Session 37 Report

General Summary

Swift's Log

Our adventure through the Chateau picked back up after a brief moment to catch our breath and regroup with our goblin friend, Gribble… Approaching a ‘God’ and entering a haunted mansion, I never would have imagined a gobbo could bolster such a pair! We got a count on our magical spells and felt good about pushing on ahead. We continued back to the main corridor, Gribble getting his first experience with the magical darkness. He kept curiously glancing at the West wing… in hindsight the better decision, but alas we ventured up the stairs under the assumption that it’d be a good idea to chase the poltergeist up to the room he’d escaped to. Immediately at the top of the stairs, we were accosted by a separate band of puny shadows, a pitiful front line of defenses and we leapt right into battle! After Cher illuminated the area, spirits were brought to light and I nimbly flipped up over the banister and into the first shadow I could see! I radiated with brimming confidence as I stabbed into the floorboard as hard as I could! It certainly felt like a strong stab as my rapier dug into the weakened wood. It attempted to quickly rebut, but only gained another stab for it’s troubles as it left itself open for a riposte. Moon Planter threw himself into the backline at a couple more shadows, slicing at one before another disappeared somewhere around him. Ord made haste around the banister to join Moon Planter, and Tangent used a large area heal to hit the shadows, taking out one of them in the process! Gribble was steadfast in coming to help, unfortunately putting himself right in the middle of the shadows in the process, and they took advantage by starting to gang up on the poor goblin and tug away at his shadow. Gribble wasn’t shy about showing his pain, and that seemed to spark a fuse in all of our hearts! Shabaka tried getting the shadow from off of him while Cher followed right up with precise, powerful magic missiles that did away with the last two shadows that were around Gribble. So that left one, from what I could recall. Last I’d seen it had disappeared somewhere around Moon Planter, and all I could see was Moon Planter’s shadow, and so that was my target! .. Although it didn’t seem to react, I couldn’t see the shadow anywhere else and there was no point chasing it off down a dark hall, I turned to check on Gribble. While my back was turned, the shadow reared its form immediately into Moon Planter’s readied blade. I missed it, but I’m sure it was a grand swing as he split the shadow into thin air. With all the threats gone, we regrouped and maneuvered back to the area above the entrance to the chateau. Moon Planter and Ord pushed open another set of doors, and we were greeted with an eerie, almost theatrical sobbing that echoed through the halls, and I stayed in the back with Gribble, waiting for our casters to illuminate the room. I could hear Shabaka and Cher working their magic, getting the job done to be followed by the charge of Moon Planter and his falchion. I was in right behind him, turning to find a jester of sorts in the corner, sliding myself over to give it a stab! Not to be outdone, I watched Ord spin around and begin smacking the absolute shit out of the jester, instilling legitimate shock in the ghoul. In the midst of our assault, more chaos erupted as the objects in the room began to fly about and smack at the party. I could hear Gribble from the hall and feel a burst of healing energy that also served to do away with a bundle of foes, followed up by Tangent! Cher threw in a storm of ice to an already hectic, crowded room, and our vision was taken away as one of the shadows exploded into more darkness. Left with what we could surmise was one more shadow, it struck Shabaka mightily before fleeing like the coward it was. The threats seemed gone, and our target certainly wasn’t among them, leaving us to search further in the house, on the other side of the staircase. The sound of a door slamming caught our attention and we started towards where we could hear it. I regrouped with Gribble and offered him a hug of sweltering pride, and he bit me back! Bastard… that hurt too! I gave him a smack in the side of the head to re-teach him his place. The power of friendship seems lost on the Big Rock Gobbos. Further ahead, Ord ‘unlocked’ another door and Tangent illuminated the room, also shining light right on a shadow right beneath her hooves! Though Tangent was only able to jab at it once before it ran—again. More shadows, but still no impostor. I was beginning to get a little anxious at our luck. We only had so many spells left and I feared having to leave the chateau to rest and recover, giving our shapeshifter more than enough time to rebolster his ghouls and potentially escape. We perhaps started to feel a little rushed, and that perhaps led to some poor judgement choices. I followed into the new room, not finding any spirits I checked the next open door only to be met with the foul stench of an uncleaned bathroom. No one could find anything until more poltergeists were in the room as even more chaos began to arise, objects flying about and smacking into the party. With no clue as to where these spirits were, Cher took to the hole in the floor, putting a fireball down. The raw stench of burning fayleaf lifted back up as a result, Moon Planter dove in to chase after the shadows we assumed were down there. A stray boot came flying out of a chest, bouncing off of all of us like a pinball, catching Cher and even stealing her hat in the process, depositing it onto Tangent. Shabaka followed to the hole to cast a searing light to light the way for Moon Planter, quickly announcing the presence of 3 more shadows. With the help of Tangent and her rope, everyone followed after our leather winged ally. I got down just in time to see Moon Planter getting smacked around by some shadows, quite literally knocking the shadow out of him. My gut began to drop. More shadows on top of the poltergeists we couldn’t see that kept knocking the room around. I stabbed more furiously as allies dropped in around me. Tangent and Gribble were slow to follow, I could hear the distinct screeching of a cat followed by the empowering blast of a heal which also took out another shadow. Blasts of lights and swings of swords resumed until we couldn’t see any more shadows. At this point the party was clearly somewhat split, exhaustion starting to get the better of us after so many consecutive battles and lowering resources. Tangent kept pushing to leave, Cher kept insisting we were fine, and the rest of us were almost too frustrated to give up. In the end, Ord decided for us as she used her body to blast through the nearest locked door with a pair of thunderous thuds. After a moment of deliberation, Cher used another searing light to blast the room with light. Lights come on, and there’s a moment of silence before I hear from around the corner. “Oh now you fucked up.” Our target was finally acquired, and with it another troop of undead creatures to come pouring out of the room to assault us without even a minute to catch our breaths. All eyes fell onto the impostor, the sense of urgency was not lost as we could only hope that knocking him out for good would put a stop to the spirits and shadows of the haunt. A blast of water rushed out of the door, blasting Ord, Tangent, and Cher while more objects flew around, shadows pouring from the new room targeting only Tangent until she was bludgeoned down. They seemed as focused on her as we did on the impostor… and so it must have been a miracle that the shadows did not finish off Tangent, and instead turned their attention to smack down Moon Planter and Cher instead. The onslaught persisted, and I was forced to watch allies fall one after the other while hope seeped out of my very soul. I even saw Cher perhaps smartly turn herself invisible, preparing for the worst… Before I knew it, the room was swirling with various objects and shadows, standing triumphantly over Moon Planter, Tangent, and Shabaka. Out of the corner of my eye I then bore witness to the bravest Gobbo you’ll ever see lifting his religious symbol as high up to the sky as he could, roaring out before a tide of positive energy washed through the rooms. In the same instant, our fallen allies were brought back to consciousness and a large number of shadows were obliterated into thin air. A miracle, the second of many. I’m not a very religious stallion, but there had to have been some divine intervention that allowed Ord, Moon Planter, and myself to bum rush the impostor and overwhelm him just as Tangent fell once again. In a rather not-fabulous display of brutish swinging, we were able to chip away until a final stab through the chest halted the impostor, sending him tumbling over—his hat falling off and his form giving way to shockingly reveal an unconscious changeling.

