Way of the Wicked 19 - The 9th Knot vs Eirmanthus

So last session the PCs went after the ancient copper dragon Eirmanthus. The dragon called on a number of reinforcements and as the PCs were slowly losing they decided to retreat and regroup.

With only 4 players present last night another frontal assault was out of the question so they decided to remove some of Eirmanthus's girlfriends. The first to fall was the tree lady. She put up a good fight and inflicted some damage before dying but the PCs retreated before reinforcements could arrive.

The second strike was against the "goddess". Scry and fry lived up to its name and because I rolled really low for her initiative, she didn't even get to act before they killed her.

Unable to Scry the dragon they simply teleported straight into his lair. The dragon was alone but immediately cast Anti-Magic field and began to tear into the 9th Knot. Now barely able to hurt the dragon, the dragon was still able to hurt them. So again they retreated as reinforcements were arriving, but this time without killing their target.

The new plan was for the wizard to try to counterspell Anti-magic Field. A few days later they teleported back only to find that the Dragon was ready with some reinforcements already in place. An epic battle began. One of the opening moves was for one of the Oread guards to Dimensional Anchor the wizard removing the party's avenue of escape. The wizard did his best to lock down the dragon's spellcasting. After two rounds of being counter spelled the dragon gave up and spent the rest of his time trying to kill Gorbatch the Bloodrager.

The Orca girlfriend dropped a few nasty spells before moving into melee with her electrified shortspear. The Oread guards dropped some AE spells on the PCs while the PC cleric tried to kill them off. The Oread guard captain had no trouble hitting the cleric but inflicted laughable damage. If I had noticed that pregame, I probably would have buffed him which likely would have led to a TPK situation so its good I didn't.

The Dragon and the Bloodrager continued to trade blows (the halfling vampire fighter was in there too and while the dragon was unable to hit him, he was unable to hit the dragon) and eventually both found themselves near death's door. Eirmanthus' Orca girlfriend teleported beside Eirmanthus while the party cleric was tyring to Hela himself after many would from Orca and the guard captain. The wizard executed a well timed counter spell preventing the Heal spell from going off giving Gorbatch the bloodrager time to finish the dragon off. Orca was enraged with the slaying of her lover and she quickly slew Gorbatch. At this point the remaining PCs focus fired Orca who was already quite injured and she too was slain. Finishing off what little remained of the Oread guards was not difficult and the battle was won.

The party immediately began searching for the dragon's treasure. On the library level a strange visitor was met but he didn't seem hostile so the PCs left him alone. On the main floor of the the dragon's dome was an immense magical chess board. The inscription nearby seemed important and the PCs managed to figure out the correct combination of moves to open the portal to the dragons pocket dimension that held his horde.

I listed off all of the dragon's treasures including another piece of the broken artifact Hellbrand. At the end of the list I described a crystal  case that held a floating cube. Sergeant, the vampire halfling fighter, went over to take a closer look and as soon as he touched the case, the skull spun alive and the eyes started glow.

Skull: Free Me! Free me and I shall grant you the secret of immortality.
Sergeant: Cool! I break the case with my adamantine mace.
DM (me): Roll for Initiative.
Gorbatch's ghost: Uh guys, I think you just freed a Demi-Lich.

Still injured and with depleted resources from the battle with the dragon, the wizard quickly threw up an Anti-magic shell which he figured should protect him from most of the Demi-lich's powers. The vampire was relatively safe by virtue of him already being sort of dead which left the poor cleric who quickly had his soul wrenched from his body. The wizard closed the portal to escape the pocket dimension with the  Anti-magic shell and bargained with the Demi-lich. His freedom for the clerics soul.

After thinking about it, the demi-lich dropped the soul gem and fled out into the world. He'll be back.

We closed the session with a visit from Dessiter the Pact Devil. He hinted that there is a loophole in the contract with Thorn and that he would help the PCs if they did something for his master - kill Brigit of the Brijidine.

Next session: Infiltration of the Adarium!