Balthazars divine army marches down the pass toward New Ornos. Baron Voghtairi’s fate has come knocking. The Friends don’t know it, but years of planning has led up to this very moment.
The gate to New Ornos is wide open, and aerial scouting (courtesy of Icoriols flying broom) finds loose assemblies of soldiers stationed around town, but not even a full bodied militia. This is highly suspicious, but The Friends still contemplate just walking in and attacking. It looks like their victory is assured. They do not know they are correct, and that’s just what Voghtairi wants.
They wait outside, intending to get a short rest. They’re beat up from the dragon fight. In the middle of the night, an ambush force of 50 levies makes their way to the camp. It is quickly and effectively dealt with, the divine army suffers no losses and ends up with numerous prisoners. But it doeas interrupt the rest.
The Friends question the prisoners and get nothing but spat insults. Through inference and scattered details they piece together the narrative that Voghtairi has fed his townsfolk: Balthazar is an evil magician who usurped the queen and marched to Nildazi to set a rampant beast free. Obviously untrue, but the flow of information is slow, and Voghtairi has it on absolute lockdown. The townsfolk cannot be convinced in a short amount of time, so they remain prisoners.
The next night, Voghtairi does the same thing. He knows his only chance (now that his giants are gone) is to keep The Friends weak and hope they come attack him. He needs to be in his keep for he has magic to enact there, and even he can’t get away with attacking himself. Voghtairi is weary of his spell slots, he needs to play it very safe.
A failing of this session is that it seemed kind of contrived that The Friends would be interrupted when their army was interrupted. I think it makes sense, since they need to be giving commands, but they thought they could just have someone else handle it, and I think the army would have some kind of sub-command to lead troops. In an ideal world this would have led to some sort of penalty for the check against the army and it would have been a more interesting choice, but Balthazar’s troops so vastly outnumber Voghtairis it wouldn’t have made much of a difference anyway. In the end The Friends got their short rest, which is okay. My aim was not to prevent them from resting, it was to make Voghtairi look competent, and I think he still managed to get some good punches in.
Weary of some kind of trick, The Friends devise a plan: they will sneak into the keep using the secret door Icoriol found and try to find Voghtairi. At their signal, the army is to charge through the gates and attack.
Getting to the secret door is easy, the party has tons of ways to fly now. Getting through it is a little harder, Icoriol has to burn a spell slot using an explosive glyph of warding. (There is a pass phrase that one of The Friends had heard at some point but I don’t think they knew it was a pass phrase or knew that it was a passphrase in the first place.)
The Friends spend some time exploring the keep room by room. It’s deserted, and contains a bunch of weird stuff, like a red sapling that grows with blood, a jail cell with a dead telexu facedancer (they heard about this guy way back in The Ruby Crown XXIII), and a whole cavern basement layer. They see a shadow man inside and, after a random encounter roll, see a floating orb with multiple eyestalks. They vacate the dungeons shortly after and ascend to the upper levels of the keep.
In Voghtairi’s office, they find an imp in an orb that promises to tell them a secret if they free it. They do, and it whispers the passphrase to the secret passages in the house, but they don’t know that. Unhelpful little imp. They also find some of Voghtairis notes pertaining to his expeditions into the volcano, full of vague notes like “powerful spirit” and “orbs”.
I’ve had The Spiked Keep keyed for many months by this point, in case The Friends decide to snoop Voghtairis castle. Some of them got close, but they never did it until now, and by this point they’d mostly seen the stuff that the keep hinted at. They didn’t really learn much except hints at what Voghtairi has been doing this whole time.
The 2nd level of the keep has an outdoor balcony area, and a third floor sits on top of it, only accessible through one door up some stairs to the outside. The door is locked very well, but it’s no match for Siriel.
Unfortunately, Baron Voghtairi had an idea that The Friends might come to him in his sanctum, and he had a month to prepare while an army was raised. For a split second after Siriel creaks the door open, she sees a room flush with cabinets, shelves, drawers, pots and jars of strange materials, suits of armor on stands, and a black longsword hovering in a magical cabinet. Then a red glowing glyph appears on the floor before her. Then another next to it, then three more, then suddenly the room is alight with explosive glyphs. The Friends have very little time to shield themselves before the entire workshop explodes in a massive plume of blue fire.
The Friends are completely scattered, hitting the floor hard, as cobbles and fire rain down around them. Where the 3rd floor of the keep used to be there is now a blanket of black force, an exposed dimension of Voghtairis pocket dimension in which he contained his greatest secret.
Voghtairi stands next to a large ornate Red Door, standing on its own in an archway of obsidian arch stones. He looks less put together than he has, there is a look of desperation on his face, but also severe determination present in his eyes. He wastes no time attacking after his trap is sprung.
The divine army take this as their signal and begin to charge. Voghtairis meager forces battle as best they can, but they are no match.
Voghtairi begins by summoning a magic dragon out of the smoke created by the explosion. It breathes magical force on the injured Friends, but is dispelled when Voghtairi takes a solid hit from Friend. The wizard can’t put up much of a fight in close quarters, so he creates distance with The Ruby Sceptre, blasting several of The Friends away, including Balthazar who is knocked severl streets away by the explosive thunder force of the dragons roar. Friend resists, stuck like a rock. Voghtairi knows he has no hope of defeating him in melee. But Voghtairi doesn’t need to defeat him, only hold him off.
As the fight on top of the keep continues, the massacre in the streets is almost coming to an end. Blood soaks the walls and cobblestones of New Ornos. This is exactly what Voghtairi has been waiting for. With a good chunk of his remaining strength, he speaks the words of the ritual he has been cultivating for the last decade. Red cracks like sunken artieries light up within the obsidian rocks surrounding the door. The blood of the fallen soldiers rockets into the sky and forms a giant crescent arc that splashes into the door, coating it in blood. The door absorbs the blood, and as it does, the arteries in the rocks glow brighter and brighter, until at last, the door cracks open.
Voghtairi smiles. After all this time, all this planning, and all this meddling from the blasted Friends of Orthos, he has gotten his way. The Red Door, doorway to The Red Realm, where he hopes to harness the power to control the dragon, stands open before him. He strides calmly toward his ascension.
But he is stopped by Monkey, who locks him in a grapple. It’s joined by Friend moments later. Voghtiair struggles, trying to use his Ruby Sceptre, but it’s spent. He is low on spells, and has accumulated many injuries. He is battered by Friend and Monkeys attempts to hinder him. He grits his teeth. Icoriol tries to grab the door and swing it shut, but the doort resists him. The closer he gets to the red light beyond the door, the more he feels it trying to grab him. Icoriol is strong, but the realm is stronger. Monkey suggests using the sovreign glue, and goes to help Icoriol with the door.
Voghtairi finds his moment. With the last of his spell power, he transforms into a mist and slips out of Friends grasp, wraps past Monkey and Friends, and reforms right at the precipice of the door. He spares one final look towards the world he will soon rule, and steps through the door.