Session 51 Synposis

Previously, on Phoenix Rising...
… “Telliann is the direct descendant of the last ruler of Neverwinter! And she’s also my cousin!” exclaimed Zerak. That and other revelations were contained in the treasure trove of information they had found in the complex’s crating room. But now they needed to rest for there was still one more door to deal with…

Once our heroes had a sufficient rest, they gathered up everything of value and proceeded to check out the double doors that had been hidden by the illusory wall. The doors were large, made out of heavy wood and banded by iron and silver bands. Blackwell examined the first door for traps and did not find any. But when he went to unlock it, a trap went off – this time he escaped injury though. After he unlocked the first door, he turned his attention to the second door. This door was also trapped but he had found it and was able to disable and unlock the door without much trouble.

Asphodel then slowly opened the first door just enough to peek inside. She was able to see the left half of a very large room, trapezoidal in shape with 20ft high ceilings and rather well lit. Immediately to her left was an erinyes holding a long whip that moved lazily around seemingly by its own volition. Further into the room she saw a bearded devil leaning against his glaive and further yet into the room she saw what was later identified as a Bone devil. All three were looking straight at her but not making any moves. Then she heard a voice telling them to, “Don’t be shy. Come on in and visit.” Several party members recognized the voice as belonging to Alira Vond, the woman for which the party had retrieved two so-called ancient heirlooms out of Gardmore Abbey. This same woman was the woman in Jobi’s visions. The same one, along with Mordai Vell, sacrificing and murdering innocent virgin girls to Asmodeus and trapping the wills of Neverwinter’s leaders.

So Asphodel opened the one door fully and stepped into the room. Alira Vond again asked the rest of the group to join them, “Please, please come in. You are quite welcome here. After all, without your efforts none of this would have been possible. I do thank you again for retrieving those two special heirlooms for us.” Now that Asphodel was completely in the room, she could see that on the other side of the room there stood another erinyes with a similar whip and another bearded devil. Alira was at the far end of the room which had a large recessed area that went up three steps to a platform that housed an altar to Asmodeus. She could see dried blood stains on it even though the altar was more than one hundred feet away. She did not see any other people nor the two heirloom nor any small green glowing globes and surmised that those must be somewhere else.

Some more banter went back and forth between our heroes and Alira while the rest of the party entered the room. But just at the moment when the speaking hit a short lull, Asphodel unexpectedly and pre-emptively teleported next to Alira and grappled her so firmly and did not let go so that she would never get a chance to get free nor cast a spell. And of course this began the battle.

The bone devil advanced and casted his wall of ice spell and completely encircled the 5 remaining heroes around the room’s entrance in a thick wall of ice that extended all the way to the ceiling. Then it and the erinyes positioned themselves around the wall of ice and waited for the heroes to break free. Meanwhile the two bearded devils advanced on Asphodel and began attacking her with their glaives in hopes of getting her to release Alira (but to no avail). The bearded devils were not much of a threat to Asphodel inside her eidolon suit and only hit her a few times.

Zola used her flaming greatsword to cut her way through the ice wall and engage with the bone devil. Zerak casted a wall of fire to melt the ice and had the entire right side of the encasing wall of ice melted in short order. Blackwell changed into his hybrid werewolf form and busted through the ice wall on the opposite side also using a flaming weapon to do it. He was engaged by an erinyes who had thrown her whip at him. The whip then came alive and tried to wrap itself all around him and entangle him, but was unsuccessful. The other erinyes threw her whip at Jobi and successfully tangled her, but Kel was quick with her liberation domain ability of freedom and effectively thwarted the erinyes’ whip attacks.

The erinyes then switched to their bow attacks and were very good at hitting the softer targets among our heroes, namely Zerak and Blackwell and later in the battle just Zerak since he was casting many spells like summoning other creatures to fight for the party, walls of lightning, lightning bolts, etc. Jobi kept busy with healing her friends and casting magic missiles. Blackwell was using his pistols to shoot at the erinyes and the bone devil. And Kel helped out by targeting the bearded devils, trying to relieve some of the (slight) pressure on Asphodel.

After nearly a minute of fierce fighting, just the erinyes and Alira were left. Zola had moved in on Alira as did Blackwell and it was clear that the evil woman was nearing the end of her life. She had started to try to talk her way to surrendering but just at that moment, Zola landed a blow that cut her throat and made it impossible for her to speak. Zola then moved on to help kill the erinyes who were proving to be quite good at making Zerak a pin cushion (or arrow cushion to be more accurate). Jobi helped bring Alira down with magic missiles and Blackwell landed the final killing blow and then decided to cut out her heart and eat it (and horrified Jobi who was actually close enough to see the scene). At the same time the two erinyes were finally defeated as well.

And this is where we must leave our stalwart band of heroes for this session has come to an end. Next week we’ll have a quick wrap up session for this particular story arc …