Episode 8 (part 3): Taunting and Revealing

Collecting themselves after the fight at the late Ilthane the Black’s alchemical layer, the party realizes that their boat for hire is not likely to return.  They trudge down the river, and up the bank to return to Alhaster, worn out, muddy and exhausted.  No one speaks much as they take another night’s unobserved refuge, leaving other unsettled matters to another day.

Feeling the pressure of the coming event, Yldar, Zeek and Talis ask around at the Deluxury about issue of dress code and expectations for Zeech’s banquet.  They meet the gregarious Professor Montague Marat and unusal Shag Solomon.  The former, it turns out, was once from Diamond Lake and is an associate of Zalamandra, the proprietor of the Emporium there.  He left prior to Ilthane's attacks, and hired a boat to get a number of his acquaintances out during the dragonseige.  He is evidently a wealthy artistocrat, is also invited to the prince's party and goes to lengths to explain the expectations of the event.  He recommends that no extravagance should be spared the invitation to mingle with the region’s aristocracy and the great Prince himself, and that since there will be no gladiatorial event, that weapons are certainly not allowed.  Solomon says little, and the group does not know quite the reason why -- perhaps it is some cultural difference between Quaggoth's (a noble, cat-like people) and these folks.  Vasco, detecting thoughs, finds that he is simply strung out on some kind of opiate to which he is addicted.  Armhin, the Deluxury proprietor, overhearing the conversation lavishes the party with the fact that decadent gold chariots will be at their residences to pick them up the night of the event.  Seeing the opportunity for making an impression, Zeek books in at the Duluxury’s outrageous daily rates for the party to stay the night before and after the banquet.  They can’t exactly be seen being picked up from their current sanctuary.  Most of the party – other than Nadroc who is his own ancient extravagance – sets about making arrangements in the town for outfitting themselves for the event.

In the middle of the day, while shopping together as a group, the whole party is approached by a very finely dressed and kempt couple of hobgoblins.  The first bows lowly to the group and introduces himself as B’kruss, with a nod to his more silent and stoic friend V’juss.  He says he is the leader of the Knights of Redhand (the province of which Alhaster is located), and that they have heard the people singing in the streets about the Champions from the Free City, the dragon and demon slayers, who have managed to extract an invitation from the generous and trusting price.  B’kruss wants to know if the party is worth anything more than the songs that are sung about them, or if it is all just haughty words to mislead the wonderful people of Alhaster.  He challenges one from the party to a mounted race around the city, claiming that no one is as skilled a rider as a hobgoblin.  Playing the jester and the fool, Zeek tries to twist the B’kruss’s earnest challenge into wordplay, and – with a small shopping-crowd forming to witness the potential match – B’kruss loudly laughs off the rebuke and walks away, mocking the party as campions of nothing but singing and dancing and playing like children.  While some of the crowd offers some sympathy for the party, many laugh loudly along with B’kruss and V’juss.  Responding to pleas of from the group, B’kruss nobelly offers another challenge – a leap across a chasm reminiscent of the cowardly dragon’s layer B’kruss claims to have once defeated.  The party accepts, and offers Yldar as their finest jumper.  The crowd assembles below a 30' gap between two buildings that is to be the site of the leap.  Vasco and V’juss square off, sceptical of each other’s honesty in the jump, and Yldar and B’kruss square off, agreeing to make the leap without the aid of magic boots. At the moment of the jump, B’kruss makes it and Yldar falls, taking some damage but more severely suffering the open mocking of the crowd, only a few of whom are left with sympathies for the fallen heros.

Jarred from the embarrassing confrontation, but not discouraged, the party concludes their shopping, securing garments and lining up escorts for the event.

The party spends the night quietly studying the evidence they have gathered, working to think through what they should spend their final nights doing before the ball.  They follow-up on the lead from Manzorian’s library that Rhorsk, the old priest of St. Cuthbert, was a key informant for Balakarde 10 years ago.  Having casually scoped out the ruined church of St. Cuthbert, they decide to try to enter unobserved by Blessed Angels by teleporting in.  Vasco manages this without fail, and the group quickly finds the descent into the crypt below.  There, they hear the pitiful moans of a creature who was once Rhorsk.  He sits on top of a pile of human bones (which must have been the bodies he has feasted on) and amid many rough, small tunnels that lead out of the crypt and into the city.  Rhorsk throws bones at the group, getting them to leave, but by remarkable diplomacy with the undead, Zeek manages to get him to talk.  He shared that in his book, he left out a bit from the account of the cult of the Hextor heretics.  In truth, all the heretics were captured and executed, but when he interrogated their bodies afterwards via speak with dead, he discovered that they had actually been set on their path by a mysterious contact known to them only as Mother Maggot.  She had given the cultists the worm-eaten undead they used to cause so much trouble, and apparently promised more support if they were successful in their crusade against Alhaster.  Rhorsk found out little about Mother Maggot herself, but did find out that she met the heretics in a subterranean room under a house in the southeast section of the city, which he then went on to describe the location of to the group.  He said that a strange man asking questions about the Ebon Triad has just recently visited him, and that he had shared with him the same information.  After a few minutes of lucid conversation, Rhorsk returns to his mad state and the party respectfully leave the undead to his crypt.

