ADVENTURE 90: ANSWER TO A PRAYER
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NPC Roster:
Game Session Date: 8 February 2025
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<Incoming!> announced the telepathic voice of Petey, Zander Quilson's pseudodragon familiar, directly into the minds of the six visitors from the continent of Armaturia, and Beetle Darkcloud, their local halfling guide escorting them across Talonia to reach the outskirts of the Forbidden Lands. They were approaching the drow city of Bu'loloth, whose buildings could just barely be seen in the distance.
Wakuren, sitting in the "attic" head of the groups' wood colossus, had placed it more or less on autopilot, having it follow behind the others astride their bonehead mounts. His attention had been focused directly behind the wood colossus, peeking through the ruby he'd fastened to the back of the colossus' "head" through the magical necklace he wore. But upon the pseudodragon's warning, he snapped back to his own vision and saw a floating form headed directly for him. Instinctively, he raised his shield of Cal to ward off the assumed attack, but then his mind caught up to what his eyes had seen, and he realized this was an air mephit - one of a group of creatures often used as messengers between the various planes. Before any of the others had noticed the mephit, flitting around 60 feet in the air after having seemingly popped into existence in mid-air, Wakuren had the presence of mind to lower his shield and address it. "May I help you?" he asked it pleasantly.
"Are you Wakuren?" it asked, and upon getting confirmation that the half-orc was the intended recipient of its message, he passed on the details he had been asked to give to Wakuren. "The city ahead, Bu'loloth, has several powerful wizards among its numbers, six of whom have been summoning djinn into their service. As genies gain prestige by the mortals they have served, each of the six wizards' petitions were answered by a djinni eager to serve and make a name for herself. However, the wizards had all prepared genie traps, forcing the djinn to serve them for one year and one day. If this had not been bad enough, each mage used his djinni as a servant for a full year – and then, one day before their joint servitude was to have been up, each gave his genie trap to another of the wizards, thus switching 'ownership' of the enslaved djinni to the new master, and allowing their servitude to be extended for another year and a day. The djinni's father, a noble djinn, has asked for mortal intercession on behalf of his six daughters. As you are the closest devotee to Cal, God of the Air, to the city of Bu'loloth, this plea for intercession falls to you. Will you become the answer to the noble djinni's prayer and free his daughters from their servitude?"
Wakuren didn't even need to think about it. "Of course," he agreed instantly.
"I will inform him you have agreed to intercede," the air mephit announced. "In the meantime, here is a list of the six daughters and the masters they are currently being forced to serve." The air mephit passed over a sheet of parchment with a dozen names on them, six rows of two. Then, with a pop of displaced air, it disappeared from the Mortal Plane entirely.
Wakuren stopped the wood colossus far out of the city and had it assume its building form. Then, summoning Nimbus, he rode with the others to the city of Bu'loloth, where they hit the inns and taverns and let Xandro work his magic, talking to the locals and finding out what he could about the six wizards on the list. Within several hours, he'd gotten enough information about them he could probably identify them by their general descriptions and knew where each one lived. As it turned out, two of them were twins who lived together, so there were five buildings in all in which they'd need to rescue the djinn slaves.
"There's two ways we can tackle this," pointed out Thurloe. "Hit each building in turn, where we'll have the numerical advantage each time, or split up and hit each one simultaneously."
"Splitting up will make sure none of them has a chance to warn the others," Xandro observed.
"Yes, but what if one of us gets into trouble, and gets overpowered?" Alewyth asked. "We don't have any way of keeping in contact with each other except through Petey's telepathy, and he can't keep us all within range across the entire city." Eventually, they others saw the logic in the dwarf's assessment and they opted to hit the wizards' dwellings one by one.
"Which one first?" asked Zander.
"The twins," decided Wakuren, looking at his list. "That way we free two djinn at once - a good start to what could be a long day." According to the list provided by the air mephit, the drow wizards - Pendrizz and Haelox - had enslaved two djinn named Zayna and Khalilah. That decided, the group headed over to the stone keep shared by the two drow spellcasters, while Beetle placed their bonehead mounts in stables for the duration.
"That's it ahead," said Xandro, recognizing it from the description he'd gotten from the tavern folk to which he'd been chatting earlier that afternoon.
"Prep spells," suggested Thurloe, casting a protection from evil spell upon himself. Wakuren cast an air walk spell and considered himself ready.
"So, what's the plan?" asked Zander.
Thurloe thought about it a moment. "Let's see if we can get them out of their keep, where they'll have the home advantage," he suggested. "How about this: we hire them to come look at these weird runes we can't decipher on the wood colossus outside town?"
"And then what?" asked Alewyth. "Split up and have some take on the wizards while the others go inside and free the genies? I thought we were sticking with safety in numbers? After all, we don't know how powerful any of these wizards really are."
"I'll be on the 'sneak inside and rescue the genies' team," offered Xandro, activating his ring of invisibility and fading from view.
"Well, let's see if we can even get them to come outside," suggested Thurloe, heading over to the front door. Wakuren went with him, as did Xandro (although nobody could see that he did; he moved around the corner from the front door in case either of their targets had a means by which to see invisible objects - it would hurt their credibility as innocent bystanders hiring spellcasters to read runes if they had an invisible compatriot with his rapier out and ready for business, as Xandro had Deathwhisper). The spellsword rapped loudly on the door three times with his knuckles, while Alewyth, Robin, and Zander (and Petey) stayed across the street, doing their best to look like innocent passersby.
"Nobody's coming," said Wakuren after half a minute had passed. "Maybe nobody's home."
"Lemme try again," suggested Thurloe, rapping again, even louder this time. Wakuren was about to repeat his observation when the door was whipped open, and there stood a white-haired drow wearing nothing but a bathrobe - even his feet were bare. "What do you want?" he snarled, obviously upset at having been disturbed. Belatedly, Thurloe recalled that most drow disliked bright lights and usually spent the sunniest part of the day asleep, doing the majority of their business at night.
"We were wondering if we might hire you to come look at some arcane runes we discovered on a wood colossus just outside--" the spellsword began, but the wizard snarled, "Not interested!" and slammed the door in his face. Wakuren had planned to stick his foot in the way to prevent the door from closing but was just a bit too slow.
"Friendly sort," he observed. "Now what?"
"I'm not done with him yet," promised Thurloe, banging on the door again, even harder.
The door opened up again and the drow, Pendrizz, yelled, "WHAT?" But Wakuren was through playing around; realizing this was a slaver (and already picking up flares of evil emanating from his aura), he slammed into the robed spellcaster with his shield of Cal, figuring the drow should be glad he'd recently had it upgraded to become a merciful weapon, channeling the kinetic energy of the blow into a shock that would leave the victim knocked unconscious rather than battered to a pulp - as desired by the wielder. He decided he'd go easy on the wizard at first; they might want to question him about the other five in their little band of djinn slavers.
