Eberron: Prophecy of Ascendence, Part 46

Tuesday night's session lasted quite some time, but only encapsulated one encounter.

I know there are multitudes of gripes out there about how 3.5's combat and other encounter resolutions are slow and bring the game down to a grind, but even though the encounter (the better part of it being in combat rounds) was long, I felt that the pacing of it went awesomely well.

The group ventured into the lower levels of the temple complex they have been exploring for a few sessions now and at the bottom of the stairs, were greeted with an eerie black/blue/purple glow to the right and a hallway to the left.

At this point, much to my amusement, the group split up! Murmur detected evil at the source of the light and it was, indeed, evil, and the tentacles coming from the pool of light (which was later identified as a portal of some sort) were otherworldly enough to rile him, since he's a Gatekeeper druid, so they both charged the thing.

Lucky and Nas (Chris' new character) scouted the hallway, travelling down and then realizing that the halls were coated in a thin film of what appeared to be eggs much like those of a mosquito, some larger than others.

Vacht, being...well, Vacht-like, stayed at the base of the stairwell for a bit, not brave enough to venture into the portal area, and too cautious to join the others in the hall. I like to think Steve was tactically reinforcing by being equidistant to both split ends of the group.

So here the group was, one set dungeoneering/scouting, the other hell-bent on destroying a small statue they found at the center of the portal, and what Vacht identified as a focal point for a ritual that, from all evidence, had been directly related to the earlier "summoning" of the tentacly monster in Ossington, a second go, if you will.

Vacht, however, joined Lucky and Nas as they went about their searching and made it through a door that was burst open by a portal tentacle only to discover a hatchery of sorts minded by neogi, which held the eggs of something similar to astral dreadnaughts. (you see...Vacht has INSANELY high knowledges, as befits the character, so he knows lots about lots)

Panicking, Vacht ran back to the portal room to find the rest of his pals already in "combat" with...the statue.

Now this is where what I'm running deviates greatly from what is in the book. As written, the chamber contains a kraken and a trap as the encounter(s). This just doesn't fit my game, though I did leave the sharks in earlier, because sharks are cool, so I replaced it with the following...

Statue of Strange Green Stone Anchoring A Portal!
Statue: 500 hp, hardness 15, unique magic immunity (no spell targetting it may be cast, the spell does not discharge and is still in the mind of the caster)
Portal: Pulls in characters 1 round after they die (really die, not drop), absorbs AoE spells and attacks and shoots them out as untyped damage of equal amounts as AoE covering entire area (30' diameter), Confusion every round to those standing in area (DC 25)
Tentacles: As kraken's tentacles and legs (for simplification), only with 50 hp each and are attackable (AC 20) and have the feat Awesome Blow


After quite some time working at the statue, including some hilarious moments with Confusion, Murmur and Kelamor finally took it down with some backup from Lucky. The destruction of the focal point, however, caused quite a bit of strain to the already geologically weak area and triggered an earthquake, which is where we left off for the night.