Three lunatics and a paladin, once more.
Dramatis Personae:
Viepuck and Izgil, who have complicated magical theory shit going on
Celyn and Robin, who hit things and heal people
When we left off we had retrieved an evil sphere and yelled for help answering what to do with it.
We are currently probably the second most powerful adventuring party that's in this region. (The third most powerful is working for us.) We are a seventh level party.
The most powerful adventuring party? 13th or 14th level. We are working for them, at least at the moment. The difference in scope between parties here is immense.
In any case, they give us our choice of three locations where they could meet us to collect the cursed item we are carrying. One, down near Veltor, the barony capital, which is close to the attention of the Baroness who we believe just put this damned thing in the cursed ruin we extracted it from. Two, up in the hills in a mining village roughly a week's journey away. Three, deep in the Greenwood the Great (Mike said 'Mirkwood' but it's not explicitly twisted like Mirkwood, it's just, you know, Old As Balls) by a particularly tall tree, roughly a three day hike west.
We immediately eliminate the 'taunt the probable necromancer' option and go for 'shortest time before we hand off the nasty thing', thus aiming into the Old As Balls forest. We (in mild retcon) stash the horses in a less cursed portion of the ruined wizard academy to graze, because they're not going to do any good in that sort of forest and it is more dangerous to bring them than leave them. They are more likely to be okay for a week there than with us, since actual predators can't get in. We head off.
The forest is a pain in the ass to get a direct route in, due to being overgrown and complicated and not having underbrush die-off and so on, so we pick our way westward steadily but without too much eventfulness. Es*tiaslos does some scouting to try to find more plausible routes, we putter along and eventually find a place to make camp. Carrying the very cursed artifact is very unpleasant, because being near it is like having a constant case of moderate paranoia and being convinced one is being watched/heard/stalked. When we settle down to sleep, Izgil hits it with a dispel to turn it off, which lasts through Robin's watch, more or less; after that people have to make a check against nightmares, and Robin and Viepuck do not sleep well despite the soothing influence of Robin's lantern.
As Celyn is finishing up his watch, he spots an odd pool of shadow gathering around the box containing the cursed item, and being a moderately impulsive cleric whose primary manifestation of divine power is literal light, he casts light on the box.
Mike the GM: ... roll initiative.
The pool of shadows emits a horrifying ghostly shadow creature, which screams, thereby solving the 'wake the party up' problem nicely. Celyn bounces back from it and blasts it with radiant energy, which does not seem to do extra damage to it, unfortunately, so he blithely falls back to his usual procedure of stabbing the shit out of things. As the chaos resolves into a meaningful fight, several other shadows manifest, one of them managing to get a fear effect off on Robin (which Celyn dealt with by stabbing the shadow to death).
We fight off the screaming horrifying shadows and try to go back to sleep, which works better for some than others. Celyn tries to deal with the fact that Robin failed his save by putting a divine protection on his dreams and Robin insists he should try it on Viepuck instead (Viepuck is happy to be a participant in magical experimentation!), so he gets that, but it is largely ineffective because it can't shield from an effect already in place.
We get up eventually. Izgil has to orienteer them towards the west, a process Celyn is interested in (he has been dabbling in learning orienteering from Izgil to the extent that his attention span allows it, which means 'decent on the practical, not great on the theory'), and we putter along.
Eventually the puttering spills us out into a clearing made by a fallen tree (now rotten), which contains ... a very, very lifelike statue of a grazing deer.
After some preparation, Izgil investigates it and confirms that this is infinitely more likely to be petrification than some master stone sculptor who has completed a legendary work and abandoned it in the middle of a clearing in the deep haunted forest. Especially as there's a scrape under one of the hooves that seems reasonably fresh....
We pool our thoughts and come to the conclusion that 'basilisk' is most likely given the terrain, though there isn't a wetland nearby (they like wetlands), and Viepuck goes and asks the statue if it's seen any big lizards lately.
The statue: "I was born from the gaze of a wet lizard." After some interrogation, the statue was created when the sun was young, and we go Excellent, Thank You and proceed to edge away from the direction the deer was staring when it was stoned on our way west. The progress through the forest was enhanced in general pleasantness by an incoming rainstorm.
Then we realized we couldn't hear the rain.
