First thing’s first: I did not die. Moist managed to survive his fifth session, which makes a nice change, although I’m not going to breathe the sigh of relief that I did when Cardigan managed the same, since look how that turned out. I did come close to dying – we’ll get to that – but a survive is a survive, right?
In other news, it’s worse than we thought. We done real, real bad.
We started by following the big, scary dude out of the mine, while he told us his name, Azamus, and that the yellow chick that was with him was a githyanki whom he really needed to kill. He said she wanted to conquer the north, which was an issue for him, since he wanted to ‘spread his gifts’ throughout it, conquering it himself as the first step towards conquering the world. Yep.
Outside the mine, Azamus spotted Phandalin and teleported to it. We hurriedly caught up, and when we arrived, he sucked a ball of energy out of the two frog-creatures (slaad) with us and pushed it into Venomfang’s body, growing it three times the size and bringing it back to life. Or some kind of pseudo-life, anyway. The dragon is totally under Azamus’ control, and it grew a seat out of its back and he levitated atop it, so call it what you will.
They flew away, leaving us to help out the people of Phandalin. We sent a message to Waterdeep to warn of what happened while we spent a couple of days helping out around the ruined town, before we started heading south, towards the city. An important item to note, however, is that Airina elected to remain in Phandalin to help out her cousins (on account of her player not being too available for the foreseeable future). So, just so everything is clear moving forward, the party currently consists of Mercenary, Parvus, and myself.
Which turned out to be quite fortuitous. The githyanki and Azamus both travelled south, so we wanted to head back to Waterdeep overland, in case we encountered any sign of them, but heading south by boat was nearly twice as fast. However, with Parvus on her summoned steed and Mercenary riding a wild-shaped me, we were able to make the overland journey in half the time. Us: winning.
Temporarily.
A couple of days into the journey, we reached a roadhouse where they told us of a nearby village that was attacked by strange creatures and destroyed. We figured it was probably a sign of what we were after, so we made our way there. We had to change our mount/wild shape into goats to get over the mountains without losing too much time, and when we arrived, we found the entire village razed to the ground and a handful of bodies, including a couple of githyanki. What exactly happened, and whether Azamus showed up, we had no way of knowing.
Continuing south another day or two, we spotted Venomfang circling a small stronghold in the distance. Hurrying there, we found the main githyanki chick summoning her buddies through a portal to attack civilians. We charged in to attack, and things went terribly.
First, Parvus charged in on her giant goat, which was fine. The goat got a critical hit and did a massive amount of damage to one of the gith, and then Parvus started attacking it as well. Mercenary and I pushed forward as well, Mercenary casting Bless and me casting Heat Metal on the main githyanki. She took a bit of damage, but didn’t drop concentration (which I hoped would kill the portal).
Speaking of the portal, this is where things went bad. For me, in particular. An extra nine or ten githyanki, including a knight, stepped through the portal and came at us. The knight and one of his buddies each hit me once, but they both were critical hits, so I went unconscious just like that. The others hit the others and killed Parvus’ goat, but that was about it.
Then Azamus and a gang of slaad showed up, Azamus shutting down the portal and then going for the main chick while the slaad came for the rest of the githyanki. I failed my death saving throw, only for Mercenary to heal me up, only for the knight to knock me back to unconsciousness again. She healed me back up again, then the knight knocked her out, and then I healed her up, and that was pretty much the extent of our engagement in the fight. Meanwhile, Parvus kept hitting them and one or two kept hitting her while the rest fought the slaad.
In the end, the main chick did a bunch of damage to Azamus with a critical hit, only for him to do even more damage back with a regular hit, so she bugged out and ran away. The gith knight called his buddies to him and they all teleported away, only two or three dying in the entire fight, and then Azamus suggested we get ourselves gone. He levitated into the air while we ran for the hills, and once we were a safe distance away, we turned and watched him drop a couple of meteors on the stronghold, levelling it in moments.
Azamus hung around in the aftermath of his destructive activities, so Mercenary asked why he did it and he replied ‘now she might be dead’. Then he said he needed to return to Limbo and disappeared, while Venomfang flew north. Left in the midst of the destruction and feeling thoroughly like we were now in the middle of a fight between beings way more powerful than us, we fled with all speed to Waterdeep.
When we returned, Mercenary sought out information, but no one we had encountered before seemed to know anything about Azamus or had even heard the name before. However, that night while we all slept (ie. while the others slept and I sat in my mushroom garden and stared into the darkness) a gargoyle smashed through our window. He was a friendly chap, and explained that he could take us to his mistress, who could help with our small Azamus problem. He drew a teleportation circle in the Mug and bamfed us straight to her tower.
We met his mistress, an ancient, spectral, human wizard, in the observatory at the top of the tower. She explained that Azamus was a lesser divine being whose power was decreased by the other gods out of jealousy, so he ate a stone and became half-slaad. Or something like that. She also told us that she was the one who bound Azamus and the githyanki in their tomb in the first place, and told us of how we might be able to defeat them both.
For Azamus, she told us there were four artifacts we need to acquire which will give us the power to defeat him, located on four demiplanes only accessible from her tower. We need to travel to each one, get the artifact by whatever means necessary, and then build up enough power within ourselves to make the most of them (aka. level up high enough).
For the githyanki, it should be much simpler. We simply have to find her where she’s probably gone to her old base. In the Underdark. I’m sure that will be fun.
With the gargoyle as our guide, we immediately made our way to the first of the demiplanes, an icy place of perpetual night, where the king was in possession of the first artifact, the longsword Fenrir’s Muzzle. We encountered him in a temple, and when we asked him for it, he told us his son had recently disappeared while out hunting, and we might get it if we found him.
Agreeing to help, we began heading towards the place the prince was last seen. We needed to speak to a shaman to be allowed in, but first we had to skirt the main city, since they didn’t like or trust outsiders. We managed it, with Parvus speaking abyssal to get us through a gate, and reached the shaman’s camp, which is where we finished the session.
So, yeah, we let two really, really powerful, evil beings into the world, and now it’s up to us to deal with them. At least we know how to, having been given the guidance. Personally, I am super excited about heading into the Underdark; it’s something I’ve wanted to do since I started playing. But I suspect it will still be a way’s off. For now, we’ll have to settle for finding these divine atrifacts, and see what shenanigans we can get up to in the process.