They scope out the house that Rhosk described and find that Furpotia, a solitary nurse, operates a sick-house there, sponsored (rather without material help) by her idol prince Zeech.  She has no use for the party when approached, and does not want their help or their blessings.  Acting very careful so as not to agitate Furpotia, the party leaves the modest house to strategize another approach.   They devise an impressive plan to have Nadroc use earth elemental form to travel through the soil, below the house to see if he can find a meeting room.  Walking below the earth, he pops his head into a well-made tunnel that extends 100' down to a chamber below.  Nadroc reports back to the party and they agree that he should continue his investigation of the chamber, seeing where it leads.  He ‘swims’ through the earth, stealthily popping his head into various rooms in the small chambre.  The last one is a well that extends 300' down and opens up into a big, ornately decorated (with worm-like monsters) courtroom with a huge three-headed, six-armed statue in the middle.  Nadroc catches the statue catches eye, who just as quickly hurls a spiritual Hextor’s flail at him.  Damaged but not defeated, Nadroc retreats through the rock to regroup with the party and fight another day.

Episode 8 (part 2): Drawing Connections

The party finds a rather good old map of the whole land of Greyhawk, hanging on one of the walls of a pub, going around, each chiming in their knowledge from they started, they retell their story of where they have been and how they have come to be in Alhaster, seeking out information on the Ebon Triad.  The arc of their story has suggested to both them and the sages Manzorian and Agath how the recent proliferation of worm-infested undead may be linked to heretics of Vecna, Erythnul and Hextor who have formed the Ebon Triad.  They are now in Alhaster to follow-up on leads from the wizard Balakarde who 10 years ago disappeared after discovering the Ebon Triad was active in Alhaster and that a local elf noble had crushed a cabal of Hextorites who had left their church.

Stepping outside after filling Talis, the party’s new bard, with numerous tales which she is left to incorporate into a new repertoire path, Vasco catches a sheaf of paper which has blown up out of an alley.  The Sinchaser Report is immediately visible as not one of Prince Zeech’s sacntioned rags, but an underground publication cobbled together bear witness to the excess and hypocrocy of the nobles and bear witness to the pain and suffering of labouring under ‘his greatness.  Nearly as fast as he caught it, Vasco is accosted by a patrol of hobgoblin Watchers, who challenge the strangers found with the rag but who are quickly left to understand ‘how disgusting’ the party feels about it and its contents as well.

With a week to go before the Great Banquet, the party decides to get to know something more of Alhaster.  Zeek strikes out on his own for the Gallows and finds hangmen working towards an upcoming spectacle.  Zeek impresses them with some architectural drawings for a an improved and more dramatic gallows system, and the minor officials leave with a sense that this guy has the real potential to contribute something good to the Princes’ fine city.  Zeek is encouraged to return for the big show.

Vasco and Nadroc have more stealthy plans.  They sit casually outside the Blessed Angels’ Aerie to scope it out.  Seeing a few of these curious outsiders (as Nadroc was able to identify) coming and going, Vasco augments his hearing to see if he can work out what they are up to.  It is all the infernal business of enforcing the law, clearly and efficient, observant. organized and coordinated omnipresence in Zeech’s Alhaster.

Yldar and Talis spend time at the market learning that higher level and more pricey wares may be had after hours from certain shops for a 10% discount from the prices they were paying in Magepoint.  They also get a sense of the definately loyalty and apparent business advantage of working in the law-abiding city of Alhaster.  Certainty makes business predictable, and predictability makes profitability, though the there is everywhere a slight recognition of the irony this brings to the overall quality of life.

They witness a large crowd gather for the excecutions.  The first are two workers who had hoped to leave the construction of the Great Project before dusk so they could have advantageous hunting for their families.  Not only were they insubordinate, but the prospect of fishing no doubt included the immanent theft of fishing gear, and the possibility of trespass to get to a bank where it would do them some good.  Work is for workers, not thieving and lazing about, and everyone should remember it.  While the crowd enjoyed the spectacle, the real energy charged up with the next group of three who, it was announced, were hanged for their affiliation with the Ebon Triad.  The crowd spits and rages against the mere mention of this vile heretical belief, and are whipped up at the summary death of these traitors.  Zeech’s undeclaired war against the Ebon Triad has obvious support in the streets.

The next day Talis makes for Miomay’s Playhouse to arrange for an appointment to have the wardrobe and makeup department set her up for Zeech’s feast – a service they are more than happy to commit to.  Zeek, having heard about another service provided there, avails himself, finding that the mistress is much less inquisitive than her worker, who was happy to chat, and in fact seemed to want to know whatever she could learn about the dealings of an obvious man of wealth and power like Zeek.

After, they carry on to check out the Great Project, a huge construction that is well underway, and which strikes many of them in the architectural themes that are reminiscent of the ziggurat of Kuluth-mar.  While the patrol forbid them to enter the premises, the group suspects that they could rather easily get inside, with proper stealth and preparation – but they would have to do it while keeping the Blessed Angels in mind, who no doubt would interject on such a trespass.

Finally, they make it down to the harbour where they charter a boat on Eel River Transport to the island of the Traitors’ Graves.  They had heard that this is where the executed are taken.  It was named this by Zeech, who left the old knights of Alhaster to slowly die here after he rescued the city from their rule 20 years ago.  The transport is arranged for drop off at high tide, but will not return until the next high tide as the Eel becomes too shallow for much of the lunar cycle.

