The next events occurred privately between Chase and me on Facebook and AIM. I considered falsifying the report, but have since admitted to the true version of events.

Supheter awoke for the last time in his home in Harkenwold. The scent of ash drifted through the drawn curtains, likely a warning from the dragon Renophylax to the city he held for ransom. Last night, Citric reported disrupting some of his agents attempting to free a demon from its prison close by. This morning, Supheter frowned at the prospect of meeting its possible descendant, a female tiefling attached to Baron Thomas Harken. Citric had brought spoils from his adventure: a chest full of ritual component powder.

Supheter considered its safety whilst he ate some breakfast. Carrying the chest would make him a target and leaving it would permit theft. Supheter decided to take the cautious path of playing a shell game. He separated the powder into three bags as well as two bags of flour. He hid the fake bags as well as one real bag in abandoned neighbor’s houses. He left another in an Enneadin dead drop and kept the last. If he were shadowed, the kobolds wouldn’t have enough to finish the ritual.

He entered the castle and found Miranda gloating over her army’s advance. Apparently, she gathered a mercenary army from the eastern Dragon-born providences of Praseolaire to intersect the Queen’s army. To protect Harkenwold from invasion, she would quarter hers within the city when it arrives. She lent Supheter three of her silent lieutenants and bade him scramble the portal to the demon. As it is a fourteenth level ritual, he asked her to prepare a scroll version of it.

Supheter spent the time searching for his political rival and fellow wizard, Chester Pence, to no avail. The other factions had left. Baron Harken remained in a tower, under watch. Supheter asked him about Miranda’s first appearance and plans. Significantly, Thomas revealed he had maintained contact with a dwarven court wizard, Rellum Redfate.

He descended and picked up the scroll and minions. In weaving through the deserted streets, the group avoided a platoon of the Queen’s troops before arriving at the house with the stashed powder. Supheter explicitly lined out his plan and likely tactics against their foes in the basement. In action, the lieutenants revealed themselves as two sorcerers and a shapeshifter. They handedly beat the guardian demons and advanced to the vault’s antechamber with the portal.

Facing the portal, Supheter now saw the hulking devil clawing at the warded door. It turned toward him as he readied the ritual and spoke an Abyssal that Supheter nonetheless understood. It called itself “Barabalam, lord of the seven hundred forty-third circle” and bade Supheter cease helping Miranda. It claimed that the tiefling had stolen an item he had safeguarded for centuries for a dark paladin who had sold his soul. Supheter’s mind raced for hours in the space of seconds [a benefit of these informal sessions], charting the short and long term consequences of each scenario the creature’s offer portended.

Thankfully, Barabalam eased his decision somewhat by holding a brief, telepathic conversation whilst verbally chiding Supheter for indecision, to deceive her lieutenants. Supheter suggested he could steal her prize but the Old One claimed she absorbed his charge as well as another piece of the Staff into her body. Further, she had plans to unite the entire set and “unlock an ancient destructive force” thereby. With a prayer to iQi, Supheter killed the weakest minion and stepped into the portal.

Barabalam chortled at his decision and blocked Supheter from the minions’ attacks. They fought to the death, thankfully, rather than warn Miranda of his betrayal. Rather than scramble the portal, Supheter realigned it with the exit in his chambers in the castle. To cover his intent, Supheter asked the Old One to polymorph to an unassuming shape. It could not, but shrank and Supheter disguised it somewhat as an angel via prestidigitation.

Supheter ran down the stairs to the front gate, hoping to corral the sheriff into helping kill Miranda. Unfortunately, he had led his own troops into the streets against the Praseolarian incursion. Though they represented little more than meat shields, Supheter convinced some men and Gerald (a second level fighter) to ‘save the Baron.’ In the throne room, Barabalam reverted to his towering stature yet the disguise held. Both sets of minions evaporated under the onslaught and we three began to bleed. Miranda declared she would punish us as were the ‘elves and men of the north.’ She flew out the room, followed by Barabalam.

Supheter ransacked her room finding items, healing potions, and ritual reagents, but no journal. He ran up to the Baron and found him sprawled in the center of the room, back-stabbed. Ominous clouds hid some of the mess in darkness, but Supheter shoved the rest of the healing potions into his friend’s mouth. Though he vomited out half, Thomas woke. Both shared consoling words before they noticed that “a great fireball hung in the sky above, three times the size of the sun at high noon and nearly as bright.”

Barabalam broke through the window sill and carried them down to the teleportation circle. Baron Harken suggested Hammerfast and all strove to complete the ritual as quickly as possible. The light and heat rose until Harken fainted Supheter heard his skin crackling. At the last possible second, all three barged through. (I have expressed the end as akin to a nuclear explosion. Chase scoffs, but I will paste his exact narration below.)

The inferno that sweeps through Harkenwold and the surrounding lands is unimaginable in depth for those looking in from a distance. For several miles underground, a great thundering shake is felt, and aboveground the heat reaches several million degrees Celsius. As the explosion touches down on the castle, surrounding buildings are flattened and the heat flash vaporizes most of the people in the city: local militia, Miranda’s mercenaries, and the Queen’s forward company are all turned to dust. In mere seconds, the entire land is nothing more than a smoking wasteland. In the coming days, the heat will dissipate but the magical pollution will rival that of similar sites. Such is the power of the Crown and Staff.

If one good thing should come of this, it is that the queen no longer has an easy entrance to the valley. Her next company of men come upon a blighted landscape, and are unwilling to cross it. They must find a different route, now.

As no one was in the teleportation room, their arrival went unnoticed as an earthquake swept past the Dawnforge Mountains a minute after arrival (the theory of relativity at work). The Old One informed Supheter he would accompany him, knowing the wizard wanted to disarm the tiefling as much as he. In the end, clerics took care of Harken’s wounds. He and Supheter submitted to an interrogation about their arrival and the Harkenwold’s final day. Supheter told a careful reconstructon of events to the king and Rellum (and later, the Vanguard). Though Supheter regarded the demon dispassionately (and yet watchfully), he knew others might despise his choice. So, he substituted in the dragon Renophylax instead.

In the days before the Vanguard’s arrival, Supheter stayed in the abandonded human consulate. He copied more of Spah’s rituals into his own book and urged Rellum to have mages and bards research the Crown and Staff as well as the Black Rains.