Thursday Dec. 17th update. (Though I think there's a few days worth of updates in there, somewhere.)
After we left off, the group retreats to the fort they had been going to for a good while now, and are left alone as killing all of the wolves makes us hard to track. We rest up, and begin our march back to Elk's Bend in safety. We decide to go in more of a straight line than the bee-line we had done to get to the Hob-city in the first place. This just so happens to take us by a couple of villages. The first one we go to has people that are very on edge and telling us of rumours of people blinking out of existence, getting attacked, etc. (We also passed by some farms that had been attacked by Hobgoblins, but they left after a bit of struggling because they had been called back to home base for something. Hmm. I wonder what.) They then tell us that a whole bunch of places, especially farms, have been abandoned lately, and that they haven't heard from the messenger they sent to Luttin in far too long. So, being the brave adventurers we are, we offer to make sure that things are A-OK over there.
When we arrive, Alexander notices that something seems rather mechanical about the villagers, Rachelle notices that they're all moving in a pattern, Desmond notices that nobody here is actually from the village, and to top it all off, there were people working on the farms. While we're closer to Elk's Bend than the other town, this still sets off more warning bells than the party did when they left Hob-city. Desmond addresses a nearby farmer, and after about a minute, gets a very... mechanical response. (surprise surprise) We (mostly Alex, Desmond, and Rachelle) go through the motions of the conversation, Marza fingering his daggers very closely, ready to start blasting, and we end it having learned absolutely nothing, and being enticed to stay the night. Multiple times we were enticed. (And good beer was even offered for the Desmonds!) The party moved on, heading to Elk's Bend, not wanting to waste any more time.
When the party arrives at Elk's Bend, they head straight to the church to relax (all save Marza's kitty, whom he puts on a search around town for any sources of magic), and find themselves making a report of everything that has happened to Gregory. They even offer him the Holy Relic to inspect for himself, which he then promptly gives back, giving them a special ritual to perform their newest mission. To contact St. Cuthbert's 1000 year old dead buddy and have him fix up the Holy Relic. As the meeting finishes, Marza's kitty comes in with a frozen squid thing attached to it, which Marza detaches and puts into the bag of holding for SCIENCE!... which empties the bag and the contents fall on Marza's head 5 minutes later, minus the squid-thing. It is recommended he not do that again. On the bright side, the cat found a magic item shop. Go it.
The party goes shopping, finding many shiny things, but only having the money to buy themselves some cloaks (of resistance), and boots (of acrobatics). Sadly, Gregory bought all of the ritual scrolls, so none of those. Marza also buys himself a ritual book with most of his personal cash. They go back to the church to rest up and wait for Feth. Luckily, the next day, he shows up, and spends a couple hours shopping, while everyone else packs their stuff and gets ready to head off. Oh, and everyone has leveled, too, so yay for extra dailies!
On the way to the Alefin Downs, Desmond strikes up a conversation with the party about parents. Alex is a Deva, so... no parents to speak of, except possibly Pelor, but ehh. Desmond is, of course, a freak of nature with an elven daddy and a dead human mother, and his elven daddy abandoned him to a monastery of Erathis. Marza was exiled from his town of Eladrin Wizards because he is, evidently, not a wizard, and is not allowed back to his Feywild hometown until he becomes a great wizard able to bend the very fabric of space and time at his every whim. Feth is... not so open about his family, and Rachelle is, of course, aggressively boring, in that she has two very much alive human parents that wanted her to become a great Invoker someday, blah blah blah.
As they get closer to the Downs, they meet up with some of those people that have randomly blinked out of existence. They're like the Luttin people, only different. We speak with them for a while, being told by the crazy leader (whom Desmond owes a few silver) that we can't pass, and not giving any reasons or anything. We just can't. He also freaks out when the outsiders and their dimension are mentioned, and is inconsistent with his escape story. Nobody else from his party of 5 (including him) speak. Marza spends the time with his daggers out, desperately clinging to the hope that, hey, maybe these guys WON'T attack us. Desmond says "We're gonna keep going," they transform, Marza throws some chaos their way, and the fight begins.
This is a very odd fight. First off, the silent dudes grow claws and the like, and the guy who spoke is actually a Large four-legged creature that is made of the various remains of more people than can be counted. Next, as soon as Marza gets a turn, he walks up next to Rachelle, snaps his fingers, and they both have Resist 5 Psychic. Guess what the mooks did? If they hit, they do an automatic 5 Psychic damage. (If you were bloodied, it was 7, which meant they could break the defense!... if the two near-invincible tanks ever got bloodied. >_>; ) Oh yeah. So. We begin by doing that, and taking out as many of the mooks as we can. Marza hit one in the surprise round, and he was still around, so we figured there were some sort of revival shenanigans. Also, somebody targets the big baddy with psychic damage. Guess who completely and utterly immunes psychic damage (It's just a really high resist, but holy crap). So, after the first round, we have Desmond, Feth, and Alexander all running into Melee to start blasting at things, we figured out that it takes a Move action for the mooks to get up, Marza and Rachelle have their Mook Protection up, Feth is in Beast Form, Alexander has the Big Bad oathed, and Marza has activated his dagger of "You have no resistances against me. Suck it." The Big Bad also hits Desmond and Rachelle with Stun, and throws out some Slow + Damage. Everything he has but his swoop attack is MT, and to a large degree, too. The battle continues, with Desmond and Alexander eventually getting to the brink of death around the time we bloody the Big Bad. Which is around 150 damage in, so not bad. Our damage output then begins slowing down, and Feth and Desmond bring out a couple of their own dailies to play around with as we get to the last few rounds of the fight. (Mostly so we can focus on just damaging the damn guy, though Marza's natural rolls of 16, 16, 16, 16, 12 in one round, and his multiple max damage rolls against the Big Bad was kinda a good foretelling of how the battle went) The guy eventually falls, and we then get to the job of "Hey, these guys lost their ability to revive!"
Afterwards, we pick up a bracelet of WHAT THE SHIT, THIS SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE, AND SHOULD NOT EXIST, and put it into the Bag of Holding for further inspection. (But not until after warding the bag appropriately) The party then heads off, and talks to the dead guy, and is told to meet him in the Shadowfell. They say "sure" and begin thinking of possible places to get said ritual. They agree that Kingston is a good place to check, or at least the church of Erathis in Elk's Bend, because Gregory has a load of rituals now. They then pitch camp, and rest. End of session.
