Having defeated the Catholic cultists inhabiting the
long-neglected temple, the ragtag band of adventurers found themselves the
toast of the Lizardmen village. Sylvan had to relay this fact to the
battle-weary party, of course, being the only one who could interpret their
language and figure out why dozens of Lizardfolk warriors were all jumping up
and down and waving their spears in the air. Thank Gaia he was there, right,
because… wow… that could have gone a lot differently. Everyone was invited to a
Lizard Party! But first, they had to play bad guard/worse guard with their new
prisoner, Celestor.
They found their enemy lashed to a spit, ready to become the
entrée for the evening’s feast. Despite some pretty vigorous intimidating and
questioning, Celestor refused to give up any information about his mission
until Gandrakk, heretofore the moral compass of the group, DIPPED HIS CLAWS IN
HIS OWN ACIDIC BILE AND CARVED HOLY SYMBOLS IN THE BOUND MAN’S FLESH. Which was
insanely awesome, of course. Celestor spat his anger, but at this point gave up
the fact that his master’s forces were en route to the cities of Sleekfront and
Boggrove, and there was nothing these infidels could do about it. He then
started to drop into unconsciousness from his wounds, but was revived by Ryn, who
used a newly learned cantrip to stabilize him and wake him back up. Celestor
babbled something about the place prepared for him in the beyond, and plead his
ignorance of the involvement of the priests of Bahomet in Boggrove, despite
more acid etching from Gandrakk and Ryn remaining unconvinced of the priest’s
innocence. The intrepid Coasai asked how one could join the Catholic order, and
was rebuked by Celestor, who asserted that the party had already sinned beyond
redemption in the eyes of his lord. Tiring of these questions and seeing his
fate filled only with more torture, he jerked his jaw from one side to another,
loosing a small phial of acid and chomping it, melting his chin, the back of
his throat, and the base of his skull, killing him. His torso from the chest up
was discarded, likely unfit for eating at this pount, and he was re-tied to the
spit from the waist down.
Some Lizardfolk looked a bit pissed
about the smaller feast they would be enjoying, but the legs proved delicious
to Gluür and Gandrakk, neither of whom apparently had any compunction about
gnoshing away at a just-now-a-minute-ago-living-human flesh. Glüur found
himself the subject of many attentions from the Lizardfolk ladyfolk, with whom
his bulgy muscles and enthusiastic orcish barbarian ways were apparently a big
hit. He cut it up on the dance floor bigtime! Gandrakk managed to translate
well enough to bro out while drinking some orange wine with the lizardfolk men,
but when it came time to dance, he couldn’t bring himself to take to the
fireside with a dashing scaly lizardlass. Charisma, it’s a wily statistic.
During this time, the elven-kin watched from the hilltop, keeping their nails
clean and heads clear of the strong Lizard drinks, though Sylvan did manage to
translate “He says thank you!” during the one pause in the music, when all the
lizardfolk turned towards the party again and the village’s first spear made
his little congrats talk.
In the AM, they visit the village shaman,
Asumul, who abides in a cave amidst many smoldering divination herbs and has
super cool names for everyone. He has been expecting a visit from the chieftan
rising, wandering dragon, emissary of the sleeper, runner before the black
arrow, and ward of the forest. He tells them that the catholics are on their
way to the island, confirming Celestor’s threats. In his visions he observed a
small feet of ships sailing past the Lizardfolk’s island from the north towards
the mainland. Without some superior wood, the village’s craftsmen cannot build
a boat to help. The raft they could manage from the palms nearby wouldn’t fit
the bill of traveling across the sea, a better arbor would need to be found.
He maintains that the crystal
shards, of which the group has 2, are known to be of a set of five with
tremendous power, which has been used in many ways over the aeons. This
includes the part about how they were used against invading dragons from the
north just decades ago. Whether used for good or evil, the shards are always
separated afterwards, as their power is deemed too great for any one to have
for too long – they draw too much attention from the shapes beyond the stars,
beings whose power only ever manifests in ways that unsettle the fabric of
reality. What they could do in the party’s hands is unclear. It’s also told
that the destruction of one shard simply empowers the others, so they decide
not to wreck them out of spite, just in case the black dragon Aztaron managed
to get his hands on one.
