Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="jydog1" data-source="post: 5319906" data-attributes="member: 48156">Session #8 - Home to Earth's EmbraceNotes: everyone there.  As we started the Gm stood up, produced a pair of gloves, and said, "Now that you're all 3rd level, these come off."He was NOT kidding.FYI: Sidron Runes are the seven sided runes that contain the virtues/vices/schools of magic as the runes within.  From the journal of Grezzalik M'Rethen:I poked at one of the dead dog-like creatures with my longspear as Orik wandered over.  "You weren't much of a help in that fight."He shrugged.  "We didn't have a deal about me fighting horrible demon beasts.  And we aren't going to have a deal about me fighting Nuallia, so maybe you can just tell me how I'm getting off the island in case she kills you."Tofa looked up from cleaing blood off her blade.  "Do you not want the glory of killing her, yes?  Is that not worth the fight?"Orik laughed.  "Not really, no.  I want nothing to do with the bitch.  I just want to get out of here.  Unless you want to make it worth my while with extra shares of the loot."Londis and Tofa immediately began protesting.  He watched them with a bemused smile and said, "We could just all go now, and you could come back.  Without me, of course."  While all this was going on, Telbaine was looking at him with puppy dog eyes.  It was odd."Well, we're not done yet, so you're going to have to wait.  Might be better off with us," I said, my mind working furiously.  He was a brute force in combat and we needed him, and convincing him to come along was going to be tough.  Even more worrisome was the idea he might wander around and find the boat - he seemed like a decent guy, but I'd spent my life dealing with mercenaries and they value two things - their money and themselves.  So I lied."Here's the meat of the matter, Orik - unless you can levitate, like I can, you're not getting off the same way we got on.  I don't imagine swimming is an option in that armor of yours, either.  So it behooves you to see I don't die."He mulled that for a second, then waved his hand and started walking away.  "Nah.  I can always make it across the remains of the bridge if need be.  I'll just go wait for you in my room.""We'll be able to find you by the trail of yellow you're leaving, coward!" shouted Londis."Yeah, yeah, somehow I'll have to live with my shame."  He kept walking."If Nuallia survives she'll be pissed," I offered.He hesitated, then answered, "I'll just say you knocked me out."  Moving again, he was almost out of sight.  I fired my last arrow."Be a damn shame if I have to tell the Sheriff of Sandport about your role in the deaths of his townspeople, including nobles with pissed off families."That made him come to a complete stop, and after a moment of being still he came back in our direction, a wry smile on his face.  "I was hoping you wouldn't bring that up."My turn to shrug.  "I know what it's like to have an entire noble family looking to wipe me out for vengeance.  I wouldn't recommend it, myself."He looked at me for a while.  "Two shares."I'll spare this journal the negotiating between Orik and the rest of us, but we ended up with him getting a share and a half.  Now we just had to survive to collect it.---We'd hoped to deal with Lyrie, the mercenary spellcaster, but we chased a couple of goblins into an ambush in her quarters and she had clearly decided to stay loyal.  She knew the same color spray spell I do, and used it quite well.  My celestial dog was no match for her, but finally Londis was able to corner her and take her down.  She had a load of scrolls and whatnot, including a cloak of resistance and something else I didn't have time to really look into, so I just threw it on.  In her chilling journals we discovered that she had truly embraced the evil of her mistress and was happily participating in the human sacrifices and torturing of a dwarf in order to try to free some demon named Malfeshnikor, one of Lamasthu's Chosen, from down below.  The dwarf was proving successful where the ordinary humans hadn't.  His name was Firendrin and his journal was pretty interesting, especially the parts about his not-Owl owl that was currently in a cage here and had been feared by the late Lyrie.  Telbaine tried to bond with it and was somewhat successful.  Tofa locked gazes with it and described falling into a empty void.  I offered some goblin meat (refused), then opened the cage and said, 'Hey, we're looking to help Firendrin.  Know where he is?"The owl-thing, named Kina by Firendrin (or maybe by Kina, as according to his journal it communicates with him), hopped down and walked across the floor, leaving a set of smoking footprints behind it.  It stopped at a blank wall and started hooting, and to find the incredibly well-hidden keyhole took Trixie all of about 2 seconds.  