Shilsen's Eberron SH (Finished - The Last Word : 9/20/15)
- Thread starter Rackhir
- Start date
This dragon was indeed very, very nasty, but it was no Xagy. If it had been that bad he would probably have had an outright revolt on his hands.
Xagy we were willing suck it up with because -
A) It was basically our own dammed fault - Shil did "underplay" his power to a certain extent ("It's only a CR 20"), but we had several chances to get out of there and came back none the less.
B) We did in fact get the information we needed from it. So even though it was a tactical defeat it was at least in a sense a strategic victory.
C) It really didn't cost us all that much. Nameless didn't loose any of his items. Gareth lost some nice armor and other minor things, but kept the Endless Blade and all of his enhancements from Mordain, which substitute for many of the items characters normally would have had. We were both a level down and delayed in catching up with the other characters, but that was mostly an irritation and not a game breaker.
Also, when we were discussing what to do before this, we made it very clear that we did NOT want to go up against another Xagy. However, we did in fact swear off tacking any other dragons we didn't have to fight after this.
shilsen
Adventurer
Not quite that bad, as Rackhir noted. And this is how the Angels deal with a CR 18 dragon that has a caster level of 23...
* * * * * * * * * *
Kallionaxis’ horrid wilting strikes the entire group, painfully draining the water from their bodies, wounding Nameless and Prine especially badly. Even worse affected are the phantom steeds some among them ride, none of which are strong enough to survive the attack. Korm and Nameless remain aloft as their magical mounts pop out of existence, one due to his magic and the other on the cloaker-like wings protruding from his back. Luna and Six, however, drop painfully to the ground thirty feet below.
Bad start. “I need healing,” Nameless gasps, knowing another attack like the first will kill him despite all his protections.
“Sure,” says Korm urgently, flying closer. “Just buy us a few seconds!”
“Done!” Nameless casts and a thick cloud of solid fog envelops the hovering dragon, drawing a now-muffled snarl of frustration from it. “That gives us a few seconds,” he says quickly. “Heal up and hit her hard when she emerges. No area effects, however – she has a ring of evasion.”
“Nice work,” says Korm, casting a heal to close the alienist’s wounds. The Gatekeeper looks around as his allies seek to quickly regroup. “Time to team up on it as it appears. Gareth – give me a ride?”
“Sure,” says Gareth having cast a healing spell and commanded the Endless Blade to transform into a lance. His stag flies forward and he grabs Korm, swinging the Gatekeeper up behind him.
Luna, having transformed into a tendriculos, moves towards Six, who is also engaged in healing himself. Then she looks up and waves a tentacle. “Look out!”
There is a faint popping sound as Kallionaxis reappears, about a hundred feet above the group, fangs gaping and claws ready to cast another spell. But this time her foes are ready, and before she can recover quickly enough from the teleportation to cast, they are on her.
Gareth and Honar charge her on their steeds. To his inordinate surprise, the paladin’s lance scrapes off her magically-enhanced scales, but it creates an important distraction. Honar, much better used to both aerial combat and fighting on a mount, strikes Kallionaxis’ open flank with tremendous force, ignoring the fire shield which burns him as he plunges his lance deep into her side. As the surprised dragon screams in agony, something strange appears above her, tentacles smashing and tearing. Though Khat’van’ga hits only once, it helps bracket her further between her enemies. A green beam from Nameless barely misses her, only the displacement on her sending the dimensional anchor off-target.
Suddenly surrounded and wounded, Kallionaxis roars in anger and pain, and then brings down another horrid wilting on those around her. While Gareth, Korm, Honar and the Horror are all hardy enough to resist the second attack, this time the two phantom stags succumb, disappearing beneath their riders.
Gareth groans as he drops out of the air to hit with tremendous force on the rocky ground below. Rolling over, the paladin growls angrily, “Let’s see if you can cast now!” and casts a silence. Unfortunately, in the heat of battle he focuses the spell on the dragon rather than in her general area, and a second later, everything goes silent around him. As he looks around, surprised, Nameless’ voice rasps in his mind – “Fool! She has a spell turning up!”
“Not for long,” replies Korm, also having heard the mental message. He strikes her with a greater dispel, which bounces off the spell turning and back to him, only for his magical ring to counter it.
“Good work,” transmits Nameless, who has been growing quickly frustrated with the group’s inability to seriously affect the dragon. “Now everyone hit her and stop her from getting away!”
“On it!” replies Luna and disappears. An instant later she reappears, right above Kallionaxis.
As the startled dragon looks up, Luna drops like a stone. A gigantic, green stone with a huge fanged mouth, which attempts to wrap huge tentacles around Kallionaxis. The dragon reflexively bites and scratches like an enormous, scaled cat, and somehow fights off the attempt, causing Luna to crash to the ground below.
But doing so distracts Kallionaxis, and Khat’van’ga again assaults her, causing little damage but keeping her busy. And spells from the Angels have greater effect, a reciprocal gyre from Nameless causing her to convulse in pain as her magic wards are turned back against their owner, moments before Korm’s spell dispels nearly half a dozen of them. Meanwhile Honar and Prine, both having quaffed potions of flight, rise towards it.
Deciding that she needs to regroup but not yet ready to flee, Kallionaxis rolls over in mid-air and darts away, swiftly building speed. She knows that the enemies cannot keep up with her natural flight ability, and only a few seconds would put her safely out of harm’s way, able to cast spells without being threatened in melee.
