Episode 24: New additions, some successful magic, and a short holy warrior takes on a giant

When last we left this group we had just retaken the town of Waterdeep's Armory, but at a very high cost as we lost our party's healer. Between that, the leader of the group we were working with losing his arm, and Dancing Wind being turned into stone, it was a physically and mentally damaging day. Again this is a catch-up story, but we're almost to present 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

Evangeline, the Tiefling Paladin of Tyr

After a rest that night Rubis sends us a note to report to one of the towers, to defend it as him and another spell caster try a lengthy intense spell. So as we pack up to leave, the Druid who return Dancing Wind to a living breathing creature volunteers to go with us. Evangeline told him he did not want to do that as we've killed off two party members so far, it is not safe. He just shrugs and packs up anyway.

So we've gained a new party member. He introduces himself as Morlech, and he's a human druid. We do not know if he has any combat skills, so this should be interesting. Hopefully he can at least heal.

Returning to Waterdeep we meet up with Rubis. Him and another spell caster are doing a serious spell to help with the situation with Hallister, and he needs us to defend the tower. OK, we can do that.

It's a one doored 2 story tower, and they're doing the spell from the roof. There is an outer wall thankfully. Not sure what's going to attack, we decide to let Dancing Wind do some of his magical shenanigans. He created a stone wall to funnel bad guys one by one towards the door but off towards the side of the courtyard, then did a sickening radiance spell in the middle of the courtyard. That should slow down a horde.

We put the tanks - Evangeline and Unit 2408 - at the doorway to deal with ground troops. The druid, Dancing Wind, and Luthis went up to the 2nd floor balcony to loft damage and defend against air troops.

Seems like a solid plan, so we set up and wait.

Didn't take long for the undead in the area to notice the spell going on the rooftop and the fight was on. There were some skeletal ground troops, some archers, a couple of skeletal elite guards, and a 3 headed skeleton boss.

Once they showed up the druid put up a wall of fire across the entrance to the courtyard.

The 3 headed skeleton boss had many words for us, all of which were unkind, and he sent in his ground troops through the wall of fire, but a lot died due to the fire and the sickening radiance. Luthis helped with the death by raining his deadly crossbow bolts down on them.

This further pissed off the 3 headed skeleton boss so he resurrected some of the ground troops. They didn't last long the second time around.

So the skeleton boss called a friend, a shambling cemetery giant undead. Think a giant sized beefy fighter that is undead and was called up out of the cemetery so there's dirt and gravestones on his back, and one of those tall pointy grave markers in his hand.

And then skeleton boss and one of his elite guards teleported to the 2nd floor balcony of the tower to harass and go through our non-front line fighters to get to the magical ritual on the roof. Dancing Wind, and Morlech try hanging on from up there but they're not really melee sorts. Luthis can be melee, but it has control issues when he goes into that mode. So Unit 2408 bolts up the stairs to assist. Evangeline steps into the ground floor doorway of the tower and goes full defense to prevent that giant from joining the second floor fight.

That plan actually worked. The 2nd floor folks were able to take down the elite guards and then start digging into the boss skeleton. Evangeline frustrated the heck out of the giant. She did do some good damage, she doesn't tend to do as much as Unit 2408 but against an undead she's got some perks, and her defensive position made it harder for the giant to clobber her with the gravestone marker. Which is good, because the couple of blows that did land hurt a lot.

Also it turns out our new druid has a thing for fire. Summoned a fire spirit, kept through fire about. Having someone on the team that can damage and heal (which he did as well), is very helpful. And he doesn't seem as squishy as the late Elniss.

At some point the skeleton boss makes it into the tower and the fight continues on the stairs up to the roof. We did kill the grave giant though and were down to just the skeleton boss. Towards the end the 2nd floor folks had done so much damage to the skeleton boss that his body fell apart, so his trio of heads starts flying away.

And Dancing Wind decided to try his one long distance trick again, like with the attacking darkness, and it worked. The skeleton boss was killed and Rubis was able to complete his magical ritual uninterrupted.

More soon! I think one, maybe two tops, more catch up posts we'll be back to current games.