Session 6/23/07

                After winning the Gauntlet of Beriah (which Klar still wears proudly) from the fire elemental, the companions head back up to the statue room.  Altaer presents the newfound eye medallion before the gate to the northeast, and a beam scans the medallion, predictably deactivating its gate and giving access to the elevator shaft below.

                In the corridor beyond, which branches to the north and east, the party is confronted by three more troglodyte guards and a pair of demonic gnoll priestesses.  These latter foes have cloven hooves rather than hyena paws for feet, and they taunt the party mercilessly: “You apes shall never have the Ark!  Gashkarr is all powerful!”  However, their taunts seem all the more hollow as Altaer burns them to cinders with a fireball.  The troglodytes put up a short fight, but they too quickly fall to the party’s combined assault.  One troglodyte escapes down the eastern corridor, but he is of little concern to the party for the moment.  After looting the bodies of the fallen for some coin, the group continues up the north corridor towards a staircase down.  The sounds of snarling, gurgling gnoll chanting can be heard down the staircase to the east.

                This staircase leads to a partially flooded room with a door in the east wall.  Chained to the north wall is a badly beaten human female prisoner.  She looks up weakly and then thanks the gods for her good fortune, and introduces herself as Szussana Halborn of Oberwald.  She claims to have lost her two companions – Borsk and Ernest – some weeks ago while exploring the Slaughterscar.  Though Jack and Kaelin are both suspicious of Szussana, the party decides to free her.  She takes a spare sword, shield and chain shirt and bravely grips the pommel of her sword with white knuckles as she follows the party back away from the sunken room towards the first level of the Armory.

                Gashkarr’s ceremony must already be underway, but the heroes hold two of the four relics that the gnoll warchief needs to complete the opening of the gate.  They intend to be well rested before facing him, so they rest for the night on the upper level of the Armory near the elevator as has become their recent habit.

                Alindor 21: Upon awakening, each member of the party prepares for the final confrontation with Gashkarr.  They discuss tactics and form up ranks, heading back down through the statue room and the northeast elevator to the partially flooded chamber.  Klar pushes the doors open and the sounds of chanting grow louder.  Gashkarr and his head bitch can be seen chanting at a pedestal at the far end of a large room featuring three ruined gates and one intact gate.  The two gnolls are perched on a balcony about 20’ high, and the macabre Ark of the Resurgent Mountain stands behind them, lending its corrupted influence to Gashkarr’s ritual.

                The scarred, demon-touched warchief meets the heroes’ eyes: “By Yeenoghu, I shall bring the Abyss right here to you!  My demons will feast on your flesh and devour your souls!”  His chanting continues and reaches a crescendo, and the single intact gate glows with a lurid purple energy as it activates, spilling a cascade of thousands of skulls across the floor of the room.  A disgusting 8’ tall toadlike demon – identified by Ayotunde as a hezrou – steps through the glowing gate and burbles out a guttural challenge in Abyssal.

                Gashkarr continues to chant for the next four rounds as the Hezrou wades into battle, blasting the heroes with its chaos hammer and other spell-like abilities.  However, it seems that the Gnoll warchief’s ceremony only partially succeeded, as the skull pile recedes every six seconds back towards the gate, pulling the hezrou demon with it.  Bolstered by this knowledge, the party fights on.  Klar and Jack move up the spiral staircases towards Gashkarr, who finally stops chanting and draws out his jagged falchion.  Altaer fires spell after spell into the hezrou, but its spell resistance protects the demon from most of the damage.  Kaelin bravely closes with the hezrou, pushing it back towards the gate portal, and just then the demon is sucked back through to the Abyss, though the gate itself remains partially active.   The alien landscape of some layer of the Abyss is visible through the shifting translucent energy of the final active gate of Slaughtergarde.

                As Jack and Klar begin a vicious melee exchange with Gashkarr, the warchief’s head bitch imposes herself between the warriors.  Klar deals the female gnoll a heavy blow and Jack follows up with a decapitating swing from his scythe.  The head bitch gnoll’s head bounces against the wall with a wet thud.  The human fighter Szussana creeps forward cautiously to assist her new companions, but then suddenly changes her shape!  A lithe, naked, bat-winged succubus now stands before group.  The succubus takes flight, swooping upwards towards the balcony and grabbing the Tome of Slaughtergarde from its nearby pedestal.

                The shocked gnoll cries out: “Noooo!  Azarr Kul has betrayed me!  Laurazhi, I command you to return my Tome at once!”  But the succubus ignores his plea and flies through the Abyssal portal with the Tome, laughing in defiance as she returns to her home plane.  Gashkarr foams, spits and twitches as he enters a killing rage, spinning his falchion before him in a deadly arc.  He crushes Klar with a devastating critical hit, but the half-orc is also raging and barely notices the huge cut across his torso.  Altaer tries to take down Gashkarr with a barrage of magic missiles, but the shield enchantment woven by his head bitch still holds.  After Jack slices Gashkarr deeply across the left cheek, Klar lays into the gnoll with both blades of his ancestral double-axe. Cutting through sinew, bone and organs with a wrathful battlecry, he leaves the demon-touched warchief of Slaughtergarde a bloody heap on the balcony floor.

                Altaer casts a fireball into the still-active gate, hoping to catch Laurazhi the succubus in its blast radius before she can escape with the Tome.  Unfortunately, mortal magic does not function across planes in that fashion and his spell fizzles out once it hits the gate.  As Gashkarr falls and the Tome is returned to the Abyss, the purple energies around the last intact gate crackle, spit and finally die.  However, Mu-Tahn-Laa’s last gate still remains whole, which means that another evildoer could follow behind the heroes and start the cycle all over again. 

Azarr Kul's Ambition