Friday, December 21, 652 AU

• Qhask rejoins the party. Rather than let the prisoners fend for themselves while they fight Tharruk, they bring the prisoners with them to the hall of the three trials. They tell Valspira to watch the prisoners and open the trapdoor to the ritual chamber.
• Beatrice’s spirit insists that they kill Rinnall before they fight the lich so he won’t regenerate, but they decide to gamble on figuring out an alternate solution before he regenerates. Beatrice says Tharruk has a magic knife on his person that they need to use to kill Rinnall.
• They summon Atris with a sending, and descend.
• They find a large hall, at the center of which is a magic circle and several undead warriors and mages, chanting. At the far end of the room is Tharruk, cackling. The battle begins.
• Atris and Tharruk mostly focus on each other, while the rest of the party take out the various other undead.
• The undead prove difficult, and Tharruk occasionally targets the party, bringing several of them close to death.
• Atris manages to cast banishment on Tharruk. While he’s out of the picture, the party destroy the black statue, which is feeding energy into the circle. It produces a shadow every time it’s hit, and when the statue is finally broken, it explodes with necrotic energy and produces a monstrous shadow-creature.
• They defeat the shadow creature, and prepare their attacks for when Tharruk returns. Tharruk knocks out Thaldohr and Aurelia, but Atris manages to take him out with a lightning bolt.
• As Tharruk collapses, the room begins to collapse, with chunks of masonry fall from the ceiling. They quickly gather what they can from Tharruk’s corpse. Atris has no spell slots left for a teleport, but they convince Valspira to cast teleport on the former prisoners.

VALSPIRA: I don’t know, I’m pretty exhausted from healing you all…
VALYA: Do it and we’ll shorten the contract to six months!
EVERYONE ELSE: No, don’t say that! No!
VALSPIRA: Deal!

• Beatrice possesses Aurelia and casts word of recall, bringing them back to the Temple of Soleil in Hart’s Crossing, the last place Beatrice visited before dying.
• They discuss with Atris what to do about the phylactery. Atris suggests the Queen can spare a diviner for such an important question. She casts sending and is told a diviner will be sent that evening to Crystalport.
• They cast sending to Utaz, who teleports them back to Crystalport and informs them that the necromancers fled back north and the Wood Scorpions have retreated. ❦