The blow sent Pendrizz stumbling backwards into the keep and Wakuren stepped inside, so the door couldn't be slammed in their faces again. Then Thurloe stepped up to the doorway, activating his ring of silent spells as he did so, blanketing the area all around him in absolute silence. That would prevent him and Wakuren from casting any spells, but it should also prevent Pendrizz from doing the same - or calling out for help. But from across the street, Zander saw the commotion and cast a feeblemind spell at the drow wizard, hoping to take him out of the fight. No such luck; Pendrizz was able to shrug off the spell's effects, leaving his faculties intact.
Petey flew across the street over to the keep, figuring he'd be needed to pass on messages between the heroes when they couldn't speak aloud in the area of magical silence. But Pendrizz had figured out what had happened and immediately disengaged, fleeing not back to his own bedroom but to that of his twin brother Haelox. He opened the door and slammed it shut behind, idly noting he could hear the sound the door slamming - so he was out of the area of effect of the silence spell. Good! He cast a quick mage armor spell upon himself. Haelox began to complain about the interruption - he was in bed with Khalilah - but at hearing the keep was under attack by strangers, he leapt out of bed and grabbed up a bathrobe of his own. While he wrapped it around himself and discussed options with his twin, Khalilah wondered if she dare dream about a possible rescue from her situation.
Xandro pushed past Thurloe and entered the keep, stepping upon the large rug in front of the doorway. It rippled beneath him and tried to wrap him up, but the nimble rogue leapt to the side in time. He ran toward the door of Haelox's room, and a suit of heavy plate armor standing by the doorway came to sudden life and moved in his direction - it couldn't see the invisible rogue, but it could feel vibrations through the floor that someone was approaching. Its hand dropped to the hilt of its sword, ready to attack as soon as it saw a target within range.
Having seen the animated carpet from outside as she approached the keep, Alewyth activated her butterfly brooch and flew over the carpet of smothering. Directly across from the front door was a kitchen area; she dropped to the floor there and looked around. Then she cast a silence spell of her own, centered on her dwarven warhammer Sjondra, and readied it for battle. Robin opted to stay outside the keep, but she crossed the street and pulled the lute from her back, ready to start playing the song of inspirational courage once it would do her friends any good - no use trying to urge them on to greater efforts when they stood within fields of magical silence.
Still air walking, Wakuren charged towards the dread guard that had somehow sensed Xandro's presence. He slammed his shield of Cal into the animated construct, having shut off the merciful aspect of his shield - which wouldn't have done much against an animated suit of armor in any case. The powerful blow was still within the field of magical silence so there was no sound, but the entire suit of armor shook under the blow and several pieces of armor came slightly loose, looking like they were ready to fall off from the rest of the armor. It tried awkwardly to retaliate against Wakuren, while the second dread guard on the other side of the entry hall animated and went after Alewyth, but neither was able to make contact with their intended targets.
Thurloe entered the keep, figuring he could escape the animated rug with the same ease with which Xandro had managed the task, but here his overconfidence got the better of him. The ends of the rug folded up over him, wrapping him up like a sausage link in a pancake - only this pancake was continuously getting tighter, constricting the sausage within until Thurloe found it difficult to breathe. Zander crossed the street and entered the keep, stepping to the side of the rug wrapped around Thurloe; fortunately for the elf, it seemed as if the rug could only deal with one foe at a time.
Xandro put an ear to Haelox's door, after noticing he was outside the area of magical silence. He tried to pick up anything from inside the bedroom, but whatever Pendrizz was doing in there, he was doing it quietly. The reason for this became apparent when Alewyth slammed the dread guard out of the way, opened the door to Pendrizz's bedroom, and found the twin wizards had dimension doored over from Haelox's bedroom to Pendrizz's. Both djinni were there, cowering against the bed, while the wizards had hands making somatic gestures in an effort to begin spellcasting in the silent bedroom. Alewyth held her hands up in a "Let's not do anything hasty here" gesture, thinking frantically to Petey to warn the others that both wizards were now in this room. Wakuren had by this time made short work of the dread guard he'd been fighting, and he opened Haelox's door to find the room empty. The other dread guard made an ineffectual swipe at Alewyth, but she easily dodged the blade.
Pendrizz fled to a door along the back side of the room, stepping into a bathroom between the twins' bedrooms, where - upon finding himself once again outside the area of magical silence - he used the opportunity to cast a chain lightning spell at Alewyth. Haelox backed up as far as he could from the dwarf and followed suit, casting a chain lightning spell of his own at the frazzled dwarf once he was able to hear things again. Zayna fled from the bed, running over to the corner by Alewyth, as far away from the twins as she could get without entering the foyer, where the dread guard and animated rug still threatened.
Thurloe, in the meantime, tired of being squeezed to death, used his anklet of translocation to dimension door 10 feet away, sprawled out on the floor by the kitchen. Petey flew into the kitchen, landing on the table, and Zander approached him, casting a separate mage armor upon his familiar so the pseudodragon would benefit from its protection even if the two were separated. Before he did anything else, the spellsword cast a shield spell upon himself from the wand on his belt.
Xandro stepped into Haelox's empty room, looking around for enemies, while in the other bedroom, Alewyth charged Pendrizz, slamming him with Sjondra (and, quite incidentally, engulfing the twins back into magical silence). Pendrizz crumpled from the hammer-blow, collapsing into an unconscious heap upon the bathroom floor. Wakuren opened the bathroom door from Haelox's room, seeing the drow wizard lying insensate on the floor - as well as Khalilah, who had fled to the bathroom through the open doorway from Pendrizz's bedroom. She gasped in surprise at seeing a half-orc there, but Wakuren calmed her by saying her father had sent them to rescue her and her sisters. After that, the djinn didn't care how fearsome-looking her potential rescuer might be; she was willing to do anything she could to help him. "Destroy the genie prison!" she cried. "It's in a box beneath the bed!" But Wakuren ignored her for the moment, rushing into Pendrizz's bedroom and sending Haelox staggering in a heap on the bed with a single blow from the shield of Cal - without the benefit of the merciful property being in effect. By the angle of the drow's neck on the bed, it was quite obvious he was dead.
Undeterred, the dread guard entered the bedroom and continued its assault upon Alewyth. The dwarf took it apart with a series of blows from Sjondra. Then she and Thurloe deactivated their individual silence spells and they explained the situation to the djinn. Haelox's genie prison was a topaz inscribed with arcane glyphs, while Pendrizz had crafted his from a large, rune-covered diamond. But Sjondra was able to destroy them both, and the two genies were now no longer beholden to their erstwhile masters - especially after Xandro slit the throat of the unconscious Pendrizz in the bathroom.