He asks for their help eliminating
the spirit of Nerganu, whose soul is in a phylactery deep in the dragonstone
mine in the woods, since Nerganu keeps f-ing with their village, and is bound
to rise again if his soul’s container is not totally destroyed. In return, he
promises to help when the need arises.
As the party files out, Coasiai
hangs back, and asks about the longsword he’s been carrying since taking it
from the defeated necro-fighter of the Order of the Jade Falcon in the caverns
outside of Boggrove. He’s informed that the magics in the blade answer only to
a dark wielder, and will not obey the commands of a good-hearted warrior.
Coasai decides that maybe he’ll keep it and figure out aw ay to break it down
and use its pieces later, a possibility that Gandrakk assures him might just
work, given the right materials.
The party goes in search of groovy
wood for their ship. It takes forever, b/c druid boy Sylvan was actually acting
super druidish when it comes to
chopping down trees. Instead of deciding to cut down each one, he describes each
one’s history for a long time before moving on. This wastes about 4 hours, but
lots of dendritic knowledge is expounded. They eventually come to a clearing
where they see the crushed ruins of an old treehouse, and a magical elk with
mossy andlters and patches of bark for fur manifests to them. It projects
visions of the past between its antlers, showing them visions of a druid that
left it berries before, who had previously lived in the ruined treehouse and
the grove (both, of course, sources of exactly the right kid of wood the party
could use).. They decide not to murder it. Instead, they ask where to find some
decent wood that’s not of sentimental value? It shows them some catholic
soldiers chopping down trees, and projects an arrow in the air in the direction
they would need to go to get there.
The catholic soldiers are thusly
murdered. Key moments from the battle include: Coasai learns that he can hide,
pop out, neck-shot a guy, and hide again with cunning action. He repeats this
procedure with deadly effect, sneak attack damage really piling up when he does
so. There’s lots of blood sprayed from arrow wounds amongst the glade these
poor catholics are found in. Gandrakk charges towards a group of archers
surrounding the most heavily armored catholic soldier. He is turned into a dragonborn
pincushion and falls to the ground. The effect of “leadership” is seen in the
boost to accuracy the archers get when listening to their boss, their aim
bolstered as they remember to follow the same advice Coasai had been, and aim
for the weak spots at the neck, and beneath the arm. Sylvan uses his moonbeam
to toast some dudes. He smartly stays far enough away not to get wrecked by
arrows. Gluur cuts a few guys down with his axe. His axe does not care about the
heavy armor of his foes. Ryn flanks, blasting away with his eldritch bolts.
Eventually Ryn stabilizes Gandrakk, who was nigh upon the gates of the
afterlife. The leader is slain, and the minions begin to flee just as the elk
spirit arrive in time to chase down, trample, and otherwise destroy the last
goons after the majority have been slain. Good buddy to have! Gandrakk picks up
the biggest suit of plate mail armor available, and though it doesn’t fit, he
thinks maybe with some hammering out it could be made to fit the bill for a
dragonborn bodyshape.
The party takes a short rest. Sylvan puts some goodberries
in a bowl near the clearing, hoping that the elk will return for them as munchies.
Delicious, magical munch-berries.
They take the wood the catholics had been chopping back to
the lizard basecamp, and are thanked for it! Great, now the boat might not take
so long to build. It’s the end of the day, but they decide not to waste any
time, plunging down into the mines in order to murder an anciend wizard and secure
the help of the Lizardfolk tribe asap.
They get about 100 feet into the dungeon before they realize
that its ancient dwarven mine is currently inhabited by gorblins! Wargs attack
the party first, and after they kill one of these monster-wolves loudly, the
goblins get all mad about it, since they’ve killed their puppy! It is
determined that all this cave’s goblins are named jerry. It is also determined
that goblins LOVE traps and tricks, since four of them manage to hold off the
party for about six rounds, pelting them with arrows, sling stones, and fog
grenades, not to mention a pit trap and a tripwire-crossbow. A couple of goblins are slain, and two
more are trapped beneath a mine cart. However, jerry and jerry manage to escape
by pushing Gandrakk off the cart, dashing and leaping over a pit that held a
hapless Gluur, and escaping beyond some smoke. But not before they set off a
charge that collapsed the mine shaft they had been in moments ago. Where did
they go? The party decides “fuck these goblins, we’re not chasing them, they’re
too damn much work!” Jerry and Jerry laugh and laugh as they make their exit.
