Dragon's Demand: Mind Over Matter

Game Date: 5/17/2014
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Dragon's Demand, Session 13
System: Pathfinder
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Halfbeard (Cliff) - Dwarf Ranger
Lilith (James) - Tiefling Paladin
Raz Furian (Matt) - Human Sorcerer
Tanith Tularn (Thomas) - Human Cleric
Vires (Daniel) - Human Alchemist

The Session:

When we left off last session, we were underneath a monastery, in a room partly full of water.  Vires had just had a little exploratory swim.  As he attempted to climb out of the pool, a shark-shaped mass of water followed him to shore.  Two water elementals burst from the surface and attacked the party.  They had the ability to form vortexes, one of which sucked up Tanith and Halfbeard.  They were spun around in a vicious whirlwind, eventually bringing Tanith down to one hit point.  But we managed to kill the elementals, and got Tanith healed up.

It took a few minutes to negotiate all the pools of water in order to reach the tunnel on the other side of the room.  We made our way through a couple of harmless rooms full of statues (which didn't attack us for a change), and found a secret door.  A hallway led to a large chamber containing two large liquid-filled globes, along with the remains of a third.  There were two cabinets in the room.  The one on our end was full of satin cushions.  A note on the door read, "Herein lies safety, but know that to rely on such crutches is to fall from the path."  The cushions did not detect as magical, and we weren't sure of the purpose at first.

Lilith made her way to the opposite side of the room, to examine the other cabinet.  Meanwhile, some of the party members felt odd compulsions.  Halfbeard was overcome with the desire to approach the center globe, and attacked it until it shattered.  This released a flying tentacled Brain Ooze, which attacked the party.  Vires and Maffei were also soon dominated, and Tanith was dazed, staggered, and knocked out.

Meanwhile, Lilith opened the other cabinet.  This one's note said, "Return here what is no longer needed."  This cabinet also contained cushions, but sitting on these cushions were some pearls.  We theorized that these pearls were used to cross the room without getting dominated.  We attempted to get these pearls to some of the dominated party members.  At one point during the battle, the brain hit Raz with an mind-draining power, reducing her intelligence to 5.

Whenever a party member was forced to attack a friend, they got to make a will save to end the domination.  As we gradually regained control of the party, we gained the upper hand.  Halfbeard was particularly valuable, rolling multiple crits and giving chase when the brain finally tried to flee.  The brain flew down the hallway, too fast for us to keep up, and it looked like it was going to get away.  Luckily Halfbeard managed to finish it off with a long range shot.  After the fight, we took the far exit and explored the next tunnel.

We came to a dead end, but found another secret passage.  We passed through what looked like a training room. The tunnels finally looped around and we found ourselves on familiar ground.  We went back to some doors we'd passed up earlier, and wound up in a large room that radiated a feeling of serenity.  The corners of the room had octagonal alcoves with pillars in them, and most of the middle of the room was taken up by a shallow pool of water.  There were two Grioths in the room.

As soon as we attacked, one of the Grioths fled down a small carved tunnel.  We killed the other one pretty quickly.  Then we pursued the fleeing Grioth, but after following the tunnel for several hundred feet, we decided to go back.  The water seemed to radiate transmutation magic.  Lilith drank a little but nothing happened.  We headed back out the way we came, out of the basement and up some stairs.

In a book-filled room we encountered the last of Aeteperax's four lieutenants, a very large Grioth.  He attacked as soon as Lilith reached the top of the stairs.  It was difficult for all of us to get into the room, because the Grioth had reach and could make several opportunity attacks in a round.  He did massive amounts of damage, so getting to the top of the stairs to join the battle meant nearly dying.  He nearly killed Tanith (it was a bad day for Tanith), who had to redeem some campaign tokens to stay alive.  He lived, but was knocked down the stairs and out of the battle. 

All this danger convinced us to use our most powerful attacks.  Vires delivered the killing blow, and we tended to our wounds.  We ended the session there.

Reminder:
No game next week.  Next game should be on 5/31.