Good!Party: The Death of Magic

We’re still in battle, mainly with the Colossus. For which reason we’re moving rapidly into what Ruin is certain is The Wrong Room. Martini goes in first, and immediately steps on some symbols. She shakes off the effects.

The Colossus smashes Tavros again, for a big chunk of damage. Eva slips into the room and lets loose with a blast of flame. The ogres take damage, Cardinal Baroque is okay, and several priests die. The ogres rage and attack, hitting Eva twice. Geddy runs into the room and promptly steps on the symbols again, but shakes it off.

Tavros takes that opportunity to run for the stairs. Leira’s magic sword attacks the colossus but doesn’t get through. She attempts to disintegrate Cardinal Barague, but he resists; he still takes damage though. Cardinal Barague casts Invisibility on himself. He then casts Implosion on Geddy, who is visible. Geddy is smashed into a fine mist.

Marshall grumbles, then flies up to the balcony, heading for Geddy’s corpse.

Ruin heals a bit, then runs up and smacks an ogre chieftain, ignoring the symbols and cutting it down while sucking a bit of its life away to protect himself with some false life. Martini drops off the very high ceiling, lands flawless, and murders the remaining ogre chieftain. Cardinal Barague makes himself invisible.

Ruin: “So, are you a little bitch?”

Somebody comes stomping loudly up to Martini and shoves past her. It’s Cardinal Barague, and Ruin swings and cuts him without even being able to see him. The Colossus smacks Marshall for another massive chunk of damage. Ruin: “The console controls the colossus! Smash it or some shit!”

Eva drops a fireball on the console, and fails to damage it… but an unseen person beside it suddenly catches fire and loses their eyebrows. Leira felt somebody brush past her as well… she has no idea where they went. She screams in frustration -- Wail of the Banshee -- but fails to kill them.

Cardinal Barague attempts to implode Ruin and fails to get past his spell resistance. Marshall heals himself and then casts Dispel Magic on the control dome, trying to break the console. The machine warbles but keeps operating. He throws another one, but fails to get past spell resistance at all. Ruin rushes up and attacks the chair in front of the console, connecting with somebody.

Martini casts True Seeing and then moves up, elbows Ruin, and points at the target. The clerics continue to try to move silently, and are still pretty bad at it. Tavros gets hit by the colossus and goes down.

Eva heals him with Cure Critical. He crouches behind the balcony. Leira, meanwhile, hears the clankety-clank person and wails again. Cardinal Laroche becomes visible and melts like a Nazi at the Ark of the Covenant. Cardinal Barague attempts to Implode Eva but fails. He then drops a quickened Cure Critical on himself.

Marshall drops a Cure Serious Wounds, Mass, helping everyone except Geddy. He again attempts to Dispel Magic on the console, but fails. Ruin attacks the chair again and just annihilates the chair, but fails to damage the cleric behind it.

Martini goes to try to stab the guy, drops a dagger by accident, and then connects with the other dagger twice. Despite the difficulties, she manages to finish him off. The console is still active, however. The Colossus moves in and flattens Tavros again, then punches Eva for good measure.

Eva slides into the room, taking damage on the way, and finds herself confronted with a weird control panel. She promptly turns it off.

For the moment, everything here is dead or deactivated. Martini goes to check the room across from us, and promptly collects a Mass Hold Monster trap off the door. She then starts finessing the lock, and pops it open. There is a square barrier of Walls of Force in there, and also a big gelatinous cube. We… close and re-lock the door, and Ruin and Martini head down to check out the other downstairs room. It’s trapped, of course, and Martini collects a Wail of the Banshee trap. She tries the lock, fails, tries again, and still fails. She keeps at it, and after a while the door comes open.

It’s some sort of laboratory, with a pair of beholders in tanks at one end. There are some interesting-looking books and whatnot on the table. We yank four flesh golem manuals off the table, two scrolls of Mass Heal and two scrolls of Mass Harm. and a philosopher’s stone. Nobody steps inside, though.

A bit of additional searching reveals some broken cages, a variety of magical tools, and a bunch of potions and oils. There’s also a table that was clearly using for collecting organs and dissections. We pull a bunch of stuff out of the golem assembly room.

We move into the control room, set the colossus to guard us, and go to sleep.

