Ones who stand against Hell (Ithea, Moore)

[Ebiris]

"We destroyed the entire city," Afina answers baldly. And a little bit proudly.

Just a little.

[Yuthirin]

Calleigh flits over to Tepen and sits on his shoulder, resting. "It was loooooooong and quiet! There were explosions and skeletons and big scary devils and stuff. And the solar."

[Nephrite]

Sure.

[Ebiris]

"Lets go, Tepen," Afina agrees with his suggestion. "Everyone this is Cresiel, a solar we found in Finality. He'll be staying with us for a little while," she then adds for introductions.

[Anastasia]

Soon enough the group is together and out of the courtyard, back in the meeting room.

"So," Elder Magi Tepen begins, "What happened?"

A chance for both groups to expo as little or as much as desired. You can glaze things over or go into great detail as you please.

[Merc]

"To catch up Afina and the rest of her group, our mission on Earth was a mixed success, given Moore's news. We had requested guidance to find Lixer's outpost from Lord Crystalle and in exchange for the information he asked that we free the souls of some of his followers. Moore confirmed that destroying a necromental Lixer was puppeteering on Earth freed them. The necromental was one of the traps-slash-defenses Lixer left behind. He emptied the outpost for the most part, and we had a casualty, which is why I call it a mixed success."

Raising a hand up before someone asks about the casualty, she continues, "The Jarl was able to ressurrect Rosa, though sbe's been  left shaken. She's recovering, but expect her to be unavailable for some time."

"We destroyed what we could of the area, so it'll be difficult for Lixer to set up a base there again even if he didn't care about the location being compromised, though some enemy forces qere still around when we returned back to Aurora due to Moore's divinations. Not much happened since then, we began preparing for an attack after being told Gisfal and Tepen qere handling defences. You popped in just before whatever that spell was shattered and well, here we are."

[Ebiris]

Afina leads in with her team's experience in Gehenna. "We arrived on the slopes of Krangath and despite our efforts at stealth were quickly attacked first by native yugoloths and then by undead wraiths. After defeating them we summoned some elementals to occupy further natives before using Calleigh's wand of silence to obscure all sound as we made our way to Hopelorn without further interference. Once inside the city we were intercepted by a... Gloom?" she looks at Sylvie for confirmation. "Some sort of warped former human anyway. We convinced him to leave us well enough alone and soon made our way to Finality. Surraruthru was instrumental there in using his illusions to block sound as we cast protective spells and blasted our way into the base without being noticed by the patrolling flesh golems. Coincidentally the room we burst into was where Cresiel was being held. We killed the imps working on him and then freed him, though it required powerful magic from Tryll - I think they were planning to use him in the making of one of those skulls like we fought at Castle Crumbling," she gives Cresiel an apologetic look there, knowing it's not nice to consider.

"From there we skirted around the outer area of Finality, the layout of isolated rooms with sound dampening magic in each allowed us to defeat every devil we encountered without alerting those in the next room. We managed some minor looting before we found the main chamber, occupied by hundreds and hundreds of undead and devils. They were still unaware of our presence and we employed surprise to assault the chamber, slaying masses of monsters at a stroke. To be honest I thought we might only manage to strike key targets and sow confusion before having to escape, but we managed to keep the momentum on our side and might well have conquered Finality outright, but whatever the devils were working on was starting to destabilise the structure and the energy backwash was killing devils everywhere. They were trying to get it under control when Sylvie called a retreat, so it probably wouldn't have worked for them regardless but that was when a chaotic rift Tryll had opened at the outset of battle finished forming. The results were immediately catastrophic."

She pauses a moment, just to let everyone form a nice picture in their minds at those words - she has her own sense of drama after all. But she spares everyone soon enough, "We came to, mercifully all together, on the astral plane surrounded by elemental manifestations much like you'd see on Limbo. On Sylvie's advice we started moving elsewhere before forming a gate due to the planar interference, and soon saw parts of Hopelorn strewn about amidst the raging elements, with its inhabitants - devils included, amidst it all. As we emerged from the morass we beheld a portal ripped into the Silver Sea, miles across and gushing forth the stuff of both Gehenna and Limbo into the astral plane."

