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.
