DF Whiterock Session 67: Wyverns and Devils

Date:

2019-10-04

Weather:

Warm, sunny

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 358 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 427 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 424 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 415 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High Elf Wizard, 431 points

Significant NPCs:

Soras, Centaur Leader

Grisby, Faerie Dragon

2 Wyverns

Aquiliya, Ring of Water Elemental Command

Erinyes

8 Lemures

We started outside, in the Far Garden, with the PCs battling a wyvern that just came out of a pond.  Polly shot the wyvern in the eye, and it crashed into the ground.  (It had a Nictitating Membrane, but not a thick enough one.)  The wyvern screamed in pain, sounding like a moose.  Zaber noticed something else flying off the top of a nearby hill.  Polly tried shooting the wounded wyvern again, but Garreth was in the way, and she accidentally shot him in the foot, crippling it.  Garreth had a Flight spell, so the crippled foot didn't matter very much, and he tried to chop it's neck off.  He slightly missed, hitting the torso instead, and made a lot more green blood come out of the wyvern.

Somehow, the heavily wounded wyvern had enough fight left in it to try stinging and biting Elias, but he blocked the stinger then dodged the teeth.  Polly shot the wyvern again, and it finally stopped moving.  But then the flying object Zaber had spotted came over the crest of the hill and turned out to be a second wyvern, in a steep attack dive torward the PCs.  Polly shot it in both eyes.

Seépravir cast Invisibility on Garreth, but it didn't really matter because the wyvern was blinded.  (Though it did keep people from seeing his crippled foot.)  The wyvern tried to swoop toward where it had last seen Polly, but missed by a bit, as Elias and Garreth waited to smack it if it came within range. The badly wounded second wyvern eventually passed out, and crash-landed near Polly, Garreth, and Elias.  They all managed to jump out of the way, and it crashed into its mate.

Elias healed Garreth's foot with Major Healing.  Garreth wandered over to the wyverns and chopped both heads off to make sure they stayed down.  Zaber announced that he wanted to search the pond, so Seépravir lent him the Ring of Water Breathing and cast Warmth on him.  (It wasn't really cold enough to strictly need Warmth, but it didn't hurt.)  Zaber swam around for a while, and didn't find anything interesting underwater.  He came back up, then worked to extract some poison from a wyvern stinger and bottle it.

Zaber then decided to fly up on top of the hill and look for a wyvern lair.  It was extremely windy up there for some reason, which forced him to make some DX rolls, but he didn't crash.  He found the wyverns' nest, which contained a scroll case, a box, a little dragon statue, a medallion, some coins, and a spyglass.  Zaber gathered all the loot to bring back to the others.  As he did this, the wind appeared to wake up the Ring of Water Breathing.  It telepathically introduced itself to Zaber as Aquiliya, a Ring of Water Elemental Command, and told him that it should be worn by an archmage, not a lowly thief.

The other PCs were worried why Zaber was taking so long, but he eventually flew back.  He returned the ring to Seépravir, and got his own telepathic introduction to Aquiliya.  The ring revealed that it could understand and read any language.  Seépravir wasn't that impressed, since she also has that spell.  Zaber also dumped out all the loot so the wizards could identify the magic stuff, which was two scrolls, a ring, and a wand.  They stored all the treasure for later analysis.

Seépravir cast Seek Magic, which revealed more magic a few miles to the south.  The group flew that way, until they eventually saw a crude wooden fort, basically a circular palisade with no roof.  There were various small animal corpses nailed to the outside of the palisade, and some nasty smoke coming from something burning inside.  Zaber heard someone talking inside the fort.   Seépravir turned everyone Invisible.  As they snuck closer, everyone could hear the talking, but only Seépravir had the ability to understand Infernal.  It was a leader complaining to her minions that she did all the killing and they just sat around, and if they didn't improve their killing and find the gate, they would all be dismissed and replacements would be summoned.

The group all snuck up to the fort.  As they got closer, they saw that the thing burning was a centaur corpse, and the occupants of the fort were a winged female devil (an erinyes) and 8 smaller lesser devils (lemures).  Seépravir cast Magic Resistance on Garreth and Polly.