"We're going to go free your sisters," Wakuren told the djinn. "We'll send them here to you as we do so - we'll make this our meeting-place for now."
Ever practical, Thurloe added, "In the meantime, while we're gone, you two could gather together anything of value the wizard twins had between them - we'll be more than happy to take that off their hands upon our return!" Khalilah and Zayna hugged each other and waved farewell to the adventurers, eager for their four other sisters to share their freedom.
"Who's next?" Xandro asked
"Who's closest?" Alewyth countered. Xandro mentally consulted the mental map he'd built of Bu'loloth since talking to the tavern keepers, and decided Svaelor's villa was the nearest to them. He led the way, the others following.
"We'll have to come up with another tactic," the rogue pointed out. "Unless you guys have more silence spells...?" They did not; Alewyth had just happened to prepare one such spell that morning, and Thurloe's ring needed a day to recharge before it could be put to such use again. But then Zander came up with a plan quite beautiful in its simplicity.
"Hey, why don't we just have Petey telepathically communicate with the genie and ask her to open the door and let us in?"
"That...would be much easier," Wakuren agreed.
Standing outside the villa, a single-story structure, rectangular in build, Petey cast his telepathic senses inside while perched upon Zander's shoulder. <Samaria?> he called out tentatively, then "listened" for a telepathic reply.
<What? Who is this?>
<A band of adventurers from a faraway land, sent by your father to rescue you and your sisters. Khalilah and Zayna have already been saved, and their captors slain. Where is Svaelor? Is he there with you now?>
<No, he's downstairs in his workshop. I'm in the bedroom, putting away his laundry.>
<If you would like to come open the front door, we will have you freed momentarily.>
<I'll be right there!> And sure enough, in mere moments the door was unlocked from inside and pulled open, and the djinni Samaria ushered the group inside, taking them to the back of the building, where the sole bedroom lay. "He's downstairs," she said in a whisper, pointing to the corner of the bedroom. "There's a hovering platform there, commanded by the drow words for "Up" and "Down." Xandro went over to the corner and examined it. "There's really only room for one person at a time," he said quietly.
"It returns automatically once you step off of it," Samaria offered.
"Is it quiet?" Xandro asked.
"Very."
"Then I'll go first," he offered, activating his ring and fading from view. Saying the command word, the section of floor beneath his invisible feet started lowering into the basement workroom. The room below was pitch black - the drow wizard saw perfectly fine without any illumination due to his innate darkvision - so Xandro activated his goggles of the night and granted himself the same ability to see without light. Svaelor was tinkering with something at a table in the opposite corner, his back turned to the elevator platform.
The platform made a slight noise when it landed on the floor. "Samaria?" Svaelor asked, not bothering to turn around. "Is that the wine I asked for? You're a little early, but never mind - you can put it at the table beside me."
With the corner section of the bedroom floor wide open, the others could hear the wizard's comment. Hurriedly, Samaria grabbed up a bottle of wine and a glass and flew down the shaft, flying over to her hated master, setting the glass carefully on the table and filling it to the brim. That gave Xandro the opportunity to creep up to the wizard and strike deep with Deathwhisper, pulling the blade from his back and stabbing it in again and again. Blood spilling from his lips, Svaelor fell to the floor, spilling his glass of wine in the process. The red wine mingled with the blood from his dead body.
Xandro gave the freed djinni the same instructions Wakuren had given the first two sisters - gather up anything of value and take it over to the stone keep where Zayna and Khalilah were waiting - and then the group headed over to their next target, after Alewyth used Sjondra to smash the genie trap which had imprisoned Samiria, a large ruby the drow wizard wore around his neck. "That was significantly easier," Xandro commented. "Let's do the same thing with the next one - Joolabough's tower."
The rogue led the way through the streets of Bu'loloth, until they arrived at a two-story tower of black stone. Petey made telepathic contact with the enslaved djinni, Nadira, who informed them she was in the kitchen making pastries for Joolabough, who sat in the dining room eagerly awaiting the completion of her efforts. <I can't leave the kitchen without alerting him,> Nadira mentally informed Petey. He inquired whether there were any magical protections on the front door, and when she assured them there were not, he informed Zander and the others. Then Xandro went to work on the lock with his masterwork lockpicks, while Zander cast a haste spell on the group and Alewyth protected herself with a magic circle against evil spell. But then Xandro popped open the door, went back to invisibility, and crept forward silently into a wide hallway. Thurloe and Wakuren followed as quietly as they could, and then Alewyth entered. She examined a curious statue in the corner of the hall, a black marble carving of a terrified drow male, before deciding it wasn't a carving at all: it was the petrified form of a drow thief who'd apparently been turned to stone by the wizardly master of the house.
Xandro passed through the kitchen and made his way into the dining room, where Joolabough waited with as much patience as he could muster. But his head suddenly twitched to the side, straining to hear what he thought he'd heard: the craftily footstep of someone in the room with him wishing not to be noticed. Joolabough was a paranoid mage, convinced others of his ilk were trying to learn his secrets. As a result, he didn't bother to wait for confirmation; rather, he cast a summoning spell that brought forth a bone devil into the far end of the dining room. Fortunately for Xandro, the devil appeared at the northern side of the dining room table, while the invisible rogue had been making his way towards Joolabough along the southern edge. But he froze in position, barely daring to breathe while desperately trying to recall whether or not bone devils could see invisible beings.
"Are we alone?" demanded Joolabough to his summoned fiend. The devil cocked his skull-like head to the side, listening intently. "I believe so, master," he replied.
"Well, make sure!" demanded the drow. The three heroes in the hallway around the corner could hear this discussion, so Alewyth purposefully banged Sjondra against the petrified thief, hoping to distract their attention her way - better they take care of the devil and allow Xandro to focus on his assassination attempt. Just outside the front door, Robin went ahead and started the chords to the song of inspirational courage, figuring it was no longer necessary to try to hide their presence, as long as Xandro wasn't exposed. But Wakuren had thoughts of his own on how best to proceed, and he cast a holy word spell that reverberated throughout the ground floor of the tower. The spell's power caused the bone devil to be thrown through the planes back to its own fiendish layer of Hell, and while Joolabough's innate resistance to spells made him immune to the spell's various effects, Wakuren considered it to be a success nonetheless. For with the fiend gone, Xandro was free to rush up to the seated wizard, stabbing him through the throat with Deathwhisper, returning back to full visibility so Joolabough's last sight was of the man who had just killed him.
