyvern's turn: It's close enough to take a 5' step and get its full attack action. Which is 1 bite, 1 tail, 2 wings, and 2 talons. It hit with the bite, the tail, 1 wing, and 1 tail. Total damage was over 120, including the poison from the tail. Had Cleez not raged, he'd have died. But in either case, he was at single digit hp.

The party's tactics changed radically after that. It was now a rescue operation.
Healing spells, Lay-on-hands, and Haste flowed heavily.
And just for kicks, since he nothing better he could do, Thunderclease took some swings at the wyvern.
It was hurt bad, but not bad enough.
On his next action, Cleez took a 5' step through the door and closed it.

When the wyvern tried to bash at the door, something happened to make it stop.
The party had no clue what it was, nor did they care to find out.
They just assumed it was the nature of the prison.

The party fled to rest afterwards, and we called it a night.

Session #26

Oh man, I've been so bleeping busy recently.
If it weren't raining I'd be mowing right now.

Ok, let's not waste time on a week late session entry...

Dale created his new PC, Senmonious Solarson, an aasimar paladin.
Now due to the increasingly more difficult ways of introducing new PCs to the game, I asked Dale to (or maybe I forced it upon him...I forget) play an aasimar. And because this was for the game & storyline, I removed the EL +1. Just assume that we used the Unearthed Arcana rules for removing it.

His story:

Son of a human paladin and a solar angel (NOT Mythlyrian...Dale), Senmonious's future was never at doubt. He joined the "heavenly forces", and eventually wound up in the World's Largest Dungeon after the PC's caused the original inevitables to shut down.

Senmonious was simply a standard shock troop that was part of a squad sent into region I to begin its cleansing. His commander was a little into defeating evil and not so much into thinking before acting. A few hours into their campaign, which had so far consisted of chokers, gricks, and slime creatures, they found a couple of startled drow. The drow ran, and the squad gave chase.

It was, of course, a trap. The drow ran through a room which held several driders and drow (which had teamed up to prevent their own destruction). Between the Lightning Bolts, Fireballs, drow poison, and steel, Senmonious and the rest of his squad fell quickly.

After their slaughter, some comrades retrieved their bodies and returned them to the garrison. This happened as the party was returning with their own fallen member, Valden. After Mythlyrian raised Valden, he used the remaining diamonds from the sundered Chaos Diamond to raise any soldiers he could raise. Angels can not be raised, but aasimars can be. Those same adventurers stayed to heal up as many as they could, rather than resume their trek to find the exit.

Senmonious considered this to be a very humbling moment. And he decided he needed to reflect upon his recent actions. He returned to the rooms containing the Charter and the other holy relics to meditate and pray. (All of the new garrison members signed the charter.)

While in the candle room he saw a candle flicker and go out. This candle was one of the group of adventurers that he had heard of. This meant that one of them had fallen, or had turned from the Charter. Rushing to the Charter, he saw Thunderclease's name begin to fade away.

He returned to the meditation room and asked Ilmater for guidance. When his prayer ended, he saw another adventurer's flame die. This had to be a sign. Without checking to see who had fallen, he ran to talk to Mythlyrian. He hoped to get Mythlyrian's approval to go the party's aid.

It was granted. Mythlyrian handed him a potion of Invisibility, and a potion of Endure Elements (fire). Spark led Senmonious (Sen) to region J through region I and then left Sen on his own.

Sen drank both potions and searched for the party. After crossing the dual bridges, it did not take much for Sen to find a trail to follow (blood & bodies).

Long story short, he found them, they let him join them, and there was much rejoicing...

Here's the map

Ok, not quite true.
The last thing Senmonious remembers is following the trail of the heroes (kind of upgraded from party to heroes btw). Then he here's sound, has the area near his head filled with a puff of oddly smelling smoke, then passes out from. He seems to remember a vision of some kind of chameleon or other lizard creature.

He wakes up to a greatsword's edge laying on his throat, and his heavy armor burning him. Sen recognizes the heroes, and greets them each by name. He is slightly let down when they don't recognize him.

Odd, I feel like I'm saying this in a British accent as I type. Odd.

But a couple minutes later he fills the party in on what he saw, and they let him know what happened as well.

