CoS Session 18: The Battle of Stockton Keep
General Summary
7/2/874
- The party makes it back to Gameria after a mixed experience in Kanara
- Aldo finds a way to sneak back into the city because the guards are distracted
- Turns out an ogre attacked several city blocks on the city's 2nd level, left a lot of damage
- Roland investigates and discovers bluish-yellowish markings on the monster
- Aldo hides in The Thousand Faces, rest of party visits with Fallworth
- Fallworth pays them for Avicenna mission, looks gaunt and tired
- Arthur and Argus summoned ogre in town, killed 30 men before dying
- Fallworth’s desperate to fight Court, but he’s got Avicenna to focus on
- He’ll be sure to pay them all handsomely upon return
- Final preparations
- Catriona buys some healing potions and improves her flame blade’s accuracy
- She also burns a sketching of Alma as a way to move on
- As the picture burns, bluish-yellow smoke rises
- Aldo buys some potions and does a little bar-hopping
- He doesn’t get super wasted, but he continues Fishman tradition
- Nikolaj buys some healing poisons and picks up lunar dagger from Assaj
- It does pretty good damage, and he upgrades the other dagger
- Aldo was also promised a lunar necklace from heist, so he picks that up
- He checks on progress of Rexfur’s temple (there’s a phallus easter egg)
- Roland just buys a lot of healing potions, spends most of his time researching the Court
- He finds a scroll of 'Chain Lightning' at a rare books store
- He goes to Archives, Elgort gives him access to dark magic section
- New archivist Tarpin Melchor also helps out with research
- Roland tries to find location of Court headquarters, but he can’t find it
- He finds hints at entry symbols and potential locations, but nothing sticks
- Catriona stops by to help, but not much progress is made
- Party decides to blow off steam at the fighting pits (now legitimate thanks to Roland's lobbying)
- Roland has a rematch with an old Hakonian fighter, he wins!
- Aldo eats popcorn shrimp, Catriona goes to first fighting pit
- Afterwards Roland, Nikolaj, and Aldo go partying at a Hakonian tavern
- Catriona calls it a night, hears a Court of the Undying monster shrieking above the city
- It starts raining the next day
- That afternoon Roland goes to Archives hungover
- Catriona and Tarpin are already there studying, with little luck
- Suddenly, Roland has a breakthrough!
- There’s a place called Stockton Keep, close to where him and Catriona first began their wild adventure
- Tarpin mentions there’d lots of ancient tunnels connecting villages in Liat
- Party decides to go there, better than letting the Court get stronger
- Final farewells
- Roland meets with Magnus to thank him for running the fighting pits
- Magnus gives him a letter from Shank before he was killed
- Aldo goes find Willard, his ‘skin guy’
- Aldo has to sneak into jail to meet with him, but he promises to break Willard out
- They arrive at Rockport, the old abandoned mining town from the adventure's firs session
- The town hall’s still burned down, no undead bear to be seen
- Party does some sleuthing, they find a tunnel under a ruined house
- Catriona lights the way, the party heads into an ancient tunnel
- After a long and winding path, they make it to Stockton Keep
- The ground floor’s empty, but there’s chanting coming from the top floor
- Party makes its slow ascent to the top
- Nikolaj finds Valdemar’s room, steals some bags of gold
- Roland looks around, finds a ‘soul ledger’ of everybody the Court’s killed
- The last person on Valdemar’s list: Ildred?!?
- At the top floor of keep the chanting is deafening
- Catriona transforms into itsy bitsy spider to spy on the Court
- Behind the door she sees the seven members opening a portal
- They’re drawing magic together, lots of chants and gestures
- She sees Alma, tries to persuade her to leave Court
- Back with the rest of the party, they plan out strategy
- Nikolaj will fight Argus and Arthur
- Aldo will fight Markova, Fairouz and Morrigan
- Catriona will deal with Alma
- Roland will charge at Valdemar
- So, Aldo and Nikolaj sneak into place, but Catriona and Roland are spotted
- Valdemar monologues for a moment, and before long Ildred’s summoned
- Ildred tries to do some monologuing of his own at Roland
- Mid-monologue, Valdemar sucks up Ildred’s soul into his phylactery!!
- Wow.
- Valdemar starts morphing into some tentacled abomination as he's imbued with Ildred's mindflayer powers
- Aldo fires off a flaming arrow at Valdemar, casts 'Fog Cloud' on Fairouz
- Final Boss Fight: Valdemar the Undying
- Nikolaj stabs his daggers into Argus’ shoulder blades, catches him off-guard
- Roland uses scroll of 'Chain Lightning', hits 4 Court members in 1 turn
- Arthur takes too much damage, him and Argus flee
- Aldo focuses attacks on the women of the Court, fighting Fairouz in particular
- He does some damage with his Frozen Blade, freezes Fairouz's spiders
- The 'Fog Cloud' gives Markova, Fairouz and Morrigan disadvantage on all their attack rolls
- Catriona pleads with Alma some more to abandon the Court, eventually she’s won over
- Alma casts a few powerful spells at Valdemar et al
- Catriona’s flame blade is pretty useful too
- Fairouz focuses on Aldo, Markova does some damage on Nikolaj
- Valdemar/Ildred abomination has some tricks up his sleeves
- Some of them miss though, including a disintegration beam at Catriona
- He releases noxious blight that KO’s Catriona, hurts Nikolaj and Roland
- Roland directs all of his attacks at Valdemar
- With all his divine smites and vows of enmity, he slays Valdemar
- One well-placed great axe attack with Redemption knocks Valdemar off the keep's edge and into the ravine below
- Roland takes extra care to destroy Valdemar's phylactery
- The fallout
- Markova rushes to edge of keep, starts sobbing for loss of her husband
- She keeps mourning until she literally crystallizes with grief
- Party tries to stop Fairouz and Morrigan from leaving, but they escape
- Fairouz is nonplussed by Valdemar’s defeat, will try to summon monstrous aberrations of her own one day
- The party discusses Alma’s fate
- Aldo wants to exile her, Catriona wants to make sure she reforms
- Catriona agrees to keep eye on her if Alma joins convent
- Catriona’s mission has been to find and protect Alma
- Nikolaj scours rest of keep, steals 1,200GP worth of jewels and coins
- He also finds a ring of Fairouz’s
- Roland searches through Arthur’s old room
- He finds notes and books, but of special interest are his journals
- There’s one entry from the day Arthur murdered Roland’s family entitled ‘My First Lesson with Argus’
- The party returns to Gameria for the last time
- Catriona stays in town to take care of Alma
- Aldo leaves for Avicenna
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