Graveyard of Empires

SESSION 179 – November 29, 2017

Rallion is missed by Finkleworm.

Serithaz can tell someone is in there, but is blocked by “something” very powerful.

Rallion ran to the door to the West towards the orbital control room. Prixithalma, Edan, and most others followed.

Nash tried to pull Sturloc away, but being in power armor, he is unmoved.

Sturloc is killed and Nash sacrifices his shield to survive.

Bavmorda drinks a potion of flying and diminution adn they are both effective, but at half power. Bavmorda flies up to Edan and takes his blocking circlet and the adamantine Khel cube and flies into the maw of the giant automaton.

Nash drinks a healing potion.

All others head West and find blast doors. Edan picks the lock of one, and we move forward.

Bavmorda gets a circlet on Finklemur’s head, but the worm keeps moving. Bavmorda gets the cube to open as the worm follows the bulk of the party, and opens it to destroy the worm and the Khel.

Nash does not think he can get through, so goes East towards the Lord Marshall’s quarters.

Bavmorda goes to check on Nash. The two of them get to the door of the Lord Marshall’s quarters and detect no traps, but hear a buzzing noise. Out of caution,they pull back and Nash fires an arror to open the door, and fire lashes out. Standing in the doorway is a beserker with more automata behind. Bac and Nash fire arrows to close the door and try to get to us by going around, but there is no path, other than to return to the lounge and crawl up the exit of the rock crusher of the worm.

While they are busy doing this, the rest of us are in a fight for our lives. We surprised the orbital control room, they were not expecting us. Rallion charges one overseer, and Lambertus the other. Sittung is there, and still whole, and cowers in a corner. We do serious damage, but do not overcome them. We win intitiative and the next round we fell the overseers, and move into the room to get out of the way of Prixithalma. Prisithalma is knocked down by two undead giants who both hit, and the undying swarm her body making sure that she is dead. Edan plans to cast ice storm, but is felled by an undead fire giant. Kottar/Araquel is also felled. Rallion and Lambertus all expect to fight to the death.

Bavmorda and Nash arrive and help turn the tide of battle. Rallion had nearly felled the fire giant he face, as had Lambertus. Nash fells the fire giant facing Rallion, and Bavmorda helps Lambertus fell another fire giant.

Just as the third fire giant approaches Rallion, Sittung decides to join in our fight. Sittung distracts the fresh undead fire giant, and we manage to clean up many of the undying.

Sittung is hit hard, but he drops the undead fire giant, and helps us clean up the undying.

We look around, amazed to still live. Sittung agrees to help us. He has been trying to crack the orbital defenses for first Marchmain, and now the Silverthrone.

Lambertus tries to reach Kalgun in his cube, but fails. Sittung notices there is something in it.

Rallion closes the door and quickly quaffs a healing potion. He was mostly unscathed until this last fight. (Three 20’s from undying. He sacrificed his shield to a blow from a giant.

Nash is talking to Serithaz to get all the copies he has made put into automata to make an army to fight the evil dwarves.

Rallion suggests pusing the bodies of Edan and Kottar through the portal, and any valuables we can scrounge.

Shocked and hurt, we wonder if we can live long enough to exit this hellish place.

SESSION 178 – November 22, 2017

Rallion charges the SW stairs avoiding the blows of undying and slays one of the undying at the top. Several undying swarmed him. Rallion shouted, “Save the woman!” as he charged, and then in ancient dwarven, “Death to the false king!”

Nash held Chuq.

Prix changed to dragon form and attacked.

Sturloc shoots Chuq.

Edan casts Summon Earth Elemental from the scroll.

Bellisente is ripped to shreds and tossed over the rail.

Axel charges one of the undying Fire Giants, damaging it severely.

Kottar and Sturloc fire their lightning axes burning through charges quickly.

Rallion has unprecedented success in clearing the undying that approach him, they cannot touch him.

The Earth Elemental keeps one berserker and one undying busy until it is destroyed.

Prix breathes fire, clearing half the room of human undying and one beserker.

Axel has two fire giants on him. He sacrifices his shield, but goes down and before we can reach him, a human undying kills him.

Kalgun’s nanocarbon golem body is slain and he jumps into the body of the firegiant he slew, the one that felled Axel. Struloc grabs the circlet from the fallen Kalgun, but cannot climb the giant. Edan steps in and manages to place it on the new firegiant Kalgun. The healthier fire giant slays the new Kalgun, but Edan rips the cube from it’s skull, so we have Kalgun once again in a portable form.

Slowly, the press of undying is ended, Edan uses his memorized lightning bolt to drop many more undead and wound an undying firegiant. Prix ends the firegiant that dropped both Kalguns. Rallion holds the top of a set of stairs.

Finally, the last fire giant and last of the undying fall on the lower level.

Rallion ignores the last undying at the top of the stairs, and runs around and slays the held Chuq, by removing his head.

Via archery and lightning from Rallion, the three opponents nearest Rallion are slayed, Prix consumes one to the west, and the one by the stairs where Rallion fought alone, runs down to face Bavmorda and is soon slain.

