Session #44

Ok let’s just jump right into it.

Map

The entire night pretty much happened in the same location, as you can see in the map.

It was a long game night.

We last left the party in a bad situation; their only arcane caster had been deep-fried, the divine casters had used most of their high level spells, and just when they thought they had won, three iron golems walked into the room with the teasing voice of Invistis echoing throughout the room.

“Step aside adventurers! I promise not to kill you if you do so.”

The party, not being suicidal, stepped aside.

The three iron golems slowly walk through the room, as if looking for something.
One golem finds Kasteoficiss’s body, rips it apart, and then investigates the body as if looking for something.
Another golem walks farther into the room and investigates Kasty’s bed. (The bed was removed from the map because nothing yells “PLOT RELATED” like a big pink bed on the map when little else is shown on the map.) The golem rips up the bed and finds a large copper key. It grabs the key and all of the golems immediately begin to leave the room only to stop at the door.

“Now where have you hidden the ruby star? Give me that and I shall leave you alone.”

“We don’t have it. It’s hidden in the garrison of angels where you can’t get it.”

“I see. You probably think you are clever for doing that. But no, it’s quite the contrary.”

The lich walks into the room with a shield guardian in front of and behind him.

Invistis looks at the party one by one as if reading their thoughts. His eyes finally rest on Thunderclease.

“You will go alone to the garrison and retrieve the star for me while your friends wait here safely with me. You have one hour or they all die.”

The party realizes they are in bad shape. Their options are to fight while they have very few resources, with death being likely, or to take a chance and let their biggest fighter leave making them an even weaker fighting force.

Thunderclease agreed to go. The rest of the party was against this option, but that’s mostly because of role-playing reasons.

So Cleez used his still active Wind Walk spell and flew to the garrison.

He immediately looked for a high-ranking garrison member. He found Kelara and explained his situation. Kelara, surprised that Invistis was up and around, told him that she would help him and she would look for others to help, but don’t expect much because the whole of the garrison was called away because, “The tarrasque has escaped.” (The tarrasque is just my excuse to deny the party any more aid than they are getting.)

When he told Kelara that he wasn’t going to bring the ruby star, she suggested that he should because Invistis is quite powerful and may know if Cleez has broken the deal.

So while he retrieved the ruby star, Kelara grabbed some help. She found four volunteers that felt they owed the party a debt because of what the party has done. Among them was Spers, a Bralani with a few fighter levels. The rest don’t matter as much. You’ll see why later.

So the six of them gathered and set about returning to region N.

But in the meantime, the rest of the party was dealing with you standard insane, evil, arch-nemesis, who of course just had to fill the party in on his dastardly and evil plan.

He was the first lich that existed in the realms, but he was caught and imprisoned here for his crimes. He was placed in some green-glass coffin that was to keep him asleep for eternity. But he was too strong and too smart for that. He escaped his confines and set about creating an empire within this prison.
He became a warlord of the region and was quite powerful. But his actions were thwarted by the mad priestess of Jergal, Kasteoficiss. But her zealotry was contagious. She stole his servants by proselytizing and the promise of freedom. Invistis was forced to create his army. Now his only servants are the machines/golems he creates.
But he did learn from Kasteoficiss that in the center of the region is a great dark being who seeks to escape into the world destroy all life. He doesn’t believe it to be a god, but he does know it is very powerful. Although it is slowly escaping its bonds, the waves of negative energy are evidence of that, Invistis seeks to free it now, so it can bestow him with even more power.

When the party mentioned that the dragon Tyrus has made a deal with it as well, Invistis laughed. The dragon is a living being, and it will fall before the power of the great dark one and become the dark one’s slave.

As the end of hour approached Thunderclease and his retinue approached the room. The other half of the party was notified that only Thunderclease was approaching, and that he had the ruby star.

Now as DM, I would think that the party would let him have the ruby, and then hunt him down after they had rested and prepared for this fight, because hey, attacking a prepared lich while you’re at 50% of your power is just plain suicidal.

But of course they couldn’t do that. That would make sense, and we can’t have that.

So Cleez stepped around the corner to the hallway of the room, with his retinue of somewhat buffed up garrison members.

When Invistis saw Kelara, we rolled initiative.

