Session 38 - Operation Toast

Plot points/Scenes

Favors left:

• F: 2
• D: 0
• J: 0
• A: 1
• M: 3
• Initiative: Alvira up next, then Jalan, Fritz, Drant, Methos…

This Could’ve Gone Better - A Battle in Two Parts

• Alvira chucks a smoke grenade; Jalan pulls a goat out of his bag of tricks and it charges Roger, Roger makes an opportunity attack and obliterates it, dealing 34 damage on one strike (F: “oh my fucking god do not touch Roger” Jalan uses his pocketwatch to pull another thing out of the bag and pulls a brown bear, orders it to defend him, then tries and fails to crossbow Roger
• (flavor: Roger has a bastard sword and a shield)
• The spectral puppers attack Fritz and hit her, Terrence is conscious but still tied up, the large dog picks him up and starts casually walking him away from Fritz
  • Fritz uses a favor to find out the name of the guy in charge of the basement (Doctor Ho) then starts acting all indignant and furious “Doctor Ho promised me that you guys were professionals, call your fucking dogs off” (rolls natural 16 plus 0), the lead elf steps forward, says in Primordial “down” and the dogs are called off, then the rest of the basement members pick up bags of holding and move to help Fritz with packing things up
• Drant is faced with a guy who is eyeing him up and down with a dagger, basically says “I’m with her” and starts walking away, guy looks absolutely stunned that the thing he was about to stab talks and lets him go
• Roger
  • (DM screams: “ROGER DEATHBANE!!!!”
  • (M: “oh no”
  • Throws spectral shackles on Komodos, they spring into bright purple magical chains that wrap around him and restrain him, and clamp his mouth shut
    • (J: “hmm...I wonder what those were inspired by”)
  • Then takes a huge swipe at the bear and crit succeeds, outright killing it by dealing more than twice its max health
    • (J: “he’s killed all of my animals in one hit, what the fuck”
  • Points at Jalan with his sword “you’re next”
    • J *loading another bolt into his crossbow* “fuck fuck fuck”
• An alarm starts going off - but because we shut off the big alarm, it’s only the alarm on the control console - but if it’s ignored for too long we may have a problem
• Methos - using one hand - picks his way out of the magical shackles
• Alvira tosses Jalan some object, it’s a really cruddy mask that Fritz had made earlier to help filter the sleeping gas of the grenade she’d tossed last round
• Jalan casts Levitate and Roger crit fails, Roger screams at Jalan “RAGNAR WILL FIND YOU,”, he crit fails a con save and feels dread and marked somehow, then puts on the mask and slinks into a corner
• Downstairs, Fritz is being helped by the people to loot stuff, using an Athletics check she’s able to get a ton of stuff! Starts trying to strategically pack things in her tinker’s pack and tying extra bags by their straps so that she could run out of here hopefully with both a weapon and a shield in her hand
• Drant asks DM if the skeletons he sees on the table in front of him are actually skeletons...DM cheekily says yes, and that they’re not currently animated
  • Drant then double-thorn-whips Terrence away from the big horse-sized sleepy dawg, Terrence definitely survives the damage and is now next to Drant - as Drant uses magic, the four skeletons on the table animate
  • D: “nooo”
• ROGER DEATHBANE
  • Roger, levitating, rolls an athletics check to try to break through the wall but rolls a natural two
    • From Jalan’s perspective - *light thud* “FUUUUUUCK”
    • A really high luck roll says the guards in the building wake up - Methos uses a favor to go back in time and concoct a sleeping potion - with the help of Alvira, who knows anesthesia very well - wait no scratch them apparently DM rules that he was able to make an extremely volatile gas instead and lights the room up while the guards sleeping, as the air in their lungs ignites
• Methos uses his lasso, throws it around both of Roger’s feet, ties the end of the lasso (poorly) to a pillar in the room, then takes off
• Alvira continues booking it away, then makes it slyly around the corner to the guards at the front of the building who aren’t aware there’s trouble yet, and begins distracting them with her feminine wiles
