Old Sins

The heroes stayed in Marhaven for a full two weeks after their meeting with the other groups, waiting to hear word from the lich Hakran.

On 16 Norstan Group Three returned from the siege of Deep Elandrin bearing a dead body -- Aria's father, Lord Tagren. They asked Tika if she would be willing to cast a raise dead on him, hoping to gain an ally with useful information. Unfortunately, the spell failed. Tagren's soul, Tika learned, was not available to be rejoined to the body.

With their allies now heading off in pursuit of another lead (Long Shadows) the party felt a need to return to action. It had occured to them by now that Hakran was an anagram of another name that was infamous in Marhaven's history: Akhnar, the evil wizard who had destroyed the original island nearly 100 years before.

The heroes considered the facts before them and concluded, at least barring further discovery, that it was likely Akhnar had not known that the violence he did to the mountain had awoken an older and more powerful evil. If Hakran was Akhnar, what was his agenda?

With no way to contact the lich other than a personal visit, the group boarded the Torchwood and returned to the undersea crater where they'd found the entrance to Hakran's demiplane. This time the area was notably different. The coral that had thrived at this impossible depth was now lifeless and the coral golems gone. No necromentals appeared to challenge the party's approach to the wrecked ship, and the silvery mist was gone from inside it. It seemed nobody was home.

When the first of the party touched the ship, the muck near the opening swirled and rose, forming itself into a rough statue of Hakran.

“It was more or less inevitable that you come back here, I suppose,” the figure said, “which is why I've left this message for you.

“I was able to learn a few things from the Elder Brain, but I'm afraid they won't be useful to you. Suffice to say that I miscalculated severely some time ago; the illithids and their army are merely symptoms of a much larger problem.

“I've relocated the portal to my demiplane to safer ground and shored up my defenses. My advice to you is to do likewise: find yourselves a hospitable place on one of the Outer Planes and have a long, healthy life there. Sigil is lovely this time of year.”

Upon delivering the message the image of Hakran dissolved into sand and settled back into the floor of the crater.

Finding Hakran would require more divination ability than the group had internally. After inquiring with Grimaldi the party was introduced to the local mage Desmond, who has been called upon by Group Three for similar services.

Given the vague information the party had to start with, Desmond recommended starting with legend lore. The group went with their hunch and had Desmond cast legend lore seeking the whereabouts of Akhnar, which returned a result:

As the barracuda avoids the shark, so hides the undead mage from a greater evil. Find the path to the lich's realm among the thousand portals.

Once he got over the surprise that Akhnar still existed, Desmond suggested that 'among the thousand portals' could be a reference to Pazunia, the first layer of the Abyss. That land was also called the Plane of a Thousand Portals because it was dotted with pits that led to other layers of the Abyss. Finding the specific portal they wanted, however, would be a challenge. Desmond recommended that Tika visit her church to obtain a scroll of find the path, a divine spell slightly above her level that could lead them to the correct portal.

While the temple clerics worked on Tika's scroll, the rest of the group did some shopping and research. Karu obtained several common poisons to add to his arsenal while Ash and Tika learned what they could about Pazunia, the Abyss, and its inhabitants in general.

Thanks to an old enemy, the party already had a ready means of reaching Pazunia. The cubic gate they'd obtained from the vampire Tarus after his attempt to hunt the party for sport backfired on him had a face that was keyed to Pazunia. The next day, with scrolls in hand, the group activated the gate and stepped through into the Abyss.

Pazunia proved to be a bleak and unpleasant place. A huge red sun baked the entire plane in oppressive heat. The reddish brown ground was pockmarked all over with bottomless black pits -- the portals that gave the place its nickname. Short mesas and shallow craters also dotted the landscape.

Tika cast find the path from her scroll and the magic worked, laying out a path that only Tika could see. They followed, keeping an eye out for any demons that might spot them. After twenty minutes of walking the trail markers stopped at a nondescript pit a hundred feet or so away.

As the party approached the pit, however, arrows rained down on them from atop two mesas ahead, striking all but Karu who stayed to the rear. The heroes quickly located the source of the attack: a pair of vaguely humanoid figures, one per mesa. These creatures had four arms and were armed with two large longbows each. Tika recognized them as arrow demons, one of the more effective of chaos's footsoldiers. As more arrows came flying at them, Tika cast magic circle against evil to help the party.

