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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 8420952" data-attributes="member: 6816692">Bonds of forced faith pt. 2 The group now finally starts their ascent to Cauldron Hill. Dame Melissa, being the only one with a steed, takes it as her job to scout ahead and look for signs of undead. After a while, she spots a person bound to a stake, rides a bit closer and hears faint moaning. So she returns to the group and warns them of the danger ahead. The rest of the group advances towards the presumed corpse with all proper caution. As soon as he sees the face of the now-undead person, Stanfield exhales a short gasp as this is one of the people who accompanied him during his last expedition.The King kills off the undead with a precise shot of his bow and then promises Stanfield to take care of all the witches' victims as soon as the immediate danger is dealt with.The path is getting much harder to traverse now, so King Lorcan calls upon his royal connection to the land to ease it up for the rest of the group. Meanwhile, Harkover uses his super strength to help here and there without drawing too much attention on how he's done that. Tomas makes good use of his undead radar, and combined with Stanfield's very good eyesight, they can spot a group of specters approaching before they can really see what's going on. So all of the group manage to find a good hiding place (built and reinforced by King Lorcan) in time and they let the undead fly past them.This way, the team reaches a small plateau where they see shining flames in the distance. Knowing that this must either be the hideout of one of the witches, a trap or both, they decide to stay hidden and watch the scenery from afar. After a while, they spot more corpses bound to burning stakes and dancing dark fey who tend the flames. And then they see a young witch, sitting on top of a cauldron, humming a silly song. Tomas is about to charge at the witch when Stanfield spots more cages with hostages and he urges the Godhand to reconsider his plans as he doesn't want him to sacrifice his citizens.The team discusses their strategy and finally settle on Lorcan going in first with a silencing shot and having Tomas then drag her away from the hostages. Fortunately, Lorcan's shot is on mark and Tomas manages to wrestle the witch down. But then, to his surprise, the ground turns out to be made of burned corpses coming alive. And the corpses begin to grapple him as well. Meanwhile, the dark fey all gang up on the poor Godhand and throw their barrages of flames at him. Amielle understands that this situation is looking very dire for Tomas, so she throws a grenade at the fey and undead. Stanfield splits up again and summons his loremaster to unleash a barrage of spells at the fey while Dame Melissa singles out other fey to mow down with her steed. Harkover Lee uses a dispel on the Witch after he saw that she isn't really impressed by fire magic, but he only manages to unravel her spell of youthfulness. Which makes the witch turn rather old and seemingly more appropriate for her presumed age.(oh my, the creepy kid witch archetype)Tomas remains stalwart in pinning down the witch, Sister Pernicity, and Harkover Lee rushes to his aid, bringing along a rope to tie her up. Meanwhile, the rest of the party deals with the fey and undead. Harkover and Tomas then drag the witch out of reach for her Bonds of Forced Faith ritual and King Lorcan decapitates her without harming the hostages. Stanfield frees them all and asks them to take shelter in Pernicity's hut and stay hidden until the Red Comtessa has been dealt with. They are really grateful to see both their Mayor and their King coming to their aid and do as they've been told.Being confronted with that many undead, Tomas offers to anoint the weapons of his comrades with holy water from the channels of Alais Primos. Amielle si a bit skeptical at first as she fears that the water may ruin her gunpowder, but she still agrees to dip her bullets in the holy substance. The weather now turns bitterly cold and Dame Melissa protects all of the more vulnerable people with her endure elements spell. King Lorcan continues to support the ascent with his earth magic and after what feels like an eternity the group finally arrives at the top of Cauldron Hill.They all know that this is where the Red Comtessa, mastermind behind all this, has established her lair, and so they approach with stealth and caution. Stanfield summons his loremaster who casts a spell to scout the location from all sides. He then shares what he learned through his magic with the others: First, there are more fey, which will most likely mean more fire. There are also several witches dancing around a cauldron, which might be part of the Comtessa's ritual. A chimera-like creature guards the witches, and he describes the beast as a lion with a snake-like mane.(that one sounds... oddly familiar)Stanfield continues to state that the Comtessa holds more people captive who are being guarded by specters. So the group discusses all possible options and decide to go all out on the Red Comtessa as this might be the only chance to stop her. Especially Stanfield knows that this is payback time and he cannot hold back after all he and Flint have lost. So he summons all of his incarnations and offers to team up with Tomas against the fey and the specters. Lee is ready to unleash a fiery barrage on the witches without harming the Comtessa as he doesn't want to harm the prisoners.That's actually all the planning they need before they spread out as Amielle is more of an independent agent anyway (she also swears to not harm the prisoners) while the King and Dame Melissa will take on single targets one by one.The actual battle starts with one surprise fireball from Harkover Lee which turns all of the dancing witches to cinders. This tells the Comtessa that her guests of honor have finally arrived. So she orders the fey to attack whoever comes close. She then spots Amielle and Harkover Lee