Peco (Solmar) sits out on the stoop, pondering, "Where are they? Where have they all gone?" Patrick (Elyandre) hides in his car, confident that none will suspect. Then Chris (Varth Lokkur) pulls up with everyone else in tow. Chuck (Graf) yells out, "Hey Peco! We just turned you into a sexual object!" Georgina adds, "But don't worry! It's a very low-stress lifestyle!" Ernest (Kurgash) grumbles, "I'm a spanking elemental!" Bruce (Grenville d'Tharashk) shudders. Paul just takes it all in stride.
The characters start out in the Magma Keep, having only recently massacred a truly amazing number of demonic dwarfs. They look around. Instruments of torture are strewn negligently around the room. Varth Lokkur wonders, "How can they care so little about their instruments of torture?" He confirms that the various shackled prisoners are indeed merely half-dead, rather than magical or cursed. The characters conclude that if they just send the prisoners to walk back to the upper levels they should be safe as long as they don't step into the lava.
Varth chirps out, "They're shackled! I can deal with that! Woohoo!" He chants out a Baleful Utterance and destroys all their chains. As the prisoners' shackles drop away, Kurgash hands each one a token for a free drink.
Elyandre asks, "Why are you carrying so many of those tokens?"
Kurgash explains, "What you don't seem to realize is that a severed demon dwarf ear is a token for a free drink at our bar."
The characters heal and equip the five most healthy-looking prisoners with captured weapons. One of them picks up a nasty-looking chopping sword and exclaims, "I lost a point of Morality for just picking this up!"
Varth gripes, "Gee, the GM in this world sucks too!"
Elyandre sneaks forward to check out the interior of the compound. He finds a room that looks like it came out of Van Helsing: there are chains splayed across the floor and ceiling, all leading to three cocoons of chain. Across from it is a destroyed office with a mold-covered carpet. Kurgash points out, "Where I come from there are a lot of hostile fungus-monsters and mold-creatures. Destroy the carpet!" Solmar has his pet elemental throw the carpet into the lava. FOOSH!
Graf tells Grenville d'Tharashk, "You know that Heroes of Battle has all kinds of good feats in it, things like Improve Cohort."
Varth asks, "So Cutter could be even more useful?"
Graf answers, "Yeah. Then we'd just have to figure out how to get him to show up without bringing along the ard-Bay."
Varth muses, "But that could be sort of awkward..."
Grenville is completely unaware of this conversation.
Kurgash decides to throw a dwarf body into one of the chain cocoons. All of the cocoons start to open up. The chains start to move of their own volition. Elyandre decides, "I think I'll just stand here and see what comes at me."
Varth reassures him, "They might not be evil!"
Grenville starts singing and dancing just in time for the chain cocoons to resolve themselves into humanoid shapes and come at the characters. Cutter Gerald shoots one with his crossbow. The others observe how much damage this inflicts. Graf whispers to Varth, "Utter-cay has our-fay ice-day of eak-snay ttack-atyay amage-day! We eed-nay to alk-tay ore-may about etting-gay id-ray of Enville-gray!"
Once again, Grenville is clueless.
Then the chains lash out. Cutter Gerald howls, "My god! It just took my spine!" He turns white.
A chain devil steps up in front of Graf. Graf whispers, "Brother! We can take 'em!" The chain devil doesn't seem impressed. Graf sees the face of his old commander emerge from the chains and scream in agony. Graf is unmoved by the sight. He cuts into the creature, nearly dividing it in twain.
Elyandre steps in to help and cuts it down. He observes that the creature starts to stand up and moans, "Not fair! What's dead should stay dead!" And then the chains move to attack again.
Solmar announces, "I shall smite one of them with an acid arrow! Huzzah!" He watches as the arrow evaporates before it hits the creature. Solmar is crestfallen. He mourns, "They have Spell Resistance. Gadzooks!"
Kurgash notices that one of the chain devils has run into the next room. He follows it and finds that it is talking to its bigger friend. The granddaddy version's torso seems to be chained to the ground. It looks straight at him with the face of his dead comrade Ash, filling him with dread. But not enough dread to keep him from going into a rage and executing a power attack.
