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.

 

[(un)reason]

The sniper's player was absent due to weather-related internet disruptions and the githyanki's connection was also erratic, so this was a fairly short session that was pure combat. The binder charged the barbazu approaching from the rear and shredded them efficiently with only one minor nick. Meanwhile the priestess and githyanki were zapped by a chaos hammer through the viewhole of the barred door between areas 11 & 12. They decided to not waste time breaking it down and just dimension doored through. The sniper also used his usual combo of invisibility and blinking to head through the walls and scout ahead, stopping briefly to back the other guys up with a blast of flame. In the process he found that areas 11 & 12 were filled with captives chained to the walls, almost certainly going to become meals or incubation chambers for the slaadi, 13 was just a pantry and 14 & 15 were choke points filled with groups of blue slaadi led by a death slaad and grey slaad, respectively.

Over the course of the several rounds he did that, the githyanki & priestess cleared the green & gray slaad, and then started to explore this section as well, with priestess looking in area 9, then heading up the tunnel towards area 13 while the githyanki broke down the door to area 12. (but deciding they were too busy to unchain the captives at this point, although they might come back for them later) The binder finished off the barbazu and headed for the door that connected to area 5, which had more blue slaad behind it. It also turned out that one of the gray slaad she downed last session wasn't quite dead and its fast healing brought it up to positive hp again while she was occupied. It ran to the door first and begged the minions behind to let it in, then blasted her with chaos hammer and hold person as she tore the door down, neither of which had any effect since she's the chaotic evil one of the group. It only took a couple of rounds for her many acidic attacks to penetrate the hardness of the door and get to them, and another to tear them apart. But the door to room 5 is similarly tough with even more slaadi on the other side, so there's always a chance it'll delay her long enough for a natural 1 to put a crimp in her style next session.

While that was going on, the githyanki finished checking out the prison rooms and moved to follow the priestess. This brought them to where the sniper was scouting, so he warned them that there were multiple blockades ahead. Of course, they're not stealthy like him so they just charged ahead to get into the fight and got blasted with another collective chaos hammer from the blue slaadi. The priestess was starting to get low on hp after all these hits so the githyanki summoned a couple of amnizu to take the brunt, and the sniper broke his stealth to unleash a wings of flurry on them, which killed one blue slaad and wounded the others. The amnizu took out the remaining blue slaad, but the death slaad made its saves against the fireballs and hit the priestess with a power word blind, which will definitely slow her down for a bit until she can meet up with the binder again and swap her blindsight blindfold over. Hopefully less session will have fewer technical troubles and allow more progress.

 

[(un)reason]

The priestesses turn to have technical issues, but since her character was blind most of the session, that actually worked out not too badly from a plot perspective. The githyanki, sniper and amnizu summons kept on bombarding the slaad blockading areas 14 & 15, directing the priestess to stay back. One of the amnizu got dismissed by the gray slaad's Dispel Law, but they managed to defeat them with no further incident. Once they had a breather, they discussed their next move. The binder might have a blindfold that would alleviate the problem, but they weren't sure where she had got to. (rolling really poorly on their listen rolls to hear the screams that were coming from just a few rooms away.) To fix the problem, and maybe resolve (or at least advance) the low level tension that had existed between them since the priestess had asked Loviatar if their ultimate goals were aligned, he decided to engage in a big leap of trust and teleport her to the caverns where the Queen of Glass resided, where there would be some underlings that could cure her. She might see and hear some strange things in the brief time she was there and able to see, but this would definitely lead to some good between session roleplaying opportunities so I was all in favor of this solution.

