<style> p { font-size: 13px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em; } .phb:after { content: ""; } </style> # Adventure Log - Way of the Wicked <div class = "wide"> ### The Cast | Player | Character | Alignment | Race | Class (Archetype) | |:------:|:-------------------------:|:---------:|:------------:|:--------------------------------------------:| | Arun | ~~Val Sparklight~~ | ~~CE~~ | ~~Elf~~ | ~~Magus (Eldritch Archer)~~ | | " | ~~Lexi Hatchetwound~~ | ~~NE~~ | ~~Half-Elf~~ | ~~Rogue (Unchained)~~ | | " | ~~Miss Fyre Featherbang~~ | ~~CE~~ | ~~Tengu~~ | ~~Gunslinger (Pistolero)~~ | | " | Miss Fayke Information | LN | Kitsune | Bard (Arrowsong Minstrel) | | Byron | ~~Lucius~~ | ~~CE~~ | ~~Dhampir~~ | ~~Antipaladin (Shining Knight [converted])~~ | | " | ~~Lucius~~ | ~~CE~~ | ~~Dhampir~~ | ~~Kineticist (Blood)~~ | | " | Lucius | CE | Vampire | Kineticist (Blood, Overwhelming Soul) | | Dan | ~~Risotta Gaggins~~ | ~~CE~~ | ~~Halfling~~ | ~~Rogue (Carnivalist)~~ | | " | ~~Aradin Etherstep~~ | ~~LE~~ | ~~Human~~ | ~~Monk (Qinggong, Zen Archer)~~ | | " | Jeff | ~~CE~~ | Human | Arcanist (Blood) | | David | ~~Cras~~ | ~~LE~~ | ~~Human~~ | ~~Oracle (Standard)~~ | | " | ~~Killorn Geodem~~ | ~~LE~~ | ~~Half-Orc~~ | ~~Gunslinger (Mechanist, Melee [homebrew])~~ | | " | ~~Bulk~~ | ~~CE~~ | ~~Half-Orc~~ | ~~Oracle (Standard)~~ | | " | ~~Flynn Farious~~ | ~~CN~~ | ~~Elf~~ | ~~Magus (Blade-Bound)~~ | | Eric | ~~Illuminè~~ | ~~NE~~ | ~~Gnome~~ | ~~Sorcerer (Standard)~~ | | " | ~~Dvorik~~ | ~~CN~~ | ~~Dwarf~~ | ~~Cleric (Standard)~~ | | " | ~~Dvorik~~ | ~~CE~~ | ~~Suli~~ | ~~Cleric (Standard)~~ | | " | Celeste | NE | Vampire | Sorcerer (Standard) | | Joey | GM | \* | \* | \* | ### The Story Lucius, Risotta, Val, and Illuminè all find themselves locked up in Branderscar Prison, the most formidable jail in the history of the lawful good island kingdom of Talingarde. Each of them is here for a different reason: Illuminè, for a high-stakes robbery gone wrong; Val, for some magical misuse; Risotta, for a carnival "accident"; Lucius, for the circumstances of his very birth. Just a few days before they are to be executed, however, a mysterious woman called Tiadora appears before the gang. She bears a gift, a magical veil from which various useful items can be pulled, as well as instructions on where to go after breaking out. Yes, breaking out of the toughest prison on the island, from which no one has ever escaped before, as a group of total strangers. Risotta starts the story off by pulling a set of lockpicks from Tiadora's veil and immediately breaking them in her untrained hands, rendering them useless and forcing the party to instead break out through sheer strength. In this, they are helped by the only other occupant of the prison, an enormous ogre by the name of Grumblejack. Grumblejack, being strong of body but not of mind, is easily convinced to go along with the party's escape plan (which boils down to little more than "kill the guards near us and sneak out the back"). Despite its simplicity, the plan works surprisingly well; the party makes very good use of the rest of the veil and suffers minimal injury, right up until Grumblejack dies holding off most of the guards. At this point, the party is forced to flee more stealthily, killing from afar with Val's natural affinity for a bow and using a magical window patch to open a hole in the back wall, onto the rocky shores below. After carefully making their way around the island's border, the party has only one challenge left: crossing the bridge that connects Branderscar to Talingarde proper. With resources running low and Lucius downed by a well-placed arrow, Risotta, Val, and Illuminè formulate a hasty plan. Val and Illuminè put on some armor stolen from the bodies of the dead guards, while Risotta dons a set of noble's robes. Illuminè goes back for the body of the guard that shot Lucius and slowly makes her way across the bridge, guard in one hand and Lucius in the other. Val, meanwhile, acts as an escort for Risotta. The group attempts to convince the guards at the gatehouse that Illuminè is returning two guards' bodies to their families and Val is making sure a visiting noble gets home safely. This deceit works well for Illuminè, who crosses without issue, but Val isn't as skilled in bluffing; she gets stopped and Risotta is recognized as one of the escaped prisoners, forcing the party to fight for their lives once more. Illuminè resists the temptation to sneak away alone, and instead comes back to help Val and Risotta. Eventually, they take down this last group of guards and make their way to a cave hidden on the beach to rest and recuperate. </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> After they recover, the party heads across the marshes, following the instructions Tiadora gave them to reach their mysterious benefactor's manor. The trip itself is relatively uneventful, other than the giant frog that tried to swim away after swallowing Illuminè, and the group soon finds themselves staring up at a single light in a dark, ominous mansion. Tiadora greets the party at the door, followed by a small army of servants, and orders everyone inside. A few not-so-subtle threats later, the group finds themselves each in a separate room supplied with refreshments, healing potions, and clothes that somehow fit each of them perfectly. They're given a little time to enjoy their new quarters, but Tiadora comes back all too soon to call them down to the main office. It is here that they finally meet the man responsible for setting their escape in motion: Cardinal Adrastus Thorn, the last high priest of Asmodeus left on Talingarde. He launches into a passionate tirade against the Mitran fanatics that control the island, and makes the party an offer he feels they can't refuse: help him raze Talingarde and rebuild it anew, or die. After all, the party does owe Thorn their lives for making their prison break possible. The offer itself is also rather attractive, appealing to the group's desires for power, wealth, and revenge. Risotta leaps at the chance to join Thorn, and Val seems willing as well, but Lucius and Illuminè put up some resistance to the idea of working under someone else. They attempt to intimidate this "walking, talking, Stephen Hawking", but soon find that the cardinal is a hard man to sway. He is well aware that the party knows too much, and Cardinal Adrastus Thorn is not the sort of man to let a loose end go free. It takes some coercion, but Thorn and Tiadora do eventually convince the entire group to sign the contract in their own blood, confirming their loyalties to Asmodeus, Thorn, each other, and themselves (in that order). At this point, Thorn signals to one of the servants, and a pale, haggard human shuffles into the room. This man, smelling strongly of death and introduced simply as Cras, becomes the fifth member of the newly-formed Knot of Thorns, and the party is complete. After a few days of rest, during which Tiadora and the servants go shopping for the group, they are summoned before Thorn once more. He gives each of them a gift, an iron circlet that allows the wearer to disguise themselves at will, then presents to them a challenge: they must enter the basement dungeon, which Thorn calls his Nine Lessons. He gives them until sunrise to return with a pendant of silver and sapphire, no matter the cost. The knot encounters a variety of challenges, making their way through traps, monsters, and even a torture chamber. In one of the later rooms, they set off an alarm that brings a group of zombies down on them, and the party is soon overwhelmed. Illuminè and Risotta both fall unconscious, and as the rest of the group flees, they're forced to leave Risotta to her death as her group of circus animals ends up blocking the way. When the remaining party members make their way upstairs to heal for their next attempt, they find Thorn in discussion with a grief-stricken man in long, flowing robes. He