– Session Recap –
**Tink…Tink..Tink…**
Exiting through the only door available in the room, we found ourselves in a 10ft wide hallway going left and right. We all heard a tink…tink…tink like metal hitting metal (obviously a smithy) and we decided to follow the direction it was coming from, so we chose to go left. We found ahead a 45degree bend in the hallway. As each of the party passed, we had to make a fortitude save. Obvious to our players, this was a trap, but since everyone was making the save, there was no physical effect to make the characters pause until Isthmia passed by. She failed her fortitude save and dropped to 1 hit point as her skin almost appeared to be boiling. A quick heal by Thogar and some of her own brought her back to near full health. This sudden pain caused Isthmia to scream and the party no longer heard the tink…tink…tink…
**Unfinished Amulet**
As we expected, we were not able to continue unchallenged. A little further down the hall, 2 small creatures (what appeared to be gnomes but were more shadow than physical…later known as 2 shadow gnome zombies) appeared out of a side wall. Sometimes battles go quickly and appear rather uneventful. This battle was one of them. The 2 gnome zombies were quickly dispatched. The wall they had appeared from was just an illusion, and there were 2 fiends inside the room. Since these fiends were not immune to critical hits, Avriyael made them into big pin cushions **Note: This was the start of some tremendous d20 rolls for the day**. More specifically, there was a fish-like fiend (The DM may post exactly what these fiends were) that had Acid covering its body. It caused a little damage to the weapons of Thogar and Shawnee, but was quickly dispatched afterwards. Inside the room was a workshop with anvils. Shawnee quickly went to work fixing her sword. The rest of the party searched the room and found a round amulet of some kind in one of the fires. Being fairly resistant to fire, Isthmia reached in and grabbed the amulet. It was obviously unfinished as there was a hole in the middle just begging for something to be put in. We figured this was important so we cooled it down in water and let Thogar hold onto it.
**Energy Shield**
We continued down the hallway only to find it blocked by some type of energy shield. Every once in a while, a white glow would appear in a circular shape towards the center, expand, then disappear. Not sure as to its effects, we ran a few tests with various items. Rocks, pebbles, etc. went right through, but we couldn’t see through and didn’t know what the effect was. We tried a live summoned creature by Vystal, but it was simply sucked through without another word. Thogar decided to try and touch the amulet to the white glow when it appeared. It reflected off with a lightning type effect, bounced up nailed Thogar in the forehead for some minor damage. Obviously, this wasn’t the way to get through, so we decided to backtrack towards our starting point for the day and head down the right side of the hallway. Passing by the same bend in the hallway caused fortitude saves again, but this time Isthmia was ready. She had a protective ward on her giving her a heavy bonus to her next save.
**Graz’zt**
Down the hallway we found a door, and as all good adventurers, decided to open it. Inside we saw a large 7 foot humanoid statue of a man with 6 fingers on each hand. An easy knowledge religion check later, we knew this was a statue of Graz’zt. The religious members of the group felt very uneasy in this room. It was obviously some sort of religious chamber for the 6-fingered cult and it had been recently used (within the last 20 minutes) due to the incense still burning. A quick check over the room revealed a gem semi-hidden between the legs of Graz’zt. This was such an unbelievable trap…Hmmm…gem between the legs of an evil statue??? Well, what else were we going to do. We were fairly positive this was the gem needed to complete the amulet, so Thogar climbed back in to get the gem. As soon as he touched it, the statue came to life and stomped on Thogar. Unlike the last battle, this one was VERY memorable. Everyone joined the battle, but since it was a construct, we weren’t doing too much damage to it. Avriyael was fairing OK with her adamantite arrows, but it was going to take a lot of damage to take this construct down. It was fond of 2 types of attacks. The first was sundering items, which at one point in the battle it did a large amount of damage to Shawnee’s shield. The second attack was spitting blood. This caused whoever was hit by the blood to save vs. some effect (not sure what all possible effects were). Eventually it was Avriyael’s turn to make a Will save, and she failed big time. The DM took me aside and basically explained that I must attack the nearest ally with everything I possibly can and with good tactics while screaming that I hate them/etc. This was a potential death to a character member. If a lower hit point party member were close, I could easily kill them in one round. Luckily, it was Thogar. While screaming at him, Avriyael put 4 arrows into his back causing massive damage. It was close to killing him, but Thogar is a Tank. The next round, the rest of the part was unable to concentrate on the construct and Vystal was forced to move his summoned earth elementals against Avriyael to pin her knowing that she could kill any party member in her next round if left un-checked. They weren’t able to pin her, but at least they were able to force her to use 2 of her 3 attacks to get out of the grapple leaving only one shot left for Thogar. The party was then able to kill the construct on the next round leaving all of the resources available to stop Avriyael. They were finally able to pin her when she went unconscious.