During the several in-game minutes they were away, the githyanki & binder kept busy. The binder tore through the blue slaadi in area 5 with only one minor moment of tension when they ganged up to use their telekinesis to grab all her limbs and suspend her in the air, but activating her Blinking powers again soon let her slip free from that. She then burst in on the red slaad in area 7, currently focussed on barricading the other door since the others had been active over there and eliminated them in a few rounds more. The githyanki checked out the other rooms they hadn't looked in yet, noting that area 10 actually had books and notes in it and would be worth looting. He then freed the prisoners in rooms 11 & 12, although when asked how they were supposed to get out of here, considering they'd been brought hundreds of miles by underground train and had no idea where they were, he shrugged and told them to figure it out for themselves. He caught up with the binder as they both dealt with the ogres in room 8, and noted that this looked like the bedroom of something female and important that wasn't present right now. While they were looting that and pondering their next move, their scrying detection powers went off. Obviously news had reached upstairs and Azurax was now aware of their intrusion. They'd better keep moving or they could expect trouble to come to them. However, they didn't want to leave the area until the other two returned, which caused them to delay some more.

When they did (and after several rounds more finding each other again since they'd moved around quite a bit since the teleport), the githyanki subtly signed to the others that they were being watched. The sniper already had his own shielding from divination up, but this made him reactivate his invisibility as well and they seriously pondered where to go next. Their main choices were to head up the long tunnel to the northeast (the correct choice, since that would eventually spiral up to reach the top of the mountain and connect up to the tunnel at the bottom of level 5 in Threshold of Evil) or the door on the south side of the station. (the not so optimal choice, since that would waste a load of time fighting through a bunch of baatezu in defensive positions, before eventually reaching the tunnel that would take them to the prison of Ghazal) The Binder got bored with any lengthy discussion as usual and decided to investigate what was through door 16. She immediately got peppered with crossbow bolts from the barbazu on the other side of the arrow slits. This was no problem for her of course, as she simply Blinked through the portcullis and walls and started tearing them to shreds. By the end of the session she had finished pushing through the ones in the guard area, reached room 21 and cleared that as well. The Githyanki was sending his scrying sensor up the northeast tunnel, but it hadn't got anywhere near the top yet. The priestess was still looting the top rooms. The sniper was in the main train station area watching the prisoners mill about uncertainly and considering following the binder when he saw a green glow appear on the east side of the station and heard a deep horn sound. It appeared a portal was opening to discharge a train, no doubt full of creatures ready to try and take control of this area back. As this goes on, they're going to find that Azurax may not have the unlimited supply of minions Xhagevoxhab did, but the variety of tricks up his sleeve is considerably wider and he's not so easy to evade if they fall back to recharge. They're going to have to actually think if they want to complete this and not wind up being tricked into furthering his plans or dumped in another plane to take the long way back and start the dungeon again from the beginning.

 

[(un)reason]

Time keeps ticking on. It's now been 6 years since I started this thread, and 18 since I started the original Dragon magazine Let's Read. This quest is now officially old enough to vote, and I still have no idea how much longer it's going to go on for, with the actual play stuff continuing to take longer to get through each part of the plot than expected. Will Knights of the Lich-Queen be concluded by next year, or will it go on for over 2 years, making a whole idea that this was supposed to be a mini-game seem increasingly ludicrous? What will happen to Iron Lords of Jupiter, since all the extra time I've had to think about that has resulted in it getting far more worldbuilding than any of the previous games? Will I eventually finish this journey, or will I die in real life before I get the chance? Does anyone even care? Keep on tuning in for more rumination on ancient adventures and existential angst.

 

[(un)reason]

The player of the githyanki was off this time, reducing his character to mainly smacking things with his maul, but since they were mostly facing waves of mooks, that wasn't too much of a problem. The sniper headed down into the lawful side of the station, following the sound of all the stampy barbazu boots heading to attack the binder. She was more than capable of handling them on her own, although she needed to reactivate her blinking to get through the DR of the hamatula, but he still used a few of his spell slots to speed things along with an acidified wings of flurry. He then resumed investigating the rest of this side, spotting the cornugon that was in charge in area 29 just as one of the other barbazu reached it to tell it that the previous line of defence had been breached. He then blinked through the walls to investigate areas 23, 24, 25, 26, 30 & 31 in turn, finding only spinagon minions and the otyugh in the midden, only coming back to snipe the cornugon in the back once it had reached the binder. The binder summoned some hill giants, which didn't contribute hugely to the damage, but at least split the attacks of all the barbazu & hamatula which were attacking her and by the end of the session, all of the enemies in the lawful section were dead or downed apart from a few fleeing and hiding spingon. The binder pushed the body of the cornugon into her extradimensional pit for her minions to finish off and started looting all the stuff in the armory, while the sniper headed down the stairs to the southeast to make sure they'd finished filling in the map, with only area 28 left out when we ran out of time.