Round 1:
Invistis has two iron golems and two shield guardians protecting him from the main party. But he only has a single iron golem protecting him from Cleez and the garrison forces. So he realizes he’s in trouble when Cleez steps up to the solo golem and takes 25% of its hit points away in a single swing.
Then Spers steps beside Cleez and casts a lightning bolt at 2 of the golems and Invistis. Invistis gets to cast 2 spells a round for the near entirety of combat. His first spell is Wall of Force. This basically cuts off the garrison forces except for Spers. His other spell is Slow on the party. Only Sen fails the save.
Invistis takes no damage, but the 2 golems are slowed.
Krieg casts Polymorph Any Object and turns himself into a rust monster. He’s out of the line of sight of Invistis. His plan is obvious.
Valden buffs himself up for combat.
Senmonious, seeing the greater evil, tries to make his way towards Invistis. The effects of Slow are really hampering his progress.
The iron golems begin to pound on Sen and Valden. Valden is under 50% already. And Sen has already used all but one point of his Lay on Hands.
The shield guardians maneuver themselves into a defensive area leaving room for someone to enter and be protected by them.
The remainder of the garrison force tries to find another way into the room over the next few rounds. When that doesn’t work, they go with their only option left. One of them has a Shield Other with Spers. So when Spers takes damage, one of them takes half of it. So they ready actions for when there is damage worth healing.

Round 2:
Cleez uses his full attack against the golem. Scrap metal is the result.
Spers moves to the lich to attack and misses.
Invistis, suddenly on the defensive, gets out of his location (provoking a missed AoO), and then sees a rust monster, and no Krieg. He casts a targeted Greater Dispel Magic on Krieg the rust monster. The DM rolls 11 or higher for every spell on Krieg. Krieg has been stripped of every single spell. Then a Spectral Hand appears behind Krieg.
Krieg, his plans ruined, steps away from the hand and buffs the party with a quickened Bless and a Prayer.
Valden attacks an iron golem, but, well Jeff had a bad night with the dice. He hit it once.
Senmonious, at the persuasion of his party, ceases trying to get to the great evil lich. Instead he attacks an iron golem. He hit, but no damage was scored.
The iron golems smack at Valden. Valden drops to the ground at -4hp.
One shield guardian does nothing but stands and protects its master. The other can reach Senmonious and gives him a little love tap.

Round 3:
Cleez tries to make it to Invistis by ignoring everything else. He suffers several attacks of opportunity. And he doesn’t quite get close enough to Invistis. But he’s close.
Spers flies to help the party with the iron golems.
While the iron golems are dealing with party near the northern statues, Invistis and his shield guardians are near the southern statues. He is now protected by the shield guardians to the north and east, the wall to the west, leaving only the south area open to attack. So he tosses up a Wall of Fire along the statues. He also casts a quickened Vampiric Touch through the Spectral Hand and steals some hp from Krieg.
Krieg steps away from the hand again and casts Flame Strike on Invistis and his shield guardians. Some damage is dealt, but Invistis appears to have taken very little.
Valden begins to bleed to death.
Senmonious uses his 1 point of Lay on Hands to stabilize Valden.
The iron golems pound at Sen now. Amazingly, only 2 hits connected, but it still left him at about 50hp.
The shield guardians miss their pray and tighten their ranks around Invistis.

Round 4:
Cleez gets to Invistis, and although he has to stand in the Wall of Fire, Cleez gets a swing in. Although some good damage is dealt, Invistis seems to take only about a third of the damage dealt. This was thanks to Invistis’s buffs and his shield guardian’s Shield Other abilities (something the party didn’t know about).
Spers continues to make a nuisance of himself with another Lightning Bolt on the iron golems.
Invistis, not wanting a psychopathic barbarian going off on him, casts a quickened True Strike followed by Otto’s Irresistible Dance. He almost missed even with the +20 bonus, but since he didn’t Thundercat began doing the Stray Cat Strut.
Krieg gets close enough to Senmonious and Valden to have his Mass Cure Critical Wounds work on them.
Valden stands up, and amazingly is missed by both AoO’s. He then casts another healing spell on himself.
Senmonious, correctly feeling he’s worthless in a fight with a construct, decides to take the hard route to Invistis.
Golems and guardians smack the party around some more.

