You Don’t Have To Leave Wolfy Behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' Your Companions Level Up With You!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8230466" data-attributes="member: 7016699">Session 36: More Undead. Lots More. So Many.Dramatis Personae:Aldalómiel - Wood Elf Ranger (Hunter Conclave)/DruidElama “Lamie” Galanodel- Wood Elf Cleric (Tempest)Vinya Anar - Wood Elf Monk (Way of the Sun Soul)Elderon - High Elf Wizard (Loremaster)Marxine - Mountain Dwarf Fighter (Champion)/PaladinGM - Everyone Else(Note: This session was held on Discord.)10 Bluzzimin 749 (Campaign day 161)(immediately after)After talking to the people at the public crematory in Oldest Dhaqi, we went to the Well of Screams to collect Elderron.Marxine: We have a lead on something.Elderron: Let’s go.We then headed toward Alhim and the Street of Shades. It was getting toward dinnertime and dusk was well advanced. There was some light still on the tops of the buildings, but down at the level of Alhim’s twisty narrow streets it was all shadows. Along the way, Aldalomiel took on her starry chalice form and healed Vinya some, because she was still in pretty rough shape after fighting the wormy guys in the Last Doorway temple.Vinya cast detect evil and good from the rod of alertness, since we were looking for undead.Well before we got to the Street of Shades, we heard screaming ahead of us. We saw angry-looking incorporeal humanoids, some of which were partially in the walls or passing through them, menacing some civilians on the street. These were not at all similar to the Sons of Kyuss, which are disgustingly corporeal.Aldalomiel changed her starry form to her archer form, then she shot two arrows and the radiant bolt at the nearest one to us. Vinya, still not in great shape despite Aldalomiel’s very welcome healing while walking, planted the Rod of Alertness in the ground (giving all of us an advantage to AC and saves), moved into the road (to clear the way for people to move into the intersection) and did patient defense.The spectres on one side (to the right of the picture) attacked the civilians they were menacing. One of them actually missed but the other civilians were instantly killed.Marxine moved between the one surviving civilian on that side and the spectre menacing it. She attacked the menacing spectre and got a critical hit, which dropped it. She then moved to the next nearest and and attacked. She spared a glance for the dropped civilian up in that corner and saw that it was really absolutely dead, not merely dropped.The spectres on the other side attacked and killed the civilians they could reach, dropping all of them. From further away down both the right and left sides of the little block we could hear more screaming.Elama went the other direction from Marxine (who went to the right of the picture) and attacked one with her sword, doing thunder damage as well as the sword damage.The one surviving civilian ran past Marxine and Vinya and down the hallway to near Aldalomiel.Elderron moved to the corner of the alley and shot a firebolt at the same one Elama attacked, then he moved back into the alley in a position protecting the fleeing civilian. Aldalomiel moved to the doorway across from our alley, next to Elama, and shot the spectre Elama hit with her radiant bolt, dropping it. Then she moved around the corner toward where there were two more spectres. She shot one of them twice and dropped it. Vinya dropped the one Marxine hit then fired a sunbolt at one down in the corner of the alley. It hit, but the spectre wasn’t dropped. She thought about summoning her ki for some more sunbolts, but the civilian it was menacing was already dead and so she saved her energy.A spectre came out of the wall and attacked Vinya and another one came up out the alley and attacked Marxine. Both missed. We could still hear screams coming from both directions.Marxine attacked the one that attacked her, hitting it twice but not dropping it. Dang it.Vinya: It’s because they’re incorporeal. It throws off the balance of the swing. And the rhythm.Two came out of the walls near Aldalomiel -- one of them hit her. She took some damage but didn’t suffer the life-drain. One came out of the wall and took a swing at her in passing, then went into the central building in the middle of the block.Elama, seeing that, kicked the door of the building open so hard that it flew off its hinges, then ran to the spectre inside and attacked. And missed.The surviving civilian fled down the alley the way we’d come in through and got away to safety.Elderron stepped to the corner of the alley again and saw two of the spectres, one to his left and one to his right. He firebolted the one he could see on Vinya and Marxine and dropped it, despite the fact that it didn’t take as much damage from the fire as he would have expected. Aldalomiel cast thunderwave, with a cracking blast of