Session 18: Antagonistic armor and a finished facility

General Summary

Prelude: discussion on party loot sheet.
Summary: 3 pts for an eventual chorus of voices.

Exploring the back end of the Llyrian Moon Facility

Woodmaster’s Office

The studded wooden door to this room has a broken lock. The ruins of a desk and file cabinet are piled in a corner.

Chemical Storage

This room contains a crate and a barrel:

• One crate of wolfsbane
• One barrel of what appears to be a weak acid with a strong smell; it's identified as a wood stain/sealer.

***A brief interlude while the GM turns into Soundwave***

Library and Archives

This ruins of several bookshelves are piled in the corner. The books have been dumped into the floor and lie in a heap.

A thorough combing through of the heap turns up a copy of Domains and Pantheons; Leucis looks through it quickly and decides it merits further study.
Reflecting on the strange nature of the books missing text in various places, the party wonders if there's some magical effect that might steal the text to create magic. While it's not unheard of in the case of scrolls, that sort of thing being done with historical texts is not familiar - it's possible that some magic did this, but the purpose isn't clear.

Growing Room

The ruins of several foot-driven saws, vats, and tables are piled in the corner. The room is far cleaner than on the prior visit.

Sun Carving Room

The eastern wall of this room has a mural of a stylized sun in gold and copper tones. The ruins of a file cabinet are piled in a corner.

The group regards the Sun Carving and tries to determine if it's similar to the symbols in the Temple of Pelor. It occurs to Maya at least that there may very well not be a similarity, since sun worship exists independent of the Church of Pelor.
Kolvonnin asks Harb to draw a copy of this mural for later reference, but they elect to wait until after checking the other rooms. The paladin does try holding Pelor's Rising Sun near the carving, and there's a feeling of warmth and simlarity of energy.

Cart Storage

This room contains a series of rolling carts, clearly used to move large or heavy objects from place to place.

Maya seems surprised that these carts are in working order, and checks under them but finds nothing of note.

Storage

Upon opening the door to this room, several people hear the sound of breaking glass and a thunk. Inside there is darkness unpenetrated by the torch or darkvision.

Darkness and the sound of breaking glass...

Round 1

Several people hear the sound of heavy armor moving within the darkness, and it swells towards the party, engulfing the closest members in the hallway.
• Leucis channels Selune's divinity into a Twilight Sanctuary, lighting his immedate area with a dim moonlight.
• A heavy fist slams into Maya from the darkness.
• Kolvonnin raises his morningstar and invokes the power of Pelor to produce Daylight. The darkness bubbles and hisses around the morningstar, then recedes, (rule clarification #1) revealing several suits of armor moving on their own. Of the six, five are coated in a tar-like substance and one is shiny.
  Kolvonnin further casts Shield of Faith on Maya. (rule clarification #2)
• Maya casts Thunderwave on five of the armors, shoving one away (rule clarification #3) and damaging several. He then moves away down the hall.

Round 2

• Leucis casts Guiding Bolt but it glances off the armor's surface.
• Sunny casts Shatter in the press of armors, damaging four of them.
• Kolvonnin exhales acid down the hallway, searing the same four armors.
• Maya throws another Thunderwave in the hallway.

Round 3

• Sunny runs through the center mass on one of the armors and it clatters to the ground.
• Kolvonnin lands a critical hit on the armor, leaving a craterous dent in the breastplate.
• Maya hits the same armor with his Shillelagh'd club, stoving in the chest on it.

Round 4

• Leucis upcasts Moonbeam (to 3rd) into the hallway.
• One armor moves past Maya, catching a club to the hip joint for its trouble. Its component pieces collapse outward from the blow across the room.
• Kolvonnin takes a hit but maintains concentration on Shield of Faith.
• Sunny executes a Defensive Flourish, running through an armor and rendering it a heap of junk.
• Maya lands another solid club hit on one that Kolvonnin just hit, finishing it off.

Round 5

• Harb uses his Action Surge to attack twice, landing a solid hit on one swing but missing the second.
• Leucis moves the Moonbeam into the place where the armor is standing.
• Saf elects to live dangerously - she moves into the Moonbeam, is somewhat seared by the moonlight, misses a swing and gets a gauntleted fist in return, then moves away.
• Sunny flicks out with his rapier and finishes off the last armor.

