Terminus 12.8.13 Grand Finale Part 2!

The next room Room down, the final one before the Forge Room, held a blue and a purple Beholder.  Meggido quickly moved i to a defensive position, taking advantage of Sardis teleporting then backwards.  Vallo healed Adah-kah and the fight was on.

Unfortunately for the Beholders, it wasn't destined to be a long one.  Unleashing her fury, Sabriel annihilated tge purple Beholder.  Adah-kah slashed at the blue Beholder, beginning a torrent of attacks that left the eyebeast bleeding on the floor.  It was time for the last drop to the Forge Room.

The room seemed calm, but quickly an array of Beholders appeared!

The fight begun with Vallo pushing his teammates deeper into the room.  Maggido capitalized on this by drawing a big chunk of the Beholders to himself, keeping them from free movement.  Sardis immobilized another large chubk of the Beholders, meaning the No Pants Brigade had far more range of motion than their foes.

Adah-kah used that fact to dart in and launch a psychic assault on several of the Beholders, staggering them.  Sardis teleported the few Beholders not already pinned further away as Meggido pushed towards the largest Beholder, their apparent leader.

Sabriel used her wings and strength to smash into the blue and white Beholders.  At nearly the same moment, Meggido reacher the leader and engaged him.  The leader tried to fire back at Sabriel, but missed badly.

Vallo, having been preparing for this fight, laid out several bursts of fire from his crossbow, killing several of the lesser Beholders and gravely wounding the blue, white, and brown Beholders.

But now it was the Beholders' turn to strike.  They blasted the party, causing some damage, but nothing debilitating.  One of the lesser Beholders attacked and missed Adah-kah, who charged him in return and then flung another nearby Beholder into the Forge Fire.

Sardis, sensing the end of the long quest nearing, summoned her ensorceled succubus and commanded it to dominate the brown Beholder.  It successfully did so, temporarily eliminating a threat.  Then the succubus directed the brown Beholder closer to the leader.  Once there, it bit at its leader, scoring superficial damage.

Sabriel used the distraction to send a blast into both Beholders.  Unfortunately turnabout was fairplay and Meggido was forced to hit Sabriel, bloodying her, while she felt compelled to defend the Beholders.

Vallo took charge and sent a devestating blow into the lead Beholder and Adah-kah landed his own massive blow on the brown Beholder, finishing it off.  Temporarily at her own direction, the succubus killed one of the lesser Beholders.  Sardis damaged the leader further as Sabriel shook off the mind control.

The lead Beholder shifted Adah-kah slightly, then sent eye-rays into Meggido and the Nekhanj.  Adah-kah responded in kind, slashing at the Beholder.  Free to choose her own path again, the Succubus lashed out at another lesser Beholder... And Sardis, who went down in a heap.

Perhaps sensing an opportunity, the leader tried to shove everyone away, but only managed to move Meggido and temporarily weaken Sabriel.  He followed up by trying to freeze Sabriel and Sardis. Unfortunately for him, this didn't phase Sabriel, who shoved him at Meggido.  He countered, though bu shoving Meggido into the Forge Fire!

Being Warforged, Meggido passed through mostly unharmed, but it gave the party a brief scare.  Adah-kah teleported into range, stabbing at the unprepared Beholder.  Vallo launched a psychic assault to follow up and enraged the Beholder.  Moments later, Adah-kah, Meggido, and Sabriel teamed to bring the beast down, leaving the party alone with the Forge Fire.

The whine and shift in the Forge Fire's size the party had previously deduced was the sign of something coming through the rift.  Adah-kah, near the Fire had to dodge away as something immense crossed over.

Meggido, undaunted, siezed the momentary lull to place the linkage device onto the Forge Fire.  It immediately began to glow, seeming to steal a bit of vitality from Meggido.  Instinctively, the Warforged knew his life force had been bound to the device.  And in that moment it clamped into place, first charging off the interdimensional energies of the Forge Fire and then sealing them away.

