The Mockery Pagoda

The party awoke to the smell of boiled pork and fungus stew. They’d spent the night in the hobgoblins’ kitchen, the cleanest place they could find in the vast cave that served as home, fortress, and breeding ground for the Five Storms’ army of lackeys. Anxious to leave the cave’s stench behind them, they hurried to the Swine Shogun’s keep and made their way across the narrow bridge that led from its roof to a small opening near the cave’s roof. This opened into a broad stairway that wound down and down, deeper into the cavern complex far beneath the House of Withered Blossoms.

After a tortuous descent, Bella signaled a halt. Dim light was spilling into the tunnel ahead. Inching cautiously forward, they found themselves peering into another cavern, dimly lit by the glow of phosphorescent fungi growing on the ceiling. Another waterfall fell from the ceiling, and a broad river/lake split the cavern in two. On the far side stood a crooked pagoda, carved from raw bedrock. Its walls were carved with twisted animal forms, devouring or engaging in unnatural acts with one another, as if in mockery of the delicate traceries on the pagoda in the daylight far above. A large drawbridge, currently raised, blocked the only visible entrance, although the second story had broad windows facing out, each covered by intricately worked iron screens. Dim light shown through the lattice, and shadowy forms could be seen moving inside.

The party wasted little time; they’d stumbled on a successful strategy for entering a locked fortress up above, and they saw no reason to change it now. Nicki cast Invisibility on himself, and moved cautiously to the water’s edge. Nothing seemed to detect his presence,  so he cast Gaseous Form and drifted lazily across the dark water. He oozed between the narrow gap between the drawbridge and the wall, and found himself in a large square gateroom. Four creatures were on drawbridge duty. They looked to be the result of unnatural breeding experiments between ogres and hobgoblins. They were smaller than ogres, but unmistakably ogre-like, and each bore bizarre deformities. Other doors led out of the room in all three directions, but Nicki didn’t waste time exploring them. Instead he seeped back out and rose up to the second level.

Passing easily through the protective screen, he found himself in an even larger room that appeared to encompass the entire front of the building. A number of the now-familiar Withered Blossom Warriors stood guard at the windows, bows at the ready and a barrel of arrows to provide ample ammunition to repel an assault on the pagoda. A stairway led down, and a pair of heavy double doors were closed to the east. Having seen enough, Nicki floated back to where the party waited.

Nicki delivered his scouting report, and everyone prepared to teleport in. Marie surrounded herself with the party’s brawn – Sawyer, Shinjiro, and Bella – while Zhustin took the brains of the outfit: Nicki and Sandoval. They agreed to Dimension Door into the northeast portion of the room, where they could take the warrior guards by surprise from behind while being in position to guard the stairs against any reinforcements from below. They took a moment to prepare themselves for the encounter: Sandoval cast Good Hope, Zhustin, Haste, and Marie said a heartfelt Prayer to Desna. On the count of three, both groups vanished.

They reappeared inside the pagoda, roughly where they’d intended. The hobgoblin warriors were unaware of their presence, at least until Bella sent a volley of arrows into the nearest guard’s back, drenching the comrade standing beside him in a spray of blood. He let out a bellow of pain, but his fellows were unsure where the threat was coming from, expecting attack from outside. The party took advantage of their confusion. Nicki dropped a Fireball on the largest group, clustered near the central window above the drawbridge, and Sawyer followed it up by charging directly into their midst, hoping to keep them tied up so they couldn’t disperse or use their bows against the others. Shinjiro charged the one Nicki had already hit, kicking him in the groin, as Sandoval began singing. Bella kept working her bow; her first shot went through her target’s eye and pinned his skull to the far wall, and her next two shots sent Shinjiro’s opponent crumpling to the ground.

The hobgoblin warriors finally figured out where their enemies were, but it did them little good. They dropped their bows and fumbled for their morningstars, but all their blows went wide. Nonetheless, they were screaming at the top of their lungs, and the party knew that there was little chance that their incursion would go unnoticed by anyone else inside. Nicki was anticipating the arrival of the ogrekin hobgoblins from downstairs, so he conjured up one of his Flaming Spheres at the top of the stairs as a welcoming gift. Marie had run down to distract the warrior at the far southern end of the chamber, and now Shinjiro, his foe dead, charged down to support her, unleashing another nasty kick. Bella abandoned her bow and also charged south. Her rapier opened the warrior’s abdomen, and his guts spilled out around his feet. Suishen was a flaming blur in Sawyer’s hands; one of the warriors facing him fell, and another was badly wounded.

