18.2: "Are you sure this is a playground?"

Dramatis Personae

Beltin (Aasimar Dirge Bard/Cleric 12).

"Jake" aka Alex, the actual character name but I refuse to go back and edit the old entries (Human Wizard/Rogue 12). MISSING PLAYER

Zai (Human Tetori Monk/Lore Warden Fighter 12).

Glory, aka the Righteous Wrath of Heaven or something similar (Aasimar Synthesist Summoner/Bloodrager 12).

"Are you sure this is a playground?", Session 18.2 - 11/14/14

Day 48

The "Break Room"

The "break room" is dominated by a fairly large table with long benches on either side, and the table is filled platters of various meats, cheeses, and breads suitable for making sandwiches. Also on the table is a covered silver platter. A glance with detect magic/poison and knowledge rolls identify the food as safe to eat and, surprisingly, not from a sentient race.

Continual Light comes from a sconce on each wall and on the other end of the room the party sees an open doorway leading a darker room, but one filled with the fire light, and from that room the party can hear a fire crackling in a fireplace.

As Glory was tortured and starved for about a week, he prepares to eat from the table once it is clearly safe, but decides to lift the lid on the covered platter first. He does so and looks into the blank, staring eyes of a child's severed head. Appetite lost.

The party continues into the next room and sees a couple large comfortable looking chairs sitting on a rug in front of fireplace containing the previously seen and heard fire. There is a small table between the chairs containing an almost full bottle of brandy and a few crystalline glasses. A closer look reveals the rug to be made of human hair and skin.

At the other end of the room is a well, a closed door, and a bookcase.

Beltin examines the bookcase and finds several disturbing looking tomes, mostly in abyssal. Most seem to be the equivalent of trashy romance novels, but two stand out: "The 37 Lessons of Orcus," a banned heretical tome supposedly detailing the life of Orcus; and "The Book of Suffering," another banned tome, this one THE comprehensive guide to inflicting pain and supposedly authored by the demon lord Shax, a torture connoisseur.

Beltin decides to take them both because you never know and he notices a bookmark in The Book of Suffering. He opens to the page and sees it is to a passage describing the use of psychological torture. It suggests keeping the victim off guard, never sure of when danger will strike, to disguise danger as safety and safety as danger.

It continues to use the example of offering genuine aid to the victim, say food and water to one dying of starvation and thirst, but place the aid in such a position where they will refuse it due to their own paranoia and even starve to death with salvation an arm's reach away. Always hilarious to watch, says the book.

This sounds quite familiar, thinks Beltin, and as he thinks this the party hears a high, terrifying wail from the darkness of the well. The party jumps and prepares for battle, but nothing follows. Cautiously they look down inside and see a small mechanical siren clearly designed just to fray the nerves of those already on edge.

"Fucking playground," thinks the party, and Glory again asks if the whole material plane is like this with disgust in his voice.

Beltin goes back to the bookcase for one last look and what is this? Secret compartment on the bottom of the shelf? Oh yes, here's where all the loot will be! He opens it and... reflex! The needle trap misses him and inside is the equivalent of "HA HA HA" written in Abyssal. Fucking playground.

The party heads through the next door and finds themselves facing another crudely made maze, and as they step out of the break room they feel themselves leaving the aura of preservation.

Back to the grind. On the ground is another blood trail and the words "SAFE PATH" are written in blood at the beginning. Seems dubious thinks the party, but they begin to follow it.

The home stretch

The safe path proves to be safe as the party continues on, but at one point they notice that they can see the other side of the blood trail across a gap in the walls. Shortcut? Shortcut! They take it and find a trap. Yay, traps! Eventually ahead they see a small flickering light, like a small flame. The blood trail takes them to it and they realize they seem to have hit the actual wall of the room.

The light is coming from a pile of glowing coals (perpetually glowing, as in magically enchanted to not go out) in a forge set in along the wall. Next to it is an anvil and a rack of tools. Looking further along the actual wall of the room they found, the party sees other forges setup at intervals; no Wall of Stone blocks the path between them, but the blood trail leads away in a different direction.

