Servants of Vecna: Claiming The Town

We pick up where we left off.  We finish Florian off; no more pretty ranger. Durest walks over and opens the door to the vault. Inside is the royal family: The lord, Murrow; his wife, three daughters, and his son.

Chuck grabs the lord and turns him into a vampire. He asks us to free his family, so we send them out the west entrance. (The dominated ranger out there still has orders to shoot anybody who comes out.

Jenny demands to know about the deed to the chateau; the lord is puzzled, but he directs us to his study. The deed is there. "Oh, yeah. Pascalina had me sign that yesterday. Speaking of, where is she?"

The desk has a bag with 150 GP; the rest is just paperwork and boredom. There is a letter addressed to S.H. from Pascalina, explaining that in addition to ransacking the castle maodeus has decided to invest in fortifying it so it'll be harder to retake. Hatch goes over the whole thing thoroughly but doesn't find anything else. We return to the vault.

There a gilded snake statue, but it's not worth much -- something about artem-hiss -- and 78,000 gold.

We check the next door along, and find the lady's chambers; Hatch searches, and find a secret drawer with 10,000 GP worth of jewelry. Jenny immediately puts it all on.

Continuing on, we find the kids' (well, young adults') rooms. Past that, we find a meeting room with nothing much in it, and then a game room with an abandoned card game on the table. Hatch collects 17 GP from the table. There's a guest room, but it's empty. Beyond is room that was clearly occupied; the chest contains clothes for a nobleman and noblewoman. A noblewoman comes around the corner, sees us, and flees. Jenny pursues her to a small chapel, where she finds two noble couples and kills all four of them. The children are trying to escape off the ledge at the edge of the roof; Durest whistles a batch of skeletons over to murder them. The last two stay on the roof until Durest pushes them off.

The first floor contains a sitting room with a cowering servant. There's a desk, but it contains nothing interesting. Next we find a dining room, and people hiding in the room beyond. We have found the servants, hiding in a storage closet. Last we find the kitchen, and Hatch makes himself a sandwich.

We settle out some troops to help make the place harder to retake: 2 squads of griffins, 2 bugbear units, some Girallons, and a rhino squad.  We add some traps -- razor wire and black tentacles -- and then we head to sleep.

We sleep overnight, and return to the tower the following night. We can hear some commotion from inside as we arrive. There's also fire flickering through the windows. They've dropped some sort scintillating sphere in the opening we made last time, but since we've been here and Durest knows where we're going, he can Dimension Door everybody up to the bedroom on the top floor.

Bob strides off to assault the androsphynx, and Chuck and Hatch prepare with Shield and Mage Armor respectively.

Jenny pretends to cast a spell on herself.

We pop in behind the line of ambushers. The initiates are surprised.

Downstairs, Bob attacks the sphynx with his axe and hits. Chuck taps Jenny and puts Stoneskin on her.

Hatch attacks an adept with a sneak attack Ray of Frost. Downstairs, the sphynx roars.  Jenny bisects an initiative and then follows through to finish off the adept that Hatch damaged. Two adepts retreat, dropping Mirror Image on themselves as they go. ("Sorry, you guys really need to upgrade the processor on your DM.") The rainbow orb moves towards us, but doesn't quite reach us yet. Probably don't want to be standing there when it arrives.

Various summoned insects -- fiendish bees and beetles -- appear and attack; Chuck shrugs it off and drops a fireball, clearing the corridor outside and wiping out several of the beetles. Hatch kills one of the wasps with a spell and steps into its place.

The sphynx attacks Bob, and hits.

Jenny steps out of the summoned monsters and attacks  initiates. The adeps move towards the door and drop fireballs on everybody except Durest; Jenny and Hatch make their saves, but Chuck fails.

Another adept appears in the doorway behind them and adds a fireball to the mix as well. The bees are now destroyed.

The sphere finally lands on Chuck and Jenny. Jenny isn't impressed, but Chuck is fascinated by the sphere. A prefect appears in the middle of the room. Durest steps in and inflicts wounds, killing him; the shiny fascination-sphere vanishes.

One of the adepts zaps Hatch with a magic missile. The remaining beetles attack again, to not much effect.

Downstairs, Bob attacks the sphynx again and hits. The sphynx attacks again,

Chuck drops another fireball,  killing a bunch of them. One of the adepts manages to survive, but that's about it for everybody who was in range.

Ramekin moves in to rejoin Hatch.

Jenny strides past the beetles, ignoring them, and ignore the fact that one of them bites her; Stoneskin protects her. She kills one of the adept's mirror images.

The adept steps back and tags Jenny with a scorching ray. Jenny is irate.

Durest steps over and whacks at the adept with his mace, taking out one of the images and whacking the adept.  The beetles attack us (to no effect) and Bob attacks the sphynx again downstairs.

Chuck uses Magic Missile to get rid of the images, and Ramekin gives Hatch a potion to get him back on his feet. Hatch turns a scorching ray on the now-exposed adept, and burns right through him.

Jenny angles around Durest and attacks with her spiked chain, taking out to of the images concealign the remaining adept. He casts magic missile at Jenny, but doesn't do much damage.

Durest attacks with his mace again, taking out another image and whacking the guy.

