The Price of Redemption
Account of the rescue of our women, children and
Samian Ware from the Baneite Temple
by Natasha Riverdale, on behalf of
Shamil
Rim Goblinreaver
Martok
Kithran
Damian Sureshot
Melgar
The Mission Report:
Following
the court sessions I think everyone's aware that Lady Jillian
was given a letter from Apok of the Zentarim that had been smuggled
out by valiant halflings. It revealed that the Zents were going
to be sacrificing women, children, and Samian Ware that night
in their new temple, in an attempt to undo the residual holiness
of our Celestial Plaza.
We were asked to go and try to rescue Sam and the
women and children. Of course we said yes straight away. As we
were discussing the best way to get in (and out again) Marius
appeared with a couple of sacks. I'm not going to say exactly
what he had in them in case this report gets into the wrong hands
(gods know there seem to be enough spies and defectors around)
but I hope the contents really annoy the nine hells out of the
Zents, if their temple is still standing by the time this report
is circulated. That part of our mission was completely successful.
Still trying to decide the best way to infiltrate
the temple, we headed up to Drake's Perch Keep. From there we
could also see the troop movements around the celestial plaza
with the aid of telescopes. Godwin Secundus found us there, and
suggested we could get in from the sewer system. Again, we had
a method of bypassing a lot of their sewer security that I won't
mention here, but it would get us pretty close to our entrance
point into the temple. Most importantly, it would also give us
a decent chance of getting any prisoners we rescued out again.
We
got to our entrance point okay, and were met by one of our people
who again I won't mention by name, but is obviously running rings
around the Zent's supposed organisational security. He'd got hold
of a map of the basement and ground floor of the temple, also
marking where the main sacrificial sites were thought to be. We
headed up into a sub-basement room, and I was unfortunate enough
to climb headlong into the acidic embrace of a black pudding,
which dissolved my armour, then did the same to Martok's ancestral
waraxe and Rim's hammer. Rim told us all to stand back as he cast
magics on himself to resist it's acid, then he just stood there
and punched it very hard, repeatedly, till it started dissipating
and dripping down into the sewer below.
Melgar found a secret door out of the room and up
a staircase. For some reason they'd decorated even the stairs
up to the basement with carved stone walls depicting unholy and
horrible scenes. This only served to reinforce the horrible sense
of wrongness we were getting from the place. The staircase led
through a couple of locked doors (about which Melgar and I are
saying nothing) into a corridor, matching the first of our maps.
Damian went round the corner and ducked back again, wincing. Melgar
looked at him and where he'd trodden, and said he thought Damian
had trodden on a trap which was doing Inflict Serious Wounds,
that somehow these were 'feeding' the unholiness of the temple.
He glanced down the corridor further and said he could see two
more of them, strategically placed in front of doors.
We started looking in the nearest room. Two imps
were beating up another, and for a moment we thought our cover
was blown as two of them disappeared, but Melgar spoke to the
remaining one, and it seemed they weren't working for the Zents
as such, so we might be okay. This one had been beaten up because
it had run away to be good! It seemed to take rather a shine to
Rim, and started following him around...
I managed to disarm the other traps in the corridor
so we could move freely, and we went to the next door. Opening
it revealed 2 lizard-like things with disgusting holes for mouths
- Destrachens. They howled at us, making all our metal objects
vibrate, some to breaking point. Rim & Martok charged them,
with Damian, Melgar and I providing missile fire from behind.
They were both dealt with pretty quickly, and we moved onto the
next room, which was marked on our map as a sacrifice site.
There were several women and children in here, dazed
with terror, surrounded by warriors with nocked arrows at their
throats, and two priests who said "put your weapons on the
floor or they're dead." Kithran was the first to get in,
he got surrounded and taken down, then one of the priests noticed
Shamil and shouted "Queen of Clubs" and their attention
shifted to her. The priests were using Enlarge, Righteous Might,
Flame Strike and Hold spells in attacking us (both
then and consistently each time we encountered priests.) A protracted
combat took place, but eventually we prevailed, and were able
to take the prisoners and Kithran's body back to the entrance
point okay. I borrowed Kithan's armour - didn't think he'd mind.
Amongst the priests' belongings we found they've been using halfling
skins to write scrolls on.
Once the women and children were safe we went back
in and started looking at the other basement rooms. One was a
torture chamber with a dead child in, and Damian took its body
back to safety quickly while we were disarming more of the magical
corridor traps (this time by leaving dead Baneites on the trigger
points!)