Meanwhile in the central train station, the priestess and githyanki faced a slightly more challenging fight, but nothing they couldn't handle. A train with a devilish face on the front did indeed roll out of the glowing green portal at the end of the tracks. It took a good 5 rounds to fully emerge and come to a stop. Before it did, they had both already got on top of the engine via flying carpet and teleportation and looked down into it to see a couple of green slaadi driving. One hit them with a chaos hammer and the other used deeper darkness to try and throw them off, which saved them for one round as the priestess got stunned and needed the githyanki to stabilise her from falling off the top of the train, but after that they swung down through the window and annihilated them. This was just the warm-up though, as once the train had stopped another platoon of barbazu & hamatula came marching out of the rear carriages. However, since the PC's had got on top of the train quickly, they weren't sure where the intruders they were supposed to deal with were, which meant the priestess could wait until as many of them as possible were in range before hitting them all with a mass inflict and leaping out the window to attack. The githyanki summoned a bunch of cervidals, which as usual punched well above their weight against other summons and banished quite a few of the barbazu before falling under their massed glaives. Since the mooks were already down half their hp, they fell pretty quickly and by the end of the session less than half of them were left, having failed to even scratch either of the PC's. There's still one more cornugon left leading this group, but it looks pretty likely they'll clear this area next session and then have the choice of which area to go next. Will they take the chaotic path, the lawful one, or try to reopen the gate the train came through and see what's through there? Can they get through the adventure without exhausting their resources and having to retreat, which will have consequences in an actively defended place like this where the boss is quite capable of summoning replacements? There's still a lot to explore in here, much of which isn't essential to their goal.

 

[(un)reason]

The githyanki's player was still off and the priestess's one had to leave just over an hour in due to easter celebrations, making this a very short session. The binder and sniper continued to explore the lawful side of the station, clearing up any remaining spinagon hiding in various corners and freeing the prisoners in area 28, but leaving the otyugh lurking in the midden untouched as not worth the bother to kill. Meanwhile the priestess and githyanki continued to fend off the waves of barbazu led by hamatula, with a single cornugon emerging from the rear of the train to watch the carnage. They tried unleashing Order's Wrath, but as both PC's are also lawful, that did nothing. Pyrotechnics also plinked off the githyanki's armor to no effect. The priestess unleashed another mass inflict, which meant the mooks were injured enough that the githyanki's maul was finishing off two of them nearly every round. Things weren't all going their way though, the hamatula managed to hit the priestess enough to reduce her to negative hp. The first time, one of her contingency effects kicked in and she got a burst of temporary hit points to keep her in the fight, but just another round later, several natural 20's from the flanking enemies took her under again.

Fortunately, by this time, the sniper had finished exploring the southern side and headed back to the station. He followed the sound of combat and she came into his darkvision range just as she got knocked down again. He pulled out one of his strongest blasting spells to wipe off all the remaining barbazu in the area, then dashed over to her to use a healing potion to put her back in the fray. As they were no longer surrounded, the cornugon decided it was time to join the fight, first casting animate dead on the fallen barbazu so they would get at least a few more attacks as zombies, then using its spiked chain. But the sniper & githyanki combined had more than enough damage output at this point to put it down in a few more rounds, then the binder came flying over the train just a little too late to join in and finish it off with her silver sword. Since we were down to two players at this point, we decided it would be best to wrap up there and decide whether they were going to press on or try to get a rest between sessions, all too aware that they're still being scried upon. Which of the at least three directions open to them will they take? What will they do with all the prisoners they've just freed? Will they do something careless that lets Azurax get the edge over them or continue to push through his defences with minimal damage?

