A Prison, A Crystal, and A Wulf
It has been a long time, so apologies there, but between scheduling problems and just a longer section, we finally finished up the 8th adventure! As an aside, we continue to upload our sessions on various streaming sites, and just this week have started uploading video of ourselves and our game on YouTube. Feel free to check it out if you aren't already! (Thanks for the kind words
@Oginme ) We just uploaded our first episode with video and it is the last session that we'd played before my previous recap post, so perfect timing there.
When the party arrives at the Scourge fortress, Pilus tells them to hold on before unleashing the power of Tempest down upon the prismatic wall protecting it. Everyone is thrown backwards and injured, but the wall, and the defenders, are gone. This was a truly shocking moment for the party and truly showing off the power of the flying shark, which bodes well for later on. Especially with Rev being attached to Pilus through his former boss now turned Pilus' seeming best friend. There has been many moments where Rev has tried to find his former master, Aemon Ming, but I always had the Forbiddance around Tempest stop him from seeing anything useful. Now he gets a better realization for why and how difficult the task before him will yet be.
The remaining guards are dealt with swiftly, but inside turns a bit more dangerous. I decided to not separate the first couple of fights inside because most of the enemies there are pretty simple and pushovers meant for resource drain more than threat. So despite not getting hit a ton, the group was getting in danger of being overrun by sheer numbers of undead throwing themselves at them. Eventually, Bryn burned one of her remaining 2 channel divinities to destroy the majority of them, win the fight, and keep things moving. I put a 1 hour clock on them, so there was no time for resting anymore from here to the end as the army would be coming back to hunt them down. This let them take 1 short rest, but nothing more for the remainder of the fortress.
Deeper in, the pudding was dealt with pretty simply. I fudged some rules with it a little bit (dividing 5 is not so easy as 4), but overall it was interesting. More importantly though was the encounter with Clark the clerk. We ended up being live for this session for nearly all of us, and so we had a guest appearance play Clark. The fiancée of Becca (Myetharia) picked up the role and had a blast trying his best to destroy the party in the clean room. It was a very different fight than any beforehand, which was great! The room of anti-magic really changed how everyone thought about their characters and what they could do, so I would really recommend playing this fight out and pushing things here. The poisons are also a really good touch to make things really dangerous with the lack of healing and just high damage numbers.
In the end, Clark wasn't enough, but he got his chance at glory. While surrendering, one of his men attempted to grab Myetharia and dive into the prison pit, shouting "For Ragesia!" on the way. His moment of crazed patriotism failed when he did not win the roll off and plummeted himself down the pit. Fortunately, next session guaranteed that he was not alone. The walls of force rose, the waters turned on, and the party washed out into the prison below. They tried to resist some, but with Jack being pulled straight in on turn 1, the rest of the group didn't have much choice but to follow.
I didn't dwell too long on the prison section itself, moving them pretty quickly along to where they needed to go, but I did put an NPC from Jack's backstory here. His antagonistic rival growing up, Gil, was taken by the Scourge recently after the events in Dassen. It was really fun to have a reluctantly grateful, but still grumpy about it, person who wasn't really an enemy in the mix to remind everyone of how far they have come since the beginning. The comparison between Gil, stuck in his memories of the past and competition with Jack, compared to the problems that they are working on dealing with now was meaningful for them. There truly are just bigger fish to fry for the group now than petty squabbles like that.
On a similar note, they next find themselves in front of Guthwulf; a man they have long craved killing. Instead of drawing blades though, they recognized that they might need to work together for the time being to get out of this mess. Calling a temporary truce, Guthwulf opens the way for them during the next break in singing and the group heads inside to deal with the engine of the Obelisk. The fight with Agony had a ton of potential to be great, but a series of really great saving throws by the group to avoid damage back and a thought that this was the climax of the encounter led to them throwing some very high level spells into the mix, avoiding recoil, and killing Agony in fairly short order. The biggest concern was actually that Etinifi might be killed rather than anyone in the group would be, which did cause some interesting choices for people. I always like it when fights have alternate failure conditions than just being wiped out as it forces you to think differently.
With Agony dealt with, they bartered with Guthwulf again, giving him money to summon a burrowing fiend to lead the prisoners to safety, while the party heads up to deal with Kreven, the brains behind the weapon. I had spiced up this fight a little given that many of the combatants died in the previous events at the Eye, adding in a few erinyes (one of which was from a one-shot the group had done a while ago) and defensive brutes. It was a good time, but with the buffs the party had and the relative lack of high powered attacking options outside of Kreven to punch through the Twilight Sanctuary, it wasn't deadly.
Kreven dead, the obelisk still had to be dealt with. I decided to offer the ability to kill 2 birds with 1 stone (and fix a problem for myself) by letting the party use the remaining energy themselves. They nuked the army that was coming back to the Fortress instead of having to deal with them at all (as I realized that teleportation would still be blocked despite what the adventure says, at least without some GM hand waving). Calling down multiple high level spells and modifying them with metamagic at will allowed them to destroy the group instantly and brutally, something that I used in the next session to help Guthwulf talk his way out of death, and destroyed the crystal for good, ending the threat.
All danger dealt with, they met back up with Guthwulf and the prisoners, considered killing him when he wouldn't come bound and powerless, but decided to agree when he threatened calling down high level magic on them. I planned that Guthwulf could die there, but he wouldn't without trying to kill as many of the prisoners as he could, calling down either fire storm or an earthquake to render what the party had done less complete of a victory. They did dodge this by dealing, but it was a close run thing for sure.
Reuniting with Xavious, and seeing the results of the battle had there, the group opens a portal back to Seaquen, where still in the middle of the night, they are treated once more as the heroes their actions deserve. The town saved, the Resistance no longer in imminent danger, they have a few days to prepare before the next effort towards Gate Pass.
This will be a long awaited section coming up as the party has wanted to go back to Gate Pass nearly ever session since they got to Seaquen. I also have some ideas for going forward that might still come up as well as we may have a party member needing to take an extended break (darn you real life and babies...). We shall see how we deal with it in the coming months, but everyone is very excited to be bringing everything back around full circle for the next adventure!
E: Totally didn't post this with "Title" still at the top...
