2023/08/02: Infiltrating Necrosa's Bases Part 5 Report
General Summary
Knight, Lillith, Kal'vus, Union, Zaran, Buzz, Abarai, Ik-chuk
We pick up in the midst of a monologue by the Faceless Watcher. He continues his personal insults, doing his best to convey to his opponents how utterly helpless they are, both in relation to him and in general.
The party managed to glean some useful information in the midst of the torrent of insults. The researchers were doing all sorts of research on Blackmoore, and this facility was collating it. Knight also picked up that Necrosa still has various bases in Solace, which this guy takes his research to to pass his research up the line. There's a chain of command, and Necrosa doesn't come here herself. Lillith picked up that one of the things they were in the process of researching is called "soul dispersion", which is a deeply concerning name. That's apparently what happened to Blackmoore after the crisis. Zaran, extremely insightful, inferred that the Necrosis Corporation was in some rough times, with broken lines of communication, leaving members, and generally being Swiss cheese. He also mentioned that the Shadows weren't even on their radar in terms of threats, not on the level of the "Averian Order" and one "Taegroth the Obsidian". Necrosa actually respects and/or fears those guys.
After what felt like hours of insults and derision, the fight started surprisingly suddenly.
Knight and the Watcher went simultaneously, much to the Watcher's surprise. Knight tried to disrupt the Watcher's spellcasting via physical force, but the Watcher teleport-dodged the first few strikes and the rest passed straight through him. In response, the Watcher cast time stop and then tossed a whole pile of effects, most of them targeting Knight. He was not fond of people who got to take a swing at him.
Kal'vus just barely avoided a brackish sphere of lifedrain. A large group of NPCs did not. Ik-chuk got trapped in stasis along with the healer and a bunch of the other NPCs, not including the paladins. A gridwork of antimagic fields went up, moving at the Watcher's whim and ready to intercept any incoming spells. A pair of exploding arcane rend spells went off, inverting the MR of the targets and turning it into an explosive arcane blast. A killing spell was resisted by most of the party but killed Union. A breath of evil harmed all the survivors, and everyone had their auras switched so they registered as very evil. (The paladins didn't stop being paladins, but their holy swords were burning them as a result.) Zaran was hit by psionic sanity inversion, making him a sadomasochistic pathological liar and confusing his psionic and arcane casting abilities.
"Oh no, I'm completely helpless, don't hurt me!" Zaran, lying.
The sorceress, who had been mostly ignored until now, got hit by a binding ritual that removed all her sorcerous powers and bloodline abilities. Finally, Knight was the target of some sort of artifact-powered ring of slavery, intended to bind him to the Watcher's control. In any other case, it would have bypassed all protections and enslaved its target completely. In this case... it only sort of did. After all, Knight's soul was currently embodied in his soul blade, outside of his body. From the perspective of everyone else, a ring briefly appeared around Knight's neck, and then he exploded. Angry Void exploded everywhere, forming a writhing mass of biting faces and clawing hands.
On the inside, Knight's mind found itself as the "elected leader" of the very angry mess of souls inside the Void. They were not going to follow the Watcher's orders. The question was what Knight could arrange the mass to do.
Zaran, fittingly, called for divine intervention. Ao looked at the situation, saw the daemon standing on the pile of rubble, and decided to make himself an amazing blacklight poster. Zaran was forced into trueform and placed under a berserker effect, diving at the daemon as a vast and glowing dragon. The Watcher's dodges still worked, but he was beginning to look alarmed.
Lillith withdrew, shielded herself, and then started buffing and freeing party members. She even managed to deactivate the antimagic fields between Buzz and the daemon. Buzz, for his part, analyzed the Watcher's defenses as best he could while moving back to haste himself and drawing his guns. Then he buried the Watcher's entire dodge area in spheres of radiance, force, and soulfire, plus some bonus draconic damage. And then he put that gun away, pulled out a shotgun, and hit that area with 50 ruby fireballs that did magical slashing damage (and also soulfire and draconic, of course).
The Watcher died.
Then he stood up again at full health.
Kal'vus dove in with sword in hand, preparing to test what defenses remained. The dodging still occurred, but far less, and some strikes got through. Blood was drawn. And if it bleeds, it can be killed.
Saphira, the sorceress, tossed some daggers. It was the only thing she could do. It didn't do much.
Tamrinth threw down his sword, which had badly burned him, and used his cleric skills to cast some sort of justice spell on the daemon. Everyone felt a little better about taking him down. Kuran charged in to try his blade, as did the Fist of Ranthael. Both were being burned; neither cared. They were still up, their blades still worked, and they had a very evil monster to slay. And while they didn't bring him down, oh boy did they batter him. (He dodged out of the way of Kuran, but the Fist caught up to him and made him regret it.)
