Episode 23: Battles sometimes have a high cost

When last we left this group we had just cleared out the Garrison's outer courtyard of Giants only to witness the arrival of a Lich with undead dragon. Luckily the Lich had parked himself on top of the Cathedral. Unluckily our resident Tabaxi fluffed in fear anyway. This is another catch-up episode so some of the fine details are lost to time. As a reminder this party consists of:

Unit 2408, the Warforged (humanoid living construct) Barbarian

Luthis, the Kenku (humanoid raven who can not fly) Blood Hunter

Dancing Wind, a Tabaxi (humanoid cat) Wizard

Elniss, a Human Cleric of Ilmater

Evangeline, the Tiefling Paladin of Tyr

After we peeled Dancing Wind off of the wall he was clinging to, our party and the leader of the forces we were with proceed to make entry on the Garrison. Inside we find it is unnaturally dark and occupied. A booming voice from the rear of the room taunts us so of course we go in to take care of whatever Hallister had parked there.

That occupant turned out to be a single, solitary ... Beholder. Not good. They have an anti-magic eye beam and several eye-stalks that do damage. Some more than others. And they float, and are very tough to kill in general.

Very very tough.

So we set about to kill this Beholder and right off the bat it did not go well. The Beholder zorches the leader of the troops with a disintegration and he loses his left arm. The rest of the party continues in. Unit 2408 and Evangeline proceed to try to keep this creature's attention, and the anti-magic focused on us, so that Dancing Wind and Elniss can do their jobs, and Luthis proceeds to do his machine-gun level cross bow work. He really is quite deadly with this thing.

But we fought this thing hard, and it hit us with its all of its eye beams at one point or another. I do wish I remembered all the details of this fight, but towards the end of the fight we were throwing everything we could at each other.

And this is when our tank, Evangeline, went down hard. And missed her *death saving throws.

The Beholder then turned it's attention on our spell caster, Dancing Wind, and nailed him with a petrification situation that he failed his saving throw on so by the end of the next turn our Tabaxi had turned into a cat-statue.

Elniss, our party healer, steps in to save Evangeline. He uses *Revivify to restore her to life. And as Evangeline comes to from her brush with death, the Beholder nails Elniss with a disintegration ray. Kills Elniss instantly, reducing him to dust on the wind.

But we had done enough damage by this point to the Beholder that we were able to finally finish off the Beholder.

There is nothing we can do for Elniss, but we could possibly save Dancing Wind with a high enough level cleric, which we do not have. So we pack up the statue of Dancing Wind into our box of holding and head back out into the courtyard.

Out there we find a messenger gathering intel on the various prongs of the attack. The messenger also informs us there's an impromptu aid station being set up in the forest outside of Waterdeep, and he agreed to take us out to the encampment.

Traveling out there was easy as this area has been pretty well secured by friendlies and we find ourselves in a secure encampment full of wounded troops. We're directed to a smaller tent behind the main hospital tents where we find, of all things, a Druid. Thankfully though the Druid had the magic needed to restore our chaos caster Dancing Wind to the living breathing Tabaxi he is. After we got Dancing Wind calmed down we had to explain what all happened after he was petrified.

Evangeline slipped out of the Druid's tent while the party was catching Dancing Wind up to go into the main hospital tents. There she went through the few remaining healing spells she had on tap to heal random soldiers. Yes, it was penance of sorts as clerics of Ilmater are considered basically the Red Cross, and Evangeline blames herself for his death.

And that's where we'll leave this tale for now. More soon!

* Death saving throws: is a mechanic in D&D to see if a character dies. When a character hits 0 they go unconscious and have to make death saving throws. Three fails mean you die.

* Revivify brings back the recently dead (under a minute) without side-effects.