Session 29 - Malzrog's Chosen, And Jalan And Drant Join A Cult

Plot points/Scenes

A Brief Breather

• Drant and Jalan argue about who’s gonna scout ahead
  • Drant wants to go on Nymph, Jalan actually volunteers for once, Fritz expresses her surprise and admiration
• Jalan moves forward to scout
  • See some weird weapon-y symbol on the floor, covered in blood, two giant like suits of armor that don’t seem like they should be able to stand on their own
  • Deduces blood sacrifices are performed in this room
  • Waves us into the room; Drant realizes as he enters that the air is weirdly tense and there’s two other presences somewhere in the room with us (likely those weird suits of armor things?)
• Jalan decides he’s gonna try to open one of the doors, there isn’t like a lock to pick or unlock so he tries to force it - and actually manages because surprise it’s actually not blocked/locked he’s just a weak little man and it’s a heavy door
  • The door starts creaking, he stops to oil the hinges and continues so he doesn’t give himself away
• Next room
  • Magic warded door at the end of the hallway which Jalan manages to trigger its own magic just right in a way that it opens without issue
  • Inside, there’s some one-eyed creature sitting cross-legged on the floor with its hands on its knees, its flanked by two trolls who seem to be preparing for some sort of ritualistic combat
    • D: “let’s just let them kill each other”
    • F: “are they gonna kill each other?”
    • *Jalan goes back to check*
    • J: “they’re just wrastlin, they’re not gonna kill each other”
    • F: “oh”

Malzrog’s Chosen

• Backtracking, we decide not to fight these guys yet, there’s a door on the other side of the room, Fritz kicks it open because she has no control over trying to be quiet
  • At the end of the hallway, gathered around a giant statue of Malzrog, are four of the ogrilians worshipping it
  • Drant suggests that Fritz go forward to attack them and prove herself to Malzrog and Malzrog, inside Fritz’s head, says some shit about ‘proving herself as the chosen’ and ‘not backing down from a challenge’
    • Fritz is not pleased, but Drant casts Stoneskin on her and she goes for it
• Fritz charges down the hallway banging Volendrung against the walls and shouting out “alright, which one of you is gonna be the first to die”
  • She absolutely annihilates the first one she gets to, growls “who’s next” at the rest, one submits and cowers, the other two are just afraid but don’t submit
  • Jalan in the background casts dancing lights in an attempt to assist in intimidation, it doesn’t work
    • Fritz gives him a bit of questioning side-eye and he shrugs
  • Alvira attempts to help by shooting one of them with her shortbow, she gets a really good hit in but Malzrog gets angry that someone tried to interfere and her strength is temporarily 8
  • Fritz manages to kill another ogrilian, in the background Jalan pulls out his bag of tricks trying to be distracting and summons an owl, calling out “BEHOLD! My owl!”
    • They’re not impressed
    • Fritz turns around “Jalan, what even-”
  • She manages to dispatch of the last ogrilian and spares the one who’d submitted, he introduces himself as Mooger
    • M: “ALL HAIL MALZROG’S CHOSEN”
    • F: “....I’m Fritz. Call me Fritz.”
    • M: “..........ALL HAIL MALZROG’S CHOSEN”
• Mooger suddenly gets distressed that “we’ll be late for worship! Malzrog’s Chosen can lead the worship!”
  • He tries to drag Fritz through the nearby door, he’s stronger than her but she’s so prepared for this and deploys her try-to-move-me-now spikes
    • M: “but worship!”
    • F: “hands. off. The Chosen.”
    • M: “but do you not want to wOrShipPP?”
  • Jalan jumps in and says that she’s not properly attired to appear as the chosen, and Mooger realizes that ooh! There just happens to be the Armor of the Champion just in the next room, and he’ll go in and distract his fellow worshippers so we can get it

