4.8 Coup D'etat Times Two

Timmeron gives himself over to the
Citadel, drinking in its powers and engaging the four dread lords
keeping Kaneel prisoner. The Citadel empowers his magic such that he
no longer has need of silly little things like spell domains
concentrating on his magic; what he wills occurs. As he and the dread
lords lob spell after spell upon each other, the party tries to
rescue Kaneel. Before they can reach him, however, one of the dread
lords casually executes him. The Archbishop suggests that he can
resurrect Kaneel if they have a moment, but that they should leave.
They grab the body ad go, sealing the door behind them while Timmeron
does battle with the four.

 They come upon a divide in the path
and while they decide which to take the Archbishop takes a moment to
bring Kaneel back to life. The party decides to take the more
circuitous of the paths, reasoning that they may meet fewer
obstacles as the more direct path might be expecting them. They
almost immediately meet a blockade of cultists which they have to
fight their way through. With trickery and telekinesis, raw force and
holy fire they manage to fight their way through the blockade,
pulverizing cultists and knocking aside their magical shields. The
next room sets siege equipment against them, firing bolts of dark
magic that explode, washing over the party with necromantic fervor.
They dismantle the siege engines one by one; taking out their
operators, crushing them, or forcing them to fire upon each other by
redirecting their fire. Those not engaged in the offensive do their
best to protect the more vulnerable party members, shielding them
with magic, or even bodily diving in the way of the dark magic
assault. Once the last siege engine fell, the party ran through the
room.

 The next room, as far as they could
tell, was filled to the brim with cultists and other horrors waiting to
ambush them as soon as they opened the door. Something about the
Citadel seemed to be consciously directing the cultists to block
their path. Rather than engage against near impossible odds, they
employed one of Baygrith's remaining bombs, annihilating the room and
reducing it's occupants to powder with no small shuddering of walls
and splintering of stone and bone.

 Timmeron, for his part, separated and
took down two of the dread lords. He used time magic to lock two of
the four in stasis, leading the remaining on a chase. Distracting one
for a moment, he shrunk himself and entered the skull of the other,
growing to full size to explode its skull into splinters The other he
blasted with antimagic and cut in half with a massive sword of
conjured energies. While losing his head hadn't actually destroyed
the first lich, he was sufficiently surprised as to be rendered
powerless to stop Timmeron's final blow. He took the opportunity to
find the Chosen of Astor, taking command of the remaining cultists in
the Citadel and directing them to leave the party alone.

 After meeting up with Timmeron, the
party learns that the last two dread lords are waiting for them
outside the Citadel. Not knowing what to expect, but knowing they
have to leave sooner rather than later, the party heads to the exit,
finding the two Dread Lords just outside. They conjure a magical
barrier to prevent the party from fleeing, then prepare to face off
against Timmeron. The rest of the party is sufficiently
unintimidating to them that they barely recognize their existence.
This changes when Perlapae divides the battlefield in half with a
huge, stone wall, cutting the dread lords off from each other's power
and weakening their defenses. Left with nothing else to focus on, one
lich turns to the party, the other to Timmeron. Timmeron isn't
entirely alone on his half of the field, however. Joining him in his
head are the voices of the other two dread lords whose spirits he
subdued. They agree to help in in the fight, weaving spells in the
back of his mind so he is free to divert his attention to the attack.

 The battle rages, with Timmeron
wielding terrifying variations of time magic, shrinking,
invisibility, and explosive power. Is opponent matches his power,
though not his creativity, casting draining spells and bolts of dark
magic. For their part, the group has a hard time keeping up with
their foe. The Archbishop tries to “ressurect” their lich,
causing it great pain but being interrupted before completion.
Travize tosses some brandy on the dread lord, causing its essence to
be drawn into his flask. This, too, is interrupted as the lich fights
back, blasting the party about the field with torrents of power and
necromancy that leave them withering away. Quickly the healers try to
fight the maledictions while the rest of the arty struggles to hurt
the thing.

 The two battles merge when Timmeron's
opponent blasts a hole in the wall, joining its brother and combining
their powers to shield the two of them from most harm. The group
battles on, eventually managing to separate the two again. Travize
once more drains the lich with his flask, slowing it down enough for
the group to hack away at its body with swords or blast at it with
bolts (or bullets) of light. Finally, Grukk takes a mighty swing,
cutting the thing in half. The lich explodes in a torrent of
destructive power, unleashing its final effort in a focused wave of
destruction, outright killing Travize, Caireann, Perlapae and Evie.
Timmeron finishes up his fight by repeating his shrinking strategy
exploding the skull of his opponent and taking advantage of the
surprise to drain it of its power.

