Laravin's Folly Act III

Spoilers ahead! Proceed at your own risk.

Session 8

The PCs have gotten themselves out of the hole they were in after getting blasted by the Arbiter, with the help of Lancelot, an elven cleric of Lathandar with wings, and Theo, the guy with long hair and a buster sword.

They now need to ascend the spire of stars, a three-piece skyscraper, and bonk the Arbiter.

Theo and Lancelot don't join the PCs, as they need to stop the demons popping up all over the city. Cedric goes with Lancelot to try and regain his faith or something, Ria goes with the party.

This session will be the first of the three sections of the skyscraper. Each one has something special; The second one the PCs will be able to rotate it.

As for the first one, it's a little something like this.

While the PCs are briefing in the guard post with Theo and Lancelot, they get a map of the tower. But when they go outside, a huge storm has kicked up around the whole tower. The entire thing is wrapped in a level-apropriate version of a dragonstorm (just half the damage and -15 the saves). This isn't a huuge problem except when you're around windows, which is unfortunately most of the tower.

There are three encounters in the first section of the tower; the first and third are fairly normal, consisting of two nabasu and one erinye. The second is three sarglagons; this fight takes place in a section of the tower shaped like a massive spiral staircase with a 10ft diameter column of water rising through the middle. All three fights take place in arenas dotted with windows, creating areas where the storm is constantly blasting, changing effects every round.

Note: if the PCs want to climb a nearby building and geronimo it over to the spire of stars, they can. This will skip half of the second floor (when I make it lmao), but is made trickier by the fact that the second floor is in a storm. Should the PCs choose to take a nearby building, it has a magic elevator in it, but it gets jammed to full by some demons (erinye and buddies from earlier, 2 waves of those three) who also try and ambush them. The PCs are then on a 30 second (5 round) timer to kill all the demons so they don't get pasted on the ceiling of the lift. They then need to figure out how to a. find a window through the storm and b. actually jump the ~60ft gap. Imma leave that one to the players.

At the top is a vault of magic items (no runes or weapons, though) and a teleporter to the second floor.

note for later: the Arbiter has a transformation into an adult mocking dragon

Session 9

The PCs have just finished beating up the first group of nabasu and erinye.

First they'll run into the vault with a few magic items. They'll also get a level up (though tell them before the session). Some of the items in the vault:

The source of the water pillar in the second segment is in the first, and the portal linking the two is the only way to get through without having the key to the magic door which normally gets you up there. Normally a magus holds the key, but the whole tower's been evacuated/killed and he's nowhere to be found.

The second floor has the fight against the sarglagons, with the added ability to rotate the building. Roughly speaking, the segment is a hexagonal prism, with a column of water down the middle. The water is suspended magically, and there are still windows letting the storm in.

Have the one fight and some puzzle/setpiece moments. Some ideas:

  • Big maze of windows letting the storm in, some rolls to get through. Pehaps a whole ass side wall of the tower gets busted.
  • Obtaining some macguffin or other which they need to not break (key to the next floor, probably, a crystal orb of some kind).

Then they need to realign the tower in order to teleport. Then a level up and on to the final fight.

Session 10

The PCs have now encountered the Arbiter at the top of the tower. The general plan of the fight is something like this:

  1. A pretty normal first phase
  • As before, the arbiter uses the stat block of a coloxus, though with some changes, like:
  • A big blast attack where he plasma ball's the entire arena, which can only be avoided with cover; it cannot be dodged or reflex saved. It does 4d6 lightning and 4d6 fire on hit.
  • No summoning other monsters
  1. A transition phase of sorts, where the arbiter finally realizes his plans and blows up the entire spire. Cue a couple of turns of free fall combat where the Arbiter is still just about in human form and they are falling through the wreckage of the spire while fighting and the city is plane shifting around them.
  2. A second phase where the arbiter has fully turned into an adult mocking dragon. The planes are still shifting and most of the arbiter's attacks are swapped out for plane-manipulation ones (opening a whole lot of portals, ripping holes in spacetime kinda vibe).

Rick page: (hopefully this works) here