Ritual Dragon (pt 2)
Saturday we played more Pathfinder, continuing our quest to enter the Runeforge.
The unseen path turned out to be a long, long, LONG and also slippery glass slope spiraling around the edges of a giant pit, a thousand feet deep. At the top were a bunch of spear-like icicles waiting for something to send them plummeting to skewer anyone below, and at the bottom it vanished into darkness. The non-invisible path would have also led into the pit, only with about 900 feet worth of falling involved.
Since the invisible path was still narrow and slippery, June case Phantom Steed to give the non-flying characters (everyone but him and Altei) a faster way down that didn't end in a sudden stop. So, thus equipped, they spiralled down into the darkness, following the path in case that was important to the ritual somehow.
At the bottom, once they brought some light, they found seven 20-foot obelisks surrounding a single 40-foot obelisk -- this had to be where they used the keys. The also saw a giant pile of gold, probably the dragon's hoard, but that was a secondary consideration since they needed to get inside before the dragon came back. They spread out to investigate the pillars, find the keyholes, and figure out where to start, and figured out they needed to chip away about a foot of ice before they could use each pillar.
Then the dragon came back, even more invincible than before! He grabbed June in his jaws and started flying up the shaft. June freed himself by breathing fire down the dragon's throat -- apparently that was a thing he could do -- and cast Blink to keep the dragon from grabbing him again, while Kaito and Zeddicus flew up to engage it in melee.
Unfortunately, the dragon was too fast for Zeddicus to maintain his pursuit, since he'd activated angel form and was flying with his own wings. Kaito was able to sort of keep up with his Phantom Steed, although only because the dragon kept stopping to swipe at him with claws or use a breath weapon on the people below or something.
June tried to help with spells, but although he kept making his Spell Resistance checks the dragon now had a huge resistance to as far as they could tell every element, and Magic Missile probably wasn't going to cut it. He did have a little success with a Web spell, trapping the dragon momentarily and making it waste time tearing itself free (although it of course had no trouble doing that, and he'd only been able to catch it at the edge of the web since it had to be anchored off the walls).
Meanwhile, the rest of the party down below was trying to re-enact the seven-pointed star ritual, this time with the keys in the keyholes. They identified the pillar of Karzogg, where they'd taken the first key from, but when Ash put the key in the hole there was another problem.
Ash: "It looks like it turns either way. Which way should I turn it?"
Phoof: "Um... the rhyme said to turn the keys twice, so turn it two times!"
Ash: "Right or left?"
Phoof: "I don't know, it doesn't say!"
Anyway, either she guessed right (and it was correct) or it didn't matter which way she turned the key, because after turning it twice the key vanished, and the stone started to glow. They quickly went around the room using the other pillars, pausing only to clear ice from the keyholes, although Elyssie was doing her best to clear them all ahead of time.
Just as they were ready to turn the last key, Kaito finished 'chasing' the dragon to the very top of the shaft, where it had been heading all along. It gave a mighty roar, dislodging the icicles, which started to fall into the pit, and then flew off faster than he could follow.
The people down below spotted the falling icicles in time to run for cover, except for Ash who broke cover to use the last key, perhaps thinking that she'd be able to get back under cover before they hit. Luckily, she was only impaled on one of them, and that was a survivable injury with magical healing available.
Also, it did in fact open the portal, the middle pillar turning into a cloud of smoke. Everyone ran inside, Kaito a bit later than the others because he had to fly all the way down the pit, and then also loot a souvenier from the dragon's hoard because COME ON.
He arrived in an obsidian passageway that led to a large, brightly lit room with seven statues of the Rune Lords around a fountain of Rainbow water, that absorbed spells when you got close and gave cryptic visions if you touched it. Phoof and Zeddicus were trying to stop Elyssie from bathing in the fountain, and failed as he arrived.
Ash also soaked her head in the fountain, and realized that that was a really stupid thing to do because if she hadn't resisted its pull, it would have sucked the magical ability right out of her.
"Should we worry about Elyssie?"
"She's strong, she can hold her breath for a while."