Then Izgil figured out that the rain was causing the silence effect. Natural phenomenon, rogue spell, enemy action? We did not know. We angled into the wind so as to clear the storm faster.
Then Greymalkin spotted something, just as Robin's hammer flashed a warning: the basilisk, lying in wait. It charged in, bit Robin's leg savagely, and darted back into the undergrowth, its camouflage making it hard to spot. Celyn - who can spot things as a bonus action rather than having to take a full action to do so - saw it circling around to attack Izgil, and shot it, because shooting the thing is a good way of indicating where it is when one can't yell "It's over there" due to silencing rain.
It then proceeds to bowl Izgil over and grievously wound him, so, y'know, can't have everything. But we all knew where the basilisk was!
We all, also, spent a while rummaging around in our respective spell lists to figure out if there's any damn things we can do with them in the silence effect. Viepuck has illusions (and something I've forgotten), Izgil is at 'I can shape earth and water?', Celyn could do a disguise illusion, a minor illusion, and a damage cantrip... that does thunder (sound) damage. I suggest to Izgil's player that he shape earth himself a ledge to hide under as an umbrella, which turns into a "CAN I SHAPE WATER MYSELF AN UMBRELLA?" and an impromptu GM judgement about umbrella capacity.
Robin smites the thing with his sparkly smite such that it is faerie-fired. Viepuck conjures up his illusion-performance mastery and with the help of his familiar (clinging to the back of the thing's head) casts a bucket over the basilisk's face to make it harder for anyone to make accidental eye contact.
Me: FUCKIN A!
Mike: Did you crit?
Me: YES. I haven't crit in like four levels.
The basilisk, under the onslaught of people thumping on it, determines it can't use its stealth powers to run away while faerie-fired, and panics and takes out Izgil before the party manages to beat it to death. The rain stops. Which is not alarming or anything, but at least it's dead?
Izgil is revived with a goodberry, and proceeds to start to theorize about the properties of the parts of the basilisk as he is healed up a bit. When he decides he's going to start performing an autopsy, Celyn heals him again with a, "Before you go digging around in the corrosive flesh, heal seventeen." Generalized investigation produces an interesting bony nodule buried in the corrosive-acidic poison sacs, which is carefully extracted via mage hand. Celyn is asked to extract the creature's eyes, and manages to get one out without popping it. We move a bit away from the fetid corpse to rest.
Theory of rest on night 2: Everyone else goes to sleep (and takes their save) while Robin is on watch, thus getting the +3 to saves paladin bonus plus the support of the lantern; Celyn tries protecting Robin's dreams when they swap from Robin's watch to Celyn's. Viepuck does not sleep successfully even with these precautions, and is now fatigued.
We take another day of hiking, in which, miraculously, nothing much happens. Celyn protects Viepuck's sleep this time, after confirming that Robin thinks that's the superior plan. At the end of the third watch (Izgil), bobbing lights become visible in the woods. Izgil watches them for a bit, then wakes Viepuck for his watch a little early to point them out. The bobbing lights do not seem to quite be standard will o' wisps, they are too orderly, but their order is 'spaced evenly in an arc around the party that is slowly expanding to become a circle', so the other two are awakened so that Robin can get his armor on before the chaos breaks out.
Viepuck says something to them in Sylvan, under the principle they might be fey - they're not undead, Robin can tell - and two of them bob towards each other as if communicating before taking their places on the line again. Okay, that means they have some sort of intelligence; Viepuck tries a mind probe (his power from his patron) that gives him a fleeting impression of "color!"
Okay, sure: Viepuck can do a bunch of flashing colors with his illusion spell. This, miraculously, gathers most of the wisps to basically have a wild wisp rave, changing colors and bobbing around to match the light show he has created. He holds that on, does a read of surface thoughts, which are, "Blue! Green! Blue! Green!" and not useful.
Eventually he makes proper contact with one of them and asks if there's a threat to their home that they need help with. He gets, in response, a vision of some misshapen lumps that are recognizably a warped impression of the party, presumably parsed as the threat. He replies with an image of the sun coming up and the party moving on. The wisps confer, and a bunch of them leave - the remainder stay until the rave finishes up, and then depart.
Problem solved without anything getting stabbed!
