2025/10/17: Investigating the Vale of Hermonides Part 3

Buzz, Everett, Knight, Malakai, Nimbus, Othar, Union   Everett rejoined the party from where he'd been warming up. As the party continued down into the crypt, several of the party members discussed the possibility of the elf being the hag, or the hag being a disguise, or other problems along those lines. This was done via telepathy provided by Killgleam. The general conclusion was to wait and see; for the moment, she was being helpful, and she was entitled to her secrets as long as she wasn't making herself a threat to the party.   The more astute party members started to hear numerous heavy footfalls all around the party. Buzz turned on encounter manager and Nimbus pulled out her rod of alertness, while Othar prepared a preemptive strike. Everett hasted the party.   In the midst of the preparations, Seneca noted that the enemies down here are respawning, not necessarily undead. Seneca and her party were down here for weeks fighting as many as 25 encounters a day, and they never made a dent.   Othar kicked things off with a darkfire soulstrike aimed down the hallway behind the group. There were noises of surprise, but none of the sensor signatures dropped from Buzz's detection.   The enemies, still hidden in the darkness, were heard to do something to prepare, locking armor or shields together. Then a black arrow sprouted from Everett's shoulder, launched from the hallway ahead. Knight instantly responded by counter-charging. They were greeted around a corner by a dozen heavily armed and armored elite skeletons. The explosion of violence that ensued left Knight badly injured and all the skeletons destroyed, with weapon tips and skeletal fingers still lodged in Knight's cloak and exoskeleton. It seemed that on top of their immense resistances, the skeleton warriors were able to reactively teleport to keep up with Knight's own mobile defenses.   The rest of the party booked it down the cleared hallway, and Knight joined them on the run. The rest of the skeletons pursued. Everett took an arrow to the other shoulder, but this time the stoneskin he'd cast managed to absorb it.   Our heroes (and villain) reached a giant mineshaft leading down. 40'x40'x120+'. It looked like there had once been a big claw mechanism thing to reach down into it, but that was now melted and wrecked. Seneca jumped in the hole without hesitation, aiming for the middle. Knight followed her in without pause. Everett started to cast fly, but was grabbed by Nimbus and pulled in with her. The rest of the party followed.   At the bottom, the group was greeted by an air elemental cushion courtesy of Seneca. (The air elemental had a little smiley face. It was cute.) Othar, hovering down villainously, opted to scoff mildly and float off to the side.   Seneca described the skeletons above as the "Cursed Legion". They are the dark lord's elite force, and that encounter involved a lot more of them than her party usually encountered.   As the party regrouped, they heard a horrific, unnatural scream from down one tunnel, accompanied by a flash of light. The adventurers debated whether to investigate. Some wondered if this meant there were other adventurers down here, while others reminded them that this place was known to produce luring illusions to draw heroes into traps. Still, some argued, if there was someone else trapped down here, it would be bad to bypass them. The debate quietly continued as the party prepped.   Othar had figured something out in the midst of being attacked, and he asked if Knight trusted him. Knight said yes. Othar touched them and, with Saveon's power, managed to dispel the blackmantle he'd placed during the first battle, allowing them to heal themself once more. With his theory confirmed, he followed this success by dispelling it from the rest of the team.   The arrow in Everett crumbled to corroded metal and rotted wood when removed from his body. Seneca mentioned that they do that even within the target, if left long enough. And the pieces are cursed. A holy water sprinkling was advised. The spots where the arrows had hit hissed violently. One of the other adventurers pointed out that it might be a good idea to toss some holy water at Knight too, considering all the stab wounds. The knight itself turned out to be okay, but its cybernetic leg let out a burst of hissing steam as the curse that had impacted that item was dispelled.   Healed up and ready, the party headed toward their destination. The screeches and sounds of battle were coming from a side passage in that direction. The sneaky folks (Nimbus and Everett) went first to investigate. They saw a blast of holy energy that seemed real and promptly headed in to help.   They found an ogre-sized, dark-scaled dragon-headed knight with a giant broadsword in one hand and a colossal battleaxe in the other. Despite wielding the weapons, he was using the claws on his hands to rip at himself. He seemed to be fighting himself. Buzz asked Seneca if that was a member of the dark army, got an "I don't know who that is", and promptly tossed a ray of salvation. The dragon knight didn't even react; the spell bounced, almost hitting Buzz on the return stroke.   Nimbus started to run over to help, but the knight spotted the party at the same time, and he turned to roar in bloodlusted challenge. He visibly ejected several of his teeth with the force of the roar, and they regenerated just as fast.   The party spellcasters started to open up as he charged. This proved useless: He was 10 feet tall and managed to deflect multiple spell effects and a potion in less than a second. Physical interception by Knight and Nimbus proved more effective. Their combined efforts deflected a barrage of swings, and when one axe blow was about to get through and strike Nimbus, Knight stepped in and took it deep into the chest without pausing. The horrible chunky, bloody acid breath weapon that followed was similarly shrugged off.   Battle highlights:

