ADVENTURE 62: TAKEN
PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
Game Session Date: 9 October 2024
- - -
"Twenty days of travel?" squawked Alistair. He and the other members of the Trained Professional Adventurers had returned to the war council with the ring of the Pomarj and had agreed to go visit a sage who was a noted expert on fiendish artifacts, with the express desire to pay him to determine the safest way to destroy it without harm, but the young aristocrat did not look forward to literally weeks in the saddle. "Where exactly is this expert located?"
"In the city of Womtham," replied one of the council members, pointing it out on a map. They'd received word from their armies that the now-leadership band of orc and ogres had been routed, as had been hoped.
"We could wind walk there," suggested Orchid. "That would cut down the travel time extensively."
"I have a better idea," replied Alistair. Looking at his adventuring companions, he asked, "What do you think about staying overnight in Greyhawk City? I'd like to purchase that robe of the archmagi I've had my eye on, and I daresay my brother Atherton could put us up for the night. Then we could wind walk from Greyhawk to Womtham, likely in less than a day."
"Sooner there, sooner task completed," Ageratum supplied. Once that was agreed upon, Harlan promised the war council they'd return with word of the evil ring's destruction, gave the nod to Alistair, and with a few spoken arcane syllables, the five adventurers, Alistair's grackle familiar Ambrose, and Orchid's pet timber wolf Shushitan teleported across the miles and found themselves in the familiar streets of Greyhawk City, just outside a shop dealing in wizardly paraphernalia. "I'll be right back," Alistair promised. "I want to get my new robes custom-fitted."
Once in his new robes - a shining white that would likely see quite a few prestidigitation spells to keep them looking so spotlessly clean during the remainder of Alistair's adventurous career - the group went to Atherton's manor house for the evening, to relax, unwind, and talk over their plans for the next morning. "What's this guy's name again?" Chaevaris asked.
"The Marquis Lorne D. D’Veih," replied Alistair. "The same individual E. L. Grimwade interviewed before visiting us in Ghourmand Vale."
"And we don't trust him why again?" asked Ageratum.
"His name is an anagram of 'horned devil,'" Alistair answered. "Many fiends enjoy parading their true nature under the unsuspecting noses of foolish mortals like ourselves. But it would make sense that a horned devil, a fiend from the Nine Hells, would take as a human guise an expert of fiendish artifacts."
"And if he's set himself up in such a permanent guise," added Harlan, "then that means he's here on a somewhat permanent basis. And my order is not tolerant of allowing demons and devils to have free rein over here on the Mortal Plane."
"So what's the plan?" prompted the halfling.
"We rest up tonight, get a good night's sleep, get in a good, hearty breakfast tomorrow morning, and then Orchid casts a wind walk spell on us. From Greyhawk City, it should likely only take us seven or seven and a half hours to get to Womtham. After that, we can ask the locals for directions to the Marquis' dwelling."
That part of the plan went without a hitch, and in the middle of the afternoon of the next day the five adventurers (and Shushitan and Ambrose) dropped out of the wind walk spell Orchid had cast upon them and back into full corporeality in the city of Womtham. They approached a man on the street and got directions to the Marquis' dwelling, which happened to be on the other side of town - and a bit beyond that, as a matter of fact, as they'd have to cross a section of forest and a creek or two.
"Might as well prepare our longer-lasting prep spells," Harlan decided as they headed in the direction indicated. He summoned Nova to him from across the planes, and the celestial pegasus appeared before him, white pelt gleaming in the afternoon sun. Orchid cast a longstrider spell upon herself and greater magic fang spells on Nova and her wolf, while Alistair cast the spells flame arrow and Rary's telepathic bond on the assembled group (and their ammunition, the sorcerer maximizing the intensity of the flames). Then Alistair climbed up behind Chaevaris on her carpet of flying, letting her guide them above the others as they made their way towards the Marquis' estate.
As they approached a creek, they saw a group of four people headed their way from the opposite direction: a pair of elves, the male dressed in the robes of a druid and the woman in wizard's garb, and a pair of human commoners, a man and a woman. But as they got closer, a splash of water exploded from the flooded creek bed and a troll rose up, roaring in hunger as it stared at the two commoners before it.