As the party debates and discusses putting Axel and Bellisente and gear we can’t currently use through the portable portal, there is a rumbling.

An earthquake? The rumbling gets louder. Suddenly there is a loud crash from the north wall of the upper level behind Rallion. It is the long lost Finkelworm…..

SESSION 177 – November 15. 2017

After closing the doors on the shadow elves, we discern that there are 200 levels to the top. We elect to go straight to the top and avoid all the other levels.

We are soon halted and poison gas rises at our feet, we have perhaps 5 minutes before it is high enough to impact Axel. Prix and Edan set to work climbing up 30 feet to a door and hacking the controls. Edan realizes there is some sort of barrier/force field protecting the lift. The rest of us use large sacks to fill the cracks and empty our bladders to slow the gas even more.

Nash asked Serithaz to questions Wednesday about the poison gas. Wednesday is certain that is it deadly, but not the deadliest he had encountered. It is also flammable.

Edan and Prix manage to stop the gas. Suddenly a beserker plummets from above and hits Prix, who manages to dodge the worst of it. Yet she is severely hurt. Nash, Rallion, and Axel each give her two of their healing potions to help her feel less ragged.

Edan manages to lock off all the other doors, and prevent them from knowing that we are coming. We rise and rocket swiftly upwards, the lights of the controls at the doors of each level rushing by.

Suddenly we are in a giant glass tube surrounded by balconies full of information reliquaries. Two undead fire giants with rocket launchers spot us, but they do not fire until the elevator is past the section of glass tubing. (The glass tubing is familiar to all who ventured under water in the pirate cove.)

The ceiling is rapidly approaching, but as we feel we are about to hit, the ceiling opens and we slow to a stop. The ceiling is actually the floor of the Command Lounge. It is a two level lounge. The level we are on has couches and tables, and there is a balcony for the top level. The ceiling is a hologram showing Xenotel with slogans in ancient dwarven proclaiming the greatness of XenoTel and how he will bring them back to life. There are images of information reliquaries with spirits of the dead rising towards XenoTel. There are also many pristine banners like those rotted ones some more seasoned members of the group have seen in Xen Khel.

On the balcony to the west is a sign – Network Command and Conclave Hall and to the east Lord Marshall’s Residence and Conclave Hall.

Before us to the North is a now undying Chug Nourris, missing his eyes, in addition to the top of his skull. Chuq holds a spear to the throat of a living, though worn Bellisente, threatening us to hold. Nash will have none of it and casts Hold Person. Prix is changing to dragon form, preparing to breathe fire.

The balcony has a dozen undying and automata. Our level has 4 undying fire giants, and 2 beserkers, and perhaps 40 undying and man sized automata.

We have lived to reach the summit, can we live to rescue Bellisente, and defeat the Silverthrones, disable the orbital defenses, and save the world?

SESSION 176 – November 8, 2017

We have an incoming message, the Dark King’s forces on the other side of the west door are asking to be let in to re-supply. We do not respond, but go over and have the others open the door a small amount of it’s 50 foot capacity and as the Dark King’s forces enter, they have prisoners, among them Owyn and Laurente. Rallion uses one of the fire guns to burn most of the men and some of the automata. Kalgun smashes a man, and Bavmora also attacks. The men fail morale and join us in fighting the last two automata which are soon smashed.

We then meet the scarred “Righteous Halberd” AKA Aubry Grodecop. Axel tells him that Em is alive in Midmark. He thought she was dead, we explained that she thought he was dead and that the lat Talon rescued her.

Kilmar is with him and we send him off with him to try to keep him alive. Aubry and his men will not join us in our assault, they think it is certain death. We also find Jori, and he, Owyn, and Laurents don power armor from some other cases and each have 2 lightning axes.

Aubry tells us that a city of dark elves, lots of automaton of all sizes, and the wizard worm (Finkleworm) are between us and the Dark King. We ask him to get word to The Silence that we are pressing the attack and will leave the door open, and urge them to take all the equipment they can carry. The surviving islanders of the Dark King who surrendered opt to go with Aubry.

We return to to command center and Owyn, Laurente, and Jori will stay to watch our backs, as there is not enough room for them to go with us on the elevator.

We ascend and stop at a “room” with four doors, one in each direction, each with a green light. Nash asks Serithaz to scan, and we learn there are 19 dark elves and 8 other things he can sense. They really don’t want us to go to the north, as that is the way to continue upward.

We elect to open the north door and make a run for it, Kalgun runs out and engages one of the 4 berserkers we see, and the still enlarged Bavmorda does the same. Rallion runs across and opens the elevator so that others may enter.

Kalgun is actually hurt a bit as is Bavmorda by berserkers.

Nash tosses a bouncing Betty to the right and kills 2 and wounds 2. Axel tosses the other to the left and wounds 4. All the others run across to the elevator.

Darkness is cast and only a few of us are injured. Two dark elves open the door to the north of this new elevator. Sturloc closes it as those still outside run in and we ascend. Suddenly, the elevator stops and gas begins to hiss and poor in at our feet and begin to rise…..