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20 Norstan 1120
Heroes' Feast
After their taxing experience in Porphatys (Long Shadows), the heroes felt they'd earned themselves a trip purely for pleasure. They secured their newly gained treasures back in Marhaven and used their amulet of the planes to transport themselves to Valhalla, the grand feast hall in the Heroic Domains of Ysgard. They materialized atop a mountain peak higher than anything else in sight. The sounds of music and laughter and raucous conversation greeted them from inside the great hall and the party wasted no time entering. Inside they were greeted by a nubile and friendly serving wench, who conducted the heroes to a suitable space at one of the endless-seeming banquet tables. The table was heavily laden with fine food of every description, and the wench soon provided each with a tankard of uncommonly fine meade. Mrs. Wilkins took in the surroundings and her eye fell immediately upon a pair of studly young warrior types at the next table. A few minutes' conversation was all it took to persuade these men to escort her to one of the upstairs rooms for an energetic romp. As the rest of the party marveled at Mrs. Wilkins' seductive powers they were accosted by an unusual looking creature: humanoid, yet clearly not flesh and blood, this figure wore gold-plated armor and fine robes over a clockwork body. "Excuse me, fine heroes," it said politely. "I wonder whether you've seen this individual." The portrait sketch the creature held out was, in fact, familiar to the party -- it was a likeness of their old adversary Garrick Mistrider. Strontium recognized the questioner as a kolyarut, an autonomous, intelligent construct of the class known as inevitables. The group told the kolyarut that yes, they did know Garrick, but to the best of their knowledge he was dead. Knowing Garrick's penchant for deception, however, it did not shock them to learn that Garrick was not only alive but being hunted by the kolyarut for breaking a contract a mere six days before. Still, they had no useful information for the inevitable so it left to search the hall some more. After filling their stomachs and enjoying the hospitality of the Hall for a bit the party wondered if perhaps Garrick really was hiding out in Valhalla. They began to look around and by pure chance Quinn spotted him at a table some distance from theirs. Garrick saw her, too, however, and quickly ducked under the table. Quinn alerted her teammates and they moved quickly to cut off Garrick's escape. Quinn and Caenus took positions at either end of the long table. Moments later Caenus felt a body bump his leg. He looked down to see what appeared to be a blonde halfling female, but Caenus was not fooled. He touched the creature and saw through the magical disguise to recognize Garrick and put him in a grapple that the little gnome had no hope of escaping. Strontium cast a dimensional anchor on Garrick to make sure he couldn't slip away. While Aria went to find the kolyarut, the rest of the party (except Mrs. Wilkins, who was still enjoying herself upstairs) got reacquainted with their old adversary. Under more than a little duress Garrick told the group how he had escaped from the Lucent and established himself in the Corivan Woods. The Eldmoor tattoo on his neck marked him as an escaped convict, so after raising enough money to finance the research he found himself an elven wizard who could erase the tattoo. In exchange for this service, the wizard requried Garrick to steal for him a magic item called a Compass of Fharlanghn from a remote church. Garrick had assembled a party to help with the task and proceeded to find and steal the Compass as promised. However, once he learned of the items' real value -- it gave the user the power to cast discern location once per day -- he realized that it was worth far more than the price of the tattoo erasure. He and his party kept the Compass and started looking for a new buyer. The wizard, when he realized he had been double-crossed, had cast call kolyarut and tasked the inevitable with tracking down Garrick, so he and his cohorts had come to Valhalla hoping to get lost in the crowd until the call kolyarut spell expired. This put a new perspective on things. The Compass, as described by Garrick, could give them the means to locate Rameel, the second of Azazel's spawn, a creature that lived a nomadic existence. Since the elf wizard was not the owner of the Compass, though, only Garrick was truly obligated to deliver it there. Strontium used a message spell to summon Mrs. Wilkins and asked Garrick to produce the Compass. The gnome quickly explained that he did not have it on him, fearing that the kolyarut would be able to track him by it. Instead the Compass was hidden there at the Hall, in a small hole dug under one of the grand entrance stairways. Strontium and Melian looked in the place described by Garrick and found an empty hole. Garrick swore when he heard this and surmised that his own party must have taken the Compass for themselves. Aria arrived with the kolyarut in tow, but things had changed a bit. While Aria stalled the inevitable the group quickly discussed options. Garrick's party was still seated where the heroes had spotted Garrick, trying and failing to seem as if they were not paying close attention to the group and the kolyarut. They most likely had the Compass but would be unlikely to part with it to save Garrick's life. The heroes themselves were not overly fond of Garrick, but to their sense of justice the death penalty seemed extreme. Strontium offered Garrick the party's protection in exchange for his assistance in recovering the Compass for the party's use. Reluctantly, Garrick agreed. The kolyarut's patience neared its end. It ordered the party to surrender Garrick or be considered his allies, and therefore equally