TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

The regular 4 were once again punctually present. Having tallied up all the treasure from the last adventure, they wanted to spend it before heading moonward, with particular emphasis on making sure they could survive whatever the atmosphere situation was up there. Nearly a full hour was spent on considering if they should and could get the mudship back through the portal. Looking at its movement rate and especially the surprisingly short amount of amount of sailing through rock it can actually do in one go, they decided getting it all the way through the needlespire tunnels and out the other side again would be tedious and impractical. Instead, they checked how much they could buff their strength, to see if they could simply fit the thing in their weight limit when they teleported. Looking at the weights of real life boats of that size, this was not an unreasonable question, as a crucial factor for boats is maintaining a relatively low density for their size. Eventually we worked out that the githyanki could indeed lift the boat singlehandedly, teleport back to the gate, squeeze it through, and teleport a second time to reach their airship, still thankfully floating above the needlespire where they left it. From there, they set about roping the mudship to the side of the larger airship so they could use it as a docking transport.

With that bit of logistics sorted out, they decided that the City of Brass once again seemed like a good place to spend their money, as they could buy 9th level stuff there and would have a bit more time to think about exactly what, if anything they'd report next time they went back to Tu'narath. The trip was much faster in the airship, taking them only 6 hours, which means they got there late afternoon by their time. This gave them plenty of time to split up and hit the markets. The githyanki forgot that water & ice magic is tightly controlled here and tried to buy an ice assassin, which got the notice of some less savoury sorts who took his money and said they'd get hold of a scroll, but may not follow through on that. The sniper spent even more of his money on scrolls, to the point where I was forced to say that no, they wouldn't have that many of several specific high level spells in stock, so he'd have to order them and come back later.

However, these minor setbacks were of little importance compared to the troubles they were about to face. While they were gone, a group of devils controlled by (or maybe the other way around) the wizards they performed the heist upon a week (of in game time) ago had managed to trace the gold they'd stolen here. They'd lost the trail over the past couple of days due to the minor issue of them having travelled outside the known cosmos, but were still in the neighbourhood and had picked up descriptions of the people who had passed through, flush with large quantities of bullion rather than regular coinage. The PC's returning here so quickly and once again throwing around large amounts of cash meant the agents among the crowd soon caught on and prepared to get their revenge. They waited until the PC's had all finished their shopping and went back to the ship for the night, sending a message back to their master, who did some scrying before they made a move. This did alert both the githyanki & binder, who have scrying detection spells up, but both of them independently decided to roll bluff checks to pretend they weren't woken and act like they were still asleep. Once they were firmly surrounded, the ship got a firm knock on the main entrance. At the other end of the gangplank was a pit fiend and several dozen lesser baatezu, all ready for trouble. Since they are still trying to follow procedure, they demanded their money back, or they'd collect the PC's souls as forfeit. The binder played dumb, pretending she was still half asleep and had no idea what they were talking about, they didn't have any of their gold. (technically true as they'd already exchanged it for lighter valuables last time, but not the point and everyone on both sides knew it) Things soon degenerated as the devils were forced to become increasingly blunt in their statements due to her word games. And so we conclude this session knowing that next one is going to go into a big battle, but one where they have some complex choices to make, as simply going full force within the city limits will result in them attracting attention from the Sultan and losing a good place to buy & sell stuff. Then once that is over, they have the equally tricky choice of whether to go back to prioritizing sealing the stuff beyond the gate, which may be a universe-threatening danger long-term but doesn't seem to have noticed them yet, or deal with the enemies they've made from previous adventures first, who might not be as strong overall, but are an immediate problem that is actively seeking them out and won't stop until dealt with one way or another.

