Fanaxia: The Battle of Lydell

Azrael open the next stage of combat by dropping an Empowered Fireball, followed by a Quickened Fireball. The first hits some of the giants; the second wipes out a bunch of rogues. The giants take this as their cue to scatter and charge the village; being bunched up seems like a bad idea for them. Ruin and Alexej are on one of the paths, and wipe out more rogues. Azrael and Leira rain more destruction, as the enemies charge the village. 

Ruin looks up and sees a massive group of blinded giants charging down the path towards him, with another group of even larger giants who aren’t blinded behind them. He Dimension Doors himself and Alexej out of the path of the stampede. Leira drops another Sunburst on the giants emerging from the second path; Azrael follows it up with Incendiary Cloud to discourage them from all coming out at once. More giants fall to the accumulated damage. 

Ruin and Alexej fall back towards the archers, since they’re going to be very dead if anything gets near them. Azrael drops a Quickened Web spell on a couple of the giant, and follows with the last of his Empowered Fireball. This immediately burns the webs off, but these groups of giants are significantly damaged. More giants emerge behind the first wave. 

Ruin puts a trio of arrows into the nearest giant, and moves to help support the local heroes. Leira takes out another batch of giants. Our archers do a bit of damage from a relatively safe distance. Azrael drops Cloudkill, damaging the health of a group of giants, who promptly charges and attacks our group of captains; both sides take damage. We’re not sure who’s winning yet, but even if the bad guys beat us it’s going to be a fairly Pyrrhic victory. 

Azrael drops Horrid Wilting on the things that are threatening two groups of our allies. One of the giants rampages into a farm and crushes most of the buildings there. Others emerge and attack the local heroes; they fight back against the lead giants but do little damage. Ruin and Alexej move in to attack giants in melee, but Ruin misses. Leira drops a Freezing Sphere on a group of giants, damaging the whole group. Our archers take out another group of giants, but the local heroes are going down hard and fast. 

One group of rogues takes shelter in a nearby house. Alexej carves up a giant with his guisarme. Alexej drops another Fireball and then a Quickened Magic Missile, damaging a giant and killing a rogue; two of the giants crash into buildings and start ripping them up. The local heroes are down to one, and the leaders of the giants kill another of the local heroes. The blind giants attack but miss. Ruin hits one of the giants, injuring it. 

Leira expertly drops another Freezing Sphere into the giants, damaging them some more. The last surviving local hero teleports out. Our archers are still gamely firing away at the giants. Alexej takes out another giant. 

Ruin takes out another giant as several of the blinded stragglers blunder through the village, smashing things. Leira drops her last Sunburst on the giant commanders, to blind and damage them. Ruin takes down another giant. Azrael teleports over to the rest of the party, and prepares to do horrible things to the giants. Ruin hits one of the two not-blind giants, and Leira runs a lightning bolt through five of the giants, killing one. A group of rogues moves in to flank, and Alexej does a full Whirlwind attack: 6 rogues and one giant, all on the same round. Five of the rogues go down and their captain is barely on his feet; the giant isn’t happy. 

Azrael drops his last Horrid Wilting on a bunch of the giants. One of them actually dies. One of the giants manages to hit Ruin, and tries to poison him, but fails. There are still a couple of giants rampaging through the town. RUin does some more damage, and Leira drops another Sphere of cold. 

Alexej spins around with another whirlwind, and now we’re down to three enemy giants attacking, and one who’s sort of wandering around nearby. Azrael teleports away to intercept the blundering rampager giants, and the giants all turn on Alexej and take him down. Ruin charges and power attacks, taking some damage on the way in but delivering a huge chunk of damage; unfortunately, the main threat of a giant does not go down. Leira, however, immediately finishes him and damages another with a sphere of cold. Azrael finishes an incoming giant with a Scorching Ray, defending the townsfolk. 

The remaining giants turn on Ruin, but they’re still blind and none of them hit him; Ruin takes advantage of the opportunity to grab Alexej and Dimension Door the hell out of dodge. Azrael starts swooping down to use our Wand of Healing on Alexej. Two giants start throwing rocks at Leira, but they’re blind and it’s not wildly effective. She drops another Sphere, and takes out the two active giants. 

Ruin and Azrael manage to get Alexej back on his feet with Wands of Cure Light Wounds. Another giant moves towards the townsfolk, and Ruin puts arrows in it. Lady Green, who’s been sneaking around this whole time, shows up and shoots one of the captains that we’d grouped together. 

Leira changes position and puts a lightning bolt through the two nearby giants. On the far side of the battlefield, another giant moves up to the townspeople, but Azrael tags him with Scorching Ray. Ruin turns around and shoots arrows at the rogues who are chasing the captain, killing all five of them; but Lady Green kills the captain off anyway and moves up a little bit. The archers turn on one of the groups of rogues, killing a rogue and drawing the close enough to be in Azrael’s range.

Ruin uses Dimension Door to cut off the remaining rogues, and finishes them off. 

We lost a lot of the friendly combatants, but we basically wiped out the opposing army. Lady Green escaped, but our archers survived. We’ve been… fairly heroic, actually. Ruin isn’t quite sure how to process that. 

That night, stormclouds gather over the swamp at the center of Fanaxia. Forces of creatures emerge and move up into West Styre, attacking outlying farms. Numerous villagers are killed. On the south side of the swamp, sixty-seven lizard folk are killed. They’re also spilling into northern Fanax. It’s an army of swamp creatures: snakes and oozes and harpies and all our favorite things. 

Vecna… is not pleased.