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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8252869" data-attributes="member: 7016699">Session 39: Found the Herald of Undeath!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.)12 Bluzzimin 749 (Campaign day 163)(immediately after)Elderron cast mage armor on himself and then we went into Intororum’s house. The first room we came to was a nice parlor -- the room as a whole was sized for humanoids of all sizes. There was furniture of all sizes. Off the parlor was a dining room -- like Imada Palmroot, the Izir of Dhur’s dining room, there were cushions and pillows on the floor with low tables for people to use.The house has one floor above ground, but we anticipated that there would be one or more underground levels. Most of the above-ground floor is accessible to non-gnomes. We passed through a number of rooms -- a kitchen, an office.Vinya used the Rod of Alertness to cast detect evil and good and detected nothing. Marxine’s divine sense got a sense of the unhallowed things being below us.Between the kitchen and the office we saw a set of five-foot wide stairs. The risers were spaced for gnomish legs and feet -- narrow and low and small. We went down the narrow stairs. (Our marching order was: Marxine, Elama, Elderron, Aldalomiel, and Vinya. Elama cast light on her shield to light the way.We went down to a lower level where we found a smaller, comfortable living space. Or it would have been comfortable in better times -- it was not in great shape. Down the hall in one direction was a bedroom -- it looked like something had rotten in the bed. There was a background scent of funky smoke and decay.Vinya cast detect magic with the Rod again. And again she found nothing.Down the hallway in the other direction was a gnome-sized dining room. The table was thrown against a wall -- apparently with some force because there were cracks in the wood. The chairs were thrown about.We continued further down the hallway. There was a door next to the dining room that lead to a kitchen. There were some foods in the kitchen -- though everything in it had nasty looking green-shading-to-chartreuse worms. That looked sort of undead-ish or Spawn of Kyuss-ish.Vinya: Elderron, would you please firebolt these?Elderron looked around for any reason why he shouldn’t do that - especially for flammables. Not seeing one he firebolted all around, taking care of all the worms he could see.We went back into the hallway and continued on down. We noticed that the hallway was sloping down. We also noticed that the smell of fire and decay was getting stronger.After a bit, Vinya’s detect evil and good lit up just as Marxine, leading the way down the hallway, got to a large open space. The hallway we were in split to left and right into a five foot wide mezzanine with a large open space below us. The ceiling height had been six feet throughout this gnome residence and that’s how far down the floor was below the mezzanine. The room was a large library -- with shelves lined with books -- and there were several sets of gnome-sized stairs that went down from the mezzanine to the floor of the library. The room was sort of L-shaped, with part of it turning away out of our sight to the left.Marxine stopped at the point where the hallway separated in the mezzanine to the left and the right. Aldalomiel shaped into her starry archer form. Vinya stood ready to move forward if a way opened up for her.A suffragan on the mezzanine went to Marxine, pulled a wad of worms out of its chest and attacked her with it. Another suffragan, further away around the mezzanine, fired a black necrotic bolt at Marxine.Aldalomiel shot two arrows and a radiant bolt at the suffragan on Marxine, hitting with all of them. Marxine shoved the suffragan back onto the stairs in front of her, but it didn’t fall down. Then she moved forward onto the top of the stairs and attacked it. She did some damage to the suffragan but, more importantly, cleared a way for other people to come out of the hallway onto the mezzanine.Four spawn of Kyuss, some from the mezzanine and some from the level below, attacked Marxine. She dodged two of their worms, but caught two of them. And took two hits.Elama turned undead -- getting four spawn of Kyuss and the suffragan clustered around Marxine as well as another spawn that was on the mezzanine. Then she cast shield of faith on Marxine. Elderron cast slow on the cluster of spawn and the suffragan on Marxine. Then he moved down the hallway toward the mezzanine.About that time, a large