Several of the last installment's closing questions were answered in further conversation with our quasi-subdued Easterners: Kharnzeel & Co. have been backing the revolutionaries as well as the attempts to introduce insanity into the West, Elbret is reportedly "involved in some shady dealings in Banzeel," including dealings with the Insanity Temple, and Baleel House is "up to no good in Banzeel," though the death priest provided no specifics. (Then again, Ganeth never said which of the merchant houses was dealing with the bogus Barshen either; the death priest didn't know that any of them were dealing directly with elves.) Some Baleel operatives had recently been spotted in C-Ra; this may or may not tie in with Kalis' feather-providing informant.
The death priest and assassin eventually gave the false names Delrina and Axiz so we could stop referring to them as "you" and "your sister". Beeel seemed to find the choice of "Delrina" odd and had a short untranslated chat with her in Eastern Common.
Our local evildoers had naturally concocted a plan for dealing with Kharnzeel: Axiz was going to sneak into the base, using dust of disappearance to evade detection by the invisible birds, and set up something called the Obsidian Arch. Then everyone else would come through the Arch, pound on Kharnzeel, and retreat through the Arch before it deactivated. (Delrina was unwilling to elaborate on what the Arch actually does beyond "create a temporary portal.") Axiz wasn't particularly worried about traps, since their sources (allegedly not limited to Glurf's head) told them that the traps they'd set (mainly glyphs set by the insanity priest) only affected Good. According to these sources, Kharnzeel is currently busy with item identification and testing and may not be fully combat-ready spellwise; Axiz has been unable to scry them and verify this directly. (Their "main area" seems to be scryproof, and Kharnzeel is reputed to have a scarab against scrying.) Subator is expected to be with Kharnzeel, while the apprentices are expected to be guarding outside. According to Axiz and Delrina, Subator's psionic toolbag includes causing fear, 360-vision/detection stuff, and combat-enhancement powers. Fonzeel believes that all the apprentice kensai are trained in sai.
Having extracted whatever useful information it could think of, the party then hatched its own plan to secure the pentagram. In a nutshell, this plan (which was not shared with the Easterners) was to fly up in a Chariot of Sustarre, hammer them in a quick flash of glory, and get them to retreat to the pentagrams and teleport away. This plan did not call for the Easterners to come in with us and cause problems or for them to go in first, get captured, and blab about the party, so it was decided that they weren't going in at all.
- Delrina:
- "Hang on...you're saying that you want to do our mission, without us?"
- Silvana:
- "No, we want to do our mission without you."
Delrina eventually agreed to let us go in, provided that she got to take credit back home if we succeeded. (She hadn't clued in that we'd be quite happy scaring Kharnzeel off and saw this as much more likely than killing him.) The party further declared that they were going to put Axiz on the weekly table so she couldn't sneak in after them, and Ganeth faerie fired her before she could try disappearing. Delrina decided she didn't have a problem with that (such touching sisterly concern) but the being posessing Axiz might; Axiz's voice started sounding meaner and she eventually started howling in a low feline sort of way (though Delrina was able to snap her out of it). So the party took all of Axiz's items instead (except for a cursed-on choker with a green gem), plus the satchel with Glurf's head. (Like any good nightblade, Axiz had contact poison sachets stuck to her back, false fingernails, a death-knife hidden in her hair, and lots of other goodies; in principle, this is all to be returned once the party has made its attack on the base. Her spellbook didn't turn up, but it could be in the sack with Glurf's head.)
After a Day of Healing(tm) in which Frankel gave a few potions the taste test, the party went into a precast frenzy and headed out in the Chariot (except for Frankel, who was keeping up with a modified fly spell). They were sniped at on the way by invisible birds (all of whom were shot out of the sky, with prior blinding optional), while other birds warned the people in the base of the party's approach.
The Chariot came in along a landing on the outside staircase, where the party took on an apprentice mage and an apprentice kensai, along with a few skeletons and summoned goblins. The goblins had a short day: They all died in a lightning bolt as the party closed. The skeletons had a pathetic day: They were wiped out in a single segment by a precision sweep from Beeel. The kensai had a really depressing day: First the mage fled behind it, then it failed its fancy parry/disarm combo against Thor. Things looked up for a brief instant as he scored a 20 with his "clever disarming technique" against Thorongil and flipped his sword down the stairs, but it was a somewhat hollow victory...And then his day got really bad when a second mage, sporting a flaming robe, appeared on a lower landing and caught him in the ice storm she dropped on the good guys, but it mercifully came to an end when Frankel's morningstar met the side of his head a few seconds later.
