Oathsday, 23 Lamashan

Well, the Spared who’d been made undead still needed to be made unundead, so Avia turned on the evil radar and detected them hiding under the stairs. A little while later, the adamantine swords had created an “access panel” and destroyed them. They had been outfitted identically, so we picked up

[1606] 4 sets of +1 padded armor
[1607] 4 +1 bucklers
[1608] 4 +1 rings of protection

However, Avia and Nolin still needed clerical attention to restore them to normal. Nolin was fully restored, but Avia was going to need a bit more before she returned fully to normal. They said they’d finish tomorrow.

We went to Margive at his house and he was most pleased (ecstatic, really, for him) when he found we’d destroyed the evil invisible monster.

(I have this mental image of him trying to convince his friends: no, really, it was a huge but invisible monster and it stole my friends. Now they don’t even talk to me; they just try to harm me. Don’t go in that apparently empty room, or it will get you too.)

Anyway, Takkad was talking to him more about the ice devil from the arena when I caught part of the conversation that startled me.

There are three dragons living here.

I’m thinking maybe I should cast “protection from everything” each morning. Although, perhaps I should learn that spell first …

I do wish my resist energy spell lasted longer than 130 minutes. Maybe I’ll research a means to extend the duration of my spells.

Anyway, we then asked Sedgewick about ice devils. He was able to tell us that yes, they like cold, and they can summon other things but not very often. Beating one often brings accolades and renown. Losing to one simply brings death, however.

Interesting. I suppose it’s a devil so it needs to be dead — it’s become our lot in life. We are a small cleansing cloth, doing our part to remove the grime in the world.

As my spells have become more powerful, I’ve definitely become more of that stand-in-the-back type of sorceror. I can shoot fireballs from quite some distance, and even my lightning bolts have some distance to them. I guess it make sense. I’m never going to be the destructive force that Nolin or Avia, or even Sabin are. At least they get up in the face of the evil we defeat.

Anyway, Avia. That’s right; Karzoug had spoken through her again, much to her distress. We still didn’t know why that was happening, so Takkad decided with some reluctance to bring forth the Peacock quill. “Why,” he penned, “did Avia get chosen to represent Karzoug’s voice rather than Sedgewick?”

“The question,” it wrote back, “is not why he chose her; the question is why she allowed him to.”

Cryptic, per usual. Nolin insisted it meant Avia was weak-willed; this drew the intense focus of Avia. Since the quill was out anyway, both Sedgewick and Avia tried penning questions about the force field surrounding the citadel, but the pen responded not.

This caused Sedgewick to sit and ponder a bit. After casting a spell of legend and lore, he said he suddenly remembered a few things about the quill.

1) no one who has a quill ever runs out of ink.
2) It can be asked a question to be answered in the near term as a guide to actions
3) On a much less frequent basis, it can be called upon to communicate with the nether worlds.

There was some undetermined limit to how often it could be asked to do something. But that told us that it probably was ignoring Sedgewick and Avia simply because it had already very recently answered a question.

So instead, we discussed how to prepare for battle against the ice devil Cricket. We’d want resist cold, certainly, and I think mirror image on myself would be a smart move. It’s certainly saved Sabin’s bacon more than once.

We again hused the Rope Trick to provide a more hidden rest area.

Fireday, 24 Lamashan

It was very early in the morning Fireday when during his watch, Sabin roused us. Cricket was scouting the room below us. He’d apparently decided not to wait for us to come to him. But how did he find us? Or at least find the room we were in? This underground was vast.

That didn’t bode well.

We quietly prepared ourselves. If we went down the rope, it would have to be one at a time and that would mean the devil could pick us off one by one. Our strength was in numbers. Dispelling the spell would cause all of us to drop to the ground at once. Not optimal, but it did put us all into battle at the same time.

This meant we had some time to prepare, and it gave me an opportunity to haste everyone before we dropped. Kane threw protection from cold on Sabin, and Sedgewick started to sing. Rigel went invisible – a little ring action there I suspect – and Sabin cast fly on Nolin. I was able to cast resist cold on myself, and Sabin threw a displacement on himself.

Then the rope disappeared, the heavens opened, and we rained down into the room. Things began in earnest.