• Jalan mercy-kills one of the guards choking in the hallway, then attacks another one and generally just tries to stay away from Roger (who he can’t see on the other side of the wall but he’s aware of because of the screaming)
• Terrence looks like he probably wants to be unbound, big dog goes to do a big gnaw on Drant but misses, then grabs Terrence and tries to drag him away, Drant does an opportunity attack back at Terrence and cuts his rope bindings with his natural claw attack, Terrence immediately hoofs it 30 feet away, going for the exit
• Little puppies do nothing, 5 people helping loot say “alright, it looks like that’s everything, gather the bags together” - main elf ties them around his waist
  • E: “We’ve been compromised - activate emergency procedure!” - then chucks four of the bags of holding into the other one, mom-arms Fritz backwards away from his colleagues, and the bags implode - but instead of bringing Fritz and the elf into the astral plane, she finds them in the ethereal plane
    • F: “...what the fuck kind of emergency procedure is this???”
    • E: “90% of people who may target the Embassies in an attack can’t get into the Ethereal plane according to Ragnar!”
  • The two bags involved did explode and scatter their contents, Fritz scans the ground and notices a box clearly labelled “Millennium Artifact” - she grabs it and says “let’s go”
    • Fritz has keen understanding - explosions from bags of holding are supposed to dump you in the astral plane, something about these bags must be specially made
  • Fritz uses final favor to set up a safe house that the party could’ve retreated to after the heist, especially if they got separated
    • Place been recently foreclosed on, bank hasn’t claimed it yet, location in town, rather small and torn-down appearance, very unlikely that there’s anybody there
    • F: “I know somewhere we can go. We secured a safehouse in the event of compromise, I will take you there”
    • E: “let’s go”
    • (F: “okay, so I’m just going to spend the rest of this running and playing along. Drant only has to get out of here by himself and we’ll be fine”
    • (D: “except Drant’s stupid, and has a better idea”
    • (F: “Drant, no-”
• Drant casts See Invisibility, sees Fritz and Arrow dude booking it out of the basement, then bonus action uses his cloak intimidation invocation and glares at the elf
  • Elf screams: “they were too prepared! We’ve been compromised again!!” and pulls out some small device with the word Ragnar on it
  • F: “Drant, you cannot call Ragnar himself down upon us”
    • Scratch that, DM says, it’s not “Ragnar”, it’s the insignia of the Volaris Inquisition
• Jalan asks an intriguing question about his and Fritz’s bond and being separated across planes
  • DM makes them roll a Con save against effects
  • Fritz: 27, Jalan: natural 1
  • Fritz feels like her heart skips a beat, Jalan feels like his heart is ripping out of his chest, fails a concentration save to maintain levitation, hear a thud, around the corner hear “I’M COMING FOR YOU, FUCKER-”
  • F: “at this point, everybody’s gotta fucking run, this shit went south so fast”
• Roger turns the corner, takes two steps past Methos, hidden but not well, then stops in his tracks, turns around, “you done fucked up…” tosses his shield aside, and brings his sword two-handed down on Methos - dealing 41 damage (halved because rogues)
  • DM: “he was trying to cleave you in half-”
  • M: “and he would’ve if I didn’t halve the damage!!”
• Methos uses a favor to construct and plant a bomb near the vault exit for a loud escape contingency, Fritz and Methos both roll very poorly for working together to construct it but Jalan rolls very well for stealthily planting the small explosive devices, including swapping out a rain barrel near the corner for an explosive barrel
  • When Methos had initially rounded the corner into the hallway, he lit the fuse, when Roger was laying into him, the fuse was almost out
  • Counting down the seconds to the explosion, he steps around the corner at the last moment, the wall explodes, and he immediately darts out of the hole and into the night air
  • The shrapnel slams Roger against the wall and also does a decent bit of damage to the people coughing on the ground in the hallway
