We retreated to the ship just long enough to re-prepare spells, resurrect Meteledes and Koslov, and form a plan. We then headed back in on a phylactery-raiding mission.
At the first room, it immediately became evident that the liches had also spent their respite preparing for our return. First sign? The room holding the phylactery was sealed off by a wall. Aleistair could recognize it as an illusion, and he is the fastest of us all, so we gave him a couple of extra buffs and sent him to collect the phylactery. The instant he passed through the wall, he saw--and therefore triggered--around fifty hostile warding symbols. A few minutes of rolling saving throws later, he was stunned, drained to zero strength (becoming as floppy as a sock puppet), and rendered permanently insane. "Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?" Oh, and none of us were capable of monitoring him, as the illusionary wall had lead dust suspended in it. After a minute passed and no sign of Aleistair, we had Obeliz sneak his way in. He managed to avoid the symbols, pull a set of tongs out of his utility belt--I mean, cloak--and retrieve the phylactery and helpless, crazy Aleistair. We had brought a vat of magical acid for the specific purpose of destroying these things, and we promptly dumped it in. A contingent fireball went off, but everyone but Meteledes avoided the worst. A telekinetic pulse also went off, but everyone but Meteledes managed to keep their feet. One down, three to go.
As we got back on the Reach (our smaller, scouting airship), a pair of shadow tentacle lunged out of the chasm and grabbed the ship. At the same time, a completely new airship swept into the cavern. Its ballistae blasted off one of the tentacles, and I killed the other. The occupant (singular) of the other airship hailed us and introduced himself as Gerrard. This, by the way, is the new party psion. He explained that he was searching for a titan king, but we convinced him to help us finish off these liches in the meantime. Oh, and we also healed and de-insanitied Aleistair.
It turned out that, while scouting the first room, Obelix found clues to the locations of the other phylacteries (no, he wouldn't tell us how). The next room we searched was a very icy place, with many bodies entombed under our feet. At the far end of the room was a stage with a welcome-mat-type-thing. Gerrard sent his psicrystal to investigate. When it peeked under the rug, it was promptly sucked under. Obelix went to investigate. The rug animated and grabbed him. Combat! Weathering (though not well) a barrage of steel and magic, the rug, grabbed some nearby Loadstones (magic items that weight you down a lot) and Sovereign Glued itself (permanent, unbreakable glue) to Obelix. Koslov turned the rug into a mouse and Meteledes cut the mouse off of Obelix--along with a layer of skin, which Missinget healed. Unfortunately, the Loadstone-covered mouse fell down the hole underneath the rug, making a terrific bang when it hit bottom. "Fool of a Took!" Right on cue, the frozen bodies in the ground animated and grabbed the casters. We killed one and wounded several others, and then the dice finally hit us with their worst-placed roll yet: the solar, attempting to melee one of the undead, rolled a Natural 1. With its vorpal sword. Who was withing reach? Meteledes. Yep, our celestial ally, allegedly more powerful than any one of us, decapitated the sergeant, making his third death in two sessions, and his second death caused by an ally. The solar, apparently overwhelmed with shame, used some spell that made it self-destruct. "Did he just go crazy and explode?" This killed off all of the undead and blew a large enough hole in the ice to expose the room below. We found two more phylacteries here and threw them into the acid. One left.
At this time, the one lich who was still alive contacted us magically and basically said, "come and get me," complete with coordinates. We returned to the Reach and spotted the lich at the far end of the complex. In front of the lich rose up...a draconic skull with gems for eyes. All of us thought the same thing: Dracodemilich, a.k.a. Walking Total Party Kill Only It Flies Instead of Walks. I promptly ordered the Reach to flee--no objections were voiced--when Zerin suddenly took off in the direction of the skull and threw up a Wall of Force behind him. Heroic Sacrifice? Yes, but not quite in the manner we expected. It turned out that Zerin had cast a spell that lest him identify the beastie, and it was not a dracodemilich, but an animated dragon skull with gems in the eyes...and stuffed to bursting with explosive powder. One sword thrust to the eye later, the skull exploded, the wall shielded the Reach, and the cleric was utterly obliterated. The DM then called for a group Spot check, and, as if to make up for all the Natural 1s, four of us rolled Natural 20s on that check. Through the smoke we could make out the lich running like hell...until Gerrard rooted him in place with an Ectoplasmic Cocoon. A couple of deadly rays later, the lich was dust. Now to find its phylactery in peace.
