Session #30-32 Summary

[Nathan Sherman]

Sorry for the long lapse between posts. Life got crazy and other priorities distracted me from writing up the last session summaries.

Cast of Characters
Theren Moonshadow, a Moon Elf Bard played by Payson
Lutheo, a Halfling Paladin played by Dale
Otep, a Half Orc Fighter played by Nelson
Akronos, a Human Wizard played by Alec
Ceress, a Saurien Monk played by Graham

Tykor, very old half elven innkeeper that has forgotten he used to go by Illanor, an arch mage of the Conclave of Freedom - NPC
Nikos, friend of Tykor and entertainment manager for the Inn of the Broken Staff - NPC

Master Elodin and four monks from the Ynthar temple.


After taking a couple days to recover from defeating the tainted spirit of Nikova and setting up the tending of their prize mansion, the party meets up with master Elodin at the teleportation circle just to the west of Freeport.

Elodin teleports them to a location in the snowy timber Forest a short distance away from the ruins of the Conclave Defiant. This is where this epic adventure began months ago with the party as slaves on a digging expedition under the supervision of a Black Sorcerer and a Knight of the Abyss of Duthelm.

Eldon informs the party that the black sorcerer and his minions have not been seen for several weeks. They have cleared away most evidence of the dig and only the one entry slope that leads down to the ruins remains. None of the guards or slaves have been seen coming or going and no reinforcements have showed up. The book that shows the sealing runs of the banishment portal shows that 15 seals have been broken and are no longer working. The party fears that if 18 seals are broken then with 1/3 of the 54 seals failed, Draxorith will have a good chance of breaking out of the banishment.

The party and Ellen talk about what this means and speculate that the black sorcerer is trying to free Draxorith without alerting anyone else in the nation. Duthelm is a backstabbing nation and his discovery could quickly be taken away from him by guile, force or murder. If he can free Draxorith on his own, he will be the greatest force to be reckoned with in his nation but if it comes down to life or death, he will probably have an escape plan to get reinforcements to bring back with him.

This is why Elodin and his team of four monks have not assaulted the ruins yet. They do not want to risk the black sorcerer bringing the Duthelm army as well as more Black Sorcerer’s and Knights of the Abyss to the ruins. The assault must be quick and successful and result in the completion of the banishment ritual in one fell swoop or risk losing their only opportunity at success.

The party is concerned that there will be guards and alarms if they just march down the main ramp to assault the ruins. They devise a plan and have Elodin use Gaseous Form which Theren then turns invisible. They have Elodin go down the old chimney to the great hall that the ramp leads into and then he floats past the undead guards in there, under a door, down stairs into the basement level, through a few more rooms with guards both alive and undead and he finally finds a empty storage room. In the stairway he noticed that there was tendrils of green mist on the floor and the further he went into the ruins the thinker the tendrils got.

There in the storage room, he becomes substantial again and checks out the room in preparation for teleporting the party in the next day.

He then teleports out to the parties encampment and they rest for the evening to regain the few spells they just used, knowing that they will need every resource possible to survive the assault ahead.

The next morning they open the Snatch Pit, have several members of the large party get in and then Elodin teleports everyone into the storage room. There, they get the rest of the party out of the Snatch Pit and prepare for the assault. The assault party consists of Elodin and his four followers of Ynthar: Diego a half elf monk, Thorton a human monk, Aliston a human fighter and Jomar a half orc cleric.

Tykor and his assistant Nikos are with the party on the assault despite Tykors continued challenges with not knowing what is going on or what spells he is casting. He has gotten some of his appetite back for adventure and the party needs his head for the completion of the banishment ritual so they will risk having a senile arch mage in their assault party.

The party exit the storage room into the hall with the fighter types leading the way. From there they throw open the door to the large chamber and find that it still has a mix of undead and Duthelm guards. The party sets upon them quickly killing off several guards and zombies. The enemy forces sound the alarm and fight back but with the high level wizard support from both Elodin and Tykor the battle is wrapping up quickly. As the party advances into the room to meet the fresh soldiers and undead coming as reinforcements, the mists on the floor coalesce and form a large demon right in the midst of the party, behind the line of the fighters. It advances on Elodin and with huge fists pounds and rips at his unarmored flesh. Several other large and small demons form from the mist and the battle has become a challenge again. A couple of the Ynthar monks assist Elodin in taking out the demon assaulting him while the rest help the party kill the other demons, undead and guards.

The party takes a moment to heal up the substantial wounds received and start to talk about the next stage of the assault when another arm of the mist coalesces into another demon. They make short work of it but realize that they have to advance quickly towards their goal of the banishment gate.

