During this conversation, we learned that Shadar is something called a Shade Warden, that he got his powers, in his own words, from hell, and that his goal is destroying all mages.
Then the image disappeared, and the actual stone giant showed up. Her name was Ulthar and she had a relaxing voice.
A lot of stuff happened in the library, but cliffs notes is that we learned that the Fate's Baton was in the Silent One's hoard, the Silent One was guarded by a ward keyed to his name, that his name was made up of some fragments, and that we needed to find his phylactery.
Also, Mila learned that some people from her home kingdom were alive, Daeris got mugged by a stone giant, Tierce ran into the Silent One, and we learned that our party had been cursed so Ilvara could track us.

XXX

After removing the curse, we left and headed straight to the Silent One's castle, where we stomped most of his guards.

XXX

And then we finally fought the Silent One, whose name was actually Theynix, and after a long battle, killed him.

XXX

After defeating Theynix, we left the castle, parting ways with Vulpes and Velvez, and after a long journey, finally returned to the surface world, crossing through the drow fortress on the way and negotiating with Asha for free passage (not difficult, since we’d killed most of her troops).
After leaving the Underdark we proceeded back to Mandi, where we learned about a vampire prince coming to a party. We then sought an audience with the duke in order to get invitations. At the duke’s palace/castle/whatever, we encountered him and his son, and Mila learned that the son, Clavatis, was the masked mage the party believed to hold the phylactery. With that information, we decided to try and take action at the party to prevent Clavatis from raising another Silent One. At the party, however, we learned from a half-drow friend of Mertin’s, Zyler, that Clavatis had also been busy creating a Charnel Colossus, a monstrous undead construct. With the timeline looking more and more urgent, we followed Clavatis out of the party.
Also, while Mila will probably eventually receive healing for the burns inflicted by the Silent One, there’s no coming back from the ones inflicted by Zyler.
XXX
As we followed Clavatis, he vanished from our sight, and we found that the Charnel Colossus was already rising. We rushed into the forest, fighting our way past a small force of undead, and reached the Colossus. After a protracted battle, in which Daeris and Tierce both died for a bit, and Dawnbringer awakened to her full power, the Colossus was destroyed, along with Theynix’s phylactery.
Returning to the castle, we found the Duke of Mandi dead, and Clavatis accusing us of the crime. Fortunately, Melusine showed up and set the record straight, and Clavatis was taken away. Also, succession war ho! But then we learned that Mila is heir to the Elganin throne so we’re gonna go try and liberate her homeland.
XXX
After leaving Mandi for Elganin, we stopped on the small tropical island of Iaqua, which was populated by merpeople. This was a reasonably relaxing time. The party participated in various games (and made a minute amount of money), met a couple other groups of adventurers, and got very drunk, bonding as people and also passing out on the floor, whether due to overdrinking or psychic backlash from hearing Mila’s horrifically long full title.
XXX
We went on the boat, and arrived in Elganin, disguising ourselves as crew members to slip past the guards. We spent some time learning more about Mila’s backstory and who was and wasn’t alive, and Mila got ready to follow a lead to an old friend who had been leading the resistance against the Galhurst. On the way, however, we encountered two main obstacles. First, we met the horrifying guardians of the city, the Sirens, twisted experiments which resisted magical attacks and teleported at will. Then, we encountered a trap laid by Baron Zelrich, who was foiled by Daeris blowing an entire Necklace of Fireballs in his face (though unfortunately, he’s still alive. Or undead, as the case may be). Finally, however, we encountered Victoria, Mila’s instructor in gunmaking. There, it became established that someone had been impersonating Meir’s old order of Rangers, the Black Rose, in the takeover of Elganin. Also, Mila was at Meir’s throat for a bit over the belief that said order had been involved in Elganin’s overthrow, though Meir couldn’t have given less of a crap if he tried. Finally, Victoria informed us that Dawnbringer was one of a set of semidivinely-forged weapons called Apocrypha Arms, and that Dawnbringer specifically brought victory, but at the cost of burning the soul at both ends. As the group prepared to split up for the night, however, guess who FUCKING showed up.
No, not Ziler. Shadar. Nearly slaughtering Tierce and Daeris within a round, he demanded the Anchor of Conflux, which Daeris managed to give him. He ended up exchanging a favor, while also beating anyone who annoyed him to within an inch of their life. During the conversation/fight, we learned some information regarding the world, such as that the Black Rose was impersonated by the Crimson Dragoons (one of the fighting forces of the Galhurst), and that one other member besides Meir still lived. The favor we extracted was the destruction of the Crimson Dragoon main hold, and Shadar pointed out that Mila had a friend there. Then he left, leaving us to lick our wounds and rest. Also, he mocked us a lot. Like, maybe Shadar is Ziler. Did we ever think of that?
XXX
The next day, having somewhat recovered from the stress of fighting Shadar and all that, we set out to find the local thieves’ guild. Meir, however, slipped off from the group, and after a semantic debate over the correct usage of the term “magician”, we followed him. Meir, meanwhile, had run into some enforcers of the city, and upon encountering them, we entered combat. We won. Handily. We also converted at least one and possibly two of the enemy soldiers to Bahamut, fried the tank in his own armor, and shot their abjurer out of the air.
XXX
After defeating everyone, we interrogated the gunslingers (poorly), took their clothes (awkwardly), and sent them with Shadar’s doggo to hang with Victoria (firmly). On their advice, we went to the mage school to find out who was calling themselves a Black Rose. It was a guy named Kuan, who had taken Vulwin’s name, and was going by Razorwind. Several minutes after meeting him, we slaughtered him and literally exploded him. Like, come on guys. Anyway, after that we met Velora, the high mage of the city, who gave us some information about what had happened since we left, notified us that Mila’s brother(?) Erique was still alive, and gave Meir another of the Apocrypha Arms, the Angelfall Bow. Then we went back to Victoria’s place, where Shadar was hanging out. There we unlocked his tragic backstory. Shadar actually is, in fact, Zilar. We called it. We are now preparing to visit the Thieves’ Guild.
XXX
On the way to visit the thieves’ guild, due to a tasteless joke poor fortune, we encountered a large group of Galhurst soldiers, including General Brom, a giant of a man with an ax and staggering rage issues. Despite Nissa coming up with a very workable plan, luck was not on our side and we were forced to fight. It didn’t go well at all, Brom and his marauders nearly slaughtering the party in seconds and furthermore calling in Hector for backup. Mila caused a distraction by threatening to blow her own head off with Declaration if Brom pressed the assault, and then used the mask she’d taken from Kuan’s corpse to teleport away once everyone else had left. However, in doing this, we left the doggo behind, where it was discorporated by Brom and his men. We will kill them for this, incidentally.
Avoiding Galhurst patrols, we managed to still make it on time for the rendezvous with the Darkblades. A deal was struck to smuggle supplies to the resistance, and Mila gained some useful knowledge about the whereabouts of her childhood friends/companions, except someone named Adeline. Furthermore, Nissa was tipped off as to the location of the Lunar Veil (or possibly the Lunar Vale, but that would be difficult to carry around), an artifact dating to before the first Calamity, and one connected to her patron. Also, Daeris got a Sending from Mertin asking her to bring the party north to Arcturus to meet Salcure, the dragon god of time. But we were a little busy.
After the meeting, we returned to Victoria’s to rest, only to find the streets deserted (concerning despite the absolute lack of evidence of anything pursuing us). Our fears were confirmed with the appearance of a Songstress, an upgraded and armored Siren with a scream that inflicted severe psychic damage and a destructive teleport. While originally the plan was to run, Mila convinced the party to stay and fight, so we did. However, a lucky strike split the helmet of the Songstress, and we learned the whereabouts of Adeline. Immediately. In a sense that it was related to the splitting of the helmet.
What I’m trying to say here is that the Songstress was Adeline.
Yeah. That happened.
While most of the party was sufficiently concerned with the Songstress to want to kill it anyway, Mila was unwilling, and knocked Adeline out, taking her back to Victoria. This turned out to be the best decision available, however, as Shadar was able to dispel the enchantments holding Adeline in thrall. We found out that the enchantment also gave the leader of the Sirens vision and hearing through Adeline, so we would need to change bases. But that was an issue for the morning, because we were all fricking tired and horribly injured and so we fell asleep.
XXX
The next day, fortunately not waking up to any particular encroachments on Victoria’s warehouse, we went to a backup location near the docks. While largely uneventful, we did unlock Nissa’s tragic backstory. We are now at 3/8 tragic backstories unlocked. Well, 2.5/8. Meir’s is partially unlocked. Bets are accepted for who will be next. Anyway, Meir went shopping, and had a tense reunion with his long-unseen brother, who seems to play some role in the Galhurst occupation of Elganin. Meanwhile, we decided that our next move would be to detonate a store of gunpowder in order to attract the attention of the remaining free Astral Knights, particularly their leader Machon. En route to the powder, though, we encountered a large contingent of Sirens (including another Songstress), and a group of purple-robed soldiers, whom we discovered were paladins (blackguards specifically). The fight was made easier by employing a giant laser and a lucky intimidation check, and with the help of Victoria and Adeline (mostly Adeline), as well as some nice new spells, we managed to defeat or drive off our opponents. Also, a truly bizarre number of critical hits were made during this battle. It was at this point that we encountered Erique, Mila’s younger(?) brother.
XXX
We went to go blow up the place, and encountered Oinkbane. Yeah, you fucking heard that right. Oinkbane. We defeated him but he vanished, so we’re probably all already dead. Yeah. Anyway, Mila blew up the building, which hurt us quite badly. We ran for it and reached the mage tower belonging to Pyra Nohdame, enchantress and illusionist. We entered her tasteful foyer and took a nap. Including, strangely, Daeris and Nissa. Oops. We ended up within a set of illusions crafted in order to keep us within a pleasant lie. Nissa was the queen of…whatever she’s in charge of in the Feywild, Meir was returned to the once-again living Black Rose, Mila had reclaimed her kingdom, Daeris was a respected mage with her own tower, Lyric was a rock star, and Tierce was the high priestess of her church in service of Bahamut. Tierce broke out of the illusion fairly quickly, however, her aura of devotion leaving her unable to be charmed. She found herself in Limbo, facing down an Orb™. Shadar showed up, explaining that he’d arrived in pursuit of the Sirens’ creator.
Yeah, that was Pyra. Whoops. She’s pretty though.
Shadar vanished, leaving Tierce a portal to enter Lyric’s dream. Tierce entered Lyric’s dream and made fun of Lyric’s music until he snapped out of it, at which point the cheering crowd transformed into a shade of Theynix. Tierce and Lyric fought the not-quite-dracolich together, destroying him rather quickly compared to last time, and from there entered Daeris’s dream. However, Daeris was in the middle of a confrontation with Pyra, who attempted to turn Daeris into a Siren but failed, and then shattered the portal allowing in Tierce and Lyric. Lyric made it through. Tierce less so. Some stuff happened which will not be discussed here, end result was that everyone was fine though. Tierce, Lyric, and Daeris reentered Limbo and found themselves at the center of a number of doors, each leading to the dreams of one of the other people in the party. Also, Melusine has arrived, but had to cast Wish for some reason. Let’s not question why.
