28 Tilden 1120

Dudael

With the binding spell ready and Azazel's primary defenders dead or disbursed, it was time for the heroes to confront the ancient enemy.

Strontium spent considerable time contemplating tactics. Their recent encounters with Azazel's higher level minions had shown that their enemy clearly had learned the party's tactics and knew well how to counter them. For them to have any chance at all against a creature of Azazel's power they would need to misdirect and surprise. He consulted with Melian and Audas, either of whom could in theory cast the binding spell if Strontium were unable to, and developed a plan.

For the plan to work Strontium would need to take the scroll written by Castanamir and use it to scribe the binding spell into his spell books, then create a new scroll for us in the battle. This would take time but it would give them multiple attempts at the spell, which might make all the difference for the world.

On the third day of preparation, a messenger arrived at the island. The young man traveled alone and in clothing tattered but clearly recognizable as the uniform of the Marhaven city guard. The city, he explained, was being literally torn apart by a series of earthquakes coming from the ground below -- the heroes' help was urgently needed.

The guard's timing was poor. Strontium still needed another full day to finish creating the new scroll that was pivotal to their plan. The briefly debated an immediate departure but in the end they felt the scroll was too important to their chances of success and had to be completed first. Fortunately, they could use greater teleport after finishing the scroll and still reach Marhaven sooner than they would if they left by ship immediately. So they offered the guardsman a cot and a meal and Strontium spent a day finishing the scroll.

The next day the party teleported directly to their old dock space in Marhaven. They found the city in disarray. The deck sections, which had been solidly joined together with chains and plank bridges, were now loosely tied and in many cases floating semi-free. The normally busy Service Sector was nearly deserted, with shops boarded up and the walkways almost empty.

They stopped one of the few citizens still around and asked what had happened. About four days before, the citizen explained, a series of mammoth earthquakes started to shake the ground below. Those quakes caused the sea to erupt in powerful waves that seemed to start under the city and spread outward, ripping the deck sections apart from one another and rocking the foundations of the buildings. With a new quake and wave erupting every few hours anyone with the means had already abandoned the city; shops were closed and the city watch was on constant repair and rescue duty. The churches were all open round the clock but nearly everything else was shut down. Lord Mayor Ander remained in the city and made daily appearances to try and bolster the morale of those left but he had no solutions other than working to contain the damage and keep the decks from floating out to sea. And then, as if to add insult to injury, the remains of the city were had become a magnet for sea kith and other lower humanoids, who kept running around proclaiming that the Beast was rising.

As if to underscore the point, as the party talked with the citizen another earthquake struck. The vibration shook the water and then a rolling wave ran under the decks at their feet, straining at the ropes and wood and knocking people to the floor or into the water between sections.

When the water calmed again the party regrouped. They sent the citizen to City Hall to inform the Lord Mayor that the party was on site and knew what to do. Then they donned their water-breathing gear and dove.

Months before, a minion of Azazel had led the party into a trap in the mountain below the city (Down the Rabbit Hole). That adventure had ended in chamber that resembled the eye symbol of the Servants of the Beast Below with Azazel speaking to the party telepathically before forcibly teleporting them to the surface. It made sense that the way to Azazel's prison -- or what remained of it -- must be down there.

The heroes swam down to the cave entrance they had first entered eight months before and found it largely unchanged. There was more debris strewn around, much of it fresh, but no signs of any major activity otherwise. As they journeyed deeper into the cave system they found increasing evidence of the powerful seismic activity, with cracks in surfaces all around, chunks of rock in the passages and silt in the water stirred up by motion. It confirmed, in case they needed it, that they were likely nearing the source of the quakes.

The party found their way to a large, roughl circular chamber they had come to call the funnel room because of its sloped floor with a passage in the center leading straight down to the next level. In their first adventure here, that passage had been guarded by a powerful water elemental. This time there were two guardians: water elemental monoliths.

Aria moved forward and attacked the first monolith with her dragon breath ability and Audas let fly a vitriolic eldritch chain. Caenus attacked the nearest enemy with his halberd while Strontium and Quinn used attack spells. Almost all of their efforts yielded only slight results, leaving the monoliths unimpressed and not particularly weakened. Melian cast know vulnerabilities and learned, to his dismay, that the creatures really had little in the way of exploitable weaknesses. He cautioned his teammates to stay in contact with the ground and watch out for slams.

With both physical and magical combat stymied, Mrs. Wilkins tried a different approach. She cast mass hold monster against both monoliths and succeeded in stopping their movements. The party took advantage of this to slip past the guardians and down the center passage without spending further resources on combat. The monoliths did not pursue the party even after the holding spell ended, confirming that their task had been to guard the opening.

