Session 25 - Pit Fighting Take 2 And The Onyx Lion Heist

Plot points/Scenes

Investigating the Crime Scene

• When we get there, the forest is still splattered with blood, but there are no bodies - Drant survivals and tries to find any helpful information but crit fails and finds a pit of snakes instead. One bites him.
  • D: “I bite it back. Don’t bite me...bitch”
• There is a somewhat more well-travelled path leading away from where the archers had been standing, but if the whole group had come to this spot from this path would be much more worn
• Vincent gets touchy about Drant and healing and necromancy
  • F: “Vincent, we’ve talked about this”
• Drant gets touchy about Vincent getting touchy and makes a jab at his god, Heimdall, and Vincent goes on a religious rant about how Heimdall is generous and protective and good and how he helped form the empire but was better than Ragnar and...
  • J: “You don’t say that stuff in the city, do you?”
  • F: “He’s too smart to run around a city where his religion’s forbidden spouting religious nonsense-”
  • V: “Religious nonsense??”
  • J: “Oh boy-”
  • D: “Here we go-”
  • Vincent goes on to say how he knows the other two are a lost cause but he hopes by the end of our travels he’ll change Fritz’s mind
• We head back into Ambervern and stop by the guard barracks to talk with them about any intel they’ve got on the bandits
  • A few of them are very beat up, and one of them is telling a story of how a little clan of goblins attacked a small settlement and kidnapped a bunch of women, and how the goblins cut down their troop and left them bleeding out and for dead, and then a woman came to their rescue, saying “wait for the light...then strike,” and how they got up and charged into battle with her and how she saved all the women (Stacie!!)
  • Fritz and Drant (Jalan went to a bar because he doesn’t want anything to do with guards) ask what the guards know about the bandits, how long they’ve been there, etc.
    • The outlaws have in every encounter with the guards had complete control of the battlefield, grabbing the bodies after every fight and cleaning up pretty well after themselves
    • It all started pretty suddenly, and one day some lady came in and told them “I can get you any information you need but for a price”
      • They were desperate, and within a day everything turned around:
      • There are a bunch of caves up in the mountain, one that used to belong to a dragon, another used to belong to a dragon cult that worshipped that dragon
      • As far as the city knew, they were abandoned but now it appears that’s where these people are holed up
    • It’s weird, after the volaris empire killed all the dragons, the cults fell apart
    • How many cultists are hiding up there? The monster races are basically being drafted - there’s dozens, hundreds - not all willingly but a huge and formidable force
    • How’s it affecting the city?
      • Skirmishes mostly
      • The guards are surprised that we made it all the way to the city gates before we got attacked
      • The cultists were probably were trying to sneak someone into the city when we showed up, that’s why we encountered them and why we survived
    • Speaking of which, one of the guards mentions “did you hear? A drow single-handedly took down the entire force!”
      • F: “Is that so….well, it so happens that I happen to know him. And I happen to know he’s at one of the bars somewhere in this city at this very moment.”
      • Guard: *to his troop* “Wanna go on a bar crawl??”
      • *guy in a sling* “Yaaahhh”
      • They all tramp out
  • Drant and Fritz debate what to do next
    • Save Ambervern? But we only really delayed Stonedeep…we won’t even be able to completely take out this nearby force, at best we’d anger them and delay an attack by a few days
    • Is there anything we can do?
      • Warn people verbally (we don’t have any proof that things have gone bad up north)
    • What’s our goal?
      • Head to the coast? As per Francesca’s advice to earn gold?
      • Keep searching for Millennium Artifacts
  • Meeting Jalan
    • F: “Oh yeah, you’re about to get some visitors. Some of your new fans from the guardhouse want to say hello. You’re a celebrity.”
    • J: “The guards are looking for me??”
      • As if on cue, they very drunkenly burst through the door - Jalan sprints out the back door, loses them in the street, and loops back around
  • Bartender shouts from across the room and approaches: “arms off the table!! Filthy Stonedeep refugees…”
    • F: “We’re practically your neighbors, I would’ve thought you would be a little more sympathetic to the plight.”
  • Terrence enters, whispers into Jalan’s ear that there’s a cult looking for non-humanoid members
    • Leaders are all orcs and they dress in black
    • Drow and tosculi could probably pass to infiltrate them but the gnome isn’t hated enough by society
    • T: “It’s a sort of non-sponsored religion”
    • D: “Don’t tell Vincent that.”
    • V: *pops in on cue* “Don’t tell me what?”
    • T: “Naomi’s in town.”
    • J: *excited* “Really??”
    • T: “That was supposed to be a warning”
  • Jalan sends Terrence to go find Naomi
    • T: “Forgive me, but I think she’s the sort of person that finds you.”
    • J: “But wouldn’t it be more romantic if I found her?”
  • The party seeks out a place with a fighting pit because Drant is feeling frisky
    • The Fluffy Duck (it’s still a franchise!)
    • Cover charge is 50gp, Jalan flashes thieves cant, let us in down some secret staircase
    • Underground cavern looking place, there’s a bar off in the corner, in the center is a dug circular dirt pit, inside a displacer beast fights a crocodile
    • Jalan orders us a booth and convinces our ‘waiter’ to let Drant fight (“if it talks we don’t let it fight” *Drant chitters*)
      • Giant crocodile isn’t impressive enough, what else do you have?
      • Could put him in a free for all against a giant scorpion and a giant lizard thing and the croc
    • 100gp buy in, winner gets 300gp, Jalan puts it down
    • Complimentary food and drink, Drant is served nothing (he’s assumed to be an animal)
    • D: “Hopefully we don’t find that one dude you screwed over last time”
    • J: “I can’t think of a single reason why he would be here”
      • Franchise, besieged Stonedeep…
    • Jalan nervously scans the crowd, thinks he sees him, Drant also looks (it’s definitely not him but Drant doesn’t tell him that)
      • Fritz eggs him on “hopefully one of your new fans doesn’t recognize you, they’d scream out your name and blow your cover”
    • Jalan puts down 300 gold in Drant’s favor, Fritz puts down 50 gold against him
    • A “patron” payed a considerable amount to have it be a 3-v-1
      • David vs. the Goliaths
      • Patron’s identity is a secret

