At the end of last session, we left our heroes locked in battle with the ghostly defender of the chambers below Guiltspur.
The fight had not gone well so far, but the heroes fought on. Repeated powerful magics lashed the party—black tentacles, a fireball, lightning bolts and even a cone of cold were hurled at Ratik’s greatest heroes. The onslaught was too much for Karelia who died twice in as many moments—brought back from the brink of death by a breath of life only to die from the spell’s negative energy feedback before being revived again
Still both paladins remained in the fight, although their attacker manoeuvred adroitly to deny the holy warriors a full range of attacks. Shardane was kept busy healing the injured.
Eventually, Ariquis forced the badly injured ghost to retreat, but the party’s respite was only temporary. A loud explosion from a nearby room heralded the approach of yet more creatures; chief amongst them was a large silver dragon dripping in grey goo and embalming fluid. The normally good-aligned dragon attacked, breathing a paralysing gas on Cortana. Cortana resisted the effect, but it was clearly time to flee.
Karelia—alive again—blocked the dragon’s approach with a wall of force and the party retreated. Sadly, the ghost was not done with them. From hiding, it hurled a baleful polymorph at Karelia who failed to resist the effect spectacularly. Being transformed into a rat, she also lost her mind. Quickly, Shardane scooped up the rat and popped it into her handy haversack.
Cortana was the last to flee, and sadly he was just too late to escape unscathed. As he flew toward the mist-filled shaft leading upwards to safety he was also targeted by a baleful polymorph. While the redoubtable paladin kept his mind intact, he was transformed into cat!
Retreating, the survivors—Thaladan, Shardane, Ariquis and Cortana (or Catana as he was instantly renamed) eventually reached the relative safety of their camp. In their haste they had left behind Makani and Vesleng in statue form as well as Vesleng’s dead roc companion and treant that yet burnt brightly. It was now they discovered true disaster had struck.
Karelia the rat had objected to being stuffed into the handy haversack and had gnawed her way to freedom. Sadly, this meant she was now irrevocably lost to her companions somewhere in the multiverse…and she carried one of the party’s six shards…
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