Game Report: Entrance and Exit

The players rest inside the white dragon’s lair, while the warlock translated some ruins that would allow them to continue. They finally managed to unlock the code to the jail, which they jump through. They take down three ridiculously easy enemies, and start looking around the cells.

Inside one of the cells was a woman, wearing civilian clothes. She asks to be let out, and they hand her a pair of gloves that they found in a bag. She made a bag of holding appear, and started pulling out weapons and armor from the sack. This was Nari-Kai, the genasi swordmage, who would be tagging along with the party.

They start to explore the area, soon discovering a room full of teleportation pads. They step inside to activate the event flag, and an eladrin and a couple of ghosts showed up. Two glass walls suddenly appearing, cutting the room into four quarters, and the enemies started teleporting them around the room. Fortunately, the swordmage that just joined the party could handle teleporting well, as could the wizard and warlock, and the players were never divided for long.

They took out the enemies easily, as they didn’t hit very hard, and the minions were no trouble. After cleaning up, they continued through the room and found a hallway that led to the main office. They took that hallway only to be stopped three mildly familiar characters, a tiefling, a shadar-kai, and a satyr. Not feeling like talking, the wizard shot an acid arrow at them, and the three would have fallen quickly had a troll not intervened.

The players had some trouble getting past the troll in the small hallway, and got knocked down often by its sweeping blade ability. It was the wizard’s wall of fire that proved the day, burning the shadar-kai to ash and slowly taking down the troll, who was locked in by the melee players. Still, when the wall fell away, they found the satyr had gotten away from them, and they rushed forward.

Inside they find a large office, and behind the desk is a succubus, who demands to know what they are doing there and then tries to summon a dragon. Now, the party killed the dragon, so she immediately launches an attack, as well as three chain devils appearing out of nowhere. The chain devils immediately break the rules and do three attacks against the casters, knocking off ¾ of their life totals. The succubus tries to do a midnight kiss against the swordmage, but fails.

The party divides the enemies easily, exploding the satyr and taking out the succubus in no time. They had some trouble with the chain devils, but eventually targeted each one and took them all down. The chain devils were…played correctly, so they ended up being pretty useless later in the combat.

So, after they finished there, the doppelganger went over to the succubus’s dead body and starting looking through a book that she had in her pack. The wizard got nosy and took the book, and saw only pictures that seemed to coincide with the succubus’s life. She stole the book back quickly, and was able to discern that the succubus was the lover of the main boss of this facility, and he had recently left to give the Black Blade to the Margrave.

Meanwhile, the warlock started to hear a whisper, and discovered a blade without a hilt under the desk, which seemed to be of the same general type as his missing Traitor’s Lot, if not as angry. They took this information and these goods, and quickly got out of there.

While they were resting, something weird happened. The warlord and the swordmage found themselves on a black dreamplane, and started fighting. The fight was pretty even, although the warlord started to pull out some odd abilities, such as orb of force and lightning bolt. He was apparently channeling or actually was a soul from another dimension, but it became moot when the swordmage knocked his soul out of his body. The character was found dead in the morning.

Lessons Learned: It always sucks when a player chooses to stop playing, but it is necessary. You should work with them so they leave on their own terms, if need be. Also, don’t try to run a monster if you can’t be bothered to read his stat block beforehand.