And everyone managed to sleep decently despite the nightmare-in-a-box. We spot the tree in the distance and start aiming that direction, and partway there encounter Raoul the cleric, Leonora the paladin, and the rest of their party. There is some awkward flailing about confirming that everyone is sure they're dealing with the real deal either way, and then Leonora opens up a locket that seems to have a dark void in it, which swallows the evil orb entirely.
Izgil: Is that... a locket of holding?
Leonora: Basically, yes. It doesn't shield the nightmares, though.
We talk through what to do next. (It does not cover the concerns the party had about the wizard academy, but we can possibly talk to them after this immediate quest pattern is done. From Celyn's perspective those concerns are: 1) does smashing the cursed screaming statues free the souls trapped in them or does it damage those souls irretrievably (which at least puts them out of their misery) and 2) can we fucking do something about the artificial madness room (this is explicitly how he refers to it in my brain) it offends him professionally as a cleric of the god of protection from madness.)
The high-level party is going to go off and destroy the horcrux items and then go kill the lich who is currently impersonating the king of Sembara. They did not know what the fey were up to, Celyn does the brief professional rundown, it is noted that the Queen of Tyrwingha is currently the heir apparent to the throne of Sembara and if the Gloomshaper wants Tyrwinghan blood to lock open his portal in Sembara the ruling monarch of Sembara would probably be a choice selection for land magic reasons. At least now they know to warn her.
Viepuck attempts to convince them that someone impersonating the king for a bit would be a good plan. THey are collectively rather horrified, clearly being of the more 'sunlight must expose these shenanigans' bent, and Leonora turns to Robin to say, "You must attend to his moral instruction!" to which Robin replies, a bit tartly, "If you think you can manage it you are welcome to try." Because explaining these things to a twelve-year-old with a distinctly chaotic bent is ... not in our wheelhouse, collectively. Leonora allows as how perhaps Viepuck needs to grow up around good examples and backs down.
We seek advice on what to do, and the concerns are either the portal in the Cleenseau Wood or the Baroness who is probably a necromancer. Celyn points out that the Baroness is likely to get news of the lich's death before the Gloomshaper and make trouble, and we remember we have Vahaia (from the third-most-powerful adventuring party) keeping an eye on the portal, so it is generally deemed that that is going to have to wait while the Things Happen Quickly happens, we will help with the Baroness.
(These are things that Celyn does for his boyfriend, who is extremely tired of fey bullshit.)
The big folks note that they are going to a hell-plane to deal with the cursed items, for "the ring must go to Mordor" reasons, and they are concerned that their transit might swap some hell-plane denizens into this plane. Celyn notes that we are unaware of anyone stronger than we are in Aveil; they ask that we therefore stick around when they portal out to be clean-up crew.
After some discussion, the plan is hatched to teleport to the mining village in the hills aforementioned, travel the rest of the day into the wilderness but also closer to the giant cliff behind Veltor, rest up, and do the portal-swap in the morning. We proceed to do this.
Then the Great Planning commences.
We have no idea what, if anything, might pop through on this game of equivalent exchange. We do some extensive preparations that include digging a pit up against a hillside for our friends to portal out from, such that whoever comes in in their place will be in a hole in the ground. The spellcasters have a lengthy debate about whether a damage spell that involves extraplanar darkness (Viepuck) and a damage spell that involves extraplanar light (Izgil) can coexist on the same spot or whether they would neutralize each other. Robin and Celyn, who mostly just fucking hit things, shrug.
Eventually we are satisfied with our trap, the high-level party vanishes, and is replaced by a few imps and demons, several of whom beat the entire party on initiative. The darkness spell goes up (Hunger of Hadar) to cause some slowing down of the chaos, and the rest of us wait for things to burst out of the darkness (Izgil can see in, and can tell Viepuck what he sees via telepathic link, so we are not in a position of total ignorance). Spells go off here and there while Celyn and Robin await something to destroy, which turns out to be an imp that after it emerges and gets thumped by Robin has two hit points.
(I crit on it. I did 32 damage.)
