2023/12/13: The Formian War Part 3 Report
General Summary
Knight, Ba'alzamon, Kit, Terana, Sunderfury, Zaran As last session ended, our heroes had popped up directly beneath a formian patrol. No more stealth here: It's time to start breaking things. As the battle began, Ba'alzamon received a telepathic message from Serra, from the MtG universe. Serra informed Ba'alzamon that there were three children being held by the formians in the research chambers around the party. Serra didn't want Ba'alzamon to die trying to save them, but she wanted to inform him of their presence in case they could be saved. She specifically wanted to let him know before the fight, given the penchant certain party members have for massive collateral damage. Enemy list: 2 dozen formians w/spears. 4 formians with a variety of fancy equipment. 2 giant formian golems with lightning spears. 1 giant formian golem with thunder rod. 8 burly formian soldiers. 1 brain cart. In a rare display, the brain cart acted as quickly as Knight, randomly swapped the terrain and the locations of all of the combatants. Knight ignored this and annihilated the thunder rod golem and one of the adventurer formians, shrugging off the blast of fire the formian pointed his way as it died. Syrrecia poured a gout of her own fire over a half dozen of the patrol formians and the brain cart, essentially covering them in resistance-ignoring napalm. The smell of burning brains filled the room, but the cart remained operational. Terana, deciding she didn't want to get stuck in an inertial barrier again, avoided the golems and started cleaving her way to another of the formian adventurers. Zaran frost-blasted a second golem and a number of nearby patrol formians to death. The remaining formian patrollers tossed spears, but they just bounced of Sunderfury and only scratched Ba'alzamon. The lightning the remaining golems released was similarly shrugged off. Kit took full advantage of his opportunity to experiment with his new knife. The knife summoned itself anew every time he tried to draw a knife, so he climbed a summoned staircase of knives and launched a volley at the brain cart. Some esoteric poison on the knives took effect immediately, and the cart crumpled into a pile of soot and ash. The formian adventurers returned fire. One tried to stir people's brains with psionic force, but the party was barely moved. Another threw a barrage of eight spears of slaying, but the two hits he got were shrugged off. The psychic attacks from the third adventurer were completely ignored. Sunderfury, with plenty of space in the room, switched to true form and started swiping at the adventurers. Only one of the three survived. And then Ba'alzamon got to go and proceeded to withdraw, cast a ton of summoning, buff, curing, luck, and divination spells, and then send a small army of efreet out to rescue the kids. His plan was to leverage the high intellect of the efreet, knowing that they would be able to coordinate with each other and bunker down with the kids if needed. The Witch of Wrath improved the air quality and visibility with a rage-induced fire spell. Naturally, this is when another full patrol of formians arrived. For the most part, the process of the previous three seconds repeated. The new brain cart proved able to project some interesting psychic beams, tailoring its attacks (poorly) at Knight and Zaran. Knight turned odd colors and burped up a cartoon flower, and Zaran found himself refracting a beam of light everywhere. The efforts of the defenders proved useless. And then Ba'alzamon decided the party's stand was going well, this place needed to go, and it was time to bring in the army. He opened a portal and called in the Horde. 100,000 goblins, 20,000 hobgoblins, another 2000 HD of Siblings from Knight. The party led the army to kill tens of thousands of formians. The army did gradually get slowed and then began to be pushed back. Knight checked the comms for the status of the other groups. The Alvidarian "Silver Chalice" party was no longer responding. According to the Rebel Crown group that was hitting the same cavern, that party was probably dead; the group had heard a very large explosion in the distance as they retreated. The other parties were getting pushed back by increasingly firm and organized resistance. The tide had turned, and Knight and Ba'alzamon made the call to withdraw. The Horde army took approximately 15% casualties in the end. In return, that army and the party leading it killed approximately 14% of the population of the brain cave city, totaling some 20,000 formians and a significant number of adventurers and guardian constructs. Since he was holding the portal to Guaradon open, Ba'alzamon was the last one out, and he turned the battlefield into a giant undead and grabbed two final hobgoblins as he left. Those two were the only ones who saw what he did and lived to tell the story. (The spell was "Skelio Skarentis". The resulting monster has HP equal to the number of corpses incorporated and power dependent on the level of the caster. Immune to psionics, because undead. An absolute monster. The caster gets to give three words of instruction, and beyond that it pretty much just goes berserk. This one had over twenty thousand corpses to work with.) The assault force regrouped in Guaradon, back at the Horde staging area. Kit started a card game with the thief running the nearby sandwich shop. Terana went looking for her winter wolf puppies for puppy therapy. Knight alternated between checking the status of the troops withdrawing to New Hallownest and helping as