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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9724490" data-attributes="member: 27780">Another full 4 hour session with 5/7 players present that only covered a single minute of game time. The githyanki's player finally returned from his holiday, which meant his character also came through the teleportation circle on the back of the kadtanach (with a bunch of new gear and summons he'd been working up during the break) and saw the mess they'd managed to get into without him. The team were all in different places on the map doing their own things, so it was going to take some work to get them co-ordinated again. Meanwhile, the colossus continued its slow but inexorable stride towards the kadtanach and a second wave of gliders came out from the hatch on it's back, these ones slightly heavier and with bombs rather than crossbows. The binder activated some new tricks to further increase her speed and got a lead on reaching the colossus. The winged kobold and trio of scouting werewolves were already close enough to get a more detailed look and saw the portcullises on the feet of the colossus with the gnomes inside to operate them. The kobold sniper teleported close next and the two of them had a brief moment of commiseration about their shared hatred of gnomes before taking different directions, with the sniper blasting at the foot portcullises and directing the werewolves to do likewise while the winged one flew round the back to see where the gliders had come from. He saw the hangar doors slowly closing shut again, put on a burst of speed and managed to squeeze in just in time, unsheathe his mind blade and one-shot the gnome at the controls. He then spent a round recovering his focus and changing the controls to leave the back entrance open just in case any other PC's wanted to come in that way before opening the door to room 14, where he saw another gnome and Torax the minotaur doing their parts in keeping the colossus going. The gnome was once again no trouble at all, but Torax managed to do half his HP in a single full attack, reminding us once again that splitting the party is rarely a good idea. He tumbled out of attack range and round the corner into room 17 to re-establish stealth, which won't save him for long in such confined quarters, but may at least let him get another sneak attack in. Meanwhile, the sniper continued to focus upon the gates in the feet from a distance while the werewolves harried them closer up. Two of the werewolves got stomped upon in the process, but their DR is high enough that this did less than half their hp, leaving them squashed in little indents in the ground after the colossus moved on. After three rounds of blasting, they managed to break one of the portcullises and the werewolves headed in, where they found that the cramped quarters of the feet were too small for their wolf forms, so they had to return to human and use the lift to get up the leg, which only fit one at a time and was a three round trip, which meant it'd be a while before they could reach the torso of the robot and all get in on the fighting again. Also meanwhile, the binder flew straight for the head of the colossus and landed on the left eye. Inside, she saw Xentarich the wizard, the guy originally in charge in this adventure, and their old adversary the H'Jyord, now thoroughly upgraded with a bunch of prestige classes and magic items (most importantly, abjurant champion and the helm of Warduke) in the hope that I could make him an adversary able to survive at least a few rounds without cheating. The githyanki teleported in shortly afterwards, using spider climb to stick to the colossus. The H'Jyord tried to turn one of their own tricks against them by glitterdusting the pair before teleporting away to warn people in the lower levels, but they managed to save against that one. Xentarich tried the more conventional approach of lots of AoE blasting spells, but the githyanki climbed to the side to get out of view so he was mostly unharmed and looked for other ways in and he only managed to get three out before the binder managed to successfully smash through the glass in the eye and eviscerate him. Seeing that they had a good way in, the sniper also gave up on the feet and teleported up to the head, joined another round later by the drow who had summoned a bunch of invisible stalkers to carry him over. They were somewhat slowed down by the narrow stairs into the lower level of the head, where they found the H'Jyord and  Khrull the cleric casting buff spells on themselves as fast as they could. The H'Jyord hit the githyanki with a dispel magic as he approached, but that only removed 5 out of his 18(!) buff spells and revealed that he was currently polymorphed into a barbazu with a disguise spell to make him look like himself, and had invested in a powerful maul with a bar-lugura bound in it so he could operate as a hand to hand combatant as well as a spellcaster. The H'Jyord tried to disarm him, but the maul teleported back into his hands and started smashing, while the invisible stalkers went around them and took out the gnomes. Khrull tried to fight back, but was hit by a grease spell, which kept him from doing anything useful for another round. A couple of rounds later and the H'Jyord was reduced to negative hit points. It looked as if the PC's had triumphed.However, they'd reckoned without another of his contingencies as one of the gems in his magical helmet stopped glowing, expending a stored Heal to bring him back up to full hp. Since it was obvious he once again couldn't win the battle by conventional means, he ordered the colossus to grapple the kadtanach and engage self-destruct, then tried to teleport away. However, he rolled extremely poorly on his defensive casting check, which meant the githyanki got in an attack of opportunity that did enough damage to lock him down for another round. It's now obvious that the PC's are going to win the fight, but the big question is if they'll figure out some way to stop the self destruct and have two giant things under their control, keep their kaiju clear of the blast and keep just the one, or lose both of them and a whole bunch of their resources in the ensuing explosion and whether the H'Jyord will get away for a third try or this will be his final hurrah. I'm slightly annoyed that this is all going to be resolved without any actual kaiju fight, but they still seem to be having fun and I can still think of several more opportunities to arrange that kind of thing before this campaign is over.</blockquote>

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