The next level showed even more signs of the frequent shaking of the mountain. The party worked their way down through the passages to a long, stomach-shaped cave in which they had once faced skrags and kopru. This time the chamber seemed empty, but Audas's sharp eye picked up movement in the silt. He shouted a warning just in time for the party to confront a huge, translucent, worm-like creature almost 100 feet long.

The lucent worm was so big that it was easy to hit, but each hit was equivalent to a minor scratch. The empowered moonbow that Strontium used made a visible impact, as did the empowered vitriolic blast from Audas that followed on it, but the creature was too hungry to be dissuaded. It reared up and lunged at the group, slamming its body down onto the group in an attempt to pin the heroes down and crush them. Mrs. Wilkins, protected by freedom of movement, managed to avoid being pinned but Strontium and Aria were. Mrs. Wilkins cast another freedom of movement on Strontium, which enabled the wizard to slay the worm with a greater missile storm and end the encounter.

The encounters had left several in the party badly wounded, which no doubt was Azazel's intent. However, the group recalled that there might be help nearby. In their previous outing they had encountered an aquatic centuar druid who presided over a coral garden, and the waters of that area had healing properties. They headed for where they remembered finding the druid.

The coral garden was still there, but the druid was gone and the coral itself had seen better days. Like every other stone structure in the area, it was broken and cracked in multiple places. The celestial clownfish whose healing auras had provided the benefits of the garden before were still there, albeit in smaller numbers, and the heroes were able to take advantage of their presence once more. A half hour rest was enough to fully heal their bodies and prepare them for the battle to come.

They made their way to the round chamber where their previous adventure had ended. There they made a grisly discovery: the bodies of W'illot, Pendrul, Uiq, and Maenon, apparently left there to decay in the months since their demise. The cold water had preserved them to some degree but there was no mistaking the horrible reminder these remains were likely meant to convey.

Knowing the end game had to be near, the party grabbed Uiq and tossed his body, less Castanamir's belt of flying, down the crevass in the middle of the chamber to see if it set off any traps on the way down. The thud came back to them and indicated at least provisionally that all was clear. "Finally," Strontium remarked, "Uiq was useful."

Taking the body of Maenon, Caenus led the way down the crevass, where they found a crude passage leading sharply down. The angle was so steep it would have been difficult to negotiate on foot, but swimming was much easier. Caenus held out Maenon's body as a shield against any surprise disintegrate rays as they advanced.

About 300 feet down the passage was blocked by a shimmering purple energy field. Caenus pushed against it with the body of Maenon but it held firm. The barrier looked to the heroes like a wall of force and it proved resistant to Audas's devour magic ability. A disintegrate spell would penetrate it, but the party did not have one prepared; instead Audas used his flee the scene invocation to teleport the group, less the remains of Maenon, to the other side.

They moved more carefully for another several hundred feet until the end of the passage came into sight. They spied a narrow opening into a larger cave filled, at least from what they could see, with a wispy mist. Strontium had Melian take the prepared binding spell from his mind, then got out the group's want of protection from evil and used a charge on each of them. Ready, they squeezed through the opening one at a time.

Aria went first, moving through the foggy area to find a large chamber that appeared empty. There were large cracks in the walls, floor and ceiling -- had Azazel escaped? But then her mental disciplinie asserted itself and the illusion vanished, revealing that while the chamber was, in fact, in bad shape it was not unoccupied. Her brother Andronus leaned casually against a wall smirking at her. Behind him, lurking in the shadows, was the gargantuan figure of Azazel itself. And in between she saw two glowing, crystalline creatures that resembled kraken in physical form. Aria kept to the agreed-upon plan and engaged her brother, who easily shook off an opening Stunning Fist and responded with a punishing Psychic Strike.

Audas moved in next, saw his opportunity, and whipped out the galadiir and the scroll of the binding spell. As he began to read Caenus entered the room through the mist. Like the others he saw through the initial illusion of an empty room but then the effect of the mind fog took hold and he felt Azazel overpower his will. Caenus turned his weapon on Audas and struck hard, breaking the warlock's concentration.

Strontium, who entered behind Caenus, saw the attack and realized something had to be wrong. The protection from evil had been dispelled somehow. Then he remembered their second encounter with Rorin, in which the entry to the encounter had been shielded with a dispelling screen; a quick look at the opening confirmed that there was a similar field, which the fog had concealed from view, across the entrance. He cast time stop and used the time to cast a quick protection from evil on himself , then followed that with ghostform on himself and globe of invulnerability on his location.

Melian joined the battle next and threw his trident at Andronus. Azazel's eyes flashed and swirls of purple energy converged on Audas, encasing him completely in an ectoplasmic cocoon. Not only could Audas not resume reading the scroll now, but the galadiir -- an essential component of the spell -- was inaccessible to anyone else.