Malzrog’s Inner Sanctum and Morpheus

• At the front of the room is this massive statue thing, which is a depiction of ornate mangled bodies with Malzrog standing on top of them
  • There are two ogrilians beating each other senseless on top of the altar, others chanting “Malzrog”
  • One up front looks more priestly, is the one directing the ritualistic combat, scratch that, Trial by Combat, as one kills the other by smashing his skull in on the spikes on the altar and he is declared “innocent of his charged crimes”
• Jalan stealths forward to grab the armor off of a pedestal to the left
  • Heavy armor, magical somehow, less is more, surrounded by a magical aura that pushes against Jalan’s hands in resistance momentarily
  • Once Jalan hands it over to Fritz, it shrinks from the size of a normal set of armor to a size that fits her
    • She tells Alvira to watch the boys while she changes
  • ‘Clothes of the chosen’, base AC 20, ranged attacks have disadvantage
  • The moment she puts it on, she has a sudden urge to rush forward, resists it, and hears “LEEEROOOY JENKINS” in the back of her head
    • F: “oh. Oh NO.”
• Fritz kicks down the door, charges in ready to kill
  • Mooger shouts “BEHOLD! THE CHOSEN”
  • Everybody turns around, the priest shouts out “the chosen!” and they all generally seem very non-aggressive
    • Fritz is taken aback and stops in her tracks, very conflicted
    • (J: “You know, we could try talking to these people”)
  • (compared side by side, the armor is kind of a spitting version of the Malzrog statue up front)
  • Priest leads Fritz up to the altar, and she calls them to arms to help cleanse the temple of the unclean souls within
    • “Do you mean the ones who do not worship every day like they must?” and they immediately rally around that, apparently there’s some kind of social divide between them and others in the temple
    • The priest gathers up the ogrilians towards the entrance of the chamber and starts rallying them for battle
• Drant notices something very weird about the statue up front, sees patterns in the grime around it that indicate it moves in some way, after the speech goes up and investigates, sees some weird sort of keyhole but can’t move it
  • Drant doesn’t detect any lifeforce magic of any kind
  • The keyhole doesn’t match Volendrung or the Champion’s Armor
  • Jalan Detects Magic, it’s magical but the type of magic is super weird and unfamiliar, looks like the key can be solved by putting every single piece of his thieves tools into specific holes, he does so, the knob is free-turning, he turns it, clicking then silence…
  • Shadow falls across the statue, makes its way down, then disappears, another part of the statue becomes visible, dragonborn archer with poison off the arrow becomes visible, like a physical part of the statue, they had to have been constructed together
  • The statue looks like a generic statue of Michael the Archangel (Malzrog) crushing a demon beneath its foot, with the dragonborn standing off to the side, arrow pointed at Malzrog - seems like he’s in control of the situation but they’re not enemies
    • After the knob turned, there’s some weird fog filling the room, Fritz’s strength is back to normal, and she can’t feel Malzrog’s presence
      • F: “GUYS! While he can’t hear me….this situation fucking sucks help me”
  • Jalan sees another door to the side of the chamber, it’s locked...but his thieves tools are currently in the statue
    • J: “well, I can’t pick this door open”
    • F: “WELL, guess who can”
    • J: “Oh, your majesty the chosen, would you do me the honor of opening this door”
    • F: “you’ve asked so politely, and while I certainly could, that’s not my job”
      • Fritz gives him her extra set of thieves tools and makes him do it
    • Rolls a 20 but it’s trapped and gets hit hard by lightning damage
  • “WHO GOES THERE”
    • Door slams open, a sneaky boi orc pops out and shoots Jalan hard with an arrow dripping with poison from the end of a long hallway
  • ROLL INITIATIVE

COMBAT - IN THE CHAPEL

• Round 1
  • Jalan just runs until he hits a wall then goes prone
  • Sneaky boi at the end of the hall whispers “may Morpheus have mercy on your soul” and the door slams shut
    • Jalan starts taking some nasty poison damage and feels his consciousness slipping
  • Alvira dashes forward and medicines Jalan, she finds the arrow and pulls it out, the darkness gets thrown with it off into a corner
  • Drant moves to the door
    • D: “Do we open it?”
    • J: “No! It shot me!”
    • F: “Yes! It shot Jalan!”
    • Drant moves off to the side a bit and Thorn Whips it, the door is a bit beaten in, but the Thorn Whips sort of disintegrate and he isn’t able to pull it open
• Round 2
  • Jalan uses the Detect Magic that’s still up from inspecting the statue and figures out the poison is magical, then uses Dispel Magic to dispel it
  • Alvira notices that the door is pretty beat up, uses Booming Blade on it and knocks it clear down
  • Drant enters the room, doesn’t perceive anybody, there’s some weird hole built into the corner that’s more primitive than the rest of the stuff in the room, it’s emitting some weird growls/screams/etc.
    • The room itself seems like a way more normal room than the rest of the temple, was definitely an add-on
• OUT OF COMBAT

