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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9691417" data-attributes="member: 27780">Everyone was present save the player of the orc, who is another victim of real life scheduling issues and forced to retire from the game. (although his character will be sticking around at least until they beat the Scarlet Lord as they really need that heavy hitting power) The binder unleashed a full attack on the hellcat next to her, rapidly followed up by the priestess finishing it off. The orc pushed through the others and smashed the ice wall so the fight could proceed. Karluth responded by spamming more summons and putting a couple of fiendish wolves in the way, then casting eyebite on the orc, which did absolutely nothing with his high fort save. The binder, priestess & orc then headed through the break in the ice wall, tanking the cold damage along the way and started laying into the minions. Seeing the way the fight was headed, Karluth shouted that he'd rather die here than have the lich-queen consume his soul, unleashed one more quickened zap before stepping back and casting wall of force to block the way between rooms 8 & 2. Unfortunately, he hadn't blocked the entire wall between the rooms, so the sniper made an educated guess and dimension doored the binder through the wall roughly where they thought he would be. Meanwhile the other PC's who had been hanging back made the educated guess that the room they hadn't seen yet connected to room 1 and ran back around the corridors the long way, taking the summoned pain devils with them. Karluth took a full round's worth of attacks from the binder, which did not immediately reduce him to shreds because he had stoneskin up, but still made it clear that trying to hang around and fight her hand-to-hand would be a bad idea. He dimension doored away to room 1, only to see four of the the others running up from the south. Since they were in a neat formation with none of his allies in the way, he unleashed a prismatic spray, which banished one pain devil and sent the other insane, but both the PC's managed to avoid anything happening that would make regrouping even more complicated after the fight. The sniper teleported the priestess into room 2 as well, where she saw the binder now all alone, but hearing sounds of spellcasting from just beyond the other door, they knew which way to head and busted through the bone door to find the others all in room 1. The orc managed to resist the succubuses attempts at mind-control and finish her off, while everyone else tried to knock out but not kill Karluth, since our githyanki leader was obviously curious about his declarations and wanted to question him further. Fortunately, the dice were with them and they managed to get him to negative hp, strip him, stabilise him, and then bring him around with everyone surrounding him with held actions, ready to finish him off if he even thought about dimension dooring away.And so they finally got the revelation many of the players had been waiting for for months, that all the propaganda about the lich-queen rewarding her most skilled servants with "glorious ascension" was a lie, and the best they could hope for was being transformed into her undead servants unable to ever improve their skills beyond what they learned in life, with most simply having their souls consumed to increase her power. Karluth found out the truth after someone he loved "ascended" and ran away here, doing a powerful ritual that spun up the psychic storm that shielded this place from scrying. (leaving out the part about all the sacrifices needed to do the ritual and that people regularly being sucked in so he could kill them to keep it running was an intended part of the design rather than a glitch, but they soon put two and two together perusing his library) Of course, he'd been out of the loop for the past century, so he had no idea about the current political situation in Tu'narath, but he could tell them that there used to be a secret organisation called the Sha'sal Khou that knew the truth and wanted to overthrow her rule and that Sergeant Zetch'r'r used to be a member. A very good knowledge roll let the gith PC confirm that he was not only still alive, but a general now. Getting in contact with him could still be a challenge with only a century old callsign (it's an older meme, but it checks out), but at least it was a place to start. In return, they told him the basics of what was going on now with Pharagos, and while Karluth didn't know much about the place, he did know it was the world on which the gith rebellion against the illithid empire got started, which was still new information for them and triggered quite a bit of speculation about what the queen might be looking for. When told about the escape of the scarlet lord, his main warning was not to let her get hold of the body afterwards if they did manage to defeat him. He also wanted a sample of the fungus for further study, but having seen what happened to the last sucker who thought they could master the mold, the group were unanimously against that. So they made their plans to leave and try to build up their own powerbase while pretending to still be loyal members of the githyanki army until they thought they were strong enough to take her on. (or screwed up and were caught) But before they could leave, Karluth told them that there was a third faction recently arrived on the island, a group of human & demihuman adventurers currently exploring one of the northern towers. While he could open up a gap in the storm to let them go, if they wanted him alive when they came back, they'd better deal with them. As usual, the binder was the most enthusiastic about the prospect of more bloodshed and zipped out of the tunnels by the pyramid with the intention of flying over to the tower and attacking them from the top. The two kobolds and the priestess took the slightly more measured option of sneaking into the tower through the secret door in the basement, while the two spellcasters and the orc stayed back to keep an eye on Karluth and continue reading through his library for any more interesting arcane research. Will splitting the party turn out to be a bad idea, or will the combination of stealth and attacking from both sides deal with the adventurers before they get a chance to use their best powers? Once again, time ran out on us so we'll find out next session, whenever that is with all these vacations coming up.</blockquote>

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