The lead chain devil looks down at Kurgash's axe buried in its torso and tells him, "That was pretty good. But watch what we can do!" The others just hear a symphony of chain-sounds and see a bucket of gore fly in from off-camera. Kurgash takes 92 points of damage. He looks like an industrial-sized Cuisinart attacked him.
Solmar points out, "Hey! That was Kurgash's favorite intestine that just flew by!"
Kurgash replies, "Woo. I got one hit point left. Plus my rage hit points, of course."
Solmar yells back, "Don't calm down, whatever you do!"
Graf shouts at his crippled chain devil, "Down! Down! Bad chain-thing! Bad!" He smashes it back into the floor.
Elyandre mentions, "I don't think our weapons are able to kill these things permanently. If I recall aright, we need either good-aligned or silver weapons. Didn't someone make a Knowledge roll on this subject last session?"
Kurgash thunders back into the boss chain-thing. Fragments of shattered chain fly everywhere, but the creature stays up. Grenville comments, "I think the next time those creatures attack Kurgash is going to be dealing with a severe case of death."
Kurgash replies, "Aha! But I've just sucked down a potion of Cure Critical Wounds! And Solmar cast Displacement on me!" The chain devils respond by sabering him down to two hit points. Kurgash is unimpressed by their performance.
Varth lets loose a Maximized Eldritch Blast at the boss chain devil, leaving it staggering. Kurgash lights into it right afterward, smashing it to the ground. As an encore, he steps over to the other chain devil and smashes it into pieces. But the thing still vainly tries to regenerate. The characters divide it into bits until it gives up.
The boss chain-devil has two magical objects (with subsequent Identify results listed for convenience):
Elyandre waits just long enough to let Varth Lokkur heal him, and then heads down the hallway to see what else is in the compound. He finds a variety of stuff in barrels, and then a secret compartment in a barrel containing 500 sheets of high-grade vellum.
Then he picks through a desk and finds a locked drawer. He unlocks the drawer and comes up with a bundle of nonmagical scrolls. They are written in Dwarven. He asks, "Who reads Dwarven?"
Solmar replies, "I do, probably." Solmar learns that the entire fortress was once owned by Lord Gundaloon, called the Iron Lord because he controlled the metal-forging trade in the city. Even Grenville is able to deduce that he is an ancestor of Logri Gundaloon, whom the characters killed. He was also part of the Swords of Liberty back when it was just a regular political club, rather than a demon-controlled front group. The papers tell the story of how he found the prison of a chained rajah beneath the city. It's really funny that nobody else in Sharn seems to know that ancient apocalyptic evil is parked right under their basements. In any case, the Iron Lord learned that the prison was damaged: a single shard had been cut from it aeons ago. That shard holds the power to either keep the prison completely secure, or to release the rajah.
The Iron Lord found the prison during the war and was looking for a way to use it to advance the interests of Sharn. In the course of his efforts he managed to contact Bastinu, the Herald of the Rajah Goluth and another of the creatures caught in the prison. Bastinu set him searching for the splinter, with the promise that Goluth would help Sharn (and the Iron Lord) in the war once he was released.
The Iron Lord found the creature Veriorax in the tunnels to the east. It told him the location of the splinter, using the Eye of Errimu. The Iron Lord was unable to defeat Veriorax, so he released Bastinu from the prison. And that's where the documents end.
The characters head into the next room, whereupon Cutter Gerald finds the map. He chirps out, "Hey look! It's a map!" It is in a charred scroll case, and shows what the area used to look like. According to it, Goluth's prison should be to the north.
Elyandre asks Grenville, "Do you know anything about ancient Dwarven legacies?"
Grenville makes a couple of rolls and then sheepishly admits that he fell asleep that day in class. He does remember that Veriorax is some kind of legendary monster that lurks in the Cogs. There are some places that people don't go because he is rumored to lurk there. Nobody claims to have ever seen him, but remains of his kills have been found.
The characters head back up to the Fallen Angel. First priority is to take a nap. Second priority is to go to the library. The characters get back to find that some of the former captives have already made their way into the bar. Apparently, their first priority is to get plastered, doubtless to avoid post-traumatic stress issues.