The eastern wall was broken by a squat area that extended into the chamber, fronted by heavy double doors. Zhustin had taken up position behind its corner, where he could plink at the enemy with Acid Darts, and he barely avoided being crushed as the doors suddenly exploded open. A hulking figure came lumbering out. It looked like a giant, crude statue made of fired clay, with rough steel plates baked into its surface.

As the Armored Clay Golem stomped into the center of the room, Zhustin was overcome with a fit of bravery. (In the after-action accounts, he continued to insist it was bravery, although everyone else preferred to call it stupidity.) He’d been dying for a chance to use the adamantine spell-storing staff he’d acquired from one of the Wu sisters, and this seemed to be the perfect chance. With what he hoped was a blood-curdling battle cry (to the others, it sounded like a puppy getting its tail pulled), he whirled the staff around his head and charged at the golem’s back. Unfortunately, he mistimed his swing; the staff whizzed past the golem, missing by half a foot, and Zhustin collided with the huge creature’s butt.

As Zhustin rebounded, the golem began to ponderously turn to see what was behind it, and the others had horrible visions of their wizard being pounded into a pulp. Sawyer abandoned the two warriors flanking him, risking their (ineffectual) blows as he rushed to Zhustin’s aid, Lunging to strike at the golem’s back from just out of its reach. Bella also pounced on the golem, but both of their blows glanced off the creature’s armored surface, doing little harm. Nicki fired off a volley of Magic Missiles, but to his shock they simply bounced off the golem – he’d never seen that happen before. “It’s a golem!”, Marie called out. “It’s immune to almost all magic!” She was content to limit her contribution to offering helpful suggestions, preferring to keep as far away from the golem as possible. Wisely so, because the golem finally located its targets. One massive fist slammed into Zhustin and the other into Bella, opening gaping wounds.

Sandoval and Shinjiro moved to engage the two warriors Sawyer had left behind, to protect the big fighter’s unprotected flank. The hobgoblin warriors continued to be flustered by the viciousness of the assault against them, and their blows went wide. Shinjiro dropped one of them as Marie moved up to engage these less-threatening foes.

From his position at the top of the stairway, Nicki finally heard what he’d been expecting – the sound of pounding feet from somewhere below. Sure enough, one of the ogrekin hobgoblins rounded the corner and began pounding up the stairs. Nicki rolled his Flaming Sphere down the stairs to meet it, then conjured a Resilient Sphere around the ogrekin, trapping it inside with the bouncing burning ball, and blocking the stairwell with the invisible sphere of force. Several more ogrekin slammed into the invisible blockade from behind and began to futilely trying to force their way past it, while the hapless one inside began an incessant dance to avoid being scorched. Nicki laughed and laughed – he hadn’t had this much fun in ages.

Meanwhile, Zhustin realized that his plan of engaging a golem in hand-to-hand combat might have had a few flaws. Knowing that there is no shame in admitting you were wrong, he used Dimensional Step to teleport out of immediate danger, leaving others who were more experienced at bashing stuff to handle the golem. But it was still a dangerous threat, especially if the spellcasters couldn’t hurt it.

But Sandoval had an idea. The golem might be immune to spells, but it wasn’t immune to the laws of physics. The bard waved his hands, and the floor beneath the golem’s feet was suddenly covered in a layer of Grease. The giant construct’s feet began to slide and its arms began to windmill as it fought a losing battle to keep its balance. It hit the floor with a crash, and Sawyer seized the opportunity. Suishen crashed down again and again on the prone golem, and even its embedded armor was not enough to prevent the ancestral sword from pulverizing it. Shinjiro felled the last Withered Blossom Warrior with a furious flurry of blows, and the only sound in the room was Nicki’s giggling as he watched his captive ogrekin dance.

The golem had emerged from an alcove that revealed another set of stairs leading steeply up. “How long will that thing hold them there?” Sawyer asked Nicki. “At least another ten minutes or so,” Nicki replied, then collapsed in another round of uncontrollable laughter as the ogrekin’s pants caught fire. Sawyer nodded to Bella. “Then let’s see what’s up those stairs.”

Bella began cautiously climbing the stairs, checking them carefully for traps, with Sawyer close behind. Not everyone was sure that it was a good idea to keep pressing forward when there were still enemies behind them, and Marie and Shinjiro moved to join Nicki in guarding the stairs down. Sandoval took up a position by the double doors, where he could quickly move in either direction.

