Fanaxia: The Death of Kroni, and Into The Abyss

So, the last order of business before we depart Fanaxia: Bring back Kroni, thus freeing Sacha, and then kill Kroni, who is effectively a demigod.

We load up on our preparations, making people variously invisible and protected.

Geddy opens by casting Haste on us. Martini kills a chicken and pours its blood into Kroni's mouth. All of sudden, dark and swirling clouds gather overhead. A burst of lightning coats the area, and Kroni is now holding the Sword of Kaz.

Kroni is not wearing armor, but he's wearing a bunch of magic items that have suddenly reappeared with him. Tavros attacks, missing him four times but hitting him once, and does some damage.

Then Kroni moves. He tries to land a Bad Touch on Tavros, but misses. He then tries to smite Tavros, but he's still a little shaken from coming back to life and mostly misses. Unfortunately, "mostly" is not "completely" and he hits Tavros very, very hard. Tavros goes down.

Marshall, in the form of huge serpent, casts Heal on Kroni, but fails to get through his spell resistance. Ruin tries to carve into him, but completely fails to connect. Azrael lets loose with Scorching Ray and Quickened Scorching Ray, and scorches Kroni a bit.

Alexej manages to connect, but then gets his guisarme stuck and drops it. Leira drops Displacement on Alexej, and then fires off two quickened Scorching Rays. Unlike Azrael, most of her attacks get through.

Kroni blinks over next to Leira and tries to smite her while power attacking. Leira goes down. He then attacks Marshall, not smiting but still doing some damage.

Geddy starts singing.

Tavros is still bleeding out. Kroni blinks over next to Alexej and attempts to smite, and takes him down. Ruin attacks but again fails to connect. Azrael tags him with a Scorching Ray, and then again with a quickened Scorching Ray, and does some notable damage. Kroni blinks over to him and smites. Azrael drops out of the air like an elvish rock; Martini grabs him and uses Dimension Door to get them both out of the way.

Geddy uses his guitar to attack with a Power Chord, and takes Kroni down.

...Holy shit.

There's an enormous thunderclap overhead, and Kroni goes down. We heal Azrael and Tavros, and Resurrect Leira and Alexej. We loot the body, stake him, cut his head off, stuff a holy wafer in his mouth, immerse him in running garlic-water.

We retrieve the Sword of Kaz, which is very apologetic. We also gather:
Boots of Striding and Springing
Gloves +6 Dex
Braces of Armor +8
Amulet of natural armor +5
Ring of protection +5
Cloak of resistance +5

Alexej heads off to re-found the Magiknights. We head back to take the motivator out of the flying ship. Aided by spells and Geddy's singing, Martini attempts to disable the motivator so we can remove it...

She succeeds. We're going to have an airship when we get back. We head back to Castle Fanax and hand the artifacts over to Behemoth. He ties the portal off to a single Glaabrezu, who departs through the portal just ahead of us. We hurry through after him, into Behemoth's throne room; there's another portal on the far side that leads back to Povos. There are treasures scattered everywhere.

As we step through the portal, a coldness drops over us, nauseating. We find ourselves in a quarry, wearing nothing but manacles; in the distance we see a pyramid of stone, with a line of souls hauling stones. A demon comes to taunt us about how Behemoth kept his bargain and the portal back to Sol Povos is right there in his throne room, but we'll never see it because we're slaves now.

Azrael bends over and retrieves a wooden stick, the one he found in the treasure room earlier. The spellcasters are blocked from their magics, and pretty much all we have is Azrael and the magus staff. Tavros tries to breath ice on the demon, but fails; Marshall tries to turn into a giant snake, but fails; Ruin can't find any dimensional slips, either.

Toth the demon assures us that the portal is right there in the pyramid waiting for us, but since we're chained here Toth expects us to be slaves. Azrael is playing up the fact that he's leaning on the staff of the magus. Geddy, meanwhile, is... well, there's just an unresponsive body here.

Marshall encourages us to grab stones and start moving them towards the pyramid. Leira starts crying, loudly. There are demons on patrol around the quarry. Without our equipment, we're distinctly outmatched; we're going to have to do something clever. And this is probably the wrong party for that.

Azrael is very bored with all this. He says he can plane shift using the staff. And he won't leave Martini, but he wants her to know that he could, if he wanted to.

We take our blocks up to the drop-off area, and now they expect us to go get more stones. Martini tries to take a break, and Toth whips her; Martini pretends that this is sexy, but doesn't manage to convince the demon.

Marshall starts trying to rally the other random slaves around here to do his work for him. The slaves are not having any of it. Toth whips him again.

Martini tries to seduce Toth, but he isn't attracted. Too human.

We walk back down to the quarry. Azrael says, "Behold, demon. I am Azrael Abyss and I am your master now." He gestures with the staff and our manacles fall off. Leira is still crying loudly enough to drown out other sounds.

Marshall just picks up a rock. Martini, on the other hand, sneak attacks Toth with a rock. In the nads. Toth is... not happy. Ruin smacks him with a rock , and Tavros rips him apart with his claws. Tavros leans down, picks up his whip, and then looks around for Geddy and sees... nobody.

Azrael reminds us yet again that he can plane shift out. Ruin asks if he's offering to create a distraction and then plane shift himself to safety. We take rocks without Toth and pretend we're being good slaves.

"You! Where is your slave master?"

Martini: "He's right here. He definitely did not take a break while we are carrying rocks."

"He's taking a shit?"

"Well, somewhere. I mean, I didn't listen that closely."

"Toth is sleeping on job again. Slaves carry rocks."

We head on to the second checkpoint. "Why are you here without a slave master?"

Martini: "I mean, that guy was scary so we're just carrying rocks even though he went away."

"Toth isn't scary."

"He is, but you're scarier. If I take this rock to the next spot will you promise not to hurt me?"

They whip us a couple of times on general principle, and when we get to the drop-off point we meet Garth, our new slave master.  

"Look," says Ruin. "We brought rocks, like good slaves!" He holds out the rock, and then drops it on Garth's foot.

Azrael, sensing trouble, hits Garth with a lightning bolt. It does a lot of damage, but isn't sufficient to kill him. Ruin grabs Garth in a bear hug... naked... with a demon.

Leira cries very loudly to cover the sound of violence. Martini slams a rock into Garth's nuts, and Tavros knocks him out.

We break there.