Episode 18

Occasionally you have new people to add, or older people leave and that is certainly something that has to be addressed by the table.  This week we had a guy that several of my players had met and a few had not.  He is an experienced player and is involved in Pathfinder Society, so I was not worried about him in regards to rules.  He was also in the right age range (aka: not a teenager), so it seemed like he would fit in well.  But its not just up to me.  We play at my, and my wife's, house but the game we play is everyone's.  Turns out it was not a big deal, everyone was okay with it, so that's nice.  What it did mean was that- since he will not be a regular- that I needed to have an NPC ready for him.  I had been trying to figure out how I was going to work an angle later in the game and this presented a great opportunity for me.  So he is playing I'Olethia, the Silver Dragon Paladin.... This ought to be good.

Episode 18:

The party spent a little time getting acclimated to the grove they were in, since I drew a map and had a few places they could nab some resources from it was a good opportunity.  Afterwards (they really didn't care that much about the grove, but hopefully that will change in time) they went to meet with Oberron again.  He introduced them to a new outsider who had joined them in the Twilight Kingdom, a Paladin named I'Oethia.  She had slipped through the rift on her own and found the rebellious dark fey and wanted to assist them in their struggle against tyranny and evil.

Oberron takes this opportunity to explain his plan.  If they use this time to attack Mal'Inias' supply points they will pull her forces from her castle to protect her supplies so that she can continue her assault against the light world.  Using this to their advantage they will pick Mal'Inia apart until she is left much less defended at her doorstep.  Once that happens the heroes will attack her fortress, cut out Mal'Inia's heart, put it in a Cold Iron box, and then take it across the rift and kill her.

The players agree to take a strike force up to the river supply point and batter their way into the complex and destroy the supplies.  The fight itself was around a CR 9 (the APL is 9 as well, since there are 6 level 8 players).  This was more of the same monsters they fought last week.  I really don't like to over commit to a single type of monster, but it seemed reasonable that the most common monster would be here.  There were a number of goblins, a couple of Satyrs, and 2 Ogres (these are modified Ogres... so they were slightly more challenging).  This was really the first fight were the players got to stretch their legs as 8th level characters, so they got to do some fun stuff.  The battle wrapped up fairly quickly and the players pulled back to get to the grove.

On their way back to the grove the party ran into a Juvenile Umbral Dragon.  Yeah, immediately after the last fight they ran into a CR11-12 encounter- I love my job.  The Dragon, Daranus, tracked the players by the smell of the silver dragon they had with them.  Up until this point I'Olethia had not mentioned that she was a Silver Dragon, and at this point she changed shape from human to dragon form and flew right into combat. 

This was a tough dragon, I maxed his HP, I buffed him for the fight, and he was prepared to do some damage.  Somewhere around the 2nd round Sam hit a critical on scorching ray.  I use the critical cards and the one he got was time vortex, which means that the Dragon disappeared for 4 rounds.  Now there was some debate as to what happened there.  Ultimately I decided that he was in an alternate timeline for 4 rounds, so he got to take some actions as well.  The party formed up around him, then Daranus used his first action to take a AoO and flew far enough away to slam every member of the party with his negative energy breath weapon.  50 points of damage and 2 negative levels later I managed to nearly drop Sam, but to no avail.  Mark my words, I am taking Sam out sometime...

So after another couple of rounds they manage to drop Daranus and make their way back to the Grove. They get patched up, the healers take care of their negative levels and they go to sleep out in the tent city.  That night, while they are sleeping, Mal'Inia sends a Nightmare to the PC's.

They awake at the foot of her courtroom, fully rested and ready for combat.  I then take an opportunity to let the 1st 4 rounds of combat run so the players can get an idea of what her tactics are.  This was actually for a couple of reasons.  Mal'Inia is going to be a very difficult fight, and my group has not done combat at this level very often, so I wanted them to have a chance to see what could happen.  I also wanted to see what they would do, Mal'Inia is smart and if she has to fight the PC's she want's to know how to deal with them.

I nailed Urz and Sam with baleful polymorph, I trapped Damone with black tentacles, and the rest of the party was very quickly going to be in bad shape.

At that point the party was woken up from their Nightmare and were given an Amulet to hold back Mal'Inia's ability to use divination to track them.  At this point we were getting late at night.  The party agreed that they would prepare for the next phase the following week, but now recognized that dispel magic and the ability to detect invisibility would become critical if they were to survive Mal'Inia.

Another good week in gaming, some quick thinking only a little cheating on my part made for some nicely challenging encounters- hopefully the players had a good time.

Thanks for reading!

-Ubercroz