Starday, Arodus 2

My last entry stated that today would be a multiple fireball day.

Definitely.

The room full of sin-spawn would have fallen nicely with fireballs and swords, but then a bunch of human fighters arrived. And they too, knew the fireball spell. This caused me less distress than my companions, and the fireballs weren’t as powerful as mine. Sabin did the dimension door thing to take out one of the spell casters, only to learn there were more humans supporting that one. While he, Avia, and Takkad were not in danger of dying, the battle was decidedly more complicated than we’d thought.

I continued fireballing the sin-spawn; the humans continued to fireball and force-missile us. Finally, between the fireballs and the fighters the last of the sin-spawn expired, but apparently many of the humans were spellcasters and not only did we continue to get fireballed, but some of them were using blur or displace or mirror image to make themselves harder to hit.

Takkad put up a blade barrier to cut off half the humans from the others. One tried to launch a fireball through it – hah, fat chance. It blew up in his and his friends’ faces.

I switched to magic missiles, as the fireballs would have harmed my companions. Takkad dropped a flamestrike, and with that, we finished off the last two.

We discovered that those behind the barrier had run to the teleport circles and left. Sedgwick had apparently created a troll, or an illusion of one, and Nolin was a bit put out that he’d rushed over to kill it when in fact, it was not a danger to us. We need a system for coummunicating our illusions to each other.

Inspecting the rooms nearby we found, basically, quarters. Each human room had a pair of bunks and a chest. Each sin-spawn room was more like a cage.

Checking over the bodies, we found, on the six humans:

[1206] 6 +1 great swords
[1207] 6 +2 mithril chain shirts

On the sin-spawn, we found

[1208] 10 +1 great axe
[1209] 10 +2 red breastplates

We were also able to locate spellbooks (for the fighter-mages, I presume): [1210] 12 spellbooks.

We decided not to let the humans get too far away, so after a quick inspection to note what rooms were around us, we went to the teleportation circles. The first group of 4 (since only 4 can fit into the circle at a time) was Takkad, Avia, Nolin, and myself, and the second was Sedgewick, Kane, Sabin, and Rigel. We prepared ourselves (mirror image, mage armor, etc) and teleported.

My first impression of the room was large, with stone walls. The room was lit, but one end of the hallway held a curtain of billowing black smoke. And in the four corners of the diamond-shaped room were the four fighters who had escaped, and all four hit us with a fireball. Even though their fireballs were not as powerful as mine, Nolin missed a jump and ended up taking a lot of damage. I was a little scorched but plenty mad, and although I was tempted to show these guys a real fireball, we needed to minimize damage to ourselves first. I quickly threw up a wall of force to isolate two of the fighters from us.

Avia was able to healed everyone a fair amount (sweet!) Following my lead, Takkad entombed another in a wall of stone – one of the hazards of standing in the corner of a stone room. And about this time, wave two of our group appeared in the teleport area.

The one remaining fighter remained defiant and claimed we weren’t ready to meet Athraxis, but Nolin, feeling less like debating and more like disemboweling, accessorized him with his sword by giving him a very large piercing. I lit a fire under him, and when he still refused to die, Nolin took off his head.

Meanwhile the two behind the wall of force were using fireballs and energy bolts to judge the shape and height of the wall.

For some reason, Kane walked over to the wall of force, stared through it, and made one of the fighters cower. I HAVE to believe there was some magic involved here. The other one managed to figure an angle over the 10 foot high wall and explode a fireball over us, singing several of us again.

That was a bad idea.

I dropped the wall of force and our fighters rushed forward, much to the surprise of the enemy. They had mirror images but Sabin, Avia, Nolin, and Sedgwick of all people, kept plucking off images. In short order, their attacks began to hit true and that was the end of those fighters.

We added three more chain shirts and great swords to our collection. Takkad released the one who had been entombed, and apparently he had needed more air. Oh well, who knew? One more chain shirt and one more great sword.

We decided to try to the other teleport circles first. We appeared in the middle of a discussion, it seems. There were some large tables some distance from us, around which were sitting some humans. I heard, “but how do we get the sin-spawn back to human?”

This looked like a perfect opportunity to use my new spell. Fire is great, but there looked to be combustible books and scrolls strewn around that we might find useful. So, chain lightning it was!