After a minute or so they fished her out -- glowing bright white and unconscious. She woke up a minute or two later, massively overcharged with Ki but with only the same cryptic visions.
Kaito tried soaking his sadly nonmagical tail to see if the fountain would fix it, but no dice. He also tried scooping up some of the 'water' in a vial for use as a missile weapon later, but it lost its magical properties as soon as it was separate from the fountain. Yeesh!
There was nothing else in the room, so they looked around at the passages behind each of the Rune Lord statues and started to argue about which one they should pick.
Kaito: "We should try the Lust path first."
Ash: "...no."
Kaito: "But come on, I saw a vision of a beautiful woman mind controlling me into her bed, and a fountain full of water nymphs!"
Phoof: "Shouldn't we go down Alkanest's path first? She's the one who opposed Karzogg and we're looking for god-killing weapons which seems like a Wrath thing."
Kaito: "But that's the correct path! We need to do that one last."
Eventually, they decided to go along with Phoof.
The first chamber of Wrath was a gigantic arena with an archer golem at the far end up on a pedestal, which started rapidly pelting them with elemental arrows. The melee people climbed up onto the pedestal to fight it, but that just encouraged it to step up into the air and continue to shoot them from out of reach.
That did expose the corridor behind it, though, so while Kaito drew its fire under total defense, the others rushed through into the next chamber, and then through a teleporter there.
Unfortunately, while that did get them away from the golem, it did not get them out of danger. The next room was full of wooden dummies, and acolytes of wrath practicing on them. Kaito's cheerful greeting did not impress them, and they immediately attacked.
The first wave was easy -- a bunch of Sinspawn like they'd fought ages ago under Sandpoint, but they'd only really been meant to buy time while the actual warriors cast Mirror Image and Displacement and Fireball. So many fireballs! Also, the combination of Mirror Image and Displacement was enough to make everyone but Elyssie completely ineffective, so it looked like it was going to be a long fight.
We stopped about an hour into the fight, having not managed to even burn through a single enemy's mirror images, although they hadn't really managed to hurt us either. Ugh. x.x
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The unseen path turned out to be a long, long, LONG and also slippery glass slope spiraling around the edges of a giant pit, a thousand feet deep. At the top were a bunch of spear-like icicles waiting for something to send them plummeting to skewer anyone below, and at the bottom it vanished into darkness. The non-invisible path would have also led into the pit, only with about 900 feet worth of falling involved.
Since the invisible path was still narrow and slippery, June case Phantom Steed to give the non-flying characters (everyone but him and Altei) a faster way down that didn't end in a sudden stop. So, thus equipped, they spiralled down into the darkness, following the path in case that was important to the ritual somehow.
At the bottom, once they brought some light, they found seven 20-foot obelisks surrounding a single 40-foot obelisk -- this had to be where they used the keys. The also saw a giant pile of gold, probably the dragon's hoard, but that was a secondary consideration since they needed to get inside before the dragon came back. They spread out to investigate the pillars, find the keyholes, and figure out where to start, and figured out they needed to chip away about a foot of ice before they could use each pillar.
Then the dragon came back, even more invincible than before! He grabbed June in his jaws and started flying up the shaft. June freed himself by breathing fire down the dragon's throat -- apparently that was a thing he could do -- and cast Blink to keep the dragon from grabbing him again, while Kaito and Zeddicus flew up to engage it in melee.
Unfortunately, the dragon was too fast for Zeddicus to maintain his pursuit, since he'd activated angel form and was flying with his own wings. Kaito was able to sort of keep up with his Phantom Steed, although only because the dragon kept stopping to swipe at him with claws or use a breath weapon on the people below or something.
June tried to help with spells, but although he kept making his Spell Resistance checks the dragon now had a huge resistance to as far as they could tell every element, and Magic Missile probably wasn't going to cut it. He did have a little success with a Web spell, trapping the dragon momentarily and making it waste time tearing itself free (although it of course had no trouble doing that, and he'd only been able to catch it at the edge of the web since it had to be anchored off the walls).
