Session 49 Synopsis

Previously, on Phoenix Rising...
… they had returned to the underground broken statue room to rest and regain their strength before they continued on exploring this unholy degenerate dungeon. Positioning themselves in the broken statue room assured that at least none of the inhabitants down here would escape to the surface using this route. They only had two more doors to explore here as far as they knew, on the left side of the main corridor and the one at the end of the main corridor…

After what resembled a good night’s rest in this debris ridden chamber, our heroes were once again ready to explore and try to put an end to the unholy and subversive acts that were being perpetrated down here. Our heroes advanced upon the last door on the left of this main corridor and did their usual thing before opening it (Blackwell checking for traps, unlocking, Blackwell possibly getting healed, Asphodel opening, etc.). This door again led to another narrow corridor that ended in a door that finally revealed another library, the third on this floor. It looked like this library had been thoroughly ransacked. While there were still plenty of books in here in haphazard piles strewn about the room, there was no order or obvious important section of books here. Blackwell discovered that there were no traps at all and Kel went ahead and detected for magic. She noted four areas located in various areas of the room. She went ahead into the room and began searching the piles for the items that were radiating magic and found four scrolls hidden amongst the old books:

Scroll 1 (Divine) 4th level spells of Lesser Planar Ally and Tongues
Scroll 2 (Divine) 2nd level spells of Shield other and Zone of Truth
Scroll 3 (Arcane) 4th level spells of Shadow Projection and Symbol of Revelation
Scroll 4 (Arcane) 1st level spells of Dazzling Blade and Decompose Corpse

They spent an hour or so doing a fairly thorough search of the room which yielded nothing of interest to any of them. It seemed that all the important texts had already been removed from this room.

Next they went and examined the door at the end of the hall which revealed another long, narrow staircase leading further down into the earth. With the memory of the last long staircase down still fresh in everyone’s mind, Asphodel backed out of the way to let Blackwell lead. He cautiously checked nearly every square inch of that stairway for traps and found none at all. With the way clear, they all headed down the stairs and to a small landing that ended in double doors. This time Blackwell found both traps and successfully disarmed them before the doors were opened to reveal another ten foot wide long corridor with a single door on each side wall. He went to work yet again and searched the entire area and the doors for more traps and found none. So they decided that the door on the left side would be the first that they open. Since it was locked Blackwell commenced to pick the lock and no sooner had he stuck his lockpick into the lock that he found a trap, the hard way. A large shocking charge erupted, charring his lockpick and his fingers, blowing him back a couple of feet and causing significant damage (though not some much of the burned fur smell that usually was associated with this type of event a bit earlier in his career).

After quickly recovering from the trap the door was opened to reveal another short, narrow hallway that ended in a door. This was quite different though, for standing in the hallway were two beautiful ‘women’ who were wearing black leather and had longswords and composite long bows. They almost could have been mistaken for humans except for the large black leathery wings growing out of their backs. Asphodel and the two ‘women’ stared at each other for just a second before she advanced into the corridor. She thought about them for a moment and determined that since they had found other devils here already, these two must be ones called Erinyes.

Both Erinyes ran out of the corridor and through the open door at the end of the hallway opposite our heroes and disappeared from sight. Blackwell then decided that he was going to run into the room and take a shot at the erinyes and get a look at what else was in there so he could yell out to the rest of the group what was there. He saw a total of three erinyes and something much more grotesque and frightening in the back of the room. He had absolutely no idea what it was only that is wasn’t good – it had the torso, arms and head of a beautiful woman but her lower extremities were a mass of tentacles. He got off a couple shots of his pepperbox pistol before having to retreat after getting hit by numerous arrows from the erinyes. He made his was quickly all the way back to the outer door leading into the corridor to this room so he could drink some healing potions in relative safety.

Asphodel and Zola along with Kel and Zerak close behind advanced cautiously into the room and engaged the erinyes. All of a sudden more devils popped into existence – they must have been summoned by some of the ones already here. Four bearded devils appeared and joined in the fight. It was at this time that Zerak cast of wall of fire spell across the room trying to catch as many as possible within its area of effect. But knowing that devils are immune to fire, he changed the element type to lightning which they do not possess any type of resistance to. This had the desired effect of causing damage to some of the devils, but also blocked their vision so no one could see what was happening on either side of the wall of lightning.

It wasn’t long into the battle that Asphodel found herself dealing so much damage to one of the erinyes that she once again went into an uncontrollable, blood-lusting rage. At the same time this happened, the powerful devil with the tentacles from her abdomen down (Zerak would soon identify her as a handmaiden devil) just blinked into existence outside the main hall right behind Blackwell and proceeded to cast a black tentacles spell that caught all of our heroes in its grapple, except for Kel, and began pummeling them. It did not last long however because Kel had dispel magic in her memory and quickly dispelled the tentacles and freed everyone. Unfortunately, the devil cast a second black tentacles and was able to once again catch everyone in its grip. And again, Kel was able to dispel it. The devil changed tactics at this point and used its claws and tentacle attacks against Blackwell and trapped him inside her “tentacle ball” which began bludgeoning him to death. Blackwell after a bit was able to extricate himself from the devil and crawl away to once again drink some healing potions. Meanwhile Kel engaged the devil in order to get its attention away from Blackwell as well as channeled energy a couple times to help heal everyone she could.

After the second black tentacles spell was dispelled, the rest of the party tried to spread out so if that it happened again, not everyone would be caught by it. But this led to Jobi being chased around by an erinyes which in turn led to Zola pursuing the chaser and Zerak targeting lightning bolt spells at their assailants – both erinyes and handmaiden alike. The bearded devils had by this time fallen to Zerak’s wall of lightning and Zola’s sword. Soon the rest of the erinyes fell to Asphodel and everyone began getting out of her threat range and began advancing on the handmaiden. Jobi had hung back within the room and tried to get Asphodel to go after the handmaiden out in the hall and was successful. But the handmaiden had another black tentacles spell that she cast and was able to catch several of the party members again. This time however, both Zola and Asphodel were able to break free and advance to within melee striking distance of the handmaiden. The only one left trapped in it was Jobi, for Zerak had backed away enough to not be in the area of effect and Kel’s liberation domain ability of freedom was still active for a bit longer for the day.

The devil once again trapped Blackwell in her tentacle cage and by this point had nearly bludgeoned him to death – one more round of these attacks from her and he would die in this forsaken place – something he was not relishing. But there was some hope for him for Asphodel, Zola and Kel were all within striking distance of this devil and maybe, just maybe they would do enough damage to her to kill her before she killed him.

And this is where we must leave our stalwart band of heroes for this session has come to an end. Next week we’ll see the exciting conclusion of this battle…