signals to the party and explains that, since Risotta failed to learn the lesson of secrecy, he would have to provide a replacement in the form of Aradin Etherstep, who had previously contacted the cardinal hoping for the power to save his wife. Aradin's skill with a bow proves to be considerably more useful than Risotta's pack of badgers, and the knot eventually makes their way to the last room in the basement. Within, they find a captured knight: Sir Balin, the man who put Illuminè in Branderscar Prison in the first place. Fortunately, the party converses with the knight through the door before entering, and they decide to attempt to deceive him. They use their circlets to disguise themselves as followers of Mitra rather than Asmodeus, and Lucius goes in to talk to Balin. He successfully convinces the knight that Lucius was also captured and held here, just like Balin himself, and that he's discovered the way out. Balin is trusting to the point of foolishness, and he follows Lucius all the way back to the torture chamber before looking back and seeing the rest of the party. Aradin, being particularly observant, draws attention to Sir Balin's pendant: a silver and sapphire sunburst. Lucius and Illuminè immediately execute a beautiful tag-team table maneuver on the confused Sir Balin, with the tall dhampir bending down behind the knight and the little gnome running into him and pushing him up onto the rack in the center of the room. Suddenly, the closet opens and out spills a frightened young boy. Timeon, Balin's squire, is terrified of fighting, but he's even more scared of losing his knight. Most of the group continues to attack, and eventually kill, Sir Balin; Aradin, however (having previous experience in these matters) attacks the child and slays him mercilessly, despite Lucius' attempts to convert Timeon to their side. They bring Sir Balin's pendant up to Cardinal Thorn, who has been magically watching the knot's progress through the dungeon, and he congratulates them on a job well done. He seems satisfied; after all, those who survived certainly learned their lessons. Over the next three weeks, the group goes through various training excercises with Thorn and Tiadora to prepare for their first real mission: to bring war to this peaceful island kingdom. The party, whom Thorn refers to as both the Nessian Knot and the Knot of Thorns, is the cardinal's ninth group of servants; his first, however, is a bugbear chieftain named Sakkarot Fire-Axe and his army of hairy warriors, known collectively as the Avernian Knot. Fire-Axe has spent a long time gathering his horde, and he's finally ready to lead them against the Talireans. The party has two objectives: first, to accompany a hired smuggler as he delivers weapons to the bugbear camp in the far north, and second, to come back down and infiltrate Balentyne Tower, the gate of the Watch Wall, and open the way for Fire-Axe and his troops to invade the kingdom. Of course, once the smuggler delivers the cargo, he is to be eliminated; he's simply too greedy for his own good, and Thorn does not appreciate his demands for more hush money. </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> The cargo ship's captain, Kargeld Odenkirk, greets the party on the dock with a grunt. His ship, the Frosthamar, is sitting heavy in the water, and he seems eager to set sail. Once the group is aboard, the sailors get to work and our villains head north; it's a fairly uneventful ride until they get close to the Watch Wall, at which point the lookouts spot a smaller ship rapidly approaching. As soon as they get close enough, the Talirean sailors aboard this guard ship shout for Kargeld and his men to "heave to in the name of the king!". The pirates comply, hoping to deal with the watchmen their way; when one Captain Sambryl boards the cargo ship with four of his men to inspect their crates, Kargeld flies into a rage and begins laying into him with his greataxe. With this as their cue, the party jumps into the fray; Lucius, Cras, and Val focus on the soldiers that boarded their ship, while Aradin and Illuminè shoot and cast at the ones who stayed behind on the other boat. When the larger group finishes dealing with their guards, they turn to the others to find Illuminè missing! Aradin informs them that she charged across to the guard ship to finish off the soldiers that remained below deck, and they anxiously await her return. Sure enough, Illuminè soon emerges, bloody and bruised, and manages to make her way back to the cargo ship before collapsing from exhaustion. After they toss the bodies overboard, our wicked crew continues their journey north, and it's only another day or two before they encounter another group of do-gooders. Multiple tritons, along with their horde of summoned water elementals, assault the ship under orders from their leader, an oracle who has forseen the great evil coming their way. Fortunately, the party is more than capable of handling themselves and the merpeople-wannabes are soon taken care of. Not long afterwards, the boat is approached by a group of Yutak hunters in kayaks. Kargeld is asleep, and the party has no interest in trading for their goods; nevertheless, before they leave, the hunters warn our villains to be on the lookout for "the Storm that Laughs". The party doesn't pay his warnings much attention, but the very next night, a cold snap hits right at midnight. It begins to snow, and ice forms on the rigging, prompting the crew to light torches for light and warmth. This proves to be a mistake, as the storm seems to take offense at the fire; with a mad cackle, an ice mephit reveals himself to be the cause, swooping down with multiple ice elementals. The party fights with a vengeance, upset at being woken up, but are unable to prevent two crewmen from falling prey to the cold creatures. This, of course, only makes their eventual cleanup easier. Finally, after so many obstacles out along the coast, the Frosthamar reaches the river that leads inland, to Lake Tarik and the bugbear camp. Thousands of the beasts are assembled, and it's a truly intimidating sight. Kargeld and his men are too spooked by the bugbears to even step off their ship, but the party has no such reservations. Of course, perhaps Kargeld was right; as soon as our evildoers hit the docks, a particularly thuglike group of bugbears approaches them, hoping to get a taste of the squishy humans before Fire-Axe claims them for himself. The party remains unintimidated, however, and stalls the bugbears long enough for Sakkarot to come greet them. He rips open one of the cargo crates, scattering weapons among his men, and their attitude shifts entirely; finely crafted steel is a welcome step up from their crude cudgels and clubs. The bugbears form up and unload all of the crates, and the whole army celebrates that night with a feast. With Kargeld and his men still holed up on the ship, our villains are the guests of honor; the party is seated at Sakkarot's own table, surrounded on all sides by brutal, savage bugbears. As the feast eventually dies down, Sakkarot summons the party to join him in his private chambers. Once there, he begins to question them; what is their role in this plan, and what are their motives for doing so? After he gives them a magical flare with which to signal his army, Sakkarot asks his final question: can they actually break the Watch Wall in just one month? The party is left to ponder and discuss that as they return to their ship in the morning, where Kargeld waits anxiously. As soon as they board once more, our villains are whisked away across the lake and deposited a few hours of walking away from Balentyne Tower. This is when the party strikes, preventing Kargeld from selling them out for yet more gold. After a short yet vicious battle, the captain and what was left of his crew all lie dead, and the party makes camp on the shore to prepare for the invasion. After gathering some intelligence on the tower at the