PDA

View Full Version : Journal Campaign Journal: Ragesian Incursion



SleepyShadow
2018-05-24, 05:34 PM
I had a dumb idea and a bunch of players, so I split them up into multiple groups and gave them each a different night to play on. I set the games in an old campaign setting we've all played in a bunch of times, then mashed together ideas from Githyanki Incursion, War of the Burning Sky, Red Hand of Doom, Scales of War, Knights of the Lich Queen, and XCOM with the hopes of creating a sweeping war tale encompassing a setting my players all care about. The different groups will be acting independently at first, though their efforts will effect the challenges other groups may face. Eventually, the idea is for the groups to link up and take on the BBEG battle one another for the fate of the realms. The groups will be able to communicate with one another in-between sessions, swapping war stories and such with the in-game justification of hearing news of the war effort taking place in other locations.

Hopefully it'll be entertaining for everyone involved (players and readers alike), and hopefully the enormous amount of effort needed to pull this off won't drive me insane :smalltongue:

UPDATE: Team Evil is on an indefinite hiatus because of out-of-game stupidity.

SleepyShadow
2018-05-24, 09:11 PM
Saorise - Human Cleric 3/Wizard 5 - She mostly plays support for the group, but has a few offensive spells to throw around when need be. Cranky and a little obtuse at times, she tries to herd the party like a cattle dog when things get dicey. The utility caster of the group.
Flint - Human Ranger 5/Rogue 3 - Theoretically he's the skilled guy of the party, though mostly he just does a bunch of damage. Very friendly, quite the charlatan, and a little dim. Highest DPS in the party.
Ashlynn - Half Elf Paladin 7/Warlock 1 - The face of the group. When combat rolls around, she does respectable damage and can take a few hits, but she hasn't quite hit her stride yet. Coming into her own as a team leader. Spearheads melee combats and plays backup healer when necessary.
Virion - Human Druid 6/Barbarian 1 - Died valiantly fighting a group of spellthief assassins and refused the raise dead spell once his body was recovered.
Jasaad - Human Sorcerer 4/Warlock 2 - Bled to death after he opened one too many doors. He got raised by the shadar-kai so they could ransom him off.
Zeke - Lizardfolk Druid 6 - Newcomer to the group, and currently acting as support. Since lizardfolk don't understand human emotion very well, she just laughs very loudly during any situation where strong emotion might be called for.




Goldberg - Minotaur Paladin 4 - Bled to death in a fight with Thalos soldiers.
Amir Von Bodenstein - Minotaur Paladin 5/Warlock 1 - The player had just bought a minotaur gladiator mini the same day his previous character died. He really wanted to use it :smallannoyed:
Goremett - Half Orc Fighter 4 - Left the party.
Pitow - Kenku Rogue 6 - Effective at being sneaky, fast with a snarky remark, and nominally the smartest member of the team.
Sergeant Slaughter - Human Artificer 6 - A new addition to the team. Basically the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket, but dumber and less motivational. Really likes his homemade gun.
Evonne - Githyanki Scout 4 - Hit by an AoE while unconscious and died.
Amelia - Githzerai Sorcerer 5 - Died to a cloud of daggers.
Eclipso - Human Wizard 6 - A self proclaimed blue mage. I hope that she does more than counterspell.
Imiza Irmentrude - Human BESM Paladin 6 - Quiet and dour, the Ragesian native is forced to play healer far more than she would like. The party keeps referring to her as "Armored Stranger" since nobody bothered to ask for her name. Thinking about betraying the group.

SleepyShadow
2018-05-25, 01:12 PM
The first session went pretty well, though a couple of the encounters were a little harsher than I anticipated. I think I'll have to make a few adjustments.


The party started off in Zounah, a powerful Romanesque city-state at the heart of commerce on the northern half of the continent. The PCs were hanging around the city square as the biannual military parade marched through, when they were approached by Cassius Varsus (who quickly became known as Big Cass), a Zounite infantryman who needed some help with a problem outside of town. Cass told them a group of gnolls had come down out of the scraglands and were starting to raid a logging camp north of the city.

"Sure, I guess it can't hurt to help a fellow soldier," Saorise said with a shrug.
"How much does this pay?" Flint asked.
"Five gold per gnoll head we collect," Cass replied with a grin.
"Good enough for me."
"Is he cute?" Ashlynn asked.
I gave her a weird look and rolled a couple of dice. "Uh, sure. He's ruggedly handsome."
Ashlynn nodded excitedly. "Okay! Let's help him!"

I wasn't going to question her logic.

The party headed north, bumped through a random encounter, and made it to the logging camp relatively unscathed. The camp was guarded by a dozen poorly equipped lumberjacks conscripted into martial duty, and was overseen by a pompous beaurocrat named Gaius Verulus. After getting some less than helpful directions ("Gnolls in the treeline!") the PCs headed off into the woods accompanied by Big Cass and Arruns Renatus (a local hunter). Flint was able to put his tracking skills to good use, and the party soon found the gnoll encampment filled with a dozen wounded and exhausted gnoll warriors. The party leaped into action and killed three of the gnolls while the rest fled into the forest. Content with their victory, the party looted the camp and headed back to the logging site. Amidst the various bits of loot from the gnolls, the party found a coin of a strange mint with an inscription in a language none of the PCs spoke.

"Does it sell for more than a gold piece?" Flint asked.
"No," I grumbled. "It is a gold piece."

The party rested up at the logging camp, bought a few supplies, and were ready to head back out into the woods when over a dozen gnolls stormed into the logging site. The leader was a ponderously large gnoll with sharp claws and wicked fangs. He challenged the party to battle ("Face to fang! Blade to claw!") which the PCs accepted. We all learned a valuable lesson that day: the Gnoll Fang of Yeenoghu is way nastier in practice than he looks on paper. He absolutely shredded the party, and it was only a couple bad die rolls on the Fang's part that prevented a TPK. Thankfully, they didn't all die, and the gnolls' morale was broken with the defeat of their chief. One of the remaining gnolls stepped forth and offered to explain what had happened in exchange for the safety of his people. The party thought this was a good idea, since they wanted info and were not in any shape to pick another fight.

"Strange warriors in orange and blue drove us from our homeland," the gnoll explained. "They appeared from nowhere and attacked without pause. We were forced to flee. The strangers make camp in the woods, too. They take cave from deep one and lash its body to tree as a warning."
"Deep one?" Saorise asked. "Like the fish people out at Devil Reef?"
"Brain eater," the gnoll replied.
"Great ..."

The gnolls picked up their dead chief and skulked back into the woods, leaving the party to decide on a course of action. After some deliberation, they resolved to rest up and go check out the cave where the strangers were supposedly at. Flint guided the party through the woods, following some tracks that were definitely not gnolls. Deep in the forest, they found the decapitated body of a mind flayer crucified to a tree just outside of a damp cave.

"So these guys killed a mind flayer, and we're gonna go bother them?" Saorise asked.
"Yeah," Flint said. "Why not?"
"We got our butts kicked by gnolls. Mind flayers are tougher than gnolls."
"So are we."

Inside the cave, the party found a pair of humanoids in orange armor and blue cloaks standing watch in front of a tunnel entrance. The humanoids almost looked human, save for a slight yellow tint to their skin, long limbs, and overly large eyes. The two strangers got off a volley with their hand crossbows before the party closed the distance and killed one of them. The other one escaped down the tunnel, shouting in a strange tongue. Flint and Cass chased after her, only to be met with a barrage of readied actions from the seven other soldiers in the other part of the cave. The rest of the party hurried after them, and a messy battle ensued between the higher level PCs and the numerically superior and better organized Ragesian forces. About halfway through the fight, Arruns took a huge hit from the enemy ranger/sorcerer and died horribly. Thankfully, he was just a minor NPC, but his death punctuated the idea that these guys meant business. Eventually, the party triumphed and claimed the loot from their fallen foes, as well as the spoils the Ragesians had gathered up from the dead mind flayer.

"I want to get Arruns raised," Ashlynn said.
"What? Why?" I asked.
"He was nice!"
"Um, okay then ..."
"We need to figure out what's going on with these guys first," Flint said.
"Maybe there's someone in Zounah who could help us out," Saorise replied.
"There's an elf sage in town," Big Cass said. "He runs a tavern with his family. He's real smart."
"Good enough for me," Flint said with a shrug.
"Then can we get Arruns raised?" Ashlynn asked.
"Sure, but it's coming out of your cut of the loot."

SleepyShadow
2018-05-30, 12:40 PM
The second group had the novel idea of rolling up a bunch of (largely) cartoonishly evil villains, so I shrugged and let them have their way. The party started in a hobgoblin camp out in the wilderness of the desert kingdom Al-Hassan. The hobgoblin locals spent most of their time checking the perimeter, crafting equipment, and bemoaning how things were so much better back in the days of the Red Hand. The PCs spend about twenty minutes asking the hobgoblins about the Red Hand of Doom (apparently none of these players have played that adventure). When they began to tire of hearing the hobgoblins boast about their dead half-dragon chief and how they almost sacked the capital of Al-Hassan once, a squad of Ragesian soldiers were Gated into the camp. The party debated on rolling for initiative, but ultimately decided against it.

"Who are you people?" Goldberg asked, deciding he was going to be the face of the party.
"We are those who offer glory and conquest," Imiza replied. "Consider yourselves lucky to be given such an opportunity."
"What opportunity would that be?" Goremett asked.
One of the Ragesian NPCs stepped forward and introduced himself as Shalashaska the spy master. "Al-Hassan sent a diplomatic envoy to the desert elves to forge an alliance and open trade routes. The diplomat is none other than the sultana's daughter, Sarika Veluth. If we abduct her before she reaches the elven city, it will prevent the two kingdoms from allying against us, and we'll have some powerful leverage to keep Al-Hassan off our backs until we're ready."
"What's in it for us?" Goldberg asked.
"Do this mission and we'll consider you allies of Ragesia," Shalashaska said. "Do it well, and all the desert kingdoms could be yours to control."
"Kingmaker, let's do this!" Goldberg shouted, pumping his fist.

The party sortied out on horseback with twenty hobgoblin soldiers in tow, who were all eager for a chance to spit in Al-Hassan's eye. One time skip later, they found the princess's escort caravan travelling along an open road guarded by fifty warriors, forty on foot and ten on camels. The party decided to split their forces; the PCs charged headlong into the front while the hobgoblins were sent to attack the rearguard. It was an interesting exercise to see what tactics the party would employ (hint: what tactics?) and it was a good chance to test out the Unearthed Arcana Mass Combat rules. I don't know how well the system will hold up if there are hundreds of units crashing into each other, but for a small skirmish like this it worked pretty well. Even with the mass combat rules speeding things along, the fight took about an hour to get through. The PCs lost fifteen hobgoblins, but they were ultimately victorious. Imiza congratulated the surviving hobgoblins, Goremett looted through the dead bodies, Evonne stood on top of one of the wagons to keep an eye out for trouble, and Goldberg ransacked the caravan in search of the princess. He found her hiding in one of the wagons, and though she tried to put up a fight, the level one half-elf bard was no match for the minotaur. Sarika was disarmed and forcefully dragged out of the wagon. The party decided to camp along the side of the road to rest up before they headed out for a Ragesian outpost Shalashaska had instructed them to take the princess to.

It was a bit of a shorter session than usual, but everyone had a good time and seemed excited to deviate from the usual D&D game type.

SleepyShadow
2018-06-01, 12:52 PM
The party headed back to Zounah, picking up Virion along the way (he missed the first session). After some brief introductions were made, and no random encounters occurred, the PCs followed Big Cass into the market district to find Silvarus the sage. The sage's house was built alongside one of the major taverns in town called the Copper Coin. For some flavor, one of his lawn statue's was a gargoyle that kept watching the party as they headed up the walkway to the door. Flint was the only one to notice, but he didn't bother pointing it out to the rest of the group, so no garden gnome combat :smallwink:

As soon as Silvarus answered the door, the party dumped one of the dead Ragesian scouts out of a burlap sack and asked him for help. Saorise and Flint explained the situation as best they could, Ashlynn kept begging the party for money to resurrect Arruns, and Virion kept trying to rummage through the sage's house when nobody was looking. Silvarus informed the party the dead body was a relative of the Gith, but it was neither githyanki nor githzerai. He also translated the coin's inscription for them: "By the God-Queen's decree, go forth and conquer all."

"That's not ominous at all," Flint commented.
"Is there anything else you could tell us?" Saorise asked.
Silvarus shook his head. "I'm a cartographer, not an expert on extra-planar entities. I've got an old friend who lives in the Seldarin woods. He might know something about all this. His name is Noland Var. He's a gnome."
"Don't elves live there?" Ashlynn questioned.
"I'm an elf living in a human city," Silvarus replied. "What's so strange about a gnome living with elves?"
"Fair point. Hey, Cass."
"What's up?" Cass asked, suddenly remembering that he still existed.
"Are you coming with us?"
"Sorry, I gotta stay near Zounah. Best of luck on your journey, though. If you come back through here, I'd be happy to join up again sometime."
"What about you, Silvarus?" Saorise asked. "Do you want to come with us to see your friend?"
"I suppose I could if you really need an extra set of hands," Silvarus said. "Give me an hour to get my things ready and say goodbye to the missus."

Taking the hint, the PCs went shopping for anything they thought they might need. Flint bought an excessive amount of healing potions, Saorise enlisted with the Mage Corp of the Zounite army, Ashlynn spent her cut of the loot resurrecting Arruns (who promptly blew her off and left), and Virion caught butterflies. Once their preparations were complete, they hooked back up with Silvarus and headed out on the long road to Seldarin.

The first couple days of travel passed without much fanfare. They stopped at the local farming towns along the way to rest and get to know each other better, and in one town (Capendu, iirc) the party made friends with a touring priest of Demeter named Benjamin Dawnright. On the third day of travel, they got ambushed by a group of Ragesian scouts looking to capture Silvarus. The battle went poorly for the party. They only managed to drop three of the Ragesians before the scouts escaped with Silvarus and left the majority of the party unconscious along the side of the road. After some grousing about the difficulty of the fight (it was EL appropriate, I swear!) the party downed a few potions and went after the Ragesians. Once again, Flint's tracking abilities came in handy, and the party was able to catch up with the Ragesians just as they were making it back to camp. This time it was the PCs who got to set up the ambush, and while the fight was still touch and go at times, the party triumphed and were able to rescue Silvarus. The PCs questioned why the Ragesians were after him, but it was ultimately decided they must be after him for some geographical knowledge he had. Silvarus had no idea what that could be, however.

The party did not have much time to idle about, however, for they saw a heavily armored knight riding a red dragon approaching their position. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, the party hid in the tall grass and waited for the dragonrider to pass them by. Once the threat was gone, the party hurried on their way. By nightfall, they reached a small cabin out on the grasslands and decided it would be a good place to camp out for the night. The cabin was already occupied, however, by a Zene witch named Crystal Wolf. She was reticent at first, but a combination of smooth talking and persuasion rolls got the party into her good graces, and so she allowed them to sleep in her cabin.

Morning came with a bang! The party awoke to find a group of Ragesians attacking the cabin. This time, the Ragesians had a cleric with them, and she made life quite difficult for the party. Turns out bad guys can use Healing Word, too. The party's tactics were on point this time, though, and with a little luck and a bit of healing from Crystal Wolf, the party ultimately triumphed. I'm always glad to see when my players can work together in a fight instead of just all trying to 1v1 the enemies.

The session ended with high-fives and a pile of loot.

SleepyShadow
2018-06-05, 12:39 PM
Due to foreseen and unforeseen events, Team Evil's roster got changed :smallsigh:
At the start of the session, Goremett's player wanted to trade out characters. He has played a bunch of half-orc fighters in the past, so I wasn't too surprised by this. So out went the half-orc and in came Pitow the kenku rogue. He met up with the party on their way back to the Ragesian/Hobgoblin fort, introduction were made (though Imiza's name was still not asked for) and the party continued on with the unwilling princess in tow. Along the way, they ran afoul of a group of scouts from the island nation of Thalos. The Thalish soldiers recognized Sarika and immediately jumped to her rescue (they were planning on holding her for ransom once they got her, but better in the hands of Thalos than in the hands of a minotaur). The battle was surprisingly one-sided (eight CR 1/4 soldiers, two ranger/wizards, and one level 3 cleric) and the party was soundly defeated while the Thalish suffered zero casualties. The scouts picked up the princess, who Goldberg had shoved in a sand dune at the start of the fight, and they went on their way.

The party patched itself back up and hobbled back to camp and began to plot how to get Sarika back. Sort of ...

"We got our asses handed to us," Pitow said.
"We could've won that fight if Goldberg hadn't failed his save against hold person," Imiza muttered.
"Sorry I have an eight wisdom!" the minotaur shouted.
"What kind of paladin dumps wisdom?!"
"The kind that kills stuff!"
"Yeah, like all those Thalos guys you killed," Evonne snickered.
"Shut up, you went down in the second round of combat," Goldberg snapped.
"Better than the first."
"What was the DC on that spell anyway?" Pitow asked.
"It was only DC 13," I said, holding up my notebook to verify.

Once the party was done bickering, they actually got around to figuring out a plan. They sent Shalashaska to go find out where the Thalish had taken Sarika, then they went to bed. By morning, Shalashaska had returned with information both good and bad.

"The Thalish have taken Sarika to an abandoned keep near the coastline," he explained. "Looks like they're waiting for a ship to come pick them up. At best, we have three days before the princess gets transferred off the mainland and is out of our reach."
"So what do we do?" Pitow asked.
"We hurry," Imiza said.

Two uneventful days of overland travel later, the party arrived outside the ruined keep at the rocky coastline of Al-Hassan. The party could see from a distance that a few of the Thalish soldiers were patrolling outside, and a couple others were posted in watchtowers. The three Thalos spellcasters were nowhere to be seen. The PCs decided to let Pitow and Evonne sneak around, trying to take out as many guards as they could, while Goldberg and Imiza waited nearby in case something went wrong. I was glad they had come up with a plan other than "rush them down" so I let it play out with the guards acting like goons in a Metal Gear game. Pitow and Evonne snuck up as close as they could, then the kenku used his mimicry ability to lure one of the guards over. After the appropriate "What was that noise?", the guard went to investigate and got pounced on by Pitow and Evonne before he could raise an alarm. The two snuck a bit closer to the fort and tried the same tactic, but the dice were not on their side. Evonne failed to do enough damage to drop the guard, and Pitow fumbled his attack. The two then lost initiative, allowing the guard to call out an alarm and putting the base on alert.

Once combat properly ensued, things went pretty smoothly for the first couple of rounds. The rest of the guards came out of the base at the end of the first round, and the three spellcasters joined the fight at the end of the second. Unfortunately, Goldberg took a twenty-point critical hit from a crossbow at one point, dropped from a Ray of Sickness a couple rounds later, and bled to death before anyone in the party could get to him.

First PC death! Hopefully it'll be a long while before it happens again.

Despite losing their heavy hitter, the remaining party members stood firm and were able to kill the squad of Thalish soldiers. The loot and (once again) the princess were theirs to claim.

SleepyShadow
2018-06-09, 04:15 PM
Two of our players (Flint and Ashlynn) were absent, so Crystal Wolf offered to travel with the party temporarily to help fill in the gap. Saorise and Virion both thought this was a splendid idea. The party didn't make it very far into the elf forest before a Ragesian demoness named Jaeness accosted the party and demanded that they hand over Silvarus and his map. The PCs naturally refused, so Jaeness summoned up a hellhound and a fistful of skeletons. The battle was on! The mooks were largely hit point speed bumps, and even the hellhound proved unimpressive. Jaeness whacked at the party for a couple rounds until she fell below half health, then she teleported away. The PCs cleaned up the remaining mooks and continued on.