A quick Identify effort picks out the boss chain devil's magical gear. Kurgash gets the potion of Cure Serious Wounds. Grenville gets 60% value for the other magical objects (base value of 4000 gold, so he collects 2400 gold). The characters spend 600 gold spent on six Protection from Evil scrolls and three Align Weapon scrolls
The dwarf fight nets the 8th level characters 450 experience and the 9th level characters a mere 337 experience. The chain devil fight is worth 1400 experience to the 8th level characters and 1125 experience to the 9th level characters.
Grenville looks in the library of Margrave University to see what they know about Veriorax. He learns that the creature is some kind of monstrous god to a tribe of blind twisted dwarves. The dwarves take what they want because they rely upon the power of their monster god to protect them. Veriorax has the power to decimate entire areas of the underground. Details on exactly what his power is are thin. Some victims are ripped apart, as if by teeth, but Grenville is unable to determine if the teeth are sharp, carnivorous teeth or blunt, herbivorous teeth. It isn't entirely his fault: most of the documents he is working from are sketchy rumors left by underground dwellers and panicked survivors, rather than disciplined forensic reports.
Graf thinks, "Hmm... twisted blind degenerate dwarves. That sounds a lot like daelkyr servitors to me."
Grenville reflects, "Oh yeah, wasn't there some legend long ago about the dwarves from Eberron today were outcasts from a larger dwarven home deeper underground that got overrun by daelkyr."
Varth muses, "In the underworld, dwarves are everyone's bitches. Hey! The cleric just came back! Have you ever noticed how he's never around when the orc is? Maybe they're the same person!"
The characters return to the prison, then head east. They talk to some goblin villagers who provide directions to Veriorax's cavern, but caution that the evil dwarves prefer to hear the screams so they'll probably try to take the characters alive.
Varth Lokkur asks, "What do they do?" He doesn't speak goblin, so this does little good.
Then Munaak (who is, after all, a goblin) repeats the question. The villagers tell him that the degenerate dwarf-things can manipulate sound to inflict damage or make false sounds. They are resistant to magic. They use poison. And the cherry on top is that they are also all totally fuckin' insane.
The characters stay the night in the goblin village. Grenville gives the chief a silver ring with an inset onyx (60 gold) as a gift. Munaak is not satisfied: he decides to give them some extra gold. And he wants to take them to someplace safer, no matter how little the goblins say they don't want to leave. He insists, "But you're starving and cold!"
The chief points out, "Not with this ring! This will feed hundreds of goblins!" Munaak gives each of the 200 goblins a gold piece.
The characters hear the sounds of wild drunken goblin revelry from the village as they depart.
The next day, the characters set off from the goblin village to arrive at the mushroom grove. The entire place is filled with mushrooms ranging in size up to five and ten feet across. Solmar thinks that some are deadly poison and some are edible. He tells the others, "The purplish ones are edible, and the greenish ones are not." They are growing in a thick bed of vegetable and fecal matter, giving the cavern an indescribable odor.
Varth Lokkur puts a scented handkerchief over his mouth.
Elyandre asks, "Where's the fecal matter coming from?"
Lungpuncture replies, "Probably the dwarves."
Varth groans, "Gah! Then they s*** where they live! What kind of savages are we dealing with here?"
The characters run smack into a substantial crowd of twisted blind dwarfs. Munaak decides to do something about them right away: he flings a Fireball into the larger group of them. Two of them are badly hurt. The others don't even seem to notice.
The dwarfs respond by sending a volley of Sound Bursts at the characters. Cutter, Solmar and Varth are all stunned by the effects. Varth flutters around in the air, but does not fall into the fecal matter. He is quite grateful.
Then the remaining dwarfs charge. Graf meets their assault with a mighty cry of, "Off with his head!" The stricken dwarf totters and falls, headless. Elyandre whirls his double-scimitar around and cuisinarts the next dwarf.
Munaak observes, "Messy work there, guy." Then he ends one of the burned dwarfs with Magic Missiles.
More blind twisted dwarfs emerge from the far end of the caverns. Munaak observes, "I think we need a bigger boat. Those guys are just begging for Fireballs.
Varth replies, "Actually, I think they're going to give us something instead. Look at how many Sonic Bursts are coming in at us."
Lungpuncture reminds everyone, "I just cast a lot of Energy Resistance and Protection Against Energy spells, so we're not going to take much damage from this."
