It’s a week of second comings! First Paul reappears, back from gaming limbo. Then Rayson returns from the dead, in tact, his soul having been sucked into his pet magical device, the rod of surprise, and thus kept from heaven. The priests restore him, using a scroll, and did it two days ago (within hours of when he died). There are story reasons for doing it there. Like the fact that shortly afterward apparently the temple was ransacked by this week’s chief villains.
As part of the decree by the mayor, the Pelorian religion is outlawed. And apparently Pelor just sat up there in heaven and or down there in hell (Hey, I don’t know what kind of life he lead!) and just took it, like a wuss. We figure the Pelorians are in trouble so we rush over to the temple and there we discover the place has been converted. In the main hall there’s rubble, defaced religious iconography, and a big pillar of flame jetting up out of the middle of the place.
Upon entry we are confronted by a diabolical presence (a bone devil) who inquires as to whether we are here to worship. Rayson orders us into combat and the fight begins. He’s peppered with a few magic missiles but eventually Mathius and Copan are walled off from the fray by a wall of ice. At least Copan can send summoned monsters over the wall to mangle the thing. It takes some pretty good damage from good old fashioned smackening, but Pon Pon, our new pacific-islander friend, uses his war mage skills to slay it.
We move to explore one of the side doors and through the other side door comes a cleric and a couple hell hounds. Much the same stuff happens (minus the wall of ice). But the Cleric flees back through the door whence he came, and gets away, despite our best efforts. The hell hounds are slain. Mavin nearly dies, within one round of needing a rez scroll of his own. His doggie, Halo, keeps taking quite a smacking too, only to be brought back by Zuka.
During the exploration of the building, which apparently it turns out Rayson had been raised in as a child (and re-raised from the dead), we found an urn with some writing on it saying that it was essentially home to an Imp. We did not break the seal and add water.
The big fight came after the 2-hour lunch/schmoozing break. Therein, we explore the rest of the building and discover that there are more guys upstairs in the east wing. We end up doing battle with (if I remember correctly), a moderately high level priest (high to us anyway), two of his acolytes, a devil, and a spiritual hammer. So on our end, we have all the PCs, Halo the wolf, and a plethora of summoned Copan Beasties™. Rayson tries to come in behind them by scaling the balcony, which works fine until one of them uses a fear spell to make him flee temporarily. Mathius stands back and peppers with tiny magic missiles, Copan sends in his army, Mavin & Halo (new these season on FOX) rush in where Pelors fear to tread, Zuka tries to keep everyone upright, and there’s a big hullabaloo that results ultimately in us winning a very long battle. Of course from what I understand, if we just stood back Mavin could have taken them all now that he’s 5th level, and by the time he’s 8th level he’d be able to take on Hextor himself.
Once they are slain, Zuka asks the dead a couple questions. First guy doesn’t give too much information but does let loose the name Garoleth, who it seems is their master. Further investigation later would yield that this is the Mayor’s old friend who had come to town a few days ago. The next day he questions the second body, which was brought cross town with us to a safe place at Shuma the Blacksmith’s facility, and it seems that a few high ranking people of the town including the Pelor high priest, may be at the Mayor’s place.
There’s also a bit involving a wagon and some skulking around town, but that really doesn’t impact things. I’ll just mention that there’s Martial Law in town right now.
We hatch several plans. The one we go with ultimately has Rayson contacting the faction of the guard that have rebelled, and giving them some notes with information about how we could use assistance in this coup, and asks that they send the information to people who are sympathetic to our cause. Within hours we hear of a fire at some warehouses, which we hope will distract some people away from the Mayor’s mansion because we are going in! Note that we have sent word to Lord Ordin of our issues, via a couple of guard/messengers who we’ve gotten out of town.
At the next session we will be seizing the mayor’s place, likely using some combination of a portable hole (lent to use temporarily by Shuma), some stoneworking spells of Copan’s, possibly some sewer travel (dunno), and a whole lot of moxie.