Joshua Randall
Legend
I recently returned from the D&D Experience 2010 convention, where I played in ADCP 2-1 The Paladin's Plague, the first Living Forgotten Realms (LFR) "battle interactive". Here's a description of what happened.
This is going to contain massive spoilers for the plot and mechanics of the event. If you think you'll ever play it and you don't want to be spoiled, don't read this thread.
Part 1
[sblock]Let's start with the official description: "The leaders of Elturel are concerned about the plagueland a few miles outside the city, which has recently begun spewing out even more twisted monstrosities than usual. The paladins have put out a call for adventuring companies to send their best and bravest explorers to venture to the border, if not into the plagueland itself. The expedition's charter is to bring back any information about the horrors within and what might be causing the increase in Spellplague activity. This is a very dangerous assignment, but also one that offers adventurers the chance to make a name for themselves by braving one of the most dangerous and least understood threats in all of Faerun -- an active plagueland."
Also, ADCP 2-1 The Paladin's Plague chronologically follows immediately after the events from the SPEC 2-1 adventures, which entail helping the paladins of Elturgard with various tasks in preparation for the mission into the plaguelands.
By the way, for those who don't know, Elturgard (the country) is a theocracy ruled by followers of Torm. Elturel (the capitol) is a large city with one very important and instantly noticeable feature: a "second sun" that was placed in the sky as a gift from the god Amaunator. The "second sun" is called Amaunator's Gift, The Companion, and other evocative names.
The event began with groups forming and reporting to the coordinators for distribution to tables. I was playing Sseklah, dragonborn paladin of Amaunator -- a very appropriate character for this adventure. Sseklah wasn't a member of an adventuring company, so I looked for another group to join. I found some people advertising for "H3 need 1" (Heroic tier, levels 7-10) and joined up with them. As it turned out, that group also consisted mainly of Amaunator worshippers, so it worked out well from both a practical and a role-playing point of view.
The existing group's adventuring company charter was: must worship Amaunator (if a Divine character), or at least pay respects to Him, and no more than one character of each race could be a member of the group. Fortunately, they didn't already have a dragonborn! We later decided upon a name; behold:
The Morninglord's Many
Mechanically, this group consisted of two strikers, two leaders, and two defenders. If I could have changed one thing, it would be to replace the warlock with a real striker, like a rogue or barbarian. Lynetta was a fine character, and the player knew what she was doing, but warlocks just don't output enough damage, nor do they impose the powerful status effects of a controller like a wizard or invoker. Come to think of it, a controller would've helped this group also, as you shall see.
Except for Sseklah at 10th level, all of the other characters were 7th or 8th level, so we decided to play the low-level version of the adventure. I think that was the correct decision. We were never truly in danger of anyone's PC dying, but we had a hard time chewing through the monster's hit points, and playing the high-level version only would have exacerbated that difficulty.
The adventure started with the PCs assembled in the Temple of Torm in Elturel. We were introduced to three important NPCs:
Before the poor young man could tell us anything more, he succumbed to his wounds. All of his orifices (eyes, nose, ears...) had been leaking blue fire, and as the paladin finished his warning, he convulsed in agony as a tentacle erupted from his chest and his skull imploded, before he crumbled into ash. [The "flavor text" in this adventure was top-notch. And icky.]
At this point, we started our first encounter. Before I desribe that, let me go over a few things.
There were two mechanical elements of the battle interactive that weren't well explained. (At least, our DM didn't do a good job explaining them to us.) First, reinforcements. Apparently, if you thought your group was bad-ass enough, you could tell the DM you wanted the monsters to have reinforcements. I think you were supposed to decide upon this before the encounter began. I'm unclear how this is any different than simply choosing to play the high-level version of your level band.
Second, offering and receiving help. If your table mopped up the monsters easily, you could offer help to another table; or conversely, if your table was having trouble, you could request help. What would happen is that the table requesting help would decide how many monsters they wanted to disappear from their table and appear at the table offering help; the monsters would be appropriately leveled to the table where they appeared. For example, if an H3 table requested help and a P2 table took them up on it, then the monsters that appeared at the P2 table would be the (much tougher) P2 versions of those monsters, not the H3 versions.
There were a couple of other wrinkles. Each encounter was strictly timed, at 50 minutes. At the end of that time, the DM of each table would determine what degree of success the PCs at his table had achieved: failure, partial success, or total success. Those results (possibly plus other information) were reported to the event coordinators, who aggregated the results from all the tables to determine how the adventure would progress. You'll see examples of this effect in my write-up.
