Eon: The Throne of Discord (Fall 2009)

In which the party dungeon-crawls both forward and backward through the Ruins of Eldergrin, create their own dungeon in the Underdark, and finally emerge bang in the middle of epic political upheaval in Baldur. Oops.
==Episodes==
===Episode One: It Kinda Was Chess Notation===
:Battered, bloodied, traumatized, and out of spells thanks to their fight with Tyro Avampour, Ethan and Ashra find themselves in the Ruins of Eldergrin with Mister Bait Snugglesworth...and no one else. Shiolay and Ariana have disappeared into the night, they haven't seen Claire since they left Wilderfey Wild, the Dread Pirate Ming-ui's corpse is gone, and they have yet to see any sign of the kidnapped Prince Avimeus.
:Ashra goes to stare moodily at the pool of water into which the enemy cleric disappeared, nursing her (Note: As Ashra changed hands from Ashra 1.0 to Chimegumi, the genderless Ashra changed to female pronouns for convenience) wounds and regretting not telling Ariana to hit the pool with Lightning Bolt earlier. Ethan picks himself up off the ground, casts a hasty Ghoul Glyph on his new acquisition when Ashra isn't looking, double-checks that he doesn't have a pulse, and sits by Tyro's corpse to look for one very specific thing. He quickly finds the amulet centerpiece he seeks, and has only just palmed it when Claire pops up from one of the nearby half-destroyed structures.
:She looks around at the carnage of the previous battle, declares herself impressed, and starts looting Tyro's body like the professional that she is. She nets herself some gold and a magical bag that produces pimp hats in varying colors. She gives both Ethan and Ashra a hat as trophies, puts on a third, and stashes the remaining hats back in the bag. Business concluded, she turns to check out how her companions are doing and why half the party is gone when a buzzing sound heralds the arrival of a swarm of bloodmotes, from which they flee into the ruins. Mr. Snugglesworth loses a lot of blood and has to be carried.
:Once they emerge in a promisingly bloodmote-free location, the party hears the sounds of someone running up the tunnel ... this unfortunate person is summarily knocked out with a rock by Claire. Upon awaking, Kruglor grabs Claire and transports her to another plane with his dimension die, at which point she does her best "innocent little girl" impression, pretending that she had been the one to heal him. They find that they are in Valhalla, with rows of dwarves feasting. Kruglor finds the most powerful looking dwarf nearby, steals his hat, and vomits on him. The two return to the Prime Material Plane before any payback can occur.
:The reason Kruglor was making time down the tunnel becomes clear: a boneyard running after him. Just as the party begins to rev up for battle, Baudin Dommilan and Richard the Beautific step out of the forest, thanks to Travel by Plants, complaining at each other the whole way.
:Ethan stares in shock until Claire pokes him repeatedly and asks what's up. Ethan mumbles something about "my boss", "the Hall", and "can this day possibly get any more fucked up". High-speed introductions occur, Ethan demands to know when Fab Dick and Baudin got married, and then everyone remembers the boneyard.
:Kruglor attacks the bonyard and ends up surfing on it. Fab Dick uses Gust of Wind to great effect, blowing it apart bit by bit. The others are less able to damage it given its bony nature; Ashra wants to roll a boulder down the tunnel after it, but that would squish Kruglor and anyway she can't roll the boulder by herself. Kruglor grabs the boneyard and rolls the die. Luckily, he transports it to the Elemental Plane of Air, where it is instantly destroyed by the winds. He returns with an armload of femurs and, courtesy of a two, a saxophone which no one in the party can identify as a musical instrument. Boneyard defeated, the three negotiate company contracts. Fab D re-signs under the same terms as before, Baudin rejoins after confirming that he has no ill intentions towards Ethan, and Kruglor agrees to a contract which gives him rights to anything he finds, whiskey, and the right to take the remainder of his share in tutoring from Ashra about the planes if he does not find a share's worth of goods he wants when the party divides loot.
:The party returns to town to restock, during which Baudin, Fab Dick, and Kruglor decide to take a joyride on Kruglor's dimension die. They first end up on a deep level of Hell, where Kruglor barely evades death at the hands of a balor wielding a whip and a vorpal sword. He nearly manages to hit it in the crotch with the saxophone before returning to the Prime Material Plane. They then travel again to a plane containing sentient evil avians which they dub "giant evil chickens" and attempt to ride, driving them slightly insaner thanks to the beasts' Insanity Gas. They then transport these beasts to Mechanus, where they leave them in the gears before returning home. Meanwhile, Ethan, Claire, and Ashra go shopping and buy a wand of Cure Moderate Wounds, which is almost as thrilling.
:Shopping completed, the party returns to the ruins sans Mr. B. S. and return to the place with the writing on the wall which Ethan tends to talk to. The bodies have disappeared. Claire reads the writing on the wall (U G B E R G A R K G A R T R E U T V U) as code for "High Regent Xenteroth." Kruglor licks it and it burns his tongue, to no one's great surprise. The party also notices a crow watching them, which they think is probably a familiar of some sort. Fab D points out that, having seen it, he can scry on it later, and they decide they don't really want to pick a fight with the crow's master right now. They leave it alone and continue, discovering a giant chessboard made of petrified creatures. Surrounding the chessboard are tall chairs. A lot of examination from the sides takes place, and eventually several people carefully try stepping onto the board. When anyone steps on, they hear words in Infernal which mean "black ___ two." Interpreting this to mean that it must be nightfall for the puzzle to function, the party waits until dark, and the chessboard starts to say "Black ___ two, risk." Decoding this as "black wins in two, and now you can risk your lives doing this chess puzzle" the party works out a way for the black side to win in two moves, and after one slipup and use of a save point, manage to make the stairs into the ruins open...
===Episode Two: No, Honey===
:With the ruin staircase fully open, the party sets about searching for treasure in a typically paranoid fashion. After discovering a step which is Snake, another full of scrolls, another full of holy symbols (one of which is summarily defaced by Kruglor; Ashra's attempts to restrain him earn her his eternal? hatred), and one full of enough alchemists fire to blow up a hell of a lot, Claire gets freaked out by the whole "almost died in a firey explosion" thing and the party proceeds cautiously into the next room.
:They are greeted by six doors, each with the symbol of a different god. Claire prays to Olidammara for fun, causing spikes to crash down from the ceiling. Everyone runs away in terror except for Fab Dick, who identifies a clear illusion and stays in the room to laugh at everyone else. Screaming over, the party returns to the room as Ashra investigates the fake spikes on the ceiling and accidentally touches the very real forcefield which had been holding a large amount of water out of the room. Everyone but Ashra and Fab Dick escapes, though Ethan becomes waterlogged and can only crawl up the stairs. Claire, Snake, Kruglor, and several Ethan-provided skeletons go after Fab Dick and Ashra; Claire assists Ashra (while discovering that illithids, or at least one illithid, have legs, or at least one leg) while Kruglor acquires ... the femurs from two of Ethan's skeletons. Kruglor and Fab Dick dimension-die their way to Lolth's plane for a breath of fresh air, demonstrate the usefulness of the Dark Elf Silent for "Don't tase me, bro" to a bemused drider, and return with lungs full of air, which they use to swim out. As the water reaches the alchemists' fire, Claire backflips off of Ashra to get out of the way, and the entire party is finally on dry land.
:The party decides to rest in the stone steps while they wait for the water to recede. During the night, Claire has vivid nightmares of sand and green scales. Ethan sees the words mirror mirror tricky tricky appear on the inside of his step in oozing black letters and says hi in Infernal. The letters melt away. Shortly thereafter, Claire crawls into his step. He barely manages to dispel his Ghoul Glyph before he has a young assassin clinging to him. Meanwhile, Ashra and Fab Dick notice ghosts resetting the chess puzzle and thus trapping the party in the ruins as the entrance to the chessboard closes under them.
:The party awakes to find that the room ahead of them has dried out, and go down to check the doors in more detail. They bear both symbols of gods and writing. From left to right, the gods are Corellon Larethian, Kord, Olidammara, Erythnul, and Gruumsh. Corellon Larethian's door has his symbol of a crescent moon with writing in Infernal under it: "Manu protecta". Kord's door has the symbol of two overlaid crosses, like a compass rose, with one cross made of spears and other other of clubs. This door says "Brawler" in Infernal. Olidammara's door has his symbol of a split mask with one laughing side and one frowning side. His door says "Res molta" in Infernal. Erythnul's door has his Janus face symbol, one of a smiling lion and the other of a grinning demon. His door says "Murder" in Infernal. Gruumsh's door has his symbol of an eye on it, with "YTICESREVINU" written in Infernal script. The party quickly realizes that this anagrams to "Universe City".
:After extensive consultation with The Map, they opt for the door with Olidammara's symbol. It is trapped, with three wires at the bottom of the door; The Map suggests the "red" wire, but all three are red. Luckily, the Mirror of True Seeing reveals which wire is actually red, and Kruglor is directed to it, allowing him to sever it with his axe. They discover a room containing a mind flayer despair stone suspended above a pit with thin, razor-edged ledges. A quick pair of tests with Dancing Lights and a fire-enchanted crossbow bolt reveal that the center of the room contains an antimagic field, preventing levitation over the pit, but that magic items are not disenchanted by the field. In the mirror, the stone has the Infernal writing on it, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." Ethan remembers this phrase from epic poetry because he is secretly a total dork. Dropping a stone down reveals it's a long way down, and the party wonders if it may be Hell down there.
:This poses a double problem: for most of the party, the risk is that they will go to the edge, fail the Will save, be overcome with despair, and throw themselves over the edge. Even if they have a rope around their waist, the razor edges will cut it. Kruglor realizes, however, that Ashra can use her Suggestion ability to tell people "The death you deserve awaits on the other side," and thus use their suicidal leanings to compel them to do what the party wants them to do anyway. For Ethan, however, there is a far greater risk; as a creature running on his own will to exist in order to kill dragons dead, despair would cause him to instantly disintegrate, even if he were kept back from the ledge. No Suggestion could protect him from that. Further, Ashra's mindblast would not be sufficient to render him unaware of his sudden loss of will to exist.
:Kruglor and Baudin lash two of the slabs covering the stairs together and drop them into the hole, mostly blocking the opening but leaving some open corners. A timeshifted Kruglor opens the door on the other side, throws a femur at himself, then shuts the door again. Ashra comes up with a plan involving walking across on the buddy system, with her Suggestion for anyone who fails their save, and a rope for her. (This might not do much for the razor edges, but she mostly trusts her Will save.) However, this doesn't solve Ethan's problem. Despair stones are hard to turn off; the owner could do it, but no one here is the owner, and otherwise it's generally easiest to destroy them.
:The party decides that the best solution is, indeed, to just blow the darn thing up. Ethan decides to get the hell out of there before any of this goes down, and he accompanies Claire back to the stair room, which is the farthest away they can get. He hides himself in one of the stairs in case it's Will Save o'clock. Fab Dick decides to do the honors, with Ashra behind him in case he fails the save. He casts True Strike on himself and fires a bolt at the stone. He chips off a bit, damaging it, and a wave of despair is released. Ashra makes the save; he does not, but he does save against her mind blast, and begins to approach the edge. She tackles him, pins him to the ground, and remarkably declines to eat his brain, instead holding him down until he's no longer suicidal.
:It seems to be working, but not nearly enough damage was done. Claire offers Ashra the party's rainbow flask and a cast of Cat's Grace to help her aim. Everyone else hides as far away as possible while Ashra lobs the flask at the stone. It explodes impressively, smashing the stone and releasing a wave of despair which strikes everything for the surrounding two miles, whether hiding in a stairwell or not.
:It's a tense moment; Ethan holds himself together, but Kruglor and Claire are overcome by despair and gain Sanity Points. The party discovers later that The Map, too, has become depressed in its manner; they are not sure if this is an improvement or not. Everyone else is all right, and Baudin runs easily along the ledge and sits down in front of the door. Ashra insists on going back to check on the others, and commands him to stay right there and wait. When she rejoins the group, Kruglor seems as together as ever, but Claire is nearly catatonic, and when Ashra reads her thoughts she hears screaming. Ashra suggests "Calm down, because Ethan will take care of things," which gives Claire enough of a lifeline to allow her to move, though she's still rather out of it.
:The party makes their way in pairs across the despair stone room, holding hands so each can catch the other if they fall. They make it to the other side and examine the door for traps before realizing that timeshifted!Kruglor opened and shut the door without triggering anything. It does, indeed, open easily and safely.
:The party makes it to the other side of the despair room and finds themselves in a long hallway with a tapestry bearing Olidamarra's symbol at the other end. Inspection of the other side with the mirror of true sight reveals different images to different party members: Tiamat to Ethan, a house full of femurs (including that of the tarrasque) to Kruglor, a white horse in an alleyway to Fab Dick, cancerous lungs to Snake, and endless gears to Ashra. Ethan starts hyperventilating, a strange sight in someone who doesn't habitually breathe, but snaps out of it after a while. Claire is not allowed to see because of her general mental state, and for the first and hopefully last time, Ashra says "honey." Ashra rebuts the idea of using Suggestion to get Ethan to calm down by assuring him that Ashra will fix everything. Ethan also says that he would prefer not to have any mind-influencing magic used on him, and he'll be better in a bit.
