We were attacked by 6 packs of wolves.  Super swarms, if you will.  They were large, had reach, did 3d10+, had 100s of hit points, had a low AC, and got a free attack when they went below half after which they did a bit less damage.  We could hear a familiar woman’s voice cackling in the forest.  They were tough.  Their size and reach made maneuvering difficult and the horses were in the middle of it all.  Loki got one to himself and climbed a tree.  The rest sort of piled up so some fire was concentrated on pack 1.  Ambrus used the Ring to cast Web and two packs were restrained.  That helped a lot.  Stradanya cast half a wall on round 2 and the other half on round 3.  So, we were surrounded by a 20-foot high wall.  Loki jumped out of the tree and ran along the top, firing along the way, to get on her side.  Lord Q was impressive with an upcasted Shadow Blade but most everyone was doing 30+ points a round.  Whether than was from sneak attacks, sharp shooting, smites, shadow blades and crits.  Their low AC certainly helped as did Kharn-vantage^TM. In round 4, she cast Cloud Kill.  That sparked a debate as to whether we took damage when it was cast and then more damage when our turns came up.  I.e. two CON saves before ever getting to go.  That seemed harsh but that’s how Brian ruled.  But it was very difficult to get past that debate. 

Thankfully, the Cloud was smaller than the Walled area so there was somewhere to run.  And the wolves took damage too.  Funny how villains don’t have to worry about friendly fire.  Lord Q went down first.  (Ironic since he was mostly untouched the last fight.  The fortunes of war.)  But he was in a Cloud so he’d be failing death saves quickly.  Loki decided to risk shooting at the vampire in hopes of breaking her concentration.  He missed and rerolled and missed again.  He hit but she threw up a Shield turning it into a miss.  And then, without sharpshooter because of the Shield, hit with a crit.  Doing a whopping 16 points which she instantly healed even though it wasn’t her turn.  But he got her attention.  She upcasted Fireball, expertly placed with a +19 Arcana skill roll to get Loki and several others.  It was looking very dire as there were still 3 packs left.  But then, once again, she decided she’d tortured us enough and it all just disappeared.  Another unsatisfying fight.  At 11^th level, we are no more match for her than we were at 1^st.  Seemed pointless and hopeless.

That sparked a discussion about whether we were making any progress.  We certainly weren’t doing any damage to her as evidenced by fighting her every 3^rd night.  Brian quoted the readings we got from Madame Eva two years ago that no one remembered.  Those were supposedly 5 things we had to do before facing her and we had done 3, I think.  That point was that we’re making progress plot-wise if not combat-wise.  Beacon of Hope, Sunlight in the Druid lands, Staff of Power, research into her backstory, etc.  It was still daunting.  However, since our 3 possible paths involved fighting her or fighting what was empowering her, it did not seem like we had any chance of accomplishing any of them.  We faced group paralysis.  Brian pulled GM privilege and stated that we’d go back to Kresk and see if Esmeralda had made any progress with her research.  Maybe she has ideas the dim-witted players did not.