Drant and Jalan Join a Cult

• Alvira sends her owl into the hole, sneaky boi is down there with some regal looking woman and a dude in full plate who is strapped to a table, he’s talking very rapidly with the woman, there’a a whole bunch of shadow mastiffs wandering around the chamber, sneaky boi goes and shuts the grate to the place
  • Alvira pops her owl back to her and tells the group the scoop
• Jalan searches the desk in the room we’re currently in, gets Research Notes, most of them he can’t read but some of them are in Thieves Cant
• There’s some brief debate about how to proceed
  • Go in guns blazing, kill first ask questions later
  • Ignore them and accompany the ogrilians immediately to attack the others in the temple
  • We ultimately decide to try to talk to them and get their help getting Fritz out of her involuntary deal with Malzrog
• Jalan talks down through the grate, the orc calls back “who sent you? Why are you here?”
  • Generic answer, the Mau Tribe sent us to clear the temple of giants; turns out the orc sneaky boi was once a part of the Mau Tribe before he was shown the right path, shows a little disdain towards the tribe but satisfaction that they’re finally being given what for by Malzrog
    • Also expresses support for our mission, they prefer the temple clean because that is how they also get acolytes (?)
  • J: “Will you help us cleanse the temple then? If our goals are aligned?”
    • SB: “Well, I would, but we happen to be in the middle of interrogating a very important person-”
    • F: “well we happen to have a bit of a master of interrogation with us here”
    • (J: “Fritz what are you doing”)
    • (F: “You took classes! I mean I guess I should’ve asked if you even passed that class…”)
    • They let us downstairs to talk
• The Inner Inner Sanctum
  • Sneaky boi is standing in the far corner with his bow dipped into a giant vat of blood stuff, telling us one false move and we’re dead
  • Woman dressed in fine purple clothing, miraculously clean, extremely bright and happy, invites our house interrogator to join her
    • Got some special torture knife and special torture poison, starts pouring poison over the body of the guy in armor strapped to the stretcher who screams in agony
  • Jalan (clearly so uncomfortable with this) casts Friends, classic good cop bad cop
    • Dude: “No! I won’t tell them the secret of the Pantheon! I’m too loyal to Heimdall!”
    • (J: “Oh god, is Vincent down here?”)
    • Starts rambling about the New Pantheon and not giving Morpheus power
    • Jalan persuades him to tell what he knows so that the mean woman will stop torturing him: “go to the temple in [port city], there the leader has the information you need - they stole me from there and drug me all the way here”
      • Interrogator chick isn’t satisfied, actually a little bored, stabs the knife into him again, cuts off his finger, gets blood on her but immediately casts some spell and it disappears
    • Jalan mercy-kills him
      • But isn’t quite stealthy enough with his knife, interrogator lady is offended, backhands Jalan and stalks across the room where she starts playing with these massive shadow mastiffs like they’re puppies
      • As the Heimdall acolyte dies, he looks Jalan in the eye and says “may Heimdall bless your soul,” and some weird blue aura surrounds him and goes over to Jalan
      • Heimdall’s Death Ward
        • DM: “next time you go down, remind me it exists”
  • Jalan gets a set of Morpheus blessed thieves tools for having been able to open the statue that got us here
    • General +1 tools, but if he’s ever acting like Morpheus wouldn’t, he could get up to a -5 modifier
• Fritz asks about the connection between Morpheus and Malzrog and what vendetta Morpheus has against the Pantheon
  • Morpheus put a hole in the space between the Unsosen and the mortal realm and opened it specifically for malzrog so he could gather worshippers who guard the temple and help gather acolytes for Morpheus
  • Malzrog is sort of a front for Morpheus
  • Morpheus doesn’t really want to overthrow the Pantheon, he wants to get more power for himself; he’s actually friends with a couple of the Pantheon
  • SB: “Why would you want to not be chosen by Malzrog? It is the first step to being a chosen of Morpheus and a great honor! Just get baptized and you will become a chosen of Morpheus!”
  • F: “......*whimper*”
  • Nancy turns out to be the interrogator chick’s name

