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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James McMurray" data-source="post: 123487" data-attributes="member: 743">Preparations are made, and spells are cast. The group decides to teleport into the amphitheatre. Teflon Billy and Galrond cast their spells, when disaster strikes! Due to the unfamiliarity of the target area William, Billy, Cristoph and Kargur find themselves standing in a similar, yet different Temple-like area. The room is smaller, yet pews still line a central isle up to a stage. Atop the stage stands a red-robed figure, speaking in guttural tones to several Orcs who line the chairs. It takes but a moment for Kargur and William to recognize the sign of Erythnul, God of Slaughter behind the priest. William rightly decides to Word of Recall himself and his friends back to the Temple of Heironious in Lopolla, leaving Galrond, Amastacia, Lanis, and Gundarag to assault the Temple on their own.Appearing in the central area of the amphitheatre, the remaining band immediately notices a single robed figure standing guard with the Samurai vampire. A moment later, and battle has begun, with Lanis shooting and killing the novice necromancer before he can make a sound, and the rest of the group attacking the vampire. With ferocity and sheer destructive power, the samurai is quickly forced to shift to gaseous form and flee, but not before the two other vampires standing guard outside the amphitheatre hear the commotion and move into the room as well.Even so, the preparedness of the party combined with the distractive assaults earlier in the day show the vampires to be woefully under prepared. The fact that their Headmistress Nuala has chosen this day to not be present (as she is out picking up magic items she had commissioned) does not aid their cause. Soon, these vampires too are forced to flee in mist form, leading the band of heroes to the secret trapdoor whose underground passage soon emerges into Headmistress Nuala’s private quarters.The band searches quickly, finding Nuala’s library and taking several books and scrolls. They also find her sleeping quarters, but a trap set off when her wardrobe is disturbed fills the room with fiery gas. All furnishings are destroyed in the conflagration, but the party remains unscathed, due the protective magics placed upon them by William Siege, rendering them immune to fire (originally intended to allow Billy to Fireball at will without having to worry about collateral damage to his teammates).However, amidst all of the searching, there is no sign of the vampires they follwed here. Finding no hidden passageways, the band returns to the amphitheatre and attempts to decide where to head next. Meanwhile, Blaeseg, Harrow, and Absalom, the Dim Triad, are recuperating in their Coffins. Harrow is the first to revive himself, and he heads out to find the party again. This time, he is prepared with Improved Invisibility and casts confusion when he reaches them. Both Amastacia and Gundarag succumb to the spell, and Gundarag attacks Galrond, nearly killing him instantly. Galrond, beaten and battered, decides it is time to flee, and teleports the group back to the Temple to Heironious, where he, Cristoph, and others quickly subdue Amastacia and Gundarag.The group decides to prepare again, and return in three days for another assault. They decide to teleport into a small side chamber and fan out from there, hoping to avoid the main guards in the entryway and Amphitheatre. Appearing where they wished this time, they see a large group of robed figures standing in the main entryway. These unsuspecting necromancers die to a surprise arrow and fireball from Cristoph and Billy respectively. Then the party moves in to join battle with the mass of snakes which guards the front door. The serpent golem takes but amoment to destroy, but it is long enough for Blaesig, the Samurai, to come out of the amphitheatre, hasted by Harrow, and ready for battle. He attacks Lanis, wounding him severely, then releases his sword, which continues to attack. Drawing another, he prepares to kill Lanis, who moves away quickly. The group is well prepared however, and the vampires are quickly forced to flee in gaseous form. Galrond’s spells, Lanis and Amastacia’s arrows, and the rests swords make short work of the vampires. They flee again, secure in the knowledge that they will heal and return. The group follows, and this time they stumble upon Nuala in her chambers. She has had a bit of time to prepare however, and Billy’s Greater Dispelling rebounds upon him, taking out many of his protective magics. Kargur moves in as well, and Billy uses his haste action to cast anti-magic field, presumable sealing Nuala’s fate.Cornered by the burly paladin and the spindly dwarf, Nuala does the only thing she can do and attempts to shove her way past Teflon Billy. Seeing an opening when Nuala turns her attention from him, Kargur leaps to grapple her and pull her to the ground, where she will be trapped within the field and easily killed. Unfortunately he missteps and accidentally grabs Billy, giving Nuala the chance she needs to stand and flee to her chambers, slamming the door shut behind herself.Meanwhile, the group has bottlenecked at the entrance to her chambers, as the small area does not allow more than one person to climb up at a time. Billy, William, and Kargur reach the door to Nuala’s chambers, and William and Kargur begin slamming into it to try to force it down. A moment later, Billy moves up and turns the doorknob, afterwhich the door opens easily, revealing a room with bare furnishings (Nuala had to replace her destroyed goods), but no Headmistress.Angry at not having found her, but determined to press on, the