They head out of this guard chamber and down the halls, deeper into the ruins. As they move down the hall they notice that the mist had gotten thinner behind them but the mist is getting thicker as they get closer to the banishment chamber. The fighters are leading the way but two demons materialize in the party’s midst and attack more vulnerable targets. A fierce battle dispatches the demons after some party members take more damage.

At the end of the hall they get to a door that they remember leads to a big conference room.

Braced for battle, they throw the door open and charge in, attacking the soldiers and undead guarding the far door. The party fans out and quickly dispatch those opponents in a bloody battle with several of the hero’s taking damage. They open the door to the next room and find their enemy to be ready for them and in large numbers, both demon, undead and soldiers. At the far side of the room are double doors, one ajar, being guarded by two soldiers and a man in black plate mail armor and a sense of command and evil about him.

The doorway between the rooms becomes a choke point of death. Akronos has created a storm in the next room that buffets the enemies and assaults them with lightening bolts.

While none in the party have fallen to the enemies attacks, most of the fighting crew have taken damage, some substantial and nearing death, some having to shift back for healing.

The wizards support the battle from behind but one of the larger tendrils of mist in the room coalesces into a huge demon, standing over eight feet tall and sporting an extra set of arms with large pincers on them. Its nearest target is Elodin and it reaches out with both pincers and rends his flesh, leaving him in an unconscious puddle of his own blood. With the huge demon came several small demons that hadn’t been encountered before. These pounce on the unconscious body of Elodin and proceed to disembowel him.

Several of the fighters break off from the frontal assault to engage the huge demon in their midsts and Akronos tries to heal Elodin before he slips beyond the ability of even magic to revive hime, but the damage is too severe and he can’t be revived. 

With the effort of almost the whole party focused on the huge demon they are able to bring it down but not before it seriously injures Otep and Ceress.

A couple of the monks are brought to unconscious and revived by Jomar and the party is starting to look pretty haggard, many of them running out of the tricks that give them an advantage in battle. The enemies are too great for them to defeat in one go and the options to retreat are limited without giving the enemy an unrecoverable advantage.

When the enemies are pushed back from their room, Theren closes the door to the large room with all the remaining enemies and throws the Snatch Pit on the ground behind him. He quietly tells the party to grab Elodin and get in the pit then yells out for the enemy to hear that they should teleport out and come back tomorrow to continue the assault.

Acting quickly, the party all get into the Snatch Pit with Elodins body and then close it up from the inside. They wait and watch through the one way viewing top of the pit and see the enemy come in and search the room as well as down the hall and all adjoining rooms.

Having escaped undetected for now, they rest and recuperate and plan their next move. The pit doesn’t have much time left in it today, but it will be enough for a short rest to regain some of their health and a few tricks to aid them in battle.

They check the book that has the link to the banishment ritual and find that one more rune has been deactivated. They are failing at a very fast rate and will probably have the seventeenth and eighteenth rune deactivated before morning at this rate. Even if they could leave without fear of the Duthelm army being summoned and come back by morning, it might be too late now that something is working at breakneck speeds to defeat the banishment.

Once they have recovered as much as they can, the party checks the room to make sure no enemies are in there. They come out of the pit and open the door to the large chamber beyond. The enemy are gathered in there but apparently not expecting the second assault so quickly. The defenders line up quickly as the fighters enter the room and it becomes a bloody battle with the enemy holding the line in the middle of the room while the Knight of the Abyss and two soldiers guards the double doors to the small entry room before the circular banishment chamber. 

The new plan is that while the rest of the party engages the enemies in battle, Akronos and Tykor will both be invisible and try to sneak into the banishment chamber with the skulls and complete the banishment. Akronos is holding onto Tykor so he doesn’t get lost and wander off since loosing a senile, invisible arch mage could go very bad. As Akronos leads Tykor into this final large room before the banishment chamber, Tykor tells him “this is the room where I broke my old staff” with a wistful sound to his voice.

The majority of the party are fighting on the line against the soldiers and demons or one rank back lending support to the fighters or harassing the enemies with spells. Theren casts a Web across many of the enemy but only a few of them fall victim to its sticky effect. The green tendrils of mist have greatly diminished from when they first entered the complex but they are still coalescing into more demons to defend the Duthelm forces.

Lutheo success in calling upon his faith to cause several of the demons to flee from him. Unfortunately this sends one of the larger demons running away from him and right toward the invisible Akronos and Tykor who have made it around the room and are in the back corner trying to figure out how to get past the Knight of the Abyss. The demon is on a course to run into the mages and Akrons takes quick action, pushing Tykor one direction while he goes the other way. While he has successfully kept them both invisible and a secret from the enemies, he has lost contact with the invisible and senile arch mage who is needed in the banishment chamber to complete the ancient ritual.

