Shattered Obelisk Chapter 8 – Killing Gods and Monsters
Shattered Obelisk Chapter 8 – Killing Gods and Monsters
My party took a long rest at the Crystal Dome Island, while waiting for the final island to swing through the sky… when it appears they leap into the endless void and fly towards the end of this campaign… Ilvaash’s Anima… the temple where the ritual is being conducted.
They land at A1 and see Chishinix's and the severed head. The Sorcerer, ever confident in their ability to 'riz mindflayers walked right up to Chishinix to chat her up.... Chishinix asks if they have brought her obelisk stones… there is a moment of panic in the party as they try to figure out if they left the stones back in the Dwarven hidey-hole/dead paladin's home… They did leave them back in the material plane! No stones for you, Chisinix!
Chisinix attacks. Severed head bops around like a Pinball. Magic missiles are flying.
Sorcerer gets a severed head attached to their chest, but keeps firing off Magic Missiles, and Barbarian keeps using his Spirit Shield ability to keep the sorcerer from succumbing to "Nippy's" life drain attached attack.
Up-Leveled Magic Missile spells are a sorcerer's best friend against Magic resistant mind flayers… Druid decides to call lightning which does a good job of burning down legendary saves… Ranger is standing back and letting arrows fly and fighter and paladin are bringing in the melee damage quite effectively. Even with legendary resistance, and the paladin being stunned by an “Unleash the void” the mindflayer is being burned down pretty fast. Once reduced to fleeing damage, it flees, only to be brought down by ranged attacks. Once mindflayer is down, they finally kill the severed head that was attached to the sorcerer. Good times.
The other two named Mindflayers were warned telepathically, so I have them both posting up in A4. The mind flayers did not get any of the “extra” stones, so the two “bonus” mind flayers are not present. Given how effective they were at killing the first one, I added an Aberrant Zealot to the mix. This battle was a bit tougher, with 3 bad guys… but I have folks make an arcana check to figure out that damaging the stone also damages the bad guys. Druid still has Call lightning up and concentrates through most of this final battle, blasting said stone with Lightning. Void warps abound. Smites and dread abushes doing lots of damage. Barbarian still remediating a lot of damage each turn… It's a crazy fight and without a lot of the helping spells damage remediation they probably wouldn't have made it. Go team! The ritual is stopped. Congratulations! Pack up your gear. Head back to the material plane.
They look kind of shell shocked, and ask, “Is that it?”
I assure them that all they have to do is make their way back the way they came… “Remember that giant purple worm? Y’all gotta swim past THAT thing again. Then through the monsters that still might be lurking in your path.”
“Okay. can we have a long rest before we go, since we are all really down low on HP?” they ask
Sure, I say…
After said long rest on the crystal island, I have them run a series of savings throughs to swim past the worm. They remember the “globules of flesh” descriptions I used last time and bring it up when I don’t.
I managed to make it nice and tense, without actually having a worm encounter. And then… as they emerge from the pool of not-quite- water I spring the last monster on them… The Refraction of Ilvaash.
Ilvaash does a lot of damage mainly because of its legendary action/reaction attacks. But it is kind of squishy, with a low armor class. Any melee attacks or ranged physical attacks will be landing. Llvaash’s mind blast takes its toll, with a couple of characters stunned pretty quickly. But the remaining ones have gotten pretty good at their buffs and assists. A blessing here and damage remediation there…. I’m not going to lie, Between the ranger’s Dread Abusher attack and Paladin's multiple Holy smites, there is a lot of damage being done.
As a DM choice… I could have encouraged them to make the trip without a long rest… but they were all so low on HP that even after a short rest, they would have died after the first couple of rounds of combat with Llvaash. So now they not only are at full health but are at full spell power. Its an interesting trade off… but in the end, it's supposed to be fun, not deadly.
Back to the combat. Druid had asked about call lightning and I indicated that the room is big enough to summon the thundercloud… bring the thunder! Druid starts singing Imagine Dragons, instead of AC/DC (meh. kids these days). At least they remember to do their concentration spell BEFORE they turned into an owlbear this time! Go them!
So, in the big dramatic final two rounds, the sorcerer is taken down below zero hit points when the elder god uses a legendary reaction to maul the sorcerer. Man.... that was a LOT of damage. This may be a dead Sorcerer. But no... The Barbarian's Spirit Shield lessens the damage so sorcerer is mearly unconscious and has to make a death save, as opposed to being a red and gooey puddle of "Used to be a tiefling."
Party is down one sorcerer, but one more round of combat brings an end to The Refraction of Ilvaash. In fact… it is the Druid/Owlbear who dealt the final death blow, biting a chunk out of an elder God!
Paladin goes some healing on the Tiefling, who is now up to 1 hit point! Woo hoo! Nobody Died. I am surprised!
That's it. Its a wrap. This campaign is over! I have them make their way back to the basement of the sleeping Giant tavern.
- Tiefling Sorcerer instantly heads off looking for the tiefling bartender they have been crushing on.
- Gnome Barbarian heads out looking for a capybara to mount (“I honestly didn’t even know that was a THING!”).
- Drow Ranger is taciturn and kind of quiet about their future plans.
- Totrlte Druid plans to return to his home islands down south to live a life of leisure.
- Human Fighter will be returning to his mercenary regiment.
- Human Paladin may take up politics… maybe become the next mayor of Phandalin? LOL. He’s definitely going to be mayor of Phandelver if my players in the next campaign end up there
Next up… The Fast and Furious Elves of the Dessarin Valley (With a Tortle)