creature came lurching around the corner -- it looked like a gnome that had actually been stretched on a rack and skeletonized. It held a rod in one hand and a scimitar in the other. It gestured with the rod and a thick black beam blasted out, nearly missing Elama.Vinya moved up to between Elderron and Elama and fired two sunbolts at the suffragan on Marxine. The radiant damage chewed it up good. Seeing the effect she was having on it, she did a flurry of blows in the form of more sunbolts. The first one dropped it, so she fired the second bolt at the spawn of Kyuss that was on the mezzanine between Elama and Marxine.The other suffragan, on the mezzanine at the corner where the room turned away from us, shot a necrotic bolt at Lamie and missed.Aldalomiel moved up in the hallway and fired two arrows and a radiant bolt at the gnome skeleton, what we believed to be the Herald of Undeath. The two arrows hit but the radiant bolt didn’t.The spawn of Kyuss healed up some -- one of them began to run away at half speed -- affected by both Elderron’s slow spell and Elama’s turning. Three others attacked Marxine from the mezzanine and another one stepped up from the lower level to attack her. The three from the mezzanine, all affected by Elderron’s slow spell, missed. The one that was not slowed hit her for the absolute maximum damage they can do.Elama cast spirit guardians, surrounding herself with small lightning-filled clouds. This caused the shield of faith on Marxine to go down. Elderron cast fireball on the lower level, getting three of the spawn of Kyuss and the Herald. He altered the spell so that it did radiant damage and had an intelligence save.Following the radiant fireball, the Herald moved in our direction. It stopped just outside the spirit guardians, behind a line of spawn. He then reached over the spawn to attack Marxine with his scimitar, moving frighteningly quickly. One of the scimitar attacks hit.Vinya moved over and around the party-members in the hallway and got out of the hallway onto a clear part of the ledge. Then she fired sun bolts at the one on the ledge between Marxine (on the ledge) and Elama in the hallway. Then she moved to a corner where she could carefully angle a burning hands on five of the spawn of Kyuss, including the one between Marxine and Elama. Then she moved to a position on the ledge where she was not engaged with any of the spawn.Aldalomiel did a guiding bolt on the Herald, which hit and left it glowing, then she cast a powerful healing word on Marxine. Marxine resisted some effect from the Herald’s aura. Then she attacked the spawn on the mezzanine between her and Elama, trying to clear the entrance to the halfway. Then she did an action surge so she could get rid of the worms she’d picked up so far by laying on hands.The spawn of Kyuss near us on the mezzanine and near Marxine took damage from the spirit guardians.Elama: Radiant damage to the FACE!One of them hit Marxine twice, dropping her with its first attack then causing her to fail two death saves with its second attack.A couple of the spawn couldn’t get to anyone -- the one that had been turned and slowed was blocking the suffragan from getting to us.Elama did her emergency healing/life transference thing to heal Marxine. Elderron cast another fireball with radiant damage and an intelligence save on three of the spawn and the Herald.The Herald apparently didn’t like that because he fired two black, necrotic beams at Elderron. Fortunately, both missed. Then he made a dismissive flick with his scimitar in Marxine’s direction, but missed with that too.Vinya fired two sunbolts at the Herald, one of which hit, then she did another searing arc strike (burning hands) that finally took out the one on the mezzanine between Marxine and Elama.The suffragan around on the ledge, blocked from getting close enough to do its disgusting blobby handful of worms attack by the turned spawn of Kyuss, fired black necrotic bolts at Elama. Both of them hit, but she was able to protect herself from a critical hit with the bulette shield. Unfortunately, the second hit caused her to lose her concentration on the spirit guardians.Aldalomiel did another guiding bolt on the Herald. The bolt of radiant energy shot straight through it and it began to sublimate from the inside out, the radiance destroying its necrotic evil core. The rod and scimitar clattered to the ground. She then turned and shot a radiant bolt from her starry archer form at one of the spawn in the lower level of the library, but missed. Marxine attacked dropping one