June 7th, 2013

Sins of the Saviors

Players present: Elora (Sally), Azalyn (Shelley), Bastian (Casey), Sirilenda (Melissa)

With the return of Orden, the group retreated to Sandpoint to revive their fallen members. They knew that they had a short period of time to recuperate before the lich, Azaven, would be able to use his phylactery to regenerate. Also, they still had not found the runeforged weapons supposedly housed in the Runeforge complex. Exploring the remaining halls of that place would be more difficult with an angered lich looming in the shadows, so they hurriedly made their preparations to return.

Clay Golem

The heroes plunged back into the depths of Runeforge, returning to the Halls of Gluttony with the goal of discovering Azaven's phylactery. They first came upon an ancient burial chamber, stocked with dozens of perfectly preserved Thassilonian wine bottles. The armored clay golem guardian of the tomb immediately noted their entrance and attacked without warning, but provided little challenge for the seasoned adventurers. Azalyn's flaming greatsword carved the soft flesh of the construct easily, despite its additional armor. Orden quickly gathered up the bottles after sampling one of the vintages, which proved of excellent quality.

From the crypt the group moved on to the laboratories, where they found mangled corpses and body parts strewn about, and gore smeared on the walls. Closer inspection by Sirilenda revealed the skilled ministrations of a master necromancer at work, but this revelation did little to lessen their revulsion at the scene. The bodies appeared surprisingly fresh, as if the victims had been killed just minutes prior. They soon left the laboratories behind in search of the phylactery.

Nightwing

After the macabre tableau of the laboratories, the heroes returned to a previously explored room containing a rippling curtain of black energy suspended between two crystal pillars. Azalyn, with a death ward cast by Orden, approached one of the pillars and began smashing it with her sword. After two solid hits, the pillar exploded in a burst of razor edged shards, which damaged the other pillar but did not shatter it. The curtain of energy faded, but before disappearing completely, a hole in the fabric of reality opened up to the negative energy plane, and disgorged a monstrous denizen of the outer planes. The huge bat-like creature, which Orden recognized as a Nightwing, filled almost the entire room. 

The group retreated in hopes that the confines of the room would pen the creature in, but its long neck allowed for surprising reach. Elora feathered the creature with arrows while Azalyn, after sustaining severe wounds, withdrew. Bastian then charged the beast, but did not make striking distance before being mangled to death in its massive jaw. Elora felled the creature just as Orden revived Bastian using breath of life. 


The heroes, bloodied but alive, stanched their wounds and prepared to continue the search for the phylactery...