3...2...1...FIGHT. Fighting Pit Take 2

• Drant telepathies towards the scorpion that he can help it escape if it helps him beat the other two, it just screams at him, then Drant moves forward and casts Blur...crowd immediately goes nuts crying “cheater! Cheater!” and his Blur is Dispelled immediately
• The three Goliaths move into position and wait
• Drant approaches the lizard, which swipes at him, then he hits it back
• Crocodile flanks him and bites down hard and grapples him
  • (J: “Why’d you pick all auto-grapple creatures”
  • (DM: “Have you seen the list of beasts? They’re all auto-grappling. I mean it’s very fun and thematic that this is what’s gonna happen to him again-”
  • (F: *laughs*
  • (DM: “-but it was wholly unintentional”
• Scorpion also comes up to attack him, Drant is offended that it’s not helping him
  • (DM: “It screamed at you! In your mind! How did you think that was friendly?”
  • (J: “It’s almost as if somebody paid to make it do that…”
• Lizard swallows him
• Drant tries to telepathy goad the scorpion into attacking the lizard, then punches his way out of the lizard’s guts, now in the center of all three of them, who all attack and he’s now triple grappled
  • J: “this seems like a good time to use my blow dart”
• Drant is getting fucked up - Jalan pulls aside the waiter and says he’s rather fond of Drant and what would it take to get him pulled out before he dies even if he loses
  • W: “Do you happen to have 500 gold lying around?”
  • F&J: *aghast*
  • W: “You see, the person who paid to have this be a 3-v-1 paid for it to be a fight to the death…”
• Drant prestidigitates one of his tattoo marks onto the scorpion and convinces it to help him fight - it begins attacking the lizard but is very bad at hitting
• Jalan blow-darts the crocodile again
• Jalan tries to convince Fritz to throw dynamite at the ceiling
  • F: “Dude. No. I am not a part of your shenanigans.”
  • J: “I’m telling Drant you let him die.”
• Crocodile hits Drant, scorpion attacks lizard, Jalan shoots the crocodile
  • J: “Do I get advantage? Because it doesn’t know I’m here?”
  • DM: “No.”
  • J: “Well, I guess it’s probably more than 60 feet away, so I would but it cancels out -”
  • DM: “No, I was just gonna make the argument that no matter how good you are with a blow dart, you’re never gonna hit a critical point on a crocodile.”
  • J: “Fair point.”
  • *rolls a natural 20*