I think I stunned a few of my friends. They didn’t really know I’d been studying lightning. The lightning took out three of them before they even knew we were there. Two others were now QUITE aware we were there, and five others were hastily taking up arms.

Takkad and Nolin each took out another before they could effectively mobilize.

With my friends rushing in, however, fireball was out of the question. A flaming sphere did seem to be in order however, as the fighters closed. Another round or two and the rest of the humans were dead. in the end, we found ourselves with a total of 20 great swords and 20 mithril shirts.

It was pointed out that these humans might have had useful information, and I don’t disagree, but the hard part, as always, would be getting that information from them while they tried to kill us. And I’m pretty sure they would not have welcomed us as colleagues. So in the end, I’m positive I introduced myself properly.

There were a lot of documents and books littering the area. The three alcoves at the end of the room were full of alchemical equipment, and the middle one seemed to have a cauldron of, well, liquified flesh.

On the table we found notes outlining how to forge magical weapons. There was also notes describing what may have been the point of discussion as we entered: generations of warriors were suffering from inbreeding and one consequence of that was that they more frequently and more quickly degraded into sin-spawn, and unless they could find a way to either stop this process or find a way to take the sin-spawn back to human form, their population was doomed.

We felt our magic had been too drained to take on whatever was behind the smoke, so we agreed to go back and rest. As we left, however, there as a loud thunderclap and a wisp of smoke in the middle of the large room. A figure seemed to turn about and vanish.

On the way back, I thought about the chain lightning. Since the individual bolts can be directed much better than a fireball, it might not only be more damaging but useful in a greater number of situations. I do still have to worry about line-of-sight (lightning isn’t good at arcing around obstacles or friends) but this could be pretty cool.

 

== Sunday, Arodus 3, 4708; Runeforge; morning ==

We spent the next four hours scanning through the books and journals we had picked up throughout Runeforge, looking for any details about how to use the well to augment our weapons.

Despite being in the center of the complex that housed the well, there was precious little information available about how anything in Runeforge worked. Out best source of information was Vraxeris’ journal, which we had found in his study off of the hall of pride.

There were seven special attributes that could be added to a weapon via the Runeforge well, each created from combining the material components for two of the seven vices represented on the sihedron. To select an attribute that was most effective against any specific runelord, you needed to use the two vices that opposed that runelord’s vice — and the sihedron itself showed which two vices opposed any other vice.

The seven attributes are: miserly, covetous, jealous, dominant, tyrannical, sadistic, and parasitic.

For us, pride and lust would oppose greed, and would grant a dominant attribute to any weapon enchanted in the Runeforge well with those proper components, which we already possessed: the shards of mirrors from pride and the sex toys from lust.

But how were these components and the well used to enchant weapons? I decided to ask someone who would know: the Peacock Spirit. Using the pink ink (and why not?) I picked up the peacock feather quill and wrote,

“What are the procedures required to align weapons with the dominant attribute using Runeforge?”

As soon as I had penned this thought, the quill took over and wrote,

“Immerse deep the right components in opposition to the runelord’s rune, and hasten then to anoint thy weapons.”

After shaking off the unsettled feeling that always comes with using the quill, I realized that the use of the Runeforge well was far more simple than we had been trying to make it.

There seemed no reason to wait, and so we returned to the central Runeforge chamber and circled around the well. Each of us had selected a weapon to align, and so I dumped the components into the well.

The pool glowed with a bright gold light, and wisps of misty gold light wafted up from the surface, wrapping themselves around the weapons we held.

Avia dipped her long sword into the water, and gold traces of Thassilonian runes ran up her weapon to the hilt, etching themselves onto her weapon.

Suddenly a large wave of gold, watery light splashed up and onto the statue of Karzoug, and we heard his voice booming around us.

“You? Again?! I cannot help but be impressed by your optimism, but your enchanted weapons will never reach Xin Shalast, for you shall die here now.”

The rest of us quickly dipped our weapons in the pool, each receiving the brightly glowing golden runes, as the statue lurched to life and stomped heavily towards us.

It smacked Sabin and Nolin hard, but Avia moved and claimed first blood (or I should say “first stone flakes”) for our side. I channeled energy while Kane cast Prayer, and Sedgewick began to sing a song of courage. Trask cast haste, and suddenly we were all moving a lot faster.

The statue continue to hit our fighters, and also Kane, who had tumbled in next to it on some mischievous mission of his own.

