Mission 9 - The Cemetery And The Grand Duke

[!abstract] The Job
Find Ulder Ravengard and free him from the helm.

The Cemetery

The tunnel is mostly uneventful until it opens to the outside. We send Lulu ahead invisibly and she finds an extremely steep, jagged drop, less steep going up. It looks like a giant took a bite out of Elturel's west side. Phyria's information was a little out of date.

We climb up. A massive cemetery, graves dug up from the inside or the outside, who knows. A chapel pulses with fetid purple radiance. We start down the path when I hear galloping behind us. Four skeletal minotaurs charge. I fire first with my longbow from the back, Thomas drops a fireball, Baktha meets the nearest with his Holy Avenger and it's the worst day of that minotaur's afterlife. Mike notices they're lined up and fries them with a lightning bolt. Salah throws a guiding bolt. I hit with my newly acquired silvered longsword like I've owned it for years. Baktha obliterates one with a smite, then falls to the next. Thomas stabilizes him with spare the dying. I crush the last. We take their greataxes, all four.

We lick our wounds and make a beeline for the chapel, stained glass shattered everywhere. Pillars in front list the names of heroes: Agnithar, Zokel of Torm, Bertra Zornes, Yevina Druen, Ca'sar, Xivik Nue, VanLancer Eagletalon. I whisper each as I pass and the pillars light up. A swarm of shadows pours out. We deal with them in thirty seconds. Salah turns undead and three flee. Baktha kills two with the Holy Avenger, Mike one, me one.

Thomas walks in the front door and four more minotaur skeletons meet him. It takes about ten rounds, but we grind them to dust. Then Thomas says a short prayer and pulls a +2 longbow of Lathander out of thin air. Baktha does the same and pulls out a +2 longsword of Lathander, which he hands to me. I don't ask questions of free weapons.

Gideon and the Grand Duke

Salah peeks through a curtain into another room and is confronted by a gaunt man with long nails and dreadlocks, flanked by two insectoids. "Greetings," he rasps. Friendly, if gruff. We barely start talking when a mass of dretches pours up the stairs and attacks him and his familiars, followed by a giant scorpion.

Thomas fires a guiding bolt at the scorpion. I close in. Baktha vaporizes a dretch with the Holy Avenger. Mike misses. The gruff man kills one, I kill another, Baktha kills the last, leaving only the scorpion. It cripples Baktha. The gruff man swings his fist wildly at it and then falls into a trance, and the scorpion drops dead from a withering gaze.

His name is Gideon. He serves some unnamed devil master and is posted here as a sentinel against demons.

We go down into the dungeon below, following human tracks through the debris, until we reach a small wading pool where a man lies in the water, screaming, trying to pull a helmet off his head. Four skeletal minotaurs attack and we deal with them quickly, but not before they knock me unconscious. Salah heals me and we finish them.

Then we realize the screaming man is Ulder Ravengard, and three minotaurs stream out of a portal. They swerve around him at the last second and attack us, knocking me and Baktha down hard. Salah patches us up, and not a moment too soon, because another volley knocks Baktha out and hurts me badly. Salah brings Baktha back from the brink and we grind the beasts to dust.

We can't get the helm off Ulder. Salah tries bless and in a flash of clarity Ulder mutters a name: "Feria." Then he's back to babbling. Mike goes invisible and lifts Gideon's Testament from his chambers, because of course he does, and we go back for Feria.

We stop in the tunnel short of our gaggle of survivors and Salah goes in alone to get her. Pherria Jynks, also called Feria, tells us to take Ulder to the altar of Torm. Baktha touches the Holy Avenger to the helm, channeling celestial light, and two orbs of unholy energy pop out of its horns. I move in and attack one. We take turns until they dissipate. After a few more minutes of prayer, Ulder sits up, clear-eyed, and takes off the helm, grateful and free.

What the Elephant Remembers

Lulu starts talking about how she used to shapechange. Something about being Zariel's mount, shoving a sword in a rock. A demon that wants to destroy it and hates Zariel. She wandered Avernus and hid in the Wandering Emporium, whose proprietor might help us. Zariel is gone. Her last words were something about demons crying out her name when they die. Lulu thinks there may still be goodness in her.

Feria asks Ulder what happened with that helm. He guesses the evil from the portal was absorbed into the helmet and he got caught inside. We ask what he knows about the fall of Elturel. Not much, so we tell him what we found about Thavius Kreeg, the contract, and the Vanthampurs trying to do the same to Baldur's Gate.

He asks Lulu to help him remember what he saw under the helm's control. She dives into his mind, and he describes it.

[!quote]- Ulder's Vision
"I saw a bloodied woman in armor, a soldier wearing the colors and crest of Elturel, grasping a longsword fit for an angel. Fresh blood streamed from a nasty cut on the woman's cheek.

"Flying next to the woman was a small, golden elephant with rapidly fluttering wings.

"As an enormous, loping demon threatened to devour the woman, she plunged the sword into the ground while the winged elephant made a trumpet sound with its trunk. The demon was hurled back as an alabaster palace rose up around the sword. The winged elephant fled and took to the red sky of Avernus, where it watched as a bloody scab grew up from the ground to engulf the palace and the enormous demon.

"The winged elephant fled and wandered in a delirium before coming upon two odd, birdlike humanoids dressed in patchwork armor and standing next to a strange infernal vehicle. The bird creatures were equipped with odd weapons and tools."

Lulu says she's still missing some memories. She takes the helm from Ulder and puts it on. It conforms to her head and she flies up, refreshed. The two bird creatures, Chukka and Clonk, helped her. They took her to a junkyard called Fort Knucklebone and helped her build an infernal vehicle to travel the wastes of Avernus.

We rest, then scrounge for magic items to help us make the rest of the descent. After some earnest searching, we come up with six potions of flying and a magical shortsword of thunder.

Previous: Mission 8 - High Hall · Next: Mission 10 - Fort Knucklebone

#session #mission