Session 15: Saving Taka Crayrin-HA

General Summary

The Heroes

Emet-Selch {Vedalken Artificer}
Eralyse Sarrallon {Aasimar Paladin}
Jon Mastiff {Human Wizard}
Mala {Aarakocra Monk}
Mellow Leaf {Tabaxi Ranger}
Campaign:Heart of Annilation
Current Year:756

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1

After arriving back at the island and you are starting to settle in Emmet's new Chronolometer starts letting out a terrible screeching sound. When he looks at it a message materializes above it.
"Warning, temporal deviation detected. Anomly: Premature death of Taka Crayrin in the town of stonehorn in 5 days. Cause: Raid ordered by Victorio Blackleaf in -2 minutes. Solution: Prevent death of Taka Crayrin. Recommend intervention in 4 days to prevent temporal cascade event."
The words are all written in shondae. There is a small blinking button on the device. DM Notes

pressing the button causes the message to disappear, allowing it hover for a mintue or more causes the -2 to become a -3. Stonehorn is a place the group has been before, it was a small town not far from Grimford. Octavia has the teleportation coordinates for Grimford. From which it is half a day's journey to Stonehorn.

So, the group decided to take the opportunity to build some items that would be useful for the upcoming adventure. Such as an instant fortress with ballista built into it. They also hired a Tabaxi mercenary group known as the Golden Tigers. Eralyse took the opportuntity to do a flyby of the town. When she did this she heard a strange roar that was later identified as being a creature known as a nullifier. Finally, they reached out to the other group for information and to see if they were available for assistance. The other group was able to provide some limited information. But was too busy with their own tasks to be able to assist.

2

Mellow Leaf scouted arrived a head of the group and searched for Taka only to discover that he had been kidnapped. So the group decided to go ahead and teleport to the town to arrive quicker.
Stonehorn is much as you remember it being. This farming town seems somber. A small board is set up near the enterance to the town. On it are a few papers asking if anyone has seen various missing persons. At first you think that maybe these were some of the same papers you saw before and these are simply people who met tragic ends and were simplly never found. except one of the names is Taka Crayrin. the poster identifies this person as a human male tailor with silver hair and green eyes.
a guard near by mumbles something under his breath Perception Check DC 20

"I keep telling people, but no one wants to listen. Shut up, the devil doesn't exist"

3

After asking around you're able to piece together the following information.
*A wanderer arrived in town on the same day emmet recieved the message. She purchased some meager supplies asked a few questions about the town and then left. People started to go missing the following days. Taka went missing 2 days ago. *Those close to Taka know that he was in posession of an ancient artifact he discovered after seeing a shooting star and looking for where it landed. He talked about fixing it but its believed he has so far been unsuccessful. *Taka used to be a mercenary, but something rattled him and he settled here becoming a tailor. He's always been a nervous man since then jumping at his own shadow. *strange smoke has been seen in the forest west of town. *The cry of a strange creature has been heard in the woods following the arrival of the wanderer. *As before the occasional sheep goes missing, but this has become less frequent since the last time your group was here and in each case a cured sheep bladder has been found inside of which is a single gold piece.
Armed with this knowlege you head into the woods where the strange smoke has been seen.
It's not long before you come across a strange sight. You see 7 humans in black leather accompanied by a large bipedal brown colored snake man. The creature has half a dozen mouths across it's torso. It wears no clothing except for a metallic collar around it's neck. The humans are armed with swords and bows. Two of them carry a crusifix with a large grey haired ape-like man with black horns attached to it. The creature appears lifeless. The strange snake man seems to sniff the apeman and then sniffs the ground. The whole scene vaguely reminds you of a group of hunters with a bloodhound tracking prey. One of the men speaks up "is this really nessisary? how do we know this beast will even come to the defense of the town?"
One of the others replies "doesn't matter if it will or not, the boss doesn't want any complications and the thing is clearly magic" with the man spitting the last word like it's distasteful to him. "if it weren't the tracker wouldn't be getting such a strong scent"
The group dispached the group with the aide of their mercenary tower.

4

After dealing with the hunters, the figure on the crusifix suddenly springs to life. It speaks in a gravelly voice. "thank you, friends. if you could detach my poppet from this.... thing I would be most appreative."
The group spoke with the grey devil's avatar and he agreed to assist them in tracking down victorio's base of operations in his forest.

5

The grey devil is able to give some indication of where victorio's soilders might be. There is a part of the forest that has become numb to him.
DM Notes

if the previous social challenge was successful. The grey devil is able to help in the following ways Each turn the grey devil can "scan" any face down card and reveal information about it either the name of the card, the skills involved, or the DCs of the card. Afterward the card can either be left as it is or swapped for a new card of the same type.