 

[(un)reason]

3 players present. They spent a good 20 minutes figuring out just how many buffs they would have managed to get active considering they'd been awoken in the middle of the night with short notice, but once that was dealt with the rest of the session was non-stop action. The binder created a bunch of weaker duplicates of herself and they all charged at the devils at the other end of the gangplank, while directing her airship to fly away. The sniper had turned ethereal at this point, so he let himself slip through the floors of the ship and float towards the jetty edge where the combat was beginning. In the process he noticed there were some smaller invisible devils clinging to the hull of the ship, ready to act as tracers if the frontal assault failed. He filed that information away to deal with later, and started using his wings of flurry to wear down the same devils the binder was already targeting. The pit fiend, cornugons and barbazu continued to mob the binder and her duplicates, while the hamatula teleported onto the departing ship before it could get too much speed up. There they noticed that the top deck was empty apart from the githyanki (the minions had hid below decks, knowing even weak devils would be above their pay grade), so half of them went to attack him while the other half headed for the stairs. He summoned some cervidals in response and set them to using their banishing touches, which didn't have great odds of success individually but were still much quicker when used en masse than trying to reduce them to 0hp. They soon dealt with the ones attacking him and went for the ones on the stairs, which were being kept from advancing by the priestesses whipping.

While this was taking place, the airship continued to accelerate. The devils had come in their own ship, which also tried to give pursuit, but it was neither as fast or maneuverable. What it did have though, was the ability to spit long range bursts of hellfire from the mouth on its front, which were capable of scorching the binder's ship even through its fire resistance. Seeing that they might get away, a wave of abishai rose from the deck of the devil ship and teleported in front of the PC's one, ready to grab on and start mobbing it next round. A few of them failed their grapple rolls and hit the front in a less dignified fashion, but most of them managed to match speeds and start scrabbling at the front. They spent a couple of rounds doing this, but weren't making much impact through its hardness, so some of them climbed onto the deck, while others teleported to random locations inside the ship to cause havoc.

Meanwhile, near the back of the ship, the githyanki thought things were mostly under control there, but they needed to do something about the blasts of hellfire before they wore down the ships hp too much, so he took two of the cervidals and teleported onto the enemy ship. He managed to take out the amnizu at the helm straight away with two smacks of his maul. He was mobbed by the remaining abishai, but with his magical shielding up they were taking damage every time they tried to attack him. They then tried using their mind-control abilities en masse, but his saves were high enough to repeatedly no-sell that as well. Meanwhile his summons were dismissing the abishai as fast as they could, while he hung onto the helm to pull it off course, although it still took several rounds before the mouth cannon was unable to target their ship at all, as it has a fair amount of independent leeway to aim.

Flipping back to our original perspective on the jetty, the binder had quickly managed to mow through the barbazu, leaving just the pit fiend and two cornugons fighting her. While her duplicates had been handy against the minions, they weren't much use against the big guys. She had to expend quite a few charges from her wand of wraithstrike to wear them down, but by the time we reached the end of the session she and the sniper working together had managed to reduce them all to negative hp. The sniper then teleported them and the bodies back to the ship, where she handed the bodies off to a minion with a blessed silver sword to coup de grace while she got busy clearing the still active abishai. The sniper then teleported onwards to the devil ship to help get that fully under their control. With the way things are going, it's looking pretty likely that they'll manage to win the battle next session, but that still leaves the big question of if they'll manage to root out all the tracers the devils have planted on their ship and whether they'll continue to run away to pursue other goals or take the fight to them remains uncertain. Either way, I'll do my best to be ready.

 

[(un)reason]

All 4 regulars present. The Binder continued to take out the abishai on the top deck, with the assistance of her minion with the silver sword to coup de grace them when they were downed. The cervidals managed to banish all but one of the abishai on the first level so the priestess headed down to the second inner level of the ship to deal with the three poking around in there. Despite flanking her, they could still only hit her on a natural 20 so this turned into a slow battle of attrition.