When Damian and I opened the last of the chambers,
we saw a figure with its back to us rocking backwards and forwards,
clad in a yellow cloak, with a defaced symbol of Lathander above
it. We knew it could be a trap – but it could also be Sam
– Damian covered me as I went to put my arms round the figure
and spoke words of comfort. A blue-carapaced bug-faced creature
unfolded as it turned round at me, waved a claw, and conjured
a wall of ice that shut us two off from the others ...
I was alone with an Ice Devil! I was sure I was going to die,
but I could hear the wall being hit from the other side, so I
backed off to near where the breach would be. However, as soon
as Martok smashed a hole through the Ice Devil waved another claw,
and another wall of ice appeared at right-angles to the first,
covering the newly made hole. Martok started smashing a new hole,
and for a moment the Ice Devil stopped as if to concentrate on
something other than me (Melgar told me afterwards this it was
probably trying to gate another one in from its home plane.)
The wall was breached again and I backed out to
rejoin Martok and Damian (Rim and Shamil were up the other end
of the corridor guarding the staircase at this point.) But then
the creature teleported itself to reappear beside Melgar in the
corridor. He got himself out of its reach with a Dim Door
back to where Shamil was. We shouted for Rim , and a bizarre fight
began up and down the corridor, with it Cone of Colding
us, and variously teleporting around and separating us up with
Walls of Ice.
Rim told us all to move back to where Shamil was,
but as we were retreating another Cone of Cold killed Martok outright,
and he and Damian were separated from us by yet another wall.
Rim called for Melgar and Shamil, and Melgar put up a magic circle
of protection from evil. Rim smashed through the wall - looked
like Damian was causing the devil some considerable pain, but
Rim shouted "step back and don't fight it." He said
something to Melgar (omitted for security purposes) and
DimDoored Shamil and I back to the entrance point. Melgar
stepped through the hole in the ice wall and did the same with
Martok and Damian, except he went straight back to the Elk's Roost.
That was where we rendez-vous'd a little while later,
when the rest of us returned to the south of the city with our
released prisoners. Luckily Marius and some others were in there,
and they were able to raise Martok. Kithran had specified that
he wanted to be Reincarnated if he ever died, and he came
back as a gnome. Although he seemed quite happy about this most
of his kit was too big for him, so he transformed into a baboon
for the rest of the night. There was still enough time to get
back to the temple before the sacrifices were about to begin,
so we did ...
Fortunately the Ice Devil had appeared to have returned
to whatever plane of existence it came from, as the basement corridor
was just inhabited by the puddles of melting ice water. We went
up another staircase to the ground floor. A short corridor led
to the main passageway on this side of the main temple area, so
the others hung back while Damian and I snuck up to the main passageway.
Damian discovered that this corridor too was trapped. A patrol
was going up and down on a regular basis - 2 priests, 2 elite
warriors (that we later identified as SpellSwords) and some regular
soldiers. It was obvious that in order to be able to search the
area we were going to have to take them out...
We planned our attack - Rim was going to cast Silence
on one of Damian's arrows, then as the patrol were coming back
he'd be first round the corner and would shoot it into one of
the priests. Unfortunately this plan didn't quite work as they
were prepared for us, someone having clanked a bit as we moved
up. As soon as Damian darted round the corner to aim he was Held...
however since I was right by him with my bow ready I just snatched
the arrow out of his bow and shot the priest myself. Kithran ran
out with his bow, & I backed off to let the dwarven heavies
through to start the melee. Rim picked the still-frozen Damian
up bodily and plonked him down beside me. Melgar slowed some of
them, and then used a really scary wand of Kithran's that shoots
skull-like biting heads at the enemy that keep biting them repeatedly.
Martok got disarmed but that didn't make much difference –
he's just as lethal with his punches as Rim. Once the fight was
obviously turned against them, one of the priests flamestriked
himself to try and take Rim & Martok with him...in vain, and
it wasn't long after that that they were all dead.
Using the bodies to disarm the traps again, we searched
some various training rooms, then had a look in the main temple
area. Luckily no-one was in there, & it was quite awesome
in an appalling way, with gruesome decor all focussing on the
altar and the black hand of Bane. Pillars down the sides of the
room ended at the entrance vestibule, where 2 huge stone statues
stood in an area radiating the same sort of magic we'd come across
in the trapped corridors. We finally worked out that the trick
to bypassing the traps was their unholy symbols – even though
these weren't magical themselves they seemed to be keyed to the
traps somehow.
Working round the other side of the temple, we investigated
a series of rooms with various purposes – storage, accounting
(we took any papers we could find,) kitchens and mess halls, arriving
at another room marked as a sacrifice site on our map. We could
hear chanting from inside the room. Melgar said they were casting
defensive spells – so had they heard us? Inside there was
a complement of priests & Spellswords, but they were using
women and children as a shield between them and us – including
Merrilee from the Cat's Paw. Shamil and I started trying to get
the women out as the others started fighting over their heads.