Round 5:
Cleez is doing the happy-dance. He provokes some AoO’s and gets a minor concussion for it.
Spers does what he can to be a target.
Invistis tosses a Fireball on his golems and the party. Then he tosses a quickened one on them too.
Krieg heals as best he can.
Valden says forget the golems and moves to attack the shield guardians.
Senmonious continues to move closer to Invistis. His Ring of Fire Resistance (major) protects him from the Wall of Fire.
Iron golems and shield guardians continue to pound on the party.

Round 6:
Cleez is getting jiggy widit.
Spers repeats his action.
Invistis knows that Cleez will be free to act next round, so he casts Time Stop. During his bonus rounds he casts Greater Invisibility & Fly on himself, fills the area he was standing in with Obscuring Mist, and places a Delayed Blast Fireball within the mist. He then flies up and out of combat, and hides around the corner until the blast goes off.
Krieg, not quite sure of what is going on, Flame Strikes the shield guardians again.
Valden finishes off one of the guardians.
Senmonious wanders the Obscuring mist, looking for Invistis.
The iron golems follow after Valden.
The remaining shield guardian goes after Valden as well.

Round 7:
Cleez gets control of him legs and immediately goes to making rubble of the last shield guardian.
Spers...eh
Invistis waits in hiding.
Krieg heals some more.
Valden finally hurts an iron golem.
Senmonious is still searching around the mist. He sees a glowing red ruby on the floor. Although he has an 8 intelligence, he does roll a natural 20 on his intelligence check. He throws up a warning to the party and tries to get out of the way.
Iron golems do what they were meant to do.

Round 8:
Cleez gets away from the glowing ruby and still gets a swing in on a golem.
Spers flies up and away from the ruby.
The ruby explodes into a Delayed Blast Fireball. Thanks to Senmonious’s warning, most of the party was out of the area of effect. But Senmonious wasn’t. He had 6hp when the smoke cleared. His ring saved his life.
Then Invistis made his presence known. Flying 100’ off the ground, he flew into view of everyone. Well everyone who could see invisible, which was Cleez, Sen, and Valden.
He cast another quickened Fireball and Chain Lightning. This time Senmonious was guaranteed death. And poor Spers couldn’t withstand firepower of that magnitude.

What? Don’t like my lame sci-fi jokes and references? Well that’s too bad. At least it wasn’t often-repeated quote from The Princess Bride, Aliens, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Evil Dead II, or Army of Darkness. Those movies are quoted way too often. “’Tis but a flesh wound,” at my table will get you an actual flesh wound.

But anyway, Spers fell to the ground near Senmonious’s corpse.

The remainder of the combat went like this:
After Cleez and Valden finished off the golems, Cleez grabbed Sper’s magical bow and shot at Invistis, but it never did any damage.
Invistis used all of his remaining damage spells on the party. When he ran out of those, he attempted to Dominate, Hold Person, or Charm Person Cleez. The damage was never enough bring down a party member and Cleez kept making his saves.
Krieg, not being able to see any targets spent the rest of the combat healing where he could.
As did Valden once the golems were gone.

Since magic did not get him his second prize for the day, Invistis tried threats.

“I still have a disjunction spell and a wishing spell remaining. Don’t force me to use them.”

But the stubborn party did not relent. Even though they were quite sure he wasn’t bluffing.

He wasn’t bluffing. But he was also running out of time. He had very few spells remaining. And the Wall of Force that kept Kelara and her brood out of the combat would not last much longer.

So he flew just high enough to stay out of reach and cast Mordenkainen’s Disjunction that affected Cleez, Sper’s corpse, and Senmonious’s corpse.

The results weren’t spectacular. Senmonious was hit the worst. Since he wasn’t alive, his items didn’t get his bonus to saves. So he lost his Ring of Fire Resistance and his Attuning Longsword.

The round after that he flew into the small hallway exiting the room and cast another Wall of Force. And on the following round he dismissed the first wall of force and escaped.

He’ll save the Wish (and the 5000xp) for their next meeting.

The party and their friends gathered up their friends and returned to the garrison.
They raised Dariel and Senmonious, and paid 5000gp towards the raising of Spers.

And this week’s patience award goes to Brian. His character Dariel was dead the entire session. I even let him run Kelara, but she could do nothing. So he read his books and created a character for Dale’s upcoming campaign. Well we were expecting a TPK when the combat began, so why not get a head start on making your new PC.

Even over 2 weeks after it happened, I’m still surprised the party fought him to a stand still.

