This post has the following content warnings:
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
An adventuring party recruited from Osirion teleports into Azir on the 8th of Desnus. Rahadoum's recruiting contact in Osirion wrote ahead to note they were expected. Couple of guys he's known a long time - a wizard, a ranger - and a new guy, sorcerer, probably to replace the cleric they usually travel with. They spend two days in Azir getting oriented and head out to the front. The ranger wears an unusually high quality amulet of Nondetection; the sorcerer wears a headband for intelligence, which is a bit unusual as sorcerers usually don't need it to cast, but some variants do; they are otherwise unremarkable. Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, no reading, which could mean neutral or 'hiding it'. They work quickly and effectively, manage resources reasonably well, get recommended to higher-ups for a closer look on that account.
And then Leareth follows his army through the Gate. He stays to the back, mostly reaching past them to skim surface thoughts, gauge reactions. Check some of the compulsions he laid before.
The Chelish response to the invading army that is - absurdly, falsely, it has to be falsely - claiming to be Aroden's is being substantially hampered by the number of important people who have said "oh, it's Aroden. We can't fight Aroden." or "We had better surrender." or other similarly useless things. In some cases it's been determined they've been Enchanted; in some cases it hasn't; wizards are being marshalled to get that fixed as soon as possible.
Everyone is terrified. The invader says he's Aroden, but that doesn't make any sense, and is probably a lie, and maybe the whole thing is a spectacular trick to test their loyalty to Asmodeus, or a faction dispute within Hell, and it's not at all clear what you do here to avoid being executed.
Some groups of them have managed to conclude that probably what you do to avoid being executed is flee. Others have managed to conclude that probably what you do is start shooting at the army which is probably an illusion or something anyway, an illusion of an army pouring through a Gate is much more consistent with what is known to be possible than an actual army pouring through an actual Gate.
Some people are preparing to go kill the claimed-Aroden, which is probably the cleanest way to end this.
Leareth suspects they're going to have a pretty hard time with that!
With both, really, his army is really well shielded, and Aroden's is not quite as well equipped with Velgarth artifacts (there wasn't time to make that many) but they've got their own Golarion-style magic items, and are very organized.
He passes on warnings of what people are up to, though. Lots of other Thoughtsensers are doing the same, relaying via Taver who has the attention span to combine their info.
The city of Egorian is surrounded by plains of red roses, half of which, once upon a time in the long-distant past, turned white at Aroden's mere presence. These flowers maintained their coloration for thousands of years thereafter.
After Aroden's death, they went back to red.
Aroden passes the fields, Taver still announcing his presence to literally the entire city.
(He takes out a diamond and casts a spell, but he isn't very obvious about it.)
The once-white roses are now white again.
Most High Aspexia Rugatonn, the grand high priestess of Asmodeus in Cheliax, cannot get out of bed and cannot cast spells and cannot talk and none of the spells her subordinates are trying are fixing this and they start slaughtering human sacrifices on the altar of the temple to get a devil or a miracle capable of fixing her.
It would really preferable if, instead, they didn't do that! He directs some people that way.
Nayoki, flanked by a couple of Adept mages and quite a number of well-armed, well-armoured soldiers, gets within range, taps a node to boost her Mindhealing with mage-energies, and set-commands everyone in the building to please :STOP MOVING STOP DOING THINGS: and then directs in some of the Healers to see if any of the would-be-sacrifices can still be saved.
- someone is cheating. Most of Asmodeus's attention is dedicated to sweeping through the past several months now that He knows what to look at, figuring out how they cheated, what He can do in response -
On the altar a Gate to Hell opens and a devil charges through and tries to fix whatever that was with Dispel Good, and when that fails with Dispel Chaos, and when that fails by hammering the person responsible with an astonishing amount of lightning
A different devil charges through and checks whether Break Enchantment will do it.
Two Adept mages are covering Nayoki with shields and she's also running as fast as she can in the other direction because why would she stick around after doing that - when it looks like their shields might not hold it off she raises a Gate on the nearest shop-doorway and dives through it, catching herself in a roll and coming up on her feet back near one of the initial Gates. Or where it was, the troops are through now and they've taken it down before anyone can figure out that blasting Gates works.
Break Enchantment super does not work. It's also not detectable as an enchantment, or as magic at all.
Asmodeus gives a random priest who arrived to the temple too late to be caught in the enchantments twelve more cleric levels and a shove to his knees to pray -
And he distributes twelve more cleric levels too, in the same instant, he has bound himself to act just as much and not more and this may destroy the world but it is the best shape to be in expectation -
- Huh, something feels different, it's - like he has suddenly deeper reserves, except it's not his usual reserves, it's the other kind. The kind that comes from Abadar. It's not exactly twice as much as before but he has a sense it's the right amount to get him an additional level's worth of spells.
What is he even supposed to do about that - there aren't any clerics around he can ask, Rahadoum's army doesn't work with them, he's kind of a one-time exception here.
He didn't spend very long looking through the list of higher-level spells but he tries to remember, briefly, if any of them are useful enough to be worth stopping to ask for, rather than just going on with his normal, right now much stronger kind of magic.
All right it probably doesn't take that long to get one spell and he doesn't have anyone else to cast it on him right now - he's mostly not using magic, he's here to coordinate, but obviously more backup is better.
He Mindspeaks some mages to cover him, and also Mindspeaks Taver to let him know that he appears to have gotten more cleric powers and given how the gods work this probably means Asmodeus is up to something. And then he gets out his holy symbol and kneels and reaches for the now-familiar interface with Abadar.
He'll definitely take three of it! Leareth pushes a feeling of gratitude toward that now-familiar presence, which is still kind of terrifying but also its own flavour of reassuring.
Affection, pride, confidence.
A devil steps out of the temple of Asmodeus and fills a hundred-foot-square area with LOTS AND LOTS OF FIRE.
Not that many of Leareth's soldiers and none of his mages are within that area, because Nayoki has been warning everyone to keep their distance while they figure out what Asmodeus is about to do. Farseers are watching, messages are hissed to Mindspeakers who inform Taver.
Leareth relays to his mages, telling the nearby ones to swap to heat-sink shields; he's also not sure Velgarth magic is the best bet against this, can Taver ask some of Aroden's wizards for advice.