Dripping ichor and unnerved by this assault in its lair, the devil immediately teleports back to its troops down below, to regroup and start making some judgement about the intruders in the tower.
Meanwhile, the company have a small collective panic and then start planning what they can do. It won’t do any good to evacuate the villagers right now, since all the winged fiends can chase them down and pick them off with ease. The best option would probably be to get the villagers in a defensible location and wait for the fiends to come to them… It seems likely that the barbed devil will take some time to regroup and rest a little after Lysanders fierce blow. Perhaps an hour, no more.
They move all the villagers up onto the spiral stairs, and with K’tan and Dala guarding the ends of the column of frightened people, the others start a quick investigation of the very top room in the tower.
As they had seen from the ground, one wall of the room has been blown out by an explosion many years ago. There are two sealed doors into other chambers, with arcane symbols that appear to be a ward against fiendish creatures. Each doorknob is carefully examined and seems to be coated with a chilled, festering slime. Carefully wiped off and discarded, the right hand room opens into a library, with a table and comfy chair. The left hand room opens into a machinery chamber which includes, among other things, a 7ft tall humanoid figure that looks like it has been stitched together out of spare parts in a little alcove. A big ol’ wheel with a handle, a small wheel, a set of 4 huge switches, lots of pipes and a big glass bell jar with an electrical para-elemental zapping around inside it.
Hmmm.
Examination of the library shows a lot of books which are weather and storm related. A secret compartment is discovered in one arm of the comfy chair which contains an aged diary. Apparently Keldas the wizard had been doing lots of research on electrical magic. Some fifty or so years ago he was responsible for creating a number of shocking swords for feudal lords to the north of here, and he comments that his magic has brought him a decent income.
Towards the end of the diary, he is clearly anticipating an important summoning which will give him the power he requires to finish his greatest project. Apparently it can now take place since he has managed to purchase his “insurance policy”.
Meanwhile, Arilyn has sent her familiar, Zeph, to go and summon Trajan from his vigil with the horses. Shocked at the news, and wondering how best to get across the raging river, Trajan strips and allows the air elemental to carry his armour and equipment over, before attempting to swim the river. He manages to get three quarters of the way across before getting into quite serious difficulty, and although he recovers and is able to scramble out just in time, he has lost over half his hit points in the process.
At the tower itself, he climbs nearly halfway up the outside, until he can get within reach of a rope dangled down from the ruined upper level. With the help of the Zeph he secures himself to the rope and is hauled up to the chamber where they will make their stand.
Running out of time, they decide to leave the machinery room for the moment, but crowd all the villagers into the library - guessing that the arcane ward will keep the fiendish creatures out of there. Dala checks around some of the frost coated piles of rubble and under one such pile finds a tiny locked chest. The lock is picked and inside is an arcane scroll - one read magic later and they discover that it is a Planar Binding spell, one more powerful than either Arilyn or Dala could safely cast - but apparently it would summon a celestial being known as Garamon.
Hmmmm.
