Champion of Wrath
Saturday we played more Pathfinder, continuing on through the Runeforge.
Retreating past the golem turned out to be easier than expected, as Phoof revealed a new song she'd been working on that teleported everyone in her line of sight to a place she'd been -- namely, the center chamber with the antimagic fountain.
June revealed that he knew how to make a wall of stone, so they retreated down the entrance tunnel -- now a dead end -- and put up a wall to make it look like a slightly shorter dead end, and finally got some rest.
In the morning, there was no sign that anyone had come to investigate them. They protected themselves against various elements and otherwise buffed themselves up for combat, summoned some phantom steeds since they seemed to work just fine indoors, and charged into combat with the golem!
The golem still hit hard, but apparently it had almost been destroyed the previous day, and overnight had only regenerated a small fraction of its durability, so it went down pretty fast with everyone focusing on it.
With Altei scouting ahead invisibly to avoid any teleporter ambushes, they pressed on to the main hall (which was empty) to what looked like an arena, with the walls lined with glowing weapons. Kaito tried taking down a few, but nothing happened.
One wall of the arena was suspiciously dark and smokey, and turned out to be illusionary. Through there was a chamber with a magic circle in the middle, lines of statues down either side, a ceiling covered in flames, and at the far end what had to be the Boss of Wrath. Elyssie and Kaito charged forwards to 'talk' with her...
"All those years of training, wasted!" she complained. "But at least I get to kill you."
To be fair, that was the sort of talk they were expecting after their previous encounters with Wrath's minions.
She put up a mirror image, but didn't have displacement running, so she was still a bit hard to hit but Kaito felt like he was making progress. She hit back very hard indeed -- with a whirlwind attack followed up by an additional stab to his face, since she was hasted -- and then triggered her pet demon to appear in the magic circle. It was another one of the giant demons they'd fought under Sandpoint, the ones that could reverse gravity. So that was why the ceiling was on fire!
June, who'd been standing by to counterspell, switched to trying to take out the demon before it could drop everybody into the flames... but obviously wasn't able to do that in one hit. Zeddicus also switched targets to it, only to be hit with a Power Word: Stun.
Apparently the boss had been waiting for June to look away, and cast a Prismatic Spray. Kaito was fine! So was Elyssie, and Zeddicus. Ash was 'sent to another plane', however, and immediately vanished, and June was driven insane.
Ed (playing June): "I think I'm going to head out now. If I get an 'attack nearest target' turn I'm going to try to kill myself with fireballs, since I've always felt I'm my own worst enemy."
But even with three people effectively down, the party wasn't finished. Elyssie and Kaito kept focusing on the boss, wearing down her mirror images and hitting her a few times, while resisting her spells and enduring her attacks. She had several options for escaping -- project image, wall of force, etc. -- but wouldn't use them because they were 'cowardly'.
Phoof managed to get Zeddicus back into the fight by feeding him one of her special Cherries, and he and Altei faced off against the demon -- but they were expecting it to reverse gravity, and were both flying when it finally tried that tactic. Luckily the room was much too big for it to get the entire thing, so the people fighting the boss weren't affected. Altei eventually resorted to using her Shadow Clone power, splitting into four additional partially-illusionary ninjas that flanked the demon and backstabbed him over and over. It failed to realize that they were illusions, thought that the damage was enough to kill it, and returned to its home plane.
Shortly afterwards, Kaito finally got a good hit in on the boss, stabbing her through the heart and finishing her off. As she collapsed, the rune on her forehead started to glow -- and the same rune burned itself into Kaito's forehead, giving him the power of wrath (a slight bonus to AC, to-hit, and damage).
Elyssie was very annoyed that she didn't get it instead. She'd done most of the damage, but nooo, it was last-hit that counted.
They stripped the boss' body bare, finding oodles of magical equipment that they'd really have to identify and split up soon, and then went to where Altei had scouted out the few survivors of Wrath's forces, who immediately surrendered upon seeing Kaito with the rune. He demanded they explain what they were doing.
Wrathies: "We're preparing these bodies to be sinspawn. Once we're done with that, we're going to make some new children out of the protoflesh to replace the people you killed."
Kaito: "Are they the same people? I mean, I know they don't have their memories but do they have the same souls?"
Wrathies: "What's a 'soul'?"
Sometimes, with all their advanced technology, it was easy to forget that the ancient runelords had been primitive savages.
After that they returned to the center chamber, where they found Ash and June (who'd tried to teleport home to a priest to get his insanity cured in a brief moment of lucidity, and was now trying to cure himself by immersing himself in the fountain). Apparently you really couldn't escape this place, even with Primsatic Spray.
Afterwards, we looked at our options and apparently there's no way to cure insanity without a high-level cleric or an even higher level wizard -- bards, paladins, and magi don't count. We did find a scroll of Limited Wish that should work, but it sucks to have to use it up on something like this.
