Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
EN Publishing
Bill T's Second War of the Burning Sky: Shelter from the Storm [more spoilers than you can shake a stick adorned with ribbons and kerchiefs at!]
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Bill T." data-source="post: 8109392" data-attributes="member: 6795693"><p><span style="font-size: 22px"><strong>Dramatis Personae</strong></span></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Basel</strong>, an Innenotdaran (aka grey) elf evoker from Gabal's school who previously made his living as a baker, with his familiar <strong>Simon</strong>, a cat from Seaquen's docks.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Dämmek</strong>, a brainy and brawny human swordswoman with keen senses and the Living Blade.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Gusle</strong>, a seela bard who escaped captivity from a circus before coming to Gate Pass. This player has been through the first few chapters already, so she was able to fill Torrent's role as guide, and her familiar <strong>Sparky</strong>, a rat from beneath Seaquen.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Jesús Tillamook</strong>, a half-elf cloistered cleric of the Stormbringer Phoenix, a sect of the Stormchaser Eagle that is dedicated to finding the Aquiline Heart so that they can reincarnate the Eagle.</li> </ul><p>With the <em>find the path</em> spell provided by Ogoth, along with <em>mage armor</em> provided by Katrina, the heroes make their way to the eye of the storm. They discover Carer Tevensum and carefully explore the roof, searching for some sort of entrance while carefully avoiding the stairs down. Eventually, Simon doing the cat-at-the-edge-of-the-roof thing, notices that there's a gateway beneath the roof.</p><p></p><p>The heroes proceed in, Jesús leading the way, when they (that is, Jesús) is attacked by giant turtle-like creatures (Basel recognizes them as tojanida, but somehow not looking right, so he logically concludes they're some of Paradim's creations). One creature spits ink in his eye, blinding him, while the other bites his kneecaps, so Jesús flies away to hang onto the top of the gate where he entered the room. Dämmek tries attacking creatures and is surprised to miss, so the heroes all strategically retreat and are grateful that the creatures don't follow.</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>As the adventure text says, the tojanidas are hiding from the storm. I was surprised at how hard a time they had with the tojanidas, but their amazing natural armor is a big impediment.</em></p><p></p><p>The heroes come up with a Plan: Dämmek and Jesús will fly in, slam the gate closed, and then tie it shut. They get inked for their efforts, but successfully cage the tojanidas anyhow.</p><p></p><p>They then venture into the room with the card table, shelves, and large barnacle-covered chest. With Dämmek standing nearby, Gusle approaches the chest. It whacks her, attaching a glue-covered pseudopod to her! Dämmek steps up and hacks at the pseudopod with the living blade, and the blade ends up glued to the chest as well. Gusle whacks the living blade with her torch, igniting the blade and convincing the chest to release the blade. Gusle's fallow touch quickly makes it want to let her go as well, so Dämmek whacks it again. This convinces the chest to...negotiate?</p><p></p><p>The heroes strike a bargain with the chest -- if it promises to leave them alone, it can go eat the caged tojanida. There's a win-win solution (unless you're a tojanida, of course).</p><p></p><p>Dämmek carefully inspects the large crossbow in the room on the left side of the hallway into the prison proper and eventually unloads it, so Gusle, the first to go down the hallway, only get hit by one oversize bolt. Ouch!</p><p></p><p>The heroes starting crowd into the prison proper...</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Of course!</em></p><p></p><p>...and the skeletons in the cells rise up to attack. Gusle and Dämmek start beating on the skeletons with their weapons while Sparky surveys the far side of the room, but then Jesús steps into the room and shatters half of them by invoking the Flamebringer Phoenix's wrath. The remaining walking dead are undeterred but are soon turned by Jesús. So much for that challenge!</p><p></p><p>The heroes proceed out of the cells and into the prison lobby, Sparky swimming along in the lead, and a trio of fishmen attack from the depths. The heroes manage to slay two of them, and the third flees. Gusle lets it go rather than risking an underwater grapple and it goes to hide in the room with the mysterious reddish glow.</p><p></p><p>The heroes quickly survey the guards' quarters and then Dämmek scouts out the glowy room, causing the fishman to dart down the hole in the floor the glow is coming from.</p><p></p><p>After a bit of consideration, the heroes take Sparky and Simon out of the prison for safety, instructing the familiars how they should react in a few circumstances; consume the potions of <em>water breathing</em> they picked up from Giorgio and his allies; and make their way to the glowing hole. They discover the bits of wire at the entrance to the hole and discern it was some sort of tripwire. They then travel down the hole. They're astonished to discover that there is another surface to the water at the bottom of the hole. The fishman with crossbow bolts sticking out of it him gives the heroes a good idea of what they're about to encounter. Jesús sticks his head down beneath the surface of the water and is startled to see a bunch of Ragesian soldiers with crossbows pointed in his general direction. Lucky for him, the Ragesians were likewise startled, so he is able to pull his head back before it gets shot.