Meanwhile, Adah-kah worked to stabilize Sardis while Sabriel covered them, and Vallo, against a few straggling Beholders. Vallo completed a healing spell and Sardis regained his feet, quickly looking to gather all the information he could about the situation.  In that moment the device finished its task, flying free of the former location of the Forge Fire, which had fallen silent.

And through the damaged Forge, the heroes could finally see the thing that had come through the Fire at the very end.  It was a Beholder the size of a city, which had yet to notice them as it crashed through the damaged home of the Warforged.  The No Pants Brigade fled the building lest it be dropped atop them.

As they regained their eagle mounts, they saw that the Beholder had become fixated on an approaching object, which appeared to be a cloudbank around a solid mass.  The heroes had saved the world from the threat of invasion but the mysteries in it had not all been solved...

Terminus 12.8.13 The Grand Finale Part 1!

The No Pants Brigade decided to skirt the outside of the forge to reach the command chair, hoping that there would be fewer Beholders on that path.  We managed to avoid a lot of the enemy movements, but did come across a few Beholders blocking our route.

Meggido and Adah-kah moved in quickly and scored solid hits hits, seperating the Beholders from the less hearty members of the party.  Sardis and Sabriel struggled to connect with their own volleys, but Vallo did connect and used the chance to spur the party on.

A large purple Beholder moved in, managing to bypass Adah-kah and Meggido to advance on Sabriel and Sardis.  Meggido pulled him back, though, as one of the other Beholders temporarily petrified Adah-kah.  Sabriel got a solid shot off, bloodying one of the Beholders.  A cycle began in which the No Pants Brigade would score hits on the Beholders who repeatedly petrified the party.

Eventually the balance shifted, as Adahkah was able to pull the brown Beholder away as Sardis bloodied the purple Beholder.  The Beholders got a final burst of petrification off, but Meggido broke free.

Adah-kah used the opening to kill the brown Beholder and Vallo finished off one of the lesser Beholders.  Unfortunately, one of the Beholders scored a hit on Sabriel that put her on death's door.

The other party members teamed to rush the killing of the purple Beholder and stabalize the fallen Dragonborn.  They managed it, keeping Sabriel from passing away.

The team gathered themselves and readied for the final push.  Not too long later, the No Pants Brigade had reached the antichamber of the Warforged's Council Room.  Inside  the antichamber were three Beholders, one alive and two clearly undead.

Vallo pushed his teammates onward, getting Meggido into a place where the Warforged could pin the Beholders in a corner.  The party made quick work of them, with Sardis and Sabriel quickly crushing the living Beholder and one of the undead.  Adah-kah, slashed through the last remaining.  With a mighty heave, Meggido opened the door to the main chamber.

The Warforged rushed the room and got face to face with a large undead Beholder as Vallo sniped on of the small Beholders.  Behind the team, the three Beholders who had just been defeated rose back up.  They attacked, but Vallo sent one back to the grave as it tried to get at Adah-kah.

A large Beholder radiating an aura of death arrived as the team fought the lesser Beholders.  Vallo quickly showed the new arrival that he was unimpressed bu killing a blue Beholder and wounding a purple Beholder.  The large white Beholder attacked Sabriel, but couldn't put her down.  Adah-kah killed off the purple Beholder that Vallo had previously wounded.

Sardis added his own volley, striking the white Beholder with an acid burst before pushing him away in a booming of thunder.

He tried to move back in and get the last undead Beholder to help him, but Meggido kept it pinned down.  Vallo, Sardis and Sabriel weakened the brown Beholder that had been holding back and Adah-kah struck a killing blow on it. 

Sabriel killed the last of the small Beholders, and she and Meggido wounded the white Beholder.  He tried to retaliate, but the party manage to dodge the full assault.  Adah-kah, dogged in his pursuit, finished off the last of fhe undead Behilders and Sabriel put the killing blow to the white Beholder. 