XXX
The first person we went to rescue was Victoria, who was in a warehouse, working on something overseen by her parents. However, when Daeris and Tierce attempted to rouse her from the illusion, her father revealed himself as a glabrezu and attacked. The glabrezu was dispatched surprisingly swiftly, fortunately, and Victoria was retrieved from her dream. Meanwhile, in Nissa’s dream, Pyra appeared to her and apparently seduced her. Fade to black…?
Back in Limbo, the group went to collect Mila next. With Mila having been told in her dream that the rest of the party had died, she was somewhat startled when Daeris, Tierce, Lyric, and also a second Victoria walked through the door and told her everything was fake. Mila was fairly willing to believe this, on account of it meaning we were all still alive, and turned on the illusion. The illusory Victoria transformed into…uh, something. No clue what but it was pretty weird. We definitely killed it though, and that was cool. We left Mila’s demiplane and returned to Limbo, where we found Melusine playing cards with Tierce’s disembodied legs, which Tierce killed mercilessly. It was all pretty comical, and so we went off to go save Nissa, fully prepared to find ourselves slam-dunked into the Gay Zone.
Except the entire demiplane was gone and Nissa was lying on the ground dead. Like, super dead. So very very very dead. Deader than disco. Deader than a dretch at a paladin convention. Not quite as dead as a lich entrusting his phylactery to a cleric of the Raven Queen, but pretty close.
Oh.
Toting Nissa’s corpse, we decided that the sooner we got out of there the better, and that to accomplish this we needed help from someone stronger. So, we went into Shadar’s demiplane. Unlike the previous planes, this one wasn’t a dream but a nightmare. Shadar had been once again trapped in the Shadowfell, fighting endless hordes of undead led by the demon lord Orcus, with only his friend Alarial at his side…except she wasn’t. Each time he turned his back on her, she’d attack him, never injuring him badly enough to register but keeping him perpetually occupied. Beyond this, although Shadar had realized he was in an illusion, he hadn’t yet been able to break free. Looking from outside, of course, it was fairly self-evident that Alarial was the keystone of the illusion, and we told Shadar as much. He was aware of this too, but couldn’t bring himself to kill her (it was around this juncture that we made fun of Shadar for having dead friends, an action which will surely never come back to haunt us). Eventually, however, Mila managed to talk him into it, and Shadar destroyed the illusion of Alarial, breaking the enchantment and freeing himself. Unfortunately, he wasn’t any more able to help Nissa than we had been.
Oh.
We split up to collect Meir and Adeline. In Meir’s dream, we realized that the Vulwin Meir had been hanging out with was also real, meaning Velora had been telling the truth. Also the dream Rosaria, the leader of Meir’s order, was a Morkoth in disguise, a blob of forgotten god bits mixed with raw chaos. Lamenting that Nissa was not present to make a lewd comment about the immense amount of tentacles involved in this creature, we fought the Morkoth, thankfully with Shadar’s assistance, and slaughtered it fairly handily. With everyone freed of their illusions, Pyra showed up to mock us, at which point Shadar revealed her true identity. Pyra was a succubus, who while an archmage in her own right had been masquerading as human and had most likely killed the previous high mage to attain her post. Pyra, while a bit startled by having her identity revealed, laughed at us and vanished. Shadar then used Plane Shift to return us to our hideout by the port. There, he explained what he’d learned. Exposition time!
-The Sirens were created by Krast’athul, a sapient snippet of the magical Weave that had been imprisoned by Hiemel Zelrich during the conquest of Elganin. The creation of Sirens was a self-defense mechanism of its in response to injury, and Pyra and Hector had been working together to use the Sirens for the Empire. Hector tortured the creature into a blind rage, while Pyra would use her magic to control newly-created Sirens.
Thus educated, we all went to sleep because holy fuck today was horrible. We’ll go revive Nissa in the morning, hopefully.
XXX
In the morning, realizing that Lyric had learned the spell Raise Dead, we collected a diamond in lieu of visiting the church, and conducted a ritual to revive Nissa. Mila offered a song promising to see Nissa again, and Tierce apologized for her failures to protect her. The ritual, thankfully, succeeded, and Nissa lives again. Whew.
So anyway now it’s time for SPORTSBALL! First, there was an archery competition, which Meir utterly dominated. Like, first of all Meir is awesome but also good lord everyone else sucked. This one guy snapped his bow in half. And he’s an imperial guard. So wow. But next was the swordfighting tournament. In the first round, everyone advanced fairly easily. In the second round, on the other hand, Mila fought Erique, defeating him after a grueling battle. Tierce, meanwhile, fought a masked figure, who upon his defeat (in an equally grueling battle) was revealed to be…Erique?
Uh-oh.
Zelrich almost immediately showed up, congratulating Tierce on her victory and explaining what had happened. The Erique we met was a doppelganger, and Tierce had just drawn out and defeated the real one. Furthermore, the fake Erique had given away the position of the Resistance, meaning that Hector had been sent to smoke them out. Literally. As Zelrich prepared to end the unfortunate Astral Knight’s life, Machon leapt from the stands. He’s here! Unfortunately, Brom was present as backup as well, and an actual fight broke out, as opposed to the crappy ones we’d had so far. With Machon’s assistance, we managed to defeat and kill Brom, though not without severe injuries (mostly sustained by Tierce and Machon). We then ran to rescue those left at the base, including Nissa.
XXX
Arriving at the base, we found a fight well in-progress, with Hector having brought both Dragoons and Marauders to wipe out the Resistance. With most of the more capable fighters away, the only people putting up any real fight were Adeline and Vulwin. Essentially, we were losing badly. But the Best Decisions Adventuring Guild, along with Machon and Victoria, had arrived, so hopefully the tide was about to turn. Hopefully.
The battle got off to a deeply peculiar start, with enormous clumps of people acting at precisely the same second, and our numerical disadvantage was only exacerbated by Hector sniping holes into the Resistance fighters. However, as we properly joined the battle, things seemed to turn around. Sure, we were under heavy fire from an evoker, and we were constantly pingponging in and out of unconsciousness. But we have healing (shoutout to Lyric), absurd DPR (shoutout to Meir, Mila, and Daeris), and surprisingly high HP totals! What could go wrong?
What could go wrong, as it happens, is that Hector might decide that killing the de-facto leader of the Resistance is worth expending most of his daily resources, and do exactly that by taking advantage of the massive damage mechanics.
Funfact, Raise Dead won’t work if most of your thoracic cavity is missing. Especially your heart.
Sorry, Vic.
Mila and Daeris, respectably, flipped out and once again went to go chase down the midboss while the rest of us got sliced into pieces. Fortunately, Hector underestimated the amount of injury the two could inflict in a short period of time, and called Pyra in for extraction too late to keep Daeris from literally shredding him with a Blade Rain. The two were unable to fight Pyra, however, and the archmage disappeared once again. But hopefully, that’s a problem for another day.
For now, without Hector, the two enemy wizards, and the Crimson Dragoons, the battle was won fairly quickly. Still, it was Pyrrhic, with Victoria dead and huge losses on the part of the Resistance, as well as a pressing need to move again. After ensuring that Nissa and Melusine, who had been trapped inside the base, were alive (they were, though Melusine had been further injured by having to cast Telekinesis to support the collapsing base), and dealing with Mila’s crushing despair, we agreed that the more high-profile members of the Resistance should disappear into the city catacombs for the time being, so we did.
After taking a long rest to recover from the injuries and exhaustion sustained over the course of the previous day, as well as some time spent going over Brom and Hector’s things (of note, Hector’s guns, particularly an anti-materiel rifle called Reaper and his pepperboxes. Mila got the pepperboxes, Daeris got Reaper to replace Victoria. Also, Brom’s Amulet of Health, which ended up going to Tierce despite some reticence on her part), we proceeded into the catacombs. They were deeply unpleasant, with a number of traps and wandering monsters, notably a gelatinous cube of which Tierce swallowed more than is probably healthy. And more notably, a number of mimics composed of fractal patterns made of Tierce’s legs.
Say it with me, everybody. WHAT THE FUCK?!
Anyway, after finally getting past the myriapodal horror, as well as a number of traps which Mila alternatively disarmed, avoided, and triggered, we arrived in a large room full of colorful tiles. The room was occupied by a friendly ogre, who attempted to bond with Tierce before stepping on a tile and being electrocuted to death. How exciting.
Meanwhile, another chest, clearly a mimic, had occupied Daeris’s attention, so she shot it. Naturally, it moved…and burst open, revealing a familiar wereboar.
“SNEAK ATTACK!”
God. Dammit. Oinkbane.
XXXX
Defeating Oinkbane with relative ease, we proceeded further into the cavern, where we encountered Mila’s mom.
Sorry, wait, a mummy.
Though, you know, it could be Mila’s mom.
It cursed Lyric and injured Cybil, but was defeated anyway and we proceeded forward. As we did so, the passages started to diverge, and we got very split up, Nissa particularly ending up alone and under attack by a Vampire Spawn. Meanwhile, the rest of the party was also attacked by Vampire Spawn. Slaying them with relative ease and taking a moment to regather the party, we kept moving, until we found ourselves in a large, empty room.
With smooth tunnels in the ceilings.
Oh boy.
Here comes that Beholder! Except it’s glowing. And skeletal. Is it supposed to do that? No I don’t think it is…
Oh well, let’s roll some initiative. I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s not as if—Oh whoops, Meir’s been charmed. But I’m sure it will be—Tierce got slowed, can someone do something about tha—Great, Mila’s turning to sto—Nissa’s been Frighte—Lyric’s charmed too— Everyone’s getting all thrown around—
Okay, enough of this. We have all kinds of anti-status effect abilities, Critical hit on a Booming Blade plus a smite, that should teach you to mess with us. Oh, you want to throw all your rays at the person who just sliced you up? That’s fine, we can take it. Tierce sleeps, Tierce gets disintegrated, but hey, that woke her up, right? Which is fortunate, because here comes a death ray.
Oh.
Oh, wait. She’s not dead? Uh, okay. She’s as surprised as you are, really. Well, after that hilarious scare, I’m sure we’ll have no trouble finishing this fi—
Oh. Sorry, Mila.
RIP.
Fine, Death Tyrant. Eat another Booming Blade. Oh, hey, would you look at that. Another crit. Time for you to die. Again.
Desperately searching the Death Tyrant’s horde, we found a diamond more than large enough for all our resurrecting needs. We decided to sleep in the maze, having killed the strongest thing in it, and will revive Mila in the morning.
XXX
Next morning, it’s time for a resurrection! Or, well, a Raise Dead. With contributions from Tierce and Nissa, it looked reasonably likely that the ritual to revive Mila would succeed.
And then it didn’t.
Go fuck yourself, Lazarus.
Saddened, and somewhat desperate to not fail at this juncture, we made the decision to try and take the Avalon right then. Using an exit that Meir had located, we burst out into the streets of Elganin, making directly for the skyport.
However, before we could make any real progress, we ran headlong into a rather nervous-seeming half-drow, who despite being rather clearly outnumbered claimed to have been sent to kill Mila. …Mission accomplished?