Nadira pointed out his genie trap, an onyx ring he wore on his little finger. Alewyth removed it and destroyed it with Sjondra, then they sent the djinni to join her sisters at the twin's keep.
That left only two more wizards in the djinn-enslaving pact: Dalmarak and Osporin, the former dwelling in a squat tower of his own and the latter in a manor home. Once again consulting his mental map of Bu'loloth, Xandro headed for Dalmarak's tower, to free the djinni Jasmira next. They went through the same motions, having Petey establish telepathic contact, to learn Jasmira was serving Dalmarak a cordial in his study on the upper level of the tower. There were two entries into the tower, but as the second-floor balcony was adjacent to the study, the djinni suggested they enter through the front door. <But be careful, for it's not only locked, but he has an alarm spell in place.> Wakuren took care of the alarm spell with a dispel magic spell, and then Xandro went to work on the lock. Once he had it open, they crept inside, and Wakuren took advantage of the silence of his air walk spell to carry the invisible rogue up the winding stairs to the second level. As they also opened up into the lounge in which the drow wizard was having his unwilling slave serve him a drink, while he relaxed in his comfortable chair with his feet propped up on a footstool, Wakuren - who was not invisible - stopped before making the final turn and carefully set Xandro down on the step before him.
Xandro made it to Dalmarak's side and stabbed him to death without any difficulties. Then Jasmira was sent to join up with her sisters after grabbing any valuables, once they'd destroyed Dalmarak's genie trap, a metal oil lamp much like the group's own extradimensional dwelling - only while theirs had amenities for the comfort of the inhabitants, the genie trap was more or less a sensory deprivation chamber, into which the djinni slave could be forced to remain until the loneliness and lack of stimulus nearly drove her insane.
When Petey reached out telepathically for Shula, the last of the six djinn sisters, his conversation was brief. <He's assaulting her right now!> the pseudodragon reported to the others. Xandro cast a heroism spell on himself while Alewyth, not wanting to wait to do this the quiet way, smashed the front door in with Sjondra. Wakuren cast freedom of movement and gaseous form on Xandro and set him on his path. Guided by Petey's telepathic directions, Xandro floated up the stairs to the upper floor, seeping under the door to the bedroom.
When he reverted to his human form, he saw Shula bound by her wrists and ankles to a large, four-poster bed, while Osporin eagerly removed his own clothing in anticipation of another bout of pleasure from his current year's slave; he was already getting a bit tired of this one, though, and was looking forward to the upcoming swap, when each of the six wizards would pass around their genie traps and gain a new djinn to serve them for another year and a day - knowing full well they'd never allow the last day of servitude to a given master to elapse, for that would break the connection to the genie trap and free them from their slavemasters.
Osporin, easily the foulest of the six mages, looked down upon his helpless captive, looking up at him in fear from a face already puffy and bruised from the beatings he'd given her earlier. The sight of her aroused him, and he looked down to appreciate the sight of his own flesh, quivering in anticipation. But then something obstructed his view: a metal blade projecting from above his own fleshly protuberance: Deathwhisper, its blade glistening with the blood of the portly wizard's belly. The pain finally made it to Osporin's awareness when the blade was pulled back out of his torso, then stabbed in again and again as Xandro let loose with his full fury. By the time the others made it into the room behind him, Osporin was a bleeding corpse on the floor, and Wakuren had to pull Xandro away or he'd likely have continued his rage-fueled assault.
Alewyth released the djinn's bonds - they had been imbued with dimensional lock properties, to prevent her from escaping them - and then, with an act of will, Shula's face was restored to its full beauty, her swollen lip and black eye healed. "He didn't allow me to heal myself until he was done," she explained, then thanked them for her rescue. This being the last of the five dwellings, the heroes went through with Shuka and gathered up the valuables they found worth looting.
"You sisters are all waiting for you," Alewyth explained as they crossed town back to the twins' stone keep. Upon reaching it, Shula's five sisters all reached out to greet her, gathering her up in a series of hugs. Then there was a loud crash of thunder from above - in a cloudless sky, no less - and suddenly, towering before the heroes, stood a noble djinn - the six sisters' father, whose heartfelt prayer had just been answered.
"You have righted a great wrong this day," the noble djinni announced. "In payment, I hereby grant each of you a wish, to be cashed in at the time of your choosing. However," he warned them, holding up a hand, "I have taken the precaution of peeking into your likely futures, and I warn you thus: there will come a time, in the near future, when you may well desperately find yourself in need of a wish spell, and I would caution you to retain your wishes until such time as they are truly needed. But regardless, whenever you want your wishes granted, you have only to call out my name - Azagaard - and I will be there to grant you your desires."
With that, and after the heroes all indicated they were perfectly content to wait until later to cash in their wishes, Azagaard bent down and embraced his six daughters in a massive hug. "Come," he said. "Let us return to the Elemental Plane of Air, and let you all have time to recoup from your ordeals before you enter into any more agreements with mortal spellcasters." And with that, there was a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, and the seven djinn were gone.
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Once again, this played out very differently than I had anticipated. I built the adventure backwards, realizing I'd need each of hte PCs to have a wish spell by the end of the campaign, so I wrote an adventure that would grant them "future wishes." And I separated the wizards from each other specifically so the PCs could take them on one at a time (as they ended up doing) or splitting up and attacking the five dwellings all at the same time. I had put a bit of effort into each wizard's spell selection, so not everyone had a means to warn the others from a distance and only a few had the means by which they could teleport to another wizard's abode to render aid if needed.
But then they stumbled upon Petey's telepathic abilities, and the adventure - which I had figured would be Wakuren-centric, given his status as a cleric/paladin of Cal - instead became a vehicle for Xandro's new status as an instant assassin. Seriously, these wizards ranged in level from 12th (the twins) to 16th, specifically so the PCs would have a slight advantage over their foes if they opted to split up (figuring the wizards' "home team advantage" would help temper that a bit), but they had wizard Hit Dice so none of them had a whole lot of hit points. But after tackling the twins, the rest of them were relatively easy pickings. Oh well, it's never wise to try to undo the players' awesome tactics.
After we finished the adventure, we advanced the PCs up to 19th level. Joe was away at a concert, so he'll be emailing his dad his spell selection for Zander; our next session won't be until 1 March due to a funeral taking Dan and Vicki out of state at the end of this month.
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T-shirt worn: My black "Chaotic Evil is Never Having to Say You're Sorry" T-shirt - to represent the drow wizards who had been capturing the genies for their own twisted benefit.