Encounter 1
Our goal was to rescue as many citizens as possible from the rampaging hordes of plaguechanged monsters.
Mechanically, this meant moving the citizens across the map to the Temple of Torm. As a minor action, a PC could attempt a skill check (Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, or whatever you thought up) to get one or more citizens to take a move action (shift, move their speed, run, and so forth). The difficulty of the skill check depended upon how close the PC was to the citizens and how many citizens the PC was trying to influence. PCs could also use forced movement, teleportation, or the like to move the citizens around. However, left to their own devices, the citizens would only stand in place and cower.
The citizens were "mega-minions": they could take two hits before being killed. Initially, 6 citizens were visible on the map. The monsters consisted of 4-5 artillery minions, 4-5 strikers, and 2-3 brutes.
The encounter began with the artillery monsters winning initiative. Each of them blasted a citizen, bloodying several. Surprisingly, Sseklah was the next to react. He rushed forward from the temple's entrance, double-moving 10 squares into a clearing between several buildings, where he was near all of the wounded citizens. Sseklah then spent an Action Point to use Invigorating Smite on a nearby striker monster, hitting it and healing all of the wounded citizens ("bloodied allies within 5 squares"). [I was pleased with this action, as it was both heroic and tactically advantageous.]
The way the map was configured, it was possible for the PCs to form a safe corridor in the middle for the citizens to use. We employed several different dazing effects to allow citizens to move past monsters without provoking Opportunity Attacks. Unfortunately, we ignored the artillery minions for too long, and they managed to kill one of the citizens before we could do anything about it. [A controller PC would have been helpful to blast away multiple minions in a single action. As it was, we had to kill them one by one.]
In addition to the 6 visible citizens, there were other citizens hiding in various buildings. At some point I realized that although the PCs were in no particular danger, we just weren't killing the monsters fast enough to save all the citizens. So, our table requested help, and gave away a striker monster and one artillery minion. That was kind of embarrassing, but necessary. In the end, we managed to save 11 of 12 citizens, which was considered a success.
----------
In between each encounter, the organizer would narrate what was happening in the overall story. We learned that although we collectively had saved many citizens in the immediate vicinity of the Temple of Torm, the southern fifth of Elturel had been completely destroyed by the spellplague attack, with over 4,000 dead. [Given the population of the city, this was a catastrophic loss.]
----------
Encounter 2
We were charged with the mission of heading into the destroyed southern section to see what was going on, and to rescue anyone if possible.
Along the way, we noticed the spellplague had warped the city itself, fusing buildings and people together into grotesque amalgams. Pockets of terrain and elemental energy from elsewhere had been interspersed within the city.
We encountered a patrol made up of 3-4 former paladins and guardsmen who had been changed by the spellplague into terrible monsters. This was on one end of a very large map, with the southern wall of the city at the other end. Atop that wall were 3 plaguechanged elf archers who peppered us with arrows throughout the fight. There were some areas of fog and trees in between us and the archers, where several PCs sought cover.
Defeating the ground-based enemies wasn't too difficult, but when we tried to spare a guardsman's life by knocking him unconscious instead of killing him, it turned out that he was too far gone. As he dropped to the ground, his body exploded with blue fire, blasting everyone nearby for automatic damage (no attack roll) and knocking us back. We eventually figured out (Arcana and Insight checks) that only some of the corrupted people could be saved; the others had to be killed -- not knocked unconscious -- to prevent them from exploding when they lost consciousness.
After taking care of the ground pounders, we ran across the map to the wall. Fortunately, there were some ropes dangling down that we could climb. Star simply fey stepped to the top. Lynetta used a pull effect to drag a couple of the archers down, but they made their saves to fall prone at the edge of the wall. Eventually, we beat them into submission, enduring some pain from another one that exploded when we misjudged whether he was capable of being saved. Still, we succeeded in our mission.
----------
Looking out over the wall, we saw a strange and terrible sight. Where the southern gates of Elturel had once stood was now a massive crater filled with chaotic spellplague energy. The great army that had been camped outside the walls, ready to assault the plagueland, was completely obliterated. Worst of all, dozens upon dozens of pyramid-shaped monoliths floated above the ground, blue fire streaming among them. The line of monoliths stretched all the way to the plagueland (a few miles away), and it appeared that those monoliths had been used to transmit the energy that had blasted the city.