nearby town of Aldencross, the party learns of the existence of a tunnel between the tower and this little hamlet. Locals explain it as an easy way to deliver supplies, but to our villains, it's the perfect route for infiltration. Before they sneak in, the party is confronted by a patrol group from the tower; after all, a small place like this doesn't often get a bunch of new faces all at once. Sensing an opportunity, the party slays these guards, takes their equipment, and makes their way through the underground tunnel dressed as tower guards. [LONG TIME WHERE I FORGOT TO TAKE NOTES] </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 12/02/18 - leave adarium - teleport to ghastenhall on the way to the battle between the king's army and the bugbears - bucky gets sick because tears of achlys - dvorik spends a full day and night caring for him - in the meantime, lucius, jeff, and miss fyre go to see fire-axe - he's missing a leg; lost it in the battle - hundreds of bugbears left, vs. thousands of humans - sakkarot is initially mad because he lost so many men because the party failed to draw the king away - they (especially lucius) make lots of leg/foot puns, but promise to make up for their initial failure by retrieving his leg - lucius and miss fyre go to the front line - jeff goes to "look for magical herbs for reattaching it" - he's really trapping the soul of a bugbear in a gem - he teleports to chargammon's lair and tried to get in, but jeratheon and his crew stop jeff - the young dragon doesn't like seeing jeff because his dad thinks jeff (who rescured jeratheon from the eagles) is stronger - jeff suggests jeratheon act like he defeated jeff and drag his body in to show chargammon - chargammon is exasperated, but doesn't immediately kill them - I guess he was proud of his son's cleverness - jeff suggests a loan - chargammon gives him an enormous gem, jeff returns it later with a powerful soul trapped inside; shows bugbear-in-gem as example - chargammon gives him a day, demands something impressive like that princess or the king - lucius and miss fyre stop the remaining bugbears from fleeing like cowards or charging in suicidally - they slay scores of talirean soldiers, fighting spears, arrows, and ballista bolts as they search for the leg - eventually, they retrieve it with no bullet holes in it and only a few ice shards - they bring sakkarot's leg back and wait for dvorik to come reattach it with his divine magic - jeff returns to find dvorik asleep next to a cured bucky, decides to sneak into the human encampment anyway alone - talks in circles around a gate guard, gets passed off onto a guard captain - explains what the book is, gets escalated to a general (lord thate) - thate is super surprised at what's inside (the princess is a half-dragon [true]! the king has another child, jeff [false]!) - but this visitor's story is so fishy that thate wants to bring his entire entourage of guards when they go to see the king - jeff gets worried when the guards close in, teleports straight up - lands on the guards' shields as they duck for cover, gets stabbed by an overzealous spear-wielder - teleports to the king's tent a little bit ahead, collapses inside shouting about the king's family - king is still worried for his daughter, pauses instead of kicking the intruder out - barca takes advantage of the hesitation, sends most of the generals out and beckons the guards to bring jeff forward - jeff holds up the book, which startles the king and he reaches out for it - bam, he takes it and is soul-trapped in chargammon's big gem - at the same time, thate bursts in and freaks out - jeff hides in an emergency force sphere and teleports out as the king's men attack - but not before he reveals that his name is jeff and leaves the book (with his name in it) behind - thate puts it together and thinks this is a coup by a hidden heir </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 12/09/18 - jeff returns the gem-with-king to chargammon, asks for one for sakkarot - chargammon accepts, but shuts down his next suggestion of perma-loaning out a gem for anyone just in case - jeff teleports back to the forest near the bugbear camp that he took the random bugbear to, actually collects herbs as an alibi - dvorik wakes up, flies towards the bugbear camp - met by a hail of arrows, flies back out to a guard outpost - they let him in as long as he hands over his weapon and keeps bucky on a leash - but once he mentions that bucky had the plague, the bugbears freak out and attack, trying to keep him out of the camp - they slaughter one of the guards with poison and claw, the other one flees back to the outpost - jeff and dvorik arrive at the same time, dvorik hangs back and wants to enter later - jeff goes in, grabs the leg and starts writing magic on it; hands it to sakkarot - as he stares into lucius' eyes, asking if he trusts jeff, sakkarot takes the leg and gets soul trapped - the bugbear maids freak out, pick up chairs and sakkarot's cot and try beating jeff with them - he teleports to the tent entrance and puts up a force sphere - dvorik sees this from outside, watches the maids burst out and assault jeff's dome - confused party frantically demands some sort of explanation from jeff about what's happening - meanwhile, the army converges upon hearing shouts of the intruders' assault on sakkarot - lucius is trying his best to calm them down, jeff threatens to hurt sakkarot if they keep attacking - miss fyre fires her weapon into the air to get their attention, but it's ineffective - some giants in the back, who couldn't hear the temporary ceasefire, saw bucky flying and tried to throw rocks (and missed, crushing a nearby tent) - dvorik responds with a flame strike, tensions get high again - jeff finally starts to explain himself - but not really; he just demands that they all obey him - the maid attacking with the cot gets tired and sets it down, tells jeff he should give up and return fire-axe before they break through and kill him - he remains adamant, she calls for the rest of the army to come fight and rescue sakkarot - they try and fail to hurt the party, each responds in a different way - miss fyre dodges and waits for lucius to act - dvorik rains down a firestorm, cooking dozens. like holy cow, so many bugbears/goblins/giants/trolls dead - lucius takes matters into his own hands and force chokes jeff, knocks him out - dvorik flies down and the rest of the party tries to talk while dodging the enraged goblinoids - "we're not here to hurt these guys, we're here to help these guys hurt those guys!" - miss fyre - lucius uses all his clout to call a truce, spends the next minute trying to keep things calm - jeff continues to lie unconscious in his bubble - dvorik gets permission from the very suspicious cot lady to heal those he hurt - miss fyre congratulates herself on not shooting anyone - some of the bugbears are too enraged, but most are willing to wait if it means getting their chieftain back - lucius blasts down the force sphere and takes the gem-with-sakkarot, tosses it to cot lady (khaat) - she pleads with the party to save fire-axe, so dvorik takes a look - "we can save him tomorrow by breaking the gem and regenerating his leg (because I don't have regenerate prepared right now and don't want to make him wait after freeing him)" - the bugbears only accept if they can keep the gem for safekeeping and jeff as collateral - the rest of the party agrees, but sleep near jeff to keep him safe (for now) - in the morning, he wakes up when they do - tries to talk to dvorik, is ignored </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 01/20/19 - dvorik and lucius smash the gem to free sakkarot and heal his leg as a peace offering, but he's still fuming - he runs out and demands answers from jeff, but when none are forthcoming, he began swinging - jeff keeps teleporting away, eventually up onto bucky's back; nobody pays attention to his warnings about a dragon coming