  • Alvira had been holding an action, knowing that the bombs were in place, releases her held action to dagger one of the guards she’s distracting, shifting the knife into the back of the guard’s throat in a way that the other guard doesn’t notice, then all sultry-like moves over to the remaining guard, and sneak-takes that one out too, lays them down like they’re sleeping and books it into the night
    • A: “we’re cutting our losses, Jalan, get out of here!”
• Jalan
  • J: “so...I have five dynamite”
  • F: “oh my god”
  • D: “don’t you fucking crit fail again”
  • Goes up to Roger, who is basically unphased by the explosion he just survived, in front of a Roger-sized indent in the wall
    • J: “...merry Black Sabbath.” *chucks dynamite*
    • *roger rolls poorly on an intelligence check*
    • DM: “you have visibly confused him”
    • J: “it’s an underdark holiday!”
  • Jalan walks over to the vault, looks in, there’s only stairs leading downwards…he thought he’d be able to see the action with Fritz and Drant from here
    • J: “...well fuck”
• Terrence
  • T: “Drant, trust me!!!”
  • F: “Drant, please”
  • D: “.....I cross my arms and I pout...but I go.”
  • Casts Dimension door, bringing Drant with him
  • Good thing too, because there’s one big dog, eight small dogs, and four skeletons about to converge on drant
  • Overshot, they’re 100 feet in the air, they start falling
  • Drant gives the signal, Jack and Jill swoop in to catch Drant, refuse to help Terrence because of their past animosity, but Drant Thorn Whips him immediately before he splats into the ground in front of Methos
    • The damage is still enough to knock him out but Drant stabilizes him
• Fritz
  • The elf is quickly typing in some magic stuff into the Inquisition symbol device
  • Fritz desperately tries to get him to stop: “we don’t have time to make a call, that’s who we’re working with, that’s why we’re here”
  • Elf isn’t entirely convinced but stops typing, looks at her and just says “Foxtrot”
  • Fritz desperately digs through her memory for the one time we met the Mechanical Enlighenment masquerading as the Inquisition trying to remember anything they might’ve said that would give her a clue of how to respond: *crit success on a history check*: “Tango
  • Elf looks satisfied, puts the transponder away and allows her to lead him up the stairs
  • We joke that the button would’ve called down the Azrael Division - airship shoots them in Mordekainen’s Sphere, drops the troops down with Meteor Swarm levels of damage, and the troops emerge shock-trooper like
• Drant does the thorn whip and Jack/Jill stuff he said he would’ve done (we were a bit out of initiative order for that part)
• Roger full-speed runs to where he saw Jalan go - into the vault, at the top of the stairs, dynamite still attached to his chest
• Methos approaches Alvira (Fritz and Jalan are unaccounted for but everybody else is fleeing) - “I want to prove myself, but everybody’s running, Jalan hasn’t come out yet”
  • A: “hey, if we save him now, he’ll just get us killed later”
  • F: “OOOOH!”
  • (DM, who’s running Alvira in Stacie’s absence: “I guess I can’t really be that mean in canon”
• Methos and Alvira tag-team with a tripwire, owl-thunder attack designed to hold Roger up for a moment if/when he comes through the door
• Jalan v. Roger
  • J: “so he’s just coming at me, still got the dynamite on his chest”
  • DM: “there is no fear, this man wants to give you a big old hug so that you know what dynamite feels like too”
  • Jalan dodges aside, using Roger’s momentum to duck down, throw him over himself football-style, then bolts up the stairs and out the back door, past Methos and Alvira lying in wait with their trap
  • DM: “you triggered their trap card! Luckily it was a shittily laid trap-”
  • (Fritz cackles, DM “that’s not what I meant”)
  • Good acrobatics check gets him through it
  • J: *panicked* “have you guys seen Fritz?! I can’t feel her anymore-”
    • From his perspective, he had no idea where Terrence and Drant were, then had no idea what happened to Fritz aside from him momentarily feeling like he was dying
    • J: “did anyone get any gold--???” (sobbing)
• DM rules that with the Safehouse favor, and since we’re all outside already, we don’t have to actually go through the motions of escaping so...flash forward to safehouse