Shortly after, they were attacked by a trio of flaming warriors summoned by the malevolent spirit of the forest. Crystal Wolf tried to tackle Virion out of the way of the initial barrage, but he shoulder-checked her out of his way and got walloped by a flaming spear for his trouble, and Crystal Wolf was stunned by the backblast. After the initial round was spent figuring out how to fight the darn things ("I can't bite them! They set me on fire!") the party didn't have too much trouble. However, after the fight was done, the party was offered vague promises of power by the ancient fire spirit in exchange for his freedom from the "elven curse" he suffered from.

"Power good!" Virion exclaimed.
"Seems pretty sketchy to me," Saorise argued.
"We need every advantage we can get."
"What advantage is it even?"
"Let's go find out!"

Taking the bait, reluctantly or otherwise, the party veered off-course and headed north into the woods rather than continuing west along the trail. Jaeness reappeared a short while later, though this time she claimed that she only wanted to talk. She warned the party that a village of half-crazed eladrin elves lived down by the lake where the fire spirit was trapped. The demoness warned the party that they would likely have to kill the eladrin in order to free the spirit, and she offered to help them fight the eladrin in exchange for Silvarus's magic map. The party was understandably suspicious, but told her that if a fight broke out in the eladrin village they would give her the map in exchange for her help. Silvarus wasn't happy about the PCs offering up his map, but Crystal Wolf reassured them it was a sensible compromise. My NPCs are rarely helpful when it comes to making decisions :smalltongue:

Jaeness teleported away, and the party continued along until they heard a scream from somewhere nearby. Virion raced off to investigate with Silvarus hot on his heels, while Saorise complained the whole way about deviating from the mission. The party came upon a winged elven maiden (actually an aasimar) being attacked by a band of eladrin warriors. Virion leaped to the maiden's defense, and Saorise begrudgingly decided to help. I swear, I've never known a PC to be more reluctant to go do adventuring things. The fight was surprisingly difficult, with Saorise and Crystal Wolf taking turns getting dribbled by the eladrin while Virion and Silvarus slowly thinned their numbers. Saorise referred to it as "unintentionally tanking". However, at one point during the fight, this happened:

"Alright, it's your turn," I said to Saorise's player.
"Okay, so eladrin are a subrace of elves," she muttered, "which means they're fey, and fey are immune to sleep and charm, so ..."
"So what are you doing?"
"Um, I cast sleep!"
"..."
"..."
"Nothing happens," I said with a grin.
"I need coffee," she groaned.

Once the fight was over (and Virion and I stopped laughing) the aasimar introduced herself as Tiljanni, a local girl who lived in the eladrin village. She had no idea why they would suddenly attack her, but she was sure the village elder could give the PCs more information. However, we decided to end the session a little early so Saorise's player could go to bed.
TL;DR: Make sure your casters are caffeinated!

SleepyShadow
2018-06-11, 12:19 PM
With Princess Sarika once again secured as a political hostage, and the replacement minotaur added to the roster, Team Evil headed back for their base camp. On the way back, Imiza secretly sent a message to Al-Hassan to let them know the location of the princess. Thankfully for her, the rest of the party has yet to cotton onto what she's up to. Regardless, I quietly replaced the next random encounter with a group of Al-Hassan soldiers. Two days of uneventful travel later, the ambush was sprung.

The enemy group consisted of six Al-Hassan warriors, a couple of trained jackals, a bard, and a warblade. Waiting in reserve were six gnoll mercenaries tasked with guarding the bard in case the PCs were able to break through the front line. The warriors and the jackals did a little better than I expected, since there were enough warm bodies to crowd around Evonne and prevent her from using her skirmish ability. Still, they only had about 12 HP, so the rest of the party members were able to carve them up with little issue. The warblade proved another matter entirely; she took down both Amir and Evonne before finally getting taken out of the fight. Unfortunately, the bard tagged the group with shatter after Evonne had already gone down, and she bled to death on the following round.

Pour out a beer for the poor little scout :smallfrown:

The fight otherwise went well for the party, and even the surprise addition of six gnolls did little to thwart Team Evil. The loot was gathered, including a suit of +1 half-plate that Amir immediately snagged, and the session wrapped up since the party was down a member and the fight had taken three hours to get through. How this group manages to stretch out fights this long is still beyond me.

TL;DR: Team Evil doesn't have very good luck in combat.

SleepyShadow
2018-06-15, 10:42 AM
Just a quick update. I was reminded on Wednesday by Flint's player that I had forgotten the part where he tried to seduce Silvarus's twelve year old daughter. Silly me, how could I forget such a horrific character defining moment? :smallyuk:

Anyway, a proper journal entry will be made on Sunday.

SleepyShadow
2018-06-17, 12:52 PM
The party followed Tiljanni back to her lakeside village, and found the locals were split into two camps: those resigned to their fate of watching over an imprisoned spirit for all eternity, and those who wanted to find freedom in death. Tiljanni herself wasn't interested interested in either option, but she didn't know what else could be done. The PCs asked around the village and found out from the village elder that if anyone might know of a way to break the cycle, it would be Timbre the dryad. However, the leader of the rebels, an eladrin named Dusk, offered an alternative to trying to pry information out of the dryad: just kill her and bring the body back. Dusk surmised the eladrin would lose hope and abandon their post if Timbre was dead.

"Do we know anything else about the dryad?" Saorise asked.
"She's got a pair of pet dire boars!" Tiljanni said excitedly.
"Mmm, bacon ..." Virion muttered.
"Don't hurt the boars!" Tiljanni whined. "They're so big and fluffy!"
"Do we know anything useful?" Saorise sighed.
"She was once in love with Anyariel, champion of Seldarin and the paladin who imprisoned the fire spirit at the cost of her own life," Crystal Wolf said. "A local nymph was also in love with Anyariel, and she became bitter rivals with Timbre trying to win Anyariel's affections."
"Wait, did you just describe a lesbian faerie love triangle?" Virion asked.
"Um ... yes," Crystal Wolf replied sheepishly.
"Love triangles are stupid," Saorise grumbled, "but we should go talk to the nymph. She might be able to help us."

Virion used his Disney Princess druid powers to ask the local wildlife about Gwynevere the nymph, and a friendly bluebird gave the party directions. They found her in a pond a couple miles away from the eladrin village, but she wasn't too keen on answering the party's questions. However, Saorise had a pretty clever plan. She used Minor Conjuration to fabricate a fake of Gwynevere's decapitated head and planned to show it to Timbre in the hopes of luring the dryad into talking. I shrugged and went along with it. Seemed like a good enough ruse to me. The party tracked Timbre down to her tree and tossed the "head" at her before she could sic her dire boars on them.

"You killed Gwyn?" Timbre asked sadly.
"Um, yes," Saorise said.
"I'm sure it had to be done. She was falling apart," Timbre replied. "Why are you here?"
"We're trying to find a way to free the eladrin from their eternal duty," Saorise said.
"I want to fight the fire spirit!" Virion interjected.
"Destroying the fire spirit would certainly free the elves," Silvarus said with a sly grin.
"No, hang on a sec," Saorise said. "We have to think this-"
"We can have glorious battle!" Virion shouted excitedly. "Blood for the blood god!"
"If you wish to slay the great fire spirit, he is imprisoned at the bottom of the lake," Timbre said. "Pinned there by Anyariel's magic sword fashioned from the bark of my own tree."
"Boss fight! Magic sword!" Virion said eagerly
"Boss fight! Magic sword!" Silvarus parrotted.
"You guys are insufferable," Saorise groaned.

Virion took off for the lake with Silvarus hot on his heels. Saorise trudged along irritably behind, with Crystal Wolf trying to reassure her that things would work out in the end. After the party clobbered their way through a random encounter with a couple of merrow, the boys headed into the lake while the girls stayed at shoreside. The spot where Indomitability the fire spirit had been imprisoned was only twenty feet deep, so Virion and Silvarus were able to swim down there without any difficulty. Working together, they attempted to pry the wooden sword out of the monster, but only got high enough on the strength check to lodge it free from the bottom of the lake. Indomitability burst to the surface with Virion on its back, while Silvarus frantically swam after them.

The battle was pretty fierce, and the party had some difficulty slogging through Indomitability's 80ish hp without their two heavy hitters, but eventually they managed to take down the great fire spirit and claim the Living Blade of Anyariel for themselves. Virion got to keep it, since the party was in agreement that it made sense to give the druid a wooden sword. However, before they could finish leveling up, the party came under attack by Jaeness and her squad of skeletons. The demoness was eager for revenge, since she felt the party had betrayed her by not killing the eladrin. The party was tapped on resources, so what would have normally been a moderate challenge proved too much for them to handle right after the battle with Indomitability. Before anyone could be slain, however, Saorise had an idea.

"We surrender!" the wizard shouted.
"You do?" Jaeness asked.
"We do?!" Virion sputtered.
"Yes," Saorise said calmly. "You're after Silvarus, right? Take him and leave us alone."
"Deal," Jaeness purred.
"What are you doing?" Virion asked.
"Silvarus and Crystal are unconscious in thigh-deep water," Saorise replied. "They're gonna drown if we don't get them up this turn, and I'm out of spells. You get Crystal out of the water, and we'll figure out how to rescue Silvarus later."

Jaeness grabbed Silvarus and teleported away, leaving the remaining party members to carry Crystal Wolf to shore and get her conscious with Virion's last spell slot. The party slept in the eladrin village, then struck out for the trail once again. Tiljanni accompanied the party as well, since she wanted to explore the outside world and Virion thought she was "perfect waifu material". After a couple uneventful days of travel, the party finally reached the small town where Silvarus's friend Noland Var lived. About this time, Ashlynn and Flint also joined the group again. The gang was back together!

The party spoke with Noland (a gnome cleric/illusionist who was very bitter about nobody coming to visit him anymore) and learned that the Ragesians had taken over an abandoned flour mill and were using it as a forward operating base. Noland also told them that it was their best shot at finding out where Silvarus had been taken, though with Greater Teleport on the table it was a longshot. Still, the party thought it was a good idea to break the FOB anyway, especially since it was close by. Saorise introduced Ashlynn and Flint to Tiljanni, and the party headed out.

The FOB was a few miles south of the forest town, and some additional fortifications had been made to the hilltop structure. More importantly, however ...

"We can't defeat them!" Flint exclaimed. "They have the high ground!"

All joking aside, the party's assault on the flour mill was entertaining enough. They tried to sweet-talk their way in to no avail ("Magic map? Eh, sorry, we've already got one you see.") and Ashlynn tried to seduce her way past the gate guards, but she was met with bowfire for her trouble. Once battle broke out in proper form, the party spent most of the time exchanging ranged attacks with the Ragesians and the gnoll mercenaries they hired. Combat was relatively routine, except for when Ashlynn taunted the gnolls about their honor, causing them to do a massed charge downhill, which nearly killed Flint in the onslaught. Once the outer defenses were dealt with, the party stormed their way inside and fought through the inner barracks and even managed to take a couple of prisoners: a lowly grunt named Claudette and a loud-mouthed bard named Vanala. The party tied them to a tree, then smashed through the final door and engaged in battle with Perimeter Commander Kehalena. The Ragesian eldritch knight managed to last three rounds before getting taken out.

With the FOB commander dead, the party gathered up the loot and whatever intel files they could find. Of note, they found a prisoner transfer log detailing a list of captives that had been transported to Rivenroar Crypt. The party also found four red-shelled eggs each about the size of a dwarf.

"Any ideas what they are?" Flint asked.
"Dragon eggs, maybe," Ashlynn suggested.
"They aren't big enough," Crystal Wolf said.
"Let's take them to Seldarin City and have them identified," Saorise said.
"Aww, but I wanted breakfast," Virion sighed.
TL;DR: The Ragesians may or may not be working on a super-soldier program.

SleepyShadow
2018-06-19, 12:16 PM
It was sometime after the initial flurry of spending their hard earned loot and the brief introduction of new party members that the PCs were gathered by Spymaster Shalashaska and informed of the Ragesians' actual plan. Ragesian Empress Zarouhi Orlaith had discovered that a dead goddess was cut into pieces and scattered across the world; Zarouhi aims to gather the pieces of the dead goddess and harvest the dormant divine energy from the corpse, thereby becoming a goddess herself. The primary aim of the invasion is to locate the pieces of the goddess and keep natives of the world too occupied to stop Zarouhi's ultimate goal. Conquest of the realm is a secondary goal at best.

"So all these soldiers are fighting and dying in a world not their own purely for the benefit of the Empress?" Pitow asked.
"Yes," Shalashaska replied.
"I like this plan," Amir said.
"I don't agree," Imiza grumbled.
"What's the problem?" Amir questioned. "It's trickle-down economics on a cosmic scale."
"Doesn't that economic structure not work at all?" Pitow asked.
"It'll work here," Amir said confidently. "So what's the plan?"
"Simple," Shalashaska replied. "We've located one of the pieces in an abandoned temple called the Temple of Shining Sand. You just need to go get it and bring it back."
"We got this in the bag," Amir boasted.

The PCs journeyed out, and eventually arrived at the abandoned temple built on top of a low mesa surrounded by blinding mirror sand. Once they figured out that getting hit in the face with glass dust hurts, they blindfolded themselves and used Amir's natural sense of direction to navigate their way to the mesa. Once their, they immediately demonstrated they were out of good ideas for the night. Pitow threw his lucky rabbit's foot into a pool of murky water and nearly got himself and Colette (an NPC paladin/sorcerer they hired on) killed by the hungry tentacle monsters living in the brine. They proceeded to clown their way through a fight with a giant ant-lion, gave all their shoes to a cranky dust mephit, and fought a pretty vicious man-scorpion without so much as a single Godsmack or wrestling joke. I was a tad disappointed.

They hacked their way through a few more encounters before they opened a secret door and accidentally unleashed the most dangerous foe in the entire temple: a swarm of scorpions. Those little buggers are a lot nastier than their CR 5 would indicate. On top of having 50 hp, poison, and immunity to weapon damage, some sadist over at WotC decided it would be a good idea to give the scorpion swarm a 4d6 rend attack against anyone who failed the distraction saving throw. Luckily nobody in the party died, but it did take a few self-centered shatter spells to take the little bastards out.

Eventually the PCs found the library in the temple, but all save Imiza decided that anything that couldn't be swung, worn, consumed, or sold wasn't worth bothering with. Then again, I really shouldn't be surprised by this sort of behavior coming from a group led by Amir's player. It took a long time for him to grasp that Colette was more than an extra set of numbers helping the party out. He was shocked and appalled that she, as an NPC, would demand an equal share of loot under threat of leaving the party. What did he think the word "hired" meant? :smallannoyed:

DM grumbling aside, the PCs eventually discovered the hidden chamber at the back of the temple where a sealed sarcophagus was kept. As soon as Pitow touched it, a mummy staggered forth from the shadows to defend the crypt. Unfortunately, the battle proved fairly anticlimactic - the mummy died before he was able to take his second turn. The temple was thoroughly looted, the treasure divided far less than evenly (I think poor Amelia walked out of the dungeon with only a wand of Detect Magic to show for all the trouble) and the torso of the dead goddess was hauled back to camp.

Another victory for the glory of Ragesia!
TL;DR: Amir's greed is becoming a problem.

Ice
2018-06-22, 01:20 AM
Great campaign so far keep it up!

I love the idea of two campaigns running side by side like this. It is something i have wanted to do for a while and never got around to it. Although i would want to find two groups of friends that dont know each other very well.... i suppose a player could lie about what they are doing and play it off as rumors on the war front that where not actually true.

On a side note are there rules about posting on campaign journals? Seems like not many people write comments on them any more.

Anyway I cant help thinking (and kinda hope) Amir's Greed is going to get someone killed.

Cheers!
Ice

SleepyShadow
2018-06-23, 01:48 AM
Great campaign so far keep it up!

I love the idea of two campaigns running side by side like this. It is something i have wanted to do for a while and never got around to it. Although i would want to find two groups of friends that dont know each other very well.... i suppose a player could lie about what they are doing and play it off as rumors on the war front that where not actually true.

On a side note are there rules about posting on campaign journals? Seems like not many people write comments on them any more.

Anyway I cant help thinking (and kinda hope) Amir's Greed is going to get someone killed.

Cheers!
Ice

I'm glad you like it :smallbiggrin: It's been a little tricky to pull off, admittedly, but all players involved seem eager to make it to the inevitable big confrontation between the two groups. As for posting rules, I have no idea. I'm always glad to get comments, though. And yes, I think Amir's greed getting someone killed is just a matter of when, not if :smalltongue:

SleepyShadow
2018-06-25, 01:17 PM
The party decided to head to Seldarin, capital city of the elf empire, in order to pawn off vendor trash and identify those giant eggs. Outside of the city, the party found a settlement of refugees from the northern kingdom of Sterich huddled about in tents. Most of them were civilians who had fled the country when Ragesia invaded. Among the refugees were several groups of Zene, a nomadic people who would often act as healers, mystics, and entertainers for small villages they travelled through. Today, the Zene were on full medic duty. The elves had also torn down their city walls and were in the process of rebuilding them around the refugee camps. After being escorted to the city proper by an elven guardsman named Ishmael, the PCs split up into three groups. Flint took Tiljanni to the market to sell vendor trash and appraise magic items, Ashlynn and Virion escorted their Ragesian prisoners to jail for interrogation, while Saorise and Crystal went to find the elf captain to warn of the incursion and to ask about the eggs. The elf they sought was a knight named Ohtoha, or as he put it "Sir Ohtoha, Captain of the Order of the Seldarin Guard!"

While Flint was busy crunching numbers and dividing up loot in the background, Ashlynn and Virion found out the elves' idea of interrogation was just to have one of their bards play "It's a Small World" repeatedly until the prisoners cracked. The PCs decided this was far too inhumane, so they interrogated Claudette and Vanara themselves. After a lot of badgering, persuasion rolls, and asking Vanara to ease up on her "baguette" accent, the party learned Silvarus and the other prisoners had been taken to an abandoned crypt once dedicated to Vecna's high priest. Meanwhile, Saorise learned from Sir Ohtoha the eggs they found were red half-dragon eggs, though he didn't know what the other half was. Saorise and Flint rejoined the others at the prison, and the party wizard asked Vanara about the eggs.

"Those are the eggs of the Duthka'Rag," Vanara gleefully explained.
"Bless you," Flint interjected.
"What're those?" Saorise asked.
"Elite soldiers specially bred with the blood of red dragons," Vanara said. "They are unstoppable!"

That's when the Fire Nation Ragesians attacked.

The un-walled elven city was an easy target for the Ragesians to swarm into. The party heard the explosions of combat from the jailhouse and rushed outside to aid the elves defend their home. Floating overhead, directing the Ragesian troops, was an avatar of God-Empress Zarouhi Orlaith; the party wisely chose not to shoot at her. The battle was relatively straightforward, with a group of warriors backed by cinder bones in the first wave, and a group of archers riding in a wagon pulled by an ogre in the second. Team A continues to impress me with their use of terrain and tactics. I guess I'll have to start employing more Sun Tzu tactics to challenge them.

