16th of Marpenoth, 1371 DR
One look at the room where “the Beast” had been kept an’ every shred of sympathy I had for them fellers trapped in the burnin’ rooms was gone. The chamber was covered in blood – the kind of spray only a livin’-at-the-time victim makes and there was the mangled corpse of at least one child. A child!
At that moment, every single cultist in this mine signed his or her own death warrant because now we (every single one of us) were resolved.
Enraged, Justice led the charge through the double doors (literally and metaphorically) into a large, balconied room with a gigantic, obsidian statue of Bane. In the far corner, three cultists were chantin’ – maybe even summonin’ some foul demon. Hine and Valcrist were first in the room, droppin’ one of the cultists with their ranged weapons. Justice charged to get toe-to-toe with the last two, Sparrow grazed one with an arrow, and then Dolgun vomited acid all over them (killin’ the injured one)!
That Dwarf is the most disgustin’ person I’ve ever met. Effective, but repulsive.
That’s when an iron wall slid down from the ceilin’ and trapped me and Carenthal outside the room in the hall! Guessin’ that the hall to our right would eventually hook up with the main room, Carenthal and I ran down it and opened the door. Behind the door? A couple of Humans (a man and a woman) in half-plate armor and three of those tough Tiefling warriors! I reacted first and slammed a Blast of Force into the lead Tiefling, but he was not knocked down as I’d hoped. Carenthal followed up with a Sleep spell however, droppin’ him in his tracks.
Not really sure what happened in the main room after that. The fellas tell me they hacked the leg off the Bane statue and used it as a ramp to get to the balconies and apparently, Justice killed a guy by hookin’ him with a grappling hook and yankin’ him to the floor! I wish I’d been there to witness such heroics, but we had our own problems.
The man in the half-plate revealed himself as a Cleric (of Bane I would assume) when he cast Shield of Faith on himself as one of the Tieflings ran up a flight of stairs to join the fray in the main room and the other Tiefling leapt over his sleepin’ companion and tried to take my head off with his axe. Carenthal tried to save me by castin’ Hold Person on the Tiefling, but that failed because he was a Tiefling (a Native Outsider) and inherently immune to such a spell. Pity, that. That’s when the leader charged up and killed his own Tiefling follower with an unbelievably powerful blow of his sword just so he could get to me!. Guess he didn’t like my comment to Carenthal when I asked, “Should I tell them their god’s dead?”
Duckin’ under the Cleric’s follow-up attack, Carenthal and I retreated down the hall. We then proceeded to lead him on a merry chase all the way back into the elevator room and all its pillars. We’d stop periodically to pepper him with crossbow bolts or Magic Missiles and I kept tauntin’ him. The way I figured it, he was never gonna catch us in all that armor and we could run him ragged so he couldn’t rejoin the fight against our friends.
Sure enough, my plan worked, and I only had to trade blows with him once. He hit me hard, but my Spell Shield absorbed most of the damage leavin’ me with a little scratch. That’s when I saw Sparrow sneakin’ up behind him silent and deadly as a panther. So I grinned at him and said, “No wonder Bane died. With weak-ass followers like you, he must of rolled over and died of embarrassment” and then literally skipped away from him.
I’m sure my antics would have been enough to keep the guy’s attention on me so Sparrow could take him out from behind, but Storn showed up. He came barrelin’ from around the corner, huffin’, puffin’, and clangin’ and I could see Sparrow’s wicked grin turn into a frustrated frown. Before she could say anythin’ to Storn, the Cleric had turned, charged, and crushed Sparrow beneath his massive Heavy Flail which glowed and gave off an evil feeling! She went down like a marionette who suddenly finds all its strings cut and Stron shouted, “Noooooooo!” and cut the Cleric down in one chargin’ blow.
We ended up savin’ Sparrow before she bled to death and joinin’ the rest of the fight just as they killed the woman Cleric. The two Clerics had thoroughly evil weapons, so we shattered ‘em and looted the rest of their possessions.
We desecrated a small shrine to Bane and then had to destroy another worm-ridden Zombie. I say “another” because the guys had to deal with one earlier in the main room. These worm-Zombies were tough and fast and the worms kept trying to leap out and get us! They were also impossible to Turn in this unhallowed place, so the only way to kill them was by sword, spell, and acidic Dwarf vomit.
Horrifying.
At the very back of this complex of rooms, we killed three more cultists (Dolgun killed them with a gout of fire) and pursued the last remaining Cleric into the battle arena where he challenged us to fight him. I suppose he thought we’d try to fight him one at a time. I suppose he thought he’d have the use of his spells. Unfortunately for him, however, we brought lots of things down the mine with us. We brought outfits, shovels, torches, ropes, and a host of other minin’ stuff. But we brought no mercy down with us. Not a scrap.
Personally, I think it was the Silence spell Carenthal put on Storn’s sword that did the trick. Twice, it kept the man from using his divine magic to change the fight. The fact that we all ganged up on him helped, too. The only person who didn’t really assist in the fight was me. I was tapped and barely had enough energy left to conjure up a Message spell, so all I can could do was fire my crossbow (ineffectually) into the fray.
Every Banite is dead. Their possessions now belong to us, to create whatever good deeds we can manage from them. We discovered that the three cults of the dead gods
(Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul) have formed themselves into somethin’ called the Ebon Triad. They’re tryin’ to meld the three and resurrect him into some kind of evil “Overgod,” which you have to admit, sounds bad.
On the positive side, it appears from the Cleric’s writin’s, it doesn’t sound like the three cults play well together. In fact, it seems like they’re barely maintainin’ civil relations at all. Maybe we can do somethin’ to push them over the edge.
