Session 31 - Some Respite In A Town That Doesn't Want Us Dead...Yet

Plot points/Scenes

Retcon we’re still in the temple

• We apparently re-loot the place and find extra stuff, see above
  • Notably, Jalan finds a broken rock of gravity detection (it floats and a golden beetle radiating a magical aura
• Vincent approaches Fritz and tells her he’s gonna wait outside (he looks at Drant in disgust), Jalan cheerfully offers to follow him and asks him to tell him about Heimdall (does a horrible deception check but Vincent’s oblivious)
• Back to the village
  • “We cleared the temple”
  • They see Zuvilriun petrified and get all touchy, Drant responds by saying “he got in the way”, Jalan promptly kicks him and we explain that a stone giant did this
  • Zavala is relieved because she had a dream that someone died, but clearly that didn’t happen
    • J: “.....she has real dreams, that’s not cool”
  • Zavala also asks if the Unsosen ever contacted Fritz again….that’s a hard yes, and according to Zavala it’s apparently very easy to keep them out of your head
    • F: “please help”
    • Zavala pulls out her research notebook that has a whole bunch of sigils and drawings and weird shit in, and draws a line of sigildry on Fritz’s head
      • F: “......is this permanent?”
      • Z: “oh no, it’s just ink”
      • F: “I just feel like I’m walking around with sigildry on my forehead”
      • J: “you should wear a headband” *hands her one of his scarves*
      • F: “.....I’ll wear this for now…”
• Approaching the chieftain
  • They get very angry about Zuvilriun and swarm to restrain us, Malzrog erupts, Jalan casts Darkness, Malzrog gets very angry, Jalan releases Darkness, “WHO DID THAT??”, Drant points at Jalan, Jalan points behind him, some random dude gets incinerated
  • Malzrog confronts Fritz on the charm she wears on her forehead to block him out, she lashes out, he tries to fling her against the wall, she’s still uncooperative, he turns to the chieftain and screams about how they sent their weakest blood to take back his temple and he’s been justly removed from the equation, and now the chieftain’s bloodline ends today (he reaches out and the chieftain starts aging rapidly, doesn’t die), reaches out to Fritz and congratulates her as his champion, now the hammer looks like Volendrung and he’s officially bestowed it upon Fritz
  • The tribe is now real angry and debate killing us to prove themselves to Malzrog, one guy tries to attack Drant but he flips around the back and rips both of his eyes out, we flee
  • Zavala makes the point that they’re mad now but the new chieftain might thank us later
  • Fritz enlists Robin’s help and crafts some technologies, including the owl bottle opener

Onward to Stalwartz

• Drant realizes that Nymph is def still petrified and that our fastest bet for getting her unpetrified is back in Ambervern
  • He approaches Vincent for an alternative, who is surprisingly cordial and offers to bless him with Heimdall’s blessing (?) to commune or something and Drant immediately decides to commune with Heimdall behind Morpheus’ back
    • Admitting to Heimdall that he associated with Morpheus, a burning anger, asking for devotion - unpetrifies Nymph and demands that he find the nearest necromantic lair and destroy it and burn all the heretics within
• Into Stalwartz
  • Watchful Hobgoblin Guardhouse
    • A female dark elf (Decla), 6’ 9” 180lbs;
      • Surprised to see members of Heimdall’s sect since it’s been years, says there’s not really big necromantic activity but there was this edgy teenager like five years ago who kept getting kicked out of school and eventually said “screw you guys I’m gonna go do my own necromancy thing in the woods” and was never seen since, though hunters have since seen some strange stuff in that direction
  • Jalan picks up some snacks
  • Vincent tells Drant about Heimdall’s trial: he’s gotta fight the necromancers alone and then die and rise up from the ashes
    • D: “....okay, sure”
  • We head out and make it into the general vicinity that Decla described and start looking around, Jalan finds some weird staggered unnatural deer tracks - Drant sics Nymph on the trail and at the end we find a decomposed deer corpse - looks like it was running and stopped suddenly and scavengers have been at the corpse recently
    • Between Drant and Nymph they determine that the corpse has been here no more than 5 days but they can’t tell the age of the corpse itself
    • Jalan meanwhile finds a cave thing with smoke, upon getting to the entrance Drant observes that it’s very obviously trapped - and it’s sparking with some kind of electrical energy
      • While we debate how to deal with it Drant notices an obviously undead giant eagle flying our way, he casts a spell in preparation and it grapples him and flies him max speed further into the chamber

