Session 12/1/07

                Maia 26, morning: the citizens of Brindol emerge from their boarded up shops and homes to celebrate the heroes’ victory.  Altaer regales the gathering crowd with stories of the companions’ heroics, though as always his own derring-do is emphasized and embellished.  Certain attributes of his brass dragon heritage simply cannot be avoided, but in this case – glowing in the morning sun and flush with victory against the forces of evil – the embellishments serve only to make the young sorcerer more attractive to the ladies of Brindol.

                Klar finds himself surrounded by a small cadre of Bloodflayer orcs who are native to the nearby Wyrmsmoke mountains.  These warriors, formerly loyal to his father Hravek Kharn, now form the beginnings of Klar’s own horde.  The head shaman, Gril’daun, approaches with a handful of flasks.  “Master, we have prepared potions of curative magic for your coming journeys!”  Klar takes the potions with a grunt of thanks, and he too joins the morning celebration as his orc wardrummers start up a triumphant beat.

                Kaelin seeks out Besha, and she, Jack and the strange traveling merchant share a drink of whiskey-spiked coffee under Ayotunde’s blossoming tree in the courtyard of the Walker’s Cathedral.  “You did a good thing there, boyos,” says Besha, cocking his fuzzy eyebrows and downing his coffee in a few swift gulps.  Matriarch Goldenbrow appears in the courtyard and informs them that Lord Jarmaath will live, though his poisoned wound still festers.  Once her clerics have rested, they will tend to their lord with the appropriate magics.  Ayotunde sits quiet and serene beneath the trees in the courtyard, letting the late spring breeze blow through her dreadlocks.  Despite the heroes’ great victory, the antics of Laurazhi within the Walker’s Cathedral at the conclusion of the battle have left them uneasy. 

Their fears are confirmed that evening.  After resting throughout the afternoon they are summoned before a weakened but stable Lord Jarmaath.  “My friends, you have succeed where few others could.  But Tredora tells me that a vile demon penetrated the cathedral and made off with a number of valuable artifacts of Jenoic.”  Matriarch Goldenbrow nods gravely.

“My divinations tell me that the horde we defeated last night was only an advance force.  The warlord Azarr Kul has long intended to perform a great summoning magic and erect a permanent gate between Avernus and Gaia.  If he should succeed, his dragon goddess Tiamat – and her countless infernal servants – will have a direct passage into our plane.”  Tredora pauses to allow Jarmaath to speak.  The lord of Brindol coughs and wheezes, but fixes the party with his gaze.  “I have asked much of you already, but will you once again take up arms to defend the Elsir Vale, and indeed all of our kingdom, from this menace?”  Without hesitation, the heroes agree.  Azarr Kul’s plot now unfolds before them: he used Gashkarr and the forces within Slaughtergarde to learn more about Mu-Tahn-Laa’s methods of planar binding, and then caused his pet succubus Laurazhi to make off with the Tome of Slaughtergarde so he could study it more closely.  Armed with the Tome itself and its ancient methods of binding, he has begun an extended ritual to bind Avernus to the prime material plane.

Before departing, the five friends receive a handsome reward from Lord Jarmaath and the citizens of Brindol: a war chest of 25,000 gold pieces each, to spend on enchantments and improvements for their weapons, armor and magical gear.  The Red Hand army fled the field quickly, leaving behind much in the way of spoils, and Jarmaath felt it only fair to share the wealth with Brindol’s mightiest defenders.

That night, the party drops off their equipment for enchantment with Brindol’s expert crafters.  Afterward, they attend a solemn ceremony at the Walker’s Cathedral, where the clerics of Jenoic perform a raise dead ritual for the fallen Kain Ulverth.  The son of the guard captain heeds the call of his grieving father, and his spirit returns to his body forthwith.  “I am grateful beyond words that the cathedral stood, and that we won the day so that my son might live again,” says Lars, who is unable to meet the party’s eyes as he blinks back tears.