Cutter replies, "Huzzah! That means I don't get killed!" But he does get stunned.
Munaak sends out another Fireball, incinerating six of the new crop of attackers.
Varth observes, "You know, it's a good thing these guys are fanatics. This way, we don't need to run around too much to find them." He watches as Lungpuncture, Graf and Elyandre chop through the front rank of blind dwarves.
The last surviving blind dwarf throws itself at Lungpuncture. It gets its jagged piece of metal lodged in a joint of Lungpuncture's armor. Lungpuncture looks down at the creature and demands, "What do you think you're doing?" Then Varth staggers it with an eldritch bolt. Graf finishes the unfortunate creature with a slam.
Grenville decides that he'd rather not touch the dead dwarf-things, so he addresses Cutter, "Please search those things." Cutter reports that they're carrying nothing worth bringing along.
Elyandre investigates further and finds their camp, along with plenty of evidence that these creatures are not concerned overmuch with cleanliness. Grenville observes Elyandre's search activities and comments, "I wouldn't even have Cutter search through that filth."
Cutter responds, "Oh thank you, Lord!"
Lungpuncture sees a passage ahead, partially blocked by a stalagmite. He runs past it to look for other potential threats. The others hear him call out, "Great googly moogly!" as the stalagmite attacks him.
Varth watches as six tentacles lash out at Lungpuncture and very knowledgably comments, "It's a roper. Yaaaugh!" Then he realizes that the creature has a fifty-foot reach and is grappling him as well. In the meantime, Lungpuncture gets dragged into the roper's maw. Varth thinks, "I know how to handle this! I can use my eldritch powers!" He sends a Maximized Eldritch Blast at the creature and is quite horrified to see that the thing has Spell Resistance stronger than he's ever seen before.
Cutter Gerald reports, "It is vulnerable to crossbows! I can hurt it! Just not very much!"
Graf cuts a tentacle off it. The roper screams. Graf runs right at the roper. The roper thinks, "Gee, I've never had anyone run towards me. There should be a warning sign. Ah well." The roper grapples Graf. The warforged loses ten points of STR. The roper idly reflects on whether warforged taste better fresh, or aged.
Lungpuncture activates his Freedom of Movement effect to get out of the creature's grasp, and then casts Divine Might on himself.
Cutter gets grappled but makes his save by the skin of his teeth. Varth gets dragged ten feet closer to the creature. He screams like a little girl, "Noooooo!"
Grenville shouts out, "Graf! Before the roper eats you, tell me if it is evil!"
Graf (who is in the process of being eaten) screams back, "At a guess, YES!"
Munaak announces, "I have a spell that isn't affected by Spell Resistance! I have Orb of Electricity!" He casts the spell, and howls when he discovers that ropers are immune to electricity.
Grenville, in desperation, casts Tongues and yells out, "Stop! I want to negotiate!"
The roper very reasonably asks, "Why should I stop? I'm winning."
Grenville suggests, "If you spare me and my friends, I can get you lots of tastier food!"
"Graugh!" The creature sneers at Grenville through a mouthful of warforged bits. Then Elyandre skewers it with one end of his double scimitar. The creature howls in pain. The negotiations end.
The roper drags the characters in. Cutter Gerald loses 9 STR. He reassures the others, "I can still move!" Then the roper senses that it is near to real flesh and attacks Varth. Varth screams, then reads a Gaseous Form scroll and evaporates out of its grasp.
Grenville suddenly realizes that Glitterdust isn't affected by spell resistance. He casts it at the roper, just to find out if the creatures have blindsight. He doesn't get a chance: Graf pulls out his vampiric blade and taps the roper. He taps it once and it shudders. He taps it twice and it turns gray, shrivels and dies.
While the others cut themselves free of the tendrils, Lungpuncture comments, "I'm going to look a bit further in, just to see if there's anything out there." He heads around a corner. Three eyestalks pop up and send rays of Finger of Death, Flesh to Stone and Distintegrate at him. He manages to shout out, "Beholder!"
Varth curses, "What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you not have a single gram of common sense in your head?"
Lungpuncture doesn't dignify that comment with a response: he's too busy making Fortitude saves to save his life. He staggers back singing, "Wheels on the bus go round and round!"
