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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9894133" data-attributes="member: 27780">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. <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/dungeon-polyhedron-part-2-the-great-merger.914783/post-25202848" target="_blank">(using the appropriate map of mystery from issue 99)</a> 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.</blockquote>

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