The Wayfarer's Inn

Now THAT was an interesting session.

Mek guard almost pummelled one of the PCs to death as they entered the tower, then the party rescued an enchanter (4th level mage, rather irrelevent to masters level PCs) locked up as a prisoner, discovered the three coffins and decided to come back to them in a little while, struggled against a couple of illusion traps (they'll bother high level PCs just as well as low level ones) and eventually worked out how to get into Elyas's lab. There, Della (Dwarven warrior) worked out that the hat next to the two alcoves must have something to do with the operation of what must clearly be a magical device, put the hat on, and walked in... only to find herself teleported to a chamber with a beautiful elven maid. Said maid tricked her to walk into an alcove, pulled a lever and trapped Della.

Augustus (Mage) frantically got out his crystal ball and discovered that the dwarf was thus trapped. Didn't have much of a choice, he wasn't going to leave his long time friend in there, so he cast immunity and teleport any object to join Della in that room (but not behind the bars). He couldn't really risk sending other party members too.

Thats when it all kicked off.

I'll try to post more details of this fight later; Augustus and Della (each 28th level) versus a 36th level, evil and ancient mage who has for centuries been trapped in a buried tower.

Okay... The witch spent some moments trying to extract information from Della before deciding that she'd simply be better off killing her. That moment, being the most dramatic, was obviously when Augustus arrived.

The witch wasn't surprised, so its time to roll initiative. She and Augustus started to act simultaneously; for spellcasters, I require then that theres a reroll (d6, no modifiers, a tie means genuinely simultaneously), the witch went first and cast power word blind at Augustus.

Now, Augustus is a wise old soul, and I allowed him to modify his spellcasting choices a little; he cast timestop, create magical monsters to call two beholders into being and haste. Della started lifting up the portcullis she was trapped behind.

Next round, Witch goes first again. Neither Augustus nor the dwarf could see what she was doing, but I allowed Augustus to surmise that she had cast timestop.

The beholders had gone (yep, she used a wish in timestop to dispose of them), but nothing else was clear to Augustus. So he made some assumptions; he assumed that she'd have force fielded Della in (thats what he'd have done), then cast anti magic shell and prepared to beat the blinded Augustus do death with her staff. He was close to being right, she'd also raised up immunity. Thats what he'd have considered in her place; cripple your foe and beat the smeg out of him at your leisure.

So augustus came up with an excellent plan, he used his second timestop (no point holding back, this is kill or be killed stuff now, and if he's driven off then Della will probably be lost), and casts stone to flesh on the floor; his reasoning being that alhtough its icky, Della will be able to dig out underneath the forcefiend he has surmised is there. He cast invisibility, activated his robe that has anti magic shell.

Della finally got the portcullis lifted, and smashed straight into the force field. Clever Augustus.

Cab,

I'm enjoying the running session reports. It sounds like you an you're group are having a lot of fun. Keep posting!

The fight continued...

Augustus is blind and has burned a lot of spells, his goal is still to rescue Della.

The Witch needs to either kill her foes or get away.

The two mages each know that the other is covered with magical defenses; immunity and anti magic shell would be obvious contenders. Augustus isn't as good a mage as the witch, but he does have Della, the Dwarf, who can get out soon and level the playing field.

The Witch headed to the door, opened it, pointed inwards and yelled "KILL".

Augustus didn't know what he was facing, but he had to do something. Enclosed space, had to hope that he could kill whatever it was with an area of effect without dying himself, but he was blind... Pulled out a wand of fireballs and let rip.

Didn't hurt anyone very much (6d6, save for half) except for the witches pet displacer beast; it failed its safe, took full damage, and died.

Della continued digging.

Next round, Augustus goes first. He has fly permanenced, and reasoned that his safest place would be up by the ceiling. Anti-magiced, immunity... yeah, get out of melee range and wait for Della. Flew up.

The witch saw that the dwarf wouldn't be long. Now, even with his defensive spells up, on his own Augustus is a sitting duck. Yeah, anti magic shell is a pain in the ass, but there are ways of beating him to death; summon in some giants and have them pummel him to death with rocks, that would do. But she just doesn't have time, and she hasn't got memorised today any more spells to keep the dwarf in. Besides, she needs to alert the other Witches.

So, she casts another timestop, followed by two create magical monsters spells (summoning blast spores, which I treat as half hit dice, meaning that she fills the room and corridor with blast spores), casts haste, drops a delayed blast fireball, and then simply runs off.