party begins to search for secret passageways. They do find one, but only because Blaesig opens it just wide enough for two Flame Strikes to slam into the group. Cristoph nimbly dodges aside, but Galrond, Gundarag, Amastacia are hurt. William’s Shield other also leaves him mildly wounded.As the party strives to open the doorway, Blaesig continues his assault. An arrow from Lanis sends him back to gaseous form though, just in time for Absalom to appear and hit the band with a cone of cold, before he too is forced to flee again. This time, the vampires decide to rest until fully healed, and let their traps do some of the dirty work for them.The party moves through the doorway and into a sarcophagus. As they step out of it, they find themselves in a dark hallway, lined with several alcoves, each of which holds a sarcophagus, except for two of them, which hold Iron statues of the Death-like creatures which previously assaulted the group. The party begins to search, looking for secret passages. Cristoph climbs into a large sarcophagus and finds a switch. When he presses it, the lid slams shut. Moments later, Kargur opens the lid, but the sarcophagus is empty. Cristoph, having been teleported to another sarcophagus does not even realize he has moved. However, he does realize that he is in trouble after spike protrude from the base of the sarcophagus and enter his back, where they begin to rapidly drain all the blood out of his body. After screaming and clawing at the lid for a bit, he realizes he cannot escape and will soon die, so he breaks the small rod given to him by William, which teleports him to Lopolla, safe, but no longer able to aid the party in their assault.Searching near where they heard Cristoph’s screams, the group finds a secret door behind one of the Scythe wielding statues. William casts Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, expecting the statue to come to life when the door is opened. He slams his mace into, putting a small dent in it. Gundarag hits it as well, putting several large dents into it. At this point, Kargur and Lanis realize that it is only a statue and they move away, while William and Gundarag open the door.Inside the small chamber are three sarcophagi. Two are unadorned, but the third has a lid carved in the shape of a screaming Cristoph. Inside it is empty though, and only a few tiny fresh blood marks attest to the fact that Cristoph was here. Worried, but unable to do anything about it, the party presses onward.Lanis, tinkering with a stone sarcophagus shaped like a dwarf, manages to trigger a gas trap, which seems to have no effect, until the group looks around to see Amastacia’s face frozen in agony, having been turned to stone. Gundarag, her loving husband screams and rails, and it takes Galrond wuite some time before he can convince Gundarag that they can fix her, but that the group must press onward still.Kargur, at the urgings of William, detects evil near all of the sarcophagi, and finds that none of them seem to contain vampires, so the group decides that they will have to search for secret passageways again. They soon find one, behind the second Scythe wielding statue. When it is opened, William is assaulted by the statue’s scythe. It hits his several times, but even though the group is fatigued from the aftereffects of the Righteous Wrath, the Iron Golem is no match for them. Even its highly poisonous gas is stopped by the heroes’ feast the party ate the day before.As the group moves forward, it is decided that Billy, with his anti-magic field still up, should lead the way, as he is proof against any magical traps. Unfortunately, as he moves to pass Kargur and William, the field momentarily negates the Heroes’ Feast’s effects, allowing the poison to weaken Kargur, and kill William. Determined to press onward, and knowing that they cannot get him True Resurrected without something to show the High Priest, the party applies a Resurrection Salve to William, who awakens missing several spells and a level, but otherwise unhurt. He quickly casts heal on himself and Kargur, and the party moves onward again. At the end of the hall is an unlocked doorway. However, the door turns out to be false, and only hides three spears of light, which slam into Galrond and Lanis.Feeling that there is no reason to have a trap hidden behind a secret door, William urges the group the search the walls. doing so finds a passageway to the south, which leads deeper into the hillside, to a hallway lined with candles, from which three passageways diverge. Kargur convinces the group that to press onward would be foolhardy. Although they have yet to kill any true enemies, many protective magics will soon be fading, and the vampires are likely fully healed and prepared for them by now. The group decides to place Walls of Force between them and the rest of the are, dragging Amastacia into a corner so that they can retreat to a Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion. However, although the wall goes up, the Mansion’s door fails to materialize, and the group realizes that the area is protected by a permanent Zone of Respite, blocking all inter-dimensional access. They instead decide to stay up all night, behind successively cast Walls of Force, and the next morning, shielded from prying eyes by a Private Sanctum spell, Billy returns Amastacia to flesh, and the group dispels the Zone so that they can teleport back to Lopolla. A brief discussion and they decide that they were most definitely on the losing end of this exchange, although they gained great insight into where the vampires may be.Now they prep and plan for their return, and of course, so do the necromancers...</blockquote>

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