Patent Pending, Session 2: Heart of the Witchlight Fens, Part Two

Due to plenty of hanging out, chatting, and eating before hand, as well as a player's need to leave early for health reasons, tonight's session of D&D consisted solely of one of the big set-piece battles that Fourth Edition does so well. We had some character renaming: the artificer is now known as Janissary, while the bard is called Dalia.

Patent Pending (as I will continue to refer to the party) set out from the lizardfolk village they had saved after resting there for the night. The lizardfolk guided them to the elemental node within the swamp, but they dared not enter it themselves. It is a sacred place to them, and besides, their gods had obviously appointed these outsiders as their champions.

Some scouting by Cordova the thief revealed that the elemental node lay at the middle of a large, dry clearing at the heart of the swamp. Around a 15-foot central plinth lay areas dominated by each of the classical elements: trenches of muddy water; walls of solid earth; curtains of fire; and swirling vortices of air. The party was approaching from the earth quadrant, so they would be funneled through a series of earthen walls.

At the center, an elementalist in leather robes was conducting some kind of ritual to redirect the energies of the node, creating the elemental upheaval the party experienced the night before. Obviously, he needed to be stopped. Unfortunately, he had a small army of elementals at his command, including more of the dust devils they'd already encountered, two earth elementals, a fire elemental, and hulking brute made of mud.

The fight was long and painful, but in the end, Patent Pending captured the elementalist for questioning and removed the materials he was using for his ritual: two crates containing 200 pounds of charcoal from a charcoal merchant in Fallcrest named Mardan Coalhand. Coalhand is a particularly unsavory dwarf who bears further investigations. They also took the elementalist's orrium staff, a pouch that converts gems and coins into platinum of equal value, a shortsword that warns you of enemies, and a small chest with coins.

Highlights of the fight:

  • The bard singing a Verse of Triumph at the very beginning of the fight, turning the battlefield into a disco boogaloo.
  • An earth elemental burrowing up through the earth like a landshark toward the wizard, only to enter a psychic chasm the wizard had put down earlier and falling flat on its face.
  • The warden, encircled by rings of fire that would burn her if she moved, happily taking the fire damage to empower her blessing of blazing fangs and charging the elementalist down with a raking attack from her relentless panther guardian form.
  • The artificer, on fire and blind, desperately stumbling away from the fight, then pulling an obedient servant out of her pocket and throwing it back at the enemies. The servant would go on to punish the elementals for daring to threaten its mistress.

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