F#ck Sinned, and f#ck this mountain, too.

Esmerelda departs with the Revallians. God, they were annoying.

We move forward with Dr Alaris to murder her creations. Once through the previously unpassable door, we find the walls lined with framed artwork of the Revallia, and at the far end, a statue of Heckna.

Through the doorway, the corridor moves in 2 directions. To the right, the corridor is blocked by a pulsing blue wall. Through the translucent wall, we can see pulsing black moss, and hordes of Intellect Devourers.

We go to the left, where we come upon a brain extraction chamber. A Mind Flayer is working on a subject at the operating table in the center of the room. The walls are lined with sarcophagi, labelled with the traits of their contents.

The Mind Flayer speaks:

I have been expecting you. Our Lord Sinned has tasked me with being the last …

“Sacrifice”, says Dennis.

Line of defence! I was going to say the last line of defence!

“Nope. You’re just the next in line.”

It is at this point that Ethan reveals that the Mind Flayer has a name. Sur’geon. We name him Sergei.

Initiative. Dennis 27, Raymond 25, Rusty 23, Louie and The Captain 21. It’s unclear - and not important - what the initiative of Sergei was, because as has become customary, all our opponents these days get infinite Legendary Actions, and all go after every players turn. Though in this case, also before.

Sergei presses a button and fills the room with toxic gas. Only The Captain and Rusty are not immune to poison, so only they roll to save. They both do, but half damage is still significant.

Dennis moves forward and whips into Sergei. 3/5 hits, no crits. Sergei is resistant to force damage, but Ethan wasn’t aware that Dennis can turn his force damage off, and he’s doing slashing damage now which is working fine.

Sergei makes a scalpel fly down and stab Dennis in the temple, doing significant psychic damage and stunning him.

Raymond bounds forward, hits Sergei twice, then jumps back to Louie.

The blue wall drops, and the hordes of Intellect Devourers rush forward. As they come, they merge into Voltron, so Ethan only has to run one more monster.

Rusty shoots Sergei and does damage, which also damages Dennis. So he aims his next shot at Voltron, but misses.

Voltron psychically attacks Rusty, but Int saves are kind of his thing.

The Captain runs out of the room (and the area of the neurotoxin), and stabs the crap out of Voltron, but that also damages Dennis.

Louie is very excited to abjure the extraplanar, which works about as well as Horus’ over-complicated plans, which is to say, not at all. They both save and Louie wastes his turn.

Sergei rushes forward and attacks Rusty, doing pretty serious damage and reducing his movement speed to 0’ by slashing his achilles tendon. That’s pretty impressive given that Rusty doesn’t have one of those.

Dennis uses his turn to unstun himself and then Hand of Heals the crap out of himself as he’s almost dead by this point.

Raymond hits Sergei.

Sergei sends his head scalpel to attack Raymond, which stuns him.

Voltron, having decided Rusty is too hard a target, psychically attacks Louie, but he saves too.

Rusty casts Dispel Magic on Dennis to break the damage link he has with Sergei and Voltron, then Misty Steps into the next room.

The Captain goes to attack Voltron, and Vilgax casts Holy Weapon (twinned) on The Captains rapier and Dennis’ whip. Nice. The Captain proceeds to stab the crap out of Voltron.

Louie attacks Sergei and hits him with a Divine Smite. Now The Captain is also taking Sergei’s damage.

Sergei hits Dennis for 36 psychic and reduces his movement to 0’. Again with the achilles tendon, which really wouldn’t affect flying? Or if he cut a wing tendon, wouldn’t affect running? Whatever. Then he hits Louie for 21 psychic.

Voltron uses a Legendary Action to psychically attack Louie, but Louie makes the save again.

Dennis whips the fuck out of Sergei. Sorry Captain.

Raymond, even though currently stunned, hits Sergei. Sorry Captain. The Captain drops.

Voltron engages in a battle of wits with The Captain’s unconscious brain, and fails spectacularly. The Captain rolls so well that he takes over Voltron! The Captain drops the damage link with his body, that was causing him to take Sergei’s damage too.

Rusty Misty Steps to The Captain and casts Cure Wounds on him, which stops him having to make death saves, but he doesn’t wake up. Rusty is pretty familiar with The Captain’s shenanigans by now, and given that Voltron has turned around and is now facing Sergei, Rusty has a pretty good idea of what is going on, even without his +8 to Perception and +14 to Investigation.