The group was able to make their way through the forest and find the area where victorio's camp should be located.

6

You make it to where the encampment should be and you hear a group of.... people? are rushing through the forest toward your location. One of the creatures is a nullifier like you've encountered before. A wrangler of sorts walks with it. The other eight look like they used to be humans. But they seem to have been augmented. Bits of them have been replaced with mechanical prostetics. mostly it's just the odd arm or leg but some of them look to have undergone considerable reconstruction.

7

After dispatching the enemies you find that the clearing you were in doesn't seem to be anything remarkable. Paths lead away from it but not in the direction you've been heading. The grey devil can tell you roughly the direction you need to head only because that would be the center of the numbness he feels.
DM Notes

The trap consists a magic sensative trigger that releases a cloud of lead and cold iron into the air that temporarily supressess magic. Beneath this is a pit trap filled with cold iron spikes.

you find a small clearing within it is a camouflaged tent outside of which sits a cage. within the cages you see villagers. Each wearing a metallic collar. More patrols like the ones you just slipped past wander about the open field.
The group was able to navigate the area and arrive undetected.

8

Moving up to the cage you see that the top of it is a frame covered in metal spikes, held up by a series of light blue crystals. Next to each crystal is a small piston like device with coiled metal cords that go into the ground.
Trapped Cage

A series of hidden pressure plates are placed around the ground surrounding the cage. stepping in the wrong place will cause the pistons to shatter the crystals. The crystals are also sensative to magic so using magic near or around them 10' will cause them to break. If triggered the top of the cage falls killing 3 of the 4 prisoners with Taka bleeding out

Next to the cage is a long metal rod leaning against a metal box. The box has a series of small short blunt spikes, twelve in total. On 6 of them are a silver ring held in place with a mechaical catch. Lastly, the box has 3 hollow cylinders sticking out of it. With an activation lever. Next to each cylinder are a series of 3 symbols. At the top is a circle bisected with a line. In the middle is a flat line. On the bottom is an open circle.
words above each cyclinder read as follows.
Ring, Fill, Consume
There are two canisters attached to the cage one labeled food and another labeled deadly gas. Feed with food

R:1 F:3 C:3

Kill Prisoners-fills with gas

R:1 F:1 C:3

Kill Prisoners-Drop spikes

R:1 F:3 C:1

Convert Prisoner

R:3 F:1 C:3

Open Cage

R:3 F:3 C:1

After looking over the cage and understanding the dangers of it. The group disabled the falling spike trap that would trigger when magic got too close and then passed a portable hole into the cage that the prisoner's could get into and then pulled the hole through the cage to release them.

9

The group entered the tent and was able to dispatch the vampire leader and her followers.
DM's Perspective of the fight