A spike-covered demon thing surges out of the darkness and promptly charges at Viepuck, grabbing him with claws and trying to pull him into an impaling hug. Viepuck misty-steps out of its grasp and knocks it back towards Robin and Celyn with a blast. Two more demons emerge from the shadows, one near Robin, one near Viepuck; the one near Robin leaves him with a bloody wound, and the one near Viepuck knocks him unconscious but Celyn prevents his bloody wound, then teleports between the halberd-wielding fiend and the unconscious child and stabs the everliving fuck out of it, killing it.
Me: 22.
Mike: Damage?
Me: Also to hit.
(I can't remember if I did a bunch of shenanigans with my dice reroll abilities to get a crit there or if my third crit of the session was on the spiky guy. I think it was on the spiky guy? But who knows.)
Spiky guy engages Robin, and also keeps getting hit with Izgil's area spells even though it's a single target because that's the most damage Izgil can do. Es*tiaslos feeds Viepuck a weirdberry, reviving him enough that he can scramble to cover behind a boulder.
Mike: Don't you have a fourth level spell?
Izgil's player: I used that to put improved invisibility on Celyn.
Me: It's me! I'm the fourth level spell!
I think it was when I came back to back up Robin that I got the third crit and said "Hi," which is a silly thing to do when invisible, but Celyn is in fact chaotically aligned and it wasn't going to stop him being invisible and protected from evil. (Also saying "Hi!" to things after stabbing them is now a Bit.)
Sufficient thumping of the barbed devil happened that it died, Celyn healed Robin, Viepuck healed himself, Robin healed everyone, and we hiked up to near the edge of the cliff near Veltor, because our plan was to jump off it in the morning.
Because we have feather fall, you see.
It saves a day's hike?
(Viepuck does his usual checkins with people for the rest of the day and determines that the everything is very unsettled because Aveil is usually closely aligned with Wisford for historical reasons, and the Duke of Wisford is leading the resistance to the lich-king fella, and the Baroness is a staunch royalist, and it's just giving everyone issues on top of the, y'know, civil war. We vaguely hatch up a plan to meet up with the bard from the third-most-powerful party and get a rundown on gossip.)
(I have developed a theory that apparently Robin and Celyn are sharing crits and it's my turn to get to have some now,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
arcadinal was frustrated by his rolls today.)
Dramatis Personae:
Viepuck and Izgil, who have complicated magical theory shit going on
Celyn and Robin, who hit things and heal people
When we left off we had retrieved an evil sphere and yelled for help answering what to do with it.
We are currently probably the second most powerful adventuring party that's in this region. (The third most powerful is working for us.) We are a seventh level party.
The most powerful adventuring party? 13th or 14th level. We are working for them, at least at the moment. The difference in scope between parties here is immense.
In any case, they give us our choice of three locations where they could meet us to collect the cursed item we are carrying. One, down near Veltor, the barony capital, which is close to the attention of the Baroness who we believe just put this damned thing in the cursed ruin we extracted it from. Two, up in the hills in a mining village roughly a week's journey away. Three, deep in the Greenwood the Great (Mike said 'Mirkwood' but it's not explicitly twisted like Mirkwood, it's just, you know, Old As Balls) by a particularly tall tree, roughly a three day hike west.
We immediately eliminate the 'taunt the probable necromancer' option and go for 'shortest time before we hand off the nasty thing', thus aiming into the Old As Balls forest. We (in mild retcon) stash the horses in a less cursed portion of the ruined wizard academy to graze, because they're not going to do any good in that sort of forest and it is more dangerous to bring them than leave them. They are more likely to be okay for a week there than with us, since actual predators can't get in. We head off.
The forest is a pain in the ass to get a direct route in, due to being overgrown and complicated and not having underbrush die-off and so on, so we pick our way westward steadily but without too much eventfulness. Es*tiaslos does some scouting to try to find more plausible routes, we putter along and eventually find a place to make camp. Carrying the very cursed artifact is very unpleasant, because being near it is like having a constant case of moderate paranoia and being convinced one is being watched/heard/stalked. When we settle down to sleep, Izgil hits it with a dispel to turn it off, which lasts through Robin's watch, more or less; after that people have to make a check against nightmares, and Robin and Viepuck do not sleep well despite the soothing influence of Robin's lantern.
As Celyn is finishing up his watch, he spots an odd pool of shadow gathering around the box containing the cursed item, and being a moderately impulsive cleric whose primary manifestation of divine power is literal light, he casts light on the box.