The half-drow, who called himself Adran, had very little time to spend wondering what had happened to Mila, because the party had already made a break for the skyport. Running along after us, Adrian seemed to have more or less inducted himself into the Best Decisions by coincidence, which was fortunate as he provided a handful of healing spells for a crowd that suffered some injuries in our passing.
Reaching the skyport, we took several elevators up, engaging in a semi-aerial battle with a number of guards. However, thanks to timely shooting from Meir, and effective rope-pulling from Tierce and Drano, we reached the dock and made it onto the airship.
There, we encountered the General Aquilla Alden, an armored man with a wicked lance, as well as a number of his soldiers. Upon seeing the lance, Adenine and Dawnbringer became very nervous, recognizing it as another one of the Apocrypha Arms, with the power to strike through people’s hearts without fail. Alden ordered us to surrender and drop our weapons, and, with the knowledge of his lethality and outnumbered two to one, we naturally attacked.
The battle opened by testing two Apocrypha Arms against each other. Alden survived the full power of Dawnbringer’s blast, and retaliated with his lance’s special power, stabbing Tierce through the heart and leaving her to bleed out. However, we as a party have always had a lot of healing, and with a Life Cleric on our side now, we managed to keep everyone alive despite Alden’s onslaught of attacks. Meir’s new skill, Volley, enabled him to rip through Alden’s soldiers, while Lyric heated Alden’s armor to a dangerous temperature and Daeris rained down swords on the warlord. The fight was brutal, but we triumphed by the skin of our teeth, Addition keeping Tierce, Lyric, and Daeris alive while Meir finished off Alden with two well-placed shots from the Angelfall Bow. The Avalon was ours.
Talking a converted soldier into flying the airship, we decided to leave Elganin for the time being to seek out Salcure, the dragon god of time, in Arcturus. We’d been sent to do so by Mertin anyway, and we were hoping he’d be willing to help us bring Mila back. Meanwhile, no longer threatened constantly, the party took a little time to breathe and get to know our new member, Ardent.
Adele is a Life Cleric of the drow goddess Ellistrae, the chaotic good goddess of the moon. He’s not terribly into violence, and he tends to be squeamish, but he considers himself bound to heal anyone who needs it. In this case, us. Truly, a gentleman and a scholar. He even healed the brain damage we’d been accruing, allowing us to actually remember that his name was Adran. What a guy.
After our introductions, people split up to go sleep, the day having been a long and emotionally exhausting one.
XXX
Having stolen the Avalon, we made our way north as Daeris quickly figured out how to fly the damn thing and started cosplaying as a Gallian airship captain, despite never having seen the uniform of one before. Along the way, we encountered a couple of possibly-incestuous possibly-gay wyverns that decided that the bridge of the Avalon would have good, juicy meals inside. Fortunately, the glass windows are apparently bulletproof, and you can’t poison an airship.
(7:35:20 PM) verax@tropi.us: Stupid wyvern.
So, Daeris blew a hole through one, lengthwise, with Reaper, proving why Hector liked the damn thing so much. She finished it off with a shot to the head as Adrin and Lyric tore the other one apart. Mostly Adrin with a conjured spear. Meanwhile, Meir had, in an amazing feat of drinking, managed to actually get himself drunk, by drinking most of the wine stores of the ship over a period of a few days, only pausing to sleep. So, he staggered out, drunk, just as momma (or poppa) Rathian/Rathalos, err, wyvern, decided to show up. So we shot and stabbed it a lot. Then Lyric punched it in the face, and it died. Moving on to Salcure’s place, we parked the Avalon just outside the harbor of the research village where Mertin told us to go, and met a purple-haired dude who informed us that we were late. His name was Marcus, apparently. And the purple hair was his natural color.
Weird.
More on him later.
(7:36:34 PM) everydunsparce@tropi.us/Kraata: How can you be late to a meeting with a god of time? o3o
(7:36:42 PM) verax@tropi.us: So, we spend the better part of 18 hours hiking up to Salcure’s temple. Straight. Should’ve taken ~2 days. Instead it took 18 hours. Anyhow, we spent a bit running around Salcure’s temple completing stupid puzzles. Then we got to meet Salcure himself. Guess who it was. I’ll wait. If you guessed Marcus, you’d be correct. Same purple-haired dude that gave Vulpes the way to the Library, too. Also? It turns out Salcure is a fucking memelord. I kid you not. He called the party friendos. So we asked him for two resurrections.
(7:36:57 PM) everydunsparce@tropi.us/Kraata: Ah, of course. o3o
(7:37:09 PM) verax@tropi.us: He said yes to Vic, and no to Mila.
Nissa’s interactions with him after this can be summed up by the following: “Fite me IRL.”
Daeris’ interactions with him can be summed up with “snark.”
And Tierce’s interactions can be summed up with “SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
On the inside, of course. And doing exactly nothing on the outside.
(7:37:31 PM) everydunsparce@tropi.us/Kraata: I will handle the issue of Tierce next week. :P
(7:37:45 PM) everydunsparce@tropi.us/Kraata: And I sort of figured he'd be unwilling to rez Mila. So Adran's with us for good?
(7:37:54 PM) verax@tropi.us: So, after that, Salcure decided to toy with us and pretend to fight us as some bullshit test. First turn, he did… not much.
So Daeris shoots him with Reaper. He rewinds the bullet’s timestream back into Daeris’ gun.
And Nissa threatens to suplex him. Then he turned into a dragon.
And wiped the entire party in one turn with his breath weapon.
Except Tierce.
Who survived the full damage.
He decided to bring us all back for more, dropping us to only 1 hp.
This trend continued throughout the entire “fight.” And Nissa threatened to suplex him. In his dragon form. It didn’t work, but it was amusing as hell.
XXX
In Salcure’s domain, with the newly revived Mila, we were ready to leave, but Salcure had something to show us first. He produced a video of some events that had transpired the previous day. Time for a FLASHBAAAAAAACK!
We found ourselves observing a strategy room, where Adeline was giving a rag-tag bunch of misfits a mission to scout one of the keeps held by the Galhurst. Determining that Keep Maiko was the best option, in the interest of freeing the imprisoned Astral Knights, the crew set off.
The Crew:
-Nosara Waver: Halfling Dragoon: A lively and fairly bloodthirsty soldier, who worked as an enforcer before she joined the resistance. Her approach to things, while eccentric, seems to work out most of the time.
-Izshta Al-Hazir: Human Fighter (Gunslinger): Her lover was turned into a Siren and her father was executed as a traitor. They say revenge is best served cold, but Izshta seems to prefer serving it with the spark of gunpowder.
-Azura Esperon: Human Fighter (Battlemaster): A member of the pre-occupation military. A lethal fighter in close-quarters, with markedly less luck otherwise.
-Roxa Swiftriver: Wereskunk Bard/Wizard: A researcher into bard magic, Roxa got into the Resistance because of her girlfriend. Definitely the more effective spellcaster of the party.
The crew headed north for Keep Maiko, making reasonably good time and managing to avoid encounters (putting them several up on us, really). However, reaching the Kilreath…
SCREEEEE!
Suddenly, Sirens! One of them! Well, that’s not so bad, especially with the addition of two more Resistance members!
-Venna Ferre: Human Barbarian (Marauder): An ex-Marauder who joined the Resistance, her zest for life and brutal strength are matched only by her utter idiocy.
-Thea Rigist: Human Wizard (Knowledge Theurge): A living counterexample to the theory that good things come in small packages. Grumpy, rude, and not that good at things.
The Siren was defeated with relative ease, thanks to halberds, guns, and Hold Person. However, the commotion attracted a handful of guards.
The guards were also defeated with relative ease, though it did transpire that neither Thea nor Roxa had any particular ability to hit things with spells. Thea particularly failed to hit anything throughout the battle. This is why they have melee fighters and a gunslinger.
After the scuffle, Keep Maiko was reached without incident, and the guards there were confronted. Fortunately, most of them had probably already been killed or were otherwise occupied, and the keep was lightly guarded, leaving the crew able to easily take down the handful of pistoleers.
However, on their way to find the prisoners, it transpired that Pyra had taken notice of them. As they freed the imprisoned Astral Knights, something was let loose into the Fort after them. Something blue, flickering, and highly magical.
Well, we had wanted to know more about Krast’athul, and now was our chance.
Despite attempts at covering their tracks with illusions, Krast’athul pursued the crew and the escaping Knights relentlessly, tearing them all into pieces with a single blast. However, Venna remained conscious, and got off a Sending to Adeline to inform her of the remaining Knights. Pyra then appeared, along with an evidently-reanimated Hector, and reimprisoned the Resistance members, addressing us directly through Salcure’s scrying to greet us and express excitement for the next time she saw us.
End vision. Shocked and horrified by what we’d seen and our own complicity in letting it happen, we rushed back onto the airship and set sail for Elganin.
XXX
Arriving at Elganin more or less without incident, we found the second of the Galhurst capital ships awaiting us. The Excalibur, while significantly smaller than the Avalon, had the advantage of a far superior weapons system and much greater speed. Unfortunately, we had little choice but to engage.
Fortunately, the Excalibur was willing to oblige our desire for a closer engagement, flying towards us in order to get above us and bomb us to dust. This was a very intelligent idea, with one small flaw, namely the existence of the spell Dimension Door.
Lyric, Tierce, Cybil, and Adran teleported onto the Excalibur, Tierce and Adran inflicting horrific damage on both the Excalibur’s soldiers and its weaponry. Even after the appearance of the second of the Galhurst marshals, the battle was over fairly quickly (notably thanks to an unbelievably good pair of shots from Meir), the surviving crew converted to Bahamut, and the Excalibur docked in the Avalon’s hangar. We have two ships now (even if they are a little trashed). Things are looking pretty good for the Best Decisions Adventuring Guild.
It’s at this point that Mila woke up from her post-resurrection coma. The party, expecting a tearful reunion, went to greet her, but instead found that Mila was mostly concerned about whether Vic had been raised. Oops.
The tension was made worse when Adran entered the room. Mila’s grudge against drow, and the fact that Adran admittedly had been sent to kill her, soured relations between the two fairly quickly, and Tierce was forced to pull Mila off of Adran. Mila did not appreciate this, and snapped at the party, questioning why they’d chosen to bring her back over Vic. We couldn’t really think of any good reasons and everyone stormed off angrily. Mila, Tierce, and Lyric talked again shortly thereafter, and while Mila was still busy being angry she at least agreed to fight with us.
We then went to reconvene with the Resistance, whose numbers had been steadily draining against the Galhurst occupation. However, they did succeed in liberating Keep Maiko, which was now defended only by the revived Hector and Krast’athul. We decided to take those two out before they could cause us any further problems, and because it was more or less our best option with air support still off-limits.
It was also at this time that the Best Decisions Adventuring Guild met the crew from the oneshot. They did not get along especially well.
Anyway, we attacked Keep Maiko, and we almost immediately ran into Krast’athul.
Let’s do this.
The fight got off to a good start. Though hitting Krast’athul for some reason proved difficult, and Tierce ended up on the wrong end of a Hold Person spell, we managed to inflict rapid damage, when suddenly…
“Die, die, DIE!”