PC Roster:
Alewyth Putterpye, dwarf priestess of Aerik 18
Thurloe Pulver, human fighter 3/wizard 3/spellsword 10/eldritch knight 2
Wakuren, half-orc cleric of Cal 9/paladin 9
Xandro Silverstrings, human bard 6/rogue 12
Zander Quilson, elf sorcerer 18
NPC Roster:
Beetle Darkcloud, halfling ranger 6
Robin the Balladeer, human bard 6
Game Session Date: 8 February 2025
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<Incoming!> announced the telepathic voice of Petey, Zander Quilson's pseudodragon familiar, directly into the minds of the six visitors from the continent of Armaturia, and Beetle Darkcloud, their local halfling guide escorting them across Talonia to reach the outskirts of the Forbidden Lands. They were approaching the drow city of Bu'loloth, whose buildings could just barely be seen in the distance.
Wakuren, sitting in the "attic" head of the groups' wood colossus, had placed it more or less on autopilot, having it follow behind the others astride their bonehead mounts. His attention had been focused directly behind the wood colossus, peeking through the ruby he'd fastened to the back of the colossus' "head" through the magical necklace he wore. But upon the pseudodragon's warning, he snapped back to his own vision and saw a floating form headed directly for him. Instinctively, he raised his shield of Cal to ward off the assumed attack, but then his mind caught up to what his eyes had seen, and he realized this was an air mephit - one of a group of creatures often used as messengers between the various planes. Before any of the others had noticed the mephit, flitting around 60 feet in the air after having seemingly popped into existence in mid-air, Wakuren had the presence of mind to lower his shield and address it. "May I help you?" he asked it pleasantly.
"Are you Wakuren?" it asked, and upon getting confirmation that the half-orc was the intended recipient of its message, he passed on the details he had been asked to give to Wakuren. "The city ahead, Bu'loloth, has several powerful wizards among its numbers, six of whom have been summoning djinn into their service. As genies gain prestige by the mortals they have served, each of the six wizards' petitions were answered by a djinni eager to serve and make a name for herself. However, the wizards had all prepared genie traps, forcing the djinn to serve them for one year and one day. If this had not been bad enough, each mage used his djinni as a servant for a full year – and then, one day before their joint servitude was to have been up, each gave his genie trap to another of the wizards, thus switching 'ownership' of the enslaved djinni to the new master, and allowing their servitude to be extended for another year and a day. The djinni's father, a noble djinn, has asked for mortal intercession on behalf of his six daughters. As you are the closest devotee to Cal, God of the Air, to the city of Bu'loloth, this plea for intercession falls to you. Will you become the answer to the noble djinni's prayer and free his daughters from their servitude?"
Wakuren didn't even need to think about it. "Of course," he agreed instantly.
"I will inform him you have agreed to intercede," the air mephit announced. "In the meantime, here is a list of the six daughters and the masters they are currently being forced to serve." The air mephit passed over a sheet of parchment with a dozen names on them, six rows of two. Then, with a pop of displaced air, it disappeared from the Mortal Plane entirely.
Wakuren stopped the wood colossus far out of the city and had it assume its building form. Then, summoning Nimbus, he rode with the others to the city of Bu'loloth, where they hit the inns and taverns and let Xandro work his magic, talking to the locals and finding out what he could about the six wizards on the list. Within several hours, he'd gotten enough information about them he could probably identify them by their general descriptions and knew where each one lived. As it turned out, two of them were twins who lived together, so there were five buildings in all in which they'd need to rescue the djinn slaves.
"There's two ways we can tackle this," pointed out Thurloe. "Hit each building in turn, where we'll have the numerical advantage each time, or split up and hit each one simultaneously."
"Splitting up will make sure none of them has a chance to warn the others," Xandro observed.
"Yes, but what if one of us gets into trouble, and gets overpowered?" Alewyth asked. "We don't have any way of keeping in contact with each other except through Petey's telepathy, and he can't keep us all within range across the entire city." Eventually, they others saw the logic in the dwarf's assessment and they opted to hit the wizards' dwellings one by one.
"Which one first?" asked Zander.
"The twins," decided Wakuren, looking at his list. "That way we free two djinn at once - a good start to what could be a long day." According to the list provided by the air mephit, the drow wizards - Pendrizz and Haelox - had enslaved two djinn named Zayna and Khalilah. That decided, the group headed over to the stone keep shared by the two drow spellcasters, while Beetle placed their bonehead mounts in stables for the duration.
"That's it ahead," said Xandro, recognizing it from the description he'd gotten from the tavern folk to which he'd been chatting earlier that afternoon.
"Prep spells," suggested Thurloe, casting a protection from evil spell upon himself. Wakuren cast an air walk spell and considered himself ready.
"So, what's the plan?" asked Zander.
Thurloe thought about it a moment. "Let's see if we can get them out of their keep, where they'll have the home advantage," he suggested. "How about this: we hire them to come look at these weird runes we can't decipher on the wood colossus outside town?"
"And then what?" asked Alewyth. "Split up and have some take on the wizards while the others go inside and free the genies? I thought we were sticking with safety in numbers? After all, we don't know how powerful any of these wizards really are."
"I'll be on the 'sneak inside and rescue the genies' team," offered Xandro, activating his ring of invisibility and fading from view.
"Well, let's see if we can even get them to come outside," suggested Thurloe, heading over to the front door. Wakuren went with him, as did Xandro (although nobody could see that he did; he moved around the corner from the front door in case either of their targets had a means by which to see invisible objects - it would hurt their credibility as innocent bystanders hiring spellcasters to read runes if they had an invisible compatriot with his rapier out and ready for business, as Xandro had Deathwhisper). The spellsword rapped loudly on the door three times with his knuckles, while Alewyth, Robin, and Zander (and Petey) stayed across the street, doing their best to look like innocent passersby.
"Nobody's coming," said Wakuren after half a minute had passed. "Maybe nobody's home."
"Lemme try again," suggested Thurloe, rapping again, even louder this time. Wakuren was about to repeat his observation when the door was whipped open, and there stood a white-haired drow wearing nothing but a bathrobe - even his feet were bare. "What do you want?" he snarled, obviously upset at having been disturbed. Belatedly, Thurloe recalled that most drow disliked bright lights and usually spent the sunniest part of the day asleep, doing the majority of their business at night.
"We were wondering if we might hire you to come look at some arcane runes we discovered on a wood colossus just outside--" the spellsword began, but the wizard snarled, "Not interested!" and slammed the door in his face. Wakuren had planned to stick his foot in the way to prevent the door from closing but was just a bit too slow.
"Friendly sort," he observed. "Now what?"
"I'm not done with him yet," promised Thurloe, banging on the door again, even harder.
