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Bill T's Second War of the Burning Sky: The Mad King's Banquet [with a smorgasbord of spoilers in the posts]
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<blockquote data-quote="Bill T." data-source="post: 8235878" 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 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>Lucius</strong>, a human wielding a pair of short swords and a silver tongue.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Seda</strong>, a spellcasting Seela, sick and tired of singing, with her mountain lion companion <strong>Smoke</strong>.</li> </ul><p>Hi, everyone. Apologies for going silent, but no one in our group, including me, was terribly interested in generating session summaries lately. I want to give a quick overview of the bulk of the activities in Dassen because (1) the heroes went to kill the Koningsmarshal, a rare enough encounter that I figure I should share, and (2) a player shamed me into action by typing up the final session in Bresk. So, without further ado:</p><p></p><p>Our session in late October was pretty much a bust. I decided to take advantage of the excellent notes [USER=6816692]@Lylandra[/USER] so generously translated and shared regarding the proxies in Dassen. Enfortunately, my players still haven't figured out that they should spend some time tryin to learn about the people they want to influence before talking to them. Their only crack at trying to learn about the nobles and their proxies was to try to gather information in a tavern --a tavern frequented by soldiers. I was a bit frustrated by the whole idea, so I just dumped on them the standard pre-audience information. To that I also added that the soldiers were talking (crudely!) about Lady Namin's efforts to ingratiate herself with the king. If I'd taken their plan to hit a tavern a bit more seriously, they should have <strong>only</strong> heard about Lady Namin there. Oh well,</p><p></p><p>Anyhow, after that, they went and talked to all the proxies. Unfortunately, not only did they make these visits ignorantly, but they kept trying to persuade the proxies that the Ragesians couldn't be trusted, and none of the were buying it. That said, they did manage to score some major points with Lady Namin and the proxies for Dashgoband, Dene, and Iz when Balan spoke during the next session (despite forgetting to mention succession) -- which, it turns out, saved their bacon later.</p><p></p><p>They also visited the Shahalesti ambassador, as I discussed earlier. I decided to base her on Ambassador Mollari from <em>Babylon V</em> -- in short, she got the position because no one else wanted it and she wasn't in the Shahalesti's court best graces. She was simply thrilled that anyone would take her seriously at all, although the heroes were a bit shocked when the directions they got to the Shahalesti embassy lead them to a burnt-out remains of a building. Luckily, there was a sign on the door pointing them to the ambassador's new residence, where they learned that someone had fire-bombed the embassy. I figured Torrax was sending the ambassador a message to mind her own business, a message which she took to heart. Unfortunately, I don't remember anything more about her and doubt the players do either, so she'l likely to make a return appearance.</p><p></p><p>The audience with King Steppengard was during our session right before Christmas (a bit of confusion over who was going to role-play Balan caused us to miss a session). The king really flummoxed Dämmek when he demanded to know how many people she'd lost in the war, and she kept trying to understand why the king was picking on her. As a result, she wanted to get out of the castle as soon as possible and wasn't particularly interested in talking to Serrimus and Torrax. Basel asked Nina to thank the king for listening to their request, which she found amusing if a bit confusing.</p><p></p><p>After leaving the castle, the party decided that, since they had been declared Fake News by the king (in Basel's words), they may as well leave for Gallo now and avoid the rush. And so Balan survived his trip to Dassen!</p><p></p><p>The heroes fought to take the northernmost watchtower in the Alydi Gap during our after-Christmas session (I decided that Gallo knew <strong>something</strong> was up at that tower because they lost contact with that chaplain but could still reach the others -- and Commander Hertiage certainly could tell them how the towers were laid out internally). They reached the tower at dusk and were very careful about their approach -- Basel send Simon to scout around the watchtower, who discovered the tracks and the torches before scurrying back to Basel to get warmed up again. They then approached under the cover of an <em>invisibility sphere</em> to get right up to the tower and, since Seda asked, they got a windy night to cover the noise they were making. Alas, their next step was to conjure a <em>climbing tree</em> to get on the roof of the tower. That certainly got the Ragesians' attention!