Fireday, 1 Arodus (still)

Kazaven had teleported or dimension doored out, which left our fighters behind a wall of force, and the rest of us to face two devourers.

Takkad, aware he was still protected from evil, took a moment to stone shape a passage around the wall of force, allowing Nolin and Avia to attack one of the devourers and kill it. I pulled Sedgewick out of harm’s way on the theory that I could take a bigger hit than he right now, plus I had spell resistance up, and naturally he started to sing.

Sabin used locate creature to try to find Kazaven, but it strangely told him he was all around him. Was he invisible? Had he become ethereal?

Nolin and Avia continued to battle the remaining devourer, with Nolin taking most of the beating at its … hands. To help them out, I actually approached it from the rear, flanking it and drawing its attention. As expected, it paid much more attention to the armored party members in front of it than the unarmored human at its rear, but the distraction nevertheless helped seal its fate. Takkad channeled healing to all (most importantly Nolin) before Avia finally put it down.

But where was Kazaven?

With that, Sabin found a trapdoor in the floor, and Rigel rushed over to check it for traps. Of course. He was all around us .. he was underneath us, and judging from the locate spell, he was probably directly under us. No sooner had Rigel pronounced it safe than Takkad warped it with stone shape to open it and Avia, Nolin, Sabin and Takkad all jumped down.

For her trouble, the big K sent her an ominous black ray, which she kind of dodged but that still left her looking a bit wan.

I immediately jumped down too, using my acrobatics to land on my feet.

Sabin got a wicked grin on his face, looked left and right at Nolin and Takkad, and dimension doored them all next to their lich buddy. Nolin immediately took several swings at him, and if he could have still bled, there would have been blood everywhere. Takkad tried a greater dispel (which apparently did nothing) while Avia and Sabin did their usual damage.

Then the room was briefly aglow, and we all felt weaker while Kazaven cackled about how he felt invigorated. The room – the sarcophagi – was a trap, it seemed, and our life forces would be used to replenish his.

But Sabin threw a touch of idiocy on the lich, greatly diminishing his options. And with nearly all of us down there now, we hammered him – even Rigel, with an invisible sneak attack. I tried lightning … and found that it has no effect on a lich. Shrug. It was technically Avia who landed the killing blow, but it was truly a team effort.

Takkad talked about needing to find the phylactery, and I remembered what we learned at the Foxglove estate – a lich had to put part of himself away to become a lich in the first place. As luck would have it, the sarcophagus closest to where he died was that object, so our fighters quickly destroyed it to remove any chance of Kazaven returning.

Searching his remains, we found some impressive goodies.

[1194] a Staff of Hungry Shadows [39] The charges in this staff could be used to invoke the following spells: 1 charge – enfeeblement, darkness, or vampiric touch; 2 charges – enervation or summon shadows, and 3 charges – call devourers.
[1195] bracers of armor +5 (mine!)
[1196] headband of intellect +4
[1197] ring of protection +2
[1198] statue of himself, which we believe to be an artifact of a contingency spell

and a robe, non-magical.

And as we marvelled over this, the room lit again and we all felt weaker. The trap was still draining us. We tried dispel even as our cleric healed us. Didn’t think we’d changed anything. Finally, Rigel treated it as the trap it was and discovered how to disarm it.

The other two sarchophagi held valuable stuff. One held

[1199] various spellbooks

and the other … oh how Rigel’s eyes lit up! The other held

~14,000 gp worth of coins, gems, jewels, and other small items, plus
[1200] smoking bottle (creates clouds of smoke when unstoppered)
[1201] scarab of golem bane – detect a golem within 60′, and remove DR should one attack it
[1202] spellbook of very nice black leather — Kazaven’s
[1203] collection of instruments, originally valuable jewelry, probably worth about 1500 sp

Sedgewick inspected the spellbooks and reported there was a spell and rune listed for each of the seven sins, which Takkad, I noticed, was summarizing in his notebook. All I remember is the runes needed to be engraved in the skin, which made them somewhat unattractive to me.

At last, we felt safe enough to rest.

Starday, Arodus 2

Today we would take on Wrath.

We entered the corridor, and as expected it was easier for some than others. It took me, for example, a while longer to reach the door at the end of the corridor. It was untrapped and unlocked and led to a huge hall. While we’d been in a Great Hall before, this put it to shame. It had to be 150 feet long and over 100 feet wide, with a huge 60′ ceiling. On a far wall there was a mural of a red-haired lady riding a dragon. At the far end of the room was a tall pedestal (probably 30′ tall) upon which stood an iron archer probably 12 feet tall.

It didn’t take a genius to predict that either the mural or the archer would come to life. It was best, I guess, that it was the archer that decided to attack us.

We had all entered the room, spread out a bit to reduce the effectiveness of area effect spells, and the statue decided to attack Nolin, Avia, and Takkad, the last two of which easily determined her decision by being struck by bolts of fire.

Sabin, with a quick sign to the others, paused to let them gather near him before dimension dooring directly to the statue. Since he got over there before I could do anything, he effectively took fireball off the menu. Besides, heat might not do anything interesting to the metal figure. So instead, I created a major image of the white dragon we’d defeated. Perhaps it would fear cold. Thinking similarly, Sedgewick created a silent image of a troll.

The statue moved, however, and then shot lightning at our party standing around her. Sabin and Avia both took damage before the statue moved sharply OFF the pedestal, and left behind a cloud of noxious gas.

It was flying now.

Sabin gave fly to Nolin, and Takkad gave airwalk to Avia. I tried to dispel magic on the iron maiden but near as I can tell it had no effect. The statue, however, again attacked, this time with bolts of ice. Sabin and I both gained flight and moved toward the statue.

In melee, the statue proved formidable, getting some heavy blows on both Nolin and Avia. But with our fighters able to match its movement, it did eventually take enough blows that it crashed to the marble floor below and lay motionless.

Beyond the pedestal, a hallway led to another room which contained only two circles – one formed of a red line, and the other of blue. The rune of Wrath was in each circle.

I cast mirror image on myself as we started to experiment. We learned that blue exits a room, and red is the arrival area, and that about four humans could transport at once. In short order, we were all in another room … and facing many many (maybe a couple dozen) figures that did not view us with favor.

I got off a fireball — but this was clearly going to be a multiple fireball day…