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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tolamaker" data-source="post: 9623804" data-attributes="member: 7031495">Sessions 109-112: Retaking Gallo's FendSession 109The group decides they should repay King Gallo, and also decides that the best way to help with the siege is to teleport directly into the castle itself. They appear amidst the barracks, and catch recuperating Ragesians off-guard. Eluriah casts an earthquake spell, starting to crumble many of the barracks onto the soldiers within. As they begin to mop up, however, the earthquake continues even without her spell, and a great purple worm pulling the chariot of a glowing giant emerges. The giant shouts out "Who shakes my mountain?" and fires off beams of light at the party from his shining hammer. Mishka is swallowed by the worm, but is able to cut her way out, and the party is able to focus fire on the Empyrean and send him back to his celestial home.Session 110Running towards the main gates, the party engages with the Ragesian troops on the wall, pulling the attention of wyvern knights harrying Dasseni troops on the ground. The party is holding their line well when a screech sounds in the air, and a new rider atop a black dragon swoops down and splashes them with acid. It's Ghorza, now dubbed the Blackwing, the wyvern rider captain they defeated in Gate Pass, and she is looking for revenge. The party splits up, with Mishka and Eluriah dealing with the platoons on the wall, and Aripos and Gruz fighting the fliers, focusing on the wyverns to take out their mobility. However, Ghorza is entirely set on killing Aripos, for killing her mount. Aripos repays the attention by killing the black dragon with a well-placed crossbow bolt at point-blank range.Session 111AS the heroes start to surround Ghorza, she reveals a vest of dragonbombs and vials of acid. The explosion takes out a group of Dasseni soldiers, but a low-health Aripos is able to dodge the acid entirely. Taking out the last of the soldiers, Dasseni forces are able to take Gallo's Fend back. King Gallo has a feast to celebrate his castle being in Dasseni hands once again, and the party nods sagely as he complains about the damage the Ragesians did to his barracks. Aripos meets up with his old drinking buddy Iztorun, who had heard that Aripos had died at Castle Korstull. After hearing Gallo's opinion on the war, the group decides that they should head to Shaaladel next.Post Session Thoughts109: I always love when my players are more reckless than advised, because it allows me to throw them right into the action. It also worked out, because apparently 20-some veteran ragesians and a squad of inquisitors are also not difficult. More CR tweaking to come. That easy fight and the earthquake were the inspiration for having the Empyrean arrive with his Purple Worm in a very random encounter type of way, when I had originally planned to have the Empyrean simply be a Ragesian ally. Also relearned an old lesson: vary up your enemies. The worm was a big damage dealer, but boring tactics wise, while the Empyrean could boast and taunt while hitting from afar, making for a good encounter.110: This fight was my "throw more enemies than seems fair to see how it plays out," finale, and it worked out pretty well. Two Ragesian platoons, 5-6 wyverns and knights, and a buffed up knight with rogue levels and riding a young black dragon lead to a very fun fight. The wyverns were the star players, able to dart in and out and we had a few crits with the stingers, knocking Gruz down once.111This session was largely mop-up, but i thought I might be close to at least knocking down Aripos, but as I mentioned above, I forgot about his evasion feature, so my big finale of an acid explosion went down the tube because I chose a Dex save. It still landed with the group well. Then pretending to have nothing to do with the earthquake was fun as well, as they were obviously lying, but I played Gallo as obliviously bemoaning all of the damage as much as I could.Changes to the ModuleWe are completely off-module here, so I'll really only use this to point out the requests of players.The Purple Worm was Mishka's request, so I figured it was only fair for her to get swallowed up.Targeting Aripos like I did was because that player's request was to be killed! The party has about three separate full-death revival options, and she wanted to use one. More generally, they felt like as a stealth archer they didn't get targeted much, so I've been doing my best to focus fire on them more often. Ghorza's vendetta for killing her wyvern helped in that department. Next time, I won't use a dex save.</blockquote>

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