Combat - In the Necromancers’ Lair

• The eagle is flying so fast it can’t stop and splats on the far wall, dropping Drant
• Also in the chamber are three mutilated undead deer and an undead owlbear, and three humanoids towards the back of the chamber
• The humanoids c-c-c-combo, reduce a giant boulder, shove it, then enlarge it, squishing/restraining Drant - but Drant can’t be restrained so nothing happens?
• Drant casts Slow on the humanoids and the owlbear, but two of the humanoids succeed
• One of the humanoids transforms into some antlered creature of some kind, the rest of the undead creatures swarm around Drant
• Drant starts swinging, takes out the owlbear and one of the deer
• Drant is ultimately taken down, but the lead necromancer casts Spare the Dying on him and just starts mourning his dead pets
  • He looks confused at the rest of us standing in the corner: “Why...are you here? Why are you not trying to kill me?”
  • F: “It was his trial, not ours. And you’ve spared his life, and now I’m confused”
  • He starts explaining that he thinks death is ugly and sad and that he can make it useful again by bringing dead animals back to life, they’re his pets and useful
  • He also subtly casts Healing Word on Drant and Drant sneakily gets up and punches through the necromancer’s chest and rips out his heart, the guy turns around, looks at his own still-beating heart, then collapses
  • Drant then goes to the two remaining humanoids in the corner and debates what to do with them, he suggests to Vincent that they convert them to Heimdall instead of killing them
    • Vincent revives the lead necromancer again and tells the acolytes to kill their leader to prove their worth
    • Sullivan and Berry - Sullivan’s in shock, Berry accepts by taking Vincent’s flail and smashing the lead necromancer’s skull in
  • Vincent smites the rest of the undead creatures, who are otherwise sitting around the cave, docile
  • Berry and Sullivan tell how they were kicked out of the town for being a bit eccentric and the guy (turns out his name is Hector) just took them in, they never hurt anyone…
  • Vincent builds the fire up, and Drant steps over it….and he’s initiated? That’s it? The other two are initiates too
    • Jalan’s a bit bitter, Fritz is silent
• We make it back to town to an inn
  • Drant approaches Fritz asking if that was good, he’s trying to be better
    • F: “No, I’m not particularly pleased with how that went...but I think you mean well and I’m not sure if that scares me more than if you knew what you were doing”
    • D: “I also went down”
    • F: “that’s not even remotely the point….but yes, that is like no joke the fourth time you’ve been certain you could handle a challenge on your own and were promptly knocked unconscious, so”
  • Drant hardly sleeps at all that night, he has basically constant dreams that he’s being assassinated and only gets half of a long rest
• In the morning
  • The two abducted acolytes have disappeared (ran away)
  • Vincent is very chipper, seems to have had amazing dreams, is a little sad that Fritz doesn’t seem very happy
  • Jalan goes out on an excursion to get into crime, finds a wizards’ enchanting guild with a leprechaun chick running it, he asks about any poisons they might have - leprechaun seems to be a bit of a prankster and offput by his request for a paralysis poison but is more on board when he insinuates that you would paralyze them just to try silly hats on them
    • This becomes a constant thing now to the chagrin of her poor assistant
    • Jalan also goes out to find a blacksmith, who’s a frog person
      • D: “no wonder they didn’t notice the necromancy, these people are crazy”
  • The blacksmith
    • BS: “I’m not havin’ no untried tinker tech exploding in my shop”
    • F: “Actually, I was just hoping to smelt some metal in your shop”
    • BS: “What kind of metal?”
    • F: “....I suppose untried explosive and extremely volatile metal would be a poor answer to that question”
      • Fritz talks the blacksmith into letting her use her shop for the day, 200 gold up front to not be interrupted
  • Jalan goes to find the Mugger’s Guild (?)
    • He walks in, some female hobgoblin running the place
    • He has some tense conversation, introduces himself as “Gary”, and on his way out winks at some elf chick on her way in the door
      • Upon checking his pockets later, he’s short 100 gold
      • He goes back to talk with Fritz instead of immediately making trouble, she encourages him to not make a fuss
• The next day
  • Fritz has the workshop to herself, wakes up early and takes Robin with her to get in a full work day
  • Jalan goes back to the thieves’ guild to steal back his money
    • Disguises himself as the female elf who pickpocketed him yesterday (she’s the only one he could pass as, everyone else is like a hobgoblin or leprechaun)
    • Gets in the front door no problem, gets upstairs, finds her room, tries to pick open the lock - and fails, and is immediately unconscious
    • Wakes up tied up and gagged in a basement room an indeterminate amount of time later, the elf he tried to impersonate (the leader of the thieves guild) is in front of him, totally speechless at this imbecile in front of her
    • He tries to talk his way out of it, eventually gets her to give back most of the money he stole back, though not all of it, but not before making a few snide comments about taking out Zavala or Fritz, “whichever one you’re more attached to at this point”
      • J: “...”
• Fritz forges
  • Even though she thinks she’s handling it fine, there’s an explosion mishap - upon studying it and the phantasmium bolt that Jalan ‘donates’ she figures out that forging phantasmium requires a lot of flash heating and cooling of a magnitude not possible outside of magic
    • Fritz sheepishly enlists Jalan to go find her a willing mage, and he brings back the leprechaun from the wizards’ enchanting guild yesterday - Garck
      • As he walks into the shop the poor assistant is once more paralyzed and wearing a different silly hat
    • Jalan talks the guy who keeps getting paralyzed at Garck’s hands to go with her ‘to learn’ and agrees to stay behind and watch the shop, is very sorely tempted to loot it but behaves himself...for now
  • With Garck’s help, Fritz manages to forge half of her unrefined phantasmium into 9 workable ingots (losing a ton along the way to trial and error, but now is pretty confident in her ability to refine it with a mage’s help), and makes one functional phantasmium bolt (and is pretty confident in her ability to forge refined phantasmium ingots without a mage’s help)
• Jalan gets some fun magic stuff that he loots from a back room (a fancy dragon slayer rapier and a bunch of vials) - the fancy rapier is a +1 nonmagical, but if you happen to whack a dragon with it it does some 3d6 extra acid damage
• Drant trains Nymph to do Alarm once per day
• We return to the inn, Vincent is getting drunk with a veritable menagerie of magical people creatures (hawk person, frog person)...
• Fritz gifts Jalan his new phantasmium bolt
  • J: “Is this….free?”
  • F: “....yeah, sure.”
  • J: “Speaking of free…” *proceeds to pull out the shit that he stole under the guise of ‘it was at a garage sale’*

