It was sometime after the initial flurry of spending their hard earned loot and the brief introduction of new party members that the PCs were gathered by Spymaster Shalashaska and informed of the Ragesians' actual plan. Ragesian Empress Zarouhi Orlaith had discovered that a dead goddess was cut into pieces and scattered across the world; Zarouhi aims to gather the pieces of the dead goddess and harvest the dormant divine energy from the corpse, thereby becoming a goddess herself. The primary aim of the invasion is to locate the pieces of the goddess and keep natives of the world too occupied to stop Zarouhi's ultimate goal. Conquest of the realm is a secondary goal at best.
"So all these soldiers are fighting and dying in a world not their own purely for the benefit of the Empress?" Pitow asked.
"Yes," Shalashaska replied.
"I like this plan," Amir said.
"I don't agree," Imiza grumbled.
"What's the problem?" Amir questioned. "It's trickle-down economics on a cosmic scale."
"Doesn't that economic structure not work at all?" Pitow asked.
"It'll work here," Amir said confidently. "So what's the plan?"
"Simple," Shalashaska replied. "We've located one of the pieces in an abandoned temple called the Temple of Shining Sand. You just need to go get it and bring it back."
"We got this in the bag," Amir boasted.
The PCs journeyed out, and eventually arrived at the abandoned temple built on top of a low mesa surrounded by blinding mirror sand. Once they figured out that getting hit in the face with glass dust hurts, they blindfolded themselves and used Amir's natural sense of direction to navigate their way to the mesa. Once their, they immediately demonstrated they were out of good ideas for the night. Pitow threw his lucky rabbit's foot into a pool of murky water and nearly got himself and Colette (an NPC paladin/sorcerer they hired on) killed by the hungry tentacle monsters living in the brine. They proceeded to clown their way through a fight with a giant ant-lion, gave all their shoes to a cranky dust mephit, and fought a pretty vicious man-scorpion without so much as a single Godsmack or wrestling joke. I was a tad disappointed.
They hacked their way through a few more encounters before they opened a secret door and accidentally unleashed the most dangerous foe in the entire temple: a swarm of scorpions. Those little buggers are a lot nastier than their CR 5 would indicate. On top of having 50 hp, poison, and immunity to weapon damage, some sadist over at WotC decided it would be a good idea to give the scorpion swarm a 4d6 rend attack against anyone who failed the distraction saving throw. Luckily nobody in the party died, but it did take a few self-centered
shatter spells to take the little bastards out.
Eventually the PCs found the library in the temple, but all save Imiza decided that anything that couldn't be swung, worn, consumed, or sold wasn't worth bothering with. Then again, I really shouldn't be surprised by this sort of behavior coming from a group led by Amir's player. It took a long time for him to grasp that Colette was more than an extra set of numbers helping the party out. He was shocked and appalled that she, as an NPC, would demand an equal share of loot under threat of leaving the party. What did he think the word "hired" meant?
DM grumbling aside, the PCs eventually discovered the hidden chamber at the back of the temple where a sealed sarcophagus was kept. As soon as Pitow touched it, a mummy staggered forth from the shadows to defend the crypt. Unfortunately, the battle proved fairly anticlimactic - the mummy died before he was able to take his second turn. The temple was thoroughly looted, the treasure divided far less than evenly (I think poor Amelia walked out of the dungeon with only a wand of Detect Magic to show for all the trouble) and the torso of the dead goddess was hauled back to camp.
Another victory for the glory of Ragesia!
Re: Campaign Journal: Ragesian Incursion
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