Examining the room to which it was running, we found a heavily trepanned, petrified titan, whom Gerrard identified as the king he sought. Searching the expansive room turned up a metric ton of lich loot and a series of rune-covered papers that fit the descriptions of the lich's phylactery. Aleistair cautiously examined the pieces of paper one by one. Next...next...next...you've reached the bottom? Guess what: Mirror of Opposition. A second, third, fourth, and fifth Aleistair appeared and threw up an illusionary-but-very-opaque wall around the five of them.
Sidebar: This is how a Mirror of Opposition works: if you look in it, the clone/s that emerge will try to kill you. They are duplicates of the poor sap in every way except for intent. If either the original or the clones die, and clones and their equipment vanish. End sidebar.
Examining his sheet for the benefit of how the clones would act, Aleistair saw the he was either resistant or immune to most of what he could do to himself, so the most effective way to get rid of them would be for us to kill him and try to resurrect him later (tough, as he is not native to the plane). Two Aleistairs (one real, one fake) walked into view with weapons sheathed and necks bared. The other three had run off. Missinget cast a spell that disabled both of them. Then we came up with a gorgeous-but-sickening plan: We had Koslov use wish spells to duplicate programmed amnesia (total mental rewrite) on both Aleistairs. When they woke up, neither one was interested in attacking the other any more. Indefinitely Duplicated PC! That complication out of the way, we destroyed the final phylactery (the papers). Examining the titan-turned-statue, all of us agreed that the mutilation its brain had suffered and how long it had spent in this state--450 years, give or take--meant that the best course of action would most likely be a mercy kill. So we dealt such.
Now that we had destroyed evil, it was time for the other half of adventuring: taking its stuff. We ended up carting several magical tomes (mainly of varieties that permanently increased mental ability scores: Koslov and Obelix took the Intelligence books, as Int rules their class abilities, Missinget and Aleistar took the Charisma books, and I took one of the Wisdom books so that my Wisdom could meet actual human standards) and spellbooks, some large magical onyx blocks that I had pulled out of the titan's brain, and a FILTHY RICH FORTUNE in random magical items and components back to the ship. The Atherton society claimed most of it, but we were very generously compensated. On the way out, Koslov left a message for the ghost to read when it rejuvenated, telling it that it lich buddies were kaput and that if it decided to pursue us, we would find a way to make it permanently dead. Afterward, we briefly debated on whether or not to send a ship home to report back our discoveries or to continue onward without delay. We decided on the latter, as next land was two weeks away and that backtracking, due to various factors geographical and political, could set us months behind schedule.
In the aftermath, the duplicate Aleistair made it clear that he would strike out on his own soon (and there are still the three renegades to worry about), we resurrected Meteledes again (which we learned would, due to escalating interference with connections to the afterlife, be the last resurrection we could manage--sorry, cleric!), and the DM let us invest our newly-acquired funds as we pleased, due to the plethora of crafters aboard the ship and the effective two weeks of downtime. Koslov set to creating an adamantine body for himself. Obelix boosted his Intelligence even more and got various other magical enhancements, especially pertaining to mobility and melee (I will take this moment to mention that Aleistair, Obelix, and I, due to the acronym of or real-life names and common competency in melee, are known as the IMP Squad.). I massively (due to having been the one to loot the onyx blocks, I got an extra kickback from our employers) upgraded most of my combat-oriented gear, putting my Strength on par with many giants and making me considerably more agile than anyone in full plate has a right to be. Not sure how the other party members are investing their money yet.
Long story short: Liches are dead for good (but the ghost is not), Meteledes continues to be the tagalong Chew Toy of Fate (but he's sure fun to play), Zerin is dead and not returning any time soon (most likely the DM will find a way to introduce the knight that is his backup character), solar exploded himself after a nasty, brutish, and short life as the other Chew Toy of Fate, Aleistair has one friendly clone aboard the ship (for now) and three homicidal clones of whereabouts unknown, and we all have obscene amounts of loot. We're also approaching the Epic threshold.
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