Ritual Dragon
Last weekend we played some Pathfinder, and I forgot to write down what happened again. Let me fix that.
They spent a week shopping, to start with, mostly in Magnimar. Kaito hired a tracker to find his missing girlfriend, but he was only able to track her to a tribe of goblins, who'd captured and enslaved her... and then immediately let her go? Wha?
So it was going to be more work to find her, but at least she seemed to be able to look out for herself? Maybe she was secretly evil or something.
At any rate, he didn't find out about that until after the shopping trip, and there wasn't time to go traipsing about in the wilderness because the party was going to teleport. They first tried to get the local fortune teller in Sandpoint to show them a teleport destination, but she didn't work that way -- she foretold cold, and ice... but you can't teleport to 'cold and ice' and expect to end up where you want.
She also told them "the path is unseen..." which was also too cryptic to figure out on the spot, but which they noted for later.
So they first hit the library, and did a little more research. The clues they'd found in the temple of Llamashtu implied that they might need to pray to the Rune Lords, but the library didn't have the proper prayers, at least not for easy access. It did have a good enough picture of the Mirror Lake to work as a teleport destination, though.
So, to the lake. Then around the lake, because the seven heads were not giant heads surrounding the lake, but 20-foot or so heads on a platform at the far end, near the single giant head of Xin whose mouth was the actual entrance. Phoof recognized which head was which, and they planned out the ritual they'd need, hopefully without prayers since they didn't have any.
The first spell cast of the appropriate school onto the appropriate head produced a key... the second another key, and a loud roar from somewhere up above in the clouds. The third, a third key, and a massive massive dragon strafing the party with cold breath, after exposing them to his dragon-fear.
The cold breath was worrisome, and made them scatter to avoid a repeat... but the dragonfear was worse, since even with a song of courage and the Paladin's anti-fear aura it sent half the party running, including June who was supposed to cast several more spells for the ritual. Fortunately, Phoof resisted the fear and said that she'd be able to cover his bits.
Kaito had no part in the ritual, so he started shooting fire arrows at the dragon, and managed to get a couple of hits -- which attracted its attention. Instead of waiting around for its breath to recharge, it dove and grabbed him in its claws and lifted him hundreds of feet into the air, then tossed him forcefully towards the pile of bones at the base of the stairs up to Xin's mouth. This would have been more impressive if Kaito hadn't had a new featherfall cape that arrested his descent long before he hit the ground.
"Ha! You coward! Come and face me!" he shouted at the dragon, which worked to get its attention, in the form of a fearsome tail-slap as it passed him to head back towards the rest of the party.
Fortunately, that had bought enough time for June to snap out of his fear and shoot a fireball at the dragon, which luckily broke through its spell resistance and easily overwhelmed its fire resistance. The dragon charged madly at the sorcerer, only for June to dimension door 900 feet behind the dragon just before it got in reach, and fire off another fireball, which also got through the spell resistance.
The dragon realized that this was not a duel it could win with the same tactics, and retreated for the moment to come up with new ones, leaving a nasty ice storm around the base of the stairs as a parting shot.
But between June and Kaito, they'd bought enough time to finish the ritual -- the last statue, needing necromancy, being activated by Phoof using a wand they'd picked up along the way. [The GM had to look up whether or not that would work, but fortunately it was legit -- otherwise it would have taken several more rounds for Ash to get to the statue to activate it.]
Then they headed up the stairs, pushing through the ice storm and getting indoors before the dragon returned.
The entrance to the Hellforge was not right inside the cave. Instead, it led past a pair of statues to a long, long tunnel that ended at a dangerous, snow-and-ice-covered slope, with another pair of statues that this time turned out to be golems.
The golems were smashed, mostly by Elyssie as you'd expect. The fight wasn't especially interesting.
But afterwards, while they talked about how to safely go down the slick slope, someone (Altei?) noticed that some of the snow from the fight was hovering in midair, almost as if there was an invisible pathway that they could take instead of going down. The unseen path, surely!
