2023/07/12: Infiltrating Necrosa's Bases Part 2 Report
General Summary
Knight, Lillith, Kal'vus, Union, Zaran, Buzz, Illease, Ik-chuk
As we return, the party is lying in wait inside one of Necrosa's hidden bases in Leithien. They're debating whether divine divination might give some insight on the magic filter portals themselves or whatever's on the other side.
Some 50 more floors of the (computer?), going down. No passages going off from these lower floors. The party (led by Lillith, and with the exception of Buzz and Zaran) climbed or flew down to the next floor down and waited for liches to pass by, hoping to overhear useful information. Buzz and Zaran, not having stealth capabilities, stayed in the vault with the rescued wizards. The wizards were searching the inside of the vault for secret cubbyholes and passages that they remembered existing, and Buzz stepped in to help.
The wizards found a secret experimental room. Mostly human-sized, so the demon could probably polymorph. The wizards eagerly dove into exploring the equipment and notes. There seemed to be some leads that could potentially give them options for escape.
Outside, five liches stomped by above the hidden party, arguing about magical matters. Something about needing more eyes to use as components. There are slaves "keeping some fresh", but they'll need more soon. The party decided to ambush them while they were downloading something from the computer. Knight popped up and cleaved the whole group, shattering the lot of them and tossing two partway across the room. Lillith, not trusting it to be that easy, started sneaking around the edges to check the bodies. Union did the same. And then one of the piles of bones giggled and another asked "what the heck was that?" And the lich researchers began to reform.
Kal'vus noticed that the bones all seemed to be intact and the cloaks were sticking with them, and the bones were sticking together. He tried to break the skulls specifically, focusing on the three still near Knight. The effort failed, but those three were still whacked into their component pieces again, with the three of them tossed in all directions. One of the three went straight up and ended up behind Kal'vus. Ik-chuk grabbed the skull of one of them and slam-dunked it into one of the orreries, but the rest of the bones were pulled along, and the orrery did little beyond bonking the lich around a bit. Illease tried to stab another with a knife, but it didn't do much.
Knight took down one of the reforming two with straightforward brutality, then tried to creatively dismember the other. It didn't work.
Zaran prepped to work together with Illease to blast holy summoned water at some of them. Lillith stole one of their robes and put it on to try to keep it away from the bones. She succeeded: The lich's bones turned to dust. Then Lillith felt very odd in a familiar way. And then she was dead and a lich. (This was not the first time.) With a frustrated tone, she told the rest of the party to give her the cloaks. Union went with the weirdness and tried to use telekinesis to toss her one of the other robes.
Union's attempt failed, because one had to put the shirt on to disable/claim it. All he accomplished was dropping a reforming lich in front of Lillith.
The liches, seeing that they'd been figured out, became a lot more concerned. Like cornered rats, in fact. Those that could lashed out with extending eye-extractor knives in desperation. Kal'vus stopped one inches from his face, then stopped another from reaching Knight. The third available lich went for Lillith, trying to stab her and wrestle the cloak off her, with little effect.
Kal'vus stole the cloak off the one next to Knight. Zaran and Illease hit one of the liches with holy water, which melted him and disabled the cloak, turning it brown and black. Knight, seeing that the others had found killing options, opted to continue disrupting those who were still up, bashing the one next to him and the one next to Lillith into pieces once more.
Zaran and Illease briefly conferred. She only had one water summoning left, and suggested they make a bowl or tub to contain it so they could get multiple uses. Zaran used stone shape to make a dip in the floor for the water.
Lillith zapped the lich next to her with a cure spell, which burned her in the casting and blasted the lich even further, but didn't kill him. She deduced that damaging the bones wasn't going to work; they had to damage the cloaks, and holy water was one of the few things that could. Union grabbed one of the others with telekinesis and tossed him into the as-yet-empty pool.
Despite the pile of disruptions on the lich next to Knight, he still managed to get up and try to stab Knight in the face. If not for great luck, great reflexes, and blackblink, it would have landed in Knight's eye.
Kal'vus dropped his lich in the pool and followed him in to beat him and the other into submission. Ik-chuk launched himself onto the pile to help, and then Illease filled the pool on top of them. Knight shifted to shade form and buried the liches in entangling Void tendrils. And then Zaran hit it all with a level 5 bless.
Two of the liches immediately melted. For the third, the cloak seemed damaged and his bones were getting cleaned, but he was still up. And he surrendered.
The party grudgingly let him out of the pool. He was much cleaner, and the robes had sloughed off him, destroyed by the holy water.
Knight went to check on (and keep an eye on) Lillith. He still wasn't sure if she wasn't possessed by the lich who had been wearing the cloak, no matter what she said. She couldn't take the cloak off; apparently it was cursed, and was possibly also her phylactery.
The lich revealed that this was a research facility, researching Blackmoore. The slaves and their eyes were used as the observation devices. The slaves are in the first passage left of the entrance. There are 45 other liches in the facility, only 5 of which are high-level spellcasters. Some of those are defending the slave pens. The other five passages lead to the eye scrying devices. The orrery device is a computer in which they store their findings.