Adahkah quickly moved to check the next room, spotting the wide hole created by the forced expansion of the Forge Fire.  Meggido, for his part, moved to the Command Chair and sat, immediately becoming linked to the Forge.  He locked the doors of the Forge to restrict the movements of the Beholders.  The Forge Fire began to whine and pulse and as the noise grew, and tge fire expanded, it became apparent something had just come through from the Beholders' world.  It settled back as Meggido continued his mental exploration.

Meggido closed and locked all open doors in the Forge, giving himself tge only passcode.  Meanwhile, Vallo began rebuilding the artifact the team had gathered.  With great care he completed it, prepping the team for their final assault.

Meggido was slightly stymied by not having the top level of clearance, but managed most of what he intended.  The party formed a plan to use Sardis' gateway to teleport closer to the main Forge Fire room as Meggido contacyed the Contruct which made Pseudo-Warforged we had seen months before in the forest.  The Construct agreed to send those empty vessels towards the Forge under orders to obey Meggido and the party and attack the undead and Beholders.

Now done with the Command Chair, Meggido rose and Sardis teleported the team down closer to the Forge Fire room.  The floor below, in the room above the actual Forge Fire, waited Beholders...

The party quickly dropped through and engaged them.  Meggido drew them all together.  A few minor blows were struck before Meggido was petrified and Adah-kah abjured the Beholder.  In response, it managed to lock down most of Adah-kah's skills.  It was enough, though, as Meggido, Sardis and Sabriel landed heavy blows to finish off the ghost.

In response, one of the Beholders tried to push Sabriel into the Forge Fire, but she rolled away, keeping from being burned.  This gave the team an idea and the slowly positioned their foe until Adah-kah could put him in range for Meggido to shove him into the fire.  He burned and the party dropped down another floor...

Terminus 11.24.14

When last we saw the No Pants Brigade, they were on a boat sailing around the main undead force on Celton.  The sea voyage was going mostly smoothly until we were attacked by a ship towed by a Beholder and manned by a group of headless yellow ghosts.

Fortunately, as is often the case, Vallo struck first.  He scored a solid hit and was able to launch Meggido onto the other boat.  Sabriel followed that up by spewing acid onto the enemy.

Meggido, true to his nature, quickly arranged the enemy into a postion where he could limit their movement.

Adah-kah, who had been holding his discomfort around water in, missed his next attack because he was more focused on moving safely than the attack.  Then the counter attack was on. The yellow ghosts tried to strike back, with one stabbing Sabriel.

The big damage came from the Beholder, though, who used his eye beams to attack everyone, including the crew of the ship transporting our heroes.  Charlie, a lesser crewman died in the assault and quickly rose as an undead horror.  He bit at Adah-kah and caused the Nekhanj to have a festering wound.

But the team had a secret weapon. Cornered and having grown into the adventures with his friends, Sardis unleashed a powerful magical assault, driving back his foes!

Unfortunately that paved the way for a disgusting swarm of secered heads, clearly seperated from the headless crew which had been the first wave of the assault.

Vallo and Sabriel were not phased, though, striking out to score big hits on the enemies.  Meggido reasserted his dominance, locking down the movement of the assorted creatures.  Having recovered his balance, Adah-kah joined the fray and delivered a big blow of his own!

The ghosts piled on to Adah-kah and Meggido, but the melee combatants were undeterred.  Sardis backed them up by firing an icy blast which rearranged the attackers.  Vallo used the moment to strengthen the resolve of Meggido and Adah-kah.

Sabriel viciously struck at the Beholder and the swarm of heads, which didn't work out as well as expected as the Beholder exploded in response, injuring the combatants.  Meggido quickly adjusted his positioning to stay in betweenhis teammates and the shifting threats.

Adah-kah, irritatedat having been bitten, crushed the risen Charlie and plannedto move on to another foe, but they had been cleared from the decks by his compatriots.  Quickly, the team inspected the enemy ship and then allowed it to sink, setting out once more to find a way to attack the Undead from behind.

It was smooth sailing for about another week until a large mass was spotted off to port.  Adah-kah usedhis keen eye to make out the features of the Forge!  The No Pants Brigade had inadvertantly found the portal the Beholders had been using to enter the world before the outsiders could drag it ashore.

