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28 Tilden 1120
Ready or Not
The heroes and their new allies spent a few days plotting their assault on the mind flayer sept, which lay a half-day's march from the Valley entrance. They spent much of that time with Metar, gaining a basic education on mind flayer society and the capabilities of an elder brain. The more the heroes learned about the elder brain the more they realized that they would be facing the real possibility of failure. Illithid elder brains had formidable spell resistance, extreme resilience against physical attacks, and epic-level psionic power. Against the brain alone, with no bodyguards or illithid minions, they would be considered doomed by most seasoned oddsmakers. And this elder brain was in the middle of a populated city of 70 to 80 mind flayers and their thralls. Consulting with Metar, they worked out a plan to tilt the odds as much as possible in the group's favor. On the third day after meeting the Flock the party, wearing plain robes to appear as ordinary followers of Orgheron, joined a large group of warriors led by Metar and the two beholders in a march to the sept. Just before the war party neared enough to be detected, Tika cast heroe's feast and fortified both the party and most of the warriors for the battle to come and Ash cast battle hymn to bolster their wills against mental attack. The war party approached the front gate and were detected immediately by the mind flayer sentry, as expected. The beholders disintegrated the iron gate and petrified the sentry, but not before it could telepathically raise the alarm. The area around the captive pits flooded with duergar and cave troll thralls, armed and ready to defend their masters, and within a round the illithids themselves began to appear. The beholders focused on the mind flayers, using their disintegrate, finger of death and flesh to stone eye rays to mow down the illithids almost as quickly as they could appear. They also used charm monster rays to turn a couple of the cave trolls into allies and set them to opening the captive pits. A stream of fleeing prisoners flowed out of the pits and down the road, where followers of the Flock encouraged them to make for the safety of the Valley of Eyes. The heroes helped with the freeing of prisoners until the sept's defenses were clearly on full alert and all attention was on the battle at the inner gate. Then, as planned, they joined hands and teleported into the city's central plaza, a thousand feet from the battle but very close to the pool of the elder brain. Sure enough, when they materialized in the plaza (aided by a detailed map drawn by the Flock) almost all of the remaining population was heading northward toward the battle. Two figures appeared from a southward passage, however, and stopped short. These mind flayers wore clerical garb and clearly recognized the party as intruders. They both unleashed mind blasts at the heroes, but the party was prepared and nobody was adversely affected. Well, mostly prepared. Vondran's combat got off to a rocky start as he overbalanced on his first attack and missed the enemy badly. The mind flayer, perhaps thrown off by the unorthodox approach, then missed with what should have been an easy tentacle attack and left itself open to a reprisal. Loki and Hyros also moved in to engage the enemy and had little difficulty inflicting wounds. The fighters were doing so well, in fact, that Tika and Ash used the time to prepare for the next battle. Tika cast mass freedom of movement and Ash renewed her battle hymn while the fighters slew one cleric and the other teleported away before it could suffer the same fate. They rushed down the passage, which their map told them led to the elder brain's pool, and found themselves entering the Temple of Ilsensine. There they found the surviving cleric from the plaza, an older cleric, and two brain golems. The clock was ticking on their protections, so the party wasted no time. Hyros cast a quick spiritual weapon to harangue the elder cleric and charged into battle. Loki formed a mind blade and engaged a brain golem while Vondran engaged the other. Ash dispatched the wounded junior cleric with an earth reaver spell and shook off an attempt by the elder cleric to wrack her. Ash responded to that with a scintillating sphere and followed up with a scorching ray to slay the cleric. Meanwhile, Tika also cast scorching rays but at the brain golems, helping Loki and Vondran to dispatch the constructs quickly. They paused just long enough to quickly heal the worst damage from the golems' slams and hurried into the chamber where the elder brain lay waiting. The chamber was mercifully empty except for the elder brain itself, a huge tentacled mass that floated just above an ornate pool of briney water. It was prepared for the heroes, however -- before they could clear the entrance corridor it attacked them with a powerful energy wave that nearly killed Ash on the spot. With the enemy floating in the air melee was not an option, so Loki cleared the entrance and threw his mind blade at the brain, hitting the mark. He'd prepared the mind blade to be holy and acidic, seeking to avoid the brain's known resistances and regeneration ability. Vondran also moved in and prepared to attack from a different angle, avoiding clustering together again. Tika executed the first phase of the group's battle plan: a quickened assay resistance to boost her ability to overcome the brain's formidable spell resistance followed immediately by spell vulnerability. The combination worked -- the elder brain's spell resistance dropped low enough to ensure that the heroes would be able to bombard it with magic. Hyros was the first to take advantage by casting holy storm, realizing it would be little more than an annoyance but seeking to chase the brain from its spot above the pool. The enemy, however, simply rose above the storm area and retaliated with a powerful mind blast that stunned Vondran. Ash covered herself with a quick false life and then took on the dangerous task of attacking the brain. She started with a cone of cold, substituting sonic energy to bypass the brain's cold resistance. Tika cast downdraft and slammed the brain back down into its pool, which bought time for Hyros to find Ash and cast cure