soon - dvorik tries to fly him away, but a boulder knocks him unconscious and bucky catches jeff in his claws - miss fyre flies and lucius ethereal jaunts; they almost make it out, but a goblin-thrown spear takes jeff in the heart and kills him outright - dvorik realizes that he could spin jeff's death as planned to curry favor with sakkarot, has bucky drop him - the group descends and make peace; sakkarot cools off a bit, thanks the party for restoring his leg and apologizes about jeff (but the party think being dead for a bit will do him some good) - the party camps near the bugbears for the night, and chargammon arrives while dvorik is on watch - he demands they give him gem he lent to jeff, since it's been over half a day since the deadline - they shrug and dump out the shattered fragments that were once used to trap sakkarot, chargammon is enraged - he insists that they fix the gem asap and give him gold as interest in the meantime - miss fyre doesn't take this well at all, starts insulting/berating/provoking the mighty dragon - he responds with a single word of power that drives her blind, lucius and dvorik jump into action - lucius strikes with a blood whip and dvorik uses harmful touch spells, but they can't stop chargammon from tearing miss fyre to shreds - the remaining two drive the dragon off, forcing him to turn invisible and fly away - they teleport to his lair to try to get the jump on him, end up killing his son jeratheon and some of jeratheon's drake friends - with no sign of chargammon, the party seals themselves up in his loot chamber and ressurect the other two - they spend the evening there, sorting through loot - tiadora finally approaches that night, during lucius' watch - she has some erinyes with her, insists that the party come see thorn in the agathium - they refuse, it eventually escalates into a real fight - jeff is out of spells, dvorik is almost out, miss fyre and lucius can't teleport so they get grappled - it's a slog of a fight, but they eventually overcome all of the tentacles </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 01/27/19 - dessiter appears to the party to invite them to see naburus, a pit fiend who supposedly sits right below asmodeus and is disappointed in thorn - party completely refuses, thinking he's just like tiadora but for naburus instead of thorn - instead they continue going through chargammon's hoard - lucius, dvorik, and miss fyre see the gem containing the king's soul in chargammon's hoard, in a special place of honor melted into the wall - they're not sure what it is exactly, since jeff never explained, but they sense a strange magical energy coming from it so dvorik pries it out of the wall, lucius tosses it up, and miss fyre shoots it - the king pops out, totally disoriented; after the initial confusion subsides, the party binds the king and begins discussing terms of release - they've truly realized that thorn is afraid of them now and wants them dead, and they don't trust dessiter/naburus because they're worried it'll be like with thorn but leveled up - so the party decides to cut a deal with the king! - split island in half, so northerners get much more land than before - lucius gets to run northern kingdom, jeff will compete with bellinda for southern kingdom after king's passing - ceasefire, peace between north/south kingdoms - joint force meant to remove asmodeus' influence from talingarde because neither side wants to rule a ruin, and despite what thorn's been saying, ruin is all that he's been bringing - lucius gets to try to woo the princess - once the terms are settled, they do some plane shifting to put all of chargammon's loot in jeff's demiplane (and narrowly avoid/cure a few curses on the items while they're at it) - king delivers news to his stunned generals (including vastenus barca and lord thate) with jeff and dvorik, while miss fyre and lucius talk to sakkarot - the leaders meet on the battlefield as their armies stand down and they discuss how to move forward: borders for no territory disputes, clerics to clear out the plague, etc. - meanwhile, the party is worried now about chargammon's eventual return, so they scry on him - they see that he never returned home to his lair, likely because he had too much pride to show wounds to his son; instead, he was marauding - but as he smells a certain dragon-scent, he dives for the coastal village of embryl and is met by the half-dragon princess in hiding, bellinda, and her paladin protector knight, sir richard - she calls down an enormous meteor swarm that brings the already-wounded chargammon crashing down, and sir richard takes his head off while telling her that this beast has allies like the knot of thorns - the party tries to get the king to come with them to update bellinda, but he's busy fixing things with sakkarot; instead, they go on their own - bellinda and richard are nowhere to be found, but one of the embryl villagers mentions that bellinda arrived a few days ago by teleporting so that's likely how she left - party considers raising chargammon as undead, but instead decide to save the body so they can sell the dragon's parts </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 02/10/19 - party continues to bug villagers - eventually uses discern location to find princess is in ghastenhall - scout from above, see movement in the southwestern segment; it's the princess and her paladin - they approach (with jeff/dvorik/bucky catching the plague), the paladin recognizes them and a battle ensues - princess drops meteors on bucky, miss fyre shoots paladin to trip him, lucius pleads for a truce - they eventually talk, but not before dvorik freaks out and princess has to drop some time stop delayed blast fireballs on him - rip - princess goes to revive brother quintus and will meet the party at the king's in a day - jeff reincarnates dvorik as a suli, dvorik goes dark - with bucky (the friend that quelled his lust for power) gone, he's reverting to the old dvorik, the one that slew the rest of the fourth knot, but seeking revenge instead of power this time; now worships sifkesh instead of sun wukong (new god/domains/feats) - they bury bucky and heal/cure up - they go to the king the next morning, find him trying to explain things to princess - after a lot of discussion, the treaty is finalized and sent out - the king offers new aid (in the form of the bard miss fayke information) to the party - party sells chargammon's loot and body at various markets - they get to know this daughter-of-kitsune-ambassadors-arrowsong-minstrel while they buy more items at the southern markets - jeff buys lucius' robe of arcane heritage "as an act of good will between our two nations" lmao - lotta shopping - lucius heads out to get trained in improved crit feat by one of the general - he gets jumped by 3 barbed devils disguised as injured sakkarot and two of his men, but slays them all (entirely unscathed) thanks to his shiny new items - meanwhile, dvorik questions miss fayke about what she does (sings) - note at the end: party wants to retcon so they revived bucky and he went off to live with miss fyre </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 02/17/19 - lucius is off training with the army (retraining a feat) - jeff and miss information punch each other for three days to retrain hp - in the meantime, dvorik gates down to the matharyn markets to buy 25k worth of diamonds for crushing - he nat 1s both diplomacy check attempts, has to pay a little extra - then goes to the alchemists' to buy some oil and chills at a bar until night, then sets fire to the storefront because he was so ashamed of what he did there (really terrible social interation) - he avoids giving away what he did to the innkeeper (who mentions it to him when he wakes up) and casts gate to go back to the demiplane, sees them duking it out - dvorik crushes the diamonds he bought with his earthbreaker - nobody does anything else the rest of the day, so dvorik wakes up