(the party earns maybe 50xp for the two gobos they managed to slay. LOL that’s
goblins for ya.)
They move on, deeper into the
ruined ancient drawarven mine, and encounter a carrion crawler above a trash
pit, gnashing its way into a wooden miners cabin that’s built into the rock
wall. They kill it. Ryn makes an illusion of the crawler in front of the door. They
open the door, and the goblins that had been cowering inside loose their arrows
into it all at once, dispelling the illusion but not noticing the party. Gluur
body slams one goblin into another, killing both. Crit 20s! Ryn
intimidate/coerce the last goblin, Jerry, into being their guide through the mines.
Jerry promises to take them to Thrank, their huge, maybe a goblin? boss. Coasai
finds a rapier of excellent workmanship, with very sharp blades despite years
of neglect. Runes on its hilt seem to indicate its maker’s clan name and the
year it was made, while those near the base of its blade name a couple previous
owners. (Masterwork rapier. +1 to damage rolls. For stabbing.)
They move through some mining
areas, totally ignoring the “Terry’s house, keep out” cave entrance adorned
with spiked heads of goblins, humans, lizardmen, and weird giant tuna heads. I
really thought they would check it out, but apparently they’re over their “must
kill everything” phase and just want to get off this Lizard island.
Faced with a fork in the road, they
choose the spider-webby side rather than the goopy, oozy looking side. In a
shocking turn of events, they are ambushed by spiders! Jerry crits a strength
contest against Coasai, who had been holding his rope, and bolts, hollering
“bye Guys!” and runs off into the distance, pulling up his length of cord as he
goes. The party loses 50’ of rope, and their “guide.” One of the three ambushing
spiders bites Gluur and then vanishes into the ethereal plane, which Ryn can
see for a moment before the spider hides among its ethereal webs on the
ceiling. Eek! It’s spooooky! The other two spiders also bite at Sylvan and
Gandrakk, but their stabby fangs don’t manage to poison the stalwart
adventurers. Everyone bravely runs away, bypassing the spider’s cavern and reaching
yet another fork in the road. Ryn can’t shake the feeling that there’s a spider
followin’, just beyond the range of his ethereal vision granted by his cloak of
too many gross out eyes. They decide not to follow the path Jerry just ran down
(see “fuck these goblins”), instead, taking the winding, descending path
towards, they believe, Nerganu’s lair.
On their way, they encounter a pair of bridges over a chasm,
where they have to fight a test monster. I mean, a clockwork abomination. I
mean, an industrial mining equipment demon insect in the form of a boiler with stabby
drill bits and wonky legs made of mine cart parts and tools. It kicks their ass
all over the place, but they eventually manage to put it down.
This is the report I sent to the developers: (my tonight’s eds
in [] )
“The clockwork
automaton was presented as a mess of mining equipment (bellows, drills,
pincers, grinding gears, mine carts, etc, formed into an insectoid body) from
the ruins of a dwarven mine the group is investigating. The monster emerged
from beneath a massive pile of trash and discarded mining equipment below two
parallel 40’ bridges 8’ wide, with 20’ between them, over a 15’ gap. It crawled
up from beneath, and blocked the bridge the thief was attempting to cross sneakily
when the thief failed his stealth check. It missed its first pneumatic drilling
and biting attacks (which it took from the far range), and the thief disengaged
and ran back across the bridge asap. The fighter and barbarian took up posts at
the foot of the bridge, and readied attacks [solid strategy]. These clunked
into the clockwork monster with unsatisfying results: the lack of magical
weapons (aside from the druid’s shillelagh attack, and he hangs back most
often) in my players’ group meant that no one had any effective attacks against
the clockwork abomination – effectively doubling its hit points. It breath weaponed
the fighter, rogue, and druid. That 4d10 damage is no joke against L4 players.
