Guardians of Sol Povos: Two Dragons and Vampiric Spellcaster

We're on the third floor of the tower, and Alexej is blind. 

We open an empty room, and Tavros finds a pouch with 31 GP and a badly-used picture. 

We proceed to another room; it appears to be a sort of bunkroom, and there's a small brass dragon inside. It's hissing at us. The dragon casts a spell and then flies over to the corner of the room. Someone in the... bathroom? ...on the far side of the wall is also casting a spell. Leira attempts to transform the dragon into a regular lizard, and in the process makes herself visible again. 

We hear the bathroom door open, and Marshall moves himself and Alexej up to where he can see inside; he can see a claw around one corner of the door. (Marshall is guiding Alexej around because Alexej got himself blinded in our last session; he's beasically a seeing eye cleric.) 

Tavros continues pursuing the newly-minted lizard, which is utterly immune to his persuasive words ("Come! Join us, brother! Let us defeat this evil together!"). The second dragon emerges from the bathroom and uses its breath to put Leira and Marshall to sleep. 

Tavros attempts to persuade this second one to join us.

The dragon grins. "You friend is blind and your other friends sleep, enemy of the tower!" Tavros crosses the room and comes up beside him. 

The dragon reaches out and attacks Leira, who is unconscious on the floor; it gets a good chomp in, waking her up; she tries to dodge the claws, and avoids one; then it pummels her with its wings. It fails to kill her, but... barely. 

Alexej swings at it but flubs and loses his guisarme; Tavros attempts to attack and also drops his sword; he quickly scoops it back up. Leira has rolled away and turns invisible; the dragon throws a blast of flame after her, finishing her off. 

Tavros shouts, "Alexej! There's a table behind you! Kick it into Marshall!" He does, and now Marshall is awake. Alexej quickly scoops his guisarme back up. Tavros attacks twice, hitting once and then missing; the dragon hisses at him. 

Marshall stands up and casts Command, but fails to make it stick. Alexej moves forward, following the sounds of the dragon, and runs into the table. Tavros moves over to Leira and finds her invisible form, then heals her enough to get her awake again. 

The dragon crosses the room and casts a spell; Marshall casts dominate animal on the lizard. He orders it to attack its comrade. It does, but misses; the dragon looks very confused. 

Alexej is stumbling around; Marshall moves over and grabs him again. 

Leira, still invisible, moves across the room, and casts Baleful Polymorph on the second dragon. They are now both lizards, and engaged in a lizardy battle to the death. Marshall dominates the second lizard, and we put them Marshall's snake bag. This is one of the weirder battles I've ever taken part in. 

Treasure: 

Yembit

Porkith

 290 pp, 2500 gp, 12000 sp Gems worth 239gp 

1. Silver Shortsword Scabbard inlaid with Electrum (4000 gp)
1. Arcane Scroll (Detect Magic (12 gp 5 sp), Acid Arrow (150 gp)) (total 162 gp 5 sp)
2. Arcane Scroll (Lesser Confusion (50 gp), Protection from Chaos/Evil/Good/Law (25 gp), Calm Emotions (200 gp)) (total 275 gp)
3. Divine Scroll (Magic Weapon (25 gp)) (total 25 gp)
4. Pearl of Power (1st level) (1000 gp)
5. Potion of Invisibility (300 gp)
6. Wand of Delay Poison (35 of 50 charges) (3150 gp)
7. Wand of Knock (10 of 50 charges) (900 gp)
8. Wand of Summon Monster I (46 of 50 charges) (690 gp) 

Marshall heals Leira back up to full health, using most of a wand in the process. We move on to another small room and find 23 GP under the bed; the chest is empty. Same for the next room, actually. 

Tavros throws open the door of the next room, having heard voices behind it, and takes a barrage of Magic Missiles to the face. Alexej stumbles forward, and Tavros shoves him in front; Alexej switches to heavy flail and bludgeons the guy in front of him to death. Tavros moves past him and cuts another one down, them continues the cut into his companion. Both die. The last one tries to blind Tavros with a spell, but Tavros is a paladin and his ability to save against this stuff is insane; he just shakes his head sadly at the guy. 

