Moonday, 27 Lamashan (still)

I wonder if we will have a chance to sleep before we truly meet Karzoug. I would love to recover some spells, but if we do, then he does too.

After “defeating” the taunting image of Karzoug, we turned our attention to one of the doors “behind” him. The stone door opened at a mere touch into what appeared to be a fantastic throne room. Opulent. Opulent to the point of practically blinding Rigel. Brilliantly lit, and every inlaid gem, every strip of silver or gold decoration on the wall made the room simply glow. There was, of course, a person in this room — a large but still human female fighter, flanked by two large giant (and that is not redundant.) The fighter was upon the throne and appeared to have the rune of greed engraved upon her cheek.

Ah. The champion of greed. This should go well when she realizes the champion of wrath is here now too.

She challenged us to come face (heh) her but it was the giants who made the first move towards us. This allowed me to subtly place an invisible wall of force between her and the giants and us. The ceiling here was also awe inspiring – certainly more than the 10 feet tall I’d made the wall of force, but I didn’t want her to run around it.

As the fighters began to whack on the giants, I hasted everyone. Takkad threw a destruction ray on one of the giants who seemed very displeased with that. Meanwhile, I got the satisfaction of seeing our Amazon friend run smack into the wall of force and scream “but I am the champion of Greed!” With that, Nolin pulled off his headband and screamed “and I am the champion of Wrath!”

Whoa. Hee hee. Awesome. Perfect timing.

The female warrior seemed to go almost berserk, and tried to scale the wall of force to get at Nolin. Successfully, I might add; she was probably about 7 or 8 feet tall so she could easily scale the wall. I briefly considered it cancelling it just to make her fall on the ground, but although the buffoonery would have been fun, i decided chain lightning might actually be more helpful to the task at hand.

So I lit up the giants … and they seemed unaffected. Shoot. That’s what I get for strategizing. Shoulda gone with my gut.

So this weird dance began, with most of the party engaging the weakening giants while Nolin drew the rapt attention of Greed’s champion. (She had a name, I’m sure, but she’s dead now so who cares [foreshadow much?]). Nolin was able to get some good whacks on a giant before having to turn his attention to the woman. Ultimately, Sabin and Avia laid the killing blows on the giants, but Nolin got three good hits on Greed in one flurry and two more in another before she fell. And as with Alasnist’s champion, the rune on her face disappeared and reappeared on Nolin. A headband was going to be sufficient anymore, with marks on both his forehead and his cheek.

This rune, Sedgwick later told us, made him immune to mind-affecting magic and gave him fantastic spell resistance to transmutation spells. It also, however, made him vulnerable to domineering weapons such as those we wielded.

His eyes also lit up at the sight of her golden scimitar.

[1666] Chelan – one of the the 7 swords of sin. Had the ability to turn victims to gems upon striking. Although made of gold, it had the hardness of adamantine. Collector once owned this, but … odd, it must have been stolen.

Or perhaps her body lay here before us.

We could learn nothing more.

Other tribute that the champion of Greed and her giant minions left for us:

[1667] 5 potions of cure serious (Nolin used 1, so 4)
[1668] 2 potions of fly (Nolin)
[1669] 1 potion of haste (Takkad)
[1670] +5 large full golden plate
[1671] +5 great shield
[1672] periapt of health (immunity to disease)
[1673] belt of strength +4 (Kane, who gave his +2 to Rigel)
[1674] minor cloak of displacement
[1675] ring – freedom of movement
[1676] sihedron ring
[1677] scarab of protection (+20 spell resistance, absorbs energy
or death) 10 charges
[1678] 2 great swords (giant)
[1679] full plate mail (giant)

We did not take the giant equipment since it was both unusable by us and non-magic.

Done opening our presents, the party moved south to an open corridor. I stuck with Rigel, who was searching for traps and secret doors. We passed several non-secret doors, which I objected to to no avail. I argued we could potentially be leaving enemies to attack us from behind, but I guess nobody considered that a viable threat. I understand the urgency in getting to Karzoug, but that’s not a reason to throw caution to the wind.

Finally we opened one at the end of the corridor and hey, whaddya know. There stood a Karzoug .. or another image of him. Karzoug engaged in what I’m sure seemed, to him, to be witty banter before shooting magic missiles at Takkad. Sabin attacked .. but of course passed right through him. I tried a dispel, but failed.

I’ve done some thought on this. The only illusory spell I know of (although do not master) that can allow you to cast spells from it is Project Image. There are a couple of things that are disturbing, if I am right.

First, that is a 7th level spell. That would indicate that Karzoug is at least the equivalent of, say, myself. But I feel like he’s probably more skilled than I, which would suggest he has (at least) 8th level spells that perhaps we have not seen yet.

The other thing is that to use that spell requires sight of the site. That is, either he’s in the room with us invisibly (unlikely) or he’s scrying (more likely). Either option, though, is a little disconcerting.

However every image he projects is one less 7th level spell for him. I suggest that if we come across another and Avia doesn’t detect evil, we just leave the room. The spell only lasts for a minute or two, and then we can re-enter. Instead of him making us burn our spells, we can make him burn his.

Anyway, Takkad, Sabin, and Sedgwick inspected the double doors in this room, discerned nothing dangerous about them, and opened them.

Inside we found an odd sight. At the far end of the room, appearing as though in a fog or perhaps a portal, were actual moving scenes of what appeared to be Xin Shalast in glory days past. Was Karzoug planning to bring forward his armies and minions?

Scurrying about making adjustments on instruments near the walls were some strange humanoid (but not human) beings. Kane muttered “extra planars”. There was maybe 20 or so of them. Several now looked up and took notice of us. Sabin asked the nearest one, in Thassilonian,

“Why are you here?”

We mind the machine.

“What does it do?”

It does its purpose. You are not giant or rune lord or flung. Stand back.

When we did not, some appeared to take an aggressive stance. That was all the excuse Takkad needed to create a blade barrier. Meanwhile the fighters starting moving toward the machinery on their side of the barrier, cutting and hacking at it. The “flung” hastily repaired, or adjusted for the damage. It became apparent that the damage we might do would be undone by the “flung”s efforts, so we directed more effort at destroying them directly.

There was more damage done by the occasional explosion than by the creatures themselves. Eventually Sedgwick sang a song of dischord which caused them to fight among themselves. Takkad brought in a water elemental to attack the machinery close to the image. The image continued to weaken and flicker, and finally at one point, the remaining “flung” decided to become suicidal, and ran through the blade barrier to try to get to us.

Eventually all were slain, and we continued to hack on the cables and machinery. We found that the image eventually faded to a hazy area in the room, with increasing explosions from the machinery. Nolin expressed concern that the whole room might blow up. I’ve no idea if that is possible or not, but he seems greatly concerned. In any case, the machine is not, I believe, usable for its original purpose any longer.