Elana - Human Holy Warrior of Melora, goddess of the wilderness and sea (262 points)
Masha Deathfoot - Human Martial Artist (265 points)
Puddin' Noddington - Gnome Thief (272 points)
Mahk Strawngmussle - Human Labourer (62 points)
Uncle Ruckus - Human Wizard (250 points)
Vaelcor Treehippie - Human Druid (271 points)
Jahn the Bear - Bear (201 points)
Amothius 36th 2546, Outside Kral Aklaz
In the morning, the party headed around the valley and up the mountain to the chimneys and then spent two hours searching for the observatory entrance shaft, but nobody was able to find it. Vaelcor cast Pathfinder, which revealed that it was in an open clearing 20' from where they were standing. Mahk tied a rope to a tree and Puddin' ran it down the sloping shaft, so they'd be able to climb down into the room proper.
Archer went down first, and found that the constellations on the domed ceiling weren't shining, though the white orb still glowed. Vaelcor slipped and fell, but his harness saved him from taking any damage; Elana also lost her footing and took some damage from slamming into the wall. Mahk tripped halfway down the shaft and tumbled down into the observatory, on fire and melting from potions that had shattered in his pack. Vaelcor cast Extinguish Fire and then got to healing the wounded, while the last people made it down.
The party decided to rest for a while, and Puddin' made sure to pick the door shut, but after a while they heard the sound of hooves on stone in the hallway outside again. It came and went a few more times, before a giant boar, its tusks crackling with lightning, charged straight through the door. Vaelcor identified it as a thunderfury dire boar, an extraplanar animal; he tried to calm it with Beast Soother, but it charged Archer anyway.
She dodged out of the way and fired an arrow at the boar's eye, but it also dodged. Elana, Jahn, and Masha ran up to engage, but none landed a blow. Ruckus started Haste 3, and the boar continued after Archer, but she was able to retreat out of the way. It avoided another retaliatory arrow, but Masha kicked at a leg from behind, though this only succeeded at driving it Berserk. Elana stabbed it in the vitals, and Jahn bit into its haunches.
The boar savagely kicked back at Jahn's face, but he moved out of the way, and it was finished off before it could do anything else. They settled in to continue their rest, and Archer, after learning that the boar's tusks and pelt would be valuable, started to skin and butcher it with her cavalry saber as best she could. While they recovered, an elf woman in a tattered dress and holding a torch showed up at the doorway, and, upon seeing them, pleaded with the party to help rescue her sister from the evil sorcerer who had kidnapped them.
Puddin' quietly mentioned to the others that the dwarf ghosts had mentioned seeing a woman several months ago, and that this could be her. The elf claimed that she had been kidnapped along with her sister only a couple weeks ago, and that she had just broken free several minutes ago and ran. After a rather intent look at the party's maps, she thought that she could lead them back to the dungeons where she had been imprisoned, which she claimed were in the northwest corner of the floor they were on.
Elana was insistent that they help her, and those opposed gave in under the promise of taking the sorcerer's loot, though they still decided to finish their rest first. The elf woman, who finally gave her name as Rinesil, tried and failed to convince them to leave now, and became increasingly annoyed when they didn't. After a full half hour, they locked the boar's pelt and meat in the library, to keep it from the halflings, and headed south past the shock door.
They passed the hole that looked down on the giants in the farm and Ruckus ("Call me Uncle or Daddy") did the usual Simple Illusion trick. Rinesil led them west to a T, then north across another bridge they hadn't been to yet. Puddin' was sent to scout past the bridge, and found a hallway with vines growing out of the stone, which was unworked in places. Despite intense paranoia (and the halflings' warnings of man-eating plants), Vaelcor determined that the vines were harmless, and the party continued on to another T, and then north.
Puddin' asked Rinesil what she was doing in an abandoned dwarven ruin, and the elf responded that maybe she should ask the sorcerer who had kidnapped her and her sister. The party rounded a corner proceeded down a hallway lined with manacles, and came to a black iron door adorned with a large skull, with a smaller skull as a knocker. Puddin' pulled out the Tapestry of Glasswall and took a look through the door to see a square room, with an elf maiden chained to a wall and a male elf in flowing black robes, his eyes blazing with the fires of hell, threatening her with a sacrificial dagger.
They asked the increasingly sassy Rinesil if she knew anything about what the sorcerer was up to, and she mentioned him babbling on about sacrificing pure maidens to become immune to mortal arms (Elana: "So... how 'pure' would you say you and your sister are?" Rinesil: "WOW. Pure enough, I guess?"). After some planning, they opened the door and Masha charged in with a flying spin kick at the sorcerer but missed. Puddin' Disappeared and would stay in Stealth Mode for quite a while.
The rest of the party filtered in as best they could, but nobody else could close the distance, and the sorcerer, apparently named Ancalagon, cackled at the "foolish heroes", and ordered them to surrender or die, as he had completed the ritual and was now indestructible. Archer ran around to Ancalagon's far side in an attempt to avoid hitting allies and fired an arrow at him, but it passed straight through, only causing him to shimmer slightly. The arrow continued on and embedded itself in Rinesil's chained sister instead.
Masha, Jahn, and Elana all failed to land any blows; the sorcerer's body bent out of the way of some, and those that "connected" harmlessly passed through the air. Elana opined that perhaps Ancalagon and the elf sisters were ghosts, and Mahk, from the back, asked "Wait, what if we're the ghosts?!". Ancalagon gloated some more, claiming to be indestructible, and told the party that he was now only weak to the power of "pure love", before throwing out a purple bolt of lightning at Archer, which she managed to drop and dodge.
