Session 134: Triggering Thoughts

General Summary

9th Sydenstar 836PD   Kix, the clone undergoing ceremorphosis, has his back turned to Simeon and Raphael, resigned to his fate. Simeon looks to Raphael as the closest kind of kin they have, how should we help him?   Raphael weighs the risks of another illithid loose in the lab, he could be ready to cut him down if he turned like Dorovar, but not if there’s a chance he could be cured? Simeon has no knowledge of the process, but if it’s like a parasite then he could be able to remove it through the powers of Greater Restoration.   With Raph’s blessing, Simeon reaches out to Kix and casts the restorative magic through the clone. Kix screams in pain, and his eye weep with the destroyed dark matter of the tadpole that had infected his brain.   Raphael tends to the cured clone, and takes him back upstairs to join the other clones. While Elmorn and the others initially reject him, Raph is able to persuade them that Kix is cured. Raven finally free of the cloning pod trap, sees the importance of the clones’ safety to Raphael, and offers to protect them.   As Raphael heads back down, he and Simeon hear a loud crackle and groans of pain, as they rush to arrive at the aftermath of Enessa triggering a trap in the library!   Unsure what else lies down below, the party prepare themselves fully for battle. Orlando uses the downed blades of the clone guards to fabricate new bullets. Enessa shares around a healing spirit, while Simeon leads with another prayer of healing.   In the final moments of their preparation, Simeon conjures a celestial, the Couatl that had fought beside them previously against the illithid in the underdark. Zeni wreathes protective divination magic over the party, creating a fortress around their intellect against the inevitable psychic onslaught they will face.   Enessa and Raphael lead on into the tunnel behind the secret door, just as they pass through the entrance down in the dark below, Enessa spots a body on the floor. Raphael inspects the body, and recognises it as the Mind Flayer Warlock that had escaped with ‘Karkematth’. Its body lays dead on the ground, the flesh all sunken in as if the life had been drained from it. It appears the Unbroken weren’t the only ones that had taken the time to heal.   As they turn the corner, in their minds they telepathically hear “You are not welcomed here”. There before them in the centre of this small flesh covered cavern stands the freshly healed Ulitharid Karkematth, and behind him a huge Ancient Elder Brain!   Arthur makes the first move evoking a dim green sickening radiance around the two aberrations. Orlando and the Couatl cover the party with their protective blessings. The Ulitharid clones Arthur’s spell and covers the party in kind with their own sickening radiance.   But before the copied radiance can sap the party, Simeon dispels the exhausting green light. Enessa and Orlando volley into the Ulitharid, and the corrupted clone tries to dominate the gnome to their cause, but his mind resists the controlling thoughts to gun down his friends.   Zeni hurls a chromatic orb of lightning into the Ulitharid, who’s already worn down with the initial attack. The wounded clone spreads a sphere of maddening darkness over the Unbroken, and retreats to the back of the cavern to protect themselves.   Raphael resists the darkness’s’ shrieks, gibbering, and mad laughter that harass his mind. Aiming a cone of cold through the dark to freeze the wet flesh around the Ancient Brain and the Ulitharid. Arthur and Zeni manage to hold their thoughts through the demented darkness, but find the spell too powerful to dispel.   The Ancient Elder Brain reaches into Arthur’s mind, and uses the psychic link to break his concentration on the sickening light that was slowly sapping the aberration. The Couatl tries to come to the party’s aid, but history repeats itself as it’s soon dispelled through the Brain’s psychic link breaking Simeon’s concentration on the celestial.   In the continual battle of casting, copying and countering, Simeon returns the favour and restore un-molesting light to the cavern by dispelling the maddening darkness. Now with a clear target on the cowering Ulitharid, Raphael finds his original quarry and fells the tentacled clone with his eldritch blasts. Despite knowing it wasn’t the real Karkematth, there is a brief moment of catharsis for the Winter Knight in killing him.   A wave of psychic panic erupts from the Ancient Elder as its main protector is destroyed. Which overwhelms Zeni’s concentration on intellect fortress, leaving the Unbroken’s minds’ defenceless. Suddenly the floor around the party begins to move and form into several mindless spawn made of clone flesh that come to their mastermind’s defence.   The huge Brain’s tentacles reach out at the nearest threat of Enessa and grapple her in their psychically stinging embrace. Zeni’s hands twist in a circular motion, and the air in the cavern begins to churn and howl into a whirlwind that batters the Brain and splats the mindless spawn against the walls.   Simeon summons his spirit guardians on top of the Brain, the radiant burns of the spirits weaken the Ancient Elder even further. Assailed on all sides, the bulbous Brain unleashes the full furious power of its mind through a psychic scream. The psychic assault ruptures through the party’s unprotected minds, Arthur exhausts himself to converge the future into one where he resists the worst of the wave. Orlando’s trigger fingers are stunned and Enessa is knocked unconscious.   The limp Drow ranger’s body convulses with the tentacles’ sting and is then thrown to the ground with a heavy thud. Zeni rushes to her aid but finds her friend dead on the floor, blood and brain fluid pouring out of her eyes, ears and nose. The horrors of Enessa’s last death by the vampires flash through Zeni’s mind.   With final insult to injury, the Ancient Elder Brain clones Simeon’s spirit guardians and lays their own necrotic version over the party.   The battle has reached the point of no return, its whoever dies last that wins. Raphael calls on the exalted power of Frostweaver to become the Avatar of Winter, renewing their fading flesh with the hard frost of winter, and volleys the Brain with blasts of his own eldritch magic.   Before the Ancient Elder can act, Arthur banishes it into labyrinthine demiplane, buying some precious holding time with a powerful Maze spell. The Unbroken prepare themselves for when the Brain returns to unleash a retributive counterattack. Zeni positions the bludgeoning whirlwind right on top of the Ancient Elder as it returns.   The weary Brain pulls on its legendary resolve to resist the Unbroken’s ambush, and dispels the whirlwind and spirit guardians. The bleeding Brain sluggishly moves its tentacles to cast another spell, one which Zeni has seen and heard before from the party’s previous aberrant encounter. Zeni fuelled with the tempestuous rage of seeing her friend die, pulls on the highest circle of her magic to counterspell the Brain’s attempt to plane shift.   With the Brain stranded, there’s only one way this could end for it. Arthur speeds the flow of time around the sluggish Orlando coming out of his psychic stun. He reloads faster than the speed of thought, “You’ve been in all our thoughts, now you’re in my Prayers”.   The radiant bullet blasts right through the centre of the Brain, and blows a large hole right out of the back of its mucus covered membrane. Raining chunks of matter over Raphael and Simeon nearby.   The Ancient Elder’s Braindead, and so is Enessa…