Meanwhile the githyanki & sniper progressed things somewhat faster on the baatezu airship. The githyanki's summons took out the remaining abishai mobbing him on the top deck over the next couple of rounds while he made sure the ship stayed off course and unable to target their one. The sniper went ethereal and floated through the deck to the hold, where the remaining spinagon were running around in a panic and trying to make themselves inconspicuous. He took out another half a dozen of them with another blast of wings of flurry, which prompted the survivors to jump ship and fly away, but not before activating the self-destruct sequence for the ship. He blasted a few more of them as they vacated the premises, then blinked back up and had a brief discussion with the githyanki. They both headed down to examine the controls and see if there was any possibility of stopping the countdown. Looking at the controls, it was obvious that they had been designed to be intentionally obtuse to anyone that didn't know the code, but they did manage to trace them back through the walls using his x-ray vision. In there was an organic brain connected to all these mechanical components. The sniper did have Rary's Telepathic Bond among his scrolls, so he tried to connect directly to it and command it to stop. In doing so, he found it was a devil brain that had been lobotomised for some distant past screw-up and extracted to operate the ship. He tried to convince it that they were actually the rightful owners of the ship and the previous occupants were the hijackers, so it should disregard previous instructions and cancel the countdown, but since he doesn't know Infernal, that was a no-starter despite his high bluff score. After several rounds of that, they teleported back to their own ship with plenty of time remaining on the countdown just in case that was also deceptive.

There, the girls had kept busy. The binder had finished off all the abishai on the top level and gone down to save her minions from the one remaining on the first floor. The priestess had knocked down one of the three she was fighting and damaged another, but their regeneration meant they kept on getting up and trying to attack again, but being taken down by her attacks of opportunity. The sniper went down and got the summoned cervidals moving again. (who had been just standing around after their last orders expired) and got them to banish the abishai before their duration ran out and they headed home. The sniper & priestess then headed down to the third floor where one last abishai was poking around looking for stuff to steal. They used a pincer maneuver, with the priestess being obvious and attracting its attention, then the sniper shooting it in the back when it charged at her, then dumping its body out the window while it was in negative hp to fall into the firey sea below. Shortly after this, the binder finally finished off the remaining abishai on the first floor, although not before it had managed to slaughter three of her low level minions. (which would have been more if both her glove and ship hadn't been using their spell-like abilities to run interference and stabilise the fallen)

Once they had a moment's breather, she consulted the ship telepathically to see if there were any more devils. One quick search check against their stealth rolls revealed two spinagon still remaining, one clinging to the bottom of the hull and another in the lowest hold burrowed into the food barrels. (and whether they managed to spot all of them I will not say here yet just in case) These were easily one-shotted, which brought the action to a close. They kept up their momentum and planeshifted out. The rest of the session was spent debating their next move. Did they want to prioritise going back to the red sun world and dealing with the potential cosmic threats on the other side, or getting these guys off their backs by negotiation or force. Did they want to risk going back to the city of brass now that was definitely watched to pick up the things they'd commissioned but hadn't been finished yet? The binder was definitely in favor of going back to Redeagle, since she still had three captured minions undergoing who knows what tortures back there to rescue, while the guys were more ambivalent. Hopefully they'll come to a conclusion before next session and we shall see if I can keep this mess of spinning plates going another week.

 

[(un)reason]

All 4 regulars present. Having warped off the elemental plane of fire, they then split up to cover more ground. The drow left the party with the aim of scrying & teleporting around the world to alert as many gold dragons as possible to the upcoming invasion before it began, since they would be the obvious thing to counter all the red ones the githyanki ride. (his player still hasn't shown up again and as one of the things he was frequently talking about, I thought it seemed the best way to write his character out for now.) The sniper spent a full day teleporting around Pharagos, reporting to the Queen of Glass about all the things he'd seen on the other side of the gate. She was eager to know more and dispatched several more tsochar with class levels to join the investigative team, but also wary, as even if the illithid did also serve Mak Thuum Ngatha (still not confirmed) they would likely still try to take over the power structure of the cult here. (they might be servants of an eldritch lovecraftian entity, but they’re not so insane as to not care about status ) He then checked in on his previous efforts to alert people to the upcoming invasion, finding that the halflings of hoquan had taken them most seriously and melted away into the swamps, while the human settlements had seemingly not believed an anonymous warning from a projected voice and were just carrying on as normal. Slightly disappointed by the lack of fighting spirit, he teleported back to the others for the next phase of their information gathering.