After the battle, the PCs learned the elves had also been largely successful in repelling the attackers, though Captain Ohtoha's house had been broken into and the elven knight had been slain. The half-dragon eggs had likewise been reclaimed by the Ragesian soldiers. Saorise was not convinced Ohtoha is actually dead, and suspects he faked his own death so he could investigate the Ragesians incognito. I guess I shouldn't have named the gate guard Ishmael :smallredface: Later, the PCs tracked down Ohtoha's apprentice at his grave, and found she was a tomboy aasimar named Sayari. They also learned she had taken an oath of vengeance, swearing never to stop her crusade until every last Ragesian was dead. The party decided to take her with them, largely to make sure she wasn't left unchecked. At this point, Crystal Wolf decided to leave the party for the time being, since she wanted to stay with her people for a while (and I didn't want the head count higher than six). The PCs reluctantly traded out the Zene witch for the aasimar paladin of vengeance, and set off for Rivenroar Crypt to free Silvarus. A couple random encounters later, the party stormed into the crypt! Saorise wanted to turn the crypt into the party's new base of operations, but the rest of the team thought working out of a crypt built for a family of Vecna worshippers was just asking for trouble, so the idea was eventually scuttled.

Since going into detail on every combat in the crypt would be tedious at best, I'll just give some highlights of the dungeon crawl.


The Ragesians had bolstered their numbers with lizardfolk and elves that had defected from Seldarin.
Web and Spike Growth cause problems for everyone in tight spaces.
All of the prisoners were magic-users of some kind, leading the PCs to suspect the Ragesians were trying to invoke some sort of ritual.
The Avatar of Blades was not nearly as strong as I thought she'd be; the party dropped her in three rounds.
Silvarus' australian accent gets thicker the more whiskey I drink.
The PCs got to take their revenge on Jaeness! Even with help from a couple of scouts, she was no match for the whole party.
Sayari died in the fight with Jaeness. Only Saorise felt sorry for her.
The Ragesians hadn't been able to clear out the back end of the crypt, and the PCs found that out the hard way. The undead priest of Vecna wasn't too keen on having house guests.
The PCs rescued a Ragesian captive named Naoko, who had allegedly been involved with the defense of Gate Pass back on her homeworld. She didn't know why Zarouhi was dragging her around.


With the dungeon cleared and the prisoners rescued, the PCs decided to head for the coastal city-state of Sapphire, since it was closer and had a mage council that might be persuaded to aid the party. The PCs also gave Silvarus the boot, who took being kicked out of the party with all the grace one might expect from a semi-retired adventurer. After venting for a brief moment, he gave Saorise a copy of his spellbook (though he failed to warn her about the explosive runes hidden somewhere in there), and headed back to Zounah. The party decided to keep travelling with Tiljanni and, although Flint strongly objected to the idea, the PCs took Naoko along with them. As they travelled, the party learned from Naoko that the Ragesian homeworld was basically uninhabitable, since the entire sky was on fire. This led the PCs to believe the invasion objective was to ultimately colonize the world.

The PCs travelled through the cold swamp surrounding Sapphire for several days, aided once again by Flint's ranger abilities, but after a while they were beset by a trio of man-eating tiefling witches and their pet frog/crocodile hybrid. The witches got off a good surprise round and managed to hold person most of the party, but unfortunately for them the two members that weren't paralyzed had lesser restoration and were able to undo most of the damage done by the surprise attack. Afterward, the battle went fairly smoothly, though Saorise spent the entire fight locked in a grapple with the "frogodile". When two of the witches were dead, the third surrendered and offered to give the PCs her captive if they promised to let her live. Intrigued, the PCs followed the witch to her island in the depths of the swamp, and found it littered with the bones of well over fifty people. Ashlynn and Saorise also detected that twenty of the skeletons were animated, ready to attack should the PCs attempt to harm the witch. Cautiously, the PCs searched the huts on the island, and eventually found a red-haired woman chained and gagged in the only dry spot on the island. They quickly unshackled her.

"I was wondering when someone would come rescue me," she purred. "I hope nobody died on my account."
"We didn't even know you were out here," Ashlynn said.
"You mean Benjamin didn't send you?" the woman asked.
"How do you know him?" Virion questioned.
"He's my cousin," she replied. "I'm Katarina D'Kal."
"Side quest achieved?" Virion pondered.
TL;DR: The group continues to surprise me with their competence. I'm glad things are going relatively smooth so far.

AllHailthed4
2018-06-26, 02:19 AM
Saoirse's player here. I personally will always cherish the memory of riding a giant spider across a Web spell into glorious battle. And the part where Flint and Tiljani used their earnings to buy snow cones for the Ragesian prisoners :smallbiggrin:

SleepyShadow
2018-06-26, 12:14 PM
Saoirse's player here. I personally will always cherish the memory of riding a giant spider across a Web spell into glorious battle. And the part where Flint and Tiljani used their earnings to buy snow cones for the Ragesian prisoners :smallbiggrin:

I'll admit, I forgot about the snowcones. Also, the giant spider was Virion. I think he even remembered he had spells during that fight :smalltongue:

Brimming with confidence, the group sortied out for an outpost jointly held by Al-Hassan and Thalish troops. The base was situated along a major trade route, and capturing it would cut off trade between Al-Hassan and the desert elves, and make it more difficult for Thalos to reinforce its ally. Potentially, it could even allow the Ragesians to start trading with the elves for supplies. Imiza was a big proponent of this idea. As she put it, "We should bring our own weapons and feed off the enemy." Amir was then reminded not to actually eat enemy troops.

The party marched on the base, broke in through the main gates, and quickly alerted the entire outpost to their presence. As I didn't want to TPK the group, the enemy came at the PCs in waves, with one round intervals in between each batch of reinforcements. First was a pair of cavalry archers, who faired a lot better than I expected. Then was a trained manticore, which died in one round. Next was a minotaur and four Spartans Thalish veterans, who fought in a tight phalanx formation to make it virtually impossible for the PCs to flank them. Naturally, Pitow was not a fan of their strategy. Last onto the field was the base commander, Captain Drakos Ippotis. The party recognized him immediately, as he was a returning NPC from a previous campaign. Their out-of-character knowledge didn't help much, since the stalwart dragon shaman proved nearly strong enough to break the party's back. Amir was extra salty, since his 22 AC meant nothing when he took electricity damage every time he hit Drakos or one of his troops. The captain comfortably rotated between his breath weapon and his scalding gust invocation, only making an attack roll when he could set up a massed charge with his veterans. The look of despair that washed over the group when Drakos used touch of vitality to heal himself 48 hp was delicious :smallamused:

At last, even the old sea dog ran out of tricks, and Drakos fell to the concentrated fire of the PCs after a two hour battle. The two surviving veterans fled the battlefield, and the party was in no shape to pursue them. Pitow and Imiza were the only ones standing, and the party's entire supply of potions, spells, and other resources had all been used to squeeze out a narrow victory. They managed to find a couple of unused potions on the fallen soldiers, and got the rest of the party to consciousness. Though it was an arduous fight, they were victorious and the base was theirs. The group decided to rest up before heading back to camp to report their victory.

During Pitow's watch, a nine foot tall figure garbed in black entered the outpost and beconned the kenku to speak with him. Pitow was naturally suspicious, so he woke up Amir (but not the rest of the group) and followed the stranger outside of the base. The six-fingered man had charcoal skin, cloven hooves, and a crown of horns protruding from his ebony hair. If his description didn't set off any alarm bells for Pitow and Amir, I don't think anything will.

"My name is Rule-of-Three," he spoke in a low tone, "and I am here at the behest of my father. He has an opportunity for you."
"What would that be?" Pitow asked.
"The queen of Ragesia, Zarouhi Orlaith, is using you to locate pieces of a dead goddess," Rule-of-Three said. "Zarouhi wishes to harvest the divine power from the corpse and become a goddess herself. Why aid her, when you could claim the divine power for yourselves?"
"So you're saying we should screw the Ragesians over and become gods?" Amir asked excitedly.
"Demigods," Rule-of-Three replied. "If the power is shared, there's enough for three people to become demigods."
"Who would be the third person?" Pitow asked.
"My father," Rule-of-Three said humbly. "He thinks it is best for local deities to rule their own worlds, rather than a foreign mortal who fancies herself a goddess."
"So Amir, your father, and I all get to become demigods if we do this," Pitow said. "We get a whole world. What else does your dad get out of this?"
"It's a small request, really," Rule-of-Three said casually. "Once you have usurped Zarouhi's power, my father would like to claim her as a consort."
"Yeah, let's do it!" Amir said excitedly. "Screw these bitches, let's become demigods!"
"Hang on, who is your father?" Pitow asked.
"He has many names," Rule-of-Three replied, "but you may call him Graz'zt. Farewell for now, mortals. I look forward to our next meeting."
TL;DR: Amir and Pitow are on the path to becoming super-traitors.

Cormac Mac Art
2018-06-27, 01:29 PM
Very interesting and enjoyable to read. Please keep it up!

SleepyShadow
2018-07-02, 04:55 PM
Very interesting and enjoyable to read. Please keep it up!

Glad you're enjoying the ride so far :smallsmile:

A couple of things to note going into this session's log: My players had gone through the whole Queen of the Spiders campaign last time they played in this setting, so the drow no longer worship Lolth (since the party killed her). Instead, they worship the Elemental Princes. So, the drow are less evil but they're still jerks. Also, this session took place in a pub. Good times until somebody hijacked the jukebox with lots of money and bad taste in music.

The party arrived in Sapphire, an independent city-state on the western coastline of the continent. Katarina left to go speak to the council on behalf of the party, Tiljanni wandered off to go see the circus, and Naoko was stuck babysitting her. Essentially, the PCs were free to wander about the city and do as they pleased. The group headed over to the refugee camp outside Sapphire and found there were eight groups all split along religious lines. A local paladin, a half-elf named Laurabec, was the only thing preventing the groups of refugees from outright brawling with each other over it. Sensing the opportunity for do-gooding, the PCs split up to go talk to some of the faction leaders.

Saorise spoke to a Thalish priest of Poseidon, who was trying to teach people to swim by throwing them into the ocean and fishing them back out when they started drowning. Tensions between Saorise and the priest flared up immediately, since Saorise was still wearing her Zounah navy uniform and Thalos was the only nation that could challenge their nautical superiority. Things didn't go as well as she had hoped.

Ashlynn spoke to a Ragesian(!) priestess of healing who was working herself into exhaustion trying to treat the various injuries and diseases ravaging the refugee camp. When Ashlynn asked why a Ragesian was helping others, the priestess replied "They aren't soldiers, and neither am I." Ashlynn spent the next little while spending all of her spell slots and Lay on Hands pool helping the priestess treat the refugees.

Flint and Virion decided to work together talking to the faction worshipping the God of Strength. Turned out that faction's leader wasn't a cleric, but rather a proud Sterich barbarian woman who proclaimed only the strong should rule and magic was for the weak. Virion's response to this was to slug her across the chin. Much to his surprise, she liked it. (https://youtu.be/FNrMXuLJ8Xw?t=10m51s) Flint ran away to find an adult while Virion stayed behind to, er, deal with the consequences of his actions.

After much ado about nothing, the PCs called a meeting between the eight faction leaders and proclaimed Saorise as the "Refugee Messiah". Saorise was not informed of this plan, so she spent the next few minutes stumbling through words while trying not to spit her beer back out. Once the initial confusion was over, the PCs agreed to help the refugees with a couple of side quests in exchange for the factions not killing each other. First, the PCs went out and killed a pack of giant wolf-spiders that were preying on the weaker refugees. This took less than three rounds of combat. Next, the party parlayed with a very angry green dragon whose egg had been stolen from her. They quickly tracked down the thief and handed him and the egg over in exchange for a magical harp of building so the refugees could have better shelter than thin tents and shacks made from scuttled boats. Lastly, the PCs declared Laurabec as the go-between for themselves and the refugees, defacto making her the leader of the camp unless something particularly important came up. After that, the PCs (and the players) needed another drink, so off to the tavern they went.

Turns out the tavern in Sapphire has a fighting pit for upstart adventurers to challenge one another. Flint beat the ever-loving crap out of a couple of rookie patrons at the bar, and then the party proceeded to fight each other for the entertainment of the crowd. Ashlynn was particularly happy about this, since she used to be a gladiator before becoming an adventurer. After all that, the PCs played Risk with an old dwarf fighter and went to bed.

The next day, the party met with the Mage Council of Sapphire to discuss the ongoing war effort against the Ragesians. The council had a few extra guests that day, including Katarina, Laurabec, Naoko, and diplomats from several countries and guilds. Notably absent was Tiljanni, though the PCs were glad not to have their sweet hearted idiot friend around for sensitive political discussions. The NPCs were all brief in their discourse, and the PCs by and large directed the flow of conversation. Head Mage Simon was quite impressed with the party's conduct and wanted to speak with them after the meeting, surprising the group as a whole. After all, the last group of characters they played were reviled by most NPCs when they promised to lend their aid to a group of Zene and then promptly took off for the desert for six months.

Anyway, the party learned a few key pieces of information:

The Triumvirate leading Zounah had been assassinated by Ragesian blackguards, and the generals of the different branches of military were now in charge.
Katarina is really good at being the PCs' hype-artist.
It was surprising to the group that the various leaders of world powers were (mostly) behaving like adults.
The dwarves of Tethojin would be willing to ally with Sapphire if someone could help them with the orc army that had come out of the Frostfell. The dwarves normally wouldn't be having an issue with it, but somebody told the orcs about the secret tunnels that lead past the mountain fortress of Bordrin's Watch. That was going to be an issue.
Strange monsters had been spotted in the steam tunnels beneath Sapphire, and someone needed to go check things out.
Laurabec is apparently a well-meaning but rather irritating social justice warrior.
The dead goddess of patience that Zarouhi is after has been cut up into six pieces and scattered across the world. The gnomes of Silac believe one of the pieces is in Firestorm Canyon, but they have no idea how they or anybody else could ever get to it. Y'know, because of the firestorm.
Yes, Simon's staff of antimagic is spiral shaped.

As the meeting was winding down, Shalo'ha, princess of Erelhai-Cinlu and next in line for command of the Vault of the Drow, burst into the meeting chamber with her entourage of bodyguards and proclaimed that the Vault would grant its allegiance to Sapphire if they handed control of the ports over to the drow. This, naturally, went over like a lead balloon. Before things could escalate into physical violence between the diplomats, the drow, and the PCs, Saorise asked Shalo'ha what she expected to happen. The princess quietly handed Saorise the scroll with the speech she had given. It had been written by High Priestess Shalo'sheen (actually Eclavdra (secondary BBEG from Queen of the Spiders) resurrected from the dead after the old party killed her). Shalo'ha didn't have any choice but to deliver the demands her mother had made. The princess expressed genuine concern for all parties involved, saying that a global invasion from Ragesia was more concerning to her than political squabbling between nations. Shalo'ha and her entourage turned to leave ...

"Wait!" Ashlynn interjected. "What's her charisma?"
"Shalo'ha is serene, graceful, and has an unearthly beauty," I replied.
"So, that's like a twenty charisma or something?"
"Um, yeah. Why?"
"I invite her to the tavern."

One quick persuasion check later, Shalo'ha sighed and agreed to meet Ashlynn at the bar that evening. Pleased with her success, Ashlynn's player headed down to get an actual drink while the rest of the group finished things up with the diplomats. Shortly after the meeting (and the private meeting with Simon where he reassured them of the faith he had in them), Naoko pulled the party aside and told them that Tiljanni was missing. Naoko found her room at the inn empty that morning and had been meaning to tell the PCs, but hadn't found the chance to talk to them until after the meeting. The party hurried over to the inn, then began to follow the tracks of both Tiljanni and a mysterious second pair of tracks. The trail led the party to an entrance to the steam tunnels beneath the city, and the party cautiously headed underground to find their missing friend.


TL;DR: The beginnings of a geopolitical soap opera.

SleepyShadow
2018-07-03, 05:52 PM
On their way back to base camp, Team Evil got attacked by a pack of gnolls and their sand dragon ally. The gnolls weren't much of an issue, save for one who had a level of bard, but the sand dragon killed Amelia and Colette by knocking them unconscious with its breath weapon while they were still adjacent to a cloud of daggers. The dragon also proved to be a bit of a bastard to deal with; it kept flying up every other round, since it was more than content eating a single AoO from Amir than eating a flurry of full attacks from the entire team. Imiza also proved to be the only one with a ranged attack worth mentioning, so in all the battle proved way more difficult than I intended it to be.

Regardless, the survivors of the battle limped back to base to pawn off the spoils of war and bury their dead. While replacements were being rolled up and Imiza was taking care of loot division, Amir and Pitow confided in Shalashaska that they suspected somebody on their team was a spy ...

"I'm a spy, remember?" Shalashaska said dryly.
"No, I mean like spying on us," Pitow replied.
Amir put his hand on Pitow's shoulder. "What if Shalashaska is spying on us?"
"Crap! What do we do?!" Pitow asked.
"I cast Zone of Truth!" Amir shouted. "Shalashaska, are you spying on us?!"
Shalashaska folded his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow. "You think that's going to work on me? I'm a professional. I've been trained to resist interrogation magic."
"But you have to tell the truth!" Amir argued.
"I think he is," Pitow said. "Nothing in the spell description compels anyone to answer the question. They just can't lie."
"Damn, you're right," Amir sighed.
"Nice try, kids," Shalashaska said as he gave them his signature finger-guns. "You're pretty good. But listen, I've got more important things to do than stand around jawing with you guys. Just don't go suspecting everyone around you of being a spy. Paranoia is bad for morale."

Amir and Pitow proceeded to spend the next five hours of session time interrogating every named NPC they had encountered at camp, then dragged Imiza into their "Zone of Interrogation" and badgered her until she not only fessed up to the fact that she was considering defecting to Team Good, but also divulging her entire backstory about being press-ganged into serving in the Ragesian military because her lover was being held hostage in Imiza's fortress in Dispater. Pitow felt kind of sorry for her, but Amir didn't hear anything other than a chance to blackmail his own party member and force her to remain with the party.

I felt rather sorry about the whole thing.

Also, they made a fourteen year old messenger girl cry because Amir shook her like a baby ragdoll until he was convinced she was not the spy.
TL;DR: Double blackmail!

normal name
2018-07-03, 10:51 PM
Flynt's player from group A here: We're gonna try to do individual perspective recaps from one player in our group every week. These are mostly fluff and are mainly for character insight and development and largely cover the same topics of the main recap so they are purely supplemental. That said, here is the first Flynt File!

Flynt File: Where there's smoke, there's Sapphire

After arriving in Sapphire and settling in (ie: restocking potions, meeting npcs, shopping for a third hand, resting, etc.), we woke up and set out to work on some of the issues with refugees that we noticed as we entered the region. There appeared to be many factions that were all segregated and at each other's throats, so trying to be as helpful as possible, we split up to cover more ground.

I have no idea what Ashlin, Saoirse, Tiljannie, or Nyoko were up to, but Virion and I went to the Sterich camp first since I and Virion are from the region. The Chief Barbarian lady was as bull headed as my people usually are, claiming they should be leading all camps since they are mightiest. I suggest that since they are all equally displaced that maybe their way is not any better than the "wimpy magic user's." This did not go over well, and Virion took matters into his own hands. Valuing strength himself, he cold clocked the chief and that seemed to grab her attention. With her finally listening to us, we offered to help them in any way we could to ease tensions with the other factions, to which she told us to go talk with the magic clans to get them to agree on standings of the clans.