The dwarf yells "AHH! BEHOLDERS".

Augustus is still blind, being buffeted by scaley things... They clearly aren't beholders, and they're clearly summoned. He casts dispel magic, falls painfully to the floor, dispelling about half of the blast spores but failing to deal with the delayed blast fireball (which he doesn't even know about for sure).

Next round, he casts a forcefield around himself, in a cone. I rolled some dice, did a sum, and it transpired that he had been lucky and not trapped any blast spores with him, but he HAD trapped the delayed blast fireball... Well, he just about survived that as it went off at the end of the round. Next round, as he's licking his wounds, the dwarf tossed her egg of wonder out under her forcefield, covered the gap with a towel, and let the giant snake that had appeared bite one of the blast spores... esplosions rocketed up and down the corridor outside as they set each other off

So, round one over. It'll be interesting what happens when the party manages to catch up with the three witches. Bear in mind that the witches are trapped; they can't leave, they can't cast teleport, dimension door or similar to get out.

This evening, I'll have to see whether the PCs can get back together. That won't be as easy as you'd think. Then of course I have to decide how much of his hand the Master is willing to lay down now. Should be a fun session.

Going to take a short while for things to settle down...

Now, the party did indeed encounter more meks on the other side of the door, and in a few short and tremendously bloody rounds they beat them. Pushing on, they made it through that level of the dungeon crucially, missing out on looking for the opal and to the wine taster room. I'm startled to say that they cracked that puzzle first time.

So, they made it to the inner sanctum, and now they're going to face the three hags. The hags have got nothing to gain from this fight, they only need and want to survive. The party reasoned with the obelisk (what came first, the obelisk asking "what is your name" and "what is your quest" or Monty Pythons Holy Grail? Was this part of Rahasia published before that film?), and went straight on through the temples.

It was in one of these temples where the party met the hags. Remember, the hags have been replaced with fitting foes for the PCs, namely extremely one of each high level mage, cleric and fighter.

The fight was brutal; of the party, Augustus (mage) went down in a hail of spell turned meteors, but not without first putting up plenty of summoned creatures. He survived, but barely (playing using -constitution score equalling death), the paladin and fighter (Ironsage and Della) also fell, and the NPC paladin they've picked up en route (Baik) died too. That left the cleric (Taron) and Clarissa the thief still standing. The hags tacticof walling PCs off and taking them down one at at time worked well, for a time.

Clarissa positioned herself for a backstab at the fighter, and Taron raised one of the fighters, who stood briefly, but that gave Taron long enough to raise Augustus and then activate the travel spell he had up to go gaseous.

Clarissa managed with her backstab, finishing off the fighter, Augustus finally got the better of their cleric... the mage cast her last timestop and simply ran off, later casting wish to recover the bodies of her friends, and another wish to raise the cleric, followed by heal, the cleric then casting raise dead fully on the fighter.

Nasty little fight, but that was only round one... Taron cast locate object on a strange holy symbol that the bad guys had on display, and the party were soon following...

The party now bad guys cornered in the final throne room; what ensued was lots of tactical creation and disintegration/dispelling of walls and barriers of various sorts, Ironsage eventually being cut off in the room with the bad guys. He got lucky, and got to activate his armour of ethereality before anyone could get him.

On the ethereal plane, he found that he was in the same kind of place, with the room set up more or less duplicated there.

As the tit-for-tat skirmish continued on the prime, the hag mage decided to try a similar trick, and made off for the ethereal (remember, they can't teleport, thats part of the curse, but they can travel in the same complex on the ethereal). And now Ironsage is face to face with that mage.

The fight was short, Ironsage won initiative and hacked the mage to pieces. The contingency she had didn't work (it was a spell called swaps, which would have swapped her location with that of the hag fighter, who was still on the prime). Ironsage continued investigating the statues, then while stuffing the mage into a bag of holding the hag cleric cast travel and soon joined him, with the fighter, on the prime.

It all now came down to speed; Ironsage is a lightly armoured (leathers) fighter and ran like the clappers, the hag fighter couldn't keep up, and ironsage managed to get away and used his armour to get back to the prime.

So... Good fight, round two over, and critically the PCs have taken out one of their foes. The fighter and cleric are still monstrously dangerous, and will presently be making a concerted attack on the PCs to try to take as many of them out with them as possible (they're going to go straight for Taron, the cleric), knowing that they have nothing else to lose really.

How things will pan out, I don't know... But this modified form of Rahasia has been great fun.