thunder, on the one in front of her, then she shot it with a radiant bolt, but it was still standing.Vinya dropped the one left on her and Marxine with a couple of punches, then she ran down to the corner that led off to the right of the picture above, sparing a glance down the cross alley. As she ran, she yelled to Elderron.Vinya: Elderron, please grab my rod before you go!She didn’t see anything interesting in the cross alley but around the corner she saw another spectre.Vinya: Hey! There’s another down here.It moved up and attacked her, fortunately missing.Marxine moved up and dropped it with two big hits. She stopped and listened and didn’t hear screaming in this direction any more. Good.Spectres attacked Elama and Aldalomiel but missed.Lamie attacked the one in the building and missed it. Elderron grabbed the rod of alertness then went into the doorway Elama had kicked open. He saw her fighting an injured spectre so he threw a firebolt at it, which dropped it despite the resistance to fire damage. Then he moved to the corner where he could see Aldalomiel.Aldalomiel cast zephyr strike and moved to the corner to look down the road, then she shot an arrow at the one that came out of the wall at her, dropping it. She doesn’t hear screaming down this alley either. Then she headed along the cross alley. Vinya examined the body next to her and listened for screams. She ascertained that the body wasn’t going to rise as undead -- she had a bit of a recollection that she spectres don’t do that.Vinya: We should head to the crematory. This bodes, and not well.She’d barely finished getting the words out when one came out of the wall to attack Marxine, missing her. She attacked it and got a hit but didn’t drop it.Aldalomiel turned back and saw one go past the end of the alley toward where she knew Elderron was. Two more came out of the wall at him and attacked. He cast shield to block the hits and was fine.Elama: Elderron, I’ll save you!Elama went out of the central building and cast a high-level shatter, putting all of her tempest energy into the spell, to catch the three on Elderron. In order not to also hit him, she did some damage to the buildings nearby -- all the windows shattered, adding to the huge noise from the spell, and there was a fall of dust. When the dust settled, the spectres were all still there.Elama: Crap, they’re still here.Elderron: I have dust in my eye.Elderron then disengaged from the three spectres and ran backwards away from them. Aldalomel went back down the cross-alley and, when she go to the entrance to the alley, she shot one arrow each on two of them and fired a radiant bolt at the third one. She dropped two of them.Vinya dropped the one on Marxine with a radiant bolt, then ran up the alley and across, past Elderron, and dropped the one that was still standing.Vinya: We also serve who pick off the badly wounded.We knocked on the doors around the area -- we found some people hiding in the buildings. We also, sadly, found some corpses both in the buildings and in the streets. We followed the “line” of bodies back from this fight toward the crematory we’d heard was troubled.To our surprise, the bodies weren’t radiating or spreading out from the crematory. The crematory wasn’t even the end of the “line” of bodies we’d been following, it continued on beyond it. We continued to follow the trail of dead breadcrumbs past the crematorium and shortly found ourselves in the Abandoned Warehouse district. We were moving semi-sneakily along --stealth-ish.Elama: Why didn’t we just come here in the first place?We eventually got to where we could see a building with a lot of spectres and wraiths. Really a lot of them. We counted 21 spectres, to the extent we could individually identify them, and five wraiths, floating in and out of the walls of the building.We backed away from the building to decide on a course of action. We decided that the area needed to be evacuated and sealed off and we needed help dealing with this situation, even though Elama thought she had a chance of being able to destroy them when she channeled divine energy.We checked the map of Alhim we’d gotten from Jorcha Linnolim in the Well of Screams to find the nearest guard house. Vinya, as the fastest runner, ran to the precinct house, leaving the rest of the party to keep an eye on the situation.Vinya, at the guard house: My friends and I here looking into a possible undead problem. We’re working with Lt. Linnolim in Dhur [flash badge]. There’s a big spectre problem in an abandoned warehouse. Like 20 of them. Would you like to have someone come look?Sergeant: Yeah. Hey, Corporal, why don’t you go check this out?A large dragonborn, Azzaorhan, stepped forward and walked with Vinya back toward the warehouse. When we got close, we started moving up stealthily, so as not to draw them all in our direction. He spotted the spectres going in and out of the walls and his eyes