With this new task, we left the tent and made our way to the sorcerer's tent to speak with their leader, hoping they would be more reasonable. Apparently they were already using their magic to fend off some magical beasties and were feeling underappreciated for their efforts. We offered to help ease the strain by taking out the remaining monsters, so they could use their magic for other more useful tasks. This was met with some appreciation, but also another problem. Their magic wasn't capable of curing the diseases or growing food for the people gathered in this place. With this insight, Virion and i Head off to the Druid hut to see what they could do about the issue. Feeling like I was doing all the talking, I told Virion he was in charge of this one and I knew he would do great! (He is a druid himself after all.) The leader of the druids was a delightful cat lady who was not helping because the other groups refused their help due to nationality (she was Ragesian). Other clans were stealing the druid's supplies on top of the disrespect so they were not to keen on helping them out. Virion suggested that being the bigger person and helping them out first with creating croplands would be setting a great standard for the rest of the clans. After brief deliberation, the druid chief agreed and spread her cats out among the camps apparently to plant crops. (OOC: the cats were released to catch disease carrying rats, but since we asked for them to help make food, Flynt thinks the druids taught cats how to farm.)

After this, we regrouped with Ashlin and Saoirse and found out Saoirse was now the Messiah of the refugees. Such an impressive feat and befitting of my captain! We called all the heads of the clans together for a group meeting and convinced the leaders strength in unity was better than individual hubris and formed a council with the 8 clan heads and a paladin named Laura Beck as the tie breaker.

With the refugees starting to self-govern, we decided to explore along the seaside. It wasn't long before we heard beastly wails and buildings crumbling. We came upon a lovely green dragon who was distraught over having an egg stolen from her. Using my expert tracking skills and Ashlin's ability to locate objects, we quickly found the fool trying to re-sell the egg in town for 5000GP. We stunned the robber and brought him back to the dragon with the egg. Along the way, Ashlin tried to show him the error of his ways by teaching him lessons from Pelor, but he wasn't very receptive. We returned the egg and calmed the dragon asking for forgiveness for the foolishness of this guy, but to spare him as everyone deserves a second chance. About this time Saoirse asked if we could borrow a magical item to help build some structure for the refugees. The generous dragon had a lyre of building which could construct more permanent housing that wasn't huts for the people. We agreed to borrow it in exchange for letting her hold onto the robber until we are done using it, at which point he will be set free. Excited to share the good news we headed back to the camp and gave the harp to a musician to start construction.

After turning over the Lyre, we were approached by a gnome telling us of an amazing teleporting circus. Of course we headed over to see the amazing sights. Much to our surprise, Tiljannie was already there, being recruited as an acrobat or something... It wasn't clear what she would be, but she was balancing on a pole, so acrobat makes sense. She seemed to enjoy it and was doing well so hopefully it plays out well for her. We learned that they were having an issue with their act when we were there. Teleporting acrobats were being set on fire upon "landing." I offered to do some research and was teleported. Sure enough, I came out, 30 feet away on fire! It was quite exhilarating.

Not knowing much about the issue, but being in a town with a famous mage court we went to seek answers. The red headed fan girl, Katerina, apparently was talking us up to the court since we dropped her off the day prior and the court was excited to meet with us. I think Saoirse was asking her to join up with us but I hope not. We met with the mages and found out some big trouble was brewing in the super south. We were unofficially appointed the task force to handle this threat by Simon and came up with a group name to go by: The Opposition. Apparently body parts of a goddess were being collected in order to bring the Ragesian god queen to full power. We agreed this would not be good and started to consider how to tackle the issue when a beautiful Drow woman burst in saying we were surrounded and we should bend a knee to her queen for any of us to have a chance to survive the invasion. This request was denied and instead Ashlin offered to take her out for a drink. Luckily she accepted and I think we made a new friend :smallcool: After the meeting we were approached by a mage named Simon who wanted to talk to us, but we had magical spider creatures to kill for the sorcerers so we asked him for a rain check until tomorrow to talk with him.

The spiders were not much of an issue, but they got my blood pumping. After we got back to town, we went to the tavern which had a fighting pit. The place was full of warriors telling tales of the glorious battles they fight. (OOC: failed a insight check to notice they were all obviously lying and were all very green) Wanting to let off some steam and learn from these great warriors, I challenged 2 of them to a handicap, no DQ, street rules, no-holds-barred match in the pits. They accepted but must've been recovering from a recent trip because they went down in one hit each. Upon taking down these regulars, a crowd gathered and seemed stunned at the lack of a show, so I challenged Virion to put on a show. He jumped into the ring and we began! I hit him with 2 powerful blows and he was also done..... So Ashlin was next! She was a grizzled pit fighter before, she'll put on a good show. We went toe to toe for a few rounds before I eked out a victory and challenged Saoirse as well. She seemed confident the crowd was pleased and didn't want to kill me, so she declined and we left the pits. The cool Northern Dwarven commander apparently owns the tavern and showed up to talk with us after hearing about our show. We went upstairs and played a weird game. As we played, the commander told us of some troubling news in the north about an orc invasion so we will leave for that soon to investigate and do what we can to help. He also mentioned some creatures in the steam tunnels beneath Sapphire that we will investigate before we leave, but first we must rest.

::End Flynt File::

SleepyShadow
2018-07-08, 02:44 PM
Flynt's player from group A here: We're gonna try to do individual perspective recaps from one player in our group every week. These are mostly fluff and are mainly for character insight and development and largely cover the same topics of the main recap so they are purely supplemental. That said, here is the first Flynt File!

I wasn't expecting the contribution, but thanks for the post :smallsmile: Anyway, Group A wasn't able to play this week, so no update for them today.

SleepyShadow
2018-07-12, 07:41 PM
Sorry for the delay. It's been a hectic week for me, and Amir's player sprained his ankle.

After spending about an hour shopping, drinking, and arguing, Team Evil finally got on with trying to track down the spy in their midst. At one point, Pitow ran into her (an changeling named Zelle MacLeod) and she asked him for directions to "Captain Irmentrude's tent". He managed to hilariously mislead her by honestly forgetting Imiza's last name. Instead, Pitow told Zelle to ask at the tavern. He realized his blunder about an hour later.

Once it became clear that no progress would be made if I didn't pull the trigger, the party was alerted to an attack on the prison block. Rushing to prevent their hard won abducted princess from escaping, the party hastily flung itself into the fight against the Hassani rescue squad. The enemy force consisted of three cavalry archers, a mage, a pair of celestial war hounds (refluffed hellhounds), and five gnoll mercenaries. The battle took longer than it needed to, mostly because Sergeant Slaughter was the only one who bothered to attack the mage. Speaking of which, turns out double-tapping with fireball kills people! Eclipso forgot she had counterspell, got dropped by the first fireball, and killed by the second. I don't normally hit unconscious people, but it was rather unavoidable with three people clustered around the downed wizard.

At any rate, the party eventually managed to defeat the enemy combatants, stripped the corpses of all the valuables, and even remembered why they went there in the first place. As they entered the prison to make sure Princess Sarika was still there, Pitow commented how strange it was that the prison block had been so lightly guarded.

"Almost like they left intentionally," Pitow mused.
"Nah," Amir said. "See? There's dead hobgoblins. They didn't leave. They just lost."
"What happened to the Ragesian guard shift?" Pitow asked.
"No idea," Imiza commented offhandedly.
"How did they get inside the base anyway?" Pitow asked. "We have walls. Aren't they guarded?"
"Maybe they teleported in," Amir said. "Come on, let's make sure the stupid princess didn't escape again."

Sarika hadn't had the chance to escape yet, and Zelle MacLeod was posing as a hobgoblin guard. She was hoping to wait for the party to leave, then smuggle Sarika out of the camp on some horses Imiza had readied for her in between sessions. Unfortunately, it seems my players have seen too many spy movies. They cottoned onto the notion that the only surviving guard had to be in on it, and immediately tried to kill Zelle. She quickly surrendered and offered to become a double agent if the party agreed to double the pay Al-Hassan had promised her.

"You want us to pay you?!" Amir shrieked. "Hell no! **** you!"
"Calm down," Pitow sighed. "She's a lot more valuable alive than dead."
"No!" Amir shrieked. "She'll either tell us everything or I'll kill her."
"No," Zelle said calmly.
"Zone of Truth! Now tell us everything!" Amir screamed.
"No," Zelle said again.
"Dammit!" Amir whined. "Why does that never work?!"
"If it didn't work on Shalashaska, why did you think it would work on her?" Pitow asked.
"Wait, I could've said 'no' in your spell the whole time?" Imiza asked irritably.
"Yeah," Pitow said.
"Dammit ..." Imiza sighed.
"Look, let's just pay the spy," Pitow said. "She's not going to talk otherwise."
"Fine," Amir pouted.

Once the party gave Zelle 2,000 gp, the female spy told Team Evil everything she knew about Team Good (basic composition, mostly), the geopolitical situation (Al-Hassan and Thalos were allied, and that Al-Hassan was trying to ally themselves with the desert elves), and that Al-Hassan was getting desperate enough to reach out to "The Lord of the Wastes" for aid. Zelle didn't know who or what the Lord was, but she thought the title was rather ominous. She recommended that Team Evil beat Hassan to the punch and secure an alliance with the desert elves first. Pitow thought it was a good idea, and made sure to frame the suggestion to make it sound like Amir had come up with it.

I'm so glad he's learning how to manipulate handle negotiations with other players.

The party double secured Sarika's prison cell, dropped the cash to get a raise dead for Eclipso, and settled down to divide up loot and pawn off vendor trash. The session wrapped up with a grand parade of brightly dressed Ragesians marching through the main road in camp as they heralded the arrival of a woman claiming to be an avatar of Empress Zarouhi Orlaith. Sergeant Slaughter seemed to be the only one in the group happy to see her.

TL;DR: They turned the enemy spy into a double agent.

SleepyShadow
2018-07-17, 12:06 PM
Virion's player had asked me to convert an old 2e druid kit where they gave up armor proficiency and normal wildshaping in exchange for the ability to turn into a werewolf. I remember it being complained about as laughably lackluster, so I made a few tweaks and brought it up to speed. I still don't think it's a particularly powerful druid circle (named it Circle of the Wolf because I'm super clever like that) but he seems to be enjoying it and that's really all that matters.
The party hurried into the steam tunnels to find their missing friend Tiljanni. They cleared the place room by room, easily hacking down the hobgoblin rogues hired to guard the steam tunnels from interlopers. Turns out no matter how hard they try, level 1 rogues just aren't going to stop a cranky group of 6th level adventurers :smalltongue: Eventually, the party found the makeshift prison cell where Tiljanni was being held. They also found a fire elemental hanging around the cell talking with Tiljanni when they arrived. Deciding not to kill the surprisingly talkative elemental, they learned its name was Jibrand and that it was an engineer tasked with repairing the elemental portals powering the steam tunnels.

"Why do they need repairs?" Saorise asked.
"A couple of elves damaged them," Jibrand explained. "Said they want to make the portals to Fire and Water touch."
"Portals? To the elemental planes?"
"Yes."
"What would touching them together do?"
"Big steam explosion."

Galvanized into action, the party gathered up Tiljanni and offered to escort Jibrand down to the lower tunnels so he could make the necessary repairs. However, they had barely left the cell block when they came under attack from a group of Ragesian assassins who had been waiting for them (a crusader, a swordsage, a necromancer, a paladin/sorcerer, a warblade, and a binder). The assassins had guessed that the PCs would put rescuing their friend over heading north to aid the dwarves, so they had kidnapped Tiljanni to lure the party into a well-scouted area too constrictive to allow Saorise and Virion to effectively use their more powerful spells. However, the assassins did not account for (meaning I forgot) the fact that Flint can ignore difficult terrain, so as long as he passed the initial saving throw on Saorise's web spell, he had free reign to puree the assassin's back line. However, the fight was still plenty difficult. Naoko was killed while defending Ashlynn and Tiljanni from the enemy crusader and gish, and the enemy swordsage wrecked Saorise with a well placed death mark maneuver. My only disappointment in the fight was that the enemy warblade couldn't roll above a 10 the entire battle. The fight ended with the binder, being the last Ragesian standing, surrendering and was spared by the PCs.

The party patched themselves up with what few resources they had left, learned the binder's name was Evelynn ("Though you can call me Eva"), and pressed on further into the steam tunnels. They came upon one of the two elves who was responsible for the damage done to the portals, and the evil mage immediately threw himself into his monologue. However, Flint shot the wizard's frog familiar for 50ish points of damage, stopping his monologue quite abruptly.

"Carl!" the wizard wailed. "He was just my familiar! Why would you do that?!"
"He looked scary," Flint replied.
"I'm an evil wizard, and the frog was scarier than me?"
"He might've been a poison tree frog."

The wizard promptly dropped a fireball on the party and died two rounds later. His hobgoblin bodyguard lived one round longer.

With that taken care of, the party trekked deeper into the steam tunnels, cleared a couple of uneventful encounters with some aggressive magmins, flew past a giant water elemental, and played kick-the-rock with a couple of small fire elementals. Eventually, they found the druid responsible for the damage done to the portal containers. However, he had the same problem most solo-bosses have: he got in one real good hit with a blight spell that killed Virion, then got clowned in melee by Ashlynn and Flint. The druid delayed his death for a couple of rounds by wildshaping into a giant scorpion, but the end result was inevitable as soon as initiative was rolled. The party looted the room, wished Jibrand the best of luck on repairing the damaged portal containers, and hauled their dead companions back to the surface for a couple of raise deads. Loot was divided and sold, and the party commissioned Headmaster Simon to craft a cloak of non-detection so that Ashlynn wouldn't be such an easy scrying target for the Ragesians to monitor the party.

The next day, the party headed north with Naoko and (surprisingly) Eva in their company. Tiljanni opted to stay with the Wayfarer Circus so she could see the world without fear of death or kidnapping, and Katarina the pyromancer had been all but forgotten. So, after a fond farewell to Tiljanni, the party trekked off for Bordrin's Watch.

On the second day of travel, the party was greeted by a fireball ripping into their ranks from out of nowhere. They quickly broke formation and tried to find where the attack had come from, but there was no sign of the enemy. The sound of ghostly drums filled the air, and a second fireball hammered Ashlynn and Naoko into single digit hp. The two of them scrambled for what little cover there could be found out in the tundra, while the rest of the group spread out in an effort to find their attacker. However, Virion was just close enough to Naoko to make himself a target, and a third fireball slammed into them. Naoko was blasted into unconsciousness, and Virion started casting faerie fire in random directions while screaming for a medic. A round passed by without an enemy attack.

"Is it over?" Virion asked.
"I think so," Ashlynn replied.

A salvo of scorching rays hit Ashlynn and she went down. Flint drank a potion of invisibility and hurried toward her, while Saorise sent her familiar toward the source of the attack as fast as the little bat could fly.

"How far away did the attack come from?" Saorise asked.
"120 feet out from Ashlynn's position," I replied.
"That's impossible," Saorise argued. "Scorching Ray only has a range of 60 feet."
"Spell Sniper," Flint said while whacking Ashlynn with a wand of cure light wounds.
"Dammit," Saorise grumbled.

Thanks to the bat's blindsight, Saorise got a fix on the enemy: a lone Ragesian mage (https://image.ibb.co/cXTcby/Rosalie_Veil.png) cloaked under a greater invisibility spell. Excited to return fire, Saorise immediately dumped a fireball on the enemy's head. Unfortunately for Saorise, the mage passed the saving throw and used absorb elements to cut the damage in half again. However, with her position compromised, the enemy mage gave up the assault for the day and used dimension door to make a clean getaway.

"Who the hell was that?" Saorise asked.
"Major Rosalie Veil Carcano," Eva replied while Virion patched her up. "She's head of the Mage Corp, and she'll be back. She never gives up the hunt."

The PCs decided to get to the edge of the pine forest before bedding down to lick their wounds. While they were camped out in Leomund's tiny hut, a man staggered into their campsite and collapsed dead. Virion recognized him as Igor, a member of his clan. Virion was understandably upset by the death of a family member, and in the morning insisted that the party avenge Igor's death.

"Are you sure it's a good idea to go side questing like this?" Flint asked. "We've got bigger problems."
"We went on a side quest to rescue Tiljanni," Ashlynn reminded him.
"Well, okay," Flint said begrudgingly. "I just don't want this to take too long. We have to get back to Sapphire in a couple weeks."
"I thought you didn't want to see the circus," Saorise said.
"Simon wanted us there for the next council meeting," Flint replied.
"Besides," Ashlynn said, "but it'll be good for us to be there to congratulate Tiljanni after the show."
"Mah vengeance!!!" Virion howled.

While the PCs were travelling, they came under attack by a surprisingly aggressive pack of wolves. During the battle, Virion spotted a black wolf the size of a warhorse watching from a safe distance. He was able to identify the beast as a loup-du-noir, a foul sort of lycanthrope that assumes the form of a wolf by donning a wolf pelt. Virion pointed this out to Flint, who took a shot at the creature. However, the arrow shattered harmlessly against the loup-du-noir's hide. Once half the wolves were slain, the rest of the pack retreated under the watchful gaze of the lycanthrope, who left once the wolves were gone.

"What was all that about?" Ashlynn asked.
"I think somebody's not happy about Virion coming home," Saorise replied.

The party trekked on, and soon came across a young hunter from Virion's home village. The hunter was named Mikali, and she explained that after Virion left a powerful warrior named Gregor moved in with his boyarski and hunted the local werewolves down to the last. {As a side note, werewolves in this setting don't infect people. Instead, lycanthropy is hereditary, and werewolves are typically tasked with maintaining a balance between the mortal world and the spirit world.} Now, Boyar Gregor and his men rule the villages of the Vorostokov Woods with an iron fist. Mikali has been trying to incite a rebellion, but she lacks a critical mass of warriors capable of combating the boyarski, let alone the Black Wolf and the feral pack that haunts the forest. The PCs quickly cottoned onto the idea that Gregor and the Black Wolf were one and the same, so they offered to help deal with Gregor in exchange for travelling supplies. Mikali eagerly agreed, and the next morning she led the party back to her home village of Torgov. One of the villagers told the PCs that Gregor and his men threatened to attack the village if they didn't hand over all supplies the village had stored for winter.

"So we need to protect this village from bandits and train the villagers to defend themselves once we leave," Saorise mused.
"Hey, I know this one!" Flint said excitedly. "Counting Mikali, there's seven of us. That makes us the Magnificent Seven!"
"Seven Samurai!" Ashlynn cheered.
"Samurai Seven?" Virion suggested with a sheepish grin.
"Sorry, the boyarski don't have giant mechas," I laughed.
"You guys are dorks," Saorise sighed.

The party schemed out a "fool proof" plan to deal with the boyarski, then slept for the night. Ashlynn woke Eva up early enough to do her usual binding ritual, and rather than binding Tenebrous like she normally did, she instead opted to bind Diabolus for silver weaponry and fireballs. Unfortunately, she made a bad pact, so her behavior was notably ... off. Still, the battle got underway much earlier than the party had anticipated, so they hurried to where they had planned to be and commenced the battle against the fifteen boyarski. Ashlynn and Naoko fought back to back against half of the enemy, doing everything they could to hold their ground and protect the church where the villagers unable to fight were huddled. Saorise lobbed spells from the tavern window, Virion and Mikali teamed up to keep the other half of the enemy forces from flooding in behind Ashlynn's position, and Flint hid in the bell tower of the church and used it as a sniping position to drop wounded enemies whenever he could. Eva tried to cast fireball from the door of the church for the first two rounds, but Saorise kept using counterspell on her.

"Why are you doing that?" Virion asked.
"She would've hit you with the first one," Saorise argued, "and Mikali would've gotten hit by the second one."
"I'm fine with it. I've got plenty of hit points."
"Well, I'm not fine with it. Eva is way too reckless, and I'm not sure we can trust her at all."
"Everyone deserves a second chance," Flint said.
"Her magic is blasphemous and evil," Saorise grumbled.
"Hey!" Eva snapped. "Not all of the vestiges I bind are evil!"
"All the ones you've talked about do sound like supervillains though," Ashlynn said.