the next day - sun wukong feels a little distant when dvorik prays in the morning - jeff and fayke are basically starving, dvorik offers to go get them food - he leaves and warps to vaasten (a small town away from everyone) and buys a bunch of food - goes to a hill outside of town and prays to sun wukong for a miracle (for the princess to disappear entirely, as revenge) - dvorik finds his connection with all divinity broken, becomes depressed (new body, no faith, oh no) - visits a local church, asks the priest there for advice on how to re-find his faith - priest tells him how he came to believe in mitra, but dvorik isn't interested - he thinks long and hard about it, knows that when clerics lose their way, they either stay powerless, re-find their faith, or get picked up by the demon lord sifkesh - he figures he's too far gone for the monkey king, but the lord of heresy is willing to take him - after remembering all he could about sifkesh, dvorik decides that he wants his power and he wants his revenge, no matter who grants it (he'll eventually gain access to his new domains as he grows accustomed to his new deity) - so in supplication, he cries out about how he's turning his back on sun wukong and slits both his wrists for sifkesh - forces his wrists to keep bleeding by sheer will/conviction, feels power tingle and hears whispers of key words like abandon and revenge - eventually he goes unconscious and his blood coagulates, he stabilizes and remains out throughout the night - meanwhile jeff and miss information are just chilling, she can't get past his emotional emergency force sphere - lucius meets up with them post-training, inquires about dvorik, but nobody knows where he is - they worry that he's been attacked by devils like lucius was; after much debate, they scry on him and see him lying unconscious - they think their worst fears are confirmed, so they decide to teleport to him and loot him - they mis-teleport and end up in the cambrian bay, teleport again and make it to his body in vaasten - they realize he's not dead yet and lucius heals him by putting dvorik's blood back in his wrists, dvorik regains consciousness - they decide to hunt down dessiter by opening a gate to hell...?! - there they meet a devil dog (spot and his [larger than standard] imp owner (ikan) - they ask if he knows any contract devils, so he gets his roommate sulron - sulron doesn't know dessiter, and the party doesn't want to make a contract with him to enable him to use his power - instead, they discern dessiter's location from within hell - he's in naburus' throne room - they return to jeff's demiplane, sleep, and dvorik communes with sifkesh; she won't get him dessiter unless he converts a friend - so they call out "dessiter I want to make a contract" and poof, he appears - stil cordial, but casually calls the party traitors and the new bard not asmodean - party wonders if they can kill thorn and supply a replacement (aradin?) and in exchange naburus won't send anyone after them - dessiter writes up a contract, offers it for one of them to sign - jeff wants protection for his kingdom; if jeff offers his soul, dessiter will protect the kingdom for as long as jeff rules - jeff tries to argue for as long as lucius lives plus 500 years afterwards, dessiter agrees - then jeff gets cold feet, doesn't want to sign his soul yet, so dessiter offers the lighter version of the deal again; no protection, no soul - jeff agrees, but the rest of the party has reservations, so dessiter and jeff rewrite it so it doesn't involve them - now, jeff is the one attacking thorn and supplying a replacement (but he'll still try to get the party to help), and he's the only one protected from the devils - they decide that it's time to take out thorn </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 03/10/19 - dvorik discerns location, gets a ping at the cairn of nythoggr (I ruled that locating thorn would find his soul and not his undead shell because they didn't specify his body... idk) - they send lucius to fly there as a scout and return to report on things - not enough info, so teleport mishap takes them to another cave (similar area) where they see 8 cloud giants cooking bugbear meat - lucius calls out, tells them he's their king, but they don't believe him - the biggest among them challenge lucius to a duel, gets whipped in two rounds - the other giants bow down, have a surprisingly fluent conversation with lucius about consumption - the rest of the party just watches without understanding a word - they try teleporting again, mis-teleport and end up in a forest somewhere - dvorik gets sick of this and prays for a miracle, teleports directly to the plateau that leads to the cairn, seeks shelter from the wind behind one of the enormous fossils - the others scry on him and teleport to him successfully, enter the cairn - chaotic guardian statues block the way, demand a pass phrase in an ancient language - jeff can't battering blast the statues, but he can gravity field them while lucius blood blasts them - they make their way in, looking at a few ossuaries throughout the cairn - jeff gets suspicious of one of them, sees through invisibility to find a colossal invisible slime - cuts it in half via prismatic wall and reverse gravity - ropers attack, knock out miss information and almost get jeff but dvork saves them while lucius fights back - jeff is temporarily fascinated by roper eggs, but the party moves on - they hear the banshees' song, but don't see anyone in that ossuary; it sounds like the voices are coming from the walls and reverberating all around the room - as they're distracted investigating, three dread wraiths (the men from the song's tale) try to sneak up on the party, but dvorik notices them and calls out a warning - then three banshees (the singers, the women from the song's tale) swoop in out of the walls (incorporeal things are hard to find sometimes huh) and scream all in unison - jeff is saved by a magical item, dvorik is sickened, lucius is hurt, and miss info is outright killed ;_; - the survivors manage to overcome the fear and slay the phantoms, but are pretty wounded </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 04/20/19 - party sleeps in a tiny hut, gets woken midsleep by the earth elemental custodians - they don't like the party creating huts and pits and other things that don't belong here - they tell the party to get moving and leave, one way or another - party wants to try for the phylactery first, they just don't have time to sleep and resurrect miss info - party proceeds further, sees a strange magical tablet; dvorik approaches it with comprehend languages to interpret it, and saves against the death effect that pops out - they make it all the way around and find not only nythoggr but also his pet purple worm, keep trapping them with walls of force and stone and blood and prismatic - as they emerge victorious, lucius and dvorik fall prey to the linnorm's death curse - among the hoard they find thorn's phylactery, his heart bound in thorny chains and stashed inside a finely wrought ornate gold box - lucius eats it and nat 20s his save to not explode from negative energy </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 06/02/19 - party sleeps in demiplane, revives miss info - discern location on thorn fails this time, so they tp to his manor - they find nobody initially, but dvorik remembers where his office is - they find a map that, after careful study, points them to the agathium - party finds worn books that tell how to become a lich in thorn's office, throw it in jeff's demiplane - decided to visit the basement dungeon, just because - miss info sets off a javelin trap, it double crits her but doesn't really do that much - they explore the rest of the dungeon but find nothing of interest - they eventually follow the map and warp to the agathium, where they're greeted by vetra-kali's revenge posse ([astra|dergho]daemons) - after getting covered by