:The party debates what these strange images may mean. Fab Dick saw his own death at Claire's hands, and Tiamat may have been involved with one of Ethan's deaths. Maybe. The endless gears look like the plane of Mechanis to Ashra; later she will remember that they are also the same gears she saw in the Nautilus as the third tapestry about the Fall of Xenteroth. The femur-ful house seems like a plausible death for Kruglor, though the justice of Kruglor the Reviled dying happily of old age is debatable, but them's the breaks. As everyone gets into full discussion mode and Ashra starts overanalyzing, Snake suggests that it's all meant to mess with the party's heads. Ethan definitely saw something disturbing to him, and the best way to mess with Ashra is to throw her something that doesn't quite make sense, so this seems like a promising theory, and the party decides to forge onwards for now.
:Beyond the tapestry is a secret door, through which lies a pit with the final mirror in the mirror puzzle. Light is meant to bounce between this mirror, the nearby Temple of Corellon Larethian, and the mirror back by the writing on the wall. Once aligned, the mirrors will open another door near the chess puzzle once night falls.
===Episode Three: It's Zoroaster Jones! Squee!===
:The party returns to the chess puzzle and attempts to rest until nightfall. Claire hides inside an arrow slit to sleep, and the party makes one of its famous fake camps. They are awakened, however, and discover that an army of bugbears with siege engines is approaching. Tobo and Andrey sneak up close enough to see that the army has the standard of Queen Rebecc-is of Goneril, contemplate stealing it, then return to camp. Kruglor attempts to scare the army off, but they don't seem to care. Ashra suggests that the party escape down the hole into the emotion stone chamber, but a trap has been triggered and sand is blowing at high speed down that hallway, closing off that means of escape.
:With no alternative, the party stands and fights. Ethan takes out the siege engines and some of their operators with Neg Ball as Tobo regales the party with tales of bard camp. Kruglor runs up to the army, allows them to surround him, and hacks at as many as he can. Ashra loads her wand whip and fires as soon as the group gets in range, taking out several more. Claire takes potshots from her safe location. Ethan Cloudkills much of the army, Ashra mind blasts the last few, and the party finishes them off in various ways. (Ashra eats the brain of one, Claire stabs another in the eyes, etc.) Some of the bugbears rise as Ethan's zombies.
:A strange darkness descends early over the land as something large flies off in the distance. The party considers what this might mean -- perhaps a dragon, but they'd better not mention that to Ethan. Ethan realizes that the darkness is actually Deeper Darkness. The moon shines, opening the new entrance, and the party decides it's best to get in while it's open. Through a tiny door at the bottom, the party discovers a statue which Claire identifies as Zoroaster Jones, legendary drow adventurer. Ashra detects two minds besides those of the party in the area: one very emotional, the other very rational. When the moonlight travels through the door and falls on the statue, it animates, and he introduces himself to the party.
:A beholder wearing spectacles then rushes in and yells at everyone to run to the "music room". Almost everyone does, but Baudin, having read in his book on aberrations that beholders hate sound, stays behind to throw bombs at it, while Kruglor stays behind because he's Kruglor. Claire runs back for long enough to tell Kruglor that he is "retarded", accompanied by a punch to the back of the head, then she rejoins the party in Getting Out Of There. Kruglor grapples the beholder (oh, not again) and dimension-dies his way into the Positive Energy Plane (aka Elemental Plane of Europop), where he licks the beholder and is slowed and charmed for his troubles. He manages to drop his negative energy axe before the plane shift, saving it, and the two also resist exploding from the positive energy filling their bodies. The Map is cured of his depression from the emotion stone, and now wants everyone to know the good news about Pelor. Upon their return, they join the party in fleeing from what is identified as an older and scarier beholder, the mother of their bespectacled friend. With no help from Zoroaster Jones, who thinks it's "more of an adventure" not to assist, they make their way to the music room along with the beholder, who collapses the passages into the room with his disintegrate ray to give them time.
:The room contains a large organ. The beholder makes tea and cookies out of random materials and offers them to the party as they try to discover a way to defeat the enormous beholder which is attempting to disintegrate its way into the room. The party has recently found a scroll of what appears to be music, and Ethan and Claire begin to study it. Ashra and Kruglor begin developing contingency plans in case they can't solve the music puzzle; she considers her chances of eating the beholder's brain, while he decides to put bombs where the beholder would detonate them on entrance into the music room.
:Meanwhile, in the Actually Productive Corner, Ethan and Claire put their heads together over the weird music. It is not chess notation. It is not normal music notation, either: the lines on the staff are in strange groupings, and there is no indication of clef. Ethan also realizes that it looks nothing like what musical notation from a thousand years ago should, either. Eventually, they discover that it is meant to be read turned ninety degrees from what one would expect, that the strange grouping of lines indicates placement on the organ, and that the direction of the note stems indicates which hand is meant to play each note. They finally manage to play the song as written, and discover that it is a song the sound of which kills beholders. Claire works this out a moment before it sounds, and casts Deep Slumber on the friendly beholder, saving him. A hole in one organ pipe opens, large enough that the party could squeeze through
:The party decides to keep the beholder as Claire's mount, and upon learning he has no name, Ethan asks if he can call him Herr Doctor. Exhausted, the party makes use of the music room's relative safety to rest.
===Episode Four: Dargon Time===
:After resting, Claire awakes to find she was using Snake as a blanket. That sorted out, Herr Doctor clears the debris from the entrance to the music room and the party discovers the looted body of the big beholder with two scrolls: one a map of beholders' eye rays written in Dwarven and the other beginning "I prepared..." One explosion later, the party hears something making a ticking sound and discovers that something is probably psionically shielding its consciousness from Ashra's thought-dar. They decide to beat a hasty retreat up the organ pipe. Bringing up the rear, Herr Doctor fires his lazors sleep ray at the pursuer, and they hear the snores of success, but decide to get out of there as quickly as possible anyway. Ethan can't climb well, and Ashra's personal levitation works but she is unable to levitate him, so she carries him up the pipe after he disenchants his clothing. Kruglor discovers a spike stuck into the pipe near the top and yanks it out, deafening everyone in the party except Ethan but not sparing him telepathic scolding from his fellow party members. After going up for some ways, the pipe branches out horizontally, and the party stops climbing and is able to walk along.
:The party walks for a long time along the pipe in silence (as far as they know) and eventually discover an enormous room with a sleeping, apparently dead red dragon bound by great chains and a bunch of numbered mosaics depicting various colors of chromatic dragons and the Ille Draconum heroes Heckle, Hjartlos, and Gabriel. A statue of High Regent Xenteroth is at the far end of the room, past the tiles. The party attempts to conceal the contents of the room from Ethan while deciding what to do, but he figures it out pretty quickly anyway because there's really only one thing that causes everyone to switch to sealed telepathy and say "Oh, nothing, Ethan, really."
:The decision makes itself even more when the dragon wakes up. The chains dissolve and it takes off. Claire rides Herr Doctor on the long drop from the organ pipe to the ground, while Ethan accepts a piggyback ride from Ashra to shouts of "Yippie-kie-yay, motherfucker!" and "Fuck, Ethan, when did you get so heavy?!" respectively. It's a long drop, and they have to disengage and reengage levitation in order to make it down in a timely fashion.
:Kruglor, left without a corresponding floating aberration to ride, uses a combination of rope, grappling hook, and spike to get down some of the way, then leaps onto the dragon axe-first. He strikes it a mighty blow, and it responds to this cordial introduction by scraping him off on the ceiling; he rolls the dice as he plummets toward the floor and ends up high above the Outlands, where he tackles air elementals in an attempt to slow himself down. Claire gets into position, studies, and fires off a death attack at the dragon with a bolt of lightning. As the dragon throws around breath attacks and Ethan heads for the puzzle, Kruglor reappears with enough momentum still to shatter his right arm into little bits of pain.
:Claire throws another rainbow flask at the dragon and discovers that this one replicates the effects of Color Spray. Another breath attack bounces off Ashra's spell resistance but knocks Herr Doctor unconscious. Ashra runs over and heals him with the wand, and the dragon takes off to to go one on one against Ethan.
:Claire and Herr Doctor attempt to solve the puzzle. It appears that the mosaics flip when tapped or struck as long as two or more of the mosaics that are touched at once add up to the last. The dragon and Ethan trade breath weapons and Neg Balls, and Ethan isn't looking very good after a while. Ashra heals Kruglor, convinces him to chug a vial of Wolves' Milk, and points the coked-up barbarian at the dragon. He deals the finishing blow, exploding the dragon and his weapon as his axe's final rune activates.
:Claire and Herr Doctor manage to solve the puzzle of the mosaics just in time to prevent a second dragon from reappearing, and the party investigates the statue of High Regent Xenteroth (creepy! and anachronistic... what's he doing here?) and the reliquary, which is full of lovely treasure. Specifically, a copy of every exotic weapon that exists in Eon, a lovely set of scrolls, the Hammer of Moradin, immediately claimed by Kruglor, and an entropic reaper's scythe and lantern, which go to Herr Doctor because it would be just so cool to have a beholder with a scythe in its mouth. The Xenteroth statue has a real gem in his staff. When Ethan uses Detect Magic, he realizes that the gem is incredibly magical. It also feels very familiar, in a way. In fact, it kind of feels like...him. Ethan suspects that it might be a phylactery, but has no idea to whom it could belong. As most party members settle in to rest, Ethan bribes Kruglor with some Wolves' Milk to chip away at the statue with his newfound hammer of Moradin. Several hours of pounding later, an exasperated Ashra tells them freeze the statue and shatter it. They do so, Ethan a cool stone staff that's probably very, very important to some lich out there.
:As the party rests, an ettin approaches. The people on watch fail to hear it, but Ashra had been sitting up to watch Ethan rest, and she hears it from in the reliquary and tells Kruglor and Claire about it. Claire takes out her crossbow and points it in the general direction of the newcomer with a look of "My party exploded a dragon and I'm tired. Do you really want to try something?" while Kruglor and Ashra set out to actually tangle with it, Ashra from the air and Kruglor on the ground. Ashra mind blasts it and Kruglor, accidentally allowing it to beat up Kruglor with its boxing gloves. Back with the rest of the party, Claire shoots at the general area of the commotion and resets the dragon-summoning puzzle by accident, but manages to fix it before any harm is done. Ashra eats one of the ettin's brains and watches it flop around, then tips over Kruglor for good measure. The next morning, the party opens a trapdoor in the reliquary and starts down the staircase below...
===Episode Five: Interview with a Nine-Hundred Year Old Lich===
:Kruglor serves as the party's coalmine canary by running cheerfully down the stairs ahead of everyone else. ("When I said I was making an untrained trap check by pushing the barbarian down the stairs, I didn't mean it!") He finds a door, opens it, and upon finding a hallway full of doors runs down the hall knocking on every one. One mind blast later, the party discovers that the rooms are full of zombies and the barbarian should be allowed to move again. Ethan claims a few zombies for his own, and the rest of the party defeats the remainder using Ashra's fire wands and Baudin's undead rebuking while Ethan is safely out of the blast radius. Herr Doctor attempts to turn one zombie to stone, only to turn it accidentally to brass instead thanks to a two.
:In one room the party finds a strange set of runes in a language they can't identify, and in another, the party finds a sarcophagus. Baudin opens it and is immediately poked and frozen by the demilich inside. He appears to be a creation of Xenteroth's, and claims to be from a time which would make him approximately nine hundred years old. He paralyzes Herr Doctor and zaps Kruglor with Harm, but is friendly once he gets his bearings, and Ashra and Ethan proceed to talk to him in Infernal. He pretends that Herr Doctor's antimagic eye is still in effect by counterspelling the party's spells, and claims not to speak Common, though he probably actually does. He appears to be some sort of guardian from the time of ancient Eldergrin, and the party breaks it to him gently that these are now the Ruins of Eldergrin.
:While they're talking, Kruglor slips off down the hall and discovers a group of people -- some rogues and at least one mind flayer -- going after some Frozen Fates down below. Upon returning, he agrees to use this information to get the lich out of the room as long as Ashra doesn't get to know what he found out. The party agrees, and the lich thunders off downstairs to deal with the intruders. The party decides to defend the fates themselves as well. Just then, the speakstone rings and Vishnu, drunk, tells the party that the revolution has succeeded. The party has a morale surge which heals them and recharges their spells, and after some quick party buffs Claire Dimension Doors everyone to the frozen fate room. They find themselves up against Tyro, Poetry, what appears to be High Regent Xenteroth, and ... the demi-lich, who has apparently been convinced to join forces with them. Oh darn.
:Xenteroth mind blasts the party, freezing Claire. Ashra flips upside down above the doorway and fires her wand whip into the hallway, only to discover that all of the enemies seem to be able to dodge. The lich is very well buffed, but actually too large to fit through the doorway so far. Baudin tangles with Xenteroth and nearly gets his brain eaten; Ashra and Kruglor work together to pry the two apart. Xenteroth Suggests that Herr Doctor "protect Claire", which limits his effectiveness.
:Meanwhile, Ethan defends the frozen fate statues from a group of flaming outsiders (not that kind of flaming). He takes fairly good care of himself with Neg Ball, and refuses offers of assistance. The rest of the party has enough to deal with anyway, as Tyro and Poetry are greater invis'd, but the party manages to find both. A two while Baudin and Poetry fight temporarily ages him, and he takes it personally, but Claire steals the kill to finish her off. Ashra manages to find Tyro by mind blasting him, and begins attaching tentacles.
:Everyone gets very tired and is almost out of resources. The party decides it's probably do-over time.
===Episode Six: The Episode That Shall Not Be Named===
:Rewind to the meeting with the demi-lich as the party decides to try again when some of them can roll over a five. Ashra and Ethan speak to him in Celestial and Infernal and discover that he is probably significantly younger than he claims. The demi-lich notices Baudin has an amulet piece and is unconvinced that it's a fake, but is distracted by other questions. Baudin and Kruglor take Herr Doctor outside and look at the runes, which Ashra and Claire recognize as signifying Xenteroth's sequence because they are mathematical geniuses. Specifically, the runes are a visual representation based on an old counting system in which the spaces between fingers rather than the fingers themselves are used when counting on one's hands.