Mike the GM: ... roll initiative.
The pool of shadows emits a horrifying ghostly shadow creature, which screams, thereby solving the 'wake the party up' problem nicely. Celyn bounces back from it and blasts it with radiant energy, which does not seem to do extra damage to it, unfortunately, so he blithely falls back to his usual procedure of stabbing the shit out of things. As the chaos resolves into a meaningful fight, several other shadows manifest, one of them managing to get a fear effect off on Robin (which Celyn dealt with by stabbing the shadow to death).
We fight off the screaming horrifying shadows and try to go back to sleep, which works better for some than others. Celyn tries to deal with the fact that Robin failed his save by putting a divine protection on his dreams and Robin insists he should try it on Viepuck instead (Viepuck is happy to be a participant in magical experimentation!), so he gets that, but it is largely ineffective because it can't shield from an effect already in place.
We get up eventually. Izgil has to orienteer them towards the west, a process Celyn is interested in (he has been dabbling in learning orienteering from Izgil to the extent that his attention span allows it, which means 'decent on the practical, not great on the theory'), and we putter along.
Eventually the puttering spills us out into a clearing made by a fallen tree (now rotten), which contains ... a very, very lifelike statue of a grazing deer.
After some preparation, Izgil investigates it and confirms that this is infinitely more likely to be petrification than some master stone sculptor who has completed a legendary work and abandoned it in the middle of a clearing in the deep haunted forest. Especially as there's a scrape under one of the hooves that seems reasonably fresh....
We pool our thoughts and come to the conclusion that 'basilisk' is most likely given the terrain, though there isn't a wetland nearby (they like wetlands), and Viepuck goes and asks the statue if it's seen any big lizards lately.
The statue: "I was born from the gaze of a wet lizard." After some interrogation, the statue was created when the sun was young, and we go Excellent, Thank You and proceed to edge away from the direction the deer was staring when it was stoned on our way west. The progress through the forest was enhanced in general pleasantness by an incoming rainstorm.
Then we realized we couldn't hear the rain.
Then Izgil figured out that the rain was causing the silence effect. Natural phenomenon, rogue spell, enemy action? We did not know. We angled into the wind so as to clear the storm faster.
Then Greymalkin spotted something, just as Robin's hammer flashed a warning: the basilisk, lying in wait. It charged in, bit Robin's leg savagely, and darted back into the undergrowth, its camouflage making it hard to spot. Celyn - who can spot things as a bonus action rather than having to take a full action to do so - saw it circling around to attack Izgil, and shot it, because shooting the thing is a good way of indicating where it is when one can't yell "It's over there" due to silencing rain.
It then proceeds to bowl Izgil over and grievously wound him, so, y'know, can't have everything. But we all knew where the basilisk was!
We all, also, spent a while rummaging around in our respective spell lists to figure out if there's any damn things we can do with them in the silence effect. Viepuck has illusions (and something I've forgotten), Izgil is at 'I can shape earth and water?', Celyn could do a disguise illusion, a minor illusion, and a damage cantrip... that does thunder (sound) damage. I suggest to Izgil's player that he shape earth himself a ledge to hide under as an umbrella, which turns into a "CAN I SHAPE WATER MYSELF AN UMBRELLA?" and an impromptu GM judgement about umbrella capacity.
Robin smites the thing with his sparkly smite such that it is faerie-fired. Viepuck conjures up his illusion-performance mastery and with the help of his familiar (clinging to the back of the thing's head) casts a bucket over the basilisk's face to make it harder for anyone to make accidental eye contact.
Me: FUCKIN A!
Mike: Did you crit?
Me: YES. I haven't crit in like four levels.
The basilisk, under the onslaught of people thumping on it, determines it can't use its stealth powers to run away while faerie-fired, and panics and takes out Izgil before the party manages to beat it to death. The rain stops. Which is not alarming or anything, but at least it's dead?
Izgil is revived with a goodberry, and proceeds to start to theorize about the properties of the parts of the basilisk as he is healed up a bit. When he decides he's going to start performing an autopsy, Celyn heals him again with a, "Before you go digging around in the corrosive flesh, heal seventeen." Generalized investigation produces an interesting bony nodule buried in the corrosive-acidic poison sacs, which is carefully extracted via mage hand. Celyn is asked to extract the creature's eyes, and manages to get one out without popping it. We move a bit away from the fetid corpse to rest.