</p><p></p><p>The heroes put together a quick plan: Jesús will jump down first cast <em>wind wall</em>, and the other heroes will do other clever things when they arrive [sorry, I forget what]. The wind wall stops all missile traffic, as intended, but it doesn't stop the inquisitor from casting <em>silence</em> soon thereafter, preventing the heroes from casting spells.. The Ragesians push forward across the bridge and start engaging in melee. Gusle attempts to use <em>joyful noise</em> to counteract the <em>silence</em>, which lets the heroes use a few magic items without the inquisitor's knowledge, but one of the soldiers counters her spell with his axe. Some of the heroes take cover behind the braziers at the foot of the bridge and attempt to shoot at some of the Ragesians past the edge of the wind wall while others make battle at the foot of the bridge.</p><p></p><p>The battle is hard fought, but several of the Ragesian soldiers are brought down and a few fall into the lava, while the heroes find they are able to get outside the sphere of silence and start healing themselves. Eventually, the inquisitor creates a <em>wall of fire</em> blocking the heroes from crossing the bridge, but Basel manages to <em>grease</em> the floor under the inquisitor and a couple soldiers, bringing them all down, while Gusle uses <em>glitterdust</em> to blind several soldiers. At this point, the soldiers have pretty much had enough -- those that can't see are basically cowering while those that can are trying to hide in what little cover is available, despite the inquisitor's orders to the contrary. Dämmek charges through the <em>wall of fire</em>, leaps over the grease, and lops the inquisitor's head off.</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>As usual, I did a pretty poor job playing the inquisitor -- once the </em>silence<em> was in place, I couldn't decide what he should do. There were several rounds where he should have been blinding or otherwise nerfing Dämmek but I just had him standing there looking fierce. Oh well, the </em>silence<em> was pretty effective, at least.</em></p><p></p><p>At this point, the battle is basically over, but the soldiers keep trying to heal or otherwise keep themselves from dying, which enrages the heroes and leads to several more of the soldiers getting killed before the last two drop everything, put their hands up, and beg for mercy. The heroes throw the soldiers' weapons into the lava and bind the survivors, who happily answer the heroes' questions to the best of their rather limited ability. They do let the heroes know that they have a couple of captives but that no one else is in the complex, as Lee left recently. Gusle goes over the inquisitors corpse to discover whatever useful things he might have possessed.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bill T., post: 8109392, member: 6795693"] [SIZE=6][B]Dramatis Personae[/B][/SIZE] [LIST] [*][B]Basel[/B], an Innenotdaran (aka grey) elf evoker from Gabal's school who previously made his living as a baker, with his familiar [B]Simon[/B], a cat from Seaquen's docks. [*][B]Dämmek[/B], a brainy and brawny human swordswoman with keen senses and the Living Blade. [*][B]Gusle[/B], a seela bard who escaped captivity from a circus before coming to Gate Pass. This player has been through the first few chapters already, so she was able to fill Torrent's role as guide, and her familiar [B]Sparky[/B], a rat from beneath Seaquen. [*][B]Jesús Tillamook[/B], a half-elf cloistered cleric of the Stormbringer Phoenix, a sect of the Stormchaser Eagle that is dedicated to finding the Aquiline Heart so that they can reincarnate the Eagle. [/LIST] With the [I]find the path[/I] spell provided by Ogoth, along with [I]mage armor[/I] provided by Katrina, the heroes make their way to the eye of the storm. They discover Carer Tevensum and carefully explore the roof, searching for some sort of entrance while carefully avoiding the stairs down. Eventually, Simon doing the cat-at-the-edge-of-the-roof thing, notices that there's a gateway beneath the roof. The heroes proceed in, Jesús leading the way, when they (that is, Jesús) is attacked by giant turtle-like creatures (Basel recognizes them as tojanida, but somehow not looking right, so he logically concludes they're some of Paradim's creations). One creature spits ink in his eye, blinding him, while the other bites his kneecaps, so Jesús flies away to hang onto the top of the gate where he entered the room. Dämmek tries attacking creatures and is surprised to miss, so the heroes all strategically retreat and are grateful that the creatures don't follow. [INDENT][I]As the adventure text says, the tojanidas are hiding from the storm. I was surprised at how hard a time they had with the tojanidas, but their amazing natural armor is a big impediment.