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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 480444" data-attributes="member: 41">Coldeven 1421:  Finding Iuzians and handing them pain.With the party united and alive, the motion is carried four-against-naught to find that mage and make him pay for the deaths of Prisantha and Elijah.  And Curst of course, Elijah adds after some thought.  Right.  Make them pay for what they didn't do to the accountant.The party casts defensive spells on themselves, then uses plane shift and to approach the mines ethereally.  Once there, they spot the Artificer Suel, surrounded by the Seven Terrors, hard at work in a large storage room that has been converted into a Necromantic workshop.  The vast majority of the space is covered by an arcane circle, and the circle itself is filled with corpses, strung and stitched together with intestine thread and skin cloth.  Readying themselves in the etheric, the party shifts into reality . . .. . . and Heydricus attacks from behind and slices Suel into three separate pieces.  Just like that.  Anticlimactic?  You bet, but that rat-bastard had it comin'.  Tau focuses the Blinding Light of Pholtus into a burst of positive energy, and scatters the Seven Terrors to the wind.  A quick detect magic spell reveals that Suel was carrying no less than four magical wands, some leather wrist-bands, a cloak, a ring, an amulet, a scroll and three potions.  Heydricus starts looting the corpse, and apparently, the sight of the Seven Terrors fleeing for their unlives was enough to set off the alarm, as the main doors leading out of the room are flung open by a pair of hill giants.The giants storm into the room, and start swatting PCs with morningstars made out of logs and track spikes.  Stonefisters come screaming into the room from two other doors, and either take up positions on a cat-walk overlooking the room or charge into melee.Tau is quick to act, and as Heydricus starts laying waste around him with his sword, the cleric of Pholtus summons three celestial bears to the catwalk to do battle with the barbarians up there.  Prisantha targets a group of ettins coming in behind the Men of the Fist and charms the first one stupid enough to put his heads through the door.  Elijah moves out, and tries to keep the giants from reaching her friends, to little avail.The party is cornered, and while a flame strike from Tau combined with the steel of Heydricus and Elijah stop the first wave, the second is not far behind.  More hill giants lumber in, along with another pair of ettins. Prisantha protects her flank with a grease spell.Tau's bears begin throwing Stonefisters off of the balcony with surprising regularity, but the Men of the Stone Fist are no slouches when it comes to slaughtering helpless children . . . er, summoned bears.  The Stonefisters finish off the last bear with the help from a magic missile spell flying in from the door leading off the balcony.  The missiles have the appearance of ghostly crossbow quarrels radiating a black light and dripping with ichor.As the PCs fight a desperate struggle not to be overrun by giants and barbarians, a withered, desiccated figure limps in onto the catwalk, flanked on either side by thirteen-foot-tall Stonefist warriors.  He is shriveled and wrinkly, his eyes sunken deep into his sockets and glowing with a red, feral light.  His old, threadbare robes are licking with a purple, dancing flame that seems to make his bodyguards uncomfortable.  Martak the Undying, may I present the Liberators of Tenh, avowed enemy of liches everywhere.  From his point of view, Martak can only see Heydricus, as the remaining Liberators are directly underneath the walkway.  He knows they are there, because he can see the giants attacking them, but he cannot target them with spells, without harming his fodder, er . . . junior associates.  So be it.  You don't get to be six hundred and seventy without learning enough patience to wait thirty seconds or so before blasting off all your fireballs.And besides, that's what cone of cold is for.  Martak calls the withering storm of ice and frigid air, and directs it at Heydricus, who is at the moment standing alone, having run out of giants to kill.Did I mention Heydricus kicks ass?The cone of cold surrounds and freezes the Tenha sorcerer, leaving his skin frostbit and his hair covered in ice.  Martak narrows his glowing red eyes in surprise and displeasure.  Someone just survived his cone of cold.  There is a first time for everything, they say.Well, thank Iuz for lightning bolt.  Tau steps out from under the catwalk, and invokes the name of his god, summoning another positive energy burst.  The burst nearly repulses the lich, and Martak screams out the command for his giants to "kill that priest!"Prisantha, for her part, sets a dispel magic in the air near where she could hear the high pitched command.  The purple flames disappear from his body, and Martak contradicts himself for the last time:  "Kill whoever cast that spell first!"The giants and Stonefisters hasten to obey, and in the process turn their backs on Elijah and Heydricus, all in all, not a healthy thing to do.  The battlefield is soon littered with bodies, giant and Stonefister alike, and Elijah is finding it difficult to find her footing in all the blood.A pair of dire wolves lope into the room, their tongues lolling out of their mouths.  They circle the fight, looking for openings.Martak, as promised, arcs a lightning bolt from his fingertips hoping to incinerate the upstart giant (Heydricus is 12' tall when enlarged) in a storm of electrical destruction.  Unfortunately for the lich, Heydricus manages to leap out of the way, avoiding the worst of it.Elijah backs away from the melee to tend to her own grevious wounds, when she is suddenly struck from behind!  Melting out of the shadows is a gnoll, a hyena-headed humanoid, standing a full seven feet tall wearing studded leather armor and wielding a dire flail.  He mutters, "I'll make this hurt," as he lashes Elijah with the dual heads of his weapon.  She takes a step back and cuts him neatly across the chest, too badly wounded for pithy rejoinders.Meanwhile, Tao concentrates on his faith and strikes Martak with the purifying flame of Pholtus.  A milky, whitish flame leaps into being, covering the lich and burning him terribly.  