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Retreating past the golem turned out to be easier than expected, as Phoof revealed a new song she'd been working on that teleported everyone in her line of sight to a place she'd been -- namely, the center chamber with the antimagic fountain.
June revealed that he knew how to make a wall of stone, so they retreated down the entrance tunnel -- now a dead end -- and put up a wall to make it look like a slightly shorter dead end, and finally got some rest.
In the morning, there was no sign that anyone had come to investigate them. They protected themselves against various elements and otherwise buffed themselves up for combat, summoned some phantom steeds since they seemed to work just fine indoors, and charged into combat with the golem!
The golem still hit hard, but apparently it had almost been destroyed the previous day, and overnight had only regenerated a small fraction of its durability, so it went down pretty fast with everyone focusing on it.
With Altei scouting ahead invisibly to avoid any teleporter ambushes, they pressed on to the main hall (which was empty) to what looked like an arena, with the walls lined with glowing weapons. Kaito tried taking down a few, but nothing happened.
One wall of the arena was suspiciously dark and smokey, and turned out to be illusionary. Through there was a chamber with a magic circle in the middle, lines of statues down either side, a ceiling covered in flames, and at the far end what had to be the Boss of Wrath. Elyssie and Kaito charged forwards to 'talk' with her...
"All those years of training, wasted!" she complained. "But at least I get to kill you."
To be fair, that was the sort of talk they were expecting after their previous encounters with Wrath's minions.
She put up a mirror image, but didn't have displacement running, so she was still a bit hard to hit but Kaito felt like he was making progress. She hit back very hard indeed -- with a whirlwind attack followed up by an additional stab to his face, since she was hasted -- and then triggered her pet demon to appear in the magic circle. It was another one of the giant demons they'd fought under Sandpoint, the ones that could reverse gravity. So that was why the ceiling was on fire!
June, who'd been standing by to counterspell, switched to trying to take out the demon before it could drop everybody into the flames... but obviously wasn't able to do that in one hit. Zeddicus also switched targets to it, only to be hit with a Power Word: Stun.
Apparently the boss had been waiting for June to look away, and cast a Prismatic Spray. Kaito was fine! So was Elyssie, and Zeddicus. Ash was 'sent to another plane', however, and immediately vanished, and June was driven insane.
Ed (playing June): "I think I'm going to head out now. If I get an 'attack nearest target' turn I'm going to try to kill myself with fireballs, since I've always felt I'm my own worst enemy."
But even with three people effectively down, the party wasn't finished. Elyssie and Kaito kept focusing on the boss, wearing down her mirror images and hitting her a few times, while resisting her spells and enduring her attacks. She had several options for escaping -- project image, wall of force, etc. -- but wouldn't use them because they were 'cowardly'.
Phoof managed to get Zeddicus back into the fight by feeding him one of her special Cherries, and he and Altei faced off against the demon -- but they were expecting it to reverse gravity, and were both flying when it finally tried that tactic. Luckily the room was much too big for it to get the entire thing, so the people fighting the boss weren't affected. Altei eventually resorted to using her Shadow Clone power, splitting into four additional partially-illusionary ninjas that flanked the demon and backstabbed him over and over. It failed to realize that they were illusions, thought that the damage was enough to kill it, and returned to its home plane.
Shortly afterwards, Kaito finally got a good hit in on the boss, stabbing her through the heart and finishing her off. As she collapsed, the rune on her forehead started to glow -- and the same rune burned itself into Kaito's forehead, giving him the power of wrath (a slight bonus to AC, to-hit, and damage).
Elyssie was very annoyed that she didn't get it instead. She'd done most of the damage, but nooo, it was last-hit that counted.
They stripped the boss' body bare, finding oodles of magical equipment that they'd really have to identify and split up soon, and then went to where Altei had scouted out the few survivors of Wrath's forces, who immediately surrendered upon seeing Kaito with the rune. He demanded they explain what they were doing.
Wrathies: "We're preparing these bodies to be sinspawn. Once we're done with that, we're going to make some new children out of the protoflesh to replace the people you killed."
Kaito: "Are they the same people? I mean, I know they don't have their memories but do they have the same souls?"
Wrathies: "What's a 'soul'?"
Sometimes, with all their advanced technology, it was easy to forget that the ancient runelords had been primitive savages.
After that they returned to the center chamber, where they found Ash and June (who'd tried to teleport home to a priest to get his insanity cured in a brief moment of lucidity, and was now trying to cure himself by immersing himself in the fountain). Apparently you really couldn't escape this place, even with Primsatic Spray.
Afterwards, we looked at our options and apparently there's no way to cure insanity without a high-level cleric or an even higher level wizard -- bards, paladins, and magi don't count. We did find a scroll of Limited Wish that should work, but it sucks to have to use it up on something like this.
prev | next