For our final mission, we must steal the Book of Vile Darkness from an efreeti called Vrakir. What, no killing gods? I was expecting that after all that ramp up. All our upgrades and the rumor mill did exactly nothing, so we flew up north to the Brimstone Hold, a fortress built on the side of an active volcano. The area was patrolled by a red dragon, so we waited until it went away to possibly sleep. This coincided with the arrival of a merchant caravan. I stashed the guys in my Bag, and flew in invisibly. Not even the truesighted devil guards spotted me, as I zoomed in through a giant efreeti statue's mouth spitting lava into the port.
Right up front, there were some guards, including a Beholder, but I threw some coins to distract them, and sneaked in through a door. I found myself face to face with Nebukath, our informant: an antropomorphic fox. I managed to convince him of my good intentions, then sneaked on through a secret corridor into the guest room. There was just one more corridor, which opened into both Jarazoun's office[1] and Vrakir's quarters, which supposedly held the book. I flew through the corridor to avoid any traps, but upon opening the door to Vrakir's quarters, efreeti statues animated. Sigh. I really did try to finish this in the leftover time after the previous mission. Guess not.
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After a couple months hiatus, we finally reconvened in force, starting just at the moment when I opened the door. I immediately went in and locked the door, shutting the animated statues out. As I pulled the guys out of my Bag, we noticed the Book on a lectern. Thaldohr went to grab it, but it was a mimic. A rather short lived one.
The golems shortly broke down the door, and we only managed to destroy one before the guards from the front door came to see what the ruckus was about. The Beholder quickly disabled several of us, by frightening Thaldohr for several turns, putting Grog to sleep, and generally mucking us up with his no magic zone field of vision. It even spinned up the quantum generator in its body, and fired its Death Ray at a weakened Daramin, but Silver Devil jumped in front of the attack
We were having difficulties breaking through, what with half the party down, but Daramin made an exit through the wall, allowing them to attack the Beholder directly. Then Silver Devil threw blinding powder into its great eye. With magic back online, we quickly dealt with the monsters, including me critting the remaining golem for 91 damage.
Once the battle was over and no more reinforcements were incoming, we looked through the room and found nothing... except the sinister efreeti face sculpted on the wall, with a giant gemstone in its forehead. I tried to pry it out with crowbar and dagger, but got nowhere, so I touched it. I tanked the resulting Disintegrate spell with my face, barely going down to half health. Touching the gemstone opened a portal into a pocket dimension, and the book was there. Thaldohr was once again eager to grab it, but reading it only made his alignment shift to the better - from Chaotic Evil to Neutral Evil.
Finally, we ransacked Jarazoun's room but only found a magic lire, and a giant bed, on which I wrote with faeces: Yo momma so ugly, her blowjob counts as anal. This is not something that will go into Silver Devil's heroic epic about our adventures, that's for sure.
We were kind of done with the scenario but we had more time in the game store, so we flew up - once again invisible and in the Bag - to the red dragon's lair. I disembarked the guys under the cover of a Silence spell, and took aim at the lava pool where the monster was taking a relaxing bath.
One sneak attack later...
We went at it with everything, but pure damage was not enough to take it down. Every movement splashing lava, the dragon flew around, breathed fire, took cover under choking smoke, and slashed us with great claws. However, all the while, Daramin worked on using up its legendary resistance. Once done, with the mage just one step away from death, a Hold Monster spell finally got through. This sounded the death knell for the dragon, even with the game store closing. We math'd out the dragon kill, and heard the words any adventuring party wants to hear: "You find so much treasure, you fill up your Bag of Holding, in order to take and sell, to buy more Bags of Holding, to fit everything in."
The End.
[1] The efreeti second-in-command.
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