Clearly, we couldn't give them time to charge up for another such attack.
----------
At this point, Tirangal (the mage who was "unusually interested" in the plagueland) proposed a ritual that could transform The Companion into a weapon against the spellplague. If successful, the ritual would cause The Companion to lose its anti-undead properties, but Tirangal considered that acceptable.
Sseklah considered it totally unacceptable. In his view, tampering with a holy gift from Amaunator was blasphemy. Although the ritual might very well work and make it easier for us to beat back the plaguechanged monsters, in Sseklah's views, the ends do not justify the means used to achieve them. He voted against casting this ritual.
At our table, only Brother Solinus also voted no. Lynetta was more than willing to see this blasphemous ritual cast (what can you expect from a tiefling warlock?). Ziz was a pragmatist and thought we needed all the help we could get. Shockingly, Silvana also voted in favor of the ritual. [I seriously questioned the player about whether her PC would do that, but she said yes.] Star cast the deciding vote... in favor. [If there had been a tie, my vote would have counted as the tiebreaker, because the players had previously chosen me as "table leader".]
During the voting, a couple of players stood up to make impassioned speeches either for or against the ritual. I thought the player of the Spellscarred PC, who argued against the ritual, made a particularly compelling case: he said that he was already afflicted by the spellplague and knew all too well its dangers; he didn't want anything to do with altering The Companion to attune it against the spellplague, for fear of what might happen.
In addition to voting for or against the ritual, each PC also had to decide how many healing surges he would semi-permanently give up to fuel the ritual in the event it was cast. At our table, most characters chipped in one or two surges. But Star said he would contribute none! So not only did he vote in favor of a dangerous ritual, he refused to give any of his personal power to enable it.
With a sigh, Sseklah said that if this awful ritual was to be cast, it had better work: he offered four surges towards its success. [Although Sseklah does have 12 surges, he goes through them rapidly, using them for lay on hands and for virtue (paladin utility 2, spend a surge to gain temporary hit points equal to your healing surge value). Going down to 8 surges would have cramped his style, a lot.]
As it turned out, the ritual was voted down, so no one had to give up any surges. Sseklah was greatly relieved.
----------
Encounter 3
We set out to destroy as many monoliths as possible.
The map consisted of a monolith in the middle, surrounded by areas of rubble (difficult terrain). The monoliths continuously spewed out "plague motes", which were minion creatures that dealt more damage when there were multiples of them adjacent to their target. There were also a bunch of undead wandering around: zombies (melee) and skeletons (ranged).
The two clerics in our group used turn undead to lethal effect. Ziz did a great job drawing many enemies to him and keeping them there. The monolith itself was the toughest adversary: not only could it generate more plague motes, it could react to being struck by blasting its attacker (damage plus push).
Eventually Sseklah managed to divine challenge the monolith, which deterred it from reacting to anyone else's attacks (as it would then take radiant damage from the challenge). Star, Sseklah, and Ziz all pounded on the monolith, while Brother Solinus provided healing and Lynetta and Silvana used skill checks (Arcana and Religion) to disable the monolith.
By this fight, our group started to find its rhythm. [And everyone's character started to unload daily powers.] We polished off the first monolith and allowed for reinforcements. This meant fighting another monolith plus some of its guardians. We killed them, too. Total success!
----------
In all, the PCs collectively destroyed 28 monoliths. But there were 60 of the foul things, and we didn't destroy enough of them.
The remaining monoliths unfolded, revealing that inside each one were the twisted bodies of pilgrims who had foolishly journeyed to the plaguelands seeking the blessings of the Order of Blue Fire. Instead, their bodies and souls had been corrupted to fuel the monoliths. Those terrible creations now used the power of the spellplague to create a massive wall of chaotic energy, blocking our way into the forward.
Whatever intelligence was behind this attack had thwarted our progress, and we feared that it would not be long before another pulse of destruction turned all of Elturgard into an extension of the plaguelands. Weary and defeated, we returned to the city to rest and await the dawn.
[When the organizers announced that we had failed to destroy enough monoliths, a murmur of disbelief and disappointment swept over the room. There was a real sense of apprehension about what would happen next.][/sblock]
This is going to contain massive spoilers for the plot and mechanics of the event. If you think you'll ever play it and you don't want to be spoiled, don't read this thread.