Theory of rest on night 2: Everyone else goes to sleep (and takes their save) while Robin is on watch, thus getting the +3 to saves paladin bonus plus the support of the lantern; Celyn tries protecting Robin's dreams when they swap from Robin's watch to Celyn's. Viepuck does not sleep successfully even with these precautions, and is now fatigued.
We take another day of hiking, in which, miraculously, nothing much happens. Celyn protects Viepuck's sleep this time, after confirming that Robin thinks that's the superior plan. At the end of the third watch (Izgil), bobbing lights become visible in the woods. Izgil watches them for a bit, then wakes Viepuck for his watch a little early to point them out. The bobbing lights do not seem to quite be standard will o' wisps, they are too orderly, but their order is 'spaced evenly in an arc around the party that is slowly expanding to become a circle', so the other two are awakened so that Robin can get his armor on before the chaos breaks out.
Viepuck says something to them in Sylvan, under the principle they might be fey - they're not undead, Robin can tell - and two of them bob towards each other as if communicating before taking their places on the line again. Okay, that means they have some sort of intelligence; Viepuck tries a mind probe (his power from his patron) that gives him a fleeting impression of "color!"
Okay, sure: Viepuck can do a bunch of flashing colors with his illusion spell. This, miraculously, gathers most of the wisps to basically have a wild wisp rave, changing colors and bobbing around to match the light show he has created. He holds that on, does a read of surface thoughts, which are, "Blue! Green! Blue! Green!" and not useful.
Eventually he makes proper contact with one of them and asks if there's a threat to their home that they need help with. He gets, in response, a vision of some misshapen lumps that are recognizably a warped impression of the party, presumably parsed as the threat. He replies with an image of the sun coming up and the party moving on. The wisps confer, and a bunch of them leave - the remainder stay until the rave finishes up, and then depart.
Problem solved without anything getting stabbed!
And everyone managed to sleep decently despite the nightmare-in-a-box. We spot the tree in the distance and start aiming that direction, and partway there encounter Raoul the cleric, Leonora the paladin, and the rest of their party. There is some awkward flailing about confirming that everyone is sure they're dealing with the real deal either way, and then Leonora opens up a locket that seems to have a dark void in it, which swallows the evil orb entirely.
Izgil: Is that... a locket of holding?
Leonora: Basically, yes. It doesn't shield the nightmares, though.
We talk through what to do next. (It does not cover the concerns the party had about the wizard academy, but we can possibly talk to them after this immediate quest pattern is done. From Celyn's perspective those concerns are: 1) does smashing the cursed screaming statues free the souls trapped in them or does it damage those souls irretrievably (which at least puts them out of their misery) and 2) can we fucking do something about the artificial madness room (this is explicitly how he refers to it in my brain) it offends him professionally as a cleric of the god of protection from madness.)
The high-level party is going to go off and destroy the horcrux items and then go kill the lich who is currently impersonating the king of Sembara. They did not know what the fey were up to, Celyn does the brief professional rundown, it is noted that the Queen of Tyrwingha is currently the heir apparent to the throne of Sembara and if the Gloomshaper wants Tyrwinghan blood to lock open his portal in Sembara the ruling monarch of Sembara would probably be a choice selection for land magic reasons. At least now they know to warn her.
Viepuck attempts to convince them that someone impersonating the king for a bit would be a good plan. THey are collectively rather horrified, clearly being of the more 'sunlight must expose these shenanigans' bent, and Leonora turns to Robin to say, "You must attend to his moral instruction!" to which Robin replies, a bit tartly, "If you think you can manage it you are welcome to try." Because explaining these things to a twelve-year-old with a distinctly chaotic bent is ... not in our wheelhouse, collectively. Leonora allows as how perhaps Viepuck needs to grow up around good examples and backs down.
