Astvanor Session 150 (9/6)

[cinaed]

Four years and 150 sessions have gotten us to level 13! Looking forward to seeing where the final arc goes in this campaign.

Session 150: Day 19 of Saedan (9/6)

The golem is thirty feet tall, its chest-plate at the platform level the Hooligans are standing on, leaving its arms free to punch anyone nearby.

Galowen eyes the spider robot and the golem before him, weighing his options before he lashes out with his sword at the spider. The first one glances off its carapace before the second one dents the spider.

It feels as though the earth drops out from under Diana as her spider robot drops to a crouch and then punts her off of its back. She slams onto the ground nearby, her breath knocked out of her.

The golem swings both fists. Both slam forcefully into Hava. Hava gauges everyone’s burned and bruised state and casts Mass Cure Wounds before she moves away from the golem.

Yolov glances at Galowen and asks if he minds being moved a little. Galowen looks at how he’s flanked by the golem and the other spider robot and deadpans that he’s fine with being somewhere else. He and Yolov disappear in a roar of thunder that makes everything in the room rattle and injures both of the constructs before he and Galowen reappear twenty feet behind the spider robot.

Diana stands up, wincing, before she unleashes an acid breath on the robot and the golem.

Tally stares at Az and pulls back her hand. He sees a ball of fire glowing in the center of her palm as she throws fire at him. The first bolt whizzes past him as he realizes he’s the focus of Scorching Ray. Seven of these bolts strike him, burning flames scorching his clothing and burning across his skin, leaving a wake of searing pain. Despite this he manages to hold concentration on his spell.

Tally bares her teeth at him and promises that she’s going to make him wish that he were metal.

Az tells her that she won’t if he buries her under this building first.

She tells him to try.

The spider robot turns and approaches Galowen and Yolov. Its super heated mouth bites into Galowen’s arm as one of the legs kicks him hard in the chest even as Az sends three Eldritch blasts towards Tally. Two miss but one blasts into her.

She hisses at him almost like an animal, locked in a crazed fury.

Galowen looks at the robot that just attacked him and the golem before he casts Ice Storm on them both. Everyone watches hailstones pummel them and melt, turning part of the platform into icy terrain.

The other robot scuttles closer to Hava and Diana before fire unleashes from its many eyes and burns them both. The golem looks between Galowen and Az before it swings at Galowen again and punches him twice in the face.

Hava rushes away from the spider, her foot-wraps from Elidyr allowing her to move easily over the ice, and strikes it with her Spiritual Weapon. Then she casts Aura of Life, both her twilight and divine aura falling over the battlefield.

Yolov casts Shatter on both the closest robot and the golem. One almost manages to dodge but Galowen casts a spell that makes it shudder and take the full damage. One of the spider cracks and its metal splinters, sending fire and shrapnel into Galowen and Yolov as it explodes.

Diana attempts to hit the robot attacking her, but both attacks miss. She lashes out with her back hand dagger and this time lands a blow. The spider seems to be on its last legs.

Tally stares at Az again. He feels the rings on his hands begin to burn him. He tries to take them off, but he fumbles with them as they start burning his sensitive skin. He curses and asks what’s wrong with her even as he clings to concentration on his spell.

She repeats his words back to him mockingly, before she says that she tried for years to get into this artificer track here. She was actually good, she wanted to see what she could make metal and technology from, how far they could push boundaries. She wanted to show them what she could do, the things she could design and build, but that crusty old man refused her and told her that she was too unregulated and too averse to ethics and morality.

Az tells her that he disagrees with her, and she tells him that once she burns his fingers off his hands, she’ll give him ones that will actually work. He glares and throws some more eldritch blasts at her. Two of them strike her.

She grits her teeth and growls again. She says she knew he would wash out too, he should be joining her. When he calls her out about separating families, she retorts they’re all still working together. He tells her Togsworth was right about her.

Galowen lashes out with his sword at the golem. Both strikes hit, pulsing with radiant power. On the second blow, parts of the golem begin smoking and sparking.

The remaining spider robot lashes out twice at Diana. It bites her with its fiery mouth and then punches her in the chest. The golem lashes out at Galowen again. The first strike misses, and the second one hits Az. He is barely on his feet and still clings to his spell.

Hava moves forward, casting Healing Word on Az before she sends her own Eldritch Blasts towards the golem. All three hit the golem, and it looks badly damaged but not quite down. Pieces of it fall off from the impacts.

Yolov uses his spell scroll of Wither and Bloom to heal Az and do some thunder damage to the golem, which is barely clinging to life.

Diana lashes out twice with her shortsword and a third time with her backhand attack. She stabs into it and strains her muscles to rend it apart with her dagger, cutting wires. Steam pours out of it as it explodes. Injured by the fire and shrapnel, she races over to the others and asks if they know these things explode.

Galowen tells her they do, gesturing at himself.

Tally reignites the Heat Metal, burning Az’s fingers again, before she knocks him down with another series of Scorching Rays. He manages to get upright, barely managing to stay conscious as most of them miss him, but still clings stubbornly to the spell.

He sends three more Eldritch Blasts at her, but all three miss.

