The Anti Fight

April 1, 2008

The group has the pit fiends surrounded in the circle.  Nigel's group is mixed with the main group.  Spellcasters are at the edge and the fighters are next to the pit fiend. 

The pit fiend is offering them items again.  A staff of the arch magi, a holy avenger, a powerful wand, and other items.  He offers Deuce a necklace that can change all of Deuce's life experience to sorcerer.  He offers Jaden a necklace to be able to cast all spells of the top tier.  He pulls out a few more gifts from the chest. 

The group is having none of it.  At a signal, the other group's cleric goes around casting protection spells on everyone.  Jaden casts some spells as well.  At a nod, the group gets ready.  Finn pulls out his new powerful sword and gets ready to strike the circle.

Fine, roars the pit fiend.  You want to do this the hard way, that's fine with me.  I was trying to make it easy on all of you!  He turns so he is facing Deuce and holds up his hands spread apart by a foot, palms facing each other.  Fire gathers in the space between his hands.  Let's see how well you do! 

Finn attacks the circle, breaking it.  Notch attacks, the other fighters including Nigel attack.  Notch hits.  The pit fiend releases his meteor swarm at Deuce.  Deuce releases his readied counter spell.  The two spells meet but the pit fiend's wins and keeps going.  The meteors impact Deuce and then explode.  The protections hold and even though he isn't able to dodge completely out of the way, Deuce survives the attack. 

Notch attacks again, a full flurry of blows.  He hits with less than half of them.  Then, hasted, he attacks again using his quivering palm ability.  The pit fiend runs at Deuce, the way clear due to the meteor swarm.  He closes to eight feet away.  There is an ethereal line running from the pit fiend back to Notch.  Notch yanks it.  The pit fiend's "life" is pulled out of its body.  Just as it was going to attack Deuce, it explodes in a sulfurous cloud, leaving Deuce wretching in the stench. 

The group stares at each other for a second.  Is that it?  Are they done? 

Black lightning crackles around Jaden.  "Destroy my physical form, will you?" screams the lich, back again.  Finn mutters an affirmative and runs over to it, swinging many times.  Bits of the lich are thrown everywhere but from the knees down remains on the stairs.  "Well," he says chagrined, "he gave me the idea." 

Again, the group cannot believe it.  Nigel looks to his hurt friends, pleading for help.  Jaden casts two quick healing circle spells and those that went down are now better.  Deuce pulls himself out of the cloud, wretching and coughing, going for the chest and the items the demon used to tempt them.  The items are grabbed and distributed.  Nigel and his group go outside to keep watch as the group decides about the chest.  It's evil.  It's oozing evil.  They still want to open it and see what else is inside.  It's eventually decided that Nail will open it with Notch and Deuce upstairs.  Deuce watches from the top of the stairs.  Meanwhile, Jaden and Finn leave the tower. 

Nail opens the chest and darkness is revealed.  Deuce sees the shape of a man, horrific yet beautiful, coming out of the chest. 

"GET OUT OF HERE!" yells Nail, already swinging his rapier at the shape. 

Deuce can only nod in agreement, as cold fear sweeps over him.  He pushes Notch forward as they run across the stone floor toward the front door. 

The explosion causes the floor to buckle upward and crack, creating a hole in the floor.  The stone floor is still shaking from the power unleashed but Notch and Deuce manage to run across and get out the door.  They see that Finn and Jaden are only fifty paces ahead of them. 

"RUN!" shouts Deuce, his voice almost a primal scream after what he saw. 

Jaden puts on a burst of speed immediately.  Finn looks back to check on them but keeps running as he sees the tower lurch and twist, then drop several feet.  A wave of energy creates a wave in the ground that ripples out from the tower.  Several are slammed by it and drop but get up and keep moving.  The group gets to where they felt the evil first start and pauses.  The tower lurches again and Jaden feels evil slip further away from the tower, overwhelming him.  He yells at the group to keep running and no one needs to be told twice. 

They get more than one hundred paces away from the tower and finally stop to look back.  It is slowly collapsing in on itself.  The upper half of the tower is spinning clockwise and the bottom is spinning counter clockwise.  The rock is toppling in on itself. 

There is one final explosion.  It leaves a crater, four hundred feet across and five hundred feet deep.  The group can only stare at what has happened.

"Nail?" 

No one has an answer to the question.  They can't see much in the hole.  Deuce says that he thought he saw a ruler of hell coming through the box.  That's all it could have been and he shivers again at the thought of it. 

