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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 9492689" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 64: INSIDE, UP OR DOWNPC Roster: Ageratum Purslane, halfling rogue 16             Alistair Mandelberen Pastlethwaite, human sorcerer 16             Chaevaris Noarunal, elf archer 16             Harlan Starblade, half-elf paladin 16NPC Roster:Orchid, elf druid 16Game Session Date: 23 October 2024 - - -The heroes entered the chateau as Carruthers was crushing the life out of the blind erinyes devil.  When he released her lifeless body to fall to the floor of the shattered building, the last of the devils they had been up against thus far had been slain.  But Harlan wasn't convinced there weren't other devils to be found in the building, so he insisted they check out the rest of the structure, while his celestial steed Nova stood outside on guard duty, alert in case any other devils popped into view."Where to first?" asked Ageratum."Might as well clear this level," replied the paladin.  He made his way to the double doors in the back of the central room of the chateau, the one that had suffered the worst damage from Orchid's earthquake spell.  Fortunately, the doors pushed inward, so once he'd made his way across the rubble from the collapsing roof it was easy to get them open.  The tower beyond was a vast, empty chamber 50 feet to a side, with a ceiling height of some 30 feet - half the height of the tower itself."It's empty," Harlan announced, seeing nothing within.<Actually, it's not,> replied Orchid over the Rary's telepathic bond spell that was still active among the heroes.  <There's an invisible imp on the floor in the back left corner.  I can see him my true seeing spell.><All the way in the back corner?> asked Chaevaris, wanting confirmation as she fitted another arrow into her seeking longbow.  After Orchid fine-tuned the imp's location to the archer's full understanding, Chaevaris rapidly fired off a series of arrows that peppered the imp like a pincushion.  It flowed back into full visibility after its death."Nicely done," praised Harlan.  "Let's go check out the upper level."  There was no set of stairs inside the tower, so they backtracked into the chateau and examined the sets of stairs leading up from there.  The stairs had been in the path of the earthquake damage and didn't look like they'd necessarily take the weight of a paladin in plate mail armor, so Chaevaris ferried him up to the top level on her carpet of flying, then went back down to fetch Alistair and Ambrose.  Ageratum simply spider climbed up the wall and Orchid was still wildshaped into eagle form, so she flew upstairs.  Carruthers was left on the ground floor with orders to attack anyone other than the heroes that approached him from inside the building.There was a set of double doors leading into the upper level of the 60-foot-tall tower, and Harlan stood before them, concentrating on whether he could detect any evil behind the doors.  The others were quiet, allowing him to give the situation his full attention.  Finally, he announced over the mental link, <There is a single source of evil in the back left section of the tower.>  And with that, he opened the door before him to find a wide hallway leading to another set of double doors in the back, and four other doors along the side walls.  He crossed the hallway, heading to the double doors, and announced, <The evil is behind these doors!>  Chaevaris sent her carpet floating up behind him, Alistair sitting behind the archer with his grackle familiar perched on his shoulder.Swinging open the second set of doors, Harlan was disappointed to see nothing but a solid wall before him.<Hold on,> advised Orchid, using her true seeing against the wall.  phase door spell - we're not attuned, so it's a solid wall to us.><But there's a room beyond?> asked Alistair.  <It isn't just a solid mass of stone or anything?><No, there's definitely a room beyond,> the druid replied.<The evil is getting increasingly stronger!> Harlan advised.<Okay, everyone, gather up around me,> the sorcerer commanded.  <I'll dimension door us all into the room.>  Once everyone was within range, the sorcerer cast his spell and the five heroes - and one grackle - were inside what appeared to be the burnt, charred remains of what had once been a study or something.  But the paladin's attention was drawn immediately to the skeletal form slowly taking shape off to his left - bits of bone shards were flying together to reassemble into a human-sized skeleton, although this one seemed to be missing a right hand.  <Lich!" the paladin identified over the link, before bringing his Starblade, coursing with Pelor's smiting energy, into the skeletal form and shattering it all over again.  This time, the bone shards lay where they had fallen.<Look around,> he commanded to his team.  <There's got to be a phylactery around here somewhere - it's how he managed to survive after having been destroyed, and it's how he'll do so again unless we find and destroy the phylactery where he keeps his life-essence after death.>  But although they searched the entire room, and the adjoining rooms in the hall beyond (which turned out to be guest rooms, one of which at one point no doubt housed E. L. Grimwade when she interviewed "Lorne D. D'Veih" in his mortal guise), they found no evidence of there being a phylactery in the vicinity.  They did, however, find a lot of art supplies, including paint of a mundane quality and a set of Nolzur's magnificent pigments, whose magical quality Alistair was able to confirm with a detect magic spell.  There were also scraps of jade in a corner, which the halfling surmised were the fragments of something that had been carved of jade in this room."No phylactery - that's very odd," Harlan admitted.  "Liches end up back in their phylacteries after being destroyed, and can regrow a new skeletal body as long as there's a corpse within around 30 feet or so.  But this one was reforming well outside the range of its phylactery.""Maybe some fiendish influence?" suggested Chaevaris.  The paladin admitted it was a possibility, and suggested they continue on with their search - not only for the phylactery, but also for any other devils who might be using the area as their personal dwelling on the mortal plane.  The guest bedrooms were dusty from disuse but offered up nothing suspicious or untoward."That seems to be about it, then," admitted Alistair, but Ageratum corrected him by pointing out they hadn't explored the lower level of the tower yet.  "But it was just a big, empty room!" the sorcerer argued."It appeared to be," countered the halfling.  "But let's give it a good look-see anyway."  She turned out to be correct once they returned to the empty room with the slain imp, for Chaevaris and Orchid, with their elven senses, were able to find a hidden passageway in the back that opened onto a wide set of stairs leading down into the earth.  Fortunately, by being along the very back of the tower's structure, it had been spared from taking any damage from Orchid's earthquake spell.Chaevaris led the way down, floating on her carpet of flying.  There was no illumination, but the heroes all still had darkvision spells active, allowing them to see perfectly fine in the darkness.  The stairs went down for a bit and then leveled out to a short hallway, 15 feet wide, that led to a solid-looking wooden door.  On the right-hand wall hung a wide portrait of a bunch of fiendish creatures: a horned devil, an ice devil, two bone devils, a winged erinyes, four barbed devils, and six barghests - every devil the heroes had met up with since teleporting into Womtham.  "Nice family portrait," Ageratum commented, adding up the fiends and coming to the conclusion they'd likely already taken out everyone who'd been living here."Is this magical?" Harlan asked, and Alistair cast another detect magic spell before announcing that it was indeed.  "Transmutation magic, and a bit of illusion," he specified."Then this is likely how they took on mortal forms," the paladin explained.  "D'Veih, as a horned devil, wouldn't normally have the ability to appear as a human.  And the others were even less powerful than he.""So who painted it?" asked Chaevaris.  "The lich upstairs?"  He had, after all, been remanifesting inside an artist's studio, likely the place where he'd been destroyed.  Harlan accepted it as a possibility and advanced to the door, concentrating once again on sensing evil emanations from beyond.  The process took almost half a minute to get a full reading, but this time he didn't get to finish it, for the door was yanked open mere seconds after his initial approach.  Standing in the doorway was a giant of a man, a full twelve feet tall if he was an inch.  Harlan had time to recognize the ruby-tipped mace he carried as being an unholy symbol of Asmodeus and quickly deduced this was an evil cleric under the effects of a righteous might spell, but then the giant stepped back and started to cast a spell.Chaevaris acted just as quickly as the cleric, aiming an arrow at his eye and letting it fly.  It pierced through his right eye and he screamed, but he'd already finished the words of his spells: a quickened silence spell that encompassed all of the heroes but Ageratum (who had lingered back at the top of the stairs) and a blade barrier that sent whirling blades of force cutting into the heroes' flesh.  