With Jerribeth defeated, we
quickly ransacked her room to find some codes and secret signs the Templars use
(should help the efforts of the Crusade) and some other oddities, including a
necklace that screamed of magic but I couldn’t figure out its purpose. Pocketed
for the future because I’m not sure it’s safe.
Checked the rest of this side and
found, beyond the cells, an icky room with two humanoid-corpses and writings
carved into the back wall. Those with better knowledge of anatomy than I
realised the bodies had been alive when their organs were removed. Made me feel
sad and ill together. Evander looked at the writing and something in him
snapped – it was wrong, all wrong; unfinished; didn’t make sense; not right. Alexei
used stone shape to destroy the wall: as best we could tell from Evander’s
expletive-laden rant, it was the beginnings of a spell to loosen all natives of
Golarion from this plane – to make it easier to teleport us to other planes.*
That didn’t seem like a good thing to leave half-finished in a demon
stronghold.
After that, we headed back to
sneak to the other – but the demons guarding the cathedral in the centre
spotted us as we tried to figure a way to sneak past and charged. Didn’t take
long to deal with them.
The cathedral was impressive –
pillars lining the way to a large altar with another statue to the demon lord
Baphomet. The high, vaulted ceiling was painted with stars. Two small rooms
lead off from either side – one, strangely enough, seemed to be marked with a
magic circle against evil… The other, a meditation room of sorts, with cat-o’-nine-tails
and other creepy things, most notably, a creepy book written in Abyssal –
pocketed with the necklace because I could hear discussion outside in the
cathedral itself about removing the Baphomet statue. And the next moment, a
deafening, shattering crash as Evander took his flail to the statue’s leg and
managed to topple it.
As the sound died away and our
hearing began to return to normal, we knew the noise would have drawn the
attention of every remaining accursed demon in the place. We took up defensive
positions and waited for the onslaught. It was not long in coming.
I started by setting up a mind
fog on the stairs to the room. It was swiftly dispelled and I hid** as the
mages in the first wave stone-shaped away a section of the wall… the fighters –
Kieran, Aaron and Evander – quickly dispatched the Templars who rushed through.
Some kind of noxious magical smell left Aaron vomiting in the corner and nearly
took out Alexei as well – in defence, he threw up a blade barrier, circling the
stairs. Demons rushed through it, several falling as the blades sliced through
them. Those that made it were quickly taken out and Kieran ran through the
blades – fending them off and letting his shiny, shiny adamantine armour deal
with the worst of it – to take out the few demons remaining. I used my shiny
new Sceptre of Heaven to Holy Smite the group, and Alexei summoned a demon of
his own to help.
It was hard, with Aaron nearly
being killed by a barrage of magic missiles, but at the end we were victorious
and no wounds we couldn’t patch up. This should make the rest of our
explorations a bit easier, at least! But it’s a shame we didn’t manage to take
any alive for questioning.
*I may have misunderstood –
Evander is controlled by Husbit as Alexei’s cohort but he was voiced by the GM
with the instruction from Husbit (who’d been sercret-noted what Evander
learned) to “relay that info but as if you have tourrettes”. And I was tired
and neither I nor Svetlana has much knowledge of the planes and I had several
people trying to explain so got a bit muddled. I *think* the spell would turn
all natives into outsiders, but that’s a bit of a guess.
** Svetlana is not very good in combat – particularly in comparison to
Kieran and Evander. It did bother me for a while and everyone blamed the fact
she’s multi-class, but I’ve realised she’s very good outside of combat and I’m
focussing on that. It can mean that combat-heavy sessions (like this one
descended into) can risk being a little dull, but I got Husbit to let me roll
some of the damage for his blade barrier shield so at least I felt a bit
involved. I’m sure there are other ways I can continue to do that whilst
keeping Svetlana safe (and in reserve if the party need that sneak attack
surprise!)
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