Session 70: Bargain with the Devil

The Abolitionists made quick work of the cloakers, only pausing briefly to laugh at Gahl'akr when he flailed about, trying to remove the creature attached to his face. The rest of their explorations outside the temple yielded no fruit, so they returned to finish exploring the interior. Down a corridor on the south end of the temple, they found three rooms, and elected to start with the southernmost. Inside, they found a cadaverous mummy, and immediately attack. The fight is more difficult that the fight against the cloakers, but with the help of a well-timed insect plague, Deitrich went down.

That chamber contained nothing of interest, but to the north the Abolitionists found a well-appointed room with a handsome gentleman who introduced himself as Ulthut. He asked what they were doing in the temple, and perked up when they said they were collecting the pieces of the rod. He said he had been guarding a piece for Arquestan, and inquired what the party intended to do with it. Once the party promised to retrieve the next piece of the rod, he handed them the sixth piece, and told them the seventh piece was in Pandemonium, inside of Miska's citadel, and they would have to go there next.

Session 69: The Forgotten Temple

Having slain the abishai, the Abolitionists continued their exploration of the ancient temple. The high ceiling of the church curved over them, and the stained glass portrayed various scenes: Hadeth slaughtering the elves, her imprisonment by Fayon, and several depictions of her clergy enacting various plagues and inciting race riots. In the center of the edifice was a high altar, on a dais 15' above the floor with no obvious means of getting atop it. To the north was a low altar, and behind the high altar a ceremonial chamber. Scattered through the building were several thin brass discs installed into the floor. Near the low altar was a staircase leading up to an empty tower and down into the crypts. South of the high altar was a corridor, and a door leading outside. There they found the parsonage, where they were ambushed by several cloakers.

Session 68: The Death of Avianca

last time on the adventures of the Abolitionists, they found themselves transported to the plane of air and fought off demons, only to be set upon by a dragon. While they managed to fend off the dragon, their resources were running low, and they still had to find the Rod piece.

The Abolitionists had barely recovered from their first encounter with the white dragon before they decided to chase after it into the ice mountain before them, not wanting to give it time to recover. Kroseek flew ahead and took a quick survey of the mountain. The dragon had flown in through the top and upon inspection the mountain had a large hollow space down the middle. Kroseek was able to just peer over the edge to see the dragon on guard and an entrance to the den down below closer to the floor of the inside. He flew back and the party discussed their options.

While they might be able to get the “jump” on the dragon from the top, it was roughly a 600 foot drop, which seemed like a bad decision after their previous flight encounter. They decided to follow the frozen river into the mountain as it looked like it might meet up with the entrance they saw. They made their way up the river until a path split off going up. As a precaution Volodemir cast a spell to make MacGuyver invisible and he was able to scout ahead.

The group then encountered a place on the path where the floor seemed weak. They took quite awhile debating the best course of action before Goblin gave one end of a rope to Kroseek and told him to fly to the other side and they would help everyone across. MacGuyver quickly ran across the rope with deft elven agility. (insert Luke’s character’s name here) the half-elf was next the cross. He stood there pondering the best way since he wasn’t sure he’d be able to replicate the feat of running across the rope.

Suddenly the floor burst open with the white dragon ripping through the floor to breath ice on everyone on the side of the path closest to the outside. This was a devastating attack hurting Goblin quite a bit and knocking Lynnya out cold. Volodemir while hurt quickly told a joke infused with magic. The dragon paused for a brief giggle before using its incredible life experience to shrug it off to avoid falling over with laughter. Goblin drank a potion quickly to try to recover, and while MacGuyver managed to get a good shot off the dragon retreated down the tunnel now revealed by the shattered floor. Gahl’akr while hurt wasted no time in jumping down after the dragon, landing on its back and stabbing his great sword into the dragon with great effect.

Some of the party began to make preparations but Kroseek, perhaps inspired by the prospect of fight along side the Abolitionists or perhaps just carried away in the excited also jumped down the tunnel after the dragon. Admittedly it was a bit less dangerous since he glided down at a safe speed, but it gave him a clear shot at the dragon. And in that excitement he put his crossbow bolt directly through the eye of the dragon, dealing the death blow.