Quickly the team formulated a plan to assault the Forge with the intent of speeding through the building to reach the Forge Fire and charge the device we'd assembled.  Once that was accomplished, an attempt would be made to cap the fire and close the portal.  To help in this, Vallo planned to summon great eagles which cpuld allow our boat to stay at a distance while we made our attack.

Quickly, we put the plan into action, taking to the sky and landing very near to one of the doors to the Forge. Several Beholders waited there and they managed to score a hit on Meggido and Sabriel as we landed.  They missed Adah-kah, but did manage to trip him up as Meggido bullied them into the positioning he found favorable.

Undaunted, Adah-kah lept to his feet and charged the Beholders, returning their attacks.  One of the Beholders, dubbed a Blood Kiss, managed to daze the party, but missed in directly attacking Adah-kah before hitting Meggido softly.

The Beholder tried to instill fear in Sardis, but shockingly, Sardis charged into the fray and magically coerced the Beholders to move to his liking.  Meggido used the opening to push closer to the doorway.

The Beholders made an attempt to blind Sabriel, but she struck back at them, causing them to retreat in fear.  The flaming Beholder tried to move back in and their reinforcements arrived.  It was too late, though, as the No Pants Brigade was already pushing their advatage.

Meggido slid the Bloodkiss Beholder out of the way, giving Adah-kah an opening to slay the flaming Beholder.  Vallo, Sabriel, and Sardis quickly added their own assaults, killing most of the smaller Beholders and further wounding the Bloodkiss.

The Beholder, having seen Adah-kah's assault on its ally, tried to use its eyes to stun the Avenger, but every attempt failed against the Nekhanj's iron will.  Sardis used the distraction to score a staggering blow and Vallo followed up with a daring strike of his own.

Meggido stepped in with his own major assault and bloodied the Beholder heavily.  The creature responded by lashing out wildly at the party, but couldn't stop Adah-kah from circling around to cit into him deeply.  Sardis and Vallo added further injury and Meggido and Adah-kah struck again one after another to send the Bloodkiss crashing to the ground in death.  And then it was time to enter the Forge proper...

Terminus 8.4.13

Having ended the threat of Karus, the No Pants Brigade mounted up and flew to the mountains seperating the forest to the desert.  As we were flying, Adah-kah spotted something that he noticed just coming into view here and there. After the group slowed slighty, he was able to make out that a dragon was following us.

We got further on and slowed enough for Adah-kah to make out the the trailing was grey.  The group decided that the dragon was quite huge and would likely attempt to attack and consume us, so pushed on, at least hoping to pick the ground for the fight. We stopped on a large plateau.

The dragon slowed as ge neared the plateau, circling instead of landing for a fight.  The party spun to see what the dragon was avoinding and were faced with a large force of air elementals including a rather aggressive Djinn.

While the air elementals generally got the drop on the party and dropped devestating early blows, the No Pants Brigade returned fire admirably.  Adah-kah oathed and then abjured a tornado-formed elemental, grievously wounding it. 

Sardis and Adah-kah were pushed in one direction, Sabriel and Meggido in another, and Vallo in a third.  This allowed the elementals to heavily damage the party.  Sardis and Sabriel were in dire straits, but the elementals were falling. Adah-kah finished his foe, the attacked the Djinn, hitting it hard but not as hard as the tornadomental.  It fell before the rest of the group's assault.

Sardis fell as the party picked off the various elementals.  Adah-kah pushed one of the tornados off of Sardis and tge elementals went into retreat, with Vallo picking off the tornadomental as it ran.  The dragon chose this moment to move in.

It chased down one of the smaller elementals and devoured it.  He returned to land before the No Pants Brigade and threaten us with being eaten.  This immediately put Meggido on the defensive.  Sabriel was able to talk him around until he mentioned Karus and she could confirm we'd killed him.

The dragon demanded details.  Sabriel described the major events of the fight.  Sardis filled in the divine providence of tge Watcher's aid.  Vallo was able describe the effects of various attacks and strategies.  Meggido refused to be a jester for a dragon, but Adah-kah pitched in by describing the dome in which the fight with Karus happened.

