2024/05/08: Defending Zyth Part 9 Report

General Summary

Terana, Knight, Zaran, Kal'vus, Buzz   The party wakes up after their night at Auntie Edna's. The beds were very fluffy. Several of the party members woke up to see cats watching them: Apparently Edna has several of them, but they may be a magical surveillance network.   Terana started preparing to put a second floor on the weeniemobile. At Terana's request, Buzz summoned his 25 halfling-sized gardener robots to serve as extra hands (and to help with the garden in the meantime), with his 10 engineer bots also assisting.   The garage, which the party had been offered parts from, was extremely packed with all manner of odds and ends. Things kept falling off shelves onto Terana, so in frustration she had Knight take over searching instead of carrying things. He ended up searching through boxes in ghost form, managing to find everything from fishing equipment to a whole box of skulls and a hidden cache of modern weapons and body armor.   After supplies had been procured and construction started, the less technical party members got to talking with Auntie Edna. She informed them that the hellscape below the farmhouse is mutable, dependent on the will of the demon lord running it. He likes undead, constructs, and golems, rather than having lots of demon followers. The demon lord himself usually fights weapon/shield. Sometimes comes in riding a giant black dragon. Sometimes he's feeling more spellcastery. He's good at modifying his defenses depending on what is attacking him, though his skills aren't infinite. He shows a preference for alteration spells. (Edna was a barbarian before she became a witch, and she once spent most of a fight against him having been turned into a chicken.)   The rest of the day was spent on construction of the sensor array on the weeniemobile. The next day started with reconfiguring the hot dog and bun so it didn't look like a sexual innuendo. Once that was mostly handled, the party decided this would be a good day to kill a demon lord.   After going down 60-70 feet of brutalist modern stairs, the party found the walls and stairs switched to old wood. Eventually the path leveled off in front of reinforced doors. Some wards were glowing around the door. Edna, who had accompanied the party, said this meant something had tried to get out.   Terana asked some questions of the animated skeleton who was hidden behind a reinforced storm door. The room he was in was full of random bric-a-brac, including bear traps. The skeleton himself was dressed in what looked like SWAT gear, with a big backpack and a bucket helmet.   The skeleton said death had come through, but not any creatures. Apparently the wards had reacted to Edna's death. (We'd healed her, though.) The skeleton told Terana that major changes have happened in the dungeon: It's now a burning hellscape rather than the usual dark and dank place the demon lord prefers.   The comments about Edna dying had the party somewhat concerned. It was very likely that it was just her having counted as dead due to the heart attack, but the party wanted to be sure she wasn't possessed or something. Fortunately, there were no signs of such. Ngel Sfet volunteered to stay behind with Edna while the rest of the group went into the dungeon.   The first room inside the dungeon door was large and contained a big demon smith with a giant anvil. Upon seeing the party he roared and summoned a golem, which Knight immediately dispatched. Every 5-foot square in the room was clearly delineated and each had a cinder floating above it, and Knight discovered (by facetanking) that the cinders would drain 5% health from anyone who entered each square (with the cinder being consumed in the process). Buzz resolved this by summoning a horde of random animals with his Pokeball. The fight that followed wasn't particularly noteworthy. The demon summoned more golems, got stabbed a bunch, missed with his hammer, and then Azhar struck him with such horrific, excruciating pain that he curled up in the fetal position and died on the spot. The golems that had just been summoned remained, masterless, and were looked at sadly and ignored.   The party considered their next steps. There were archways to the east and west and a door to the south. The party chose to go left, i.e. east. The next room had a big chest filled with spirits. Or rather, the room contained a giant chest mimic with 30-foot reach that, if it swallows you, sends you through a portal directly to Hell. The party decided to skip that one and maybe come back later.   They went through the other archway and started to hear the screams of someone being tortured. Azhar rated it poorly: Whoever was being tortured really wasn't putting their heart into it. The party found a beautiful blond-haired woman being tortured on a rack by a pair of giant gargoyles. Our heroes begrudgingly stomped the fire elemental gargoyles and released the "princess".   Evelyn of Zakarta. Definitely a real princess. (Claims to be 3rd princess of Zakarta.) This was obviously a trap, so Lume made an illusion of the party to test if she would stab them in the back. He played out the party going to fight an illusionary version of the chest mimic. After much playing up of the party getting whittled down by things that defiitely wouldn't have gotten them in real life, Evelyn finally took her opportunity and buried a wicked-looking dagger in Zaran's back.   The dagger bounced off. Zaran, the real Zaran, who had either also somehow been fooled by the illusion or who had played along to the hilt, turned around, looked her in the eye, and zapped her with banishment.   The party congratulated him on his quick reaction. He was just happy to discover that they weren't all dead.

Rewards Granted

Big smithing hammer   2 xp

Character(s) interacted with

Auntie Edna, Azhar, Ngel Sfet, Tevitarian, Levistiana, "Evelyn of Zakarta"

Notes

Auntie Edna is a "Technicolor granny witch". Yellow, warm pastels, all stripes. An apparently infinite supply of cats.