- Beeel:
- "Fortunately, Thor has more weapons than the kensai has rounds left to live."
- Silvana:
- "That's okay--we'll be going that way anyways."
The summoned 12 HD air elemental had a frustrating day: Ganeth and Stealth pounded on it with their temporarily +2 weapons, while it couldn't reach Stealth and couldn't penetrate Ganeth's stoneskins. The summoned hell hounds had a decent day, aside from the initial lightning bolt from a prot-fired Silvana, though they didn't survive to see the sunset. The invisible birds generally had an unpleasant day, though nothing terribly interesting happened to them as they were killed. The mage had a slightly better day, since her mirror images saved her from the lightning bolt and her stoneskins protected her long enough for her to run away (though they didn't save her from feeding Stealth most of her hit points via vamp touch), but eventually Beeel caught up to her and finished her off (though she had the satisfaction of watching him run though the anti-Good glyph on his way). Her summoned bullywugs got the satisfaction of watching Ganeth run through the anti-elf glyph on his way to them but accomplished little else of note.
The mage with the flaming robe had a decent day (comparatively) after a rocky start with some ball lightning: She nailed Frankel with a stinking cloud (to which she was somehow immune) and started blasting spells at him, then managed to escape from the area undetected before Silvana dropped a dispel magic on it.
And thus did the party claim the Nirduk stairway as their own (and there was great rejoicing).
The party regrouped on the lower landing and found that a new tunnel had been dug from it, leading toward the pentagrams. It was also full of webs, which Thorongil burned from a safe distance and so was denied a full appreciation of the explosive gases that permeated the passageway.
The passageway led right up to the pentagram rooms (both of which were now accessible). Someone in one of the rooms started in with the sinister low chuckle routine while Stealth detonated yet another glyph remotely. The someone turned out to be a squat, pudgy, 5'6" humanoid with dark brown skin, gleaming teeth, a wicked smile, a large, curved, gem-encrusted falchion, and an attitude.
"Welcome. Fools. I am Dodaji. Who are you that dare mess with me?"
The party sized Dodaji up as an elemental earth creature and the likely architect of the latest renovations, and they decided (based on the single-file passageway and their generally low hit points) that this would be a good time for a tactical retreat. As they left, Dodaji clapped his hands a few times and stone spikes started coming out of the passage floors and walls.
"And don't come back!"
The party searched around outside, and the trackers discovered a spot where someone had probably set up a rope trick. Healing was distributed, and Stealth set up an alarm spell under the rope trick. Just as he finished, the rope trick opened and an insanity priest jumped out. The priest spoke a language nobody understood (if it wasn't gibberish), wore a hypnotic cloak that made people break off attacks if they failed a save, had a half-mask that did nothing obvious, and carried a strange-looking mace that Thorongil disarmed. He managed to fight down to where he should have gone negative, acting oblivious to all the damage, then flopped over and started speaking Western Common:
- Insanity priest: [laughing]
- "Ho ho. Stop that, it's killing me!"
- Frankel:
- "Surrender!"
- Insanity priest: [still laughing]
- "Okay, I accept. [hee hee]
Submit to me! [moo haa haa]
You just surrendered! [ho ho ho]
I win!"- Frankel:
- "Actually, it was more like a request."
- Insanity priest flops again and stops moving
The mage with the flaming robe, meanwhile, continued to have a pretty good day. She was running a form of invis that works against DI, though not See Unseen; Silvana had to abort her planned hold person to stop the insanity priest from getting a nasty insanity-producing scroll off (following PD's "'no go insane' directive"); and she was able to dimdoor away before Ganeth, following the sounds of her casting, could hack through her remaining stoneskins.
Frankel and Silvana did some aerial recon (Frankel to Silvana: "You're smarter than I am...may I offer you a ride?") and located the mage with the flaming robe by the base of the cliff, but she was too far away to do anything about. No clues regarding the whereabouts of Kharnzeel, Subator, and Lexar; also note that Delrina had said that the team's insanity priest was female, but the one we killed was male.