S11E07 - Bye bye Azaernara, Gray

The episode starts with the heroes fighting Azaernara and the dretches inside the abandoned mine. Azaernara flies towards Ike, who is charmed by her, kisses him, and nearly kills him outright. The rest of the party briefly contemplates fleeing but instead decides to stay and fight. Lyra, on her turn, casts Thunderwave, slamming the nearest dretches to the floor and launching the ball bearings Nemo had scattered earlier all over the place, hitting one of the dretches, Soto, and Azaernara. Some of the poisonous gas clouds are also partially dispersed. Next, Soto parkours around Azaernara and jumps at her, tackling her with a natural 20 and breaking her neck on the fall. She rolled a natural 1 because she tumbled down the stairs.

The heroes then quickly dispatch the remaining four dretches, decapitating most of them and collecting the heads for Jinu, but Lyra is knocked unconscious.

After this, the party decides to take a rest, but in another abandoned mine, one that doesn’t have dead drow, dead demons, and a dead succubus strewn about. Nemo takes the lift up and stealthily approaches the exit but emerges into the open to find a group of 12 guards, the guard master, Sister Gloria, and Mon, the man who tried to kidnap Lyra a few days earlier. Nemo surrenders and is taken prisoner.

Back inside the mine, Soto and Gray, who have heard the commotion above, grab the unconscious bodies of Lyra and Ike and take the lift down, first to the third floor, and then, following an air current, to the fourth floor. They cut the lift ropes, killing three guards in the process, and then run for the mine’s exit.

While Ike is unconscious, he hears the demonic voice in his head again, tempting him to dig deeper into the strange power he’s been feeling since recovering his first piece of wood.

Out in the forest, Gray and Soto decide to split the party further, with Gray guarding the unconscious bodies of their two friends and Soto scouting the area. Soto, though, soon is apprehended by two guards. He tries to pass himself off as an innocent traveler but fails. The lack of weapons works in his favor, but the fresh human and demonic blood on his clothing works against him.

Ike and Lyra eventually wake up and, together with Gray, decide to go rescue their two friends. Lyra wild-shapes into a wolf and finds two guards lurking nearby. Together with Ike and Soto, they kill one of the guards in cold blood to support the fake story they plan to tell, and then Gray gets into the other guard’s clothes. The clothes are too small, but the party decides that a bloodied towering guard showing his belly button won’t draw much attention. They then head to Ironwound’s prison with the dead guard’s body and the other guard gagged and wearing Gray’s clothes.

When they arrive at the prison, it’s surrounded by extra guards. Gray tells the entrance guards he’s bringing two prisoners who killed the other guard and nearly killed him. He’s persuasive enough to get into the prison building with Ike, who looks handcuffed but isn’t, and the captured guard, who can’t reveal the lie because he’s gagged. Once near the cells, Soto, who had broken free of the handcuffs through sheer strength, starts a fight as soon as the guard opens the door. The heroes quickly overpower the three guards and free the six other prisoners, including Jinu and Nemo. The party arms the prisoners and tries to exit through the front, but too many guards are coming in. They leave through the window and the back door instead, outpace the guards, and escape into the forest after another day of leaving corpses behind.

Jinu and our heroes, utterly spent, then decide that’s enough bloodshed for the day and take a long rest in the forest, unwilling to go back to Jinu’s place, which is now likely guarded.

The heroes are jolted awake before dawn by a massive explosion up in the mountains, near the river that passes by Ironwound. As they gather themselves, they quickly realize that Gray is gone. He has left behind his bedroll folded with military precision, his holy symbol on top broken in half, and next to it, a large pentagram drawn on the ground.

The heroes consider their options: going south for nearly a month of boat travel to the merchant town of Zoqoi and then the Red Sea desert to advance Ike’s and Nemo’s personal missions, or north towards The Wicked Whiskey Warf to investigate the dragonborn menace and hunt XV-7, the warforged connected to Soto’s personal mission.

The heroes decide to first go North, which is closer, and then go South.