It was trapped as well, and while I figured the correct key, which we had found elsewhere, would bypass that, I didn't believe it so much that I didn't use mage hand.  A set of stairs took us down to a room with a couple of sarcophagi and big doors one either end.  Behind one set ritualistic chanting could be heard.  With a quick whispered discussion of a plan of attack and the furtive casting of spells, we kicked the doors open and headed in.A quick note - while I am a student of magic, I don't purport to really understand it.  Does anyone?  Shortly after the fight with the Ripnugget and his caster I felt different, as if I were a little more adept with my spells.  In fact, two spells I'd studied by never mastered suddenly seemed quite doable.  One was the very force armor I'd read off a scroll before that fight, and another was one that allowed me to spray fire from my hands, much like the color spray one did.  I also felt as if I could shoot lightning from my fingers instead if I wished.  I do like my green lightning.  As for now I activated the force armor, leaving me with a single spell in me and a single elemental ray at my disposal.  Good thing Lyrie had had a wand of magic missiles, eh?  That, along with the one of shocking grasp we'd gotten before, have me some options.The doors swung open wide to reveal several things:1) 4 goblin cultists chanting in an almost straight line in front of us.  They had wickedly sharp looking knives and turned to us with snarls.2) a dwarf tied to some altar off to the left.  Even from here he looked unhappy.3) standing in a glowing circle of runes was a woman who was no doubt Nuallia.  She was disturbingly attractive, even with one of her hands deformed into a glowing claw surrounded by a sidron rune.  Her breastplate left her horribly scarred abdomen exposed, and she had a large bastard sword lying on her shoulder.  Did I mention that despite being obviously a bad person she was really attractive?"So," she said with a sneer in her voice, "the heroes finally arrive, just as I'd planned.""Hey," I shouted back, "your boyfriend died like a little bitch.""And so shall you!" she growled.  "Kill them!"Somehow I was the first to react, and my thought was to clear a path for others to get through and get Nuallia.  I ran forward and let my new spell fly - lightning flavored, of course.  One cultist more or less exploded on the spot, while the other two I managed to get screamed as their flesh popped and sizzled.  And so the fight was on.Telbaine rushed past me and charged Nuallia, the owl-thing that had been perched on his shoulder flying off toward the bound dwarf.  This was a poor idea.  His glaive seemed to be deflected by her runes - her counterstrike encountered no such issues.  In one horrible moment her clawed hand blasted him with a spell that knocked him down, then glowed a nasty black as she clawed him mercilessly.  Orik rushed by to try to help and Tofa smashed the unhurt goblin in the face, but then the room was filled with the baying of yet another of those yith dogs (we'd studied the book Trixie had from the quasit's room and now were fairly knowledgeable about the horrid things).  It made my eyes water but I stood my ground as the goblins slashed at me.  I couldn't tell you about the others in the heat of battle.  I activated the shocking grasp wand but the yith eluded my swipe, which allowed me to see what happened to Telbaine.  Nuallia reached down with that claw still glowing black and did something I'd read about but never had the misfortune to witness until now - a death touch.  The sidron rune from her claw settled on his chest as a black ray shot from her finger.  His body glowed red and black, convulsing mightily until it arched a final time and fell with an ominous limpness.Then <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> got weird.Above the body, a golden glow appeared and coalesced into an elderly female elven face, drawn in sadness.  Behind me I heard Shalue gasp, "Ancient Elldari!"Sadly shaking back and forth, she said in a voice that was not a voice - honestly, I don't know if it was out loud or in our heads - "The last of the Guardians has failed.  You must be the new Guardians and save this country."  With that vines began to snake out of the stone floor and either encase Telbaine or actually become one with him - I couldn't really see well enough to say.  His glaive suddenly exploded with a flash, and I heard Nuallia cry out.  I felt as if something had been thrown over me that would protect me somewhat, and I slapped at the yith again.  This time I managed to hit it, and it howled in outsider pain as electricity coursed through it.  It turned from where it had been battling with Londis - in mid air, did I forget to mention it was flying? - and bit me.  It was a savage strike but whatever we'd gotten from the now gone glow absorbed the brunt of it, leaving me with a nasty gash and nothing else.  