After resting overnight, group now including Gedout and Neril, and joined by the Iomedae Paladin Jarrick, attack & defeat the Gray Maiden fanatics under Quenelle Page, then head up into the Lady's Light where they meet Oriana before attacking the insane alu-demon Ashamintallu, daughter of Amandiyalu. Defeat her, loot treasury and find the third Shard, plus recover the Shard of Pride.
Rest then explore hidden chambers off the jail area, encountering vampiric mists & babau demons.
8 Gray Maidens CR 2 xp 450x8= 3600
Quenelle Page CR 6 xp 2300
Chamber of the Seven CR 7 xp 2900
The Spinning Serpents CR 7 xp 2900
Sorshen's Boudoir - defeat Ashamintallu & take Shard CR 10 xp 5900
Total 17600
6 PCs & Gray Maiden allies = 7
17600/7= 2514 each
Quillax's Account
After a long rest, we were met by the rest of our group, who were returning from taking Anastasia to the half-ogre witch, whom we hoped would help her regain full consciousness.
Geddout and Neril were a welcome sight and rightfully mourned the passing of Keelan when the news was shared.
They also brought a companion, Jarrick, who had been sent to investigate the Grey Maiden activity by his Order. As long as he did no harm to our allied Maidens, I was happy to have him along. He didn't know Keelan, so he kept his distance from our mourning, along with Elwin.
Despite the risk to Gert, we decided to move quickly - we couldn't risk the Shard getting into the wrong hands as it still has power despite the binding of the Ioun Stone. We planned to move with stealth and spent time detailing the layout of the path we needed to take but we also decided to bring a contingent of strength and gathered all our allied Maidens with us.
We found that taking all the boats had been a wise move, as the beach showed sign of heavily armoured boots. Those with heavy armour were instructed to stay back while those with stealth capabilities moved ahead. We decided to take a huge risk and split the party with the ranged and more vulnerable attacking from the balcony, while those better in close combat took the floor. In the hall of the illusatory dance, we met two enemy Maidens. They were quickly and rather brutally dealt with, but there was now a higher risk to Gert as we were spotted and barred from the next room.
Our group rejoined and we worked to break down the door. Between Geddout and myself, we forced the door, but too late for Gert as her severed head was thrown at us. Our allied Maidens kept their calm, though I admit to no such restraint as I ignored all other enemies to head for Lt Page, taking the damage as a matter of course.
We beat down the group only to find that the Shard was missing. The Maidens had shown themselves particularly resistant to mental magicks, so perhaps it wasn't unexpected that they could ignore the slight remaining pull from the Shard of Pride. We managed to keep two of the enemy alive for questioning, although if left to me I admit I would not have.
While Gedout did his best to intimidate the Maidens into answering our questions, and very successfully did so, we arranged Gert to be re-united with her head and taken out to be buried in the sands of the beach. With good information, we were left with the conundrum of what to do with our captives. Our allied Maidens preferred not to kill them, so we left two to guard the captives in a cell and keep them alive. We also field-promoted one of the Maidens as she was capable and our Maidens had lost all their leaders and needed someone to provide order and structure.
Instead of investigating a room with vampiric mist, we decided to head up immediately to the next set of teleporters. This room contained an interesting riddle about embracing the Lady and the Liar. The Lady was obvious. The Liar was not hard to find; Greed would hardly give away anything, even a rose.
Geddout and Jarrick were volunteered to go first. They disappeared into the light easily enough, so we arranged for the rest of us followed.
When we were reunited, we had found the missing Captain, who had been banished to this strange limbo room, unable to leave as in the next room was our false Sorshen. Our Maidens helped convince her that we were telling the truth and we went to confront Anastasia's sister and hopefully rescue one final Maiden that had been left with her.
We had to travel in groups as the whole of us could not pass through the portal at once.
When I arrived, we found that the Maiden had not survived, and Anastasia's sister was being thoroughly trounced. Neril had landed a perfect blow, which stunned our enemy, and our combined strength was enough to kill her without any losses on our side.
We found Keelan's body in the bed, which raised thoughts that did not sit well with any of us. Wrapping Keelan and the Maiden in the bed silks, we sent Maidens off to bury them, while we looked for the Shards, both stolen and our next objective.
We found them in a little room, which sounded oddly of breathing. That turned out to be caused by a rather wicked little orb, which thankfully I was able to avoid being ensnared by. Sepheria was beside herself with joy at finding a small library of spell books, and all of us were thereby happier yet to find a bag of holding large enough for her to fit them all in. Else, we would have had to try to carry whatever might not have fit in our existing bag. Aside from other magical trinkets, we located both Shards. I claimed mine immediately, pleased to have it safely back and not being used for evil. The other was picked up by Sepheria, who we trusted to carry it. The two new members of our group had not yet proven themselves fully trustworthy and as a Monk, Neril was ill-placed to carry the Lust Shard.
We packed up what we could and left Anastasia's sister's body where it lay.
We decided to rest and organize ourselves before we would go investigate the mists.
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