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3 Shyrdus 1120
New Blood
After conducting the freed hostages to safety the heroes found themselves in the land of Belain, a lawful good theocracy. It seemed like a good place to recruit some more muscle for the fight against the mind flayers. They interviewed a number of candidates before settling on Hyros Rainore, a Paladin of Belain. Hyros brought both fighting muscle and additional divine spell power to the group and seemed especially well suited to the tasks ahead. Also while they were in a civilized area Tika took the time to research a new spell: mass freedom of movement. This, too, would be highly useful against mind flayers and half-illithids. Next came the question of how to find the mind flayer settlement. Hyros suggested that they intercept another slave party, take a guard captive, and persuade the guard to take them there. Nobody else had a better idea, so the heroes set off for the hidden tunnel once again. When they reached the spot over a week had passed and the landscape had changed. The tall trees the party had used for cover in their earlier ambush had been clear cut, leaving nothing substantial enough for even a halfling to hide behind. The heroes had to conclude that this was a response to their earlier attack. The next party, they reasoned, would be stronger and better equipped as well. After much discussion of options, they tried a combination of misdirection and camouflage. Tika cast cometfall and caused a massive pile of debris to block the tunnel entrance. Then she and Hyros combined their abilities to stone shape a hollow into the mountain side for the party to lie in wait. They didn't have to wait long. The next morning Tak, who served as the forward lookout, detected the approach of a large number of bipedal creatures on foot and scurried to the safety of Ash's familiar pocket. The party braced themselves and soon saw a group of 30 or so humanoids of various races, all looking half dead from exhaustion, being driven by a group of half-illithid sahuagin. The leader, a 4-armed mutant, halted the group and looked around suspiciously. Hyros gave the enemy no time to adjust -- he charged out of the hiding place and positioned himself 15 feet from the leader, daring the creature to come fight him. The mutant held back, though, and allowed its underlings to prepare for an attack. Tika shot the leader with her crossbow for a minor wound and Vondran hurled the Arm of Telomir at an underling, getting it stuck in the creature's leg. Ash measured the distances and aimed a scintillating sphere to catch two enemy targets without harming any of the innocents, who were scurrying away from the battle. Since the enemy didn't come to him Hyros charged and attempted a smite against the leader. His attack missed and left him open to a flurry of attacks from the leader's swords and spiked shields. Vondran's opponent aimed a mind blast at the group and stunned Vondran and Tika, making it that much easier for its allies to close in on the party. Their movement, however, gave Ash an opening to blast several of them with a fireball. One of the grunt warriors took the full force of it and dropped dead on the spot. The enemy responded decisively, with two them using dimension slide to surround Ash and punish her with their spears. Hyros found himself surrounded when two grunts came to join the leader against him, and he was not getting the better of the exchange. He bought himself some breathing room with a ring of blades that slashed at all of his opponents and caused the lesser two to fall back but the leader continued to pound on him with rapid-fire attacks. He cast righteous might on himself and grew to Large size, forcing the lesser fighters back once more, but the leader countered with a psionic power that made him larger and stronger as well. Meanwhile, Ash tried a baleful transposition to escape her enemies and failed. She ran back, taking a hit in the process, and threw a scorching ray at her enemy but failed to overcome spell resistance. The opponent executed a psionic lion's charge and pierced her again with its spear despite Tika's timely help with a close wounds. Finally Ash protected herself with a vortex of teeth. The whirling force pirhanas bit at the enemy until it decided to attack Loki instead. Hyros was still holding his own against the leader but clearly could not continue much longer, so Tika tried a desperate tactic. She used assay spell resistance to gain an advantage, then lunged through the ring of blades to deliver a slay living touch. The gambit worked -- the leader fell dead on the spot. The tide of the battle had turned. Soon after the leader died two more mutants were felled as well, leaving only the psychic warriors on Loki still standing. The heroes' plan required at least one survivor to interrogate, so they needed to take these alive if possible. After Tika weakened them with a moon bow and Vondran did serious non-lethal damage Loki put one down with a psychic strike and Hyros, still in his enlarged form but less the blades, took the other in a grapple. It struggled briefly and, as Vondran approached with manacles, managed to dimension slide out of Hyros's grasp but Loki ran it down and tackled it at the edge of the river and Tika used a dimensional anchor to ensure that it wouldn't be able to teleport again. Among the leader's possessions they found a set of dimensional shackles and put them to good use, binding the two psychic warriors to each other and preventing either from escaping easily. They began the interrogations with the last surviving low-level warrior. When it claimed ignorance and refused to cooperate, Hyros slew it and they moved on to a psychic warrior. That enemy was less beligerant but also resisted questioning, so Hyros performed a coup de grace on it and turned to the final survivor. Having witnessed the pattern, this creature was more forthcoming. It did not know the actual location of the mind flayer sept, it told them telepathically, because they had never been there. Normal practice was to drive the slaves into the underground and then hand them off, preferably too exhausted and confused in the darkness to resist, to another group consisting of a mind flayer and some slaves to complete the journey. This was not good news. Short of disguising themselves as half-illithids and leading a group of hostages underground, what could the party do to locate and intercept the relay group? In the pack of the leader they found a few possibilities in the form of arcane scrolls, one of which held a couple of different illusion spells. And what to do with the captive? They had verbal directions but not a clear path to follow; should they take the creature with them, as it urged, or leave it behind? Leave it dead or alive? They huddled to consider their options.
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