</p><p></p><p>Anyhow, they climbed up the tree and onto the roof, still invisible. Smoke got a good pounce in on the wyvern, only to nearly get shredded in return, forcing Seda to call her back. Seda nearly got herself killed by the wyvern a few rounds later. Lucius wandered off on his own and nearly got himself killed. Basel and Dämmek dealt with the conga line of people coming up the stairs -- in retrospect, they should have waited downstairs rather than try joining the battle.</p><p></p><p>Eventually, the heroes took the tower, but this was probably the most dangerous battle of the adventure -- the wyvern brought Seda's constitution down to 1 when it attacked, so if the damage dice had gone slightly different or she had failed her second save, she'd have ended up truly dead. Smoke, likewise, was in dire straits and it took an awful lot of hinting to get someone to feed her some antitoxin.</p><p></p><p>The heroes went to rally Gallo's allies during our session in early January. With difficulty, they managed to talk their way past the pitchlings. Seda foolishly assumed that the pitchlings would treat her as a "fellow fey", and not-so-foolishly (but nonetheless incorrectly) assumed that sharing information about the oncoming Ragesian army would help persuade them. They then easily convinced Dashgoban to send troops.</p><p></p><p>Their efforts to convince Pitchburg to set the river afire just barely failed. The sad thing here was that Basel kept talking about bribing the people of Pitchburg to convince them to help, but didn't talk to anyone about getting money for the bribe -- and Balan had a purse full of coin dedicated to bribes!</p><p></p><p>They then proceeded to the Glaskeel cliffs, where they encountered a pair of ice dragon's (Basel's term for white dragons, which actually has a better ring to it -- I decided I didn't want to run the sphinx encounter again, and the girallon strikes me as a bit strange). Battling dragons while hanging from a cliff was, as you'd expect, difficult, but they eventually used <em>feather fall</em> to make a HALO jump and drove the dragons off from the ground. The dragons had to settle for their horses, but the Smoke got the last laugh -- she was able to stalk a dragon that was eating a horse and managed to snag herself some oh-so-refreshing dragon meat. When the heroes eventually discovered this, they decided to skin the dragon, and now Basel is insistent that Simon get leather armor made from white dragonhide.</p><p></p><p>Anyhow, the second attempt to scale the cliffs was successful, and convincing Lady Timor to send Gallo aid was pretty straightforward. The next morning, they decided to head to see Lord Iz to try to convince him to aid Duke Gallo. Oh, er, uhm -- oh, look at the hour, it must be time to call it an evening!</p><p></p><p>So, that gave me a chance to check the progress of Steppengard's army, and, because of their success with the audience in Bresk, had given them just enough time to get to Timor and Dashgoban, as they had decided to spare the horses on their way to Dashgoban. So, when they decided to head south at the start of the session in late January on the <em>phantom steed</em>s Timor's mages da provided them, they ran into the vanguard of Steppengard's army. They would have been happy to take on the first patrol, but another patrol nearby recognized the heroes and so they decided to simply ride back to Gallo's Fend. On the way, they met a mephit who used a giant glowing sign to get their attention. The mephit explained that Timor's mages had a plan to capture Smoke and bring her to Gallo's Fend for them. They never clued in to the fact that the mephit was actually a tiefling wizard from Timor using <em>alter self</em> and <em>silent image</em>.</p><p></p><p>Anyhow, upon reaching Gallo's Fend, Gallo asked the heroes to destroy Steppengard's catapults and, er, eliminate Kelkin as a factor. The attack on the catapults went rather slowly, and Lucius's role was particularly boring -- Gallo's team explained to him how to disable a catapult, so he spent the entire encounter doing that -- and only that. Since he was invisible the whole time, only the red dragon (who I renamed Scarlet) was able to attack him, and even she was frustrated by her continual misses and the fact that he refused to counterattack. They only managed to destroy three of the 'pults before the cavalry came, forcing the heroes to flee. Sadly, I think the winning strategy would have been for Seda to fill her head with <em>warp wood</em> spells to destroy the catapults. If she'd done that invisibly while the rest of the heroes created a diversion, she could have easily wrecked many of the catapults all by herself.