The party materializes around the central fire of Logos to find the church...empty. That's kind of weird. Walking outside, they find everyone just standing out in the square, staring up at the sky (which is a little weirder).
Specifically at the glowing outline of the moon, the only thing visible through the ash filling the sky. I'm sure this is perfectly fine...Puck's test shake of a nearby person progresses into vigorous rattling, then to upside-down thrashing, before he's told to put the poor victim down. They find poor Noctis out in the courtyard, eyes fixed skywards and a bit of drool leaking out of the side his mouth. Sona looks up as well, unfocusing her eyes to try and catch a glimpse at Fate strands (she has a couple levels in Fatespinner, so fluff reasons ahoy). Her suspicion is correct, and she can see a gleaming thread stretching up from each person to the clouds above. There's not really any magic to dispel, so there's a brief lull until Sona pushes a point of her Spin against the thread connected to Noctis. It pulls apart, and a surprised Noctis jolts back to awareness. The party frantically stops him from looking up, and hustles him back into the church to try and figure out what's going on. Unfortunately he can't recall much at all, and just as a worried Alexandria shuffles up from further back in the church, I call for a Will save from Spotter. He fails, but then out of everyone Puck makes the Intelligence check to feel the party being watched. He points out the
Scrying sensor to Sona, who dispels it swiftly. Unfortunately, Unfortunately he can't recall much at all, and just as a worried Alexandria shuffles up from further back in the church, I call for a Will save from Spotter. He fails, but then out of everyone Puck makes the Intelligence check to feel the party being watched. He points out the
Scrying sensor to Sona, who dispels it swiftly. Unfortunately, that’s all the time the scryers needed, as a moment later there’s an explosion from outside the
church!
“Come out, Pilgrims. Or do we have to snuff out more of these feeble little sparks?” An exceptionally cold and cruel voice taunts the party, and the smell of burning flesh wafts in.
Initiative!
In setting up the mat for this fight, I placed the party members inside the church, and then scattered most of the remainder of the map with dice to represent all the helpless folks under the sway of the moon. Then I scooped away a whole bunch of dice due to the explosion. The stakes are laid out pretty clearly thanks to that >:}
Spotter rushes out the doors first and looks up to see the 4 robed and masked figures that had been stalking them back at the ruins of Midpoint. All 4 silver maks gaze down, two humanoid figures (one about 12 ft tall though), one that is clearly a horned devil, and one that's more a writhing misshapen lump under the robes than anything. Spotter coming into view triggers the Norn's and the Olethros' readied actions, though. The Olethros pegs him with an arrow, which crits! But is negated by Spotter's Forged fortification, lucky dog. Then the Norn reaches out and grasps hold of a shining thread that seems to be attached to Spotter - and she severs it with a part of wicked shears. I roll perfectly average and deal 60 pts to poor Spotter He responds with a
Hunter's mercy charged arrow, but the Norn's twisting of fate causes him to miss. The fight accelerates quickly after that, with Angelena bringing out the big buffs right away with
Holy aura. The misshapen enemy hurtles downwards to the ground, barely flinching as the
Forbiddance burns it. Puck zooms at the Norn, but the Horned Devil lashes out with his chain and uses Stand Still! I roll poorly for damage though and Puck continues on to slash the Norn heavily. Sona slaps
Fly onto Talvosh, and he rockets out to slash the enemy with writhing robes! Said robes fall apart to reveal not one but two hideous abominations, some drug-addled cross between a spider, octopus, scorpion, and tree, with an extra helping of nightmare tossed in. The Thulgant Qlippoth shriek and hiss, and their horrific appearance burns 6 wisdom away from Spotter.
The Norn decides to make Puck a problem for later and hits him with
Maze, and he disappears with a *pop*. Unfortunately for me, he makes his intelligence check on the first try, so he's back the following round. The Norn gets riddled with arrows from Spotter, the Olethros zooms to a flank, and the Thulgants attack Talvosh! One full attacks and rips into him, but deals minimum ability drain from him making all his saves (I tuned them up by making the drain only half instead of negated on a save). The second tries to
Temporal Stasis the wrathful berserker, but he had activated his ring of Spell Turning earlier! Thankfully the Thulgant does not take itself out of the fight. The horned devil swoops down and cranks Talvosh in the head, stunning him for 4 rounds, but he delays it with Mad Foam Rager.
Sona and Angelena are still charging up, Sona with
Project Image, and Angelena with
Storm Rage and a divinely-quickened
Mass Death Ward. I think said stormrage might be Angelena's 2nd favorite new spell, right after
Slime wave.
The Olethros tries to shoot Angelena, but
Stormrage says no to such shenanigans, so she instead fills Spotter with fateful arrows. Sona decides that using the enemy's tactics is never a bad thing, and
Mazes the Horned Devil. Spoiler, I fail every single Intelligence check for the full 10 minutes.