By coincidence, all the d8 hit die classes in this group all have 25 hp, which
I think is statistically about average at this point, and is well within the
one-shot of 4d10. Even though Fighter and Rogue made their save against the
attack and only took 6, the druid took 12 damage (pretty low for 4d10 roll);
combined with some wounds from a previous battle, this was enough to down the
druid [sorry you keep getting hosed by breath weapons]. The warlock was next to
go down, he had attempted a few cold touch cantrip attacks, thinking the molten
blood of the beast might mean cold was its weakness [but it didn’t have any!
Yikes]. This just enraged the beast, who wrecked him with a drill and bite
attack. The Fighter then managed to use some intimidating strikes to keep the
thing in place while the barbarian and rogue hit it with their ranged weapons,
and Gandrakk’s high AC meant he was safe for a few rounds, until the breath
weapon recharged. [Great work, by the way, scaring the thing into disadvantaged
attacks] That took the fighter out with a 27 damage roll. The barbarian then
ran in and raged, but failed to push the clockwork over the edge and back into
the trash pile. The Rogue ran across the far bridge, and spent a few rounds of
running and gunning with his bow to lower the Clockwork’s HP with some sneak
attacks. The clockwork and barbarian both failed to hit one another –the dice
were very weak with them at this point. Then the Barbarian eventually smashed
the mining beast with a massive attack, despite the whining, high-pitched
squeal of the abomination as it neared death (a warning about its infernal
engine death), and nearly died himself in the ensuing explosion. At that point,
2 characters were 1 death save from total oblivion and another had just rolled
a 20 to stand back up with 1 hp.”
-PS We need to come up with a system for scars – you dudes must be looking nasty
after what, a week and a half of battle? Lots of near-death experiences,
clashes, slashes, bashes, and molasses leave their mark, right?
They find a load of cool shit in the trashpile that the
monster was lurking in. These things include:
A set of statues of the dwarven gods. Gandrakk snags this
up, and the party lets the big guy have it, despite its clear monetary goal.
Who’s gonna fight a dragonman over some tiny statues?
They also find: Two scrolls: they are for spells. Spells of
a pretty high level. Guys, what were the spells?
AND, A long pipe with a miniature hammer attached to it,
with some old-timey dwarven runes inscribed that seem to say something about a
door. What could all that mean?
They carry on.
As they are walking down, Sylvan’s multicolored stone disk
begins to vibrate in his pocket. The green segment is flashing dimly. He looks
at it until it stops vibrating. Wonder what that was all about, eh?
They carry on.
They come across a terrible scene: There
are lots of fishmen! Ryn knows that these are kuo-toa, a race known to most
commonly frequent the underground acquatic areas of the underdark. They have tied
up a goblin, and are chanting as they feed it to a crazy tentacled water beast.
It has too many tentacles! It ate the goblin in one bite! The kuo-toa really
loved that, they cheered and cheered. The monster has a really sharp beak! It’s
grabbing a tied up lizardman now! The party decides to kill it.
During parts of this fight, Sylvan
is a wolf! No one knew he could wolf, but he wolfed the shit out of some of
these little fishy peckerwoods. The kuo-toa ineffectually throw poison phials
at the group, attempting to weaken them before hucking nets at them. This
strategy does not pan out. Gandrakk acid breaths a couple of these jerks to
death. The group kills nearly all the fish, but the Lizardman captive is not
rescued, and is instead eaten as the tentacle monster ducks down into a
subterranean pool. Ryn casts a big spell on the remaining fishies. Two of the
kuo-toa are super impressed by this! They gather around Ryn, and start acting
like his bodyguards. This gives the
group a chance for a quick nappy poo. Thanks fishmans! They use their hit dice.
Coasai picks up some poison phials. The Sylvan and Ryn get spells back. They
glower menacingly at the darkness that surrounds them, which they can see in as
if in a dim light, but only out to about 30’ or so.
They keep going. The little fishy guys help them sneak up on
Nerganu.