Sabriel then took the chance to make Meggido sound intimidating, which the dragon responded made him like Meggido.  Sardis fed the dragon eel because it had said it was hungry.  All that added up to the dragon being pacificed and the laughing about Karus' downfall.  He then told us his name was Kashmard and gave us routes which might best help us avoid elementsl interference and departed to hunt the forest.

Last Recap.  Other posts on Terminus. 

Terminus 7.21.13

Other posts on Terminus.  Last Recap.

The party slept in the relative safety of the artifact chamber and then decided to head back to the surface to hunt down Karus' Ent.  The party decided that the route back to the surface should be the one they'd entered through, choosing to ignore the arboleth hole.

At the entrance, the No Pants Brigade found that a weathered but solid wall had been erected across the open wall of the building.  As they approached it to determine a method of egress, it fell on them, revealing it was actually a transformed rock golem.

The party was hurt a bit by the surprise attack, but quickly rallied.  Vallo called his punishing eye and Adah-Kah shoved the golem through his lesser golem sidekicks, knocking them all over.  Meggido and Adah-Kah closed in on the big golem as the rest of the team decimated the minons.

The golem fell quickly, though not without having taken some serious damage as the golem collapsed on them again.  They took a break to tend their wounds and Vallo summoned a wilderness guide and asked it to lead us to the Ent's grove.  The party mounted their summoned boars and set out.  On the ride, though, both Vallo and Adah-kah were visited by the Watcher.  When they awoke, they shared a bit of what they'd seen and the party returned to hunting Karus' Ent.

The group was led to the grove and found the Ent, who didn't respond initially.  it looked old and nearly dead, but was clearly still a threat.  The party prepared itself and the fight was on.  Vallo gavr Adah-kah an enchantment to set his sword aflame, which Adah-kah was happy to accept.

Everyone sprang into action, scoring quick hits on the Ent.  For his part, Adah-kah stabbed the tree with fire in the face. TWICE.

The Ent tried to strike back, attacking everyone at once but it only managed to hit Sardis and Vallo.  It followed that up by starting to grab partymembers, especially Meggido and Adah-kah.  Unfortunately for the Ent, the party was happy to stay close and use the firey weapons they carried to set the Ent alight and finish it off.  As it burned, it revealed a semi-fetal Dryad-lich, Karus, who also died in the fire.

Taking a moment to assess the situation, the party discovered that Sabriel's sense pointed us at the desert.  They discussed going over the mountains or through the abandoned dwarven tunnels.

Terminus 6.24.13

Other posts on Terminus.  Last Recap.

Now that Karus was gone, the party set to searching his command post for access to the area we needed to go to.  After a little searching by Adah-kah, we spotted an area filled with junk that Sardis recalled might hide the stair down.  Under the direction of Vallo and Adah-kah, Sabriel and Meggido dug into the trash pile, revealing the stairs under the junk.  We set out to descend.

Going further down into the building for a while, we ended up at the entrance to a vertical tube which let out into a domed room below.  Sardis briefly wanted Adah-kah to go through first, but Meggido claimed the most dangerous position.  Vallo helped the party exit the tube into the room when the dome's current inhabitants noticed Meggido and prepared to attack.  They turned out to be arboleths, who tried to go insubstantial and dominate the party.  They sort of succeeded but only sort of at the insubstantial part.  The party beat them down and took a moment to gather themselves.

From the dome, we found a door way and went down a long passage where there was fancy art and jewels on the way.  Clearly, this was leading to something important to the Skeshuni, and the party was curious.  Unfortunately, what it led to was a wall that had been dug in and what appeared to be a treasury that was now a nursery for the arboleths and filled with hatchlings and arboleth-snot-monsters.  Which meant it was time for a fight.

The No Pants Brigade set to killing the hatchlings and snot-monsters, which fell fairly quickly, especially to the area effect attacks of Sabriel and Sardis.  Adah-kah and Meggido pushed into the center of the room and the mother arboleth appeared in the hall behind the party, particularly Vallo and Sardis.