The Safehouse

• Jalan is crying that nobody grabbed any gold, Methos gives Jalan 5 gold
  • M: “five gold that you paid me when you hired me”
  • Music gets all fittingly touching (F: “in the middle of a combat playlist, what is happening”)
• Jalan gets smart, uses Detect Magic and realizes he’s covered in Divination magic, he can feel Roger coming for him (the mark from earlier!), uses Dispel Magic but fails, then uses his final inspiration to succeed
  • But apparently he waited to check if the mark was still there until he was already in the safehouse...so now Roger knows where we are and is definitely coming for us
    • Fritz starts screaming, incredulous that he could’ve been so stupid
  • M: “man, give me my five gold back!”
• Fritz introduces her new elf friend to the group, loudly announces that “this is the crew that was put together to stop the attempt to infiltrate the Embassy and to secure the artifacts before somebody could steal them” - party plays along
• Elf introduces himself as Calypso
  • C: “so who’s after you?”
  • M: “that big guy”
  • J: “what, you - I punt Methos”
  • (M: “what?! Ow!”
  • (J: “that’s his commander, you can’t-
  • C: “oh, that asshole?”
  • J: “...”
  • C: “he came in and was all like “I’M IN CHARGE NOW” and started shoving us all around, yeah I figured something was up”
  • F: “yeah, he’s not very subtle"
• Calypso sees Drant and recognizes him as the guy who saw him and Fritz running through the Ethereal Plane, draws a dagger and gets ready to attack, Fritz jumps in saying that she tried to tell him that he was with her but he got all feisty, and at that point it was easier to convince his friends that Drant was an enemy than try to sort it out, especially since ‘we don’t know who was compromised”
  • Calypso also briefly mentions that “no one knows about our special [bags of holding]” and that must be how Drant knew to look in the Ethereal Plane, because he’s in on it with us and we’re in with the Inquisition, just doubling down his trust in us
• Calypso mentions that things have been off in the Embassy for a little bit, especially after what happened in Stonedeep
  • Jalan tries to get him to tell us what happened there and what the reports have been saying because we have high clearance, but Calypso says the reports as of late have been “kind of iffy”
  • Calypso is “kind of a member in the inquisition”, but he’s on the edge of retirement, thought he’d settle down somewhere where he wasn’t treated like a freak
  • ...which we’re about to accept because he’s an elf, but then he cracks his back and starts shifting himself, switches into some werewolf creature, looks at us hungrily, then shifts back
    • J: “...so Jalan’s out the door”
• (Meanwhile, Fritz has succeeded on her check against Adrenaline withdrawal, Terrence has failed his against Lidocaine but he was unconscious both when he got the shot and when became withdrawn so he’s just craving something without really knowing what)
• --
  • D: “when have you ever gotten a boner going through a razor wire grid?”
  • J: “training! We had to do some weird stuff-”
  • (M: “I’m into quantum mechanics, okay?!”)
  • (J: “it’s not my fault that the trainer was the head priestess of Anubis and she was hot, leave me alone”
• F: “so this was a two-step plan. Step one: secure the artifacts before they could be stolen from the Embassy. Step one done, well done team, high fives all around, drinks on me later. Step two: interrupt the meeting that we know is taking place somewhere outside the city, Calypso, you don’t happen to know anything about that…?”
  • We give Calypso all the coded information we have about the meeting that we got from Tsed, he laughs
  • C: “you’re kidding. They picked that place? That’s the stupidest place!”
  • Sune’s Cave
    • (Sune: Faerunian goddess of beauty and love), the local makeout point
  • C: “I guess, at dawn nobody’s there. It’s not that insecure a place”
  • (D: “it’s a school night”)
• Jalan gives Terrence a health potion, Terrence wakes up and is mucho grateful
  • T: “I’m surprised to see that you guys are okay. I thought they were going after you”
  • J: “I think they were just trying to steal from us, it wasn’t really a hit squad”
  • F: “have you ever heard of the mechanical enlightenment?”
  • T: “no.”
  • *natural 2 minus 1 insight*
  • DM: “this guy is so much of a mystery to you that you are questioning what you do know about him”
  • F: “he is an enigma”
• Terrence says that if he can help our little operation in any way he can he will, “especially you, Drant” (D: “....something’s wrong here”) Jalan casts Detect Magic on Terrence, he’s clean, no tracking magic or mind control magic or otherwise
  • D: *unconvinced* “hmm…”
• Fritz suggests we walk and talk since Roger definitely knows the location of our safehouse and we’re already pushing dawn
  • Jalan scouts ahead as we move
    • Drant protests that he wants to be the one to scout ahead, and that there’s no reason to be stealthy about it, Fritz counters that yes there is good reason to be stealthy, we don’t want our scout to run into Roger and be spotted, Drant counters that the last time Jalan scouted ahead Drant got thrown into a druid-zombie-cave
      • (meanwhile, Jalan’s rolled a 29 on stealth
      • (M: “shut up Drant, he rolled really well, don’t ruin it-”
• Jalan leads us safely out of town, we see Sune’s Cave just ahead…

Plot type

Session

Parent Plot

Act 4: Untitled