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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Menexenus" data-source="post: 3404209" data-attributes="member: 8951">Session 27: Acquitted! (Scapegoats No Longer)2nd of Reaping.  The party was in the thick of battle against a large spell-casting snake creature as well as a small platoon of drow warriors led by a female cleric.  Katawan, who had rushed in to face the cleric in advance of the rest of the party lay unconscious before a locked door.  Tarric found himself surrounded by the drow warriors.  Killick and his new wardog Grimlock were flanking the snake creature.  Alexander, who had been charmed by the naga, was using his spell power to assist his teammates.  Alees, who had been hit with a tanglefoot bag, was moving slowly toward Tarric (and doing everything in her power to avoid the naga's gaze).  Thorash was bringing up the rear, defending the party against two advancing drow warriors who had dropped from their perch to pursue the party deeper into the system of caverns.    One of these two drow faced off against Thorash directly while the second one moved toward the back of the cavern to assist the naga against Killick.  The naga, who was tired of being flanked, tried to concentrate to cast a spell once more.  The previous time she had tried this, the spell had fizzled.  However, this time the spell was cast successfully.  A familiar bead of energy left the naga's tongue and shot across the room.  When it impacted on the far wall, it exploded into a fiery conflagration which caught Alexander, Alees, and Grimlock in its path.  Alexander and Alees took the full brunt of the fiery blast, while Grimlock jumped and ducked in such an acrobatic fashion that the well-trained dog was able to avoid all damage.      Meanwhile, Tarric was consistently doing grievous damage to his drow enemies, but they were also consistently doing grievous damage to him.  In a relatively short span of time, Tarric had killed three of his enemies, but a wicked critical hit from the drow cleric knocked him to unconsciousness.  This freed the remaining drow to assist the naga in the adjoining cavern.    Killick heard Tarric's plate-armored body collapse to the floor in the adjoining cavern, and he saw the drow that had been fighting him start entering his cavern.  He knew that Tarric must be in need of aid.  The second drow from the ledge had also moved in behind Killick, causing him to become flanked.  Killick whistled for his dog to come to his aid.  The dog, which had been helping Killick flank the naga, now moved around a natural stone column to threaten the drow.  Meanwhile, Killick moved and tumbled his way past the drow to Tarric's side.  When he reached Tarric, a scroll emerged magically from his gloved hand.  He read it and Tarric was instantly as good as new again!    Unfortunately, Grimlock had been left to fight the naga and a drow warrior by itself.  In its depleted state, the wardog was no match for these foes, and he was quickly knocked unconscious by the drow.  This freed the naga up to fire off some spells of opportunity.  She noticed that Alees was staggering back towards Thorash for assistance, so she shot the rogue with magical missiles, knocking Alees unconscious.  Because of his Shield spell, Thorash had little to fear from the drow warrior that had been attacking him.  So he moved next to Alees's unconscious form and healed her.  When she regained consciousness, she used her magical prayer beads to heal herself even further.    Meanwhile, Alexander stood near the pool, as far away from the enemies as possible and fired his magic missile wand at drow targets.  (Even after being fireballed by the naga, Alexander could not shake off her charm effect.  He refused to believe that she could have targeted him on purpose.  Surely it had been a mistake!)    Tarric and Killick faced off together against the drow cleric and her dwindling warrior minions.  One by one, the minions fell away until the only the cleric remained.  She might have considered retreat had it not been for Alees's timely tanglefoot bag.  Even though the cleric was not rooted to the floor by the sticky goo, it rendered her so slow that retreat was no longer an option.  She opted to go down swinging.  She continued clocking Tarric for large amounts of damage, but this time Tarric won the damage battle.  The cleric fell dead to the floor at Tarric's hands.  Tarric, his hands drenched with blood and sweat, breathed a quiet sigh of relief.    Thorash went in to investigate the fallen cleric, while the rest of the party faced off against the naga, which had been given a few seconds of respite while the party focused on the drow.  It had apparently been casting spells on itself during the lull.  Killick went toe-to-toe with the abomination and ascertained that the creature definitely was not as wounded as it had been before he had tumbled away from it.  Alees joined Killick against the naga.    In the other room, Tarric called for healing from the dwarven cleric, but Thorash seemed more interested in finding a drow who was still breathing.  When Tarric heard the sound of battle being joined in the next room, he strode and sprang to his comrades' aid.  The naga saw that Killick, Alees, and Tarric were all in a tight group, so it backed up five feet and shot another bead of energy at the back wall, igniting another fireball.  Killick and Alees were able to use their reflexes to avoid any damage from the fiery blast, but Tarric was burned alive and instantly fell dead to the ground.  