Ageratum warned the others over the link as she slapped her bracelet and activated the greater invisibility spell effect it provided. Then, running toward Chaevaris' floating carpet, she leaped up, did a somersault in mid-air, and let her boots of spider climbing adhere her to the rug's underside. Orchid cast a mass bear's endurance spell on the group, preparing them for combat against a fearsome troll.
The male commoner ran across a log conveniently placed as a crossing-point across the waterway and motioned for his wife to do the same. The troll made a swipe at him with the claws of one massive hand but failed to connect. Then the male elf cast a scorching ray at the troll, sending two gouts of flame coming from his outstretched hand, one of which impacted the warty-skinned troll, momentarily bathing him in flames. Chaevaris furrowed her brow at this, and asked Orchid over the link, <Druids can't cast scorching ray spells, can they?> Orchid replied that no, that wasn't a spell known to druids, although they had produce flame and flaming sphere spells which did much the same thing. The elf archer still looked at the male elf druid skeptically, wondering if she had just made assumptions about him based on his robe or if he were under some sort of magical disguise or something. Despite her intense scrutiny, she came to no absolute conclusions. So she sent an arrow through the troll's skull, dropping it back into the pool of water from which it had arisen. The archer's arrow had been blazing with fire from Alistair's maximized flame arrow spell, and while she wasn't sure if that had been enough to make sure it didn't regenerate itself back to consciousness, if it wasn't dead yet it would likely drown under the waters of the overflowing creek.
The elf wizard pulled a flask from her hip and drank down its contents, then followed the commoner's path across the log to the other side of the flooded creek. The other woman did likewise, drinking down her own potion before joining her husband on the other side of the creek, over by the heroes, who were approaching the same log from the opposite direction.
And then the red dragon came down from the skies.
Announcing its presence with a mighty roar, the dragon spread its wings and glided down to a landing on the ground some distance away from the heroes. Alistair's attention was immediately focused upon the dragon, ignoring the lesser threat posed by the possibly-already-dead troll to these passers-by. As the way was clear, he fired a cone of cold spell through his metamagic rod, maximizing the spell's effect upon its target. The dragon - which, Alistair knew, was particularly vulnerable to cold energy, as its very nature was fiery - was covered in a layer of frost, but it didn't seem quite as discomfited as he would have imagined. He too began to question whether what he was seeing was being manipulated, but his suspicions were confirmed before he even got to voice them over the telepathic link, for Ambrose told his master he was able to see the ground through the dragon's form - it was some sort of an illusion! Alistair broadcast this update to his friends over their shared mental link, and Chaevaris then added her suspicions about the "druid" casting wizard spells.
<Stay focused!> Harlan warned. <I don't think anything's necessarily as it appears to be! Best not to trust these strangers - somebody's using illusion magic, and it may well be one of them!>
<Get to safety!> Alistair commanded to his familiar, and Ambrose took flight, heading to a tree far enough away to be able to watch without getting in the blast radius of any combat spells.
Nova took flight and Harlan concentrated on sensing the taint of evil in the vicinity. There was definitely evil about - not surprising, given the troll before and below him, but this evil seemed much more powerful than he'd expect to be broadcast by a simply hungry troll looking for a meal. (Plus, if the troll were indeed already dead, it would no longer register as evil to the paladin's trained senses - a corpse being no more evil than a rock or a tree stump.) Ageratum dropped from her upside-down perch beneath the carpet of flying and rolled to a stop, short swords out and ready for danger - all while remaining completely invisible.
Orchid and Shushitan approached the newcomers hesitantly. "Who are you?" the druid asked, but the only answers she got were frantic gestures towards the dragon - they seemed freaked out by its sudden presence. Then the male commoner tried making a grab for her, stepping nimbly around Shushitan as he tried biting the stranger grabbing his mistress. But Orchid cried out in pain at the man's touch, as multiple rents opened in her leather armor. The reason became clear as soon as the druid pierced through the "commoner's" disguise: he was a barbed devil, human in size and build but with a long, lizardlike tail behind him and spikes sticking out from his hardened body in all directions. Warning the others over the Rary's telepathic bond spell, the other four heroes were able to see through the magical disguises as well - none of the four strangers were as they had at first appeared, each being a barbed devil. For their part, the barbed devils stopped acting in their previous roles and focused their attention on attacking and destroying the heroes as quickly as they could, whooping and roaring in excitement. But Orchid found out the hard way that grappling a barbed devil was not something she'd ever willingly sign up to do, as the fiend's barbs tore open her armor and the skin beneath it.