</p><p></p><p>Their fight with Kelkin was in late February. This turned into a Battle of the Clouds -- Seda send a <em>murderous mist</em> at Kelkin's tent, and he eventually responded with <em>cloudkill</em>. Thanks to the clouds, the battle was something of a confused mess, but they did eventually defeat Kelkin and his sphinx. Unfortunately, everyone decided to press their luck -- especially Lucius -- and start looking for loot. Simon and Basel searched Kelkin's "tent" (and I forgot about the <em>symbol</em> and then foolishly retconned it in midstream) while Lucius looted the dead soldiers outside. They kept doing this even as the criosphinxes started arriving and attacking. Dämmek would have died but for Indomitability's Boon, and Smoke would have been chewed up by a pair of criosphinxes had Tupof Dzequifs not arrived in the nick of time to save the day. (I had a card for Tupof in my stack of initiative cards from the beginning just in case he needed to make an appearance). The bit with Smoke was a result of some poor strategy -- Seda told her wounded animal companion to Stay in the middle of a dark forest as the rest of them went off to do other things. Smoke would have scurried for the exit if Tupof hadn't rescued her anyhow, but the attacks of opportunity would have likely done her in.</p><p></p><p>Anyhow, to the main reason for this post: I decided I didn't like the idea of the battle of Gallo's Fend ending in a draw, and there's really no way Gallo would have known one way or another how things would work out, so I had them learn about the death of Gallo's crack team of Koningsmarshal assassins when Gallo did. Gallo never asked them to take the mission on themselves, since he had figured the heroes had done enough but, after a short discussion amongst themselves, they volunteered to take the mission on anyhow.</p><p></p><p>It turned out that this Very Dangerous Mission, which we played late February, was a cakewalk compared to the prior two missions. The sappers blew the stairs and an entrance to the Koningsmarshal's bunker, Lucius dashed in, and then, with two quick blows, brought the Koningsmarshal down.</p><p></p><p>Well, of course, it wasn't <strong>quite</strong> that easy -- one prelate healed the Koningsmarshal while the other cast <em>invisibility purge</em>. That spell's area is large enough to cover the entire bunker. They made several attempts to kill Nina using a variety of means, but were frustrated by the fact that all their attacks went right through her, while Lucius, Dämmek, and Commander Hertiage made their way to the Koningsmarshal. Basel cleverly used a <em>wall of ice</em> to slow down the reinforcements coming into the bunker, so they didn't have to face them until they were ready to leave. They were also smart enough dragged along the Koningsmarshal's corpse as they left, just to make sure the enemy couldn't resurrect him.</p><p></p><p>Nina then made her obligatory after-battle taunt and then got away. That wasn't what I was hoping for -- I was looking forward to Seda singing the Song of Forms so that they'd have the chance to battle Madness in a long underground hallway, but Basel had gotten everyone fixated on Nina being some sort of projection, so it didn't even occur to her.</p><p></p><p>The tournament of unity, played during our early March session, had its amusing points. Dämmek decided to joust, since her Knockdown feat makes her reasonably good at it, and Seda, of course, decided to sing for the nobles. Seda's sang well until the final face-off between her, Duke Gallo, and the revivified Koningsmarshal, at which point she choked and gave a performance inferior to them both. Meanwhile, Dämmek made it all the way to the final round before being creamed by Silvia. Sadly, Dämmek never thought to use any of her spells. Using <em>disable</em> on a jouster's horse could have easily ended a joust right then!</p><p></p><p>Just to emphasize how dangerous Silvia was, I had her <strong>kill</strong> her opponent in the quarter-finals. I was hoping to use this as an excuse to let Seda <em>reincarnate</em> someone (as part of a longer silly plan to hopefully give Seda the chance to reincarnate Smoke as a more powerful animal companion), but Lucius cut that plan off by telling Seda to use the wand of <em>recall spirit</em> on the dead jouster. Wait, what? They then sent themselves off on a wild goose chase investigating why the jouster had died despite the precautions being taken. Lucius eventually ended up drinking the mage responsible for nerfing the jouster's weapons under the table.</p><p></p><p>They also did speak to Randas of course, and had a lot of fun with that -- Smoke managed to pilfer several steaks, and even managed to fetch one for the heroes. On their second visit to his stand they managed to bribe the guards taking away his carts to give them all the soup. Basel was in soup heaven!</p><p></p><p>After syncing up with Gallo after the tournament, they went to make their way into the backside of the castle. The tragedies were at least a somewhat interesting challenge, made more difficult by the fact that Lucius forgot about his <em>anklet of teleportation</em>. The zombies frozen in the ice were no challenge at all, thanks to Seda's little lightning bolt reserve feat (sort of like warmage strike). Jutras, on the other hand, was quite a challenge, since he had the height advantage over the heroes -- again, the anklet would have been useful here. They did manage to get into the dungeon, but Jutras paralyzed Dämmek before they destroyed him, and Basel unnecessarily used a potion of <em>remove paralysis</em> on her after the battle was over.