I guess in the Forgotten Realms it would be called a Maztican Stand-off.

Ok, I’m all caught up on the blog now.
About smurfing time.

Session #43

Ah, finally things in this region get a little bit more interesting.

The party has been walking virtually problem free through this region. Well until they irritated Mr. Lich. That woke them up a little bit.

But it's not like they weren't on edge already.

No philosophical chatting this session either, just the usual BS'ing.

We even got started on time. A rarity it seems.

So down to business...

Map

The party landed in room N193, cast their 10 minutes/level buffs, and set off exploring.

Room N198: The door to this room was full of happy fun traps.
First the door had a Flame Strike on it (and an Undeath to Death spell, but that didn't matter now did it?).
Then on the inside were a couple of columns with many runes. On each of them, many of the runes were trapped.
After the party discovered that little fact (by triggering it of course), they set about dispelling what they could, then buffing up and triggering the rest.

When that was said and done they deciphered the runes as best they could.
But thanks to their intelligences of 10 or so, and very few skill points spent in the right places, they only got a bare-bones reading of the stories on the columns.

One story was that of an ancient warrior woman name Vinnara who was so powerful that even her follower's joined her in undeath.

The other story was more interesting. It was that of a man named Invistis. He was the first being in the realms to discover the secrets of becoming a lich. Therefore he is the first lich, or rather, the prime lich. But his crime was discovered and he was placed in this dungeons.

Obviously, not before he leaked the secrets of becoming a lich.

I betcha he's pretty ticked about that too. He'd be a demi-lich by now.
And Vecna's a god even.
That'd put a damper on my mood.

Room N197: The party detected a pretty powerful evil behind this door, so they buffed up for it.
But it didn't matter.
A 40HD large mohrg stood behind the door. Combat began and lasted 2 rounds.
And the 2 not-so-large mohrgs in room N196 joined in to add another 2 rounds of combat.
But the poor, pathetic mohrgs were but a speed bump to the party.

Room N199: This room was basically a large closet containing only a 4' long lever.
The party, not having fond memories of levers, closed the door and left.

Room N192: This room was once a barracks, but is now rotted and left in ruins. Otherwise the room is empty.

Room N186: This room only gave the lingering effect of evil. It's inhabitants fled when it heard the party coming.

Hallway N188: Thanks to Krieg using Miracle to emulate arcane spells, he was able to stop the party from stepping on a couple of symbol traps. He led everyone around the symbols and moved on.

Room N190: Four strong points of evil are behind this door, so the party preps again. (They usually have enough power to prep 2 1/2 times per day.)

But the 4 large mohrgs only serve as targets for spells and sword points.

Hallway N189: Another set of symbols are on this door. They are summarily dispelled.

Senmonious detects evil behind the door and finds 5 strong points of evil, and a lingering overwhelming residual evil.

So they prep what they can and open the door...

Room N191: In this large room are 6 allips, half-hiding in statues, 2 invisible shield guardians (that the party can see...), and an ancient figure standing at the far end of the room.

It is Kasteoficiss, one of the warlords of the region.
There is no witty banter and no evil speech.

Combat begins immediately.

"Let's not waste the spells. This isn't big battle yet" - Jeff, right before entering this room.

Well the party had many buffs of their own, that I have pretty much stopped keeping heavy track of. Things like Haste, Death Ward (grrr), stat buff spells (Owl's Wisdom, et al.), energy protection spells, Heroism, etc.

But I can list what Kasteoficiss had on her: Death Watch, Sanctuary (just in case), Bull's Strength, Eagle's Splendor, Greater Spell Immunity (Flame Strike, Heal, Disintegrate, & Magic Missile), Shield of Law, True Seeing, Protection from Energy (lightning), Protection from Energy (cold), Invisibility Purge, and Freedom of Movement.
She was also wielding a Rod of Greater Maximize Spell.
Thanks to her incorporeal spies, and the sounds of combat from room N190, gave her plenty of time to prepare.