Mrs. Wilkins cast Battle Hymn to help protect the group from more mental tricks and Quinn started the process of cutting Audas free of his bonds. Unfortunately, this meant the bulk of the group was clustered together. Azazel took advantage and lobb an energy ball of bitter cold in their midst but the globe of invulnerability blocked it and bought the party some time. Audas used the time to invoke fiendish resiliance and improve his mental defenses, a purely mental action the cocoon couldn't prevent. Caenus, still under the control of Azazel, turned and attacked Melian. Strontium cast a quick magic circle against evil and the control on Caenus was suspended as long as he remained close to Strontium.

Mrs. Wilkins attempted a break enchantment on Caenus but failed to overcome Azazel's influence. The attempt earned her the creature's attention in the form of a mind lock but she managed to resist the power. Aria, who had been exchanging blows with Andronus, used her dimension door ability to join Mrs. Wilkins, who was holding the Rod of Health, and seek healing.

Strontium took the opportunity to launch a greater missile storm at Andronus and even used his Sudden Maximize feat to amp up the damage. Andronus, however, shrugged it off as he applied a psionic power that actually reduced the spell's damage to its absolute minimum and then used another power to heal himself of nearly all the damage done to that point.

Melian reached in through a gap cut in the ectoplasmic cocoon and cast gaseous form on Audas. This caused the warlok and his gear to turn into vapor and rise out of containment. Azazel responded by throwing an antimagic field right where they stood, which was also in the middle of the globe of invulnerability. The globe was no match for the powerful psionic affect and all magical effects in the area ceased to function. Audas turned back to physical form and the group's magical aides for swimming, vision, and breathing all stopped working, forcing them to abandon the protective radius of the globe.

Mrs. Wilkins moved out first and Azazel was ready with a dispel magic targeted specifically at her Gills of Hamachi. Mrs. Wilkins held her breath and Quinn came to her aid, using her Breathing Link ability to help Mrs. Wilkins breathe. She then cast a moonbolt at Andronus but failed to overcome the psychic monk's spell resistance. Quinn then felt her mind in the grip of a brain lock from Azazel and she lost the ability to use her spells or other mental powers.

Caenus came out of the antimagic field unable to see Strontium, and as a result emerged too far away from him to be protected. Azazel's dominance reasserted itself and Caenus attacked Audas, who was free and once again in position to start reading the scroll. Strontium, protected by ghostform, took the scroll and galadiir from Audas and moved to a clear space. A disintegrate ray from Azazel struck him nonetheless but his incorporeal form helped to reduce the damage from it.

Azazel lobbed another energy ball at a cluster of heroes and this time it hurt. Audas shook it off and aimed a pair of vitriolic blasts at Andronus, finally doing some serious damage to the boy. Caenus, now sporting a fresh protection from evil courtesy of Melian, moved in to melee with Andronus as the boy morphed into a hideous, tentacled form only vaguely resembling his own. His muscles seemed to grow and his body took on a vile, luminous glow.

Strontium ignored Andronus and began to read the scroll. Almost immediately he was engulfed in a Stygian conflagration as Azazel sought to destroy him, or at least spoil the spell attempt, but Strontium held firm and continued to read and focus even as the negative energy harmed him. One of the kraken-like creatures -- an elder eidolon, a powerful form of construct from an era whose knowledge was long lost to living minds -- advanced and thrashed a tentacle at him, also doing damage but Strontium kept his focus. With time running out Azazel made a final all-or-nothing push and tried to enslave Strontium's mind. Strontium felt the pressure, and helped by a moment of prescience from Mrs. Wilkins just managed to resist the elder aboleth's control. He completed the incantation.

The galadiir flew out from Strontium's hand. An eye-searing light burst forth from it and and engulfed Azazel. Everyone felt the ancient creature's screams in their minds as Azazel's physical form was pulled into the galadiir and absorbed. Then the stone began to spin like a drill and plunged itself down into the cave floor, drilling its way to the very core of the planet.

The mountain shook more violently than ever before. The cracks in the walls, ceiling and floor grew rapidly and the very roof of the cave seemed to be descending all at once. The heroes quickly joined hands and Strontiuim used his second greater teleport to get them out as the cave collapsed around them, leaving Andronus and the elder eidolons to whatever fate would have of them.

They materialized in the center of Marhaven's center deck to find a major quake happening. Giant circular waves erupted from under the city and pushed outward, forcing the deck sections apart with a violence that easily broke the restraints keeping them tethered. The deck rolled and pitched, knocking everyone off their feet and causing violent upheaval to the buildings around.

And then, after a long few minutes, all went still. The sea calmed and the decks slowly stopped rocking. The heroes announced that the threat was over and the people cheered, exhausted but happy to be alive.

<MR>
5/24/2010