Hector appeared from nowhere, wielding twin scatterguns, and quite efficiently too. He tore fairly quickly through most of the party, fortunately running out of shots before he could finish anybody off for good. Even more fortunately, Mila and Daeris once again ventilated him in a single round, leaving only Krast’athul once again.
At least until Krast’athul simply forced Hector’s essence back into the armor. God dammit.
Fortunately, Krast’athul itself wasn’t looking too good. Despite this, and despite the fact that it was fairly obviously in pain, nobody could really bring themselves to feel sorry for it. With focused fire, and thanks to its anger at Tierce for injuring it badly at the start of combat, it didn’t manage to kill anyone before Meir turned it back into ambient Weave.
It was at this point that a whole lot of stuff happened. First, thankfully, with Krast’athul destroyed, Hector’s spirit departed the armor that was holding him together. Second, and a bit more strangely, the armor came to life.
Oh dear.
Seeming very confused about what it was doing, the new creature wandered off into the castle, though not before Tierce gave it her prayer book to go over.
So, um…we created Warforged, guys. Nice.
XXX
After defeating Krast, we realized that literally all the Sirens had been turned into Warforged. Maybe not the best possible ending for them…but an improvement on being a Siren. Also, because Tierce converted the first one to Bahamut, it converted the rest. Awkward.
Anyway, with the Sirens out of the picture, we went to Velora to enlist her help. She agreed to deal with the spell turrets ringing the city, so we could bring in the airships. Meanwhile, after a somewhat circuitous discussion, we decided it was time to pay Pyra a visit.
And by visit we mean stabbing her. We were going to pay her a stabbing. That scans and is proper English.
Also we learned that Naida, Vic’s mom and another one of Elganin’s high mages, had been turned into a thrall of Pyra’s. Just for the record.
Pyra’s tower was predictably irritating, though aside from Tierce falling into a spike pit the traps were fairly uneventful. What was a great deal more stressful was the fact that this was Pyra’s lair, and she was casting spells at us through it. Fortunately, Tierce more or less shrugged off a spell that would have turned her into a vegetable.
Also, for some reason, Adran got very upset when Mila mentioned wiping out the Silent One’s cult. Wonder why…
Also, Adran got turned into a bunny by some pixies.
Also, there were Wallmasters for some reason. So now we hate legs and hands.
Also, as we made our way through the tower, we encountered a handful of mid-tier demons, and most of the party was ensorcelled by a Slow spell, which thankfully wore off once we’d dealt with them. Adran banished one, Tierce slashed up another, and we worked together to ventilate a glabrezu. Also, Mila shot Tierce while Tierce was strung out on Haste. But good teamwork, really.
At this point, Pyra got annoyed, and released another one of her many thralls. At this point, something started pursuing us through the tower. It appeared periodically, but didn’t seem able to notice us, in spite of the lights from torches and Dawnbringer…we realized that it was blind, and tracking us by hearing, or possibly tremorsense or something like that. This led to a rather macabre game of Red Light, Green Light, with us freezing every time the creature made an appearance, and moving slowly and quietly when it was gone.
So, good news and bad news. Good news, we made it to Pyra’s room without having to confront whatever she’d sicced on us. Bad news…we made it to Pyra’s room. She’d clearly prepared, and when we arrived, she summoned a small cadre of demons, consisting so far of two mariliths, a goristro, and a small horde of quasits. A formidable prospect on their own, but coupled with the succubus archmage…this will be fun.
XXX
Let’s fight Pyra now.
The mariliths, thankfully, were evidently taken from the Abyssal reject pile, as despite their many attacks they tended to fail to connect. Pyra, on the other hand, had no such problems, and with her first spell in the battle petrified Daeris and Tierce instantly. It lasted a while for Daeris, but only about a round for Tierce.
Then, the goristro attacked. It charged in, fully ready to paste all of us…and Adran proceeded to banish it, with the help of a timely assist from Nissa.
Awesome.
Meir, meanwhile, dedicated himself to shredding the gathered quasits, which was fortunate, as it turned out Pyra was more than capable of devouring them to heal herself.
With most of the quasits gone, and the mariliths rapidly being cut down by Tierce, it seemed as though the fight would be largely uneventful. Unfortunately Pyra disagreed, and sacrificed one of the badly-injured mariliths to summon a balor. Oh boy.
Fortunately, the balor was unable to act immediately, which gave the rest of us time to kill the other marilith, delete the remaining quasits, and cut a massive chunk out of Pyra. Less fortunately, Pyra decided this would be a great time to nope out. Initially attempting to take one of her portals, she instead used Dimension Door to vanish from the room after Mila destroyed the gemstones keeping the portals stable. Shame we didn’t do that while Pyra was in the middle of the portal, because that would have been straight-up karmic.
That said, Pyra was still out of the room. However, it seemed as though she’d encountered company. Destroying the last gemstone and revealing the door into Pyra’s room, we found Pyra facing down someone wearing Brom’s old coat…weird. Either way, Mila slit Pyra’s throat, and that was the end of that.
Except, of course, that we still had a major demon to kill. Fortunately, it was fairly occupied with the tanks, leaving it mostly stuck on one end of the room.
It was at this point, incidentally, that someone else entered the room. Someone who, until recently, had been considered altogether too heartless to work with BDAG.
Yep, Vic’s back. Dying and returning seemed to have done wonders for her accuracy, hitting the balor with almost every shot and critting on several. Plus, it’s generally nice when people come back, even if the only reason it took so long was because Salcure was waiting for an appropriately dramatic moment.
Despite the balor’s power, there isn’t much that can survive a steady assault from 8+ determined adventurers, and it ended up dying at Mila’s hand as well. Thankfully, everyone survived its subsequent detonation, and we fled Pyra’s tower to return to the airship.
On the airship, we agreed to go finish Zelrich the next day, and then prepared for sleep, mostly by getting to know the new people. Ezra Helsing was Brom’s protégé, and the closest thing he had to a daughter. Despite the awkwardness of that situation, however, she agreed to help us, as did her sword Razgriz, who turned out to be Dawnbringer’s long-lost twin. Dawnbringer was not especially pleased by the impromptu family reunion, and the two have been somewhat awkward around each other.
The next morning, meanwhile, Daeris, Mila, Tierce, and Nissa ran into Thea and Venna. It was predictably uncomfortable.
XXX
After making Erique’s life miserable for a bit, we went to finally put an end to the occupation of Elganin. With most of Zelrich’s army occupied by Velora and the other Resistance members, we were free to attack his castle directly.
First, though, we had to deal with his personal guards. This wasn’t especially difficult, because a number of them were undead and thus fairly easy to kill. The rest of them were just generally flimsy. Also, that jazz hands skeleton was there. We slaughtered him. Again.
We ran into a set of more elite troops after that, but with Dawnbringer’s help they were fairly easily (and destructively) dispensed with. We entered Zelrich’s castle without further obstruction.
And then we found Zelrich. We offered him a chance at surrender, but he refused, and Mila sentenced him to death. We traced him back to his throne room, and found that Zelrich wasn’t the only vampire running the kingdom.
Well, we know where the rest of Mila’s family is now.
Yike.
So, the fight began. Zelrich revealed himself as a dragoon, leaping in and out of the party and wreaking havoc with his magical lance. Bertram, meanwhile, used the magical crown of Elganin to cast intensely powerful lightning spells.
Surprisingly, Zelrich went down rather quickly, torn apart by a double Blade Rain from Daeris and finally executed by an arrow between the eyes from Meir. However, Bertram remained brainwashed, and left many members of the party in critical condition. Mila talked him down, and he ceased his assault…unfortunately, during this time, Tierce died from her injuries.
She was revivified rather quickly, but was left with a mild grudge against Bertram, and friendly vampires in general. On the other hand, however…we won. Zelrich’s gone, and Elganin is free. Time to party.
The party, naturally, was legendary. In the very literal sense, because a god showed up. But more on that later… First of all, Mila needed a new high mage, and asked Daeris if she’d take the post, but Daeris deferred to Nissa. Mila left Daeris with the suggestion to ask Vic out and went off to go get Adran laid. Tierce, meanwhile, had become heavily drunk, with Lyric minding her. Nosara ran around hugging people, Venna drank more than should be physically possible, Thea passed out several times in a minute, and Izshta showed off her trick shooting skills. Daeris went to go ask out Vic, learning before doing so that the Galran empire was still a threat, even with Zelrich defeated. This didn’t deter her from asking Vic for a date, but Vic gently turned her down for the time being. Daeris, fairly saddened, went off to read alone like a nerd. The rest of the party gathered around her, and that is when a god showed up.
Salcure offered Mila a drink, which of course she drank. This led to the activation of numerous effects, including one that left Tierce with the belief that she was immortal, thus leading to her attempting to leap from the mage tower. Fortunately she was prevented from doing so. Less fortunately, Salcure continued peddling his purple chaos juice (oh god what was it), leading to dozens of wild magic effects activating, and most of the party passed out drunk. Hopefully this will change by the morning.
XXX
In the morning, with Zelrich gone and the kingdom restored, the pervading question was “What now?”
Some logistical issues needed to be handled, of course. Zelrich had removed most of the money from the treasury, leaving Elganin only barely in the black after paying our debt to the Darkblades. Further, the city still needed to be brought back to a semblance of order, with two out of four High Mages missing, most of the royal family dead or vampirized, and just generally a lot of messes.
While Daeris, Mila, and Vic went over these issues, Tierce attempted to perform surgery on herself to remove the frill she’d acquired from Salcure’s purple chaos juice. Dawnbringer refused to help, so Tierce borrowed Razgriz from Ezra to get the job done. Surprisingly, she survived the experience. Even more surprisingly, so did the frill. This ran in parallel with Ezra mailing a thing to an old friend from the Marauders, Adran spilling the remainder of his life story (he used to be a cleric of Lolth, but left the Underdark after the Silent One was deposed to try and bring Mila back. He nearly died in the Underdark but was rescued by Ellistrae and now serves her), Daeris attempting to contact Melusine and make ammunition for Reaper, and Mila mentioning she was going to stay behind in the city.
Wait, that last one is sad. But it’s okay. She agreed it would be kind of an anticlimactic ending to just ditch us, and we decided to take one last trip to Mufo together to get Mila’s family raised. Meanwhile, a bunch of dragons were roaring so loudly we heard them from off-continent.
Wait, that last one is bad. Rushing for the airship, Daeris finally got a response to her Sending, but it wasn’t from Melusine, it was from Theynix.
…Oh no.
Mila decided to stay behind and keep watch over her city, leaving the party in Adran’s care. After a somewhat perfunctory goodbye (nobody really wanting to acknowledge the possibility of members of BDAG being killed in the fight against Theynix), the remaining party members set sail in the Excalibur.
Meanwhile, Theynix continued taunting Daeris, reminding her that Melusine wouldn’t have been weak enough to possess if she hadn’t been weakened from using Wish for the party. That’s embarrassing. Further, when Tierce threatened Theynix, Theynix notified her that he’d turned Mufo into a glacier. I guess we have a destination now.