:After feeding zombies to Herr Doctor, Baudin and Kruglor manage to sufficiently disgust the lich that he appreciates the party closing the door, though the lead lining prevents any telepathic communication by the party. Ethan, Ashra and Claire interview the lich on what is going on while Baudin and Kruglor tow Herr Doctor on a rope down the hall.
:The lich still pretends to be older than he is, and the party discover from him that the ruins will do terrible things to anyone who's been there for too long. Claire's nightmares are probably a symptom of this. The lich really wants everyone out of there at once, and Ethan makes an impressive display of emotion, telling him about the party's tragic losses and claiming that the party really just wants to go home. The lich tells the party that there is a way out through a trapdoor in the main throne room, and that it will be the most direct route to the surface.
:While Ethan talks to the lich, Ashra slips Claire her mirror and asks Claire to take a look at the lich, as she's more likely to be able to do it without him noticing. She sees that the symbol around his neck, which appears to be a six-fingered hand holding lightning bolts, is actually glamored and is in fact a symbol of Tiamat. He might be pretending to be a cleric of a different god to avoid persecution, they guess, and since not fighting the demi-lich is working out so well for now, they decide not to reveal this new information to Ethan.
:Meanwhile, the intrepid adventurers and their beholder on a rope run straight into Tyro and Poetry's sneak attacks, and Kruglor sends the three to another plane in the hopes they can heal before returning. They find a jungle containing blue flowers and grab some, then notice the approach of an enormous cat. Herr Doctor, newly unparalyzed, charms it into submission before their return and orders it to accompany them. Meanwhile, the lich-chatting group hears Kruglor's scream and sets off to find their comrades. Ethan convinces the demi-lich that the party will help defend the fates, while Claire discovers (through translation) that her dreams are of a fate which will take her over if she goes entirely crazy in the Ruins.
:Kruglor, Baudin, Herr Doctor and the cat return, and Kruglor, still extremely wounded, rolls the die and plane shifts away again. This time he ends up in the Outlands, in the wreckage of Boccob's temple, standing in front of Boccob himself. (Not like Boccob cares.) He attempts to lick Boccob and, for his troubles, is made first extremely gay and then extremely straight, undressed and relieved of all items in his inventory, highly aroused, and then sent back to the Material Plane with only his hammer to the god's sweet whisper of "fuck you."
:Meanwhile, the party fights black-armored mooks, and Baudin is knocked unconscious. Ashra eats a mook who tried to stab her.
:High Regent Xenteroth appears, causing the demi-lich to kneel in fealty and then attack the party. He hits Ashra with a lightning blade (sigh) before she levitates away, and Ethan starts trying to convince him that this is not the real Xenteroth. Xenteroth's mind blast does not affect the party members, but freezes the Very Large Cat. Ashra asks Ethan for his wand of Cure Minor Wounds (which was once Ashra's, but had been given to Ethan when Ashra picked up the Cure Moderate wand), intending to snap it over the lich's head if he could not otherwise be defeated. Ethan drops it, too busy to hand it over, but Ashra is too occupied with Xenteroth, so that plan gets scrapped.
:Upon return, Kruglor ejaculates while spinning around, revealing Poetry behind him. Baudin shouts at him to "Hit her with your penis, Kruglor," and Kruglor grabs her and plane shifts away. Claire and Ashra fight "Xenteroth," who is revealed by the mirrors to be Tyro in a magical disguise, while Baudin nearly bleeds to death. Tyro nearly knocks Ashra unconscious, then Claire finishes him off. Once dead, he reverts to his true form, and Ethan finally persuades the lich that he'd been deceived. The lich screams about traitors and tricksters and starts taking out mooks right and left. Ethan asks if the demi-lich can be healed with negative energy; he cannot. Fail undead is fail.
:Meanwhile on another plane, Kruglor rapes Poetry. He returns to the Prime Material Plane, barely alive, and she eventually escapes, casts Greater Invisibility on herself, and presumably runs away. Ethan tells Kruglor that he knows this spell called Power Word Castrate, and if Kruglor ever even so much as thinks about maybe doing something a little bit like that ever again, he's willing to try it out.
:More mooks arrive, accompanied by Marcus Fairlan and Sadzuko Udina, and visible in the frozen fate room is Brezcar, standing in a summoning circle, about to kill the prince. Ethan freaks out a bit at seeing Marcus Fairlan again for the first time in over a year, but Marcus doesn't notice him. Ashra floats over the cat and pretends to be Grax, scaring the mooks away from her and from Kruglor, currently surviving on wolf's milk and rage. Marcus runs over to the nearly dead Baudin, grabs him, and teleports away. Claire uses a necklace of Time Stop for great justice, dimension dooring next to Brescar and filling his head with crossbow bolts to save the prince. As she begins to lead him out of the room, Sadzuko runs after them, only to be blocked by a trip from Claire and a giant zombie from Ethan. Ethan has an incident with Time Stop as well, and piles on the hurt with Magic Missile. Claire finishes Sadzuko off as the demi-lich runs into the frozen fate room and uses a Limited Wish to collapse the room and seal the fates, and himself, away forever.
:The zombie barely pulls the prince to safety. Ethan grabs Tyro's necklace (which Tyro had recently swiped from Baudin's body) as the party prepares to run the hell away, then the eyes of the statue of High Regent Xenteroth open...
=== Episode Seven: In Which a Dragon and a Staircase Explode ===
:As the ruins aren't immediately about to fall, the party begins to discuss what is to come next when a call comes from Vishnu. The Malvont occupation has ended! Unfortunately, that's the Goneril Army above them, but he is going to come rescue the party in his mech if they can survive for the twelve hours it will take him to make it to the arena. The party receives a surge of energy, recharging their abilities and healing them. Fab Dick arrives.
:As they prepare to go up the steps, a pair of alchemist's fire grenades fall down the center of the stone staircase and explode. Herr Doctor and Claire float up the stairs to investigate and discover Tyro's sister Royt in another room off the stairs. She takes a death attack at Herr Doctor with her crossbow, but fails to kill him. Kruglor charges up the stairs to the secret door in the reliquary; the summoning trap on the door fails, and he claims a magical shield with retractable spikes. Once Herr Doctor shuts his antimagic eye, Ashra levitates up and mind blasts Royt. As she approaches, intending to eat Royt's brain, she discovers the team of hobgoblins behind her wired with alchemist's fire. She manages to immobilize all but one with another mind blast, but that one pushes a fellow bomber down the stairs, where it rolls to the bottom and explodes, injuring most of the party. Claire shouts at Ashra to get out of the way, and once no other party members are in the near vicinity, she dashes up the stairs, throws her own alchemist's fire into the wired group, and runs to the top of the steps, cackling madly. The explosion is enormous and destroys much of the stairwell, kills the cat, and sets Ethan on fire, in addition to harming most of the party. The prince splashes some water on Ethan, who rides Herr Doctor to the top of the stairs. Fab D flies while Ashra and the prince levitate above the broken stairwell. Claire is not cowed by Ashra's yelling, but obeys when commanded by an irritated Ethan's to hold his cloak until it is dry.
:The party returns to the reliquary, from which they can hear the sounds of the Goneril army on the surface and of a new dragon in the main room. Claire attempts to Dimension Door the party into the center of the room, but the spell is only halfway successful, scattering Ethan, Claire, Ashra and Fab Dick in the middle of the room and leaving Herr Doctor, Kruglor, and the prince in the reliquary. The statue of Xenteroth is still awake and stares at Ethan, who is preoccupied with the dragon. Ethan starts throwing spells at the dragon, including a new lightning bolt, while Kruglor, emerging from the reliquary, runs past it while yelling to draw its attention. Claire shoots it and Ashra misses with her new Arcane Fire.
:Just then a hole opens in the ceiling and an enormous drill crashes down, followed by ropes and the beginning of the Goneril Army. Vladomil Primakov breaks from a group of soldiers and runs, pursued by them. He gives a strange and dubious speech which proves inspirational to the party as Fab D and Ashra take out much of the army with fireballs.
:Meanwhile, the dragon picks up Kruglor in its mouth and flies into the air. While guarding with his shield, he finds the flame ducts in the back of the dragon's throat and slams into them with the hammer, causing the entire dragon to explode and fall to the ground in two pieces. Fab D dodges the tail as it hits the ground, and Kruglor, barely alive with many of his limbs and ribs shattered, crawls out of the head as the prince runs to save him. More waves of the Goneril Army arrive, and Ashra and Fab D continue throwing spells at them.
:Ethan, no longer faced with a dragon, notices Xenteroth, who shoots arcane fire at him and demands the return of his staff. Ethan heals himself, sets the staff on the ground, and it flies back to Xenteroth's hand and mends itself. Claire and Herr Doctor dimension door behind the statue and hide, noticing Infernal writing stating that the throne will ascend when the "number of God" is used.
:The army attacks the prince as he tries to heal Kruglor, and Vladomil also finds himself surrounded. Vladomil asks for rescue from the party; Ashra attempts to reach him to tag him with levitation and get him away from the soldiers surrounding him, but is unable to get over there. Fab D and the prince cover the area with thick fog, and Ashra screams at the army that this is the 'fog of death' and they should cower and hope for mercy. They buy it, though Xenteroth dispels the clouds a moment later.
:Xenteroth notices Herr Doctor and attempts to push him away with his staff, failing repeatedly due to Herr Doctor's impressive armor before finally knocking him across the room. Claire, meanwhile, hides on the other side of the throne and looks as harmless and not there as possible. Despite Ethan's polite overtures, Xenteroth begins casting Vengeful Eye of God, a spell that usually requires four epic clerics (and kills them afterwards), by himself. He's pretty hardcore. As this might destroy so much that even Plane Shift won't save the party, they need a way to unsummon him before he finishes.
:After some debate about what the "number of God" is, the Prince reveals that he knows it to be 4 9 13, at which point the party begins to work on resetting the puzzle. Claire does most of the actual tapping until Xenteroth casts a spell at her duplicating the effects of lichbane, at which point Ashra takes over the physical setting off of the cards, listening to Claire for which ones she should tap. Xenteroth does not attack Ashra. Almost at the last minute (as always), the party manages to make the number of God face up, and Xenteroth is sucked into the throne, being replaced by his statue. The party runs and jumps onto the throne, which rises through the ceiling and up onto the chess arena, which is surrounded by Goneril soldiers. Now that Xenteroth is a statue, Ethan steals the top half of his staff again.
:Ashra discovers that yelling at ballistae that they should go ahead and try shooting at her does, in fact, cause them to try shooting at her. The party sets to work on solving the chess puzzle, which has been changed, so that they can get back down into the water battle room and wait for Vishnu. After repeatedly solving the puzzle and discounting the correct solution, they finally make the correct moves and the doorway opens, allowing them to run through the doors just before the ghosts reset the puzzle, sealing them in. Vladomil flips off the army as they duck inside.
:In the morning, as the doors open, Vishnu arrives. The party steps into the light and realizes that they have finally scored an airship.
=== Episode Eight: Now it's REALLY Crazy Time ===
:As the party stares at their new ship, Vishnu in his mech screams at them to get inside as ballistae begin to fire at them. Vladomil runs and jumps onto the ship with the promise that "if we don't like [him], we'll throw [him] off" from Ethan. Claire and Herr Doctor Dimension Door into the kitchen, dropping Tyro's body on Sam's stove and grabbing a pie from the now very confused Sam. Fab D flies onto the ship. Ethan runs and sends a large zombie to pick up Kruglor, whose many broken limbs prevent him from running anywhere, and jog to the boat. Ashra runs most of the way there before what is apparently her left leg is shattered by a ballista bolt, and she levitates the rest of the way onto the ship.
:After everyone is pulled aboard, the balloon above the ship inflates and the Jade Kracken III lifts high into the air, far from the army. At Ashra's request, Sam feeds Kruglor a Cure Moderate Wounds Pie, which also gets him high and kills the pain. Vishnu wants to talk to the party, and Claire presents him with Brezcar's head, as well as Tyro's burned body, which is now covered in beholder spit as well from Herr Doctor's ineffective attempt to put out the fire from dropping him on the stove. They smell a strong odor of urine and alcohol, and notice Valera Oak III hanging off the side of the ship with a grappling hook, looking extremely confused and drunk. They pull him aboard, Claire attempts to pickpocket him and gets punched for the trouble, and Ashra mind blasts him to buy the party time to decide how to handle him. They decide to allow him to wake up and explain himself, which he does: he has no idea where or, in fact, when he is, as he tends to get just that drunk. They (possibly) allow him to stay on in exchange for providing him with moonshine.
:The ship, which is sentient, teaches Ashra how to pilot it, and she does so (floating above the ground due to her leg) while the party eats dinner and healing pie and talks business, discussing the various places they could go, why they have a beholder and Vladomil Primakov in the party, etc. After much debate, they decide to head to Barrensburg to restock before going to Baldur. Before bed, Mister Bait Snugglesworth takes over the helm from Ashra, Ethan and Ashra go to the medical bay and set her leg, and Vladomil does the same for Kruglor's many injuries.
:Kruglor spits off the side of the boat into Elderfey Forest, gaining the party a pursuer in the form of an angry blue drake. Ashra's Arcane Fire misses completely, while Claire somehow manages to hit it with a crossbow bolt from half a mile away. Fab D gets the party out of the situation by throwing a Gust of Wind at the balloon, shooting the ship forward at high speed. As they watch the drake disappear into the distance, Kruglor tosses a hat he got from Tyro over the side, while Claire throws some alchemist's fire overboard. Remember, only you can start Alchemist's Fires.