Another pause just to let people gauge their own imaginings against the reality she described. "Once Jaela's group returns, I want us to go there and clean up the mess. While Hopelorn's ruins will offer its share of looting, we share some responsibility for the portal - though if anyone asks we should stress it was unreliable devil experiments that caused it, it would do our reputation no favours among those we could call on as allies to leave such devastation in our wake without attempting to fix it. Those who looked down on us for our actions with Annalise and Baleruk would only find fresh fuel here."

[Ebiris]

"A shame about Rosa," Afina says after hearing Ithea's tale. "We don't honour Lief and Muirfinn by throwing our own lives away, but I'm glad she's come back to us. How did the golems perform?" she asks out of professional interest.

[Nephrite]

"Smrgol held his own quite well. I think he's deserving of some of the profits he managed to recover from Earth, if he's interested." Moore says. "The, ah... the other ones weren't quite as... robust? There were some magical arrows that unfortunately caused them to be destroyed."

[Ebiris]

You mean Smrgol, Baleruk's his senpai!

"It was expected, the Shredstorms were designed to be expendable, though I'd hoped they'd at least cost their worth to the devils. I'll have to reconsider the design for them. Good to hear about Smrgol, though."

[Merc]

"Your ironwyrm golem, Smrgol, was fantastic. His lack of flight was a bit of a bump as there were many gaps where we had to teleport him across, but otherwise he did well at getting enemy attention, dealing damage, and didn't require much direction. The shredstorms, well... they weren't really suited for the mission unfortunately. Both were destroyed, I'm afraid. Sorry," Ithea gives an embarrased apology. "I overestimated their ability to excavate, and they didn't get much chance to attack before one of the defenses destroyed them."

[Nephrite]

"Um, speaking of, do... er... do we know what happened?" Moore asks, waving his hands in a general direction all around.

"I was going to try and do some divinations to see if it was still blocked. Er... maybe that was already answered?" Moore asks with a look around.

[Merc]

"I don't think divinations are needed. Whatever spell was being used around Aurora was dropped and as was suggested, seems very likely the attack was dropped. Probably Afina's group returning was the tipping point for them. They must have decided the losses they'd incur wouldn't be worth the effort."

[Ebiris]

"My suspicion?" Afina says in response to Moore, "Lixer was planning to attack us but our own assaults pre-empted him. He was probably set to muster forces from his bases and had set up spells to block Aurora right before they were deployed, only to abruptly have a big chunk of his forces wiped out by our attacks. He'd just have to hang his head and go home then. I can't imagine any other scenario where he'd go to the trouble of putting up that barrier and then not attack immediately afterwards, it's too much of a warning giving us time to prepare and counter it otherwise."

[Iron Dragoon]

Surraruthru nods to Afina. "First, let's not forget the vampire in the alley I got us past, also. As for the abandoned attack, it seems like the most likely. The defenses at Hopelorn were pretty minimal, so it didn't seem like they really expected us to have any knowledge of it. I don't know what potions they were making from that Balor, but there were certainly enough undead and devils in the main room to serve as a strong back up or primary force against Aurora. More so with whatever that green power was and those potions, if they were meant to be used to power up those forces. Whoever it was on the throne was probably one of Lixer's lieutenants or a general. I could easily see that group being empowered and then thrown through a gate at Aurora for a shock and awe type of attack.

Losing that, and whatever allies he had in Hopelorn since it was destroyed, could have been nearly crushing on their own. Combined with Earth and Void teams' success, we likely hamstrung his operations. We also likely cost Lixer any credit he may have had on that plane. While that probably got us a whole slew of new enemies, I doubt may there would be many left who want to side with Lixer, since the last group to do so lost their entire city for it. The fact that we did it without being discovered or raising alarms probably makes a lot of groups nervous. They're probably going to start examining our forces and abilities much more closely."

Surraruthru stops to consider... "We may be able to take advantage of that. It makes our diplomatic position for allies that much stronger of an argument, especially with the aborted attack. We could also play it into the underground ears and use it to emphasize Lixer's slipping power. Maybe get a few of his allies to pull back some of their support, at the least."