Cricket was already floating above the ground (hence the fly spell) when we appeared. We prepared to use our usual strategy of teleporting the fighters directly to the fight, when to everyone’s surprise (including Avia’s) Avia again spoke:

“These people teleport to their foes during battle. Slay them all now!”

Despite the warning, Sabin was able to dimensin door per usual, but it was nevertheless distressing to have our strategy revealed in such a way. Nolin immediately marked him up pretty good.

Cricket moved away (and Nolin, Sabin, and Avia all made him pay for that maneuver) and then teleported.

Crap. Where would he go? Only place we knew of was his “box” in the coliseum. Quickly we divided into our usual teleport teams (I had Kane, Sedgewick, and Rigel) and we tried to teleport into his box.

We were largely successful. Of course, the dread wraiths we’d seen earlier were still there, and immediately turned on us. I was able to get a fireball on them before they got so close that a fireball would have too much impact on friends.

The wraiths were awful. They took health and sometimes stamina everytime they struck. Rigel and Sedgewick both found their stamina diminishing, while nearly everyone else at least got wounded. I’d just put up a wall of fire to make them back off when Nolin announced from his aerial position that the ice devil was in the middle of the stadium and approaching (a couple of dozen feet off the ground).

I put the wraiths between two walls of fire, making them very unhappy. The ice devil shot a cone of cold at us, clipping part of a wall of fire and making me very glad that I’d cast resist cold on myself. My damage was minimal. Others weren’t as lucky.

Kane accomplished a way cool thing. He banished the devil, and it returned most unwillingly to his plane. Remind me never to really piss him off. Takkad channeled a great deal of vengeful, painful (to the wraiths) positive energy and they were most upset. And stuck.

Wraiths finally began to drop. Sabin nailed the last one, just after Avia again provided us with color commentary from Karzoug: “The devil wasn’t important. You will all be mine in the end.”

Yeah. Those grapes were sour anyway. Snicker.

I was not terribly injured, but I was definitely the minority. The clerics went about healing (and restoring, as needed) the injured. Since we’d been awakened, most of us had not regained any spells or a full amount of rest, so we definitely needed to recharge. Another attack now would be … unfortunate.

Still, we needed to nail a couple of things down. Avia was not the only one annoyed by the interruptive commentary from Karzoug, and we began to puzzle it out. Could the sihedron she wore be permitting or enabling scrying? Several of us have the medallions, but Avia was alone in wearing hers. Sabin cast detect scrying .. and found that yes, Avia was being scryed. She reluctantly took off the medallion .. and she was no longer being scryed.

Given that our rope trick was probably not a secret anymore, we decided to set it up in an out-of-the-way place here, while I used teleport to go to our previous camp (the vampire room) and set up a fake camp, complete with its own rope trick. I’ll never know if anybody was frustrated by that (I expect the spell will harmlessly expire) but I’d like to think they were.

I did leave a note in the ethereal space: “Sorry we missed you. Please set up an appointment next time.”

When the ice devil was banished, his weapon was not, and it clattered to the ground. We now retrieved it and identified it.

[1609] +4 returning spear, icy burst +1d6 cold, crit 19-20 plus addl 2d10 cold upon crit

Pretty nifty.

There was also some chests in the ice devil’s box.

[1610] Darkwood chest with 8-10k of gold
[1611] Darkwood chest with 400-500 platinum
[1612] Darkwood chest with ~1500gp of gems and jewelry
[1613] Sihedron ring (Kane)

(later)

Finally, we got a full rest.

Margive told us that “masters of the bad men” wore the sihedron rings. Takkad did a divination that said to pass through the forcefield we need to appear like Karzoug’s servants. Combine those two, and we decided we needed to find more powerful allies to kill, and snatch their jewelry.

We all windwalked through the city, looking for powerful beings to anger. We checked Karzoug’s temple – nope, nobody there seemed powerful enough to annoy.

We found where a dragon probably lives in the city, and decided that perhaps we weren’t quite ready to annoy a dragon yet.

Then, moving higher into the city, we found a giant with tattoos similar to those Mokmurian had had .. but much larger. He was a frost giant. He seemed to be giving orders to others, who seemed to be giving him much deference.

Target selected! Mischief managed!

We took a quick side trip to the mountain again to see if the rings offered safe passage through the forcefield. It did.

Time to go plan our injuries. Er, I mean battle.