Munaak thinks, "If ropers have really good spell resistance, beholders must be pretty much helpless." He flings an Ice Storm at it. He is terribly surprised to find out that he's right. Grenville tries to duplicate Munaak's success by casting Glitterdust. He learns that Will saves are where beholders are Vikings.
Varth casts Haste on Graf. Graf drinks a Flight potion and takes cover.
Solmar announces, "I have the perfect solution!" He casts Evard's Black Tentacles underneath the beholder. Unfortunately, his tentacles are a bit disoriented by their sudden appearance and fail to grapple the beholder.
Lungpuncture steps back and casts Summon Monster VI from a scroll. He brings up a celestial dire tiger and sends it straight into the beholder and the Evard's Black Tentacles. The tentacles proceed straightaway to grapple the tiger. Lungpuncture utters some words that are not suitable for a family-oriented session summary.
For its part, the beholder decides to take advantage of the situation with an opportunistic Charm Monster on the tiger. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief when the tiger saves. Then they groan as Solmar takes a ray in the wishbone and staggers away smoldering. Finally, a large earth elemental springs up from the floor and attacks the tiger.
Munaak manages to hit the beholder with a Fireball. He exults when the thing fails to save. The beholder emerges from the blast with smoldering bits all over its outer shell. Varth moves up and hits the beholder with a Maximized Eldritch Blast. The beholder starts looking a lot more charred. Grenville joins in the fun and hits the thing with a spray of Magic Missiles.
Graf flies in directly and hits the beholder with his Rapier of Puncturing, drawing away 6 CON. As usual, the creature withers and dies. He comments, "I think it died of a double heart attack."
Then the characters take out the earth elemental, by the numbers.
With the beholder dead, the characters look around. Lungpuncture notices a veritable fungus forest off to the right. He orders his tiger, "Rush into the skull-faced fungus!"
Varth screams out, "Nononononono!"
The tiger goes. And then it hits the ooze.
Varth strikes his forehead and exclaims, "Oh, it's an ooze. And now it knows we're here. Just peachy."
Yellow mold spores explode into the air. The tiger staggers and coughs. Lungpuncture orders the tiger to continue stomping through the mold until he's set it all off.
The other characters observe this process with varying expressions of total disbelief. Elyandre comments, "You know that tiger is going to go back to Nirvana or Shambala or wherever and it's going to badmouth you soooo bad..."
The tiger makes it through four or five squares of the stuff before it dies of spore poison. Lungpuncture follows it in, burning off mold. He finds a chest-sized object in the middle of the patch, but he ends up covered in spores in the process. He opens the chest to discover that it contains:
Lungpuncture uses Create Water to wash the mold spores off the treasure. Meanwhile, Solmar and Elyandre search around the roper for treasure. They find nothing.
Several characters cooperate to push the beholder's body into Grenville's Bag of Holding. Everyone has an idea for how to use it, ranging from taxidermy to magical item creation.
Varth kicks the roper as he leaves. He scowls, "Jerk. No treasure." Graf cuts a tentacle off the creature for the practical joke potential.
The characters spend 400 gold on pearls to Identify everything, and then look into possible applications for their non-monetary loot. They learn that beholder eyes are useful in creating magical objects: they reduce the gold piece cost to create items apropos to the function of the eye. The characters send the corpse to a magewright taxidermist with Mending.
The Eye of Errimu works like a digital camera able to hold ten pictures. It shows a new location every time the user blinks. Anyone looking in the eye can use it as a teleport guide. At the moment, it only has one stored location, a place of gaping fissures pulsing with lava-red light, breaking up what might once have been a wide hall. The characters conclude that this must be the place where the key-shard for Goluth's Prison is.
The session ends with the characters splitting up the magical and mundane loot. Grenville gets the Cloak of Charisma +2. Graf gets the Golem-Bane Scarab. Elyandre gets the Dust of Illusion. The coins are divided into seven shares, each worth 290 gold, 5 silver and 7 copper.
The 8th level characters each gain 4343 experience points. The 9th level characters each gain 3472 experience points. Elyandre, Solmar, Lungpuncture and Munaak all hold a little celebration, as all of them made 9th level. Yay!