I even managed to stumble out of its attempt to trip me.Now off to the side of the beast, I turned to Nuallia - who had her hands full with Orik, but appeared to be giving as good as she got with some purplish glow about her - and loosed my final elemental ray.  As it hit her I suddenly flashed on one of my classes - she was a Aysimyr, and thus had natural resistance to certain things - such as lightning.  My spell looked pretty, but did nothing.  I didn't have much time to think about it as the last standing cultist almost hamstrung with a vicious strike, but my armor held and it soon had bigger problems in the form of an arrow sticking out of the back of its head, courtesy of Shalue.  Trixie came bounding in on her gecko, beating out a rhythm that filled me with good feelings before throwing a silver dagger at the yith.  It hit and the beast roared in pain before spinning and charging into Orik from behind, sending him sprawling.  Before we could help him he made a poor choice and tried to stand up - the yith bit him again and Nuallia hit him hard with her bastard sword.  He went back down with a thump and stayed there.  But neither of them looked too mighty themselves at this point.  I fired the wand of magic missile at her and while it didn't stagger her, the purple glow around her blinked out.  Londis had been harrying her along with Tofa when he wasn't dropping his weapons and one of them - not sure which - took her down.  Tofa was raging and had her spooky ravens around her, and the yith was down as well too, leaving us panting but happy to be alive . . . oh, right.Shalue said a few words over Telbaine's body as we stood there before adding, "We should bury him by the ocean, over by Sandport."  I nodded absently, thinking about the logistics of getting his body back in the boat.  We'd figure it out.  Telbaine was always a little odd and made some . . . interesting decisions, but I was sad to see him die.  Stupid bitch Nuallia.  I wandered over to Orik, who was beyond help.  I know he probably wasn't a saint - the fact he charged right through Nuallia's runes that were designed to keep those untainted by evil out is a bit of a giveway, and also very interesting as Londis did as well - but he did warn those kids and being greedy is not a trait he had all to himself.  I have no idea where his soul was supposed to go but I asked Shelyn to help it on the journey, if she wished.  At least he gave his life for something that mattered, I suppose.The dwarf talks.  A lot.  More on him in a bit.  In the other room off the crypt we came in through we found the mechanism keeping the demon imprisoned, along with other things.  We have Nuallia's journals and if she couldn't get it out, it's unlikely we could, even if we wanted to.  But did she get it close enough so that it can finish the job itself?  We're discussing right now what to do - investigate more, or just seal the place up and destroy the special key that got us in here.  Either way, I'm out of everything spellwise beyond my cantrips, and feel I couldn't threaten a large kitten at this point.  So what do we do?Notes - yep, death comes to our game.  Telbaine's player ran his druid into combat one time too many, it seems, and he got hit so hard by the spell she'd been holding in her claw that the ensuing attack killed him easily.  He decided to let the character die, which provided us with the handy Glowing Face of Help that blinded Nuallia for a single round (I immediately thought of Valeria showing up in shiny armor to save Conan and say, 'So, you wanna live forever?') and gave us 8 temps.  It was an extremely dicey battle to say the least, and a TPK wasn't out of the question, especially when Trixie and Tofa failed their saves against the baying Yith and were out of the fight fleeing for two rounds.  Telbaine's player then took over Orik for the combat and tried to stand up between Nuallia and the Yith, getting absolutely crushed by both of them.  So he had two characters die on him, but as Tofa noted he saved us a share and a half.  Telbaine's player is probably going to take over the dwarf and make him a PC, he's a witch so we'd be trading out a support role for another support role, which is fine.  Trixie's performance skill was incredibly helpful, that +1 to so many things is always a big help.  Several attacks and saves made it by that bonus.  Firendrin's not-owl almost sucked Tofa into some void with a gaze, so that'll be interesting to have around.  We have just stupid amounts of loot right now and once we get back to town Grezz will be spending heaps of time identifying things (like Nuallia's groovy looking amulet, which I got both schools of to start).  Now we have to decide whether to make sure the demon's restrained, try to kill said demon, or just get out and lock the place up.   Sucks someone had to lose a character, but it's a risky game.  If Grezz had bit it I would have been rolling up an alchemist is about 5 seconds.  Who WOULDN'T want to be essentially a mad bomber?</blockquote>

Verification