Round 1:
Thunderclease charges the allips on the north side of the room. Thanks to their hiding in the statues and their non-corporeal status, Cleez can't hit squat.
Valden steps into the room and uses Miracle to cast Reverse Gravity on Kasteoficiss (Kasty). But the room is 120' high, so instead of hitting the ceiling, she ends up floating 80' from the ground.
Kasty responds with a Hold Monster spell at Valden. Valden's Spell Turning kicks in and turns it back on her, but she's undead, so nothing happens.
Krieg enters the room and targets Kasty with a Greater Dispel Magic, ruining her Bull's Strength, Shield of Law, Invisibility Purge, & Freedom of Purge.
Dariel enters the room and hits Kasty with a Disintegrate. But she saves and only takes 5d6 damage.
The allips act with 3 of them babbling, 2 of them attacking Cleez, and one casting Prayer. Three of the allips are in a Silence zone because one of the clerics cast it on his helm.
Dariel fails his save versus the allip babbling. Now he stands in his square, fascinated.
One shield guardian swings at Valden. The DM thought they were invisible, but apparently everyone had See Invisible. Ruined that plan.
The other shield guardian released its stored spell; Dispel Magic. It cast it as the general dispel. This took out a few spells, notably Haste and Valden's Protection from Fire.
Senmonious takes on one of the shield guardians, protecting one of the party's flanks.

Round 2:
Thunderclease misses each and every attack thanks to the protections of the allips.
Valden, thinking that Kasty isn't dangerous at the moment, moves to attack the other shield guardian.
Kasty, who is a lot more dangerous than the party believed, sees 3 of the party standing close together. And each of them has personally assaulted her with spells. So she casts her Empowered Flame Strike, and uses her Greater Rod of Maximize. The Flame Strike does 120 points of fire damage with a reflex save DC of 22 to take 60.
Valden makes his save, and half of that is sent to Krieg thanks to Shield of Faith spell.
Krieg makes his save, but is pretty low on hp now.
Dariel rolls a too low on his save. Since he's just over 60hp, he's now a charred pile of elf.
Krieg has to cast Heal or he's dead.
The allips begin to attack the party. Their attacks are relatively futile since they only deal 1 point of damage, and that's only because of Prayer.
One shield guardian and Senmonious begin to trade blows.
The other shield guardian releases its own Dispel Magic. While it does remove some spells, nothing of importance comes to memory.

Round 3:
Thunderclease ignores the harmless allips and moves to one of the shield guardians.
Valden finishes off the guardian that Cleez hurt.
Kasty follows up with a weaker Flame Strike for 15d6 damage. By comparison to her last one, it's not as impressive.
Krieg uses his full round to move closer to Kasty.
The allips continue their fruitless attacks.
The last shield guardian and Senmonious continue to bash one another.

Round 4:
Thunderclease finally gets some hits in one the allips. He sends 2 of them running home to their mommas.
Valden joins Cleez in some allip smacking.
Kasty tries to push herself against the wall to get out of the Reverse Gravity effect. She fails.
Krieg steps within 5' of Kasty's location (she's still 80' up) and casts Prismatic Sphere, a domain spell for him.
The allips do...eh who cares.
The last shield guardian and Senmonious continue to bash one another.

Round 5: (Cool player tactic alert!)
Thunderclease finishes off the allips.
Valden dismisses his Reverse Gravity. This causes Kasteoficiss to drop 80' right into and through the Prismatic Sphere and slams into the ground. She makes every single save against the sphere, so only takes 70 damage from that. And she takes 8d6 points of damage from the sudden stop at the bottom of her fall.
Kasty uses her move action to stand up. Krieg gets a free swing and misses. She slams Krieg for 1d6+10 damage plus he hast to save versus mummy rot. He saves.
Krieg, suddenly not liking his location for mysterious reasons, casts Blade Barrier inside the sphere, in a circular pattern with a 5' radius.
This leaves Kasty with a whole 16 hit points, even though she saved.
Krieg then leaves the sphere and takes damage from his own Blade Barrier. It's probably safer that way.
Plus this party seems to be doing more damage to themselves than their opposition in this region.
The last shield guardian and Senmonious continue to bash one another. Both are low on hp.

Round 6:
Thunderclease moves to help Senmonious with his shield guardian opponent and steals Sen's kill.
Valden moves to join Krieg with taking on Kasty while rebuffing.
Kasty takes a 5' step into the center of both spell effects, casts Harm on herself and is back to max hp. She now in a nice protective cocoon.
Krieg heals himself.
Senmonious heals himself.