Two of the other barbed devils - hamatula, Harlan knew them as, having studied them back in the temple - activated unholy blight spells in the middle of the heroes' lineup, ensuring each was covered by the unpleasant effects. Sickened by the cloying miasma, most of the heroes fought the rest of this battle at less than their top strength.
Chaevaris whipped an arrow into her magic bow and rapidly aimed at one of the hamatula, releasing the arrow to fly straight into her target's eye. It cried out in pain and reared its head, pointing the arrow shaft straight up into the sky. The peal of thunder rolled across its back as the arrow's sonic damage did its work, but the devil remained standing at the end of the archer's attack.
The fourth barbed devil stared down Orchid and tried freezing her up with a hold person spell, but the druid's mind was too strong for the spell to take effect. Then the air beside her started to get all misty with ice crystals forming out of nowhere; instinctively, the druid stuck her hand into the area of cold and the attempted wall of ice, cast by a devil as yet unseen in this battle, failed to take effect. But the caster faded into view at the end of the spellcasting effect, revealing itself to be twice the size of the druid, skeletal in build, but with a scorpionlike tail rising up from behind it. <Bone devil!> Harlan warned his friends.
But the bone devil had a coating of frost covering its skeletal body - it had inadvertently been inside the blast radius of Alistair's maximized cone of cold spell. Seeing that, Alistair repeated his strategy, firing a second such spell through his metamagic rod. The bone devil was slain instantly, and the illusion of the red dragon popped out of existence as well, leaving no doubt as to who had caused it to appear in the first place.
Nova dived down at the nearest barbed devil, allowing Harlan to swing his Starblade into its side. The attack caused the paladin a small amount of damage, getting that close to a devil covered in sharp spines, but Harlan felt he had dealt far more damage than he had taken, and was likewise sure he could keep up this pace much longer than could the hamatula. Ageratum, after having been advised over the link that the devils were immune to fire (and that beads from her necklace of fireballs would therefore be useless), instead fired off three "pebboulders" at a barbed devil, but none of them managed to deal the devil much damage at all. Orchid stepped away from the devil that had appeared as a male human commoner and cast a sunbeam spell at it and another barbed devil right behind it. However, both managed to survive the attack unscathed, their inherent resistance to spell energy keeping them protected.
Two of the barbed devils teleported closer to their victims, one right behind Orchid and another arriving directly behind Nova. But this latter hamatula got a surprise upon arriving, in the form of an arrow piercing his eye, courtesy of a grinning Chaevaris, who had backed up her carpet of flying to set up the shot. The arrow continued on out of the back of the devil's head, and he collapsed onto the ground in a pool of blood. Harlan noticed with interest that its body didn't disappear when slain, which meant it hadn't simply been summoned to the Mortal Plane but had actually been gated in. That made its death even more of an occasion for celebration, for it meant the fiend had been truly slain, not merely returned to its home plane.
Another barbed devil approached Orchid, grabbing her up in its claws and ripping her to shreds. But then Alistair focused a maximized chain lightning spell on the offender, sending an arc of electricity out to hit another hamatula within range. The first devil dropped from the attack, and the sorcerer could tell the second had taken some damage as well - his spell had at least made it past their inherent resistance.
Harlan and Nova charged at a barbed devil, dropping to the ground to do so; the paladin's blade crackled with Pelor's smiting energy and the devil was slain instantly. But the sword continued its swing, cutting into a second hamatula and chopping off a clump of spines as the blade dug deep into the fiend's torso, drawing blood. It was at about this time that the troll simply disappeared, although the heroes were too engaged in the battle at hand to pay a whole lot of attention at the moment. (Later, they'd realize this was a likely indicator of another bone devil - or similar fiend - in the vicinity, observing their progress and doing what he could to cause them to waste their attacks upon illusions.)