The Traitors Graves is a muddy, reedy, mosquito infested place.  On initial inspection, there is little to see other than the crows and marshy pools.  However, the party does not go unobserved.  Four black dragons – young but still large enough, close in from all sides, but not to attack but to make a proposition.  They claim to have been watching the party and want to enlist them to help rid their mother’s old layer of a scourge who had moved inside.  The party initially agrees, and once the giant boulder to their layer is pushed aside by the dragons, Yldar takes Zeek’s bait and lets out that it was he who had helped kill their mother.  Enraged by this betrayal, the dragons attack.  Two are slain by the party and two take flight, smart enough to know when they have been outmatched.

Nadroc disintegrates the boulder that the dragons had managed to push back into place during the battle and the party descends into Ilthane’s layer.  Completely buffed and ready for battle the intruder is faced head-on, but it is more terrible than they had anticipated.  An incorporeal acidwraith blasts them with a cone of acid breath before smashing through their armours to the core of their beings with its acidic, etherial force. Ignoring the lightning bolt replies and much of the hoped damage of traditional combat, the party manages to overcome the beast through sheer force and persistence.  The dragon’s layer they had been hoping for, however, lay in ruins.  Most of the treasure had been completely corroded or ruined by the intensity of the acid.  Some 4,000gp in coin and minor baubles were recovered, along with three completed elixirs that had survived the ransacking of what appears to be a very sophisticated alchemical laboratory.

Episode 8 (part 1): Entering Alhaster

Having returned to Magepoint, the archmage Manzorian reveals what he, Celeste, Agath, and Eligos had been researching about the Ebon Triad.  Several scrolls and books about the Ebon Triad in Manzorian’s library had notes written by Balakarde in their margins.  The main theme of this marginalia was his suspicion that the Ebon Triad just a front for a cult of Kyuss.  Many of the Ebon Triad leaders were from the port town of Alhaster in the Bandit Kingdom of Redhand.  One old book, an outdated text called The History of Alhaster by a cleric of St. Cuthbert named Rhorsk just before the kingdom was taken over by Prince Zeech.  The history recounts how heretics from Hextor tried to establish an underground cult in the city, and used something call “the Writhing Dead”.  The cult was defeated by an elven noble spellcaster named Lashonna, but  the leaders of the cult escaped.  Balakarde left a note of questions pinned to this text.



The party hires a ship and travels over the Lake of Unknown Depths largely uneventfully to Alhaster.  Upon arrival it is clear that a festival is being prepared for.  The temple of Hextor is supporting the upcoming gala for Zeech, celebrating 20 years of the joy of his leadership.

After a brief encounter with the city guard – some tough looking hobgoblins that are poart of what keep the peace in the place, the party learns of the Blessed Angels who seem to have their eyes and ears everywhere, and are very much Zeech’s powerful enforcers in this place.

Asking around about the upcoming gala, the party learns that there will be a Grand Banquet in about a week, where all of the most esteemed circle of the city and a few nobles from beyond will be attending – including rumour has it — Zeech’s most trusted advisor Lashonna.

The party ends up in the Church of Kord, which is a run down of the past.  Lanthis Chax, the aging warrior high priest, realizes the group’s non-alliance with Zeech and allows them to bunk down secretly on the premises.

The party cases out Lashonna’s manor, but sensibly decides not to break in.  Later that night, Armhin Loratio, the owner of one of the Deluxury (the upscale tavern the group decided to drink in) had heard that there was a hero from the Champion Games in town.  Maeron, does an amazing bardic performance and manages to score invitations for the whole group to the Grand Banquet.  Armhin takes Maeron aside and tells her that he think really only she has the class to fit in with the nobles.  He is giving the tickets to her, and if the behaviour of the others doesn’t fit, she will be on the one to pay the price.  Talking around the tavern that night (and several others overheard the impressive performance and there is a bit of a buzz about the group), the party learns that fine dress is expected and that weapons are generally not allowed.  They also learn that Zeech often expects gifts.

Episode 7 (part 6): The Harbinger of the Age of Worms

Zeek briefly considers smashing the foul worm fountain while Yldar mulls over the possibility of packing it away for its museological value, when Maeron picks herself up tells them all that it is time to go and face what is behind these other doors.  Down the hall again, they are half distracted by their quiet discussion of how they might work to bring to an end the Overworm that nearly devoured them.  Carefully working their way past the two entrances that lead to the Overworm’s writhing green sea, they find the last double door in the hall closed but not evidently locked or trapped.  Lining up battle ready behind Yldar, the party prompts him to throw the doors open.