• Fritz:
  

• Drant manages to kill the alligator, the scorpion crits versus the lizard twice and overkills it
• Drant and the scorpion are the only ones left, Jalan tries to blow dart the scorpion but misses
• Drant senses confusion in the scorpion, goes over to it and lifts its claw in the air and pops his glow, Jalan stands up and applauds, trying to get the crowd to acknowledge the dual victory - even with Drant helping the crowd is not convinced
• Drant starts consoling the scorpion, Jalan shoots a blow dart at the scorpion and the scorpion goes into a rage and attacks Drant
• Drant laments that he doesn’t want to attack the scorpion, and holds his Thorn Whip for when the scorpion attacks with its stinger
• It hits him twice with his claws, then attacks with its tail - Drant rolls his two attacks versus the tail’s attack and crit fails twice
  • Jalan uses his last two luck to allow him to reroll both of those, only one succeeds the check and a bad straight Luck roll from Drant means the tail doesn’t hit Drant but also doesn’t hit the scorpion
• Jalan blow darts the scorpion again
• Drant has very few options
  • D: “All of my burst-y options are outlawed”
  • F: “Worst case scenario, you cheat but kill it and survive. Jalan loses out on his money but you’re alive?”
  • (a bit of debate on whether he could actually do magic, Counterspell vs. Dispel Magic)
  • J: “I. Need. That. Money.”
  • F: “We. Need. Him. Alive.”
• Drant Thorn Whips a stalactite from the ceiling and brings it down, dealing 24 damage and killing it
• The crowd freaks
• Jalan beelines for his winnings, has a short spat with the ring leader about cheating, he threatens to send people after Jalan if they suspect foul play and bans Jalan from ever betting in here again
• Drant grabs Jalan’s poison darts from the bodies and eats them, then convulses in paralysis
• The ring leader offers 5 grand to buy Drant off Jalan - Fritz laughs, Jalan demands 20 grand, the leader offers 10 grand
  • Jalan looks to Fritz for approval, she gives him such a stink eye
  • Jalan refuses the offer, the ring leader makes the comment that with the money he could buy himself a more amorous concubine
  • Fritz scoffs, Jalan dismisses the guy and we get tf out of there before they kick us out
• Fritz asks if they’re done having their fun and if they’ve learned their lesson - will they ever do this again?
  • J: “Fritz, we won.”
  • F: “You cheated. Drant barely survived.”
  • J: “You just need to be more morally flexible”
• Terrence is waiting outside: “how did it gooo?”
  • Drant just shoulders his way past, Jalan explains
  • Terrence set up a small spy ring in the city, found Naomi in the Half-Dead Unicorn in the seedier part of town making profit off of selling the information that hordes of goblins are coming down the mountain
    • J: “I always loved me a girl with an eye for profit”
• Meanwhile, Fritz peaced out
  • Vincent finds her, asks her what happened, she briefly explains, he asks “if you had fun. The most important thing.”
  • She says no. She’s gonna go take a nap. But if he sees Drant help him out a bit, the little dude’s hurting
  • Vincent finds Drant, who’s mourning that he had to kill someone he didn’t want to, and Vincent (“I don’t really deal with the emotional wounds...but let’s fix you up a bit”) and heals him
  • Vincent finds Jalan, who declares that he had a great time, and talks with Vincent about how he’s gonna meet a lady friend for dinner and some fun, Vincent offers him protection from disease and poison, the party just laughs



