Alright, we played this last Saturday for about six hours. I would've written it up earlier, but I wasn't in the mood, so I didn't. So there you go
[sblock]So, last session ended with the party taking an extended rest after an intense fight with two vampires of Vecna and a cooperative hill giant. To kick off the session, I told the Scout and the Knight to roll Endurance checks. They asked why, and I stared gleefully at them. The player of the Warpriest guessed correctly: they had both been bitten by a vampire in the last fight.
I told the players about the disease track, and briefly summed up how it worked. I told the Warpriest that he'd normally get to substitute his Heal check for one of their Endurance checks (he gets +20 on it at level 8, while the Scout only gets +4, I think). However, vampirism isn't a normal disease, and the most he could do is give a +2 to one of them (the one he treated). I told them the Endurance DCs (1-19 and it got worse, 20-22 and it stayed the same, 23+ and it got better). I even put a
vampire die next to each of them, set to "1". I told them that if it reached 3, then they'd become a vampire.
The Warpriest decided to treat the Scout, giving him +2, but both the Scout and the Knight failed (the Knight got a 19, barely failing; he's trained and has an 18 or 19 Con, so he had a good shot). They both set their dice to 2. I told them at level 1 their maximum healing surges were reduced by 2, but at level 2 they were reduced by 4 (cutting the Scout's in half). At level 3, they would die (give in to the vampirism). The Warpriest used a daily utility on the Scout to improve the disease by two steps (curing him) after discussing it with the party. Unfortunately, he couldn't do it to the Knight before his next roll, so the PCs were worried that their defender would roll poorly and fail.
They debated whether or not to go back to the dwarven city (they were only one day out), but thought that he might not be well received in his current state. They didn't want to press on, and decided to wait around until they could take another extended rest. After about thirteen hours, they heard the sound of around ten creatures approaching from the direction of the dwarven city, though the creatures stopped about a hundred or so feet away and waited for about an hour. After debating what to do, they had the Scout, well, scout ahead.
The Scout crawled along, trying his best to gain information (he can't see in the dark, and he didn't want to give his position away with a light source). He has a Wild Talent that allows him to send his sight or hearing ahead, and could overhear the group talking. Before he could move away, someone from the group cast a spell, hitting him for some damage and immobilizing him. As he was within eyesight of the party, they moved up when he mentally alerted them that he was stuck (another Wild Talent).
They called out to the group, and were greeted by dwarves. They approached the group, and explained who they were. The group recognized them, but one of the soldiers (there were eight soldiers, a cleric, and a mage) chided the group for hanging around back here rather than continuing on. They put as much in a report, too, declaring that they would report this to the king. The Warpriest wasn't in the mood to argue, saying that he was taking care of things.
After a short discussion with the group, the Warpriest asked if the dwarves had a vampire problem. The dwarven cleric narrowed his eyes and approached the Warpriest, speaking to him in a low voice. He said that he didn't, and the Warpriest revealed that the Knight had been bitten. The cleric chided him for not asking for help, but admitted he couldn't cure it. He used a spell that would delay it (the Knight gets one free extended rest without rolling), but told the group that they should continue on, out of patrol range. The group agreed, continuing on.
After walking for some time (with the Sorceress walking behind the Warpriest rather than the Knight, and making numerous half-serious jokes about maybe having to put him down, telling him to scout ahead, etc.), the party was attacked out of the darkness by two magical iron bolts. They both hit the Knight (he has a low Will), controlling him and causing him to attack the Scout.
We rolled initiative. The Scout commanded his owlbear companion (Fey Beast Tamer theme) to throw a lit torch ahead, revealing two duergar priests of Asmodeus (they had holy symbols) and a mind flayer. At this point, the Knight felt an intense rage wash over him from the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd (it hates tyranny, and Asmodeus is a pretty big offender, and had in fact just controlled its wearer). They players all mentally prepared themselves for a fight with a mind flayer...
...and then I told them that the Warpriest could see it was marked to live by The Raven Queen. The players were all shocked, and the wilden Scout player said that this wasn't going to go well. He hated aberrants, and had waited his entire life for revenge on the race (mind flayers) that had destroyed his village before mysteriously leaving him alive.
The fight was interesting, as both priests of Asmodeus and the mind flayer were all controllers. The priests would basically have the party attack one another, while the mind flayer could spur one priest to attack each turn (who would attempt to have a PC attack another PC). The mind flayer also finally got a good grasp on the dwarven Knight, digging into his brain. This caused him to be stunned until he was no longer grabbed, no save (the sensation was remarkably painful, but the PC couldn't help but be fascinated by it; the mind flayer was stimulating the PC's brain so that it'd be tastier as it prepared to snack on it). The Scout ended up breaking him out of it with an Acrobatics check, but he didn't roll high enough, and so he swapped positions with the Knight. Now the mind flayer was digging into his brain... OMNOMNOM.
Unfortunately, some well-placed blasts from the Sorceress broke the Scout free (she slid him away after hitting the mind flayer), and freed the Knight after he was grabbed and then subdued again. The priests of Asmodeus were put down, and the focus on the mind flayer was overwhelming. When it got low on hit points, it telepathically told the Knight that neither of them would survive this (the Knight was getting pretty low on hit points, too).
