Episode 1503: Temple of Tiamat

When last we left this crew, Magnus and Elle had had an awkward exchange but we came up with a decent plan or two of attack. The first plan leans heavily on our sneaky and controlling trio: Tsedek, Leoven, and Itanis. The second plan leans heavily on the party being martyrs. Again this one happened a bit ago so it's more of a recap based on my memory. Shall we get to it then?

Tsedek, our charming Tiefling Rogue

Itanis, a devious High Elf Wizard, fond of controlling any situation we may find ourselves in

Leoven, our quiet but effective Wood Elf Ranger

Magnus, the Human Paladin of Heironious, he has followed a vengeance path

Elle, the small but sparky High Elf Wizard, fond of blowing things up with lots of fire

Gearbox, a Monodrone, who is Elle's follower. He looks like a round ball on legs but think more along the lines of R2D2 in skills and abilities

We finally received all the intel we could gather on the state of things at the well of dragons, and it's not good. They've apparently gathered (or captured/enslaved) all the resources they need to do the ritual to bring back Tiamat from the nine hells. We also find out that the blue dragon mask we did capture was actually a fake and odds are the Cult of the Dragon has all 5 masks. Lovely.

So we launch Valormight, the flying island, with its metallic dragons as escort towards the Well of Dragon. We did bring Gearbox along to help keep the island functional if it gets attacked, and of course the Order had stationed the 20 flying Paladins on the island so they were also prepared to defend the island (and get support staff off the island if we decide to fly Valormight straight into the volcano).

As we get closer and closer to the volcano called Well of Dragon we see signs of several destroyed farming villages and the like, clearly the Cult of the Dragon has been busy taking anything and anyone they need. But we make it semi-close to the volcano in one piece so we decide to go with plan A first: the sneak attempt.

Tsedek and Leoven take the lead here, studying the mountain, the terrain, and using their sneaky abilities to get our not so sneaky party to the mountain. Paladin, full plate armor, yeah, we don't sneak well. Though he must have oiled it well before this leg of the adventure as he did good. And they managed to find a hidden partially obstructed side tunnel/entrance. So we proceed inside.

Inside we find tunnels leading toward assorted rooms. We seem to have found our way into the daily living quarters area. We're on a time crunch as we have to stop the ritual, but we also do not want to leave cultists behind us, so the first couple of rooms we come to Itanis uses his creation skills to seal off and turn the floor to lava. It is an old volcano after all.

Sneaking further in we find a group of cultists in what appears to be some sort of dining hall and we decide to take a more direct approach on this one. Tsedek sneaks through the room, invisibly, and sets himself up to attack once we enter.

It was a blood bath, literally. Tsedek critically hit with his whip while still invisible. So imagine you're a cultist and you're just there minding your own business on a break when out of no where a Tiefling appears with a deadly whip. This whip then proceeds to cut through one of your buddies. He did so much damage he killed that cultist, and the flying blood/body parts combined with the shock and surprise of the attack killed 3 other cultists around him.

Leoven proceeds to start shooting people, Magnus walks in and challenges the cultists, Elle starts picking off people as well. They did not last long at all.

Continuing down the hall we find the pens where they had held the kidnapped locals, and a few more cultists that didn't last long. We went ahead and left the locals in their relatively safe holding cell as we were in a hurry and did not have the time to escort them out of there safely.

As we came around the final curve in these tunnels it opens up into a massive central room. No time to get exact measurements as we realize the ritual is under way. There's a portal floating horizontally, and several wizards on 3 tiers flying overhead, ribbons of energy flying towards that portal.

More next time.