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Previously on War for the Lost Plane

Starring:
Kaelan, level 15 tiefling Monster Slayer Ranger/Fiend Warlock
Scarlet, level 15 human Oath of Devotion Paladin
Gillian, level 15 triton Champion Fighter, College of Lore Bard
Kethra, level 15 half-elf Assassin Rogue
TIM, level 15 warforged War Domain Cleric

My body is sopping wet, but my skin is burning. My shameful demon heritage allows me to shrug off fire, but this – this was a holy fire. Radiant. Agony. And it was pouring out of this terrible hovering ball of energy, its concentric iron rings circling around it as it flew inexorably toward us.

Three of us lie on the tiny island in the middle of the water-filled cavern. Kethra  is barely breathing, her eyes closed. TIM stares straight ahead, showing no emotion, while I concentrate on breathing. Every breath burns. I can barely hold my crossbows. Another blast will finish us.

Scarlet must have rescued Gillian, snapping her out of the creature’s charming effects, which would soon envelop us. Maybe it would be better this way, I thought, as it stops above us. Its rings lock into place. What follows is the holy fire. The agony. The release. 

I close my eyes.

Death doesn’t come. From the other side of the island, a ghostly axe spins toward the celestial being, slicing into its core. Gillian’s axe. Its dimming light fades along with its rings, and the small core drops harmlessly to the ground.

We are alive.

The “ball of light” we were hunting at the end of these twisted caverns turned out to be a floating mass of rotating rings bathed in radiant energy, like a miniature star.

We approached the water-filled cavern in our boat, and its voice boomed in our heads as it formed the holographic image of a beautiful winged man, Rahmael, the leader of the celestial armies in this realm. Behind him on a tiny island was Feogh, starring blankly ahead, his mind controlled by the celestial being.

Rahmael commanded us to stand down and accept the genocide these celestials were planning on this entire plane. Naturally we refused. The Radiant Idol spit out several floating golden eyes, and we rolled for initiative.

Gillian threw her phase axe – a crit! – at Rahmael, only to discover it was indeed a projected image. Our primary target in this fight was the Radiant Idol. We knew it was capable of commanding other creatures, but beyond that we were wary of its capabilities. We would soon find out.

Kaelan fired crossbow attacks while TIM (played by Raymond/Kethra this session) cast Create Water, dousing the fiery enemies and dealing some damage in the process. Kethra jumped onto land to save Feogh and hurl him onto the boat.

But then the large floating energy ball hovered over to us. It exuded an aura of incapacitating charm, but Scarlet’s Paladin aura protected us. Kaelan then used Counterspell to stop it from casting spells (he’d end up doing it three times this fight, though Scarlet rendered us immune to most of its enchantment spells anyway).

So far so good, until its rings locked in place, and it unloaded a rain of radiant fire down upon us.

50 damage, with a DC 17 CON save – yikes! Even making the save was a solid chunk of damage. Being clustered together in a boat didn’t help, and our poor Folding Boat folded back up in response, leaving us treading water while the smaller eyes blasted us with radiant laser beams. Feogh sank beneath the waves.

We were in a bad spot. TIM tried something else – using Control Water to raise the water level, destroying most of the eyes and damaging the Idol, along with Gillian’s Wall of Water (see Chat for the Lost Plane below for our discussion on using water spells to damage the Idol).

D&D

Raising the water level also made the environment a bit more challenging as we swam away from the floating lava-rain.

We were in an interesting bind tactically – stay near Scarlet to gain immunity to its constant Charm aura, or spread out to avoid all getting hit by the devastating radiant-rain attack.

We stuck to the former, and took a horrific amount of damage every round. Since it stayed in the air, only Kaelan and Gillian could deal consistent damage to it. Thankfully all those water spells were doing a lot of damage as well.

At one point Gillian got separated and became charmed, losing a turn as she swam toward the radiant light and taking almost 40 damage in the process.

It was a fight for survival. Kethra would save Scarlet from drowning. Scarlet would save Gillian from the charm effect, and Dispel the Idol’s radiant-rain.

By the fourth round everyone was hovering around 20% hit points or fewer – Kethra literally had 2 HP! The Idol hovered over Kethra, Kaelan, and TIM ready to finish us off, but Scarlet’s Dispel Magic made it sputter, and Gillian rolled another crit on her phase axe, destroying the Idol.

It was a long, brutal fight that lasted the entire session. Surprisingly none of us went down in the end, though the DM took a bit of mercy on us in that last round, easily capable of downing two if not three of us with its last attack.

When the smoke cleared the Idol was reduced to small glowing ball, which looked like a magic item. In honor of the kill, Gillian claimed it. Feogh swam up out of the water, thanking us for the rescue, and we prepared to leave this godsforsaken cave full of chaos magic.

MVPC – Kethra (Raymond played both Kethra and TIM this session)

Post-session live discussion:

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