Ep 1205: Itanis and Elle get surrounded by evil

So when we last left our adventurers we had waltzed into the den of a cult. A cult ran by a bone devil. This bone devil would flay the skins off of his followers and then use the skins -- especially the faces -- as "leather" for his cloak and his throne. Yeah, it's quite creepy, all these humanoids without faces staring at us.

It's a good sized room with a throne at one end and 5 balconies along each side, so that the cultists can watch the new arrivals. Each balcony holds 2 cultists. The throne is occupied by the bone devil, and he has two muscular thugs as his personal body guards. They stand on either side of the bone devil.

Magnus and Tsedek had gotten up in the bone devil's face, Elle's about 20' behind them so she can go from range to melee as needed, Leoven is pulling a spiderman on one of the pillars, and Itanis is a good 20' behind Elle. Ready?

The bone devil was unamused that Magnus was up in his face and proceeds to claw-attack him. Turns out it's claws are actually shards of a super sharp vorpal sword, so he actually does land some blows. It then reached out with its tail to strike at Tsedek.

Elle, in her quest to prove herself to be more than just fire, launches a lightening bolt at the bone devil. Visually it's quite fun, Tsedek whips the bone devil with this green electric damage that jumps over to one of the body guards, and then a bolt of normal lightning follows it a half tic behind.

The body guards try to hit Magnus, three times each, and miss entirely. So six of the cultists jump down from the balconies and wade into the melee. Four went straight for the main fight while two went to Elle. Well attempted to, one walked right past Tsedek so he got an attack of opportunity, killing the cultist.

Itanis then locks one of the body guards in a mental prison. It does significant psychic damage and prevents the target from moving or doing anything.

Next round Tsedek does more whip damage, the green jumping lightning is a fun visual effect and quite damaging. Magnus does some sort of spell or ability on three of the cultists, which killed the other cultist in Elle's space but the other two he targeted remained standing. Leoven continued with his sniper skills, he really is quite good. Leoven also showed off a bit, continuing his spider climb up the pillar to proceed to hang upside down from the ceiling. Wonder if he's still arachnophobic at this point? LOL

The bone devil decided he didn't like the casters damaging him so he launched his hands with the vorpal bladed fingers at us. He has special bracelets/bracers that allow him to do this stunt. Slightly fascinating, slightly terrifying. One was launched at Elle, one was launched at Itanis. It would have hit Elle too but she has a new reaction that brings her AC* up to 22 so it *just* misses. Itanis has a new cloak that helps him from getting hit as well.

Elle decides to abandon her no fire attempt and lands a fireball on Magnus, excluding him and Tsedek of course, damaging the body guards, bone devil, and killing a couple of the cultists.

So several more cultists hop down to help their leader, some went to the main melee, a couple went to Elle and a couple to Itanis. Drats. Elle did take a little damage this time. More important to note, Magnus got hit by one of the cultist and he failed his concentration check, dropping him out of Haste. Which means next round he can not have an action.

Itanis then uses his wand of scorching ray on the bone devil.

So at this point the bone devil, one of the body guards (the one stuck in the mental prison), and several cultists are around us. There's two melees, the main one with the bone devil, and then the secondary one where the cultists have started to engage the two casters in melee. Elle is very concerned as she doesn't know if she needs to help Magnus or Itanis more and she can't help both at once due to the distance between them. Helping Itanis will help her though as we're within 10' of each other at this point.

So Tsedek, being the cheeky sort, hops over the body of the dead body guard and stands on the bone devil's throne. Where he then has to make several checks to see if he takes damage/keeps sane from all these skinned faces staring at him. He then whips the bone devil again -- he's rather quite good with this new weapon of his. Magnus just sits there this round, recovering from the Haste, and Leovan sniper fires away ... and the bone devil goes down.

Elle, after an inner debate over which friend to help (Itanis or Magnus), decides to land a fireball on herself, excluding herself and Itanis from the damage. While the cultists did take a fair chunk of fire damage the dratted things were still standing.

The rest of the cultists came down from the balconies and surrounded Itanis and Elle almost entirely, and swinging away at the two casters. Itanis did actually take a little damage this time, and Elle took a little more. Thankfully they're not doing a ton of damage and both casters have managed to avoid several attacks that should have landed.

Tsedek and Leovan take out the remaining body guard while Magnus plays whackamole on several cultists around him, leaving one remaining cultist for the main melee.

Elle, not liking being completely surrounded by bad guys and realizing Magnus was safe, decides to ratchet up her fireball and lands one on Itanis, excluding her and Itanis from the damage. Did a chunk of damage too ... killing the cultists around the two casters. The batch that took damage from the fireball she landed on herself turned into literal ash they were so badly damaged.

This left one remaining cultist up by Tsedek/Magnus and we all yelled we need to question him, so Itanis uses a hypnosis spell to render him harmless.

While we caught our breath a little door opened and a Quasit poked its head out, saw what was going on, and promptly attempted to go back into his hidey and shut the door.

Elle, feeling pretty good right about now, was like oh its cute! Can I make it into a pet? Magnus promptly shut that thought down as it's an evil fiend. So then Elle was like yeah, a blue dragon would match my eyes better. Its so much fun to rib Magnus sometimes.

We are in remarkably good shape and Elle's pestering Magnus to let her help with the interrogation this time. This prompted a pretty fun conversation.