Part 1
[sblock]Let's start with the official description: "The leaders of Elturel are concerned about the plagueland a few miles outside the city, which has recently begun spewing out even more twisted monstrosities than usual. The paladins have put out a call for adventuring companies to send their best and bravest explorers to venture to the border, if not into the plagueland itself. The expedition's charter is to bring back any information about the horrors within and what might be causing the increase in Spellplague activity. This is a very dangerous assignment, but also one that offers adventurers the chance to make a name for themselves by braving one of the most dangerous and least understood threats in all of Faerun -- an active plagueland."
Also, ADCP 2-1 The Paladin's Plague chronologically follows immediately after the events from the SPEC 2-1 adventures, which entail helping the paladins of Elturgard with various tasks in preparation for the mission into the plaguelands.
By the way, for those who don't know, Elturgard (the country) is a theocracy ruled by followers of Torm. Elturel (the capitol) is a large city with one very important and instantly noticeable feature: a "second sun" that was placed in the sky as a gift from the god Amaunator. The "second sun" is called Amaunator's Gift, The Companion, and other evocative names.
The event began with groups forming and reporting to the coordinators for distribution to tables. I was playing Sseklah, dragonborn paladin of Amaunator -- a very appropriate character for this adventure. Sseklah wasn't a member of an adventuring company, so I looked for another group to join. I found some people advertising for "H3 need 1" (Heroic tier, levels 7-10) and joined up with them. As it turned out, that group also consisted mainly of Amaunator worshippers, so it worked out well from both a practical and a role-playing point of view.
The existing group's adventuring company charter was: must worship Amaunator (if a Divine character), or at least pay respects to Him, and no more than one character of each race could be a member of the group. Fortunately, they didn't already have a dragonborn! We later decided upon a name; behold:
The Morninglord's Many
- Brother Solinus, human cleric of Amaunator
- Lynetta, tiefling warlock
- Star, eladrin ranger
- Silvana, elf cleric of Amaunator
- Ziz, warforged fighter
- Sseklah, dragonborn paladin of Amaunator (me)
Mechanically, this group consisted of two strikers, two leaders, and two defenders. If I could have changed one thing, it would be to replace the warlock with a real striker, like a rogue or barbarian. Lynetta was a fine character, and the player knew what she was doing, but warlocks just don't output enough damage, nor do they impose the powerful status effects of a controller like a wizard or invoker. Come to think of it, a controller would've helped this group also, as you shall see.
Except for Sseklah at 10th level, all of the other characters were 7th or 8th level, so we decided to play the low-level version of the adventure. I think that was the correct decision. We were never truly in danger of anyone's PC dying, but we had a hard time chewing through the monster's hit points, and playing the high-level version only would have exacerbated that difficulty.
The adventure started with the PCs assembled in the Temple of Torm in Elturel. We were introduced to three important NPCs:
- The High Observer of Torm, the head priest. (I didn't write down the NPC's actual name.)
- Knight Commander Vessen, leader of the paladins of Torm.
- Tirangal, a powerful mage of some sort, who "takes an unusual interest in the Plagueland", but is one of the Good Guys.
Before the poor young man could tell us anything more, he succumbed to his wounds. All of his orifices (eyes, nose, ears...) had been leaking blue fire, and as the paladin finished his warning, he convulsed in agony as a tentacle erupted from his chest and his skull imploded, before he crumbled into ash. [The "flavor text" in this adventure was top-notch. And icky.]
At this point, we started our first encounter. Before I desribe that, let me go over a few things.
There were two mechanical elements of the battle interactive that weren't well explained. (At least, our DM didn't do a good job explaining them to us.) First, reinforcements. Apparently, if you thought your group was bad-ass enough, you could tell the DM you wanted the monsters to have reinforcements. I think you were supposed to decide upon this before the encounter began. I'm unclear how this is any different than simply choosing to play the high-level version of your level band.
Second, offering and receiving help. If your table mopped up the monsters easily, you could offer help to another table; or conversely, if your table was having trouble, you could request help. What would happen is that the table requesting help would decide how many monsters they wanted to disappear from their table and appear at the table offering help; the monsters would be appropriately leveled to the table where they appeared. For example, if an H3 table requested help and a P2 table took them up on it, then the monsters that appeared at the P2 table would be the (much tougher) P2 versions of those monsters, not the H3 versions.