After a largely uneventful trip, during which time we learned that the Duchy seems to be in still-functioning shape (at least from above) and that there are other Charnel Colossi wandering the world, we arrived at Mufo. We found it covered in a wall of ice, and besieged by undead hordes. Using the Excalibur’s main cannon to put an end to the siege, at least temporarily, we landed outside the city and were greeted by Seina, a general(?) in charge of a whole lot of paladins. Somewhat unsurprisingly, she didn’t seem to like Tierce. She brought us to the grand temple, which was full of wounded (who the party began healing), and filled us in on the situation. Theynix had showed up a while back, frozen half the city, and set an undead army on them. Fortunately, our use of the Excalibur’s cannon shattered a chunk of the ice wall, allowing ways in and out of the city.
Also, Nissa’s patron appeared to her. While it was extremely cool, she was also delivering bad news, specifically that she was dying and needed Nissa’s assistance. Meanwhile, eager to escape Nissa’s flirting with her deity and everyone else within range, Tierce and most of the remainder of the party went to go see if Tierce’s parents had survived.
They had, and they even seemed to be in reasonable physical health. Mentally, however, they made Tierce look positively observant, having failed to notice not only the siege but that Tierce had not simply stepped out to pick up milk. This was a slightly upsetting experience for Tierce, who remembered them as admittedly fairly scatterbrained but not quite so bad. Further concerns were raised when it became clear that someone had in fact been providing the milk in Tierce’s absence, at least recently. Daeris, meanwhile, stepped outside to get away from the madness, and noticed someone observing the house. But back to that in a moment…
The Grand Acolyte of the city, Vasha, had followed the party to Tierce’s house, and filled us in on some of the details relating to the roaring we’d heard before leaving. Apparently, Melusine’s death caused the breakdown of a truce between chromatic and metallic dragons (explaining a lot) and the roars had been a war beginning in the dragons’ realm.
Back to Daeris, she easily caught up with the fleeing figure, only to find out that it was Shadar. Welp. Shadar easily defeated Daeris, because when there’s a wizard in your melee range the fight’s generally already over. He demanded she remove the boon granted her by Salcure, and also hand over the armor she’d taken from Zelrich. Daeris, wanting to live, complied, and Shadar left, warning her that we shouldn’t get in his way.
Meanwhile, Vasha explained that she’d seen signs that the fifth calamity, the end of the world, was fast approaching. Daeris, returning to the house, connected this to Shadar, and Vasha mentioned that Shadar’s Apocrypha Arms, at least Blackheart, were considered failed prototypes, having no particular features. Daeris suggested that Shadar could have imbued them with power somehow, a sentiment which Vasha agreed with, and the group decided that if we were going to lose our boons from Salcure, we might as well burn them fighting Theynix’s soldiers.
XXX
Back at Elganin, Meir and Mila were hanging around, picked a snowball fight with some kids which Meir won aggressively, were challenged to a battle by Angeil the Immortal, who is a representative of the Cutomat people, who may have been enlisted in the fight against the Galhurst Empire (also Mila got a ring with Wish). Then they went to interrogate Meir's brother about why the Galhurst wanted him back from Elganin.
XXX
The next day, we awoke. Nissa attempted to scry on Shadar, though not to much effect. Suddenly, someone appeared in the midst of the group, calling herself Lea Kitze and claiming to be a famous bard. Slightly confused but not really willing to argue the point, the party dragged her along to the Grand Temple to plan out the day (though not before the force of her ego warped time to bring us to the mid-afternoon).
At the Grand Temple, we decided that the best course of action would be to bring the Excalibur into the city, so we went outside to meet the undead strike team that was attacking it. While generally uninteresting, it was led by a strange creature that nearly absorbed Ezra into itself. However, we dealt with it with limited problems, and brought the airship into the city, also meeting a dragonborn sorcerer named Robin Loptyr whom we press-ganged into BDAG, possibly to counterbalance Lea.
XXX
We returned to Mandi, where we’re trying to find a shrine to the Lunar Mistress. We encountered some Death Knights, Nissa died, was fortunately revived, and we arrived at the lake around the shrine and crossed it with ice magic. We are now in the castle.
Incidentally, this castle belongs to the vampire Strahd. So, like…this should be fun and exciting.
XXX
Entering the castle, we were greeted by a projection of Strahd’s voice, welcoming us to his crib. Despite his offer of beverages, Tierce never received any apple juice, and nobody else asked for anything. So on we pressed.
We encountered some vampire spawn, but given the numbers advantage and the fact that we were in Dawnbringer’s light, the battle was predictably quick. Then we found a statue with a dead body next to it. Naturally, we poked it to see what would happen. The results were predictable, and a number of us ended up badly injured, but we did feed the statue enough life for it to be restored to its original state.
Then we were greeted by Marcus, or rather Salcure. He warned us that we should leave the temple. Nissa disagreed, and the rest of the party was fairly suspicious, given our past associations with Salcure. Further, Nissa’s patron showed up and told us to ignore Salcure. So we did.
Next we ran into a teleport trap, but it only caught Daeris and Adran and they both made it out rather quickly. We fought a Grey Ooze and kept moving. Then we fought two Grey Golems.
Oh, wait, sorry. Those are Iron Golems.
Oh, wait. Fuck.
Nonetheless, we did defeat them.
XXX
Moving on from the iron golems, we found Strahd’s mausoleum. It contained numerous crypts of various servants and nobles of Strahd’s kingdom, as well as a few surprises. Highlights included:
-A vampire spawn full of spider webs
-A ghost that wanted to fly and possessed Lea to do so
-A skull that may well have been a demilich
-A bell that summoned fire
-Adran’s tomb (?????????)
-A dude who built the world’s greatest navy belonging to a landlocked country
And many more. Moving past the crypts, we found a number of coffins that seemed to be of greater importance. The first two seemed to belong to Strahd’s parents. The second seemed to belong to his brother, and though his brother was wearing a very nice set of enchanted plate armor we decided against graverobbing.
The third coffin we found was of exceptionally ornate make, and as we examined it…well, we found Strahd. As he had no apple juice to offer us, the fight began.
Before anyone could do much of anything, Lea proceeded to use Bigby’s Hand to punch Strahd across the room. Because…why not? The battle against Strahd was generally a simpler affair than the one against Zelrich had been. Despite having the ability to lay several geasa on the entire party, as well as powerful and esoteric offensive magic, Strahd had no means of counteracting the typical vampire weakness of sunlight, and was ultimately fairly simple to defeat. Given the dread we’d felt coming to face him, it felt almost anticlimactic.
All the same, the shrine was clear of infestation, and after following some sparkles back to the statue, we were greeted by Nissa’s patron, who was once again in stable, if not perfect, condition. She restored us to health, reenchanted Reaper, thanked us for our assistance, and sent us on our way. That was simple. Now, time to get back to our main plot of killing Theynix. Should be okay enough, especially after leveling up from Strahd. Everything should be pretty good from here on in, really.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you scrying on me?”
Alternatively, everything is terrible and we’re all doomed. Yay!
Shadar showed up, enraged that we’d bring back a god of magic, and more to the point, that we’d spy on him, and decided it was a good time to remind us not to fuck with him. Time for the real boss fight.
Of course, this one didn’t really go as well. Fully rested or no, the party was fundamentally no match for Shadar, and he proved as much within the first round, inflicting massive damage throughout the party and shrugging off our retaliatory attacks.
And then he stopped playing around.
With one set of attacks, he nearly rendered Tierce unconscious, knocked out every one of our healers, and killed Adran.
Because nothing says “vengeance for my dead friend” like killing someone whose primary method of magic use is to bring back other dead people.
Tierce threatened him, but Shadar wasn’t especially impressed, and decided that he’d leave her unable to protect anyone ever again. He did this by cutting off her arm.
Give the man a hand, everybody. Really, you have to hand it to him. Offhand, I couldn’t think of a better way to hurt someone who relies on a shield so much. A real underhanded move. Arm pun.
Shadar finished making his point by hitting Daeris with a single, incredibly powerful strike and knocking her unconscious. Deciding he’d satisfactorily explained himself, he left us to lick our wounds, though had the decency to revive Adran first. The party was left in a bleak mood, though at the very least there were few permanent injuries.
Also, despite being the one to actually do the scrying, Nissa was completely unharmed in the battle.
XXX
The next day, Adran attempted to Regenerate Tierce’s arm, but something in the wound prevented it. So now the paladin is mostly ‘armless.
We left the shrine to find that Theynix had destroyed our airship and killed most of our men, with the exception of Jameson. Good old Jameson. We were forced to take Plane Shift back to Mufo and ended up overnighting in the Astral Plane, during which time we ran into Pyra’s ghost (who was exorcised by Tierce to prevent Nissa from dying) and several arm beetles. Best not to go into that.
Also, Tierce kissed Nissa for a good cause.
Returning to Mufo, we found that not much had changed. Theynix had left the city alone, and everything seemed very quiet. Ezra brought immense amounts of bacon to the Settle household.
Then we got a psychic communique suggesting that we needed to deal with Theynix RIGHT NOW. We took a teleport circle from Mufo to the dwarven city of Clothorp, where we said goodbye to Lea in the most awkward goodbye of all time. Then we hiked off to Dravia, where we fought some dinosaurs.
That night, we received a weird dream, containing spiders, a whip, and a zombie drow. Wonder what that could mean?
I WONDER.
XXX
The next day, we discussed the nightmare. Meanwhile, Daeris was being bothered by a platinum drake.
That is, Bahamut, god of dragons. Tierce, predictably, fainted.
Tiamat and Salcure also showed up for the full family reunion credit, and some exposition happened. Turns out Melusine is the draconic embodiment of the element of ice, making her one of the world’s most powerful dragons and essentially a demigod.
Well. Melusine was the draconic embodiment of the element of ice, making her one of the world’s most powerful dragons and essentially a demigod. Too bad we got her killed over Tierce’s legs.
Eilistraee also showed up for a bit to give Adran some words of comfort, and we proceeded onwards to a goliath village. There, we found that the village leader had been having some issues with attacks on the outskirts of the village, and asked us to deal with that before agreeing to give us a guide to Dravia proper.
We agreed, and went to go stand outside the hut and wait to be attacked. Somewhat predictably, the attacks were more of Theynix’s cult. The battle was grueling, and Daeris died during it, but we managed to take a hostage and find out a little about our enemy. Theynix had brought back Ilvara, who apparently was a magical prodigy, and had already taken over a huge percentage of the Underdark. Which means we almost certainly need to go back there… great.
We left off on the note of what exactly to do with the guy we’d captured. Executing him doesn’t really work, but at the same time, it’s almost impossible to keep a mage captive, so now what?
XXX
The answer to the question of “now what” was that Adran executed the mage to put him out of his misery. We returned to the goliath village, though we ended up keeping the orb as we continued into Dravia.
We had a peculiar discussion about the nature of the sun and moon along the way. Turns out we don’t know much about them.
We then received our guide, a goliath names Palles (not Pals). He explained to us that en route, we’d need to pass through the hunting ground of the legendary dragon of Earth, as well as a city of elves that had been warring with the dragons for quite some time (this also sparked a discussion about the nature of various biomes, and Daeris’s home region).