Meanwhile the githyanki & binder headed back to Tu'narath for what would probably be their last peaceful visit. (the other two had hit 16th level after the last fight and they were only a few hundred xp away from levelling as well) There they found the place noticeably less crowded than before, but still extremely busy, with troops shipping out as fast as they could, and new ships still in construction even at this late stage. He reported success in the heist, but continued to keep secret the existence of a gate to another universe where it was looking increasingly likely the illithid empire still existed, in case this was what the lich-queen was really searching for on Pharagos and revealing it would play into her master plan. The binder took care of the shopping (and they're really starting to feel the effects of the lich-queen's cap on spellcasters around here when it comes to purchasing certain magical items) while he also secretly visited General Zetch'r'r, to discuss their plans for eventually defeat the lich-queen.


Emac: during the day i had in the gith city, i also drop by the general's ship, i teleport and dimension door around, so im hard to follow, and as always detect scrying is on
if im allowed to see him again when i arrive, id like to have a convo with him

GM: Absolutely.

Emac: I would cast mage's private sanctum before commencing
would let him talk first if he wants

GM: The general makes sure you are fully inside and warded before speaking. "Ah, Emac. What news do you have?"

Emac: “Much, I intended to visit to discuss plans for the day, both to ensure we don't lose too many lives unnecesarily in Pharagos, since that is after all just a convenient distraction to get them away from the Palace,..
"and I also wanted to discuss how we would avoid a civil war and internal fragmentation. as in how to we command the needed authority to bring the knights and the generals into order.."
"but...
"well, tell me what you think General and I'll dive into the but

Zetch”’r’r: I do have the beginnings of a plan for that."
"As a wizard of your experience might know, the ability of the githyanki to shift planes is not truly innate, but powered by a beacon in the astral sea, constructed by one of the lich-queen's predecessors. If someone were to damage that once the invasion had begun, the forces on Pharagos would be thrown into disarray, cut off from communication and unable to easily leave. This would give us a perfect opportunity to attack the lich-queen's castle while her strongest forces are elsewhere. If we did not completely destroy it, then whoever repaired it would have the gratitude of our people and it would be relaively easy to establish a new order afterwards. Of course, that still requires that we defeat her and destroy her phylactery, but with multiple distractions, I believe that would be the point she is most vulnerable."

Emac: "hmm, Pharagos has been preparing a defense, my own mercenary allies playing a big part as some are natives of that planet. I do not want our troops stuck there, unable to pull back. could we use spells like redirect portal to send the ships elsewhere? yes individual giths can still tracel with their innate plane shift but why would they abandon their ships, specially if the ship has by mistake ended up in the wrong place"
"but i see what you mean about being the heroes who repaired the beacon..."

Zetch’r’r: "Perhaps an astral storm? We do both know someone who is skilled at manipulating those. It would not get all our forces, but if even some were scattered on the astral just before the invasion begun that would further reduce our casualties."

Emac smiles knowing he knows the wizard has been found "great"
"Here's the but: One of the mercenaries I travel with, the shifty kobold sorcerer, in passing -as if it's no big deal- said that he belives Gith Himself is alive and being kept by the goddess of red dragons Tiamat! I do not know where he got this notion, but it might be true - coming from him, he's a strange creature, not properly grounded in realty, yet full of surprising insights that turn out to be true...if true this changes the entire dynamic of our struggle, and the very identity of our allies and adversaries.." Emac waits for him to consider and respond if he wants to

Zetch’r’r: ”It is quite possible. She must have given or done something pretty important to keep that deal with the red dragons going all these years. Maybe she labors still in Tiamats realm."

Emac: If the dragons are our enemies, perhaps we should let the armada with the dragons - and you should encourage the deployment of the vast majority of the dragons if that is within your influence - all go into Pharagos, and then we call back using whatever means we have, the true githyanki loyal troops back to Astral so they do not fall needlessly in Pharagos"
"we need to know whether this is true, if we cannot trust the dragons to work with the post revolutionary githyanki command we must know ahead of time"

Zetch’r’r A good question. Is their loyalty to the gith as a whole, Gith herself, or the Vlaakith line, which has no heirs at this point."

