2025/11/14: Investigating the Vale of Hermonides Part 5

Buzz, Kelsey, Knight, Malakai, Nimbus, Everett, Othar
  When we last left our heroes, they had just saved the dragon Nagrar in the dungeon beneath the Sacred Hollow.
  The party was now some 200 feet under the surface of the mountain range. Seneca remarked that they'd started to run into things she hadn't seen before, which indicated bad things happening. It was good that the party had come along and they were doing this. She was glad she'd found a group powerful enough to really handle this place. Malakai remarked that he hadn't even accidentally summoned a trueform god to the material plane yet. Seneca didn't have much to say about that beyond a concerned "Yeah...", repeatedly.
  A party of seven badasses came strutting down the hallway from the other end. From the way they looked and the way they walked, they were the protagonists, and the invading adventurers were the speed-bump mooks. They were all tall (human-sized), wearing black studded spiky looking armor in various versions of scale/plate hybrid armor. One carried long, curved swords. Black, liquidy looking metallic leather/hide/scale/plate armor. The second had a giant spiked chain. Third had a poleaxe. Fourth had a big two-handed sword. Fifth had a sword and shield. Sixth had a rapier. Seventh had an exosuit with pistons on the arms.
  Seneca and the spellcasters stayed back and set up an artillery line while Knight, Kelsey, Malakai, and Nimbus strode forward to match the enemy's style. Kelsey used her authority as a sovereign blade to challenge the guy with the two-handed sword, Malakai started beating the exosuit-wearer to death, and Everett confirmed via explosive spellcasting that at least one of the villains was undead.
  The villains did their very best to eviscerate the party's front line. The heroes took it and held (even if it took Othar's sarcastic encouragement to keep Nimbus from dropping after her retaliatory strikes tore the chain-wielder in half). Then the party returned the favor. With the villains already savaged by Othar's darkfire shells, Knight finished off another four, and Buzz finished the surviving rapier-wielder with an overwhelming barrage of 30 blasts from a magical slashing-fireball shotgun.
  Vrex watched on with wide eyes. Seneca clapped and jumped up and down. Those were The Seven Dark Swordsmen. The party had kicked their collective ass.
  The party crossed the 30-foot pit Buzz had blasted in the floor and carried on, the corpses vanishing behind them.
  Around the next corner, they found a crown resting on a purple pillow on a pedestal. An ominous-looking black crown with black gems on it. Masterfully carved. Malakai and Buzz didn't detect any serious magic on this one, but Knight detected bits of souls attached to it. The party decided to skip this one.
  Near the next exit, there was some eerie giggling from one direction. Seneca promptly removed that direction. When asked, she said something about "dark fairies", and the party fully approved of her decision.
  A bit later, down another hallway, there was a large treasure chest. After debate, detection, a turn undead, and a telekinesis, four tall bone golems with flamberges appeared and charged the party. Seneca said they were likely immune to magic. In response, Buzz took off his stopwatches, clipped them to Knight, clicked them, and told him to have fun. Everett hit him with aid and echoed the sentiment. Nimbus went defensive, Kelsey hacked two of the golems to deconstruction with Vrex's help, and Knight finished the other two. And then the bone golems came back as ghosts and nearly ripped Kelsey's soul out. Buzz clicked the stopwatches again via telekinesis and the group cheerfully blasted, turned, and smashed the ghosts to death.
  Very nice obsidian angelic runed bracers were found on a nice pillow inside the chest. Aura of enchantment, abjuration, conjuration. Nimbus took the pillow. Othar said that he wanted the pillow. While they debated this, the rest of the party considered the bracers.
  The final encounter was coming up, according to Seneca. There was a pit angling down. The mage warned that there was a hole leading into a void outside space and time off to the right, and the party should carefully stay on the platform to the left and make sure all of their friends do too. There was a large, silver vault door down next to the platform. The door had been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times. Seneca said they just had to get to outside the door to do the ritual.
  There were black motes floating through the air. Knight detected that this whole place was saturated with Void, and that hole in time and space was a hole into Void. This whole place had a tear into the dream/nightmare realm. This didn't just look like home to Knight; it practically was home. Knight warned the party that it might not be safe for the others to stay here long.
  The party mages set about building the ritual circle. And arguing about building the ritual circle. Everett started arguing with Seneca about one part of the circle, Othar said they were both wrong and then utterly failed to articulate why, and Malakai had no idea what they were doing with any of it and called Blythe Derguil for advice. After some back and forth, Blythe opted to just teleport over and participate herself, bringing Guy and Burdacolorab with her. She used mimic mortal to make Guy look alive. When they arrived, he was examining his hands with wide eyes. He seemed to be... remembering.
  Descriptions:

Burdacolorab: almost chubby. Mostly bald. Looked like someone's friendly crazy uncle. Tonsure haircut. Brightly colored yellow robe. Fancy-looking battle staff of gnarled wood. Fuddy-duddy old wizard.