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bill T., post: 8235878, member: 6795693"] [SIZE=6][B]Dramatis Personae[/B][/SIZE] [LIST] [*][B]Basel[/B], an Innenotdaran (aka grey) elf evoker from Gabal's school 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]Lucius[/B], a human wielding a pair of short swords and a silver tongue. [*][B]Seda[/B], a spellcasting Seela, sick and tired of singing, with her mountain lion companion [b]Smoke[/b]. [/LIST] Hi, everyone. Apologies for going silent, but no one in our group, including me, was terribly interested in generating session summaries lately. I want to give a quick overview of the bulk of the activities in Dassen because (1) the heroes went to kill the Koningsmarshal, a rare enough encounter that I figure I should share, and (2) a player shamed me into action by typing up the final session in Bresk. So, without further ado: Our session in late October was pretty much a bust. I decided to take advantage of the excellent notes [USER=6816692]@Lylandra[/USER] so generously translated and shared regarding the proxies in Dassen. Enfortunately, my players still haven't figured out that they should spend some time tryin to learn about the people they want to influence before talking to them. Their only crack at trying to learn about the nobles and their proxies was to try to gather information in a tavern --a tavern frequented by soldiers. I was a bit frustrated by the whole idea, so I just dumped on them the standard pre-audience information. To that I also added that the soldiers were talking (crudely!) about Lady Namin's efforts to ingratiate herself with the king. If I'd taken their plan to hit a tavern a bit more seriously, they should have [b]only[/b] heard about Lady Namin there. Oh well, Anyhow, after that, they went and talked to all the proxies. Unfortunately, not only did they make these visits ignorantly, but they kept trying to persuade the proxies that the Ragesians couldn't be trusted, and none of the were buying it. That said, they did manage to score some major points with Lady Namin and the proxies for Dashgoband, Dene, and Iz when Balan spoke during the next session (despite forgetting to mention succession) -- which, it turns out, saved their bacon later. They also visited the Shahalesti ambassador, as I discussed earlier. I decided to base her on Ambassador Mollari from [i]Babylon V[/i] -- in short, she got the position because no one else wanted it and she wasn't in the Shahalesti's court best graces. She was simply thrilled that anyone would take her seriously at all, although the heroes were a bit shocked when the directions they got to the Shahalesti embassy lead them to a burnt-out remains of a building. Luckily, there was a sign on the door pointing them to the ambassador's new residence, where they learned that someone had fire-bombed the embassy. I figured Torrax was sending the ambassador a message to mind her own business, a message which she took to heart. Unfortunately, I don't remember anything more about her and doubt the players do either, so she'l likely to make a return appearance. The audience with King Steppengard was during our session right before Christmas (a bit of confusion over who was going to role-play Balan caused us to miss a session). The king really flummoxed Dämmek when he demanded to know how many people she'd lost in the war, and she kept trying to understand why the king was picking on her. As a result, she wanted to get out of the castle as soon as possible and wasn't particularly interested in talking to Serrimus and Torrax. Basel asked Nina to thank the king for listening to their request, which she found amusing if a bit confusing. After leaving the castle, the party decided that, since they had been declared Fake News by the king (in Basel's words), they may as well leave for Gallo now and avoid the rush. And so Balan survived his trip to Dassen! The heroes fought to take the northernmost watchtower in the Alydi Gap during our after-Christmas session (I decided that Gallo knew [b]something[/b] was up at that tower because they lost contact with that chaplain but could still reach the others -- and Commander Hertiage certainly could tell them how the towers were laid out internally). They reached the tower at dusk and were very careful about their approach -- Basel send Simon to scout around the watchtower, who discovered the tracks and the torches before scurrying back to Basel to get warmed up again. They then approached under the cover of an [i]invisibility sphere[/i] to get right up to the tower and, since Seda asked, they got a windy night to cover the noise they were making. Alas, their next step was to conjure a [i]climbing tree[/i] to get on the roof of the tower. That certainly got the Ragesians' attention! Anyhow, they climbed up the tree and onto the roof, still invisible. Smoke got a good pounce in on the wyvern, only to nearly get