Union psychically reached through time to draw a nearby weapon to him. The response, shockingly, came from inside the monster: A crystalline holy avenger's blade burst from the thing's chest, causing more pained demonic screeching and another barrage of the horrible acid. Once the battle ended, it was revealed that the crystalline core of the old sword had been embedded in the monster's chest as a questionably successful attempt at a power-up, and Union summoned the sword's original form from the timestream. This turned the stabbing pain in the creature's chest from figurative to very literal.

Knight got creative with the special moves in this fight, aiming to incapacitate the knight and free whatever what was inside. Disarms, trips, and a sword into the mouth to direct the breath weapon, and when the first attempt to slam the creature to the floor failed, this was followed by two swords into the chest, a shade dash through the target, a pinning sword planted into its heel, and then a pull on the two successfully planted front swords to slam the monster to the ground and tear it wide open.

Nimbus supported these efforts with some good grappling and redirection, clambering onto the thing's back and head.

Othar dispelled the thing's armor and sword, breaching its defenses and significantly weakening its offense.

Knight's finishing move unzipped the monster into two smaller demon dragon things, leaving the holy avenger clattering to the floor between them. It called to Nimbus; the disguised aasimar found herself reaching for it, and when it failed to burn her, she launched herself at one of the staggered monsters, augmenting the avenger's blows with a barrage of holy water darts from her wrist launchers. The dragon-thing she went for survived, but barely.   As Nimbus charged, Seneca aimed for the second creature, calling out "Defense check!" A silvery orb, identified by Buzz as some terrifyingly empowered variant of a flaming sphere, descended on the unwounded dragon and consumed it in hellish silvery fire.   And then Buzz opened up on the remaining creature and immolated it with a barrage of 60 purefire stars from his Trigun pistol.   That ended the combat. As the rush of battle faded, so did the form of the holy avenger, coming apart into the scraps of a holy sword. The majority of the weapon vanished, but the softball-sized gem at the core of its crosspiece remained. Knight didn't detect a full living soul inside, but there was definitely a lifeforce. (They also detected all sorts of ghostly eyes watching from the walls while focusing. They ignored those.)   Nimbus had Malakai inspect the gem. According to his inspections, it was a raw holy spirit that was once the core of a holy avenger but has since become greater than the sum of its parts. It was also doing 50 points of damage per round to him. He quickly handed it back to Nimbus. (It seemed to like her.)   Seneca did a check without touching it. She recognized it: She said it was what was left of the holy sword that belonged to one of her friends. It was the core of the weapon that destroyed the dark lord, but she knew it to have exploded in the process. It seemed the dark lord's minions had retrieved this piece and tried to use it to grant the demon-dragon knight the magic-deflecting properties of a holy avenger.   Union tentatively reached out to the sword with his mind: "Hello, nice to meet you." Sword: "'Sup." Union: "I'm glad you're okay. I'm sorry we don't have someone who can use you, but we'll try to find someone." Sword: <rolls its metaphorical eyes and pointedly turns to look at Nimbus>   Nimbus, feeling somewhat awkward about the sword's favor but willing to try to live up to the faith, held onto it. The enemy's (ogre-scaled) weapons were intact and not cursed, so the group grabbed them as well.   Heading back to the main passage and onward into the crypt, the party's next stop was a massive cavern. A giant humanoid, some 40-50 feet tall, was visible at the far end of the cavern, obscured by thunderclouds wrapped around it. According to Seneca, the dark lord liked to summon storm giants like this as siege weapons. She proposed that she engage it directly, giving the rest of the party the chance to sneak closer. They agreed. Before splitting up, the adventurers went through their inventories and handed a bunch of lightning resistance equipment to Seneca to help her survive. (One of those pieces, notably, was a beard clip. Despite Seneca's clear lack of beard, she was able to put it on after she put her hood up, with no explanation given. Nimbus may have detected an expression of shame as the woman attached it.)