We've gotten back together and one of my old friends is visiting, so I cooked him up a spot character to join in (basic halfling barbarian).
As they had 13 hours before midnight, the appointed time that shadow demon arrives to speak with King Brawn, Tow took advantage of this and started to rest in one of the guest rooms. During this time, X37 & Marshal headed down into the dungeon to see if there were any important political prisoners. There's a barbazu guarding the place, and doesn't believe X37's statement that the contract's been changed (no shadow to give the go-ahead), but does state that none of the prisoners are allowed out unless King Brawn's around to approve. When X37 pulls out Brawn's corpse to show him, the barbazu curses at his wording and lets them in, himself leaving since the contract's null with the boss dead.
As an aside, Kast leaves orders with the guard to deny entrance to any of the barbarzu, stating that their king is busy. Since they don't know he's dead yet, they're not going to storm the place, so it suffices as a decent stalling maneuver.
There are two specially designed cells, one holds our spot-player and another holds a political prisoner. The temp-player is held inside a magically treated iron cube less than 2' on a side, held up on chains above a 60' pit. Marshal suppresses the magic of the box, which makes it possible for X37 to make the DC 30 break check to open it. They find the halfling's equipment, the still beating boar's heart (magic Strength booster, requires periodic nibbling, regrows that damage), creepy; which amuses everyone. In the other room, the political prisoner seems to be a human heavily bound with ropes that are connected to a series of yet more ropes that hold up a 2 tonne boulder slightly above him (so if they're broken, the boulder falls and crushes him), the human can't see because he has a metal plate tied over his eyes, and there are mild burn marks around the area. The man is named Tenoc, where further detail on his origin will be revealed in the stat write-up with Tow (semi-cohort). Suffice it to say, he doesn't give much help for the moment, because he assumes it's just a torture ruse to make him think he's getting out; so they leave him for Tow to speak with.
Once Tow finishes resting and recovering his spells, he goes down to the catacombs and uses hypnotism on Tenoc to convince him to assist in fighting the shadow demon. X37 goes into his true form and picks up the boulder, carrying it off, so now Tenoc can safely explode in flame to remove the rope.
Midnight nears, and two barbarzu arrive to escort one of the nobles on charges of wrongful summoning, pushing him forward in chains. Everyone is in the throne room, hiding in illusions, along with an image of Brawn on the throne and a false cage for Kast. After a bit of cajoling, the barbazu are told to leave the prisoner, so they walk out the room. During the conversation, the noble seems dazed and confused, and said the thing he summoned was an item in his pocket, which turns out to be an darkness enchanted gem (later revealed to be a crappy 1gp onyx). As soon as the room is enveloped in darkness, the shadow demon springs out and pounces upon Kast for a fair bit of damage. The barbazu come charging back in, failing to summon a single lemure, and get slaughtered by X37. The shadow demon itself is beaten down before it can do anything significant (the barbazu had a damning darkness on them, but it was dispelled by Marshal when it came out).
Tow and Marshal head up to the top of the castle/ziggaraut, create the largest floating head you can do with a silent image, while Marshal shouts as loud as he can to inform all of the barbazu that Brawn is dead and they must leave immediately. There's some clean-up over the next two days, and Gina eventually gets word (they don't know she switched sides) that they have a new contract. There's some sneaking around and ambushing, followed by awakening the barbazu in the dungeon (which makes it waste a round when it tries to teleport away and fails due to the depth of the dungeon) and hypnosis gets it to reveal that the new contract is with some 5' tall dwarf-like wizard that wears white robes, speaks High Infernal, provides virgins, and tells them to call him The White.
While travelling to the capital to go through the coronation, the Empire proves reluctant to attempt to scry on The White since he's not revealed himself to be an enemy to the country, is obviously powerful enough to watch for scrying, and now has a small army of teleporting fiends that are individually on par with a Coronal Guard. Once I speak with the players again, after having initially given them nothing, I'll go ahead and let them have heard of someone that looks like The White with a good enough Knowledge (nobility) check; which will be a dwarf known for being the spokesman to a white dragon far to the north.
No comments:
Post a Comment