Session 79: Making a Break for It
General Summary
Nemara tumbled out of a lecture from a frazzled angel and into a tower of the Angel's Aerie, where Trislee stood silhouetted in the window, facing three of the fiendish "angels" through the bluster of a rainstorm. Too far-off to see clearly, Lins struggled against another Angel's ensnaring whip.
The heroes moved fast. Lins wrenched herself free while deflecting arrows and longswords with her magical buckler, then booked it toward the tower so fast the rain felt like pins on her face. As she got closer, she saw a shimmering cage containing three of the angels, who were peppering arrows into the windows of their own aerie. She completed her journey with a Misty Step into the shelter of the tower, where Nemara was pulling the ensnaring whip off of Trislee.
As the warmage entered, Nemara looked up, and Lins, following her gaze, also saw the huge, black shape gliding through the night outside.
"We need to go," said Nemara, kicking the whip aside.
"There are probably more of them coming," Lins agreed. Trislee was edging a glance out from a different window, where the three she had trapped in a Forcecage were still contained. This turn in the battle had been emboldening, but when Lins mentioned reinforcements, she realized that while this battle may be winnable, the war was another matter.
"All right, but I'm going to mess with them first." she said, and flung a parting gift for the angels through the window before grabbing her friends' hands and Teleporting them.
Behind them, in a twenty-foot cube outside the rainy tower, three angels watched a point of light bloom into a sickening beacon of radiance.
--
The party landed in a dark room, eerily quiet, but warmer than the tower. A few tables and chairs with wooden benches were illuminated by magical lamps, the same which lit the stacks of books around them. A gallery above doubtless housed even more. A bronze plaque above a wide double-door read "geography." They sat in an area somewhat removed from the rest.
Trislee had brought them not only to the safest place she knew, but to one of the greatest repositories of knowledge in the known world. They stood in the Grand Library of Greyhawk.
Still full of adreneline from the fight, they caught a quick cat-nap to heal their wounds and restore some energy. But as the minutes passed, they realized they had found a true reprieve, and could move more deliberately.
They decided to do some research before making like graduate students and sleeping in the library.
Late-Night Reading
Lins looked at a 30 y/o atlas and learned- the slums in the south of town used to be pasture/wooded area with wells and shrines to nature gods.
- only three of the noble houses: Zeech's palace, Mistwall Manor, and Kilraven Manor, are unchanged in the last 30 years.
- the shanty towns have grown
- the city perimeter has not changed
- Ilthane is roughly forty or fifty years old, very young for a dragon (Dragons are Ancient at 1,000 and typically live up to 2,000 years)
- Establishing a lair and hoard is a rite of passage into adulthood; she has only been an adult for a couple of decades.
- Youngish adult dragon; something to prove?
- Zeech has been a devout Hextorian and a scheming bully for a long time
- Zeech almost certainly assassinated his elder brother Zered
- He behaves like an orthodox Hextorian, not like an Ebon heretic
- Lashonna has been in his good graces for at least thirty years, and was in good with his father before him, too.
- Lashonna is reported as a peerless scholar in matters of history and the arcane. She doesn't meddle directly in Alhaster's politics, but has held a position of noble privilege in the city for a long time.
Report Date
07 Aug 2023
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