Hi everyone.
Sorry I've been so busy lately; between work and preparing for my upcoming fantasy baseball draft, I haven't had much time left over to devote to writing up the summary of the last session. But I'm slowly chipping away at it, helped immensely by notes all my players sent me about what they remembered doing in the fight. Here's the first part:
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 141a
Ernie immediately flies back out to the corridor, and as quickly as he can tells the others what he saw. Most notably he describes the dimensions of the room, the locations of the three people, the giant spheres in the far corner, and the shimmering in the air above the lines of blue energy on the floor. Morningstar relays all of this to Grey Wolf, who waits in the upper floors with Cobb and about twenty guards and priestesses.
Ernie then flies back into the huge chamber – just missing out on the bless spell cast on everyone else by Dranko. But the whole group follows close on his heels, streaming into the room to engage the Black Circle worshippers. Dranko, Ernie and Kibi are flying. But because they are unwilling to cross the blue energy lines, and because they have been arrayed far down the corridor, it takes a few rounds for them all to get inside. And during that time, their enemies are not idle. The woman in the lightning-bolt breastplate downs a potion, and the next round drinks two more potions. Mokad reads off a spell from a scroll, and the halfling woman casts a spell on herself. The next round, the halfling appears to cast stoneskin, and Mokad runs over to stand near her before casting a spell that brings up a white hemisphere of translucent energy around the two of them.
Only Aravis waits out in the corridor. While the others go in, he sits down and enters the Crosser’s Maze.
Ernie flies in, skirts the left-hand wall to avoid the nearest blue energy line, and quaffs a potion of heroism. Kay stands just inside the doorway and decides to see what happens to objects that pass over the blue lines. She fires an arrow toward the woman in the breastplate some 80 feet away, but it vanishes when it passes through the shimmering air. That merely confirms that their initial policy – to avoid those lines at all costs – seems to be wise.
The halfling wizard casts another spell, and another hemisphere of energy, this one a faint blue, surrounds both her and Mokad. And the human woman in the breastplate is suddenly surrounded with a familiar grey glow – either she has cast stoneskin on herself, or there is another invisible caster about!
One Certain Step moves into the room, intending to get to the armored woman on the far side. Flicker does the same, hoping to get some flanking opportunities when they arrive. Dranko heads that way as well, flying and invisible. He activates Thriss, instructing the snake to attack the fighter if she moves toward the party. Mokad, now encased inside two different spell-bubbles, starts to cast a full-round spell from a staff. Morningstar, once she has moved past the silence spell around the door, casts Searing Darkness at the female fighter. It goes through the shimmering air above the line of blue energy and strikes true, searing the flesh of her target. First blood!
Grey Wolf, back upstairs, agrees with Morningstar (over a Rary’s telepathic bond) that he will probably be needed down in the ritual room soon. The World Spheres have clearly been sped up recently, and may align in a matter of minutes. He stops to get the Divination Sink from the rope trick – which cuts off the telepathic bond – but on his way to talk to Cobb about having his men join him, there are sounds of combat from elsewhere in the upper complex! Some of Cobb’s men and several Ellish priestesses go off to investigate, but about ten stay with Grey Wolf. He instructs them to follow him as quickly as they are able, before flying down at top speed to join the others.
Back in the ritual chamber, the sudden conflagration of a massive flame strike scorches Step, Morningstar, Flicker and Ernie. Even more disturbing than the gruesome damage (Flicker and Morningstar both fail their saves) is the fact that it was cast by a fourth enemy, heretofore invisible, who is now revealed standing in one of the black circles in their quadrant of the room. He is even thinner than Mokad, wears spectacles, and looks smugly satisfied. And having just torched half the party, he then points a finger at Kay and casts another spell. Kay’s vision starts to go dim, and she realizes with sudden horror that she has been struck blind!
Ernie flies just out of reach of the bespectacled black circle cleric and pegs him with an arrow. Kay and Oa Lyanna activate their fly spell, and while Kay is blinded, Oa Lyanna guides her flight toward the enemy human fighter. The fighter responds with a vicious flurry of attacks from a bastard sword she wields one-handed. In one gruesome round, almost half of Kay’s own stoneskin is whittled away, and a good deal of damage gets through it altogether.
Kibi, flying over toward the human woman, glances down, and sees something quite startling. The large circular three-foot-high wall in the center of the room is actually a railing, and inside its perimeter is a deep circular pit extending downward over twenty feet. At the bottom of that pit are over twenty Black Circle clerics, most arrayed around the perimeter, with half a dozen standing in a black obsidian circle in the center of the floor. That circle, like the large one on the floor between the converging Spheres above, is pulsing blackly in time with the loud thrumming sound that fills the entire chamber. Black energy is streaming out of the black circle in the pit, spilling up the wall of the pit, and across the floor above, toward its counterpart. The two enormous translucent globes, each a miniature of an entire world, are moving inexorably closer...
...to be continued...