[/I][/INDENT] The heroes come up with a Plan: Dämmek and Jesús will fly in, slam the gate closed, and then tie it shut. They get inked for their efforts, but successfully cage the tojanidas anyhow. They then venture into the room with the card table, shelves, and large barnacle-covered chest. With Dämmek standing nearby, Gusle approaches the chest. It whacks her, attaching a glue-covered pseudopod to her! Dämmek steps up and hacks at the pseudopod with the living blade, and the blade ends up glued to the chest as well. Gusle whacks the living blade with her torch, igniting the blade and convincing the chest to release the blade. Gusle's fallow touch quickly makes it want to let her go as well, so Dämmek whacks it again. This convinces the chest to...negotiate? The heroes strike a bargain with the chest -- if it promises to leave them alone, it can go eat the caged tojanida. There's a win-win solution (unless you're a tojanida, of course). Dämmek carefully inspects the large crossbow in the room on the left side of the hallway into the prison proper and eventually unloads it, so Gusle, the first to go down the hallway, only get hit by one oversize bolt. Ouch! The heroes starting crowd into the prison proper... [INDENT][I]Of course![/I][/INDENT] ...and the skeletons in the cells rise up to attack. Gusle and Dämmek start beating on the skeletons with their weapons while Sparky surveys the far side of the room, but then Jesús steps into the room and shatters half of them by invoking the Flamebringer Phoenix's wrath. The remaining walking dead are undeterred but are soon turned by Jesús. So much for that challenge! The heroes proceed out of the cells and into the prison lobby, Sparky swimming along in the lead, and a trio of fishmen attack from the depths. The heroes manage to slay two of them, and the third flees. Gusle lets it go rather than risking an underwater grapple and it goes to hide in the room with the mysterious reddish glow. The heroes quickly survey the guards' quarters and then Dämmek scouts out the glowy room, causing the fishman to dart down the hole in the floor the glow is coming from. After a bit of consideration, the heroes take Sparky and Simon out of the prison for safety, instructing the familiars how they should react in a few circumstances; consume the potions of [I]water breathing[/I] they picked up from Giorgio and his allies; and make their way to the glowing hole. They discover the bits of wire at the entrance to the hole and discern it was some sort of tripwire. They then travel down the hole. They're astonished to discover that there is another surface to the water at the bottom of the hole. The fishman with crossbow bolts sticking out of it him gives the heroes a good idea of what they're about to encounter. Jesús sticks his head down beneath the surface of the water and is startled to see a bunch of Ragesian soldiers with crossbows pointed in his general direction. Lucky for him, the Ragesians were likewise startled, so he is able to pull his head back before it gets shot. The heroes put together a quick plan: Jesús will jump down first cast [I]wind wall[/I], and the other heroes will do other clever things when they arrive [sorry, I forget what]. The wind wall stops all missile traffic, as intended, but it doesn't stop the inquisitor from casting [I]silence[/I] soon thereafter, preventing the heroes from casting spells.. The Ragesians push forward across the bridge and start engaging in melee. Gusle attempts to use [I]joyful noise[/I] to counteract the [I]silence[/I], which lets the heroes use a few magic items without the inquisitor's knowledge, but one of the soldiers counters her spell with his axe. Some of the heroes take cover behind the braziers at the foot of the bridge and attempt to shoot at some of the Ragesians past the edge of the wind wall while others make battle at the foot of the bridge. The battle is hard fought, but several of the Ragesian soldiers are brought down and a few fall into the lava, while the heroes find they are able to get outside the sphere of silence and start healing themselves. Eventually, the inquisitor creates a [I]wall of fire[/I] blocking the heroes from crossing the bridge, but Basel manages to [I]grease[/I] the floor under the inquisitor and a couple soldiers, bringing them all down, while Gusle uses [I]glitterdust[/I] to blind several soldiers. At this point, the soldiers have pretty much had enough -- those that can't see are basically cowering while those that can are trying to hide in what little cover is available, despite the inquisitor's orders to the contrary. Dämmek charges through the [I]wall of fire[/I], leaps over the grease, and lops the inquisitor's head off. [INDENT][I]As usual, I did a pretty poor job playing the inquisitor -- once the [/I]silence[I] was in place, I couldn't decide what he should do. There were several rounds where he should have been blinding or otherwise nerfing Dämmek but I just had him standing there looking fierce. Oh well, the [/I]silence[I] was pretty effective, at least.[/I][/INDENT] At this point, the battle is basically over, but the soldiers keep trying to heal or otherwise keep themselves from dying, which enrages the heroes and leads to several more of the soldiers getting killed before the last two drop everything, put their hands up, and beg for mercy. The heroes throw the soldiers' weapons into the lava and bind the survivors, who happily answer the heroes' questions to the best of their rather limited ability. They do let the heroes know that they have a couple of captives but that no one else is in the complex, as Lee left recently. Gusle goes over the inquisitors corpse to discover whatever useful things he might have possessed. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
EN Publishing
Bill T's Second War of the Burning Sky: Shelter from the Storm [more spoilers than you can shake a stick adorned with ribbons and kerchiefs at!]
Top