The party decides that they are done with the maze and are just going to walk the perimeter of the room now until they find the next door. As they decide this they walk closer to the anvil and suddenly a previously invisible rune flares up on its service. Fireball trap!

The fireball does minimal damage, but after it goes off, Glory notices movement in what he mistook for a scrap pile set into the alcove. It's another one of those weird metal skull things with wire all around it! And it's reaching a wire out to touch the anvil... this time Beltin sees it and recognizes it for what it is, a Gearghost.

That would explain all the traps they found, he thinks, but there must be quite a few of them around to make all this happen. Beltin explains it is resetting the trap as the gearghost touches the anvil... and resets the trap! With one round before it re-triggers, Zai and Glory easily destroy it with a full attack and then Glory, with his already cast Resist Energy Fire, just lays down on the anvil and absorbs pretty much the whole fireball with no ill effects. Crisis averted.

Before moving on the party examines the gearghost one last time and then notice what looks like a hilt in the scrap pile it had been hiding in. Cautiously they investigate and find an adamantine dagger just laying there for centuries apparently. Glory is all for taking it before realizing that the sigil of the Tower of Weeping Sores is engraved on the blade... and then he just drops it. Beltin decides the symbol doesn't offend his delicate sensibilities and stashes it.

The party continues along the wall and around a corner, finding a few more mechanical traps at times, but is mostly unaffected. Then ahead is mist. More mist. An obscuring cloud actually and it is blocking their way. The party does not like the idea of going through, but they certainly aren't going back now. Beltin tries to dispel the cloud but his dice hate him and so it stays.

Eventually they decide to just man the fuck up and walk in. Zai goes first and one thing he immediately notices is that it suddenly became quiet. Too quiet. Supernaturally quiet. He tries to communicate this to the others and realizes he can't and the others outside ask him what is happening and he doesn't hear them. Silence does that.

He steps out and explains and the party deliberates a tiny bit more before manning up for real this time and just walking in. About 30 feet into the mist they find a door, this one surprisingly not trapped when Zai opens it. The mist ends at the doorway and he steps inside to a fairly small antechamber with another door about 15 feet in.

On the wall is a message in blood: "EXIT: Congratulations you have escaped from the Tower of Weeping Sores! You may count yourself among the other (here is a nail with small sign hanging on it with "0" on it) lucky guests to do so! We hope you enjoyed your stay and feel free to sign the guest book!"

Next to the door marked exit is a small lectern with a tattered looking book on it, opening to a page covered in blood splatter. A small inkwell and quill sit next to it untouched. Apparently General Mirak and his circle are actually really good sports about people escaping.

Yeah, that's not happening, thinks Glory and he walks forward from the mist and to the entry door, Zai directly behind him, and Beltin in the rear. About halfway across the antechamber Glory feels the silence end, but when he pushes open the door, suddenly another large rune flashes on the ceiling.

A black serpent made of smoke lashes down and strikes him the chest and Glory finds himself Sepia Snake Sigil'd on the threshold of the doorway out of the playground. So much for the owners being good sports and the game not being rigged. That kind of cheating wouldn't stand in Heaven, Glory would surely think if he wasn't trapped in stasis.

Zai moves forward to check on Glory as it is clear the trap is expended and behind him Beltin moves into the antechamber. Or he would like to, but...

While Glory was getting trapped and Zai was distracted, the reason for the Obscuring Mist and Silence became clear, at least to Beltin, as the hidden Crimson Death made its presence known by attempting to envelop him, which is not good for the squishy caster.

As the crimson death gets ready to gorge itself, Zai makes his perception check and notices something is amiss and turns to see Beltin facing his inevitable-if-fought-alone-in-magically-silenced-area death, and runs back to change that.

He pulls the mist like creature off of Beltin and begins to do what he does best and wrestle it. The crimson death wrestles back, but finds itself outmatched. It tries to flee back into the mist and safety, but Zai catches it and puts it down. Another crisis averted, but about that issue in the next room...