They enter Nerganu’s chamber along a sneaky upper-level
route. They come upon a cavern where elevated wooden plank bridges link three
exposed deposits of dragonstone, each deposit encased in a crystalline cylinder
filled with swirling gas. Sylvan decides that these are probably the
phylacteries they are after. They also notice a bunch of Fishmen. They decide
to kill them. The two fishguides are ordered to go attack the fishguards below,
and effectively trade stabby spear attacks with them for the rest of this
battle until everyone involved downstairs has killed each other.
One of the upstairs fishies was a
wizard, but all his spell attacks missed so it was pretty unclear that he was potentially
way more powerful than he seemed during this fight. He had a groovy ghostly
sword, but, knowing about how those work since the meeting with the lizardmen
priest, the party decided it was best to just leave it on the ground after
Gandrakk disarming attacked him, forcing the fishwizard to drop the blade. Sylvan
bit the face off a fish, and Gluur chopped one in half. Eventually, Sylvan was
stabbed so much that the fishies were able to see through his wolf illusion,
and he re-formed into a half-elf, still ready for battle. When it seemed that
the fishies were finally defeated, the tentacled beast from the previous scene
emerged from the water below!
At
this time, several of the fishguards had made their way upstairs, to be
attacked by wolf-form Sylvan and Gluur, while Gandrakk, Ryn, and Coasai found
themselves face-to-face with the apparition of several copies of Nerganu,
formed from ghostly beams that linked the phylacteries. They managed to slash
through enough of his spectral doubles to strike the true sorceror, and he
briefly disappeared. Unfortunately, at this point, the Tentacled beast had
crawled out of the water (yikes!) and up the latter (eew!) and was poised to
attack Gandrakk.
Gandrakk made himself so menacing
that the Tentacled beast was unable to strike him! In return, he hammered away
at its rubbery flesh, wounding it like crazy. This pattern managed to continue
for several epic rounds of squishy tentacled flailing as the dragonborn held
his ground, pummeling the ever-loving crap out of the beast. Coasai loosed
arrows at the monster, taking advantage of its distraction by Gandrakk to land
his pointy shafts in the beast’s softer bits to great effect.
The phylacteries flashed, spectral
beams of light rejoined, and Nerganu’s ghost reappeared, ready to attack!
Sylvan, in humanoid form, took this as a sign to start smashing the
phylacteries, and commenced whacking them with his staff. When he smashed
through one, it released poisonous gas upon Gluur, but the barbarian, who was
occupied slaying fishy reinforcements, managed to shrug off the measly pittance
of damage that ensued.
Nerganu cast a spell that summoned
a crown of magic upon Gluur’s dome piece, preparing to compel the maddened
half-orc into attacking his friends. Not wanting to end up at the wrong end of
an axe, Ryn magicked Nerganu’s brain, and hideous whispered impossibilities of
“Carcosa” proved too much even for the ghostly being to withstand. The crown
disappeared, as did Nerganu, for a brief moment.
Gluur took his cue to smash a second
phylactery, again blasting the raised platform with poisonous gas that his
barbarian-reflexes allowed him to avoid. The final phylactery glowed again, and
Nerganu reappeared. The tentacled beast’s… tentacles… finally managed to grasp
Gandrakk, who was unceremoniously hucked off the platform into the water below,
as the monster advanced towards Gluur and Ryn. Coasai’s arrows were unable to
hit their mark so well without Gandrakk’s distractions. Ryn found himself the
next target of tentacly attacks, and was also thrown from the platform! Nerganu’s
spectral form, depleted of much of its energy, was unable to find purchase with
magical rays of light that he cast towards Gluur and Coasai. Gluur ran up to
the tentacled beast and chopped it down, wondering what the big deal was all
about and why it took Gandrakk so long smacking it around without killing it.
Gandrakk would later claim to have loosened it up for him. Gluur was very happy
with lots of black inky ichor all over his face.
The party surrounds and strikes the
lone Nerganu, his spectral form withdrawing to within the last phylactery. No
parley is attempted. The phylactery is smashed! The air fills with howls of
misery, a loud crack and blinding light emit from the glass cylinder, and
suddenly the party finds itself without anything to stab, shoot, slice, dice,
blast, fireball, or otherwise attack. Everyone jumps in the air and there’s a
freeze frame when they all high five!
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