Jalan’s Date

• Naomi’s running a brothel now apparently
• Greeted by a portly man who offers him oranges(?), Jalan asks to see Naomi and is led to the back by an elderly woman, Naomi meets him a few minutes later, casually mentions that she heard he had a lot of fun in the fighting pits
• Jalan offers to take her on a date, “you look so stressed, I’ve brought some of the best things in life in my carriage~~”
• Naomi offers him a wager: he gets to pick the task to compete against each other, but she gets the most valuable thing “in your little Tinkertop’s bag…”
  • (Fritz fumes silently)
  • Naomi threatens him that the fighting ring probably knows about his cheating and found some blow darts, and would probably come after his winnings soon
  • And Jalan’s benefit? A real date - at the opera (N: “a man of culture…”)
• The task: a diamond called the Black Lion, a rather large onyx stone with some rich but dark history - steal it.
  • J: “whoever gets this item wins the bet.”
  • N: “And what would you say if I said I already had it on me?”
  • (F: *laughs*)
  • J: “I’d be surprised”
  • Naomi takes a dig at Jalan never knowing what to expect from somebody
• Naomi give him a coin that if he presses it tightly to his palm hers will warm up and she’ll meet him at the bell tower of whatever city he happens to be in
  • N: “...because I keep tabs on you. I’ll know where to find you”
  • J: “I’m glad the interest is mutual.”
  • N: “Strictly professional, Jalan. Strictly professional.”
• Jalan tries to convince Fritz to help him
  • She 100% refuses
  • Jalan eventually convinces Drant to help him by promising him ‘a favor’ in return