He is accepted into the party on the condition that he must first..."Please the Cleez."
Thankfully he never really elaborated on what that meant.

And now the party has a new paladin and all of the Detect Evils they want.

Krieg had just cast Raise Dead on Thunderclease, but did not have a sufficient number of diamonds to do so on Dalron. So our heroes did final rites, stripped him any valuable equipment he had, and then gave him a funeral by fire and dumped him in the lava pit in...

Room J20: After leaving this room, the party noticed some dragging marks of a large, rectangular object, possibly a chest. They believe it to be the work of the azers.

The party then investigates the other areas where they found fire giants, rooms J24 & J25 (they stayed clear of the lava river). In each room they found a single giant, dead, with many small stab wounds about it.

Hmmmm...more work of the azers?

Room J60: The party back tracked to where they fought the dozen trolls, and moved through its northern doors. They came to a crossroads with a 10' wide brazier resting in the middle of it. Thunderclease began to move off to the east, but a pillar of divine fire rained down upon the area, centered upon the brazier. The Flame Strike Spell barely hurt him thanks to the standard fire resistance spells cast upon him.

Torin, in his new role, Dalron's understudy, searched the brazier. He found nothing until he touched the brazier itself. Then another Flame Strike, followed with a Deeper Darkness.

Unable to disarm the trap, Krieg and Zorak temporarily disable the spell sources with a few Dispel Magics.

Room J61: This room is split into two by several thick iron bars. The bars serve to cage 4 very large wyverns. One particularly nasty wyvern continues to bash its head into the bars until it knocks itself out. And their eyes glow red, in a manner the party has seen before, on all of the fiendish creatures in region A.

A quick guesstimation of the wyverns' tails leads the party to believe that the poisonous tails of the wyvern could reach just about anywhere in the room, even through the bars.

The party attempted to talk to the wyverns using a few languages until Zorak struck gold with Draconic.

"Free ussss!"

"What will happen if we do? You are evil through and through."

"Free ussss! We will let you and your friends remain free of our wrath.

"Fine. But in order to free you we'll need to search the room for anything that might remove the bars."

"That is ok!"

(The party never intended to free them.)

Torin enters the room and begins to search for any levers, buttons, or whatever is out of the ordinary in the room. But not even 10 seconds into the search a wyvern attacks Torin with its tail.

Torin immediately fled the room, minus a few constitution points. The party slammed the door shut to the room with the wyverns screaming "Free ussss!" from behind it.

A little bit of healing and a Lesser Restoration later and the party moved on.

Room J64: A similar room to J61, but with no wyverns, some rubble in the corner, and a large lever in the center of the southern wall.

When Torin investigated the lever, a Chain Lightning spell ripped through him and the party. But the damage was effectively nothing when compared to 2 relatively fresh clerics.

But when the party cannot find any clue to the levers purpose, and it's protected by a trap, they decide to leave it alone.

Room J68: The door to this room was scarred by fire and the smell of burnt fleshed permeated the area.

Upon entering the room, a pair of huge fire elementals chased after the party.

The party runs out to the hall where Sen and Cleez melee the elementals through the doorway. This combat was possibly the most boring combat since region A. It was pretty much a combat of attrition. Fire damage was ignored thanks to the party's spells, and melee damage against the party was quickly replaced through healing spells. And the combat was prolonged by the elementals damage resistance. The elementals were finally put down by Zorak's ice spells.

And to add insult to injury, there was no treasure to speak of.

Room J71: As the heroes approached this room the heat from the room drained until it became quite cold. The floor to this room was covered with a thin sheet of ice. A quick look into the room showed ice throughout the room, rubble in the northeast corner, and a statue of a scowling demon in an alcove to the south.

The party chose to let Torin scout out the room.

After he had made it about 10' into the room, a Wall of Ice filled the western half of the room, and completely blocked out the doorway. Torin was all alone in the freezing room.

The party set about melting the wall. (Dispelling it didn't seem to occur to them.)

A couple of Flame Strikes and a Scorching Ray later and this section of the wall had melted. Torin was freed.

But he only had 10hp remaining. While in there, a Cone of Cold erupted from the statue and Torin rolled a natural 1 on his save.

The party decided that they had had enough and returned to J60, successfully dispelled the Flame Strike trap and moved back to their resting room in troll territory.