Otep has successfully killed the enemies that were opposing him and he advances on the Knight of the Abyss, Delmanakan. Delmanakan wields a flaming long sword in one hand a short sword in the other hand. While Otep is the toughest fighter the party has, Delmanakan is tougher. His hits with the flaming sword deal massive damage and on the occasion that Otep misses an attack against him, Delmanakan uses the same trick that Otep has been using and riposte and gets in a free, punishing attack.

Ceress rushes up to support Otep but they find that the battle strategy of Delmanakan and his elite soldiers are well practiced and they outflank their attackers, calling in reinforcements of other soldiers from the battle to make sure they have the upper hand.

Most of the Ynthar monks have been dropped or are barely hanging on to life with their cleric almost tapped out of power to help them.

Having lost Tykor, Akronos decides to use his Blink spell to travel to the astral plane and see if he can get past Delmanakan and his guards that way. What he discovers is that past the small chamber after the double doors is another set of double doors leading to the circular chamber with the banishment pit in it. In that room there are at least two creatures. One appears to be a smaller demon and the other a human, probably the Black Sorcerer that they haven’t seen since their imprisonment months ago. He appears to be franticly working on breaking the banishment gate before the party can get through the defenses.

Despite being severely damaged, Lutheo finishes off his enemies in the main line and advances up to assist Otep and Ceress where a tight knot of battle is raging at the double doors with serious damage on both sides. Delmanakan slashes Ceress with another punishing blow from the flaming long sword and drops him into bleeding unconsciousness.

Tykor has wandered around the room, invisible for a little bit but then decides to join in the battle despite having been told by Akronos not to cast any spells since it would ruin his invisibility. He lashes out at Delmanakan with magical force but the knight is incredibly tough and continues fighting, dropping Lutheo with a wicked cut to his chest.

The battle finally culminates with all of the demons and soldiers killed off and Delmanakan fighting till the last, finally killed after being ganged up on by the remaining party members that are barely alive and conscious.

They quickly set about reviving Ceress, Lutheo and the fallen monks. They use up almost all of the last little reserves of their healing abilities and everyone is on the ragged edge of life with only a couple options to revive a companion if one should fall in the next battle. Knowing they can’t delay at all they move to advance into the banishment chamber. They find that the way into the banishment chamber is blocked by an invisible barrier, similar to what the Sumurak shield produces. They try several methods to get around it but fail each time. They hear chanting on the other side and the crackle of energy and know they have no time to waste.

Akronos asks Tykor if he can get them through the barrier. Tykor thinks about it and then he walks up and casts his favorite Disintegrate spell through the walking stick that he always has with him and it shatters whatever spell was preventing their passage.

The party is bottlenecked at the entry but they start to pour into the banishment chamber to try to kill the Black Sorcerer before he can break enough glyphs to unleash Draxorith.

This magnificent chamber in the farthest reaches of the underground ruins is adorned with the fine marble, silver inlay and intricate carvings in the stone. The forty foot wide chamber is built around a ten foot wide, extra-dimensional pit with swirling green mist and energy in it. Around the pit engraved in the floor is the symbol of Ynthar, a triangle inside of a triangle inside of a circle. Around the outer edge of the circle is a set of fifty four glyphs, divided into six sections of nine glyphs. The glyphs are glowing and fading in seemingly random patterns. Some of the glyphs are glowing red and some are glowing a sickly green color like the energy in the pit. The greenish mist churning in the pit and the the glyphs are the only illumination in the room.

The Black Sorcerer Kelvar stands at the far side of the room and is dragging one leg, his left arm blackened and shriveled, his hair is shock white, mouth drooping on the right side. Apparently the past months and the recent rush to disable the banishment symbols has taken a huge toll on him.

Kelvar has filled the banishment chamber with a Stinking Cloud and when the party breaks his wall of force he reaches out to Draxorith to bring more demons in through the few remaining tendrils of green mist snaking around the room. These are all of the smaller sized demons since Draxorith has apparently tapped most of his power on this plane for the earlier battles.

Theren hurtles a fireball into the room at the Black Sorcerer and while it does some damage to him, he seems to resist most of it and the little demons caught in the blast also appear to have a resistance to the fire.

Akronos summons up the energy of an eldritch blast to attack the sorcerer and then steps back around the corner out of retaliation sight. The sorcerer responds with hurtling a shattering boom to the tightly packed group bottlenecked outside of the banishment chamber and drops four of the Ynthar monks clustered at the doorway, leaving the last one standing struggling to prevent his companions from slipping past the point of no return. Fortunately for him, Akronos was wise and had retreated far enough into the previous room to avoids the blast.

