This session, again, did not have Iados present; it was quite a session though. We had it all in this one - demons, fires, windmills, stairs, falling through stairs, acid bomb demons...let's get to the recap!
The adventure started with the group heading to the windmill. From the top of it they saw a faint red glow; obviously nothing good, so they headed inside to investigate. Reed attempted to head up the stairs and check out the chattering noises they heard, but botched his stealth roll and drew the attention of the manes up the stairs. They began to pour down toward the group, throwing themselves onto the stairs and rolling down like barrels. They exploded when killed, throwing acid all over nearby enemies. The party avoided most of the damage here, though Erik was hit twice. Sterling briefly showed up to play Reed for a bit, but a storm caused him to lose internet and he was unable to return.
The party then met their first real test of the session: the acid-weakened stairs. Everyone but Reed fell through the stairs their first time up and took fall damage; Gwenn actually failed twice, and had to make 3 attempts to climb a rope Reed dropped to her from the upper level out of pity. The stairs conquered, the party continued upstairs to find a number of abyssal scavengers and a dimensional marauder snacking on corpses in front of a demongate - an unstable variety of portal which links to the Abyss, the realm of demons within the Elemental Chaos. The beasts immediately attacked the party. The abyssal scavengers surrounded Erik and took his health pretty low, but in the end the creatures were all defeated, leaving the party with the issue of how to seal the demongate.
They concluded they would need help from someone in Cairnmoor, and returned to "I" to seek information on who could potentially help them. "I" referred them to the Temple of Pelor. There, they found a priest who had knowledge of the appropriate ritual; he agreed to help but stated that having them pay the component cost would make things move along more quickly. The party squabbled about whether or not to pay, concerned they may be getting ripped off, but eventually agreed to pay. They met the priest and his attendants at the windmill, and the ritual began.
As they carried out the ritual, the final encounter of the night began. First, a quartet of abyssal scavengers came through and attacked. They killed the priest's attendants, and nearly bloodied the priest, but the party managed to handle them rather easily. What came through the portal next, however, was not so simple - 3 evistros, muscular humanoid demons with sharp claws and fangs, came through next. They were immediately marked by Erik, and began attacking him. This proved to be a very intense battle, as the evistros hit often and they hit hard, including a pair of crits. At one point during the battle Erik was left with a mere 1 health after a series of attacks from the evistros.
Somehow, the party managed to survive this encounter without anyone dying, and defeated the evistros - it was then that a large fire demon came through the portal, and began casting a devastating fire spell, one strong enough to likely kill the party. The priest managed to seal the portal at that moment, however, and the fire demon was sucked back into the Abyss, but not before he set the entire windmill on fire. The party had two avenues of escape: they could leap off of the windmill, taking considerable fall damage, or make Athletics checks to run out of the place in time. Aludiana and Gwenn chose to jump, Erik and Reed chose to run. Gwenn suffered serious injuries from her fall; Aludiana, on the other hand, managed a great landing and barely had a scratch on her. Erik, Reed, and the priest all managed to escape the windmill, and they watched as it burnt to the ground, sadly assuring a food shortage in Cairnmoor over the harsh winter.
With their mission complete, the party went and spoke to "I", who referred them to Halpern. They then discovered that Halpern was, in fact, "I": the peculiar dot placed over the signature "I" used was actually "H." tilted onto its side. He spoke with them on the details of their actions in the windmill. They were interrupted by Mayor Lundgrave, who asked Halpern about the events in the windmill - he denied any sort of demonic activity, and Erik did the same. His Bluff roll was rather terrible, unfortunately, and Erik was caught in his lie when the party later spoke with Lundgrave. They told him of what had happened in the windmill, and agreed to make dealing with the hobgoblin camp their latest priority. Lundgrave expressed concern that this demongate was another sign of the warlocks' designs on Cairnmoor. The session concluded with a bit of RPing of the party's downtime, Reed's womanizing in particular.
The plot continues to grow in complexity in Cairnmoor. Halpern and Lundgrave appear to both be in the business of keeping secrets, and the party may be heading toward a point at which they will have to decide which one they want to trust. We'll find out more next time; we won't be trying for a session on Saturday, so I'll see you guys at the usual time on Wednesday! Gwenn and Aludiana's backstories should be going up this week, so keep an eye out for them.
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