liable for the breach of contract. The heroes drew weapons and prepared for combat. Since the kolyarut was a construct, and therefore immune to mind-affecting magic, both Garrick and Mrs. Wilkins moved toward Garrick's traitorous companions to see about recovering the Compass while the rest of the group engaged the kolyarut. Aria landed two fast blows and felt her magic gloves adjusting to the creature's damage reduction, which required a chaotic-aligned weapon to do full damage. Strontium fired off a volley of magic missiles and scored, but the kolyarut responded by pegging him with a ray of black negative energy that inflicted three negative levels and robbed Strontium of his most potent spells. On the other side, Mrs. Wilkins used greater invisibility to cover herself and Garrick cast incite riot to create a diversion. A number of the warrior types around his party rose up, drew weapons, and began to attack each other. One of the enemy cast an obscuring mist that enveloped Garrick's ex-party in a thick fog, granting them concealment. An Isaac's lesser missile storm from Strontium did significant damage to the kolyarut, but rather than strike out at the wizard again the kolyarut unveiled another power: it touched Aria and Caenus, and as it did a crackle of negative energy injured them and restored health to the kolyarut in equal measure. The damage done by Strontium's spell was effectively repaired. Garrick and Mrs. Wilkins continued to work against his old party. When a ninja emerged from the cloud and turned invisible, Mrs. Wilkins cast see invisibility and Garrick tried to incapacite the whole group with a vertigo field. The ninja threw shuriken at Mrs. Wilkins and inflicted a small cut that then opened the way for the poison to sap her coordination. From somewhere at the periphery of the cloud a Melf's acid arrow appeared and struck Garrick, its accuracy helped by a recitation from the gnomish-looking favored soul. Mrs. Wilkins responded with a mind fog overlapping the mist to soften up the enemy for more mind attacks and Garrick tried to retaliate for the arrow with a blinding color surge but failed. Meanwhile, the battle with the kolyarut was going slowly. The construct's vampiric touch ability allowed it to keep healing by stealing strength from the heroes, and it could do this enough to offset most or all of the damage it took. Quinn cast a capricious zephyr and knocked the kolyarut to the ground, but it simply turned invisible and reappeared in another position to resume its attacks. At Strontium's urging Aria and Caenus worked to keep the creature busy and others backed off to limit its ability to drain health from a variety of targets. Quinn and Audas joined in support of Garrick and Mrs. Wilkins. Quinn tried casting drown on the sorcerer and the spell worked, but the sorcerer was unaffected due to his ability, as a wavecrest gnome, to breathe water. Audas sent a vitriolic chained eldritch blast against two of the enemy and had more success as the sorcer and ninja took acid damage. The ninja retaliated by turning invisible and using that cover to hit Audas with a poisoned shuriken that did serious physical damage as well as delivering the Dexterity-reducing poison, but Audas's blast had weakened him and he fell dead soon after from the residual acid damage. The sorcerer favored Quinn with a Kelgore's fire bolt that hurt Quinn but didn't weaken her resolve in the least. Melian found that he had little ability to damage the kolyarut and disengaged to join the part of the fight against Garrick's former cohorts. The sorcerer tried to neutralize him with Tasha's hideous laughter but Melian stole the spell and cast it himself, forcing the sorcerer to scramble to avoid being taken out himself. Mrs. Wilkins hit him with a feeblemind spell that took away the sorcerer's best spell slots. He responded with a stinking cloud that sickened Garrick and Mrs. Wilkins but failed to affect Melian or Quinn. The combined efforts of Strontium and Audas at a distance with Aria and Caenus in melee finally wore down the kolyarut. Aria managed to land a combination of blows that destroyed the construct before it could use its vampiric touch again and the kolyarut was no more. With the entire party now focused on Garrick's ex comrades there was little the enemy could do. Quinn cast a cloudburst to dispell the various mists that had been conjured up and protected herself with her Elephant Hide feat. Strontium sent a magic missile volley at the favored soul but the spell failed due to spell immunity. Caenus ran to engage the half-orc fighter while dodging an attempted ray of enfeeblement from the sorcerer. The favored soul, another wavecrest gnome, called down a flame strike on Strontium and Audas and then ducked Audas's vitriolic chain counterattack. He proved less resistant to blows from Quinn's trident, however; she struck him three times and he fell dead. Melian also used his trident to good purpose, felling both the sorcerer and then the fighter in successive rounds to end the combat. With the enemy slain the party searched their bodies and found the Compass of Fharlanghn on the ninja. They helped themselves to the traitors' gear and resumed their evening of leisure, giving Strontium time to enjoy the attentions of an attractive Dwarven lass he had noticed earlier and the rest an opportunity to relax and enjoy the victory. Burly bus-boys cleared the bodies out of the way and replaced broken furniture with nary a comment about the carnage. In Valhalla, five dead bodies barely counts as a decent bar brawl. The magic of Ysgard healed the heroes quickly and the divine alchemy of the feast hall's meade did the rest. By the time they returned to Marhaven they felt refreshed and satisfied. And they had an unexpected and highly useful prize in the Compass.
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