Garreth activated Great Haste from the pearly spear, then threw the spear at the erinyes.  She noticed it coming and dodged it.  Polly fired three bodkins at the devil's skull, but she dodged them all.  Zaber flew around the side of the fort, setting up a backstab.  The erinyes yelled a command to the lemures to kill, then flew straight up.  Elias moved forward toward the palisade.  Seépravir dropped everyone's Invisibility except her own.  That cost Zaber a second to put on his Ring of Invisibility.

One of the lemures jumped up and tried to grab Elias, but he parried it easily.  Polly fired another volley of arrows at the leader's head.  She dodged the first, but the second was a critical hit for maximum damage.  That would be a fatal shot against most people, but either the devil was really tough or she wasn't susceptible to brain hits in the usual place.  Polly put the third arrow in her body, and rolled another crit, inflicting a death check, which the erinyes passed.

Garreth fast-drew a sai and threw it at the devil, who failed to dodge it.  She let him know telepathically that she would make him and the archer fight to the death after their friends were dead.  The erinyes tried using her long whip to grab Polly, who acrobatically dodged it.  The erinyes then readied her flaming bow.  Elias smashed one of the lemures with his blessed flail, which destroyed it utterly.  Since Elias came down into melee range, the other lemures swarmed toward him.  Once tried grabbing him, but he blocked critically, causing it to fall down.

Polly tried firing three more arrows at the erinyes, but she dodged all three, while mocking Polly's aim.  Zaber flew up behind the devil.  Garreth tried a kiai, twice, but she resisted it, twice.  She then cast a charm spell on Garreth.  But with Magic Resistance giving him +6, he managed to resist.  She fired a couple of flaming arrows at Garreth.  The first one hit, doing a bit of damage.  He parried the second, though it required using his Luck.

Elias fatally smashed another lemure with his flail.  Seépravir cast Magic Resistance on Elias.  Several surviving lemures tried to gang tackle Elias, but he dodged one, blocked one, and parried one.  Polly flew up to slam the erinyes.  She made contact, but didn't inflict any damage.  She followed up with a couple of kicks, which were dodged.  Zaber, who'd been sneaking up for a while, grabbed a wing from behind.  Unfortunately, this did not appear to affect the devil's flying ability.

Garreth flew down a bit into melee range and wrecked a lemure with his katana.  The erinyes cast a spelll on Polly and critically succeeded, but Polly used her Luck to make her reroll the crit, and then the Flight spell resisted being dispelled.  (The erinyes didn't know that Polly had a Ring of Slow Fall on, so dispelling Flight wouldn't have been that effective anyway.)  She then tried to grapple Polly instead, but Polly dodged.

Elias used Rapid Strike to end two more lemures.  Seépravir yelled tactical advice to Garreth.  A couple of lemures tried grabbing Elias and Garreth, but failed.  Polly pulled our her rapier and cut the erinyes for enough damage to inflict a second death check...and the erinyes rolled a 17.  Screaming "Nooooo!" she died and then crashed into the ground, as Zaber let go.  The surviving lemures dissipated as their summoner died.

Garreth collected his sai, then pulled the centaur corpse out of the fire.  Polly checked out the devil's bow, which was still on fire, and too hot to touch.  She asked Elias for a Resist Fire spell, and with it, was safely able to fire flaming arrows from the bow.  The devil had also dropped a long whip and an axe.  In the corner of the fort was a partial unicorn corpse.  Under it were some coins, some pearls, a gem, and a golden unicorn horn.  Garreth buried both the unicorn and the centaur near a beech tree outside the fort.

At that point, the group decided to return to Dawn-on-Stream.  Seépravir tried telling Soras to apologize to the nymph, but he was having none of it.  However, Soras and Grisby were happy to hear that the erinyes had been destroyed.

GM's Comments:

The wyverns made the mistake of having eyes and being SM +3 so their eyes were even easier for Polly to shoot out.  So that fight wasn't that challenging.

Seépravir had been wearing Aquiliya for over a year, and had grudgingly lent it to Zaber from time to time, so it was interesting that the ring finally revealed its intelligence and some of its other abilities.

The erinyes was a tough opponent, but its lemure lackeys were not, and were stuck at ground level where flying PCs could mostly ignore them.  Magic Resistance was huge against the erinyes, making her Charm ability mostly useless.  The fight should have lasted longer, but a 17 on a death check ended it early.