Chaevaris and Alistair leaped off the carpet of flying to the right, while Orchid flew to the left, but Harlan, in his heavy armor, was too slow to avoid the spell's effects.  None of them failed to notice the sudden lack of sound; Chaevaris had the presence of mind to broadcast the situation to Ageratum over the mental link, as the halfling was outside both spells' effects and could hear just fine.But then Ageratum popped a bead from her necklace of fireballs, loaded it into her sling, and fired it through the open doorway to explode past the giant cleric's feet.  The resulting explosion of flame engulfed the oversize cleric, adding to his screams as he pulled the arrow from his eye socket, taking his skewered eyeball with it.  Alistair, unable to get through the doorway without getting himself sliced to ribbons by the blade barrier spell, turned and fled back toward the stairs, but only until he could suddenly hear the sound of his boots on the stone floor again.  Then, confident he was outside the area of effect of the silence spell, he cast a dimension door spell that sent him and Ambrose dimension dooring to the far side of the cleric, in front of yet another set of double doors, this pair each etched with the unholy symbol of Asmodeus, Archduke of Hell.  It didn't look like the cleric had spotted him, so he'd be able to get in a surprise spell from behind!But that never came about.  Instead, Harlan ran out of the blade barrier spell straight for the unholy cleric, channeling Pelor's smiting energy once again through his enchanted blade and sending it swinging straight into the giant's belly.  He cut a wide gash across his foe's torso, allowing the man's intestines to start sliding out.  He fell painfully to one knee, with his hands gripping his stomach, trying to keep his innards from spilling onto the floor before him.  But then he toppled forward, his face smashing into the floor as he collapsed into blackness.  The blade barrier spell dropped as he lost consciousness, and while Chaevaris readied another arrow and Orchid flew into the room, it was Ageratum who had the presence of mind to run up to the cleric and slide the blade of her short sword across his throat, killing him instantly.  Then, her mind switching gears automatically from combat mode to treasure assessor, she declared, "That armor looks like it's worth something, and the same with his shield!"  Rummaging around in his pockets (a process that became easier when the righteous might spell wore off and he returned to his normal size), she also found a severed skeletal hand in his pocket."Ew!" the halfling cried, dropping the bones onto the floor.  "What's he doing carrying this around for?"Harlan had an idea.  "I'm starting to think this whole deal - the ring of the Pomarj getting into the hands of that half-orc barbarian leader, so that we'd go kill him and bring the ring here for an expert assessment on how to destroy it - may have all been a ruse.""To what end?" asked Alistair, somewhat disappointed he hadn't been able to get a final attack spell in against the cleric before he'd been slain."To get us here," replied Harlan.  "We have the cubic gate, the one that can send us to specific areas on a given plane if we have a touchstone to guide us.  What do you think the odds are that the lich's phylactery is on one of the five planes corresponding to the five faces of our cubic gate besides the Material Plane?""And the lich's hand would work as a touchstone," added Orchid.  "But which plane?""A project for another day," replied Harlan.  "We need to keep clearing out this nest of evil."  But there was no more evil to be dealt with; the double doors led to a temple of Asmodeus that was empty of all but the slain cleric who tended it.Ageratum didn't mind - that gave her more time to search for treasure.  Her explorations unearthed a rod of the python and a wand of charm animal (both of which were presented to Orchid for her use, after Harlan had determined to his satisfaction that neither device was inherently evil), while Ageratum claimed the Nolzur's magnificent pigments for herself."I was not aware you had a talent for painting," observed Alistair."I can learn!" answered the halfling, imagining all of the coins and gems she could create with such magical paints. - - -Of course, the Nolzur's magnificent pigments don't work that way, but even after finding that out, Ageratum decided she could still use them to paint holes in walls easily enough, so she's still eager to use them.</blockquote>

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