RECAP
The group freed and refreshed all the slaves, then decided to send them as far away as possible from the enemy camp. Among the group were the favored slave, Daane, and the Gaurdinials. Asinjin scryed the Shackle King, Knight of Chains, and the Ultralith to see what they were up to. Those who fought us earlier were getting healed and the others were barking orders at their subordinates.
We were discussing strategy and decided to send the phantom steeds off to the enemy encampment, complete with illusory riders, as a decoy. During our planning, the minds of Shaar and Vega were overtaken by the Ultralith's vast psionic power. It used their bodies as vessels to speak with us and issue an ultimatum. The demand was that we give them back their precious slave and, in return, they'd let the rest of the slaves live. We argued that they'd simply find new slaves and kill them off, so there was no point in agreeing with their demands. The Ultralith and all the others already knew of our plans and we were unable to deceive them in any way. They threatened to feed all the slaves to hungry monsters, so ultimately, we decided to face them head on in the gladiator arena.
We buffed ourselves as best we could with flight, protections, and enlarge person on Shaar, then Parker teleported us in the air above the arena floor. Asinjin shapechanged into a 50 ft. tall Treant and proceeded to cover the entire arena with Dolores Motes. The motes protected the slaves encircled by creatures, then the rest of us began to assault the leaders with magic, bullets, and bows. Shaar waded into battle to defend the slaves, Gnicodemus set up a crow's nest somewhere and sniped the Ultralith, and the rest of us held our own throughout the battle. The assembled bad guys were all protected by an anti-magic field, so they were stationary while ordering all the minions in the stands to rush the field and attack us. The motes prevented many of them from approaching, and those that tried were cut down brutally by Shaar. After the initial wave, most didn't dare to approach after witnessing her wholesale slaughter of the fiends.
In the meantime, Vega attempted to free Dovan from the shackles, but the Ultralith dominated him before he could reach them. Once Shaar cleared a path, Vega was able to free himself from the domination. Not sure if it was by his Investigator skills or Asinjin's magic, but nevertheless, he was able to sucessfully free all the slaves by unlocking the power of the key to mass release all of them at once. This infuriated the fiends and they upped their assault. The Ultralith released mighty waves of psionic power against us and manifested psionic horrors to assault us. We fought them off and slowly made progress against those in the anti-magic field. Because Parker and Asinjin were mind blanked, the Ultralith couldn't affect them.
The battle raged on while the freed slaves scattered to escape the arena when one of the Guardinials teleported into the arena to tell us they were under assault by the Loth lieutenant and his soldiers. We took that opportunity to gather Dovan and the rest of the group. We flew up and out of the magic barrier of the arena, then Asinjin teleported us to where the slaves were. We battled the Loth's and butchered them handily. Several slaves died in the attack as well as a handful of the Guardinial's, but Daane and the favored slave survived.
Once again, Vega's mundane prowess proved useful as he figured out a way to unlock the key's ability to open the portal on the other side of the tracks. Asinjin stepped through first since he has a contingency up that would bring him back to us in the event things on the other side were really bad. Once he made it though successfully, we brought all the slaves and the rest of the group through and Vega sealed the portal behind us.
We stepped through to a giant warehouse with a nasty odor, but weren't assaulted upon arrival or met by any creatures. We left off with all of us getting our bearings in this new location.