Guy. Incredibly pale almost grey skin, liver spots, massive forehead. Currently preoccupied with the newfound ability to taste and smell. He kept "having multiple horrifying revelations" look in his eye.

  Speaking to the souls in the place, Blythe was informed that the big demon king's soul was gradually returning to the material plane, but someone (Seneca) was chiseling bits off it over time to keep it suppressed and try to redeem it.
  Guy, with a lower voice and seeming concerningly more aware, wandered into the circle and started scuffing and replacing parts. "We don't need complicated, we need simple." Seneca watched on in bewilderment.
  Guy moved Othar over to a specific spot and aimed him at a specific point. Then he headed to Knight.
  ORB KNIGHT! (Turned into a 3d magic circle? True form? Is a magical formula? Very strange.) Was told to "resonate".
  Then told Seneca to stick her hands into Knight and call out to the one she loves.
  NOTE: Guy succeeded on his spellcraft check by like 70 points.
  Guy arranged the rest of the group in chosen spots around the area, then told Othar to start the incision while Guy "dealt with any interruptions".
  Seneca was revealed as a licrin, with a very long and pointy nose. Pointy ears, silver hair. Little bit of a beard. ("A fine dwarven woman's beard.") Apparently becoming a licrin has "appearance drawbacks" that mean it's almost exclusively males who become licrin.
  As the ritual went on, Guy got in a knock-down, drag-out fight outside with the incarnate soul of the demon king. Guy also revealed he could cast a sort of iron version of Bigby's crushing fist, but what it really does is open to a portal to an actual golem construct he made that then shows up and starts hitting people.
  The ritual worked, and Heroditus was returned to the realm of the free and living. A man of pale bronze and ashen sunlight; at least, that was the poetic way to describe him, considering he was currently naked and unconscious. He had a typical build for a solar (so essentially a physical ideal), with pale bronze skin and hair the color of golden sunlight breaking through an ashen sky.
  With their goal achieved, the party evacuated. Blythe went to join the ongoing fight, with her dragon transporting the group out to the Sacred Hollow. From there, Malakai arranged pickup from the Ragnarok.
  Knight, ignoring all conversation throughout the evacuation, managed partial memorization of the "true" form and what went into it. Externals pretty much yes, some internals. Something to pursue and figure out further.
  Off in the distance, the magma dwarves were getting dogpiled in the sky. This didn't include the guy Othar had been bonded to kill. He'd still need to track that guy down.
  Seneca, for reasons, had a set of clothes for Heroditus. They got him covered. He started to recover and wake up. In the meantime, Seneca asked what she could do to repay the adventurers who had so helped her.
  For Malakai: Clarification that he could resist some rules of the world because as an angel he was a messenger of the gods, but he has to understand what rules he's breaking and be actively trying to resist. Like applying a bit of divine authority to his situation. He shouldn't do it too much, doesn't want to overstay his welcome with the local gods, but he can do it.
  For Othar: To heal him, would probably involve doing a reverse ritual to remove the soulfire runes engraved on his soul. It would probably remove his ability to mess with soulfire, though. Seneca could do the ritual, but her master would do a much better job. His name's Ambrose. He's very busy everywhere all the time. And also impossible to scry on.
  For Kelsey: Recent weird experiences and encounters appear to have activated a bloodline ability of some sort, granting her her new psychic striker abilities. On Kelsey's request, Seneca took a blood sample to get a better idea of what bloodline was involved.
  Heroditus finally came to, and the party started filling him in on the situation. In the midst of the conversation that followed, Othar asked about the mines that were supposedly still worked by slaves under Heroditus' leadership. Heroditus made no bones about it; the story was true, but he claimed that the party would understand after they saw the mines and met the miners. Apparently there's something unusual about them.