:Claire and Ashra go to a remote part of the ship together for much of the next day. While away from everyone else, Claire asks Ashra to hypnotize her and try to help her look through her memories. Ashra agrees. Claire asks that she be led to her memories of Nerul, and generally of the past which is blocked to her.
:Ashra has her relax and says the standard set of hypnotist things as best she can recall them. With some help from her psionics, Claire is soon under her control, and she's piggybacking along in Claire's mind and seeing what she sees. She takes her back to the ride of Nerull, where she remembers fleeing her burning house and running in terror. She also remembers the address of the house in Fire's Alley where she grew up. As she ran, a manifestation of Nerull touched her and said "So reaps the sower of strife." That is all of that memory Claire can recall.
:Ashra then looks for any other early memories Claire has. She finds only one: standing in the Assassin's Guild as a preteen, being taught the use of her crossbow. She sees Claire's singleminded love for that crossbow, and her focus on it as she practiced hitting targets.
:When the hypnosis ends, Ashra remains in Claire's mind for a while, and sees the contents of her dream: "Only the faith healing of Pelor overpowers Nerull and his evil, and can remove the horrid curse that binds you. Save your soul by dismembering your body, so sacrifice your life. Pelor commands you." When Claire is done with the hypnosis, she has temporarily suppressed one of her Sanity Points.
:While all this is going on, Ethan and Fab Dick watch Versus get to know Valera, by which we mean 'drink with Valera', Kruglor tries to offer constructive criticism on Sam's pie in the form of "I think you can do better", and Herr Doctor chillaxes in the ship's kitchen with Sam.
:The next morning, Claire and Herr Doctor seem to be acting a bit strange. Claire is holding on to the entropic reaper's lantern like a teddy bear, and it holds thirty-six lights instead of one. Claire and Herr Doctor claim to be feeling fine, but are grinning crazily and acting a bit irrationally paranoid. Herr Doctor's thoughts detect as "I want to start a soul collection" and "I never knew how much fun killing could be," then Herr Doctor and Claire become entirely undetectable to Ashra, and stop being able to respond to telepathy, while at the same time insisting that they are fine and growing angry spontaneously. Claire does not remember the house number of her house in Fire's Alley, and when asked what list Ashra is on, she claims that everyone on the ship is on her "protect" list, a wild inaccuracy for the real Claire. She does, however, remember names and other facts from before the Ruins of Eldergrin, and she does not want a hug. She becomes extremely suspicious when Ethan detects magic, which he does all the time, and attempts to concentrate on him even though he's undead.
:Ethan grabs the scythe and rolls the die to take it to another plane. He ends up back on the Negative Energy Plane face to face with Sadzuko Udina, and spends forty seconds suffering horrifying Living Memory. He returns with the scythe and pulls himself together, but Kruglor tells him that it didn't help.
:As the party discuss how to fix them, Sam mentions his strange dream: dealing Three Dragon Ante cards and coming up with a black 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and a Tiamat 13. Ethan gets twitchy and wanders away, too unsettled to deal with dragons and having no dreams to talk about. Eventually Kruglor reveals his dream, as well, which consisted of the words "Feed them decently the hol(l)y potion, berries, and chocolate. Avoid the mistletoe."
:The party discovers some holly and mistletoe of unknown origins. Kruglor nearly blows up the entire ship in midair by bombing these herbs, but Ethan tells him that tindertwigs are plentiful and will not abruptly end the entirety of Eon midseason. Kruglor feeds the two crazies berries and chocolate. The beholder can taste the holly's bitterness, to his own surprise as beholders are usually completely without taste.
:Claire and Herr Doctor get worse. They serve the party tea despite having no tea to make, and the rest of the party decide not to try drinking it. They also have paranoid rages, and need to be frequently reassured that they are trusted.
:After consultation with the others, Ashra borrows the dimension die from Kruglor. She drops her pack, tucks the scythe into the back of her belt, and makes a grab for the lantern while rolling the die. Claire, however, manages to Dimension Door on top of the ship before Ashra disappears, so Ashra does not have the lantern when she travels, ending up on the Elemental Plane of Water. She holds her breath and releases the scythe, returning to the Prime Material Plane soaking wet but otherwise none the worse for wear.
:The party asks Sam to put together holly, chocolate, and mistletoe, which he does. Fab D uses telekinesis to force Claire's mouth open, and Ashra shoves half the concoction down her throat, then forces her to swallow. She becomes briefly saner before returning to her previous state, and is now furious at Ashra, attempting (and failing) to kick her in the broken leg.
:The party continues to look for courses of action. Ethan, Ashra, Fab D, and Snake sit down with copies of the Libris Mortis and Ethan's other books and have a speed-reading study group with the different translations, researching all they can about entropic reapers. They learn that touching the scythe probably did this to the two, who are now suffering an apparently irreversible transformation into entropic reapers themselves. This also puts Kruglor, Ashra, and Ethan at risk, as they have all touched the scythe, but they had less exposure and are showing no ill effects so far.
:Herr Doctor and Claire tumble around the room, smashing much of the kitchen. Sam cowers in a corner. Kruglor and Ethan realize that they only have one dose left, but two crazy people. Ethan disenchants the center jewel of the amulet, hands it to Kruglor, and tells him to protect it with his life. He then casts Magic Jar, knocking Herr Doctor's soul out of his body and trapping his own soul inside the amulet piece. Ashra and Fab Dick dose Claire with the second dose of potion as Herr Doctor, trapped in the jar, goes entirely insane. Ethan uses the powers of Magic Jar to look at Claire and Herr Doctor's souls. They have been affected by powerful necromantic magic, but their souls are at least still there.
:Claire flees to the top of the ship, attaching herself to the top of the balloon via Spider Climb. Ashra levitates up after her to watch, and Claire manages to pierce her spell resistance with a spell of Deep Slumber, sending her falling onto the balloon, sliding off the side of the balloon, and plummeting towards the ground. Fab D flies out and catches her by the arm, grabs the rope Valera left hanging from the side of the ship, and manages through great effort to pull himself and Ashra up one-handed. He then faces the moral decision of whether to drop Ashra over the side or otherwise maim her before she wakes fully up, as the shock of being caught (with a broken leg) had already shocked her out of the spell. He settles for casting True Strike and smacking her in the face.
:The party turns its attention to decoding the dreams. After much discussion of the possible implications of "decently" and the various numbers that always crop up, they eventually discover that the messages are meant to be decoded by only reading the words in the places that are in Xenteroth's sequence, with the last number taken to be twelve in the case of Kruglor's dream. This yields "Feed them decently holly and mistletoe" and "Only the faith of Nerul can save you." The party realizes they need to restrain Claire and pray to Nerul for salvation, but first they have to get her off the top of the ship without incident. She has also been concentrating on Ashra.
:Ashra gets everyone up on the deck and tags everyone, including Vishnu, Sam, and Snake, with levitation (except Fab D, who can still fly). They are all enlisted to fly out to the side and grab Claire when she shoots off the side of the balloon. They drag the beholder onto the main deck, point his antimagic eye up, and carefully open it, making sure they all stay out of range. This negates Claire's Spider Climb, and she begins sliding off the balloon, making no effort to stop herself. The kobold shakes the controls to the ship, causing it to lurch wildly, and as Claire flies off the side, Ashra catches her and brings her back to the ship. Claire prays, "I don't know why you're following me, but please, save me," while Fab Dick and Ethan's soul both pray to Nerul as well. Ashra pins Claire to the deck and restrains her as she froths at the mouth and attempts to claw out her own throat. The holy symbol of Nerul heats up on her chest, burning a new, Nerul-symbol shaped scar into her skin, her sanity returns entirely, and she remembers everything. She immediately headbutts Ashra, then apologizes and, after checking out via Detect Thoughts, is released and allowed to stand on her own. She tells Ashra that she is now the third member of her "Do Not Kill" list.
:The party heals Herr Doctor in the same way, and Ethan's soul returns to his body. Maybe. Probably. It goes somewhere. The party sets off again for Barrensburg.
=== Episode Nine: I Can't Find My Brain with Four Tentacles and a Mirror of True Seeing ===
:On route to Barrensburg, the party decides to contact Neax Hiss in order to purchase a slave to become Ashra's thralled cleric, as well as conduct some other business. Ethan casts Dream, having bribed Vishnu to be the subject, and Vishnu asks Neax to come meet the party outside Barrensburg.
:About four hours north of Barrensburg, the question arises how they intend to land without being noticed in their very conspicuous and thus stealable airship. Approaching via a river or the ocean seem to be the main candidates. As the party debates this, Vishnu shows clear distress, itching and complaining of strange hissing sounds, which he ascribes to drinking too much the night before. His ailment seems too severe for a mere hangover, however, though he does not appear to be on any sort of drug. The party asks Sam, who is currently very high, but receives no help besides that Vishnu is indeed seriously ill. When Ashra checks everyone's thoughts, she discovers that her own thoughts have become undetectable, though she insists she is fine. The party is completely out of holly and mistletoe, and it is not native to this region, nor is it food and water that can be created by Sam's magic.
:It is freakishly, unseasonably warm. As the party looks around, Ashra, Vladomil, and the beholder catch sight of an enormous black figure in the distance, staring at them. Ashra detects three new consciousnesses: two elves, being very quiet, and a third which is crude, vaguely druidic, and malevolent. Vladomil casts chaos magic on the figure, which results in a divination spell manifesting as a large eye staring at the party for a while (during which Kruglor removes his pants and displays himself to it), then disappearing when Herr Doctor shines his antimagic eye on it. The party decides to deflate the balloon and drop down onto the river in order to make an inconspicuous approach to Barrensburg, though the river is very high and running very fast thanks to the snowmelt. Vladomil is terrified until he convinces himself he isn't. Ashra snaps at him and at Claire several times. Claire pulls out her holy symbol of Nerul and says "The power of Nerul compels you!" to no effect, as Ashra has not consumed any holly and mistletoe.
:As the boat is going so fast, the party decides to drop the anchor, which snaps the ship to a halt. The chain of the anchor, however, is under great tension. Ashra attempts to levitate Ethan and Claire in order to help them in case the ship crashes. Instead of the levitation going off properly, they each take a small amount of damage, apparently via inflict spell -- even to Ethan. Herr Doctor is unaffected by the levitation, and Ashra herself is able to use her own spell on herself without suffering injury.
:Kruglor decides to go on a quest for holly and mistletoe in another plane. His first roll of the die takes him to the elemental plane of electricity, where he is repeatedly electrocuted, but survives and returns. On his next roll, Ethan volunteers to come along, and they find themselves in a great laboratory filled with books and alchemical ingredients. There is no holly and mistletoe in evidence, but Ethan takes home many useful liquids and Kruglor grabs what turns out to be five enormous pop-up books written in Giant. The whole incident kind of looks like this.
:Vladomil discusses with Herr Doctor whether or not he should cast Protection from Law in order to help shield him against Ashra. Ashra, hearing this, becomes angry that they don't trust her. Herr Doctor charms Vladomil and tells him to tackle Ashra, who has been growing increasingly irrational and irritable. Vladomil jumps at the mind flayer, who swipes him away with a tentacle, then casts Shocking Grasp, jumps on him, and attaches a tentacle to his head. He manages to wrestle free from Ashra's grip before any more tentacles attach. Claire brings out the enormous dragon eye, which seems to be looking especially at Ashra. Ashra accuses Claire and everyone of not trusting her, and starts referring to her comrades as thralls.
:Ethan, Kruglor, and Herr Doctor go on another ride on the die. This time, they end up in an unknown plane with mountains on all sides -- literally all sides, including up and down, as they are high in the air. They see some greenery on the tops of the mountain and decide to remove the Feather Fall Ethan had reflexively cast, then recast it when they get close to the mountain. In this way they reach the mountaintop, where they grab bunches of irrelevant vegetation. Kruglor listens for adventure and hears two tarrasques, and the three collectively shit bricks before returning to the ship. Kruglor and Herr Doctor both vomit in terror on the deck. Ethan was trained better than that, and throws up formaldehyde over the railling like a civilized person.
:Meanwhile, an enraged Ashra hits Vladomil with a bolt of arcane fire. Vladomil had been ready to forget about his fight with the mind flayer, but he grows angry at this. Claire runs up to Ashra and asks her to leave with her, claiming that they can escape the stupid people who don't understand or appreciate Ashra. Ashra, now well on the way to insanity and thoroughly caught up in her own ego, agrees and Dimension Doors with Claire to the side of the river. She tells Claire how she is the only one she likes, and how she will make her into her main thrall. The thoroughly creeped out Claire nevertheless manages to bluff Ashra, despite her psychic abilities, into at least believing she somewhat trusts and, more importantly, reveres her. The two sit together at the riverbank as Claire attempts to soothe Ashra and keep her from flying off the handle.
:Ethan and co. have discovered that there is no holly and mistletoe off the Prime Material Plane, and they realize they need some fast. They could get some from nearly any druid in Barrensburg, but need to reach Barrensburg before Ashra goes insane enough to start killing party members. A solution arrives in the form of Vishnu in his mech, who is convinced to go with the argument that they will get him some ointment for his skin. He suits up, though he is very ill, and Ethan clings to his back as the mech takes off into the sky. They fly towards Barrensburg, but as they approach a currently raging battle, Vishnu goes unconscious, and Ethan can't wake him up. Ethan decides that it's fine with him, since they're still going the right way, and tosses a Neg Ball around the mech and the ground. This both wakes Vishnu up and changes the mech's trajectory so it doesn't slam into a wall. Vishnu lands, takes out a group of soldiers, picks up Ethan in the mech's arms, and flies over the wall.