There were a couple of other wrinkles. Each encounter was strictly timed, at 50 minutes. At the end of that time, the DM of each table would determine what degree of success the PCs at his table had achieved: failure, partial success, or total success. Those results (possibly plus other information) were reported to the event coordinators, who aggregated the results from all the tables to determine how the adventure would progress. You'll see examples of this effect in my write-up.
Encounter 1
Our goal was to rescue as many citizens as possible from the rampaging hordes of plaguechanged monsters.
Mechanically, this meant moving the citizens across the map to the Temple of Torm. As a minor action, a PC could attempt a skill check (Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, or whatever you thought up) to get one or more citizens to take a move action (shift, move their speed, run, and so forth). The difficulty of the skill check depended upon how close the PC was to the citizens and how many citizens the PC was trying to influence. PCs could also use forced movement, teleportation, or the like to move the citizens around. However, left to their own devices, the citizens would only stand in place and cower.
The citizens were "mega-minions": they could take two hits before being killed. Initially, 6 citizens were visible on the map. The monsters consisted of 4-5 artillery minions, 4-5 strikers, and 2-3 brutes.
The encounter began with the artillery monsters winning initiative. Each of them blasted a citizen, bloodying several. Surprisingly, Sseklah was the next to react. He rushed forward from the temple's entrance, double-moving 10 squares into a clearing between several buildings, where he was near all of the wounded citizens. Sseklah then spent an Action Point to use Invigorating Smite on a nearby striker monster, hitting it and healing all of the wounded citizens ("bloodied allies within 5 squares"). [I was pleased with this action, as it was both heroic and tactically advantageous.]
The way the map was configured, it was possible for the PCs to form a safe corridor in the middle for the citizens to use. We employed several different dazing effects to allow citizens to move past monsters without provoking Opportunity Attacks. Unfortunately, we ignored the artillery minions for too long, and they managed to kill one of the citizens before we could do anything about it. [A controller PC would have been helpful to blast away multiple minions in a single action. As it was, we had to kill them one by one.]
In addition to the 6 visible citizens, there were other citizens hiding in various buildings. At some point I realized that although the PCs were in no particular danger, we just weren't killing the monsters fast enough to save all the citizens. So, our table requested help, and gave away a striker monster and one artillery minion. That was kind of embarrassing, but necessary. In the end, we managed to save 11 of 12 citizens, which was considered a success.
----------
In between each encounter, the organizer would narrate what was happening in the overall story. We learned that although we collectively had saved many citizens in the immediate vicinity of the Temple of Torm, the southern fifth of Elturel had been completely destroyed by the spellplague attack, with over 4,000 dead. [Given the population of the city, this was a catastrophic loss.]
----------
Encounter 2
We were charged with the mission of heading into the destroyed southern section to see what was going on, and to rescue anyone if possible.
Along the way, we noticed the spellplague had warped the city itself, fusing buildings and people together into grotesque amalgams. Pockets of terrain and elemental energy from elsewhere had been interspersed within the city.
We encountered a patrol made up of 3-4 former paladins and guardsmen who had been changed by the spellplague into terrible monsters. This was on one end of a very large map, with the southern wall of the city at the other end. Atop that wall were 3 plaguechanged elf archers who peppered us with arrows throughout the fight. There were some areas of fog and trees in between us and the archers, where several PCs sought cover.
Defeating the ground-based enemies wasn't too difficult, but when we tried to spare a guardsman's life by knocking him unconscious instead of killing him, it turned out that he was too far gone. As he dropped to the ground, his body exploded with blue fire, blasting everyone nearby for automatic damage (no attack roll) and knocking us back. We eventually figured out (Arcana and Insight checks) that only some of the corrupted people could be saved; the others had to be killed -- not knocked unconscious -- to prevent them from exploding when they lost consciousness.
After taking care of the ground pounders, we ran across the map to the wall. Fortunately, there were some ropes dangling down that we could climb. Star simply fey stepped to the top. Lynetta used a pull effect to drag a couple of the archers down, but they made their saves to fall prone at the edge of the wall. Eventually, we beat them into submission, enduring some pain from another one that exploded when we misjudged whether he was capable of being saved. Still, we succeeded in our mission.
----------
Looking out over the wall, we saw a strange and terrible sight. Where the southern gates of Elturel had once stood was now a massive crater filled with chaotic spellplague energy. The great army that had been camped outside the walls, ready to assault the plagueland, was completely obliterated. Worst of all, dozens upon dozens of pyramid-shaped monoliths floated above the ground, blue fire streaming among them. The line of monoliths stretched all the way to the plagueland (a few miles away), and it appeared that those monoliths had been used to transmit the energy that had blasted the city.
