Dale's Campaign - Session #19

This session was one nasty session.

Dale finally made it tougher on us, but not until after we thought we were done with the combat for the night. And we, in all our foolishness, fell for it.

No Justin this night and no Mike this night or next session. Justin’s PC, as usual, was not around and Aaron controlled Mike’s PC, Mark. Brian’s PC, Culan, poofed in when we started. Brian had taken home Culan’s character sheet, thinking there would be no reason he couldn’t make it to the next game.
He was wrong.

We got down to business and continued from where we left off last session.

We had just defeated another Hulking Corpse (Dale loves the Libris Mortis), so we healed up and slowly moved through the crypt.

Because we weren’t using Detect Evil liberally, we didn’t notice anything unusual about the interred bodies in the alcoves around us.

That put us in a bad situation because we were surrounded by several ghouls with fighter levels and a couple of Weeps (from the Libris Mortis).

The Weeps attempted some kind of fear affect with their weeping, but we all saved, so haha.

In spite being surrounded on four sides in a 5’ wide hallway (two rooms gave them another attack source), we did quite well.

From the front, Mark was being attacked by three of the four ghouls, while he and Culan took them on in melee.

From the rear, Kal and Kineo took on the weeps. Kal took the two Weeps out of combat with an Evard’s Black Tentacles while Kineo casually fried them with spells.

But what did the most damage was Kineo’s Mass Fire Shield. A ghoul would almost take double the amount of damage it dealt.

Once that minor nuisance was over, we healed up, and charged around a corner before our buffs wore off.

And we charged right into a pit. But Culan and Mark made their saves so they stopped before they fell in.

So Kal and Jaxil used a couple of Dimension Door spells to move the party over the pit.

Once Jaxil brought Culan and Mark over, combat began anew.

Several of the tombstones rose up out of the bone-covered floor and formed a Tombstone golem.

But this fight went like the last one. A few scratches on us and we had ourselves one dead golem.

The next hallway gave us another combat by being surrounded yet again. This one took longer than the previous hallway combat trap, but the result was the same – five dead mohrgs littered the floor.

At the end of this hallway was a door, so we charged through it. Every door in this dungeon had something nasty behind it, so we threw caution to the wind, expecting to find the boss.

We opened the door and began combat again, this time with the boss of the dungeon – some kind of humanoid undead with sorcerer levels.

Kal had a quickened True Strike and Disintegrate memorized still, and was going to use it.

Kal made his intent clear, and since he was on the bottom of the initiative stack, everyone had an opportunity to clear the way.

Mark moved into the room, out of the ray’s path, and hit the creature.
Kineo blasted it with an orb spell, and then moved out of the way.
Jaxil simply moved out of the way.
Culan took his full attacks, dealt over 100 points of damage to it, and the creature dropped.

The combat didn’t even last one full round.

So Kal used Disintegrate on the Darkskull we found, an evil magic item that the creature owned.

So we scoured the area for treasure and left (using another Dimension Door, and some Fly spells to get over the pit).

We had our new loot, we had enough XP for a level up, we didn’t bother with healing, we were relatively low on spells. You get the picture?

Ah arrogance, I spit at thee.

We climbed the stairs out of the catacombs back into the church, the smoke-filled church. But we didn’t leave it that way...

We heard two voices, both of them bad voices, very bad voices.

One was of the lich that tried to sue us. The other was from the devil that possessed the little girl from last session. All of the people in the temple had been slaughtered as well.

(Please excuse my poor recall of the events that followed. The lack of an MP3 really hurts the recall on my part.)

Thanks to horrible initiative rolls, Kineo, Jaxil, and Kal were all nicely clumped together. Those 3 PCs were subjected to 2 Fireballs.

Kal survived thanks to a Protection from Energy spell, Kineo saved and took no damage, Culan saved but had plenty of hit points, and Jaxil fried and died.

He was brought back by Kineo using a Revivify scroll and Kal helped with a Cure Critical Wounds spell.

Mark charged the devil. It was a horned devil and had a tough AC to hit; 35.

Culan followed slowly while buffing up.

The rest of us scattered while taking shots at the horned devil when we could, but its spell resistance was in the high 20’s.

Kineo could easily get past its spell resistance thanks to the Orb line of spells. Even though it doesn’t make sense to us, all of the orb spells are considered non-magical once cast and can deal damage as an energy attack rather than a cast spell.

Kal was the only one that could see the lich, but he acted like he couldn’t. During this, the lich was double-wielding two Fireball wands aiming strictly at Kal. Kal’s Protection from Fire spell didn’t last much beyond that.

Jaxil cast Silence on Kal, who voluntarily failed the save. Then Kal ran under the flying and invisible lich and cast Cone of Cold.

That irritated the lich who then floated down to attack Kal in melee, hoping to use his lich-touch to leave Kal permanently paralyzed.

Kal made his save and his plan had mostly worked; the lich was in an area of Silence and had foolishly put itself near melee. Culan came over and finished off the lich with a single attack then finally moved into combat with the horned devil.

The devil was faring much better. It was immune to the petty animals Kal had summoned and Mark and Culan were barely denting its hide, but Kineo was giving it some grief.

So it half-flew and half-jumped out of melee with Mark and Culan into melee with Kineo. One round later, Kineo was pulp.

Next, Mark ran around the obstacles to get back into melee with the devil.

Kal ran next to Culan and then Dimension Doored them next to Kineo. Culan then cast Revivify on Kineo and protected him with his tower shield (only possibly because Culan had cast Girallon’s Blessing on himself – giving him an extra set of arms).

Next the devil jumped/flew out of melee to put an end to Jaxil’s irritating habit of healing people. (Which really wasn’t very powerful at this point, he only had level 2 spells left for a whole 2d8+10 points of healing.)

Thanks to that devil’s spiked chain, Jaxil had a whole -8 hit points left.

From his prone position, and precarious hit point status (1hp), Kineo cast one more Orb spell at the devil, rolling a natural 1.

Mark and Culan once again rushed to get into melee, but missed on their swings.

What we didn’t know was that the devil had only 18 hit points remaining himself, had any one of us hit, it would have bought the farm.

So it teleported away, and I’m sure we’ll see it again another day.

And unless someone hands us that phylactery, I’m sure that lich will appear again someday as well.

I’m sure they’ll both bring more friends to that party.

But anyway, we quickly stabilized Jaxil at -9hp, looted the lich’s body, limped out of there, and called it a night.