 

[(un)reason]

Everyone was punctually present. They decided it would be a good idea to warp back to their airship base and rest between sessions, to let all the spellcasters recover their spells. However, to keep Azurax guessing, the still battle-fresh binder & Zerr teleported back to Redeagle. There, they spent the whole night performing hit and run attacks against the devils in the city, popping out of the sewers, taking down patrols of mooks and disappearing back underground before anything stronger could come their way. Meanwhile, all the freed prisoners were blindfolded and sent through the portal in her enveloping pit to Ruun-Khazai, to be kept in the main dome for now. There, they got Karluth to examine them, who determined fairly quickly that the ones on the chaotic side had been infected with slaadi tadpoles and if kept around would have eventually gone chestburster. Being on the astral plane would halt the development of the infection, but it would be a bad idea for them to leave until cured, which would take multiple days of the priestess using all her 3rd level slots on the job that they really didn’t have time for now.

The following morning, the githyanki teleported in and out of the Redeagle sewers to collect our two guerrillas at the predetermined spot and they discussed their next strategy. Since there were multiple routes they could take and they had no idea which one led to Rei, they needed more info. Their initial impulse was to choose between the north or south tunnels, as who knows where the portal could lead or if they would be able to warp out from there if things got challenging. Questioning the prisoners, they determined that while the lawful side had seen some of their number taken from the cells by the devils and sent further in, this had not happened on the chaotic side, which initially inclined them to look south first. But the priestess decided to use Commune to see if Loviatar’s omniscience was strong enough to penetrate Azurax’s shielding. This paid off, and through the usual series of yes/no questions, they established that Rei was actually on the north side, but she was guarded by both slaadi and devils, and Azurax was also there and aware that they were specifically looking for her, so they were almost definitely heading towards the most dangerous area of the fortress. But since when has that ever deterred any adventuring party?

When they teleported back into the train station, it all seemed quiet. Something had obviously visited in their absence, as the train that was parked there before was gone, but there were no sign of any guards until they reached area 15 again, where there were a couple of gray slaadi posted ready for trouble. The sniper spotted these early and alerted the others, who let the binder do her charge and shred routine with them. Once those were defeated, they found the tunnel spiralling upward was blocked by the more prosaic obstacle of many portcullises, one every few hundred yards for several miles of tunnel. Fortunately, Wind Walk gives enough insubstantiality to squeeze through those and can be applied to the whole group, so that condensed the journey from a lengthy trek smashing stuff along the way which would have given the enemies much more chance to prepare to a mere 3 minutes of flight.

Eventually the tunnel terminated in what seemed to be a solid wall, but to their trained eyes was obviously a secret door. This brought them to area 33 in Threshold of Evil, entering the dungeon complex from the opposite direction that the adventure intends. They easily opened the locked secret door and were faced with the choice of 4 different directions to take. Up the stairs, through one of the two portals (conveniently left open and unguarded but one-way, in the hope that the PC’s would go through them, wind up trapped on the other side and have to figure out another way to get back to this planet) or try to open the locked door to the east. Since they knew their goal was in this dungeon, they decided to ignore the distractions and head straight up the stairs. At this point I’ve changed the layout of the levels for better narrative flow, rather than leading up to the back of Azurax’s throne room, these stairs now connect to area 12 in level 3, with the gate to Limbo now a big mirror in the middle of the room rather than on the wall. They peeked around it cautiously, seeing the swirling mists inside, who’s destination was easily determined by the githyanki’s high Knowledge (planes) roll. Once again, they decided not to go through and stick to the plan of exploring this place, which was definitely the sensible move here. The door to the central chamber was shut and it all seemed quiet here, but the party members with high Listen skills could hear that it was the kind of silence where something was on the other side waiting for them and trying to be quiet. The sniper tried to do his usual trick of invisibly Blinking ahead to scout, but found that this area was warded from any kind of planar travel other than the portals created by Azurax. They’d have to explore this dungeon the regular way.