Beltin offers homage and promises of blood sacrifice to his d20 and this time it favors him: He manages to dispel the sepia snake binding Glory and now they have escaped the playground! They step through the doorway into the next room and find themselves in a vast, but mostly decrepit looking armory.

They savor their victory as with the playground defeated, the Tower of Weeping Sores is surely ready to fall, right?

Right?

End of Session. No casualties.

Out of Game Notes: The "Playground" area is used by the general and his associates as entertainment as well as a test of worthiness for which guests deserve more personal attention. Prisoners are normally thrown into the cell Beltin was placed in and then freed at a set time by the skeletal guard (hence the watch) and left to run the gauntlet while suffering from both the normal horror of their situation, but also drug induced hallucinations, as experienced by Glory. The general and his people find it hilarious to watch.

Normally people of the party's caliber would not be down there, especially not so armed and especially not in a group, but such was the circumstance here. Most former victims were common folk and certainly weren't armed to the teeth and high level adventurers. The modified sepia snake sigil trap was placed to catch the (very) few that made it out of the playground under those rather fixed circumstances. Strangely no one who made it that far ever stopped to sign the book.

If you could beat those odds, being stripped, tortured, drugged, alone, and forced to run through a nightmarish gauntlet of traps, then obviously you would be worth keeping as a "guest" in the upper tower. The general enjoys meeting people with spirit... and then breaking it.

Which will be where Jake starts his session off.

18.1: "The Material Plane is awful!"

Dramatis Personae

Beltin (Aasimar Dirge Bard/Cleric 12).

"Jake" aka Alex, the actual character name but I refuse to go back and edit the old entries (Human Wizard/Rogue 12). MISSING PLAYER

The Smith (LN Half-Giant Aegis/Psychic Warrior 11). RETIRED CHARACTER

Zai (Human Tetori Monk/Lore Warden Fighter 12).

Glory, aka the Righteous Wrath of Heaven or something similar (Aasimar Synthesist Summoner/Bloodrager 12). The Smith replacement character. The polar opposite of Vol, Glory is a heavenly diplomat as well as an instrument of Heaven's fury against evil.

Even in the high Heavens there is bureaucracy and councils that debate policy issues, and one issue of contention has been the whispers of some lurking peril in the ruins of the once great bastion of darkness, Tsar. Eventually it was decided that a decision about what to do could not be made without more information, and thus Glory was chosen to investigate and evaluate the situation on the material plane.

He descended from the Heavens and found himself on the northern side of the Desolation. He was told to go south and there he would meet men of righteousness on a crusade against evil and that they would help him on his mission. But, as it was his first time on the material plane and the fact that he was bad with directions, Glory ended up mistaking the city of Tsar for the Camp and walked toward it. In the night, demons from the the Tower of Weeping Sores ambushed him and dragged him back to their master.

For a week straight Glory was tortured by General Mirak and his right hand men for both information and sport. They found the idea of an army of angels descending upon them especially humorous.

Then as a new round of "fun" was about to begin, the general was pulled aside and informed of something that interested him greatly. He told Glory he would speak with him later and left him in his cage. He pulled out an amulet from beneath his armor. It glowed briefly and then Glory found himself teleported to a dingy room filled with cages and rusty torture implements.

About 30 minutes later Zai appeared in a cage not far from his, and Glory rejoiced for clearly this meant that the armies of Heaven were assaulting the fortress and coming to save him. Yeah, about that...

"The Material Plane is awful!", Session 18.1 - 11/14/14

As the person making Glory got confused and made him at 12th level instead of 11th, to cut back on confusion and to be fair the party DINGS to level 12. Don't ask for another level at the end of this dungeon because it ain't happening now.

Day 48

Prison break!

Glory is most joyous upon seeing Zai arrive and asks if the forces of St. Alexander (I have no idea...) have come to deliver him from evil and smite the wicked, and at this question Zai is just as confused as the DM.

"Well, I don't know if I would call him a saint," starts Zai, thinking of his amoral mercenary boss Jake/Alex. And then what is really happening comes to light. Bunch of stupid adventurers walked in and quickly got in over their heads. Teleport trap. Captured. So on. Glory is mildly disappointed to say the least, but the two decide they should make their escape.