Leira uses magic missile to finish the guy off. We add another 31 GP to the total. 

We move around to the next room, and find a crate inside with a sliding eyeslit on it. Tavros: "Is there anyone there?" 

Voice: "Oh please, please save me!" 

Tavros is... suspicious. "We must dispose of our enemies first! Wait here." 

"But sir! I am afrad here! It is dark and I cannot see!" 

Fine. We arrange ourselves around the room, and Tavros uses his paladin abilities to detect evil. There's evil. The crate is full of evil. Alexej opens the crate, and Tavros attacks. 

It's a medusa, but it fails to turn him to stone and he cuts it down. Marshall promptly claims the body; no snake left behind. 

We head up to the fourth floor of the tower. There's a hole in the crystal dome of the ceiling; it's been filled with stone. We head down the hall, and Tavros takes the door to the north. There's a coffin inside... ...and it's full of EVIL too! We move carefully into the room. 

Marshall: "There's a coffin in here!" 

Tavros, stage-whispering: "It's full of EVIL!" 

Marshall doesn't say a word; he just turns undead. (OOC: This is waaaay better than listening to the RNC, which is also tonight.) The coffin starts rattling a moment later. Leira straight-up fireballs the casket. After the smoke clears, where the coffin used to be a vampire stands up, pushing aside burnt, splintered wood. Tavros charges and attacks, but the blade fails to sink into her flesh. 

She casts Mirror Image, which is possibly the most annoying spell ever. 

Marshall tags her with a touch attack for Cure Critical, which -- since she's undead -- damages her rather badly. She charms Marshall and then steps back. Leira attacks with a Scorching Ray, and Tavros drops Protection from Evil on Marshall. 

Marshall guides Alexej up, then drops divine favor on himself and attacks. He misses once, and hits the second time. 

The vampire steps back and drops a fireball on all of us. 

Alexej steps up and attacks (blind) and misses. Leira uses magic missiles to dispel the mirror images; Tavros gets behind her and does a massive amount of damage, though not all of it goes through. 

Marshall drops a cure mass wounds on the room, healing us and hurting her. She steps to Tavros' side and casts Chain Lightning, damaging us (except for Leira); Alexej steps forward and attacks her but misses. Leira throws another set of scorching rays, hitting once, and adds some fire damage to the vampire's total. 

Tavros tries to attack, loses his sword, and picks it up again. (Seems to be something of a theme this evening.) Marshall... consecrates the room. 

The vampire casts on the defensive, and manages to blink out of there. Tavros detects evil to the southwest, the other room, and finds that it's full of evil. Marshall tried to detect evil in the southern half of the tower and immediately passes out; we think he just found the Evil Ritual that we were sent here to stop. 

Alexej wakes him up, and Tavros continues sensing... there are many evils in that room, but there's one that's particularly powerful. 

Tavros: "She's in the next room! But be careful, she isn't alone!" 

Marshall throws open the door and finds a room full of skeletons... the lichy regenerating ones with red rubies in their eyes. And Marshall, after his adventures among the elves, knows exactly what that means. He turns undead, mowing down a good dozen of the skeletons and clearing half the room. "Grab the gems!" 

The vampire is still regenerating; she's not exactly enthused to see us. She drops Bigby's Grasping Hand in the doorway. Leira tries to counter with Dispel Magic, and does. She moves into the room. 

Tavros comes into the room, grabs a skull off the floor, crushes it in one hand, and removes the gems. He tucks them into a pouch. 

Marshall comes into the room and consecrates the ground just inside the door, to keep the fallen skeletons from reanimating. The bones are shaking and trembling, but they don't stand back up. The vampire is still healing, and dismayed; she casts Crushing Despair. 

Tavros shakes it off and charges, power attacking and smiting, and takes the vampire down. 

Marshall drags her body into the consecrated ground. Marshall asks us to smash the mirrors; we do. We take the body back downstairs to the bathtub, bless the water, and finish her by tossing her in. Marshall and Tavros rip the eyes out of the skeletons and reduce them to useless bones. 

We end the game there.