Good!Party: The Great Priests of Vecna

We begin with the Hierophant Malafar and Cardinal Marcion vowing to try to stall… no, hurt the heroes so that Vecna might manage to manifest. We start dropping preparation spells.

Ruin has a vision of swarms of bugs covering everybody. Martini turns invisible and zips up the ceiling of the stairs and begins studying Cardinal Marcion. Ruin charges Malafar and hits him; Malafar grunts and evaporates into a swarm of flies. There’s a brief flicker of nearly invisible movement, and a moment later the room is full of locusts… except where Marcion is standing. 

Geddy starts singing to Inspire Greatness. Eva carries him up to the room and exhales fire all over the swarms. Malafar avoids the worst of the damage, and drops two quickened Mass Inflict Damage (Light); we avoid the worst of it, but still take some damage. He then attempts to cast Implosion, starting with Geddy. He fails to get past Geddy’s spell resistance. Marshall charges, and promptly discovers that swarms are immune to weapon damage. Tavros charges in, ignoring Malafar, and attacks Marcion; he misses.

Leira comes up the stairs and steps into the cone of no bugs, stopping just in front of Eva. She decides that this is her cue to use Time Stop, and uses it to lay down four Delayed Blast Fireballs… except, she’s an archmage, so she can shape her attacks so as not to hit any of our people. She clears the swarms out of most of the room and strips the fire protection from Marcion and Malafar; Marcion stubbornly heals himself and Malafar. Leira hides herself with Greater Invisibility.

Martini moves over behind Marcion, who sees her coming. They’ve got some kind of countermeasures in place. Martini stabs him anyway, and barely manages to hit. Ruin decides that he can’t really hurt Malafar, and charges Marcion and attacks him, doing some damage. Malafar swarms over to Leira, Eva, and Geddy, and drops a quickened Cure Critical Wounds on Marcion. He then drops Energy Drain on Leira and tries to nauseate Geddy, who shrugs it off. 

Geddy hits him with a power chord, and while Malafar shrugs off the worst of it he still does some damage and also absolutely blisters the air. Eva also avoids being nauseated, and casts Cure Critical on herself. Marcion casts Heal on himself. Then he does a quickened Inflict Moderate (to damage us and heal Malafar) and a quickened Resist Energy, then does it again. He doesn’t get past everybody’s spell resistance, but he does do some damage. Also, because he’s a swarm of carnivorous flies and swarming over Geddy and Eva, he does them some additional damage. Marshall casts Cure Critical Mass, to heal us and damage Malafar. 

Tavros straight up murders Marchion. 

Leira takes damage from standing in Malafar’s swarm. She takes a step to get out of it, and drops a quickened Fireball on Malafar, and then casts Time Stop. She drops a Delayed Blast Fireball and a Freezing Sphere which she converts to fire, doing a bunch of damage. His wounds heal slightly, as do Ruin’s. 

Martini attempts to Disintegrate Malafar, but does not get past his spell resistance. She moves away from Tavros and Ruin, and Ruin follows suit. Malafar uses Harm to restore himself (he’s undead), then drops a quickened Greater Spell Immunity on himself. He also elongates his swarm to cover Leira again. 

Geddy plays another power chord, slashing through the swarm of flies with the power of Rock’n’Roll. Eva shifts position and then breathes fire all over the swarm of flies. Malafar again avoids the worst of it, but takes some damage. Marshall casts Searing Light on the swarm of undead bugs, then does it again. Leira steps back again and hits the bugs with Scorching Ray. She adds a quickened scorching ray that kills him. Geddy: “Take that, bitch-ass flies!”

We should really immediately charge up the stairs and take on Vecna, while we still have all our buffs in place. Marshall can heal us on the way.