As I predicted in my last article, we had quite a bit of down-time between games. We started off with a bang, however, as the party finally entered the Bleak Theater.
The initial entry was fairly routine. The party did attempt stealth, but the invisible thief still triggered the silent Alarm spell set by the duergar wizard posted at the back door of the Bleak Theater. Note: There is really only one approach to the Theater from the surface, so the party had few options in that regard.
As scripted, the wizard alerted the other guards and began buffing, while the two duergar with tower shields set up a front line facing the stairs and the 3 duergar "ushers" (reskinned as fighter/rogues) became invisible and positioned themselves to make maximum use of their nets and saps. Yes, SAPS!
It was all for naught, though. The party blasted through this encounter, with only a single invisible usher at 1 hp slipping through the smaller door next to the larger entrance and alerting the rest of the complex.
The party opted to kick open the bigger doors and found themselves facing a bunch of maddened animals. Initially brought in as fighting animals for the Theater, the advance warning of the mephit Grime, allowed them to prepare another surprise for the party. Several invisible duergar stagehands (who had been tormenting the animals to "get their blood up") began releasing the animals caged in this staging area.
The party found themselves confronted by enraged rhinos, tigers, smallish dragons, and a pair of owlbears, but wound up getting the initiative and slamming the doors closed again before more than a single rhinoceros could get through the entrance. Bear's wild empathy ability managed to calm the creature down with a few incredible rolls, but after a few rounds, the animals within the room had begun picking each other off. The party re-entered the room and mopped up the remaining animals.
But before they could finish off the remaining creatures, the double doors to the left of the entry burst open, almost knocked off their hinges by an enormous (fifteen feet long) boar, which charged through the room, trampling everyone and smashing the wizard and cleric against the far wall. This took a few more rounds to clean up, with a few serious wounds being distributed before dropping the giant pig. Nobody had their head lopped off by its vorpal tusks. Sigh.
What followed was some frenetic searching as the party tried to figure out where they were in the Theater complex and what was going on. Jonas used his Locate Creature ability to help them find their way to his nephew, but while attempting to release him from his cell, the hobbit thief accidentally freed the bodak from the cell next door. At the same time, farther down the hall in the darkness (remember, duergar can see in the dark just fine, better than stinky humans), the remaining stagehands and their human ranger leader had set up a picket of chained up slaves to use as a shield, and were about to unleash a withering storm of arrows and crossbow bolts on the party. But Gektas went first and neutralized the ranger with a Baleful Polymorph, turning her into a cockroach and stealing her buffing abilities from the duergar. Boo!
Also, the bodak's lethal attacks against the group failed and they killed the beast, finally getting the nephew free of his cell.
At this point, Jonas implores the party to leave. They got what they (he) came for, and sticking around in a fortress of evil dwarves was not wise. But the party wanted to stay and find out what happened to the rest of Jonas' nephew's group - it's what they were hired for, after all. Jonas disagreed, paralyzed (hold monster) his nephew, threw him in some sort of bag, then disappeared, bidding them farewell and good luck.
At about the same time, the dreaded hobgoblin Gora-Khan appeared and began fighting Bear. Simultaneously, a reddish, lizard-and-bug like creature with four arms suddenly appeared and began attacking the group from the other side. Bear managed to take the vampire down, forcing him into gaseous form before losing any energy levels. The bug-like creature was beaten back, but disappeared again to lick its wounds.
After this the party cast about, trying to find their bearings and looking for traces of the other missing adventurers. They wound up fighting more monsters on a wide stairecase going up; ettins and blind, barbarous caveman-like creatures called grimlocks, behind which were more duergar, but a quick, invisible scouting mission by Paco revealed that the duergar were set up to bait the party in and expose their flank to an enormous, bus-sized rust monster. Paco warned the group and the party chose the better part of valor.
At some point, Bear observed "You know, aside from those duergar at the front (sic) door, we haven't killed anything that looks important" i.e., no more duergar had been killed beyond the first combat, just successive waves of animals, beasts, undead and servitor monsters.
Returning to Pelltar's Redoubt, they collected Chauntessa and returned to the Inn of the Slumbering Drake to recover and consider what they had learned.
- The party received their award from Chauntessa as agreed, for locating the latter party's ultimate fate.
- They also received a mysterious delivery that turned out to be from Jonas, who paid them a hefty sum in the form of diamonds and adamantine bars. He also exhorted the group to get as far away from the area as quickly and quietly as possible, as he feared the retaliation of Thane Vejik.
- Chauntessa did not find what she was looking for in Pelltar's massive library, "But" she added cryptically, "I now know what it isn't! And that is a good deal further than I have gone in quite a long time."
- The party rescued one slave from the Theater, Brandis the Bard, who knows a bit about the Theater and is oh so grateful. I look forward to annoying the group with songs about their adventures for years to come.
- The Inquisitors of Nuln have taken up residence in Cillimar, under the auspices of "keeping the peace" and quashing any unauthorized use of magic. It's a problem.
- Aside from some uncomfortable rumors from Kemp's extraplanar experience regarding the actions of Lomri and his ilk and how "they are changing everything, how the world works", the group hasn't really addressed what to do about it.
And as Kemp said, the world is changing...
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