We sleep through the night uninterrupted.

We wake up again, and resurrect Geddy. We Death Ward everybody.

Then we all go downstairs. Marshall walks into the room, pulls the Luck Blade out of our supplies, and uses its last remaining wish to banish the gelatinous cube. Geddy dispels the Walls of Force, and then…

We come up the stairs, which double back, and come into a long hallway lit by sconces on the wall; it’s about 90’ long. We see light streaming out of a central archway, and also a sort of sitting room to the side that also has doors open. Off to one side, on a sort of throne behind another wall of force, is Kas Luthien – the former High Provost, whom Ruin badly wants to murder.

So this was clearly the Dark One’s old throne room.

Luthien: “So, did you find the kings?”

Tavros: “Kings?”

Martini: “Only Mythrandril survived.”

Tavros looks at Ruin, who shrugs. As far as he remembers, that's true.

Luthien monologues that in two days Fanaxia and Sol Povos will be reunited, this tower will become the new center of the realm, and my queen Vecna will rule. “In fact, it’s too late already…”

He turns to a mirror, and the image of a woman appears. He introduces us as her enemies, come here to stop her plans.

Geddy starts trying to sell Vecna on the idea that A) we;re here to help, and B) Luthien has failed completely, as evidenced by the fact that we’re right here.

An anti-magic field settles over us. Eva starts writhing in pain and passes out. Luthien just looks at us: “I’ll be waiting for you on level six.” He teleports away; this divine anti-magic doesn’t affect Vecna’s servitors.

As he departs, more servitors arrive. They’re Girallons, the four-armed apes. They rush in and attack, pounding on Leira, missing Ruin. One of them hits Tavros. A couple more of them show up at the door. Martini: “Hello. My name is Fartathren. You killed my brother. Prepare to die.” Also, her primary dagger was a dagger of Vecna, and it still works just fine.

She moves to flank a Girallon and shreds it. Ruin does the same to the one next to him. He moves between Leira and the Girallon. Tavros charges the beast and attacks, damaging it. Geddy takes five foot step and fires off a bunch of crossbow bolts.

A girallon goes after Marshall, hitting him twice. Another one goes after Tavros, hitting him. Marshall starts slashing with his scythe and wipes out a girallon. Leira takes a step back and shoots her own crossbow at one of the girallons, hitting it. Martini finishes off another one.

Ruin clears out the two in the doorway, and Tavros finishes off the last one in the room. Geddy moves up to the door, notes a Girallon in the corridor, and puts a bolt in it. A girallon attacks Martini, hitting and doing a bunch of damage. Another one moves up and attacks Ruin, injuring him. Marshall charges and smacks the girallon; Leira’s staff still has some magic; she could use her 3/day Dark Bolt, possibly using the intensify ability. She decided to wait on that, though.

Martini is still in another room, dealing with another girallon, which she stabs a lot. It dies. Geddy calls us over and we make a quick inventory of our equipment. Leira has her staff, which still works; Martini’s dagger still works; Marshall’s scythe still works – we’re not sure why; and the formorian weapons we took earlier are functional. We pass out some of the arquebuses and flame blades.

There’s some people shuffling around inside the room. They’re waiting for us to open the door.

Martini: “Everybody get your weapons ready, they’re going to try to surprise us.” She unlocks the door, then looks around to make sure everyone is ready.

Geddy reaches out and opens the door. Martini comes through and murders the absolute shit out of the guy standing there. There are screams from behind her. Tavros enters the room and murders one of the Thoughts of Vecna; Ruin follows and swings at another, but misses. That one turns invisible. Leira decides to hang back.

The bodyguard rages and attacks Tavros, but misses. Marshall steps in and attacks the bodyguard, hitting him with the evil scythe and cutting him up. “Ha! That was nothing!”

Martini tumbles past the rest of us, then stabs the bodyguard. Geddy fires off the arqebus, and Tavros finishes the bodyguard off. Ruin finishes off the second Thought of Vecna, because his Tremorsense is still active. Ruin nabs a mithril chain shirt off one of the bodyguards; so does Martini. (That’ll give us each an extra +4 to AC, so remember that…)

We grab a bag of 11,000 gold and a Ring of Wizardry 3 which is useless to us now but still could be kind of cool if we ever shake this effect off.