swarms and a whole bunch of negative levels and warping around, they finish off the demons - but then the frost giants come out! dvorik drops a crazy fire storm though - they throw rocks and swing axes (especially hard, in the case of the ice-axe king), but they go down in the end </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 06/16/19 - the party enters the cathedral, examining the devil-level pillars and the ornate altar to asmodeus - dvorik decides to cut himself and offer some blood, gets a minor bonus (+1 to attacks and saves vs fear) - they get the feeling that that's not the full potential of the altar, but they don't know what else to sacrifice - lucius tears down a thorny asmodean star from the backboard and ends up cursed by asmodeus; 50/50 chance to waste his turn praising the dark lord - eventually they decide to move on and go downstairs to the sub-temple, where they run into two grave knights - they take them out with a pit and not too much trouble, and continue exploring - they find fire-axe's old chambers and a crew of skeleton servants - as they exit those rooms, they're faced with another roving band of five grave knights - they kill two and scare three away easily enough, but those three then come back with five others and phantom steeds - as they charge down the party, lucius tanks easily enough but the other three take heavy injuries, so they retreat and put up a force wall for protection - they expect lucius to go ethereal and join them, but his asmodean curse keeps preventing him from acting - in the end, the rest of the party has no way of bursting down all of the grave knights without hurting lucius, so they heal and buff themselves while watching him get mobbed - his high ac and small concealment chance help him last a long while, but the debilitating curse stops him from escaping, and he eventually goes down while raging about the party - at this point, they're able to throw out their aoe damage and finally destroy the undead (one of which stole lucius' natural armor amulet), though they almost lost miss info doing so - after much discussion about how to fund their diamond spell component purchases (and the discovery that they somehow lost 32224 gp), the party eventually raises lucius - dvorik thinks lucius can remove his curse if he restores the altar star and makes a sacrifice - lucius wracks the hearts of the two ceustodaemons from the horn of abaddon, hexoraticus and vexorandian, whose true names he learned back then (so he summoned their true selves, not instances), freeing himself of the curse but not getting asmodeus' inherent bonus to his highest stat because he already had it from his bloodline </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 06/30/19 - party recovers themselves a little and heads back down, begins exploring further - they find a room kept magically dark, but quickly close the door and leave after the two zombie dragons that seem too large to have gotten in there blast them with lightning - they find thorn's bodyguard captain sequestered away in his room, but he's still too loyal to thorn for them to convert so they kill him - they almost go in the fake throne room, but instead discover the trap and blast the decoy from outside - then they find the strange machinery, which they destroy (along with the negative energy elementals powering it, but not after they use them to heal lucius); they aren't sure what it powers, but they suspect it was the magical traps and want those gone - the noise gets the attention of the wizard who built the thing, and they slaughter him and steal his spellbook - they also find another empty bedchamber, like the one that used to be sakkarot's, but this one has letters addressed to general vastenus barca - they speedrun the rest of the exploration, peeking in the dungeon and torture chanber, running around looking for any secret doors they missed, and all the while lucius and jeff were accusing each other of being thorn in disguise - they find the secret passageway that leads to the real throne room, and rush down, ignoring the side chambers (including the one that lead via secret tunnel to the treasure room) - as they enter, thorn calls out to them, first mockingly, then in pure rage - he stops time, summons two ice devils, and drops some fireballs; dvorik is burnt to a crisp - also, thorn's pet skeleton dragon peeks out from the corner and dominates lucius - jeff goes to revive dvorik while miss info distracts lucius, and jeff creates a prismatic wall to keep them split until lucius comes to his senses (which he does while going ethereal to get around the wall) - dvorik and miss info heal each other and buff the others as lucius takes on the dragon and jeff takes on thorn - a few devastating rounds later, everyone's battered but the dragon is shattered and thorn is blasted to bits; but it's not over yet - his unstable soul holds on by sheer force of will, and haunts his throne itself - he rips four golems free from the very walls of the throne room, and we get round two - the two leftover ice devils, along with all of the newcomers, eventually fall, but the entire party is barely holding on - with thorn fully destroyed, there's nothing left to keep asmodeus' power flowing through the cathedral, so the agathium begins to collapse without its support (since the walls and pillars turned into golems and were shattered) - dvorik plane shifts himself and miss info to jeff's demiplane - jeff and lucius take cover with thorn's bodies under an emergency force sphere, finally using the spell as intended, before joining the others </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 07/21/19 - they visit king, tell him about their success - he's so pleased with their fast action that he's willing to grant them each a boon - jeff wants nothing more than to continue serving his people; the nobles all cheer - dvorik takes a gryphon, names it bucky jr; kidnaps a kid, tries to brainwash him to follow sifkesh, uses that favor to miracle a permanent mind blank so he can live out the rest of his days as a hermit in the northern wilderness, giving up all worship and missions - miss info asks for her own unit, ghostbusters of sorts - people who will help her fight exclusively supernatural threats to the kingdom; barca helps her pick and train them - lucius asks for bellinda's hand in marriage to join the north and south, the king says it's up to her, she refuses; lucius is disappointed, instead requests people (criminals, tradesmen, anyone willing to live in the new north) - before dvorik leaves, lucius talks to him about potential new patron deities of the north, settles on zura - jeff and miss info hit up dessiter, find out that jeff has very little time; he's not sure what avenues are left to explore - meanwhile, lucius has traveled north to one of the cities that he aquired in the border shift, estyllis - he's met up with some of the caravans of his new citizens there; he finds the local lord, nala, belligerent and uncooperative so he makes short work of the round man and bleeds him dry to use in prayer to zura - miss info reasons out that maybe the last real asmodean worshippers, the 8th knot (whomever they are), might be a viable thorn replacement, but jeff knows little about them and dessiter himself can only tell her that they were on some sort of infiltration mission - from lucius' offering's pool of blood comes celeste, a vampire sorceress emissary of zura; she and lucius gather the leaders of the north to set up their new infrastructure, tell them of how the south refused a proper alliance and show them what zura can offer over mitra - jeff just decides to take the plunge and sign the contract himself; gains some minor asmodean spell boons, will have more potential depending on how much favor he curries for the dark lord - lucius convinces celeste to make him into a true vampire like herself, so she bites him and drains all of his life away </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 