A+Visit+to+Tepes+-+Closing+the+Portal

A Visit to Tepes - Closing the Portal
-- With the Library area pacified and safe again, the Gods rewarded the party and also sent us on a quest - to close the central portal which would then close all the branch portals. This would stop the leak of magic power to the Shadow Plane. The central portal is guarded by Tepes a demigod who had been formed by it's power, and who would slowly fade in power if it were closed. The party was given a "rock", which if thrown into the portal, would block it, hopefully permanently. Raven was given it to carry.

As the party returned to the Prime Material Plane, we came out in the middle of the central mountains, near where the territories of Tepes, Dong Valley, and the lich meet. As we began scouting out the nearest town, we found an annual meeting between the three about to happen. We also found a druidess who was acting as elder to the town. She turned out to be a great source of information on the three factions. The party decided to head south and attack an Offspring of Tepes to learn of it's power. On the way, we ran into a fairly large patrol traveling along a river and took them out. The offspring of Tepes wasn't that awesome, but he had a guardian wyrm that was truly impressive and that killed Everett and swallowed Raven, but Raven managed to survive long enough to be belched into a pit from which he was rescued later by the party. Everett was raised.

Flying over the mountains, we descended into the old Halfling Valley. No halflings remain, and the area has been overrun with ogres, but still mostly deserted. The three lakes contain some kind of huge sea-monsters. Tepes had a tower in the center, and it was very well guarded and protected from stealthy invasion by a palantir of some sort, giving Tepes constant True Sight of the surrounding area.

We encountered an ex-wife of Tepes, heading out and knowing that she was only going to her death. We persuaded (charmed) her to aid us, and that we didn't intend to kill Tepes, but for her help we would kill his new Slut-Wife, allowing her to regain her position. She told us about a cavernous cleft that ran for miles not too far below the surface. The tunnel dead ended at a whirlpool. We did a little more Q & A with the Ex-Mrs. Tepes (EMT) and got everything we could from her. Then, much to the dismay of the DM, we killed her. After minimal pouting, Tom acknowledged that it was a good tactical move. And on her body we found. . .a dagger.

This dagger was covered in Shadow plane runes and it turns out that to contact whatever it was she was planning on contacting on the other side of the portal was going to require a sacrifice. Zaldistin shivered. We shrank and flushed her body down the whirlpool, off to the great underground ocean.

Our attention now focused on the whirlpool, and we notice an odd smell wafting up. ER the water elemental did a little exploring. The pit that leads down into Teeps' area has a drain system that also acts as a sewer system. The pipes are not large but it could be another method to enter the complex should we decide to do a little swimming up shit stream.

We started exploring down the cavern a little and about 50 yards from the dead end we found a secret door. It was covered over a long, long time ago and had not been opened in a long, long time. We passwalled around it and found a narrow stairs going down. A little ways in there was a partial cave-in with a partial skeleton sticking out. We excavated it out and narrowly missed making it into a bigger cave-in. In the process we found a bag of 200gp of 1st Eastern Empire coins. After waiting for ER to clean himself up we allowed him to keep the coins and all he had to do was put 2000gp into group booty. We also figured out that this was an elven skeleton. We then figured out that Teeps' complex was probably an expansion of an ancient Eastern Drow city. [Did we find anything else on this guy?]. ER kept the skeleton.

We continued down the stairs and eventually realized we were officially in the Underdark - glowing lichen covered walls, lots of stalactites and mites. There were some recent tracks on the ground. Large, three claws in front and 1 in back, about 8 ft tall from the stride and moving like a predator. We warily kept exploring until Lea's 300' vision saw a large shape coming towards up. We set up an ambush but the umberhulk was too smart to walk into it. It disappeared behind a large boulder and we heard rhythmic tapping which we took to be a call for reinforcements. A silence spell ended that and we moved in to surround it but it had disappeared. It popped up next to Everett and whiffed but scared the living crap out of him. So much so that he hit on all 3 swings and criticalled on 2 of them. The 5x damage ended up being about 80 hp. Neville dropped him next with a couple +5 sling bullets. Poor sap never knew what hit him but given the description that was probably best. So the group still does not know about the gaze attack they can do. Continuing on, the tunnel ended at an ancient dock, and seeing nothing else nearby, we went back up to continue with Tepes.

From there, we tunneled directly to the cave with the portal, managing to avoid other outlying areas. Knowing Tepes would be instantly aware of us, we spared no time. The room was a crazy topsy-turvy place with strange gravity wells. At the far end was obviously where Teeps slept, but we did not want to take any time to check it out. We just popped in, Raven ran around the golem guardian and threw the rock into the portal. We then attempted to retreat out again. The golem was immune to most of our attacks, and we decided to just port out. Before doing so, a wave of wild magic poured out of the portal, catching Raven and Everett. Raven forged a link with Tepes, to his dismay, and Everett's sword changed into a nice bow, but leaving him without a melee weapon. We then fled back down the hole we dug we opened up in the cavern and then teleported safely away.