Semiplanar Rift: Things don't go according to plan.
The party quickly tried to figure out exactly what they were fighting as the battle began. There were six enemies, and each was unique and very powerful in its own way. The first was perhaps the most terrifying: it was a beholder, one of the most dangerous and bizarre creatures known to exist. Its reputation as a walking arsenal of magic was well known, and to make matters worse, this one appeared to be unusually large for its kind! Next, there was a huge woman. She had some sort of black rocky hide, a pair of wings that ended in sharp blades, and a scythe for one hand, and her overall appearance was very diabolical.
The neutral evil sect was represented by a strange black insect creature. It was wearing some sort of mask that hid its face. The other creature was also a bipedal insect, but it looked more like a soldier compared to the more flimsy, academic appearance of the first bug. The chaotic sect, finally, was represented by two more well-known creatures. There was a marilith, the infamous demon with six arms and the lower body of a snake; and an umberhulk, though the umberhulk was larger and armed with much better equipment than its kind usually have.
Both sides quickly moved to gain any advantage they could, and Tal was the first to react. He decided to attack the more arcane-looking insect and fired a green disintegration ray at the creature. The ray caught the creature right on the chest, causing it to wail unearthly screams. Meanwhile, Danae and Robin realized their greatest threat was the beholder, and began to pummel it with both magic and arrows. However, the beholder was also quick to react, and mere moments after Xalem began to give the party enhancing magic, the beholder opened its center eye, draining nearly the entire party of their protections. It then unleashed its many eye rays on Theaven, Bath, and Robin, since they were outside of the antimagic effect. Fortunately, the rays had only minor effects, but the party knew enough about such creatures to realize that their luck would soon run out!
Meanwhile, the blade woman, who the party later learned was a devil called an ashmede, advanced on the party. She began her attack against Theaven, but soon learned the hard way that while Bath normally considered killing demons to be a priority, any evil fiend would work in a pinch! She began to slice the devil to bits while Theaven moved to help her, just as the rest of the villains made their move. Both the warrior insect (a yugoloth known as a mezzoloth) and the umberhulk suddenly worked themselves into violent outbursts, though the mezzoloth’s was more like a battle fury than the typical mindless rage. The yugoloth began to attack Tal while the umberhulk start to attack Danae. Meanwhile, the arcane insect (called an ethergaunt) quickly cast two spells. It first sent waves of strength-draining negative energy against everyone in the party that managed to evade the antimagic cone, and then fired another negative energy ray at Robin that drained much of his life force. Finally, the marilith used less subtle tactics. She merely began to slither towards Robin, intent on slashing him to bits with her many swords.
Despite the many threats around them, the party quickly realized the beholder had to be stopped. With its antimagic cone, the party was without the benefits of its magical equipment, making them easy targets for the less item-focused enemies. Besides, the longer the creature lived, the more likely someone would finally fall victim to one of its more deadly eye beams. Tal and Danae carefully escaped the cone of antimagic to fire at the creature with their most powerful magic, while Robin attacked it with arrows despite their decreased effectiveness within the cone. Bath and the ashmede continued to concentrate on each other, but Theaven also broke off the fight to help finish the creature. With a few words, fire rained down from above, incinerating the wounded creature at last. One down, five to go!
Of course, with their intent focus on the beholder, the mezzoloth, marilith, and umberhulk were able to freely rip into Tal, Robin, and Danae, and Robin was unlucky enough to be twisted up in the serpent woman’s tail. He struggled futilely as the demon laughed and began to shred him with her half-dozen swords. At the same time, the ethergaunt rained more magic down on the party. He sent a slightly weaker life-draining ray at Bath, but she was able to dissipate its effects with her inherent magic. The creature was not discouraged, however, and tried to suck the very moisture from her body. This had slightly more of an effect, but the angel still stood her ground.
While Xalem desperately tried to keep his wounded allies healthy, Tal backed away from the mezzoloth and helped Danae focus on her enemy, since the creature’s great strength and ability to confuse its enemies was his first concern. Bath finally finished off the ashmede and was about to turn to fight the marilith when she saw Danae get struck by the umberhulk. The blow was almost lethal, and as bad as Robin was doing at the moment, she sighed and charged the umberhulk. The demon would have to wait.