and throws a lightning bolt into their general direction. Amielle is able to roll aside, but Harkover gets hit by the full blow and withdraws. Meanwhile, the fey throw their fire at the King, Tomas and Dame Melissa who retaliate in melee combat. Melissa then sees that being too close to the others may be too much of a risk, so she charges at the chimera while Stanfield harasses the fey from a distance. He directs his counselor to support the group and lets his warrior go into melee as well.Tomas sees that Harkover Lee is badly burnt from the lightning bolt and heals him with his healing fist. Lee recovers and continues his rain of fire on the fey. Amielle stays at a safe distance and shoots at the fey with her revolver, but with little success. Melissa keeps her one-on-one with the snake-maned lion, but she takes some blows and bites in the process. King Lorcan and the Stanfields engage in a heavy battle with the fey and the Comtessa tries to bring down the King with a curse. But she didn't expect the intervention of Tomas, who takes the full effect upon himself.(We should call him Tomas the martyr at this point... he intercepted every single curse in this adventure. Most times he made his save, but he wasn't too lucky in the final battle.)“Damn your bloody gods of the Clergy! They shall all rot in hell!” she screams.Tomas ignores her curses and teams up with Dame Melissa and Amielle Latimer to put an end to the chimera. Stanfield and Harkover Lee withdraw again and agree to free the prisoners first as they might have to fight the Red Comtessa directly. Together, they eliminate the specters and Harkover Lee shatters the risuric knot with one of his spells.The Red Comtessa tries to curse the King again, this time with a stunning curse, and Tomas intercepts again. Unfortunately, he takes on the full effect once again and falls to the ground. Things aren't looking too well for the team right now as the cauldron all of a sudden seems to gain a consciousness of its own and starts hopping down the Hill.But then, a storm rises seemingly from out of nowhere and a single lightning strikes the Hill. With the roaring thunder that follows, a huge stag steps on the top of the Hill. He rears his head and lightning emerges from its body, imbuing the weapons of the Green knight and King Lorcan. Another flash strikes Harkover Lee's chest, invigorating his magical abilities. Melissa's stag turns its head towards the mythical creature which is when Melissa realizes that this fey stag must be connected to the man she saw earlier. Auryn however instantly realizes the true nature of the “Old Stag”, giving Melissa the uncanny feeling that this one would be somehow a kind of guardian spirit.The stag then turns to the group of frightened captives, who have since been released by Stanfield and Lee. It calms them down somehow and leads them away from the site of battle.(Yeah, this is no one else but a prior incarnation of the Storm Fey known as Old Stag or Guardian of the Threshold. The fisherman was the human form he was reincarnated into at the time, the stag is his spirit form and his magic is tied to lightning. He obviously may not interfere directly in this case which is why he resorts to influencing and empowering)Harkover Lee uses his replenished magic to throw a final fireball at the fey, which is enough to kill them off. He then tries to dispel the moving cauldron but isn't successful. Amielle and Melissa then try to stop the cauldron together: Amielle starts by throwing a grenade at the thing which sends it flying through the air. Dame Melissa throws her lance at the flying cauldron, the lightning that surrounded her weapon strikes the object and the cauldron falls down the cliff with a bang. Meanwhile, King Lorcan fights against the pillars at the ritual site which seem to come alive as well.The Red Comtessa is very much surprised by this turn of events. She throws another lightning bolt at King Lorcan, but he isn't too impressed. As soon as the prisoners are out of sight, the group agrees to take on the Comtessa together. They kill her and then disassemble the moving pillars one by one.King Lorcan and the rest are very much intrigued by the sudden appearance and disappearance of the mysterious stag.“The presence of the Fey must be really strong here, and they didn't like what the witches were doing”, Dame Melissa guesses.They move down the Hill after a long, hard battle and rescue all of the previously captive citizens of Flint. The first group they find, the ones guided by the stag, explain that the creature vanished into a gust of wind after they arrived at a safe distance from the battle, but they also don't know more about it.After being finally rid of the witches and their dark magic, King Lorcan is finally able to celebrate his birthday. He uses it as an opportunity to step down from his role as King and names Dame Melissa his successor. Stanfield promises to never forget what the King had done for him and Flint that day and he openly thanks Lorcan for his support.The memory then ends and we all find ourselves back inside the Navras Opera house, slowly recovering from the experience we just had.(So that's our Bonds of Forced Faith!I must say that it would work really phenomenal as a standalone adventure, especially with a larger group. Many of the playable characters have really creative power suites that are unique to them and don't stick to y'olde character class restrictions... which I totally love! I fear that Amielle might have gotten the short end of the stick, which wasn't too bad in our case, but she could need a bit of a beef up in comparison to the others. Also, we kept the party rivalry pretty civil and I know it would be much more fun in a one-shot. That last battle was really intense as well... we had a streak of bad luck, so Tiz helped us out a bit with the Stag... he just didn't want to re-write his canon with a dead Harkover Lee <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )</blockquote>

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