Ageratum decided to follow Harlan's example and charged the nearest hamatula, stabbing it with her short sword at the cost of being stabbed herself by a number of the fiend's spines. Orchid sent another sunbeam flashing at the sole remaining barbed devil, the burst dealing it a bit of damage, but not much. It, however, was focusing its attention upon Harlan, no doubt enraged by his allegiance to a god aligned with the hated celestials, and clawed at the paladin, trying to pull him from the saddle. In that it failed, but Harlan took numerous scratches across the unprotected parts of his body.
And then Chaevaris shot her last arrow of the battle, hitting it directly between its eyes and slaying it instantly. With no other combatants visible, Ageratum scrambled from corpse to corpse, looking for carried treasure; all she was able to find was one flask that hadn't yet been consumed, and Alistair's detect magic spell identified it as having a magical aura. (Later, it was determined this was a potion of see invisibility, which had Chaevaris concerned: how did these devils know the archer and the halfling rogue often used invisibility and greater invisibility to their advantage?)
<It would seem,> Harlan surmised, <this Marquis may have been spying upon us, to learn our ways. He may be well prepared for when we come up against him.>
<When will that be?> asked Orchid. <Do we press on, attacking him in his home before he has time to make further preparations against him? Or do we wait until tomorrow, when we can all be at peak strength and have the maximum number of spells available to us?>
That, it seemed, was the real question, and the decision the group made would no doubt have an important effect upon their upcoming fight with the Marquis, whom the heroes believed to be a horned devil masquerading as a human expert on fiendish artifacts.
- - -
My nephew Harry, who plays Harlan, now absolutely hates barbed devils. We pointed out to him that we had all come to the same conclusion in previous campaigns (before he joined our ranks), but he was absolutely right: they're the worst!
We haven't decided yet whether to press on immediately or to rest up; we'll likely discuss it at our Saturday "Dreams of Erthe" session and come up to a decision, so Dan will know which way we're going with this.
PC Roster:
Ageratum Purslane, halfling rogue 15
Alistair Mandelberen Pastlethwaite, human sorcerer 15
Chaevaris Noarunal, elf archer 15
Harlan Starblade, half-elf paladin 15
Alistair Mandelberen Pastlethwaite, human sorcerer 15
Chaevaris Noarunal, elf archer 15
Harlan Starblade, half-elf paladin 15
NPC Roster:
Orchid, elf druid 15
Game Session Date: 9 October 2024
- - -
"Twenty days of travel?" squawked Alistair. He and the other members of the Trained Professional Adventurers had returned to the war council with the ring of the Pomarj and had agreed to go visit a sage who was a noted expert on fiendish artifacts, with the express desire to pay him to determine the safest way to destroy it without harm, but the young aristocrat did not look forward to literally weeks in the saddle. "Where exactly is this expert located?"
"In the city of Womtham," replied one of the council members, pointing it out on a map. They'd received word from their armies that the now-leadership band of orc and ogres had been routed, as had been hoped.
"We could wind walk there," suggested Orchid. "That would cut down the travel time extensively."
"I have a better idea," replied Alistair. Looking at his adventuring companions, he asked, "What do you think about staying overnight in Greyhawk City? I'd like to purchase that robe of the archmagi I've had my eye on, and I daresay my brother Atherton could put us up for the night. Then we could wind walk from Greyhawk to Womtham, likely in less than a day."
"Sooner there, sooner task completed," Ageratum supplied. Once that was agreed upon, Harlan promised the war council they'd return with word of the evil ring's destruction, gave the nod to Alistair, and with a few spoken arcane syllables, the five adventurers, Alistair's grackle familiar Ambrose, and Orchid's pet timber wolf Shushitan teleported across the miles and found themselves in the familiar streets of Greyhawk City, just outside a shop dealing in wizardly paraphernalia. "I'll be right back," Alistair promised. "I want to get my new robes custom-fitted."
Once in his new robes - a shining white that would likely see quite a few prestidigitation spells to keep them looking so spotlessly clean during the remainder of Alistair's adventurous career - the group went to Atherton's manor house for the evening, to relax, unwind, and talk over their plans for the next morning. "What's this guy's name again?" Chaevaris asked.