During the night, Daeris decided to examine the orb. This had unfortunate and painful side effects, but she did positively identify it as the Right Eye of Tiamat.
Wait, what.
Tierce tried to destroy it but only succeeded in stabbing Daeris, so we just shoved it into a Bag of Holding to keep it safe and away from us.
The next day, after that embarrassing incident, we found ourselves at a rope bridge, which was guarded by a number of drow. They attempted to issue a threat but Daeris shot the threatgiver through the head in the middle of his speech.
Unfortunately, then they called up someone they called the inquisitor, a figure in plate armor who delivered an ominous and religiously-tinged warning.
Tierce’s evil twin? Maybe!
Fortunately, Daeris sealed him in a Wall of Force to keep him out of the fight while we killed the two drow snipers. Then the Inquisitor dropped an antimagic field and everything went to hell in a handbasket.
First, as is frequent, he attacked Tierce. His greatsword was fairly damaging in and of itself, but what was slightly worse was the smite damage.
Yep, he’s a paladin. Fuck.
Despite the injuries he inflicted on Tierce, we managed to respond in kind, cracking his armor and revealing…
Well.
Um.
Reunions are so nice, right?
Velvez flew past Tierce to attack Adran, and his sword revealed a secondary ability, shutting off Adran’s ability to work spells. Wuh-oh.
The battle was complicated heavily by our unwillingness to just kill him, but fortunately Robin was able to Hold Velvez long enough for Nissa and Lyric to talk him out of his rage. And then we all shared hugs. It was nice.
XXX
After our tearful reunion with Velvez, we went to sleep for the night, and had some peculiar dreams.
Lyric met a pit fiend named Dave, who in a twist of fate was not his dad. Ezra, meanwhile, hung out with a manifestation of Razgriz. Finally, Cybil encountered Oberon, her patron. All three received cryptic warnings about the future, as such beings are wont to hand out.
The next day, we resumed our trek through the snow, when we encountered a dragon who wanted to know why we were there. Fortunately, he hated Theynix as much as we did, and let us pass. Less fortunately, this meant that we encountered the Iraxian elves.
They didn’t like us.
The feeling was mutual.
They accepted us as guests on account of our gagging Tierce and vouching for Robin, but they stored us in their prison and confiscated most of our stuff. So, you know, the usual. Elves are jerks.
Speaking of jerks, Salcure showed up. He was being more serious than average, so we knocked it off with the jokes in exchange for not having had never existed. Salcure explained to us that in order to best combat Theynix, we would need the assistance of another one of the elemental dragons, that being Gant, the one whose territory we had passed through. Alternatively, we could talk to an Iraxian named Zachariah about stopping Theynix. Salcure also explained that Iraxia was where Vulpes had come from, and that our helping him locate the Staff of Five Fates had helped him save it. This was rather awkward as given any knowledge whatsoever of the place we probably would have happily let it die.
Salcure additionally suggested that whatever we do we make up our minds quickly, as the Iraxian guards had found large amounts of Bahamutian paraphernalia in our stuff and were about to charge us with heresy.
Whoops.
Salcure informed us that we would be able to undergo trial by combat against two knights of the Iraxian inquisition (I guess they’re expected), and we decided to use Tierce and Ezra as our champions. We were summarily arrested, charged, and the battle began.
It didn’t go well at all and we were laughably outclassed. Neither Tierce nor Ezra survived two rounds. Fortunately, Razgriz did. He took over Ezra’s body, and without much fanfare slaughtered the two Knights and a summoned air elemental. It was awesome.
XXX
Despite our totally awesome victory, the Iraxians still wanted to execute us. Fortunately, Vulpes showed up. As the hero who saved his city from extinction, he had some pull and was able to convince the Iraxians not to kill us. Weirdly, despite the fact that we were major players in aforementioned saving, we had no such pull.
Vulpes brought us to his home in Iraxia, where we all chilled out for a while, before Daeris and Lyric went to go locate Zacharias. They met and collected him in a surprisingly easy turn of events, and learned that Wulric was currently in an Iraxian prison.
We also immediately thereafter learned that he had broken out, and was leading a swarm of dragons to Iraxia. We went to go fight them, and found that one of them was a huge, ancient-seeming beast with immense, if limited, magical output. The rest, drakes and wyverns, were easily slaughtered, but the larger dragon proved unkillable, only fleeing after we had inflicted a great deal of damage to it.
XXX
In the aftermath of the fight, we collected Wulric, who was sort of mumbly and useless. Daeris identified the cause as a Feeblemind spell, which we fixed using Tierce’s new ability to break curses.
WHOOPSIE FUCKING DAISY.
Wulric was taken to an antimagic prison cell. Along the way, Tierce lifted the curse on her arm, and was faced with the issue of the wound no longer being cauterized. She immediately started bleeding everywhere. Take note of this habit of her removing curses and making everything worse, because it’s going to be on the test.
Taking Wulric to an antimagic prison cell, we attempted to interrogate him now that he actually had a brain to pick. Zacharias was present too, which proved a problem almost instantly when he attempted to murder Wulric.
Do note that he managed this within an antimagic field. Weird, right? Well, we’ll get back to that. Ezra intercepted Zacharias and prevented him from causing injury, but Wulric didn’t seem worried at all. He continued explaining himself fairly calmly, revealing that he was able to kill Melusine for the same reason that Robin might be- he has blood of a fell dragon. But by all means, he said, allow the Shade Warden to try and kill him.
Shade Wardens, if you will recall, are a type of warrior powered by energies from the Shadowfel. They have been referred to in the Blightenstone Library (Verax 2016) and more recently by Shadar (Verax 2017).
Well, fuckity shit.
Zachariah, rather earnestly, explained that he did in fact work for Shadar. Despite our adverse reactions, he continued to insist that we kill Wulric, because—
ZA WARUDO!
If you want to live, you’ll kill Zacharias now. Do that, and I won’t kill you when I escape.
Wulric, despite the antimagic zone, had casually stopped time and was making some pretty presumptious demands for someone everyone wanted to kill. He also laid claim to the title of god of magic, and namedropped Zilar.
Wait. Let’s back up here.
In Shadar’s tragic backstory (Verax 2017) he explained that he was betrayed a long time ago by a mage. Right now, this mage, who is of a comparable power level, was threatening Shadar, and Shadar evidently hated him enough to send people to kill him. So, um…
Hi, Godreit. Nice to meet you, I don’t think.
Godreit explained that when time unstopped, he was going to murder the two Iraxian guards in the room, but that it was our job to kill Zacharias. Opinions were split on what to do, and when time unfroze, things turned chaotic quickly. Robin Disintegrated Zacharias, Cybil hit him with a Cloud of Daggers, but Tierce and Ezra attacked Godreit. This was an error. Though Zacharias and the guards were killed by the converging attacks, Godreit didn’t so much as blink at the double attack from Tierce and Ezra, and broke Tierce’s jaw with a casual backhand. Godreit, taking advantage of our total helplessness, took the time to exposit. The events of the entire campaign were machinations by Shadar to gather and destroy the Anchors of Conflux in order to free a god as a favor. Unfortunately, this search had allowed for the destruction of Theynix’s phylactery, in which Godreit’s essence has been hidden. Further, his magical power had been hidden inside none other than Krast’athul. Whom we also killed. Even further, his memories had been held inside the elemental core of Melusine. Consequently, when Wulric helped Theynix kill her, he regained his full power as a god, though he’d forgotten about it when Melusine Feebleminded him. See what I mean about Tierce’s cursebreaking being a bad idea? So anyway Godreit left us to stew on that, though he also gave us a scroll of Imprisonment to get rid of Theynix, who was coming to kill Godreit.
We decided that the best option was to visit the Archbishop of Iraxia, because Godreit had decided he wanted the city and was willing to destroy it if he didn’t get it. We spent a day recovering at Vulpes’ house, complete with existential crises and short-lived despair, and left the next morning. Along the way, though, there was a solar eclipse, and a flash of light seen the world around.
Can things maybe go wrong one at a time someday? Probably too much to ask.
A speech was made to the entire world, in a familiar deep and booming voice. Shadar announced his intention to start the Calamity, giving everyone in the world a few weeks to make their peace.
Conversely, fuck that shit, because we’re going to take the fight to him before that can happen! Who cares if we’re horrendously outclassed? Who cares if we’ve never beaten him in a fight? Who cares if the last time we crossed his path, he beat us all to a pulp, killed Adran, and took Tierce’s arm?
…Yeah, we’re gonna die. But we’re gonna do it fighting.
Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it right now, and Theynix is the more pressing issue. We went to talk to the archbishop to see if we could get advice on something with enough power to hold an ancient dracolich. Ezra noted that we could always put Theynix in Razgriz, which Razgriz thought sounded delicious. The archbishop pointed out that this would involve disarming Ezra, since the imprisoning item would have to be held by the caster, which would be either Daeris, Cybil, or Nissa. Also, the caster would have to stand within 30 feet of Theynix for an entire minute.
But hey, what’s a plan without risk?
Razgriz was still pretty excited about the idea. In fact, he was so excited that he dropped some exposition. Apparently, the events building up reminded him uncomfortably of the last calamity. There had been a band of heroes then too, Melusine among them. And look where she is now…that brought down the mood somewhat, but at least we had a viable method of imprisoning Theynix. The archbishop suggested a backup plan in the form of a gem held in a temple of Bahamut, which Tierce was initially disconcerted by but eventually accepted. We decided to collect the gem anyway, because it might be useful to have a favor from Bahamut on hand.
Also, Tierce got her arm back. Yay!
We went on a quick sidequest to collect the gem, which was located in an abandoned temple in an equally abandoned city. We entered the temple, and Tierce immediately rushed it, unsurprisingly. She was cut off from the rest of the party by a magical barrier, and was greeted by Bahamut, who seemed to be in the market for a champion. Tierce fought a death knight, though did significantly better than the last time the party had encountered a Death Knight. She returned to the rest of the party, where another door had opened up. It was marked with Draconic for Wisdom, so Tierce brought Daeris with her. All the same, Tierce ended up answering the test, which was a fairly standard issue of Lawful vs. Good. Tierce picked Good and also Violent, and Bahamut, apparently being an antifascist sort of god, took that as the right answer. Then a third door appeared, insisting that Tierce prove her willingness to sacrifice for others…and then acknowledged that she’d sort of spent her whole life doing that, and let the party pass into the inner sanctum. There they found a statue of Bahamut holding the gem, with the inscription “To keep it, you must give it to me.”
Tierce assumed this referred to her heart and was fully ready to die, but Vulpes suggested the more moderate route of rededicating herself to Bahamut. Tierce did this, and a passage opened up to under the statue, where we found some very nice armor and arms. Tierce collected it, and became fully realized as the Champion of Bahamut, while the rest of the party gained the Boon of Combat Prowess. Collecting the gem, which turned out not to have been guarded at all, we left the temple to return to Iraxia and deal with Theynix.
XXX
On the way back to Iraxia, we saw a storm cloud, and the temperature began to drop. Hoping to get to the city faster and avoid needless casualties, Adran made a Sending to Theynix to get his attention. Unfortunately, Theynix decided that instead he’d just teleport us to him.
