The PCs meet with Lashonna at midnight, getting information about the whereabouts of Balakarde and being informed about the dracolich Dragotha. Lashonna urges them to seek his phylactery, and then provides scrying to one of her traitor agents who was seeking it. This reveals Darl Quethos & party on his ship heading to the island.
After some debate, the more bold PCs vote for "scry and die", and they succeed their teleport to jump his ship. The ship is currently in the middle of a severe storm, and it is midnight, thus vision is obscured to 15ft. However, 2 PCs have mindsight to help deal with this. They buff up, teleporting in under a circle of invisibility, among other buffs.
The ship includes several other high level enemies, besides Darl and his Hand of Myrkul. The PCs start with a surprise round, other than Darl. They roll well on initiative, and begin killing the orc pirate crew within view. Darl's turn comes up and he uses Blasphemy. The cleric avoids most of the effect with FoM. The Sorcerer protects himself with Wings of Cover, as well as the sader/warblade. The beguiler is not affected due to alignment. The swordsage does get tagged. The second round comes up with the swordsage getting disarmed of his precious transmuting living spiked chain. He also receives a FoM from the clerics planar bind, though is still dazed, while the cleric grants himself blindsight. The beguiler stops the nightmare with a halt. The rogue sneak attacks the sorcerer PC while spider climbing the mast, though is immune to his poison. The cleric puts Darl in a shadow conjured forcecage. Darl steps out of the cage succeeding both a will save and SR, while the SCM player laments the inferiority of shadow evocation vs. shadow conjuration, of which I reply, 1500gp component ignored
. He tries to Implode the sorcerer, as he is the closest target and doing quite a bit of area threat. Sorcerer wings of cover to block. The beguiler mass suggests the monks, a few orcs and the nightmare they're planning to blow up the ship and they should escape, they fail their will saves, and it seems reasonable considering what the sorcerer has been slinging, their turns are up next and they push off the life boats and jump ship. Next round swordsage takes revenge for being disarmed, burning his entire belt of battle, pursuing those who left with it. I could have had them toss the weapon in the ocean, but it would have just ended up being a waste of time sidequest, rather than any meaningful treasure destruction. The sorcerer punts Darl off the boat with a Melf's Unicorn Arrow, but he has airwalk. Most of the orc fodder is dead, the efreeti and Darl make some last ditch efforts to take down a PC and then Plane Shift out. The rogue attempts a scroll of Mirage Arcane to make the boat appear like it has split in half, but all will saves are succeeded. Glitterdust, Spider Climb, and the PCs take him out.
Ultimately, the storm heavily hampered the attack options of the enemies, and somewhat of an element of surprise didn't help. The most powerful of the enemies survived to regroup and can certainly make future plans.
With control of the ship, the SCM shadow evokes Submerge Ship, submarining below the worst parts of the storm and onward to the shallows of the island.
On the island, they move onward through the maze, discovering an area with half a dozen Ropers. Cakewalk.
As written, at the portal the party finds the remains of Darl's combat with the guardians. Since they got here 1st, I grabbed the Primorial Colossus and two Scouring constructs from MMV. They made their knowledge check to leave the Colossus alone for the time being, as it is passive. No problems in combat, but it is the rude introduction that most enemies forward have 300+ HPs.
Once inside the demiplane, the party parlays with the Wild Watchers and moves forward on their tests.
An important thing to note is that demiplanes can be largely a fuck you to Conjurers and Shadow Crafters such as the partys cleric. This particular demiplane, and perhaps others created via Genesis (non psionic), do not connect to the Astral or Shadow planes, only to the Material/Ethereal. Thus Conjuration Summoning & Teleportation fail, as well as Shadow Conjuration/Evocation, etc. DMs might want to remember that the next time they want to fuck over a conjurer wizard. In any case, the cleric still has his planar bind, and prays for new spells at the earliest opportunity.
The tank gets a rude awakening from the Night Twists multiple attacks, but they burn it down pretty easily otherwise.
Moving on, they face Krathanos the Titan. At this point the party is dwindling on resources, with the knowledge that they're still on the clock vs. Darl. The swordsage whiffs his quad damage and another powerful maneuver. Unfortunately for me, they also draw a swashbuckler card that immediately destroys his weapon. So, without his melee option, he AoEs the crap out of the party round to round with Meteor Swarms, Chain Lightning and such. Embarrassingly, he is bested by a Melf's Unicorn Arrow (no SR, low touch ac, excellent), and the Swordsage finally finishes him off after using his Belt of Battle to refresh his maneuvers.
Towards the next destination, they run into some Displacer Beast Pack Lords, no problem, just a resource drain.