There, amid a massive nest of books, scrolls and papers, a large green naga looks up from his reading and raises an eyebrow at his guests.  “Hello?” he says, an engages Yldar in cautious but curious banter.  Looking at Vasco who has come down the hall, Sruggut, as he introduces himself, raises his eyebrow higher, could this learned elf help him get out he wonders, and proceeds to engage in a negotiation with Vasco over the potential use of teleport to get him out, anywhere out, beyond the obsidian ring.  Zeek and Jorel join in the polite conversation in the room while Maeron and Nadroc stay just outside.  The naga has no clear explanation for why he is unable to get beyond the obsidian wall himself, but does offer a curious view of his being another interloper in this ziggurat, avoiding the fate of an undead worm while spending extended time studying the vestiges of the powerful necromancy that Kyuss’ birthplace has to offer.  Zeek, sensing that Vasco is extremely uncomfortable with the teleport request decides to end the conversation with a blow from his hooked hammer.  The naga had expected such treachery and lets forth his sorcerous ways, nearly destroying Yldar with a spell that for Yldar luckily only grazed him.  Suffering a few more hits and realizing that this may be his only way out, Sruggut moves over to Vasco and grapples his whole body around him with a fully charged Harm spell readied to course through him.  Teleport me out or you die.  Vasco agrees and the aggressive party carefully backs away and lowers their weapons.  With Vasco just free enough of the naga’s grasp to cast the spell, Zeek recognizes that the spell Vasco is putting together is not the same teleport that they have done together before.  He lets unleash a furious blow against the naga, who succumbs and is left dead.   The battle has left the naga’s library of arcane and religious tombs smouldering with at least a quarter of the books in ruin.

Zeek, disrespectfully mocking the dead corpse of the naga he had just killed, asks for a further conference out in the hall and away from the smells of the burnt literary nest, to make further strategic plans for getting past the Overworm.  While the conversation drags on the party’s minds are filled with an alien and unrecognizable voice.  It soon clarifies into one that asks each of them to reveal how many of the prophecies of the Age of Worms have come to pass.  Most other than Vasco don’t seem to actually know, and Vasco wisely suppresses the reply in his mind.  The alien voice leaves and the strategy resumes.

And goes on for some half and hour.

During which time Jorel is standing just outside the group, watching suspiciously down the hall that leads to sea of worms and the Overworm that lurks beneath.  A sound catches his ears – the sound of well armoured soldiers marching through the shallows of a lake.  He raises the alarm with the group who turn to find three Kyuss Knights, armoured in heavy magic full plate male and great unholy bastard swords drawn for battle.  Marching relentlessly forward, the lead Knight uttering something nearly unintelligible in ancient Flan but surely relating to the proficies of Kyuss, they blast the party with vile visions of Kyuss’ wormy armies defiling their moral bodies, visions so wretched they leave Zeek stunned and pushed aside.  The Knights push in and engage the group in immediate melee combat, seemingly shrugging off the previously effective blasts of heat and fire, and attacking with sword and bites from the huge Kyuss worms that extrude from their eye sockets at every opportunity.  Within 20 seconds both Yldar and Jorel are collapsed on the ground, breaths away from death.  Nadroc using a kind of wind-form strikes over and over and stays on the move.  Vasco backs away, frustrated by the seeming ineffectiveness of his spells.  Maeron evokes her holy smite again and again, but the Knights respond with impressive force.  Zeek his best hammer dropped in the confusion, feels hardly effective.

Maeron, seeing her fallen comrades and the battle that has clearly been fought entirely on the Kyuss Knights terms, decides that powerful gifts are sometimes too long kept back, summons the Solar angel who committed to watching over her at Manzorian’s Fountain.  The angel appears moments later and time appears to stop.  The Solar immediately understands the situation, assessing the wretched evil these former Generals of Kyuss represent, and the precariousness between death (and subsequent undeath) and the goodness of life that this party may represent.  Maeron humbly requests aid in destroying these evil Knights, and the Overworm that lurks in the room just behind them.  Holy Words are uttered and the Knights are immediately destroyed.  Time moves forward and the party sees their foes crumbling to the floor as the Solar walks over to the shore of the sea of worms.  The worms part around him, not entering anywhere near his holy aura.  The Overworm senses his presence and lunges up to smash and pulverize the new intruder.  Again, time appears to slow down for Maeron and then arrow after glowing arrow is let loose into the Overworm.  The party sees in one instant a whole slew of arrows bleeding out the Overworms’ festering unlife force, as it crashes into the sea of worms and is gone from the world forever.  The Solar walks out and with a glace at Maeron, she knows that there is one final evil in this place, but which is for them to overcome.

The party heals, rests, regroups, and sits with new respect for Maeron and her connections with the gods (and their angels).

Eight hours later – the time of day or night now completely lost – debate over tactics is quite.  Nadroc quietly suggests building a wall-of-force bridge to carefully walk over the sea of worms and see what is beyond the last two doors.  Silence is exhausted consensus.  Yldar walks over and sees the open door of the Generals quarters.  They are once-luxurious rooms that reflect a now spartan eternity of undead brooding.  Leaving that place, the party crosses the final span of the bridge over the sea of worms to the final double doors, listening for what might lay beyond.

Listening, their minds are filled again with the alien voice, again probing the question as to how many of the prophecies have already been fulfilled, and fades away.  Yldar opens the door and sees sitting in an elaborately foreign room, arranged in unfamiliar ways for this world, and with a tall six-armed creature standing mutely in his metative space.  Yldar asks who he is and it explains it is Mak’ar, an ancient spell weaver who has long ago come to favour undeath.  Maeron realizes she has seen here her first lich.  He continues to explain, mutely, through his thoughts, that he is the architect of the Ago of Worms, that he wanted to bring on the End Times for this world to draw on the vast necromantic power that would come of it.  Vasco remembers more about the prophecies he had learned had not yet passed: “A tripartite spirit once again becomes one, and at its advice are the mighty undone,” and “On the eve of the Age of Worms, a hero of the pit shall use his fame to gift a city to the dead.”  Mak’ar is listening to these thoughts and is pleased to know how far along the Age of Worms has come.  He says that if he is finally destroyed here, then these may indeed be the people who bring the End Times on, while if he defeats them, then they are nothing but more bodies for Kyuss’ undead army.

