DFE 13 Notes (Laura)

In this adventure, our intrepid party found a new friend, learned a little more about the White King, and escaped from the Green Mountain with Namanda's key and some of the Pharaoh's artifacts.

(Larry, can you forward this to Jai, whose email address I do not know?)

1) At the end of last adventure, one of the bronze giants in the temple chamber, which Leonus had identified as technomantic constructs, had been activated by our artifact acquisition and began attacking with uncanny speed. Wakinyan had attempted to deactivate it again by replacing the staff he had taken, but instead it picked up the staff and attacked us even more.

2) Jaicinteleq decided this qualified as an emergency and activated the antimagic artifact she had received in the post, with the intention of disabling the army of constructs. This had the unexpected side effect of causing a silver lightning storm to emerge from the crystal, which then shattered and released Jai's new character, Pandora.

3) Pandora at first appeared in the form of a peasant woman who did not know anything about this situation, but then she transformed into a winged being called the Mistral who said that the constructs were minions of the White King who had trapped her in the crystal for 8000 years. She called the one who was attacking us Giela, and started shooting at him.

4) Meanwhile, Wakinyan called Esther over to help him pray for Tongues. He heard the grinding of gears in the darkness and suddenly called for Jaicinteleq to turn the magic back on, which she did. Wakinyan's intuition was apparently correct: the constructs had all moved during the time the magic was turned off, and froze back in place when it was restored. Wakinyan theorized that they were in stasis, which the antimagic field had suppressed.

5) The armored giant continued angrily attacking. Our own attacks seemed to be doing little damage even when they successfully penetrated. Jaicinteleq eventually felled him with an arrowstorm to his unarmored head; even there, each shot appeared to be doing very little damage, and only the critical hit to his spinal cord had a clear effect.

6) With Giela dead, the party recovered the two staffs the Pharaoh had wanted. Then they searched the giants body, finding a magical necklace which Eekam put away in a special bag.

7) During this time, Leonus had been using his dragonmark to narrow the corridor we were retreating down so that it was too small for the construct army to pursue us except in single file

8) When Eekam put the necklace in his bag, another giant commander activated and confronted us. The Tongues spell of Wakinyan and Esther was online by this point, so we parlayed with him. His name is Thiel. Ademar at first refused to talk to him, but was eventually persuaded to show him the sword he had taken from the Fain of Night, at which point Thiel knelt and told him "The Bronze Legion follow the sword."

9) The party spoke with Thiel for a while. He confirmed his legion serve the White King, and also that they had captured Pandora and trapped her in the crystal thousands of years ago, at the White King's command. Thiel did not know why. He identified Pandora as a "servant of the she-cat." Jaicinteleq guessed this was Namanda, which Pandora confirmed. Wakinyan asked about He Who Came Down From The Mountain, and Thiel made an elaborate ritual warding signal and said that name must not be spoken in the temple. Thiel confirmed the sword as the White King's, but the upper temple as He Who Came Down From The Mountain's.

10) Thiel concluded that Akhetenare was playing us for fools, wanted the items he had asked for so as to control the Legion, was lying about being confined to his tomb area and about containing the evil of He Who Came Down From The Mountain, and that he instead wanted to free him. Deucalion read his mind and confirmed that he was telling the truth to his best knowledge. However, the party has observed the guards who had confined Akhetenare, and also it was Namanda, not Akhetenare, who told us he was containing Mountain Man's evil.

11) Thiel wanted to accompany us to the Pharaoh's tomb and confront him immediately. Jaicinteleq suggested that instead, we all go to Namanda and ask HER about it, then decide once we've spoken to her whether to return to the Pharaoh. Thiel and the party agreed to this, but first we had to retrieve her key.

12) We went back to the upper temple where we had seen Namanda's key. The golem had detached from the wall and followed us closely, without attacking us but without letting us examine it. Wakinyan was suspicious of it and used Precognition, getting images of it shooting deadly chain lightning at us and also melting the key.

13) Meanwhile Pandora noticed some kind of "chain of fate" affecting Loic and offered to cut it, but he said no, so she did not.

14) Leonus cast a warding spell to suppress magical lightning on the archway leading to one of the small rooms. The party deactivated the key alcove so the key wouldn't be damaged, then had the giant constructs drag the golem and throw him into the warded alcove. The golem shot them with lightning on the way, disabling two and wounding a third, but was eventually barricaded in the anti-lightning time-out room, at which point Deucalion used telekinesis to grab the key.

15) Pandora opened a magical portal to Namanda's castle. Merkha passed through the portal first. Jaicinteleq suggested Deucalion contact him telepathically to make sure the portal worked and was safe, but Leonus disagreed and said it was more important for Deucalion to pass through with the key immediately. Deucalion disobeyed him and contacted Merkha first anyway, on the theory that Leonus had no way of knowing what he was doing mentally anyway. Merkha replied positively, and Deucalion passed through, with the rest of the party following.

16) Upon arrival at Namanda's castle, Leonus chewed out Wakinyan for putting the staff back at the end of last episode when his orders had been to retrieve it.

And there we broke for the day.

Onward!