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Cultists & Conversions

Last week, the Boundary Wardens that had journeyed with the party decided that they were in over the heads. In the face of the party's overwhelming power and incredible ability to survive statistically lethal injuries, they felt that their odds of contributing directly were fairly minimal. Instead, they would contribute more by bringing word back to Praxis about the party's exploits. The party considered sending Millie back with them to recover from her injuries, but they decided that the Sables would likely try to kidnap Millie if she went off on her own, so they kept the party together for the time being.

While the party was resting briefly after the battle, Whitefall contacted Chort again. She said that all of the dragons she and her allies had been tracking had suddenly fled and all seemed to be heading the center of the high magic zone at great speed. The party deliberated about whether to try to rush to shut down the ritual or whether to retreat from the dragons until Millie could recover from her wounds. In the end, they decided that valor was the better version of discretion, and they rushed to the ritual site to try to shut it down somehow before the horde of dragons arrived.

At the center of the high magic zone, the party found a hidden tunnel into a mysterious dungeon. They ventured inside and found that the intensified magic they had tapped into while fighting the dragons began to backlash on them as soon as they entered the tunnel. They considered trying to enter the tunnel without using any magic at all, but fortunately Gregory saved them before they had to do all of that complicated math. He had been thinking about the way he seemed to passively radiate a shield in the high magic zones, and he believed that he could concentrate to negate the high magic effect. They tested it, and determined that as long as they were inside Gregory's emanation of concentration, the party's magic would function normally even inside the ritual dungeon. They clustered around Gregory, though it seemed like Ayala may have stayed closer to him than was strictly necessary.

Inside the tunnel, the party heard ominous distant chanting that sounded suspiciously cult-like. They also found a giant animated blood person thing called a vitaeus surrounded by a cluster of stygian leeches. Strangely, the leeches were not draining the blood from the blood creature, and instead all of the monsters attacked the party, starting with a horrendously gross vomit stream of concentrated blood. Diplo and Chort held the front line to keep Mikolash and Ayala safe in the back, and despite missing support from both Gregory and Camilla, they managed to wipe out the leeches fairly quickly. The vitaeus had a strange ability to recover from physical injuries by slurping up the blood it splattered around the room whenever it took damage. However, Ayala's dessication magic and Chort's flaming sword were unaffected by the blood pooling. Diplo's massive attacks created large pools of blood quickly, and Mikolash expertly used his barriers with no difficulty to block the creature's access to the blood pools so the party could burst the monster down.

In the corner of the room, a cultist opened the door and was quite surprised by the quick results of the fight and by the fact that he was suddenly in a bubble of water. He introduced himself as Nyjel, and explained that he was part of a group of cultists who loyally served Mammon. He said the cultists were not at all persuaded or intimidated by the party's quick victory and inexplicable ability to use magic inside the ritual dungeon, despite the fact that Mammon had promised them that it would be impossible. The party was not entirely convinced by Nyjel's claims, and managed to persuade him not merely to stop attacking them. Then Ayala went a step further, and mentioned that she was technically also acting as an agent of incredible antiquity and power, just like Mammon. Given that the party's agent was demonstratably superior to Mammon, as evidenced by the fact that the party could do things that Mammon said would be impossible, it seemed like it would make sense for the cult to change their allegiance to the party instead of to Mammon. This actually worked, and Nyjel spoke with the rest of his cult and they all decided to serve the party instead of Mammon - except for one holdout, but they killed him.

The cultists immediately started working on bringing the horde rampaging dragons to a halt and preventing them from returning to the ritual site to wipe out the party. Mikolash set to work investigating the nature of the ritual with the cultists, and he determined that he could disassemble the ritual itself with the help of the cultists after about 24 hours of solid work. The party considered their options and decided that disassembling the ritual was safer and faster than breaking down the dragon bones like they did in the Expanse, so they took 16 hours of well-deserved rest, allowing Millie to become slightly less dead.

Join us this week to find out why the party only rested for 16 hours instead of the full 24!

Stupid Awards

Mikolash: Diplo: Millie: Chort: Ayala: Gregory:
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