Sergei attacks Dennis.

Louie attacks Sergei.

Sergie attacks Dennis again, and drops him.

Dennis makes his death save.

Raymond hits Sergie, then crits Sergei, which kills him.

Dr Alaris speaks with Voltron and convinces it to commit suicide, which is pretty cool considering it’s not even in charge of its own body right now. The Captain, of course, makes the save to not die when it does.

Louie lays on hands on Dennis enough to get him awake, and Dennis slaps himself back to health. Then he slaps some health into The Captain, too.

The Captain figures out how to clear the neurotoxin from the room, which we do. All the Revallians in the room have died, though. We never liked them anyway.

We loot Sergei’s body and he has bugger all loot on him, just a note from Sinned.

Dr Alaris extracts something from Voltron’s body, and presents us with a poison that can ignore Sinned’s poison immunity (just for it, it doesn’t remove the immunity for other poisons). Then she says that she has delivered on her end of the deal and we have to kill her now. The Captain, who was in hiding, does so before she has a chance to reconsider.

We go into the Intellect Devourer preserve, and start spinning the fan up, which reveals a hidden room. Inside are organs preserved in formaldehyde, and after searching, we also find a psi-nullifier grenade. We take that, and torch the room.

A Road to Nowhere

Before us, a portal tears through space. Looking through, we can see a creature that looks like a clone of Dennis that went badly wrong. Instead of well-formed, noble and handsome, it is depraved, hideous and craven. It’s Sinned! The party is given the option of stepping through the portal or not. There’s no hesitance in our heroic party. The contrast with Sinned is unavoidable.

Sinned monologues for a while in a pathetically narcissistic manner, thinking it would goad Dennis. He admits to murdering Seldrin, their mentor. Dennis doesn’t react - he stores it up for later.

In the corner there is a jack-in-the-box, which starts jumping about - and then Heckna leaps out! Well, a Heckna doll.

Initiative! Rusty gets 34 off a natural 20, and Raymond gets 29 off a natural 20, so they go 1 & 2. Then there’s The Captain with a 30, the Dennis and Sinned tie on 29 each. Of course, Sinned gets to go first. Not that it matters - he has infinite Legendary actions too. Heckna slides in here somewhere, and Louie trails the pack with a 19.

Rusty shoots Sinned twice, critting once.

Sinned uses up all his legendary actions, and hits everyone for 64HP, no save.

Raymond attacks Heckna. Heckna uses his reaction to blow smoke into Raymonds face, but it does nothing.

Sinned casts Confusion on Dennis & Raymond. Neither save. Then he uses Arcane Vigor to heal himself.

Dennis rolls 10 vs Confusion, so acts normally. He whips Heckna silly and makes his save vs Heckna’s second reaction damage this turn. Nice! He gets infinite reactions too! Dennis saves against Confusion at the end of his turn.

Heckna attacks Dennis and does 64 Necrotic damage.

Rusty drinks a potion of healing, then casts Chaos Bolt at Heckna but misses.

Raymond rolls poorly against Confusion and does nothing, but then makes his save and ends the condition.

The Captain hits Heckna twice for major pain.

Sinned flies up and kills Dennis (he was only on 8HP). And I mean kills - he keeps punching down to burn through all the death saves. I get he has an inferiority complex, but that guy has no chill.

Heckna takes a swing at The Captain but misses.

Sinned pauses to gloat. Nobody is listening to his crap. Louie drinks a healing potion.

Rusty shoots Heckna twice. Minion shoots Sinned.

Sinned casts a spell on Dennis as a legendary action, mostly because Ethan heard Zoe talk about having Raymond pick up Dennis’ body.

Raymond then attempts to swallow Dennis’ body, but Sinned somehow figured out Raymond’s cunning plan and cast Immovable Object on Dennis’ body.

Interesting side note: This sets in canon in Ethan’s world that a dead body is an object, and that object affecting spells work on them. So using Mending to re-attach limbs to dead bodies before raising them is 100% legal now.

Anyway, Raymond can’t swallow Dennis, so he sits on him. Then he hits Sinned twice.

The Captain attacks Heckna, fucks him up a bit, and casts Bane on Heckna and Sinned, both of whom fail their save. The Captain then hits Sinned.

Sinned Dimension Doors away, taking Dennis’ body with him.

Heckna casts Psychic Blast on The Captain, Raymond and Louie. Then he Misty Steps through the portal, which closes.