Emac: imagine, if we could bring Gith back? all questions of succesion and discent and the right to command would dissappear" he smiles looking distantly at a wall
"how does one rescue a prisoner from the clutches of a goddess"
"i dont know, perhaps this is not the right time to pursue that"

Zetchr’r: But if taking her from Tiamat voids the deal, that would greatly weaken us long term. This needs more research before acting rashly."

Emac :hmm, so we should attempt to continue the arrangement with tiamat? so we can continue to command dragons?"
Emac is thinking - but not saying - that if Gith comes back, githyanki and githzerai would likely reunite, and that would more than compensate for the loss of the red dragons
"i understand the strategy, but we should at least try to send them all away to Pharagos to remove a variable for hte post-revolution succession struggle"
"we scramble the gates with an astral storm as soon as our own troops have been called back"
"and once we know the deal with Tiamat is transferrable to the new leaership, we help the red dragons also return to astral"

Z”etch’r’r: Yes, If we make sure that the red dragons are first in line to attack, which should not be difficult with their temperaments, we can further minimise casulties among our own people. I will try and adjust the tactics of the units I have contacts with accordingly."



Once they'd sorted that out, their next course of action was trying to rescue Zerr, Rei and the other two. First, the priestess used Sendings to try and contact Zerr & Rei. Zerr's response was typically laconic, he was ok and hiding out in the sewers but some pretty wild stuff had been going on up top. (details then cut off due to word limit of the spell) However, there was no response from Rei at all. This highly concerned the binder, who was quite fond of her most powerful minion. (besides the sentient glove and airship, of course) Since that hadn't worked the next thing they tried was heading through the portal in the enveloping pit to Ruun-Khazai to get Karluth to use his spells. One Limited Wish later confirmed that Rei was not only alive, but very strongly so, but in a location shielded from any weaker scrying. Unsure how to deal with that, they decided to get Zerr first. The sniper decided to go in alone for this bit, since he's by far the best at stealthy stuff and the others would just slow him down.

Teleporting to just outside Redeagle, he saw that things had indeed taken a sharp turn for the worse. Circling above were three airships very similar to the one they just defeated. (cue Bowser's airship theme) On the fields to the east of the city was an even larger rolling fortress belching out toxic smoke. (Using the image of The Relentless from the Blood War boxed set) There were devils on every gate to the city and abishai patrolling the skies above. Fortunately, his combo of invisibility and blink meant he didn't even have to get close to them to get inside, slipping through the walls and to one of the sewer entrances they scouted in the last visit. Zerr took several hours to find, and he had to avoid several patrols of amnizu along the way but eventually he was located in the thieves hideout they'd passed earlier. (using the map from Skulking Below)

From Zerr, he got a rough timeline of the events after they had completed the heist. For the first three days there was slowly increasing unrest as the news gradually spread through the population, with people growing increasingly angry at the bank as it became obvious all their money was gone. On the fourth one a wave of devils had burst out of there and spread through the city, taking control of the place. Since then their numbers had steadily increased and people were being dragged off the streets & thrown into prison without trial for the slightest infractions. Whispers in the taverns pinned the blame on Azurax, the second most powerful wizard on the council of nine that are the big power behind the throne here. Unable to pay the devils for their services in coin anymore, (as the PC's found out when they tried using Disobedience to free them) while also wanting more forces to hunt down the people responsible for the heist, he'd fallen back on the traditional lower-planar method of using the souls of the population as payment instead. Fortunately Zerr is also pretty good at evading notice and poking around in places he shouldn't be, and had uncovered another bit of ancient technology hidden from the general population. There was a strange cavern under the northern side of the city, where a massive metal contraption rode along two metal rails into a tunnel. This had been taking shipments of the prisoners away in the middle of the night. This seemed like the obvious place to go next and so they headed down the tunnels and lurked invisibly until midnight, where a chunky train with a devilish face on the front did indeed pull into the station, emitting foul-smelling smoke all the while despite this being underground. As the captives were being loaded onto it they noticed that amongst them was one of the lower level bards from the heist, looking distinctly thinner than last time they’d seen him. They used their climbing skills to sneak onboard and cling invisibly to the ceiling of the train, which wasn’t particularly pleasant given how tightly the prisoners were packed, but at least none of the devil guards had detect invisibility, so they still managed to pull it off. It thundered into the darkness for several hours without interruption. Growing increasingly worried that it would lead them into somewhere dangerous they couldn’t teleport out of without the others, Nurhi decided to try and get away now. Touching both Zerr and the captured bard, it turned out this section of tunnel wasn’t warded (too expensive to put it up all the way along several hundred miles of tunnel) and they could teleport back to the binder’s airship, currently parked way to the north alongside the Kadtanach

