Golems to the left of me, demons to the right ... stuck in the middle ... again ...
FrdNwsm
Member Posts: 1,069
Having (finally!) found their way to the Elven City, they were met at the gates by Elrond, who superciliously informed MC that the City's name was NOT Rivendell, but rather some weird elven concoction with an S; Salt-n-pepper it sounded like. He then went on to inform the group that the city was under siege by creatures of Irenicus, and that in order to find out what to do, they needed to find Princess Ellie-Mae or the priestess Jeans (or was it Denim? Hard for a half-orc to discern all that Elvish gibberish), who would instruct them.
Elrond himself would valiantly stay at the gates and show any refugees how to leave the City. What, they have lived here all their lives, and have no idea where the bloody 20 foot tall gates are? Yeah, riiight. Brave, brave Sir Elrond! Well, at least he was thoughtful enough to give us a map of town, so we knew where everything was located; no more stumbling around in the dark.
And sheesh; the place was swarming with Irenicus' pals. The group found a couple of stone golems and an adamantine golem friend on the steps of the nearest house, and turned to engage them. At which point another set of three charged the group in a flanking maneuver that caused a rather rapid change in deployment. Anomen and Keldorn moved to intercept the second group, Neera tossed off a haste, Jaheira summoned a fire elemental as a distraction, while Imoen totally wasted her Maze spell on an adamantine golem. Sheesh, she's supposed to be smarter than that! MC finally had the opportunity to show off some new tricks. Already berserk, he engaged the first set of golems by using physical immunity and a couple of greater whirlwinds. Whee! And these tactics proved quite effective. Injuries were actually fairly minimal, and easily dealt with by a couple of light cures.
Emboldened by the victory, the group advanced to the house of Priestess Denim. There they encountered a witch doctor in the employ of Irenicus, named Rama-Lama, and his pet Nabassu. He rather pompously informed everyone that they had just been sentenced to death. Big words, Doc! Now back 'em up!
He gave it a pretty good try, actually. While MC worked himself into a frenzy and the rest of the group started prepping spells and such, Rama-Lama ding-donged them all with a Time Stop spell. MC was getting rather sick of this sort of thing; there's nothing more annoying than being forced to take a time-out while working up a prime killing frenzy. Rama's spells of choice during intermission? A protection from evil (by now even MC knew what this meant) followed by Gate (yep, knew it!) and a meteor swarm, Ouch. Enter Mr. Pit Fiend. Two demons to deal with.
When the time flow resumed things got a bit hairy. Rama Lama buffed up, as did our group, while the demons closed in. Neera used her spell strike wand on Rama, MC and Keldorn clobbered the Nabassu and sent it wailing back to the Abyss while Imoen used her haste. The pit fiend in turn froze Jaheira with demon fear, and Rama tossed off one of those horrible wilting things. MC didn't care and began whacking the fiend, but everyone else retreated out of the area, taking a fair amount of damage. Everyone except for Jaheira, that is. Immobilized, she took it on the chin and died before Anomen could get off his remove fear spell. Ouch.
This was the only casualty the group had, however. The fiend went down under another flurry of blows, while Imoen and Neera peppered Rama-Lama with breech and magic missiles, until MC shoved him why it was unwise to mess with a 7 foot tall half-orc with anger management problems.
Luckily, MC had thought to get the rod of resurrection recharged, so Jaheira was revived intact; everyone's wounds were then cured. Since time was of the essence, the group pressed on, entering Priestess Denim's house. Damn, but those elves used some narrow staircases! A real annoyance for non-elves to navigate.
Elrond himself would valiantly stay at the gates and show any refugees how to leave the City. What, they have lived here all their lives, and have no idea where the bloody 20 foot tall gates are? Yeah, riiight. Brave, brave Sir Elrond! Well, at least he was thoughtful enough to give us a map of town, so we knew where everything was located; no more stumbling around in the dark.