shredded in return, forcing Seda to call her back. Seda nearly got herself killed by the wyvern a few rounds later. Lucius wandered off on his own and nearly got himself killed. Basel and Dämmek dealt with the conga line of people coming up the stairs -- in retrospect, they should have waited downstairs rather than try joining the battle. Eventually, the heroes took the tower, but this was probably the most dangerous battle of the adventure -- the wyvern brought Seda's constitution down to 1 when it attacked, so if the damage dice had gone slightly different or she had failed her second save, she'd have ended up truly dead. Smoke, likewise, was in dire straits and it took an awful lot of hinting to get someone to feed her some antitoxin. The heroes went to rally Gallo's allies during our session in early January. With difficulty, they managed to talk their way past the pitchlings. Seda foolishly assumed that the pitchlings would treat her as a "fellow fey", and not-so-foolishly (but nonetheless incorrectly) assumed that sharing information about the oncoming Ragesian army would help persuade them. They then easily convinced Dashgoban to send troops. Their efforts to convince Pitchburg to set the river afire just barely failed. The sad thing here was that Basel kept talking about bribing the people of Pitchburg to convince them to help, but didn't talk to anyone about getting money for the bribe -- and Balan had a purse full of coin dedicated to bribes! They then proceeded to the Glaskeel cliffs, where they encountered a pair of ice dragon's (Basel's term for white dragons, which actually has a better ring to it -- I decided I didn't want to run the sphinx encounter again, and the girallon strikes me as a bit strange). Battling dragons while hanging from a cliff was, as you'd expect, difficult, but they eventually used [i]feather fall[/i] to make a HALO jump and drove the dragons off from the ground. The dragons had to settle for their horses, but the Smoke got the last laugh -- she was able to stalk a dragon that was eating a horse and managed to snag herself some oh-so-refreshing dragon meat. When the heroes eventually discovered this, they decided to skin the dragon, and now Basel is insistent that Simon get leather armor made from white dragonhide. Anyhow, the second attempt to scale the cliffs was successful, and convincing Lady Timor to send Gallo aid was pretty straightforward. The next morning, they decided to head to see Lord Iz to try to convince him to aid Duke Gallo. Oh, er, uhm -- oh, look at the hour, it must be time to call it an evening! So, that gave me a chance to check the progress of Steppengard's army, and, because of their success with the audience in Bresk, had given them just enough time to get to Timor and Dashgoban, as they had decided to spare the horses on their way to Dashgoban. So, when they decided to head south at the start of the session in late January on the [i]phantom steed[/i]s Timor's mages da provided them, they ran into the vanguard of Steppengard's army. They would have been happy to take on the first patrol, but another patrol nearby recognized the heroes and so they decided to simply ride back to Gallo's Fend. On the way, they met a mephit who used a giant glowing sign to get their attention. The mephit explained that Timor's mages had a plan to capture Smoke and bring her to Gallo's Fend for them. They never clued in to the fact that the mephit was actually a tiefling wizard from Timor using [i]alter self[/i] and [i]silent image[/i]. Anyhow, upon reaching Gallo's Fend, Gallo asked the heroes to destroy Steppengard's catapults and, er, eliminate Kelkin as a factor. The attack on the catapults went rather slowly, and Lucius's role was particularly boring -- Gallo's team explained to him how to disable a catapult, so he spent the entire encounter doing that -- and only that. Since he was invisible the whole time, only the red dragon (who I renamed Scarlet) was able to attack him, and even she was frustrated by her continual misses and the fact that he refused to counterattack. They only managed to destroy three of the 'pults before the cavalry came, forcing the heroes to flee. Sadly, I think the winning strategy would have been for Seda to fill her head with [i]warp wood[/i] spells to destroy the catapults. If she'd done that invisibly while the rest of the heroes created a diversion, she could have easily wrecked many of the catapults all by herself. Their fight with Kelkin was in late February. This turned into a Battle of the Clouds -- Seda send a [i]murderous mist[/i] at Kelkin's tent, and he eventually responded with [i]cloudkill[/i]. Thanks to the clouds, the battle was something of a confused mess, but they did eventually defeat Kelkin and his sphinx. Unfortunately, everyone decided to press their luck -- especially Lucius -- and start looking for loot. Simon and Basel searched Kelkin's "tent" (and I forgot about the [i]symbol[/i] and then foolishly retconned it in midstream) while Lucius looted the dead soldiers outside. They kept doing this even as the criosphinxes