Sure enough, before Bella and Sawyer had climbed halfway up the new staircase, there was a chorus of shrieks and a new wave of enemies came pouring down. They looked like the familiar Withered Blossom Warriors, but they were infected with some hideous skin disease; their noses, ears, and lips had rotted away, and where their other flesh wasn’t rotted and oozing, it was covered with thick, gray, warty growths.

The Lepers charged at Bella, clawing at her and trying to infect her with their horrible affliction. Their claws drew blood, and she could only pray that the infection wouldn’t take hold. She stepped back to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Sawyer, and both of her blades flashed, spraying the walls with infected blood. Sawyer added Suishen to the assault, and first one leper fell, and then another. Sandoval rushed up the stairs to help out; he stabbed one, but its claws raked across his face.

One of the lepers had held back at the top of the stairs, and was raining arrows down at the attackers. Zhustin rushed through the doors, and fired off a trio of Scorching Rays at the bowman. Nicki, knowing that his pet ogrekin would keep dancing for awhile, ran to join the new fun; he copied Zhustin’s spell, and the bowman was transformed into a column of flame. Bella’s Hasted blades continued to form a blurring wall of steel, filling the air with a fine red mist, and Shinjiro joined the other fighters in holding off the rabid lepers. They fell in quick succession, the last succumbing to one of Zhustin’s Acid Darts.

Having started to explore up the stairs, Bella and Sawyer were determined to see it through. Bella continued checking the stairs for traps, although the thick layer of blood and guts now made the job more difficult. Sandoval stopped singing, as if the belated quiet would give them any element of surprise on any more enemies waiting above.

At the top of the steep stairs was a wide, bare chamber, with an arched doorway depicting tormented dragons leading to a dark area beyond. Bella and Shinjiro crept forward to peek through the opening. On the other side was an open pit, stretching sixty feet or more from wall to wall. The depth of the pit was impossible to judge, as it was filled with a greenish-gray, bitter-smelling mist. A handful of widely-spaced iron bars, perhaps six inches wide, crisscrossed the pit, providing the only means of crossing. Shinjiro knew he’d have little trouble navigating the narrow paths, but he wasn’t so sure about the others. Similar archways to the one they were at could be seen in each of the other three walls. The ones to the north and east were totally dark, but dim light could be seen shining from behind folding screens that blocked off the opening to the south.

Sawyer and Bella reluctantly decided they’d gone far enough for now, and the advance party quietly retraced their steps. Down below, Nicki had resumed watching his entertainment. The ogrekin hobgoblin had proven surprisingly adept at dodging the Flaming Sphere, and it looked like this game could go on for quite some time. Nicki was quickly growing bored, and the rest of the group was anxious to be done with the ogrekin hobgoblins and make sure there were no other threats at their back before moving up. Everyone took up positions, and then gave Nicki the signal they were ready.

When he got the green light, Nicki dismissed the Resilient Sphere, and the trapped ogrekin came stumbling up the stairs. Marie instantly summoned a Spiritual Weapon behind it, which stabbed it in the back, while Sawyer lunged down the stairs and buried Suishen in its throat. With a gurgle, it collapsed on the stairs.

But its three comrades were hot on its heels. As they appeared in the stairwell, Sandoval shouted “Everyone close your eyes!”. An instant later, the area was filled with a burst of multi-colored fireworks, as he cast Pyrotechnics on Nicki’s Flaming Sphere. Two of the ogrekin hobgoblins were blinded by the flash, but they came stumbling up the stairs nonetheless, swinging furiously at their foes’ remembered positions. One’s morningstar smashed into Sawyer’s chest, all but crushing his ribcage, and the fighter struggled to keep breathing.

But that blind strike was their last hurrah. Nicki’s Flaming Sphere had little trouble catching an opponent who couldn’t see to dodge it, and he zapped the last sighted one with a Ray of Exhaustion, leaving it barely able to lift its morningstar. Marie’s Spiritual Weapon harassed them from behind, while Bella, standing at the rear of the stairwell and firing straight down, nailed one to the floor with a hail of arrows. Sawyer recovered enough to behead the one who had hit him, and Shinjiro’s Flurry of Blows sent the last one cartwheeling back down the stairs.

The entire assault had only lasted a few minutes, but they had taken out each successive wave of defenders. They didn’t know what else might still be below them, and they were sure there were more dangers above them. It was shaping up to be another typical morning.

The PCs earned 10,057 XP for their exploits, putting them at 199,091 XP, with 220,000 required for level 12. We’ll be at Rich & Joette’s next week, although Roger will be on call.