At that Yldar has no more patience and lets fly a volley of arrows.  Zeek’s lamp of true seeing had revealed that the Mak’ar was standing invisible in the corner of the room, while his mute mirror image played the role of alien host.  The arrows flew true, but bounced against a powerful force wall Mak’ar had cast around himself, and in moments when he is ready, he drops this wall and unleashes Confusion amongst several, and blasting with multiple magic missiles.  His ability to cast so many spells simultaniously is impressive, but so is the party’s ability to respond.  Nadroc quickly locks Mak’ar in his own wall of force, giving the party time to regroup and get strategically around the spell weaver for an intense melee.  Vasco recognizes from his old teachers the outlines of a powerful (but limited) wish spell, and suddenly an entire swarm of Kyuss worms flow out of the lake and into the room, coming near Vasco and attempting to engulf and burrow into Maeron.  Pausing from their attack on Mak’ar long enough to destroy the Kyuss worm swarm without any infections, the party readies for Nadroc to bring down his force wall.  Mak’ar hits Nadroc with a Maze, causing him to vanish to another plane, while Vasco succeeds in dispelling much of the magic that the spell weaver had cast.  After this, it is mere moments until the advanced spell weaver lich is destroyed alltogether, leaving the party in the room to experience their final vision.

The room melts away into darkness as the air fills with strange and frightening whis pers. It sounds as if a hundred different voices speak in a hundred different languages, but an instant later, the voices have joined into one and the language resolves into familiar words. These words speak of the prophecies of the Age of Worms, and as they speak, visions of the prophecies coming true manifest before you, allowing you to observe the events as if you were a god looking down upon a troubled world. The visions are violent and horrific. Legions of worm-eaten dead rise from soggy graves. An immense and demonic tree explodes into destructive life from the heart of an unfamiliar city. A burning comet lances down from the heavens to strike the earth in a tremendous, mushroom-shaped cloud of devastation. Another city, its town square wreathed in a cloud of black smoke filled with eyes, is held in the grip of shadows that move independently from their source. A cackling man attaches a clawed and withered hand to the bleeding stump of his arm, and the hand writhes into unholy life. A city built in the heart of a volcano suffers tragedy during a partial eruption that sees the collapse of its southeastern quadrant. As each of these scenes flash by, they are accompanied by a crushing sense of certainty—these events have already come to pass. Yet finally, the whispering voices speak of two more prophecies, and these are accompanied by blackness. “A tripartite spirit once again becomes one, and at its advice are the mighty undone,” the voices whisper. And then, “On the eve of the Age of Worms, a hero of the pit shall use his fame to gift a city to the dead.” After this, there is only silence.

They come out of this vision in time to feel the ground shake, knocking Jorel right to the ground.  The massive spire has fallen down and crushed the obsidian ring outside and destroying much of the ziggurat above.  None of Kyuss’ magic is left in tact within these inner chambers. It will not be long now before the creatures of the jungle around Kuluth-mar will become the new denizens of the ruined city.

Taking an hour to pick through the few treasures and valuables left in the now ruined ziggarut of Kyuss, the party loads up and teleports back to Magepoint to rest, recover, re-equip and debrief with the archmage Manzorian and his advisors who by now, they hope, have finished their research on the Ebon Triad and its links to Kyuss, whom they feel now they are much more knowledgeable about.

Episode 7 (part 5) - The Worms’ Bite

Coming down the hallway out of the rooms where the dead are reposed, Jorel and Zeek reminisce a bit about their past.  Jorel was laughing over how he had followed Zeek since he had seen the little guy battle a band of Kira Tahlah slavers, who almost got the last laugh on Zeek until Jorel rescued him from a slow-acting poison collapsed Zeek into the sands of the Dry Hills.  Jorel’s laugh stopped abruptly as a sound behind him caught his ears.  Most of the others in the party had crept around a corner and were approaching another entrance to the Worm Sea cavern.  Jorel let out a short expletive (he had been with Zeek now for even his language to be wearing off) as two stooped, armoured undead floated down the hallway, led by the very same plate-mail encrusted warrior who they had destroyed in the pit hours before, pointed their worm-writing, boney hands at the group and uttered terrible evocations in an ancient language that Jorel could make out a single word: the name of their deity Kyuss.

Nadroc and Yldar, being held firmly into place through blindingly fast hold person spells, were left out for important seconds.  Jorel and Zeek, spring into battle while calling their companions attentions.  Jorel manages to spring past the undead trio who push forward to close the party in on the Worm Sea behind them.  Zeek swats away falling Kyuss worms in strategically jumping under one of the floating divine minions, taunting and thwarting him from behind.  Conventional attacks and arrows seem to be doing little good, when Vasco, Maeron unleash their full power against them, first thoroughly destroying the undead warrior before dropping one of the spell casters who had unsuccessfully been trying to control their minds.  The third undead floats up and past the party, disappearing around the corner into the cavernous room.