started arriving and attacking. Dämmek would have died but for Indomitability's Boon, and Smoke would have been chewed up by a pair of criosphinxes had Tupof Dzequifs not arrived in the nick of time to save the day. (I had a card for Tupof in my stack of initiative cards from the beginning just in case he needed to make an appearance). The bit with Smoke was a result of some poor strategy -- Seda told her wounded animal companion to Stay in the middle of a dark forest as the rest of them went off to do other things. Smoke would have scurried for the exit if Tupof hadn't rescued her anyhow, but the attacks of opportunity would have likely done her in. Anyhow, to the main reason for this post: I decided I didn't like the idea of the battle of Gallo's Fend ending in a draw, and there's really no way Gallo would have known one way or another how things would work out, so I had them learn about the death of Gallo's crack team of Koningsmarshal assassins when Gallo did. Gallo never asked them to take the mission on themselves, since he had figured the heroes had done enough but, after a short discussion amongst themselves, they volunteered to take the mission on anyhow. It turned out that this Very Dangerous Mission, which we played late February, was a cakewalk compared to the prior two missions. The sappers blew the stairs and an entrance to the Koningsmarshal's bunker, Lucius dashed in, and then, with two quick blows, brought the Koningsmarshal down. Well, of course, it wasn't [b]quite[/b] that easy -- one prelate healed the Koningsmarshal while the other cast [i]invisibility purge[/i]. That spell's area is large enough to cover the entire bunker. They made several attempts to kill Nina using a variety of means, but were frustrated by the fact that all their attacks went right through her, while Lucius, Dämmek, and Commander Hertiage made their way to the Koningsmarshal. Basel cleverly used a [i]wall of ice[/i] to slow down the reinforcements coming into the bunker, so they didn't have to face them until they were ready to leave. They were also smart enough dragged along the Koningsmarshal's corpse as they left, just to make sure the enemy couldn't resurrect him. Nina then made her obligatory after-battle taunt and then got away. That wasn't what I was hoping for -- I was looking forward to Seda singing the Song of Forms so that they'd have the chance to battle Madness in a long underground hallway, but Basel had gotten everyone fixated on Nina being some sort of projection, so it didn't even occur to her. The tournament of unity, played during our early March session, had its amusing points. Dämmek decided to joust, since her Knockdown feat makes her reasonably good at it, and Seda, of course, decided to sing for the nobles. Seda's sang well until the final face-off between her, Duke Gallo, and the revivified Koningsmarshal, at which point she choked and gave a performance inferior to them both. Meanwhile, Dämmek made it all the way to the final round before being creamed by Silvia. Sadly, Dämmek never thought to use any of her spells. Using [i]disable[/i] on a jouster's horse could have easily ended a joust right then! Just to emphasize how dangerous Silvia was, I had her [b]kill[/b] her opponent in the quarter-finals. I was hoping to use this as an excuse to let Seda [i]reincarnate[/i] someone (as part of a longer silly plan to hopefully give Seda the chance to reincarnate Smoke as a more powerful animal companion), but Lucius cut that plan off by telling Seda to use the wand of [i]recall spirit[/i] on the dead jouster. Wait, what? They then sent themselves off on a wild goose chase investigating why the jouster had died despite the precautions being taken. Lucius eventually ended up drinking the mage responsible for nerfing the jouster's weapons under the table. They also did speak to Randas of course, and had a lot of fun with that -- Smoke managed to pilfer several steaks, and even managed to fetch one for the heroes. On their second visit to his stand they managed to bribe the guards taking away his carts to give them all the soup. Basel was in soup heaven! After syncing up with Gallo after the tournament, they went to make their way into the backside of the castle. The tragedies were at least a somewhat interesting challenge, made more difficult by the fact that Lucius forgot about his [i]anklet of teleportation[/i]. The zombies frozen in the ice were no challenge at all, thanks to Seda's little lightning bolt reserve feat (sort of like warmage strike). Jutras, on the other hand, was quite a challenge, since he had the height advantage over the heroes -- again, the anklet would have been useful here. They did manage to get into the dungeon, but Jutras paralyzed Dämmek before they destroyed him, and Basel unnecessarily used a potion of [i]remove paralysis[/i] on her after the battle was over. [/QUOTE]
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Bill T's Second War of the Burning Sky: The Mad King's Banquet [with a smorgasbord of spoilers in the posts]
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