**Isthmia’s Revenge**
There are certain things players will remember for years to come and this session was full of them. Only 10 seconds after Avriyael went unconscious, the party heard a low moaning and shuffling coming from down the hallway. Peaking around the corner, Shar saw a mummy coming down the hallway. He backed off and called out “Mummy!” Vystal moved the 2 elementals away from Avriyael, since she wasn’t moving anyway, an moved down the hall towards the mummy. This wasn’t an ordinary mummy. Later we found out it was a Mummy Lord. It moved past the 2 elementals, both getting an attack of opportunity, but missing. Still in the first 6 seconds of combat, Isthmia moved towards the door, saw the Mummy Lord, and did a greater turning. Not only was it a success, she rolled a natural 20 giving a 37 turn check for her. This was exactly 5 greater than what was needed and automatically destroyed the mummy. That was a shining moment for Isthmia.
**Vystal’s Death**
As we continued down the hallway, we saw a pair of doors (one on each side of the hallway). Opening the first door, we found nothing. Shar then began to open the second when he was paralyzed. 2 pairs of creatures, all of which “appeared” to be undead, got the jump on the party. In their surprise round they were able to cause severe strength damage to Thogar and surround the party. Shar, once free from being paralyzed, found himself quickly ineffective with physical attacks due to the creatures incorporeal forms and lack of magical claws. Before the second half of the party was able to find out how effective they would be, a stone wall appeared in front of them, blocking them from entering the combat. This, and the fact that he heard someone mumbling a spell from down the hallway, led Shar to seek out the spellcaster (drow cleric) and destroy her first. This wasn’t too difficult of a feat for Shar since the cleric had no plans to fight a shadow dragon and therefore was very ineffective in damaging him. Before being completely annihilated by Shar, the cleric plane-shifted out of the plane of shadow. Thogar & Vystal were being slowly sucked to death as 1 of the pairs had latched onto them in a grapple type fashion. Unfortunately, since they were undead, there was no way to get out of the grapple. We would find the means to detach them a little too late. Meanwhile, Avriyael and Shawnee were working frantically at making a whole through the stone wall. After a few more rounds, Shawnee was able to bring down 1/2 the wall which gave an opportunity for Isthmia to turn the creatures. I previously mentioned these creatures appeared to be undead, but as Isthmia found, only 2 of them were. She destroyed one immediately and stunned another. Unfotunately, the creatures that were not undead were the ones sucking on Thogar and Vystal. As players, we knew that missing the creatures attached to Thogar and Vystal would cause a hit against the characters they were attached to. Since we didn’t know how to remove them, we chose to attack. Avriyael decided to attack the creature on Vystal first, since he had the least number of hit points. The hit normally would have hit the creature, but the incorporeal miss-chance missed. This caused a hit on Vystal, but he was still alive. Unsure as to the effect of another arrow towards Vystal, Avriyael decided to make her second attack on the creature sucking on Thogar. This was almost fatal. She rolled a natural 20 and confirmed a critical hit on Thogar (since the incorporeal miss-chance missed). This dropped Thogar to the ground with negative hit points. He was unconscious, but he was atleast alive. Knowing that another arrow would kill Thogar, Avriyael decided to take another shot at Vystal’s creature. Vystal’s player kept saying not to, and I agreed as a player, but Avriyael couldn’t just let these creatures continue to suck the life out of other party members, so she decided to take another shot…This was a mistake. She critted again…but as had happened on the last 2 attacks, she missed the incorporeal miss-chance. We knew this to be a character killing shot. 57 points of damage to Vystal with a single arrow when he only had 32 points remaining…He did not have a 25 constitution, so it was an automatic death. The next round, we found out that a simple healing of the party member the creature was attached to forced the creature to unattach…Unfortunately, this was one round too late. A few rounds later, all of the creatures had been dispatched, but the party mourned the loss of its druid. Deciding that Vystal could be resurrected later, we put his body into one of our bags of holding. A few moments later, we heard the sound of footfalls coming down the hall. Almost ready to attack, we realized soon enough that this creature was living and that Shar was calling to it like a pet. It was a shadow gnome Shar called Kith. We assumed it was some kind of servant. Continuing down the hall, we entered a larger room that contained another part of the energy shield. This time, there was a couple patterns on a raised platform opposite of the shield. In the center of the circular pattern, it appeared to match size and shape of the amulet, so Thogar put the amulet up to it and it fit like a key. This seemed to activate a mechanism for the other pattern which was 3 squares around each other from small to large. A darker light appeared in a position on the outside square in the lower middle position. This was obviously a game we needed to play to continue. We found it to be some sort of inverse 24 position tic-tac-toe. The DM had recently visited a game store in Europe, which he promptly pulled out the actual game board for us to play with. After a few rounds of play, we were able to beat the mechanism which caused the energy shield to slowly fade away.
