Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ormazd" data-source="post: 6004028" data-attributes="member: 24334">Merrick completed a ritual to protect us from heat and noxious fumes.Karuna and Van are unconscious.In Hell, fire powers are enhanced, and teleportation no longer causes damage.Is Baelzra stealing souls from the Raven Queen? A funnel cloud reaches back up into the clouds, and glinting gold light in the distant hills is an arch of some sort.There are moans, cadenced chanting, and fires. There seems to be some ceremony going on further on around the lake.Using the ritual Comrade's Succor, Lumi and Shirazade sacrifice healing surges to revive Van and Karuna, and another ritual is cast to make us stealthy. Van uses a ritual to send a distress message to Simeon "In hell. Send help."We head towards the gold archway built into the hillside. A giant iron gate is hanging open, with glowing red runes (not in common, but can be read by all) - "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." This, the Gate of Melsparanze leads to Dis, the second layer of Hell, descending deeply down a cavern.Shirazade finds a place to camp, she and Karuna take watches, as they each only need to meditate for 4 hours.We head back to where we heard the moaning, and discover that the ship we were on was torn apart during the night.On the very distant horizon we see a city in the distance, the Bronze Citadel, central seat of power in Avernus.We move on to site where we heard activity and discover a chasm spanned by a bridge of bones and a pit of fire. In a pentacle is a beautiful woman with long black hair. Artfully draped chains cover her body. She seems to be leading the ritual. Diabolic creatures attend her, as well as a yuan-ti servant. A line of souls leads up to the center of pentacle, maybe about 25 -- at the end of the line is a minotaur, clearly unhappy and chained. As the souls reach the woman, they shred apart.Van is going to pretend to lead Karuna and Shirazade as prisoners, with Lumi as a guard. Merrick is going to circle around on Smelly to free the minotaur at the end of the line. The guards allow us to get over the bridge. Van embellishes our story and says he's got souls for Baelzra. The guards swallow our story and tell Van to add us to the end of the line. Van claims to be Malgar who stole the soul of the Tannarok, but the guard calls his bluff, and Van says he was just angling for a better reward.The minotaur can tell that the party's actions are total subterfuge and readies himself. Baelzra attacks with chains, restraining party members. Her serpentine attendant dominates Shirazade. Asteron, the minotaur, heals the party AND charges Baelzra with his horns! Meanwhile, Merrick is fighting Zofia in the sky alone (on Smelly) far in the distance.Zofia flies down with Merrick and demands that Van come with her or she will kill us all. Van chooses to protect his friends by going with her after landing the killing blow on Baelzra.</blockquote>

Verification