MY SHOES!
Continuing on Day 955, in the midst of a difficult battle, they are glad to have a temporary reprieve due to Farron’s banishment of the biggest threats. Especially because the party is extremely low on resources. However, banishing those enemies for the next minute takes concentration, which means Farron had to drop haste on Aran. As a result, Aran feels like he just hit a brick wall and needs a few moments to recover.
Farron shoots a mote of light at the badly injured Nightmare by Qarzdaq, killing it on impact.
The winged kobolds shoot small balls of fire at the party from their daggers, causing minor damage.
The Giant Fire Beetles swarm Qhortho, but they can’t even manage to land their bites, let alone cause damage.
The party manages to paralyze then obliterate the remaining non-banished Nightmare. With that beast out of the way, they easily clean up the rest of the smaller enemies.
Andrea continues to pepper them with helical streams of necrotic energy, but she becomes furious once the room has been emptied.
ANDREA: How do you always thwart everything?!
She vanishes, spawning corporeal wights, deathlocks, and deathlock wights around the magenta cube… a play right out of Tyrone’s playbook earlier.
The lava stops flowing from the ceiling. The lava in the trenches continues to light the room from the ground.
In Andrea’s place within the magenta cube, a red shard lies on the ground, inaccessible.
Farron sends one of his motes of light soaring towards a deathlock, destroying it with a flash of radiant energy. He then rattles the core of the other deathlock, though not enough to kill it.
Aran kills the last creature in front of him then looks around for his next target. He comes to the realization that if he moves in to attack the undead near the magenta cube, he will be scorched by the lava along the way. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but his own mortality is making an extremely rare appearance before his very eyes. Instead, he downs a potion and plots his next move.
Qarzdaq launches a fireball at the cluster of undead, destroying them all with the magnificent power of R’hllor.
Though no other enemies exist in the room right now, the magenta cube still remains intact. They quickly surmise that the banished creatures will need to be destroyed before they are able to leave the room.
They all quaff potions to heal their injuries and regain their mojo, regrouping near where the banished creatures will reappear.
As they position themselves, the lava begins to cool and the light from the ground dims.
Farron takes out his thieves’ tools and casts light on them, tossing them in between where the enemies will reappear.
They devise a plan to have everyone attack the enemies once they reappear. However, rather than waiting the full minute, Farron intends to drop his concentration on their banishment, so they will reappear on his command. But his intention is not to just drop concentration alone… instead, he will cast haste on Aran, which also requires concentration, forcing the banishment to end.
Each member of the Assembly figures out exactly where they want to be when these creatures reappear, and in the meantime, the lava cools completely, leaving the room almost entirely unlit and heavily obscured. The only sources of light are the newly lit thieves’ tools and the magenta cube at the center of the room.
Everyone lights torches and arranges a loose perimeter. As they do, Farron provides bardic inspiration to each of his allies.
FARR: Everyone ready?
ARAN: Ready.
QARZ: Ready.
QHOR: Ready.
Farron casts Haste on Aran.
Immediately, the relative silence is broken by the cacophony of two glowing fiery Nightmares, a Fire Giant, and a Young Red Dragon. But before they even have a chance to move an inch, the Assembly spring into action!
Aran slashes through the dragon’s golden plate and its red scales.
Qarzdaq casts a thunderball at the two Nightmares and the Fire Giant, destroying one of the Nightmares.
Qhortho heaves his Valyrian great sword into the Fire Giant, destroying it.
Farron launches a mote of light at the dragon, blasting it with radiant energy.
Aran slashes the dragon twice more. He connects on one but loses his footing on the second, providing the dragon an opening, which it takes immediately, biting him hard with its searing teeth.
Aran attempts to retaliate with another strike, but is unable to connect.
The dragon disengages and flies high into the air. The Assembly recognizes this dragon tactic; it is about to do a strafing run with its fire breath!
Qarzdaq, with mixed feelings, targets the dragon with Disintegrate. But not just raw Disintegrate… he needs this to land hard. He casts it with both Heightened Spell and Transmutes the energy to Thunder damage. The dragon appears to dodge the ray, but the gods have inspired Qarzdaq to thwart this beast of evil, curving the ray towards the dragon’s new location, instantly transforming the beast to dust and ashes.
Although still mid-battle, Qhortho looks somewhat displeased!
QHOR: My new shoes!
Qhortho takes his anger out on the nearby Nightmare by charging it and knocking it to the ground. He then turns and smashes it to a bloody, fiery pulp.
The magenta cube in the center of the room vanishes, leaving behind a glowing red ice shard surrounded by inky black darkness.
They grab their lit torches from the ground and approach the ice shard. Their artifacts dim and they all feel more exhausted. They find they can only move half as fast as usual.
Aran picks up the softly glowing red ice shard and they all head towards the entrance.
Aran places the shard into the door’s cavity. A resounding clunk fills the room. It sounds similar to the clunk they’d heard when the door initially slammed shut behind them.
He tries to push open the door but nothing happens.
ARAN: I’m not sure what’s happening here guys. It’s not opening.
He jiggles it a bit, but nothing changes.
He recalls that the water room had the shard already inserted and the doors opened when it was removed. Aran removes the shard and they hear the same crackling sound they’d heard when removing the blue ice shard from the blue door.