As his new temp cage isn't magic suppressing, Glory calls forth some of his righteous heavenly wrath, aka summons eidolon suit and rages. That cage didn't know what hit it. At this point the eidolon would get described, but who can remember that shit? It will have to wait for next time.

He then breaks Zai's cage open and the two of them take a closer look around the room. Yep, still looks as bad as it did before from inside the cages, but they notice that in one of the full body cages next to where Glory was detained is the skeletal remains of a man covered in black robes. Knowledge check? Yep, those totally belonged to the priesthood of Orcus. That's weird, thinks the two of them, but yeah better things to do then ponder this mystery.

They make perception checks, fail, and then move toward the exit to the room flanked by the four iron maidens. If they had made it the perception check they would have realized that one of them closest to the door had changed position slightly since they broke free. Instead this comes as a surprise to them when as the near the door, one of the iron maidens flies open and a zombified corpse is ejected, hungry for brains.

Initiative and Glory goes first and throws everything he has at the zombie. It is just a zombie. Like a 1/2 CR zombie. It dies, but "just as planned" thinks the DM: Waste that full attack. As this happens there is another perception check to be made and Zai gets it. The way that zombie came out? It didn't push open the door and lunge, it was forcefully thrown out. With this in mind he looks suspiciously at the iron maiden in time to not be flatfooted when it quickly dashes forward toward him.

Surprise, it's an Iron Maiden Golem! The DM loves this creature so much.

It is open wide, ready to give him a deadly hug. The lid slams down on him and tries to scoop him in, but unfortunately for the golem, it is trying to grapple the grapple master. Zai is nearly closed in but manages to jam his arm into hinges to keep it open, and oh wow does that door slamming hurt.

With the element of surprise gone, the golem goes down quickly not too long after and mostly uneventfully as it never does get to feel Zai inside of it. As a side note, I wonder if the party would take Craft Construct if they knew it only costs 30,000 to make one of these things.

With the battle done, the two go to the door, find it open, and step out of the torture room. They are now in a prison. Cells everywhere with a hallway snaking between them. The cells they see are either empty or have old corpses inside. On the floor is a dried blood trail that is interrupted at times with arrows, also in blood, pointing to in one direction. In common, and also in blood, they see the word EXIT painted on the floor next to the pointing arrow.

How nice of someone to make a blood trail to show people the way out, they think. Seems legit. As they ponder whether to follow the arrow way of the blood trail or follow it backward (as there is no way not involving a blood trail), they hear a loud clanking sound from the non-arrow way, like someone is running a tin cup across the bars of his cell.

They decide to investigate that.

Back in his magically suppressed cell, Beltin contemplates his options and after a while hears what may be the distant sounds of combat (perhaps against an Iron Maiden Golem). He doesn't know what that means, so decides to do what St. Alexander would almost certainly approve of, help himself.

He rattles something metallic against the bars of the cell and tries to call forth his supernatural bardic powers over undeath and make that fucking skeleton walk him over the key. He finds his bardic magic also suppressed, but makes a lovely racket. And then he hears people approaching.

Around the corner walks Zai and some sort of angelic abomination, which based on the glowing caste mark, he recognizes as an eidolon. The skeleton turns toward the newcomers, hostile, and quickly goes down. On its ribs they find a key as well as a pocket watch. They open the cell door for Beltin, introduce themselves, and then examine the watch.

In regards to introductions, there is usual awkwardness surrounding Beltin but it mostly goes unsaid as it's not like he has an undead menagerie with him right now. Upon learning Glory's story and seeing the eidolon, Beltin is reminded of a "heretical" dissertation he had read concerning the strange forms taken by both some evil outsiders as well as angels.

The theory proposed that such beings were simply channeling the power known on the material plane as "eidolon," though perhaps to a greater mastery than commonly seen. It proposed that the "divine" beings were hardly divine so much as shaping their own forms with arcane magic and were actually not much different in reality than the other races.