Vondran threw the Arm of Telomir at one enemy while Loki scaled the mesa to engage the other. That exposed Loki's back to a third arrow demon hiding in a shallow crater to the rear. Both Loki and Karu took arrows from behind. Karu spun and jumped to respond but took another pair of arrows that threatened the pitch of his voice and broke off the attack.

Tika questioned to herself whether the should even bother fighting when they could just break for the portal. The arrow demons read that thought and responded by summoning a small horde of dretches, the scum of the demonic earth, to block the portal. Ash cleared them away with a sonic fireball, which prompted the two high ground demons to dimension door in front of the portal with bows ready.

The party was quickly learning about this new enemy. Their arrows were brutally effective and accurate, and their bodies proved resistant to all of the party's usual weapons. Ash found herself struggling to get spells off and Vondran had difficulty doing any significant damage without a cold iron weapon. Tika tried to reason with the creatures by stating that the party wished them no harm and had urgent business that would benefit Hakran, but the demons only replied with insults and threats.

The demons' resistances forced the party to try new tactics. Loki tossed his cold iron morningstar to Tika, who picked it up after casting aid to bolster the party's attack ability while also providing some temporary vitality. Vondran put away his beloved harpoon and grappled with an arrow demon, thus not only taking away its ability to fire arrows but also making it vulnerable to sudden strikes from Karu. Loki's mind blade was minimally effective by itself but when charged with a psychic strike it worked very nicely indeed, and his morningstar in the hands of a good cleric proved fully capable of dealing damage. These combined efforts, along with some magical support from Ash, turned the battle against the demons and they soon after fell. The group gathered up the demons' remaining cold iron-tipped arrows and stepped through the portal.

They found themselves in the familiar realm of the lich, chest deep in water with a cloudy grey sky overhead and the harsh, rocky cliff and stone tower staring down at them. This time there was nobody on the beach waiting for them, but they did spot a human-like figure in an upper window of the tower.

Tika wrote a message in the sand: "Hakran, we seek your counsel."

A few moments later a projected image of the lich appeared. "It is truly unfortunate that you didn't take my advice. You couldn't have found this place without realizing my true identity first. That means, of course, that I can't allow you to leave."

Tika, on behalf of the party, tried to argue the need for cooperation but the lich was unmoved. "You have left me no choice," he said. "There is something far worse than I threatening that world now, something you cannot oppose and live. And I can't afford to let it read your minds. I'm sorry."

Akhnar's image vanished and the fog outlining the demiplane shifted. The portal was closed.

Still smarting from their fight with the arrow demons, the party set up camp on the beach to heal up while they considered their options. Their spell resources were severely depleted, so the obvious first step was to get some rest. Karu, Vondran and Loki split up the watch schedule so the spellcasters could rest their minds and the party turned in.

As Karu stood first watch, a pair of foul creatures managed to sneak up on him and attack him viciously. He cried out and woke the party, who jumped to his defense. Tika recognized these things as abyssal ghouls, a particularly nasty form of extraplanar undead. She grabbed up her cloak of charisma and her holy symbol and attempted to turn them.

The positive energy worked. Both ghouls retreated as far as they could, which in this place meant up against the misty curtain that defined the boundary of the plane. They all knew, however, that turning is only a temporary measure in such a finite space. So Vondran and Tika grabbed ranged weapons while Loki stood guard over the very wounded Karu. A long target practice then ensued, with Vondran and Tika shooting bows and Ash using up her complement of magic missile and scorching ray spells. When the turning period was near over Tika dropped her crossbow and used up her last spell slots on searing light spells, which are more effective against undead. The ghouls were destroyed just as they regained their aggression.

Before settling down again for the night, Tika healed Karu from a wand of cure critical wounds and the party explored the cave from which the abyssal ghouls had come. It was clearly a workshop, hastily assembled it seemed, for animating the dead. The group recalled that Akhnar had provided them with two zombie escorts for their encounter with Thedris (The Long Way Home) from this very cave. They noted the presence of some fairly valuable equipment for later, once they'd solved the immediate problem of how to get out of Akhnar's domain.

It seemed clear that even fully rested and with all of their spells, the party did not have the power between them to defeat Akhnar in a combat. Doing so would not even necessarily help, as they needed Akhnar to reopen the portal -- experiments had already shown that the cubic gate did not function inside Akhnar's demiplane. They would need an argument persuasive enough to override the lich's fear of Azazel.

That gave Loki an idea ...