Brain's right- the chaos beast got 1d6 attacks per round, and they stunned on a hit. It was a bad ass.
Stats here, from my Monster Project.
But I digress; how about an update?
***
Iggy casts a
prismatic burst down at the lich and its gorgon mount. It detonates with incredible brilliance. Before the dazzling radiance has faded, Summer shifts into the form of an eagle and flies, shrieking, to the attack, raking her claws across the lich's face.
Vann-La charges forward, her sword whisking free of its scabbard. She rushes the mounted lich and swings, but the gorgon rears back and her blow catches only empty air. She curses, and then the gorgon's forehooves smash down onto the rock before her and it bellows like a bull.
Then gray gas billows forth from its mouth and flaring nostrils. Summer flies out of the way, but Vann-La is caught! She feels her body start to stiffen as it starts to petrify- but once again her
unfailing resources allow her to shrug the effect of the breath weapon off.
Hkatha chants eldritch words, and a serpent made of lightning appears and lunges for the gorgon. Its crackling jaws hit it, sending lightning into the beast's huge frame. It bellows. The serpent wraps around it, holding it place and pumping venom into it!
“Vann-La!” cries Heimall. “GIT!!”
This time her blow slices into the lich's arm. It feels like cutting into dry wood- but much harder. In reply, the lich slashes its claws at her in a
mocking attack, chiding, “Is that the best you can do? You'll never get anywhere like that!” But Vann-La catches the claws on her shield and turns them.
“You won't either!” the Kree warrior growls back.
With a sneer, the bugbear lich teleports away, its mount going with it. It reappears instantly behind Summer.
“Hey lich, I have something for you!” cries Iggy, directing a
spectral ram at the gorgon. Unfortunately, his aim is off, and he misses. “Damn it!” he curses.
The lich sneers. “A poor spell,” it says contemptuously, and unleashes a blast of freezing shadows that wrap around Heimall and Torinn. They cry out in pain as the shadows form into strings that control them like puppets. “Let me show you how it is done! Tremble before Dasmodel!”
“No thanks,” replies Hkatha, sending a
shock sphere at Dasmodel. The lich avoids it, but then Summer swoops down in a
wildblood frenzy and rips a long furrow in the lich's back!
But it's too late to stop the lich's
shadow puppets. Amazingly, none of them manage to land a hit; even Iggy's gun shot goes wide. Then, as the lines of shadow dominating them fade, Torinn swings his executioner's axe in a deadly arc that decapitates the gorgon!
Shakgar and Vann-La rush the lich even as he vaults to the ground. “You'll pay for that!” he cries with a
terrifying cackle*, but they aren't having any of it, bracketing the undead bugbear and hacking into him. Shakgar enters the
silver phoenix rage and roars in anger as flames lick over him, battering the lich from one side while Vann-La smashes it over and over from the other. Then Torinn and Summer move in, catching the lich quite thoroughly between the four of them.
Still cackling, uttering
black reprisals against Hkatha's
magic missiles, Dasmodel slashes his claws all around him in a frenzy, but to no avail. Finally, Hkatha invokes a
flaming sphere and the lich gives a final howl before collapsing into a heap of charred bones.
“You know,” says Hkatha, “given that he's a lich, if we don't destroy his phylactery, all we've really done is make an enemy.”
“Yeah,” agrees Ligir. “That's part of why I didn't want to mess with the lich in Varelose.”
“Wait a minute. You mean it's not really dead?” Vann-La prods the pile of burnt bone fragments with her foot dubiously. “Looks dead to me.”
“It will grow a new body near its phylactery,” explains Iggy. “The phylactery is where its soul goes when its body dies- that's how liches become liches, is by making a phylactery.”
“So... what does its phylactery look like?”
“It could be anything,” replies Hkatha. “And the odds are really strong that it isn't here.”
“Right,” agrees Torinn. “A smart lich will have its phylactery hidden away somewhere very secure, far from where its body is, so that if it is destroyed, it's just a temporary setback.”
“Well,” Heimall says, “we're kind of busy anyway. Let's just hope that we don't encounter this lich again before we're done.”
***
The only door out of the chamber leads to a 35' long passage that opens into a large pottery workshop that includes a pool of clay that is fresh, supple, hot and wet. A wheel and chair are near the pool of clay, and a large bucket half-full of water is on the ground next to it. There are no other exits from the area.
The party backs up and returns to the four-way intersection. Vann-La says, “We still haven't fully checked out that direction,” indicating the passage along which the elevator room is. “We might want to look it over, since it's kind of our way back.”
