PotA Session 19

You can never plan on the dice.

The party was, as usual, split.  The two on the pinnacle would probably be okay.  But on the ground level, Su'uvarax and Truth were inside the tower, low on everything, and the drawbridge was halfway up and rising.  My plan was to free up Freyja and Silaqui so they could get downstairs, and hopefully get the drawbridge back down to reunite the party.  For resources, I had aarakocra in the valley who would be willing to help.  Unfortunately, they're not that formidable; they'd be able to help turn things around, but probably not quickly enough to help Su'uvarax and Truth.  However, five aarakocra are able to summon an air elemental, and that's a game-changer.

So at the start of the round, five aarakocra appeared up at the top of the tower and their air elemental dispatched the priest.  That left Freyja and Silaqui fighting single targets.  Another foe had made off with Freyja's hippogriff; he rolled poorly for Perception and didn't notice the reinforcements.  Freyja finished her opponent but Silaqui missed.

Down on the ground, Zook was out of spells -- but he still had some sorcery points.  So we got practice with another game mechanic and Zook used Misty Step to bring his full pool of HP inside the tower.  Once there, all he had was a crossbow and some uncooperative dice, but it was a start.

Then Maendir moved along the edge of the canyon to line up a shot behind the half-raised drawbridge, through the double doors, and into the guy hauling up the drawbridge -- Roll20's ruler tool is so helpful with archers.  And he rolled a 20.  And he has the Sharpshooter feat.  And the guy had only 5 HP left.  So he was obviously utterly splatulated.  I decided that his corpse got entangled with the drawbridge mechanism and left the drawbridge stuck at a quarter raised -- enough of an opening for the rest of the party to exploit.

Just about that time, Miyamoto Saigo showed up to chip in.  Will decided that he was from some Far Eastern region, and had been magically banished when his clan was defeated.  He has been wandering and working as a guard since.  I figured he would like the military discipline of the Knights of Samular, so he's friendly with them.  To put him on the trail of the missing delegation, I pulled the thread of the fallen soldier's body being returned for burial at Summit Hall.  Then he ran into Hazel, the rescued halfling, travelling with a caravan to Waterdeep, and heard about the caravan raids from the towers.  One player introduction successfully engineered.  He recognized the party from Hazel's description -- Su'uvarax, for one, is quite distinctive -- so he helped out.

The downstairs priest tried using Gaseous Form to escape once the tide turned, but his movement was only 10' and  the spellcasters managed to dispatch him.  The hippogriff thief landed to attack Maendir, but the air elemental pursued and finished him off.  One hurricane almost managed to get away, but I forgot that he had to open the outer stable door and he just ran out of movement at the last minute.  Everyone but Liliandra and Maendir had chased him downstairs, so that was the end of him.  The air elemental also took care of three initiates who were escaping on some giant vultures -- no survivors for the air cult.

Afterwards, one of the aarakocra landed and told Maendir, "They will staff the tower again."  Maendir had stayed outside to protect Thoril's body from the hippogriff.  She wanted to fly, so he let her go.  I was hoping that would be the end of her, but I rolled high, so she came back to the tower stables during the night.

With the battle over and the aarakocra on their way, we wrapped up with Miyamoto introducing himself to the party, and then they came up with a suitable funeral for Thoril.  Their night in the tower passed uneventfully.

Now it's across the hills some more to the Sacred Stone monastery.  I'll have to find a good encounter with an air-based creature to bedevil them a bit.