RECAP: 13C Final Battle #1
|A short-handed 13C managed to notch a win in the first of their Five Final Battles as we wind down a campaign that began in December of 2013, 5.5 years ago.

Initially, the team (a short team, consisting of Aerric, Balthazar, Trevor and Sr. Delores) faced a single Fallen: Lord Shume, a ghostly apparition wrapped in ancient armor and swinging a heavy military flail. Alongside Shume stalked Pike, a Nessian hellhound of prodigious size and ferocity. But no sooner had hostilities commenced than Shume called for aid: “Tegwar! Come forth!”
And Tegwar did. Tegwar turned out to be a bear – a vampiric bear. Trevor had moved toward Shume ahead of Balthazar’s arrows, but Tegwar came roaring out of the adjacent hallway and attacked him viciously, rending him with claws, savaging his shoulder and drinking great gouts of the slayer’s blood.

Balthazar let fly with ensorcelled arrows, and Aerric rose up into the air and let fly with crisp Chain Lightnings, which jumped from for to foe.
About that time, a huge web plunged down out of the dark domed roof of the room, attempting to trap Balthazar. He dodged it, but Trevor was taking a lot of damage, and had lost a level due Energy Drain (he eventually was to lose a total of four levels through vampiric drain). The web, although dodged, could serve to hamper maneuverability later.
Aerric kept up the chain lightnings, consistently doing serious damage (although Tegwar’s spell resistance was nearly as high as his armor class, and kept him from getting the worst of it). But Shume had other allies: he began calling in an unintelligible language, and a round later a 12-foot mummy in from the opposite side as Tegwar. The mummy blasted with negative energy, but it became clear quickly that it’s slow speed and distance from the action were going to preclude the mummy for engaging some of his more trenchant abilities, most of which relied on touch.
More spiders fell from the upper reaches of the dome, but Aerric’s lightning took them out pretty quickly. Balthazar, seeing the trouble that Trevor was getting into, zipped around the webs and took up a flanking position on Tegwar, putting arrow after arrow into the vampire bear. It whirled and rent Balthazar but Trevor, whom Sr. Delores had been both healing and insulating against further level drain, took the opportunity to put the sword to Tegwar.
The mummy moved to the relative cover of the large sarcophagus, and attempted to dispel the powers of Balthazar’s bow. Shume had been felled by this time, and the mummy had brought him back (albeit a disjointed and not very capable Shume), and the mummy had hoped to take some of the sting from Balathazar as he made his way toward Aerric and Sr. Delores. The attempt on the bow failed, however, and a well-placed Fireball lit the mummy on fire, and weakened it enough that Balthazar’s arrows were sufficient to finish it off.
13C earned the maximum of 64 points for the encounter, bringing the party total to 65 of the required 600 points to meet the conditions of victory.