07/28/19 - jeff takes miss info around on a few mission trips to find people on the outskirts of civilization to try to convert to asmodeus, but he tries to sell them on the idea of a civilization ruled with an iron fist, which is the opposite of what hermit druids want, so they refuse to convert and he kills them all - lucius eventually wakes up, and only then decides to ask about the restrictions and downsides of being a vampire, so celeste fills him in as they talk about their plans for the north (which involves telling the king something, so they begin to fly down south) - jeff and miss info set out to peddle their dark lord in the now-somewhat-repopulated ghastenhall, but when they get there they find it split into two camps: the loyal citizens who lived there and are trying to restore the city (but who have little to no bureaucracy, mostly craft/tradesmen), and the bandits and other opportunists passing through the area on their way to the north who are hoping to stop here and not mingle with the beastmen - they decide to aid the loyalists, break into the bandit camp and kill two of their leaders (a human ranger and a dwarven barbarian) and capture the third (an elven rogue) - lucius and celeste realize they forgot to bring their coffins, so they go back and get a horse carriage set up to take them down south; lucius tells celeste stories both depressing and epic, of everyone around him dying or leaving and of slaying dragons and taking souls - jeff brings the captured elf back to the blacksmith and butcher who are unofficially leading the citizens in their restoration efforts; they're so impressed with how swift he was to deliver on his promise to help them that they let him take over some of the management - jeff gets miss info from the bandit camp, they go back south so she can acquire funding from the king to train the ghastenhall citizens to defend their home; she makes a great case, so he gives her the 10k gp for her squad to improve the city overall and they set out once more (jeff and miss info teleport again, the soldiers ride) </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 08/04/19 - opening scene has no pcs nearby; lucius' men are hard at work excavating the agathium ruins when they uncover a chunk of wall with a strange symbol, a big yellow flame; it's something that the party never saw because it was covered up by another wall entirely - some of the men try to break it for easier transport, and a searing blast of energy bursts out from the symbol, killing a few of the miners and scaring the rest away - back to the pcs, jeff and miss info talk to the priest at ghastenhall (john) and the chaplain at branderscar to get a sense of the current state of faith in talingarde - lucius and celeste tell the king's guards that they have a matter of national security, so the castle gathers everyone of importance (including the warden of branderscar, who brings jeff and miss info with him) - the party reunites, kind of - dvorik's still missing, replaced by a vampire, and lucius is now also a vampire (though nobody can actually tell that either of them are undead), but still - then lucius addresses the whole hall - speaks of his past as a pawn of asmodeus and the many people he saw die around him as a result - the crowd is now even more hesitant to trust the north, but that changes when lucius drops his big reveal - there is an asmodean worshipper in this very hall! - jeff keeps a low profile and just waits, lucius pauses to give someone a chance to confess, but no takers - lucius names general vastenus barca! barca roars in rage and his men begin cutting him a path to escape, but celeste disintegrates him and his men are swiftly eliminated - but three of them are left alive; lucius and celeste take one north with them, two are sent to branderscar - lucius asks miss info who the new asmodean champion is, she won't say, so he tattles to the king - miss info refuses to tell him at first, eventually (under duress) lies and says it was john - lucius gets info about the southern army (currently split and stationed around the regional bases) from the prisoner and then feeds on him - miss info and jeff sign one of the two traitors that were kept in the south out of branderscar, official paperwork and everything - they offer him a deal: take on a fake name and run an asmodean church and they'll let him live (not sure how they plan to keep it secret or stop him from being recognized)... he might go all "they made me do it" </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 10/13/19 - two month timeskip - lucius and celeste stabilized their kingdom - jeff and miss info were able to recruit a small amount of recruiting - bellinda and richard called jeff and miss info to the colosseum - there, bellinda waits for jeff and sir richard + 3 men wait for miss info + 3 of her men that joined her on the way - the king revealed the man they broke out and converted, accused them of being asmodean traitors, sir richard and bellinda begin the fight; lucius and celeste are watching - soldiers fight back and forth, mages stop time and buff and dispel and counterspell and fly and mirror and stuff - bellinda's flight lets her avoid jeff's reverse gravity into prismatic wall, but the wall kills dozens of onlookers - when jeff goes invisible, bellinda calls to the crowd saying that he forfeited - jeff sneaks to the king, puts up a tiny hut for cover and traps his soul (again) by invisibly dropping a trigger book in his lap - lucius and celeste teleport away, not wanting to get caught up in whatever's going on, but it backfires; when the hut drops, the northerners and the king have disappeared - bellinda goes ballistic, declares war on the north - jeff fires magic at her, but it's turned back on him; she knows now that he didn't flee, but he's blocking her from seeing through his invisibility - he dispels all of her buffs, she gets scared and teleports herself and richard out a bit - jeff goes visible and declares his victory to the panicking crowd, along with his intent to bring the southern kingdom back under a strong leader, not one who gets kidnapped or flees, and that the south can't let the north bully them like this - bellinda, on a nearby rooftop with richard, takes the chance to hit jeff with some magic, but it has no effect and he blasts her to pieces - richard revives her, jeff slaughters her again and kills richard too this time - during all of this, miss info had been fighting off all of richard's guards stationed around the colosseum who poured into the arena when the duel went haywire (alone; before she fled, bellinda weird-ed miss info's three troops) - up in the north, lucius and celeste go to explore the agathium ruins so their men could raid thorn's treasure room - they see a strange cloaked man standing in front of the glowing insignia (now fading) - he, caasimolar, announces his intentions to claim this island's followers for lucifer while it was in chaos from mitra/asmodeus/zura, but unlike those deities, lucifer sent his right hand man, caasimolar (naburus' equivalent) - he summons a pit fiend and they all fight, dipping in and out of visibility and granting true sight and casting defensively and fighting with fireballs and lightning bolts and blood blasts and disintegration rays and impossibly tough skin and spell resistance - it's tough, everyone's a massive statstick and there's all sorts of walls of fire (devils) and blood (lucius), but the northern rulers claim victory, with celeste killing the pit fiend with a critical disintegration ray as lucius does the same with a critical empowered blood blast to the invader who called the vampires oversized blood-sucking bats </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 10/20/19 - week later, everyone's settling into their new roles - miss info's men begin a disinformation campaign to praise asmodeus, jeff enjoys payoff of being king - celeste wants to play defensive, lucius