Fanaxia: Kuldas Keep, and the Deck of Many Things

We have elected to invade the castle, rather than tangle with the dragon. It is our 22nd day in Fanaxia, and that morning a powerful force emerges from the swamp and heads slowly south, engaging the magiknights; the magiknights take them out but lose about 15% of their force, and then next group takes out another 10%. The lizard-folk have now come over to Richlieu and are attacking the magiknights; it’s now an evenly-matched battle. Another force attacks lady Merrowin’s troops, but she fends them off. Unfortunately, Ziss’laer the Black Wyrm is heading her way, and he’s a considerably larger threat. 

We spend some time discussing strategy outside the keep, and then…

The airship flies high above the keep, and Azrael unloads with Meteor Strike, clearing off most one side of the wall in an apocalyptic display of destructive power. Leira follows up with Sunburst. The courtyard is filled with alarums and excursions, but the folks on the wall start losing people as whole groups break and run for the courtyard. Leira clears more wall, while Azrael drops another meteor swarm and effectively shells the courtyard, centering on the leaders; the body count is ridiculous, and the army is effectively broken. A smaller group makes an orderly retreat into the keep; we spot some Vecna robes, and someone who’s probably the elder Lord Crowe himself… but even more importantly, Richelieu and a couple of his big orc bodyguards. There was also a priest, and another guy who was probably the leader of Crowe’s forces. 

The centaurs and the Bakunawa move into the castle’s courtyard. Ruin takes himself, Alexej, Leira, and Azrael down to the courtyard, just outside the door that the rather formidable collection of enemy leaders just retreated through. Geddy, Marshall, and Tavros are all still with the advancing centaurs and Bakunawa. 

The strike force goes inside, and finds themselves in a kill box with archers around the walls and Richlieu and the others at the far end of the room, trying to maneuver Lord Crowe towards some sort of escape route. We have no intention of allowing that, but a lot depends on who moves first. 

Alexej waits; Richelieu tags our entire group with Flame Strike and Quickened Flame Strike, which despite our various resistances and attempts to dodge is still pretty painful. Azrael responds with Horrid Wilting on the entire group of enemy leaders, excepting only the Blackguard. He follows it up with a quickened fireball, finishing off the wizards. Ruin and Alexej move to block this door, so none of the enemy warriors can get past us to Leira or Azrael. 

The Vecna priest does a quickened Cure Serious Wounds on himself, then drops a blade barrier on top of us. Leira goes down again. The Blackguard moves over to Richlieu and Lays on Hands, healing him back to considerably better condition. The archers are just sort of watching and panicking. The two orcs fly into rages, and charge up to the door. Alexej, dodging blades from the spell, intercepts them both with his guisarme, damaging them badly; one of the orcs manages to strike Alexej in return using his axe. 

Crowe moves back to the door: “If you surrender now, I’ll spare your lives!”

Ruin: “Optimist.”

Alexej scoops up Leira and moves out of the doorway; the orcs try to attack him but miss. He takes the opportunity to revive Leira with a wand of Cure Light Wound. Richlieu moves up  and quick-heals the other Vecna priest, then drops Flame Strike on Ruin and Azrael. Ruin survives, being extremely fire resistant, but Azrael goes down. Ruin catches him as he falls, and slips them away through a hole in reality. 

The Vecna priest moves forward and summons a couple of Bone Devils next to Alexej. They attack, lightly scratching Alexej. Alexej: “Teleport, yes?”

Leira teleports them away, and Marshall raises Azrael from the dead. We huddle up with the leaders of the invading army, and then we heal up and start teleporting ourselves and the local champions back. 

By the time we get back, the leaders have gone and the archers are still lining the walls. Geddy tries to intimidate them, and they all move to the center of the room and loose arrows at him, doing… only a little damage. A pair of fireballs follow from Leira and Geddy; two thirds of them die, and the others flee. Ruin slips across the room and grabs one of them. Geddy asks Tavros to wait outside, and questions the guy… who is currently wrapped up by a giant snake. 

According to the captured archer, they teleported away. The younger Crowe comes in and shows us the secret passages and also the royal chambers; Marshall does a Discern Location, and we learn that Crowe has gone to the central wing of Castle Fanax. 

While we’re discussing this, the Bakunawa and Centaurs come to Marshall and lead us to Crowe’s treasure room. Younger Crowe shows a really well-concealed secret door, which leads to an armor room with the Sacred Snake Armor hidden behind it. They call it the Armor of the Avatar, and it was stolen from the centaurs and the Bakunawa. It predates the Sundering. Since Marshall is the chosen one, it is his to wear. 