Broken free of their holds, Nadroc and Yldar press with the others up to the shore of the huge cavern whose floor undulates with the sickening green worms.  Vasco sees the escaped Kyuss priest lower himself into the sea and tries to pin him to the wall with a web.  Unsuccessful, the party watches, noses wrinked and eyes squinting, as the worms suffuse his blasted and scourged body, seeming to recharge his the essence of his very-unlife.  Then the surface of the water nears them begins to briefly rumble and with a horrible splash a gargantuan green worm, its dual-rows of razor teeth shocks out of the water and lunges its massive 40' mass at the party, biting hard and fast on Vasco who through writing in tremendous pain from the hit, manages to elude being swallowed whole.  When the spray from the worm sea covers the party, and seemingly between the moments of reality, the next vision falls over them:

The immediate surroundings waver and fade, replaced by a bird’s-eye view of the city of Kuluth-Mar at its height. The streets are empty, as the thousands of citizens seem to have gathered in a mass in the central plaza surrounding the Spire of Long Shadows. Suddenly, a foul energy wells from the spire at the center of the city, sweeping outward and felling the living as it passes. For each creature that falls, you feel a silent but potent sense of wrongness, as some indescribable part of the creature, perhaps its soul, is drawn back toward the Spire of Long Shadows to be absorbed by the strange black monolith of stone balanced at its peak. As the energy builds around the peak, a shimmering image of a colossal humanoid figure, its body composed of a million writhing worms, takes form around the Spire of Long Shadows, its arms raised in triumph. Yet in another moment, that triumphant pose seems to change to one of rage, and a soul-wrenching cry of fury tears from the undulant face. The image shrinks, pulled into the stone monolith at the Spire’s peak, imploding with a horrific wet burst. In an instant, the city is quiet again, yet as the vision fades, the first signs of unlife spread through the thousands of dead bodies strewn around the ziggurat’s base as bodies, now festering with green worms rise from death. 

With the massive worm withdrawing in the real world, and his wounds nearly crippling him, Vasco weakly calls out that he is teleporting out right now. One by one the party steels their will and lay hands on Vasco who, not before a slashing force of necromantic darkness lunges out of the worm-priest’s boney fingers, blinks his colleagues back to the safety of their inn-room at Magepoint.

After taking healing and recovering time, the party sets out to restock.  They contact Celeste for more of those 15th-level caster greater teleport spells to get them to and from Kulleth-Mar, and take some time to become more liquid, with some of the treasure recovered from the worm nagas and various armour and weapons picked up and stashed in bags of holding along the way.  Zeek works on Celeste and other of Manzorian’s officials to attempt to secure a loan of more powerful weapons, but these sources respond with dry denial.  Sluthing around the adventurers and merchants in town, Zeek realizes that they have all seen his type before – a massive risk that is nearly certainly not worth even the greatest return with little or no security on offer.  This town has seen far too many adventurers come and never return.  Yldar, meanwhile, finds time to complete some of his studies of arcane archery and levels up.  Nadroc, Maeron and Vasco medidate and study on their spells.  Soon, they are ready for return.

Standing in Vasco’s inn room at the agreed upon time, Zeek asks again, why is it they are all so convinced that they should go back and get pounded relentlessly again.  Reminded of the importance of his role in this move grave threat to the living, Zeek returns to a conversation of strategy, debating Vasco, Maeron and Nadroc on the best places to teleport to and re-engage battle.  Against his better judgement, Vasco agrees on Zeek’s strategy to attempt to draw the Overworm, as they have dubbed him, into the 10' wide corridors that to his massive bulk, should be narrow enough to give the party the advantage.  Nadroc wonders what exactly is going to be the bait as their bodies dematerilize...

... and reappear in the hallway where Jorel had several days before alerted the party to the Sword of Kyuss.  Ever alert and standing more ready than they have for over 1000 years, two of the worm gods’ priests stand at the entrance of the cavern and unleash again powerful blasts against the wills of the party.  This time, rested and buffed, the party resists their spells.  Nadroc and Vasco establish walls of flame which dispatch one quickly and sends the other badly scorched out of view into the worm sea.

The party heads back down the hall to the rooms where the ancient bodies lie, when Yldar notices at the far end of the hall, the double doors that had once been closed are now open, and two more worm priests advance upon them.  The third, tatterd robes gone and armour scorched, joins them from behind.  Again with godly smite from Maeron, and flames from Vasco’s skilled hands, these three are utterly destroyed before they pose much of a challenge to the group.

Wary of the Overworm who they imagine has returned to the unknown depths of the nearby worm sea, the party moves towards the now open doors at the end of the hall.  Yldar, invisible and stealthy, enters and finds a large but spartan chamber whose only remarkable feature is a black fountain, built as an alter of burbling water to Kyuss.  Having heard Yldar’s all clear, Maeron joins beside him at the fountain alter, and is taken with an insatiable desire to have a drink.  Moments after she ingests Yldar looks at her in puzzlement as she clutches at her head with an intense and incredible pain.  Nadroc comes beside her and pulls her out of the room, looking suspiciously at the fountain, while Zeek, Vasco and Jorel look worried but continued stand cautiously on guard for any other disturbance.  Maeron screams again, hear body in sharp agony from some fast and deadly intrusion.  Realizing that it must be some worm-related disease, Yldar pours a potion down Maeron’s throat.  Maeron sputters and coughs, and a blackened and lifeless worm drops out of her nose.   Maeron is left standing, blood dripping from her face, having extremely narrowly avoided death, and the certain undeath that would follow.