Into the Vale of Thorns, the party flies over the brush and directly towards the cave of Harrowdroth, the Nightmare Beast. The party wins initiative as a whole, the Swordsage steps up first, using his fire immunity stance to disregard the steam vents and uses a leaping tiger claw strike to stun the beast. They kill the creature at the end of the 2nd round before it can even act.
The party rests again (tick tock), then flies towards the peak of the mountain on the quest for the Roc feather using Wind Walk. Again, since they beat Darl here, they find the Roc alive. The Phrenic Beguiler uses his Psi-Dominate to subvert the Roc, and they remove a feather. To be safe, and for their own amusement, they keep the live Roc in tow and make their way back to the Wild Watchers.
At this point Darl has arrived with several new Devils in tow. Using Locate Object in regards to the quest, he figures the PCs have beaten him to the punch, so he lies in wait to confront the party. His allies at this point are now
Cauchemere Nightmare AoW/MM
Cornugon Devil AoW/MM
Paelaryon FC2
Ghargatula BoVD
Malhazar Efreeti AoW
I had a list of various candidates I was willing to use, with the intent of there being a 1:1 face off, depending on what PCs could play. The PCs gave him plenty of time to recuperate, Wish/Miracle/Gate/GBP/PlanarAlly any of these new friends.
The Swordsage opens, 1-shotting the Cornugon into subconscious state, with his weapon then transmuting into silver+good. The Roc is commanded to snatch the Efreeti, which he does so with success, while the Beguiler queues up some Dark Bolt. Darl rides the Cuchemere, and opens with a quickend flame strike, and activating unholy aura with his hand of myrkul, this buff actually puts all the enemies saves just over the edge to make a lot of their future saves. The Ghargatula and Cornugan (regens awake) take a chunk out of the Roc. The SCM cleric falls back to his Air domain to unleash a Tornado with Control Winds. The enemies make their saves by the grace of unholy aura. The Paelyron moves out of the tornado and hits the Warblade/Sader with enervation for -4 levels. The Efreeti uses gaseous form to escape the clutches of the Roc.
The mistake, or leniency I made here was not having the Paelaryon already buffed with Greater Invis and perhaps Antilife Shell up, nor any Major Image trickery. At the same time, I didn't want this creature stealing the show. The SCM cleric has also had his eyes on GBPing this critter after the end of the chapter.
The next round the Swordsage puts the Cornugan under again, enough for the rest of the fight. The Roc circles around grabbing the Paelaryon this time. Darl starts his Implosion routine, PC makes the save. The SCM falls back to his Conjure Ice Beasts, while the Warblade/Sader goes toe to toe with the Ghargatula. The Efreeti puts down a wall of fire to block some LoS against the PCs and burn the Warblade. The Paelyron tries to Hold Monster against the Roc and fails, the Roc retaliates with power attack/grappling.
The Paelyron's main choices here were to simply pump damage with Meteor Swarm, or use Mind Fog & Hold Monster. Given the Roc is Collosal with an obvious huge hp pool, he opts for the save or suck, but fails. He's unable to simply Teleport out due to the nature of the demiplane!
The next round the Swordsage joins the Warblade in taking shots at the Ghargatula, but using his Heroic Surge to tumble away rather than stay in close quarters. Darl continues his Implosion routine, taking to the skies on his Cauchemere to avoid the ice beasts. The Efreeti plays cleanup on the ice beats with his flaming sword.
The PCs have pretty good control of the situation, but certainly the effects are still dangerous.
The next round the melee continue their attacks on the Ghargatula. The SCM Cleric uses necrotic skull bomb to no effect. The Phrenic Beguiler uses energy current in addition to his free action dark bolts setup. The Paelyron tries Mind Fog to no effect. Darl Continues Implosion, slaying the SCM Clerics planar bind. The Efreeti continues his attacks.
The next round the Ghargatula is subdued. The Paelyron finally resorts to a meteor swarm to try and kill the Roc, but the Roc finally kills him. Darl heals himself and the cauchemere, the cauchemere moves to the efreeti and they use etherealness to escape.
Of course, as written in AoW, he could use his Wish bullshit to bring back his allies to continue to fight, but we don't play that crap at our table. With his footsoldiers handled, he simply tries to save his own skin at this point. We ended for the night, so the PCs will make some decisions as whether to finish up with CDGing the subdued devils, or whether to pursue Darl with any sort of expediency. It was a bit slow and complex, but this ended up being the epic fight they deserved at the end of the chapter. However, such complexity also highlights why we're doing E6 next.
After writing that bit and reviewing some things, I also realize I completely missed the fact that the Paeliryon had Quicken and Empower SLA feats. I hate when thats not included in the SLA block as metamagic'd version entries, and is only in the feat section. Still unlikely to have changed the outcome, the chance of Hold wasn't very high, and it had plenty of hp to soak damage.