Xorian Wars: Alliance and Rebellion

[Anxe]

Alliance Session #10/Total Session #17
This session was held over Google Hangouts. Ozymandias, Throgg, and Salzar attended.

The battle began! I set up the troops where the players commanded and we got underway. It became clear very quickly, that actually rolling all those dice would be agonizing. I quickly computed average damages for all of the archer units. We ruled that archers would deal average damage every round. Made that a lot easier. Lightning was also striking and essentially killing one of the player’s units every round (A unit represents 100 men. The players have close to 400 units).
The Xorians started off by bringing rams forward to attack the three gates into the city. Preta defended the eastern gate with the contingent of wizards from the city. Torin defended the central gate. Amalius rallied the troops. The many NPCs also spent time rallying the troops.
The deadliness of the rams became apparent quickly. Preta shattered the wheels on one ram. Torin animated the log portion of another ram. The animated ram started flailing around and killed a few Xorian troops. One of the Xorians spotted the errant ram and moved to attack.
This rage is Degusharla, the archer rage, who also met at the negotiations before the battle. Degusharla killed the ram in one round with his arrows (Order of the Bow Initiate + flaming, shocking, acidic bow + rapid shot or manyshot). The players moved to engage.
As the party moved in a colossal man grew out of the dark clouds over the siege walls. The black cloud man had red eyes and a plumed helmet. He stood several hundred feet tall over the battlefield (The players correctly surmised that this was Ares). Ares brought his hand down upon the clouds. A funnel began to form over the central gate. TORNADO Warning!
The players chose to deal with the tornado later. They engaged Degusharla with the help of Kig Yupington (A tattooed monk NPC). During a battle within a battle like this the soldiers generally stay out of it. The power scale is too great for them to have any real effect.
Degusharla won initiative and shot a full barrage of arrows at Torin. Torin would’ve died, but Athena protected him. That’s not just a euphanism for Torin casting shield of faith. Torin has 86 HP and the rage dealt 145. Athena came down and possessed Torin in a similar manner to the possession of Diomedes in the Iliad. Flames sprouted from Torin’s armor and his helmet. His spear became wreathed in divine light. Torin survived the arrow attacks unscathed.
Degusharla took a step back in shock. Preta cast Evard’s black tentacles to try and incapacitate Degusharla, but his grapple was too high to succumb to the spell. Amalius pulled out his old favorite power of retrieve. It worked and the rage’s bow went straight into Amalius’s bag of holding. The players specifically requested that I show them Degusharla’s expression after losing his priceless artifact weapon. I started off with shocked surprise (open mouth, wide eyes). I slowly shifted from that to gritting my teeth, narrowing my eyes, and showing my fangs.
Torin threw his spear through Degusharla. The spear immediately returned to his hand. Degusharla rushed forward and attacked Torin. Torin and Kig fought back, getting some flanking action going. Shez failed a fear check against Degusharla’s Kiai Shout and ran away. Preta kept his eyes open for Frost, the mounted charger rage. Amalius flew up in the sky a little bit to get the bow out of Degusharla’s reach. Kig successfully grappled Degusharla. Torin began using some divine positive energy magic on Degusharla. The Dragovinian writhed in agony.
Frost showed up mounted on her nightmare just in time to see Degusharla turn to dust due to the overload of positive energy. Frost’s nightmare mount was quickly shot out from under her by Preta. Fortunately, Frost had a backup magic mount. She got on top of her magic spider and charged Preta (Who had foolishly forgotten to fly out of range). Preta died in one hit (typical of uberchargers).
Kig and Torin attacked Frost. Kig took out the spider and Torin got in a few good hits. Amalius began working his way back and trying a few more retrieve powers which failed due to Frost’s divine grace buffed will save. Frost threw a full attack at Torin which brought him down. Torin would’ve died again, but Athena once again intervened. She whisked him away to the dwarven city of Jord for him to recover (Torin won’t be able to do anything else in this battle).
Kig grappled and pinned Frost. He began using his Earth’s Embrace feat to deal extra damage to Frost. Frost fought back with her energy draining claws. Amalius threw a few more powers at Frost that failed to pierce her will save.
The fear effect wore out on Shez and he teleported back to the fight. Shez told Amalius to help him pour holy water on the two grapplers. The holy water proved effective, but the two remaining party members were very close to failing. Kig was knocked unconscious by Frost’s continued claw attacks. Just at that moment the holy water took her last hit point away. Frost died. Amalius and Shez quickly stuffed the bodies and the magical gear into the bag of holding before flying back to the safety of the walls.

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After the battle with the two rages we were too exhausted to continue the battlefield fight. One hour has passed on the battlefield so far. We’re hoping to play again next week, but may not due to scheduling conflicts.