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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PHDungeon" data-source="post: 5516934" data-attributes="member: 86320">Session #41DMs Note: This was by far the most deadly session we've had thus far in the campaign. The session consisted of three character deaths and one petrification. Nasty.PCsMelek (level 16,Tiefling, hybrid warlock/wizard) Bella (level 17, Changeling rogue with a touch of sorcerer) Turak (level 16, Minotaur, Warden) Ardyn (level 16, Elf, Ranger) Smar (level 16, Shifter, Ranger) Harbek (level 16, Dwarf, Runepriest)Melek's Journal:As we fly towards the minotaur home we discuss our options. According to Turak there are 2 entrances into the inner sanctum of the labyrinth where he expects Oostarix the shaman will likely be found. One of them is the main entrance and is well guarded by warriors. The other is a secret entrance that leads to the cow chambers and hence to the sanctum. Although not guarded by warriors it is well guarded by traps.Having perhaps grown a little wiser since our frontal assault on Harrowthane we decide that we should take the unguarded route. We land outside the doorway without incident.As Smar, Bella and Ardyn argue over who is the best at detecting and disarming traps and hence should have the honour of leading our foray, Turak gets even more impatient than is his norm and pushes his way past the three of them and strides boldly into the Labyrinth. The rest of us follow, Ardyn kindly agreeing to be the rearguard.As we enter we are all assaulted by a psychic impression of pure and unadulterated evil. We all get even more testy than usual. The rage that I had thought was almost under control is seething within me. I thrust it down but really, really hope that it will not rise up and consume me.We proceed quickly into the maze. Turak never hesitates at any junction but just strides forward. Either he was extremely promiscuous as a wee lad or something is giving him more information than he should have. As he rounds one corner he suddenly gives a bellow of rage and charges. Smar then heads up to the corner and also quickly rushes down the corridor, as does Harbek. Bella is a little more cautious and she just peeks around the corner but is also affected. I am the only one who uses a modicum of intelligence, and I put a mirror out into the corridor with a mage hand and study the scene through its image.The corridor goes a few dozen feet. At the end is some foul altar constructed of various animal carcasses. As I watch, Turak charges to the altar, barely avoiding falling into a pit trap in the process. He then smacks at it, damaging it slightly. Bella shoots Turak in the back. Smar races forward as does Harbek. All is confusion and noise. I'm not actually sure who did what but suddenly there was a loud explosion as the altar blew up. In the aftermath, with my ears ringing, all that I could hear was Smar telling Turak to NOT attack altars and Bella muttering something about "But I had to shoot Turak, it was the only way to slow him down". Turak is very eager to move forward. Very, very eager. He is obviously being even more influenced by this foul place than are the rest of us. I am able to use my arcane magics to somewhat reduce the vile influence on him while Bella manages to convince him that a short rest would be best for all of us. While he is nearly pawing the ground in his frustration and annoyance he concedes the point and lets us rest a few minutes to regain our strength.A close examination of the remnants of the altar revealed that it had parts of various animals, including a Unicorn. It looks very much like a foul ritual had been performed here, a ritual that takes the still beating heart of a magical animal and imbues the eater of the heart with supernatural abilities related to the slain creature. The horn has doubtless become some form of magical weapon.We then proceed deeper into the fortress. As before, Turak is in the lead almost running in his impatience to arrive at our destination. We enter a huge chamber. It consists of a chasm hundreds of feet across, too far for even my Arcane Gate to reach to the other side of. We are about a hundred feet above the floor. Stretching ahead of us are a few platforms separated by distances too large for at least some of us to jump. The bridges that usually span the chamber are inconveniently (albeit expectedly) absent. We have two alternative means to traverse the chamber. We could descend to the floor and ascend the other side. Alternatively we could try and make it from column top to column top.Bella squeals excitedly that she can get us across with her new found wind power. I've seen children at the winter solstice who are less excited to use their new toys than Bella is to use hers. I'm doing her a disservice by that. Her powers are incredibly useful, and we all take a perfectly legitimate pleasure and pride in using our abilities. Actually, it is quite a refreshing change to see her enjoy herself like she does. Perhaps I'm not the only one altered by the Feywild.At any rate, she and Harbek proceed across the chamber. Unfortunately, they do not make it all the way, for suddenly an enormous Behir reveals itself from behind one of the stone columns and attacks them. The rock pillar on which Harbek and the beast stands IS reachable with my Arcane Gate, so I rapidly open one, and most of our party charges through to engage the beast in hand to hand combat. I ask Bella to use her sorcerous winds to fly me over to the top of a different column, one where I will be in range of the Behir but hopefully out of its grasp.A fierce combat then ensues. The Behir is a devastatingly powerful