Another casualty of the blast was Killick's faithful wardog, Grimlock (who had been unconscious but who was now a charred cinder).    Seeing the body of his dead friend Tarric and the charred body of his dead dog Grimlock, Killick began fighting the naga with renewed ferocity.  Suddenly and unexpectedly he felt someone pulling at him from behind.  It was Alexander!  Although the wizard's attempt to grapple Killick was unsuccessful, he cried out that Killick should not hurt his friend.  He even suggested aloud that Killick was the one responsible for Tarric's death!  Killick gave the wizard a threatening look and warned him not to try that again.  Then he turned his attention back to the naga.  Luckily for everyone involved, the naga was felled soon thereafter, freeing Alexander from his enchantment.    Thorash finally got around to healing Katawan, who had lain unconscious near the locked door for most of the battle.  Although the party was curious about what might be waiting for them down the next passageway, they realized that they could not continue without their stalwart friend Tarric.  The party looted the bodies of the fallen drow.  Alexander noticed a dim light shining at the bottom of the pool.  He dove in and recovered 8 pp, a large emerald, and an ornate jug.  Disappointed, the party withdrew and carried their dead friend back to the surface.    On the way back through the sewers, Alexander pleaded with his comrades to turn themselves in to the authorities, as he had done.  When Thorash resisted Alexander's pleas, Alexander explained that he would now start suffering serious consequences if the party refused to turn themselves in.  He insisted in no uncertain terms that the party *must* turn themselves in!  Thorash pressed the wizard for details of the "consequences" that he had mentioned, but Alexander was characteristically unwilling to tell the party more than they needed to know.  Finally, the group relented and agreed to turn themselves in after a brief stop at Eligos's house, to bathe and drop off the loot (as well as Tarric's body).  They told Eligos what loot he could sell, and they asked him to use the cash to hire a cleric to raise their friend.  The next day, Eligos did as he was instructed, and immediately after being raised, Tarric turned himself in to the authorities to face judgment side-by-side with his comrades.     3rd - 10th of Reaping.  When they were taken into custody, the party was split up and interrogated individually.  The interrogation was quite aggressive and harsh.  It continued on again and off again for more than a day.  Each of the party members was beginning to suspect that turning themselves in had been a big mistake.  Then suddenly, the interrogation lightened up.  A familiar face visited each party member in their individual cells; it was Krastor, the circuit court judge who had tried Smenk and Filge back in Diamond Lake.  Apparently, he had returned to Greyhawk in the wake of the Worm's Rampage and had heard about the party's plight through his contacts among the city's legal system.  Having fought by their sides against the temple of Hextor, he offered to represent them and offer them legal counsel.  The Ruling Oligarchy found that it had little choice but to accept Krastor's offer.  Krastor and Eligos had been working behind the scenes ever since to line up important witnesses that could attest to the party's innocence.  Apparently, their efforts had been successful, because the conditions of the party's imprisonment had improved dramatically.    The next day, the party were given back their possessions and placed in a more comfortable cell together.  The interrogations were now much more polite and Krastor was permitted to be present.  Eventually, Eligos was permitted to visit the party.  He confided to them that the Directing Oligarchy had indeed originally set out to use the party as scapegoats for the events that had now become known by the citizens of Greyhawk as "the Worm's Rampage."  However, because of the stiff legal resistance presented by Krastor, the Directors had decided it would be more convenient to blame the disaster on Loris Raknian - the former gladiator who ran the Greyhawk Arena.  Although Raknian and the Directors had had a cozy relationship in the past, Raknian and his head bodyguard Okoral had disappeared immediately after the Apostle of Kyuss was released.  The suspicious timing of Raknian's disappearance along with the suspicious passageways leading directly from his residence to the sublevels of the Arena where the Worm had been summoned led the Directors (reluctantly) to the conclusion that he (and not the party) was truly responsible for the disaster.  A bulletin was dispatched to all Greyhawk Militia offices offering a reward for the capture of Loris Raknian, dead or alive.    Finally, the party was released from custody after having been imprisoned for a week.  The party received a weak apology from representatives of the Directing Oligarchy for the inconvenience that they had endured.  While the party was still unhappy about their initial treatment at the hands of their jailors, they were too happy to be free again to hold a serious grudge.  Now the party had to decide whether to return to the caverns in the sewers beneath the Cold Forge, knowing that their enemies had a week to prepare for their return.</blockquote>

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