S07E27 - Ch11 Eve of Ruin (live) - The Black Wedding - Vecna: Eve of Ruin

Okay, so I've

got

a full house today, level 19, right at the prickly end of a couple of years of campaigning.

You've been pursued across various planes of existence by Vecna, keeps turning up, because you found what's a chamber called the Grasp of Vecna, and there's all this, full of this sort of cluster of crystals, three passages going off.

Each one had a rune of Vecna, which is like a magical lock, and if you can... unlock those ruins or unlock those magical keys or wards or whatever you'd like to call them, somehow that will open the gateway to Vecna's private sanctum.

You have gone through one of those passages and found Kaz the Redeemed chained up in a ruin of his own castle and he He was basically, Vecna did turn up eventually, and you found the rune.

It was an amulet around Kaz's neck.

I'm sorry, I keep looking down to where Tiscord is on another screen here.

I'll try and...

Try and keep straight.

And so you've got that amulet.

You've got that amulet from Kaz.

It's not been deactivated yet.

It would need to be deactivated by casting a high-level spell in its immediate proximity.

And instead of casting the spell, you channel that spell energy into the ward.

And at the same time, spend a charge of the rod of seven parts and touch the ward with the rod of seven parts.

Doing those two things would cancel out or unlock the rune.

I think Vecna sent a couple of you almost to death's door, unconscious or whatnot.

Shawnee, I don't think you were here, but your character was here, and you were sort of guarding the exit or something along those lines, as we do.

You know, you were off camera.

Of course, that's the way that Vecna came in, and the party heard a scream, went to investigate.

I think it was...

Lyndon went to investigate.

The rest of the party was all challenged with this, you know, misc of the wolf spider deal.

I'm going back a little bit here.

But, and you were unconscious, rictus sort of locked, fused joints and everything.

And he moved on and basically one rounded Lyndon and the party did a sort of, bugged out of there, did a quick retreat.

They managed to rescue you and bring you back to consciousness.

And Lyndon, you know, a whack-a-mole thing.

There's a few people with healing in the party.

So it wasn't as bad as someone dying and then not being a cleric or whatnot.

Anyway, so you've got one of these locks.

And you pursued a second one.

into the astral plane where an astral dreadnought was consuming dead gods.

These are gods that presumably should be alive, according to you.

You've seen gods look like asteroids in the astral plane.

You've seen one.

a long time back when you first heard of Vecna.

In fact, that was the first time you happened across the rod when the party had pursued a elder brain into the astral plane as it was trying to escape your clutches.

And you...

Unfortunately, the Astral Dreadnought was beset by some sort of eye beasts, sort of like beholders without eyes, and they had some sort of dimensional thing that could swallow you, and then it was anti-magic within.

A huge fire erupted, and then there was this glow of Vecna's rune coming from inside the mouth of the Astral Dreadnought.

The party realised they needed to be swallowed by the Astral Dreadnought.

Inside an Astral Dreadnought is a demiplane.

They're astral beings and you're transported to the dungeon.

And there you're in this sort of wasteland where you try to find the lock, the rune.

You located it but it was on the far side of a chasm and fought this monstrosity, a cosmic horror and there was a point I think at which some of you may have been pulled into the abyss but not quite you sort of got dropped down a ledge but didn't quite fall off the scree into the into the void so um somehow the party scraped out of that as well the cosmic horror is still alive you have you've been sort of um fighting running battles it seems Where you are in Vecna's Grasp is also got some sort of teleportation beacon.

And if you cast anything that teleports, or does anything like a teleport, so you magically translocate, instead of going to where you would under the nature of that spell, you go back to Vecna's Grasp.

And so that's how you've been able to bug out.

But it means you've been withholding on things like misty step or things like that because as soon as you do that in a battle, you might actually be blinked out and you're out of the battle for the whole time.

So the third one.

Did I miss anything from those two? Any highlights anyone wants to share? I think in that case, I think there was some resting business going on.

We actually got a long rest, I believe.

Is that right?

There was Prayer of Healing.

Prayer of Healing.

Yeah, there's Prayer of

Healing, Short Rest.

Yeah, and

after we returned, we had another Short Rest, and that's

it.

Okay, alright, so there's been Short Rests, so for a lead, if you wanted to do any Short Rest Malarkey, feel free, that's fine.

Now, I think, is everyone on the map? Yeah, so then you pursued the last tunnel where there's some sort of chanting going on and you're in some sort of ruined cathedral city.

I think it's not actually indoors like a temple or something.

It's more like what looks like a religious, a whole religious complex.

There's statues broken and so on.

And there's all these crouching things swaying in ecstasy as they chant and look towards this bridge that arches across the ruin.

And there seems to be Vecna and the Lady of Pain, which look like a wedding ceremony.

And the Lady of Pain's tiara, where the veil is, has this Vecna's rune on the tiara.

So you've only got a limited vision.

It's quite ashy and so on all around here.

But you snuck around the throng down on the ground level.

You've gone up some stairs and had been creeping along the archway looking for what was going on because you hadn't seen.

And this is the point where we are now.

We're just within your limits of vision.

There's Vecna, and he's just turned his shoulder and regarding you, I'll do this, and is now clearly aware of your presence.

The Lady of Pain is sitting there and she's also, the whole like headdress of blades turns like a peacock with razor blade feathers, turns and just regards, and she has her chin up and she's just also looking at you impassively.

There's some sort of horribly, horrible mutated celebrant and further back there seemed to be some sort of bridal party.

I think she's got a whole set of bridesmaids.

No Kirsten Wiig, unfortunately, but you haven't quite seen them in the gloom.

You can just see a couple at the limits of your vision there.

So that's where we're at.

I'm going to...