:Ethan finds the first nearby druid, who is currently smoking and staring at the mech he just arrived in. After utterly failing at a Color Spray, the druid is convinced that Ethan is "the nice kind of undead". Ethan asks for holly, mistletoe, and ointment for Vishnu's ailment. Vishnu opens up the mech and falls out of it, asleep, and the druid screams as he identifies the plague. Before running away he is kind enough to drop holly, mistletoe, and weed on the ground, all of which Ethan takes.
:Vishnu is sound asleep and, even if wakeable, in no state to pilot a mech. Ethan gets in and settles himself. He then needs a somatic component to start the mech; after trying many reasonable ideas, his irritated "Fuck this!" makes the mech spring into ground-based life. He is then able to pick up Vishnu in the mech's arms. Now all he needs is to make it start flying, but when he shakes Vishnu and asks for the password, all he hears is "WHAT?!"
:... Which, after significant experimentation, turns out to be the password to make the mech take off. Ethan and Vishnu fly back to the ship, holly and mistletoe in hand. They give the plants to Sam and ask him to make a drink out of them. Kruglor climbs into the mech and starts trying out buttons, finding several attacks as well as the speakstone call button. (Below decks, poor Sam hears Ethan's pack ring unanswered ... over and over again.)
:Meanwhile, Claire asks Ashra if she wants to go back. Ashra initially does not, but is convinced that everyone on the ship wants to apologize and venerate her, and to give her tribute. Claire also promises her tribute from party loot. Just as the two are about to join hands and return, Kruglor discharges the lightning bolt button on the mech, sending a visible lightning bolt into the air. Ashra freaks out, yelling about how she hates lightning and the party should know not to use it, since it tends to strike her so often. Her rage is such that she decides she wants to eat the brains of everyone on the ship; Claire convinces her to allow them to apologize first, and she agrees that the party should beg for their lives before she eats them.
:Since he's already in a mech, Kruglor rolls the dimension die, taking Herr Doctor with him. They end up on the Elemental Plane of Water, where they notice the scythe. The two have a slow motion competition, as Kruglor tries to slash the scythe with the mech's sword and Herr Doctor attempts to snatch the scythe with telekinesis. After several iterations of foiling each other, Kruglor manages to cut the scythe in half -- first severing the wood, then halving the blade itself. Before they are about to return, Kruglor shoots off a lightning bolt into the plane.
:Meanwhile, Ashra picks up Claire in her arms and the two Dimension Door back onto the ship. Ethan approaches, freezes Vladomil with the Ghoul Glyph on his backpack, and drops to one knee before Ashra, holding the cup of the holly-mistletoe drink. Claire convinces Ashra that the drink is a standard tribute offering, intentionally failing her own knowledge of poisons so that Ashra cannot read the deception in her mind. Ashra sets her on the ground and takes the potion from Ethan, drinking it. Claire pulls out her unholy symbol, yells "The power of Nerul compels you!" while slamming it into Ashra's lower back, and prays.
:Kruglor and Herr Doctor reappear. Kruglor vomits up a snake. Ashra comes to her senses, and now has a Nerul-symbol tramp stamp where hopefully no one will ever see. The giant creature stalking them disappears, as it was the effect of Ashra's psychic abilities sharing her hallucinations with the rest of the party through unconscious use of Suggestion. Vladomil stabs the snake, which turns out to somehow be Snake. Herr Doctor, angry over Kruglor's destruction of the scythe, fires many of his rays at Kruglor, but keeps missing and eventually gives up and offers a truce. Ethan yells at him that he is endangering his crew and, if he does so again, he will be killed. Ethan also chastises Claire for allowing her pet to get so out of hand, and then goes for the whiskey. Drinks are shared all around, because everyone needs them.
:They see Neax Hiss's spelljammer land nearby, and meet up with him. The party buys a cloak for Ethan and a cleric for Ashra. Kruglor decides to gamble with the Neogi. He uses the lantern to get money, then manages to lose his hammer, his shield, and his jacket armor. He then wins everything back and pays for Gate Crasher lessons from Neax, also managing to convince Claire to pay him for the lantern, which Claire keeps. Claire buys herself a ring.
:The party reaches Barrensburg, where they dock the ship and rent a floor of an inn for a week. Ashra thralls the cleric, Zaphodel of Nyasa the Dutiful, who treats but cannot cure Vishnu. The party restores their broken limbs and damaged abilities, as they finally have a free source of lesser restoration. Sam offers to stay with Vishnu, and the party decides to contact Sil'meelen and Shiolay; Ethan talks to both in their dreams, but is unable to know if they received the message or not. Claire gives Sam enough to stay for a good while longer, and the party decides to take Vishnu to Port Brogan, where they hope one of the clerics will meet them and help treat Vishnu. Prince Avimeus gives the party a reward for their help, returns their Underdark symbol, then takes a commercial ship to Port Brogan. Claire is angry at the others -- Ethan for yelling at her, Ashra for not apologizing for her actions while insane -- and storms out of the deliberations.
:The party decides that they are headed to Baldur through the Underdark. They purchase two masterwork skiffs, and the group piles in, hooking The Dark Lantern on the front of the front ship. They sail off into the dark...
:(Note: I don't remember what was going on with why we landed in the first place, and what happened with the anchor and the dam.) 
=== Episode Ten: No Two Things are Not Unnecessarily Difficult ===
:The party has two boats in which to sail the Underdark: the Sophia and the Lufia. They divide themselves thus: in the Lufia, in front, Vladomil, Herr Doctor, and Claire (piloting). In the Sophia, following, Ethan, Kruglor, Zaphodel, and Ashra (piloting). They tie the two boats together and head off into the Underdark. They notice that the way splits up ahead, and Herr Doctor spots a dwarf swimming off the right bow of the ship. Ashra detects an extra consciousness, but is blocked from focusing on it. As the boats approach the split, Claire consults the map about which way to go, and picks the right hand route, which includes a sharp descent up ahead. Specifically, as the boats arrive, a waterfall.
:The Lufia plunges over the falls, and its crew take a hard landing in the water ahead. Snake grabs the emergency boat and flips it upside down, then uses it to surf down the waterfall. Ethan cuts apart the two boats, Ashra tags everyone on the Sophia with levitation, and they levitate out of the boat and follow it carefully down, avoiding the water. The Sophia, however, crashes into three from the Lufia where they were treading water at the bottom of the waterfall. No one is seriously harmed, but the boats are now quite full of water, and the only thing the party has to use in bailing themselves out is Zaphodel's helmet. It looks like a long job.
:They realize that the place where they've ended up has a rope bridge high above, and Vladomil throws his grappling hook up to it, then he, Claire, and Herr Doctor go up to investigate. CSI: Underdark finds the nearly dead body of a yuan-ti, his blood, and a bricked-up tunnel. Ethan tells Vladomil to give them an inspiring speech in the form of bad one-liners. Vladomil says, "FUCK NO."
:Meanwhile, Kruglor gets an idea: since the boat would be easier to turn over on dry land, and there are many elemental planes which involve dry land, he will grab the boats while standing upside down, roll his die, and hope that not only do they come with him, but he also lands on his feet and thus inverts the boats, dumping out the water. Ashra agrees to come along with Zaphodel, as they are strong enough to help lift the boats. They roll the die and end up on the roof of Olympus, sans boats.
:Kruglor, never missing an opportunity to do something incredibly unwise, breaks a hole in the roof. Athena freezes him with her stare, then comes up and asks if they are mortal. Ashra, never one for modesty, replies "My servant is mortal," and everyone takes a lightning bolt to the face. It's always lightning. Athena begins casting Dimensional Anchor, an "oh shit" moment for everyone involved, and Kruglor grabs her breastplate and wrestles with her. She throws him off, takes out her +5 mythril flaming longsword, and gives him the smackdown with it. He manages to strike her wrist, knocking the sword onto the ground, then tumbles over and grabs it. He even manages somehow to convince the sword that he is lawful good, allowing him to lift it. Meanwhile, Zaphodel is prone on the ground and Ashra is frantically attempting to make nice with the goddess.
:Athena tries Dimensional Anchor again, and Zaphodel counterspells it. Athena screams, frightening Zaphodel and taking her out of commission. Kruglor gets up and starts running, and she turns him to stone. Ashra is still making frantic explanations. The word "sorry" may even have been grudgingly, awkwardly involved, though no other party members witnessed this. Athena reclaims her sword and also scores some of Kruglor's Wolves' Milk. As the spell duration is about to expire, Ashra runs over to the statue of Kruglor and wraps her arms around it, ensuring it will return with her to the Prime Material Plane.
:They return. Ashra drops the statue, and it promptly sinks seventy feet to the bottom of the lake.
:Meanwhile, Claire, Vlad and Herr Doctor had healed the yuan-ti and negotiated with him. It turned out he had nearly died in a fight with the drow, and just wanted to return to his village. Claire offered him the party's assistance, but shied away from actually accompanying him back, which would require swimming. Herr Doctor disintegrated the brick wall and discovered a dwarven burial/treasure room. As Vlad and Herr Doctor rush in, Valera wakes up in the boats below, drunk and confused. He ends up using empty liquor bottles to help with the bailing.
:Ashra makes it up to where Claire and the yuan-ti are negotiating, then argues a bit with Claire. Claire pointedly declines to ask for levitation to help the yuan-ti down, instead using feather fall and jumping together into the water. He gives her advice as to which path to take from there, then swims away through a lava tunnel.
:Vladomil pries open a coffin, searching for treasure, and a smooth stone slides down, trapping them in the room. It rapidly begins to fill with poisonous gas. Slabs on the walls with dwarven runes on them begin to glow, but unfortunately neither Vlad nor Herr Doctor read Dwarven. Ashra can't hear their thoughts, but she can hear them yelling. Describing the runes, however, seems unlikely to work.
:Ashra descends to the boat, receives a Bull's Strength from her cleric, and swims down to the statue of Kruglor, then takes his Hammer of Moradin. She is able to persuade it to come to the surface with her, but after that it becomes heavy, and she quickly hands it over to Snake. Snake manages to convince the hammer to "be good," and starts trying to smash the rock with it, but isn't very good at hitting things with a hammer. As Ashra attempts to get Zaphodel to use the hammer, which the hammer refuses, Snake, Ethan, and Claire Dimension Door into the trapped room, where Herr Doctor has passed out from the poison gas. Snake translates the runes: "family" "duty" "honor" "law" "fate" "destiny". Ethan remembers a similar set of runes from Stone Step and Claire solves the puzzle. She identifies the two that do not belong, presses them so that they stop glowing, and the door slides open, allowing everyone to leave. Zaphodel heals Herr Doctor's damaged Constitution to the point where he wakes up.
:After a discussion of how to pull Kruglor up, the party discovers that Vlad has a pulley and silk rope. Vlad and Ashra rig it up to the boat and tie it around Kruglor, then pull his statue up. Zaphodel casts Dispel Magic, returning him to his flesh form.
:The boats can finally be tipped up and dried out, so the party sets off again, following the directions Claire got from the yuan-ti. They notice, after several party members have sampled the disgusting water, that it the water is currently clear and flecked with gold. Ethan observes that it has been disintegrated and fills a flask with it.
:The walls and ceiling begin to shake. A delver dramatically emerges, eating its way through the wall. Attempts to charm it are almost working until Valera decides he hasn't shot things enough today and takes a potshot at it. Vladomil also attacks it, and Claire steers the boat and notices her Underdark symbol isn't helping much.
:Meanwhile, the saga of the FailBoat occurs. It starts with Ashra's critical failure to steer, causing the boat to run into the side of the tunnel. Then Kruglor critically fails to seize the controls from her, instead falling over the side of the boat. He considers tossing the die, and Ethan would have critically failed at guessing where he went, but instead he decides to climb back into the boat. Then the drow attack.
:The delver starts to chew on the front boat and slams into Valera. Vladomil throws alchemist's fire down its throat, dislodging the stalactites from the ceiling, which fall on everyone. Kruglor attempts to convince his ring of slow fall to act as a ring of water walking or fly, and the opportunity for The Best Thing Ever is missed when he jumps before Ashra has a chance to secretly tag him with levitation in order to convince him he's succeeded. Kruglor falls over the edge while Ashra and Ethan laugh at what might have been.
:Claire has almost finished negotiating with the drow when Valera shoots one, so Claire throws some money and gems up to the drow, who declare it acceptable tribute. Kruglor manages to hack his ring enough to allow him to bounce between boats and up to the rocks where the drow are. The delver stops attacking and apologizes, while the drow agree to grant the party safe passage through their territory if the party's champion beats theirs in unarmed combat.
:Vladomil attempts to pray at the shrine to Lolth in Dark Elf-Silent, and gets a kick for his troubles.
:The party's best warrior is determined to be Kruglor after bite attacks, tentacle slaps, Harm, and brain eating are all ruled not to be "subdual damage". His opponent is to be ... Ulfgar! Ulfgar, now a Drunken Master, is the champion of this drow city. Ashra mentions the manacles from her (at the time, his) first appearance in Eon, and he returns them to her, now rusted and key-less. He tells Kruglor about the glories of FFFF bombs, and the two drink lots of purple whiskey. Ashra and Ethan seriously consider going in the drunk Kruglor's place anyway, as they are the most physically hardcore pair of wizards ever, but he stays sober enough to fight with Valera as his second. He proposes that many rounds of the combat be fought on other planes, to which Ulfgar agrees. He also discovers as he is stripping down that his inventory contains a lovingly wrapped pie with the note "I fucking did better."