Spoiler: SULKY DM NOTE
Show
He had levels in Warblade and everything!
The Norn decides to go for the squishes, and uses her
Time Stop ability to appear between Sona and Angelena, with the intention of snipping their lives short with those shears. An observant Spotter spins and unloads on her point-blank, though, and she topples over dead.
Only for time to seemingly reverse itself, as
Fortunate Fate triggers and she stands again healed.
"My lady's plans will not be stopped."
Talvosh cuts the one Thulgant down and then goes punch-drunk for the next few rounds, and the remaining Thulgant eyes Spotter's tasty spine hungrily. Spotter's attack on the Norn gave Angelena and Sona time to wheel about, though, and Angelena unloads all of the lightning channeled from
Stormrage directly into the Norn's mask. She twitches and thrashes, but nowhere near as much as she should.
But then Sona hits with a heightened
Disintegrate and I roll a nat 3, and the Norn crumbles to nothingness.
Puck is back in the fight and rockets headlong at the Olethros, slashing across her midsection deeply. In response, the Olethros hits him with
Temporal stasis and he nat-1s the save. Puck is locked outside time FFFOOORRREEEEVVVEEEERRRR.
Or until Angelena
Wishes him to not be.
The Thulgant shreds Spotter, stabbing and slashing and melting, and his attempts to shoot back are foiled by the beast's
displacement. The returned Puck charges the Olethros once again, this time bouncing her off the outside of the church. She's hurt, but still standing. As the impassive silver mask stares at Puck though, she seemingly comes to a decison, and flies
around Puck.
To the helpless survivors standing below in the courtyard. The Olethros flits gently to the ground, and then lets out a
Wail of the Banshee, killing everyone within the spell's radius. I scoop dice off the table with an evil little smile.
Spotter had been forced to tumble back and out of the Thulgant's reach last turn, so it has a clear line to shuffle over and full attack Angelena instead. It stabs, slashes, rips, and melts, and Angelena takes a lot of ability drain. The Thulgant shrugs off a
Plane shift as well, but more arrows plus Talvosh finally coming back to awareness and hurling his axe into its "face" is enough to drop the monster. Puck rockets after the Olethros to finally put her down, and everything is quiet. Nearly two-thirds of the people who were outside are gone, nothing left but ash. The party physically moves the remaining survivors back into the church, using their portable hole and a floating disk to speed the process.
The Horned Devil reappears after 10 minutes and beats a hasty retreat, flapping upwards before disappearing with a snarl.
Alexandria and Bulwark are terrified and confused; they can barely remember that the party was fighting something, let alone see what it was. Bulwark in particular seems somewhat dumbstruck by the deaths of so many, but he actually nods in thanks to Puck's somewhat stilted explanation of how they tried to save them. Alexandria uses a
Greater Restoration on Angelena, but the magic takes an obvious toll on her as she sways unsteadily. The party burned all their big guns, so they sit down to rest until dawn, when they will go directly to the Goblin Holds/Demon Ruins.
They do ask if anyone has seen either Rowen (the Mage-King) or the Twins, though. Both answers are a no, which isn't a good sign...Spotter goes looking at the corner building where the twins normally lurked.
He does find them, frantically slapping protective talismans against walls, scribbling down formulae, and generally freaking out behind magic wards that crackle like demented bugzappers. He tries to calm them down by explaining that the servants of Fate are dead, but the most coherent thing he gets out of them at first is, "IT'S THE END."
He doesn't really reassure them by giving them a timetable for the apocalypse (6 days), but then they ask him what he's going to do.
"We're going to the Demon Ruins, and we're going to get the last Primal Spark." They nod hesitantly.
"Then we're going to go into the Labyrinth." Eyes widen at that one.
"And we're going to find the Beast and kill it." Eyes bulge a bit more.
"After that, we're going to Adremmelach's throne, and use it to get to the Prison within the Moon. And then we'll deal with Her." The twins start to mutter to each other more rapidly, expressions shifting at least from absolute terror to frightened determination. Spotter promises that they'll even deal with Adremmelach if he gets in their way, and the Twins suggest to stick to one attempted deicide. The Twins promise to spread their wardings to help protect the others, but they unfortunately don't know where Rowen went, other than Elsewhere. As Spotter turns around to leave, they put forth one last request.
"Please don't let the Moon crash and kill us all."
During the night, Spotter and Puck notice that the streets surrounding the square are absolutely packed with Ash Wraiths. Shoulder to shoulder, glowing eyes fixed straight ahead, the wraiths press right up to the edge of the protective wardings and don't go anywhere.
Puck decides that's a good opportunity to stab and poke at the wraiths within reach of his polearm from the other side of the wards. So after a little bit, there's the wards, a 5ft gap, and then legions of Ash wraiths. Ah Puck, always hold to your principles of "murderdeathkill." The night passes uneventfully.