As Sardis retreated, Vallo got dominated by the mom.  He took a swing at Sardis, but not much came of it.  The rest of the snots and hatchlings were pushed to their limits, so Adah-kah turned to attack the mother arboleth.  He sprinted to it mightily, but missed his attack.  In the meantime, Vallo got free.  The last of the hatchlings and snots died at this point, which was good, but then Adah-kah got dominated after attacking the mom but missing because he was dazed, which was bad.

The Arboleth, positioned as it was, couldn't make Adah-kah attack the party, so it sent him around the corner and sought to dominate Meggido, which it succeeded in, but the battle was on it's downswing.  Adah-kah tried again to attack the arboleth, but missed.  Fortunately, though, Vallo and Sabriel had no such issue and we won eventually.  As we counted the money in the room and looked around, we spotted a golden seal upon the roof.

Sardis and then Adah-kah swam up to inspect it.  It really was gold and there were five knobs upon the seal which had symbols which corresponded to the five races of the party and council.  Pushing at the knobs, we opened the seal, but it only opened a little.  Sardis went into the small hole and swam up to a chamber like the ones we'd seen before when finding the Linkage and the Base.  There, Sardis found the Receptacle, which looked like a metallic-glass cylinder and series of increasingly sized glass orbs.  Sardis brought the party up to the room and they settled in to rest.  Sardis passed out pieces of the receptacle to the party, but Adah-kah refused to take some and Sardis questioned his faith.

Terminus 6.7

Other posts on Terminus.

The No Pants Brigade started the day on a bridge where we'd been led by the old Kuo-toa lady after questioning Karus' flunky.  It seemed like we'd get across this bridge without issue, but Adah-kah spotted a black form in the water, which turned out to be a creature of swamp-muck that looked like a dragon, an eel, and a tree had an ugly baby.  The party was ready for this, though, as Vallo had cast a spell that let us walk on water.  He moved us down to it and the fight was on.

Unfortunately for muck-drageelant, the party was itching for a fight and had resources to spare.  Adah-kah and Meggido quickly positioned it to effect max damage.  The Kuo-toa pady ran away, but the party pretty smuch smashed through the muck-drageelant.  It was pissed when it died.

We went back and found the Kuo-toa lady and got better directions from her.  Rather than follow her round-about directions, the party boar-flew to the town center.  From the air, we began to scout the area.  We quickly spotted the main dome, but saw no sign of Karus.  We spied on his shrub people minions from above, though.  Sabriel's dragonborn sense pointed us directly at the building.

After a bit of debate about fkying i. On the boars or leaving them outside, tge party entered the big dome on foot and found the dryad-lich Karus.  He had his shrub minions and golem Skeshuni creatures with him and seemed to be doing a ritual.  Thus, it was combat time!

The shrub minions fell quickly as the party went straight to work on crowd control.  That left mainly the fake Skeshuni and Karus, who demanded the golems defend him.  The party didn't know until too late that the golems had some nasty tricks up their sleeves.  when bloodied, they washed over wnemies in an acidic form, severely damaging a few party members.  

Adah-kah took a fair amount of damage from that, then tried to finish one of the fake Skeshuni off.  It blew up on Meggido and Adah-kah, bloodying Adah-kah.  Adah-kah crossed to another fake Skeshuni near Sabriel, which died trying to blow up on Adah-kah and Sabriel, but only hit Sabriel.

For a breif moment Adah-kah was able to flex his mobility and teleported once and sprinted about, but Karus entered the fight and restrained the Avenger, along with Meggido and Sabriel.  It was sad times.  The last Skeshuni-light exploded on Adah-kah, who was in a bad way.

Things looked grim for a moment, but Sardis and Meggido combined to get Karus close to Adah-kah and Vallo managed to keep everyone alive.  Adah-kah landed two big Avenger powers on Karus and everyone else piled on the damage, bringing him down.  Karus threatened to find us, to which we responded, "fuck you, we'll find you first."