And sheesh; the place was swarming with Irenicus' pals. The group found a couple of stone golems and an adamantine golem friend on the steps of the nearest house, and turned to engage them. At which point another set of three charged the group in a flanking maneuver that caused a rather rapid change in deployment. Anomen and Keldorn moved to intercept the second group, Neera tossed off a haste, Jaheira summoned a fire elemental as a distraction, while Imoen totally wasted her Maze spell on an adamantine golem. Sheesh, she's supposed to be smarter than that! MC finally had the opportunity to show off some new tricks. Already berserk, he engaged the first set of golems by using physical immunity and a couple of greater whirlwinds. Whee! And these tactics proved quite effective. Injuries were actually fairly minimal, and easily dealt with by a couple of light cures.
Emboldened by the victory, the group advanced to the house of Priestess Denim. There they encountered a witch doctor in the employ of Irenicus, named Rama-Lama, and his pet Nabassu. He rather pompously informed everyone that they had just been sentenced to death. Big words, Doc! Now back 'em up!
He gave it a pretty good try, actually. While MC worked himself into a frenzy and the rest of the group started prepping spells and such, Rama-Lama ding-donged them all with a Time Stop spell. MC was getting rather sick of this sort of thing; there's nothing more annoying than being forced to take a time-out while working up a prime killing frenzy. Rama's spells of choice during intermission? A protection from evil (by now even MC knew what this meant) followed by Gate (yep, knew it!) and a meteor swarm, Ouch. Enter Mr. Pit Fiend. Two demons to deal with.
When the time flow resumed things got a bit hairy. Rama Lama buffed up, as did our group, while the demons closed in. Neera used her spell strike wand on Rama, MC and Keldorn clobbered the Nabassu and sent it wailing back to the Abyss while Imoen used her haste. The pit fiend in turn froze Jaheira with demon fear, and Rama tossed off one of those horrible wilting things. MC didn't care and began whacking the fiend, but everyone else retreated out of the area, taking a fair amount of damage. Everyone except for Jaheira, that is. Immobilized, she took it on the chin and died before Anomen could get off his remove fear spell. Ouch.
This was the only casualty the group had, however. The fiend went down under another flurry of blows, while Imoen and Neera peppered Rama-Lama with breech and magic missiles, until MC shoved him why it was unwise to mess with a 7 foot tall half-orc with anger management problems.
Luckily, MC had thought to get the rod of resurrection recharged, so Jaheira was revived intact; everyone's wounds were then cured. Since time was of the essence, the group pressed on, entering Priestess Denim's house. Damn, but those elves used some narrow staircases! A real annoyance for non-elves to navigate.
Post edited by FrdNwsm on
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The grateful Priestess of the Jeans then went into a lengthy song and dance about Irenicus and the shame the elves felt and what had happened and ... yadda yadda yadda. After a few minutes, MC (not known for his long attention span in any case) felt his eyes start to glaze over, until Imoen thumped him back awake. Sorry, sis! My bad! Basically, it could all have been boiled down to 2-3 sentences.
1) Irenicus and Bhodi were powerful elves who wanted even more power, and did bad things to the Tree of Life to try and garner it.
2) It didn't work, and they were exiled as punishment. That didn't stop Irenicus, however.
3) Heee's baaaack! And he intends to do more Bad Things to try any achieve his goal.
Denim's solution to the problem was to contact the Elven deity Reilly, and ask him to send down an avatar to deal with the situation. Fair enough; sounded like a plan to MC. But Ms. Blue Jeans was Reilly's priestess; couldn't she just pray and ask him to help out?
Ooooh, nooo! That would have been too easy. Apparently R. has a really strict secretary screening his calls, and the only way to get around her is by performing a summoning ritual involving three magic doo-dads, which ... you guessed it ... had been stolen by minions of Irenicus and scattered around the city. She was PRETTY sure that one of them was with a black Dragon in a cave to the North and West, but she had no clue about the whereabouts of the other two; they'd have to scour the entire golem infested city. Wonderful.
Irenicus sure seems to like golems; probably because they don't have pesky things like emotions. Where the heck did Irenicus get 100 or so golems anyway? Unlike demons, they have to be manufactured, not summoned; did he have a Drow assembly line back in the Underdark, cranking them out by the dozen? That must cost him a bundle!
Well, everyone in the group was feeling tired by this time, partly due to fighting demons and golems, and partly due to Denim's 2 hour explanation. Urgent situation or not, the party would have to rest before continuing their task of saving the City.