Clearly, we couldn't give them time to charge up for another such attack.
----------
At this point, Tirangal (the mage who was "unusually interested" in the plagueland) proposed a ritual that could transform The Companion into a weapon against the spellplague. If successful, the ritual would cause The Companion to lose its anti-undead properties, but Tirangal considered that acceptable.
Sseklah considered it totally unacceptable. In his view, tampering with a holy gift from Amaunator was blasphemy. Although the ritual might very well work and make it easier for us to beat back the plaguechanged monsters, in Sseklah's views, the ends do not justify the means used to achieve them. He voted against casting this ritual.
At our table, only Brother Solinus also voted no. Lynetta was more than willing to see this blasphemous ritual cast (what can you expect from a tiefling warlock?). Ziz was a pragmatist and thought we needed all the help we could get. Shockingly, Silvana also voted in favor of the ritual. [I seriously questioned the player about whether her PC would do that, but she said yes.] Star cast the deciding vote... in favor. [If there had been a tie, my vote would have counted as the tiebreaker, because the players had previously chosen me as "table leader".]
During the voting, a couple of players stood up to make impassioned speeches either for or against the ritual. I thought the player of the Spellscarred PC, who argued against the ritual, made a particularly compelling case: he said that he was already afflicted by the spellplague and knew all too well its dangers; he didn't want anything to do with altering The Companion to attune it against the spellplague, for fear of what might happen.
In addition to voting for or against the ritual, each PC also had to decide how many healing surges he would semi-permanently give up to fuel the ritual in the event it was cast. At our table, most characters chipped in one or two surges. But Star said he would contribute none! So not only did he vote in favor of a dangerous ritual, he refused to give any of his personal power to enable it.
With a sigh, Sseklah said that if this awful ritual was to be cast, it had better work: he offered four surges towards its success. [Although Sseklah does have 12 surges, he goes through them rapidly, using them for lay on hands and for virtue (paladin utility 2, spend a surge to gain temporary hit points equal to your healing surge value). Going down to 8 surges would have cramped his style, a lot.]
As it turned out, the ritual was voted down, so no one had to give up any surges. Sseklah was greatly relieved.
----------
Encounter 3
We set out to destroy as many monoliths as possible.
The map consisted of a monolith in the middle, surrounded by areas of rubble (difficult terrain). The monoliths continuously spewed out "plague motes", which were minion creatures that dealt more damage when there were multiples of them adjacent to their target. There were also a bunch of undead wandering around: zombies (melee) and skeletons (ranged).
The two clerics in our group used turn undead to lethal effect. Ziz did a great job drawing many enemies to him and keeping them there. The monolith itself was the toughest adversary: not only could it generate more plague motes, it could react to being struck by blasting its attacker (damage plus push).
Eventually Sseklah managed to divine challenge the monolith, which deterred it from reacting to anyone else's attacks (as it would then take radiant damage from the challenge). Star, Sseklah, and Ziz all pounded on the monolith, while Brother Solinus provided healing and Lynetta and Silvana used skill checks (Arcana and Religion) to disable the monolith.
By this fight, our group started to find its rhythm. [And everyone's character started to unload daily powers.] We polished off the first monolith and allowed for reinforcements. This meant fighting another monolith plus some of its guardians. We killed them, too. Total success!
----------
In all, the PCs collectively destroyed 28 monoliths. But there were 60 of the foul things, and we didn't destroy enough of them.
The remaining monoliths unfolded, revealing that inside each one were the twisted bodies of pilgrims who had foolishly journeyed to the plaguelands seeking the blessings of the Order of Blue Fire. Instead, their bodies and souls had been corrupted to fuel the monoliths. Those terrible creations now used the power of the spellplague to create a massive wall of chaotic energy, blocking our way into the forward.
Whatever intelligence was behind this attack had thwarted our progress, and we feared that it would not be long before another pulse of destruction turned all of Elturgard into an extension of the plaguelands. Weary and defeated, we returned to the city to rest and await the dawn.
[When the organizers announced that we had failed to destroy enough monoliths, a murmur of disbelief and disappointment swept over the room. There was a real sense of apprehension about what would happen next.][/sblock]