of the spawn with her first attack, hit another with her second, and then, since she was on a roll, did an action surge and got two more hits against it, one of them a crit.Spawn of Kyuss attacked both Marxine and Elama -- Elama caught two of the flying worms and was hit.Elama, to Elderron: Maybe a dimension door down into the library?Then she cast cure wounds on herself.Elderron took Elama’s suggestion and used dimension door to take both of them down to the floor of the library in a corner on the far wall. Vinya jumped the six feet down to the library floor, dropped one of the spawn on Marxine with a punch, moved back up to the ledge to attack a spawn up there, then jumped back down to wind out next to Marxine.Vinya: naughty word! That was a punch. I think that one’s coming back.The suffragan on the ledge, still bottled up by the turned spawn, fired two necrotic bolts at Elama. Fortunately only one hit.Aldalomiel dropped a spawn of Kyuss with two arrows. Marxine hit the spawn next to her -- which she’d already hit twice before -- but it still didn’t drop.The two spawn on Marxine and Vinya ignored Vinya to attack Marxine. Marxine dodged one of the worms, but in doing so dodged into the other one. Aldalomiel was attacked by a spawn and missed.Elama, now on the lower level, moved up to right behind Marxine and cured her. Elderon cast a high level magic missile, doing radiant damage, on five of the six remaining undead (excluding the one that was still turned by Elama). After that, Vinya dropped the same one she’d dropped the previous round again, but this time it was going to stay down. She then went back up to the top of the ledge and dropped one of the ones up there. Then she jumped back down to the floor level and punched one of the ones on Marxine.The suffragan shot black bolts at Elama again -- once again she used her shield to turn a critical hit into a regular hit and was hit twice. She didn’t drop, but she was very badly hurt.Aldalomiel cast thunderwave on the spawn next to her but unfortunately it saved and wasn’t knocked prone. Then she shot a radiant bolt from her starry form at another spawn. Marxine went up the stairs and attacked the one Aldalomiel was fighting -- she smote it with her first attack then dropped it with her second.Aldalomiel: Thank you.The turned spawn, still trying to run farther from Elama, couldn’t get past the suffragan, who wasn’t letting it go anywhere. The spawn at the bottom of the stairs hit Vinya once, but it was a critical hit. Fortunately she was able to dodge the worms.Marxine, able to feel worms crawling under her skin, laid hands on herself again and killed them. Elama cast cure wounds on herself and moved back to be nearer to Elderron -- then she took damage from the worms under her skin. Elderron cast magic missile -- spreading the radiant darts among the various undead (except the turned one). Vinya attacked the two remaining spawn on the lower level, dropping both of them.That left just the turned spawn and the entirely untouched suffragan on the ledge. The suffragan, seeing that Elama was badly injured, fired at her again. (If she dies with the worms in her, she’ll come back as a spawn of Kyuss a few minutes later.) Fortunately it missed both times.Aldalomiel moved along the ledge to a point where she could get a clear aim at the suffragan -- she fired two arrows and a radiant bolt at it, hitting with all three. Marxine went along the ledge toward the suffragan and the remaining spawn. Elama hid under a table in the library, to give herself cover from the suffragan’s necrotic beams, and cured herself again. Elderron cast scorching ray, changing the damage to radiant, and fired it at the suffragan. He hit with all three rays, leaving it looking bad. Vinya followed that up with a radiant sunbolt that dropped the suffragan. Her second sunbolt hit the turned spawn with a crit, breaking the turning. Aldalomiel shot at the last remaining spawn and hit with her radiant bolt (but not her arrows).Marxine stomped down the mezzanine and smashed at the last spawn with her hammer, hitting it twice and dropping it.There were no further opponents to fight -- except the danger of Elama turning into a spawn of Kyuss if we can’t get her to a temple and get the right kind of magic (which no one in the party has right now).Fortunately, Tulwark, of the Kalam guard, was there to help. We haven’t looked around the room at all. There’s a hint of a circle on the floor, but we don’t know much more than that.</blockquote>

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