Eva was irritated that her one useful ability was wasted for the day, so she just trudged about the battlefield whacking stuff with her handaxe until the fight was over. She then made herself feel better by stacking all of the dead bodies into a pile, setting the giant pyre on fire, and watched it burn.

"We're dropping her off at Bordrin's Watch," Saorise told the group. "I'm not putting up with her anymore."
"Let's worry about that when we get there," Ashlynn suggested.
"I still need mah vengeance!" Virion cried.

The next day, the PCs accompanied Mikali out to Kirinova Village to gather reinforcements for Torgov. On the way there, they were attacked by the Black Wolf and his pack. However, Saorise fireballed them out of existence before they could even close the gap :smallannoyed: and the Black Wolf had to leave again. Unfortunately for the PCs, Kirinova Village had already been sacked by the wolfpack. The party scrounged up some loot, decided it would be best just to deal with Gregor directly, and headed off for Vorostokov Village.

On the way there, Gregor and his boyarski ambushed the party with the intent of forcing them to join his wolf lodge and become lycanthropes under his command. So, how many 3rd level fighters does it take to subdue a group of seven 6th level adventurers? I don't know, but I do know that if fifteen fighters couldn't beat the party in a straight fight at the village, twelve of 'em with two 5th level buddies certainly wasn't going to cut it. The party hacked apart the boyarski, killed Gregor's son and his second in command, and even managed to force Gregor back to his lodge with his mist walking ability. The party gathered up what little worthwhile loot there was to be found, we ended the session, and I briefly considered throwing the module in the trash bin.
TL;DR: No matter how many mooks you think it will take to capture the party, it will never be enough.

AllHailthed4
2018-07-17, 09:29 PM
Saoirse's player here with the weekly character piece. As a bit of background, Saoirse grew up in a fishing village and captained one of her father's boats until she was drafted into the Zonan navy. The campaign started as she was on her way home after being discharged. (Also, because of her military experience, she has a habit of scratching out information that could give away the party's position.)

Dearest Father,

I fervently hope this letter finds you well, and our family untouched by this Ragesian Incursion. Please tell mother I send my greetings, that my mission progresses smoothly, and that I am in good company. I do not want her to worry (or, more likely, pick up her daggers and come looking for me.)

In truth, our party’s way grows more treacherous each day. Since I last wrote, we have been targeted by two assassination attempts. One group lured us down into the steam tunnel network below Sapphire by kidnapping Tiljanni, then confronted us in the tight quarters there. They were far stronger than any of the Ragesians soldiers we’d dealt with before—their leader killed one of our companions in a single blow. Later, while we were traveling to the North, firebombing from an invisible force pinned us down for what felt like an eternity. If it hadn’t been for Lucas, we might not have survived (I now see why Old Mac Lir sent aid in the form of such an odd creature.) The “force” was a single Ragesian mage, a major in their army, with an invisibility spell the like of which I’ve never seen. She fled as soon as I returned fire, but our native Ragesian allies assure us she will return to finish the job. All I can hope is that by the grace of Mac Lir we will be better prepared the next time.

In the meantime, we continue to render aid where we can as a small force of a larger resistance effort. In the steam tunnels, we stopped a pair of expelled students from blowing up the city (at the prodding of Ragesian spies.) When the second of the students killed Virion, Ashlin and Flint cut him down with such ferocity and bravery that I could hardly recognize them as the celebrity pit fighter or the roguish charlatan, and Ashlin’s earlier kindness towards some of the refugees convinced their leader to resurrect our fallen allies. Later, we aided Virion in defending his home village against a rival pack of werewolves, and will help him destroy the monster who massacred his tribe when the opportunity presents itself (I do not believe the man will rest until either he or Virion is sent to their ancestors.) For now, we turn our gaze to the North, to confront the Ragesians and orcs disrupting an important information network.

Earlier, I mentioned the native Ragesians traveling with us, and there is a matter on which I desperately seek your advice. One of the assassins from the steam tunnel surrendered and, as is correct and moral, we spared her. I will be honest: I do not like her. In fact, I only agreed to let her accompany us on our travels in order to keep an eye on her. She knows far too much about us, and volunteers little about the Ragesian military when asked (or redirects the question altogether.) More disturbingly, she appears to derive her magic from binding dead entities, usually those known to be evil. If she screws up the binding ritual, the entity possesses her. This happened in Virion’s village, and she spent the battle casting fireball without regard for friend or foe. I should have let her: our party has become quite adept at patching up battle wounds. It would have finished the fight sooner, and the effort it took to counter her spells prevented me from fighting as effectively as I could have. You did always say it was wrong to disregard the crew’s wishes, especially when one’s own judgment may be impaired. Still, after what happened to Virion in the steam tunnels, I do not think I can ever let preventable harm fall to an ally again.

But to the point, our ward is sullen, wields evil powers, and is likely a spy. However, she is just a kid, and she honestly believed that her empress had initiated this invasion to secure her people a new homeland. Her loyalty to the empire evaporated (violently) when we told her otherwise. If we keep her with us, she will continue to endanger our party. If we leave her behind, she may disappear to continue spying on the resistance and become another enemy we do not need. Worse, she could be killed as a traitor or die from the vicious cold here (Ragesians are not accustomed to frigid climates, and even we who are would be in serious peril had the mages at Sapphire not taught us Leomund’s Tiny Hut.) Given these choices, what is the right course to take?

I still cannot say with any honesty when I will return home, only that I will do so as soon as circumstances allow. Until then, Mac Lir’s blessings upon you, mother, my siblings, and the crew.


Your loving daughter,

Saoirse

SleepyShadow
2018-07-18, 10:48 AM
It's official. Team Evil has broken up and likely won't be playing anymore. I don't want to get into the heavy details, but the short version is Amir's player got belligerently drunk, yelled for three hours about how awesome his character was, and eventually picked a fight with Pitow's player.

I'll let you guys know if the players can patch things up and behave like adults, but I wouldn't count on it. This shouldn't affect Team Good (I hope), so I'll continue to post about their exploits as regularly scheduled. Sorry to anyone who was cheering for Team Evil.

SleepyShadow
2018-07-23, 03:54 PM
I forgot to mention something for Team Good last week. They had a run-in with a couple of cloakers, each of which is listed as a CR 8. Those are the weakest CR 8 critters I've ever seen. The party chewed through them like tissue paper. After the fight, we determined that cloakers must be an endangered species, since they're worth way too much XP to not be hunted by adventurers to the brink of extinction.

Anyway, on with the show!

While the PCs were in the process of breaking camp, a pair of witches dimension doored into camp with offers aid slaying Gregor the Black Wolf. However, the witches weren't expecting the party's response.

"We've already got it figured out," Saorise said.
"What?!" the elder witch stammered.
"Yeah, just hit him with a cocktail of holy water, wolfsbane, and silver powder."
"How did you know?!"
"I got a thirty on my knowledge check."
"But you'll only have three days before the potion wears off! You'll never find him without our help!"
"I dunno, I think if I use locate object on his wolf pelt, that should do it," Ashlynn said.
"Well, um, okay then ..." the witch muttered sadly.
"Thanks anyway, though," Flint said.
"Well, uh, here," the witch sighed as she handed over her satchel. "Winter blankets and some healing potions. Maybe they'll help you."
"Never hurts to have extras, I guess," Flint replied with a shrug.

The PCs sent Mikali back to her home village (they didn't want her getting killed/getting in the way) and tracked the Black Wolf down to his den on the edge of a frozen river. Virion shouted a challenge for his vengeance. Gregor responded by charging into their midst, tearing into them with claw and fang. The battle was pretty fierce, since Gregor got four attacks per round, an aura of cold damage, and a few other nifty tricks. Only Flint ever got close to death, but the party has plenty of healing and he was never in any real danger. I'm fairly happy with how the battle went. As a solo boss, he handled the party better than I expected. The party eventually triumphed when Ashlynn landed a critical hit with her last smite of the day. Virion claimed his vengeance, Flint claimed Gregor's magic sword, and the girls buried the bloody wolf pelt.

The party was reminded they had been fighting on a frozen river when the ice began to crack, and they booked it out of there as fast as possible. :smallamused:

With the forest returning to normal, Mikali was sent a farewell sending spell, and the PCs continued north to Bordrin's Watch to aid the dwarves against the sudden mountain orc uprising. When they arrived, they were informed by the council of elders that another group of adventurers had been hired to seal the eastern tunnels, but the PCs were still needed to evacuate the temple of Moradin and seal the western tunnels beneath the church. The party agreed, with Flint even declining the dwarves' offer of 1,000 gp each upon the group's return. This caused quite the outrage from Ashlynn, who reminded Flint that she desperately needed a strength increasing magic item.

"Don't worry about it," Flint said with a grin. "I've got that magic coin that creates two gold a day!"
"Strength gloves cost four thousand gold!" Ashlynn cried. "It'll take like six years for you to make that much money with just the traveller's coin ..."
"Good things come to those who wait," Flint replied happily.
"Dinnae worry, lass," the dwarven elder said. "We'll donate the gold we would've paid ye. It'll go to the charity or orphanage of yer choice, lass!"
"I just want my magic gear ..." Ashlynn sobbed.

The PCs relaxed in town for the evening. Saorise, Ashlynn, and Virion hit up the tavern and proceeded to get knock-down drunk, Naoko carried Virion up to his room at the inn when he passed out from drinking local dwarven booze called "Not Fit for Human Consumption", Eva played cards in the alley behind the tavern, and Flint caught up with his old mentor Terrence Forkleaf. The half-elf ranger was the one leading the adventuring group into the eastern tunnels, and he promised Flint a graduation present when next they met. While at the tavern, Ashlynn learned from the innkeeper that her old gladiatorial partner, a half-orc named Greta the Knife, seemed to be leading the orcs against the dwarves. Greta was also rumored to be working with a new girl as her advisor and partner, which caused Ashlynn to freak out at the thought of someone prettier than her. I suppose even paladins have egos.

"Don't worry, Ashlynn, you can 1v1 Greta while we all sing 'Duel of Fates'," Virion said.
"I don't think I can fight her alone," Ashlynn admitted. "She was always the better fighter. I was just good at hyping up the crowd. We were like Enzo and Cass, and I was Enzo!"
"Greta is seven feet tall, and you can't teach that," the bartender chuckled.
"See? I'm gonna get killed fighting her!" Ashlynn said.
"Just take the high ground, you'll be fine," Virion replied.

Ashlynn proceeded to bemoan making herself the hype artist in her own background.
TL;DR: Stuff from the party's character bios are popping up left, right, and center!

normal name
2018-07-24, 01:47 AM
Flynt coming back at ya again with another Flynt File! Ashlin was supposed to do her's this week, but due to what appears to be a rumble in the tunnel coming up at the end of this week's session, I am taking this week's player recap on. Tune in for her perspective on the sure to be epic duel between ex-gladiator partners next week.

Without further ado, Flint Flie: Hole Lotta Trouble Beneath Bordrin's Watch
After another frigid night in the magic tent that my captain conjured came and went, we packed our gear and got ready to head out to finally find/kill the massive black wolf that had been pestering us as we traveled through this forest. Without much warning, we were in the presence of a pair of two wrinkled old women. They claimed to have the cure to all the problems we were sure to face going up against the wolf. My mentor had warned me to beware snake oil salesmen, but he never mentioned saleswomen so I was glad to have the help. My crew on the other hand was quick to dismiss their generous gifts as "not needed" and "too late to be useful." I felt bad that all their gifts were being rejected so even though I have plenty of furs from the game I've hunted to feed our group to keep us warm, I happily took their shabby blanket when they offered it. They left and we were quick to pick up the trail of the wolf and track him back to his cave. He stormed out of his cave and tried to rush us down with some unearthly cold force surrounding him seemingly at all times. I swear I even saw him move through mist at some points to quickly get around we and keep us on our toes. Most of the details are fuzzy due to me losing consciousness a few times during the bout, however my captain was quick to spare me pain and Ashlin was quick to heal me afterwards. I think that wolf may have been cursed or something because I swear as it died, I could hear the screams of a man escape its mouth.

We collected the body to burn as well as magical sword that I'm holding on to for emergency situations. The curse that effected the wolf must've also been tied to the forest because almost instantly the temperature began to rise and we only then realized out battlefield was a frozen river! We got to land as soon as possible and burned the wolf on a pyre before leaving for Bordrin's watch finally.

We arrived with the usual haste that we have become accustomed to traveling with after the forest curse was lifted. We arrived in town and decided to make our way to the High Council meeting in place to get our directions for the mission we were sent here for. We entered the hall and saw many of other adventuring groups with distinct looks and banners. I decided we should get our name out there and start gaining some fame so we could take on more high ranked jobs and earn enough gold to get captain Saorise the boat she's always wanted. As we walked around and mingled I made sure to tell everyone our group name and let them know we are here and glad to help.

Finally, a stately dwarf approached the stage and announced that all assignments for tunnel monitoring in the East were filled! I was crushed, that was the one job we were sent here to do and it was already taken by some other crew. However, the dwarf continued and mentioned a temple just past the wall that need evacuation and they were taking volunteers. I knew what I needed to do and my hand shot in the air. He clapped his hands together and motioned us on stage.

"Such a brave group to risk life and limb to rescue others! To who does this noble task go to?" the dwarf asks.

"We're The Opposition sir, and we're here to help!" I ring back, then look over to captain with a big thumbs up.

I could tell we gained a lot of respect in that moment when the whole crowd died down and stared at us with what I can only assume was envy. The dwarf was stunned for a moment after witnessing such a capable group volunteer and told us that if we evacuated the temple, we would all be rewarded handsomely. Knowing we couldn't take money for a job we weren't sent to do and captain would never want to use such ill gotten gains for her boat, I turned down the reward and we told them to donate it to charities in our names. We were ushered of stage and the rest of the team hurried out of the hall for some reason.

On the way out, I ran into my mentor, Terrance Forkleaf, who was happy to see me with a nice bunch of kids, but was baffled by why we would go around saying we're "The Opposition"?

"Well you see sir, when the enemies are talking about us, they'll be saying The Opposition did this or that and they'll be intimidated by this group who dares oppose them."

My poor instructor must've been struck with a sudden migraine since he just covered his eyes with his hands and sighed deeply. He told us he appreciates our efforts and if we make it back successfully after our mission, he'll count it as me passing my Ranger Exams and give me a gift! I caught up with the rest of the group setting up camp in a park with the magic tent captain provided. I was more than willing to stay with them, but opted to use my nifty magic coin to buy myself a room at the inn instead since they offered free breakfast.

After breakfast was over we quickly went past the wall and made our way to the temple. We were met by a bunch of orcs tearing into what could only be described as the previous inhabitants of the temple. We fought our way into, through, and out the temple through several waves of orcs.

Eventually the temple opened up into a cavern that went even deeper into the mountains. This was one of the tunnels that was supposed to be blocked off, but apparently the job had either been incomplete or undone. As we moved further in, we found another dwarf beset by a group of orcs, one in the enemy's colors. we saved his life and he told us he was supposed to blast these tunnels but a big half orc brute of a woman and her lovely assistant showed up and stopped his operation.

Ashlin looked visibly shaken and we asked her why. "I asked around while we were still in town and it sounds like my old partner Greta has joined with the Rhegesians, she's the one who cause this" She explained. We decided if a brawl with Greta were coming up we should get to a safe place and rest up for the impending brawl. Using a spell I have never used with this group before, we were able to stealth past some enemies and quickly dispatch with immovable ones in front of a door we needed to enter. I was so proud of them for finally taking their time instead of going in weapons swinging and needing me to bail them out again. We found a small area to set up the magic tent and we are currently resting for what is to be a momentous reunion of Greta and Ashlin in the morning.

SleepyShadow
2018-07-29, 02:02 PM
We had a dungeon crawl this week, so it was largely a series of combats. That isn't to say no story development took place, and as promised the other party members made sure Ashlynn got to attempt her duel against Greta ... whether she wanted to or not.

The PCs hiked their way to the Monastery of the Sundered Chain, a dwarven temple dedicated to Moradin. The party discovered it had come under assault by an advance company of orcs. The PCs fought their way through the initial defenders, cleared out the ground floor of the monastery, and headed down into the lower levels to secure the tunnels the orcs had come through. Down in the caverns below, the party found the last defender of the temple, a dwarven paladin named Kalad, desperately trying to fend off a group of orogs. The party rushed to the dwarf's aid! Up to this point, the orcs had proved little challenge to the PCs, but these orogs proved a different story. They defeated the orogs after several rounds of pitched combat, but afterward were forced to take refuge in Saorise's tiny hut to lick their wounds.

"So what's going on down here?" Ashlynn asked.
"The orcs, orogs, and their monstrous allies tunnelled their way in here and surprised the priests," Kalad explained. "My team and I were sent to seal the tunnels while you evacuated the priesthood, but we arrived too late ... as did you."
"What do we do now?"
"If you can clear a path through the orcs to the central nexus chamber, I can use the steam pipes as a catalyst for a massive explosion. We can bring the mountain down upon the heads of our invaders!"
"Can you do it so we're clear of the blast?"
"Of course I can! But I can't fight the orcs or their leader. She's too powerful."
"You mean Greta's here?" Flint asked.
"Aye," Kalad replied. "She leads them with her advisor at her side."
"1v1! 1v1!" Virion chanted excitedly.
"Why me?" Ashlynn sobbed.

Once the party had recovered from the fight with the orogs, they headed deeper into the caverns while Kalad stayed behind to keep watch for enemy reinforcements. The party encountered another group of orcs, this time backed by a trio of Ragesian mages and a halfling assassin. The party dispatched them without much difficulty, though Virion did end up on the receiving end of the initial barrage of fire attacks from the Ragesians. Pressing on, the PCs encountered yet more orcs, a choker, and the most dreaded obstacle of all: a locked door! Flint did not have thieves' tools, so the party took turns trying to bash the door down until resident wizard Saorise rolled a crit and smashed the door open.

"I loosened it for you," Virion grumbled.

The doors opened to reveal a large chamber with an elevated catwalk around the perimeter and a multi-level raised platform in the center. At the top of the platform was none other than Greta the Knife and another "avatar" of Zarouhi Orlaith, this time armed with necromantic magic. Naoko started having a mild panic attack at the sight of this, and Ashlynn had a proper fit at the prospect of being forced to 1v1 Greta. A few lines of WWE smacktalk were exchanged, and the fight began in earnest. Flint and Saorise managed to take down Zarouhi in only a couple of rounds, but as reinforcements of mook-tier orcs kept pouring in through the tunnels at the back of the chamber, the PCs knew the fight wouldn't end until Greta was taken out. This proved problematic, since she managed to dispatch Ashlynn in three rounds with barely a scratch on her. The party was kept busy at all points, with a pair of archers keeping Saorise pinned down, orog duelists hacking their way into the midlines of the party (even managing to kill Eva), but as things started to look up for the party, one of the unexplored doors behind the group burst open. Out came another half-dozen orcs, but more importantly ...

"They have a cave troll," Flint sighed.