Maia 27-30: The following morning, the heroes pick up their newly-enhanced equipment and take flight on owlback towards the Fane of Tiamat in the Wyrmsmoke mountains.  Klar’s new head shaman Gril’daun Bloodflayer summons his personal griffon mount and accompanies the party, pointing out the quickest route as they fly.  By the early evening of Maia 30 their flight path takes the party deep into the twisting canyons of the mountains, where they find a series of hidden Bloodflayer settlements carved out of a depression in a sheltered set of cliffs.  That night, Gril’daun speaks to them of the hag covey which is thought to inhabit the high peaks of the Wyrmsmokes, and Altaer shudders with the thought that one of the hags might be his grandmother, Imyatra!  However, the night turns even worse for Altaer, as he sleeps fitfully, tossing and turning as his dreams are haunted by visions of being ridden across the Astral plane by a screeching, cackling hag. 

Nerida 1: When Altaer awakens, he feels sick and tired, as though his inner vitality was somehow drained by the previous night’s visions.  Ayotunde is there to help with the kind magic of Shandae, restoring the sorcerer to full health with a quiet prayer to the goddess.  As Ayo works on Altaer, the others pack their gear and prepare to depart.  Now back in his ancestral lands, from which he was exiled many years ago for “failing” to take up the mantle of leadership in a tribe that was never his, Klar’s spirit soars.  He knows the lay of the land as he knows each inch of his cold steel double-axe, and he confidently guides the others through the twisting canyons of the Wyrmsmokes on owlback, ordering them to disembark about a mile’s walk from the entrance of the Fane.

The Fane of Tiamat is an imposing structure, and its architecture towers well over 150’ high upon a windy cliffside walkway.  The entire vista is dominated by an enormous carving of a five-headed dragon, which seems to be emerging from the cliffs themselves.  As the heroes approach, doing their best to be quiet, their plated boots echo off the canyon walls.  A booming voice, seeming as though it is five draconic voices speaking as one, rings out: “Unwelcome guests!  Know that you have come to the Fane of Tiamat, Goddess of Dragons!  If you leave proper tribute, I shall forgive your transgression and allow you to leave.”  The party ignores this ruse and advances ahead towards a set of huge stone double doors in the cliffside, which are themselves guarded by a smaller facsimile of the five-headed dragon perched atop the Fane.

As they move forward, a flash of fire erupts from a cave about 140’ above them.  A roaring fireball explodes in the party’s midst, and they scatter both towards and away from the cave above as more fireballs rain down, accompanied by an occasional grim draconic chuckle.  Altaer spins his rod in one hand and sends an electricity ball up into the cave, but that only brings more chuckling.  Even more fireballs singe the group, and Jack takes a step back nearer to the edge of the cliffside passage, but he still cannot spot anything above.

A swooping rush of wind signals a dragon’s dive, and Jack suddenly spots his foe.   A large blue dragon is headed directly for him, its horn crackling with electricity as it dives.  “I cannot allow you to disrupt my son’s ceremony.  I am Tyrgarun, father of Azarr Kul, and you will not defile Tiamat’s Fane with your filth.  Die!”  With that, Tyrgarun slams into Jack, attempting to knock him backwards off the cliff to the rocks far below, but by some trick of fate the feytouched warrior holds fast.  With a growl of dismay, the dragon bares his sword-like fangs and claws.  Now grounded and vulnerable, Tyrgarun fights with a deadly ferocity. Klar and Kaelin soon take up positions near Jack, laying into the dragon’s hide with their steel.  Altaer burns him badly with an orb of fire, and Ayotunde finishes the battle by incinerating Tyrgarun with a deadly flame strike.  The cleric of Shandae wipes her brow after destroying the father of Azarr Kul, while Kaelin moves forward to look for traps on the smaller five-headed dragon and the stone door it guards.

After pronouncing the door safe for entry, Kaelin and Klar force it open.  The dragon heads immediately animate, spewing the warriors with a blast of four deadly energies: fire, cold, electricity and acid.  A strange groan echoes from the corridor beyond the door, but Klar and Kaelin are forced back by the energy blast and are met halfway by Ayo, who is ready with healing magic.  Down the corridor beyond the stone doors, Ayo spots a pair of odd looking wyverns shambing towards the group.  Jack, Klar and Kaelin move to intercept them, and as they approach they all see that the wyverns are actually reanimated zombies!

