TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

The regular 4 were once again punctually present. Having tallied up all the treasure from the last adventure, they wanted to spend it before heading moonward, with particular emphasis on making sure they could survive whatever the atmosphere situation was up there. Nearly a full hour was spent on considering if they should and could get the mudship back through the portal. Looking at its movement rate and especially the surprisingly short amount of amount of sailing through rock it can actually do in one go, they decided getting it all the way through the needlespire tunnels and out the other side again would be tedious and impractical. Instead, they checked how much they could buff their strength, to see if they could simply fit the thing in their weight limit when they teleported. Looking at the weights of real life boats of that size, this was not an unreasonable question, as a crucial factor for boats is maintaining a relatively low density for their size. Eventually we worked out that the githyanki could indeed lift the boat singlehandedly, teleport back to the gate, squeeze it through, and teleport a second time to reach their airship, still thankfully floating above the needlespire where they left it. From there, they set about roping the mudship to the side of the larger airship so they could use it as a docking transport.

With that bit of logistics sorted out, they decided that the City of Brass once again seemed like a good place to spend their money, as they could buy 9th level stuff there and would have a bit more time to think about exactly what, if anything they'd report next time they went back to Tu'narath. The trip was much faster in the airship, taking them only 6 hours, which means they got there late afternoon by their time. This gave them plenty of time to split up and hit the markets. The githyanki forgot that water & ice magic is tightly controlled here and tried to buy an ice assassin, which got the notice of some less savoury sorts who took his money and said they'd get hold of a scroll, but may not follow through on that. The sniper spent even more of his money on scrolls, to the point where I was forced to say that no, they wouldn't have that many of several specific high level spells in stock, so he'd have to order them and come back later.

However, these minor setbacks were of little importance compared to the troubles they were about to face. While they were gone, a group of devils controlled by (or maybe the other way around) the wizards they performed the heist upon a week (of in game time) ago had managed to trace the gold they'd stolen here. They'd lost the trail over the past couple of days due to the minor issue of them having travelled outside the known cosmos, but were still in the neighbourhood and had picked up descriptions of the people who had passed through, flush with large quantities of bullion rather than regular coinage. The PC's returning here so quickly and once again throwing around large amounts of cash meant the agents among the crowd soon caught on and prepared to get their revenge. They waited until the PC's had all finished their shopping and went back to the ship for the night, sending a message back to their master, who did some scrying before they made a move. This did alert both the githyanki & binder, who have scrying detection spells up, but both of them independently decided to roll bluff checks to pretend they weren't woken and act like they were still asleep. Once they were firmly surrounded, the ship got a firm knock on the main entrance. At the other end of the gangplank was a pit fiend and several dozen lesser baatezu, all ready for trouble. Since they are still trying to follow procedure, they demanded their money back, or they'd collect the PC's souls as forfeit. The binder played dumb, pretending she was still half asleep and had no idea what they were talking about, they didn't have any of their gold. (technically true as they'd already exchanged it for lighter valuables last time, but not the point and everyone on both sides knew it) Things soon degenerated as the devils were forced to become increasingly blunt in their statements due to her word games. And so we conclude this session knowing that next one is going to go into a big battle, but one where they have some complex choices to make, as simply going full force within the city limits will result in them attracting attention from the Sultan and losing a good place to buy & sell stuff. Then once that is over, they have the equally tricky choice of whether to go back to prioritizing sealing the stuff beyond the gate, which may be a universe-threatening danger long-term but doesn't seem to have noticed them yet, or deal with the enemies they've made from previous adventures first, who might not be as strong overall, but are an immediate problem that is actively seeking them out and won't stop until dealt with one way or another.

 

[(un)reason]

3 players present. They spent a good 20 minutes figuring out just how many buffs they would have managed to get active considering they'd been awoken in the middle of the night with short notice, but once that was dealt with the rest of the session was non-stop action. The binder created a bunch of weaker duplicates of herself and they all charged at the devils at the other end of the gangplank, while directing her airship to fly away. The sniper had turned ethereal at this point, so he let himself slip through the floors of the ship and float towards the jetty edge where the combat was beginning. In the process he noticed there were some smaller invisible devils clinging to the hull of the ship, ready to act as tracers if the frontal assault failed. He filed that information away to deal with later, and started using his wings of flurry to wear down the same devils the binder was already targeting. The pit fiend, cornugons and barbazu continued to mob the binder and her duplicates, while the hamatula teleported onto the departing ship before it could get too much speed up. There they noticed that the top deck was empty apart from the githyanki (the minions had hid below decks, knowing even weak devils would be above their pay grade), so half of them went to attack him while the other half headed for the stairs. He summoned some cervidals in response and set them to using their banishing touches, which didn't have great odds of success individually but were still much quicker when used en masse than trying to reduce them to 0hp. They soon dealt with the ones attacking him and went for the ones on the stairs, which were being kept from advancing by the priestesses whipping.

While this was taking place, the airship continued to accelerate. The devils had come in their own ship, which also tried to give pursuit, but it was neither as fast or maneuverable. What it did have though, was the ability to spit long range bursts of hellfire from the mouth on its front, which were capable of scorching the binder's ship even through its fire resistance. Seeing that they might get away, a wave of abishai rose from the deck of the devil ship and teleported in front of the PC's one, ready to grab on and start mobbing it next round. A few of them failed their grapple rolls and hit the front in a less dignified fashion, but most of them managed to match speeds and start scrabbling at the front. They spent a couple of rounds doing this, but weren't making much impact through its hardness, so some of them climbed onto the deck, while others teleported to random locations inside the ship to cause havoc.