Episode 7 (part 4) – Return to Kyuss’s Evil Blast Pit

Before teleporting back to Kuluth-Mar, Zeek spreads the word around Magepoint that he is the killer of Kelvos the fallen Ghaele Eladrin, and is looking for followers.  Outside the ring, they return to the inner temple, proceeding with heightened caution.  They find the temple much as they left if, the days away now only feeling like moments since the grizzly battle.  Bracing themselves for the intensity of the encounter they know is coming, they throw open the doors of the other room off the main chamber in in the Ziggurat hall.  Inside, three warriors, armoured head to toe, stand battle ready, and a crouched, armoured fragment of a man lurks behind them.  All children of Kyuss, worms writhing and crackling with its necromantic powers, these four engage an intense battle.  The hunched figure is something of a powerful cleric, healing his warrior friends, and thwarting the party with hold person.  The warriors are intelligently engage, but the four are not strong enough to defeat the group, who finally succeed blasting and smashing them all, Zeek dropping the last of the warriors down, down, down into the pit below.  Following the defeat of the temples guardians, the party encounters another of their visions of Kyuss.  The chamber wavers and shimmers, and suddenly a human man appears at one of the desks nearby. A strange gray-skinned humanoid creature with six arms stands at his shoulder. The man studies a collection of worn and pitted bronze disks arrayed on the desk before him. Faint etchings adorn the plates, and it seems as if the alien figures and symbols writhe together at the behest of some sinister wilt. The gray creature points to one of the plates, and a look of sudden comprehension blooms on the man’s face. The man, the creature, and the plates then fade away, and are gone.

Exhausted again from battle, but not nearly as savaged as their previous encounter, the party decides to barricade themselves in the room to recover and explore its contents.  The room is a kind of Hall of Knowledge, covered in books on topics of the planes, arcana, religion, and history.  The most intriguing feature of the room, however, are 12 illuminated jars, each carrying tiny, writhing worms, inscribed with runes.  With the guidance of one of the books and the clever deciphering by the Seekers in the party, it is determined that these worms, if they manage to reach the brain, may impart knowledge, the runes on the worms corresponding to something of the domain of knowledge learned.  None in the party decide to try it, not knowing if the worms might kill or stupefy them before the knowledge is imparted, they decide that these are best taken back to Magepoint for a more controlled exercise.  While the magic users rest and meditate, Zeek and Jorel fashion crates out of furniture in the room to haul the jars containing the worms safely out.  The Seekers pick 20% of the best books for sale or storage in the Seeker library.

Their rest is uninterrupted.

After much discussion and some brief excursions around the rest of the Ziggarut where frescos of Kyuss the man and Kyuss the god ruining a city with armies of undead dominate entrance rooms’ walls, they decide to brave the descent into the hole revealed by the ancient, evil blast pit.  Nadroc with his lightning sword of Aaqa, and Yldar flying with the cloak of the bat, see that the pit is riddled with side-tunnels and ledges, and Yldar, in bat form, blind senses that at least one of those side tunnels has an occupant.  He also determines that some 500 feet below, the plunging tunnel ends by opening into a room with an undulating, writing, green floor, illuminated slightly by the everburning torch thrown down a week earlier by Zeek.   

Warned of what might be to come and equipped with feather-falling Maeron, Vasco, Zeek and Jorel  simply leap off the edge of the pit into the darkness below.  About 120 feet into their plunge down the hole, the heads of three worm nagas, familiar from having emerged from the same pit early in their exploration of the Ziggarut, emerge into the light.  They are writhing up, twisting and spinning around each other in a motion which makes them appear to be riding on the air.  Over the next 12 seconds of falling, both the party and the nagas unleash their respectively impressive power and engage each other.  By the end of the 12 seconds, the three worm nagas corpses are falling to the chamber below, and the party has managed to catch hold of a ledge of the side-tunnel these nagas emerged from to catch their breath before proceeding.  The Seekers in the group decide to look down these tunnels before proceeding further, and follow them basically horizontally for over 10 minutes, checking all the while they are not getting lost.  Finally, a correct turn is taken and the group finds themselves in the worm nagas’ nest, and in possession of their collective treasures of gold, platinum, and few magic items.  They divide and pocket the loot before returning to their vertical drop to the depths below.   

Somewhere before the end of the tunnel drop, the party members other than Nadroc feather fall into a ledge that holds them while Nadroc goes below and looks at the extent of the wormy threat.  Below, hundreds and hundreds of Kyuss worms of all sides writhe in a massive pool on the floor.  Nadroc manages his flying expertly, and hovers just beyond the ceiling of the chamber below, unleashing fireballs and a particularly deadly wall of fire, leaving a smoking, smouldering and stinking ground of charred worms.  Giving the all-clear signal, the rest of the party finishes their drop and enters the chamber of smouldering wormhusks.