Round 7:
Thunderclease gets closer to Kasty while the clerics prepare.
Valden delays his action until Krieg is done with his.
Kasty, knowing she's about to be in trouble, casts Repulsion. But the spell is currently contained in the sphere. But that's ok.
Krieg uses his full round to dismiss both the Prismatic Sphere and the Blade Barrier.
This releases the Repulsion spell.
Thunderclease and Senmonious both fail their saves and are now not allowed to get close to Kasty. They are effectively out of combat now.
Valden casts Blade Barrier and puts in on top of Kasty.

Round 8:
Kasty steps out of the Blade Barrier and casts one of her own around herself.
Krieg casts Sunburst. All three combatants are now blind.
Valden blindly drops a Flame Strike where he thought Kasty would be.

Round 9:
Kasty steps out of the Blade Barriers and uses Miracle to cast a Mass Inflict Critical Wounds. The results are less than spectacular. (The DM was tired at this point, and probably should have made a better decision.)
Krieg casts Heal and blindly swings at Valden, hitting him and healing him. This removes his blindness.
Valden drops yet another Blade Barrier on top of Kasty.

Round 10:
Kasty once again steps out of the Blade Barrier and heals herself again with Harm.
Krieg uses Miracle to cure his blindness.
Valden moves to and attacks Kasty.

Round 11:
Kasty, thinking she's done for, cries out a prayer to her god and casts Firestorm and augmenting it with the Rod of Greater Maximize Spell. She lives through the spell, but the Krieg and Valden have to save versus the spell.
Both do.
Krieg heals himself.
Valden rips into her with his full attack.
She drops to the ground, finally at rest.

"Well done adventurer's!. Now stand aside!", bellowed out the voice of Invistis.

Three large iron golems are now noticed walking down the hallway to this room.

And we stopped the session on that cliffhanger.

Session #42

Ah the agony of overtime.
It puts you behind on many things.
Like blog updates for instance.

If you are looking to leave a comment on the blog now, you will have to deal with a little extra irritation. This was done to get rid of the irritating spam that I was beginning to get daily on the blog. Towards the end I was getting 5 of them from some love potion jackass.

Once again this session was information gathering more than combat.
Which was probably a good thing since only Brian, Aaron, & Jeff were able to make it to the session.

Map

The party returned from the garrison to continue exploring.
When they put their maps and heads together they decided noticed a large empty area on the map. They had found only 2 ways into that area and both were blocked by bronze doors and force fields.

So they did some exploration and discovered areas N134 & N112. Both were blocked by a force field had a bronze door that had no handle, but instead some kind of item on it with a piece missing. Room N112 had a black circle with an empty area in the shape of a 6-fingered hand. Room N134 had a large copper circle that was missing a piece in the shape of a large key.

The party decided to check out the other 2 doors once again to refresh their memories.

After that the party decided to return to exploring the unknown. But...

Room N140: The party had been in this room before, but had to walk through it to get back to where they hadn't been.

This room had almost killed Dariel with its Wail of the Banshee trap. Otherwise it just had some dead elves that had dug up much of the center of the room.

But when the party walked inside this time, something different happened.

They opened the door and set off the spell, which was summarily ignored thanks to the dang Death Ward spell. But inside was not just rubble and elf corpses, but a skeletal creature wrapped in ancient robes. The trap alerted it to their presence.

"Pardon me. Do you perhaps have some diamond dust?"

"Umm, no."

"Oh. That is a shame. Well if you happen to come across some diamond dust, perhaps you would sell a little to me?"

"We would have no dealings with a creature the likes of you."

Note: Thanks to the party being mostly exalted characters, they are not allowed to let an evil such as this make deals with them.

"Ignorant fools! I know you are! I know what you seek! I give you this warning; leave my area alone! If you are to disrupt this prison, do not do so with mine!"

"We have no choice but to destroy you lich."

Round 1:
Dariel wins initiative. He casts Reverse Gravity to try to knock the lich off balance.
The lich doesn't move. The reverse gravity slightly pulls on the lich's robes, revealing feet that were never touching the ground in the first place.
The lich is next and it gives a maniacal evil laugh after is unleashes a Mordenkainen's Disjunction. And then the lich disappears.

Almost 75% of the PCs magic items are rendered non-magical.
Among them:
Thunderclease's +2 Holy Greatsword
Every permanent magic item Dariel owned
Krieg's Silent Metamagic Rod
Valden's Periapt of Wisdom +2
Senmonious's Ring of Fire Resistance

Well Krieg would have cast Miracle to return the stuff, but since he had just leveled, he didn't have the 5000XP to spend.