We seek advice on what to do, and the concerns are either the portal in the Cleenseau Wood or the Baroness who is probably a necromancer. Celyn points out that the Baroness is likely to get news of the lich's death before the Gloomshaper and make trouble, and we remember we have Vahaia (from the third-most-powerful adventuring party) keeping an eye on the portal, so it is generally deemed that that is going to have to wait while the Things Happen Quickly happens, we will help with the Baroness.
(These are things that Celyn does for his boyfriend, who is extremely tired of fey bullshit.)
The big folks note that they are going to a hell-plane to deal with the cursed items, for "the ring must go to Mordor" reasons, and they are concerned that their transit might swap some hell-plane denizens into this plane. Celyn notes that we are unaware of anyone stronger than we are in Aveil; they ask that we therefore stick around when they portal out to be clean-up crew.
After some discussion, the plan is hatched to teleport to the mining village in the hills aforementioned, travel the rest of the day into the wilderness but also closer to the giant cliff behind Veltor, rest up, and do the portal-swap in the morning. We proceed to do this.
Then the Great Planning commences.
We have no idea what, if anything, might pop through on this game of equivalent exchange. We do some extensive preparations that include digging a pit up against a hillside for our friends to portal out from, such that whoever comes in in their place will be in a hole in the ground. The spellcasters have a lengthy debate about whether a damage spell that involves extraplanar darkness (Viepuck) and a damage spell that involves extraplanar light (Izgil) can coexist on the same spot or whether they would neutralize each other. Robin and Celyn, who mostly just fucking hit things, shrug.
Eventually we are satisfied with our trap, the high-level party vanishes, and is replaced by a few imps and demons, several of whom beat the entire party on initiative. The darkness spell goes up (Hunger of Hadar) to cause some slowing down of the chaos, and the rest of us wait for things to burst out of the darkness (Izgil can see in, and can tell Viepuck what he sees via telepathic link, so we are not in a position of total ignorance). Spells go off here and there while Celyn and Robin await something to destroy, which turns out to be an imp that after it emerges and gets thumped by Robin has two hit points.
(I crit on it. I did 32 damage.)
A spike-covered demon thing surges out of the darkness and promptly charges at Viepuck, grabbing him with claws and trying to pull him into an impaling hug. Viepuck misty-steps out of its grasp and knocks it back towards Robin and Celyn with a blast. Two more demons emerge from the shadows, one near Robin, one near Viepuck; the one near Robin leaves him with a bloody wound, and the one near Viepuck knocks him unconscious but Celyn prevents his bloody wound, then teleports between the halberd-wielding fiend and the unconscious child and stabs the everliving fuck out of it, killing it.
Me: 22.
Mike: Damage?
Me: Also to hit.
(I can't remember if I did a bunch of shenanigans with my dice reroll abilities to get a crit there or if my third crit of the session was on the spiky guy. I think it was on the spiky guy? But who knows.)
Spiky guy engages Robin, and also keeps getting hit with Izgil's area spells even though it's a single target because that's the most damage Izgil can do. Es*tiaslos feeds Viepuck a weirdberry, reviving him enough that he can scramble to cover behind a boulder.
Mike: Don't you have a fourth level spell?
Izgil's player: I used that to put improved invisibility on Celyn.
Me: It's me! I'm the fourth level spell!
I think it was when I came back to back up Robin that I got the third crit and said "Hi," which is a silly thing to do when invisible, but Celyn is in fact chaotically aligned and it wasn't going to stop him being invisible and protected from evil. (Also saying "Hi!" to things after stabbing them is now a Bit.)
Sufficient thumping of the barbed devil happened that it died, Celyn healed Robin, Viepuck healed himself, Robin healed everyone, and we hiked up to near the edge of the cliff near Veltor, because our plan was to jump off it in the morning.
Because we have feather fall, you see.
It saves a day's hike?
(Viepuck does his usual checkins with people for the rest of the day and determines that the everything is very unsettled because Aveil is usually closely aligned with Wisford for historical reasons, and the Duke of Wisford is leading the resistance to the lich-king fella, and the Baroness is a staunch royalist, and it's just giving everyone issues on top of the, y'know, civil war. We vaguely hatch up a plan to meet up with the bard from the third-most-powerful party and get a rundown on gossip.)
(I have developed a theory that apparently Robin and Celyn are sharing crits and it's my turn to get to have some now,
arcadinal was frustrated by his rolls today.)
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