Shattered Star: The Return of Bjertha (...for a minute)

Game Date: 3/12/2016
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 50
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Bjertha Brawlbaker (Matt) - Dwarf Fighter
Fellany Mertien (Matt, subbing for Cliff) - Human Fighter
Gustav Greycastle (Graham) - Human Necromancer
Maruca (Daniel) - Elf Ranger/Cleric/Rogue
Slancio Brioso (Thomas) - Human Bard

The Session:
When we left off last week, we had just met Lord Xin.  As with most people we meet, we pissed him off and started a fight.  Xin vanished as five of his mechanical soldiers came to life and attacked.  These constructs were very tough.  They each had three attacks per round, had incredibly high attack rolls, and several inconvenient immunities.  While they mostly stuck to melee attacks, occasionally they would surprise us with a high level spell.

Early on we discovered they were immune to Magic Missile, so Gustav's undead missile spam strategy wouldn't work.  We also found they were immune to Slancio's Eldrich Blast and Firestorm spells.  Late in the battle we discovered they were vulnerable to Lightning, but Gustav was the only one who could take advantage of that weakness. 

Meruca took to the air and attacked at range, while Gustav used his zombie army to surround a soldier.  Slancio used Dimension Door to keep his distance.  We passed the Sihedron around as needed, mostly keeping them on the fighters.  One soldier tried to use Finger of Death on Meruca, but Slancio used counterspell to stop it. 

Bjertha went down to zero while the Sihedron was equipped.  This caused the Intellect Devourer - who had been inhabiting Bjertha for the last seven sessions - to pop out and start walking around.  This left Bjertha without a brain, in other words dead... but the Sihedron automatically casts True Resurrection once a day, which brought her back to life at full hit points.  Her mind was finally whole again (for what that's worth).

On its next turn, the Intellect Devourer tried to jump into Fellany, but failed.  Fellany responded by creaming the Devourer with one strike.  A good hour into the battle, we finally brought down one of the constructs, but the party was hurting badly.  Slancio tried to separate us from our foes using an Ice Wall spell, but they just broke through it. 

The final turning point was when one of the soldiers cast Meteor Swarm.  It hit each of us for 60-something fire damage and 60-something bludgeoning damage, bringing all of us down.  Gustav died instantly from massive damage, while the rest of began making death saves.  The soldiers kept attacking us while we were down, causing Bjertha and Fellany to quickly fail three death saves (it didn't help that they both rolled 1's on their saves).

Meruca had the Sihedron at this point, and the artifact's regeneration brought her back up on her next turn.  She teleported to Slancio and revived him, and the two worked together on an escape plan.  They popped around the room using Dimension Door, leaving the building and coming back in a couple of times in order to gather up all the bodies.  They noticed that upon leaving and reentering, the soldier constructs moved back into position and Xin reappeared on the throne.

Fearing that everything would start all over again, they got all the party members together and teleported back to Magnimaar.  We ended the session there, safely back in town.  Everyone but Slancio and Meruca are still dead, but we have the resources to fix that.  Unfortunately we left all of Gustav's undead back in Xin's palace, our poor Necromancer may have to start from scratch building an army.

XP: 1,270 each, bringing us up to 174,750.