... here doggy doggy... nice doggy ...
Our band continues to be...
Kalik, halfling initiate of Avoreen;
Vesper, (NPC) human fighter, henchman of Kalik;
Milik, halfling sorcerer <absent this week>;
Kendradell, female half-elf bard & initiate of Lydia <absent
this week>;
Marcus, half-elf acolyte of Hieroneous;
Tarqualan, high elf mystic;
Nubo, gnome thief-psionicist;
Piotr, suloise human mercenary;
and finally;
Talon, dwur initiate of Clangeddin.
[4th of Planting, 579]
When we last left our heroes, they'd just taken out the guards on the ground level of Vastan Keep, and their Location spell was leading them upwards. The two guards on the second floor didn't put up much more of a fight, though the goblin managed to flee the room and had started releasing the hellhounds from their cages in the next room before being slain. Tarqualan dominated the human of the pair, and sent him to the floor above to discover if the alert had been sounded...
The guards on the third floor had heard most of the commotion, and had called for reinforcements above and abroad; after the guards on the third floor fell in defense of their posts, the guards on floors four and five banded together and blocked the stair with a bed from their sargent's office while calling out to the other towers for reinforcements to hurry. While Marcus, Talon, and Piotr tried forcing their way past the bed, the rest of the party suddenly found themselves facing nearly a dozen guards, a flail wielding priest, and a horned devil... (Marcus was still Silenced, which kept those in his immediate presence from hearing the commotion below).
As the guards surged into the room, Vesper and Kendradell quickly fell, while Nubo fell victim to the devil's aura of fear. Though Tarqualan managed to banish the devil, Nubo still felt the effects of the fear and fled upwards as Marcus and company surged past the obstruction and onto the fourth floor. Seeing the atypical behavior of the gnome, Marcus returned below while Piotr and Talon fought with the upper guards, aided feebly by Nubo.
Once downstairs, Marcus faced off with the diabolic priest, while Tarqualan, Kalik, and Milik polished off the remaining human soldiers. Facing what was clearly a master of his craft, and hard pressed by the whirling metal flail that moved almost too quickly to see, Marcus called once more upon Hieroneous for aid, and was granted superior strength, which he used to quickly dispatch his opponent. Kendradell, near unconsciousness, healed herself, but remained prone, feigning continued injury...
All opposition momentarily defeated, the party advanced to the top of the tower they were in, only to discover that their Location spell now pointed several dozen yards away to -another- tower. Returning to the third floor, they quickly surged out onto the battlements, only to be met by another group of soldiers reinforced by both hellhounds, keffiz (3E's Creature Companion), and a man who was quite likely a sorcerer; as their dominated guard opened the door to allow Marcus and Talon rush forward, the sorcerer snapped his fingers and unleashed a spell that had no effect on Marcus, but sapped the STR, DEX, and physical SIZe of both their dominated guard and the dwur (the dwur being reduced to a mere 1 foot high!).
Surging past the guards who stood before the sorcerer, Marcus quickly cut him down, but while his back was turned the sorcerer somehow managed to teleport away. In the ensuing melee, the hellhounds and keffiz were quickly slaughtered, and the guards set against one another, but an unseen agent caused Vesper (who had been healed of his previous wounds) to become possessed by a malignant spirit, and would have turned upon Nubo (who, aside from vesper, was at the back of the group) had Nubo not quickly used his psionics to blast vesper into unconsciousness. Once the final guards were defeated, the party used the tower's walls for shelter as they healed themselves and freed Vesper from his possession; opening the door on the far side of the tower revealed what appeared to be a tentacled shade blocking their path across the battlements, but Marcus's axe made short work of it.
Coming up against the door to the tower they sought, Nubo's esp detected that the sorcerer had returned and was awaiting them on the other side, Tarqualan used his flying boots to get a bead on him through an arrow slit but the sorcerer unleashed another held spell, dispelling all of Tarqualan's spells, and negating the power of his boots; before he could fall to the courtyard below, however, Tarqualan managed to wedge his hand in the arrow slit, arresting his fall but leaving him impotently trapped against the outside wall of the tower. As we broke for the evening, Marcus was preparing to force open the door for a rematch with the sorcerer, and Piotr was bracing himself to pull Tarqualan down from his uncomfortable perch...
[4th of Planting, 579]