2024-04-25 Enemies at the Gate
1492 DR 26 Uktar (The Rotting)
General Summary
Once a holy city whose folk venerated Lathander, Torm, Helm, and Tyr, Elturel is now a site of doom and despair tethered some five hundred feet above the River Styx. Eight great chains bind the city to jagged posts of infernal iron, which stick up out of the ground like gargantuan spikes. The bottoms of those spikes are guarded by scores of devils, making escaping the city by climbing down an arduous task. The Companion, the second sun that provided so much solace and protection to the city for years, now glares down on Elturel like a baleful eye — a black void crackling with lightning.
Completing our journey down the River Styx, we came aground at the head of a series of rocky plateaus and ravines which ended at a flat valley floor and a sharp cliff, before which stood a strange circular structure.
The endless stream of demons disgorging from the Styx crashing against the legions of devils lining the riverbanks sends up a horrendous din, even at this distance. The chaos of that wanton destruction highlights, by contrast, a scene of relative calm separated from the battle by a mile and a rocky ridge.
A well-formed infernal legion of devils marches up an iron ramp into a metallic ring crowned with spikes and adorned with skulls. As they pass into the ring, purplish energy crackles and distorts around them and they disappear. Within that distortion you briefly glimpse a city street and crumbling buildings.
The last of the legion completes its journey through the ring, leaving behind only three: two huge, ochre-fleshed fiends with horned heads, batlike wings, and long military forks, and a shorter, stout devil tall as a human but twice as thick around, with small, almost laughable wings that seem unlikely to support its bulk.
After substantial discussion, we elected to assault the devils at the gate, with Xandar initiating the attack. During the battle, we recognized the stout devil as being Thavius Kreeg, former high overseer of Elturel, whom we had dispatched in Baldur's Gate.
Despite the devils summoning addition forces to their aid, we succeeded in defeating the assembled force of Kreeg, three horned devils, and five bearded devils.
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