Sometimes DMs get front row seats to..... watching players completely dismantle an encounter in the most unbelievable manner. The party had made their way to the pavilion where the BBEG was. The group is fairly high level such that they had an instant fortress and a bunch of hired mercenary archers with them. Additionally, prior to attacking the BBEG in her pavilion they had rescued about half a dozen towns people that had been abducted and brought here so they could be turned into horrible creatures. So, as part of their prep to rush in, they would pop the instant fortress. Have the townspeople rush inside along with the archers who would protect them from any re-enforcements that might show up. I would like to point out that at this point, I didn’t have any plans for re-enforcements to show up so, my response in my head was “yeah, ok that’s fine whatever, now I don’t have to worry about dealing with the npc archers. Awesome”
The wizard cast mirror image on themselves, and the group rushed in. Initiative starts and the enemies aren’t surprised. The group sees a finely dressed female who is the obvious leader, four other humanoids and 3 Aeorian Absorbers. Basically, weird cat like creatures that are heavily anti-magic. They also are some of the rare creatures that have immunity to radiant damage. The group made their skill check to recognize the absorbers but failed the religion check to recognize the leader as being a vampire. The other humanoids were a bunch of rogues.
The vampire has legendary actions meaning they can do select things after another creature’s turn. I was going to have her move into a better position after the 1st character went.
It gets to the vampire’s turn and I look over her abilities. No ability to teleport, as legendary actions she has as options, moving w/o provoking, unarmed strike, bite. She doesn’t have a teleport ability or even a dispel magic, not that dispel magic works on wall of force and there is no save so her legendary resistance doesn’t help either. But she does have a once a day ability to summon bats or wolves. Since she’s in a tent I ruled that counted as being “outside” so she could summon 3d6 wolves to come to her aid. They arrive in 1d4 rounds. Great, she can summon a bunch of wolves to attack the wizard in hopes of breaking his concentration. Number of wolves…. Ugh, only 7. Number of rounds… 3. Ok, wolves have a speed of 40 and if I assume they dash every round to get there, 40x2x3 = 240 feet. Ok. I describe to the group. “The leader howls like a wolf and you hear half a dozen wolves howl in reply in the distance and begin to rush toward the tent. They are about 240 feet away from the tent.”
The archers on the tower begin firing arrows at the approaching wolves. Dropping two of them. Ok, no big deal, there are still 5 left, maybe some of them will survive.
The next round the fight is continuing. The paladin and ranger are complaining, having to use their back up weapons because their radiant damage does nothing to the absorbers. Radiant damage had been chosen because it’s a damage type that few creatures are resistant to much less immune. Also, the wizard is focusing on the rogues (who then subsequently evade) and is being ineffective as a result. But the monk is starting to stun lock the absorbers greatly reducing their ability to fight back.
So, it’s the vampire’s turn. I’ve realized the only other ability at her disposal is her charm ability. The ranger was in range but moved to take cover from the rogues behind a wall at the end of her turn putting her out of range. The artificer however, had come into her room and was quite close to the wall of force. So I had the vampire move as close as possible and I tell the group.
The leader moves over here and says to them. “Look, I’m not really your enemy”, make a will save. He passes the save and gets weirded out by her. At the end of this round 2 more wolves are killed by archers leaving 3.
The paladin quite annoyed with the radiant immunity (she has the very rare Duskcrusher) decides to unleash the sunbeam spell it grants on the rogues that keep trying to shoot her with their bows. This makes the vampire nervous and she orders everyone to focus on the wizard (hoping to break his concentration). But he has mirror image up and they are attacking with disadvantage (thanks to the fear effect). So they aren’t really landing any blows against him. Though they are depleting the mirror images with some of their attacks. The artificer has moved away but is still barely in range for her to attempt to charm him again. He spends an inspiration and makes the save.
The final 3 wolves make it to the tent and are promptly finished off by the archers. I bitterly taunted the players. “I bet you guys feel really silly having wasted your money on that tower and those archers.” They sarcastically responded back “yeah… real silly”
The next round almost everything is dead except the leader and her 1 minion that got trapped with her. So, the leader spends the round to re-focus (basically changing her initiative to be first in the next round). Since she literally can’t do anything else. Nothing useful anyway. She could turn into a mist or swarm of bats but these would only reveal her true nature to the party without doing anything to help her escape. The rest of that round the group murdered the remaining enemies. The top of the round begins and the vampire readies an action.
I have her prepare to move to the closest enemy as soon as the wall of force drops. The wizard tells everyone to get ready and delays. The paladin points out not wanting to waste a round of sunbeam and so the wizard drops the wall of force. The vampire rushes over to the monk but otherwise can’t do anything. The monk tries to stun her multiple times but she passes her save every time. Once he’s done she tries hit him but misses. The paladin blasts the leader with sun beam, but the vampire passes her save only takes half damage and isn’t blinded. So, she then runs around the corner to get out of line of sight of the other casters (thanks to vampire's legendary actions she's able to act out of turn like this). So, the casters start going after the rogue, while the ranger (being highly mobile) also rounds the corner and shoots the leader glad to finally have a target that the radiant damage on her bow will affect.
It gets back to the vampire’s turn. Vampires have regeneration, regeneration that is turned off if they’ve taken radiant damage. So, it’s not working after getting smacked with a sunbeam and some arrows infused with radiant energy. Damn it! So, the vampire moves up to the ranger and grabs her and bites her. It might not heal but it makes the vampire feel better and now she has the ranger grappled stopping those pesky arrows….
Or at least it would if the ranger had not turned into a swarm of insects in response and moved away. So, at her next opportunity the vampire moved up to the ranger and was ready to grab her again right after the next person went. Well, the next person to go was the paladin. She rounds the corner and blasts my vampire with sunbeam. The vampire makes her save reducing the 32 damage to 16. Now, a couple of things to note. At this point the vampire had 16 hit points left. Vampires are hard to kill because even if you reduce them to zero hp they turn into mist and can flee. The only thing that stops this ability is if the vampire is in running water or is exposed to sunlight when they are reduced to zero hp. In this case the vampire is unable to transform and is instead destroyed permanently. And wouldn’t you know it the spell sunbeam generates light that counts as sunlight.
So, she died. I allowed the group to make another religion check as they were looting the tent. At this point they finally realized that the leader had been a vampire. I gave them a check when she popped but the only characters to witness the leader’s death, failed said religion checks at the time. <face palm>

Rewards Granted

• 30 plat
• 114 gold
• 7 silver
• 4 bronz
• 90,000 gold worth of random gear/treasure

Report Date

27 Nov 2022