Pushing the door open, it turned out there was indeed trouble waiting for them on the other side. A massive blast of wind was activated, attempting to blow them back up the tunnel into the portal. The githyanki and sniper failed their saves and were blown into Limbo, appearing on the edge of a ruined monastery now controlled by slaadi allied with Azurax. (using the appropriate map of mystery from issue 99) This left just the binder and priestess to fight another load of green and grey slaadi in the central chamber of level 3. Initially, it might seem as though they were in trouble. But the two who failed their saves were exactly the ones who had plane-shifting and teleportation abilities, so it took only a single round for the githyanki to take them back to the prime material before the waiting slaad even got a single attack in and then the sniper to take them back to the tunnel just a little before they reached the warded areas. This still meant they were out of the fight for over a minute but the binder was more than capable of handling this fight on her own, which was lucky because the priestess was stunlocked by a lucky chaos hammer for much of it.

Once they were out of combat time again, they took a good look at room 11. Would they take one of the 8 doors on the sides, or the elevator upwards. They opened the one to the north and noted it contained another portal, this one somewhat more foreboding in its swirling. The githyanki identified it as leading to Pandemonium, which rapidly set them to trying to extrapolate what the other 6 might be if they followed any kind of pattern, as it obviously couldn’t cover the whole Great Wheel. They looked at the other 6, checked which ones were locked and which had warnings on them, but didn’t open any others, still trying to stick to the plan and reasoning that there was more likely to be plot-significant stuff up than to the sides.

They were correct, but not in the way they expected. The elevator led them up to the library, where they encountered their first Lord Fell simulacrum, reading a romance novel, as it notes in the original adventure. This was sufficiently outside their expectations and his obviously githyanki influenced fashion sense was intriguing enough that they didn’t instantly leap to the attack, which gave him the chance to look up and politely greet Emac in particular. They asked him who he was and how he came to be here, which meant they got the basic story about him being orphaned, adopted by Githyanki, growing up and eventually leaving to work for Azurax. They then asked if he had seen Rei. He replied affirmatively and then waxed lyrical about her beauty for a little bit. (since she is a Sha’ir with high cha, angel wings and maxed out diplomacy, transferring his unrequited desire from Lady Florimel in the original adventure to her makes perfect sense)

After a few more clarifying questions, they thanked him for his time, said they wouldn’t disturb his reading any further and moved through to the next corridor. There, they checked one of the empty guest rooms before heading up the stairs. At the top they found - another Lord Fell, this one guarding the entrance to the first floor. Since they were coming from below, this simulacrum also assumed they were other-planar guests from the portals and greeted them politely in a near identical way to the previous one, further increasing the PC’s confusion. They asked if he knew Rei, which got the same response as the other one did but shorter. They then tried asking how he got ahead of them and if he remembered seeing them in the library, which the simulacrum politely brushed off, simply saying “It is of no importance”. Eventually they thought to actually ask if he knew where Rei was, to which he responded that she was downstairs with the master. In response to that, they headed back downstairs and explored the rest of level 2. There were no dangers here, merely more guest rooms, the dining room and the kitchen. They saw the chef sleeping in the dining room but didn’t wake him. They did start introducing an element of risk again when the binder looted the magical stuff in the guest rooms, unscrewing the bathtub and putting it in her enveloping pit, which brought Fell-4 over again to ask them if there was any problem. The githyanki used his high bluff to pretend that they were repairing a fault in it, and then asked if they knew where his master and Rei actually were. He replied that they should go down the elevator and to the west. They once again thanked him and noted that down for next session, since we were running out of time IRL and it didn’t make sense to start another combat at this point. Will they finally get to meet Azurax next week? (or at least, some of his simulacra) Will they actually be able to talk this out, or will it turn to combat as usual? Will they be able to get the better of him, or wind up tricked by one of his several layers of contingency plans and wind up furthering his schemes along the line? Will they be able to rescue the real Rei? What’s for certain is that he won’t be underestimating them after the damage they’ve done to his holdings already, unlike certain arch-villains who believe themselves indestructible right up to the last moment.