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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kid Charlemagne" data-source="post: 88294" data-attributes="member: 93">Ulfang, Midnight, June 3rd, AE 420Brennen and Aris return sheepishly from the bar upstairs where they had been hiding.  Jovah looks out from behind a box, and seeing the minotaur-demon is dead, joins them.  Jalea sticks his head back in the room from the hallway to the sewers.Gavin and Reana congratulate each other on taking the beast down by themselves, and they start checking the summoning room out.  There is another turquoise-painted door on the other side of the room.  They discover that the trap set off by entering the room was a very simple one; a steel weight was tied to the door, and when the door was opened the thread holding it back was untied.  This allowed the weight to swing into a busket full of marbles sitting on top of a wooden stool.“We’re right under the docks on the Noren River,” Jalea says.  “We go more than twenty, thirty feet straight out that way, and we’d be swimming.”“You gonna check this door for traps, too, Jalea?” Gavin asks skeptically.“Hey, there was no way I could have found that trap,” Jalea replies.  “The only way to set it or deactivate it is from this side.”“So whoever set that trap has to still be here?” Brennen asks.“Right,” the elf responds.There is some discussion of what to do now; the party is relatively healed up, but Jovah has only one spell left.  Corwin has a few spells available, but none of his big ones.  They decide to continue on, since this may be there only chance for a while to disrupt a ceremony dedicated to Pazuzu, and get a clean shot at Arlen Kentfield.Jalea checks the door, and unlocks it.  Beyond is a stairway that leads down at a steep angle.  At the bottom, Jovah estimates they are about a hundred feet below where they were previously.  Jalea has no idea how deep the river is at this point, but he knows that its about 1,000 feet across.Gavin leads the group down the stairs, and when they end, he starts down the narrow hall.  The walls are wet with condensation, and there is a fair amount of mold and mildew here.  Then Gavin stops, and whips off his continual flame bandana and stuffs it in a pouch.“I see a light up there, and I think there’s a door,” he says.Jalea sneaks up to the door, which is about thirty feet down the hall.  The door is made entirely of rusting iron, and there is a small, open viewing window about five feet up.  Jalea stops and listens.  He hears voices on the other side of the door.“I’ll see your three silver, and raise you five.”“No way!  I call.”Jalea cracks a smile, and sneaks back to the group.  They decide to have Jalea try to open the door, and then the party will rush the room.  The elven “scout” sneaks back, and tries the door handle, quietly.  It turns, but the door won’t open.  It must be barred, Jalea thinks.  Then he notices that the voices have stopped.“Did you hear something?”“Nuh uh.”Gavin and Jovah are back about thirty feet, with crossbows loaded and ready to fire.  They see the light streaming through the open view port, and then see something or someone block the light.  Jalea can see that one of the guards is looking down the hall, towards where the party lies in wait, all lights extinguished or hidden.Jalea pulls out a dagger, and steps up to the view port.  He stick the dagger through the view port, and catches it in the nostril of the guard looking down the hall.“Open the door!” he whispers threateningly.  The guard complies fearfully, but his fellow guard is less inclined to give in.“Hey!  What are you doing?”Jalea kicks the door in quickly, and slips into the room.  He draws his shortsword of quickness and deals a nasty blow to the first guard.  He’s somewhat surprised that he doesn’t go down.“These are pretty tough guards,” Jalea thinks to himself.The rest of the group rushes the door and gangs up on the other guard.  The first guard runs for it through another open door in the room, running down a very wide open hall that seems to go on a very long ways.  Jovah tries to peg him with a crossbow bolt, but misses.  The gnome can see that very far off, maybe a hundred yards, there is a large number of torches.Corwin tries to zap the fleeing guard with a magic missile, but his armor gets in the way again, and Aris is forced to use a magic missile of his own to bring him down.A quick survey of the room reveals a couple of light crossbows and bandoliers of bolts, and about ten red cloaks.“Aha!” Brennen says.  “We can disguise ourselves with these!”They suit up in the red cloaks, and make their way down the wide chamber.  It is about forty-five feet wide, with the last ten feet on each side being about a ten foot drop off to a ten foot wide channel of brackish water.  As they approach the torches down the chamber, they can see that a ceremony appears to be taking place.Four chambers just like the one the party is walking in meet at one point.  In the center of the point is a pool of water, ten feet below the level of the chamber floor.  In the center of the pool is a walkway five feet wide, around a raised platform five feet above the chamber floor.  The walkway can ony be reached by four narrow bridges.  On the raised platform is an altar, flanked by two winged seven-foot tall demons.  Behind the altar stands a man in a red cloak and an elaborate bird mask, holding down a young man on the altar.  To his right stands a shorter man, also in a red cloak, with a less elaborate bird mask.  To his left stands a female sauhuagin, dressed scaly armor, and carrying a trident.  On the walkway around the raised platform stands Kentfield’s heavily armored bodyguard, and a four armed sahuagin wielding two tridents in two of his hands, and a heavy crossbow in the other two.Arrayed all around these major figures are about two score (presumed) cultists, including four more sahuagin.“We’re in big trouble,” Jovah says.  “That’s a lot of people to be fighting.  What are those demons anyway?”“Nabassu,” Corwin says.  “Servants of Pazuzu.”They form plan, and prepare to set it into action.  First, Aris cast snilloc’s snowball swarm at the group of cultists right by the nearest bridge.  A furious volley of icy snowballs cascades into the area, knocking all but one of the eight cultists there out.Jalea, Reana, and Jovah all let arrows and bolts fly at the lead priest, some hitting, some missing.  The lead priest sheaths the dagger he was preparing to use on his sacrifice.The smaller cultist leader looks at the first one incredulously.“They got past the Ghour Demon!”“You said there was no way they could get past the Ghour Demon!”</blockquote>

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