Theaven quickly maneuvered to block the mezzoloth, and was rewarded by being ganged up on by the ethergaunt and his fellow insectoid. The ethergaunt was sick of fooling around and fired a dark ray at the druid that was designed to snuff out the life with one touch. Theaven fought against the dark magic and survived, but even being that close to the sensation of death was painful to him. Once aware of how dangerous the ethergaunt was and after seeing how Bath nearly finished the massive umberhulk with one series of sword swings, Danae left the giant monster to her and Tal while they finished off the spellcaster. Since the creature was still heavily wounded from Tal’s earlier disintegration attempt, so Danae was able to finally finish off the beast just as Bath killed the umberhulk.
The fight was finally in favor of the party, but Robin and Theaven were still in dire straights. Bath almost laughed as she finally focused on her racial enemy: the marilith. Meanwhile, Tal and Robin helped Theaven by bombarding the mezzoloth with spells. Bath, not surprisingly, was the first to finish his prey, and Robin was saved before the creature could slice him to bits. The mezzoloth wasn’t much better, and soon the combined assault of the rest of party sent him to the brink of death.
Tal, realizing they had a potential source of information, tried a bit of battlefield diplomacy. “Surrender or be destroyed!” he ordered. “We may be able to come to an agreement that will compel us to spare your life.”
However, the mezzoloth just hissed, “I won’t give you the satisfaction,” and teleported away. He seemed to collapse in pain just as he did it, but the party realized that he if managed to find allies, he could be healed, and would likely face the party again some day.
For now, however, it was time to rest. The battle took a lot out of the party, and they seemed to be in another mirrored room with the time-changing clocks. This might be their last safe place to rest before confronting the Blade of Minds, and they eagerly took it after looting the bodies of their enemies and disposing of their corpses.
Finally, the next day, they party took some time to prepare their magic and whatever enhancements they wanted for the next battle. When ready, they left through the room’s only doorway to confront their third Strife Master.
As expected, they found Tesserill Requien waiting for them beyond the doorway. The room she waited in had mirrored walls and a strange, almost liquid feel to the floor. Below the floor, a strange amorphous blob of shadows was shifting and pulsing. On the far side of the room, a circle of light extended up beyond the sight of the characters, and the room itself also seemed infinitely tall.
As the party arrived, the gold man and the flying, psychic slug monster appeared to assist their mistress. Tesserill regarded them with curiosity. “When you attacked my servants in the riddle foyer, I thought you had no interest in honoring my proposal, but it seems I was wrong. This is the first time you’ve been through the Rift, isn’t it?”
The party was largely unwilling to engage in discussion with a Strife Master, even one that wasn’t openly evil, but Danae and Tal were less judgmental. Danae nodded as Tal said, “Yes, we found an … “alternate” method of traveling to other worlds. But how did you know that?”
“Well, because the Rift is still testing you. I was a little worried when you first attacked my servants, because I hoped they would give me an equal number of allies in our battle. But this situation has given me a suitable replacement.”
“What do you mea…,” Tal began, but he stopped when he noticed the shadow blob. Slowly, it rose through the floor between Tesserill and the party. To Tal’s horror, he realized that they weren’t finished with the third challenge after all, and the Blade of Minds was going to fight them while they were in the middle of the last battle!
Tal opened the battle by firing a spell at the black blob, but the ooze seemed to resist the magic entirely. Robin, however, had a different target. He remembered being psychically pummeled and then violated by the slug in the earlier fight, and decided it won’t happen again this time. He began to fire rapidly at the creature. His arrows lost their magic as they neared it, but they still struck true, and he began to wear down the monster before it could get to him again. The slug (known as a windghost) tried to telekinetically wrest Robin‘s bow from his hands to stop the onslaught, but Robin held on and kept up the attack.
