Session 35: The Calm Report

General Summary

Picking up immediately where they left off, the Rat Pack was thrown into a blizzard at different locations. Geasle and Glebnor appeared on a frozen cliffside. Stinkbreath and E.L.B.O.W. manifested on a frozen lake. Azid found himself alone in a barren, snowy plain.

Krampus Strikes

Azid wanders into a copse of trees, separated from the rest of the group. There, he is suddenly attacked by Krampus. While this happens, Glebnor and Geasle plan their descent down the cliff when a permafrost elemental attacks them. On the lake, Stinkbreath falls through some thin ice, and E.L.B.O.W. confronts an ice elemental.
Azid flees up a tree but Krampus chases up after him. Geasle rides Glebnor like a sled down the mountain, and they begin making their way into the copse of trees where Azid is trying to get away from Krampus. While there, Krampus causes chaos by triggering Glebnor's cursed battleaxe, leading to the ooze attacking Geasle. While this is going on, Azid turns into a massive flying dinosaur and flies away. Geasle is forced to knock Glebnor unconscious. While his ally was down, he kicked the battleaxe away and then buried it under the snow.
Stinkbreath and E.L.B.O.W. defeat the elemental and carefully make their way across the frozen lake. Azid lands on the edge of the lake and waits for them. As this goes on, Krampus comes down from the trees and captures Geasle in his sack before running after Azid. Unprepared for the sudden attack, Krampus grapples the dinosaur with his hooked chain and forces him to revert back to his regular self. He then placed Azid into his sack and chuckled with glee as he did so.
Stinkbreath and E.L.B.O.W. crossed the lake and prepared to confront the fiend. Krampus offered to let them go, and even return Geasle. His goal was only to take Azid. The fighter and cleric were not about to let their allies go and attacked. Meanwhile, inside the sack, Geasle was weakening and desperately trying to escape. Azid attempted to turn into a whale to burst out but it failed. He then attempted to attacked the walls of the sack and caused enough damage to rip it open, freeing himself and Geasle from the sack.
Krampus angrily attacked Azid again, but the rest of the party was there to fight him. He didn't stand a chance against Azid's allies and was overwhelmed. As he fell in defeat, the Rat Pack suddenly woke up aboard Eagerwhisper's ship. Glebnor was distraught to wake up and see that their battleaxe was nowhere to be found. However, they did find a bundle of gifts addressed to each of them. Each gift contained a powerful magical item.

Dealing with a Lich

Back on Bral, the Rat Pack returned to their tavern only to find out that Frillo and Eddina had shut it down while they were away. The undead had infested the bottom of the tavern. They decided to go and deal with their pest issues, looking for the root of the problem. The undead led them to the lair of Zerask, the Mindflayer. When they arrived to see what was going on, they found a lich named Emirkol had come to Bral and killed Zerask for stealing his book. He planned to enslave the Rock and then infest a new world with undead.
Not fond of becoming slaves to a lich, the party confronted the lich and his horde of zombies. The zombies proved easy but tedious work for the skilled adventurers. Emirkol did pack a punch, but he soon became overwhelmed and attempted to flee. Glebnor wasn't about to let him through, using her new magical lantern to badly wound him with ice and create difficult terrain for the lich to try and maneuver through. With this opening, the rest of the party could defeat their would-be undead overlord.

Rewards Granted

The party leveled up to 9.