The door opened up again and the drow, Pendrizz, yelled, "WHAT?" But Wakuren was through playing around; realizing this was a slaver (and already picking up flares of evil emanating from his aura), he slammed into the robed spellcaster with his shield of Cal, figuring the drow should be glad he'd recently had it upgraded to become a merciful weapon, channeling the kinetic energy of the blow into a shock that would leave the victim knocked unconscious rather than battered to a pulp - as desired by the wielder. He decided he'd go easy on the wizard at first; they might want to question him about the other five in their little band of djinn slavers.
The blow sent Pendrizz stumbling backwards into the keep and Wakuren stepped inside, so the door couldn't be slammed in their faces again. Then Thurloe stepped up to the doorway, activating his ring of silent spells as he did so, blanketing the area all around him in absolute silence. That would prevent him and Wakuren from casting any spells, but it should also prevent Pendrizz from doing the same - or calling out for help. But from across the street, Zander saw the commotion and cast a feeblemind spell at the drow wizard, hoping to take him out of the fight. No such luck; Pendrizz was able to shrug off the spell's effects, leaving his faculties intact.
Petey flew across the street over to the keep, figuring he'd be needed to pass on messages between the heroes when they couldn't speak aloud in the area of magical silence. But Pendrizz had figured out what had happened and immediately disengaged, fleeing not back to his own bedroom but to that of his twin brother Haelox. He opened the door and slammed it shut behind, idly noting he could hear the sound the door slamming - so he was out of the area of effect of the silence spell. Good! He cast a quick mage armor spell upon himself. Haelox began to complain about the interruption - he was in bed with Khalilah - but at hearing the keep was under attack by strangers, he leapt out of bed and grabbed up a bathrobe of his own. While he wrapped it around himself and discussed options with his twin, Khalilah wondered if she dare dream about a possible rescue from her situation.
Xandro pushed past Thurloe and entered the keep, stepping upon the large rug in front of the doorway. It rippled beneath him and tried to wrap him up, but the nimble rogue leapt to the side in time. He ran toward the door of Haelox's room, and a suit of heavy plate armor standing by the doorway came to sudden life and moved in his direction - it couldn't see the invisible rogue, but it could feel vibrations through the floor that someone was approaching. Its hand dropped to the hilt of its sword, ready to attack as soon as it saw a target within range.
Having seen the animated carpet from outside as she approached the keep, Alewyth activated her butterfly brooch and flew over the carpet of smothering. Directly across from the front door was a kitchen area; she dropped to the floor there and looked around. Then she cast a silence spell of her own, centered on her dwarven warhammer Sjondra, and readied it for battle. Robin opted to stay outside the keep, but she crossed the street and pulled the lute from her back, ready to start playing the song of inspirational courage once it would do her friends any good - no use trying to urge them on to greater efforts when they stood within fields of magical silence.
Still air walking, Wakuren charged towards the dread guard that had somehow sensed Xandro's presence. He slammed his shield of Cal into the animated construct, having shut off the merciful aspect of his shield - which wouldn't have done much against an animated suit of armor in any case. The powerful blow was still within the field of magical silence so there was no sound, but the entire suit of armor shook under the blow and several pieces of armor came slightly loose, looking like they were ready to fall off from the rest of the armor. It tried awkwardly to retaliate against Wakuren, while the second dread guard on the other side of the entry hall animated and went after Alewyth, but neither was able to make contact with their intended targets.
Thurloe entered the keep, figuring he could escape the animated rug with the same ease with which Xandro had managed the task, but here his overconfidence got the better of him. The ends of the rug folded up over him, wrapping him up like a sausage link in a pancake - only this pancake was continuously getting tighter, constricting the sausage within until Thurloe found it difficult to breathe. Zander crossed the street and entered the keep, stepping to the side of the rug wrapped around Thurloe; fortunately for the elf, it seemed as if the rug could only deal with one foe at a time.
Xandro put an ear to Haelox's door, after noticing he was outside the area of magical silence. He tried to pick up anything from inside the bedroom, but whatever Pendrizz was doing in there, he was doing it quietly. The reason for this became apparent when Alewyth slammed the dread guard out of the way, opened the door to Pendrizz's bedroom, and found the twin wizards had dimension doored over from Haelox's bedroom to Pendrizz's. Both djinni were there, cowering against the bed, while the wizards had hands making somatic gestures in an effort to begin spellcasting in the silent bedroom. Alewyth held her hands up in a "Let's not do anything hasty here" gesture, thinking frantically to Petey to warn the others that both wizards were now in this room. Wakuren had by this time made short work of the dread guard he'd been fighting, and he opened Haelox's door to find the room empty. The other dread guard made an ineffectual swipe at Alewyth, but she easily dodged the blade.
Pendrizz fled to a door along the back side of the room, stepping into a bathroom between the twins' bedrooms, where - upon finding himself once again outside the area of magical silence - he used the opportunity to cast a chain lightning spell at Alewyth. Haelox backed up as far as he could from the dwarf and followed suit, casting a chain lightning spell of his own at the frazzled dwarf once he was able to hear things again. Zayna fled from the bed, running over to the corner by Alewyth, as far away from the twins as she could get without entering the foyer, where the dread guard and animated rug still threatened.
Thurloe, in the meantime, tired of being squeezed to death, used his anklet of translocation to dimension door 10 feet away, sprawled out on the floor by the kitchen. Petey flew into the kitchen, landing on the table, and Zander approached him, casting a separate mage armor upon his familiar so the pseudodragon would benefit from its protection even if the two were separated. Before he did anything else, the spellsword cast a shield spell upon himself from the wand on his belt.
Xandro stepped into Haelox's empty room, looking around for enemies, while in the other bedroom, Alewyth charged Pendrizz, slamming him with Sjondra (and, quite incidentally, engulfing the twins back into magical silence). Pendrizz crumpled from the hammer-blow, collapsing into an unconscious heap upon the bathroom floor. Wakuren opened the bathroom door from Haelox's room, seeing the drow wizard lying insensate on the floor - as well as Khalilah, who had fled to the bathroom through the open doorway from Pendrizz's bedroom. She gasped in surprise at seeing a half-orc there, but Wakuren calmed her by saying her father had sent them to rescue her and her sisters. After that, the djinn didn't care how fearsome-looking her potential rescuer might be; she was willing to do anything she could to help him. "Destroy the genie prison!" she cried. "It's in a box beneath the bed!" But Wakuren ignored her for the moment, rushing into Pendrizz's bedroom and sending Haelox staggering in a heap on the bed with a single blow from the shield of Cal - without the benefit of the merciful property being in effect. By the angle of the drow's neck on the bed, it was quite obvious he was dead.