The author of that work was burned, so Beltin decides not to ask Glory about the truth of those sentiments. He examines the pocket watch found on the skeleton and determines that it is magical; looks like it is an alarm clock that can be magically set from somewhere else and there is seemingly no way to tell when it will go off.

Correctly assuming that if they take the magical trinket it will go off at the most inconvenient time for them, the party decides to leave it on the broken skeleton.

Back down the blood trail goes the party. It winds them through the cell block. As the party goes they notice small silver mirrors on the walls at random intervals and a knowledge check recognizes them as sensors for scrying. Security cameras. The party breaks the ones they see and continue on. The blood trail leads to a large reinforced door. Written on the wall next to it in blood is a single word: "PLAYGROUND."

That claim seems dubious, but it is the only way out. It may even be fun, says Glory, thinking of what playgrounds are like in Heaven. Clearly he has never been to the material plane, and certainly not to a bastion of evil and despair like the Tower of Weeping Sores.

The "Playground"

Glory opens the door and has to make a fort save. Contact poison on the door? Excellent! He makes his save, but as he starts to look around things begin to seem... off. Glory is now high on fear inducing hallucinogenic!

Ahead the party sees rough stone walls at odd irregular angles, seemingly constructed without rhyme or reason, perhaps through many, many castings of Wall of Stone. It is a labyrinth, and the blood trail ends at the beginning. Only darkness and silence awaits.

The next section of the dungeon is the party moving through the claustrophobic passages, first quickly, and then rather slowly once they realized it is full of traps. Darts spit from a wall, there is a pit with spikes and razors that rip your leg as you pull it out, spears from the ceiling, and, of course, obvious pressure plates that spring no trap and are simply there to sow paranoia. More scrying sensor mirrors also appear at seemingly random intervals along the walls.

As the party advances, they begin to catch sight of small flying figures dodging around the maze around them. Glory gets the best look at one of the creatures, a skull suspended in a mass of coils and wires, but by this time he is beginning to realize that his nerves are shot and he is beginning to doubt his perceptions, especially when he started seeing blood running down the walls that no one else could. He doesn't recognize the creature for what it is at any rate.

As they go, Glory rants about the "playground," about how anyone could call this one. This is not how things are done in Heaven, he continues. This isn't right.

"The material plane is awful!" he concludes.

They continue on until finally they find a door, which Zai opens. A needle shoots out from the handle, but he pulls his hand back in time. This act becomes a theme for the rest of the maze, with Zai immediately opening doors without looking for traps that are always there and always the same. At least he has good reflex and always made it.

The party enters into a large hallway. Here too there are random walls of stone blocking straight progress, but they are more haphazard and function less as a maze and more as dividers in the hall to block line of sight to the ends.

At this point perception checks are called for and very faintly the party can hear the sound of a an alarm clock ringing back the way they came, waaaay back.

The party picks one of the two possible ways and begins to walk and as they round a corner Glory sees an emancipated man in rags against the wall. Glory is concerned and begins to move forward and ask the man if he is okay.

As he does so the figure turns to him and begins to scream as it claws out its own eyes with ragged fingernails. And then the figure is gone. It was never then to begin with, but Glory's obvious reaction gives Beltin enough motive to try a heal check.

Check made. Yep, Glory is hallucinating. Tripping balls in fact. A Remove Poison stops that and only then does Glory realize how trippy everything had been since the playground sign, but it does not change the fact that this is not how playgrounds are supposed to be.

At the end of the hall they see two ways to proceed. Straight on is a door and to the left the hallway turns but the way forward there is blocked by a strange fog, seemingly a permanent Obscuring Mist effect. Out of game and not shared with the players, that way is also about 100 feet or so away from one of the two exits out of the area.

The party decides to do the door, Zai opening and triggering the trap of course. Inside they see more stone walls forming a maze, but directly off to one side they see a pile of rotting corpses. Beltin immediately perks up, hoping they belong to him, but a brief glance shows these are just normal dead people. Probably commoners. Not even worth the effort of bringing back.