**Mok-Lorn (sp)**
Once the shield was down, we saw an extremely bright light in the center of a room. Across the room was obviously the other point the party had contacted the shield. Looking around the room revealed 3 things. First, there was a door leading out that was blocked by some black energy shield. Second, we had found the Mok-Lorn. Third, the light in the center was the Star of Elishar. We didn’t know it yet, but I believe everyone knew deep down this was the demon we had been told out in the previous session. This demon was different. It didn’t attack us straight out, but instead chose to back away and attack from afar. It was able to do a dispel on a few of our spells we had in place, such as Death Ward. All of the fighters quickly approached and engaged in the battle. Since Shar’s claws were still not magical, he called for someone to throw him a weapon to use. This was answered by Shawnee throwing a +1 wavy longsword we had found earlier. At least now Shar could do some damage. (we would find out later, Shawnee also had a potion of magic fang that would have helped tremendously) Isthmia quickly ran to the star and picked it up. When she did, she gained some insight into what the demon was and how to defeat it. Though it didn’t help too much, she yelled to the party to use silver weapons…Unfortunately, only Avriyael had silver. And, as many players will attest to, rolling the dice tends to correspond to the mood your character is in. For Avriyael, this applied rather directly. Out of the next 16 arrows she attacked with (which she happened to have 20 available silver arrows), only 2 found their mark, and even then, didn’t do too much damage (This was primarily due to the incorporeal nature of the demon, but there were a couple natural 1 rolls as well). Obviously, killing one party member and seriously maiming another twice caused some internal strive for the character. While Avriyael was horribly missing, and Isthmia attempting to turn the demon multiple times (it required a higher roll than she was capable of), the party was fairing badly as well, but eventually were able to defeat the demon.
**Return to the Prime Material Plane**
After a quick Restoration on Thogar, Shar told us to “leave now” and told his Kith to go with us. Nobody could pass through the black energy shield, so using the Star of Elishar, Isthmia walked through the black energy shield which caused it to be sucked into the Star of Elishar. We hiked a long way up winding stairs and eventually popped out fatigued at the top which happened to be right next to the gate. This was fortunate since we probably wouldn’t last a battle against 100s of shadows. We then saw a huge Shadow dragon diving toward us and make a swooping landing right next to us. It opened a claw near Shawnee, which opened her hand to receive a ring, which had been promised to Vystal and Shawnee upon accepting this task in the first place… We all jumped into the gate and found ourselves falling 50 feet to the desert floor in the Prime Material Plane. A few seconds later, the gate collapsed on itself. At this point, we all realized that Methkarten was standing next to us. What had been a few days for us had only been a few hours for him. He was now dressed in black robes, but a quick detect evil from Thogar confirmed he had not become evil. Remembering the legend lore, Isthmia quickly cast a consecrate on the area. A huge beacon of light came down from the skies and lit the area as the consecrate was completed. It pushed all the shadows away, but only outside of its own light. It soon became a long stretch that moved away from the gate so the party followed. We then noticed that this light was removing the desert and creating a pathway into what was a previously covered temple of some sorts. This was obviously the original temple we had been looking for. Not believing we were quite ready for entering, the majority of the party used a scroll to return back to Avriyael’s keep. Avriyael and Methkarten stayed behind to scout the temple so a future teleport would be easier. Not that this was really necessary because Methkarten is now high enough level to cast greater teleport, he just has to buy it.
**Item Investigation**
With Methkarten back, we decided to analyze a couple of the magic items we had received in the plane of shadows. One of particular interest was an amulet we had found in the remains of the Mok-Lorn. We found out this was a gift to Parisha’s father…Which, we deduced that the Mok-Lorn was probably not wearing just anybody’s amulet and that Parisha must have been this Mok-Lorn’s daughter. So, we are now proudly wearing this amulet to spite Parisha. It may come back to bite us someday, we’ll have to see.
– End of Session –