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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Menexenus" data-source="post: 4017745" data-attributes="member: 8951">Sessions 49-50: Against the Vampires3rd of Fireseek.  After resting, rememorizing, and identifying swag, the party re-entered the lion door.  They were careful to verify that the statues were all in the same positions that the party had last seen them in and that the naked half-celestial being was still lying in her transparent coffin.  All was just the way they had left things.  Thorash made for the room with the black throne.  He picked up one of the slain spider creatures from the barracks room and placed it on the throne.  A small vortex of black energy appeared above the throne but then quickly dissipated, having no effect on the spider-thing's corpse.  Although Thorash was clearly still intrigued, he and the rest of the party decided that it would be unwise to continue experimenting with the throne's negative energies.    The party began moving single-file down the last unexplored hallway.  After about 30 feet, it turned abruptly to the left, leading to an oak door.  On the wall leading up to the door was a worn tapestry depicting a man riding a black dragon.  Alees dutifully checked the new door for traps.  She found an alarm trap that she was able to easily disable.  She moved away from the door to allow others to open it.  She began looking more closely at the tapestry to see if it was of any value.  Tarric opened the door to reveal an armory stacked with rows and rows of carefully stacked spears, greatswords, and various exotic pikes and pole arms.  While Tarric walked in to examine the weapons more closely, Alees noticed a row of small holes behind the aged, frayed, and virtually worthless tapestry.  Just then, Tarric turned a corner and found himself face to face with a hairless creature with leathery greenish black skin.  Upon seeing Tarric, the creature opened its mouth and let out a deafening scream.  It wielded a shortspear quite expertly and traded blows with Tarric.  Thorash stepped forward, cast a spell, and touched the black-skinned undead.  It looked at the dwarf in sudden horror as it collpsed into a pile of dust.    However, just then, Alees shouted, "Uh, guys, there's some kind of mist seeping out of the wall."  The mist was rising from the holes in the wall that Alees had found.  The mist coalesced on the ceiling into the form of a female vampire.  She looked at Alees (who was closest to her) and said in a very pleasant tone, "Hello child.  I am Narise.  Serve me."  Alees's eyes suddenly went glassy and she replied, "Yes, mistress."  Hearing Alees's cry, the party's main combatants came running out of the armory to her aid.  Tarric threw himself into melee combat with the vampire.  However, the vampire commanded Alees to follow her and then turned to Tarric and commanded him to defend her and not let anyone past.  Tarric's eyes also went glassy and he replied, "Yes, mistress."  The vampire and Alees retired to the recently evacuated armory and Tarric stood in the hallway protecting them both.  Tarric's partymates shouted at him to snap out of it, but to no avail.  When they tried to move past him to help Alees, he struck them with the flat of his blade and prevented them from tumbling past.    Alees was drawn into the vampire's embrace and dragged behind a corner, out of the party's sight.  The party was desperate to get past Tarric to help Alees, but they couldn't see how.  Then Thorash cast a spell on Tarric which broke the vampire's hold on him.  He immediately ran back into the armory, with the rest of the party in tow.  They were in time; the vampire had not yet fed on their comrade.  At first their attempts to help Alees did as much harm as good.  Both Killick and Tarric struck Alees instead of the vampire who held her.  Thorash cast a spell that made his hand crackle with positive energy.  He thrust his hand forward, reaching for the vampire, but made contact with Alees instead.  This healed her of all her wounds, but that had not been the intended result.  After sustaining a volley of magic missiles from Alexander, the vampire who had lost its grip on Alees, now retreated back out into the hallway.  However, the party's pursuit, like Alexander's magic missiles, was relentless, and in a matter of moments she was forced to retreat in mist form back through the wall.    The party brainstormed about how to get to the wounded vampire before she had a chance to fully regenerate.  Killick cast a spell that tunneled through the stone of the wall toward the vampire's lair, but he was not able to go deep enough and the tunnel came up short.  Killick then summoned a Xorn and asked it to go through the wall and come back to report.  It did so and reported that the wall was only about 2 more feet thick before becoming a small room with a stone coffin inside and a wooden chest at the foot of the coffin.  Killick commanded the creature to go back in and destroy the coffin.  It reluctantly did so and was quickly dispatched by the vampire's blows.  Then Killick summoned a Thoqqua and instructed it to bore a hole in the wall and attack the vampire's coffin.  Again, the creature was quickly dispatched.  Realizing that the vampire would soon be back to full strength unless action was taken, Alexander decided to fire a maximized fireball through the small hole in the wall left by the Thoqqua.  As soon as Alexander began casting, Narise could be heard casting on the far side of the wall.  Alexander shot the bead of energy through the still molten hole left by the Thoqqua which was followed by a tremendous explosion.  For a moment afterwards there was silence, and the party dared hope that it had destroyed the vampire.  But then the party could hear Narise cackling.  Killick shook his head and informed Alexander that she had cast Minor Globe of Invulnerability at the last moment.    The party took stock of its situation and decided that they would be better off withdrawing and rememorizing before coming back to destroy the vampire. 