Session 26 - Contact with the Enemy
17 Yarthmont 1010
General Summary
The party finished their preparations, buffing up with the bear totem, getting a "free" Hex in place on an Unseen Servant, and taking a short rest before entering the lair. They sneak up to the above water entrance, take their Gaseous Form potions, and slip through the cracks of the door. Stavos and Seraphina move over to the space right in front of the gong, as Tork, Leo, and Elincia explore beyond the portcullis into the main lair. The lair seems a bit more on alert, as the number of guards in the outer chamber is higher than before (not to mention the door being closed).
Tork allows the group to get positioned, then drops out of gaseous form, startling the two Sahuagin in the interior space, and is the cue for the rest of the party to drop as well. Seraphina and Stavos valiantly fight off the Sahuagin to attempt to prevent the gong from being rung. Meanwhile in the inner room, Tork, Leo and Elincia deal quickly with the two guards there as Leo turns the crank to raise the portcullis. Stavos and Seraphina quickly take down their first opponent, and the others quickly take down their first as well. Tork moves over to the guard by a rope that is holding a net over the other side of the portcullis, and slices it down, dropping it on a surprised Sahuagin; Tork and Elincia kill the last inner room guard. By now, Leo has the portcullis open enough to allow Tork to enter the main battle raging with Stavos and Seraphina. In just a few rounds, one of the Sahuagin determines that ringing the gong is his critical task, and does so before he can be killed.
The party assumes that this means the lair is now aware of their intrusion, quickly opens the main gate, and finishes off the remaining Sahuagin. They send the alert to Black Jack, and he is surprised at how quickly they have called.
The first batch of Sahuagin dealt with, the party decides to start exploring the vicinity, expecting to find more Sahuagin on the defense. Surprisingly though, they find many empty rooms including weapon storage. Tork ventures west and south, and Stavos decides since they've alerted the alliance, they better make sure the alarm is truly triggered, and bangs on the gong several times.
Leo sends Flametalon south on the east side, and through his eyes, sees a group of Sahuagin coming north up the hallway. He has Flametalon pull back and warns the nearby party members of the coming attack. Stavos is able to arrive not long after combat begins, but it takes Tork quite some time to get back; he actually misses the entire combat. This second combat of their invasion includes another handful of sahuagin and two priestesses. Elincia summons two bears for the combat and they help define the front lines nicely for the party. Once again the party is able to overwhelm the Sahuagin before they are able to deal any significant damage. One Sahuagin runs away back south, so the party feels they have in fact alerted the Sahuagin to their presence successfully.
Still feeling confident about quickly dealing with two and a half groups of Sahuagin, the party presses on south in the estern hallway. They discover another room northeast and in the back corner find a human prisoner that is in remarkably poor shape. They try to feed him Goodberries, but this doesn't seem to help him much. They ask him how he came to be here, and what his name is. He is Emlo, and he and his companions came upon the lair and were taken captive. His friends are all dead, and he is the last survivor. He is from Darokin originally. As they tried to put him on the back of a bear to send back toward the coming allies, he exclaims "The teeth... teeth in the temple!" and then expires. It is not clear to the party what this exclamation means, but perhaps it is a form of expletive in Darokin?
Regardless, the party starts to explore deeper into the lair. Stavos senses others approaching from the north, and backtracks to inform the coming human troops of their presence. Meanwhile Tork has headed west through another tunnel and encounters the Lizardfolk contingent, and gives them an update on his exploration. Tork returns, and the party rejoins, and explores two more rooms off the east/west hallway, but they do not find anything of interest. The party decides to follow the route to the staircase as this section seems to closely match the Lizardfolk maps.
Leo heads quickly up the hallway to inform the allies there that the party is going to head to the stairs down, and informs them that they may go downstairs to avoid any further alarm if they are not found.
The party presses on to the room just around the corner where the stairs down should be, and as they enter the room, they find quite a large group of Sahuagin, and several chained up slaves cowering in a corner. Unfortunately, the party isn't necessarily fully arrayed for combat, as the summoned bears are in the back and, as the party engages, they are quickly surrounded. A very vicious battle begins. There is a priestess, several common Sahuagin, and a large number of the tougher Sahuagin, and more importantly several very tough looking ones. The tough ones seem to attack three times in a row, and as with all Sahuagin, they become frenzied when their opponent is injured. Unfortunately, the party has burned off quite a bit of their temporary hit points in the prior battles, and after a single round of combat finds themselves in substantially more danger than their earlier combats.
This of course sets the Sahuagin into a frenzy, which makes them all the more vicious. Fairly quickly, the Sahuagin injure Stavos, and he is even knocked out by some vicious blows. The party is able to get him back up and into the fight, but by then, pretty much everyone is hurt, and things seem a little more scary. The party unloads as much damage on the Sahuagin as they can, but other than taking out some of the smaller ones, it feels like they can't make significant progress.
Soon the Sahuagin land a few particularly vicious blows on Seraphina, and she is knocked unconscious. The party makes some further mistakes, and the truly vicious side of the Sahuagin comes out, and they actually kill the downed Seraphina, while the party struggles on too many fronts. The priestess and one Sahuagin retreat down the stairs, but fortunately the party finally is able to overwhelm the last of the Sahuagin that seem to have endless stamina.
Leo has burned through his spells, but through his Rod of the Pactkeeper he is able to call out to Elezar, who restores some spell power, and he brings forth a diamond and pumps spell energy into Seraphina. She lurches, and breathing restarts as the diamond disappears into the ether. Elincia is able to begin healing her, and restoring her. The party is quite set aback by this combat, the death, and then restoration of Seraphina. They free the slaves, though they still seem shell-shocked when Black Jack finally shows up. He sees the blood, the dead Sahuagin, and the partie's injuries and seems to understand. Rather than his normal snarky commentary, he simply nods, then his squad pull out potions, quaffing them, and descend into the water down the stairs.
The party begins to heal themselves back up and prepare to take another break.
Character(s) interacted with
Report Date
15 Aug 2020
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