Knight didn't bother trying to reform himself. He and the Void had better things to do. He managed to organize the mass enough to shift underneath the Watcher and let it lash out angrily as it always does. It didn't connect much, but it did manage to get a good hold on one of the Watcher's legs, pinning him in place.
The Watcher refused to get hit by Buzz again. He summoned an immortal stone shield between them, which tracked with Buzz to block any direct attacks. Then he launched stunning force bolts at the heroes attacking him in melee. Knight/the Void completely ignored it, and Kal'vus was bruised but resisted the stun. Traena, incandescent with rage, parried hers with her sword. (Kuran got stunned, though.)
Zaran, still berserking, activated an item to bump himself up to age category 12 and grow even bigger. He swung in with everything he could muster against the pinned daemon. Claws, tails, wing buffets and breath weapon. The daemon came apart, and the breath weapon stopped just before it hit Knight.
The party grouped up. The evil auras proved impossible to dispel; they'd have to be allowed to run their course. After much disturbing experimentation, Lillith and Knight managed to find a way to get the slave collar in reach and disarm it, letting Knight return to physical form. His form was a bit wobbly and he felt all tingly, but it worked. The paladins set to breaking the stasis effects on the trapped party members.
Union's body was nowhere to be found. Knight, concerned, started checking his inventory to see if he'd accidentally eaten it. He didn't find Union's body, but he did find the Watcher's! Some of the items on it were concerningly purple and evil, so he enlisted Lillith's help to very carefully pickpocket those items off the corpse without taking it out of Knight's inventory.
Union, meanwhile, saw things no mortal mind was ever meant to comprehend. Fortunately, he's used to that. He heard some yelling from something too large to comprehend, and eventually he reformed on the prime plane and woke up. He felt a burning sensation on his forehead. There, he found a sigil of Ao, a platinum/silvery diamond with a circle in the middle. He also found himself holding a scroll that had been addressed "To Zaran". He tossed it towards the half of the room that Zaran was currently occupying as he tried to calm down from the dragon rage. "This is yours."
Loot pulled off of the Watcher's corpse:
Sacrificial Bag of Dark Miracles (super evil)
Black Robe of the Daemon Wind
A rod of arcane focus Also, the artifact-level Binding Disc/Torc of Slavery (super evil). The healer healed everyone and the party checked the remaining rooms in the facility. Every remaining occupant was dead or, in a few suspected cases, had left with a chunk of the research. No threats remained. Lillith did find some valuable spellbooks, though. The party stayed in the library for the next few days, waiting for the evil auras to wear off. The forces of Leithien (including Eldritch and Sweet) were called in as reinforcements and to go through the place thoroughly. Buzz rebuilt as much of the library as he could manage while the rest of the party moved rocks, stacked books, and copied down spells from the gathered spellbooks. The corpse of the Watcher was being very carefully watched.
Sacrificial Bag of Dark Miracles (super evil)
Black Robe of the Daemon Wind
A rod of arcane focus Also, the artifact-level Binding Disc/Torc of Slavery (super evil). The healer healed everyone and the party checked the remaining rooms in the facility. Every remaining occupant was dead or, in a few suspected cases, had left with a chunk of the research. No threats remained. Lillith did find some valuable spellbooks, though. The party stayed in the library for the next few days, waiting for the evil auras to wear off. The forces of Leithien (including Eldritch and Sweet) were called in as reinforcements and to go through the place thoroughly. Buzz rebuilt as much of the library as he could manage while the rest of the party moved rocks, stacked books, and copied down spells from the gathered spellbooks. The corpse of the Watcher was being very carefully watched.
Rewards Granted
4 xp
Sacrificial Bag of Dark Miracles (super evil)
Black Robe of the Daemon Wind
A rod of arcane focus
The artifact-level Binding Disc/Torc of Slavery (super evil)
Black Robe of the Daemon Wind
A rod of arcane focus
The artifact-level Binding Disc/Torc of Slavery (super evil)
Missions/Quests Completed
Clear out Necrosa's bases in Leithien
Character(s) interacted with
Notes
The guy who was noticed chained up last session was Uldrek the Bound. He probably wasn't friendly.
The mage things last time are Hooded One demons.
The Faceless Watcher is 18 feet tall.
Kal'vus
Union
Zaran
Lillith
Buzz Gizmo
Knight of Darkhome
Report Date
02 Aug 2023
Primary Location
Related Plots
Comments