One look at the room where “the Beast” had been kept an’ every shred of sympathy I had for them fellers trapped in the burnin’ rooms was gone. The chamber was covered in blood – the kind of spray only a livin’-at-the-time victim makes and there was the mangled corpse of at least one child. A child!
At that moment, every single cultist in this mine signed his or her own death warrant because now we (every single one of us) were resolved.
Enraged, Justice led the charge through the double doors (literally and metaphorically) into a large, balconied room with a gigantic, obsidian statue of Bane. In the far corner, three cultists were chantin’ – maybe even summonin’ some foul demon. Hine and Valcrist were first in the room, droppin’ one of the cultists with their ranged weapons. Justice charged to get toe-to-toe with the last two, Sparrow grazed one with an arrow, and then Dolgun vomited acid all over them (killin’ the injured one)!
That Dwarf is the most disgustin’ person I’ve ever met. Effective, but repulsive.
That’s when an iron wall slid down from the ceilin’ and trapped me and Carenthal outside the room in the hall! Guessin’ that the hall to our right would eventually hook up with the main room, Carenthal and I ran down it and opened the door. Behind the door? A couple of Humans (a man and a woman) in half-plate armor and three of those tough Tiefling warriors! I reacted first and slammed a Blast of Force into the lead Tiefling, but he was not knocked down as I’d hoped. Carenthal followed up with a Sleep spell however, droppin’ him in his tracks.
Not really sure what happened in the main room after that. The fellas tell me they hacked the leg off the Bane statue and used it as a ramp to get to the balconies and apparently, Justice killed a guy by hookin’ him with a grappling hook and yankin’ him to the floor! I wish I’d been there to witness such heroics, but we had our own problems.
The man in the half-plate revealed himself as a Cleric (of Bane I would assume) when he cast Shield of Faith on himself as one of the Tieflings ran up a flight of stairs to join the fray in the main room and the other Tiefling leapt over his sleepin’ companion and tried to take my head off with his axe. Carenthal tried to save me by castin’ Hold Person on the Tiefling, but that failed because he was a Tiefling (a Native Outsider) and inherently immune to such a spell. Pity, that. That’s when the leader charged up and killed his own Tiefling follower with an unbelievably powerful blow of his sword just so he could get to me!. Guess he didn’t like my comment to Carenthal when I asked, “Should I tell them their god’s dead?”
Duckin’ under the Cleric’s follow-up attack, Carenthal and I retreated down the hall. We then proceeded to lead him on a merry chase all the way back into the elevator room and all its pillars. We’d stop periodically to pepper him with crossbow bolts or Magic Missiles and I kept tauntin’ him. The way I figured it, he was never gonna catch us in all that armor and we could run him ragged so he couldn’t rejoin the fight against our friends.
Sure enough, my plan worked, and I only had to trade blows with him once. He hit me hard, but my Spell Shield absorbed most of the damage leavin’ me with a little scratch. That’s when I saw Sparrow sneakin’ up behind him silent and deadly as a panther. So I grinned at him and said, “No wonder Bane died. With weak-ass followers like you, he must of rolled over and died of embarrassment” and then literally skipped away from him.
I’m sure my antics would have been enough to keep the guy’s attention on me so Sparrow could take him out from behind, but Storn showed up. He came barrelin’ from around the corner, huffin’, puffin’, and clangin’ and I could see Sparrow’s wicked grin turn into a frustrated frown. Before she could say anythin’ to Storn, the Cleric had turned, charged, and crushed Sparrow beneath his massive Heavy Flail which glowed and gave off an evil feeling! She went down like a marionette who suddenly finds all its strings cut and Stron shouted, “Noooooooo!” and cut the Cleric down in one chargin’ blow.
We ended up savin’ Sparrow before she bled to death and joinin’ the rest of the fight just as they killed the woman Cleric. The two Clerics had thoroughly evil weapons, so we shattered ‘em and looted the rest of their possessions.
We desecrated a small shrine to Bane and then had to destroy another worm-ridden Zombie. I say “another” because the guys had to deal with one earlier in the main room. These worm-Zombies were tough and fast and the worms kept trying to leap out and get us! They were also impossible to Turn in this unhallowed place, so the only way to kill them was by sword, spell, and acidic Dwarf vomit.
Horrifying.
At the very back of this complex of rooms, we killed three more cultists (Dolgun killed them with a gout of fire) and pursued the last remaining Cleric into the battle arena where he challenged us to fight him. I suppose he thought we’d try to fight him one at a time. I suppose he thought he’d have the use of his spells. Unfortunately for him, however, we brought lots of things down the mine with us. We brought outfits, shovels, torches, ropes, and a host of other minin’ stuff. But we brought no mercy down with us. Not a scrap.
Personally, I think it was the Silence spell Carenthal put on Storn’s sword that did the trick. Twice, it kept the man from using his divine magic to change the fight. The fact that we all ganged up on him helped, too. The only person who didn’t really assist in the fight was me. I was tapped and barely had enough energy left to conjure up a Message spell, so all I can could do was fire my crossbow (ineffectually) into the fray.
Every Banite is dead. Their possessions now belong to us, to create whatever good deeds we can manage from them. We discovered that the three cults of the dead gods
(Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul) have formed themselves into somethin’ called the Ebon Triad. They’re tryin’ to meld the three and resurrect him into some kind of evil “Overgod,” which you have to admit, sounds bad.
On the positive side, it appears from the Cleric’s writin’s, it doesn’t sound like the three cults play well together. In fact, it seems like they’re barely maintainin’ civil relations at all. Maybe we can do somethin’ to push them over the edge.
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