Wells of Darkness

After a peaceful nights sleep, Arry led the party once more to the prison on Gaping Maw (which was lucky, from the universes point of view since they had yet to meet the clue to the next stage). Moving through the now empty cell blocks, they moved into the last are to explore and were a little discombobulated to discover it full of lethargic undead. Moving cautiously through the ranks of ghouls, wights, bodaks and wraiths, they encountered a very skinny and slightly desiccated bullywug (frog man). He addressed them, asking what they were doing in his domain - Sancho answered that they were seeking to stop Demogorgon. The lich agreed to help them if they killed Vanthus, who was being a pain in the oujamaflips. Since this was impossible, as they had already done the deed, they simply proved that he was dead. The delighted lich advised them to seek Shami-Amourae, the demon lords ex consort, in Shattered Night via the wells of Darkness. Met with a sea of blank expressions, he told them to talk to Red Shroud, a succubus information broker, in Broken Reach, on the abyssal Plain of Infinite Portals. They thanked him and left - a good move on their part, since he is a rather vindictive little chap and his phylactery is very well hidden!

They returned to Sasserine to re-equip, now that they knew where they were going and set out for the town of Broken Reach via plane shift. On getting there, a helpful passing Glabrezu, who assumed they were mercenaries in the blood war, pointed them in the right direction. Reaching town, they took rooms at the inn and checked out seeing the succubus. This turned out to be fairly simple and they left a note pinned to the wall of her throne room requesting she left them know when she was in. The next day, they were summoned and went with 12,000GP in gold and considerably more in poison (having been told of her fondness for poisons) which they more or less dumped on the floor in front of her. This made her very amenable to them, with Sancho rather overawed to be confronted with a better charisma than his own. She provided tons of background information concerning the fall of Shami Amourae and the rise of Malcanthet as queen of the succubi, as well as telling them how to reach the Wells of Darkness via a gate, for which the key was a relic of a demon lord. Sancho remembered the tooth he had been carrying around for ages and found that it was a tooth of Ahazu, the demon lord keeper of the wells of Darkness and so off they went, with a new friend in the form of Shadowfire, a wispling planar guide lent to them by red Shroud.

The Battle Of The Apes

Using the gate, they found themselves at the bottom of a pit, with much carrion, four abyssal ghouls and four chasme demons. The demons promptly teleported to the top of the pit as the ghouls attacked. Mr P flew up to get range for a cone of ice on the chasmes as they unleashed a hail of irritation magic on the battle below. He found himself grappling with one of the demons as the rest of the battle followed a rather predictable course and so used his new toy - a wand of wonder!?! This had little effect, apart from equalizing the grapplers size, which enabled Mr P to briefly break free. Sancho joined in by weakening the chasme as the others landed on the floor of the well and the battle was swiftly ended.

After a brief search around, the group headed for the large ruined castle overlooking the small plane. Within the ruins was an almost complete tower, with a mosaic floor showing a map of the plane with prisoners locations indicated by their demonic seals. As Mr P worked out where Shami-Amourae was imprisoned, Sancho suddenly felt a compulsion to draw the seal of Ahazu on the mosaic by depressing tiles in it. He was swiftly disabused of this notion by the entire group dragging him from the chamber.

They set off for Shamis well, arriving there to find it overgrown with several large trees. As Analesia and Arry climbed down beneath the foliage, they were attacked by Gorallons (huge girallons) and mad a swift retreat to tell the party what they had found. Sancho immediately jumped in to the pit and feather falled to the bottom, as every one else cast fly/drank potions of fly and went to combat the apes. Mr P disintegrated one of the trees to aid his vantage point as Arry and Keth went toe to toe with the four apes. Sancho was a little unnerved to find himself in front of a huge retriever, but soon realized that it did not seem to pose a threat - a greater threat was probably the rain of swords landing around him from above, as a mix of weapon choices and fumbles were made. Another great combat went on for poxy ages, but eventually the apes were stilled and the party gathered at the base of the well.

Watch The River Flow

Having recovered from the ape assault, the party faffed around a lot, trying to work out what to do with a gigantic retriever and a pool of inky darkness. The solution was to go somewhere else - obvious, really.

They headed for the ruined castle atop a nearby hill. Having reached it, they suffered the unwelcome attentions of some Varrangoins (bat like magical beasts) who caused them virtually no problems at all. Moving in to the ruins, they found that the tower was virtually unscathed and moved inside. At this point, Sancho ran forward and started playing with the mosaic floor, seemingly imprinting on it the symbol of Ahazu. The others swiftly moved to stop him and a lengthy discussion ensued. Finally, they decided to go with Sancho's idea, only minus Sancho. Mr P used an illusion to get a pattern for the symbol and pressed down the stones of the mosaic to form it. This opened the mosaic like a door, and ants started to swarm out. Being heroes, they closed the door and beat a tactical retreat.After yet more discussion, they advanced, reopened the door and had a bit of a barney with the ants and the three watchers of Ahazu within, during which some of the great piles of books lying around the well were damaged. The combat went well (eventually) and they found themselves in the well of Ahazu - but still unsure what they were doing there. There's a bit of a theme building up here...

Sancho set off to see if Shami-Amouraes well had opened and found her still imprisoned. On his way back, he was seen by two of the guardians of the plane - immense Bodaks, who trailed him back to the keep. This proved a little unfortunate, as two of the party fell to their dreadful gaze. The rest of the team battered the poor little undead killing machines down and then used true resurrections on their colleagues.At long last, someone touched one of the wells - Sancho found the ghostly sibilant echoes of Ahazu drifting through his mind and, after some conversation, made a demonic pact to return with a powerful prisoner in return for the release of the succubus. As he did so, a tome of infinite spells appeared in his hands, with just one spell left - Freedom.

They made their way back to Shamis well and prepared to free her - unfortunately irritating the retriever in the process. Realizing that they had his P45 on them, he attacked, causing quite a lot of damage in the process, before succumbing to the party's joint might.They read the spell and shami rose from the oily darkness, only to immediately teleport away as the chokesnake attached to her took over. A swift and brutal combat ensued, during which the snake discovered that 39 hit points did not grant a great life expectancy in the abyss. As it died, the skies were rent open and a torrent of black water fell, as the Styx was diverted by a powerful contingency spell. Simultaneously, four bar-lgura mounted on retrievers were released from stasis and moved to attack, ignoring most of the party and heading for Keth as he tried to leg it with the succubus over one shoulder. The battle took some time, as it split into small pockets of warfare as the retrievers moved across the plain. Finally, as the last one fell, they looked up to see a small skiff in the distance, slowly moving down the waterfall of the Styx towards them.

Into The Maw
Enemies of My Enemy