Assault on the Grey Garrison Part 1
Campaign Log of Autec the Landbound, Day 9
After obtaining healing from the resident crusader clerics we passed an uneventful night in our quarters in Defender's Heart. We were awoken shortly after dawn the next morning with a request for our presence from Irabeth. The last evening had proven very fruitful for her scouts and she wished to discuss our aid in an important mission.
Essentially, the demons had managed to locate a shard of the shattered wardstone and were intending to corrupt its purpose through a ritual being enacted in the Grey Garrison, a former crusader base of operations across town. Irabeth requested that we infiltrate the Garrison and destroy the shard through the use of a rod of cancellation provided by Quednis, the leader of the Riftwardens library. To assist our attack, she would divide her remaining crusader forces around town and launch simultaneous attacks on key demon holdings far from the Garrison in an attempt to lure them out. While extremely dangerous, our growing reputation as demon slayers and friends of the crusade demands our aid.
Before leaving, Lann of the Mongrelfolk/First Descendants offers us the services of a squad of six rangers to aid in our assault and we readily agree to take them on. After hearing of our mission, Aravashniel also offers us a cache of Riftwarden equipment scavenged from the remains of the library. I picked an exquisite cold iron lance from the pile and we were able to secure enough cold iron arrows for the newly expanded party.
The Garrison lies 400 feet or so ahead of us. Fortunately, we managed to avoid the eyes of any demonic patrols on the way here and seem to have the drop on them. Ahead of us, the building looms, solid and imposing. There is one, small, boarded window that we are able to see, but quickly dismiss it as a viable entry point for our force of 12. Two figures stand to either side of the large front doors, even this far away Kesh is able to identify them as animated corpses. Our assault begins with a full volley by the party. Our new ranger allies acquit themselves well and the corpses fall unmoving well before closing to melee. We spend a moment readying our weapons, buffing (Enlarge Person, Mage Armor and Shield for Pax), and, with a prayer to Eadro, we approach the doors.
Pax is the first one through the door and takes a surprise crossbow volley from the pack of tiefling rogues lurking in the shadows of the entry hall. Our initiative is terrible, giving them a second full round of sneak attack boosted crossbow shots on my poor octopus. Fortunately, with my new level four AC evolution, mage armor, and shield, Pax is up to 28 AC and doesn't just keel over dead. This was a *really* rough start to our assault and I'm pretty sure if any other PC had been the first through that door we'd have started down a man.
The tieflings are no match for our martial fury and go down quickly once we push into melee combat. Our damage output is very high, but we're overall lacking in area of effect capability. The entry to the Garrison is strewn with filth and the leavings of the now, also messy, tieflings. Ralan identifies the next, also filth filled, room as a shrine to Iomedae and, after seeming to suffer some sort of religious seizure, refuses to continue the assault while the shrine is desecrated by tiefling offal. He sets to work scrubbing and washing while the rest of us shrug and press onward. (Ralan was out this session and this was an in-character / tongue in cheek way of occupying him while we proceeded with the session. That is would turn out to have extremely positive repercussions for our party amuses me greatly.)
Pax leads the way, barreling into the next room and we startle a pair of Abracondilu demons enacting a puppet show with the severed head of a crusader as the puppet. They don't appreciate our interruption, but seem suitably receptive to our cold iron criticism of the performance. One bites a ranger, but tis but a scratch.
Continuing our blitz, we clump a bit too much around the next door and everyone suffers a nasty hit from the alchemist bomb that comes sailing out as we open it. Pax rushes in to give the bomb hurler a big tentacle-y hug and I go roll around to stop being on fire. A few more tieflings materialize from behind the statues lining the hallway we are fighting in and rush to clog things up. Due to her Large size, Pax manages to keep hold of the alch for a few rounds as we meat grinder our way through the tiefling mooks, but he finally slips the leash and resumes wrecking our rangers and Katsa with bombs. Fred sets up a triage outside the room and a number of us retreat, on fire, while Pax continues flailing at the alchemist. Finally, the dice fall my way and Pax fells the alchemist in a flurry of claws. We have a healing party and Sitzva helps considerably with a number of positive energy channels.
Quickly searching the alchemist's quarters turns up a fine wooden sword case radiating magic. We throw it in the loot sack and, remembering the duration of our fleeting buffs, head upstairs.
