Ep 1220: That went sideways fast

A note for today's game, Tsedek's player was not available to play.

When last we left our adventurers we were in Qualish's lab. There's a Mindflayer in a container of some sort. There's a very angry vampire over to one side, for Itanis had obliterated his lover Mary. And there's a bunch of steam mephits loose as Mary's unseen servant was dismissed when she died, dropping and shattering the containers holding the steam mephits.

So the freshly released steam mephits went swooping out into the room and doing 2 or 4 steam damage to random characters. I'm not entirely sure how this happened, but something involving the steam mephits and the container holding the Mindflayer happened and the next thing we know, the Mindflayer is loose.

The Mindflayer, of course, promptly does a psychic attack. Itanis and Tsedek of course made their saving throws. Leoven failed his. The two surprises were Magnus and Elle. Magnus made his saving throw with his -1 to intelligence saves. Elle failed hers even with the +10 to intelligence saves. Ahh, dice.

Thankfully that attack also destroyed several of the pesky steam mephits.

So Elle and Leoven are stunned and unable to do anything at this point. Elle is so very very mad right now as she thought we should have killed the Mindflayer when we arrived, plus she's down about half her health, she just can't do anything about the situation right now. She can't even let out colorful commentary.

Magnus, delighting in having an evil undead in front of him, proceeds to beat the heck out of the Vampire. It is surprising not dead yet, though he is quite damaged.

Leoven fails his attempt to break the stun on him, so he's just standing there (that is literally all you can do). Elle, thankfully, was successful at breaking the stun on her and can act next round.

Itanis sent his flying caltrops of doom at the Vampire, doing even more damage to the creature but not killing him. The Vampire then decides to turn into mist and run away. Itanis also sent the mephits into a frenzy of some sort, they basically started acting like cats in full zoomies.

And this is when the deceased Mary reanimates as a Vampire herself and goes after Leoven -- ironically he was the only one that did not partake of Mary's Tarot readings. She promptly bites him for significant damage. And yes, the possibility is now there that he'll turn into a vampire.

Things are not looking that good for our heroes after that bite and then suddenly several swarms of bats appear on the scene.

But then the Mindflayer put up a wall of force kinda around most of the party, separating the bats from the Mindflayer and the party. Most of the bats did the bird vs window routine, but a few found their way over the wall.

Tsedek obliterated one of the swarms of bats that landed between him and Elle, and Leoven failed his saving throw again so he's still stunned.

Elle's mad and injured. So she tries a stunt she's never done before. And she didn't quite think all the way through. She misty-steps on top of one of the laboratory tables and uses a necromancy spell called Ennervation. What people see is this inky black tendril comes from Elle and attaches itself to the Mindflayer. The Mindflayer takes necrotic damage, and Elle gets 1/2 the damage in healing. The Mindflayer not only failed its saving throw versus her spell, so it took full damage, it failed its concentration check to keep the wall of force up.

Magnus then comes up behind Mary, the now Vampire, and proceeds to smash her. He's in his element with the evil undead. She's not happy with this turn of events.

Itanis though, he realizes with the dropped wall of force, the bats are now back in play, so he drops the spell controlling the caltrops of doom and puts up a spell to control the enemies in the room. The bats all fail their save so he's got them mesmerized. The Mindflayer and Mary both made their saves.

And that was the end of our lunch.