16.3.4.8 The Inquisitors chambers The Full Battle Rages

Military action

We recuse a couple of humans, Kill the Inquisitor General and the Giant Dragon.

Carved into the center of the floor of this chamber is the symbol of a mountain and a giant anvil, which we known as the Holy Symbol of Minderhal Smith of the Giants. Mystic runes painted with a fine, glittering silvery dust sprinkled over what appears to be blood encircle the carving. Six iron cages stand in a circle around the floor carving, interspersed with stone braziers burning small coke fires scented with smoldering pine cones. A few tables holding a variety of iron implements stand against the walls nearby. The walls are windowless and covered with lines of carved text. Staircases at opposite ends of the room lead to floors above and below. Hanging from the ceiling are roughly two-score more cages filled with the skeletons of humans and dwarves that were taken and tortured from shinnermans fortune. Varr'os and e'luna ride along the north of the chamber circling the dust careful to stay a few paces away from it. To the south the others creep within the cover of magical vanishings and invisibility spheres. In the air above Jooose has taken flight and has hidden himself within the tangle of cages hanging from the ceiling.   100' ceiling. 10' chains. 10' cages. walls are etched with the lessons of the Smith.. though his darker aspect. runes painted in blood glowing softly crimson.   Daemon calls upon his intense knowledge of spellcraft to realize the silvery dust is glyphs of foul necromancy magics. the heros edge their way around it not triggering the magical trap.   We advance to the far cages finding two human males of their third decade or so.. both in pretty bad shape. one with a leg that has been.. all the meat that has been eaten even the marrow was sucked out of it. Zaxel tries a lesser restoration upon him (greg) but it has no effect, he senses that only a regeneration prayer will work. neither priest has prepared it for the day. the others using various wands of prayers of healing restore both the humans to full health. As we are discussing the possible ways to open the cages to free these human, or if we should climb to the roof to track down the general. He appears in a puff of foul sulpher within the center of the chamber.   As one we all unload upon him with everything in our power trying to drop him. A magical shield of blood protects him from damage. our shots seemed to do nothing but spread burning blood around the chamber. Thankful we were all protected from being burned by divine magical prayers.. still gross. It took a fair bit, some of us were near killed.. but eventually we were able to break through the blood shield.. joose spilt alot of his own fluids ontop of it.. and our damage was enough to shatter it. Inquisitor General Urathash was weakened his prayers were no longer answered by Minderhal. We were able to rally and slay him. not before however a noble salamander lord was summoned from the plane of fire and attacked luna, almost killing her..   In the air above we feel and then heard a roar as the Giant Mature Adult Red Dragon known as Jahlvoraz breaths fires down upon Jooose hoping to immolate the shifter below. The dragon was not large as we had been told.. it was Gargantuan.. Largest living being that any of us had ever seen.. how it even got into the chamber is still a mystery. It was downright scary. Had Dredoc not been inspiring us and multitude of prayers and blessings from both Brigh and Sarenrae been upon us.. we would have run away.. as it was She scared the scat right out of E'luna who then fled halfway down the tower stairs as full bore.   Daemon used his stone shape prayer to create a hemisphere of stone to shield him and adler from the breath of the dragon. leaving a couple of very small arrow ports for them to either shoot or cast out of. Dradoc running about the chamber inspiring us and then vanishing again. Varr'os and Zaxel were standing near the caged prisoners still, both take aim with rifles and hit just glancing blows. Adler unloads a volley of arrows, Daemon blasts it with a ball of ice.. somehow he created a coldfire ball. Jooose charges and tries to grapple the dragon.. that is three times his size. he comes very close but the Jahlvoraz shrugs off the shifter.   The dragons debates between Zaxel and Varr'os as to who it is going to try to eat. the gnome bears much more powerful magic so is clearly the better tasting choice. in a viscious round of combat zaxel almost goes down. The rest of us use wands and our magics to heal zaxel. others take aim with everything they have volleys of arrows, beams of pure radiant energy, songs of inspiration. jooose tries instead to just attack the dragon. ignoring him the dragon focuses his rage onto Zaxel, bighting and clawing him beyond the brink of death. other claw and tail lash out into varr'os half killing him. Daemon reaches out with his most powerful healing prayers to restore zaxel.   we can see that the dragon is badly wounded.. near death it appears.   The others.. they rally and between them all the dragon is brought closer to the brink.. Adler unloads a volley of arrows sinking the final one into the heart of Jahlvoraz.   (we paused as the final arrow shot was fired and the dragon fell to the ground)   My apologies to any who reads this journal.. there was so much magic both divine and arcane flying about its hard for a dwarf without any training in spellcraft to know whos speaking what prayer or spell when.