
As the Questors round the corridor of the passage to enter the Blue Steel doors, they are beset upon from behind again. The Arrow Demons are attacking them in a group of four, one using Dimension Door in and the other Dimension Door out, with their colleagues firing arrows, such that they appear, fire a rain of devastation and disappear in the same turn. Traveller moves to the predicted spot of appearance so that some of the reappearing Demons will be shunted when they arrive in the spot, while marksman Sven hides and readies his deadly crossbow bolts.
Near the doors, the paladin, Keoghen, and the fighter, Aibron, battle against Bar-Lgura skeletons issuing from a room up ahead. Kassadin readies himself for unexpected attack in one of the smaller chambers and Jezrab prepares to take on the main healing duties in the absence of the cleric. Although the Questor’s tactics are effective, they are not able to prevent the tragic death of Tippit, who succumbs to a deadly onslaught of giant arrows.
In a skirmish of deadly attrition, the Questors gradually wear down their foe – turning and battering exploding skeletons and depleting the ranks of Arrow Demons, while all the time moving closer to the entrance of what they discover to be The Temple of the Old and the Dead – a temple containing shrines and statues to both Iuz and Nerull. The room is filled with Desecration and Invisibility Purge and commanded by two Clerics – a male hobgoblin and a female human.
As the Questors force their way into the Chapel, Traveller despatches the hobgoblin Cleric of Iuz with his explosive Eyes of Light. Out in the corridor, two Entropic Enemies appear and Kassadin, able to see them clearly, attacks with his Bow of the Night, gaining extra advantage by using his Careful Strike and Dead Eye feats. Jezrab bolsters the fighters with song and heals them with his wand, carefully minimising the appearance of more Entropic Enemies.
As Traveller battles with the Cleric, Keoghen and Sven move into the room to combat the few remaining demons and skeletons, but two of them Dimension Door into the corridor, where Kassadin succumbs to a mortal barrage of giant arrows that decapitates him and lays his body flat. Near the end, only the one Arrow Demon and the female cleric remain. She knows her time is nigh but as she dies, the Statue of Nerull explodes. From the smoke she rises again, new life in her body through the Divine Power of Nerull. She commands the last remaining Arrow Demon to whisk her away. “Take me to Vayne NOW!” she screams and he uses his _Dimension Door- ability for the last time to place them in front of the doors at the end of the passage.
Opening the door, she manages to escape. While the Questors finish off the last Demon and the remaining Turned Skeletons, the Blue Steel doors ahead shut with a bang! A few minutes are spent gathering magical items from the fallen foes and then Quintine is resurrected through the fading power of the Divine Time Lock, but in arriving, her most powerful item, the Scroll of True Resurrection given to her by Pelius, her brother in Pelor, is destroyed. A minute later, Tippit is resurrected with the loss of his powerful Bracers of Defence.
Kassadin does not return. His soul, it seems, is no longer with the party and their quest. After everyone has magically healed themselves, the Questors waste no further time, and enter through the Blue Steel doors, through short passage, and push open the doors to find a large room populated by three Giant Rutterkins, the female cleric, Shyrath and a thin scrawny man with a staff, who must surely be the wizard Vayne – all ready and waiting. By the shape of the room, the strange spherical balconies and the four burning magical circles inside, the Questors believe they have arrived in The Hall of Beckoning.