The group awoke from their uneasy slumbers or strained meditations, restored as they'd ever be, gathering their resolves and dispelling the last of the depravity to continue to the battle they all pensively awaited. During which time Finduilas healed Izaki of his resentment of the gods and Sev revealed a bit of his new fatalistic attitude. Victoria bestowed everyone with a Deathward, and Finduilas with a Holy Aura.
Serren had since escaped the watery vortex and found the well-hidden mechanism to close the portals and drain the submerged passage, leading the way onward.
Portals
Passing down the emptied passage, the group took note of two flanking portals, reading: Yssidral Bay #7 and Plane of Steam #7. Finduilas, Victoria and Matthias recalled these portals to be exactly like the ones they destroyed in the Crystal Caves.
Some in the group were beginning to develop alarming suspicions as to the purpose of portals taking salt water into the super-heated plane of steam, theories involving a certain glacier prison.
Crawling Cave
Through a steadily-widening tunnel, the group walked through a vast causeway whose walls writhed with millions of crawling insects, slick and black in what light the group shed. The group's feet crunched over chitin and a nightcrawlers, slugs and worms rained steadily. Large cave bulges actually shook themselves free of insects to reveal bear-sized spiders with tiny, white humanoid heads. They scurried about their own business as the group passed into the final chamber.
Serren slipped into the earth, passing beneath the group and slightly ahead, though sensing nothing at all touching the ground in his range of "blind-sight".
The Nexus of Anansiel
The tunnel opened up into a cavern so vast not even darkvision revealed it all, but by the stir of the air and the echo it was truly a sprawling underground. The entire space was covered in webs, thousands upon thousands of strands, some as thin as a finger and others as thick as a tree.
Fifty feet out from the entrance Serren conjured an explosion of flame, clearing a space for himself, but drawing the would-be demon lord out of hiding. She crashed on top of him with a thunderous shake of the cave.
The Crawling Queen
It was no exageration calling her Colossal, a being at the very least forty feet high and sixty across, so large darkvision could not reveal all of her horrific splendor, barbed legs clicking anxiously in the dark. She appeared a bare-chested giantess from the waist up of gray, ruined flesh, with two enormous spider fangs as arms and six, under-sized arms sprouting from her lower abdomen. They each wielded a magic longsword. Her face was particularly brutual to behold, a woman's with an oversized mouth in a perpetual grimace and collections of bulbous, red spider eyes that matched the hundreds of others bordering her waist. It was them you realized her humanoid half was burst from the mouth of a gargantuan spider, its crimson thorax like a setting sun behind her in the dim.
Give Me Back My Wife!
Anansiel made sure to dig into Serren as he was crushed beneath her, having a quick, mocking dialogue with the others. Gravant demanded to see his wife and the demon obliged, lowering Ilpa from the dark of the ceiling, upsidedown and entirely wrapped in webs but for her pristine, pale face. She was an elf... and looked no older than fourteen. Anansiel rubbed her cheek against the body and mocked some more, asking if the heroes were ready before reeling Ilpa back to the ceiling and going on the attack.
Barriers Come At Will
As would become painfully apparent throughout the battle, Anansiel commanded barriers of force blades at will, the first of which she conjured directly onto the group. Some were carved, all were forced to leap aside, and the exit was effectively blocked. No going back now...
Blinded!
While the mage was still pinned, Anansiel unleashed her nine strikes of utter annihilation, but thanks to the blessing laid by Finduilas, on the fourth strike the demon went blind! Shocked, she reeled back and abandoned what might have been the death of the Ever-Living.
Burst
Finduilas backed her promise of destruction with a burst of sunlight that seared away an eighty foot sphere from the webs, eliminating the obstruction between the group and their enemy, as well as burning the demoness a bit. The meleers rushed in, even as Matthias and Victoria seemed trapped in a magical stupor. Sev, Gravant, Izaki and Tasha all landed blows.
Hidden
Though Anansiel threw up a barrier of blades and managed, despite her blindness and enfeeblement, to land strikes, she eventually retreated to the darkness of the ceiling, where supernatural black granted her much-needed concealment. From their she launched a webbed net, one which caught Serren and Finduilas and thrashed them against the side of the cave, and stuck the rest of the group in place so as to suffer the effects of another barrier.