Once Zerr and the bard were thoroughly debriefed and they’d had another night’s rest (since they had arrived at around 3am in the morning) they discussed their next move. The binder was the most reckless one as usual, wanting to go straight to the city with all guns blazing and tear the place apart until she found her two remaining minions. She had to be reminded that they were still pretending to be loyal to the lich-queen, and it was still 36 days to the big invasion date. If they did that before then they’d get a reprimand at the very least. However, a wizard’s sanctum, which they were already pretty certain was several hundred miles away from the city, probably in a remote location, would be another matter entirely. They did use one of their Discern Location scrolls, intended for hunting down the chains, to see if that was strong enough to penetrate whatever shields blocked Rei from weaker scrying. This still didn’t give a precise enough location to just teleport in, but did reveal that she was indeed in the most remote part of the Sleeper’s Teeth, about three hundred miles northeast of Redeagle in somewhere the mountains of Volkrad. If they snuck into Redeagle and used Air Walk to fly down the tunnel, they could make that journey before the day was out as long as they didn’t hit the train coming the other way. (and at their level, it probably wouldn’t kill them in one hit even if they failed the reflex save. ) A couple of checks for stealth and wandering monsters later, both of which went smoothly for them, they were speeding down the pitch-black tunnel.

Somewhere between 5 & 6 tedious hours later, they finally saw a split in the tracks. Curving off to the right, the tunnel got wider and higher. They dropped out of air form but remained invisible. It was time for them to enter what is probably the last stitched-together megadungeon of the campaign, combining Train of Events, Threshold of Evil, Cloudkill and Ghazal into one big interlinked complex, with some upgrades to the monsters due to the level of the players and some further twists due to the nature of the campaign. (the fact that Lord Fell was raised by githyanki opens up some very interesting roleplaying possibilities when the characters meet him) They easily snuck past the barbazu posted at area 1, but the grey slaad replacing the derro in the original adventure do have detect invisibility (and would definitely have been ordered to keep it active under the circumstances), and so everyone except the sniper was spotted as they went up onto the platform and past door 4. They raised the alarm and so the PC’s had to deal with both them and the Hamatula posted at door 16. The binder did most of the work of that, while the sniper snuck ahead to see what the rest of the station was like. There is of course another door on the north side, and having been alerted, the guards on this one were actively looking for him. They managed to zap him with their chaos hammers, prompting him to duck off the side of the platform onto the tracks and shoot them back with wings of flurry. After having knocked down the two on the first door, the binder charged over to help him out. Meanwhile the githyanki & priestess handled the hamatula with no great problem, before dimension dooring over to the others as the barbazu approached slowly from behind. (knowing all too well that this was probably above their pay grade and they were likely to take an express trip back to hell soon, but still had to look like they were doing their job) We conclude this session knowing the next one will be solid action. But just how long can the minions here hold off PC’s vastly more powerful than them with choke points and defensible terrain, and will they decide to explore the lawful or chaotic side of the station first, which lead to different locations. Plenty of different ways this could turn out and affect the plot long-term even if it looks pretty certain they can handle pretty much anything I throw at them combat-wise.