World of Prime: Campaign Journal #67

The Golden Empress

The party works its way back to the surface with no opposition; the forces that maintained the interest and attention of all those supernatural beings has waned, and it is now just a dead volcano. But the party still holds the interests of certain parties, and in the forest outside they find their old confidant Alys the bard.

First they have to rescue her from a pair of hell-hounds. She explains that she dares not use her magic, for fear it will reveal her location to her enemies (who shall remain unnamed, for the same reason). 

She has come to the party seeking assistance. Rhian has renamed herself the Golden Empress, reaching heights of power previously unimaginable. Soon she will be unstoppable. The Resistance against the Golden Empress's totalitarian rule  - such as it is - has prepared a strategy. They know where the Empress will be on a given date, and can sneak a wagon full of hidden adventurers in to ambush the Empress and destroy her once and for all. In exchange the party can keep all the treasure, including the fabled Helm of Brilliance.

The party quickly (for them, at least) agrees to this scheme. They travel through the wilderness to the edge of the kingdom and wait patiently (for them, at least) while Ayls fetches a farm wagon. Then, hidden under bales of hay, they travel into the city, waiting for Ayls's signal to leap out and attack.

However, the get a slightly different signal, when six Frost Giants leap next the wagon and smash it to bits, trying to kill the adventurers hidden within. The Bard escapes, seeking to flank the giants, only to discover an army of archers has ringed the battlefield. It's a trap! One carefully set by Alys never actually telling a lie. She used the classic Bard trick of the Oracle of Delphi - "a great empire shall fall," without specifying precisely which set of enemies she was hiding from or setting a trap for.

The Wizard shuts down most of the archers, but things look pretty dangerous until the Bard gets a Fear spell off and forces most of the giants to retreat for a few rounds. With their battle-line broken, the Ranger, Barbarian, and Bear overwhelm the giants piece by piece. The last death is Alys, as she tries to mind-control the Barbarian, fails, and is immediately cut down.

This leads to certain mysteries, such as how did a bard cast a high-level sorcerer spell? But more importantly is what to do next, and the party, having barely survived a brutal battle, immediately decides to press on and end the Golden Empress once and for all.

They know where the palace is, after all, and they have Invisibility, Disguise, and Glibness. Surely they can sneak past a sentry or two. As usual, the process is more drawn-out and violent than necessary, but eventually the advance into the throne room.

The woman sitting on the throne is not the Empress, though she is wearing the Helm of Brilliance. Her protection seems weak, being only a handful of low-rank sorceresses and a pair of Frost Giants. But as the giants advance and the casters prepare counter-spells, the lady flicks her hand and sends a Prismatic Spray against the party, so neatly framed in the doorway.

The Barbarian is hit by a red ray and bursts into flames. But the damage is minimal, and in any case he shrugs off the magic by dint of rage-induced spell resistance. The Cleric is struck by a stronger effect, but makes his save. The Druid is immune to the green ray's poison. But the Ranger is not, and dies on the spot; the Wizard, bathed in violet light, goes violently insane; the Bard strikes a permanent pose as he is turned to stone. 

A single spell, and half the party is down! Yet the remaining members manage to kill the woman in the helm before she can act a second time and trigger the device to self-destruct - an effect that would have certainly slain everyone still standing in the room.

After mopping up the rest of the resistance, the Cleric undoes the various debilitations. They even have enough tael to restore the Ranger's lost rank, though once again it leaves them broke. They hardly care - they have taken possession of one of the few known artifacts on the continent. That the Empress has still somehow evaded them does not trouble them overly; they believe her army to be broken and disorganized. Loaded with conventional wealth from the Necropolis, they set out to visit Kek for a shopping a trip.

Likely to be their final shopping trip, in fact, as they discuss the obvious next step is destroying Kek and looting his empire for more tael and artifacts with which to face the dragon. Few tears are shed over this inevitable development, as Kek, despite his usefulness, is after all an insane mummy lord trying to destroy the world.

 

World of Prime: Campaign Journal #66

The Necropolis: Philosophy Debate

The party spends an inordinate amount of time discussing strategies for dashing into the Erinyes and snatching their key by surprise, only to ultimately settle on walking in and just taking it.

The squads of glaive-wielding demons do their job, which is to say, keep the Barbarian busy for several whole rounds. The winged demons vaunted archery power is blunted by the Bard flying in with strong Mirror Images and close combat with his halberd; after a futile round they switch to his one true weakness. The Bard and the leader of the Erinyes spend the rest of the battle occupied in... other activities.

But the distraction was too much, and the Ranger is winning the ranged battle. Several other members of the party resist the lady's enticements, proving this really is just a Bard thing, and soon enough the battle is over.

As they extract the Bard from the embrace of the last Erinyes, her final words are sigh of relief. Five hundred years in a dungeon is a fate worse than death and the party has released the devils from their imprisonment, albeit at the cost of their lives. 

The Necropolis: Throw-down in the throne room

The hallway to the throne room is trapped with explosions every five feet. Rather than deal with a hundred of feet of damage, the Bard Dimension Doors the party to the next door. This reduces the problem to only a few trapped squares, at the expense of leaving them no easy retreat.

They insert the twin keys, open the doors, and step into the next room. This floor is trapped as well, but only with Dispel Magic intended to debuff them. This proves even more restrictive than the explosions; the party clears a few squares to fight from, buffs up their melee, and sends the Bard in to scout.

As he flies around the dark room he discovers the one thing they never expected: the massive bulk of a dragon!

The beast rouses itself and spits a line of acid at the party, followed by charging into melee. The Druid-bear is obviously the greater threat, especially as it is currently enshrouded in spells, so the dragon grapples the beast and tries to roll across multiple de-buffing trapped squares. Unfortunately, it fails as the bear finds an anchor point in a cracked stone and holds his ground.

At this close range it becomes clear that the dragon is, in fact, dead. However, a zombie dragon requires a staggering amount of damage to dismantle. This would not normally be a concern as the bear and Barbarian throw fistfuls of dice, except for the minor detail of the appearance of the Lich.

This is an unwelcome development, to say the least. His first words are met by a barrage of attacks, all of which pass harmlessly through. This is merely a projection; the real lich is hidden somewhere else in the room. The Bard sweeps through the air, searching, while the rest of the party starts making saving throws. Once per round, the lich's image points at a target and utters a word of death.

Remarkably, the party keeps surviving. The Bard finds a throne on a high dias in the middle of the room with a corpse seated on it. He quickly lands and beheads the corpse, but it is a mere prop. The rest of the party, having dispatched the dragon, rush over to investigate and the Cleric quickly realizes the throne itself is the lich's phylactery. For once the bear's claws are ineffective against dull stone, so the party breaks out all the blunt weapons they have - warhammers and halberds, but the supreme weapon is an ordinary sledgehammer in the Barbarian's bag. While they reduce the throne to dust the lich's programmed projected continues its assualt; the Bard, once again, is the only one to fall to the mystical assault. His lifeless body slumps to the ground just a round before the throne does, its rubble mixing with the dust of the lich's mortal remains.

Behind the throne they find a chest with the wealth intended to fund the lich's conquest of the surface world. Powerful magic items collected across the ages from previous adventurers and so unique they seem as if they were collected with the party in mind, and a wealth of tael so great it erases the loss of the Bard's death and more.

What they do not find is the Orb of Dragons. Because this, they realize, was always a myth. A lie spread by the dragon to encourage parties to spend themselves fighting his foes. As satisfied as they are with the wealth, they are actually no closer to solving the problem of the dragon.