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The King Needs Some Better Bodyguards

Last week, most of the party used their Stones of Recall to teleport back to Undermountain to aid in the war against the devils. Azoreas, having tasted the forbidden fruit of splitting the party and found it to his liking, used his own Word of Recall to jump back to Gomer's shop so he could stock up on basic gear like potions. Meanwhile, the Elder Sage led his cultist army through a Sanctum Gate to reach Undermountain through a different path.

When the party arrived in Undermountain, they were immediately greeted by a representative of the Order of Myriad Truth who had been waiting for them to arrive. He told them that King Garrun Ironforger was trapped in his palace, which as under siege by devils. The party rushed there to save him, meeting up with Azoreas along the way. The path to the king was blocked by several tunnels collapsed by the devils, but the party's penchant for wanton destruction meant that the tons of debris posed no significant obstacle. They had even less difficulty with a small squad of bearded devils that they encountered on the way, and were able to massacre them in a single round, barely even slowing their progress. Before long, they arrived at the outer gates of the palace.

The party found that the gates were locked, and after deducing that the devils were almost certainly on the other side, they decided that the correct course of action was to knock on the gates. Unsurprisingly, this immediately resulted in an attack from a small squad of devils, and equally unsurprisingly, all of the devils were killed immediately. They knocked again. A single devil appeared at a much greater distance to scout out the party and report back, but they killed it instantly. They knocked again. After a brief pause, they decided the devils might attack in force, and they set up a defensive position based around Aedan's antimagic wall.

As expected, a horde of bearded devils appeared, led by three more powerful devils. The party remained disciplined and stayed behind their wall, with only Craggles leaping through it briefly to butcher his fellow bearers of beards. The rest of the party focused all of their attacks on a single one of the greater devils, killing it instantly. When they turned their attention to the commander, they were unable to kill it, but they scared it into trying to escape - which failed, thanks to Aedan's dimension lock. On the verge of death, it surrendered, and the battle ended, though the third greater devil escaped. The party commanded the greater devil to tell its allies to surrender, and it did as they commanded. Although all of the other devils teleported away instead of surrendering, they still left, and the siege was broken.

With the leader of the devils in their custody1, the party walked up to the inner doors into the palace and knocked on them. A gruff voice shouted back in dwarvish that the filthy devils were not welcome, so the party considered trying to convince the dwarves that they were not devils. Instead, they decided to destroy the door, and when that failed, they destroyed the stone around the door. This almost immediately started another battle, but thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, and soon King Garrun Ironforger welcomed the party to his palace. He thanked them for rescuing him, and they talked about what to do with their prisoner. Ironforger said he would take custody of it to interrogate it, and the dwarves brought out antimagic shackles to bind the devil and prevent any shenanigans.

The party talked with the king and devil and learned what had been happening in Undermountain in their absence. The devils had been using their ability to teleport freely to great effect, bypassing Undermountain's impressive static defenses and focusing their attacks on vulnerable civilian populations. The Undermountain forces had been forced to take heavily defensive positions, and were congregating all of the civilians into centralized areas that could be adequately defended from unexpected teleporting armies. At the moment, the pit fiend bearing the Soulstone was leading an assault on a city in Undermountain, accompanied by a horde of devils.

After some thought, the party came up with several plans to deal with the situation. They considered simply going to the city to fight the pit fiend, but were concerned about their odds of actually defeating it along with the rest of the devils. Lester came up with the creative idea of using planar binding magic to summon the pit fiend to them directly, but wasn't sure that would be possible without its Truename2. Ione decided to commune with Demogorgon again to see if it could tell the party the fiend's Truename. When she came to her senses again, she told them that Demogorgon was unwilling to reveal the fiend's Truename due to rules governing the conduct of demon lords, but it told them it could help. Deep in the volcanic heart of Mount Derenor, through long magma tunnels, there existed a quasi-omniscient entity that could reveal the fiend's Truename. The party took this into consideration, and pondered what they should do to defeat the devils...

  1. And being punched every ten seconds or so by Aedan and Azoreas. Aedan was punching it to reactivate his dimension lock to make sure it didn't teleport away. Azoreas was punching it for fun.
  2. Outsiders have a Truename which is separate from their given name. Learning an outsider's Truename can give you great power over it.

Stupid Awards

Craggles Ione Taito Cayosin Aedan Shanky Lester Azoreas Carnuthax Elder Sage Garrun Ironforger Everyone
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