Chuck hits him with magic missile and kills him, and Hatch throws an acid orb. Then Jenny steps up and cuts him down.

Durest kills off his wand of healing on Jenny, who's taken fairly serious damage. She follows up with healing potions, and Hatch brings himself back up with his own healing potions, to which Durest adds some more healing.

Durest raises a batch of skeletons, and we proceed down to the next floor. He uses them to open the doors and check chests.
Wand of Slow, 29 charges; 100,000 CP;
700 GP
200 GP
Potion of invisibility
+1 Heavy Steel shield.
200 gp belt
800 GP
4,000 silver; porcelain sundial worth 700 GP.
200 GP, a handback of tricks, a potion of bear's endurance and a potion of owl's wisdom.
Stats:
Wand of slow (29 charges, 6525gp)
Bag of tricks (tan; 6300gp)

The Initiates presumably share the bunkroom. We find 7,000 GP in valuable, 4,000 in gold.

5,000 silver.

The next floor down is mostly occupied with a library. It has a bunch more treasure:

Arcane scrolls: Expeditions retreat, magic aura, silent image, feather fall, resist energy, glitterdust, alarm, blindness, burning hands, animate rope, disguise self, true strike, calm emotions, blur, eagle’s splendor
o Ring counterspells (4k)
o Robe of powerlessness (5500)
o Slippers of spider climbing (4800)
o Wand bull’s strength (14 charges, 1260gp)
• On potion table
o 2x oil invisibility, 3x potion blur, 2x potion bull’s strength, 1x potion bear’s endurance, 2x, endure elements, 2x oil magic weapon
• Wand burning hands (46 charges, 690gp)
• Wand detect magic (28 charges, 210gp)
• Wand shocking grasp (46 charges, 690gp)
• Wind fan (5300gp)

The other part of that level is the dining hall. The room behind that contains a nother staircase down, so Durest sends the skeletons down to the first floor and strolls down after them.

We arrive in a kitchen. Chuck hears noise behind a door, and opens it; it's a bunch of terrified servants. Chuck shushes them, then moves to the door beyond. Durest arranges his skeletons in front of the other doors to prevent surprises. The skeletons are not quiet, but Durest isn't either and doesn't particularly care.

Hatch moves to the door beyond the servants and checks for traps, but doesn't find any. We all move up.

Durest sends the skeletons through the other two doors, where they locate a meatlocker and another hall with a mage and some beetles standing in it. The skeletons immediately attack, wiping out a mirror image and missing the beetles. The mage tries to dodge past the skeletons and into the kitchen, giving them plenty of opportunity to "kill" his images as he passes.

He gets into the room and fireballs us over in the next room. Ramekin goes down; Hatch is intact, and everybody takes damage -- including the servants who do not survive. Hatch moves back to the door and tags him with an empowered Scorching Ray, immolating him on the spot.

Jenny opens the door. We are standing behind a wall of fire that's facing the main door to the tower. Jenny closes the door again.

Durest directs the skeletons out of the meatlocker and through the other door. They tangle with the beetles but do not actually kill any. Still, they should keep anybody out there occupied.

Chuck drops protection from energy on Jenny. Hatch moves to follow the skeletons. Durest drops some healing on Jenny as she passes, but not too well.

Chuck opens the door and blasts a beetle. The skeletons are still tangling with the beetles, killing one and injuring another.

Ramekin returns to consciousness and gets back to his feet. "Master, it hurts!"

Hatch looks through the door and sees a roomfull of skeletons attacking beetle. Jenny moves up behind Hatch.

Durest moves up into the doorway in front of Chuck, who promptly steps out and drops a fireball on a nunch of initiates who are trying to defend the front door and wiping out everyone he hits.

The skeletons move in from the other side, killing another initiate. Hatch launches another scorching ray and kills another initiate; then Jenny moves up through the skeletons and slices an initiate.

Durest steps out and drops Mass Inflict Light Wounds, taking out three of the remaining four.

The last guy surrenders.

Chuck: "Why should we let you live?"

Guy: "Cause I surrendered?"

Chuck: "Not the best reason in the world. Got something else? Anything?"

Guy: "I know how to get the headmistress's treasure."

Chuck Dominates him, because vampire. "Show me."

He goes upstairs and gets himself immolated.

The rest of us follow, and this time Hatch successfully disables the statue. We search the room.

o Wand of invisibility (25 charges, 2250gp)
o Wand of silence (47 charges, 4230gp)
o Flesh golem manual (8000gp)

The enchanting stone contains enough power to enchant an item up to 1,300 xp worth for anyone who has the proper feat(s). Hatch opens the bedroom. He disables a trap on the end table, finding 1,100 PP and some nice clothing. The armoire contains a rose quartz statue of a female dwarf wreathed in continual flame, worth money.  In the chest, we find a wand of lesser metamagic: maximize.

We camp out for a week or so while Durest heads over to the castle and adds to the supply of undead. Pascalina shows up and says Maodeus is well pleased, and invites us to treat with him about a new job.

We finish the first Solari Hunters section here; we'll pick up in Saltmarsh next week.

We head downstairs and kill the sphynx so Durest can bring it back as a skeleton.