"The Marquis Lorne D. D’Veih," replied Alistair. "The same individual E. L. Grimwade interviewed before visiting us in Ghourmand Vale."
"And we don't trust him why again?" asked Ageratum.
"His name is an anagram of 'horned devil,'" Alistair answered. "Many fiends enjoy parading their true nature under the unsuspecting noses of foolish mortals like ourselves. But it would make sense that a horned devil, a fiend from the Nine Hells, would take as a human guise an expert of fiendish artifacts."
"And if he's set himself up in such a permanent guise," added Harlan, "then that means he's here on a somewhat permanent basis. And my order is not tolerant of allowing demons and devils to have free rein over here on the Mortal Plane."
"So what's the plan?" prompted the halfling.
"We rest up tonight, get a good night's sleep, get in a good, hearty breakfast tomorrow morning, and then Orchid casts a wind walk spell on us. From Greyhawk City, it should likely only take us seven or seven and a half hours to get to Womtham. After that, we can ask the locals for directions to the Marquis' dwelling."
That part of the plan went without a hitch, and in the middle of the afternoon of the next day the five adventurers (and Shushitan and Ambrose) dropped out of the wind walk spell Orchid had cast upon them and back into full corporeality in the city of Womtham. They approached a man on the street and got directions to the Marquis' dwelling, which happened to be on the other side of town - and a bit beyond that, as a matter of fact, as they'd have to cross a section of forest and a creek or two.
"Might as well prepare our longer-lasting prep spells," Harlan decided as they headed in the direction indicated. He summoned Nova to him from across the planes, and the celestial pegasus appeared before him, white pelt gleaming in the afternoon sun. Orchid cast a longstrider spell upon herself and greater magic fang spells on Nova and her wolf, while Alistair cast the spells flame arrow and Rary's telepathic bond on the assembled group (and their ammunition, the sorcerer maximizing the intensity of the flames). Then Alistair climbed up behind Chaevaris on her carpet of flying, letting her guide them above the others as they made their way towards the Marquis' estate.
As they approached a creek, they saw a group of four people headed their way from the opposite direction: a pair of elves, the male dressed in the robes of a druid and the woman in wizard's garb, and a pair of human commoners, a man and a woman. But as they got closer, a splash of water exploded from the flooded creek bed and a troll rose up, roaring in hunger as it stared at the two commoners before it.
Ageratum warned the others over the link as she slapped her bracelet and activated the greater invisibility spell effect it provided. Then, running toward Chaevaris' floating carpet, she leaped up, did a somersault in mid-air, and let her boots of spider climbing adhere her to the rug's underside. Orchid cast a mass bear's endurance spell on the group, preparing them for combat against a fearsome troll.
The male commoner ran across a log conveniently placed as a crossing-point across the waterway and motioned for his wife to do the same. The troll made a swipe at him with the claws of one massive hand but failed to connect. Then the male elf cast a scorching ray at the troll, sending two gouts of flame coming from his outstretched hand, one of which impacted the warty-skinned troll, momentarily bathing him in flames. Chaevaris furrowed her brow at this, and asked Orchid over the link, <Druids can't cast scorching ray spells, can they?> Orchid replied that no, that wasn't a spell known to druids, although they had produce flame and flaming sphere spells which did much the same thing. The elf archer still looked at the male elf druid skeptically, wondering if she had just made assumptions about him based on his robe or if he were under some sort of magical disguise or something. Despite her intense scrutiny, she came to no absolute conclusions. So she sent an arrow through the troll's skull, dropping it back into the pool of water from which it had arisen. The archer's arrow had been blazing with fire from Alistair's maximized flame arrow spell, and while she wasn't sure if that had been enough to make sure it didn't regenerate itself back to consciousness, if it wasn't dead yet it would likely drown under the waters of the overflowing creek.
The elf wizard pulled a flask from her hip and drank down its contents, then followed the commoner's path across the log to the other side of the flooded creek. The other woman did likewise, drinking down her own potion before joining her husband on the other side of the creek, over by the heroes, who were approaching the same log from the opposite direction.
And then the red dragon came down from the skies.