Undeterred, the dread guard entered the bedroom and continued its assault upon Alewyth. The dwarf took it apart with a series of blows from Sjondra. Then she and Thurloe deactivated their individual silence spells and they explained the situation to the djinn. Haelox's genie prison was a topaz inscribed with arcane glyphs, while Pendrizz had crafted his from a large, rune-covered diamond. But Sjondra was able to destroy them both, and the two genies were now no longer beholden to their erstwhile masters - especially after Xandro slit the throat of the unconscious Pendrizz in the bathroom.
"We're going to go free your sisters," Wakuren told the djinn. "We'll send them here to you as we do so - we'll make this our meeting-place for now."
Ever practical, Thurloe added, "In the meantime, while we're gone, you two could gather together anything of value the wizard twins had between them - we'll be more than happy to take that off their hands upon our return!" Khalilah and Zayna hugged each other and waved farewell to the adventurers, eager for their four other sisters to share their freedom.
"Who's next?" Xandro asked
"Who's closest?" Alewyth countered. Xandro mentally consulted the mental map he'd built of Bu'loloth since talking to the tavern keepers, and decided Svaelor's villa was the nearest to them. He led the way, the others following.
"We'll have to come up with another tactic," the rogue pointed out. "Unless you guys have more silence spells...?" They did not; Alewyth had just happened to prepare one such spell that morning, and Thurloe's ring needed a day to recharge before it could be put to such use again. But then Zander came up with a plan quite beautiful in its simplicity.
"Hey, why don't we just have Petey telepathically communicate with the genie and ask her to open the door and let us in?"
"That...would be much easier," Wakuren agreed.
Standing outside the villa, a single-story structure, rectangular in build, Petey cast his telepathic senses inside while perched upon Zander's shoulder. <Samaria?> he called out tentatively, then "listened" for a telepathic reply.
<What? Who is this?>
<A band of adventurers from a faraway land, sent by your father to rescue you and your sisters. Khalilah and Zayna have already been saved, and their captors slain. Where is Svaelor? Is he there with you now?>
<No, he's downstairs in his workshop. I'm in the bedroom, putting away his laundry.>
<If you would like to come open the front door, we will have you freed momentarily.>
<I'll be right there!> And sure enough, in mere moments the door was unlocked from inside and pulled open, and the djinni Samaria ushered the group inside, taking them to the back of the building, where the sole bedroom lay. "He's downstairs," she said in a whisper, pointing to the corner of the bedroom. "There's a hovering platform there, commanded by the drow words for "Up" and "Down." Xandro went over to the corner and examined it. "There's really only room for one person at a time," he said quietly.
"It returns automatically once you step off of it," Samaria offered.
"Is it quiet?" Xandro asked.
"Very."
"Then I'll go first," he offered, activating his ring and fading from view. Saying the command word, the section of floor beneath his invisible feet started lowering into the basement workroom. The room below was pitch black - the drow wizard saw perfectly fine without any illumination due to his innate darkvision - so Xandro activated his goggles of the night and granted himself the same ability to see without light. Svaelor was tinkering with something at a table in the opposite corner, his back turned to the elevator platform.
The platform made a slight noise when it landed on the floor. "Samaria?" Svaelor asked, not bothering to turn around. "Is that the wine I asked for? You're a little early, but never mind - you can put it at the table beside me."
With the corner section of the bedroom floor wide open, the others could hear the wizard's comment. Hurriedly, Samaria grabbed up a bottle of wine and a glass and flew down the shaft, flying over to her hated master, setting the glass carefully on the table and filling it to the brim. That gave Xandro the opportunity to creep up to the wizard and strike deep with Deathwhisper, pulling the blade from his back and stabbing it in again and again. Blood spilling from his lips, Svaelor fell to the floor, spilling his glass of wine in the process. The red wine mingled with the blood from his dead body.
Xandro gave the freed djinni the same instructions Wakuren had given the first two sisters - gather up anything of value and take it over to the stone keep where Zayna and Khalilah were waiting - and then the group headed over to their next target, after Alewyth used Sjondra to smash the genie trap which had imprisoned Samiria, a large ruby the drow wizard wore around his neck. "That was significantly easier," Xandro commented. "Let's do the same thing with the next one - Joolabough's tower."
The rogue led the way through the streets of Bu'loloth, until they arrived at a two-story tower of black stone. Petey made telepathic contact with the enslaved djinni, Nadira, who informed them she was in the kitchen making pastries for Joolabough, who sat in the dining room eagerly awaiting the completion of her efforts. <I can't leave the kitchen without alerting him,> Nadira mentally informed Petey. He inquired whether there were any magical protections on the front door, and when she assured them there were not, he informed Zander and the others. Then Xandro went to work on the lock with his masterwork lockpicks, while Zander cast a haste spell on the group and Alewyth protected herself with a magic circle against evil spell. But then Xandro popped open the door, went back to invisibility, and crept forward silently into a wide hallway. Thurloe and Wakuren followed as quietly as they could, and then Alewyth entered. She examined a curious statue in the corner of the hall, a black marble carving of a terrified drow male, before deciding it wasn't a carving at all: it was the petrified form of a drow thief who'd apparently been turned to stone by the wizardly master of the house.
Xandro passed through the kitchen and made his way into the dining room, where Joolabough waited with as much patience as he could muster. But his head suddenly twitched to the side, straining to hear what he thought he'd heard: the craftily footstep of someone in the room with him wishing not to be noticed. Joolabough was a paranoid mage, convinced others of his ilk were trying to learn his secrets. As a result, he didn't bother to wait for confirmation; rather, he cast a summoning spell that brought forth a bone devil into the far end of the dining room. Fortunately for Xandro, the devil appeared at the northern side of the dining room table, while the invisible rogue had been making his way towards Joolabough along the southern edge. But he froze in position, barely daring to breathe while desperately trying to recall whether or not bone devils could see invisible beings.
"Are we alone?" demanded Joolabough to his summoned fiend. The devil cocked his skull-like head to the side, listening intently. "I believe so, master," he replied.
"Well, make sure!" demanded the drow. The three heroes in the hallway around the corner could hear this discussion, so Alewyth purposefully banged Sjondra against the petrified thief, hoping to distract their attention her way - better they take care of the devil and allow Xandro to focus on his assassination attempt. Just outside the front door, Robin went ahead and started the chords to the song of inspirational courage, figuring it was no longer necessary to try to hide their presence, as long as Xandro wasn't exposed. But Wakuren had thoughts of his own on how best to proceed, and he cast a holy word spell that reverberated throughout the ground floor of the tower. The spell's power caused the bone devil to be thrown through the planes back to its own fiendish layer of Hell, and while Joolabough's innate resistance to spells made him immune to the spell's various effects, Wakuren considered it to be a success nonetheless. For with the fiend gone, Xandro was free to rush up to the seated wizard, stabbing him through the throat with Deathwhisper, returning back to full visibility so Joolabough's last sight was of the man who had just killed him.