Worse yet, it does not extinguish itself, but continues to burn him with righteousness.Martak looks through the large double doors into the hallway beyond, and screams "Ra-Mohn!  Don't just stand there, fight them!"  Tau follows the liches' gaze, and thinks he might see a faint outline where an invisible creature could be standing.  Following Prisantha's lead, he casts dispel magic, revealing the form of a massive figure, wearing full plate armor and carrying a disturbingly large two-handed morningstar.  His armor is marked with the holy symbol of Iuz.  Ra-Mohn is humanoid, but covered in black scales.  A pair of bat-like wings protrude from his back, and a row of small horns line his face.To Tau's eyes, he looks diabolical, but Heydricus knows better.  Memories of the fight with Lareth in the fens outside of the Moathouse come to mind, and Heydricus recognizes where the being's reptilian features come from:  His black dragon father.No doubt, Ra-Mohn would have been a fearsome opponent.  Had he received an opportunity to use his divinely-granted gifts in battle, surely the Iuzians would have won.  As things played out, however, once Tau's dispel magic revealed the lurking priest, Prisantha promptly feebleminded him.Ra-Mohn suddenly forgets what the big, black stick he was carrying is for, and sits down to examine the shine on his boots a little more closely.As Ra-Mohn suddenly finds himself exploring the axiom ignorance is bliss, the gnoll lashes out at Elijah, raking both heads of his dire flail across her torso, shredding skin and breaking bones.  Elijah falls to the ground with a sharp cry, her life's blood oozing forth.Heydricus, enraged, finishes off the giant he has been whittling down, and with the same mighty stroke, slices one of the dire wolves almost completely in two.  The Master Inquisitor howls in agony and grief, and in a weird barking voice curses Heydricus and challenges him.Heydricus turns and starts striding toward the gnoll, lashing out as he does so at the second dire wolf, severing its spine and killing it instantly.  He takes a giant-step (apologies to Coltraine), and strikes at the Master Inquisitor, rolling not just one, but a double critical, smiting the torturer and imbeds his sword in the gnoll's chest, by way of his forehead.As the grease spell dissipates, Prisantha rushes over to Heydricus' side.  Martak, able for the first time to actually see all of the adventurers attacking him, unleashes his ace-in-the-hole, a chain lightning.  He targets Heydricus as the primary recipient, with bursts arcing out toward the other PCs.  Elijah and Tau are sorely wounded, and in Tau's case, it proves to be the second to last straw.The last straw being a Stonefister greatsword.Tau and Elijah are both lying (rather uncomfortably) in rapidly-growing pools of their own blood, and Prisantha tells Heydricus "I'm out of spells."  Heydricus is debating the moral consequences to abandoning his friends using a teleport spell, when Prisantha decides the issue.  Reaching into Heydricus' backpack, Prisantha removes one of Suel's wands.  She points it at the burning lich and mentally closes the gap between the wand's potential and it's effect.Prisantha fervently hopes she didn't pick the invisibility wand.A ball of red-hot flame begins at a point just in front of Martak, and spreads until it has engulfed the lich, both of his giant bodyguards and the lone Stonefister remaining on the catwalk.  The Man of the Fist probably gave a scream as he fell from his perch, but it was drowned out by Martak's cry of impotent fury, and his desperate attempt to flee the catwalk.  Unfortunately, in the confusion, he runs into his massive bodyguard, and is unable to reach the door.Heydricus is laying about him with his sword, cutting down the remaining Stonefisters and ettins with a gleeful expression on his face.  He doesn't verbalize it, but it is obvious to Prisantha that with each blow, he is thinking "Take that!  And that!"Prisantha coolly aims her new favorite wand and sets off another fireball, then another, until the villains on the catwalk are nothing more than smoldering corpses.As the last of the Stonefisters fall, Heydricus looks at his two fallen companions, and after a moment's hesitation, rushes to Tau's side.  He opens a healing potion, and pours it down the cleric's throat, breathing a sigh of relief as Tau sits up.  Tau examines Elijah, and is able to cure her wounds by reminding Pholtus of the Ancient Pact between Priest and Master.As Tau empties his spell repertoire mending Elijah's broken bones, knitting the tears in her skin, and restoring her lost blood, Heydricus shuts the large double doors to the room, and begins searching the battlefield for magical loot.Tau peeks out the doors and sees that Stonefisters are mustering in the courtyard outside.  The party determines to do the following: Prisantha can teleport only two other characters to safety.  Elijah, of the four of them, has the best chances to escape on foot.  Thus, Elijah drinks a potion of spiderclimbing and is made invisible.  Within moments, the Stonefisters begin battering down the doors and Prisantha whisks her men away on the wings of a spell.  Elijah waits until the Stonefister's initial battle-rage dies down, then sneaks into the dungeons beneath Cur'ruth.  Guarding the entrance to the Tenha mines (facing the Tenha, of course), Elijah discovers a pair of disturbing things.  Statues, or so it would seem, made from men.  Many different men, apparently - an arm from one, the torso of another, and head of another still.  Fortunately, they do not spot Elijah (if they are, in fact, animate, and not some ghoulish ruse to frighten the Tenha into obedience).Elijah creeps invisible and unheard through the mines, observing the gentle Tenha as they go about their daily tasks.  She finds the Aiman, and whispers into his ear "All the hill giants are dead.  A score of the Fisters are dead.  Suel is dead.  The Master Inquisitor is dead, Ra-Mohn might as well be dead, and Martak 'the Undying' needs a new name. "We'll go back tomorrow for the rest of them, but you had better get your people into hiding, in case some drunken scumbag decides to go on a killing spree.  We'll scry you, and tell you when it's safe."-----Next:  Cur'ruth falls to the Liberators of Tenh! . . . Unless it doesn't.</blockquote>

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