opponent, crackling with lightning. Anybody standing within several yards of it is hit by lightning constantly. It moves insanely quickly for an animal of its size and gets many devastating attacks with mouth and claws in a short space of time.I wish that I could laud my role in this battle. But I find that the evil miasma of this place is very severely affecting my concentration. Or, at least, that is what I wish to blame for my complete failure to even hit the animal, let alone teleport it into the air, as was my goal. All of the half dozen spells that I sent at it missed it completely, not even getting close enough to bounce of its hide. Perhaps it is the will of Odin. The master of the lightning bolt and a creature of lightning? Or maybe I have just completely lost my touch.Both the Behir and ourselves realize that a fine tactic is to toss somebody off the edge of the pillar. Initially, Bella’s and my attempts to make the creature lose its grip on the rock with well placed spells and bolts are unsuccessful, as are its attempt to toss any of our companions into the chasm. Our warriors engage it in hand to hand combat, I snipe ineffectually from my rock, and Bella first finds a safe place on the other side of the chamber and then joins into combat.We are substantially damaging it when the first of what would appear to be a disaster occurs. A swipe from the monster sends Ardyn plummeting off the column they are on, to what I had foolishly assumed would be his doom. But he manages to slow his descent by grabbing onto an occasional handhold and then does an amazing acrobatic roll at the end. Not only is he not slain, he even lands on his feet.But it does take him out of the fight for awhile. Not very long, mind you, as he is an incredibly skilled climber and quickly scales the column in a matter of a few seconds with the help of his trusty magical Rope of Climbing.The battle continues above with the Behir taking the worst of it. But then disaster truly does strike. The Behir manages to concentrate its attacks on Turak and knocks him unconscious and then hurls the unconscious body off the rock. While this isn't enough to kill Turak, he expires before any of us can manage to descend down to aid him. Bella in particular tries to get down there but fails to arrive in time.Fortunately, Turak’s death is the last triumph for the Behir, and as it tries to scuttle off to devour its prey, we manage to dispatch it, sending its body plummeting to the ground.We then make use of the scroll of Raise Dead that we had been carrying these many weeks. It appears Turak feels that his mission on this world is not complete since his soul agrees to return. Not even death removes the effect upon Turak since he immediately wants to resume our journey onwards.We fairly quickly arrived at the outer sanctum. There were several chambers, the innermost of which contains the doorway to the Inner Sanctum. Acting as a moat to that sanctum, complete with poisoned stakes, was a pit at the far end of the chamber crossed by a single bridge.The chamber had two inhabitants. A huge demon vaguely resembling a minotaur held within a summoning circle inscribed on the floor, and a minotaur much larger than usual who Turak recognized. While the beast had always been a formidable fighter he was not previously of his current stature.We approached the chamber. Bella was, quite reasonably, afraid to shoot the Minotaur since her shot would cross the circle. Unfortunately, it turns out that she should have taken her shot since a moment later a single word from the minotaur unleashed the demon anyway.Our warriors rushed forward while Bella and I stayed at the rear. As they confronted the demon, Bella shot the minotaur, and the bolt causes It to stagger backwards and fall into the pit. Judging from the screams and curses that then came from the pit, it apparently had failed to miss all of the spikes.Then another minotaur suddenly appeared out of thin air attacking Bella from behind. It was wielding a unicorn horn as a weapon and apparently had some ability to go invisible. And, also at the rear, a savage, demonic minotaur charged out of a side passage and tried to impale me on its horns, thankfully missing. Fortunately, I was able to blast the demon minotaur with eldritch power and, using the boon granted me by the Maiden, cause it to briefly enter the Feywild and reappear 20 feet away in the room with the other raging demon where it could be dispatched by our warriors.Between Harbek, Bella and myself we quickly dispatched the minotaur with the unicorn horn. The fight between the other two demons and our three mighty warriors was a little longer lived but never really in issue. Smar is quite arrogant and quite foolish. While demanding healing from Harbek he flagrantly shows contempt for both the dwarf and his God, the great Odin. Harbek is, for the moment, letting his tactical wisdom and feeling of loyalty to one’s comrades overcome this and is providing the healing. But I'm not at all sure how long he will continue to do so if Smar doesn't mend his ways.Meanwhile, from the pit behind us we heard various noises. At one point the large minotaur almost made it out before slipping and falling back. It was not until the two demons had been dispatched that the battered beast finally managed to emerge to attack us.It would seem that the spirit of whimsy was high in all of us since we seemed more eager to push him back into the pit than to just kill him. Unfortunately, that wasn't possible and we were forced to the more mundane solution of slaying him outright.Again it was all that we could do to dissuade Turak from charging forward, but with difficulty, we managed to convince him to let us rest a