Sean's Campaign - Session #12

The last game of the year (maybe) was a bit anticlimactic.

Everyone made it, but Joy was late thanks to a work-related Christmas party. It was not a good night for her. She had her character sheet on her, so Ari couldn’t join in on the big fight at all. And when she showed, she had to wait until after the big fight before we popped Ari into the game, which was around an hour of doing nothing.

Don’t expect the podcast for a week or so. Christmas-time barely allows me enough free time to do much more than shop.

We last stopped with the party getting ready to rest after helping Mornal to realize that he was no longer a fun-loving young man like he was tricking himself into believing, but that he was, in fact, an evil undead sorcerer.

First we gathered up Artemis & the unplayable Ari.

Artemis awoke to a muscle-bound man coming from out of a mist saying, “Come with me if you want to live.” with a thick accent.
Sensing a DM plot element, he agreed and followed the large man and mounted a large red dragon who then flew them up to the aerie the joined the two lich towers.
Later that large man turned out to be Marko, well Marko and Bill (or Bob, or whoever I named him).

Prior to resting the party kept asking questions. The delusional Mornal would have kindly answered the questions. The delusions were what had kept his evil side at bay. But his mind was no longer fractured, and he was clearly losing his patience, getting more irritated with every question asked.

Between the prior-to-resting questions and the post-resting questions the party got about as much information they were going to get about Ventraine and the upcoming fight.

- Mornal never visited Ventraine’s tower, but he knew the basic layout of it.
- There were two ways into Ventraine’s tower; above and below. Below meant dealing with more traps. Going above meant sneaking past the lichs’ mounts; a pair of skeletal red dragons that would not attack the party so long as they were with Mornal.
- Mornal is not an aggressive caster. He used illusions for jokes and fun while alive. The most powerful spells he had in his repertoire, from a combat standpoint, were Dispel Magic & Improved Invisibility.
- Mornal could feel the last shreds of his humanity were slipping away, so he used an illusion to show the party where in the nearby mountains that he and Ventraine became liches. They also kept their phylacteries there. Once Ventraine’s body was killed, the party was to immediately destroy Mornal’s body and then find their phylacteries and destroy them as well.

What the players did not know, and now it certainly can’t harm in letting them know, is that he used a shadow demon to spy on Mornal at times. This allowed Ventraine time to cast spells for preparation when the party began their short trek to get to Ventraine from above.

The fight was quite nasty.

On one side was the party (6 strong), Mornal, and Marko (the flesh golem).

On the other side were Ventraine, a shadow demon, and a shield guardian.

The fight occurred in a cramped room only 15’ in diameter and Ventraine had already placed a Blade Barrier in the room (though it did have a short duration after the party paused to cast some last minute buff spells).

The party could only slowly get into the room thanks to the very confining situation. This allowed the shadow demon to attack Artemis at the rear of the party. The demon only dealt 1d6 points of damage with a hit, but the damage caused could only heal with time and not with healing spells. This was a nasty surprise for Artemis who had 6 hit points remaining before the shadow demon was finally dealt with by Zelast and Artemis.

Ventraine had an absurdly high AC of 31 thanks to his magical armor and buffs. Plus he had a DR of 15/bludgeoning and magic. Guess which group of heroes doesn’t have a magic bludgeoning weapon, or any weapon that can deal more than 15 points of damage without getting really lucky.

Well they had Lindo, but the limited maneuvering space made it impossible for him to get to Ventraine. So instead Lindo joined Marko in bashing the shield guardian.

The combat was all over the place really, with everyone doing really good or really bad at some point.

The lowest point for everyone in the group was the Flame Strike that left most of the group in single digit hit points.

The nearly immune Ventraine started off very strong, but slowly dwindled as Mornal stripped away his buff spells with several castings of Dispel Magic.

Eventually Zelast, Lindo, and Sorra were able to corner Ventraine when his minions were gone. Zelast had cast Magic Weapon on Sorra’s warhammer, so Ventraine’s damage resistance was worthless there. Zelast himself was just delivering touch attacks through his hands directly rather than through his weapon. And Lindo was pounding away while invisible thanks to Mornal’s Improved Invisibility Spell.

For whatever reason, Lindo wanted to grapple the lich-cleric. Well it worked beautifully - for half a round. Ventraine successfully cast a Harm spell on Lindo while in the grapple. Lindo absolutely had to make the save as he had only around 50 hit points (after a lot of healing from Ysilia) and a failed save would have put him around -70 hit points.