“Or at least,” adds Cook, “
a way back.”
The party walks to where the passage turns to the left. A door is at the elbow; a look within reveals this to be an empty chamber with a rotted plush carpet underfoot. A large walk-in closet is attached, as is a bathroom with a long tub against one wall and a wood stove against the other.
“All the comforts of home,” comments Iggy.
“Shakgar doesn't like baths,” the barbarian growls. “They make him smell less manly.”
“That isn't always a bad thing,” mutters Iggy under his breath.
Vann-La suppresses a snicker and points to the wall. “There's another secret door through there.”
“Let's check out the rest of the hallway first,” suggests Torinn.
“Oi, the treasure will be behind the secret doors,” Cook says.
“That's probably true,” answers Vann-La, “but we'll get there soon enough.”
After it turns, the hallway extends a short ways before ending in a door. Behind this is a very interesting chamber indeed; Cook, being a dwarf, recognizes it immediately. “Oi,” he says, “this is where the rune-graver would work.”
“The who?” asks Hkatha.
“The rune-graver. He would work runes into things, to bless them with the powers of stone and iron, or whatever would be appropriate.”
The chamber has a number of chisels and vials of what prove to be slow-acting, stone-etching acid. There are also several jewelers’ rouges of exceptional quality. The chamber is seriously rune-graven- the runes on the walls include symbols of protection, learning, oneness with the stones and earth, and similar themes. A large pile of flat stones suitable for rune-graving is in the corner of the room. More of them- completed- are leaning up against the walls in profusion.
Cook sits down and starts to read. Before long, he says, “These have many answers upon them.”
Everyone turns to listen as he relates what he has found. The graven stones seem to be a record of the last period before the coming of Fray and her shapechanger enemy.
Again, the stones verify that this place is called the Terran Undercollege and it was a center of learning for dwarves and “grey elves”. (Iggy snorts at the term “grey elf” and says, “That's so racist. That's a racist term for eladrins.”) The stones further relate that for about the last nine months of its functional existence as a school, the Undercollege was besieged by the warring forces of two extremely powerful wizards. One of them was a grey elf (Iggy again rolls his eyes) woman of incredible beauty and extraordinary power; the plaques assert that she is
not from Tirchond, though they do not suggest an origin for her. They also mention that she has seduced several powerful allies with the promise of help constructing a “Hell’s Eye”, whatever that is.
Hkatha shrugs. “I've never heard of such a thing.”
The other wizard in contention for the college is some kind of shapechanger. The gravings posit that he might be a doppelganger or another kind of natural shapechanger, and describe him as having frustratingly effective information-gathering ability. In fact, it seems that he can steal memories from the dead.
“Whoa,” comments Torinn, “that's pretty heavy information gathering, all right. Why keep an enemy alive if you can learn all they know after they're dead?”
“That's insidiously powerful,” Hkatha agrees.
The Terran Undercollege was a portion of a much-larger university called the Silver University. The Silver University spreads for over a square mile of the city above ground and it has numerous annexes underground “and in other places”.
Vann-La muses, “We know we're under a city now.”
The rune-graven stones have more to tell. The strange, silver undead elves are called
deodanths. Again, our heroes already know this, but the stones next make some startling assertions: Deodanths are from another time period, and the plaques assert that there is worrisome evidence of tampering with the time stream by
both of the warring wizards. At about this time, the plaques start to be graven with a strange rune, unknown to Cook and the rest of the party. They puzzle over it for a time, but all that they can ascertain is that it has something to do with warding or preservation.
The most recent plaques are the most interesting to the party. They describe a quintet of death knights being dragged from “the portal on the sixth level” and then follow this up with the following engraving:
“By the most recent gravings I know the worst to be true. From the past great crimes arise again. These two wizards are too careless for tampering with forces that could erase them. Who are they and from whence do they come, that they dare such madness? My only clue is the rune, given by the Uncaring. Why would he do such a thing? Alas, pursuing this riddle may prove impossible, trapped as I am down here. It is desperate, but I may open the cages and try to escape in the confusion.”
It takes four hours for the party to discern all that they can from the stones. By then, our heroes' mouths have gone dry.
Tampering with time? That can't be good?
They eye each other uncertainly.
“Well,” says Heimall at last, “at least there are still only five death knights.”
“Hopefully four,” amends Torinn.
Next Time: Our heroes find a room full of troublesome temporal traps!
*A close burst 2 minor action at will: +16 vs. Will; target is pushed 1 and has -2 to saving throws (save ends). Good setup for many of Dasmodel's other powers.