Meanwhile, near the back of the ship, the githyanki thought things were mostly under control there, but they needed to do something about the blasts of hellfire before they wore down the ships hp too much, so he took two of the cervidals and teleported onto the enemy ship. He managed to take out the amnizu at the helm straight away with two smacks of his maul. He was mobbed by the remaining abishai, but with his magical shielding up they were taking damage every time they tried to attack him. They then tried using their mind-control abilities en masse, but his saves were high enough to repeatedly no-sell that as well. Meanwhile his summons were dismissing the abishai as fast as they could, while he hung onto the helm to pull it off course, although it still took several rounds before the mouth cannon was unable to target their ship at all, as it has a fair amount of independent leeway to aim.

Flipping back to our original perspective on the jetty, the binder had quickly managed to mow through the barbazu, leaving just the pit fiend and two cornugons fighting her. While her duplicates had been handy against the minions, they weren't much use against the big guys. She had to expend quite a few charges from her wand of wraithstrike to wear them down, but by the time we reached the end of the session she and the sniper working together had managed to reduce them all to negative hp. The sniper then teleported them and the bodies back to the ship, where she handed the bodies off to a minion with a blessed silver sword to coup de grace while she got busy clearing the still active abishai. The sniper then teleported onwards to the devil ship to help get that fully under their control. With the way things are going, it's looking pretty likely that they'll manage to win the battle next session, but that still leaves the big question of if they'll manage to root out all the tracers the devils have planted on their ship and whether they'll continue to run away to pursue other goals or take the fight to them remains uncertain. Either way, I'll do my best to be ready.

 

[(un)reason]

All 4 regulars present. The Binder continued to take out the abishai on the top deck, with the assistance of her minion with the silver sword to coup de grace them when they were downed. The cervidals managed to banish all but one of the abishai on the first level so the priestess headed down to the second inner level of the ship to deal with the three poking around in there. Despite flanking her, they could still only hit her on a natural 20 so this turned into a slow battle of attrition.

Meanwhile the githyanki & sniper progressed things somewhat faster on the baatezu airship. The githyanki's summons took out the remaining abishai mobbing him on the top deck over the next couple of rounds while he made sure the ship stayed off course and unable to target their one. The sniper went ethereal and floated through the deck to the hold, where the remaining spinagon were running around in a panic and trying to make themselves inconspicuous. He took out another half a dozen of them with another blast of wings of flurry, which prompted the survivors to jump ship and fly away, but not before activating the self-destruct sequence for the ship. He blasted a few more of them as they vacated the premises, then blinked back up and had a brief discussion with the githyanki. They both headed down to examine the controls and see if there was any possibility of stopping the countdown. Looking at the controls, it was obvious that they had been designed to be intentionally obtuse to anyone that didn't know the code, but they did manage to trace them back through the walls using his x-ray vision. In there was an organic brain connected to all these mechanical components. The sniper did have Rary's Telepathic Bond among his scrolls, so he tried to connect directly to it and command it to stop. In doing so, he found it was a devil brain that had been lobotomised for some distant past screw-up and extracted to operate the ship. He tried to convince it that they were actually the rightful owners of the ship and the previous occupants were the hijackers, so it should disregard previous instructions and cancel the countdown, but since he doesn't know Infernal, that was a no-starter despite his high bluff score. After several rounds of that, they teleported back to their own ship with plenty of time remaining on the countdown just in case that was also deceptive.

There, the girls had kept busy. The binder had finished off all the abishai on the top level and gone down to save her minions from the one remaining on the first floor. The priestess had knocked down one of the three she was fighting and damaged another, but their regeneration meant they kept on getting up and trying to attack again, but being taken down by her attacks of opportunity. The sniper went down and got the summoned cervidals moving again. (who had been just standing around after their last orders expired) and got them to banish the abishai before their duration ran out and they headed home. The sniper & priestess then headed down to the third floor where one last abishai was poking around looking for stuff to steal. They used a pincer maneuver, with the priestess being obvious and attracting its attention, then the sniper shooting it in the back when it charged at her, then dumping its body out the window while it was in negative hp to fall into the firey sea below. Shortly after this, the binder finally finished off the remaining abishai on the first floor, although not before it had managed to slaughter three of her low level minions. (which would have been more if both her glove and ship hadn't been using their spell-like abilities to run interference and stabilise the fallen)

Once they had a moment's breather, she consulted the ship telepathically to see if there were any more devils. One quick search check against their stealth rolls revealed two spinagon still remaining, one clinging to the bottom of the hull and another in the lowest hold burrowed into the food barrels. (and whether they managed to spot all of them I will not say here yet just in case) These were easily one-shotted, which brought the action to a close. They kept up their momentum and planeshifted out. The rest of the session was spent debating their next move. Did they want to prioritise going back to the red sun world and dealing with the potential cosmic threats on the other side, or getting these guys off their backs by negotiation or force. Did they want to risk going back to the city of brass now that was definitely watched to pick up the things they'd commissioned but hadn't been finished yet? The binder was definitely in favor of going back to Redeagle, since she still had three captured minions undergoing who knows what tortures back there to rescue, while the guys were more ambivalent. Hopefully they'll come to a conclusion before next session and we shall see if I can keep this mess of spinning plates going another week.