The cave troll promptly grappled the ranger and began to use him as a club to whack Virion. A few more rounds of combat later, the last of the orcs were dead, the orogs were finally taken down, and all that remained were Greta and the troll. Things were looking grim for the party. Flint was still being used as a weapon by the troll, Virion was on medic duty with his wand of cure wounds, and everyone that wasn't unconscious was in single-digit hp. With a war cry that echoed through the caverns, Kalad came charging up from the rear and engaged the troll, allowing Virion to finally slip past and start working on Saorise and Naoko. Kalad (lvl 4 paladin) was not really much of a threat to the troll, but he kept it occupied long enough for Flint to finally take it down with his flaming rapier. With no allies left, Greta fought on valiantly. Even with the party on its last legs, she was no match for the combined firepower of the entire group. At long last, victory was claimed! Kalad sabotaged the steam pipes, and the party hurried out of the monastery before it exploded and collapsed. Nobody looked at the explosion :smallcool:

The PCs headed back to Bordrin's Watch and were celebrated as heroes by all! Well, almost all. In the cheering crowd was a little girl, a half-dwarf half-orc (locally referred to as a dworg) that had been a fan of Greta's work in the gladiator circle. This made Ashlynn upset, but the little girl was encouraged to join Flint's old ranger academy and seek her revenge when she's an adult. Yay revenge!

The party got some well-deserved rest, and Saorise promptly began to badger Naoko about Zarouhi's "avatars". Perhaps a bit of metagaming was involved, but it was a known fact that Zarouhi wasn't an actual god and therefore couldn't will avatars into existence. Naoko reluctantly explained that Zarouhi brainwashes powerful Ragesians into thinking they are avatars, then warps them with magic to make them look like her. With this new information, Saorise resolved to kill as quickly as possible any avatars the party came across to "put them out of their misery".

After resting up, the PCs trekked back to Sapphire to report their success. Along the way, they were once again ambushed by Major Rosalie Carcano. This time, however, she brought reinforcements. The battle was a tense one, with the lower level mages spamming magic missile at the party while the better trained ones used battlefield control spells to make life miserable for the PCs. All the while, Rosalie and her second lieutenant (a nervous girl named Vienne Leyvon) peppered the party with AoE spells. The battle proved a lot more difficult than I had anticipated, so once the mage squad was taken out, Rosalie just shrugged and used plane shift to withdraw. The PCs stuffed Vienne's body into their bag of holding with the intent of using raise dead to hopefully get some answers out of her, and trudged back to Sapphire without further incident.

Saorise had become convinced there was a spy in the group, but she didn't want to just drag NPCs into a zone of truth to yell at them. So the session ended with the party splitting up to level up, sell loot, and buy new gear. Ashlynn flipped the bill for Vienne's return to life, and Saorise followed Naoko, Eva, and Katarina around while invisible to see if she could catch them in the act of selling out the party to Ragesia.

Team Good's own spy hunt has begun!
TL;DR: Ashlynn couldn't 1v1 Greta.

normal name
2018-07-30, 07:42 PM
Ashlin here: sometimes old fans send me things when they can track me down. This time, a fan sent me a tabloid piece and an articles about me.
I always find the tabloids hilarious because they never seem to care about anyone I'm with unless they think we're romantically involved, which is
why they got everyone's but my name wrong.

Ashlin the Astonishing and Greta the Grand: Where Are They Now?


Everyone that frequented the gladiator pits within the last couple of years remembers this tag team. Who could forget them? On one hand,
we had the behemoth of a half-orc, Greta, who would often cause fans to pass out in the stands with a withering glare. And on the other
was Ashlin, a plucky beauty who had quite the knack for smack talking. They were the gladiator pits’ pride and joy --- the sport’s favorite
odd couple.


Everyone remembers one day after winning their fight for the evening, Greta stabbed Ashlin in the back, thereby ending the most successful
tag team. No one really knows why the half-orc did what she did, and there are more than a few theories that range from unrequited love,
jealousy, and a command spell. Regardless of the actual reasoning, Greta earned herself a new nickname that night: Greta the Knife.


But what happened to them? That is, what happened to them after the incident.


These two gladiator superstars met head to head recently, although not in a pit fight. Ashlin (with the most random assortment of adventurers
whose names Athletics Recorded were not able to find) ran into Greta who was leading a force of orcs and some mysterious woman.
According to our source, the two women wailed on each other with a few close calls on Ashlin’s end until Ashlin combined forces with some
friends and felled the great gladiator.


Everyone here at the Athletics Recorded would like to send our prayers and appreciation to the late, great Greta the Knife. To us, you will
always be the gladiator pits greatest warrior.


___



Several Spits Away Tabloid of Celebrity News


Ashlin the Astonishing Seen with New Woman


Just this afternoon the gladiator combatant turned adventurer was spotted at the Sapphire Circus with a mystery woman!


The new woman was tall with honey-colored hair and seemed nervous to be with such a high-profile date. But who wouldn’t be nervous when
they’re on a date with someone with so many fans like Ashlin?


Our source noted that Naomi was not seen in the vicinity, leading many to speculate whether or not Ashlin cut ties with the long-sword wielding
warrior in favor of this new contender. We can only assumed that Naomi didn’t take the break up as well as she would like people to believe.

Our source reached out to one of Ashlin’s traveling companions, Flick, who gave out several interesting details on the subject.


Flick said, “Well, she (Naomi) was saying something about believing in true love and how it will always find a way…”


When our source tried to interview the Zonan navy wizard, Sasha, they were met with a deliberate refusal to answer questions. The wizard
gave our source a glare and disappeared. Maybe there are some underlying feelings for our favorite former gladiator harbored by the naval
officer.


We can only hope Ashlin finds her true love, but here at Several Spits Away, we don’t think this new conquest will stand the test of time.



---Harvey Lemon

SleepyShadow
2018-08-13, 04:12 PM
Sorry for the delay, everyone. I went on vacation, and then the internet wasn't working. Everything is ship-shape now; hopefully there won't be anymore snags like this. We now return to your regularly scheduled campaign journal.

After returning to Sapphire from Bordrin's Watch, the party enacted their plan to catch the spy. They orchestrated a few diversions to split Naoko and Eva up from the main group, then Ashlyn approached each suspected NPC individually and told them she was going to be out in the forest alone praying to Pelor for guidance. Saorise followed with invisibility to try to catch one of the NPCs reporting to the Ragesians either through mundane or magical means. Virion followed Ashlyn out to the woods to safeguard from any ambush Saorise might be unable to learn about, and Flint got snow cones for himself and Eva as the two of them hung out in town. After waiting the better part of the day without any spy network being discovered, the PCs judged both Naoko and Eva to be trustworthy enough to keep in the party. To the party, it could only mean one thing: Katarina the pyromancer must be the spy!

Their next plan was a little less ... foolproof. Saorise challenged Katarina to a spell duel intent on tricking her into overstepping the rules of the duel or circumventing the nonlethal damage wards in place. The PCs were so convinced Katarina must be the spy that they even set aside enough money for raise dead, fully expecting the pyromancer to kill Saorise. It was a remarkably close duel between Saorise and Katarina (Light Cleric 2/Phoenix Sorcerer 6), and no rules were broken. After Katarina won the duel, she quietly chastised Saorise for losing. Kat had been trying to let her win by throwing out nothing but fireballs that would often catch both of them in the blast radius. Regardless, most of the group was then convinced Kat was not up to anything duplicitous, but Saorise was not so easily swayed.

After the battle, Flint got a letter from a woman named Jess, asking to meet him at the Shady Heart Hotel. The ranger thought little of it, and was about to head off by himself until Ashlyn pressured him into at least taking her and Eva along while Saorise and Virion stayed behind to patch up injuries from the duel. Flint reluctantly agreed, and I became mildly concerned.

"Jess" was a cover name for Jezska, an eyrines assassin summoned by the Ragesians to eliminate Flint (since he's the highest DPS the party has). I am usually able to rely on player paranoia to naturally circumvent assassination attempts like this, so I was a bit caught off-guard when it seemed like the party was splitting up. But hey, gotta let the players do what they want to do. I split up the encounter so that Jezska and her bearded devil cohort would engage Flint and Ashlyn on their own, while the four spellthieves I had planned to back the devils up were instead outside the hotel ready to either pick off survivors or prevent the two groups of PCs from linking up once the fight started. Still a couple of rough encounters, but nothing that should have been overwhelming even if Flint, Ashlyn, and Eva had to deal with both groups.

Anyway, Flint and Ashlyn got to the hotel, got into a scrap with Jezska, and the paladin used her sending stone to let Saorise know what was going on. Naturally, Saorise, Virion, and Naoko rushed to go aid their beleaguered party members. Of course, Group #2 got jumped by the four spellthieves before they could enter the hotel. Inside, the fight between Group #1 and the devils went pretty well. Ashlyn got some good smite damage in, Flint consistently passed his save against Jezska's magic lasso, and Eva tanked enough damage from the bearded devil to make a barbarian blush. Unfortunately, the battle outside was far less smooth. The caster half of the party had the misfortune of being the ones tangoing with the spellthieves; not the most powerful class by any stretch of the imagination, but it turns out spellthieves make much better antagonists than player characters. Saorise had not rested since her duel with Kat, so while she was at full hp she only had a couple spells left for the day. The spellthieves butchered Saorise and Virion, kidnapped Naoko, and scampered off before the warriors in the party could arrive. The spellthieves had made off with Saorise's and Virion's loose gp, but did not take any gear from the two dead PCs.

Ashlyn and Flint still had enough cash to afford a raise dead for both Saorise and Virion, but the werewolf druid refused the spell. His player wanted to swap in a new character: A warlock/sorcerer who was barely scraping 2nd level spells. The rest of us grumbled and protested (we all really liked Virion), but he was dead set on the new character. Reluctantly, the party allowed Jasaad the Dark to join the group. :smallfrown:

Once that debacle was taken care of, Head Mage Simon contacted the PCs and asked them to join him at the theatre that night. Hearing what had happened to them, he feared an assassination attempt might be made on himself as well. He also offered to use his scrying magic to locate Naoko after the play.

"It's a good idea," Flint said. "Don't want Simon to end up like Abe Lincoln."
"That's awful!" Ashlyn said.
"What? Too soon?" Flint replied with a shrug.

The party agreed to help the head mage, and met Simon at his tower before leaving for the Wayfarer Cirque's Theatre Ship. The PCs made sure to bring Katarina along, both for her magical power in case a fight broke out and so they could keep an eye on her. The five act play proceeded normally for the first two acts, but during the intermission the party spotted one of the actors sneaking up to the deck of the ship. Flint caught sight of blood on the actor's hands, so the party hurried after him to see what was going on.

Outside, a storm had begun to form, churning the waters and threatening to turn into a full blown hurricane. Amidst the pounding rain, the PCs saw Giorgio the bard and a halfling woman up by the controls of the magic ship, while a pair of gnomes (Jimmy the Fish and Larry the Bull) acted as bodyguards. Giorgio had activated the magical ship's teleportation function with the intent of sending it straight up into the air and hoping the falling damage from 400' up would kill everyone aboard. Saorise and Jasaad were able to also learn that they only had one minute before the ship's power was fully operational. The PCs were on the clock!

They killed Giorgio and his crew in two rounds and deactivated the ship's teleportation function two rounds later. A bit anticlimactic :smallsigh:

Once the mass assassination plot had been stopped, the party raced to tell Simon what had happened and to warn everyone of the gathering storm blowing into port. Simon commented how odd it was for a hurricane to blow in during spring, and suggested that it might be a magical attack. He asked the party to check on Lee Sidonia the hydromancer and ask for his expertise on the matter. After all, the head mage reasoned, if anyone would know how to stop a magical storm it would be Lee.

The party hurried off to Lee's house while the local militia took the opportunity to sail out and lose a battle against the dark elf navy blockading the port. When the party arrived at the hydromancer's house, they found the front door open and Lee was gone.

"Alright," Saorise said, "either he's in some serious trouble or he's causing it."

We ended the session there with one last futile effort to convince Jasaad's player to switch back to Virion.
TL;DR: Never split up the party.

SleepyShadow
2018-08-21, 11:56 AM
We had a new player join our group join our group this week. Hopefully, she'll be a regular addition to the team.

As the PCs were leaving Lee Sidonia's abandoned house, they encountered a bemused lizardfolk who looked like a giant axolotl (https://geneti****eracyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2-2-2018-1f25b8ce5f5b268259c50e8a95741663-axolotl-pet-strange-animals.jpg). This was Zeke, a local shaman sent by the green dragon Naxilla to figure out why there was a hurricane in Sapphire at the end of May. The party quickly accepted the strange lizardfolk into their ranks, due to equal amounts of metagaming and being on decent terms with Naxilla, and set out to find Lee.

"So, this is a control weather spell causing the hurricane, right?" Saorise asked. "I mean, we know Lee is a druid ... unless 'hydromancer' is a class I need to know about."
"Hydromancer is a title, and magic is a likely cause for the storm," I said.
"Wouldn't he need line of sight for the spell to work?" Ashlyn asked.
"I think so," Saorise said.
"I'll try to track him," Flint said as he proceeded to roll a 2. "Crap ..."
"Is there anywhere that would give Lee a good line of sight?" Jasaad asked.
"Roll a history check," I said with a shrug, content to let the players noodle out their own ideas.

There wasn't a particular DC needed, since I don't let plot get stopped by bad dice rolls. Rather, the two PCs that rolled highest (Ashlyn and Zeke, I think it was) knew the Tomb of the Pyromancer would offer an unparalleled view of the harbor and would be the perfect spot to use control weather. Of course, I didn't tell them that Master Sidonia was definitely not high enough level to cast 8th level spells; he was acting as a scrying point for the person responsible for the spell.

With their destination determined, the PCs and Eva set off for the tomb. As they travelled across the harbor, everyone except Saorise (because of Indomitability's boon) and Ashlyn (because she had the Tidereaver's Tears) got battered by hurricane winds and struggled to make any headway. Flint, of course, still refused to accept that the Tears might actually be a useful item. :smallannoyed:

Once there, the PCs ran into a small group of Ragesians who were trying to fortify the tomb and turn it into a forward operating base. As they hacked their way through the Ragesians and there monstrous minions, the party came across the dead body of a Ragesian rebel tucked into one of the storage rooms. A quick Medicine check determined she had been garrotted with a leather cord, rather than the usual metal wire, to ensure her strangulation was unnecessarily slow and painful. They also found her locket, which was a magic amulet paired with another amulet. Separated, the necklace did nothing, but when the two necklaces were near one another the wearers could cast warding bond on each other. The amulet also served as a locket, and had a picture of the dead woman and another Ragesian girl. The PCs thought it was odd, so they stuffed the whole body in their bag of holding and kept going.

"Eva, do you know these girls?" Saorise asked.
"Just because I'm Ragesian doesn't mean I know them all," Eva replied irritably.
"That's not what I meant!" Saorise said quickly.
"It's okay, Eva, I know how you feel," Flint said sadly. "'Massah' thinks I know all the rangers out there."
"She also thinks you're a charlatan," Jasaad chimed in.
"It's his character background!" Saorise stammered.
"Don't forget the lockpicking," Ashlyn added.
"Yeah, just because I'm black doesn't mean I'm an urban ranger," Flint said defiantly.
"I never said that," Saorise sighed.
"This is one of those times where mammals get sad, right?" Zeke asked. "I know how to do that. Look, see? AH-HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"That emotion," Jasaad said, "I do not think it means what you think it means."

And thus the rest of the party thinks Saorise is racist. Anyway, after the PCs cleared out the upper floor of Ragesians, including capturing a pair of rookie gishes, and hacked their way through the two dozen lemures somebody had stuffed into one particular room, the party headed down to the second floor and found a door warded by a river of lava.

"Pyromancer's tomb," Jasaad commented. "Makes sense."
"I'm immune to nonmagical fire," Saorise said. "Think I'll be able to get to that door?"
"I think I've got an extra character sheet if you're wrong," Flint replied.

Wisely deciding not to wade into the lava, the party opted to instead use floating disk to get to the door that didn't have a river of lava coming out of it. The PCs had a brief battle with a half-dozen 1st level wizards that got to magic missile Flint for a bunch of damage before dying horribly; once the encounter was clear, the party kept going in search of Lee Sidonia. Instead, they came across a Ragesian inquisitor torturing Naoko for information while the master spy and his three underlings waited around impatiently for something useful to be gleaned. The party, particularly Saorise, were all too ready for a rematch with the spellthief.

The battle was pretty rough at first, since the level 7 PCs had to run a lot of interference to make sure the two level 5s didn't get blasted into oblivion by the inquisitor spamming fireball after casting guardian spirit right on top of the group. The spy underlings weren't too much of a threat; they got in a couple hits now and then, but mostly they just ate up attacks from Ashlyn. Still, they were admirable hp speed bumps. The spymaster once again proved to be a pain in the butt, starting off by stealing Saorise's last 4th level spell and proceeding to wallop anyone he thought might have spell slots left. The fight ended in dramatic fashion when, after the underlings and inquisitor were slain, the spymaster was shoved into the river of lava and consumed by the divine fire.

"Never underestimate Chekhov's gun," Ashlyn laughed.

The party rescued Naoko, who was relieved they were still alive, and hustled out of the collapsing tomb still wondering where Lee had gotten off to. He had been perched on top of the tomb the whole time, meditating and allowing the storm to wreak havoc both on the city and the dark elf blockade. Once back outside, the PCs were alerted to his presence by a bolt of lightning to Saorise's face.

"Hold and go no further, laymen," Lee called out to them from his perch.
"Lee! So it was you!" Saorise cried. "Why are you doing this?"
"To maintain balance," he replied. "I do not wish to see Sapphire fall into Ragesian hands, nor do I wish to see it ally with other world powers."
"You led the Ragesians here?" Flint asked.
Lee nodded. "Yes. They wanted a FOB, so I played the part of helpful quisling and told them of the tomb. It was secret and secure, but I knew it would be demolished by the coming storm."
"Your storm is hurting innocent people!" Ashlyn shouted.
"It matters not in the end," Lee replied. "This world will be neither unified nor conquered."
"Your draining my dragon friend's swamp!" Zeke snapped. "I'll eat your fingers!"
Lee struck a dramatic pose and prepared for combat as his two gargoyles and his giant crab animal companion surfaced from the ocean. "If you wish to stop the hurricane, you must weather the storm of my fury!"

The fight with Lee was pretty intense, and the difficulty was amplified since the party had not had a chance to rest. Lee Sidonia (a druid/monk) was also aided by the choppy water battering the party and the occasional hurricane-generated lightning strike that would target PCs at random. He had plenty of spells to throw at the party, so he pelted them with magic while waiting for someone to engage him in melee. The aquatic gargoyles weren't much of a threat to the party, but they were very durable and just accurate enough with their claw attacks that Flint and Ashlyn had to take them down. Eva and Lulu the crab into a hilariously awkward duel where neither of them could roll above 10. Once the gargoyles were defeated, Naoko and Flint braved the hurricane winds to face Lee directly while the others stayed back, either to help poor Eva with the giant crab or to pepper Lee with spells from afar. When the hydromancer was at last defeated, the hurricane coalesced into an annihilating cyclone directly where he had fallen. Naoko and Flint both tried to sacrifice themselves to save the other, and in doing so managed to get both of them safely away from the tornado.

A few moments later, as the cyclone receded back into the sky and the storm began to fade away, the sound of approaching wings put the exhausted party on edge for another fight. Thankfully, it was an ally: Takasi, Laurabec's giant eagle companion. The golden bird carried a halberd in his beak, and once he landed he solemnly placed it on the ground in front of the party.