little.After flying over the bridge we smashed open the doors to the Inner Sanctum.The doors opened to reveal an appalling stench and an even worse sight. In the centre of a large chamber was a large rectangular pool filled with body parts, foul, bubbling sludge, and demons slowly swimming up to the surface. At the far end of the chamber on a raised dais was an altar behind which a minotaur shaman incanted a ritual. Affixed to his head was the iron, horned crown that had been described to us by our minotaur prisoners back on the road. In the chamber itself were perhaps a dozen or two demons, both the kinds that we had previously fought on the road and two minotaur guards.Turak gave a bellow and charged through the room towards the altar. Fairly quietly at first but louder and louder as the battle raged he kept muttering the words "Beat him down, take the Crown". While it rhymes it is clearly not up to the high standards that I've come to expect. Still, it is minotaur magic and so I suppose one shouldn't expect too much.The rest of us also entered the chamber and battle was joined.In the first few seconds a few extremely unpleasant facts were established. Demons were coming out of the pool at an alarming rate. Unless something could be done, we'd be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.I used the fey powers granted to me to teleport one of the demons into the pool. Unfortunately, the pool caused it no harm. I've read about such pools in my studies and realized that it would be possible for me to at least temporarily suppress the pool by manipulating the magic energies being transferred to it from the demon altar and the shaman. The pool is not a pool so much as a gate to the foul home of the Demons- a portal to the realm of Baphomet.Unfortunately, to do so was going to be about all that I could do for most of the fight.But I had little choice if we were to prevail.The combat broke down into several separate but related fights. Ardyn was fighting one larger demon and some minor ones, Harbek and Smar some others, Turak charged up to fight Oostarix the shaman at the altar, I was focusing my efforts on dealing with the pool, and Bella was flitting about being unusually ineffective as she couldn't really decide what she wanted to accomplish. She first headed over to the altar but didn't get involved in that fight and instead sniped at various enemies on our side of the battle.Our forces were quite spread out and we were greatly outnumbered. Although we managed to put down several demons quite quickly we were soon in danger of being overwhelmed. The crucial juncture arrived when Harbek fell to axe wielding Tanaruk. Although controlling the pool was taking up nearly all of my energies I managed to call up sufficient reserves to launch a Prismatic Burst, buying us a little time. Unfortunately, the edge of it clipped Harbek as well which may have contributed to his eventual fate. While I deeply regret the decision that I had to make I think that I'd make the same decision again. By hitting Harbek I also manage to hit an additional enemy and that was probably essential.At one point my control of the pool nearly slipped. Although I managed to get the control back the effort cost me dearly.I note that two foul minotaurs in the midst of the main melee, have partaken of a blasphemous ritual with the heart of a gorgon since they are both able to breath some form of gas capable of turning one to stone. Fortunately, I was able to quickly knock aside the gas with my magic. Smar was also caught in the gas, I hope that he too has some means of overcoming it.I called out to Bella to get over and help keep us alive. Without somebody to distract our enemies we'd all soon fall. To my surprise, she started to make her way over. She is obviously braver than I'd given her credit for.For a little bit of time my various defensive abilities kept me up through the assaults. I stayed up long enough to actually shut down the gate at the bottom of the pool but, before I could exalt in my triumph, I was knocked senseless.I came too to find the battle still raging. Smar had obviously succumbed to the gas, as he was now a stone statue. I was in the concealment granted by a primal fog that Smar can summon. A very battered Ardyn was giving me first aid. Bella was also in the mist, looking the worse for wear and sniping away at the demons. Turak had managed to beat down the shaman but was resisting the call of the Horned Crown. In fact, as I awoke he was tossing the crown across the room.With the death of the shaman the demons seemed to become even less controlled than usual, and fortunately two of them attacked the remaining minotaur guard, dispatching him fairly quickly but getting damaged in the process.One of the remaining demons struck Ardyn unconscious. Bella and I withdrew, hoping to draw the demons with us and away from the bodies of our fallen comrades. Alas, it wasn't to be and one of them hacked the unconscious Ardyn to pieces.Fortunately for all of us, the demons were also on their last legs and at least as interested in killing Turak as in killing us. We managed to slay all of the demons without further casualties.As the battle ended, we looked for the crown but it was missing. While Bella started a ritual to open a portal back to Grimmsburg, I quickly searched the area, finding some magic items, some scrolls describing the foul magical rituals that these scum were using, and some useful magical components amongst the detritus that nobody of good conscience would use. We then returned to Grimmsburg, bringing with us the bodies of our two dead companions and the statue of our third.</blockquote>

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