Spires of Xin-Shalast 27

This session of our campaign picked up after the PCs finished their conversation with the two Lamia priestesses, and they headed in the direction of the Leng Device. In the corridor outside, they encountered another image of Karzoug, who was again surprised, and they quickly ducked back into cover as he summoned a Mage’s Sword.

Grodok and Solassar charge up towards him, Grodok getting hit multiple by the sword. Karzoug gets off a second spell before Grodok hits his image – a Wail of the Banshee, which forces Solassar to use the one re-roll he has against Karzoug’s magic (obtained from studying the library under Guiltspur).

Esheire darts into a side room, and comes face to face with a green skinned angelic being, which attacks her with her greatsword. Esheire puts it into a Forcecage, then retreats out as the image of Karzoug is slain.

The party correctly identifies the creature as the angel that Khalib has summoned to guard the side entrance into the structure. The actual adventure background at this point is a bit dodgy – I’m not certain exactly how Khalib would have been able to persuade an angel to follow his commands as per Planar Binding, and going by online discussion I’m not the only one who finds it a bit odd. But it’s a minor point.

The angel had been instructed to guard the room silently – which also meant she wouldn’t be able to use her cleric spells (I’m not certain that the adventure had taken that into account) – until her death. Using telepathy (not breaking the silence rule), the Esheire is able to glean this information, and when she breaks out of the forcecage, there is a brief fight with her and she is ‘killed’ – regenerating back a few minutes later (Grodok got a critical, then hit her again just to make sure getting another critical – with a regeneration of 10, that was 24 rounds for her to recover).

Recovered, the angel Ayruzi is willing to work with them to fight Karzoug, and knows a little about the place based on what she has heard. She knows Karzoug was expected to rise soon, and was being strengthened by an influx of very large souls that he had obtained with something called a soul lens recently. The players figured out (with a bit of prompting), that the powerful giants and dragons they had slain recently were probably the cause of that.

Heading on, they encounter a very large set of doors inscribed with runes that seemed to shift and change. They had already been told not to read the doors, so Serena tries to see if there was a trap embedded into them. As a Pathfinder Savant, she has some very specific abilities which actually turned out to be useful – the ability to detect traps in writings without setting them off, and bonuses to resist them.

Examining them (without reading), she determines that there is some form of planar conjuration/teleport trap set into the words, but she is unable to actually disarm the trap.

Solassar steps in, and Esheire puts a Dimensional Anchor on both of them to prevent them being teleported if anything goes wrong, but nothing does and Solassar is able to disable things with ease.

Beyond the doors was an opportunity for me to bring in some of my SciFi scenery, for the room was full of machinery, cables and blinking lights being administered by a dozen humanoids wrapped in cloth that hid their features.

At the far end was a ‘window’ that looked out on a Xin-Shalast that exited 10,000 years ago. A magical portal that linked the present to the past. This was going to be an opportunity for the group to find out a bit about Karzoug’s plan, and possibly some of the side plot in the adventure since these Denizens of Leng weren’t interested in a fight.

So obviously the PCs buffed up, charged in and killed everyone. As each Leng creature died, the window onto the past shifted and dissolved, until by the end it was just a whirling vortex of energy. Admittedly they had earlier been told to destroy the device by the trio of strange spiders they met on the mountainside, and as any experienced adventurer knows – always trust the instructions of strange spiders hanging out on mountainsides.

We decided to leave things there, and resolve the aftermath next session.