Marshall is thrilled. It is +5 Wild adamantine Full Plate, provides +6 to Wisdom, and immunity to poison. Once per day it will cast Blade Barrier in a five-foot ring around him. (The blades are snakes.) The adamantium provides damage reduction 3. We also gain $99,000 plus a tome of clear thought +4. 

So: the lizard folk attack the magiknights, and the magiknights take quite a beating before they pull a trick and recover. It’s a battle of attrition at this point, with the lizardfolk slowly starting to gain the advantage. Even so, the battle drags out until at last the Magiknights are annihilated. (“The magiknights are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the Universe.”) The lizard-folk have lost about two-fifths of their force. 

The black dragon assaults Lady Merrowin, tearing into her forces and ripping up her positions. She counters, damaging him, but her attack capability is dropping rapidly while his remains intact. Martini whisks Lady Merrowin away at the last moment, as the last of her force falls to the dragon. The dragon is badly injured, but will recover by the morning. The battle has torn up the landscape, and the dragon is flying overhead. It’s blackened on the surface, but it seems to be a white dragon underneath. Possibly Vecna has raised the white dragon we slew. 

Strategically? Based on what our characters know? We need to get to Castle Fanax, and disconnect Fanaxia from the Abyss. With any luck, if we manage that – and kill Richlieu and etc. – we can then go to the tower and use the hand and the blade, which will hopefully free the place from Vecna’s influence as well. 

Kuldas Keep: we start considering who should take over the rulership. The younger Crowe has no interest. There’s another son, who’s spoiled; no. There are twin daughters, spoiled; no. There’s a minister of trade, Bald Jonny; he’s well-dressed, and carrying a bunch of papers when he comes to speak with Geddy. “Might I share with you some of my plans that I would implement if I were king of Kuldas Keep?”  He sits down, and he starts smoothly laying plans: “The centaurs and the Bakunawa would both need to have trusted advisors on the council.” Weirdly, he seems sincere though he’s also obviously telling us what he thinks we want to hear. “We will need to reorganize some of the lesser lords. I know there’s sausage-making to be done there, but we can’t just toss out the old lords… it would be chaos. Still, we'll have to levy them to give some land back to the centaurs, as fairly as possible.” 

Tavros: “Good. Also, all of the former harem are ennobled as ladies.” 

Jonny: “Of course. And that brings me to my first question for you: what would you expect of me?”

Geddy: “You have to keep the city safe, and report to us.” 

Bald Jonny: “I won’t disappoint you.”

Later, Tavros approaches young lord Forthwind: “Hey, can I talk to you about something really fucking weird?” He may have been hanging around with Ruin a little too long. 

Lord Crowe: “Of course.” 

Tavros: “You strike me as a forthright and honorable young man, one who inspires loyalty and wants the best for your people – all your people.” 

He seems kind of torn. “One that just rebelled against his own father.” 

Tavros lays out his offer, with the amulet and the possibility of priesthood. Tavros has some other options as fallbacks, but he’s the first choice. Crowe wants some time to think about it, which only seems fair since the amulet will kill him if Tavros is wrong and he's unworthy.

So next we need to get to the keep, but before that… we stand with Geddy as he draws from the Deck of Many Things. Geddy takes a day to locate a Wand of Searing Light first, so he has some way to counter the worst possible outcome; then he readies Airwolf, our Ebony Fly and dons the Wings of Flying. Then he draws seven cards, and we see what happens.

-Jack of Hearts: he gains the services of a fourth-level fighter. 

-Jack of Clubs: He must fight a Dread Wraith. Geddy finds himself in an extradimensional space with a Dread Wraith, which is a horrible robed figure with a scythe. He immediately hops on the ebony fly and uses that to stay out of reach, and bombards the thing with Searing Light. 

-Queen of Diamonds: he receives 1d4 wishes. His player rolls a 4.

-King of Clubs: Void, his body functions but his soul is trapped elsewhere. 

-Ace of Hearts: Avoid any one situation.

-Ace of Spades: He is imprisoned. 

-Two of Hearts: He gets money: 50,000 GP, in fact.

From the perspective of the rest of us... Geddy draws his cards and disappears. Apparently we’re going to have to find him. The deck falls to the ground unnoticed as we wander off discussing how to find the gnome. A random by-passer, Jerry the Archer, finds it. He draws four cards, gains two wishes, and immediately blows them to avoid the effects of the next two cards, and levels up after the next thing he kills. His heroic adventure has begun. Perhaps unfortunately, none of us will ever know about it...