Karzoug continued to taunt and gloat, “Give up. You are going to lose and be destroyed.” And of course as soon as he said this Nolin sliced off one of the statue’s legs, and it topped onto the floor, narrowly missing Sabin and I.

We then paused for a moment as Sabin examined our weapons more closely to see if he could discern what features the domineering attribute had added.

One thing we could all tell is that the weapons were empathic, and as long as we held them we could feel their suggestions for how to behave during combat whispering in our minds.

[-2 Diplomacy]

The weapons now provided some bonus for avoiding effects of transmutation magic, and they acted as bane weapons for transmuters and shape changers.

[+2 morale bonus on saves versus transmutation]
[+2 attacks/+2D6 damage versus transmuters and shape changers]

They could also absorb up to three harmful transmutation effects a day.

If a weapon was not magical before being aligned it now boasted a +1 bonus.

Our domineering weapons are:

Avia: +1 adamantine long sword
Nolin: +2 adamantine great sword
Sabin: +2 adamantine great axe
Kane: Masterwork (now +1) star knife
Rigel: keen rapier
Trask: staff
Sedgewick +1 rapier
Takkad: +1 light crossbow

Nolin then had the brilliant idea to try to enchant another set of weapons to be effective against wrath. The two runes that opposed wrath were envy and sloth.

We were not sure what components we needed from these halls, but because they had been abandoned or destroyed our options were limited. I had collected a vial of the quick-silver liquid from envy, and Trask sent an unseen servant into sloth (none of us wanted to return) to obtain some of the disgusting slimy liquid from the pools there.

Sabin decided not to align another weapon, and stood guard before the statue of Alasnist, in case it sprang to life when we activated the well. I put in the components, the water glowed with a gold light that caressed our weapons, and we enchanted another set.

Alasnist did not make an appearance, and we now had a set of covetous aligned weapons.

[-2 Diplomacy]
[+2 morale bonus on saves versus evocation]
[+2 attacks/+2D6 damage versus evocators and fire users]
[+5 Fire resistance]

Our covetous weapons are:

Avia: +1 long sword
Nolin: +1 great sword
Kane: +1 sling
Rigel: +1 bow
Trask: +1 knife
Sedgewick +light crossbow
Takkad: +1 knife

Having two contrasting empathic weapons proved to be very distracting, and so each of us made sure to keep one of these weapons in a bag of holding at any point in time.

Because we would visit wrath the next day we kept the covetous weapons on hand.

On the way back to the study in greed Sabin once again stopped and looked at the gold fish, and said, “Baleful Polymorph.” He explained that he thought the green mist, which we used Gust of Wind to pass through, changed anyone caught in it into a goldfish.

Kane and I each tried to Break Enchantment on one of the fish, but with no luck.

Before retiring for the day Kane, Sabin and I went to the large well beyond the study and recharged the wand of Lesser Restoration (+21 charges) and the wand of Endure Elements (+9).

My watch begins momentarily, and tomorrow will be a busy day.
== Sunday, Arodus 3, 4708; Runeforge; morning ==

We returned to the entrance hall of wrath, but it was as we left it yesterday, and so we walked to the teleport circles at the far back of the hall. We put up a few protective spells, but wanted to save as much magic for the big confrontation with Athroxis, which we felt would take place further in.

Avia, Nolin, Trask and I stepped into the blue circle and immediately found ourselves in the practise hall surrounded by four sin-spawn.

They struck out at us, and we returned blows while carefully stepping out of the teleportation circle so the rest of our team could join. In very little time the spawn were dead.

4 +1 great axes
4 +1 red breast plates

The four sin-spawn appeared to have been the only defenses placed in this hall, and we went further back and to the left to the teleport circles for the diamond room, and regrouped.

Nolin, Avia, Sabin and I stepped in the circle first, and popped into the diamond room with nine sin-spawn standing nearby, ready to attack. But we too were prepared and both sides exchanged blows. It was more crowded around the circle here, and it took longer to clear enough space for the others to arrive.

The combat was fierce and physical with very few spells and only a minimal of healing. I used some icicles, but mostly I struck out with my aligned knife, and channeled energy when needed.

Soon all nine spawn were down, and we took a moment to look around.

9 +1 great axes
9 +1 red breast plates

The flaming weapons are still stuck in the walls, but now I see that the mural on the ceiling of the red haired lady wielding a flaming ranseur was not, as I had first thought, Alasnist, but rather Athroxis.

