2024/01/17: The Formian War Part 8 Report
General Summary
Knight, Kit, Malakai, Starlight, Ash Ash and Malakai made a unified attempt to remove the curse from Knight's leg, boosted by equipment from Knight and Starlight. The attempt just managed to overcome the curse and dispel it. Knight gave Malakai a hug. Ash would have gotten one too, but his armor is covered in spikes and he's carrying a pile of swords, so he offered a fistbump instead (which was enthusiastically returned). The group then went to comfort poor Yvenna and Kit, the former having lost an arm and the latter having the trauma of carving the key out of a zombie derro's chest. It was quickly discovered that conventional magic wasn't going to fix the arm. Yvenna explained that she'd need to rebuild it herself, and for that she'd need a workshop and high-quality wood. Ash let her borrow his artifact-level Staff of Might while her spellcasting was impaired. Kit, meanwhile, seemed to have completely forgotten his trauma before five minutes had passed. A short attention span (or the memory of a goldfish) can sometimes be a wondrous thing. The party aimed to find the key in the factory next. They decided to try using the dream realm for passage again; while the last attempt had almost gotten Meis killed, it had completely bypassed all the guards and defenses in the real world, and the one cyborg enemy had been dealt with quickly. And besides, more low-stakes practice for Knight couldn't hurt. Malakai had Knight use a special, quasi-intelligent scroll first, which was supposed to guide the user to where they were trying to go. It gave Knight a slight (if piercing) headache. The dream portal he subsequently cut open was a worrying shade of red. When the party warily stepped through, they found themselves in a filthy stone chamber linked to a vast derro arena, with thousands of derro chanting for blood. Knight gave an unrepentant Malakai an exasperated look. Knight's dream compass was just spinning, so while Kit started trying to pick the rusty lock on a gate back into the depths of the structure, the rest of the party tried searching the room for the phylactery key or anything of value. Except Ash. He decided to open the portcullis and find out what would happen if he stood in the middle of the arena. Most of the party just found graffiti. Starlight found a little stamped silver key hidden deep in a crevice in the wall. As Kit picked a lock loose in the back, Ash winched the portcullis open. Ash gave Kit a minute to check the unlocked passage. Kit snuck down the hall and found a twelve-foot-tall minotaur guarding a door, with the sound of a crying child coming from behind it. There was also another door across the hall. Kit rushed back to inform the party, and Starlight and Knight immediately turned and started marching down the hall to free the kid. The minotaur proved physically resilient, but less so than he himself expected. Ash's swords inflicted some painful slashes, Starlight's magic punched through his defenses, and Kit's eldritch knives consumed many of those same defenses. Just before he would have been able to strike back, Knight stepped forward and cut him into pieces, and then stilled time, stepped through him, empowered the Dream Master's Nail, and cut him into a portal. As in, the minotaur was turned into a rusty-looking portal. (Knight had decided that if the party was going to be experimenting with dream realms, he might as well get as much experimentation as he could out of it. Trying to cut holes in the dream as he tried to cut holes in a resilient dream enemy seemed like a worthy attempt.) Starlight's key opened the prison gate the minotaur had been guarding, and from the cell inside, which was full of skeletons, she retrieved a terrified derro child. After checking that Starlight and the little girl seemed okay, Knight prodded the newly made portal with his sword, and from the other side he heard the sound of a very angry minotaur bellowing. He asked Ash if Ash wanted to fight a super version of the minotaur, probably with extra loot. Ash dove right in. Those who entered found themselves in a smaller arena facing a 20-foot-tall "minotaur king". The walls were covered in hand weapons and spikes. The fight began without hesitation or fanfare, and the minotaur's resilience and power proved he deserved his title. His bracers and greaves automatically deflected many incoming attacks. Those that got through were shrugged off with casual ease. Seeing how tough the minotaur king was, Malakai drew and activated the sword he calls Apocalypse. Just unleashing it put everyone and everything on the battlefield at half health. The combatants, the cage, the ground, everything. Then he pulled out Desolation, which struck all combatants with a draining field that disabled healing on the battlefield. The latter effect was later found to persist well after the fight, though Ash was able to use unicorn powers to at least reduce the duration. A 6-and-a-half foot tall dark knight showed up and started beating on the minotaur in the midst of the fight. A mage-type figure also showed up and started doing magic that seemed to be trying to choke the minotaur. The latter was a woman wearing a dark purple robe and wielding a rod with a fleur-de-lis on the end. She was a pretty human. Haughty. Raven dark hair. Pale skin. Late in the fight, Yvenna (apparently, or possibly the summoned mage) activated some powerful necromantic effect. It did horrific damage to the minotaur, but at the same time Yvenna's entire party was sent reeling, as if they were all puppets and the puppeteer had just gotten distracted with something else. They recovered, but that was concerning and something to follow up on later. After a very tough fight, the minotaur finally fell. He left behind a treasure chest large enough for a person to lie down in. It was full of gold and treasure, all shiny and pretty, as if it were meeting the expectations of a dream.
Rewards Granted
3 xp
Character(s) interacted with
Yvenna, Dova, Venn, Aishivastis, Meis, little derro girl, summoned mage, summoned dark knight