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They spent a week shopping, to start with, mostly in Magnimar. Kaito hired a tracker to find his missing girlfriend, but he was only able to track her to a tribe of goblins, who'd captured and enslaved her... and then immediately let her go? Wha?
So it was going to be more work to find her, but at least she seemed to be able to look out for herself? Maybe she was secretly evil or something.
At any rate, he didn't find out about that until after the shopping trip, and there wasn't time to go traipsing about in the wilderness because the party was going to teleport. They first tried to get the local fortune teller in Sandpoint to show them a teleport destination, but she didn't work that way -- she foretold cold, and ice... but you can't teleport to 'cold and ice' and expect to end up where you want.
She also told them "the path is unseen..." which was also too cryptic to figure out on the spot, but which they noted for later.
So they first hit the library, and did a little more research. The clues they'd found in the temple of Llamashtu implied that they might need to pray to the Rune Lords, but the library didn't have the proper prayers, at least not for easy access. It did have a good enough picture of the Mirror Lake to work as a teleport destination, though.
So, to the lake. Then around the lake, because the seven heads were not giant heads surrounding the lake, but 20-foot or so heads on a platform at the far end, near the single giant head of Xin whose mouth was the actual entrance. Phoof recognized which head was which, and they planned out the ritual they'd need, hopefully without prayers since they didn't have any.
The first spell cast of the appropriate school onto the appropriate head produced a key... the second another key, and a loud roar from somewhere up above in the clouds. The third, a third key, and a massive massive dragon strafing the party with cold breath, after exposing them to his dragon-fear.
The cold breath was worrisome, and made them scatter to avoid a repeat... but the dragonfear was worse, since even with a song of courage and the Paladin's anti-fear aura it sent half the party running, including June who was supposed to cast several more spells for the ritual. Fortunately, Phoof resisted the fear and said that she'd be able to cover his bits.
Kaito had no part in the ritual, so he started shooting fire arrows at the dragon, and managed to get a couple of hits -- which attracted its attention. Instead of waiting around for its breath to recharge, it dove and grabbed him in its claws and lifted him hundreds of feet into the air, then tossed him forcefully towards the pile of bones at the base of the stairs up to Xin's mouth. This would have been more impressive if Kaito hadn't had a new featherfall cape that arrested his descent long before he hit the ground.
"Ha! You coward! Come and face me!" he shouted at the dragon, which worked to get its attention, in the form of a fearsome tail-slap as it passed him to head back towards the rest of the party.
Fortunately, that had bought enough time for June to snap out of his fear and shoot a fireball at the dragon, which luckily broke through its spell resistance and easily overwhelmed its fire resistance. The dragon charged madly at the sorcerer, only for June to dimension door 900 feet behind the dragon just before it got in reach, and fire off another fireball, which also got through the spell resistance.
The dragon realized that this was not a duel it could win with the same tactics, and retreated for the moment to come up with new ones, leaving a nasty ice storm around the base of the stairs as a parting shot.
But between June and Kaito, they'd bought enough time to finish the ritual -- the last statue, needing necromancy, being activated by Phoof using a wand they'd picked up along the way. [The GM had to look up whether or not that would work, but fortunately it was legit -- otherwise it would have taken several more rounds for Ash to get to the statue to activate it.]
Then they headed up the stairs, pushing through the ice storm and getting indoors before the dragon returned.
The entrance to the Hellforge was not right inside the cave. Instead, it led past a pair of statues to a long, long tunnel that ended at a dangerous, snow-and-ice-covered slope, with another pair of statues that this time turned out to be golems.
The golems were smashed, mostly by Elyssie as you'd expect. The fight wasn't especially interesting.
But afterwards, while they talked about how to safely go down the slick slope, someone (Altei?) noticed that some of the snow from the fight was hovering in midair, almost as if there was an invisible pathway that they could take instead of going down. The unseen path, surely!
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