The walls were inscribed with spidery runes describing various evocation spells.
== Sunday, Arodus 3, 4708; Runeforge; mid-morning ==

We decided to look through the smoke curtain first, and using True Seeing I peered through the illusion into a vast hall. Two rows of red stone pillars reached up some sixty feet to support a flaming ceiling, and a circle of low flames surrounded a large sihedron image in the floor.

But what caught my eye was the enormous daemon standing in the center of the hall. It was a shemhazian, of which I had only read before and never hoped to encounter. The hulking thing towered thirty five feet high, and looked like a giant cross between a bear and a spider. These things were said to have been created in the lowest levels of the abyss from the tortured souls of the most evil of people.

A small figure floated in the off to the side behind the daemon, and by her red hair and flaming ranseur I knew she was Athroxis. She was too far away for me to see what she was doing, but that soon became painfully clear enough.

I was struck by a lightening bolt, and while I managed to dodge aside at the last moment to avoid the full strike, it still hurt plenty.

I quickly described what I saw in the other room to my companions, and we prepared for battle. It seemed our best strategy was to focus on Athroxis and avoid the daemon until she was slain. But I was not sure what was in the minds of my companions. Sabin had an odd grin on his face, and Kane was muttering something about needing to kill the daemon.

And then two things abruptly changed our hastily drawn battle plans. First, another bolt of lightening arced in and struck me, but this one forked and blasted all of my companions as well. Second, the shemhazian vanished from the hall beyond the smoke and appeared behind us.

We adapted quickly. Trask put up a wall of force on this side of the curtain of smoke, effectively isolating us from Athroxis for the time being. We then turned and faced the daemon.

I cast Prayer and Sedgewick began to sing.

Nolin charged in, with Sabin close behind. It struck them hard, but they had a hard time penetrating its defenses and damaging it (even if they hit it). The creature bit Nolin, draining him of strength, and so Kane began to creep in so he could restore Nolin’s strength, and he too began to take hits.

I channeled energy to help heal those in front, and followed Kane in towards the beast.

Trask cast Fly upon Avia (he had previously cast this on Nolin, and she was waiting for her turn), and Sedgewick cast Greater Invisibility on her. She ran in to join her companions in arms, but the invisibility did not aid her against the daemon, and it struck her as she came in.

All the while the rest of us were trying to conserve as much magic as possible for the encounter with Athroxis, while still trying to make meaningful contributions in the battle against this potent foe.

The daemon continued to strike and bite with devastating results, while our own strikes seemed feeble by comparison.

But then Avia was finally standing next to the shemhazian, and while it did not know it yet, this spelled its imminent doom. Avia used her holy smite skill, which extended to Sabin, who was standing nearby, and the two of them began to cut seriously large chunks out of the daemon, who now began to howl and wail in agony.

And then from the cloud of smoke came a bright flash and the sound of a loud explosion: Athroxis had attempted another lightening spell, but had now discovered the force wall. Sedgewick placed his hand on the wall so he would know as soon as it fell, but even after another blast thudded into it, the wall held.

Nolin redoubled his efforts, having had much of his strength restored, and even though Avia suffered a bite for some strength loss, it now mattered little.

The demon, realizing just how close to death it was, teleported to the back of the room and screamed at us. Sabin ran up and threw his great axe at it, striking it squarely in the face.

The thing fell to the floor dead.

We have quickly healed and restored the wounded, and are at full strength with nearly our full complement of spells at the ready.

But we are letting Athroxis expend her spells trying to take down the wall of force.

As soon as it falls (or she gives up trying to take it down) we will take the fight to her.

Today is the day we created RuneForge weapons. We gathered around and as the first weapon was energized Karzoug took over the statue and attempted to kill us. Luckily adamantine weapons are great against stone. The statue/golem was dispatched fairly quickly.

Analyzing the new magic on the weapons was very interesting. This should be very helpful in the days to come.

Dominant GreatAxe:

• +2 moral bonus against transmutation magic, alas this does not stack with heroism.
• The bane of the weapon affects transmuters and shapeshifters as a bane, provides an extra +2 weapon enchantment (+2 to hit and +2 dmg) and deals an extra 2d6 dmg.
• Up to 3 times a day my GreateAxe can absorb a harmful transmutation spell. Looking over transmutation spells this should protect me from baleful polymorph, flesh to stone, and disintegrate.