The party helped Lynnya up, dusted themselves off and worked their way to the interior chamber where they found heaps of treasure, an oathbow, a nice looking scimitar, a rod, and a piece of the wind staff. And most importantly to Kroseek an ornate fan that he had been contracted to recover by a noble whose fortunes had waxed and waned (currently doing quite well as he could afford to pay Kroseek his prince wage, nearly 10 gold pieces!).

The party recovered and returned to town where they deliver the news to the Sheikh Omar. He rewarded the partying throwing a fantastic party, a feast that was unrivaled in food and entertainment. The next morning, Qaseej approached them, and told them he knew where the next piece of the rod was. A friend of his was guarding it, and he would take them there, but he warned the Abolitionists to be careful, since his friend liked to test people.

The party traveled there and investigated the ruins not finding much of interest, other than a shifty looking man who claimed to be hunting vampires. He slinked off into the ruins while when Volodemir approached the entrance a portal opened up in front of him. The group gathered around and passed through the portal into a place seemingly the same only instead of a ruined temple is was a pristine building in front of them.

Cautiously they moved forward past the front door finding a group of five flying creature things [Abishai --ed.]. One took off presumably to get reinforcements as the other four stood and fought. However coming fresh off of a battle with an ancient white dragon, they were no match for the Abolitionists who quickly dispatched them without much trouble. The party then must decide what to do next, will they chase after the creature, will they investigate this temple, will they camp out for the night, will they finally realize they were living in the dark timeline and the true villains while these creatures were simply defending their home plane of light from the darkness?

Session 67: The Broken Isle

Standing on a beautiful floating island, surrounded by other beautiful floating islands, sounds like a wonderful place to vacation. Not necessarily one to come across flying pig-faced demons chasing a birdman. This was our situation though. We’ve seen and experienced some strange things, but our surroundings have never been in such stark contrast to our present predicament.

Enter Crow. When we first saw him, he was being chased by two flying pig-faced demons. Pigs flying - it's officially happened! I thought it was an ambush, as did one of our number who was about to blast him with a Hex when he begged for our help. Gahl'akr was excited to engage with these demons and ran straight into a melee. I suppose if you are a demon and you see someone run toward you, there are probably two thoughts that go through your head: either they are insane or they know they might be able to  wreck you. So, they did what they knew would be the best approach: they teleported to the other side of the group to engage with those that did not attack them. Gahl'akr made it back to the fray and with a little help from Goblin was able to put one of the demons down permanently. The other, seeing its companion downed, decided it was time to go and teleported to who knows where. Introductions were made all around and our new Aarakocra friend, who was on his way to the dragon’s lair, decided to come with us to aid us in our quest.

Seeing that our destination was at hand, we were excited to get on with our search. The downside was the distance to our goal. Looking down on the island that we needed to get to, the distance looked somewhere around 300 or more feet away. How many magic users does it take to solve this problem? All of us, it seemed. A decision was made: the magic spell of "Flight" would be cast on the stronger members of the group. Goblin, Gahl'akr and Volodemir would carry the lighter members down to the island destination. 

The island destination below us was covered in frost, snow and ice. We knew the piece of the rod we were seeking was with an ancient frost dragon. Our hope was that we would catch this legendary beast asleep or at least unaware. Sadly, the gods did not smile down upon us. During our controlled decent down to the island the beast attacked. Goblin could only fly so fast with a spell cast on him and carrying Flint. The creature opened its maw and breathed frost on Goblin and Flint during their decent. Goblin nearly lost consciousness and pooped his pants. Seeing death’s door, he flew with as much speed as he could muster. The effort got him to within 30 feet of land but that was the most luck that he and Flint would receive. Plummeting to the ground with Flint, the effort was too much and left Goblin closer to death’s door than he’d ever been. One more attack from the dragon and Goblin would be dead! With the creature high in the sky, there was little the group could do to fight it off. Goblin has never been much of the healing kind of cleric. There is one bit of healing magic that is usually kept in reserve for these specific circumstances: it was do or die time for Goblin. Casting "Heal" on himself, Goblin was revitalized and weighed the options of fighting such a beast. There was little time to organize with the group before the creature could do another flyby. But, for reasons unknown to itself the beast decided to fly off and leave us to lick our wounds and take stock.

Confused and a little afraid, we decided to take a short rest and prepare ourselves for the task at hand. Time to finish our task or die trying.....