:The first roll of the die takes them to the Greyhawk setting, where they land on top of the bar. As smashing down through the roof worked so very well before, Kruglor does it again, landing in the middle of the bar and noticing a particularly familiar drow with two scimitars. He gives the man an insulting speech about how cliche his character is, then uses a table for improvised cover. Ulfgar shatters the table with a kick, and the two proceed to beat and throw each other as everyone in the bar starts attacking them. A Warforged jumps up on the bar and yells at everyone to remain calm, at which point Ulfgar and Kruglor decide they have a common enemy. Ulfgar attacks the Warforged, but is stopped by a flying orc. Kruglor wrestles away both masterwork scimitars from Captain Cliche. Ulfgar then drinks more beer and breathes fire, causing the entire bar to explode. The two return to the Prime Material Plane.
:They decide that the next round should be fought by their seconds. Ulfgar's second is Yolanda, provoking several squeals of recognition. Ethan ditches the party and runs over to Yolanda and Ulfgar's side of the ring. The two roll the die and end up in Second Edition, rolling THAC0 in a dim dungeon with extremely ineffective torches. Valera is soundly beaten and passes out as they return.
:Ulfgar and Kruglor, however, are still at it. They next find themselves on Mechanus, surrounded by strangely familiar chickens. Kruglor catches himself on a gear and nearly has his hand broken in the machine. He lets go, engages his ring of Slow Fall, then finds Ulfgar's kick heading towards him. He returns to normal falling speed, catches himself with the ring before he would hit the ground, and takes the kick to the face to watch Ulfgar crash into the ground. A two recharges Kruglor's dimension die, and when the two return -- Kruglor with a chicken -- they are ready to go again.
:The final plane shift takes them to the elemental plane of fire. The chicken is now a roast chicken, and Ulfgar begins using his Drunken Master abilities to spew alcohol at Kruglor, burning him. Kruglor attacks the back of his own throat, induces vomiting, and returns the favor. After trading several blows, Ulfgar offers a high five to Kruglor and passes out. Before they return, Kruglor takes a big bite of roast chicken.
:Kruglor is now the champion of the drow, and is rewarded with a belt of giant's strength. Claire gives Ethan the party's financial information and stalks back off to the boats to sulk. While negotiating, Ethan hears about the black dragon fifteen miles away. Luckily it is on the way to Baldur, as the party would otherwise have been on a mandatory detour. Meanwhile, Vladomil offers ten gold to Lolth and is offered the chance to convert. The priest explains that he must allow himself to be bitten by a certain magical spider, which he actually allows. This wracks him with extraordinary pain and transforms him into a drow woman.
:Meanwhile, Claire and Snake play hide and seek. The delver appears and apologizes, and is apparently the cutest thing ever to Claire, who discovers that the drow keep it and whip it, and it is unable to leave because the nearby rocks contain no nutrition. She offers it a pound of gold, and learns that it will cut the party a way to Baldur. However, they need to spend the night in the drow city so that Zaphodel can get enough lesser restorations to repair the Constitution damage Valera and Herr Doctor are carrying around from the poison, and so that she can prepare Make Whole to fix the boat which the delver had been chewing on. Vladomil decides that while the baleful transformation was not permanent, he likes himself as a woman, and asks Ethan to cast Permanency. Ethan agrees, and several twos later Vladomil, now Vladomis, thinks of everything as a sexual innuendo and is abnormally fertile.
:The party decides to rest for at least a night, discuss where the dragon is with the drow, then go and kill it and follow the delver's route, not returning to the drow city as they will probably have guessed who stole their delver. Claire casts Misdirection on the delver, redirecting all scrying attempts to Ulfgar. Vladomis tests out her new body and becomes pregnant. Everyone facepalms.
=== Episode Eleven: No Two Rolls Are Not 'Two' Rolls ===
:(A note on the title: The dargon fight alone yielded thirteen twos, if I recall correctly. A count was started on the blackboard after Chimegumi managed to get two consecutive twos in one round -- one on Ashra's to hit for Arcane Fire, and the next on Zaphodel's Use Rope to tie up the boat. This was after two other combat twos in the same battle, and at least three or four more earlier in the session.)
:The party spends the night in the drow village, resting so that Zaphodel can recover her spells, repair the boat, and heal Herr Doctor's Constitution damage from the poison. Overnight, Vladomis disappears, having joined the Cult of Lolth, and is not seen from again. Kruglor, using his new sway as the champion of the drow village, opts to accompany the drow on their nightly patrol. He attempts to pretend that he heard the dragon and thus to distract the drow, but fails pathetically. While returning to the camp, he asks Ashra telepathically to come Suggest to everyone that the dragon is coming, but she is busy talking to Claire. Ashra and Claire have a telepathic conversation about why they've been arguing, which resolves with a spectacularly pompous apology: "Apologies aren't really a thing Illithids do, but I suppose that it could be said that as my actions, which were out of my control and completely against my own true intentions, appear to have done you harm, and I had no desire to cause you such harm, it would be an accurate depiction, in Common human parlance ... to say that ... I am sorry."
:Meanwhile, the rest of the party discusses how they will handle the challenge of receiving payment from the drow for killing the dragon and still manage to steal the drow's delver without them noticing. Several plans are discussed: that Claire could pretend the delver ran away, that the party could fake a cave-in or another event which might have given the delver a source of gold with which to escape, or that they might use illusions and/or polymorph to create the impression that the delver went the other way than it really did. Some more destructive plans are considered, but dismissed because the party does not want to make enemies of every drow city ever when they're trying to travel through the Underdark.
:As the party is debating their options, Ashra and Claire having rejoined the discussion, Kruglor talks to the drow chief and finds out some general information about the workings of the drow and the delver. Suddenly, the alarm sounds and all of the drow rush inside the temple. Ashra manages to get from one of the drow that this is just a drill, but Herr Doctor does not understand this and starts spinning through the streets, terrified. Claire sneaks inside the leader's tent and steals his things, then sneaks back to the boat. The party had intended to leave during this, but Claire's looting took too much time, and the alarm stops. A drow attempts to cast Calm Emotions on Herr Doctor, who is still spinning, but he resists the spell. Ashra hits him with a Suggestion as he spins by -- "It was just a game" -- and he calms down, somewhat disappointed.
:A few minutes later, six drow forcibly escort Claire to the drow leader's tent, where he confronts her about his missing stuff. A bowl of water sitting before him reveals his ability to scry on his possessions, and Ashra telepathically offers backup if things go south, but Herr Doctor turns his antimagic eye on the tent, blocking the drow from casting spells on Claire but also cutting off all telepathic contact with Claire and blocking her from using her Dimension Door to escape. With some skillful bluffing, Claire pretends that she had been in a fugue state and that she now had no idea what had happened. She also pretends to be very sorry, and begins crying. The drow, still very angry, take her out of the tent; Herr Doctor attempts to intimidate them, but they don't really care. Ashra follows behind as they escort her back to the boat. Thanks to one of the many twos rolled that night, she forgets the location of everything she currently owns, and is thus extremely convincing as she shows them the party loot and allows them to reclaim their belongings. Ashra watches carefully to see that the drow chief does not take anything extra; he looks hard at the box of astral diamonds, but does not make a move for it. The guards and chief return to the village, leaving Ashra with Claire. The chief finds Kruglor and tells him one of his party members had caused significant trouble, and he immediately blames it on Ashra. This falls through somewhat when they realize that one of them is talking about a mind flayer and the other one isn't, but the drow don't really care, they just want Kruglor to give his belt back and leave immediately, never to return. Kruglor, angered by this, rolls the die and ends up on the Infinite Battlefield, where he battles dragons. In the last minute, he touches a white dragon and says that if the dragon does not accompany him back to the Prime Material Plane, he would have been the last to touch the other, and would thus win. The dragon is Not Impressed, and he returns, bloody, quite alone. The drow is playing with his die and appears to intend to keep it. Kruglor fails to persuade him to try it out before he takes it, but does eventually negotiate swapping the belt and the party's swift departure for the die.
:The party heads for the boats and begins to plan at double speed now that they only have half an hour before the delver will be taken to work and thus inaccessible for the next twelve hours. Ethan, going crazy because there's a dragon and he hasn't killed it yet, takes out some paper and begins scrawling "redrum" "nogard", "ykcirt ykcirt rorrim rorrim", and other cheerful things. Ashra takes Zaphodel over to Ethan and has her cast Calm Emotions on him, which snaps him out of it and allows him to return to the party and help plan. Having heard what happened, partially from Ashra's version which tilted the blame more towards Kruglor than Claire, Ethan helps the party plan what to do next. Ashra gets the idea to use Ghost Sound to mimic the sound of the alarm, then tell the delver to go the other way for about a day, tunneling over the yan-ti settlement, before turning and meeting up with the party at a predetermined location away from the drow city. The delver would then continue on to Baldur as planned. This way, the drow would assume that the yan-ti found the delver, and if they wanted to track the delver further they would first have to fight through the yan-ti settlement, hopefully delaying their progress significantly and shifting blame away from the party. Zaphodel critically fails to cast Make Whole on the boat, so the second boat is tied to the first and everyone piles in, with the aberrations floating and Claire riding Herr Doctor. Ashra casts Ghost Sound, everyone rushes off into the temple, and Claire flips the delver a thumbs-up. The delver, filled with gold from Claire and Ashra, says "T h a n k s, g u y s !" and starts chewing its way off in the opposite direction.
:The boat sails along, riding very low in the water due to the extra weight as everyone is crammed in. Ulfgar has accompanied the party, replacing Vladomil, though Yolanda had no desire to go to Baldur and thus stayed behind. As they sail along, they begin hearing a strange chipping noise, and then the sound of a man telling something that no one else understood, they would win, etc. Ashra tags everyone but Ulfgar with levitation. (She would have tagged him, too, but he didn't ask when she was handing out touch spells.) Herr Doctor and Claire float out ahead to scout, but Herr Doctor is not very good at sneaking, and they are immediately noticed by the foes who stand in waiting. These foes are the large black dragon the party was expecting, but also Bookish, standing in front of a spellbook and a pair of healing potions. Kruglor starts floating out over the water, realizes that levitation is kinda slow, and starts walking along the bottom. The dragon flies over to say hi with a powerful acid attack. Ashra steers the boat forward to get Ethan a line of sight, and is rewarded with a lightning bolt to the face from Bookish. In the stream of insults, threats, and general invective which Ethan and Bookish are trading, Ethan notes that Bookish has now definitely made an enemy of the mind flayer.
:Herr Doctor, meanwhile, manages to take only a single wing attack from the dragon in the process of tumbling past it to get to the other side, near Bookish. Bookish summons two sets of fiendish apes. Claire had been concentrating on Bookish for a death attack, but is hit by part of the dragon's breath attack, and loses her concentration. She casts Greater Invisibility on herself, and Herr Doctor scouts out hiding spots for her. Kruglor dives underwater to escape the breath attack, then jumps off of Ulfgar, who had the same idea, to get at the dragon. The dragon fouls the water near it, ruining Ulfgar's booze, except for that of it which a two turns into sugar instead. The dragon throws its breath attack at the boat, and Ashra sails the boat back around the corner, hoping to tie it up out of breath weapon range to minimize the reconstruction the party's one functional boat will need. Trusting her thrull to tie the boat up, she attacks the dragon with Arcane Fire. They both get twos, and the count is started. (Both twos end up being irrelevant, as they depended on someone being of the opposite sex from Ashra, and Zaphodel being able to believe something.) Ethan moves to the front of the boat so that he can heal himself with Neg Ball and not destroy the boat in the process. Claire leaps from the beholder to the sand, dashes behind the dragon's pile of treasure, and hides. Yet another two transforms one of the vials of Wolves' Milk in her inventory into pure nitroglycerin, though she remains unaware of this. The dragon moves past Ethan and he bites it, dealing it damage with Profane Vengeance. Even the dragon has to appreciate how hardcore that is, but it's not like it really cares. Claire sneaks up on Bookish and sinks several bolts into him, killing him. The fiendish apes remain, as does the dragon. Ulfgar and Kruglor reach the apes and begin to cleave through them. A two makes Kruglor gain Grax's friendship, raising the number of people who like Kruglor appropriately to two.
:Ashra hits the dragon with Arcane Fire, successfully this time, and Zaphodel ties up the boat. The dragon lands on Ethan and the boat, crushing Ethan beneath its belly, then attacks Ashra and Zaphodel. Zaphodel is barely able to keep herself and Ashra alive. Ashra attempts to mind blast the dragon and fails. Claire jumps back onto Herr Doctor, thankfully does not explode due to the nitro in her backpack, and the two begin to float back over to where the dragon is.
:Herr Doctor, having arrived, keeps Ethan alive with his Inflict Critical Wounds ray while Zaphodel keeps herself and Ashra alive with every healing spell above first level in turn. The dragon continues to bite and spew acid at the boat and its occupants. Herr Doctor, who has been gifted by another pair of twos with eyes that appear fifty percent larger and with a voice which temporarily reverberates, attempts to intimidate the dragon by yelling at it. Ashra, who wants to distract the dragon and get it off of Ethan before he is destroyed, decides to show Herr Doctor how it's done, screams at the dragon that Ethan is her friend, floats up to attack its head, and ... misses.
:Meanwhile, Kruglor makes his way to the pile of treasure and discovers a strange object. Having blown into it, put his finger into it, and then inserted himself into it, he is rather surprised to learn from Snake that it is in fact a gun. After it surprisingly fails to go off, he withdraws himself and fails to shoot the dragon with the gun, using up all its bullets. Snake does better, as he actually knows how to use a gun, and he manages to sink a shot into the dragon from across the cavern.