Announcing its presence with a mighty roar, the dragon spread its wings and glided down to a landing on the ground some distance away from the heroes. Alistair's attention was immediately focused upon the dragon, ignoring the lesser threat posed by the possibly-already-dead troll to these passers-by. As the way was clear, he fired a cone of cold spell through his metamagic rod, maximizing the spell's effect upon its target. The dragon - which, Alistair knew, was particularly vulnerable to cold energy, as its very nature was fiery - was covered in a layer of frost, but it didn't seem quite as discomfited as he would have imagined. He too began to question whether what he was seeing was being manipulated, but his suspicions were confirmed before he even got to voice them over the telepathic link, for Ambrose told his master he was able to see the ground through the dragon's form - it was some sort of an illusion! Alistair broadcast this update to his friends over their shared mental link, and Chaevaris then added her suspicions about the "druid" casting wizard spells.
<Stay focused!> Harlan warned. <I don't think anything's necessarily as it appears to be! Best not to trust these strangers - somebody's using illusion magic, and it may well be one of them!>
<Get to safety!> Alistair commanded to his familiar, and Ambrose took flight, heading to a tree far enough away to be able to watch without getting in the blast radius of any combat spells.
Nova took flight and Harlan concentrated on sensing the taint of evil in the vicinity. There was definitely evil about - not surprising, given the troll before and below him, but this evil seemed much more powerful than he'd expect to be broadcast by a simply hungry troll looking for a meal. (Plus, if the troll were indeed already dead, it would no longer register as evil to the paladin's trained senses - a corpse being no more evil than a rock or a tree stump.) Ageratum dropped from her upside-down perch beneath the carpet of flying and rolled to a stop, short swords out and ready for danger - all while remaining completely invisible.
Orchid and Shushitan approached the newcomers hesitantly. "Who are you?" the druid asked, but the only answers she got were frantic gestures towards the dragon - they seemed freaked out by its sudden presence. Then the male commoner tried making a grab for her, stepping nimbly around Shushitan as he tried biting the stranger grabbing his mistress. But Orchid cried out in pain at the man's touch, as multiple rents opened in her leather armor. The reason became clear as soon as the druid pierced through the "commoner's" disguise: he was a barbed devil, human in size and build but with a long, lizardlike tail behind him and spikes sticking out from his hardened body in all directions. Warning the others over the Rary's telepathic bond spell, the other four heroes were able to see through the magical disguises as well - none of the four strangers were as they had at first appeared, each being a barbed devil. For their part, the barbed devils stopped acting in their previous roles and focused their attention on attacking and destroying the heroes as quickly as they could, whooping and roaring in excitement. But Orchid found out the hard way that grappling a barbed devil was not something she'd ever willingly sign up to do, as the fiend's barbs tore open her armor and the skin beneath it.
Two of the other barbed devils - hamatula, Harlan knew them as, having studied them back in the temple - activated unholy blight spells in the middle of the heroes' lineup, ensuring each was covered by the unpleasant effects. Sickened by the cloying miasma, most of the heroes fought the rest of this battle at less than their top strength.
Chaevaris whipped an arrow into her magic bow and rapidly aimed at one of the hamatula, releasing the arrow to fly straight into her target's eye. It cried out in pain and reared its head, pointing the arrow shaft straight up into the sky. The peal of thunder rolled across its back as the arrow's sonic damage did its work, but the devil remained standing at the end of the archer's attack.
The fourth barbed devil stared down Orchid and tried freezing her up with a hold person spell, but the druid's mind was too strong for the spell to take effect. Then the air beside her started to get all misty with ice crystals forming out of nowhere; instinctively, the druid stuck her hand into the area of cold and the attempted wall of ice, cast by a devil as yet unseen in this battle, failed to take effect. But the caster faded into view at the end of the spellcasting effect, revealing itself to be twice the size of the druid, skeletal in build, but with a scorpionlike tail rising up from behind it. <Bone devil!> Harlan warned his friends.
But the bone devil had a coating of frost covering its skeletal body - it had inadvertently been inside the blast radius of Alistair's maximized cone of cold spell. Seeing that, Alistair repeated his strategy, firing a second such spell through his metamagic rod. The bone devil was slain instantly, and the illusion of the red dragon popped out of existence as well, leaving no doubt as to who had caused it to appear in the first place.
