GoCorral

This session was attended by Jamie, Ben, Will, and Trajan. It was held over Google Hangouts using Roll20. This was my first time using Roll20’s dynamic lighting settings. It was interesting, but the players felt weirded out by it. If I use it again I won’t be enforcing line of sight on the PCs.

Brawl with the Bane

Eathirilu awoke in the morning with a terrible vision. He’d dreamed that if he went to fight the lich, they would all die, but if he stayed behind, a life would be saved. Convinced of the truth of the vision, Eathirilu refused to go to the Björn’s Palace even after the others pleaded with him. He elected to cast numerous buff spells on the others. Aldarian also chose to sit this one out saying, “I’ve died too many times to that lich.”

Everyone received mass resist energy to all five elements and freedom of movement from Eathirilu. Torin gave everyone a death ward. Amalius finished off the buffs with a spell resistance manifestation.

The plan was simple. Teleport in and find the lich. Torin would cast antimagic field on himself and run up to the lich. Tagenadi would use his kusari-gama to keep the lich in the field. Without any of its powers, the party would slowly whittle the lich down to nothing.

Prepped and ready to go, the party teleported to the edge of the Björn’s Palace grounds. They found the area shrouded in unnatural perpetual darkness. The street just outside of the grounds had normal daylight, but no natural light penetrated the grounds. Fortunately, the light from Tagenadi’s magic weapon still functioned and darkvision still worked for Torin’s dwarf eyes, Tagenadi’s undead eyes, and Amalius’ magically enhanced eyes.

The party cautiously moved forward into the Palace itself. They found several severely fire-damaged spots devastated from their last battle and the more recent one. With no signs of the lich or his shadows, Amalius reached out with his mind to find them. Suddenly his mental radar was covered in the pings of the undead. They were everywhere in the mansion!

The shadows converged on the party and flailed at them with their incorporeal hands. Unfortunately for the undead, their negative energy attacks could not pierce the protection of Torin’s death ward. The party took the undead out over a few turns using a few of their spells. The Palace creaked under the stress of the magical force. Would it collapse soon or hold together? Hektor used his shapechange to transform into an iron golem just in case.

The party searched for the lich, but stuck together, fearing he would pick them off one by one. They moved from room to room. Tagenadi heard someone casting spells in the kitchen. The invisible lich cast a dispel magic on Torin and all but one of his protective enchantments slipped away.

Time stopped. The lich smiled and planted three delayed blast fireballs on the party. He summoned a fire elemental as well and cast black tentacles. Time resumed. The party was engulfed in the inferno. Torin went down. Tagenadi came close. Amalius’ spell resistance won out and he was unscathed. Similarly, Hektor’s iron golem body took no damage. The fire elemental beat down on Amalius and the tentacles encircled Torin’s limp body, unable to grasp anyone else due to Eathirilu’s freedom of movement.

Amalius grabbed Torin and sent a mental message to Tagenadi and Hektor, “I’ll be back soon. Taking Torin to Eathirilu.” With that he teleported away to Lakatia.

Hektor abandoned his iron golem form and turned into a glabrezu demon. He swept the Palace with his now true seeing eyes and located the invisible lich in the entrance hallway. Hektor cast a time stop of his own and changed into a beholder. He fixed his central antimagic eye upon the lich, all but neutralizing it. Time resumed and Hektor blasted the fire elemental with a few eye rays, but it resisted. Tagenadi flew past the fire elemental, taking a few hits. He engaged the lich and whiffed his attack.

The lich moved to escape the antimagic cone, but Tagenadi tripped him. The Bane ordered the fire elemental to bull rush Hektor in Ignan. The lich hoped that the elemental could remove the beholder from the Palace entirely, but it only managed to push Hektor’s beholder body into the entrance hallway itself. The lich still crawled away.

Meanwhile, Eathirilu healed Torin. Conscious again, Torin healed himself back to full. Satisfied, Amalius teleported back to join the fray.

From there it was a slow slog to take out the lich. It could not escape, but Tagenadi’s kusari-gama couldn’t deal significant damage without magic. Torin returned. Amalius drew Korm and tried to use him to aid Tagenadi. Hektor’s eye rays eliminated the fire elemental. The house did eventually creak and collapse under the stress.

Hektor disintegrated a pit and Tagenadi threw the lich in. Amalius then had the bright idea of using the staff of the magi they’d looted from the lich previously. Artifacts continue to function in antimagic fields. Amalius activated the staff’s wall of fire ability. The lich slowly burned to death in the pit. It took out a crystal ball from a bag on its belt and smashed it on the ground. Then it removed its spellbook from the bag and allowed it to be engulfed in flames. It may have been defeated a second time, but these interlopers would loot nothing from his corpse this time. He would return and unleash his full wrath on them another day.

With the lich defeated once more, the party cheered. And a twinkle passed along Korm’s edge in Amalius’ hand. Artifacts work fine in antimagic fields, but the same can’t be said for Amalius’ constant mind blank mental protection. If there was a time to strike, now was it.