While Archer regained her feet, Masha tried to judo grab Ancalagon, but again, her arms passed right through the sorcerer. Vaelcor started casting Dispel Magic, and Ruckus stepped into the room just as the sorcerer hurled a baleful blue orb in his direction, which hit and silenced him. Archer, who was tired of this "wizard shit", took aim at the captive elf woman's eyes and ordered the sorcerer to cut the crap, or his prisoner would die. Elana waited to try to interrupt the sorcerer's spells, while Masha and Jahn both continued to fail to hit.
Ancalagon threw another purple lightning bolt at Archer, and just before it hit (which only Puddin' actually noticed), she fell asleep. Puddin' appeared beside Rinesil's sister and tried to pick the chains, but found that, like the sorcerer, they were intangible; she tried to ask the elves if they knew what was up, but both were understandably distracted by the arrow sticking out of one of them. Vaelcor finished casting Dispel Magic, and with a pop, Ancalagon simply vanished.
A moment later, the walls, and shackles, shimmered and disappeared, revealing a wider, circular room, and a large group of elves, lounging on chairs made of wood, ice, and snow, looking annoyed. At the far end of the room, a particularly beautiful elf with blue-tinted skin who was being showered in snowflakes by a group of pixies above announced that, despite the rather disappointing ending, Rinesil and her sister, Carwen, had done an admirable job, and the two took a bow before another elf came forth to help Carwen with the arrow.
She continued on with her speech, expressing her disappointment with mortals being unable to understand even the simplest of dramatic plots, and ordered the rest of the elves back to their normal work; amongst the crowd, they noticed Celebor standing in a corner. Puddin' tried asking the blue elf what was going on, but was interrupted by an elf courtier who said that the Princess of Snowflakes does not speak to mortals, and offered to act as an intermediary. Though the courtier was well-mannered and polite, those with Savoir-Faire recognized that he was trying to hurry them out as quickly as possible.
Ruckus noted that the Princess of Snowflakes was an Archfey, notoriously fickle, and only slightly weaker than a proper god, and suggested they leave. Puddin' asked the courtier if Archer would recover, and an elf that looked exactly like Ancalagon emerged from the crowd chuckling, and replied that she'd be fine in a minute or two. He clapped his hands and a pair of porters came forth, lifted her body onto a palanquin, took her out the door, and dumped her on the ground.
The party left, and while they waited for Archer to wake up, Celebor came out and apologized for not telling them earlier, but explained that he had been sworn to secrecy. He went on to explain that the fey were here looking for "a fancy crown", which was supposedly in a vault that needed four keys to open, and at that he pulled out a complicated key on a chain, similar to the two the party had. He offered to collaborate; he only wanted the crown, so the party could have whatever else was in the vault.
Celebor warned the party to be cautious of any other fey they met in the field; Ancalagon had been divining the location of the crown over the last several days, and was likely to start magically searching for the three "unaccounted for" keys soon, though he would send others to actually search for them. The party asked if he had any idea of where the last key or the vault were, and Celebor mentioned that they weren't on the ground or top floors, unless they were behind the lightning doors.
Vaelcor asked if he'd checked the basement or throne room, but Celebor said his search had been interrupted by some acid lizards, and the party noticed that some of his armour was melted and warned him not to go in the forge, which was now full of acid lizards. He left, and the party discussed where to go next; eventually they decided to just check out the area on this floor to check for loot.
The party went to a door down the hall to the south, and opened it to see a group of four slightly-shimmering black, six-legged jaguars with tentacles on their backs (instantly identified as Displacer Beasts) eating a mauled body in a sky blue robe. Archer struggled to get line of sight due to the clustered hallway, while Masha moved up to the front with All-Out Defense. The displacer beasts charged forward, biting and tentacle-ing at Puddin', Masha, and Elana, but no attacks connected.
Puddin' stabbed into the vitals with her katar, and Elana activated her Holy Might (rolling +6 to DX!), while Vaelcor, after being asked if he could cast "Destroy Animal", cast Animal Control instead, and brought one of the beasts over to the team. Jahn and Masha both ran into the room and started clawing and kicking beasts, but missed due to their shimmering hides. Archer finished establishing line of sight with a Move, and the three remaining enemy displacer beasts started whippin' Jahn, Masha, and the friend beast, which missed both of its own attacks.
Elana stabbed at the eyes, but was dodged, and both Vaelcor and Ruckus held back, All-Out Defending.
Notes:
After the mishaps in the entrance shaft, they realized that in the future they should lower bad climbers down, and that gear should go separately.
Mahk's terrible fall ended up working out fairly well; neither the Phial of the Mad Alchemist nor the Tapestry of Glasswall were destroyed, and he wasn't killed.
Again, I let Jahn grapple an SM+1 monster with a bite, which he shouldn't be able to do. Not that it mattered much, as the boar was going to die anyway.
I just ruled butchering the boar was enough to skip 1 day of upkeep for everybody.
The "pure love" thing would have been resolved had any two characters kissed. Elana's/Vaelcor's player claimed to have figured it out afterward, but decided that neither of their characters were interested in making out in the middle of a battlefield.
When Masha takes an All-Out Defend (Dodge), she has Dodge-17, thanks to the bullseye shield's Deflect +3.
XP was 1 for killing the boar, MVP went to Puddin'. Loot XP will be done whenever the delve ends.
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