Meanwhile, Xalem helped the party maintain their health while Theaven helped Tal fight the shadow blob and Bath charged the Blade of Minds. Though Bath knew she had to take the Blade of Minds alive, she used lethal force on her now on the assumption that they could knock her unconscious when she was a little weaker. As the gold man (known as a Rilmani,) moved to surround Tal and Theaven, Danae decided she was too close to that blob and erected a prismatic sphere around herself. However, Tesserril expected this plan, and as soon as Danae escaped into the sphere, Tesserril seemed to take a step and vanish, much as her servants and the mezzoloth did earlier. She smiled at Danae and said, “Surprised?”
The fight with the blob, meanwhile, was going poorly. The creature was a product of pure dimensional chaos. Random magic fired off all around it, and portals to unknown locations opened at random. Robin already had to duck out of the way to avoid being sucked in by one. Tal, however, was the latest victim of the creature’s direct aggression. The creature wrapped a massive tentacle around him, and then warped his body with entropic magic. Soon, his very form began to warp until he was an entirely different being. More specifically, he was turned into a tree! With their primary quarry temporarily out of reach, Bath elected to help Theaven and Xalem deal with the strange blob.
Within the sphere, however, Danae did something that, well, complicated things. Though she didn’t expect to be attacked within her own sphere, she also realized what a great opportunity it was. She magically altered her shape to become as large an elemental as she could be, and then moved to push the Blade of Minds through the sphere! Tesserill desperately attacked Danae to keep her at bay, and did a massive amount of damage to her foe with just one sword swing, but she was soon forced through the sphere. Danae thought that her enemy would come out the other side severely weakened by the energy of the sphere, or even petrified or insane. She didn’t expect to see The Blade of Mind’s poisoned, lifeless corpse flop onto the floor. As it dawned on Danae that they were supposed to take The Blade of Minds Alive at all costs and that she just killed said target, she said the only thing one could in this situation. “Oops,” Danae said, having temporarily lost any capacity for a more elaborate response.
But there was little time to deal with this catastrophe at the moment. Robin finally killed the wind ghost, but the blob was still wreaking havoc. Tal was the next target for the random portals, and since he was still an inanimate tree, he had no way to dodge out of the way when it pulled him out of the room and into the earth machine. Meanwhile, the blob attacked Rex, Robin’s pet dinosaur next. It suffered a worse fate than even poor Tal, for the blob pulled it into its body and completely absorbed it, leaving nothing left! It went after Bath after that and managed to transform her as well. Fortunately, Bath retained her angelic magic powers, so she was able to return to normal on her own. And then, finally, the creature was destroyed. With the entire surviving members of the party surrounding it, it was unable to withstand their attacks for long.
As soon as the blob was killed, the Rilmani, who was largely ignored up to this point and was barely wounded, tried to escape. However, defeating the blob was enough to finally finish the Rift’s challenges, and the characters were flooded with information about the truth of the Rift. The entire place wasn’t completely real. It was more like the imagination of the plane itself at work, as its memories of past civilizations clashed with each other. The party was inside those imaginations, but they were also outside of it. All of this was excessively metaphysical to them, but the practical benefits made up for any confusion. They could picture the entirety of the Rift at once by focusing their minds, as if looking at a perfect map of it while floating above it. They could also simply walk to any point in the Rift in a single step, just like Tesserill and her servants were doing to quickly teleport and escape away.
With this knowledge, the party was able to corner the Rilmani in the desert wasteland with the hovering security lights from above. They teleported there using their new power, only to see the Rilmani calmly walking towards the nearest security light. “Stop!” Danae yelled. “You don’t have to do this!”
The Rilmani, however, merely shook his head and continued walking. When he entered the light, the nearest security orb suddenly fired a strange projectile at the creature. It moved so fast that the party couldn’t even see it, but they did see a little smoke trail that spiraled from the orb into the Rilmani. The Rilmani himself was killed instantly. He collapsed on the sands, and the security orb was able to blast his body multiple times as he dissolved into ash.
“Well, now what do we do?” a glum Tal asked as the party gathered the equipment Tesserill and her minions and after they found Tal and restored him to his normal form.
“I don’t know,” Bath sighed. “There’s no way that The Blade of Minds will let us resurrect her. I don’t think Bas would let her soul go anyway, assuming she didn’t just obliterate it moments after she died.”