Meanwhile, the rest of the party down below was trying to re-enact the seven-pointed star ritual, this time with the keys in the keyholes. They identified the pillar of Karzogg, where they'd taken the first key from, but when Ash put the key in the hole there was another problem.
Ash: "It looks like it turns either way. Which way should I turn it?"
Phoof: "Um... the rhyme said to turn the keys twice, so turn it two times!"
Ash: "Right or left?"
Phoof: "I don't know, it doesn't say!"
Anyway, either she guessed right (and it was correct) or it didn't matter which way she turned the key, because after turning it twice the key vanished, and the stone started to glow. They quickly went around the room using the other pillars, pausing only to clear ice from the keyholes, although Elyssie was doing her best to clear them all ahead of time.
Just as they were ready to turn the last key, Kaito finished 'chasing' the dragon to the very top of the shaft, where it had been heading all along. It gave a mighty roar, dislodging the icicles, which started to fall into the pit, and then flew off faster than he could follow.
The people down below spotted the falling icicles in time to run for cover, except for Ash who broke cover to use the last key, perhaps thinking that she'd be able to get back under cover before they hit. Luckily, she was only impaled on one of them, and that was a survivable injury with magical healing available.
Also, it did in fact open the portal, the middle pillar turning into a cloud of smoke. Everyone ran inside, Kaito a bit later than the others because he had to fly all the way down the pit, and then also loot a souvenier from the dragon's hoard because COME ON.
He arrived in an obsidian passageway that led to a large, brightly lit room with seven statues of the Rune Lords around a fountain of Rainbow water, that absorbed spells when you got close and gave cryptic visions if you touched it. Phoof and Zeddicus were trying to stop Elyssie from bathing in the fountain, and failed as he arrived.
Ash also soaked her head in the fountain, and realized that that was a really stupid thing to do because if she hadn't resisted its pull, it would have sucked the magical ability right out of her.
"Should we worry about Elyssie?"
"She's strong, she can hold her breath for a while."
After a minute or so they fished her out -- glowing bright white and unconscious. She woke up a minute or two later, massively overcharged with Ki but with only the same cryptic visions.
Kaito tried soaking his sadly nonmagical tail to see if the fountain would fix it, but no dice. He also tried scooping up some of the 'water' in a vial for use as a missile weapon later, but it lost its magical properties as soon as it was separate from the fountain. Yeesh!
There was nothing else in the room, so they looked around at the passages behind each of the Rune Lord statues and started to argue about which one they should pick.
Kaito: "We should try the Lust path first."
Ash: "...no."
Kaito: "But come on, I saw a vision of a beautiful woman mind controlling me into her bed, and a fountain full of water nymphs!"
Phoof: "Shouldn't we go down Alkanest's path first? She's the one who opposed Karzogg and we're looking for god-killing weapons which seems like a Wrath thing."
Kaito: "But that's the correct path! We need to do that one last."
Eventually, they decided to go along with Phoof.
The first chamber of Wrath was a gigantic arena with an archer golem at the far end up on a pedestal, which started rapidly pelting them with elemental arrows. The melee people climbed up onto the pedestal to fight it, but that just encouraged it to step up into the air and continue to shoot them from out of reach.
That did expose the corridor behind it, though, so while Kaito drew its fire under total defense, the others rushed through into the next chamber, and then through a teleporter there.
Unfortunately, while that did get them away from the golem, it did not get them out of danger. The next room was full of wooden dummies, and acolytes of wrath practicing on them. Kaito's cheerful greeting did not impress them, and they immediately attacked.
The first wave was easy -- a bunch of Sinspawn like they'd fought ages ago under Sandpoint, but they'd only really been meant to buy time while the actual warriors cast Mirror Image and Displacement and Fireball. So many fireballs! Also, the combination of Mirror Image and Displacement was enough to make everyone but Elyssie completely ineffective, so it looked like it was going to be a long fight.
We stopped about an hour into the fight, having not managed to even burn through a single enemy's mirror images, although they hadn't really managed to hurt us either. Ugh. x.x
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