Still they can't leave the dead like this says Zai and Glory, so they move up to the bodies to cleanse them by fire. As they move up they notice slightly movement from the mound and get ready. They blast the corpses with fire and screeches and a mass of blackness erupts from the burning flesh and rushes toward them.

Shadow Rat Swarm! Fortunately this swarm can be hurt by weapon damage and it goes down easily after the initial blast, with the few remaining rats slipping through the walls incorporeal. They continue around a few corners and see light ahead.

They advance into a open room seemingly free of dangers and as they enter they feel themselves move through a magical barrier of sorts. They easily identify this magic as warding this room against corruption, both from age and from vermin. On the wall is another large written word: "BREAK ROOM."

To be continued...

17: Got you now, you son of a bitch

Dramatis Personae

Beltin (Aasimar Dirge Bard/Cleric 11).

"Jake" aka Alex, the actual character name but I refuse to go back and edit the old entries (Human Wizard/Rogue 11).

The Smith (LN Half-Giant Aegis/Psychic Warrior 11). MISSING PLAYER

Zai (Human Tetori Monk/Lore Warden Fighter 11). New in town and looking to be prove his worth as a bad ass, mostly by wrestling everything he meets into submission and then breaking bones. As the Greed Elementals are growing in fame (and infamy) in the Camp, he hears of them and seeks them out. A new handy recruiting poster commissioned by Yohan, created by the acolyte of death Augustine, and hung around camp helps with that endeavor. Perhaps more back story will appear if he survives. If.

Got you now, you son of a bitch, Session 17 - 10/31/14

Day 43-47

The party hands over possession of the firebase to the crusader force and begins the walk back to town with the Greed Elementals in tow. It takes two days to get back to camp with such a large number traveling together and in those two days two Greed Elementals are slain by the dangers of the Desolation (i.e. "Ambient Warfare). 22 recruits remain.

Back in Camp the party rests and gets ready for the excursion into Tsar and the outer fortress of Dirash Kiarut. In this time Jake learns of the new recruitment posters (an elemental made of coins with a cigar in his mouth, which is being lit by a coin that is on fire) and groans, but 4 new grunts have joined. Around this time Zai shows up to audition for the crew and after wrestling Yohan into submission and breaking many of his ribs, he is in as a commissioned officer and Yohan refuses medical attention out of pride and decides to walk it off.

Day 48

Getaway (Jake) and Word of Recall (Beltin) are cast in the Camp just in case things go bad (and do they!)

The party teleports back to the outside of the firebase; Smith stays at Camp to do some smithing. Work is being down on the firebase to make it more defensible and the crusader grunts doing the work seem happy to see them as well as a bit star-struck; it's not everyday you meet people who single handedly defeat undead armies and fearsome tar dragons. Jake tells them to get back to work and the party departs into wastes and toward Tsar.

They approach Dirash Kiarut, the massive outer fortress that protects the main gates of Tsar. It is a place of ill repute; besides guarding the gates, the tower was known for its torturers and its sadistic commander, the General Mirak. It is said no one ever escaped from the fortress and the inner sanctum of the commander, the Tower of Weeping Sores, was a place of such suffering and depravity that it made the Abyss itself seem tame. Probably just rumors and ghost stories though.

The party finds one of the two massive outer gates leading to the courtyard of the fortress ajar as expected; it is barely open but the crack is wide enough for several men on horses to ride through side by side. The fortress itself sits above these gates. As the party enters the gates, siege undead (see notes) on catwalks high above stand and drop stones. And nearly kill the party due to lucky rolls causing every stone to hit, plus the massive damage bonus from the height of the drop.

The party makes quick work of the undead once they get up to them (yay teleporting or in Zai's case, extensive parkouring). The party proceeds toward the bailey, but this time more cautiously. The path ahead is fairly contained between the outer walls and the walls of the fortress, but ahead it opens. The party sees undead with bows and arrows waiting on the walls, unmoving.

