This is a very special post for two reasons: first, I think it is fair to say that, now that Moist has survived seven sessions, the 5-session death curse on me has finally lifted; second, this is the 100th post on this blog. That’s a pretty significant milestone that I’m quite proud of.
We began the session with a fruitless return trip to the temple to see if we could find the king again before searching for the manner in which the trolls got to this side of the massive chasm separating the east and west sections of this demiplane. The only official access was through a gate that would only be opened with the king or queen’s express permission, and since the king was gone and the queen seemed a little off, we figured we’d search for an alternative. The trolls must have gotten across some other way anyway, right? Turns out they did, via a couple of narrow bridges of ice. With our flying gargoyle friend acting as a safety line, we managed to get across the entire span with only one slip (by me, but then I turned into a squirrel and everything was okay).
The eastern section had the same cold effect as the Halls of Hel, but after Parvus failed her first save and gained a level of exhaustion, no one failed another for the entire time we had to make them. We bypassed the large mountain to the north (which became important later) and made our way to the ruined stone buildings to the south. A lucky Perception check from Mercenary spotted a faint glow inside one of them, and further investigation proved it to be the prince we were looking for, restrained by magical chains. I dispelled them and we set him free, but Mercenary’s perceptive luck went out and she was snuck up on by a couple of trolls while keeping watch.
There were four in all, but between the Flaming Sphere that I had prepared and my realising that Chill Touch would shut down their regeneration as well (which, if I had realised last week, would have made that fight much, much easier) we took them out without too much trouble. After the fight, we fled to the gate, which the prince got us through, and headed for the palace.
Along the way, the prince explained that his mother, the queen, had been replaced by the evil witch who lived on the mountain. Upon arriving in her presence, I dispelled her disguise, and her outer skin sloughed off to reveal a disgusting, gaunt hag. She claimed that the king had gone to the giant that also lived on the mountain and then flew off, heading towards it and cackling a taunt to come and get her.
Of course, we went to get her. Taking a short rest first, we were then offered mounts in the form of tauntaun-like beasts. Mine was a female called Saga, with whom I formed an instant bond. So, naturally, once we got to the mountain and started fighting our way up it through a blizzard, there was an avalanche and poor Saga got squished. I was buried too, but my companions managed to dig me out.
Eventually we reached the tower structure where the giant lived, where we were greeting by a talking, frost-breathing wolf. The giant came out and said that the king came to see him but he broke him and gave him to the hag. After Mercenary and Parvus managed to defuse a potential fight between the prince (and his five soldiers that had accompanied us) and the giant, we quickly continued on our journey to the summit, bypassing where a second wolf had killed and was eating all of our remaining mounts.
We managed to reach the summit and found the hag flying in the air. She taunted us, but then the prince shot her with an arrow and the fight was on. And let me just say, we are not a party that is well-equipped to deal with flying enemies.
I didn’t really contribute a whole lot to the fight, largely because I was already low on power from not having long rested since the earlier fight. I entered this combat with four 1st and one 4th level spell slot, the latter of which I saved in case we needed fire to kill the hag (since it was the only way for any of us to conjure fire), but never ended up needing or using (until I healed everyone up after the fight – Healing Spirit, of course). The 1st level slots ended up mostly going on Absorb Elements, since the hag hit us with three Cone of Colds and two Ice Storms, and between those and her lair actions, I had to use both my special spore things (burning through 56 temporary hp) and Absorb Elements several times and I still only finished the fight on 3 hit points.
The others did a bit more work. Mercenary and the gargoyle did most of the job of killing the hag, between her wand of magic missiles and his Catapult spell, while they were assisted by a couple of javelins and Spiritual Weapon strikes from Parvus and a few arrows from the prince, although he mostly missed. Early in the fight, a collection of zombies and spectres emerged from the ground, and while we eventually killed them all off (although the hag’s area of effect spells did most of the work for us) they did kill all of our soldier allies. It was a messy fight, by any account.
We did win, though, and a lucky high Perception check from me spotted a hidden passage in which we found the king and his sword, Fenrir’s Muzzle, which was what we had come to this demiplane for. We escorted him and his son back to the palace, where we took a long rest before he presented us with the sword as our reward. Then he jumped off a balcony into the abyss of the chasm because of weird ascension laws stuff that was just plain off-putting, so we quickly made our exit after that.
Back in the ‘real world’, we pretty much straight away decided to move onto the next plane. We took a long rest so I could prepare some water-oriented spells, since it is a water plane, before we entered back through the portal generator. We emerged on a beach, I cast Water Breathing on Mercenary and Parvus, and the four of us (the gargoyle was still with us) began heading into the water.
That was where we finished and (finally) levelled up. Yay level 8. Yay Wisdom boost. Of couse, last campaign, we TPK’ed in the first session at level 8, so… we’ll see what next week brings, I guess. Of course, the real conflict at the moment is who gets the sword. Mercenary and Parvus both have a reasonable claim to it, and as we ended, Mercenary had it, but we’ll see if that sticks. Regardless, I’m super excited to play through an underwater session or three. The people of this realm are supposed to be peaceful and will purportedly just give us the item (cloak) we’re after, but somehow I doubt it’s going to be as easy as that. But, again, we’ll see.