Serren retreated back into the earth as the demon queen seemed to again gain the advantage.
Fire and Storm
Sev shifted into a fiery bird and burned a path through the ceiling webs and into the magic darkness, swallowed by black and facing the unknown. Matthias followed just after and the sound of swords rang down, followed by a shower of blood, as Anansiel sliced the skald up.
Revealed!
Finduilas again shined when she enchanted an arrow with daylight and launched it into the darkness. The black disapated to reveal a wounded Anansiel clinging to the ceiling of the cavern about 140 feet up, Tazjaree, Ilpa and Sev unconscious in silk bonds along with a dozen other Veluvians. Matthias looked injured as he and the blinded demoness fought.
Cursed!
Able to see, Victoria wracked the Crawling Queen with a curse, one that managed to pierce even her many resistances. Anansiel could do nothing even as Matthias pressed his attack, Izaki flying up to join him.
The Glaive Proves Its Worth
Invoking the name of Thorm, Matthias grew to giant proportions and unleashed the fury of all giant king. The result was a veritable storm of steel and brawn, one that wracked the queen for damage the likes of which she never suspected.
Fin for the Win
The priestess finished the would-be demon lord with a beam of white hot light, dealing just enough to send Anansiel plummeting 140 feet and splatting her humanoid-half onto the stone in a wave of gore. Almost immediately, the bulbous thorax on her surviving spider half began to shiver and bulge. Large monsters looked like they were trying to break free.
Earth Shards and Giant Bolts
Serren launched a lingering earth shard attack, followed by Matthias's god-like descent against the spider body, enough together to burst the thorax wide, killing the spider but also unleashing Anansiel's brood.
The Fifteen Daughters of Anansiel
Fifteen large clones of Anansiel burst forth from the placental goo (and Serren's recipe still grosses me out). Each held some power of their mother, but stranger still, they all spoke as one in Anansiel's voice, as if her consciousness was transferred genetically. For the most part, the group had a much easier time handling the subdued power levels of the daughters, even slaying a few before the first three evolved into huge versions, no doubt on their way to becoming the next true Crawling Queen. The eldest three took the unconscious Sev, Ilpa and Tazjaree hostage.
A Thunderous Threat
What resulted from Matthias was a threat and a promise of hurricane proportions, inspiring such fear and awe it rocked even the huge clones backward. More out of panic than anything else, the eldest jabbed a claw downward for a coup de grace on the archdruid...
The Inevitable Use of Force
...Except Serren had already conjured a force bubble to protect the three helpless victims. Free to kill, the group did so, dwindling the daughters numbers until they broke apart and fled down various escape-route crevasses.
The Hunt
And so the hunt was on, Serren chasing some down with earth and water, and Matthias howling with glee as he charged through two blade barriers to pursue two terrified demons. When the bodies were piled, and Matthias returned singing a hunting saga, all the brood were accounted for but one. Victoria flew upward in search of it, irked by the thought of one left to grow into a new Anansiel and wondering if, with one survivor, her deal with Tameroc was truly met.
I'm Pregnant!
Those who could fly went about freeing Sev and Ilpa and the surviving six Veluvians, administering healing and stirring them all back to consciousness. The Veluvians experienced a deluge of emotion, ranging from fear and sadness to eventually gratitude.
Tazjaree was left for Serren to deal with. He fed her a potion and helped her down. There it was revealed she was pregnant with his child, a girl which she would name Hecate. After some trouble with Fin, the devil finally returned to her bag.
Victoria's Journey
Following the escape route all the way to a mage tower on the street level of Veluvia, she witnessed the demon and undead mobilizing amidst siege engines, the vanguard already departing toward Ivristel. Tameroc sat silently watching, something pinched between his fingers.
The envoy of Saspien went on to a revealing last encounter with Tameroc the Blind, that titanic angel of decay sitting utop the ruins of Bladen Wing.
Idaasila's Resurrection
Deep beneath the earth, Serren asked Finduilas a favor, resurrecting his fallen dragon woman to life. After Serren dug through Anansiel's entrails to find a single black scale, Finduilas obliged. In ten minutes time Idaasila was back to her same old depressing self. She cursed and shuffled back into the bag, a wonder she decided to come back from death at all.
