Season 5 Episode 3 - turning tables With the Bishop of Woe haing completed the ritual, the team bum-rushes him to close out his plot line. The bishop releases control of the storm, having finished the ritual of awakening upon the buried Titan, and lets the team fly through an uncontrolled spell storm. lightning ensues, and the team weaves through it with only Gang taking a hit... who easily slips free of the resulting stone pillar. Chuck closes distance first and unleashes dragonfear to garnish the claw claw bite routine of an adult gold dragon. The bishop has been hanging casually amidst a huge guardian-elemental, that immediately fails its save and runs away... dumping the Bishop from the eye of it's wind chamber. the bishop disappears and chuck castches a aquamarine gem taht radiates magic-- chuck immediately dumps dragonfire onto the object til it shatters. The storm is still spitting lightning that is creating a forest of rock pillars throughout the titan's grave. The other elementals cut their losses and head away... but the Titan IS RISING.. so no bluff there. The span of it's hand is nearly 700 feet across.. the team is ant-like to this being. Feng channels his ritual to commune with nature; focusing on the titan itself as the Force of Nature to commune with and gets hit by a bolt of lightning mid-ritual.. Natural 20 save fuses the druid to the magic circle and creates a direct conduit to the Titan as it slowly rises without harmig the land around it like a ghost. Too Much! that much power fries Feng's synapses with massive psychic damage, severing the connection. the titan is now looking straight at the team-- it's massive eye a vortex of void energy that acts more like a black hole than a sensory organ-- plightning pulling into the void as it rises to a sitting position from beneath the ground. Meanwhile, Faeris Wishes to know what Karl the Bishop knows about The Devourer, the Titan, and his plans for them. PoP Suddenly he knows it all and starts spouting out all the mysteries, plans, and weaknesses of the scenario and what role Karl and Undertow play in that plan. Here it is. Undertow takes control of the river underground, known as Releh'Jan -- the river of sleep. The evil spirit reroutes the river from it's course towards Blood Crescent and instead feeds it directly into the titan, filling its body with the Releh-Jan. Once filled, Undertow is able to control the awakened titan's body like a puppet. Undertow then guides the titan to Ashtakalah to the east, and absorbs the storm trapping the demon gate, then absorbs the gate itself. At this point, The Bishop of woe will trigge the ritual of summoning for the Devourer to surface as dictated by the ritual, overriding wherever it is the Devourer would otherwise rise (which karl doesn't actually know) Once the devourer emerges from the absorbed hellgate, the portal to hell will be severed, The devourer will have manifested, and if everyone is where they are supposed to be standing, The Devourer will be bound to Karl's will. From there Karl holds the world hostage. The team also now knows that Undertow wasn't killed--- the party catching the spirit out underground caused Undertow to disperse, releasing Releh-Jan to flow naturally. Once the spirit was able to manifest again (after a long rest) it diverted the river again to flood the titan... which it managed to do only mostly before the ritual of awakening triggered. Undertow is now racing to seize enough control before the titan rises to maintain focus and complete the mission at hand. So naturally the team wants to ruin Undertow's day. flyin gthrogh the storm at haste to arrive on the Titan's shoulder, they investigate the river flowing into the titan. rising fom the land by thousands of feet, the river is behaving more like a tether rising from the ground to connect to a hole in the back of the titan's head about 100 feet wide. Gang has a spellsurge, bumping him into the spirit world momentarily where he sees black ink roiling out of the titan's ears like smoke, and the river clutching to the hole in the titan's head like a leach, defying physics and flowing into the crature despite climbing thin air as the titan sits up fully past a half-mile high. the heroes come to the conclusion that if they can get undertow's attention and get him to focus back into form, they can disperse the spirit again, potentially severing the tie between the river and the titan. so Feng turns into a blue whale and Chuck super-sizes him through enlarge, plugging the hole in the back of the titan's head like a cork in a wine bottle... the pressure is incredible, killing through the whale, then the dragon, until Feng is forced to wildshape into a giant octopus. Faeris enchants freemovement onto feng and chuck as Undertow arrives on scene with two of his bruisers to investigate. Chuck pops a wish to trigger planar binding in a word, and hands Undertow a saving throw of 6 on the d20 from his diviner powers to control fate.... with a 9th level binding in effect, Undertow is Chuck's servant for a year and a day. Undertow follows its commands, and fills in the rest of the details for the team... the vampires that escaped where supposed to stay trapped in undertow so he could use them to taint the titan's blood stream to control the epic scale giant... but Faeris caused them to break free under ground when the dispersed Undertow the first time. Before the team plugged the river, Undertow was battling the vampires who had snuck in and are feeding off the creature's ptuitary deep inside it's brain. Chuck orders undertow to focus on filling the titan and maintaining what control he has while the party ready another battle with the vampires. Undertow lends the elemental brutes to the team to lead them to the gland where the team finds Bloody Poodle, Frank the Legend, and General Crog INSIDE the pituitary gland, engaged in a blood orgy, clouding the gland from a lustrous green to an inky black. Undertow had intended to do the same himself using the vampires trapped within its form.. so it knows these vamps are well underway to replace the pituitary resin with vampire blood.. converting the titan to a thrall of Bloody Poodle. If undertow loses control. the vampires gain control and are free to do as they please. Next week, the team takes on the vamps for good, and using their control over Undertow to ruin The Bishop's plans. about an hour spent in game. the team is now level 19.