4th of Fireseek.  The party re-entered the lion door once again, intent on destroying the vampire that had nearly drained Alees.  However, as they were approaching the vampire's lair, it suddenly appeared on the ceiling where it had been waiting invisible and shot a lightning bolt down the hallway at them.  They had seen this tactic before, so they were mostly prepared for it and took little damage.  Then she cast Shout which the party had not seen.  This did a bit more damage, but not much.  If this was the best that the vampire had at her disposal, then it would be a short fight indeed.  The vampire retired back to the armory and tried unsuccessfully to enthrall some of the party members.  Seeing that the vampire was surrounded and on the ropes, Killick focused on getting to the vampire's coffin and preventing the vampire from doing the same.  He cast another Stoneshape spell, allowing him to complete the tunnel that he had started the previous day.  Then he cast Wind Wall at the entrance of the tunnel to prevent mist forms from following him.  Finally, he climbed into the vampire's lair and attempted unsuccessfully to shape the lid of the stone coffin to prevent it from opening.  However, the stone seemed to resist his efforts somehow and he was unsuccessful.  Killick ordered his dog Grimlock to wait in the tunnel and prevent anyone from entering.      When Killick emerged to rejoin the party, he found a completely different situation than the one he had left.  Narise had indeed been reduced to a mist which was unsuccessfully trying to return to its coffin.  However, there was now a line-up of living enemies attacking the party from behind.  Killick recognized these new enemies as the flesh-and-blood versions of the statues that they had seen when they entered the lion-head door.  Above these living enemies, clinging to the ceiling, was a second vampire.  It was the half-celestial, Huvariel, who had lain naked in the transparent coffin.  She was no longer naked.  She now wore a thin mithral chain shirt which hugged her otherwise naked form and wielded a bastard sword.  Since most of the party was unable to get to the vampire past the line of new opponents standing in the hallway, she was able to attempt to dominate members of the party at her leisure.  Killick used his previously-cast spider climb spell to move over the enemies and threaten the vampire.  Huvariel commanded Alees to assist her in defending the temple, and Alees's eyes finally glazed over once again.  She moved into flanking position behind Killick.    Meanwhile the rest of the party was shooting and hacking its way through the enemy party of living beings.  After a few of Alexander and Katawan's fireballs in addition to Tarric's relentless hacking, the enemy party was quickly dispatched.  When the enemy party's last member fell, Huvariel cast a Web spell trapping Thorash and Grimlock on the far side and trapping Katawan in a side passage.  Tarric did all he could to avoid the vampire's gaze while also trying to avoid Alees's deadly blades.  Killick kept disarming Alees to prevent her from using her abilities to sneak attack him.  Meanwhile the vampire withdrew to the room with the black throne and waited to deal with the party members one at a time, continuing to regenerate for each moment they delayed.  Alexander, who had nearly run out of offensive spells, cast what little he had left at the vampire.  But she did not die.  Instead, she dominated his mind and instructed him to kill Killick.  Alexander drew his dagger and began haplessly pursuing the druid.  Since Katawan had been cut off from the combat by the Web spell, he jumped into the web and tried unsuccessfully to wade through its sticky strands.  He was met there by Alees who gladly eviscerated him with a demonic smile on her face.  Meanwhile, Huvariel caught Tarric in a moment of weakness.  He opened his eyes to locate his opponent and the vampire used the opportunity to dominate the fearsome warrior.    Since Alees, Alexander, and Tarric had all been dominated, Katawan was apparently dead, and Thorash and Grimlock were trapped on the far side of the web waiting for it to slowly burn down, Killick found himself alone.  Realizing that the vampire was the key, he drew his Wand of Healing and attempted to touch the vampire with it.  But the vampire's thralls were able to successfully protect their mistress.  After some desperate fighting, Killick finally succumbed to the vampire's bastard sword.  Since the fight was over as far as she knew, she ordered her thralls to sleep.  They collapsed immediately to the floor.  At just that moment, the final strands of the Web burned away.  Thorash and Grimlock stepped through.  Seeing his master's body lying bleeding on the ground, Grimlock gave a deep growl and prepared to launch itself futilely against the vampire.  But just then, Thorash held his holy symbol aloft and commanded the vampire with an otherworldly voice to flee the power of Wee Jas.  Huvariel screamed in fear, returned to mist form, and fled from the dwarf's holy symbol at top speed.  Thorash stabilized Killick and ordered Grimlock to pull him out of the pyramid.  Somehow the dog understood the dwarf's command and complied.  Thorash knew that he had a limited amount of time to pull the rest of his party out before the vampire returned.  He did so as quickly as he could and slammed the lion-headed door shut just as Huvariel returned to her senses.  Thorash, breathing heavily, tied up all of the vampire's thralls and waited for dusk so that he could rememorize spells.  He had pulled Katawan's body out to prevent the vampire from raising him as a subordinate vampire.  However, Thorash was now astounded to see that Katawan was miraculously still alive!  Despite the grievous wounds that he had suffered at Alees's hands and despite the fact that he had received no magical healing, he was stable in a state of unconsciousness.  Thorash used some of his last spells to heal the monk and the druid (who had never been dominated by the vampire).</blockquote>

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