went wide. They went back and away from the building.Vinya: We counted at least 20 of the spectres and maybe 5 wraiths.We then headed back to the guard precinct.Azzaorhan: Yeah, it’s a problem. A big problem.Sergeant: What do you want?Vinya: Priests with adventuring experience to help clear the building. And you need to clear the area -- evacuating people in a several block area and creating a perimeter.Sergeant: We can make a perimeter and keep people safe. I’m not so sure about the clerics. Would you like a place to rest for the night?Vinya: Oh, gods, yes!Sergeant: We can do that.Vinya went back to find the party and get them the message that we had a place to stay the night. We waited until the perimeter was set then went to the barracks. The guard had set aside an area for us with beds and a washroom for our use.Vinya, to Sergeant: Have you had any luck lining up clerics?Sergeant: No, ma’am.Elderron thought about it for a bit and while we were getting ready to rest told us that spectres and wraiths are sensitive to sunlight. When we go back to fight them in the morning, we can break in the roof of the abandoned warehouse to let the sunshine in. That should help us control the battlefield a bit. Safely ensconced in the guard house, the night passed without incident.11 Bluzzimin 749 (Campaign day 162)(immediately after)First thing in the morning we checked in with the Sergeant before doing anything else. He confirmed that nothing bad, or worse, happened overnightVinya: We need to go check in with Lt. Linnolim in Dhur. Can you keep up the perimeter?Sergeant: Yes. No problem.Once at the guardhouse in Dhur, we talked to Linnolim. We explained what we’d found in Alhim and what we were planning to do.Vinya: Any word from the Hearthkeepers and the Last Laugh? Did they have any problems?Linnolim: No.Vinya: Really??Marxine: Huh!Linnolim: Yeah. It’s not what I would have expected either.Vinya: Can they check with their their temples in other izirates?Linnolim: We’ve asked them to do so.Vinya: We may stop back by later today after we’ve dealt with this situation in Alhim.We then left and headed back to Alhim and the warehouse. We were stopped by a cluster of guards a few blocks from the warehouse. We showed them our badges and they waved us through.We stopped a bit away from the warehouse and looked at the situation in order to come up with a plan of attack. Elderron sent Oda flying around to look at the situation -- the roof of the building was completely intact and the windows were boarded over. There was a large door for loading wagons and a couple of smaller, humanoid-sized doors. We developed a plan of attack for our first round involving a shatter spell and the rod of alertness and a storm sphere.(Note: Since the plan pretty much worked perfectly (bizarrely), I’m not going to describe it here.)We decided to enter through the human-sized door that was most in the shadows, so that creating a hole in the roof at a distance would let in more sun. We snuck up to the doorway with a pass without trace spell up.Elderron picked the lock so quickly and efficiently we were all amazed at his heretofore unknown skill.Once we opened the door, all the sunlight-averse monsters inside were aware of us, and we headed in.There was a chest-height L-shaped wall right in front of us (about 4 feet tall) and 19 spectres and 5 wraiths in the room. Off in the corner there was something on the floor (the red circle), but we couldn’t get any impression of what was going on over there as it was all just marks on the floor.Elderron started things off with a storm sphere that covered a large section of the room, catching two wraiths and some of the spectres closest to us, while still leaving us room to get past. Then he shot a lightning bolt at the closest wraith to us, doing it radiant damage.Elama moved into the room, along the wall and cast shatter on the roof over some of the spectres. A section of the roof collapsed, creating a circle of sunlight on the floor. Marxine dashed through the storm sphere and attacked a wraith that was inside the storm from outside it. She used her action surge and with a couple of hits and a crit (on which she did a divine smite) she dropped it.Vinya jumped over the wall and used her ki to step of the wind to get to a good point to plant the rod of alertness to give herself and Marxine a bonus to AC and saves, and light up that side of the room.These area effects were all distinct and not overlapping and made three different parts of the room differently unpleasant for the undead.Aldalomiel moved and dashed to get close (but not into) the circle of daylight, then she took on her starry archer form and fired a radiant bolt and one of the wraiths.Then all of the spectres and wraiths went. All of them. Elama wound out surrounded by four of them. One of them hit her and faced a retaliatory thunder strike that pushed it away a few feet. Three of