Name of the lich is Theraj. He is/was an aasimar. "You have to do what you have to do in pursuit of true knowledge."
Accessing the information in the computer takes psionic power of great magnitude. The demon could barely manage it. The Necrosis Corporation occasionally sends someone to download the info. The filters keep magic from interfering with the nonmagic workings of the machine.
Theraj volunteered to "turn state's evidence", give all the information he has, and possibly even become alive again, if being undead bothered the party and Leithien. Or at least becoming more alive again. It turned out he'd been faking his lichdom to some extent.
The party checked in on the Order Nocturnus, who had retrieved their own equipment and possessions from the demon lord's loot hoard. After a brief brush with confrontation when the Order threatened violence if the party tried to keep them there or take their stuff, the party agreed to let them leave, with all the rest of the loot staying in the party's possession.
The party, with the help of Theraj, set about planning holy water traps for just outside the portals.
Razalok the Destroyer (or Rapist, or one of a list of other bad epithets he's voluntarily taken) is one of the powerful liches defending the slave pens. All of the powerful liches have "unconventional" spells, and they didn't give full details to Theraj.
Attrition of the eyes has been higher than normal. There's something happening in Blackmoore.
Theraj volunteered to help with the fight. The party turned him down; they trusted him even less than they'd trust some evil gods, and they didn't want him to be able to go free in reward for his help. Lacking a way to safely restrain him in the meantime, though, the group brought him with them to the slave rescue, with Lillith keeping a close eye on him. Zaran, Union, and Illease stayed behind to watch over Buzz's robots as they mined a way to a nearby mountain stream.
Razalok was on the other side of the door, supported by eight liches in white robes. Three of those were farther down the long hallway, three were in a side passage, and two were in another side passage. Knight promptly dashed past him, activated the antimagic aura of the Gem of Ptah, and unloaded on him with a barrage of sword strikes sped up by the Time Stands Still maneuver. The strikes were eaten by what seemed like stoneskin, while the necromantic counterattacks were cancelled by the antimagic aura. Then, as Razalok turned around to face Knight, Ik-chuk buried a knife and a katana in his back and wrapped his teeth around the lich's neck. He was paralyzed from the touch in return, but stayed latched on as a major inconvenience.
Lillith used withdraw to buff multiple people. Knight got pushed back and bashed by a wall of force, then isolated with five of the liches by walls of force. A subsequent radiant disruption laser was mostly shrugged off and a mass hold person was ignored and returned to the caster. A giant death-beast (looking mostly like a bear) was summoned next to Knight. Cages of bones sprung up around the party. A wall/shield of fire was summoned around Razalok.
Kal'vus started sword-dancing, smashing the bone cage around him and continuing on to free the rest of the party members near him.
Knight ignored the death-beast and went to stab its summoner in his usual fashion. These liches proved just as annoyingly resilient as the first group. Buzz tossed up his usual missile multipliers, disintegrated both walls of force, and then buried the death-beast in lethal fireworks. Knight's path to the boss was clear again. Then Buzz used his sonic screwdriver to dispel the wall of fire and attempt (unsuccessfully) to dispel the paralysis on Ik-chuk.
Lillith tossed holy water vials at the two liches Knight smashed. They didn't fully melt, but their regeneration failed, and their deaths were only a matter of time.
Theraj disappeared and reappeared, leaving a flash of grey-white lightning in one of the side passages. He killed five of the liches, permanently, in that single attack. Razalok unleashed his own ultimate attack. Death claws reached out of the ground and tried to steal the souls of the heroes. None of them went down, but it was a close thing, and even successful resistance brought them to the verge of unconsciousness. Theraj self-destructed to evade the soul-stealing effect, presumably returning to his phylactery.
Kal'vus went and finished the last of the minions. Knight used the Sash of Safety to restore himself, then charged back in at Razalok. The stoneskin effect ate seventeen sword strikes. The necrotic counter-damage half-killed Knight in return. But the stoneskin failed before Knight's barrage did, and the lich came apart.
The party dragged the remains (with the skull still in poor Ik-chuk's jaws) over to the pool of holy water and drenched them.
Theraj walked back out of one of the side passages wearing a robe and carrying a mage staff. He got his stuff, apparently. "Some things are a birthright." Sort of phoenix-themed.
Found the eye-based scrying devices. A whole network of various kinds of eyes (some of them very weird) hooked up to a gem and a sort of backwards telescope. The slaves the party discovered were humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings. Some are missing an eye. There are no slaves or corpses with no eyes; such were considered useless, and were disintegrated.
The party gathered the slaves and loot and made their way back to the vault to set off the trap.
Rewards Granted
3 xp
Cursed lich-cloak, various magic items
Character(s) interacted with
Illease the Dryad, Ik-chuk, Theraj, Razalok the Destroyer
Notes
As a lich, Lillith looked very pale and drained. All the color drained out of her hair. Sort of goth look.
Kal'vus
Union
Zaran
Lillith
Buzz Gizmo
Knight of Darkhome
Report Date
20 Jul 2023
Primary Location
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Related Characters
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