• She offers to any of us to be Baptized in Morpheus’ name and become an acolyte of his
• There’s some sort of sacrificial dagger with a goblet as a handle, the ritual involves a whole bunch of ritualistic hurting yourself and drinking blood, then submerging yourself in the vat for a minute
  • Drant jumps right in
    • (F: “no my sweet summer child why”)
• Jalan and Fritz in the background
  • Jalan asks what Fritz thinks, she’s so not pleased
  • J: “but this is definitely something my grandma would do it’ll make me powerful”
  • F: “you’re grandma’s a terrible person”
• Drant emerges from the vat, having taken a whole bunch of d20s in damage (halved, because Absorb Elements), but alive
  • Sneaky boi expresses massive surprise that he survived, as he is not one that would typically be considered an optimal candidate for Morpheus’ chosen
  • F: *quietly* “oh my god Vincent’s gonna kill him”
  • Nancy gives him a complementary shadow mastiff (only aid in the times of great need, otherwise it takes care of itself)
  • Drant can call on Morpheus if he’s doing something that applies, but has to call out specifically, there’s no passive buffs
• Nancy goes over to Alvira and Jalan: “you two look like good candidates! Why don’t you go through the baptism ritual?”
  • Alvira: “You know….I think for now, I’m okay”
• Jalan starts inching forward, glancing at Fritz
  • F: “you know, I won’t stop you”
  • Jalan commits, Fritz can’t watch, leaves the room
  • He survives the ritual fairly easily, taking d4s damage because he’s the exact kind of candidate for this
  • Static +1 to stealth, +1 to hit on surprised enemies
  • He also gets a shadow mastiff
• Nancy approaches Fritz outside the chamber, asks her to be baptized with her comrades
  • F: “you know, no offense, but that’ll be a hard pass”
    • N: “If you won’t join us, we won’t join you. Good luck, and if you succeed, you will curry much favor with Morpheus”
    • However, sneaky boi decides to go with us to cleanse the temple, at least to accompany if not help
  • Drant notices as we leave the chamber that Nancy’s sics the dogs on the corpse of the Heimdall acolyte and they’re tearing through him, armor and all
  • [a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f3/18/42/f31842c73e4fd3c0baa83d7815ad45a1.png"]Nancy’s[/a] shadow mastiffs look way beefier than the [a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/4/4e/Shadow_Mastiff.png/revision/latest?cb=20161220045311"]ones [/a]that were given to Jalan and Drant
  • Sneaky boi requests to be called “Morpheus’ Hand”
    • Jalan suggests we just call him “the Hand”
    • Fritz begs him to not start any fights with Vincent, sneaky boi is very aggravating and clearly a kind of trickster but agrees to try not to goad Vincent into suicidally attacking him
• As we come back into the chapel, the two who were just baptised can now see the statue of Morpheus’ eyes glowing and some weird shadows cloaking him; it feels like he’s watching them
• Jalan retrieves his thieves tools out of the statue and Fritz feels Malzrog’s presence return, he is immediately shouting and angry that there is a part of his temple that he cannot see and demands an explanation from Fritz
  • F *just not having it* “you know...I don’t know, there was a door and electricity and”
  • M: “a DOOR??”
• Meanwhile, the priest has just finished giving his speech to the friendly ogres, and says “charge!”
  • Fritz is unable to resist the charm this time and “LEEEROOY JENKIIINNS” happens
    • For 1 minute, she is forced to find and kill the nearest enemy, or spend the minute frantically searching for an enemy, she bolts out of the room and across the hall to a door which is now open on a room full of more ogrilians
• ROLL INITIATIVE