After talking, they decide that Jaden will go back with Nigel's group, via a teleport, and talk to the priests of his order to come cleanse this area.  Jaden leaves while the rest stay to guard the area. 

Deuce creates a cabin for them to use.  However, something about it is wrong.  From the front, the sides look wrong.  As if the front and back corners are different heights.  When viewed from the side, it looks fine and the front looks wrong.  However, Deuce can see nothing amiss with it otherwise, so he goes inside and uses it.  Deuce stares at the necklace while the other two sit on the porch, reflecting on what happened.

Jaden gets to the temple, well where the temple is being rebuilt, and talks to the high priest.  The priest agrees with Jaden's assessment that it should be cleansed and agrees to come back the next day with a group of mages and priests to make the area free of taint.  Jaden thanks him, accepts a token from him that will allow the priest to find Jaden and the group, and goes back to sleep with the group.  He senses that the cabin isn't right as well, probably because the influence of evil spread again.  However, it doesn't seem to be malevolent, so they rest. 

All but Deuce sleep well, although Notch and Finn take the night watches between them.  Finn thought he saw movement out in the woods and near the crater but nothing ever came close.  Notch didn't notice anything.  Deuce had bad dreams.  He woke with a start in the morning and wasn't fully rested.  Much of his magical energy didn't come back to him after the rest.  Jaden felt better and welcomed the sun and Lathander to the morning.  Deuce wants to perform the ritual with the necklace to convert of his life's experiences to a sorcerer.  The others agree and allow him to start.  However, as the ritual nears its completion, Jaden senses evil in the ritual.  He tries to get rid of it but it isn't completely working.  Jaden yells at the others to stop Deuce.  After several hits from Notch, who was surprised that Deuce could take the hits, the ritual is interupted.  Jaden explains that the ritual was being corrupted and Deuce agrees to wait on the ritual until they can do it back in the temple grounds. 

It is several more hours before the high priest and the others arrive to cleanse the area.  When they do, they see the black chest at the bottom of the pit, wrapped in copper chains made of scales.  They don't sense life about it and so perform the ritual to seal up the ground and put stone and dirt back.  Druids arrive to plant trees and other vegetation.  Notch plants several astor seeds.  It takes the rest of the day to finish the cleansing ritual. 

All are teleported back to Arabel where they sleep.  The next morning they gather at the temple.  Deuce wants to do the ritual with the necklace but Jaden brings up resurrecting Nail.  They wait for all to arrive, Finn is a bit late, before starting.  Finn talked to the local magistrates about Nail and what had happened.  It turns out Nail had left a will for his area and it's all Finn's now, including his hoard.  Finn accepts this but isn't sure what it means. 

When Finn arrives at the temple, they attempt to bring back Nail.  They see Nail having fun and he sees them.  He says that he is happy and that he can't come back or the chains holding back the duke of hell will shatter, releasing him.  The group can only nod at him.  Then the connection is broken and they are back at the temple grounds.  Finn tells them what the magistrate told him.  They are all happy for Finn, knowing he can probably use this to barter for his place in Cormyrean society. 

Then, they do the ritual for Deuce.  It is different this time.  Deuce feels like he is in school, learning about magic and spells.  He learns how to handle it best to hurt the enemy but leave his friends untouched.  He learns about the right away to use magic and discipline along with it.  As it finishes, all of his life experience is now in sorcery.  He has some of the skills of his past but not near as much.  That's also when he realizes that the ritual influenced how he thinks and behaves.  He's not happy with his friends for doing it but he does like the magic. 

Notes

• The pit fiend was being very whiny and pulling anything he could think they would like out of the chest.  When he realized they wouldn't be tempted or use the words he needed and were going to attack, he gave up and got ready for a fight.  He didn't last long.  He failed his save versus the Quivering Palm ability and was killed.  I suppose it could be argued that monks can't do that and it made for an anti-climactic fight but I let it stand.  I knew the lich was going to attack soon.  Of course, it didn't make a good showing for itself either. 
• It was Asmodeus who was trying to come through.  Nail sacrificed himself to stop him.  The players asked if it could have been avoided and I said only if they were willing to walk away from the chest without opening it.  That's not what they choose to do.  I don't mind sacrificing an NPC in this way.  It was dramatic and cool. 
• The player playing Deuce was having Deuce be more and more about magic because the player likes magic type characters.  So, over the course of the campaign, with the character, he has been a rogue, then rogue/shadow mage, then rogue/sorcerer and now a sorcerer.  A LG sorcerer, which was the reason for the discipline and other images during the ritual.  It will be interesting to see this played.