them attacked Aldalomiel - two of those missed, but one got a crit. Another group of spectres clustered around Vinya and Marxine -- all of them missed everyone. The final group of spectres moved, several of them clustering around Aldalomiel, who got hit once. One went to Vinya. Two were heading in Elderron’s direction, but were stuck in the storm sphere.Elderron cast misty step, then moved and dashed and made his way into the circle of sunlight. Elama took some opportunity attacks to move into a good position near Adalomiel to turn as many of the undead as she possibly could.Which turned out to be like 10 spectres. Unfortunately, the wraiths all saved.Then she cast spiritual weapon and attacked one of the spectres near Vinya.Marxine took a couple of opportunity attacks to get up to one of the wraiths and attacked it, hitting twice, but unfortunately that didn’t drop it. Vinya dropped a spectre with a couple of punches then, seeing that she was well and truly surrounded, decided to spend her ki-energy on patient defense. Aldalomiel cast Zephyr strike and moved into the middle of the daylight circle, then she fired an arrow at one of the wraiths, hitting very nicely.After spending a bit of time moving up on us, the wraiths finally attacked. Two of them attacked Marxine -- one hit her but she managed to avoid the life-drain. Vinya and Elama were both missed. The spectres on Vinya and Marxine missed for the most part (Vinya got hit once). Elderron, who was at the very edge of the circle of daylight, found himself facing three spectres lined up along the edge of the bright sunlight attacking him. He would have been hit, but he used a shield spell.Elderron then moved a bit more deeply into the sunlight, risking some opportunity attacks while his shield spell was still active. (It was a good risk -- they all missed.) Then he cast a lightning bolt that caught three of the spectres and two of the wraiths, changing the damage to radiant and the save to strength. The three spectres all died, but the wraiths were still standing. Then he moved back into the sunlight and pulled a lightning bolt out of the storm sphere and shot the wraith on Elama. It hit, but didn’t drop, the wraith. Elama’s spiritual weapon attacked one of the ones on Vinya, hitting it solidly, then she cast spiritual guardians. Marxine attacked, but didn’t drop, the more damaged of her two wraiths. Vinya punched the wraith on her, hitting once, then did patient defense, since she was still well surrounded. Aldalomiel cast guiding bolt on one of the wraiths on Marxine, missing, and fired a radiant bolt at the wraith on Vinya. That also missed.The wraith on Elama got beaten up, but not dropped, by the spiritual guardians, then it missed her with its attack. The wraith on Vinya missed her because of the patient defense. Marxine got hit, but again saved against the life-drain. The spectres attacked Vinya and missed.Marxine got hit by a spectre and she failed to save against the life-drain, but fortunately the HP loss wasn’t too bad. The three spectres that Elderron had run away from moved to Elama, running into the spiritual guardians.Elderron shot a radiant lightning bolt at the line of spectres and wraiths on the other side of vinya, dropping a couple of spectres, then he moved back into the light and called a lightning bolt out of the storm sphere that hit the wraith on Elama. Elama then dropped one of the spectres on Vinya with her spiritual weapon. Her attack on the wraith on herself hit, but didn’t drop it. Marxine got her second wind then attacked the most beaten up looking wraith on her, dropping it.Thanks to Elderron’s efforts, Vinya had one remaining spectre on her. She dropped it with some punches, then she went to help Marxine, hitting one of her opponents with the second punch of her flurry of blows. Aldalomiel missed with a guiding bolt on Marxine’s wraith, but then dropped Lamie’s wraith with a radiant bolt.The wraith on Marxine turned its attention to Vinya, but missed. Two of the spectres on Lamie dropped to the spiritual guardians, but one hit her and drained some of her life. The two spectres on Marxine both missed.(Note: At this point in the session it was after 11:30 and your deponent was falling asleep. The notes hereafter are utter gibberish.)Elderron cast lightning bolt on two of the spectres. Elama did illegible things. Marxine dropped something.And all of them were gone.We looked around a bit -- checking out the circle drawn on the ground. There were five rapidly decaying bodies on the ground around the circle. It looked as though the circle was part of a ritual that drew the power of Orcus and caused the people to become wraiths.Marxine used the hammer of unmaking to smash up the circle.Since it was nigh midnight in the real world, we saved searching the place for next session. And there we ended.</blockquote>

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