convinces her that they should go aggro; let beastmen pillage again, target southern stationed armies - ... farholde invasion ... (walls of force and prismatic, bugbears rampaging) - tentative treaty to coexist as separate kingdoms; jeff promises to stop trying to be thorn v2 and peddle asmodeus if lucius helps him eliminate dessiter/naburus </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 10/27/19 - party wakes up, bring cindy (lucius' rogue), goes to hell - see nothing/nobody initially, jeff tries to summon dessiter but accidentally says naburus instead; magic fizzles - they see a shimmering haze in the distance, get closer to see it's a lava-fall over a broken structure with imps crawling all over - jeff introduces himself as a (minor) champion of asmodeus, asks some of the imps to get dessiter - they oblige, he appears at the top of the ruins, displeased with jeff's performance - jeff tells dessiter he quits, dessiter summons four contracted souls ("I'll show you what happens to contracted beings who betray me"): monk, fighter, witch, arcane trickster - back-and-forth fight, lots of cc (mass hold person, greater black tentacles) - imps raise the lava flow, most of the party quickly flies up but miss info is grappled - lucius creates a tsunami to counter part of the lava flow, saving her from being fully submerged - imps push lava up in geysers to hit flying people, dessiter laughs - party finally turns their attention to him, jeff has a hard time breaking through his defenses because dessiter holds a lot of power over his contractees, but celeste has no such issues and together they take out the contract devil </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> 11/03/19 - party decides to finally go after naburus - gate doesn't pull him through, but it shows his face and he's surprised; throws smoke, closes gate from his side - lucius is mad at jeff because he spawned it in front of lucius, not jeff - they decide to try again, this time spawning it in an emergency force sphere - they catch a good glimpse of his throne room before the gate closes again - third gate's the charm, they run through and find themselves in this massive, rocky, lava-y throne room with a central dais for the throne and two curling pathways up the side ending in massive walls of flame, geysers of lava and flame spurt up from the lavafall and ground respectively - naburus awaits, a colossal duke of hell with a legion of devils at his command, and he wastes few words on them, having expected this since they turned on dessiter previously; he smolders as he stares at jeff - but almost more pressing upon the party is how their magical abilities are being interfered with by asmodeus' magic; they lost all of their pre-cast spells upon entering naburus' realm - they also find out almost immediately when they try to re-buff up that surges of wild magic happen whenever they try to cast spells (or spell-like abilities, in the case of lucius' blast) - some of them are harmless, like causing daylight, or helpful, like summoning an animal under their control, but some of them are dangerous, like turning their own magic back on themselves - while lucius and miss info immediately get to work fighting the horned devils and belier devils flying over to the party, jeff keeps trying to get all his magical protections back while celeste starts blasting at naburus on his throne - everyone tries to get lucius and his dimensional-anchor-aura-skull to keep away from them; the actions of celeste and a belier devil have trapped him in an emergency force sphere in an acid fog, but he spawns a blood wall outside and travels through it to escape - two immolation devils launch firestorms and meteor swarms from in front of the walls of fire, keeping everyone on their toes - lucius and miss info make good progress, ducking out of the way of claw swipes and fireballs alike, as they take out one of the horned devils and one of the belier devils; miss info realizes that the wild magic doesn't affect items, so she pulls out a few scrolls she's been saving - celeste realizes that naburus is not just toughing out her spells, he's totally unfazed - she begins to look around - meanwhile, the magical surges caused jeff to fall asleep, invisible yet immune to true sight, so only lucius' see-invisibilty could see him - celeste disintegrates the other belier devil and lighting bolts the other horned devil - miss info begins making her way closer to one of the fire-walled-off sections, but she doesn't notice the first horned devil had regenerated and was coming for her - lucius rides his blast over to jeff, hoping to wake him up; naburus' meteor swarm smashes into lucius, but jeff sleeps right through the resulting fiery explosion thanks to his immunity - celeste properly disintegrates the other horned devil as it regenerates, similar to the one currently attacking miss information - lucius takes the time to shake jeff awake, and jeff goes to take care of the horned devil that's almost killed miss info - celeste could see that every time naburus ignored a hit, there was a flash of light from behind the walls of fire; she does a flyover and sees two enormous crystals, flickering with energy inside, each surrounded by three ice devils performing some sort of ritual - they try to attack the crystals first, but realize that the same asmodean energy summoned by this ritual protects the conduits as it does naburus - she uses reverse gravity to disrupt them on one side, opening up the crystal to being shattered by jeff while miss info recovers and lucius takes care of the immolation devils that keep trying to box him in with walls of fire - those three ice devils fly over to join the three at the other crystal, jeff kills two, lucius kills one, celeste damages one, miss info moves in preparing to countersong - she disrupts the ritual with her own music, letting the other three blast the crystal as well as the remaining ice devils (though some of celeste's magic is redirected back at her! it huuurts) - naburus creates an illusion of himself moving towards celeste, jeff and lucius believe it and move in - with miss info supporting her, celeste doesn't fall for it and blasts naburus, dealing the first damage he's actually taken this whole fight - jeff had landed right on top of naburus' throne in his pursuit of the illusion; naburus, still there, has wished to asmodeus for the power to see all of the attackers, so he unleashes his fury on jeff with his gnashing teeth and spiked tail and sharp claws - jeff almost dies, takes a lot of damage and also str/con damage from the pit fiend's bite disease/poison - celeste is blasting, lucius has been gathering power for a full round - naburus spits blasphemy spells at them to try to keep the party off of him, knowing that he must stand his ground in his own realm; jeff is the only one who succumbs, having taken enough str damage to go unconscious for the second time this fight (though harder to wake up than when he just fell asleep before, miss info had to restore his strength this time) - lucius gathers a final bit of power, then rides a quickened blast to warp to naburus then unleashes his strongest, fully empowered, last-ditch effort big dbz iterative blood whip - naburus falls! the party has emerged victorious! </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> epilogue - miss info keeps m.a.g.i.c.s.u.x. going, has them on the lookout for any heresy (religion of any kind) in the south; not head of southern military, just her crew - jeff reigns over the southern kingdom like a supreme tyrant (bloated, heavy fist, with extreme force) - lucius and celeste build up the north to be more than just wildlands, a military state that has people farms modeled on the ones zura has in the abyss - new city on the border of north and south to be for blood sports, to settle any differences - if jeff ever dies, the vampires will try to take the south :o </div> <div class = "pageNumber auto"></div>