Ethan says that finishes combat…

…but is interrupted by Rusty, whose turn it is. He says he uses the Wish he got last session: “I wish for Dennis to be returned to us right now and truly resurrected.”

Fuck.

The portal re-opens, and Sinned and Heckna return. Sinned holds Dennis’ body up in the air below where Rusty is flying and returns it.

Dennis recalls his time being dead. He was pure Fae energy in the Faewild. He saw Ao in a ring of fairy mushrooms. Ao holds out his hand, and Dennis takes it. An image of Rusty appears, and Dennis steps through.

Dennis comes back to life, all wounds healed, and even with his original teeth back!

Aw yeah motherfucker, it’s back on now.

Rusty shoots Sinned twice.

Raymond bites Sinned with a double natural 20 crit for 120 damage, then crits him again, then crits him again. Damn, Raymond - leave some for the rest of us!

Sinned legendary actions and dominates Louie, and forces him to release his bond with Raymond. Raymond looks lovingly at Louie, and fades away. I mean, killing Dennis was one thing, dude. We get you have beef. Not even Dennis blamed you for that. Breaking a man’s bond with his frog? That was too far.

The Captain attacks Sinned and affects him with Dr Alaris’ poison.

Sinned picks up Blackrazor and Dimension Doors away. Fucking coward!

Dennis is briefly struck mute with astonishment that Sinned ran away not once, but twice! Then he turns and kills Heckna.

We pick up Raymonds stuff. Louie is heartbroken. The Captain picks up some of Sinned’s DNA. I think he scraped it off his rapier.

Outside Mt Makab, Sinned runs toward the pit. He doesn’t pay attention to the massive camp of Revallians, and they apparently don’t pay attention to him either, and just let him go.

He leaps toward the pit, and then a surge of chaotic energy swells, and surrounds him. Sinned is drawn back from the pit and placed on the ground. Blackrazor starts to laugh. “HE COMES! TO SAVE ME! THE TRUE MASTER! YGORL!”

Sinned turns and sees Ygorl forming from the chaos behind him. “Lord of Entropy! You cannot kill me! I am a clone - only Dennis can slay me!”

Ygorl smiles. Well, he’s always smiling, but his smile widens. “I can do you one better.”

Inside Mt Makab, the party has just finished using Sinned’s DNA to purge the experimental data from the simulation. Around the party, 17 eyeballs appear, watching us. All magic stops working. Dennis hears: “I don’t like you, and you don’t like me, but I’ll allow you to take out the trash.”

Before the party a portal opens, and we see Sinned. Dennis jumps through, closely followed by Louie and the rest of the party. While Ygorl holds Sinned in place, Dennis walks toward him. “Dad loved me better. My friends love me better. Even your servants liked me better. As hard as it may be to believe - even after I killed him once - even YGORL likes me better. You really are the worse version.” And he tears Sinned’s head off with his newly regenerated teeth.

Blackrazor whispers something to Ygorl. Ygorl strokes Blackrazor and says to Louie: “Your mount wasn’t his true master, but any wielder of Blackrazor deserves respect.” He starts casting a spell - a marble of chaos appears, and starts to swell, but it appears to be fighting Ygorl. “He is resisting me. He doesn’t want me to summon him. I require your help.” Louie assists by casting a channel divinity into Ygorl’s spell, rolling another natural 20 to assist. The marble of chaos becomes a tadpole which swims into Louie’s hand and swells until it becomes Raymond - an improved Raymond, due to that Nat 20. He gets +1 to all stats.

Ygorl turns to the party. “You are all valiant warriors, but you do not have the darkness in your hearts to wield my blade.” As Ygorl steps through a portal to Limbo, Blackrazor flicks out of its own volition, and leaves a fine cut in Raymond. From now on, once per Long Rest, Raymond can instantly heal himself for 80HP.

The Revallians cheer. God they’re annoying. Esmerelda asks if it is time to go. We’re all pretty tired of this place, and agree it’s time to leave. She shoots the mists with a crossbow, and that gets them to do her bidding. We step through to Mordent - including Villy G, who decides to join the party.

As we approach Mordentshire, a guard sees us coming and steps forward. Esmerelda tells him that the Revallians are refugees that they need to settle. The guard response that they should be fine settling in Landlecross. Someone - it wasn’t recorded who - responds “Candlecross?” The guards eye twitches.

Stay tuned.