The ice shard fades from red to transparent as the doors open on their own with a low-frequency rumble.
Their eyes are forced to adjust quickly to the glowing magenta light from the central chamber.
Elemental Mixing
The party traverses the inner halls following a counter-clockwise path. The halls are clear the entire way back to the blue door. They make a stop to insert the transparent ice shard into the central chamber door. As it clicks into place, the shard gains a magenta glow.
Two more to go.
From where they stand, they can see ice mephits if they continue in the counter-clockwise direction.
QARZ: Ice… Water and Air… we should expect Air to be the next room in this direction.
Every artifact except Farron’s light up as Qarzdaq drops a fireball on the group of ice mephits, destroying all but one of them. As they are killed, they explode in bursts of jagged ice.
Continuing along, their artifacts still lit, they find more mephits. These are half smoke and half mud.
The mud mephits explode with sticky restraining mud; the smoke mephits leave behind a cloud of obscuring smoke.
After killing all of these mephits and the smoke clears, they find large double white doors.
They continue counter-clockwise and find dust mephits.
QARZ: Dust… Air and Earth.
They destroy these creatures as well, exploding with blinding dust. Given this is contesting their constitution, neither Aran nor Qhortho can even be affected.
Next are more smoke and mud mephits. The party crushes these enemies, revealing large double green doors.
Continue further counter-clockwise, they encounter magma mephits.
QARZ: Magma… Earth and Fire. I guess that brings us full circle.
The magma mephits, which they’d encountered several times before, explode in bursts of lava. They make quick work of these things, and their artifacts lose their glow. They feel so sluggish now that they would be at constant disadvantage during a fight. They will need at least a 3 nights’ rest to overcome this depth of exhaustion.
I’m Tired Boss
The party teleports to the Nightwatch and spends the night.
In the morning, they address the troops. Aran’s words don’t hit as hard as they normally would, but that does not erode their trust or dedication to the cause. Aran tells them they will all be leaving for the Ioun cavern in a couple more days, where they will remain until their fight comes to a close. He tells them the realms of men are days away from victory.
They pull a few of the Citadel maesters aside.
ARAN: We need some help getting some health potions. We figure the best place to get them will be in Oldtown, but the potions we absolutely need are very expensive. Do any of you have connections with House Hightower that we can use to get these potions at very little to no cost?
One of the maesters speaks up and tells Aran that he does not believe this would be an issue at all as long as the request was kept reasonable.
QHOR: We’re nothing if not reasonable.
Farron and Qarzdaq look at Qhortho then to each other.
ARAN: It’s true. We are very reasonable.
The esteemed adventurers teleport themselves and a few of the maesters, appearing in front of the Citadel.
The maesters lead the group to the extremely tall tower in town, the seat of House Hightower. They all enter the great room at the base of the tower, at which point the maesters excuse themselves to speak with the lord on their own.
10 minutes turns to 20, which turns to 30. The Assembly is getting restless, but they trust in their allies in the same manner as they expect the trust from them.
Finally, the maesters return to the great room, escorted by a handful of guards.
Not knowing what to make of this, the party makes no aggressive nor defensive moves.
The maesters tell the group that the Hightowers have agreed to help. The lord’s son steps forward and tells them he’ll lead to the way.
They make their formal introductions and make their way to the best potion shop in Oldtown.
The lord tells the shopkeep that these men are guests of House Hightower and are to be treated accordingly in terms of favorable pricing and stock availability.
SHOPKEEP: Yes, of course, my lord. So what types of potions are you looking for exactly? Just healing? Keog’s ointment?
ARAN: Not even close. How much Keog’s ointment do you want? You can have all of mine. It’s worthless to us.
SHOPKEEP: Worthless?
ARAN: Yeah. Completely worthless. I’d be happy to give you all that we have. We need the darkest of red potions you have. If you could give each of us two of those and a potion of invulnerability, I think we’d be set.
The shopkeep is surprised by the value of the request and looks to the lord, who simply nods.
SHOPKEEP: Well, ok then. Eight supreme healing potions and four potions of invulnerability.
ARAN: To make it even easier on you, I’d be happy to give some other things like this crocodile hide.
QHOR: I have a black panther pelt you can take.
SHOPKEEP: Many thanks.
They settle up and leave the shop. Outside, they part ways with the lord and express their thankfulness once again. The Assembly and the maesters walk behind a building and teleport back to the Nightfort with their handful of the dankest of dankest subsidized health potions.
They rest two more nights at the Nightfort and awake fully rested and ready for battle.
They gather the troops and ask the Night’s Watch maesters to ferry everyone into the Ioun cavern.
The Assembly teleports themselves back to the ice necropolis and re-enter the inner chamber.
They make their way to the green door at the rear of the halls. The silence coupled with the pulsing magenta glow from the inner chamber is unnerving.
Once in front of the door, Aran opens the Ioun portal and call for the allies from Dorne and the Eyrie, in addition to the remaining soldiers from Night’s Watch and Winterfell.
We end this session on Day 958 with each member of the Assembly gaining 10.5 kXP, bringing their totals to 225 kXP and only 40 kXP from level 18. They stand outside the green door, ready to enter alongside their allies from Dorne and the Eyrie.