Shepherd of the North
Sev gathered the distraught Veluvians and lead them out of the nightmarish cavern and up toward the second level, which still existed (apparently only destroyed in your minds, another illusion induced on the operating tables).
The second floor holds portals to:
- The Ilon Pass (the valley leading to Ivristel's gates)
- The Ruins of N'Catr (once the northern pirate city on the ice bridge)
- The Ruins of Mongrel (once the home of orcs and their evil kin in the Rutok Mountains)
- The Dawnspear Mountains ( just outside Fin's family roost)
- The Polarbite Glacier (location of the glacial prison)
Reunited
Hand in hand, Ilpa and Gravant walked last among the group, basking in each others company once more and looking, despite some strangeness in the physical age difference, very much in love.
Session Notes:
Though we did play a little further, it was very rushed, so I'm going to pick things up with the group leaving the dungeon. That way we can resolve issues involving the remaining portal network, the trapped Angry Star entity and the weapon, speak with Ilpa and whatever else you might want to do before leaving.
Experience:
15: 5400
16: 3840
17: 3060
Coin
20,000gp per person
Six Swords of Anansiel
Each of these nonpareil longswords have spider motifs subtly injected into their make and carry a number scrolled in Abyssal at the base of their blade corresponding to the order they are listed.
- +4 Frostbrand (Longsword version)
- +3 Life-Drinker Longsword
- +3 Nine Lives Stealer Longsword
- +3 Elf Bane Longsword
- +3 Fiend Bane Longsword
- +3 Human Bane Longsword
- Kultuss's Blood, contained in 5 serpent-sculpted diamond vials with ruby stoppers like forked tongues (3000 gp worth themselves). Their contents are far more precious, the blood of the dragon god, which if administered to a non-artifact magic item bestows +2 permanently and gives it either +2d6 of Cold, Fire, Electric, Acid or Sonic damage OR resistance 20 to either Cold, Fire, Electric, Acid or Sonic. Every group member receives 1 vial.
- Gorefeet, Boots of the First Lich: Sewn from the gray flesh of Delilah's own corpse when it was fresh enough to peel, the ancient mage-priest Koschie used it as a vector and offering in the process of becoming the first lich. It grants +20 feet speed, 4 damage to attackers per landed hit, and DR 10/-. (Finduilas)
- Lava Gout, Lost Gauntlets of Firelord Endymion: These gauntlets of blackened stone streaked with hot, flowing lava were the prize of the first Firelord of Phoenix Forge, the great efreet who captured and caged the magnificent firebird so many ages ago. His treasury was raided during the Winters War by devils seeking more magic arsenal, these gauntlets being part of their take. It grants Resist Cold 20, Immunity to Fire and +2d6 fire damage per attack. (Victoria)
- Snakecord, Belt of the Hydra King: Once a contender for demon lord of the Underlands, Lorcryn was a fiend who bound himself to the growing might of Kultuss, siphoning some of the dragon god's cosmic energy to become the first hydra and sire of that terrifying species. Delilah herself banished him to the glacier, its first prisoner, for she did not trust his loyalties. The belt itself is made from some of his flayed, green flesh studded with sharpened fragments of one of his fangs. It grants the wearer Resist Acid 20, Immunity to Poison and Fast Healing 5. (Serren)
- Highlord's Wrath, Amulet of the Storm Giant King: Stolen from the famed vaults of the mythic storm giants comes a relic of their royal king, a smoky gem sphere reflecting the planet's ever-fluctuating weather patterns, clutched by criss-crossing steel lightning bolts and attached to a thick lightning bolt chain. It grants Electric Immunity, 8 electric damage to attackers whenever the wearer is struck, and a +4 bonus to all charisma, constitution and strength-based skills. (Matthias)
- Anansiel's Visage, Helm of the Crawling Queen: Made of Shalraza's own hands as a gift to Anansiel in the time before her tricked imprisonment, this golden likeness of Anansiel's head, crowded with walnut-sized ruby eyes and platinum-etched ivory fangs, bestows it's wearer with +2 all abilities, +2 all saves and immunity to mind-influencing effects. (Sev)
Objectives:
- Decide what to do about the remaining portals.
- Decide what to do about the Angry Star.
- Uncover the secret of activating the Hoping.
- Prepare in Ivristel.
- Find and confront Shalraza.
- Win!
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