But to remove any suspense, by the end of the night he did gain enough XP to cast the spell. But he ended up only gaining 500XP for the night. Heh.

But that was at the end of the night. This happened at the beginning. So the party juggled their remaining items around. And Valden had to give up his status as a warrior cleric and become a walking band-aid cleric, and part time nuker.

Room N139 and other rooms: These rooms are either empty or visited.

Room N138: This room was quite empty. The hallway out of the south of it ended in a false door. When Cleez tried the handle he felt something seeping into his gloved ...um... paw.

It was smeared with black lotus extract. But it was a fortitude save, and it's not hard for Cleez to make a fort save.

Room N127: Two large mohrgs guarded a rod in this otherwise simple room. Combat begins immediately.

Round 1: Standard shmuck combat. Cleez jumps in and hacks at one pretty heavily.
It steps back, pulls out a scroll and casts Cloudkill. Dariel is able to understand the spell with his spellcraft skill, but at difficulty because the language of the spell was very different.
The rest of the party and their spells bring the poor thing down to almost no hp and they dispel the Cloudkill before it can do more than a whole 2 points of constitution damage.

Round 2: The 1st mohrg is brought down.
The 2nd mohrg pulls out its own scroll and casts Horrid Wilting from it. It does heavy damage (18d6) but those with too few hp save and all survive.

Round 3: The 2nd mohrg is brought down.
But a 3rd mohrg riding a zombie wyvern charged the rear of the party from room N128. It assaulted Krieg, whose only company is Dariel.

But no matter. Even a weakened party overmatches the poor critters.
On the zombie wyvern rider was a silver band with the symbol of Jergal on it.

Room N128: A now empty room.

Room N129: A trap in this room combines the effect of 2 Fire Storm spells, each dealing 15d6 damage. The two lead party members, Cleez and Senmonious, take some damage, but since they both have lots of hp and their own personal cleric, it's not that big of a deal.

But it does entertain the DM as the party deals with the locked northern door while being careful of the trap.

In fact they make a lot of noise. Enough to almost "wake the dead".
Yeah, horrible pun, I know.

Room N182: One large mohrg and eight zombie ogres wait here, ready for the party to enter.

Even though I knew this combat posed no real threat to the party, we played it out anyway.

Round 1: Scratch 1 zombie.
Round 2: Thundercat kills 3 zombies. The rest of the party assaults the mohrg.
Round 3: Thundercat kills 2 zombies. The mohrg drops.
Round 4: We didn't bother.

Room N181: The party opens this door and sees fog & darkness and they hear nothing from the room.
Cleez steps through the door and is covered in silence. So he steps back and Dariel casts Greater Dispel Magic into the room.
The result is thunder and lightning from within the room before returning to silence.

Properly creaped out, the party turns around.

Room N184: A mostly empty room. Cleez investigated alone and found nothing. The DM secretly rolled a fortitude save for him to resist the Devil Chills disease. Not a problem.

Room N185: An old, rusty, torturing room. The party quickly searches and leaves. More made disease saves.

Hallway N187: Trapped...lotsa trapped hallways around here. A couple of symbol spells are written on the floor and they are triggered. But nothing happens to anyone because they always make their saves...

Room N195: This room would have otherwise been "empty" save that Detect Magic and Detect Evil both found something powerful behind the wall.
When Cleez investigated the wall, the ceiling collapsed on him doing 32d6 crushing damage (average 112hp damage), no save.
He was totally buried and risked suffocation.
Luckily Dariel had the ability to cast a Disintegrate spell that didn't harm good people.
It also didn't harm the sword.
But it did get rid of the rubble.

So there lies a black-bladed longsword and a crouching Cleez.
The sword radiated an immense evil.
On its black blade, that reflected a reddish light, was the word "Varnarul" which translated to angel-slayer in Infernal.
Dariel began to cast Disintegrate on the thing. It responded by casting Slow on the party and Daze Monster at Dariel.
It then began yelling at the party.

"If the angels couldn't destroy me you pathetic runts couldn't scratch me."

And that began an interesting little discussion where the party tried to get some information from the sword and it either laughed at them or yelled at them some more.

The party wrapped it up and decided they would let the garrison get rid of it.

Well that's all for that session.

Session #43 soon...well maybe.