best he could with the wounded Horde members. Ba'alzamon went looking for the efreet. Ba'alzamon told Knight that instead of monetary payment, he'd be asking for Knight's help permanently killing the individual who killed the sandwich shop thief's (father?). Knight firmly and enthusiastically agreed. The efreet had recovered crystal coffins containing three children and an adult, waifish female dark elf. One child was a 9-year-old skinny, nerdy human boy. The next was a kuo-toa child. The last was a little girl with short white hair, glowing red eyes, and a burlier crystal coffin than the others. That last coffin was throbbing with magic. Ba'alzamon handed the kuo-toa child to Knight for later delivery to the kuo-toa city. He freed the other two children. The young boy is Ebrian Tablesdraught. He may be a wizard. The young girl, who was hot to the touch, didn't respond verbally but started following Ba'alzamon around. She didn't understand what Ba'alzamon was doing when he tried to give her a piece of candy, and didn't meaningfully respond even after Ba'alzamon demonstrated what the candy was and how to take it with Ebrian. She was physically cooperative, though, obediently following wherever Ba'alzamon went. Ba'alzamon asked where Ebrian was from. He said he was from the village of Thistle Brook, and he didn't recognize the name of Alvidar. Ba'alzamon looked closer, and saw that Ebrian has the aura of a life mage, not a potential wizard. The little girl, meanwhile, was increasingly resonating with Ba'alzamon's magical aura. Ba'alzamon had the drow coffin dropped of at Barib's, then took Ebrian and the girl to the Isle of Mists, where he presented the boy as a "gift" to Silverwind. "Congratulations, you have a new apprentice." (Silverwind wasn't there, though, so he dropped the kid off with the head life mage who was there.) "These are wonderful people who will help you out. Either they'll help you get home or they'll teach you to use your natural gifts." The kuo-toa child turned out to be a princess who had been captured from the kuo-toa city the formians attacked. She'll hopefully be worth some politial credit for New Hallownest. Knight's checks on the returning adventuring parties went mostly well. The most interesting report was from Lillith. Her party found a formian egg. Anomalous, laid by a non-queen. The ant who laid it was in a bad way, apparently because she wasn't designed to produce eggs like this. The party killed the egg-layer but retrieved the odd egg. They hadn't had time to analyze it more closely, though, since they'd promptly been swarmed by formians and had spent the rest of the mission fighting their way out. One of the orc adventuring parties, the Order of the Bloody Brand, did find and kill a queen during their assault on the farms. The queen was about 35 feet tall and was a multi-stage boss monster. The orcs recommended anyone fighting a queen avoid the acid globules. That party also reported that Derkusk's tribe, who hadn't really been communicating their plans with Knight, had brought a whole horde of orcs. It was a lot of orcs. A lot of formians died there. There's been no response from Derkusk after the withdrawal, but after all of Knight's attempts to check with Derkusk about extraction plans went nowhere, at this point it was up to the tribe to find their way out. The coalition's strikes averaged about 8000-10,000 dead formians each. The player party did a bit more than double that. It was a total of approximately 128,000 dead formians (including a queen) at the cost of some 18,000 Horde troops (mostly goblins, who will be quickly replaced), an unknown number of orcs, and one adventuring party. The decapitation strike was largely unsuccessful, but the assault was a victory nonetheless. Ba'alzamon dropped by the Isle of Necromancy to hand off the little girl to Blythe, who has an affinity for creepy/traumatized little kids. Ba'alzamon had started calling the girl Mariki. He suspected the girl had been turned into a weapon and/or magical power source. The girl's main response when meeting someone is to hold out her hand as if to offer her power. The trapped drow was from an Underdark city further east, under Kaelund. A drow enchantress, apparently. Her first response to being freed was to start flirting with Ba'alzamon. He set her up in one of the guest houses in Guardia with a blank spellbook, a library, and some time. Her name is Taera Lisaethe, drow enchantress of Chizabaeth. She isn't quite an archmage, but she's a quite accomplished mage. She's capable of making drow-specific weaponry. Ba'alzamon contracted her to make him a disguise item.
Rewards Granted
2 xp, or 4 if below 30th level, or 6 if below 20th.
Character(s) interacted with
the Witch of Wrath, Syrrecia, Ebrian Tablesdraught, Taera Lisaethe, "Mariki", Blythe Derguil, Barib, sandwich shop thief
Created Content
Notes
Ba'alzamon started off as a potential planeswalker from the Ice Age expansion of MtG. He got banished to Renedge while fighting to protect some people, and he wasn't able to get back. All the people he was trying to protect died. Serra is really cool in Renedge. She doesn't give special powers, but she has access to practically every sphere of magic. Great versatility. Ba'alzamon has a huge crush on Dusk. He's using the flirting with Taera as practice for that. Dusk is basically Ba'alzamon's dream girl. "Hot goth mommy elf who's also a priestess of love." Ba'alzamon is just too awkward to approach her about it. Brugardess is themed as sort of viking knights. Vikings, but more into medieval organization and chivalry.
