Goodparty: Mages Under Siege

 We do some more checking around to see if we can get some better information on the demons and what they’re using to create the dimensional anchors that keep the mages from escaping. Geddy finds a fellow bard. Once the fellow finishes his performance, Geddy joins him at the bar and offers to buy him a stiff one. 

Geddy starts chatting him up, and asks about the demons. The bard escaped from the capital and had some encounters with the demons before escaping to Lakemont. 

“On the sun plains, on our way to Starroads after the work in the capital dried up on account of that bear-queen–”

Ruin: “Wait, she’s really a bear?”

“So I’m told. Likes to train with the best warriors around, then turn into a bear and rape them.”

Geddy: “Okay, so did you ever run into a giant ball of fuck made out of hands?”

Bard: “Oh, yeah, they were scary. They’re always guarded, too. Like, the one we saw was guarded by a one of those big demons with the fire whips, and the sword-girl demons. Fortunately, they didn’t much care about us – just sent a couple of Vrocks after us.” He doesn’t know if they can prevent teleportation. He has heard that all of the baalors report to an even bigger baalor, one who’s hideous gnarled and scarred… almost as if he had been caught in an explosion cause by the breaking of a staff of the arch-magus. 

There was a mage with him called The Amazing Marvin, who’s at another inn here in town. Geddy offer to take him along and he jumps at the opportunity; Geddy asks if he’d be interested in running a couple of missions for us. The dude worships Geddy Lee Geddy. So we dispatch him to look for Sacha, under the theory that a bard should be good for that. The fellow is a gnome bard named Thierry P Thierry.

Then we go look up The Amazing Marvin. He’s very impressed with himself; he just learned to cast Fireball. And he’s absolutely sure that the Odipei (ball of hands demons) could produce a dimensional anchor. 

What we know about baalors: they’re hard to hit, they’re hard to kill, they carry vorpal longswords and flaming whips; if they tangle you, they pull you into their bodies, which are on fire. They have true seeing, fire storm, and implosion… and quickened telekinesis. Immune to fire and electricity and poison, resistant to acid and cold. 

Mariliths, aren’t as powerful or as tough; they cannot fly, and they basically have six arms and six longsword. Immune to electricity and poison, resistant to acid, cold, and fire. But, they can constrict and invisibility will not hide us from them. 

So, we start buffing: Death Ward, haste. Protection from energy, Displacement. Then we move ourselves over the Odopi and let loose. Ruin steps in and attacks, doing some real damage despite not having the best weapon for this. Geddy starts singing. 

Then Eva tears into the thing. She bites it twice, claws at it twice, bludgeons it with her wings, and then slaps it with her tail. She scatters pieces of eye-stalks and hands all over the place. Ruin attacks it again and it goes down. It’s not dead yet, but there are a couple of really pissed-off demonic bodyguards who attack Ruin and Eva. The one attacking Ruin is so upset that she misses. The one attacking Eva gets a couple of hits in, but not enough to be a problem. 

Geddy, meanwhile, is still singing and playing his legendary instrument, Richenbacher’s Electric Lute. He lets loose with a power chord, and finishes it. The Baalor trties to implode Ruin, but fails; it uses telekinesis to throw a pile of rocks at Ruin from behind. Leira teleports herself, Geddy, and Eva away; Ruin Dimension Door’s after them, far enough to get out of sight and out of reach. 

“Quick!” cries Geddy,  “Get the next one before they realize what’s happening!”

We teleport again.

Ruin immediately starts carving, doing some damage. Geddy looses another blast with the lute, and then Eva tears into this demon as well. Ruin follows up and annihilates it. The baalor roars: “MORTALS! YOU SHALL PAY FOR THAT!”

The baalor implodes Ruin – successfully – and throws rocks at Leira with his telekinesis. The two mariliths move, one of them missing and the other striking Eva for some damage. Geddy fires off a power chord at the baalor, and then Eva scoops Ruin up in her mouth. Leira teleports us back to Lakemont. 

The duke himself appears to congratulate us, as does Marshal Giselle. They ask about our next move, which is Rescue Wizards. 

The next day, Geddy guides us in on dragonback to the Starroads Inn. By the time we land, Ruin and Leira have both been imploded. 

Out comes Atrix the White, who asks who we are. Geddy explains that we’ve taken out two of the Odopi, so it should be relatively easy for us to escape. The necromancer Grimsor comes in, and Atrix waves him off. Other people start filtering into this courtyard area. With the arrival of the others, Atrix considers the possibility of getting a circle together to aid Atrix in dispelling the block. 

Geddy uses our remaining scroll of True Resurrection  on Leira, and they scrape Ruin into a convenient bucket. Atrix lays out the story of their intention to hold the tower at springmage… right up until Behemoth came. Behemoth is the same demon lord that we dealt with in Fanaxia, and he’s strong: bigger than all the other baalors, but also horribly torn and scarred. 

The plan is basically to break the remaining dimensional anchors, and then have everybody who can teleport get the children out. We’re going to relocate the entire group to Caristhium, though Grimsor the Necromancer still has an unhealthy interest in Durest, so he may go his own way. 

This will give us a pretty solid set of magical resources, and possibly also allow us to teleport without being noticed by the horrible things in the air. Caristhium is back under Tavros’ control, and some of the elvish revolutionaries have been hanged in the square. Everybody is proclaiming Tavros The King in the East, and singing that horribly jaunty little song that Geddy composed. We resurrect Ruin, and then buy some more scrolls because this is definitely going to come up again. 

 

Next up: the Royal Crypt.