"Wait, where's Laurabec?" Ashlyn asked.
"She and I braved the storm together, and rescued many sailors from drowning," the giant eagle replied, "but the hurricane was too strong. She was swept off my back, and I could not save her. Her weapon was all that I was able to recover."
"I'm so sorry, Takasi," Ashlyn said.
"Why?" Flint asked. "I thought you didn't like her."
"She was kind of annoying, but she was a good person," Ashlyn admonished.
"Who's Laurabec?" Zeke asked.
"She was a paladin of freedom that didn't want to be leader of the refugee camps because bossing people around went against her oath or something," Saorise informed the lizardfolk.
"I'd like you to have her weapon," Takasi said to the group. "I'm sure it would bring a smile to Laurabec's sweet face to know it was in the hands of such righteous people."
"Thank you," Ashlyn said. "What will you do now?"
"I'm off to join her in death," Takasi replied.
"What?! You can't do that!" Saorise said. "Why not join us instead?"
Takasi held up one wing and shook his head. "No, no, I'd best go find something evil and way above my pay grade so I may die in glorious combat."
"What if we found you a new paladin to partner up with?" Ashlyn asked.
"I don't know," Takasi said, "they would have to be a champion of freedom and righteousness, an ally to the common folk and a friend to all."
"Ashlyn is chaotic good," Flint said. "Does that count?"
"Flint! Don't do this to me!" Ashlyn hissed. "I'm way different than Laurabec! Just because we had the same alignment doesn't mean -"
"A chaotic good paladin? Splendid!" Takasi cried happily. "I will gladly take you under my wing, ho-ho-ho, as my new paladin partner! Evil tyrants shall tremble before our righteous freedom!"
"Epic mount! Epic mount!" Flint and Jasaad chanted.
"Call upon me anytime you need aid!" Takasi said. "Until we meet again ... partner!"

The giant eagle flew off into the rising sun, and the session ended with loot division and lamentations of having to deal with an uptight giant eagle.
TL;DR: Druids make good boss fights, and NPCs do stuff when you aren't looking.

AllHailthed4
2018-08-24, 12:23 PM
At long last, my player update! Grad school is hard on the writing process :P


Dearest Father,

Mac Lir’s blessing upon you and the rest of our family. I eagerly await your next letter, though I realize that the distance and events between us guarantee its delay.

To begin, I have a question for mother. There is a pyromancer here who is making quite a name for herself. We dueled not too long ago, and she defeated me quite soundly. For my part, it was an attempt to coerce her into revealing herself as the spy amongst us. It all added up. The scrying attempts began almost immediately after she joined us and I, like a fool, have been carrying her staff around since then. What better focus point? But when she won, she just smiled, helped me up, and chastised me for losing an opportunity to win the crowd over to our party. Maybe her interest really only extends to improving the Opposition’s image. I still have a hard time trusting her, but I think this is because of her similarity to mother’s side of the family: tall with red hair, amber eyes, and a knack for arcane magic and mischief in equal measure. Is their any chance we are related to the Dawnrights (specifically Katerina)?

Since I last wrote, Eva and I have started to reach an understanding. I am learning that her more appalling suggestions are meant to get a rise out of anyone gullible enough to believe them—nothing more. In turn, she is starting to listen to me, although, she is prone to nitpicking plans’ weaknesses. Then again, I am starting to welcome the extra set of eyes given how much has happened. I do not know that we will ever be friends, but, in the end, I have come to trust her almost as much as Ashlin or Flint.

Aside from that, two new members have joined our band. While we were out in a hurricane trying to track a rogue druid (more on that later), a giant lizard accosted us. At least, I think she’s a lizard. At any rate, Zeke joined us on the search and has proven herself a capable wielder of wild magic. She seems to have taken a liking to us (it is hard to tell sometimes, but at least she has been laughing a lot) and will likely travel with us on our future missions. Quite fortunately, in light of our recent loss. The second is a nobleman called Jassad. His family owns a large spice-trading business, the same one that our tavern has been buying from for years, in fact. As the youngest son, he doesn’t seem to have much ambition or responsibility with regard to the family business, but it is nice to have another fellow Zonan around.

Otherwise, the war continues on. Two more assassination attempts were launched at at the resistance. The second one was… unnervingly creative. One of the Wayfarer Circus performers has badgered everyone here for weeks with tickets for the performance. You see, the group performs on a teleporting ship (as befits their theme). Rather than shooting the targets from the stage or quietly killing them from the audience, the performer just set the ship to teleport straight up. Fortunately, the controls are meant to be used with ease and thus we were able to deduce how to cancel the spell. Meanwhile, the Ragesians had established a secret base in the nearby cliffs, which we captured. Then, the druid we sought, one Lee Sidonia, revealed that he had betrayed both the resistance and the Ragesians, the former by scrying us and reporting our movements to Ragesia, and the latter by advising them to build their base in the nearby cliffs, an area unstable enough to be destroyed by a large storm (which he then provided.) Our “spy” turned out to be Naoko, who Sidonia had approached with an offer before we left for the North. He had promised to track us through her and provide aid when possible. I cannot blame her. One begins to wonder who to trust in all this. I guess I am lucky, in that regard, to in a party that can trust each other implicitly when all else fails.

The Ragesians have also started sending more skilled soldiers. For instance, they have Inquisitors—bear-masked clerics tasked with stamping out magic that is arcane in nature or originates from a deity other than Zaruhi Orlaith. Despite the fact that their queen is a false god at best, they are surprisingly powerful—a testament to the strength of their belief. Ragesia has also graced us with what they call spell thieves, which are skirmishers capable of draining magical energy from their victims and turning it to their own use. Their skills should be outlawed! There are few actions more demeaning than theirs. I urge you and the others to keep your heads down should Ragesia invade the village. They would like nothing better than to wipe out a family “heretics” like ours, and are now well-equipped to do so.

I still do not know when

Ashlin said the funniest thing

Tell my siblings that

Father, there is one more thing you must know. I met Mac Lir the night after the duel, at a dirty street corner, on the end of spell thief’s rapier. Flint and Ashlin were in trouble on the far side of the town, and I overestimated my ability to effectively fight without my chief weapon. Virion died too. I understand that my continued presence in this world subverts the very cycle of life and death we revere. But there’s so much left to do in this war. How could I possibly rest while my companions are left to continue on in this struggle? Caught between the two principles I hold most dear, I accepted a resurrection. Mac Lir just smiled when I told him my intent. Of course, you and I both understand what my choice means, and what I must do when the war is finished. I am at peace with the consequences, but I worry the others will not be so accepting. Nonetheless, until then, I recommit to my faith. I have already ensured that my killer was met with divine retribution. Now, I will use my borrowed time to do everything in my power to protect my home and end the tyranny of Zaruhi Orlaith. Then, I will return to my rest. I hope that you can forgive my choices, and will remember me always as



Your loving daughter,

Saoirse

SleepyShadow
2018-08-30, 12:41 PM
Sorry for the delay. It's been a busy week :smallfrown:

With the unexpected loss of power brought on by having two level 5 characters join the team, and since Simon gave the party a week of downtime, the PCs opted to ask around town for some local adventuring jobs needing to be done. In other words, it was sidequest time. After a bit of information gathering, the party learned of three tasks:

a) During the hurricane, several of the dark elf sailors had been kidnapped by the Sable Drake, a pirate ship crewed by goblins notorious for ransoming valuable prisoners. Although the dark elf quartermaster had not yet been able to confirm the rumor, it was suspected that one of the goblins' prisoners was Princess Shalo'ha.

b) According to the local thieves' guild, some Ragesians had been spotted at a supposedly abandoned warehouse. They were attempting to broker trade with "really pale elves in spiked leather". The thieves' guild thought it wise to stop whatever alliance the Ragesians were trying to make and, if possible, convince the strange "elves" to side with Sapphire instead.

c) With the invasion in full swing, the Ragesians had started bringing in spelljammer ships to act as an air force to provide backup for their ground troops. The gnomes of Meltis wanted the PCs to help them capture a Ragesian spelljammer so it could be studied and replicated, since Seldarin griffon riders and Zounan wyvern knights would stand little chance against such airships.

The party also learned from Simon that Kosuta No Ken, the island nation off the east coast of the mainland, had sided with Ragesia and welcomed them with open arms. According to the head mage, the Kenjin viewed the Ragesians as their divine ancestors and saw it as a sign of Kosuta No Ken's imminent ascension to power. The party took it better than I expected.

"Oh well, those island folk are always up to no good," Flint said. "Right, Captain?"
"Why am I the lightning rod for racism?" Saorise asked irritably.

The PCs decided rescuing the princess would be a good start to the day, so they headed down to the docks to borrow a ship and go rescue Shalo'ha. They also gave Naoko and Eva some time off, since killing their own countrymen had started to take a toll on their morale. The dark elf quartermaster reluctantly handed over one of the few remaining functional steam powered ironclads, The Xiphias, and after some difficulty getting the hang of controlling the unwieldy craft (Saorise accidentally plowed through a fishing boat), the PCs headed out onto the high seas to track down the The Sable Drake. Saorise was at the helm, Flint was on lookout on the ship's deck, a half dozen volunteer dark elf sailors handled the rigging, and the rest of the PCs idled about on the ship.

Unfortunately, The Sable Drake struck first.

The goblin pirates, led by Captain Naki (a wererat goblin druid), were cunning adversaries. They waited until well after dark, then came up alongside The Xiphias and quietly affixed grappling hooks and boarding planks to the ironclad. Flint heard the noise, but since he didn't have darkvision he couldn't see what was going on. He also didn't bother to light a lantern to investigate. He merely shouted down to Saorise that "something weird was going on" and then he got stabbed in the back by a trio of goblin pirates.

Combat was hectic as the PCs rushed up the ladder to defend the deck, then scrambled about in the dark since less than half the group could see the twenty or so goblins streaming aboard their ship. Saorise ordered the dark elf sailors to stay below deck and man the ship, since she didn't want any of them to die during the fight. The fight took a while due to the sheer number of pirates, but only Captain Naki and her first mate were an actual threat to the PCs. Zeke and Jasaad struggled a bit, but once Ashlyn was able to get to their position she was able to bail them out. The fight ended with the party down several spell slots but otherwise coming out on top.

With the goblins defeated, the PCs decided to board The Sable Drake and search for prisoners. Down below deck, they ran afoul of the Daughters of Mahogra, a trio of Howling Hags who had been looking at purchasing some of the lower ranking prisoners to eat. The hags proved more of a challenge than the goblins did, though admittedly most of the damage the hags were able to deal was because of the 25 ft. aura of psychic damage each of them had. Regardless, the party came out on top, even after Saorise cast hold person on something they had already identified as fey. As it turned out, Princess Shalo'ha was not among the prisoners. Rather, her disguised handmaiden had let herself be captured to allow the princess to escape. The PCs were both glad for her safety and disappointed that the main reason they had even come out here turned out to be nothing more than a case of mistaken identity. The PCs got the rescued dark elves aboard The Xiphias, hitched The Sabled Drake to the back of their ironclad, and towed the pirate ship back to Sapphire as a trophy.

Once back at port, the PCs collected a tidy sum for their efforts and hired some local shipwrights to rebuild The Sable Drake into a ship usable by medium-sized creatures. Things began to break down from there.

"What should we tackle next?" Saorise asked. "Should we strengthen relations with the gnomes, or stop the alliance between Ragesia and those weird elves."
"I think they're shadar-kai," Jasaad said after a successful knowledge check. "Edgelords from the Shadowfell."
"So you want to go stop them?" Saorise asked.
"He just doesn't like magitech," Flint said.
"So?" Jasaad argued. "I don't think magic and machines should mix, so I want to put off dealing with spelljammers for as long as possible. Also, gnomes are annoying."
"But we could have a magic flying airship!" Ashlyn said excitedly.
"Keep your sci-fi out of my fantasy!" Jasaad pouted.
"Let's go down to the warehouse and check out the edgelord faeries, then," Flint said with a shrug.
"I get it," Zeke said. "You call them edgelords because they were spikes. It is a joke, and therefore what you mammals call funny. I know the appropriate reaction to this. AH-HAHAHAHAHA!"

With that settled, the PCs headed off to the warehouse.
TL;DR: Sidequests will continue until morale improves (or the lvl 5s catch up a bit).

SleepyShadow
2018-09-05, 11:09 AM
My players have a real knack for seeing an interesting battlefield and finding the safest, flattest, most boring parts to fight on :smalltongue:

Following the lead from the local thieves' guild, the party headed off to the allegedly abandoned warehouse where the Ragesians were spotted trying to broker a deal with the Shadar-Kai. The PCs had a brief scuffle with a few Ragesians outside the warehouse, and kicked the door open. Inside, they found the Shadar-Kai were waiting for them. They had coated part of the entrance with doomspores, a type of mushroom innocuous to creatures native to the Shadowfell but poisonous to creatures from the Prime. There were also four very edgy shadar-kai mages on the other side of the mushrooms.

Turns out a bunch of cloud of daggers stacked in a tight room can cause problems for even mid-level characters :smallamused:

Once the mages were dealt with, the PCs ate some poison damage from the mushrooms and hurried farther into the warehouse. In the main part, they came upon a group of Ragesians arguing with a couple shadar-kai about the price they were being charged for whatever services the shadar-kai were offering. Flint took the opportunity to shoot the Ragesian inquisitor down to a quarter of her health. The fight was a lot rougher than it should've been, mostly because the baddies were rolling crazy well. The inquisitor only got off one fireball before she died, but had she rolled one more point of damage she would've outright killed Jasaad. The three warblades were in heaven getting to fight a bunch of casters in spaces too tight for the PCs to use most of their better AoE spells, and even the two shadar-kai managed to showcase that shadowcasters aren't completely useless. The PCs won in the end, but they had to pull back and rest before they could keep going.

Once the party had finished resting inside Saorise's tiny hut, they found a visitor calmly waiting for them: a parrot squawking for them to follow it.

"Sorry little guy, our druid is already dead," Flint said.
"I think it might be a familiar," Saorise said. "Should we check it out?"
"What if it's a trap?" Ashlyn asked.
"I think we should go," Flint said cheerily. "The last time we met up with a complete stranger in an unknown location, they tried to kill me and it was fine."
"I was there, too," Ashlyn sighed.
"It was fine for you two," Saorise grumbled. "I'll send my familiar to check it out before we go."

The party decided that was a fine idea, and so Lucas the bat was sent to follow the parrot. When Saorise's familiar reported a hooded figure clad in red pirate garb sitting on a crate. After a bit more deliberating, the PCs took the bait and went to meet the stranger. The fellow introduced himself as Lumol Kildantel, and offered them his assistance as a sort of trial run. He then pulled back his hood, revealing his identity as a mind flayer.

"You have ten seconds to explain yourself," Saorise said.
"I'm an emissary from the Ashen Compact," Lumol replied calmly. "Surfacers are not the only ones at war. Those of us below also fight against the incursion."
"Oh yeah, we found one of your guys crucified a long while back," Flint said. "Why do they hate mind flayers more than the rest of us do? Did you guys do something bad?"
"We once enslaved their entire race ... or perhaps I should say we will," Lumol replied. "The way you humans view time is too linear for me to explain."
"We need to get out of here," Ashlyn said quietly. "I have a bad feeling about this."
"I like him," Flint said. "You wanna hang out?"

-Lumol Kildantel has joined the party!-

The PCs were understandably suspicious of Lumol, but nobody explained to Flint why trusting a mind flayer from a secret organization might be a bad idea. Regardless, the party headed back to the warehouse and found most of the stuff was gone. All that was left were a few Ragesians loading a couple of crates through a shadowy portal while an inquisitor argued vehemently with a peculiar looking halfling (which the party later identified as a dark creeper). The fight was brief; the Ragesians only managed to get off a couple volleys of spells before getting cut down by the PCs superior damage output. The creeper, meanwhile, escaped through the portal during the fight. Once the Ragesians were slain and looted, the party set off headlong through the mysterious portal.

It was at that point I realized I'd never be able to run Tomb of Horrors for these guys :smallbiggrin:

The party found themselves just outside a massive military encampment near a volcano on the Shadowfell, but there was no sign of where the dark creeper had run off to. The party split up into pairs to ask around the base camp for information and found out the base camp belonged to a massive mercenary company led by a shadar-kai named Sarshan, a legendary soldier renowned across the Shadowfell. The PCs also learned that the Ragesians had hired Sarshan's substantial army to supplement their own limited forces, and they had paid handsomely for his aid.

Once the PCs reconvened to exchange what they had learned, the group was approached by platinum blonde shadar-kai woman named Leena. She told the group that she used to be allies with the dark creeper they were pursuing, but when she learned that Modra was planning to betray Sarshan, she turned her back on her friend. She offered to help the party in their diplomacy with Sarshan if they would stop Modra from completing her sabotage of the foundry. The party thought this was a fair deal and readily agreed. However, as they were heading to the foundry, the PCs ran afoul of a group of Ragesians who recognized them and rushed to the attack.

The enemy squad (two lvl 5 crusaders, two lvl 5 warblades, and a lvl 5 paladin/favored soul) proved quite the challenge for the group. At one point in the fight, Saorise was the only PC conscious. They managed to pull through in the end, but the fight was far more challenging than it should've been given the level discrepancy between the two groups. After the battle, the party limped onward to the foundry just as a massive contingent of mercenary soldiers marched through an open portal in the center of the base camp. The PCs took the opportunity to slip past the guards and sneak inside. The foundry was harnessing a stream of laval from the nearby volcano to power its forge and five mysterious vats, and the PCs came upon Modra and her lemure goons attempting to redirect the lava flow toward Sarshan's tower. The party got the drop on Modra, killed a couple of her henchmen and reduced her to half hp before initiative was even rolled.

"You don't understand what you're dealing with here!" Modra shouted desperately.
"You're right, I don't," Flint replied as he shot her again.
"They're using this place to create ... the ultimate bio-weapon!" Modra screamed as she pulled a lever on one of the vats.

Out of the vat slithered a bio-organic weaponized monstrosity (http://i.neoseeker.com/ca/resident_evil_5_conceptart_z4its.jpg) the likes of which the party had never seen before. It rampaged across the battlefield, flinging Flint all over the place (since he was the only one that went into melee with the thing), but ultimately it proved rather underwhelming beyond how much hp it had. The party handily slew the B.O.W., Modra, and all the goons without too much difficulty. While they were looting the room, they stumbled upon a secret door that led from the foundry directly to Sarshan's tower.

We ended the session with the party preparing to head through the secret tunnel.
TL;DR: I like Metal Gear and Resident Evil.

SleepyShadow
2018-09-09, 12:06 PM
Sometimes players do the darndest things ...

Things started off in our usual fashion. The PCs headed through the secret tunnel leading from the foundry to Sarshan's tower, and along the way, they triggered a trap - a fairly innocuous dart trap that missed everyone in the group except Zeke and Lumol. The secret tunnel led to the backside of a bookcase which was a secret door in the tower's library. A small number of guards (a shadowcaster, two ogre warriors, and an inquisitor) were met and dealt with by the PCs with little fanfare. They searched the library, picked it clean of valuable or interesting bits, and pressed on to the adjoining chamber where there were a couple of doors. Like usual, they searched for traps, checked for locks, and agreed on a door to open first.

Except, Jasaad didn't like the door the rest of the group picked. So he opened the other one.

In each of the two rooms now open to the party were two mixed groups of Ragesians and shadar-kai who had heard the scuffle in the library and had prepared themselves for combat. One group also had a devil-woman with them. Essentially, the fight went from a 4-on-6 battle in favor of the party to an 8-on-6 battle in favor of the baddies. Poor initiative rolls also meant only Flint and Ashlyn were able to act before the enemies, and neither of them were able to prevent the two groups of baddies from sandwiching the party in an unexpected pincer maneuver and withering them with repeated AoE attacks. The demoness was able to teleport into the library behind the party and clog up the escape route with summoned mooks.