The Black Lion Heist

• Jalan tries to reduce Empire guard response time/numbers by spreading rumors that goblins are planning an attack on the other side of the city - with no luck left, he fails a performance check, CRIT fails when he spends an inspiration dice, then does okay when he spends another inspiration dice - he now has one left
• The things which are alarmed require magic lockpicks to disarm, which cost 250gp apiece - Jalan buys a pair
• DM explains the heist - The Diamond Heist - and the steps Drant and Jalan must take to get into the vault (two magic crystals which must be ‘hacked’), and three numbers that form a code written in Illusory Script on pieces of paper around the building
• Jalan plans to create a distraction on the other side of the building by having Fishfingers and some other people detonate dynamite on the far side on a signal from Drant, letting them open the vault door without anyone paying attention
• Exit strategy? Bain Terrence can have a Teleportation Circle on the roof to get them out if things get loud
• Jalan approaches Fritz wanting to borrow the bag of holding
  • She eventually concedes, after making him buy a lead box to hold the Millennium Artifacts in (because that bag of holding is the only way she’s hiding both Artifacts from scrying eyes) and making him promise to give it back
  • F: “If you fail to give this back...there will be no forgiveness this time.”
  • J: “If I fail, I’m dead, so…”
  • F: “Well I certainly hope that doesn’t happen….I don’t agree with what you’re doing….do you want me to make you guys sandwiches?”
  • J&D: “Yes please”
  • Fritz packs them a sack lunch
  • Jalan gets a mask: a spider; Drant refuses a mask because he’s a bug regardless
• COMMENCE THE HEIST
  • Jalan climbs up the side of the building stealthily and enters an unlocked window - checks the immediate area for traps and signals for Drant to follow
  • Drant has to use his sticky boots to climb - and does so successfully and stealthily
  • First task is to find one of the gems needed to disarm something: picking a number between 1 and 8, Jalan rolls to unlock the door and there’s someone inside! Insert surprised sound effect!
    • Jalan stabs him - something in his pocket starts vibrating - he investigates - Detect Magic tells him it’s Abjuration
    • A voice starts coming through - “hey, what happened?”
    • J: “Uh...I fell?”
    • V: “Sounds good. Carry on.”
    • 1 pager down.
    • Drant prestidigitates the blood away
  • Also inside the room is one of the gems they’re looking for! Jalan places the device on it, the magic surrounding it grows faster and more sporadic, then slowly grinds to a halt - the crystal changes color from crimson to a pink-green(?)
  • Drant perceives out the door to see if anybody’s out there - meanwhile Jalan crit fails his stealth check, and uses his last inspiration dice to crit succeed instead. Mother fucker. Drant realizes there’s somebody inside the next room
  • Jalan unlocks the next door - there’s somebody inside, furiously scratching at a piece of paper - Jalan sneaks up to look at the paper - the guy’s just writing random nonsense about how his day went, but in the top left corner is a radiating green 3
  • Jalan sneaks up to put the device on the next crystal - is pretty stealthy but puts the device on crooked and it makes an obvious noise - the guy turns around and spots Jalan who puts a dagger in his throat
    • His ‘pager’ starts vibrating, Jalan tosses it to Drant who catches it and answers it - the guy on the other end asks him ‘what happened, your heart rate spiked.’ and ‘how’s that report going?’
    • Drant looks at the paper, trying to read what he’s written - but then realizes he can’t read - answers with something generic, the guy on the other end tells him to check back in in 5 minutes because ‘something weird’s happening.’
    • 2 pagers down
    • Drant stabilizes the guy and they hide the body
  • Drant perceives within and Jalan unlocks the next room, there’s nobody inside and there’s only a desk and a few filing cabinets inside
    • Jalan scans the documents on the top for things of value
    • Jalan searches the filing cabinet for the file on the Black Lion and finds it, marked with a glowing red 9
  • Drant perceives (on a crit) that he’s only a character on a page, living a meaningless life - no just kidding there’s somebody inside the next room
    • Jalan crit fails on his thieves tools check to open the door and his tools break - they go back to the last body and check it for keys and lo and behold he’s got a set of keys
    • Jalan manages to try 5 keys before a guard walks around the corner and spots Jalan crouched by the door - he’s 25 feet away
    • Drant Thorn Whips him closer, Jalan pulls out his dagger and clotheslines him with it - Jalan bags/hides the bodies while Drant cleans up the blood - Jalan answers the pager “it’s been a bad week, my girlfriend left me”; “stop thinking about her man, it sets your heart rate monitor off.”
  • Meanwhile Drant perceives around the corner to see if anybody’s coming while Jalan keeps trying keys - he finally gets the right one, and inside is a nerdy looking guy in a red vest, organizing papers and stuff
    • Jalan pickpockets him, thinking he may be the guy with the key - he gets 10gp and some recipe, but nothing else of interest
    • Keeping stealthy around the guy, they both look around but don’t find anything else of interest
  • They manage to make their way to the next room (barely avoiding guards along the way) and Jalan begins trying keys (out of a 10 possible keys this time), Jalan tries like eight of them before across the building, 60 feet down a hallway, a guard walks around the corner and spots them
    • Jalan, dressed in burglar’s black and crouched by a door, says: “oh, hey, I’m the new guy. I can’t seem to remember which key goes to this door…” fails his perception check and the guard shoots his heavy crossbow at him
    • Things go loud.

