Session 17

The Stained Glass Guardian stood nearly 10 feet tall and was made of many shards of the broken glass. Dull light emanated from the being, and the small braziers by each coffin remained burning, but with the extinguishing of the four main sconces, the crypt was mostly plunged into darkness. The glass shards scraped against each to create a discordant keening sound, and the battle began.

Harlan didn’t hesitate, rushing forward to smash his morningstar into the glass body of the Guardian. The effect was solid: the glass cracked and shattered under the paladin’s effort, and the Guardian stumbled backwards. However, one of the glass shards did not fall to the ground, and instead began floating away from the creature, spinning in place. Irene launched a low-level eldritch blast, but even on the Guardian’s defenseless body the Essence was dissipated and absorbed by the shards. Magic did not seem ineffective, per se, but to actually deal damage the heroes would need to put more effort and Essence into the attacks. Lorien had a bad showing during the fight, missing nearly every attack with his rifle and failing to infuse much support into his allies. Even so, he did not do worse than Vireya who, upon seeing Irene’s failure, ran to join Harlan at the front lines and slashed across the glass with her scythe. The result was a brutally high-pitched screech that injured and disoriented both her and Harlan and allowed the Guardian to recover itself and counterattack.

As Vireya and Harlan dealt with the Guardian, Irene and Lorien heard scraping noises coming from the back coffins. They prepared themselves and were unsurprised to see a skeleton lifting itself out of each Honor Guard coffin. Their preparation was for naught, though, as Irene whiffed another eldritch blast that knocked off one of the braziers and Lorien’s charged Dispositor shot glanced off a nearby wall to spray blue flames over the floor. Engaged in melee, the two managed to dispatch their foes without too much further trouble. Harlan and Vireya continued to break pieces of the Guardian off, which spun slowly and ominously around it. Lorien attempted to break the shards with a thunderous blast, but served only to create a new one and send the existing ones scattering around the edge of the room.

As the Guardian began breaking into smaller and more jagged pieces, it unleashed the shards in a devastating attack. Shards flew at everybody, embedding themselves and dealing sharp damage to everyone hit. Most managed to either dodge, block, or hide from the shards, but Vireya took a particularly nasty piece of glass to the shoulder, soaking her dress with blood. In revenge, she cast a Cloud of Daggers on the Guardian, which (while dealing damage) unleashed a terrible sound worse than what she created with her scythe. Harlan was completely stunned by the horrible screeching, and the ruined Guardian took the chance to swing wildly with its jagged sword. However, the damage to its body was too great, and its legs broke under the effort. The materials infused into Harlan’s armor reinforced him against the failed blow and gave him the chance to retaliate. The rest of the group failed to finish off the Guardian (and Vireya hid in fear of another glass shard volley), but Harlan’s solid and divinely-ordained swing broke the Guardian into tiny, inanimate shards of colored material. The fight was won.

The coffin was filled almost entirely with ash. Harlan, the closest, began rooting through the ash in hopes of finding some burial artifacts. He found several: a pair of gloves with arcane runes glowing on the palms, a scroll of Scorching Ray, and the broken hilt of a glowing orange sword. The hilt was warm and pulsing with Essence, and felt connected to the inscription on the coffin. It was also strangely heavy, but Harlan felt it was worth taking and might be important.

Vireya commented behind Harlan, asking if he’d found anything valuable. When he turned, however, Vireya was on the other side of the chamber, still taking shelter behind a pillar. The woman next to him was instead Aleksandra! She had remained invisible with the group during the fight with the Stained Glass Guardian, and was cheerfully gazing over Harlan’s shoulder at the loot while posing somewhat proactively. Harlan scooped the artifacts into his bag and took a defensive stance. When pressed, Aleksandra explained that she can do all kinds of impressions, and demonstrated her prowess by cycling through the voices of all four members of YFPB (though far more often of the women). She instantly became Vireya’s hated nemesis, but after such a bloody battle the tiefling was too tired to start a fight with someone who hadn’t technically done anything to them yet. Instead, she picked at the shard of glass embedded in her shoulder. Aleksandra sauntered over and offered to heal the woman, even going so far as to trail her fingers up Vireya’s arm. Vireya adamantly refused and Irene, ever vigilant, watched for signs of thievery.

