2020-06-18 – The head of the snake – Heret

Doing an out-of-character summary for now, mainly because I won't be able to do an in-character one until we know the rest of what happens that day and maybe the next day.

SPOILER NOTICE: this game is linked to the finale and reading it will give you information that player characters involved in Not simply walking..., Fighting fire with fire, and By arm the chance would not have. But this write-up does not contain any information about what has happened / is happening / will happen in any of those three games.

• It's the evening of 28 Mirtul.

• Aurelia's assistant Philip arrives, wounded and apparently bitten by snakes, in the Three-headed Ettin. Briefly revived from unconsciousness, he says the town hall is under attack.

• Bubbles, Baron Siegfried, his butler, Heret, Bones, Ziarae, and Cadfan hurry to the town hall. There they find Lady Saria Underwood, Lord Jean Auber, Samed NotSureWhetherHeHasASecondName, Rholor Vuzehk, and Lord Kensington in the Council chamber, apparently interrupted during a session by an attack from two strange creatures. One is a tall snake-bodied figure in green armour with six blade-wielding arms. The other is an humanoid crackling with electricity. For convenience I'll call them 'Snake Enemy' and 'Lightning Enemy'.

• As the party enter the chamber, Kensington is overwhelmed by a mass of snakes (apparently summoned by Snake Enemy) and killed, his body almost completely dissolved from within by poison.

• Rholor urges the party to deal with Snake Enemy while he engages Lightning Enemy.

• The party (and occasionally Auber) battle Snake Enemy and the snakes that Snake Enemy summons from time to time. Snake Enemy proves to be quite formidable, with a long reach, fast movement, six attacks, and poisoned blades that do a variety of nasty things including paralyzing Heret and blinding Cadfan (both temporarily).

• Nonetheless the party defeat Snake Enemy, though Auber runs in to steal the kill and make disparaging remarks about the party's effectiveness.

• Rholor returns and reports that Lightning Enemy has escaped. Auber leaves, politely postponing the Baron's attempt to engage him in conversation and completely ignoring Bubbles' overtures.

• Rholor says that the attackers were certainly devils and opines that the attack must be related to Zariel's attempt to invade the material plane and / or the combined Dawnlands-K'ul-Goran attack on Avernus. He mentions that Lightning Enemy said something about 'ruin'. Bones and Heret, putting their historical knowledge together, recall that there's an order of knights based in Avernus (but not aligned with any of the archdukes of the hells) called the Knights of Ruin.

• In light of this information, Heret proposes to go immediately to Zot Goran to warn Girelle and the K'ul Goran leadership that there may be a similar strike against them. Rholor agrees.

• Rholor, Samed, and Underwood invite the party to gather the following day in the Ettin to be given an appropriate reward for their help.

• The party leave the three councillors discussing what to say to Kensington's family and whether there's enough of him left for any possibility of bringing him back to life.