Nadira pointed out his genie trap, an onyx ring he wore on his little finger. Alewyth removed it and destroyed it with Sjondra, then they sent the djinni to join her sisters at the twin's keep.
That left only two more wizards in the djinn-enslaving pact: Dalmarak and Osporin, the former dwelling in a squat tower of his own and the latter in a manor home. Once again consulting his mental map of Bu'loloth, Xandro headed for Dalmarak's tower, to free the djinni Jasmira next. They went through the same motions, having Petey establish telepathic contact, to learn Jasmira was serving Dalmarak a cordial in his study on the upper level of the tower. There were two entries into the tower, but as the second-floor balcony was adjacent to the study, the djinni suggested they enter through the front door. <But be careful, for it's not only locked, but he has an alarm spell in place.> Wakuren took care of the alarm spell with a dispel magic spell, and then Xandro went to work on the lock. Once he had it open, they crept inside, and Wakuren took advantage of the silence of his air walk spell to carry the invisible rogue up the winding stairs to the second level. As they also opened up into the lounge in which the drow wizard was having his unwilling slave serve him a drink, while he relaxed in his comfortable chair with his feet propped up on a footstool, Wakuren - who was not invisible - stopped before making the final turn and carefully set Xandro down on the step before him.
Xandro made it to Dalmarak's side and stabbed him to death without any difficulties. Then Jasmira was sent to join up with her sisters after grabbing any valuables, once they'd destroyed Dalmarak's genie trap, a metal oil lamp much like the group's own extradimensional dwelling - only while theirs had amenities for the comfort of the inhabitants, the genie trap was more or less a sensory deprivation chamber, into which the djinni slave could be forced to remain until the loneliness and lack of stimulus nearly drove her insane.
When Petey reached out telepathically for Shula, the last of the six djinn sisters, his conversation was brief. <He's assaulting her right now!> the pseudodragon reported to the others. Xandro cast a heroism spell on himself while Alewyth, not wanting to wait to do this the quiet way, smashed the front door in with Sjondra. Wakuren cast freedom of movement and gaseous form on Xandro and set him on his path. Guided by Petey's telepathic directions, Xandro floated up the stairs to the upper floor, seeping under the door to the bedroom.
When he reverted to his human form, he saw Shula bound by her wrists and ankles to a large, four-poster bed, while Osporin eagerly removed his own clothing in anticipation of another bout of pleasure from his current year's slave; he was already getting a bit tired of this one, though, and was looking forward to the upcoming swap, when each of the six wizards would pass around their genie traps and gain a new djinn to serve them for another year and a day - knowing full well they'd never allow the last day of servitude to a given master to elapse, for that would break the connection to the genie trap and free them from their slavemasters.
Osporin, easily the foulest of the six mages, looked down upon his helpless captive, looking up at him in fear from a face already puffy and bruised from the beatings he'd given her earlier. The sight of her aroused him, and he looked down to appreciate the sight of his own flesh, quivering in anticipation. But then something obstructed his view: a metal blade projecting from above his own fleshly protuberance: Deathwhisper, its blade glistening with the blood of the portly wizard's belly. The pain finally made it to Osporin's awareness when the blade was pulled back out of his torso, then stabbed in again and again as Xandro let loose with his full fury. By the time the others made it into the room behind him, Osporin was a bleeding corpse on the floor, and Wakuren had to pull Xandro away or he'd likely have continued his rage-fueled assault.
Alewyth released the djinn's bonds - they had been imbued with dimensional lock properties, to prevent her from escaping them - and then, with an act of will, Shula's face was restored to its full beauty, her swollen lip and black eye healed. "He didn't allow me to heal myself until he was done," she explained, then thanked them for her rescue. This being the last of the five dwellings, the heroes went through with Shuka and gathered up the valuables they found worth looting.
"You sisters are all waiting for you," Alewyth explained as they crossed town back to the twins' stone keep. Upon reaching it, Shula's five sisters all reached out to greet her, gathering her up in a series of hugs. Then there was a loud crash of thunder from above - in a cloudless sky, no less - and suddenly, towering before the heroes, stood a noble djinn - the six sisters' father, whose heartfelt prayer had just been answered.
"You have righted a great wrong this day," the noble djinni announced. "In payment, I hereby grant each of you a wish, to be cashed in at the time of your choosing. However," he warned them, holding up a hand, "I have taken the precaution of peeking into your likely futures, and I warn you thus: there will come a time, in the near future, when you may well desperately find yourself in need of a wish spell, and I would caution you to retain your wishes until such time as they are truly needed. But regardless, whenever you want your wishes granted, you have only to call out my name - Azagaard - and I will be there to grant you your desires."
With that, and after the heroes all indicated they were perfectly content to wait until later to cash in their wishes, Azagaard bent down and embraced his six daughters in a massive hug. "Come," he said. "Let us return to the Elemental Plane of Air, and let you all have time to recoup from your ordeals before you enter into any more agreements with mortal spellcasters." And with that, there was a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, and the seven djinn were gone.
- - -
Once again, this played out very differently than I had anticipated. I built the adventure backwards, realizing I'd need each of hte PCs to have a wish spell by the end of the campaign, so I wrote an adventure that would grant them "future wishes." And I separated the wizards from each other specifically so the PCs could take them on one at a time (as they ended up doing) or splitting up and attacking the five dwellings all at the same time. I had put a bit of effort into each wizard's spell selection, so not everyone had a means to warn the others from a distance and only a few had the means by which they could teleport to another wizard's abode to render aid if needed.
But then they stumbled upon Petey's telepathic abilities, and the adventure - which I had figured would be Wakuren-centric, given his status as a cleric/paladin of Cal - instead became a vehicle for Xandro's new status as an instant assassin. Seriously, these wizards ranged in level from 12th (the twins) to 16th, specifically so the PCs would have a slight advantage over their foes if they opted to split up (figuring the wizards' "home team advantage" would help temper that a bit), but they had wizard Hit Dice so none of them had a whole lot of hit points. But after tackling the twins, the rest of them were relatively easy pickings. Oh well, it's never wise to try to undo the players' awesome tactics.
After we finished the adventure, we advanced the PCs up to 19th level. Joe was away at a concert, so he'll be emailing his dad his spell selection for Zander; our next session won't be until 1 March due to a funeral taking Dan and Vicki out of state at the end of this month.
- - -
T-shirt worn: My black "Chaotic Evil is Never Having to Say You're Sorry" T-shirt - to represent the drow wizards who had been capturing the genies for their own twisted benefit.
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