With the grating noise of stone against stone, hulking figures assemble themselves from hunks of rough rock, and lumber towards Puck! Three are quite blocky and haphazard looking, while the fourth is actually carved and detailed. Unfortunately it looks like an evil demented version of Bulwark, with wicked morning stars for hands. Rather than charging in headlong and alone, Puck wisely activates his flight and rockets upwards out of reach. There isn't a handy ledge or anything to hide out on, but it gives him a bit of a grace period to wait for the rest of the gang to catch up.
Speaking of that gang, they finally start picking their way down to the liquid, and finally identify it as "definitely a portal." Spotter is the first in, while Talvosh accelerates his entry by taking a gigantic leap from partway down the incline. Upside? He enters the same time as Spotter, who was quite a bit ahead of him. Downside? He enters facefirst on the ground. Angelena and Sona are the last to wade into the water, but that's because Sona takes some time to toss
Greater invisibility on both herself and the priestess.
The battle is in full
swing by the time everyone has arrived, but nothing terrible happened while the party was split up yay! Puck was smart and dodgy and picked out one statue that was up ahead of the rest, diving down and smashing it to pieces as the rest of the party falls/lands/floats to the platform. As the hunks of rock fly apart,
Puck makes his spot check to notice a hateful transparent face glaring at him from inside the "chest" of the rock monster!
Puck is pretty much immune to all their abilities, but as tasty living brains arrive in the room, the Advanced Evolved Allips start to attack from inside their rock-mechs. Poor Spotter fails against multiple babbles again, but is struck and knocked out of it quickly by the rock-monsters. I may have played my hand a little too early with the allips, however. After seeing how dangerous they were (reducing Talvosh to comatose in a single round), the three allips only manage to
dispel Sona's invisibility,
haste themselves, and only touch Spotter for a minimum of 2 pts of wisdom drain before they're quickly prioritized and burned down. The rougher rockmonsters are identified as animated objects, while the more detailed one is a golem, and said rockmonsters are smashed apart quickly to expose their crazy allip centers. Even the sight of the smashed rockmonster reassembling itself doesn't frighten the party too badly.
But by this point the golem has reached the fight, and the real boss decides playtime is
over. The Incarnation of Madness
Spoiler: DM NOTE - creature type and templates!
Show
Advanced Phrenic Whisper Demon
floats out of its golem ride, exposing everyone to the Maddening whispers aura. Spotter fails, but everyone else manages to roll high and save (or be Puck, who is incredibly smug being immune to all the bad things happening). Alas, Spotter rolls "act normally" so he doesn't hit himself in the face. The Madness also uses its
Fission psi-like ability and splits into two horribly spectral monsters. The Fission floats forward and forces another round of saves while zapping people with an
Energy current, while the original floats near the crystal and looks generally crazy.
The serious danger of the allips being removed makes this fight no longer instantly deadly, but the Madness is still pretty nasty. Spotter has a seriously hard time with the maddening whispers,
while the rest of the party is stymied as they try to target the Madness. One of the feats I gave it was Mark of Nessus, which combined with its super high Charisma, means a big chunk of the party's attacks are forced to fall short or go elsewhere.
Everyone takes a lot of damage, either from hitting themselves, being beaten on by the reassembling rock-monsters, or the psi-like abilities of the Madness. An
Ultrablast in particular scrambles everyone's brains, and things are looking a little tense. Spotter manages to land one of his massive x4 crits, but the Madness just shrieks in rage and keeps going. Finally, Puck rockets through the air against the Madness! And fails against the Mark of Nessus. So instead, he swings his axe as hard as he can into the crystal (which looks suspiciously like a giant version of a Forged's crystal heart). I blare the
creepy noise again as the room shakes and the crystal cracks slightly.
"YOU DARE?!?" The Madness is extremely perturbed, and continues trying to rend the Pilgrim's minds and souls to goopy confetti. Sona and Angelena get in on the crystal attack, even dropping a
cometfall on the giant crystal. The battle continues, with Sona and Spotter dim-dooring to the opposite side of the room to try and prevent themselves from more mind-blasting. Talvosh continues to reduce any rockmonster near him to pebbles, but they keep getting up.
More big numbers get thrown around (Talvosh finally lands a couple hits on the Fisson-Madness and nearly obliterates it instantly), and Puck keeps smashing away at the crystal, even with his flight about to run out again. The Madness is trying to pull his guts out during all of his, the incorporeal touch attack the only thing he's not immune to. Finally, the crystal splits down the middle. With a final howl, the Madness explodes!
And so does the crystal, assaulting everyone with chunks of high-speed shrapnel. The final blast of damage rips Sona apart, instantly putting her to -20 or so. With that, everything is dark and completely silent.
We end it there, with the last two sessions managing to put everyone to 17th level