They walk around this new area for a few minutes.  To the south, they see a massive, dark chamber with a sea of worms in its sunken floor.  To the east is a closed door.  To the west, a passage to a new room, which the party follows, observing hundreds of seemingly freshly dead corpses which Maeron correctly identifies as being in a kind of mass gentle repose, somehow triggered by some of the runes on stones in the room.  The next adjacent room is similar to this one in most respects, except that none of the human and humanoid bodies are in repose, they have completely decomposed.  Maeron speaks with dead to find that one man, at least, was ritually murdered to aid Kyuss in building an army of undead in his ascent to deity-hood.  Other than this, he knows little and Maeron and the others leave him in peace.

Episode 7 (part 3) - Into the Ziggurat of Kyuss

Searching around the summit of the temple, the party finds secret doors around the temple and decide to descend the small access stairs found on the other side.  Huddling on the stairs on the inside of the secret doors, Nadroc takes a moment to buff himself.  Yldar wraps himself in his cloak of the bat and flaps around in bat form into the chambre below.  He weaves erratically around a large room with grand 30' ceiling supported by stone pillars.  In the rooms’ centre, however, is a chilling evil, that the bat instinctively avoid.  Bat-Yldar senses nothing living or moving around in the room, so on his report, the whole group descend cautiously into the main hall.  They discover that the palpably evil in the centre of the room is the vestige of some kind of enormous blast that blew several pillars down and opened a massive and deep pit.  The group quietly, cautiously exploring around the edges of the pit, trying to figure out how deep it might be and what created it. That it was some kind of blast created at the floor of the room itself was sussed by Zeek, who starts tossing things down the pit.  The bottom is not clearly discerned.  The noise of the falling ever-burning torches and stone rubble attracts something that was floating below.  Walking on wind, three large green nagas – not undead, but terrible aberrations whose faces and bodies twisted by Kyuss’s power – float out of the pit casting powerful enervation and scorching rays, their gaze tearing at the minds of the party, nearly enfeebling them on several occasions.  A swift and powerful response by the party brings silence to the chamber again.

 The party, buffs not entirely faded from battling the nagas, move to the door at the north side of the chambre.  Zeek opens the door and the party sets eyes on a man they will not soon forget.  The room is glowing a sickly green, illuminated from behind what appears to be a glass wall containing thousands of writhing and active green Kyuss worms.  Standing ready in front of the wall, a spell cracking at his fingertips, is a elvish looking Outsider.  Clearly delighted at the site of these newcomers to the long empty ziggurat, he announces himself as Kelvos the Wormtouched, a ghaele eladrin who had come to Kuluth-Mar before Kyuss had ascended to godhood.  He could not defeat the great Kyuss even as a mortal, but he will delight in dispatching the group.  Then a destructive wave blasts forth from his readied hands.  In a flash, Nadroc, who had been standing back from the door, but in Kelvos’ sight, is completely obliterated.  His gear crumples to the ground and no other trace remains of the wind duke relic.

The party is stunned and shocked, but doesn’t have time to grieve, as two fallen angels, sword archons with flaming blades forearms, fly out of the room.  They separate the party by a nearly impenetrable wall of blades, and then work to destroy them.

Kelvos teleports out of the room, and appears right in front of Vasco.  Spell after destructive spell cast by Kelvos against Vasco absorbed by the scarab of protection Manzorian gave him in exchange for the Rod of Law fragment.  Kelvos attention turns also to Zeek and Maeron, who are the victims of a prismatic spray that causes Zeek to be poisoned, and Maeron to completely loose her mind.  One of the archons manages to commands Yldar, who had been paralyzed (along with Zeeks’ companion) for most of the battle, to go and break the glass ‘worm wall’.  Yldar walks forward into Kelvos’ room to do the archon’s bidding. By some miracle, with Yldar, Maeron, Zeek’s companion, and Nadroc all out of commission, Vasco and Zeek manage to deal the final fateful blow to Kelvos and the angels (a cone of cold and a lightning bolt).  With mere seconds before the butt of Yldars bow would smash through the wall, the command is broken by the archon’s defeat.  As they collapse from exhaustion of a battle that destroyed Nadroc, permanently made Maeron insane, and very nearly killed the others, a third vision is had.

A handsome man dressed in flowing robes, and a strange, six-armed, alien-like creature stand in front of victims chained terrible devices.  A deep light from within the hollow eye sockets of the creature illuminate a jeweled gold box that he presents the man.  From it, the man extracts a writhing green worm, whose sight brings him a look of exaltation.

They collect Kelvos’ weapons, and decide to teleport back with the scroll given to them by Manzorian, resurrect Nadroc, restore Maeron’s sanity.  Arriving back in Magepoint, they seek out Agath of Thurnch, the cleric scholar ally of Manzorian and Celeste, who is the caretaker of the library-temple, who had also returned Eligos to life.  Maeron is restored by Greater restoration (7th lvl cleric) and Nadroc has the benefit of true resurrection (9th lvl cleric), for which he charges 5,000 gp and 25,000 gp respectively.  The party sells the powerful weapons and treasure found in the temple to pay for these services.  They take time to reflect on their encounter and build their skills, as all but Yldar (who is catching up from a previous death) and Nadroc (whose premature death precluded his gaining certain experience) advance to level 13.  They must pay 2,275gp for each of two scrolls of greater teleport they need to return to the Spire at Kuluth-Mar.