They send undead forward until the the undead on the walls take notice and begin firing and as this happens, other undead in the bailey burst up from the shallow graves they had been buried in. It's not much of a fight, but they have numbers on their side. The party advances and begin making short work of the undead, but in the middle of the bailey is a strange pointed tower made of iron and from it arrows rain down on the party from slits near the top.

Unfortunately, a botch from the that tower later lets Zai make a will save; all those seemingly invincible archers in that tower? Illusions. Well, one less thing to worry about. The massive number of low level undead go down easily as expected (especially as the particularly stupid ones keep on trying to attack the biggest threat, skeletal Mallerix with his 40 AC) but the party isn't feeling good due to those lucky rock drops at the beginning and resources have been burned.

JustAsPlanned.jpg

With that done, the party turns toward the fortress itself and approach its massive doors. They see that the large reinforced doors are actually ajar. Perhaps the denizens of the Tower of Weeping Sores like visitors.

Inside the entryway is a long straight hallway leading to another set of large double doors. There are open portcullises in the hall, seemingly ready to drop to keep out or trap invaders, and along the walls at intervals are closed off arrow slits. The party cautiously opens one and inside sees siege undead with spears waiting passively for some condition to be triggered. Perception checks above reveal murder holes in the ceiling. The hallway is totally not an ambush.

So, as the hallway is an ambush, Jake casts Open/Close on the hidden hatch of one of the murder holes and out falls a large jar, which crashes on the floor. Behold, the Vescavor Swarm contained inside. The party fights the swarm and realizes how ill equipped they are to deal with swarms, especially swarms with decent reflex saves and fire resistance. Eventually it dies though, as alas, it is but CR 5.

That sucked and we aren't doing great overall, thinks the party, but we have escape methods. So onward they go. Jake Opens/Closes the next hatch; pot of some sort of napalm-esque substance. Next hatch: Nothing. Next hatch: Nothing. So either it is now save to proceed, or something is manning those murder holes and, realizing what was happening, just moved the defenses off of the trap doors to save them for manual delivery. The party goes with option 1 and walks down the hall way, undead Mallerix first.

And halfway down the hall, the inevitable and highly ambush springs for real. The gates crash down, trapping and separating the party! The holes on the wall open as masses of spears stab out into the mass of bodies! Small flasks drop down from the murder holes and explode to reveal... wait, is that Cloudkill? Yep.

Jake teleports everyone forward toward the inner set of double doors and out of the Cloudkill and the incessant stabbing of the undead in their defensive positions. The undead ignore the stabs and the cloud that doesn't affect them and begin to break down the dropped (and actually animated) portcullises, but it takes a couple rounds for each.

Zai decides to see what is in the next room and opens the doors. Ahead he sees a large alcove and a set of much larger and more heavily reinforced doors on the walls to the left and right he sees more double doors. The ceiling is high and it looks like there is a balcony of sorts above those double doors and he sees what might just be more siege undead with bows standing as if awaiting orders.

And then those two sets of double doors get kicked open and out emerge three large, reddish apes with black curled back horns and a large extra mouth filled with gnashing sharp teeth in their chests. Baregara. Behind them comes another ape like figure, but this one has no mouth chest. Instead it has the head of a horned bear and its fur is matted with dried blood. Chaaor demon.

They all wear a collar bearing the symbol of the Tower of Weeping Sores, a tower with the sigil of Orcus above, and they all also happen to look pissed. The baregara move up to Zai, ready for the slaughter, while the Chaaor stands back and watches. It seems like they are expecting an easy fight and they grab Zai and begin to cry out their fury as they slam him into their creepy chest mouths.

Remember the part where they tried to grapple Zai? That was where they dun goofed. Zai, with his ability to do three grapple checks per turn, grapple multiple enemies with no negatives, and crush the very constitution from their bodies, makes them regret their decision. One of the beasts cries out as it gets its arm broken and then pinned while Zai, still pinning it, gets the next into a headlock. They try to reverse some grapples, but this turns out to be a losing proposition for them.