serious wounds on her. The elder brain, however, was not disturbed for long. It responded with a psychic crush that dropped Ash to the floor. Loki charged a psychic strike, dove into the pool, and struck the elder brain directly for a powerful psionically-charged blow and Ash, revived by a quick close wounds from Tika, threw a sonic fireball into the pool behind it so as to shield Loki and tossed the party's wand of cure critical wounds at Hyros, who caught it and used it on Ash to keep her going. In the pool, the elder brain's tentacle turned black and crackled with evil energy. It reached out and touched Loki and the soulknife felt a powerful force trying to suck the life from his body. He managed to avoid being killed by the assimilate power but was grievously damaged and had to retreat to Tika for an emergency heal spell. Ash covered his retreat with an empowered sonic fireball that rocked the pool. Since the elder brain was using the water as cover, Hyros cast stone shape to breach the side of the pool. Brackish water rushed out all over the floor, taking with it thousands of illithid tadpoles and leaving only a foot or so of water in the pool around the brain. The holy storm did a little more damage but the elder brain had other things to think about. It responded by rising into the air again, above the storm, and focusing a disintegrate ray on Ash. She saved and, thanks to the healing from Hyros, survived the assault and retaliated with another sonic cone of cold. Vondran finally recovered his wits in time to see the brain rise up again. He ran forward, threw the Arm of Telomir ... and scored a critical hit on himself as he got entangled in the weapon's chain. Hyros backed him up by using dragon breath (acid) but the heroes except for Ash had unintentionally formed a compact line again. The elder brain floated sideways a little, lined them up, and hit the group with another powerful mind blast. Both Loki and Vondran were stunned. Tika cast panacea to clear Loki's mind and Hyros, sensing the elder brain may be getting desperate, cast a dimensional anchor on it to keep it from escaping. But escape was not the brain's plan just yet. It focused again on Ash, whose spells had done the most grievous damage, and subjected her to a crisis of life. Ash crumpled to the floor, dead. Loki saw that and vowed swift revenge. He charged another psychic strike, but this time invoked a power he'd never used before: knife to the soul. He threw his mind blade, struck the elder brain, and drained away part of its Intelligence. With Ash's final utterance a ghostly rallying cry in her ears, Tika took matters into her own hands. First she cast Pelor's grasping hand and used it to pin the elder brain to the floor where melee fighters could reach it; then she followed that up with Pelor's clenched fist and began pummeling the elder brain with force energy. Hyros revived Vondran with a panacea and the battle took on a desperate pace. The elder brain aimed a disintegrate at Tika but Loki had weakened its powers by attacking its Intelligence; Tika not only saved handily but then retorted with a very satisfying flame strike. Loki, Vondran and Hyros all attacked the trapped brain even in the face of another energy wave until a final blow from Pelor's clenched fist killed it. Loke and Hyros doused the remains of the brain in acid to ensure that it wouldn't regenerate and revive while Tika dealt with the remains of Ash. Her body was intact; the crisis of life had simply stopped her heart, so Tika got out one of the little bags of diamond dust she carried and cast raise dead. Ash stirred and revived, somewhat the worse for wear but back among the living. Metar and Orgheron had speculated during the planning that the death of the elder brain would demoralize the mind flayers and probably cause any remaining illithids to flee. As the party returned to the central plaza they found nothing to dispute that idea -- all they saw in the plaza were thralls walking around with dazed expressions. The battle scene at the front gate was also satisfying to behold. The only mind flayers in view were either petrified or dead. Metar's men had put their weapons away and were guiding the thralls out of the sept and back toward the Valley of Eyes. He invited the heroes to accompany them and celebrate their victory. Back at the Valley the Flock of Orgheron held a celebratory feast. Metar played host and announced that the refugees from the illithid sept were welcome to stay in the Valley for as long as they wished, where they would be fed and protected. The heroes were politely quiet during Metar's speech, noting only that his wording subtly encouraged them all to be grateful to the Flock and, perhaps, to consider joining their numbers. When Metar was finished, Hyros stood up and announced that the party would be leaving soon for the surface and was willing to guide any who wished to return to their homes and families. Metar smiled thinly and offered to provide directions for a route that would be safer and more direct than the one the group had taken to get there. After giving the refugees a couple of days to gain strength, the party set off for the surface. About 15 percent of the freed thralls and captives elected to stay behind in the Valley of Eyes -- enough to satisfy Metar, it seemed, for his farewell seemed warm and sincere. Even rested and fed, however, the civilians marched slowly. The need to find water sources for the aquatic types slowed the march further, so that it was a full three weeks before the group saw sunlight again. Fortunately, the party's new route took them to the surface in Belain, Hyros's home country. They found allies there willing to help return the rescued people to their homes and a ship able to take them back to Marhaven, where the Torchwood awaited them. They reached Marhaven on the last day of Tilden to find the city in shambles. While they had been underground in pursuit of the elder brain Azazel had tried to break free from its prison with a series of violent earthquakes that had split the docks apart and set them adrift (Dudael). The worst was over, though; their friends in Group Three had prevailed and Azazel was imprisoned again. For Marhaven, it was now just a matter of rebuilding.
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