“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” Danae snapped. “I didn’t think a Strife Master would be killed so easily. I thought she’d be as hard to kill as the Nightmare Prince or that Lady of Blood from before my time.”
“Well, I have an idea,” Xalem said, though he had a disturbed look on his face. “What about asking TIE? She helped us before in dealing with The Blade of Minds.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Bath replied. “To be honest, I’m hoping to meet with her anyway. If she is responsible for making this horrible place, she has a lot to answer for.”
Theaven’s response was less supportive. “What are you talking about? Who’s TIE? What about this place? Look, I’m glad you were able to help me out of there, but to be honest; I think I’m in way over my head on this one. I wish all of you luck on whatever this quest of yours is, but I must follow my own path.”
The group said goodbye to their latest ally, and then did the same to Quercus, Zethar, and Galatron. “What will you three do now?” Tal asked.
“We decided to try and perform the three challenges ourselves,” Quercus said. “After that, assuming we survive, I don’t really know. I think all of us want to return to the celestial planes. Zethar and my…my father want to meet with their superiors again, and I’d like to see where the other half of myself came from, even if my own birth might have been a life.” Quercus said with an odd mix of emotions. He was clearly happy to be with his father, but he seemed more disturbed by the revelation Galatron told them about their origins than the party. “After that, I might try to contact my sister again. She should know the truth about her father as well, and maybe we can finally work together to learn what killed our mother and drove our family apart from there. But don’t worry; if you guys ever really need me, I’ll be there. I want to finish this as much as you do.”
The party finally departed the Rift, and after dealing with the loot the acquired and getting new supplies at Union, they sought out TIE. Bath was the first to ask her a question. “How could you create such a place?” she angrily asked. “Why would you let souls suffer for eternity in such a place just for the sake of a test?”
TIE sighed when she heard this question. “I had hoped you would figure it out already. Those people weren’t real. Nothing there is. Whatever afterlife the original beings went to was unaffected by their images in the Rift. The entire place is nothing but a dream created by the plane. Now, the events that you saw images of did indeed occur. Your world was once home to demonic penguins, advanced machinery, a race of immortals, numerous world-devastating cataclysms, and much more. But all evidence of these events is lost now.”
Tal prepared to ask about what to do next, but before he could get one word out, TIE was already responding. “And no, I can’t help you figure out what to do now. I can help you some, and I already did quite a bit for you, but if I get too directly involved, I’ll ruin the very thing we’re trying to do here. You have to be the ones to stop Bas. If I do it, I’ll just be countering a great power with an even greater power, which will just spiral the universe to a final clash of ultimate powers, from which it can never return. Look, you know that souls in this dimension don’t just vanish at death. Find out where her soul went, and question that if the living person is no longer available. But figure out her location yourselves.”
Discouraged, the group returned to Methosilang. “Well, what about magic? Xalem, can you use some magic that will help you learn where she might be.”
Xalem thought for a moment, and then replied. “It’s possible, but to be honest, most attempts to decipher the mysteries of the cosmos that way tend to be pretty vague.”
Suddenly, Danae had an idea. “There is a way, though. I know a spell that lets me contact greater planetary beings like gods directly! There is some risk involved, but it might be our best chance.”
The party agreed to this plan, but as they made their preparations, Xalem looked troubled. Contacting gods? Killing their enemies even when they’re supposed to take them alive? Perhaps it was time for him to return home, now that he can do so safely without help by that TIE abomination. Without saying a word to the others, he vanished, happy to return to the poor but simple streets of his hometown on Pyrodessy.
OOC Notes: The unexpected death of Tesserill changed the path the story took quite a bit. The next two adventures were designed to make up for this change in the storyline, as the players have to find another way to finally find Bas.
A few players and characters changed in the end their. Xalem’s player got tired of the character and asked to have a new one. And Theaven’s player had to leave the game for at least a couple of months. Rather than figure out what to do with Theaven during this period, we decided to let him leave the party and have the player introduce a new character when the time came.
Sorry for screaming, our ISP locked all our outgoing lines, we couldn't call or use Internet for some time now 
