Season Finale

This was the last meeting of the airship campaign until January, and WOW was it big.

I'll post a more comprehensive rundown after I get some sleep, but here are a few sound bites.

Lots of epic background music, courtesy of my laptop.

Interrogation and release of Gerrard, lucky resurrection of the dead from before.

20,000 gold riding on a three-way drinking contest between me, Meteledes, and the captain. We all passed out and the bartender swiped the pot.

Investigation of an ancient elven library with obscene defense and authorization systems.

Encountering a band of elves who helped us repair the ship (taking about a month).

Zerin being forced to, due to Vateo's deterioration, strike a deal with Missinget's drow-pantheon patron.

Me cutting off Gerrard's arm (it was regenerated) to stop him from being sucked into a Pillar of Vile Darkness.

Obelix and Koslov putting so much work into pretending to be high-ranking elves that they're probably developing alternate personalities.

And then...

Let me see if I can do this justice.

When we were still in the process of interrogating Gerrard about his actions last session, aleistair noticed that his luck has taken a significant downturn: doors would smack his head when he left a room, books would slip out of his hands, when he landed in the ship he would clip hismself on the railings, the deck would splinter terribly under his feet, and so forth. Trying to frigure out the cause of all of this, he turned to Zerin, Missinget (the two of them to figure out if Vateo were targeting him personally for some reason), and me (as I worship the god of luck) for answers. I can't recreate it, but the verbal smackdown Missinget laid on Aleistair was one of the most hilarious and applause-inspiring things I've heard in a long time.

While in the library, we discovered that Sethos had entrusted something to a bank on the main island. We went to the island and infiltrated the (long-abandoned) bank. We were unable to bypass security and open Sethos' vault, which meant that it would be necessary to break in through an adjoining wall. While we worked (with the help of our elven hosts) on repairing the ship, Gerrard and the artificers spent the month draining off the magical wards and burrowing through the wall. 

Near the end, Aleistair spotted a blue-clad elf monitoring us from the trees. He (with no small help from some elven archers) subdued the elf and brought him in for questioning. This elf was of a band that had apparently terrorized our elven hosts for centuries, striking out of nowhere and vanishing. We began the questioning process, but all we got was, "You're making a terrible--" before another elf lost composure and killed the captive.

On the last day, Gerrard and the artificers finally broke into the vault of Sethos. The others descended (I was topside running drills with the Marines), and retrieved a black, highly magical orb matching the description of the orbs keeping the trans-planar block in place. As the party retrieved their prize, they heard a shout of, "MURDERERS!" from upstairs. They dashed back up the stair to where the artificers had stayed, preparing for battle on the way.

When the party reached the landing, they found the artificers dead of broken necks and me locked in combat with twenty to thirty of our elven hosts...whose faces were now cut and mutilated in the same manner as the elves who had ambushed us in the previous session. When we engaged, three of the elves' disguises flaked off, revealing them to be the three hostile Aleistairs created by the Mirror of Opposition. The battle that followed was the most over-the-top I have ever seen in a D&D session. I showed of the full potential of my fighting style, repaying every swing at me with two far more lethal strokes, and Koslov killed around a dozen enemies by turningh is familiar into an elder dragon and dropping it on them, but the finishing sequence was a true demonstration of just how powerful high-level characters really are. Zerin and Missinget crushed all of our remaining adversaries between two tsunamis, Obelix sent chain lightning down the entire line of foes, who were still trapped between the now-electrified tsunamis, and Aleistair, who had used a scroll to grow to seventy feet in height, unleashed a flaming whirlwind strike that explosively wiped out everybody still standing.

As this battle died down, we heard more sounds of conflict coming from the just-repaired ships (Gerrard still had his own). We all jumped onto the back of Koslov's familiar, still in dragon form, to get there as quickly as possible. On the way, Zerin cast a set of extremely powerful enhancement spells on me, rendering me nigh-unstoppable. When we arrived, the ships were beset by all manner of airborne enemies, and thousands more swarmed toward them on the ground. I threw Zerin aboard, ordered all marines not on the ship to get out, and jumped off the dragon to face the hordes. Aleistair and Koslov followed, and immediately afterward an airborne spellcaster stole the familiar's draconic form. The horde promptly fired a sun-blotting quantity of arrows at the three of us, but between Aleistair's unmatched agility, Koslov's golem-like body, and my wall of wards, it was to no avail.

Round 1: I lept into the horde and rolled my first critical hit of the campaign, utterly destroying the elf-velociraptor hybrid in front of me, and carved a ten-foot swath in all directions with counterattacks to the others. Koslov pulled a very devious stunt, casting a polymorph spell on himself, which another spellcaster in the horde intercepted...turning into a gigantic bacg of gunpowder and metal shards. Aleistair wasted no time in flinging several flasks of alchemist's fire, causing an explosion that wiped out some thousand more enemies. Everyone on the ships so far either turned their ballistae on the dragon (severely damaging it) or labored furiously to get the engines up and running.

Round 2: I stepped in front of Koslov to shield him and held position, continuing to channel Sauron in the Fellowship of the Ring prologue scene. Captain Dariel ordered Koslov and Aleistair back to the main ship to aid it. They retreated. Koslov catapulted one of the many enemy corpses at me in an attempt to send me flying shipward as well (my buffs did not include flight), but at this point I was about as easy to knock about as a monolith. The crew continued to fight off the airborne assault while trying to get the ships flying.

Seeing this, I charged back to the ship, grabbed the hull, and heaved. Thanks to Zerin, my strength had been boosted to such a level that this effort propelled the ship into the air and well away from our foes. At the same time, the crew finally managed to get the engines back online. As they sailed away, the party saw me completely swarmed by our enemies. Shortly thereafter, the last of Zerin's enhancements made itself clear: when my greatest protective spell expired, with me following suit shortly, the death throes triggered. The resulting explosion vaporized everything within it, permanently altering the island's geography. Some seconds later, Aleistair just barely dodged out of the way as my smoking pick thudded into the deck.

We now have have the first of the orbs required to lift the planar barrier and save Vateo.