Xorian Wars: Alliance and Rebellion

[Anxe]

Alliance Session #18/Total Session #26
This session was held over Google Hangouts. Ozymandias, Throgg, Salzar, and thewamp attended. For simplicity’s sake, Hektor was an absent character. He cast a few utility spells, but for the most part did nothing.

Amalius was still missing. Hektor tried to scry for him, but Amalius was still under a mind blank effect from the prison visit. Astyanax suggested that Amalius may no longer be mentally fit for his Council position. Aldarian said he would take his friend’s place until Amalius recovered. Astyanax retired for the night and the rest followed suit.
Hektor tried another scry in the morning and located Amalius in the free range zoo of Bradel Fields. The party walked over. They found Amalius sitting in a hunched position in a wooded area.
Tagenadi approached him first. Amalius stood and opened his clasped hands, revealing a new psicrystal. The psicrystal was a black piece of obsidian. Every angle of it looked too sharp to touch. It floated out of Amalius’ hands and began a slow orbit around his head.
Tagenadi asked, “What’s that?”
The psicrystal answered, “My name is Black! And I’m here to get revenge on all those who have wronged me!”
The party tired of dealing with this confusing memory nonsense, decided that a certain sort of “vacation” was in order. They (Sabriyya, Torin, Amalius, Aldarian, Hektor, and Tagenadi) packed their bags and headed off to the Lich Shade to battle undead terrors.

Sabriyya told the others the story of the Lich Shade. The Lich Shade is a thousand foot pillar of stone that stands in the middle of the desert around Mars’ Oasis. Skeletons and zombies congregate around the tower and occasionally attack Mars’ Oasis. Once, an adventuring party fought its way through the undead to the tower. They found a passage way leading underground in the southwest edge of the Lich Shade. The adventurers went down the stairs and fought with an undead beast in the first room. Half of them were slain and the other half escaped forever scarred.
It is rumored that a lich lives at the bottom of the dungeon. The lich is called the Bane by the townsfolk of Mars’ Oasis. The party discovered some information at the Tomb of Kruk-Ma-Kali that indicated another identity for the Bane. The designer of the hobgoblin king’s tomb left a map, noting the location of his own tomb. The location of the designer’s tomb and the Lich Shade match up. The designer was an evil elven wizard named Sahamathrian.
The party teleported into the desert a mile and a half away from the Lich Shade. They sent Aldarian in as a flying, invisible scout. Aldarian ascended 1000 feet to the tower’s zenith and began to fly over the hordes of skeletons zombies. After going 500 feet over the skeletons, the fly spell failed. Hoping the auxiliary feather fall in the fly would save him, Aldarian was sadly mistaken, for the feather fall was dispelled as well. He fumbled for a few moments, trying to think of an escape route. He came up blank, and braced for impact. He hit the sand in the middle of the undead and dropped to 0 hit points.

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Aldarian staggered to his feet and drew his rapier, ready to defend himself against the undead. He was shocked to see no reaction on the undeads’ faces. He was still invisible, so they ignored him.
Seeing that their friend needed help, Torin cast hide from undead on the party. They scurried through the undead shamblers to reach Aldarian. Torin healed the party thief back to full health. The party decided to scout ahead as a group. They walked through the masses of undead. At the base of the Lich Shade they found a staircase in the southwestern side, just where the stories said it would be.

Aldarian gave the entrance and the stairs a sweep for traps. He found none and the party journeyed down. Hektor cast light on a rock and threw it to the bottom of the stairs. The rock illuminated a large room with four evenly spaced columns. The party walked down the steps. Tagenadi and Sabriyya jumped the last few steps to reach the granite tiled floor.
And then the lights went out.
Consumed by darkness, Tagenadi took a defensive stance. Sabriyya followed the wall on her left, hoping to find the edge of what she rightly assumed was magically darkness. Amalius prepared a disintegrate spell to be cast upon any enemy he perceived through his telepathy. Torin started his buff spell routine. Aldarian took a defensive stance by Tagenadi.
The beast in the blackness saw one person separate from the others. It moved upon Sabriyya and took a giant bite out of her for 84 points of damage. The beast lifted the elf in its jaws and prepared to swallow.
Amalius cast dimension door and Black delivered the touch spell to Sabriyya. She was teleported to the base of the steps. Tagenadi ran forward in the dark to engage the beasty. It picked him up in its jaws as well and injected some foul poison into his veins through a stinger. Sabriyya went to save Tagenadi. Hektor tried to dispel the darkness, but failed. The beast breathed freezing air on the party.
Beginning to feel outmatched, Amalius prepared an intricate series of dimension doors to escape the party. First, Sabriyya tumbled back to the rest of the party at Amalius’ mental instruction. Second, Black went forward again and teleported Tagenadi to the rest of the group. Third, Amalius overchanneled dimension door to get everyone to the outside.
The power failed. Some part of the necromantic aura within the tomb allowed teleporting within the tomb, but not teleporting out as an escape. Panicking, Amalius manifested another overchanneled dimension door. He rolled higher on his caster level check this time and managed to break through the interdimensional barrier. On the outside, Hektor teleported everyone to Mars’ Oasis before the skeleton and zombie horde descended upon them.