COMBAT - LEEROY JENKINS

• Round 1
  • Basically everybody charges forward because we’re all so far away, Jalan and Alvira get shots off along the way
• Round 2
  • Fritz starts swinging, manages to resist the Leeroy Jenkins bloodrage and takes one of them down, Vincent runs forward “WHAT are you doing I’m supposed to keep you alive” and casts Shield of Faith on Fritz, Gregory says “hey I’M the badass don’t show me up” and runs up next to Fritz
  • Jalan and his bag of tricks owl move forward and attack some guy near Fritz
  • Our ally ogres move forward and also help with the killing
  • Alvira holds her action for when she can see somebody to shoot them
  • Drant spider climbs along the wall on top of Nymph into the chamber with Fritz and double Thorn Whips the one ogre not surrounding Fritz, who’s going for the door at the back of the room
  • The dude at the back of the room manages to pull a lever which opens four panels at the back of the room and four GIANT creatures step out
    • Fun fact, DM has no control over their actions MASS CHAOS ENSUES
    • One kills the dude who opened the lever, one goes for Drant on the ceiling but it’s not tall enough, others move forward to Fritz/the ogres
• Round 3
  • Fritz manages to taze one of the giant dudes and he’s stunned, she gets in a good hit, Gregory moves forward and MISSES THREE OF HIS FOUR ATTACKS EVEN WITH ADVANTAGE goddamn it Gregory you piece o
  • Jalan attacks the stunned dude with advantage
  • The friendly ogres move into position but can’t attack cuz they’re amateurs
  • Alvira unleashes her held attack from earlier on the stunned dude and kills him, then moves closer into the fray
  • Drant from the ceiling Thorn Whips one of the larger guys and pulls him across the table
  • The giants cause general chaos but aren’t good at coordinating attacks against people so we fine, at this point they’re taking out our friendly ogres like they’re nothing but we’re okay
  • The enemy ogres kill Mooger NO MOOGER
• Round 4
  • The Fritz Squad C-c-combos, Vincent Guiding Bolts, Gregory crits, knocking the giant prone, and he and Fritz go crazy ham but don’t kill it
  • Jalan tries to back away and gets two opportunity attacks, hit HARD, then misses a crossbow shot at the guy who’s prone
    • F: “hey Jalan you’re not looking so good”
    • J: “you shut your fucking mouth”
  • Alvira Booming Blades the giant who’s prone between all of us
  • Drant Thorn Whips the dude who’s been Booming Blade’d from the ceiling and drops him, he falls prone
  • Prone giant stands up, triggering booming blade, then unleashes attacks on Gregory; another giant moves in between Alvira, Jalan, and a few ogres and unleashes attacks on EVERYONE; Jalan goes down but has a god’s blessing so doesn’t actually, the ogre priest dies
  • Sneaky boi finally feels like doing something since we’re getting fucked on
• Round 5
  • The Fritz Squad is generally useless, the giant between Fritz and Gregory is newly tased but neither of them can deal damage, Vincent is actually the most useful of them
  • Jalan (who’s nearly dead) backs away from the big scary punchy dude and crossbows the one still threatening Alvira
  • Alvira Booming Blades the giant and disengages
  • Drant and Nymph Web the giant who’s stunned and auto-fails his save, then vaults off of Nymph off the ceiling, lands on top of the giant, and unleashes a shit ton of punches (still charged with acid damage from his baptism)
  • Giants’ turn, the stunned one (now with exactly 1hp thanks to Drant) is unstunned, the other giant runs straight up to Alvira and hits her three times hard, she now has 2hp left…
  • Sneaky boi attacks and kills one of the two remaining giants, and Fritz finishes off the guy with 1 hp

OUT OF COMBAT

Discussing moving forward

• Fritz strongly votes we take a short rest as half of the party is below half health and her and Gregory could really use their action surges/technology points/second winds; Drant votes we don’t do that because we should take the initiative and he’s feeling beefy and doesn’t want to give it up, thinks we should just get Vincent to spend all of the rest of his resources over 10 minutes to give people a little bit of healing
  • Danner just chuckles LEEROY JENKINS while we’re discussing as support for his plan and DM latches on, Fritz fails her save and charges forward fucking-
• As Fritz is charging down the hall, Alvira manages to get off a bit of healing on a few people who were hurt, while apparently simultaneously...
• The Oni wakes up, and Gregory’s glaive gets massive and unwieldable

Plot type

Session

Parent Plot

Act 3: Cults and Companions