Damn! Nameless thinks, realizing that if Kallionaxis gets away they would be at a stalemate. We won’t be able to catch or stop her, and if she tries to hit us again, we can leave, but without having achieved anything. Even with many of her protections gone, the dragon is too well protected against most of his available spells. So Nameless takes one last gamble and casts a feeblemind.
Normally, a wizard would have no chance at affecting Kallionaxis’ will, even with the spell’s natural affinity for affecting arcane casters like the dragon. But Nameless is no ordinary mage, nor is the dragon’s intellect something that can amaze him after having encountered and survived contact with the daelkyr Antaratma and the Great Old One, Cyäegha. And most importantly, Korm’s spell has removed Kallionaxis’ spell turning, which would otherwise have protected her. The dragon shudders in mid-air and half-turns to look back, eyes wide with confusion and fear as Nameless’ spell crushes her intellect*, leaving her with the approximate mental capacity of a lizard.
A lizard with multiple magical protections, admittedly, which is why she is untouched by the fireball which follows an instant later. Even so, Kallionaxis is no longer smart enough to understand what just happened or to react intelligently, so she simply screams in fear and turns to flee at her fullest speed.
“Damn!” says Gareth, seeing the dragon accelerate away, “We’ll never catch her!”
Filled with exultation at the unexpected success of his spell, Nameless gives the paladin a pitying glance. “I’m not about to let her leave so easily. Luna, Korm – come with me!” As tendriculos and Gatekeeper hurry to him, the alienist dimension doors away with them, appearing beneath the fleeing dragon.
Luna promptly begins to cast a summoning spell, while Korm settles for a more direct way of bringing their quarry down, casting a spell** which brings a rain of boulders down on her.
Kallionaxis whimpers in fear as she twists and turns, with heavy stones bouncing painfully off her body and wings as she somehow stays in the air. And then she actually cries aloud as the huge air elemental summoned by Luna attempts to envelop her as a whirlwind. For a moment, the Angels think she is caught, but then she breaks free and darts away.
Nameless sighs. “This is becoming aggravating.” He calculates for a couple of seconds, noting the dragon’s speed and angle of movement as she races away, and then says, “Luna – we’ll try the dropping thing again.” He casts another dimension door, this time transporting the trio ahead of and above the dragon.
The alienist’s judgement is perfect, and before Kallionaxis can change direction, Luna lands directly on her back, driving her down to the rocky ground in a welter of broken bones and mangled muscles. The dragon, critically wounded, turns on the tendriculos. She roars weakly, breathing a blast of electricity which dissipates uselessly against the protective spell Luna had cast before entering the dragon’s territory. With an anguished scream, Kallionaxis bites and claws at the tendriculos as she tries to break free, an attempt which is as pathetic as it is futile. Luna’s bulk does not even move, and one of her giant tentacles wrap around Kallionaxis’ throat. She inexorably bends the dragon’s head backwards, so that Kallionaxis has a last, perfect view of Korm as he descends upon her blade-first.
* She would have made the save, but a little (overly) creative use of swashbuckling cards made her fail it. I wouldn’t normally have allowed it, but the PCs had done a good job surviving and beating her off, plus I didn’t want to have a second, probably boring, fight with a feebleminded dragon in her lair, so I allowed them to pull it off.
** Bombardment, from Spell Compendium.
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Dilandau Kale
Explorer
Thanks for all the info but I'm still not clear on how Luna looks in her shifter form, how she dresses ect (Admittedly she doesn't seem to spend much combat time in it.)
Oh and great update way to show the dragon.
Atlatl Jones
Explorer
That's pretty close, actually.
Here's the picture that was one of the inspirations for Korm.
That's basically him, but with the following big sword, made of meteoric iron, instead of the staff.
He's about as unkempt as that picture, if slightly less hairy. At any given time he's probably eating some sort of fast food, covered in mind-blastingly-spicy orcish sauce. (One of his ambitions is to retire and open a chain of orcish restaurants, specializing in heavily spiced stewed meats full of cream, ground nuts, and magical Fire Seeds. Naturally the name of the chain will be Korma Khan.)
Hey! He's an actual character and a walking mass of rules abuses.
A darkwood sword plus the Spikes spell is pretty ridiculous, indeed.
shilsen
Adventurer
Oh lord, that's horrible! Please tell me the character name wasn't chosen just so you could make that pun. Especially since that would mean you've been letting it marinate for a couple of years!
Hey! He's an actual character and a walking mass of rules abuses.
Good clarifier. In his current form, Korm isn't really much more abusive than any of the characters, or at least any of the characters besides Six, who in many ways gets the short end of the stick power-wise (partly because he's the only non-caster). I think Korm's personality and characterization, though fairly evident, has suffered a bit (both in the game and in my writeups) because you missed a lot of sessions, so I ended up running him, which means he doesn't feature as much unless it's in combat.
Yup. And I think there were a couple of other things in the original concept which synergized with that to make it even more effective, but I've blanked them out of my memory for sanity's sake.
We are trying to save your mind from the horrors of Luna. She makes goatse look hot
In shifter form (remember slightly hairy) the player views Luna as svelt and something that all men want. Unfortunately she is always in fatty animal form so only gnomes find her hot (shil has a sick mind and I swear is into dwarf porn)
We actually were planning on keeping the feebleminded Mind Flayer, Nameless zapped in the mournland, but it didn't work out.
Besides if we kept the dragon, then Luna would have been endlessly dragging home ANYTHING Nameless feebleminded (Daelkyr, politicians, her dates...)