 The fight over, the Archbishop sets
about resurrecting the dead party members, though exhaustion is
beginning to take its toll on him. As he is finishing his spells,
however, the Citadel makes its will know, wrapping the party in a
bubble of power and hurtling them through the sky towards the Queen
Voidspawn, telling Timmeron that it is time he made good on his
promise to end their foe. The magic bubble strikes like a bullet,
burying the party deep inside the Queen's body. So large is she that
her innards are more like a landscape than a creature, and predators
eager to defend their mother swarm from all directions. Acid splashes
everywhere from any cut to the muscular walls of the beast as the
party tries to fight its way through the tubes and other nameless
organs that make up the Queen's vital processes. Ecosystems thrive
within her, themselves contests of predator and prey.

 The Archivist points the way for them,
telling them it can force one of the Queens “brains” to command
its troops to leave Tirisea and return home. Timmeron wraps the party
in another bubble of magic, catapulting them into, for lack of a
better word, the Queen's bloodstream and through its massive body,
eventually bursting through a wall and into a central nervous control
center. The Archivist works its magic, and through the projected
images of its power they see the Voidspawn begin to leave their
cities and their towns, fleeing Tirisea. While there, they also have
the Archivist force the Queen to free all of her Tirisean hostages,
dropping them off in the Voidspawn ships at a place the party can
ready. Though the group wants to leave, Timmeron decides that it is
not yet time to go. He casts the group out of the queen, forcing them
to save themselves from a brutal collision with the ground in the
process, and finds his way to the very core of the Queen where her
life energies are strongest. There he enacts a terrible ritual,
shedding his madness and power throughout the Queen's body,
necrotizing flesh and bone alike. With and shudder, the Queen
plummets from her position in the sky. Timmeron dies in the ensuing
explosion of ichor and acid.

 The party first finds the refugees,
having the Archivist send them home. Once they see the queen fall
from the sky, they head over to see if Timmeron survived. Unable to
find him or reach him telepathically, they search desperately for his
remains. Perlapae finds them with her life senses, drawing them out
of the carnage. Though the remains are in no way recognizable, the
Archbishop is able to resurrect him with Kaneel's help. As his body
and spirit are rejoined, the party sees him take on his old for as a
gnome, now of flesh and blood. With joy and lighter hearts, they
depart the Voidspawn world, returning home from that hellish place.
Just before they go, Kaneel gives the Archbishop some advice on how
to deal with Bartos which he promises to share with the group when
the time is right.

 Unfortunately, while the party is
able to welcome the return of Timmeron to his old self, they must say
goodbye to Karhanza. She volunteered to stay behind to close forever
the doorway between the worlds, sacrificing her very essence to
ensure the door stayed shut forever, with no material from either
world able to reopen the door. Tearfully they hugged and parted ways.

 Once again aboard the ship they call
home, the group finds Sajaina and crew and the two groups trade
stories. While they were gone, Sajaina and Albert convinced most of
Tirisea to flee to an ancient human settlement with natural resources
to spare. The Dwarves the Laputians and a tremendous number of
refugees hiding in the Cathedral of Bartos were the only people not
yet convinced, though intentionally left for last. Albert makes one
more effort to convince the party to abandon Tirisea rather than
fight Bartos, but as they have bound themselves to this task, none
but Sajaina have much of a choice.

 Getting ready for what they hope will
be their final venture into such danger, the group summons the Night
Maiden to ask her how she would approach the situation. She grants
the Archbishop a spell he can use to send the party to the realm
where Bartos dwells, which they must access through the Cathedral.
She also gives them orbs of power she says can be formed into weapons
and armor of use against Bartos once they arrive in that place. They
ask her of the Archivist, and she replies that he may have a use
against Bartos, though he may also be an inconvenience and they
should be ready to deal with him if he becomes so.

 Surprisingly, the Night Maiden also
addresses Sajaina, taking note of her new faith and attempt to follow
the principles of Bartos. She suggests that Sajaina go to face Bartos
anyway, as he might hesitate to use certain of his powers on a
“devoted follower,” suggesting that she may find some way to help
while she is there.

 Once more into the breach, the parties
prepares to venture. They make their last preparations, taking a
night to ready themselves in body and mind to kill a god.