In part 9 of this ongoing series, we reclaim our ability to be called heroes. Just nevermind that the situation was mostly our fault to begin with.

So after creating a hole which began to unleash Oblivion on the Elven capital, we ended up making our way back to The Dead Lands with the Elven Queen no less! And we went even deeper into the lands of the deceased than we thought possible.

Kudos to Hisui’s description of this city in The Dead Lands that resides where the Elven capital is in the natural world. It was in the shape of a 9-point star with huge walls and gates. The important city guards wore these amazing and unique masks. I hope to spend some time here in the next session and I’ll report back all of its awesomeness.

Anyway, back to the task at hand: fixing this stupid hole and the Dread Lord’s minions.

This was the first big battle of the campaign, even though we didn’t fight the Dread Lord proper (he was not yet strong enough to travel where we were), it was definitely a mid-boss task. We were often on the brink of actually being snuffed out, I hadn’t really feared we would lose before this point. There was a lot more strategy on our end to figure out how to survive until the next round. Also we had an NPC that was popping up when desperate times called for him to block a blow or two.

Our opponents were two wyverns (not invisible), two shelled brutes with six arms (!), and a small imp which burst out of my cloak (don’t ask).

Everyone had some pretty stellar moments over the course of the fight. My favorite was a move by our Paladin who wrapped his chain around a wyverns neck and then jumped on its back!

I actually hit 0 life pretty early on. ACK! Did I mention if you die here it could be tricky pickings with your soul and all? Luckily, before that I was able to kill the imp but I’m not sturdy against those bigger guys. But it wasn’t just me, nearly the whole party took a beating  which is of course the moment you thank the stars for your cleric. It was a race to the finish as we decided to forgo healing at one point in an effort to finish the battle before another round of attacks.

Things worked out of course! The Queen and Princess were able to close the hole to Oblivion as we took out our foes. Bigger problems lie ahead but we’ve gotten ourselves a little respite for the next session I hope.

For information about my character and other party members, check out Part 3 of my Letters from Atman posts. For more information about our adventures and the world of Atman, follow Hisui’s posts recounting the sessions.