Session 31: 9/3/2022
We pick up right where we left off. At initiative 20, people take some lightning damage based on Dex save results. Lightning continues to come down for the duration of the fight, but Dex saves are usually made.
Troudar the fighter wields his mighty mallet, finishing off the air elemental and the stunned ahuitzolotl next to him. Ratel goes next, running up the wall to near the high priestess. He shoots, hitting once for quite a bit of damage thanks to purple worm poison, which he’s almost out of. It’s then the “Enemy Caster” turn, which is most of them.

The High Priestess drops Freezing Sphere in the middle of the open area, damaging most of the party. Many of them pass their CON saves. F.S. also has the fun side effect of freezing standing water, and it’s been pouring buckets. For the remainder of the fight, the center of the temple (ground level) is covered in ice. Any creature starting its turn on the ice has to pass a DC 10 Acrobatics check or fall prone at the start of its turn. There were many failed checks.
The other casters go, but mostly miss with Guiding Bolts or things that are saved against.

The other Ahuitzotl is finished off with a Hasted stab from Teador, who then drops concentration and loses his turn by casting Circle of Power, giving everyone advantage on saves vs magic, and basically Evasion on successful saves. I think Saqwam turns invisible and moves to the side, as there are no ground targets. One of the revenants wields a Club of Humanoid Bane and catches up to the high priestess after killing one of the Senior Priests.
Troudar’s next turn is an Action Surge to double-move with his broom up to the High Priestess, where he uses Fighting Spirit to make 3 attacks and deletes her from the board. The remaining air elemental finishes off one of the revenants.
Ratel shoots at the other Senior priest (just within 30’ visibility range), doing about 40 damage thanks to poison and leaving the priest with about 60 hit points left. Teador uses Ssword’s blindsight vs divine casters to target the remaining priest with a Firebolt, then rolls a natural 20. We use big crits, so that’s 40 + 4d10 and he rolls well. That firebolt went right into the hapless priest’s beak and killed him!

The remaining lesser casters are finished off, partly by Saqwam using True Polymorph to turn into a Planetar and dealing 40+ damage per melee hit. Bodies are quickly retrieved, and the party teleports out quickly. The remaining Revenant turns down the offer to go with them in favor of staying and killing more.

Loot:
Everyone levels to 19!
Adamantine Breastplate and Club of Humanoid Bane +1 from the Revenant. It’s just a club, but against a humanoid, it’s a 3d6+1 damage club.
From the high priestess:
Cloak of Displacement (goes to Troudar, who drops his Ring of Spell Turning)
Dagger of Precision +2: +2 Dagger, Dex increased by 2 to max 22 while attuned (Goes to Ratel, who gets rid of the Skyfall boots…again…for now)
Ring of Air Elemental Control (Goes to Teador, who drops the Anyblade…again…for now. He’ll need to kill an Air Elemental for it to be much use).
Shark Leather +2, the last item in the Panoply of the Shark set. Unfortunately no takers, as the set is more for rangers and rogue types and we have none of those.

Also, Ssword gets smarter from absorbing divine energy… after all, it was made from a fragment of divine energy originally. A fragment of Sseth, the yuan-ti’s dead god. Take a bit of divinity, and add a bit more, and more, and eventually you have a god again.

The Ssword of Sseth would like to be revealed to the yuan-ti, so that they can begin worshipping Sseth again, giving the Ssword more power. Sseth was lawful evil. Troudar isn’t a fan of the idea. Saqwam is definitely against it, given orders from his patron. Ratel is fine with it because it helps kill the enemy. Teador, the wielder of the Ssword of Sseth, reveals that he’s been working on changing the Ssword’s alignment and persuading it to change its views to be more open and acceptable.

Next time, unless they change plans, they’ll be traveling to visit the yuan-ti to start spreading the word of Sseth.
They don’t have an air-skiff, and it’s 7 days until the Anyspell Tome can be used to cast Teleport again, so I’m not sure how they plan to travel. Saqwam’s player has now realized that he can True Polymorph himself into an adult dragon every day, so maybe by dragon-back.