Cher's Log

The battle in the old chateau rages on yet another day. We moved like the guards during an illegal chemical bust. Clearing room by room, our spells the only light we had to guide the way. The inky darkness has been the home to cowards and friends since the dawn of time. But take away a coward’s advantage and they often fold like paper. The shadows this time around were no match for us, Cher helped coordinate the spells with her party members to solve a majority of the problems and with the addition of our sickly green tool, we were over-prepared. The creatures quickly gave up on fighting us and resorted to hiding even with their precious darkness gone. They would hide in our shadows, but that was a trick that only worked once. Once we were aware of just how deep their duplicitousness ran, we began to attack the areas we thought they would hide, striking true more often than not. Room after room we searched for the imposter, quickly dispatching most of our targets until we got to a bedroom. A spacious lot, much bigger than other rooms we’ve been in at this time. We had followed the sounds of one of the fleeing creatures only to be met with relative stillness in the room. There was nothing of note besides a large hole. Searching revealed nothing, though eventually, we did notice a shadow that was off that belonged to one of us. Tangent had played host to a shadowy creature hiding in her darkness. We quickly pounced on it, riding its wretched form from this plane of existence. It was standard fare at this point and almost not worth the note. Except he was alone, or rather it wasn’t alone. There were more somewhere. The only way could tell though was due to objects in the room flying around attacking us constantly. Dealing a non-insignificant amount of damage to all of us. The group was at a loss, we couldn’t see anything in the room, and couldn’t sense the immediate presence of any entities. But I notice the hole in the floor, that hole was steeped in inky blackness, the one place where we hadn’t looked. I leaped to action casting a fireball down there burning wood, plants and even damaging other creatures, proving my intuition right. Moon planter took charge, rather foolishly given his last attempt to leap into danger, but he dived headfirst into the darkness to battle the creatures. We eventually lit the hole for him, giving him sight of three ghosts surrounding him. I leaped onto Ord’s back and rode her down to the bottom to give him support, while the rest of the party secured ropes or found their own way down. Our battle was done quite quickly with simple some stranglers hiding once more, taking shots at us from whatever creatures they hid. We had Ord crash through a door that was the hardest one yet. The reinforcement led me to believe there has to be something of significance here. I hadn’t thought that when I launched my searing light that it would be hitting Weed Horse, or whoever they are right in their face. It wasn’t expected to meet him on the first floor but we were now faced to face with him. We were tired with low energy left for spells but there was no avoiding this fight now. The imposter summoned even more creatures to fight on its behalf. But its wide attacks found him in the crossfire as well. But that did not help, as we were being targeted by nearly a dozen combatants. I witnessed our party fall one by one with tangent our healer being focused by the shadows, as well as moon planter being decimated as well. I used my heightened invisibility to try and avoid being focused but attacks still reigned down hard focusing the shabby cat instead, critically striking him over and over. For the longest, it looked like we were going to lose this fight. But through some miracle, we were able to overcome, with Swift taking the final strike on Weed Horse. Non-lethally stabbing them through the heart with a sword. When he fell the spell of his disguises revealed that it was number 2. The one under Clarity back in the city of sin. I’m not sure if she’s working for the pimp or Clarity but I’ll most likely find out when we speak… whenever she stops coughing up blood at least.