Combat summary:

• Total duration: 5 rounds
• PC drops: None.
• Rule clarifications:
  
  1. Light and darkness magic will counter one another (the higher level spell counters the lower one). Daylight (3rd level) counters Darkness (2nd level).
  2. RAW: Casting a spell from a magic item generally functions like the spell itself (in terms of casting time, save DC, etc) but doesn't require components. Certain items makes exceptions to these rules.
     Ruling: In the case of homebrew items, I generally include whether it's handled as a spell or not, and whether it involves the concentration of the item's wielder. If this isn't clear on an item, let me know.
  3. Effects that force movement don't have a solid ruling on what happens when the destination space is occupied or otherwise unavailable.
     Ruling: In the moment, we did some ad hoc things about moving creatures close to where they would wind up if the space was available. However, in a more definitive forward-looking ruling: if the destination space is unavailable or the target cannot be moved due to space being occupied, they are instead knocked prone.
  4. Ruling: Effects that allow rolling additional dice (advantage, luck, inspiration, etc.) are officially capped at a total of 3 dice rolled for a single check/save.
• Kill board:
  1. Sunny: Killed armor with rapier(3,4,5)
  2. Maya: Killed armor with club/Shillelagh(3,4,4)
• Loot:
  • 1 Potion of Inky Darkness

Post combat

Storage

This room is dominated by storage crates with their tops unsealed. A few sealable crates with lids are in the southwest corner with a cart.

Leucis uses the remainder of the time left on the Moonbeam spell to sweep over the boxes.
Looking closer at the armor, it seems well made but not practically useful - it's doubtful a person would actually fit inside it. The substance on the armor seems to be tar with some other contents mixed into it.
A few people look into the crates, but they are empty. There are shards of broken black glass in various places on the floor, and Sunny/Harb turn up a Potion of Inky Darkness. Sunny takes a few minutes to Identify the substance, which seems like the same goop that was on the armor.
Maya uses the Detect Magic spell, and determines that while the potion and the armor had magical auras, nothing else in the room seems to have an aura about it.

Sun Carving Room

The eastern wall of this room has a mural of a stylized sun in gold and copper tones. The ruins of a file cabinet are piled in a corner.

Kolvonnin approaches the Sun Carving, and Daylight coming from the morningstar causes a shimmer similar to heat waves over the carving. He attempts to determine if the carving is centered around Pelor or merely sun worship, and comes to the conclusion that it looks like a collaboration between both groups. The Divine Sense of the paladin gives him a different impression than the Pelor he knows, but not very different.
Harb notes that the carving looks much more vibrant in the Daylight than by the light of the torch earlier. He decides to make a drawing of each look. He also notes that perhaps there's a different sun deity involved. Leucis looks in Domains and Pantheons and finds a page about the Sun domain; there are several deities listed at various levels of power (major, minor, associated). The list includes Pelor even with a few alternate names (Helio) and a few other names, but none of them stick out.
Maya points out that there could be an organization similar to the Llyrian Sect, but around sun magic instead of moon magic.

Rest and regroup

The group decides to take a short rest and recover a bit after the recent combat. There's some discussion about checking out Sunhaven as a next step, by way of Stonebridge and Grayhill.

Preparations to leave the facility

Seal it up

Leucis uses Mending to fix the door, and Sunny uses Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments to paint a 10' boulder in front of it. Maya uses Druidcraft to sprout a few plants over the boulder so it seems to have been there a while.

Next steps:

1. Travel to Stonebridge off-camera.
• Sending to Nock (Meg)
• Read Domains and Pantheons(Meg)
2. Work with Heather on tokens defaulting to grayed-out/useless. (??)
3. Catch up any items that are not "fully created" on character sheets.
4. Check through loot and verify things are distributed.

Session Feedback

Eddy: Combat is long, so I tried to go fast. Good picks from the primary casters this time around, even if the dice were pretty bad.
Heather: I had heat metal in my back pocket. Simplified token helped. Bummed about not Identifying other items before they were destroyed. Create the darkness potion.
James: Better team tactics this time around. Wanted to beat up the furniture smasher, though. A few more ideas but way more questions.
Jeremy: Nice to put a bow on this place. Some fun bits of info. Kudos for the inventory stuff. Group token was a good change. Is it possible to do things without the group at large?
Matt: Ruling on forced movement, maybe? Add something to house rules, knock prone if they can't be moved. Knowing more would be good, as this seems to be going long on the mystery. Some answers to questions would be good, and of late it's been mostly more questions. Sign-posting better about "hey, this isn't likely to pay off" on some party suggested courses. Using the group token helped tremendously in moving things along.
Meg: Glad crates didn't attack this time. Half expecting the crate of wolfsbane to attack in some way.
John: Player paranoia is a lot of fun. Combat seemed pretty approachable. I probably overcompensated on the desire to make the first place the new players went not a "been there, done that."