Nova dived down at the nearest barbed devil, allowing Harlan to swing his Starblade into its side. The attack caused the paladin a small amount of damage, getting that close to a devil covered in sharp spines, but Harlan felt he had dealt far more damage than he had taken, and was likewise sure he could keep up this pace much longer than could the hamatula. Ageratum, after having been advised over the link that the devils were immune to fire (and that beads from her necklace of fireballs would therefore be useless), instead fired off three "pebboulders" at a barbed devil, but none of them managed to deal the devil much damage at all. Orchid stepped away from the devil that had appeared as a male human commoner and cast a sunbeam spell at it and another barbed devil right behind it. However, both managed to survive the attack unscathed, their inherent resistance to spell energy keeping them protected.
Two of the barbed devils teleported closer to their victims, one right behind Orchid and another arriving directly behind Nova. But this latter hamatula got a surprise upon arriving, in the form of an arrow piercing his eye, courtesy of a grinning Chaevaris, who had backed up her carpet of flying to set up the shot. The arrow continued on out of the back of the devil's head, and he collapsed onto the ground in a pool of blood. Harlan noticed with interest that its body didn't disappear when slain, which meant it hadn't simply been summoned to the Mortal Plane but had actually been gated in. That made its death even more of an occasion for celebration, for it meant the fiend had been truly slain, not merely returned to its home plane.
Another barbed devil approached Orchid, grabbing her up in its claws and ripping her to shreds. But then Alistair focused a maximized chain lightning spell on the offender, sending an arc of electricity out to hit another hamatula within range. The first devil dropped from the attack, and the sorcerer could tell the second had taken some damage as well - his spell had at least made it past their inherent resistance.
Harlan and Nova charged at a barbed devil, dropping to the ground to do so; the paladin's blade crackled with Pelor's smiting energy and the devil was slain instantly. But the sword continued its swing, cutting into a second hamatula and chopping off a clump of spines as the blade dug deep into the fiend's torso, drawing blood. It was at about this time that the troll simply disappeared, although the heroes were too engaged in the battle at hand to pay a whole lot of attention at the moment. (Later, they'd realize this was a likely indicator of another bone devil - or similar fiend - in the vicinity, observing their progress and doing what he could to cause them to waste their attacks upon illusions.)
Ageratum decided to follow Harlan's example and charged the nearest hamatula, stabbing it with her short sword at the cost of being stabbed herself by a number of the fiend's spines. Orchid sent another sunbeam flashing at the sole remaining barbed devil, the burst dealing it a bit of damage, but not much. It, however, was focusing its attention upon Harlan, no doubt enraged by his allegiance to a god aligned with the hated celestials, and clawed at the paladin, trying to pull him from the saddle. In that it failed, but Harlan took numerous scratches across the unprotected parts of his body.
And then Chaevaris shot her last arrow of the battle, hitting it directly between its eyes and slaying it instantly. With no other combatants visible, Ageratum scrambled from corpse to corpse, looking for carried treasure; all she was able to find was one flask that hadn't yet been consumed, and Alistair's detect magic spell identified it as having a magical aura. (Later, it was determined this was a potion of see invisibility, which had Chaevaris concerned: how did these devils know the archer and the halfling rogue often used invisibility and greater invisibility to their advantage?)
<It would seem,> Harlan surmised, <this Marquis may have been spying upon us, to learn our ways. He may be well prepared for when we come up against him.>
<When will that be?> asked Orchid. <Do we press on, attacking him in his home before he has time to make further preparations against him? Or do we wait until tomorrow, when we can all be at peak strength and have the maximum number of spells available to us?>
That, it seemed, was the real question, and the decision the group made would no doubt have an important effect upon their upcoming fight with the Marquis, whom the heroes believed to be a horned devil masquerading as a human expert on fiendish artifacts.
- - -
My nephew Harry, who plays Harlan, now absolutely hates barbed devils. We pointed out to him that we had all come to the same conclusion in previous campaigns (before he joined our ranks), but he was absolutely right: they're the worst!
We haven't decided yet whether to press on immediately or to rest up; we'll likely discuss it at our Saturday "Dreams of Erthe" session and come up to a decision, so Dan will know which way we're going with this.