• The guard shouts and everyone in the building is notified
• Drant runs up, halving the distance between him and the guard, and Thorn Whips the crossbow out of his hand
• Jalan tries the last key and it’s right! There’s a dude lounging inside in a lavish purple shirt, there is a blue 5 somewhere in the room apparently too
  • Jalan shoots the guy in the face with his crossbow, then searches the body - he finds the weird black key thing and takes it
• Drant’s disarmed guy is intimidated and not suicidal (he’s weaponless and Drant’s magical)
• They make their way to the vault and are confronted by 5 guys armed with crossbows
  • DM gives them a few options: Jalan dives for cover, Drant casts Slow on them, DM makes up some badass sequence where Drant somehow manages to kill four and Jalan knives the last guy
  • One problem….what’s the order of the code?
    • Jalan arbitrarily enters “935”, or “red green blue”
    • DM: “.....fucking hell.”
    • A: “no fucking way”
    • D: “Jalan no shit what”
    • Apparently it was red green blue because that’s how Payday keypads actually orders its code
  • Jalan detects magic, there’s magic everywhere, he just starts smashing nearby cases while they wait for the minute timer to end
  • They finally get inside the vault, grab the diamond...and now how do they leave
• Jalan suggests climbing up the outside of the building (they need to get to Terrence’s teleportation circle on the roof) - he peeks his head in the window and 7 crossbow bolts shatter it, barely missing him
  • J: “well looks like we’re taking the stairs”
• They start running up the stairs, and encounter a troop of heavily armored guards - “STOP in the name of the Volaris Empire!”
  • J: “AH! The bug is chasing me!” (Deception 22)
  • D: (Intimidation 7. [DM: “advantage”] Intimidation 4.)
  • Guards: “Oh, what are you afraid of?” they charge past and go for Drant, once they pass him, Jalan slits two of their heels and they fall down the stairs - Drant Thorn Whips the other two past him down the stairs
• Drant casts Longstrider on both of them, now there’s amplified voices screaming that the building is surrounded, they reach the roof, portal is 80 feet away, they run, are getting shot at, but they make it and dive into the circle -
• - and the circle closes behind them, but not before six of the guards come through after them
• They’re at some random place in the woods, Jalan casts Darkness on himself, grabs Drant and books it
• Heist successful

Post-Heist

• Jalan high-fives Drant, super pumped
• Drant makes a side comment: “now what would suck is if Naomi got to it first and this is a fake.”
  • [DM is silent]
  • D: *now concerned* “.....Jalan?”
  • Jalan checks it, it’s real
• Looted artifacts
  • A paper map that supposedly has directions to something, written in an ancient language
  • Pottery that looks primitive, from the dawn of civilizations
  • A sword that belonged to a crusader of the Volaris empire
  • A piece of wood supposedly from the airship that brought the fall of the empire before the Volaris Empire
  • A perfectly spherical orb that changes color (the only thing in the batch that’s magical, and the school of magic it emanates changes with its color)
    • Jalan decides to attune to it over an hour, TBD
• Terrence approaches Fritz
  • Forgot to carry a 0 on the teleportation circle calculations...they’re 20 miles into the mountains
  • Fritz double checks his math - he actually forgot to carry two zeros, and they’re only a mile outside the city
• Jalan and Drant roll survival/constitution to weather the freezing rain and build a makeshift shelter
• Terrence and Fritz go searching
• Next steps
  • Waking up the party
  • Terrence found somebody - Alvira - to help guide us through the woods; a healer who is heading to the next town over anyway because there’s people over there she wants to help
• And so we take off, leaving many mistakes behind us
  • Vincent mentions this heist he heard about! Just before we skipped town! Someone stole the Black Lion…
  • Fritz isolates herself from everyone and Vincent goes over and asks what’s wrong, they have a short conversation about motivation and trying to do good and being shackled to something pulling you backwards…
    • V: “Have you ever tried taking off whatever’s shackling you?”
    • F: “No, I always thought it was a lost cause. Maybe it’s time to start searching.”
    • (J: “noooo Fritz”)
    • (F: “you don’t get to talk, you haven’t given me one reason to like you”)
    • Word comes while we’re on the road that our rooms were ransacked and some very nasty people are after us

Plot type

Session

Parent Plot

Act 2: Uprooted