Before it could be killed, however, the Warpriest yelled to spare it, as it was marked to live. The Sorceress shouted that the Warpriest must be mind controlled, and attacked it (and then again with an action point). The Scout barely held himself back, saying that the Warpriest wasn't mind controlled after a Dungeoneering check (the Warpriest was the only PC not yet targeted by the mind flayer). The Knight stopped attacking but readied an attack. The Sorceress attacked one last time, but missed, and all three others told her to stop.
Talking commenced, mainly with the mind flayer telepathically talking to the Warpriest, though he'd always reply out loud. The mind flayer said that it was here to close the "tears in this fake reality" and to stop "this fake reality from fading away as true reality reasserted itself." The Warpriest asked if these tears were like portals, and the mind flayer said not exactly, but that it couldn't communicate the difference. There were two rooms with multiple tears in them, it said, and they had to be closed simultaneously. The mind flayer had been trying to "recruit" dwarves on patrol to get this task done, but now "both realities are doomed," though the "fake reality would be doomed much sooner." When asked how it knew this, it told the Warpriest that "my kind has seen the end of all realities," and that it planned to avert such an ending, though the Warpriest kept this to himself.
The PCs agreed to help heal one set of rifts. The Warpriest even used a Healing Word on the mind flayer. After a short rest, they continued ahead. After about an hour, they split up down two corridors, the mind flayer alone. They asked if there would be other mind flayers, and he said possibly. When asked if they would be on the side of the PCs, the mind flayer said that they would not be. The Warpriest asked if the mind flayer would aid in killing the other mind flayers, and it said it wouldn't, but that it had no problem with the PCs doing so.
As they continued, they ran into three creatures. Two were obviously twisted versions of hill giants, which the Scout recognized as foulspawn. A regular-sized humanoid foulspawn accompanied them, which the Scout recognized as a warpcaller, capable of twisting space. We rolled initiative.
This fight was shorter, but was pretty intense. The hulks did a lot of damage and hit most of the time (and hit harder and more accurately when bloodied), and dropped the Scout and the Sorceress multiple times each. The Warpriest had to use a Cure Light Wounds and Cure Serious Wound daily spell in addition to his Healing Word spells, and the Sorceress had to use her Majestic Word daily (multi-class Bard). The Warpcaller just made things harder (it could attack PCs at range and teleport one of the foulspawn hulks adjacent to that PC, which is why the squishy PCs kept dropping).
After the intense fight, they continued another couple hundred feat into a large chamber filled with portals which the Scout identified as the "tears" the mind flayer had talked about. They were portals to the Far Realm, though they didn't really allow travel in or out. However, they would warp nearby creatures, creating foulspawn. They got a telepathic ding telling them to repair the tears, and we went into a skill challenge.
I ran this as a 12/3 skill challenge, which I think was the hardest one yet. An initial Hard Dungeoneering from the Scout (who went first) gave a lot of insight into what to do, but also identified what happened if they lost: the tears would all expand, teleport elsewhere, and become irreparable. This seemed to put a lot of pressure on the players, which mad the skill challenge a lot more fun. The PCs also knew they had to emphasize this reality as much as possible, so we had several speeches on what this reality was about (the Scout lecturing about the natural world with Nature, the Knight ranting about life and honor and threatening with Intimidate, the Warpriest praying for help from The Raven Queen with Religion, the Sorceress detailing the Dawn War, etc.). Pretty interesting to see what these particular PCs valued about this existence.
Without going into too much of the fiction, I will say that some of the failures were fun. The first gave each PC ongoing 5 psychic damage until the skill challenge ended (they took each of their turns), though this didn't affect the Knight (he had already attuned his Invulnerable Coat of Arnd to give him 5 psychic resist). The PCs wasted three out of their four advantages trying to reverse the failure (several 1s and 3s) before giving up and continuing on.
They failed at another point, and each PC made a random at-will attack against a random ally; the Scout attacked his owlbear ('killing' it and sending it back into the Feywild), while the Knight and the Sorceress both attacked the Warpriest. The Sorceress crit on the Warpriest, and the combined damage knocked him to -1; rather than stay down, he activated his Amulet of Death Deferred, the gift of Vecna (yay!), bringing him up to 6 hit points.
The PCs eventually reversed that failure, the Warpriest used both Healing Word spells on himself, and then they eventually beat the skill challenge. The tears all withered, becoming highly reflective as they collapsed in on themselves. The PCs could see twisted versions of themselves in the reflections (which really upset the wilden Scout), and then the tears were gone...
...leaving behind six reflections: three foulspawn versions of the Knight, two foulspawn versions of the Scout, and one foulspawn version of the Sorceress. And with that, we called session.[/sblock]
The Scout still really wants to hunt that mind flayer down, but is holding off only because of his friendship with the others (and the fact they they've literally all saved his life at least once as of this point), though the Sorceress and Knight both want the mind flayer dead, too.
The Warpriest is really worried about the upcoming fight, since both Healing Words are expended, as are his Cure Light Wounds and Cure Serious Wounds daily powers, and he has no magic item daily powers available (his mace has a daily healing power, but he can't use it since he's used two magic item daily powers already today). To pass the time between sessions, the player is making a backup character.
The Knight player is having a lot of fun (this is the guy that hadn't played since 1e), and kind of wants to give in to the disease, though he says his dwarf definitely doesn't want to. He wants to get more powerful, and he says that vampires are powerful, even though they have drawbacks. Well, we'll see what happens... Mwahahahaha!
All in all, a very fun session. We're looking forward to playing again on the 7th of next month