Otep, Lutheo and Ceress rush into the room but Ceress is overcome with a retching sickness of the stinking cloud and is unable to act at first. Otep and Lutheo kill the first couple small demons they encounter but more are popping up delaying their ability to get to the far side of the room to kill Kelvar.

Tykor wanders into the room and seems to recognize it. He walks up to the closet point of the south facing triangle of the Ynthar symbol and calmly sits down cross legged at that point and starts meditating despite the battle still raging around him. Nikos comes and stands guard over him in case any of the small demons try to take advantage of the aged wizard that isn’t paying attention anything around him.

Theren taps into his meager remaining power and hurtles blasts of eldritch energy at Kelvar, getting through his defenses. Akronos, also nearly tapped out, adds to the damage done with his own eldritch blasts.

Ceress gets over his retching fit and sees his opportunity to charge the sorcerer. With the speed and agility of a warrior monk, he dashes forward, past the remaining demons and makes it to the sorcerer but not quick enough to also get in an attack before the sorcerer can take action.

Realizing that his attempts to free Draxorith didn’t have quite enough time and that remaining in the battle will almost definitely result in his death, Kelvar uses the last substantial reserve of arcane power that he has to Teleports out to safety. Little did he know but due to a scarred past, Ceress has trained to deal with magic users and take advantage of the weakness of their defenses when they cast spells close to him. Ceress lashes out with his long sword and scores a wicked hit on Kelvar, opening his side right as the teleport is taking effect.

The sorcerer is gone but some minor demons remain and the battle isn’t over. The extra dimensional pit still pulses with a sickly green energy and tendrils of mist are snaking out of it. The party sets about killing the last remaining demons but more keep popping up out of the mist. Akronos takes out the bag of holding and goes about the chamber, setting skulls of the long dead members of the Conclave of Freedom members at each point of the Ynthar symbol on the floor.

Once the fifth skull is in place and with Tykor still sitting at the sixth point, Akronos takes out the box that holds the green gem with the symbol of Ynthar etched into its surface. With hope that they have done everything to complete the banishment ritual and a quick prayer for Gaia to help them, Akronos throws the Avisarr gem into the pit.

As the gem passes into the extra dimensional space through the floor there is a whooshing of energy out of the pit that pushes everyone in the room back against the walls and then the energy starts rushing back into the pit. The last remaining green tendrils are sucked into the pit, some grabbing at ankles as they are dragged in.

Everyone scrambles to resist getting pulled in and with some effort, all are successful except for Tykor who apparently still wasn’t paying attention. He gets pulled over and scrambles for a hand hold as the energy drags him towards the pit. One of the remaining tendrils of mist grabs him around his ankle and is pulling him into the pit when Theren and Nikos leap to grab his outstretched hand and help slow his progress across the floor.

Once all of the tendrils of mist have been sucked into the pit it closes with a boom that reverberates through the chamber. The glow of the pit flairs and then fades out. The runes sputter and wink out one by one. The gate is closed, the center shaft is just solid stone flooring, the ritual is complete. The room is dark and silent except for the panting of the party members and the screams of Tykor. The party realize that his foot has been amputated at the ankle. The tendril had pulled his foot into the pit and was struggling to pull more of him in when the gate cut off, severing everything not in this dimension.

The party does a quick check and realize that everyone is still alive (aside from Elodin who died in what seems like so long ago now) although most are in ragged health and tapped out of spells and abilities. They use the last little bit of healing on Tykor to staunch the flow of blood. Addressing the amputated foot will have to come at a later date and they will just have to help him hobble out of the runes.

They search the chamber and realize that two of the five skulls were pulled into the banishment gate and are lost forever. They gather up the three last remaining skulls, do a quick search of the bodies gaining some nice magical items from the Knight of the Abyss and verify that there is no remaining magical signatures in the banishment room.

Knowing that the sorcerer could return at any moment if he survived the vicious hit from Ceress, possibly with reinforcements, they waste no time and hurry towards the exit. They encounter a few more undead on their way out, both the set of three that were forced to flee from Lutheo and three that were in the main entry hall that they skipped by using Elodins teleport.

The battles with these undead are quick given how much the party outnumber them but the risk of a lucky blow dropping a party members keeps them on their toes.

The party leaves the ruins and enter into the forests in the light of the early afternoon. They decide that they need to put as much distance between themselves and the ruins so they spend the whole day hiking south before finally collapsing as the sun sets. The make a cold camp with no fire out of an abundance of caution. They set up a guard schedule and each reflect on the events of the day.

This is where the session ended, with the banishment of the greater demon Draxorith completed, Elodin dead, Tykor feeling more lucid than before and everyone exhausted.

Next session: Wrapping up the campaign and each character thinking about what is next for them…