He decided to transport Tierce directly to him for ease of killing her, but this backfired when she put an Excaliblast through his eye and then hit him in the face with two critical smites. This had the side effect of destroying the Eye of Tiamat he had taken for himself. Meanwhile, Ezra began her Imprisonment spell.
Unfortunately this got Godreit’s attention. He showed up, fully prepared to annihilate us for destroying his rock.
Daeris, naturally, started casting Sending. Why, Godreit wanted to know? Melusine was right there if we wanted to talk to her. Who could we possibly summon to our aid?
Well, who do we know who wants Godreit dead?
Shadar responded immediately and with vigor, and the fight abruptly became even again. The party was able to focus on Theynix, who found himself outmatched. Also, Godreit and Shadar exchanged some intense banter. Shadar threatened to expunge Godreit from reality. Godreit retaliated by raising Alarial from the dead and then disintegrating her. It was rough.
Although the fight was grueling, and Theynix managed to kill Tierce, we succeeded in killing Theynix without even needing to finish the Imprisonment spell, and Shadar took Razgriz to kill Godreit and absorb his soul.
In the aftermath of the fight, Adran was able to raise Tierce back from the dead, and Shadar spoke to us. As happy as he was to finally have killed Godreit, his lifelong enemy, he was too set on his path and too convinced of the evil of mages to be willing to back down now. He left us behind, urging us to enjoy our last few weeks of life before returning to his machinations.
XXX
Eilistraee spoke to Adran and made him her champion. He went Super Saiyan, though much like the actual Super Saiyan this had no measurable consequences. We then went to get back to Elganin, but were stopped by Salcure, who chatted with us for a bit. Daeris wondered if it would be possible to get her hands on a Staff of the Magi by way of reward, but as 20% or so of the city was dead we felt it was best to just leave.
We stepped into the teleportation circle as Vulpes played the credits music for the arc, and we returned to Elganin with a vworp. We found Mila engaged in diplomacy (really!) with the Gal, having organized a temporary truce in light of Shadar’s imminent threat against the world. We caught up, made plans to collect an ancient Ceurth golem as part of our anti-Shadar army, and then Daeris, Tierce, Mila, and Lyric went off to Trwyld to go talk to the archmage council while Ezra and Adran went to talk to the Marauders.
Ezra introduced Adran to her family, notably the new leader of the Marauders, a far nicer man named Tythis.
Meanwhile, Daeris interrupted the council of archmages, and was swiftly elected interim leader to deal with Shadar. She went through Melusine’s things and collected some neat loot, including a Deck of Many Things which she resolved to keep secret.
XXX
This resolution lasted about three seconds when Mila immediately noticed it. While Daeris attempted to keep it from her, Salcure stole it and gave it to Mila. That will probably have no consequences.
BDAG reunited in Elganin, and took the Avalon to the Ceurth ruins to find the golem, while Adran made a sending to the drow to attempt to earn their assistance in the battle against Shadar. Arriving at the ruins, we found the dead bodies of a number of cultists of Vecna. Concerning. Daeris also accidentally awoke some suits of animated armor, but we killed them easily so that was fine.
Exploring the ruins more, we found a number of books with the names crossed out. Probably standard operating procedure when dealing with cultists of Vecna, especially if you want your death to be the end of your story.
Suddenly, a shape appeared out of nowhere! But it was just Junc, returning to the party after a leave of absence. We moved on, and came to a big heavy door. After trying and failing to open it by hand, Mila decided to employ explosives, detonating a charge of what was essentially C4 by getting Tierce to punch it. We entered Omega’s chamber.
Where we were accosted by Val Kaiser, general of the Galhurst forces. Not the forces of the Galhurst occupying Elganin, but the actual Galhurst Empire. He explained to us that if we didn’t hand over Omega, he’d carpet bomb us out of existence and order his other ships to do the same to Elganin. Fortunately, Mila was a fast talker, and we agreed to share the Omega as long as Daeris helped Val awaken it. She did…and it immediately declared us as targets and attacked. Whoops.
We were, in every possible way, completely outmatched by the Omega. Even our strongest attacks barely scratched it, whereas its weakest slaughtered the soldiers that Val had brought along. Fortunately, Val and Daeris together managed to reset its protocols to recognize us as allies.
In the aftermath of this, the group split up again to collect a few final allies. Tierce went to Mufo to get the help of the paladins there (and talk to her parents), Daeris went to Iraxia to talk to the elves, Adran went to keep an eye on the drow in Elganin, and Mila went to Mandi to talk to Celure and the thieves’ guild.
XXX
Storming the castle, fighting some enemies, cheesing everything.
XXX
After Tierce got back from the lower floors, we proceeded onwards. We encountered a room with an abyss, and were summarily attacked by angels.
They weren’t very useful angels, sort of like big chickens with weapons. Even their leader, a planetar, was quickly relegated to Pluto status. We proceeded forward, finding some interesting statues of Pelor, Kord, and Shadar. One of these things is not like the others. Can you guess which? The answer is Pelor, because we’ve yet to beat up anyone acting in their name.
Speaking of annoying gods, Salcure showed up, and explained to us that we had to backtrack. We did, and found a spring that restored us to full health (checkpoint!) as well as Shadar’s Notebook.
On the next floor (4th) we found a series of portcullises. We also met Raphael.
The portcullises were a convoluted puzzle involving opening a series of doors all across the floor. Raphael, on the other hand, was the dumbest angel perhaps alive, a bard with a trumpet, an ego the size of the Omega, and no recognizable talent. Lyric beat him in a trumpet duel within literal seconds, and Cybil punched him into an abyss with Eldritch Blast.
Which made it awfully weird when we encountered him again in the next room. And the next. And then multiple times at once.
Yes, in fact, it turned out that every angel on the floor was named Raphael, and each was as useless as the last.
There were other encounters throughout the floor. Various devils, traps, and so on. And yet, nothing else proved quite so pernicious as Raphael. Eventually defeating six at once with a single sustained trumpet note, we reached the stairs to the fifth floor, and felt a deep sense of foreboding.
XXX
Proceeding onto the fifth floor, we were immediately accosted by a group of weird losers.
By weird losers I mean creepy undead-ish people in heavy armor and archers, but they were losers by virtue of the fact that we killed all of them, thus causing them to lose.
Basically, it was awesome. Sure, we killed a guy who was ready to become a baker, but…uh, awkward, but such is life. Fifth floor? No problem. We ran into a fire giant with big ol’ shields, but Lyric seduced him while the rest of us slipped past. Upon realizing that Lyric was only using him for his body, the giant attempted to give chase, but Tierce immobilized him with a Command spell and Adran sealed the tunnel behind us.
We found ourselves by a picture window, where we were able to look out at the battle. We saw our forces starting to rally, and basically every character we’d ever met was fighting on our side. Val Kaiser sniped foes from a thousand feet up, draegloths and driders ripped through Shade Wardens, even the stone giants from the Blightenstone Library (Verax 2016) showed up. It was awesome and also terrible, in all four combinations of meanings for those two words.
In the next hallway we entered, complicated wall art transitioned into smooth stone, with periodic holes dotting it. It felt familiar, but where had we seen it before…?
Our questions were answered by red lights rising from yet another abyss. Unlike the last Death Tyrant we fought, this one largely was unable to inflict serious injury, and Ezra quickly destroyed it. Thankfully.
Obviously, this floor was kind of a joke. Even the serious enemies we’d faced hadn’t presented much of an issue to us. That’s why, as we rounded the corner and found a pit fiend waiting for us, we were completely blindsided.
Especially because he introduced himself as Dave and carried a giant squeaky mallet. Lyric remembered him from his dream, and Dave explained that he’d come to test us and see if we were ready for Shadar. His test of choice was a murder attempt.
Compared to the last two fights, and also in general, the battle against Dave was utterly brutal. Ezra nearly perished, and it was clear that even the level of power Dave displayed was just him toying with us. We scraped through the fight by the skin of our teeth, and Dave decided to end the battle before he came to any real harm. He congratulated us on our victory and conjured up another checkpoint fountain to restore us to full health before our confrontation with Shadar. He told us that the next floor up was empty, and the one after was where Shadar was waiting for us. Then he left us to prepare ourselves.
Alone, we were faced with the magnitude of what we were about to do. We’d never seen anything so much as inconvenience Shadar, and yet here we were readying ourselves to fight him to the death. Realizing the possibility of death, we exchanged the traditional formalities—“It’s been an honor”—and the less traditional ones—“Ezra, will you marry me?”
Adran performed the ceremony himself, and conjured up a Heroes’ Feast for the rest of us. We ate it, we shared memories and feelings, we hugged, and we proceeded to the next floor.
It was empty. Devoid of life, the only thing we could find was a scrying pool and also Shadar’s quarters. We rifled through his things, determined a little more about his motivations (nothing we really didn’t know), and visited his war room. We learned that he had planned individual (if unspecific) counters to each of us in battle, that he really hated Tierce (unsurprising), and that his plan to end the world involved summoning something into it.
Armed with knowledge, we took a deep breath, looked at the sun streaming through the windows of the tower for what might be the last time, held fast our determination, and climbed the last set of stairs to Shadar.
We found him suspended in a dark hurricane, staring at his portal. He turned to face us, telling us that any incantation or move to attack would end any hope of parley between us. So, we opened diplomatic efforts.
Mila asked why he thought he was doing the right thing. He felt convinced, though, feeling that the world was a baby holding a knife, and his summoning of the entity, an arbiter over magic, would take away the proverbial knife. Eminently logical.
But would it be what Alarial wanted?
Shadar looked as though we could pull him back from the edge, as though he was just about to break…and then he didn’t.
The window had closed. The time for talking was over.
The fate of the world was about to be decided.
XXX
Ezra stepped forward to confront Shadar. She even lowered Razgriz, begging him to call off his plan, and to kill her if he was truly unwilling to stop.
He did his best to take her up on her offer.
Fortunately, Razgriz took over after Ezra was left unconscious, and the rest of the party proceeded to attack. After an initial exchange of blows, we received some backup in the form of the gods. Bahamut, Eilistraee, and Salcure all descended to lay their curses and condemnations on Shadar.
It was awesome.
With Shadar’s abilities thus curtailed, the fight was something approaching even. On the other hand, this is still Shadar we’re talking about.
It was utterly brutal. Shadar, even slowed by Salcure’s magic, was staggeringly fast, and even with his shadowy power reduced by Eilistraee’s light, tremendously powerful. His presence itself blotted out light and tore away at us, chains formed to imprison our spellcasters, and his actual weapon attacks…well, they were mostly aimed at Ezra, but they were fairly terrifying.
Also, Nissa gave the Sailor Moon speech and summoned the Lunar Mistress, who lasered Shadar like 7 times. It was great. Really, everyone was breaking out their oneshot weapons. Mila used the Crown of Storms to Lightning Bolt Shadar, Tierce used Dawnbringer’s ultimate ability…
And then Shadar activated tethers he’d drawn between us, harming everyone in proportion to how far away they were from a given other party member. It was, uh…painful. Cybil died since Nissa was on another plane, and most of us were left mortally wounded or close.