Nolan had a great idea to make a different RuneForge weapon. We carefully gathered materials from sloth using an unseen servant to place in the runeforge with the quick silver. I was trying to figure out weather to place my cold iron axe or one of the other great axes into runeforge. Standing there in front of the runeforge I made the split second decision to not create a second runeforge weapon. The others gained a second runeforge weapon that provided fire resistance and bane to evokers and fire creatures. After creating the second weapon the others seemed to be distracted. The distraction seemed to be related to having two runeforge weapons and diminished combat skills. We found that putting the second weapon into a bag of holding or haversack provided enough distance or separation to relieve the diminished combat skills. Although it doesn’t seem very practical in combat to place one weapon into the bag just so you can get the other out of the bag.

Further looking at the new special ability on my GreatAxe I figured out that the RuneForge special ability takes up 2 of the 5 special ability bonuses that can be added to the GreatAxe. While I hadn’t planned to put any special ability on the GreatAxe until later this is a pretty cool special ability. If there is money and time after leaving runeforge adding the next enchantment bonus is still the right option for my weapon as the next level of regular enchantment bonus allows the weapon to be treated as a cold iron or silver weapon for the purposes of getting through damage reduction. It will take me 9 days and 9000 gold to add this next level of enchantment, more then I expected but I can not really complain about the free +2 special ability.

Nolan’s GreatSword should have the same weapon enchantment level and special abilities as my GreatAxe so I expect he will want to also move to +3 weapon enchantment to get the benefit of getting through DR. Avia asked about upgrading her weapon so I calculated the time and cost to 11,000 gold and 11 days. It just occurred to me to ask Avia how her bonded weapon paladin ability works on magic weapons. With the RuneForge special ability she has used up 4 of the 5 special ability units that can be place on a weapon. >From a standard magic weapon point of view she can now only put a +1 special ability on the weapon.

PAUSE FOR A FEW MOMENTS!!!

It would be really cool if her deity allowed her to ignore the normal special ability limit. That would awesome and the possibilities are endless. If I had that ability

PAUSE FOR A FEW MOMENTS!!!

What am I saying? I could never conform to the ridged rules that a paladin must follow. I am not sure I even understand paladins or the deities that they follow.  I am pretty sure that deities make up there own rules.

Hopefully we have some time after leaving RuneForge to do some upgrades. First on the agenda has to be the Armor upgrades for Kane and myself that were delayed to put the holy special ability on Avia’s sword.

There are going be a lot of challenges ahead of us to prevent the return of Karzoug from returning. As I wrote those words it became apparent that there is likely no way for us to prevent Karzoug’s return. We have to prepare as if we will face karzoug himself and that is a scary thought. With all of the magic that will get thrown around upgrading my ability to resist spells becomew important. Looks like it is time to have Rallo create me a cloak of resistance. Unfortunately I will have to live with just a +3 since that is the highest level of cloak that he is capable of creating. When we get out of here I need to go see about having him create this +3 cloak of resistance.

Pause for a moment look over in Trask’s direction.

Rallo needs to clearly understand that I want a plain looking cloak and not one of those frilly looking bright colored cloaks like the ones Trask is wearing. A plain brown or black cloak would fit the bill.

On the way back from creating our Dominant weapons we paused long enough for Takkad and Kane to attempt Break Enchantment too see if the gold fish change back into people. These are indeed a tough gold fish and it was not going give up easily. As it stands the score is gold fish 2 and Kane/Takkad 0. I considered learning Break enchantment to give another attempt but instead I learned fabricate from the spellbooks. Assuming that we are successful in our combat with the “mistress” this will be very useful for creating crates to hold non-magic items for shrink item. When I get time I also need to test creating master weapons and armor, not that I need anything. Maybe a new masterwork +5 strength composite longbow would be good to have to replace the +3 strength bow I have today.

I have this newly learned spell and an open spell slot. The possibilities are unlimited. I don’t have any of the bronze from the wrath Golem so will have to wait to create boxes to hold books. You know I should have used fabricate to update my journal entry. Well maybe that is a little wasteful but I have to try out the spell. I got it I will create my own manual on killing creatures. So I definitely include some giants, and dragons, and devourers, Lich

Sabin  puts down his journal and uses fabricate to create “Sabin’s guide to killing creatures”.