The last baregara sees this struggle and thinks "fuck that." And then beyond Zai and the grapple fest he sees Beltin and Jake. And they see he sees and he sees that they see he sees. And he grins and moves forward. Jake of course Emergency Force Spheres himself to safety, which only enrages the beast and makes it relish slamming Beltin into his chest mouth all the more satisfying.

Zai finishes off his opponents, leaving only the Chaaor ahead and the baregara behind him, and heads back to teach the one grappling Beltin a lesson on the finer points of the fine art of wrestling. As this happens the undead finish breaking down the gates and are nearly able to rejoin the party.

It seems momentum has swung in the party's direction and sure they could just finish off these two demons, but then what? This is only the entryway to the fortress after all and everyone is feeling the strain, reasons Jake, and he makes a fateful decision. He triggers Getaway and everyone accepts.

As he is pulled into the void of time and space between appearing and disappearing, Jake immediately knows something is not right and suddenly there is a flash of red in his mind, some malevolent intelligence trying to force its way in. Jake rolls Will, fails, and so it does. A rush of fragmented memories crash through his mind, unbidden, and the vague red presence scouring his mind seems intrigued.

And then everyone in the party is violently yanked back into being, though wherever they are, it is certainly not where Getaway intended and each is alone.

Zai finds himself in a dingy torture chamber in a cage so small that he can only sit hunched over. Along the walls are more cages like his and some contain skeletons, perhaps left here to starve to death. He sees other cages as well, some in a vaguely humanoid shape so the occupant would only be able to stand immobile. In the center of the room is a slab with straps and next to it is a small table covered with rusty instruments of torture.

There is one exit and it is flanked by four iron maidens, three rusty and in disrepair and one that still looks in prime condition. Zai ponders what to do and then he hears a small cough from another cage off to his side and realizes he is not the only prisoner here.

Beltin lands on the stone floor of a small prison cell with nothing but some broken bones on the floor for company. Immediately upon arrival he realizes that something is wrong. He feels no connection with his powers or his magic. It is suppressed and that certainly bodes ill. He stands up and brushes himself off and outside his cell across the hall way he sees a large skeleton standing with a set of keys strung on one of its broken ribs, seemingly mocking him and his current inability to just dominate it and have it deliver his freedom.

While Beltin and Zai were put on hold, Jake finds himself in a moderately sized cage and shackled. He too finds his magic suppressed. Jake looks around and sees that he is not alone. There is a man in black polished armor standing and a ragged looking bandanna covering one eyes, as if for a make shift bandage. Below the bandana Jake can see a slight opening that shows not blood and tissue, but blackness inside, like there is nothing beneath the skin.

The man introduces himself as the master of the tower, General Mirak. He says that he is quite looking forward to making Jake's acquaintance and he wants to know all about him. And Jake will tell him everything, he continues, spreading his arms as if inviting Jake to look around the room.

It too is a torture chamber, but while Zai's is dingy and seemingly abandoned, a place for amateurs, this room is covered with polished, gleaming instruments of all kinds, ready for any torment that the master torturer could dream to inflict.

The room is spotless, almost sterile looking, but then again everything in the room from the instruments, to the chairs, to the tables, to the walls, to the floor, to the ceiling all look as though they were made to be exceptionally easy to clean. Probably for good reason.

Jake says the general just has to ask and Jake will tell him whatever he wants to know. The general smiles.

End of Session. Two Greed Elemental grunts killed.

Notes: The basic low level undead encountered outside and inside the fortress as well as Tsar en masse are mostly not merely skeletons or zombies. Beltin has heard of these kind of creatures and knows they are called siege undead and come in three basic varieties: Meatmen, Bonemen, and Sandmen.

Rumor says that when the Armies of Tsar began to become depleted in the battle with the Army of Light, some strange being came to the Disciples of Orcus and offered them a solution to their problem. He said he could make three undead soldiers out of a single corpse and this seemed like a good deal. He was hired.

Meatmen are the muscles from a corpse on a wire frame and have some low level intelligence as they get to keep the brain; Bonemen are made from the bones of the corpse and held together by a wire interweaved throughout the skeleton; and Sandmen are made from the peeled skin, stuffed with sand and then animated.