October 17th Session
This session involves minimal plot. Basically the temple has defenses that cover most of the temple and does some sort of evil things to whoever is in the way. So the party, minus Gregory and Alexander who took off with Gregory, is sent off to try to break into Antonio’s room and go through a secret passage to get to the control room of these defenses. So we sneak around to get to Antonio’s room, and we get into the room. Desmond makes a roll for stalking Antonio and gets a 20, of course, so he knows all about the room.
Once in the room, the party investigates, and we find a shield and a cudgel for Desmond to use, and we find a light shield for Rachelle, as well as lots of potions and rituals and things. All of this stuff is shoved in the Bag of Holding, Marza pockets the potions, and we head down the stairwell….
And we open the door with Feth, who does not open the door stealthily enough and gets attacked by an archer! In a strategy to try to get to the boss quickly, Feth rushes ahead. He is quickly downed by the array of Halberdiers, archers, and mages. There is also a Warlord in the back, barking orders at the enemies. Feth falls and is captured by enemy troops.
As for the rest of the battle, the party is all blocked in a stairwell and we are all pretty badly injured, as well as Feared and dazed by the enemies. At this point we feel thoroughly overwhelmed, so the squisheys hide in the end of the stairwell while DESMOND tanks, because, with all his new armor, he can. We tank for another 5 or 6 rounds before Desmond gets critted a couple of times and falls. We were severely outmatched in this battle, and it showed. Fortunately for us, Gregory and Alexander came to save the day, and the enemies surrender.
So the party discusses what to do next, and there’s only one real option; kill the doppelganger Mulkaey. He accuses the Deva of being a Deva of Asmodeus, and this really pisses Alexander off, who is an honest lad. Along with the troops we just defeated, as well as some of our own, we have them stay back and tell people of the doppelganger, who shows his dirty face after a powder of enlightenment or whatever is poured on him. He closes the door so no other troops can get in, and thus the party (minus Feth) and Gregory ready themselves for battle. Rachelle and Marza hid behind pillars, whereas the valiant fighters were in the front, ready to rush to victory!!
He uses rituals to summon two wind elementals and two fire elementals, as well as summoning the skeleton of Antonio. Desmond is horrified and screams “BURN, TRAITOR!!” at him, and the battle begins.
The wind elementals start by severely crippling the party. The first of the evil foes came in and Proned Gregory, Alexander, and Desmond, whereas the second foe came in and attacked Desmond, Mazra, and Alexander, hitting each of them for 17 (out of 44, 37, and 41 HP respectively.) and blinding them. Owwie! Those guys need to die. All of the melee fighters attacked them a bit, and then the fire elementals charged forward with the skeleton. Rachelle came in and did some major crowd control, using Astral Terror and an action point to use some more attacks on the wind elementals. Marza also came in and did attacks. One died, the other Proned us again. Desmond and Alexander charged forward.
Mulkaey finally showed his dirty face to attack Gregory, eventually getting him close to death. Marza used his daily to throw an orb at him, he misses and uses an area of effect fire attack instead, killing Gregory. Mulkaey then finishes him off, cackling evilly and saying his work was done and he started running away. Desmond uses an action point to use Paladin’s Judgment on him, which ended up doing 26 points of damage, which was kickass. The rest of the enemies were killed off by Marza and company when Mulkaey ran way under the desk and he started a new ritual, either to run away or to summon more enemies, and Rachelle runs through the smoke and flames to attack him one more time…
1d10 hits 1! 6 damage! NOOO!
And then he died. Awesome.
So yeah, we win even though Gregory is dead, and we all get to Level 4.
