Session 43-B: Enough

## Key Plot Developments

Glyn, Pix, and Misu are deep in the mind flayer lair. Glyn worries about Cyrog, the elder brain, sending more undead after them. Pix feels like she’s losing her voice in a place where speaking means giving up their location. Misu thinks there must be a mechanism to dispel the wall of force and directly attack the elder brain. They decide to leave the area before more mind flayers come.

The group enters a buzzing room with pods full of test subjects—beholder-like figures, quaggoths, and people. Pix is transfixed by the experiments, but chooses to leave the creatures to their fates.

In a new room, they find desks covered with brains, bile, and other organs. Multiple vampiric mind flayers are joined by intellect devourers—brains propped up by four legs. The group is stealthy, but an intellect devourer discovers them. A battle ensues when the four-legged brains try to overwhelm the bard’s consciousnesses, but Glyn’s aura of protection helps Pix hold on to her sanity.

Misu and Glyn fight off the mind flayers, verbally provoking them to draw their attention away from the downed Pix. After a great loss of spell slots and resources, they survive.

Misu notices some wires on the ceiling and surmises they may be connected to the wall-breaking mechanism. When they follow the wires, they encounter the eyepatch-wearing empty-scabbard second-in-command Eldgrim and are introduced to his leader, the ulitharid Tobulux.

Eldgrim and Glyn, drawing on their past, negotiate. Eldgrim speaks for his employer in suggesting that, if the elder brain is destroyed and Tobulux is supported in supplanting him, they’ll support the party. Eldgrim and Tobulux don’t care for the elder brain—they want power—but they’ll know move against it if their victory is assured. If it seems like the party won’t support Tobulux’s bid for control, he’ll turn them over to the elder brain. Pix helps broker an uneasy truce: they’ll dispel the wall of force and give the party a few seconds to rush to the elder brain.

The party takes a moment to heal and agrees. The barrier disappears and the group bolts to the central chamber to finish off the elder brain.

They enter the large room. Fiendish runes cover the walls. The enormous brain—the size of many men—sits in a van in the chamber’s center. The being tries to mentally overwhelmed them, psionically bombarding them with images of their imminent undeath.

A grueling battle ensues. The elder brain blasts them with waves of necrotic energy, its hatred for life incarnate. It manifests smaller walls of force to protect itself. It psychically attacks them, trapping them in cones of pain.

Misu attempts to call on her devilish handlers for help, but the fiendish power in this room overwhelms her. Glyn attacks with demonic abandon, disrupting the brain’s wall of force. Hellish crossbow bolts bombard the brain. Dawnbringer hacks at it. But the party is running out of time, options, and stamina.

Finally, Pix realizes the brain has an opening: its van. She magically explodes the space underneath the brain, beginning to destroy Cyrog’s lair to remove the powers the lair grants. Without access to its undeath-preserving vat, Cyrog falls.

Before the party can celebrate, a portal opens in the far wall of the chamber.

A red-skinned, bloated beast with a skull for a head, a hammer at his waist, and a wand in his hand enters. Orcus, the demon lord of undeath, is here.

In the blink of an eye, Orcus stops time. When it resumes, a hoard of undead fill the chamber. The party begins to run, but Orcus is faster. Waves of overwhelming necrotic energy suck their energy. Ghouls and ghasts descend on them. They eat through Misu’s resources, including her shield guardian.

Just when it seems like the group might get away, Orcus utters a single word: power word kill. Misu dies instantly. Her soul is sucked into the ring she was wearing. Orcus raises his wand, and her body is zombified.

As Glyn and Pix, desperate and shaken, leave Misu’s remains behind, they see dozens of mind flayers—led by Grazilaxx—teleporting in, intent on reclaiming the pod from the undead.

Glyn tries to warn the group about Orcus’s arrival, but he’s too late—Orcus is here. The mind flayers face the lord of the undead.

Glyn can’t afford to lose Grazilaxx. He tackles the mind flayer back into the portal, grabs Pix, and forces everyone to leave.

As the mind flayers blast Orcus with psionic energy, Orcus reveals his true power. Tears in the fabric of reality open all around him. His corpulent body becomes a black silhouette. Only his eyes can be seen, which rage with a burning purple flame. Before his transformation is complete, the group—minus Misu—escape through the portal.

## New NPCs

1. Tobulux, ulitharid leader of the Empty-Scabbard Killers
2. Orcus, demon lord of undeath

## Memorable Quotes

**Pix:** Something as hateful and malignant and cowardly to have to incapacitate its foes instead of listening to what they have to say or fight them the fair way…hmm. Something like that doesn’t deserve to hear poetry.

**Eldgrim:** Well, hello there, Lord Glyn.

**Eldgrim:** Come on, y’all, you can talk, it’s fine. I don’t bite.

* **Tubulux:** That’s a fancy trick.
* **Misu:** Gotta have fancy tricks if you’re going up against an elder brain.
* **Tubalux:** Perhaps too much preparation, no?

* **Tubulux:** I get what’s mine and you keep your brain.
* **Misu:** Fair deal to me.
* **Tubulux:** And if this goes the other way…I will preserve my plausible deniability.

**Misu**: Mephistopheles and crew—I’m in a tough bind, need to get the fuck out of it, but need to solve this problem. I’ve sent you soul after soul and there’s plenty more where that came from. I. Need. This. Now. Think of the bargain!

**Dawnbringer**: There’s just…there’s so much here! So much hate! This thing is bottomless, it can’t be healed! We have to kill this!

**Glyn (to Dawnbringer):** Hi there. My name is Glyn and I have a lot of experience destroying the ground. And I, uh, and I also have experience killing my friends doing so.

**Orcus:** Enough.