Irene saw nothing, fortunately, and Aleksandra sighed in mock defeat. She told the group that she had been searching for similar ruins to ones she had already looted in hopes of finding some special gemstones. When the group rebuffed her subtle intimations, she sighed again. She wandered to the closed stone door and wondered aloud how to open it. It was then that she spotted the small brazier Irene had knocked over during the fight. She asked if anyone had a light and, despite Irene and Vireya’s protestations, Harlan assisted Aleksandra in fixing the brazier and lighting it with a torch. She seemed not to be lying, and indeed the stone wall that had trapped the group inside rolled back as the final fire blazed brightly. Aleksandra squeezed Harlan’s butt as she danced towards the entrance, and Harlan took a quick glance through his bags to see if anything was missing (it was not). Wholly distrustful, Irene blocked the exit with her spear. Aleksandra raised an eyebrow and attempted to shimmy past. When Irene tried to be more forceful, she found her footing incomplete as Aleksandra all too easily claimed control of her spear and swapped positions with her.

The thief chuckled as she made her escape, and with an ornery glance backward she twirled several red gems between her fingers: the rubies! YFPB gave chase, but as they emerged from the dark of the tunnel into the blinding light of the valley they found themselves closed in by the same stone golems as before. Aleksandra perched, smug, on top of the middle golem. She gave a small wave that gave the group a good view of the grappling device on her arm band, and leapt up the cliffside. Vireya had had enough, and burned her remaining Misty Steps to close the distance. However, she only managed to get within an arm’s reach before Aleksandra’s super dexterity proved itself as she twisted away. Irene, again channeling energies beyond her, pulled not just herself but also Harlan and Lorien through a Dimensional Door to land in a pile on both Aleksandra and Vireya. After much grumbling and complaining the group managed to disentangle itself, but the thief was nowhere to be seen. Aleksandra had escaped.

The group took the time to rest and discuss their next move. They decided that their foremost action was to be more paranoid. They needed to be more distrustful of every stranger they meet going forward in order to protect themselves and their belongings. Beyond that, though, not much had changed since they’d arrived. The sword hilt was mostly worthless (though clearly magical) until they got someone to fix it, but Irene did claim the Glow Gloves. The group marched onwards in the direction they had last seen Aleksandra. Eventually, along a curving path through some trees, the group heard the sounds of many armored feet approaching. They were reminded that they continued to travel through enemy-occupied territory, and quickly hid behind a nearby boulder by a pond. Eventually, a squad of heavily armored soldiers marched right where they had been standing. Irene recognized the group as a standard Torvani incursion squad, made up of 8 armored foot soldiers (usually spearmen) flanking 2 anti-magic specialists who themselves guarded a powerful captain. The captain in this case was wielding a sword but was identifiable by their dark red accessories.

The group passed the hidden heroes quickly, but before they could breathe easily one of the Spellrenders stopped. The squad continued unhindered, seemingly unaware that one of their members had remained behind. The red-robed anti-mage seemed to look around and smell the air before crouching at the exact part of the forest Harlan had led the group. As the Spellrender slowly inched forward, something in Harlan’s bag began to heat up. The warmth quickly became uncomfortable, but gritting his teeth against the pain Harlan waited with bated breath like the rest of his teammates. Just as quickly as it started, the heat ended. The Spellrender turned away and sprinted to catch up with the soldiers. Everyone breathed out, more nervous than they’d realized. The party returned to the main path and Harlan opened his bag to find the offending object. It turned out to be the Message Stone that Captain Flax had given them weeks ago. It was no longer painfully hot, but still oozed heat.

Now that they thought about it, Flax had said he would contact the group once they passed into enemy territory; yet they’d been in Western Serulea for more than two weeks without any further message. Was the heat an attempted message at the worst time, or was it some sort of magical seeking that the Spellrender was using? In any case, the group decided that they needed to try to send a message in the opposite direction. They tried many ideas: speaking to it aloud, touching the middle gem (which dissipated the remaining heat all at once), pushing Essence into the stone, shaking it, and more. Vireya, of course, wanted to shoot the artifact, and from there the brainstorming devolved as the group continued their journey west.