The party spent a day recovering. Amalius had heard of the monster, a nightcrawler. A gigantic worm beast composed of pure shadow. It does nothing but think of evil acts to commit before it commits them. Unfortunately, Amalius was unable to recall any specifics on how to slay such a beast.
The party had already encountered the important parts of its tactics though. The next day Torin prepared two freedom of movements and two delay poisons for Tagenadi and Sabriyya. He prepared a mass energy resistance for the cold breath weapon. Finally, he prepared a few daylight spells to cancel out the darkness.

The party went back the next day. Torin cast the buffs on everyone and readied a daylight for when the monster revealed itself. Too bad for the party, as the monster changed its tactics as well. Tagenadi went forward as bait, but the nightcrawler didn’t bite. It used its spell-like abilities to wear Tagenadi down a little bit. Tagenadi went forward more and came out of the darkness. He saw the gigantic nightcrawler sitting in the corner of the room.
He charged at it. Sabriyya made her way through the darkness as well, but was ambushed by four shadowy beings that came up out of the floor. She fought them with Aldarian’s help. Torin came forward with his daylight spell. The darkness was countered and ambient light conditions prevailed. The battle was now lit only by the magic weapons the warriors carried and the darkvision that Torin and Amalius possessed.
Tagenadi engaged in a slug fest with the nightcrawler. His hit point total was augmented by a share pain and a vigor power cast by Amalius. Sabriyya and Aldarian seemed to be fighting evenly with the shadow beasts, now identified as greater shadows. Torin kept healing everyone he could with mass cures that also damaged the undead.
With the slamming from Tagenadi, and some energy waves from Amalius, the nightcrawler eventually went down. Its shadowy form came off in smoky tendrils. The core of its body dissolved in a black liquid upon the floor. Unfortunately, Sabriyya was felled by the shadows. They were quickly banished as well, but Sabriyya lay dead upon the floor. Almost, instantly a shadowy ghost emerged from her body, but it too was banished by Torin. The party took a quick look around the room before retreating to Mars’ Oasis.
Aldarian found a secret door in the left wall. On the wall opposite from the stairs was a much more obvious door. A gigantic twenty foot wide set of double doors towered all the way up to the ceiling. The doors seemed to be composed of spirits which flowed across its surface emitting silent screams. (I linked this to give the players a good idea of the Gates.)

The party full rezzed Sabriyya using money from the war chest. They got some potions too. They then went back to the dungeon to explore further. The black pool of shadow from the nightcrawler was now a stain upon the granite.
First, Aldarian opened the secret door he found. Behind was a medusa head that tried its best to turn everyone to stone. Aldarian put the head in his portable hole. He searched the room from top to bottom, literally with his spider climb shoes. He found two more secret doors. Both were opened by Tagenadi, revealing two more medusa heads. These two were put into some sacks that Tagenadi carries around. Later plans were made to do something mischievous with the heads.
The party now faced the Gates of Hell. Their first attempt was to disbelieve the gates, but they found them all too real. Next, Aldarian tied Tagenadi to one of the columns in the room. Tagenadi went forward to investigate the Gate. He gave a few trial attempts of putting his arm, head, and a coin through. The coin was safely recovered along with the body parts. Not knowing what else to do, Tagenadi stepped through the portal. (I took thewamp aside for this. A lot of cool stuff happened and I have made a separate update of it. That update will be uploaded in a later post once the rest of the party finds out what happened).
Amalius’ telepathy no longer felt Tagenadi’s presence. After a few seconds, the rope they had kept taught on him, went slack. Unsure of what to do, the party asked Amalius to use a divination power. They found that Tagenadi was in Tartarus, safe and sound, and that the way to bring him back was to make a deal with Hades, Lord of the Underworld.
No one else wanted to go through the gate. They went back to Mars’ Oasis and the next day Torin cast a sending to Tagenadi. They asked where he was, if he was safe, what they needed to do to rescue him. Tagenadi replied, “I’m fine. Bargain made with Hades. I’ll return on my own. If I come back changed, kill me.”

The session endeth there.