He made the save, and dropped the grapple go so he could get healed above 1 hp.

Ventraine had taken quite a few lumps recently, and was now in bad shape.

The DM had been rolling poorly for Ventraine’s attacks (there’s a definite downside to rolling in front of everyone if you can’t roll above an 8), and the party had chewed away a large sum of his hit points. When he went to heal himself with an Inflict Wounds spell, I rolled a natural 1 for defensive casting.

The next round he was at less than 10 hit points, so he cast a Mislead spell (turns you invisible, leaves an illusory you to distract your enemies). But Mornal had nothing better to do than prepare a counterspell, and he ruined Ventraine’s “get away” spell.

Lindo then finished him off.

On a side note, Dale has vowed never to pick on the monk class ever again.

Mornal then threw his arms open and told the party to finish him before his dark side took over. And they did. Scratch two liches.

Another side note, they did not get full XP for two liches (CR14 each). They got XP for about an 11CR because they had help. I should have given them less thanks to the DM’s inability to roll double digits.

Now the adventurer’s caved in to their nature; they searched for treasure.

Boy did they find treasure. Although I have given them a lot of stuff, I seemed to end up taking it away in some form or another (raising the dead), or the magic items were pretty weak. This treasure haul made up for it quite a bit. They walked away with over 30,000gp worth of gold, gems, and jewelry and several permanent items easily worth another 40,000gp. It’s the first such large cache I’ve given in this campaign and I think it puts them about where they should be.

But rather than rest, they knew they had no time to relax. Either lich could gain a new form in just a few days.

They left the tower, which involved dealing with a few new traps and had to get past the Reverse Gravity spiked pits again.

But they forgot about the topiary guardians.

I love it when they make it easy on me.

With their arcane casters’ fire spells, this combat was ten times easier and lasted hardly three rounds.

The gate was no longer mobbed by the mayor, but there were a lot of zombies hanging around - too many for the depleted party to deal with.

So they rested and nuked their way out of town afterwards.

There were no signs of any non-zombie creatures other than a flying black horse that teleported away with its rider. But the party didn’t exactly stick around to investigate.

They headed to the mountains to the south, with Trebor leading the way (he is a scout after all).

The mountains were treacherous and easy to get lost in, leaving the party in a perfect position for a pair of young red dragons to harass.

The party was on a narrow ledge, while the dragons could easily walk along the side of the mountain.

Those dragons tore the party up bad.

Ari died when she failed her save versus 40+ points of fiery dragon breath.

Artemis dropped to negative hp and was raised back up, only to miss with an empowered orb spell that would have dropped one of the dragons.

Trebor moved to a flanking position on one dragon with Sorra & Lindo. The dragon quickly solved that problem, leaving Trebor as a bleeding stain on the ground.

Zelast once against found it easier to cast Shocking Grasp directly rather than through his sword, because the dragon’s touch AC was much lower than its standard AC.

Ysilia spent a couple of round healing before she joined others bleeding on the ground.

Lindo, hmm, I don’t remember much of what he did other than dropping the first dragon, which he then rubbed in.
I’m sure Allen will remind me more specifically what Lindo did.

Sorra drank a potion of Spider Climb which gave her maneuverability that others in the group did not. That allowed her to move around combat much easier, and her high AC gave her some staying power. Which in turn took the heat off of the rest of the party; this is Sorra’s usual tactic.

When the second dragon finally dropped, the party was in pathetic shape.

Healing unguents were used, and healing wands were heavily drained, but the party was put back in order, minus Ari.

After the fourth day of getting nowhere in the mountains, a bugbear shaman of the Grishnaka tribe took pity upon them. It helped that the party took out those dragons, as they had been preying upon the bugbear’s tribe.

He made his presence known and offered to be a guide for the party, for a price of 1000gp. Through some diplomacy the party got him to raise Ari, at a cost of 10000gp plus they supply the diamonds.

On the plus side he reduced his 1000gp guide price to merely 500gp.

With Ari back, the shaman led them to the “dark place” the party sought, a cave that he refused to enter.

The party searched inside and found…nothing but bones. They searched the place inside and out. They cast spells of detection. Those and everything else they tried came up with nothing.

They came to the obvious conclusion; at least one of the liches had reformed his body and left with the other lich or his phylactery.

All attempts to get any aid concerning the liches from the bugbear were flatly rejected. He had no intentions of crossing anything as powerful as a lich.

The party had failed in this task, so now it was time to leave the mountains.

The shaman’s price was another 1000gp.

See you all in several weeks.