A quick melee breaks out at the edge of the corridor, but the mindless wyvern zombies are no match for the heroes’ steel and spells.  However, two lurking devils with features akin to blue dragons – Abishai of Tiamat – taunt the party from the far end of the corridor.  As they move into the Fane to intercept the blue abishai, the companions climb a short set of stairs and find themselves in a wide 80’ x 50’ foyer covered in bas-relief carvings of devils, demons and dragons.  The abishai have called for assistance, and a force of six falchion-wielding Blackpawn Raiders bursts out a barracks to the party’s left.  As Jack and Klar move to engage them, Kaelin steps to the right, intending to pursue the abishai down a corridor opposite the Blackspawn barracks.  However, before the heroes’ battle formation is set, the stench of brimstone fills the room and a terrible osyluth – a bone devil from the Hells of Baator – teleports into the fray.  “Ahh, you must be the ones Azarr Kul spoke to me about.  No matter, weeee have plenty of room in the torture chambers for the lot of you!  Terilanyx wants to hear your screeeaams…”  The devil wades into melee, cutting Ayotunde off from the others and flanking her with the assistance of one of the cunning abishai.

Klar dominates in melee against the overmatched Blackspawn raiders, and soon they are lying in a heap around him and Jack.  Seeing his reinforcements cut down, Terilanyx summons a pack of eight pathetic lemures, and the bloated sacks of evil flesh move in a moblike formation towards Kaelin and Altaer, heedless of their own pain and destruction as the party cuts them down.  The bone devil seems to take pleasure in the suffering of all creatures, including himself, as he shudders or cries out with small spasms of pleasure whenever a blade or spell strikes true.  Terilanyx strikes Ayo repeatedly with his claws, bite and barbed tail, but Shandae’s divine power helps her to resist his virulent poison despite a tail-whip that catches her clean across the face.  The bone devil’s hide seems nigh-impenetrable, deflecting the blows of the party’s strongest weapons with nary a scratch getting through.

The Abishai retreat as Terilanyx’s lemures buy them a few moments of chaotic confusion.  One of the devil-dragons reappears in the corridor adjacent to the Blackspawn barracks and raises the fallen raiders as zombies, laughing with evil glee in draconic as it commands the newly-risen Blackspawn zombies to attack.  Kaelin desperately moves from ally to ally, ducking and dodging blows as she casts align weapon(good) first on Jack’s scythe and then on Klar’s double-axe.  Terilanyx licks his lips as he moves in for the kill against a vulnerable and bleeding Ayotunde, but Jack slams into him with his aligned scythe, drawing his attention away.  Klar keeps the shambling Blackspawn zombies at bay with Jack and Kaelin surround Terilanyx and cut him to pieces.  As Klar finishes off the zombies, he sidesteps and lands a devastating blow to the torso of the bone devil, and as it staggers back, Jack severs its skull-like head from its body.  Terilanyx crumbles into stinking ash and fades from existence.   The party briefly searches the room beyond the foyer and discovers the bone devil's chilling torture chamber, which contains (among other things) a set of tanks that release diseased blood, lye, biting insects or near-freezing water onto his unfortunate victims.  The two blue abishai fly away down the corridors deeper into the Fane, confident that they will not be followed by the depleted heroes.

Indeed, the companions retreat out of the Fane to gather their strength, pausing only long enough for Klar to rappel up the cliffside into Tyrgarun’s cave 140’ up.  Inside the natural cavern, he discovers the living quarters of the five dragons of the Red Hand – Tyrgarun, Abithriax, Ozzyrandion, Varanthian and Regiarix – as well as a trove of coins, art objects and magical treasure collected by Azarr Kul’s allies.  The prize of the hoard is undoubtedly a +2 adamantine shocking burst greatsword from Tyrgarun’s personal stash, but many other valuable treasures are recovered as well.  After looting all they can, the five friends hike down the cliffside paths to their owls and fly back towards the Bloodflayer caves to rest up and prepare for their next foray into the Fane of Tiamat, with the intention of disrupting Azarr Kul’s ceremony and ending the threat of the Red Hand forever.

Azarr Kul's Ambition