:Ashra takes another whack at the dragon, misses, then decides to just drop down and stand on its head. She leans down and whispers, "Goodbye." The dragon isn't scared by this, but it doesn't have to be, as Claire uses her last round of greater invisibility to jump at it with her rapier, get a critical hit, and kill it instantly.
:Everyone breathes a big sigh of relief. The dragon is rolled off of Ethan. Ashra sits happily on its head, while Ethan similarly gloats over Bookish, even though Claire was the one who actually got both kills. Bookish's body and the treasure pile turn up lots of fun magic items as well as a few guns. Given that several party members are almost dead, the healer has nothing more powerful than Cure Light Wounds left, and both boats need some serious TLC, the party is done fighting for now.
=== Season Finale: WE REVOCER TEH FAUXDIN BUT IT GRAX ===
:See also: Ruin of Baldur
:The party divides up the loot from Bookish's corpse and the dragon's treasure pile. Three wands are divided up -- a wand of inferno to Kruglor, and what are later identified as a wand of time stop and a wand of ice ball to Ashra. Ashra also gets two spellbooks, including one very similar to the one Luke found on an illithid's corpse in the Hall of Many Things. Ethan gets some bracers of armor and the four bloodied arrows that Bookish was carrying around. See also: Ethan is kind of creepy sometimes. Claire gets some guns. Claire uses her newly gained ability to explore and modify memories in order to look into her own past, seeing herself training as an assassin while a child, and herself at home with her mother cooking potatoes. She remembers her mother's name: Jillis. The party settles down to rest; a few minutes before they would normally wake, Ashra sits bolt upright and shouts, "Bear's endurance!" having finally solved the 'tears without tea' puzzle from the Hall of Many Things. Zaphodel fixes the boats, and the party meets up with Dwayne. They set out once again for Baldur, following in the delver's wake.
:Shiolay calls Ethan on the Speakstone, having finally figured out how to use it. He has news -- he is with Vishnu, and has put him in stasis to halt the progression of the plague. Fab Dick is with him as well, and wants the party to say hello to Mr. Gucci for him. Shiolay successfully took his sword to Mount Malawi and it became a sword of three wishes; he used one to try to cure Vishnu, which failed, but will allow the party use of the other two. He is stunned that the party is heading for Baldur, but wishes them luck. Sam Ash, whom the party sent with Vishnu, was not with him, and was not detectable to Fab D's scrying. The party notes that he was supposed to be with the ship, and both sides hope he'll be found soon; Fab D won't stop scrying for him. There's a place where the party can be safe: the Green Elf Inn and Bordello. Claire takes the speakstone off at a distance, apologizes to Shiolay for being a bitch, then threatens to kill him if he reveals she's apologized. Ethan calls her weird. Ashra asks for any news on mind flayers, and hears that there has been none. The party hangs up.
:The first delay on the way to Baldur comes from encountering the sewers of Port Mariner. They run perpendicular to the way the party wants to go, and in order to have enough water to continue on the boats, the party needs to block off the sewers. The barbarians realize they have bombs, and Zaphodel can cast silence. Several minutes of frenzied dungeoneering later, Ashra points out that Zaphodel can also cast Wall of Stone. This plan may be slightly less badass, but it is safer and more effective. A night's preparation later, the party blocks up the sewer system of a major city for their own convenience and gets back underway.
:They then encounter the next difficulty: Dwayne emerges in a cave. Sinister trees on the sides of the cave bear green hellfruit, which Kruglor and Ulfgar snatch. A staircase leads up, and a large trapdoor stands in the center of the floor. Ulfgar wrenches the trapdoor open, while Ethan points out that from his knowledge of Ille Draconum, this is probably a trapdoor to hell. Oh, and there's a fire trap associated with it. To disarm it, you have to tell it the story of how Xenteroth went to hell and came out a god. Unfortunately, that's all of the story any of them know. Ashra looks at the open trapdoor in the mirror and sees flames around its sides. A loud ticking signals the eminent triggering of the trap, and almost the entire party runs over and slams the trapdoor shut, which thankfully stops the trap. The staircase is examined, but discounted as an option because the party doesn't want to emerge yet. Instead, they leave the road to hell be and have Dwayne keep advancing.
:The party gets within range of where Ashra is familiar. She would have felt the Motherbrain were it there. She doesn't. Ashra and Ethan can't tell if they are sad or relieved.
:Then the party finally reaches the outside of the mind flayer city, as well as its main line of defense. The mind flayer city is surrounded by a fifteen-foot gap of air from all directions, like a cup within a cup. Beneath the city is an incredibly powerful despair stone to force enemies to commit suicide. Dwayne has been somewhat affected by this, as is Claire when she steps near; Claire comes back to the party, and Ethan sends a mummy to hug the acid-covered delver and make him feel better. The party needs to find a way to get across the gap and break a hole through the stone without killing themselves. It turns out to be Wall of Stone to the rescue again, this time making a curved tunnel. Herr Doctor will then disintegrate the wall on the other side. The party parts ways with Dwayne, Claire giving him a parting gift of one hundred gold. Zaphodel makes the wall of stone, and Herr Doctor disintegrates a way through. Ashra points out that she is, in fact, still fervently an illithid, and won't willingly compromise the illithids if they're still living there, just for the rest of the party's information.
:The party breaks through and ends up in a dormitory for newly turned illithids. Everything is covered with dust, everything that can be taken has been, though the bed pads remain, and the two beds nearest the doorway have been smashed. Above the doorway out is a single shining stone. Kruglor approaches it and discovers that it is an arrogance emotion stone. He suddenly feels great. As he begins to try to take it, Ashra spams mind blasts at him; he backs off, but Ulfgar also runs forward, gets the same idea, fails to pull it out of the wall, clings to it and finally succumbs to the mind blast. Ashra, who is able to approach the stone with no consequences as she is already that arrogant, having been raised with just such a stone (perhaps even the same stone) calls a meeting of everyone in the non-stone half of the room, Right Fucking Now.
:Ashra explains in no certain terms that this is her city, it is very dangerous, and if they don't do their best to help out, play along, and keep everyone alive, she will let them face the consequences. She attempts to appeal to their senses of home, only to discover that she is in fact the only party member who has a home or a people to which she is loyal. She also explains that if party members damage her city or pull shenanigans with important mind flayer things, she will kill them without remorse or hesitation. Ethan follows this up with a more diplomatic plea that they not do things which could, in fact, destroy him, and that they listen to Ashra because she's serious about killing them if they fuck around. Also, this is a mindflayer city! And Ashra is a mindflayer! It could be within the realm of possibility that she knows what she's talking about! Claire generally refuses to listen throughout this, and is disrespectful, but the others pay at least some attention.
:Ashra knows where they are, having grown up there: below them is a training armory where they could quite possibly pick up some very useful weapons, while above them leads to the chambers of the Motherbrain. She does not know for certain that the Motherbrain is not there, as it could have pinged her without her knowledge, discovered who she was, and then refused to connect with her further. Now, however, she faces a moral crisis for once in her life: whether or not to allow herself and her comrades to loot the armory to help ensure their own survival in the battle ahead. She shares this only with Ethan, as the others would probably insist on going and looting if they knew about the treasure.
:After long consideration, she makes her decision and explains it thus: Considering that she, Grax, Xoth, and the mind flayer on the boat are the only mind flayers of whom she has seen any evidence, and that she blames Grax and Xoth for the disappearance of the Mother Brains, she is in effect the champion and the Chosen One of the mind flayers. As it is her goal to restore her people, she has to keep herself alive first. Therefore, she will allow them to go to the armory, but she will insist on respectful treatment of everything there: no looting, no destruction, just orderly taking of the things they need.
:Then Claire comes up with some very interesting information: the door is in fact trapped. Opening it will cause the arrogance stone to explode, as it is wired to a bomb. Then the hapless victims, suddenly saddled with the egos of mind flayers but no experience in reining them in, are supposed to end up fighting each other to the death. This changes Ashra's plans, as there are definitely others in the building -- perhaps even other mind flayers! Therefore, the armory is no longer relevant.
:First order of business is defusing the emotion stone trap. Ashra comes up with a plan: Since she is already so arrogant she cannot be affected by the stone, she will mind blast the rest of the party, then attempt to defuse the trap. If she succeeds, she will release the other party members and they will go on their way. If she fails, the stone will explode, she can't become much more of a dick than she already is, and then she'll still release everyone and go. Claire protests, having seen Ashra at her most arrogant when the entropic reaper's curse gave her three sanity points. She points out that at that time, Ashra threatened to eat or thrall party members (specifically, she threatened to make Claire her main thrall), and says that she is not comfortable being mind blasted, helpless, around an Ashra any more arrogant than normal. Herr Doctor's sleep ray is called into service, but that won't help Claire, as a Two long ago made her immune to magical sleep. Ashra devises a solution: Ulfgar and Kruglor, who also don't like Ashra, will be put to sleep, and Herr Doctor, Claire, and Ethan will be mind blasted. It won't fully protect Ethan, but it'll at least keep him from hurting anyone else. Ulfgar and Kruglor will be positioned over and/or in front of Claire, so that any attempt to reach Claire will disturb them and wake them. Claire accepts this plan.
:Some sleep ray zaps and a mind blast later, Ashra walks up to the stone and sees a red and a blue wire leading from it. After a few rounds of "they'll know it's this wire but they'll know I know it's this wire but..." (under the assumption that the trap was in fact made by mind flayers) Ashra decides that it's possible to create an infinite loop of justifications for the red or blue wire, and decides to cut both. A tense snip later, the trap is diffused. Snake protests that he was, in fact, the blue wire. She releases the mind blast, the sleepers are woken up, and they open the door.
:The stairs are covered with black pudding residue. The party proceeds upwards towards the Chamber of the Motherbrain. Outside the door, they are sure that she is not there, as every one of them would have been able to feel her strongly from that distance. Through the door, they hear a bard speaking to a group, preaching counter-revolution ... inside the chamber of the Motherbrain. Ashra, enraged, flings open the door and screams at them about what the fuck do they think they're doing in such a sacred place.
:Ethan fully agrees, but Claire, seeing Sluf, steps next to Ashra, claps a hand around her shoulders, and begins frantically bluffing, passing Ashra's rage off as too much lichbane and warning the revolutionaries that the chamber has been discovered. Ashra and Claire have a quick telepathic argument about whether everyone in that room needs to die NOW or whether Claire should be allowed to get everyone out as fast as possible. Claire wins. Sluf hands Claire a scroll of Mass Teleport, opens a trapdoor, and sends everyone down it. Claire bluffs again that they will hold off the "enemy" and meet the counter-revolutionaries at "the safe place", and that they've brought a decoy Ethan with them to create even more chaos.
:The room empties out, and the party is left in the Motherbrain room. The tank which once held the Motherbrain is now full of bathtub gin, which Herr Doctor gulps down in a single gulp. Kruglor makes to dive into the tub, but Ethan catches him and drags him bodily from the room, indicating frantically that everyone should follow and let Ashra mourn. Ashra stares into the tub for a while and then curls up against the outside of it, trying to process that the Motherbrain which spawned her is no longer on this plane.
:Outside, Kruglor gets a quick lecture on the prudence of not doing things that will get the illithid to kill him. Then the party discusses what to do next. Snake has scouted out a bit above ground, and discovered that it is a very well fortified, very well guarded, very poorly fed city with bards preaching the virtues of the revolution on every corner. They decide to make their way to meet up with Sluf and go to the inn so that they can talk to the counter-revolutionaries. They go get the extremely depressed Ashra and make their way to the top.
:The party hears a bard talking about a big speech to take place at 7:00 PM that night; all guards are supposed to attend and the populace is encouraged to come and see the speech by the "new leaders." While listening to the speech and restricting their heckling to the telepathic channel, the party is approached by Sluf, who whispers information to them (and then switches to telepathy once encouraged to do so.) It turns out Marcus Fairlan has imported something big, something requiring special ops teams. While Sluf does not know what it is, Ethan immediately recognizes from the description that it is a Frozen Fate. Also, special forces have been recalled from other nations. The counter-revolutionaries just think they're going to destroy the tower. The party knows this could destroy the world.
:Sluf also tells Ethan that Pyotar Umarov was last seen heading the Baldur fleet dispatched south, and hasn't been heard from in months. Ethan is unnerved by this news, as the Malvont campaign was concluded long enough ago that Pyotar should have since returned, if he is still working as the head cleric in Baldur's army as the party discovered in Season Five. Either this means that Grax sent part of the navy even further south to the Southern Continent, that Pyotar is still lurking around Malvont and waiting for the seas to become less treacherous, that Pyotar is deliberately avoiding Baldur City for some reason, or that something has happened to Pyotar. Ethan doesn't like any of these options, and goes back to brooding in the shadows.
:After talking with Sluf and being told to meet him at the inn, the party finds a safe deserted place to fervently share conspiracy theories and go spelunking in each others' memories. Ashra obsesses over Grax's motivations, identity, and plots; Claire and Ethan theorize about what might be behind this and what to do. All of this begins to seem more connected than anyone had previously thought; Ethan admits that while he used to think he was collateral damage, he now thinks he was intentionally assassinated. Ashra points out that there are only three mindflayers known to remain on this plane of existence, and that she is the only one who isn't in league with Grax. Thus, she thinks, she was specially chosen for this mission, especially as she was connected to the Malvont Motherbrain at the moment it left the Prime Material Plane, but unlike all the other mind flayers did not receive any orders. While she had been too weak to plane shift at the time, other mind flayers unable to plane shift had probably found stronger mind flayers to take them, as no other young mind flayers were left behind. Also, if the other young mind flayers had been killed, it would have been trivial given the party's power level at that time for whatever force had killed them to assassinate Ashra as well. She also thinks that Grax wants to destroy the world, go back in time, and make it anew with himself as the sole god, or else to take power to become Xenteroth. Claire points out that "Xenteroth" anagrams to "Enter Xoth," the third mind flayer remaining, thus adding a third candidate for Xenteroth's original form. Ashra touches the phylactery staff Ethan took from the Xenteroth statue, but does not feel any connection to it.