But before we could do much the two priests both did a flame
strike each directly at the women and children, killing them
all in front of our eyes. It didn't take us long to kill the Baneites,
not that that felt like much of a compensation.
Continuing, we found a room with more prisoners
that hadn't been marked as a sacrifice site on the map. Martok
dealt with the Baneites there pretty much on his own in a display
of enlarged Dwarven martial prowess, and we got the women and
children out and told them where to go. There wasn't time to escort
them back to the entrance point ourselves – we only had about
half an hour before midnight when we expected the big sacrifice
of Sam to be taking place.
More rooms...two squads of grunt guards were taken
out quickly, then we found a room where they were making lots
of healing potions – we filled our wineskins, and we cleared
them out of healing scrolls in another room. Then we reckoned
we'd been everywhere on the ground floor, and went upstairs.
In the corridor up there we had to take out another
patrol - it seems that Martok is the 8 of Hearts, oh, and Damien's
the Joker. Then we came into a room where there was a robed, hunched
figure bound within a pentagram. Melgar asked why he was here
- he'd been sent by his human master to stop the temple being
built: the Zents are more evil then him! He wanted us to free
him, and was quite happy to comply with our request that in return
he would kill Baneites. Furthermore he told us he'd level the
temple after we'd gone. We let him out...
Next
we came to Patrician Damiel's room, she's got a real fixation
about the colour red. We relieved her storage chest of its supply
of healing potions and moved on. The next room we thought we'd
better avoid going in – a plaque showed it to be Sameir's.
However we obviously weren't quiet enough, because just as we
were passing the door it opened and the woman who came out said
"as I bathed in the blood of children I will bathe in yours."
She then did a Blade Barrier along the corridor. I got stuck in
it, felt the blades churning through me, and then a sudden pain
in my chest and everything went black...
I've been dead before, several times, so I knew
I was dead when I woke up in my goddess Lliira's waiting room.
This time there wasn't long to wait though – I was quickly
asked if I was ready to return to mortal life – of course
I said yes – I couldn't leave my friends in the middle of
this mission if there was a chance of going back, and I woke up
back on the floor of the corridor, with Rim standing over me reading
something off a scroll – they'd found it in her room after
the fight.
Pretty much all of us were swigging heavily from
the healing potions in our wineskins, and now it was very near
midnight. We quickly went back downstairs and prepared ourselves
for the fight we knew we were about to get into, in the main temple
where they were going to sacrifice Sam.
We came into the temple as the three priests were
chanting and preparing to sacrifice hi m... but there was also
a huge vile creature in front of the altar that the others knew
as a Banelar, and it seemed quite pleased to see Damian. I flew
up to the ceiling: Damien blew the priest with the knife away
with a spectacular volley of arrows, and Rim turned another priest
to stone. While the others were engaging the Banelar and the other
priest I flew over to where Sam was on the altar. Damian dropped
the Banelar, leaving just one priest who was being harried by
Kithran. However when he saw that I had hold of Sam and was about
to fly off with him he said "you will not take Bane's sacrifice
that easily" and put up another Blade Barrier. Sam
was unconscious, so I covered him with my body, and braced as
I felt the now-familiar slicing of blades through me. And again
there was a pain in my chest, and again I woke in Lliira's realm.
This time I was there a little longer, but again
the question came, and again I thought that I should return to
help my friends and the city. There's lots more to do in life,
after all, time enough for the heavenly pleasures later. I woke
up back in the south of the city, and the others filled me in
on what had happened. The Patrician had turned up with the massed
forces of the temple guard through the main entrance. Because
the temple was so big they were a way away, and Melgar summoned
a Hound Archon to stave them off for a bit. Kithran got Sam out
from between the blades okay, and Shamil got my body, and everyone
legged it to the entrance point and successfully escaped.
We weren't able to save everyone, but we got everyone
alive and dead out that we could, including Samien. I think we
took out a sizeable chunk of their elite fighting forces, and
we've certainly dented their capacity for magical healing (even
if we did drink most of it at the time.) The stealing of their
account books might just complicate things for the paying of their
mercenary forces. The memory of their callously flamestriking
the innocent women and children just so we couldn't rescue them
is going to haunt my dreams for some time, but I don't think there's
anything we could have done to prevent it, it happened so quickly.
I just hope that this goes a fair way towards kicking these evil
swine out of our city for good. I hate everything about them.
Natasha
Riverdale
First Elven Dragonriders
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