There were some of us left, but the battle was over. Shadar started to pick off the survivors of his attack…and then Mila made a Wish.
"I... I wish for health. For the fallen to rise, and for the wounded to fight again."
And they did. The effects of Shadar’s tethers were reversed, Cybil restored to life, and the battle swung back in our favor.
That’s when Nissa had the brilliant idea to transform into Alarial and try to talk Shadar down again.
To put it lightly, it didn’t work.
Shadar made the usual threats--I’m going to kill you, I’m going to rend your soul, I’m going to grind your bones to dust and rail them—but Nissa just blinked out of reality. Or would have, if Shadar hadn’t kept her there by force. Tierce tried to mock Alarial’s memory to draw Shadar’s attention back to her, but it didn’t really work.
At least until she demonstrated her Alarial impression by stabbing him in the back.
That got his attention, especially after Ezra shattered his armor. Shadar went full rage mode and showed off his own Alarial impression by using Monk skills to beat Tierce to a pulp. On the other hand, he also started showing signs of visible injury, which meant that he was mortal, and could be killed. And furthermore, that we were about to demonstrate just that. The fight, while still grueling, was more in the style of earlier fights we’d had, just a simple test of endurance. And while Shadar may have been forged in hell itself, we were the Best Decisions Adventuring Guild, and holding out against an onslaught of damage was just sort of our thing.
Adran’s Sacred Flame spelled the last blow against Shadar. He crumpled to the ground…and then got back up, propelled at this point by what seemed to be sheer force of will. Suspended in the air, he began to chant the words of some ritual, as the rest of the party attempted to…well, cut him off.
Poetically, Meir delivered the real final blow. Shadar dropped to the ground, praying for absolution in his final moments. With his last breath, he wondered if Alarial would have been proud.
And thus fell Shadar Y’mitra, the Shade Warden.
The party relaxed for just a moment. We’d done it. The threat to the world was ended. Finally, we could breathe easy. Which, of course, was when the portal opened. We were too late.
…No.
No, no, no, please no.
(Wings. A purple dress, and a dramatic entrance.)
No, we were so close!
(No longer the ephemeral vestiges of a goddess, the Lunar Mistress made her entrance. We were shocked, Nissa most of all.)
No, no, this isn’t fair! This isn’t right, we beat him! No!
(She explained, cheerfully and politely, that she was done being forgotten. That she was going to tear down the gods and remake the world into a place of perfection.)
NO!
(Tierce attempted to attack her, and was killed offhand for her troubles. Nissa realized why Salcure had attempted to keep us from restoring the Lunar Mistress’s shrine, and said as much, at which point the Lunar Mistress revoked her pact with Nissa, stripping her of her powers. Leaving the party in a state of shock/catatonia, she flew off, annihilating both armies in her wake. Daeris attempted to follow, when time froze all around us, and a familiar purple dragon appeared.)
(“It’s time for an explanation.”)
XXX
Salcure’s explanation, while interrupted by the party’s general despair, was fairly simple. This had all happened before.
Kuu and Salcure were old enemies, and Salcure had continually been gathering together bands of heroes to oppose her. However, he’d failed each time, and had been resetting time to try again and again. We were the sixth iteration, and the best so far, every other party having failed to defeat Shadar. Unfortunately, we still hadn’t prevented Kuu’s reentry into the world, and Salcure was out of power to perform another reset. We were stuck.
This left us in the unenviable position of having to kill a god. We decided that, given as Shadar had done this before, bringing him back might be useful. A lot of people, including Mila, G’diard, Meir, and quite frankly Shadar were not happy with this course of action, but sucks to be them because we have the Shade Warden on our side now.
Also, Shadar’s shadow came to life and revealed itself as his number one fan. It was very odd.
Our next step was to visit the Shadowfel in order to find the Raven Queen and get Nissa a new pact. But first, the party split up to get some things done and get chewed out by basically everyone for letting Kuu free. Most people went to Mahurst with Val Kaiser, while some stayed behind in Mandi.
Meanwhile, the side characters from the Resistance got into shenanigans with Salcure, culminating in all ink within a mile vanishing.
XXX
Arriving in Mahurst, we visited the Library of Gnho. Not the Library of No, gnor even the Library of Gno, but the Library of Gnho. Gnhowing that we didn’t have long, we split up to look for books.
Mostly, we learned that Kuu was an elder god, but unfortunately she’d already censored out the information we might need to kill her. So we just went to rendezvous with Shadar, taking Val Kaiser’s sanity with us.
Talking to Shadar, he explained what would need to happen to enter the Shadowfel. With several members of the party producing natural light, we’d have to split up. Shadar took Ezra, Adran, Meir, and Mila with him to go through a swamp, G’diard took Lyric, Cybil, and Junc through plains, and Mirren (Shadar’s number one fan and literal shadow) a) revealed herself as a tiefling, b) immediately caught Nissa’s eye, and c) took Nissa, Tierce, and Daeris into the woods. Thus organized, we entered the Shadowfel.
There was nothing. No life, no light, no warmth, no wind, no movement. A whole world dead. The chill seeped into us, digging at our minds, and in a hopeful turn of events, we warded off the first stab of despair.
There would be more to come.
XXX
First, we focused on the group led by Mirren, consisting of her, Daeris, Nissa, and Tierce. They proceeded onto the plains, past where they fought Venomfang, and towards an expanse where something called a Plaguebringer was keeping guard over a bridge across a chasm. Furthermore, Nissa and Daeris were starting to suffer from the effects of the cold. Fortunately we managed to work past that, and attempted to sneak past the Plaguebringer. We did not manage this in the slightest, and were forced to fight the Plaguebringer, which was difficult but quick (with the awkward aside of having to watch Nissa attempt to flirt with the creature). The Plaguebringer thus defeated, we proceeded across the bridge.
Next, we shifted focus to G’diard’s group, containing Lyric, Junc, and Cybil. They got off to a lighthearted conversation about the question of intra-party cannibalism (and also head), which was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a Shadow Dragon. And then everyone’s death. Oh. Well. That got deep without a warning sign. Junc was left the only survivor, and she fled to Mirren’s group, who managed to finish off the Shadow Dragon, but Lyric and Cybil (and yeah also G’diard I guess) were still dead.
So that’s fun.
The third group suffered heavily from the curse of the Shadowfell, and only barely made it through to the city of Frosia. Fortunately, they did more or less survive.
Meanwhile, the group led by Mirren crossed the bridge, and finally began to give in to the despair permeating the world. Junc and Nissa were the first, beginning to give into apathy. Daeris endured a brief bout of insanity, and then Nissa fell into despair, having to be forced back onto the path before she recovered.  As we approached Frosia in the distance, Nissa recovered, but Junc and Tierce both fell into panic and utter apathy respectively. This was unfortunate, because at this time, we were greeted by a persistent cloud that had been following us through the Shadowfell since we arrived.
It was the wake of the Black Rider, the Horseman of Death.
Oh boy. Well, that’s just a cutscene, right? The Raven Queen will rescue us…right?
…Time to roll initiative.
While most of the party fled into the city, Tierce’s apathy led her to confront the Rider head-on, bringing Dawnbringer’s full power against it. Junc, meanwhile, was trapped by the Rider, and trampled underneath its hooves. Tierce, breaking through the apathy of the Shadowfell, became enraged, firing Excaliblast after Excaliblast at the Rider to the point where the clouds in the Shadowfell sky parted to reveal its dead sun.
The Rider, finally, had had enough, and retreated, badly wounded. Tierce attempted to keep it from leaving, but failed—And the second the fight was over, Dawnbringer went grey, and the gem in her pommel shattered.
And then Tierce vanished into nothingness.
Poof.
Oh.
XXX
The party collected in Frosia, but the mood was somewhat soured by everybody being dead. They proceeded into the city, and entered a giant cathedral made of bone, with a pit of blood in the center. Shadar entered it, and disappeared.
Well. RIP.
Mirren followed, and Ezra attempted to pull her back, leading to both falling in. Adran immediately followed.
RIP them too.
Nissa, Daeris, and Meir seemed unsure of what to do. Meanwhile, those who had gone into the pit found themselves…somewhere else. As though they’d clipped through the map. Nissa followed shortly thereafter, but Meir and Daeris were about a second from just leaving when Adran contacted them with sending to convince them to enter the blood pit.
The b l o o d p i t.
The party found themselves in the presence of the Raven Queen, with whom Nissa was immediately smitten. Fortunate, that. The Raven Queen, while a little annoyed that we’d taken so long to all get on board and kill ourselves, was pleased that we’d made it to her, explaining that she’d been testing us, and had been keeping our souls without letting them pass on. As such, she revived Lyric, Junc, Cybil, and even G’diard.
Tierce, on the other hand, was a slightly more complicated matter. As usual, she’d fucked things up somehow, in this case by giving over the entirety of her soul to Dawnbringer. The two were now effectively one, and bringing her back would be...difficult. However, the Raven Queen did return Tierce, extricating her soul from the hundreds drifting within Dawnbringer.
Wait, seriously, hundreds?! God, I feel like I’m just another number…
Anyway, the resurrection wasn’t without its limitations. The nature of Tierce’s and Dawnbringer’s fusion caused Tierce to take on some physical characteristics of Dawnbringer’s solar form, meant that Dawnbringer now spoke directly through Tierce, and, oh yes, because it was a direct product of the Raven Queen’s power, it would be revoked once Kuu was defeated.
So yeah. Don’t get too used to Tierce being around, because apparently five resurrections is the limit.
Anyway, moving on, the Raven Queen agreed to form a pact with Nissa, and gave her a neat scythe, bringing her to the absolute maximum of the goth aesthetic. Furthermore, the Raven Queen required a champion in her war against the undead. Naturally, she picked Meir.
Wait, what.
Nissa was offended, but when Meir turned down the offer of a cool mask, Nissa did at least get that. Unfortunately it didn’t seem as though this patronage was going to come with the benefits that Kuu’s did, but on the other hand the Raven Queen was significantly less likely to cause the actual apocalypse.
Having fulfilled his purpose, Shadar began to dissolve into darkness, ascending to become the new god of shadow. Mirren was upset, but Shadar promised that he would see her again, in the flesh. Frankly, she was still upset after that, but at least she had that to look forward to.
The Raven Queen then explained that, in addition to Kuu, a certain well-known lich was causing problems, and in exchange for the many favors she’d done us we’d have to hunt down and kill Vecna. Fortunately Daeris had done this once before, but this time he wasn’t going to be quite such a pushover.
We left the Shadowfell and found ourselves in the jungle of Cutomat. After a brief incident during which Tierce realized that she’d been naked since her resurrection, we proceeded to the city, where we were greeted by Angiel. After the usual exchanges of pleasantries and violence, Angiel informed us that Kuu had sliced the continent in half, that the Galhurst forces had been shattered, and that pretty much everything was a mess. Furthermore, Vulwin borrowed Meir in the interest of repairing and rebuilding the Black Rose. Naturally, we decided this would be a good time to take a short break and take advantage of Cutomat’s hotsprings.