:Claire decides to break out the Modify Memory. She decides to test Ethan's mind as a baseline for sanity, since aside from his living memory issues, he's probably the sanest person there. Thus, looking at him should show her what a relatively normal person looks like.
:Oh, how wrong they are.
:Claire, shocked, tells Ethan that all of his living memories have been almost totally modified or erased in some way, especially relating to his time at the Vargus School. The two weeks before his death had been completely erased. Ethan asks what she saw. Claire tells him that he was not in the Futurian society as he believed, but rather in the Macavian. Ethan recognizes that Grax was in that society, and then his head starts hurting. He asks about the missing two weeks, and Claire takes a look. She gets a quick memory of Ethan, Lady Elan, and Marcus Fairlan all at the Baldur City Tournament in late February of 1436. Ethan doesn't remember ever going to said tournament, and says that he doesn't remember ever meeting Marcus before his death. Marcus had never indicated that they'd met before Ethan washed up in South Baldur, even.
:Further expeditions into Ethan's mind reveal that he was addicted to Wolves' Milk and heavily in debt to Marcus. ("You kinda did a lot of coke." "Clearly.") During the tournament, Marcus and Ethan were both doing Wolves' Milk. Marcus was kind of jittery, but Ethan was pretty much high out of his mind. Marcus was confiding in Ethan that something had gone kind of balls-up for him. He believed that Janadan Vishnu intended to throw the Baldur City tournament, which would put Marcus out a lot of money. Marcus had hired the mindflayer Xoth to take on Vishnu's champion, Sadzuko Udina, but he was nervous about the outcome.
:Marcus knew that Lady Elan was taking Ethan to Goneril as part of her entourage for a diplomatic meeting with Barron Ganth regarding some unrest near King's Reach. He wanted Ethan to do him a favor. In exchange for some Wolves' Milk, Ethan would take a scepter to present to Barron Ganth as a diplomatic gift. Claire realizes that the scepter was actually a scrying aid, and speculates that it probably allowed someone to find and kill Ethan.
:Ethan reveals reluctantly that he was probably found by someone immediately after his death. While the wreckage of the diplomatic party had been found one day later and completely recovered two days later, Ethan was never found. He'd thought that he spent six mortal days on the Plane of Negative Energy, but had chalked this discrepancy up to just being very well hidden or otherwise affected by having gone to said plane. While modifying his memory to the extent that it had been would have normally taken power akin to a god's, he returned to the Prime Material Plane with almost no memories at all. It would have been far easier to destroy his memory in the way that Claire found. He still doesn't quite believe what Claire tells him really happened to him. For instance, the Macavian society was for powerful and unusual mages, which Ethan doesn't remember ever being. In fact, he and the Futurians thought that they were total freaks, albeit freaks who liked doing charity work for some reason.
:Claire and Ashra discuss the possibility that Ethan was never on the negative energy plane at all, and that these memories were implanted entirely. They discuss with him why he's animate and whether he or someone else did it, but reach no clear answers. Ethan, meanwhile, insists that there is no way to create a deathlock, that there's no point in doing so, and that he can't possibly be important enough that anyone would bother preventing him from being resurrected by making him into a sentient (though amnesiac) undead when they could have just made him a mindless zombie and promptly killed him. Hell, even if they wanted to make him a deathlock for shits and giggles, they could have killed him anyway while he was weakened and memory-less. Claire and Ashra speculate over who could possibly want to engineer a machine of dragon destruction, at which point Ethan freaks out and retreats from the conspiracy theory party.
:With Claire's last Modify Memory, she decides to look at Ashra. Ashra tells her that the Motherbrain could easily have modified her memory, and Claire enters Ashra's mind and looks back at the memories of the Battle of Malvont, when the Motherbrain planeshifted away. She uncovers a memory which the Motherbrain had hidden from Ashra: immediately before planeshifting, the Motherbrain told her, "Bona Fortuna, Filii," Celestial for "Good luck, son."
:After tearing up and realizing how much she does, indeed, love her mommy, Ashra notes that she was in fact right: she is the chosen champion and avatar of the mind flayers, as the Motherbrain picked her to set things right. This realization also snaps her entirely out of her depression: she's ready to fight back, save the world, and then go after Grax. After that many hours of conspiracy theorizing, the party is ready to meet up with Sluf at the inn.
:Sluf and the counter-revolutionaries, it seems, have a very simple plan. They intend to go in, plant some bombs beneath the support pillars of the tower, and cause it to pancake, causing minimal damage to the crowd while killing the soldiers who are supposed to be inside. While Kruglor and Ulfgar enthuse about bombs, Ethan, Ashra and Claire discuss how they intend to handle the frozen Fate. Ashra is still kind of obsessed with Grax. After a lot of discussion and not many decisions, Kruglor enlists Tiemp Hiss, who got the gunpowder for the counter-revolutionaries, to go with him and a group of engineers and plant the bombs. Everyone else will dimension door with Claire across the crowd onto the second floor of the three story building. Zaphodel casts Sending for Ethan, who uses her three spells to contact Pyotar Umarov, Barron Ganth, and Tyro Avampour, asking for their help and/or general interference.
:At seven, after a round of quick (and illegal) buff spells, it's go time. Kruglor arrives and begins planting bombs with his engineers. Claire takes everyone else into the building; Ashra is invisible. As soon as the majority of the party arrives, Claire is grabbed by Tyro, who indicates silently he's on their side. Miraculously, Claire does not promptly bust a cap in his ass. Around the room are many archers staring out arrow slits; where there aren't arrow slits, there are stained glass windows. Claire and Tyro will try to sneak upstairs, while Ashra wants to get to where she has a line of sight out the window to the crowd so she can try out her new Minor Image. As Zaphodel is visible and will be of no use to Ashra, Ashra speaks the code words she'd set up in advance in case the mind flayers were there and controlled her against her friends: "Cure Ethan." This instead transfers all control of Zaphodel to Ethan.
:Kruglor plants more bombs. On the roof of the building, Baudin puts the necklace around the Fate and starts the activation process. His bards play loudly, working up the crowd. Ashra gets into position invisibly. Tyro slits the throat of one guard, and Claire shoots two more, a gun in each hand. Her targets successfully capped, she tosses the now-unloaded guns over her shoulders and blends into the background. Herr Doctor floats around the outside. Ethan and Zaphodel stay with Tyro and have fun dodging arrows.
:Kruglor walks into the visible middle of the room, where he can be seen through the holes in the ceiling and by the crowd. He holds up the push-button Wand of Inferno, tells everyone he's taken control, and scares off most of the guards. His engineers continue to set bombs.
:Barron Ganth appears in the crowd, wearing his characteristic electrum armor, and kills some bystanders. Everyone shits bricks. It's pretty awesome.
:Claire gets up onto the ceiling with Spider Climb and Greater Invisibility, and snipes at the guards. Ethan starts breaking out the Magic Missile, now with new and improved Quicken Spell action. Ashra finally manages to get her illusion off, and an unusually flamboyant Ethan of Malvont "teleports" in front of the building high in the air, swirls his cloak, introduces himself as Ethan of Malvont the Dragonslayer, and spends half his bragging time bragging about how his friend Ashra is the Chosen One of the Motherbrain. This is what happens when an incredibly arrogant person gets to run the illusions. Ethan sends a message to Barron Ganth that this is not him, and he's inside; the aura of facepalm is palpable. Turns out Ganth has in fact come to stop Ethan, as Baudin offered him an end to the war.
:The beholder disintegrates a soldier; Ethan takes out another with Magic Missile. Someone shoots at Kruglor from the top of the building, and he indicates the wand; this is enough to convince that archer to stop his companion from throwing down alchemist's fire.
:Then Baudin Dommilan teleports into the tower next to Ethan.
:This one looks way more like the one everyone used to know before the Negative Energy Plane incident, and acts like him, too. That guy on top of the building, he says, is not him. Ethan and Tyro confirm that it is him -- he would so have greased the stairs -- and the three stand around with Zaphodel, administering soldier beatdowns.
:Meanwhile, all of the soldier bystanders go into formation to try to kill 'Ethan', heedless of the collateral damage that they might levy against the all-powerful ruler of neighboring Goneril. The fake Ethan of Malvont starts flying around to draw the attention of the crowd, then Ashra gets an idea. Since Ethan really likes people not knowing too much correct information about him, she decides to spread some flashy rumors. Fake Ethan tosses off his hood and reveals a head of black hair, then brags that since he came back to life in the Ruins of Eldergrin, he won't lose that life again so easily. He then disappears in a burst of black doves.
:Herr Doctor picks up Claire, and they make it up to the main level when Kruglor detonates the Wand of Inferno. The second level crashes down onto the first. Herr Doctor and Claire, who were directly over the hole to the lowest level, dodge high into the air; everyone else is shielded by the ceiling and floor. Tyro tumbles through the wreckage to safety. Ethan casts Featherfall and catches Baudin as the building resettles, now one story shorter. Kruglor himself, however, perishes in the Kruglorious blaze, which also takes out all enemies on that floor. As his dying act, he rolls the Dimension Die, which solves itself into a standard gating die. No one knows where his remains went. Tiemp Hiss, who was also on the bottom floor, dies and is immediately resurrected at one level higher thanks to an earlier Two. He takes this opportunity to run away.
:A bunch of soldiers come after Tyro, Baudin 1.0, and Ethan. Tyro ducks into the next room, and Ethan takes the soldiers out with Neg Ball. Zaphodel is no longer useful to Ethan and Baudin 1.0, so Ethan cedes control of Zaphodel back to Ashra.
:Herr Doctor delivers Claire to the top floor, which Barron Ganth has also reached. Marcus Fairlan, Baudin, and the Fate are there, as are lots of mephits. Barron Ganth attacks Herr Doctor, who takes it like a man; Claire shoots Baudin repeatedly, but ends up surrounded by mephits. She levitates out of the way, as Ashra gave everyone but Kruglor levitation before the battle (he left before she was handing it out) but Marcus Fairlan casts Dispel Magic, sending her back down again into their midst. Thankfully, Zaphodel gave her Bear's Endurance before the fight, and she is able to sink a few blows. Ashra tells her she's coming to help out, while Ethan and Baudin 1.0 enjoy Ethan's new zombie army and Zaphodel goes for the dimension die on Ashra's command.
:Herr Doctor aims a disintegrate ray at Baudin; he resists, but it chips away part of his face, revealing ... a tentacle? Baudin appears to be Grax, or at least some mindflayer who isn't Ashra, but he also appears as perplexed as the party is as to why he's sprouting tentacles on the side of his face.
:Barron Ganth decides to strike the death blow for Herr Doctor, and casts Chain Lightning. Herr Doctor nearly explodes from the shock and perishes nobly, while Ashra (of course it hit her) survives. Claire tumbles away from the mephits, and shoots Baudin again.
:Ashra expresses her admiration for the Xentaroth Gambit that's apparently just been pulled by Grax, but she's also ready to end things. She floats up the highest level, looks BaudinGrax in the eye and says in Celestial, "You have sinned. I am the favored son." Then she zaps the Wand of Time Stop.
:First she runs up to the Fate and slips the activation necklace off its neck and around her own, easily resisting the Ghoul Glyph. She then grabs BaudinGrax and hurls him off the side of the building, though he survives miraculously. With her last few moments, she attempts to attach a tentacle to Marcus Fairlan, but cannot hit him even when he is immobile. Apparently he had a helmet or something. Time reengages with her next to him.
:Barron Ganth grabs the Fate and teleports away with it. Ethan is surprisingly okay with this. Both Ethan and Zaphodel reach for Dimensional Anchor, but BaudinGrax Dimension Doors away before they can stop him. Claire stabs Marcus, taking advantage of the flanking, and staggers him. Ashra really wants to eat his brain, but Ethan insists that he shouldn't, and they instead kick him unconscious and physically kidnap him. Claire takes one of Herr Doctor's eyestalks and some of his possessions so that she can have him revived if necessary. Baudin 1.0 and Tyro disappeared into a room in the tower which is now rubble; Ethan tries to search for them and is eventually dragged away by Zaphodel on Ashra's orders.
:The party retreats to the illithid guildhome. They've lost two party members, gained a prisoner, uncovered bizarre machinations past and present, and quite possibly saved the universe.
Season Seven Complete.
==Previously/Next Time on Eon==
Previous Season: Season Six: Legends of the Ages
Next Season: Season Eight: The Sword of Destiny
Adventures with this party will continue in Season Nine: The Dark Lantern!
== Characters ==
Starring:
*Ethan of Malvont
*Ashra
*Claire
Returning:
*Baudin Dommilan (last seen in Season One: The Jade Warriors) (OR DID HE?)
*Kruglor (last seen in Season Two: Infinite Horizons)
*Ulfgar (last seen in Season Three: Unsolved Mysteries)
Introducing (in order of appearance):
*Herr Doctor
*Vladomil Primakov
Where Am I This Time and Oh Yeah What Day Is It:
*Valera Oak III
With a Very Special Guest Star:
*Fab Dick
Category:Seasons