DavesGaming

We arrived at Amkethran late that evening. It was a sun blasted small adobe town. A large fortress, nearly as big as the rest of the town dominated the northern edge. The town was over-run with mercenaries, not the best behaved sorts either. We went over to the fortress to make contact with Melissan’s friend Balthazar. He provided information we needed, about the location of two more Bhaalspawn strongholds. But he was not at all friendly, a severe monkish sort. And Melissan had not been here for quite some time.

We looked to settle in for the night, and saw several abuses of power from both the mercenaries and the monks (!). I’ve found most mercenaries are smart enough to know when not to start a fight, but several in Amkethran seem to lack much sense. We also ran into our old friend Saemon, funny he’d turn up here.

The next day we set off for what our map called “Sendai’s Enclave”. Questioning around town led us to think she was likely a Drow, but not much useful about what kind or size army she had.
The spot on the map looked like idealic woodland, but it was pretty obvious to me some major Illusion type magic was at play. We fought through an ambush by a Beholder and several Drow. Then a conversation with a “simple woodsman” unmasked the whole facade. We fought about ten Drow before we found a cave entrance. The cave and its interior showed an obvious Drow influence in its architecture, and we found ourselves in an epic running fight against Drow and their slaves. Much of this would have been overwhelming not so long ago, but my team is a potent war machine at this point.
We entered a room with a number of Drow warriors, and of all things, a Beholder came forward to propose making things less violent. We knew him! We’d dealt with this Beholder back in the Sahuagin City! He’s actually a friendly, decent sort. He proposed I duel the Drow commander under a binding agreement for an all or nothing sort of win.

I took the challenge mainly out of curiosity. I’ve wanted to melee up front a few times, test my skills. Mainly of the magic prep/buffing sort. But melee is clearly not my best strength so it hasn’t happened much. But I recently got that “Shakti Figurine”, and I was already pretty buffed for combat in this place; so I was sure I’d win. I think that poor Drow Captain was so excited to meet a woman who was actually smaller than him he lost his head… and for the record, he did.

We faced some Illithids next, and finally stood before Sendai herself.

She did fight with a neat trick, several statues around the room, all of her, fought with different elements of her own skillset. But the outcome was never in doubt. Drow are highly resistant to all sorts of spells, So Imoen and Aerie and I were not at our strongest against them. But wow, Diomedes, Jaheira and Keldorn just destroyed her.

We returned to Amkethran the next day. Tomorrow we leave to investigate Abizagal, no one seems know anything about him.