Galowen eyes the golem, who is sparking and smoking. He strikes it both times with his longsword, again flashing radiant light as he lands the blows. He drives his sword into the center of it as it rears back and shrieks with the grinding sound of metal even as he shatters the glass of its head, stamping out the glow from its lantern-like face.

It explodes, shrapnel going everywhere. A piece of its carapace whips between Galowen and Yolov and embeds itself in the wall so thoroughly it might never be able to be removed.

Az and Diana are knocked unconscious by the blast.

Tally blinks, freed from the Compelled Duel. She says she’s been working on this for so long, wars fought with machinery instead of people. No one will die in a war again. She slaps a button and they hear the sound of cogs turning against one another and the sound of wood scraping as from the floor the wood begins to creak open. The metal twists itself until three large cannons emerge.

She shakes out her hand and says she can’t wait to kill all these people as she goes back to the array.

Hava casts Mass Healing Word on the group, bringing Az and Diana back to consciousness. She studies the three cannons and decides to focus on the biggest threat. She sends three Eldritch Blasts towards Tally, who casts Shield to block all of them.

Yolov looks at her and raises his hand and casts Chain Lightning. Lightning strikes Tally, turning her almost skeletal as three lightning bolts arches off of her and into the three cannons, causing massive damage to all four targets.

Tally asks if he can teach her how to do that and he flatly says no and points out that all of this isn’t her work, it’s Sasha and Elathias’ work. This infuriates her. She says that she had done all the work beforehand, she just couldn’t make them move until Elathias gave her the technology.

When Yolov points out that just means it’s people’s souls doing the actual work, she hisses at him and has one of her cannons strike Az unconscious again.

Diana summons Adrin beside Tally, who shrieks in surprise as Adrin attacks her with her fiery breath. Tally complains that it burns and Diana says that it should before she watches in horror as Tally points one of the cannons at Adrin and fires.

The blow knocks Adrin sideways.

Tally taps her chin and debates who to attack before she tries to cast Fireball and catch everyone. When Yolov slaps the spell away with a Counterspell, she curses at him and tells him that she is going to turn him into a cog.

He just stares stonily at her as Hava’s aura brings Az back to consciousness.

Tally glares at him as he struggles upright and attempts to cast Banishment on her. He swears in Gnomish and she tells him back in Gnomish to watch his mouth as the spell fails and he teleports away from her. He starts to panic, unaware that by teleporting to the lower level he’s safe from the cannons.

Galowen steps to the edge and jumps to get across to Tally’s platform. He lashes out at her, plowing through her spectral Shield as he lands both strikes. One of them sears the air with radiant energy crackling along the blade.

She howls in rage and pain as it cuts into her side. She spits out blood as she grits her teeth and points one of the cannons at Diana and Yolov. Fire blasts them both.

Hava casts Mass Healing Word before she casts Toll the Dead on Tally. A bell tolls above Tally as she throws her hands over her ears and starts to shriek until it turns into a cackle as she exclaims at the sound. She tells Hava she’s good and Hava thanks her before brightly telling her that she’s trying to kill her.

The middle cannon fires at Hava.

Yolov casts Psychic Lance on Tally, which hurts her but doesn’t manage to disabled her. He backs out of range of the closest cannon as Adrin also breathes fire on Tally.

Diana backs away from the cannon and attacks with her crossbow but it bounces off Tally’s Shield.

Again Tally tries to cast Fireball and Yolov Counterspells it again. She growls at him and tells him that she is looking to the future thanks to Elathias. Yolov tells her that Elathias is stuck in the past, he can’t get over a woman, and she admits she never listened to his speeches, she just gave him the machines he asked for.

Then she holds down a switch. Alarms start going off and a voice announces that the self-destruct will occur in six seconds.

Az looks up at her and casts Eldritch Blast. Two of them miss but the third one knocks her backwards and away from the machine. The machine clicks back to neutral but the alarms are still going on and she looks ready to bolt back and switch it back on.

Galowen strides towards her and raises his sword aloft. He swings down with all his strength. His sword slices her into two neat pieces.

All that’s left now is the platform and the machinery that connects to every single person who has used Sons of Kane technology to better their lives, to make a difference, to improve a situation they were in, or because they had no other option.

Az has the communication bracelet with Senator Togworth, who told him to use it once they had access to the array and he would tell them how to break it down and stop it. As he drags himself to the array, Az pulls the bracelet to his mouth and says in a smoke-choked voice, “We took her down. I’m at the array. What do we do?”

“You sound awful,” Senator Togworth says before he launches into complicated technobabble. However, Togworth is a very good teacher, and most importantly, while Az has never been a good artificing student, he was always someone under pressure who could make quick decisions and snap judgements.

Even in this fight, he stopped Tally from using the cannons earlier than she would have, giving his friends a chance to take out the spider robots and golem. During the fight with Iceclaw, he turned into Calia to get information from him.

Now there is a moment where Togworth tells him to pull particular wires connected to the self-destruct sequence. Az realizes something is wrong. The wire is connected to the handle she pulled. There is a cord next to it that goes deep into the machine and he pulls that cord instead.

The machine powers down fully into silence and a wash of relief rolls over him.

Az sighs and says, “We’re good.”

Galowen asks if he’s good and Az says he’s good but he needs to sit down. Then he corrects himself. They need to get to the Senate Hall as soon as possible.