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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 6551047" data-attributes="member: 1210">Ha! I left out the insurance!As Fray came into clear view, Kane's eye socket had been itching madly, and suddenly things erupted from it: two varakhut and two quarut, types of inevitables that safeguard cosmic rules of space and time and the proper arrangement of divine power. They were here to help! Or at least, to destroy Fray. But they had a devil of a time catching up to her- they would engage her, maybe enclose her in a force cage, but she would teleport away, keeping her distance. Periodically as the battle went on, Bolivar would announce over the telepathic link they had established before making their attack that he could see weird temporal distortions, and was trying to mitigate them. The fact that he was out of the fight and not in danger was, in truth, a godsend to the pcs, though they didn't know it. Without him interfering with Fray's chronal shenanigans, she would have eventually attained godly powers in the fight, and that would have almost certainly meant a TPK. (For starters, imagine each of the bad guys getting an extra turn each round.)In all fairness, Orcus did just want to leave-  but the fire titans were too big for him to move through, so the pcs' front line forced him to engage the group. As he and Fray and her guards rained death everywhere, including on the moonbridge that Mulmeer had set up to enable quick entry into the demiplane, killing scores of the pcs allies (mostly minions), they kept up the pressure, trying to target non-AC defenses, using flanking and whatever tricks they could to hit the personal guards. The fire titans, unleashing indiscriminate waves of flames, had some luck, but they were damned tough, and could cover each other very well with their shields.The battle was brutal, but Fray was finally in the thick of it. She had suffered a few wounds, and Kane rushed to engage her- and scored a critical hit, breaking her sternum. She teleported away, spitting blood, reappearing on the opposite side of the battlefield- just as the few surviving non-flying minions following the main group caught up with them. One of them, a member of the mercenary company that Kane had belonged to, left, defeated and eventually recruited to his service, managed to land a javelin in her shoulder. Most of the pcs rushed back to re-engage her, to prevent her escape; meanwhile, one of them managed to dump a potion of life down Dianthus' gullet, and she jerked back to life, only to have Orcus strike her down again. She was brought back again, and managed to get some distance and avoid a third slaying. The party managed to surround a haggard, badly wounded Fray, keeping up the pressure, and despite her magical puissance they finally brought her down. Then they got the hell out the way and let Orcus escape. And then it was just a matter of mopping up the few remaining lackeys, whose morale broke. And victory. There was a denouement, of course- Dianthus went back to Hell to reign in Dis, Dirk the Daring ended up doing the quantum leap and will explore sideways through time, etc. But damn, that was a hell of a game- I think we played like ten or eleven hours the final day/evening. Well done, players! Victory is yours- although, not total victory. Because, after all, for the first time since 1e, Orcus is back in my campaign world. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" /></blockquote>

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