2024/01/31: The Formian War Part 10 Report
General Summary
Knight, Kit, Malakai, Starlight, Ash The dream of the colosseum began to fade around the edges. Taking account of themselves, the party realized that the dwarves had disappeared partway through the fight with the dragon. There was nothing more to do here and staying was likely to be dangerous, so the party gathered themselves and any remaining loot and Knight cut a path back to reality, aiming for the factory in the derro city. The adventurers popped out in a room low in the factory, with vats of molten metal moving around and pouring new golem parts on conveyor belts. The party didn't have time to analyze this, however: They were instantly greeted by a swarm of dire cyborg zombie maggots, horrible creations that had evidently been set up as an aggressive alarm system. A pair of derro (named N'keri and Karazan, though the party never discovered this) were hiding in the area as well. Nine elite mithril golems wielding mauls covered in binding runes were arranged in a group some hundred meters away. Knight deflected the initial charge from the maggots, but his strikes appeared to have no effect beyond knocking them around. Their flurry of ranged attacks were similarly useless against him, and the bunch of magic missiles that his armor reflected back at them were just as useless. A flurry of daggers from the visible enemy dwarf, Karazan, did have one painful hit connect, but Knight mostly shrugged it off. With that first hit activating his Stalward Shell charm, Knight was able to completely ignore the subsequent handaxe sneak attack from the hidden derro thief. Starlight, Dova, and Ven were not so lucky. The stealthy dwarf proved once again just how lethal a thief can be in good circumstances: His three softer targets instantly dropped with fatal wounds. Ash ignored the now-revealed thief. He had other things to try. He went after one of the apparently invulnerable maggot-things with his sun-bladed sword, which ignored the maggot's physical defences and melted it to pieces. The pieces kept twitching. While the maggot was very much out of the fight, it was still drawing itself together and would recover if given enough time. The fight continued. Kit killed the ranger, making him pay for the "mistake" of trying (uselessly) to take Knight one-on-one. Starlight, death having stopped her for only a few seconds, climbed to her feet and blasted the thief who had slain her. Malakai and Ash stunned the maggots, freeing Knight from his deflection efforts long enough to put a nail through the thief's chest and toss his failing body into a vat of molten metal. An unlucky Kit got his arm eaten by the one maggot that still got through. Malakai's light grenade incapacitated the last maggots and temporarily blinded Starlight, who barely seemed to notice. The stunned maggots were easily dispatched. While Starlight was charging her power to blast past the defenses of the slowly approaching golems, a black-on-black pile of stone the golems had been arranged around (and possibly keeping beaten into submission) started to move. It quietly rearranged itself into an alien form behind the advancing golems. It was unclear which side it was on, but it made no move to attack. Knight's compass, naturally, pointed directly toward the golem when he checked for the location of the third key. Starlight finished charging her staff and blew the mithril golems to pieces. That left the black construct. In the midst of blaring alarms and the sounds of an oncoming army of golem reinforcements, Ash stepped forward with Dragontamer and tried to make a new friend. The effects were hard to discern, but the golem/elemental stepped aside. That movement revealed to Knight and Ash that the key was actually on a podium beyond it. As Ash kept playing and Knight approached the podium, the golem let out a tear-inducing wave of tragic sorrow. Poor overwhelmed Yvenna burst into tears. The golem then turned and exited stage right at high speed through a wall. Knight continued onward and found that the podium was actually an armored prison cylinder that contained another keybearing zombie cyborg derro. Knight cut the lock off the door and retrieved the key, and the party carved their way back into dreams before the golem army could box them in.
Rewards Granted
2 xp
Character(s) interacted with
Yvenna's party, the black golem/elemental