Stalwartz, Day 3

• Drant wakes up just as unrested, thanks to his new Morpheus curse (D: “now this is gonna become a problem”)
• Jalan goes to the stables (The Lone Rider Stables) to buy horses, it’s run by an imp in shorts and sandals (DM: “this place is a zoo I’m not sure what’s happening” D: “where even are we, are we on the same plane”)
  • He gets 10 riding horses, and also a large hunting hawk??
    • D: “oh maybe Fritz could ride it”
    • DM: “.....it’s large by hawk standards, not that large”
• Fritz visits a little old brownie’s woodworking shop, they have a nice chat about tinkering and show each other a little bit - she teaches him a bit about mechanics and he familiarizes her with woodworking
  • She also goes back to the blacksmith and asks to use her space to continue developing her armor mod that she never got to work on smh
• Drant goes to hunt down the two escaped acolytes with Vincent
  • They catch up, they’re haggard and just trying to get to the nearest city
  • Apparently the next part of this ritual is to stand in a Heimdall-Moonbeam and fight your inner demons(?) because Moonbeam reveals shapechangers
  • The two acolytes look terrified, and when the Moonbeam hits them one morphs into a shadowy hooded dead-eyed dragonborn, and the other morphs into a shadowy dead-eyed Terrence, who immediately starts taunting Drant on his failures
  • Drant starts swinging, slowly starts to realize it’s like punching a cloud of fog, addresses Morpheus whom he apologizes to for breaking his contract, Vincent jumps in and declares him banished, and he fades; Drant has a harder time dismissing Terrence, but he eventually acquiesces that he’s happy to let the past be the past if Terrence is
  • He snaps out of it and is finally calm in plain moonlight, no longer seared by magical moonlight - dead on the ground in front of him is Berry, but Sullivan is alive if stunned
    • D: “oh, so the punching…?”
    • DM: “was actually punching those guys, yes”
    • J: “you monster, you could’ve saved Berry if you’d only forgiven yoursellllff”
    • D: “I may have gotten a little overly aggressive”
  • Vincent congratulates Drant and Sullivan on their initiation into Heimdall’s order, as the Moonbeam would’ve killed them had they not been clean and willing

Plot type

Session

Parent Plot

Act 3: Cults and Companions