Saorise and Zeke acted as healers for the entire battle, tending to anyone who went down until they themselves were felled. Ashlyn used misty step to engage the demoness in melee and quickly take her down, but the Ragesian mages blasted her into unconsciousness. Lumol went down swinging, but inevitably died in the AoE crossfire. Jasaad had some fairly bad luck, never able to really get any offense going. He bled to death on the floor in the corner of the room. Flint was the last one standing, and managed to take down two more enemies before he finally fell to their concentrated firepower. The PCs fought valiantly, but Jasaad's rash decision proved too costly to overcome.

We ended the session there, shaking our heads, berating Jasaad's player, and wondering what could be done to salvage the campaign.
TL;DR: Keep a tight leash on your loose cannons. You never know when they'll get the whole group wiped out.

SleepyShadow
2018-09-22, 07:15 AM
Just a quick update. The campaign isn't dead and neither is the journal. I just needed some extra time to figure out where to go with the campaign. The PCs are now prisoners of war attempting an escape from a mad mage's dungeon on the Shadowfell. I'll make a full entry on Monday following this weekend's session.

SleepyShadow
2018-09-25, 10:01 AM
The party started off in separate cells after three days of being questioned by a blind woman who called herself the White Speaker. A couple of quick knowledge checks from Saorise informed the PCs that the White Speaker was a bit of an urban legend in shadar-kai society - a mysterious and seemingly immortal entity whose only motive seemed to be learning secrets. Anyway, after a quick bit of dialogue, the White Speaker left to go deal with some intruders attempting to break into the complex. Shortly after she teleported away, the PCs were freed from their cells by an NPC I never thought I'd have cause to use again: Sarika Veluth, the Al-Hassan princess kidnapped by the now-defunct Team Evil. She told the party that her cell had been damaged by some fighting earlier, and if they were going to escape now was the only chance they'd have. She suggested outfitting themselves with some gear left behind by the guards who had gone to reinforce the entrance. Since the PCs were bereft of their normal equipment, they agreed that was a good idea.

This might've been the last time the party agreed on much of anything.

Saorise started things off by berating Jasaad (the shadar-kai had rezzed him with the notion of ransoming him off) for opening the door that led to the technical TPK. This ensured a healthy camaraderie necessary for escaping a mad mage's dungeon. After poking around a bit, Flint found a locked door.

"It's lock is complex," I told him. "You'll likely need a key. The door itself is emblazoned with a shield symbol ..."
"Does a 25 unlock it?" Flint asked.
"Is that with disadvantage since you don't have your thieves' tools?"
"Yep!"
I sighed. "You wiggle your fingers at the lock until it opens up ..."

They headed through the door, clowned their way past an otyugh, and found several doors. Only one was unlocked, and Saorise was glad since this would prevent Jasaad from running around the room throwing open doors and turning paintings sideways. The PCs went through the unlocked door, clowned a few gibberlings (basically hairy goblins with a weak fear effect), and set off several traps while looting the next couple of rooms. One trap they set off was an alarm spell set to alert the two golems in a separate part of the dungeon. So a few rounds after they finished looting the rooms, the two lesser clay golems rolled up and started wailing on the PCs. The golems were basically sacks of hp without their damage resistance, but they held up against the party fairly well.

One of the bits of loot the party had collected was a golden wire key that Saorise identified as a portal activation key. Ashlyn correctly surmised there must be a portal somewhere in the dungeon. The PCs poked around a bit more, fought another batch of gibberlings, and found the portal two rooms over from where they found the key. Being the obvious exit, Flint didn't want to go through it. They hadn't found their original equipment, and Flint was quite insistent on finding it before they left the dungeon. Since both Ashlyn and Jasaad dearly missed their cloaks of charisma, they agreed. Saorise was sure the White Speaker had her spellbook, and thus wanted to find their captor as quickly as possible. Zeke, for her part, was content with the gear they had collected from the dungeon, since a druid with natural armor really didn't need anything.

After a rigorous debate, the party headed back into the dungeon to clear it out and find their missing equipment. Instead, they found little more than groups of roaming gibberlings and the occasional smoke mephit. They thought they were on the right track when they ran into an ogre mage with a level of monk, but she turned out to be little more than a mini-boss. They kept collecting gear as they went, even finding a few bits of magical gear along the way, and eventually found a smithy run by a group of ill-tempered duegar.

"This has to be where our stuff is at," Flint said excitedly.
"Ach, this is where your escape comes to an end," the lead duegar shouted. "At em, lads! Illych and his boys'll stop ye!"

The evil dwarves lasted maybe two rounds.

However, the party's gear was nowhere to be found. They consoled themselves by looting the room and surmising their gear must also be with the White Speaker. Still, there were two doors left to check and nobody to stop them. Behind one room was a whole bunch of mephits and a magic sword, and beyond the other was a very pretty half-demon encased in a magic sphere.

"What's her charisma?" Ashlyn asked immediately.
"She has a haunting and unearthly beauty," I replied.
"So .. like a twenty?"
"It's a twenty-four, actually."
"Guys, we have to help her!"

The party chatted with the cambion marquis (named Marchessa) and got a sob story about how she had been imprisoned for six months by the White Speaker while the mage tried to convince the demoness to assassinate "some high up Prime wizard". Marchessa also told them a little of the Blood War, and said the PCs stank of the Baatezu. When asked what that meant, she clarified that Baatezu were devils and the Tanar'ri were demons like her.

"Last time we dealt with a fiend, she tried to kill us," Saorise warned.
"Yeah, but she asked me out on a date and was super nice," Flint replied.
"Come on, we have to free her," Ashlyn said. "She's so pretty!"
"Do it," Jasaad whispered. "You know you want to."

Ashlyn pulled the switch on the wall to deactivate the magical sphere, at which point Marchessa thanked them and teleported away with the ominous promise of seeing them later. The PCs shrugged it off and, since there was nothing else to find in the dungeon, they headed for the portal in hopes of finding their escape. Before they went through, they decided to lock themselves in a dead end room and rest up "just in case" they had to fight the White Speaker.

"You guys sure have some kind of courage to sleep in this place," Sarika said after a successful long rest. "I would've run screaming a dozen times over if you guys weren't here."
"Oh my god," Jasaad sighed.
"That's nice, don't care," Flint said. "Let's go."
"Oh ..." Sarika said quietly.

TL;DR: Gotta find dat loot, and mistakes were made.

SleepyShadow
2018-09-29, 06:45 AM
No update this week. I'm out of town and thus cannot run the campaign. Your regularly scheduled clusterfakk campaign journal will resume as soon as possible :smallbiggrin:

normal name
2018-10-07, 07:36 PM
Due to wonky schedules and such character diaries were kinda pout on hold, but I have some free time today so it looks like another installment of the Flynt Files is in order!

I was surprised to wake up again to be honest. After watching the rest of my friends fall in combat, I was sure they would loot our bodies and take my cool hat.
Luckily, they spared us and allowed us to recoup in some spare cells in some sort of jail. I'd been in the big house once before for a crime I didn't know i was
committing and vowed to never return. While that appears to not be the case, I'm glad our captors are apparently as merciful to us as we try to be towards them.

It's impossible too know exactly how long has passed in here since there are no windows, but if our visitor's appearances have been any indication, i'd say about 3
days have gone by. This mysterious woman makes he rounds to each of our cells and tries to pump us for information about our forces and the security of our allies.
Luckily for us, we know nothing and just follow orders blindly so I've been answering as honestly as possible. Shortly after the most recent bout of 20 questions with
our new friend, we heard sounds of battle and destruction. This prompted our host to leave us, but we were not alone for long. A plucky girl the likes of which I've
never seen before crept into our cell block and freed us. She claimed to be from the South and is named Sirika.

Sirika warned us that our only chance at escape would be now so we all followed her into the room she appeared from. There were tables and cabinets containing basic
weapons and armor so we quickly equipped ourselves and moved to what we hoped would be a way out of this prison. I encountered a locked door, but with Saorise
conjuring me some tools to pick it with, I made short work of the ward. Upon entering the next chamber, we were greeted with a terrible stench and a garbage monster.
It seems we found the waste pit of this compound. Due to our overwhelming numbers, we dispatched with the creature and encountered 3 more doors. 2 doors were
locked in a similar fashion as the first door, with slightly different key hole shapes and the third door was unlocked. We chose the unlocked door first and progressed
down a hallway. We encountered a group of small, hairy, chattering men and they jumped us. Luckily they went down without much resistance but the danger was not
clear yet. Apparently this prison is heavily trapped, which we discovered when Ashlyn stepped on several pressure plates and got speared for it. I suggested we use old
school techniques such as probing for traps with a spear or pole. I must've been too quite. As soon as she recovered from the spear traps, she entered an adjoined
room and went to check a chest for traps, triggering the floor traps on the way over :smallsigh:

It was the mysterious woman's room from what we could tell and we were able to get some better armor and weapons from her personal stash. I sound some nifty
studded leather armor under her bed, but the captain wouldn't let me keep it for some reason. I think she just wanted it for herself, along with the whip and handcuffs.
We also found a port key that would allow us to hopefully escape, but not knowing where we are makes that a risky move. I suggest finding our normal gear so we
have the best chance of survival as possible. The group agreed and we returned to the 2 locked doors. Again with the conjured picks I was able to open the
door and we fought through some more henchmen. The more we fought, the more empowered we became. all the practice picking locks was really starting to
pay off and i could feel my skills growing (we leveled up halfway through this part of the prison break.)

Eventually we reached a library and searched for Saorise's spell book, but came up with nothing. We continued further and came upon an oddly placed blacksmith
crew who attacked us on sight unfortunately. After a short battle, we were finally running low on energy and were looking for a good place to rest. Checking one
room, we found a seductress who was trapped in some sort of arcane bubble, much like Naoko was found in. Ashlyn wanted to free her and hang out but I suggested
we do that after a rest so we were at full power. Checking the last door on the floor we could find, we cleared it out of the chattering creatures and i locked the door.
Be fore we rested we destroyed what appeared to be a summoning circle which was painted on the floor and found a magic great sword run through a corpse.
Saorise identified the magic gear we found and we drifted off to sleep.

I couldn't help but think about if this was all my life was about as i faded away. Are my remaining days destined to be plagued with near death encounters everyday?
What's the point of fighting if you never get to stop and enjoy the peace or spoils of your victories with your loved ones? Is this what the South is always doing?
Fighting wars and losing their sense of adventuring for adventure sake? Maybe I just need some time to clear my head, but first i have to make sure all my friends
make it out safe, and Sirika too.

SleepyShadow
2018-10-21, 01:57 PM
After a short hiatus and a long delay, things look to be back on track with the campaign journal. The campaign itself is another matter ...

The party trekked to the second floor of the dungeon and immediately encountered a violet-haired man named Mirokuji, who claimed to be a fellow prisoner and asked to join the group. He informed the PCs he was a bounty hunter from a world called Oilyx, and was unsure where they were or why they were here. After claiming he could dance on the head of a pin, the party reluctantly allowed him to join the group until they were able to free themselves.

The PCs pressed on, clowned their way through a horde of mephits, and came upon an Avatar of Zarouhi trashing a room filled with cloning vats. Ashlyn attempted to negotiate, but Zarouhi was berserk. Unfortunately, bad rolls on my part meant what should have been a challenging fight was little more than a footnote in the evening. This string of bad luck would plague the rest of the session. While they were looting the room, Flint found a scroll and wanted to immediately stash it. Jasaad objected, naturally, and snatched the scroll away from him. The warlock immediately opened the scroll and was afflicted with a debilitating curse.

"I told you!" Flint laughed. "Everything in here is a trap!"
"Who traps a scroll?!" Jasaad whined.
"Why didn't either of you have the scroll identified?" Saoirse asked.
"Nobody has identify prepared," Flint replied.
"I do ..." Sarika said quietly.
"Nobody asked you," Flint retorted.

The party finished leveling up and pressed on. After a couple of unremarkable encounters with more gibberlings and mephits, they came across a large room with tracks of multi colored tiles guarded by a pair of duergar archers. The archers themselves proved little challenge to the group, but during the fight the PCs accidentally discovered that each of the lengths of colored tiles were associated with different spell traps. During the fight, the magic missile and cone of cold traps were triggered repeatedly. Good times :smallamused: It also became apparent Mirokuji's trap-laying abilities were never going to be utilized by the party, since his pleas for cooperation were repeatedly ignored.

The PCs disabled the traps, trekked across the hall, killed a vampire, and were very disappointed she didn't have any loot. Farther down the hall, the party slaughtered another group of gibberlings and duergar, and eventually came upon an old man trapped in a glass cell. The old man said his name was Frenedan, and that the White Speaker had been keeping him here to experiment on. Saoirse and Ashlyn were quick to set the old man free, Flint and Jasaad didn't trust him, and Zeke took the opportunity to harvest some fingers from the duergar.

They made their way down the last unexplored passageway and were beset by a trio of Ragesian swordsages who looked winded from a recent fight. Saoirse and Ashlyn were relieved to run into a known enemy.

"What's going on?" Saoirse asked.
"We're here to collect you," one of the swordsages replied. "We're taking you back to our prison camp. Come quietly and nobody gets hurt."
"This isn't your prison? Aren't you guys working with the White Speaker?"
"She betrayed us! She and her minions attacked one of our transport caravans and made off with several of our prisoners, including you lot!"
"Figures the Ragesians are too incompetent to keep hold of their own prisoners," Flint snorted as he drew his bow and rolled for initiative.

The battle was short but rough for all parties involved. Desert Wind focused swordsages can put out a remarkable amount of damage when not fighting enemies with fire resistance. Luckily for the Ragesians, nobody in the party has that. The old man also revealed himself to be a doppelganger and began to lay into the back line of the PCs. Even so, it was a four-on-seven battle in the party's favor. The swordsages got some solid hits in, but went down too quickly to keep up the pressure for long. Frenedan went down last, but only because Zeke and Sarika were the only ones bothering to fight him. Loot was collected, and freedom was theirs!

The White Speaker was waiting for them outside, and she was none too happy to see her prisoners making a break for it. She fought the party to the bitter end, but even a half-dragon monk with over 300 hp wasn't enough to take down a single PC. The party congratulated themselves on a job well done, mocked Mirokuji for rolling four fumbles in a row, and went to the tavern to sleep off the battle.

After a well deserved long rest, the party pawned off the vendor trash they had picked up along the way and bought themselves a planeshift back home. Of course, they went with the cheap option, so they ended up over two hundred miles away from Sapphire. After a long trek back to town, they got Jasaad uncursed by their friendly neighborhood Healer, ditched Mirokuji at the snow cone stand, and went to talk to Headmaster Simon. He was surprised to see them, and explained that he thought they had died.

"You can read your obituaries if you like," he said with a nervous laugh.
"We found Princess Sarika," Saoirse said. "We were hoping you could get her home to Al-Hassan. Her parents must be worried sick."
"Of course, I'll arrange for an escort."
"How have things been while we were gone?"
"The gnomes are very unhappy with us," Simon explained. "They feel we didn't give them the aid they were due. Sterich has also broken out into civil war in absence of your diplomatic presence. I was forced to send Naoko and Evalyn to hopefully smooth things over. You also got a letter from a dwarven paladin named Kalad. Says he knows you. He'd like your help as soon as possible."
"We're gonna go look for pirate treasure," Flint said.
"What?" Simon croaked, his face growing pale.
"Yeah, we found a map on those goblin pirates a while ago. We're going to go look for pirate treasure on Shatterhull Island."
"We'll be back!" Ashlyn said with a smile.
"Um, okay ..." Simon sighed.

The PCs left Sarika in the Headmaster's care, hopped on their restructured pirate ship, and sailed off in search of a plot thread I had all but forgotten about. :smallsigh:
TL;DR: The PCs broke out of prison and have now decided pirate gold is more important than the fate of the world.

SleepyShadow
2018-11-12, 03:18 PM
Whoo boy, okay, let's try to crack through this shall we?

The PCs sailed off to Shatterhull Island in search of treasure based on a map they had looted from goblin pirates many months ago. However, they had lost the map during their incarceration in The White Speaker's dungeon. A few quick geography checks allowed them to roughly navigate their way and they sailed off to forget their troubles and cares. After an uneventful voyage, the party arrived at Shatterhull Island to find their troubles had beat them to the punch. A small group of Ragesians had followed the map they had looted from the PCs in search of the treasure themselves. The PCs found a few of them on the beach, leaped out of their ship, and killed the front guard within two rounds of combat.

"I'm so sick of these guys!" Flint shouted. "We came here to not deal with them!"
"It's a global invasion," Saoirse said with a shrug. "Let's just clear the place out and be done with it."

I died a little on the inside :smallsigh:

The party headed inside the giant conch shell structure on the center of the small island and slaughtered a few more Ragesians and their sahagun allies. As they hacked their way through the small compound, they did take three prisoners and sent them back to the ship to be held by the sailors. The first surrendered as the last survivor of a particularly lopsided encounter, and the other two the party managed to ambush while the two scouts were taking lunch. Deeper inside the conch shell structure, the PCs finally had their first encounter with a Duthka'Rag - a fiendish half dragon Ragesian. In this case, she was a psychic warrior using her psicrystal for the vigor/share pain combo trick. She was backed by a handful of low ranking subordinates who performed speed bump duty for the actual threat. On top of her rather cheesy combo, she was also a glaive wielding attack of opportunity build with mage slayer. Needless to say, she was a bit of a problem for the PCs to deal with, especially since they chose to fight her in a narrow doorway. Eventually they triumphed, and all agreed that psionics were by and large awful to deal with. One of the Ragesians had been knocked out by a sleep spell and the party was debating who would take her back to the ship, but while everyone else was looting the dead, Jasaad took it upon himself to coup de grace the unconscious scout. The rest of the group objected to the execution of the helpless captive, but no action was actually taken.

Yet.

The final chamber in the complex was where the leader of the outpost was, along with a dozen or so bodyguards. The leader was a duthka'rag ardent with all manner of retributive damage and crowd control effects. The combat went on for several rounds, and by the end of it only one Ragesian (a ranger 1/sorcerer 1 who was there to spam magic missiles and provide flanking) was standing, and half the party was unconscious. The lone Ragesian dropped her sword and ran, but Flint and Jasaad chased after her while Zeke was left to heal up Saoirse and Ashlyn. Flint was faster, and shot the fleeing girl in the back just before she could make it to the beach. He then used his second attack to shoot Jasaad, with the warning of "We don't kill unarmed prisoners."

I was left wondering if Flint's player was being intentionally hypocritical.

Regardless, the party scooped up the spoils of war and sailed back to Sapphire to sell the booty collected from the Ragesians. No pirate treasure could be found, but the loot more than made up for it. The PCs then decided to find out what their old friend Kalad wanted their help with. The dwarven paladin asked them to help him clear out the old Southern Lode mine down by the border between Meltis and Al-Hassan in the Thornewaste.

"Sure, but let's check on Sarika first," Saoirse suggested.
"Why?" Flint asked. "Don't we have Simon covering that?"
"Yeah, but if we're gonna head south anyway, we might as well escort her to the border. We can contact Hassan authorities and meet with someone to take her the rest of the way."
"I guess that works."
"Are we not mentioning the fact Flint shot me?!" Jasaad screeched.
Flint gave a small shrug. "It's your word against mine. I shot the girl because she shot you first. No witnesses to the contrary."

The PCs headed down to the tavern to find Princess Sarika making her final preparations to leave for home. Hired to accompany her were Mirokuji the bounty hunter and none other than the long-away eyepatch wearing knight Imiza Ermentrude! However, her reappearance would be quite brief. Team Good told her and Mirokuji to kindly GTFO, took Sarika, and headed for the border. They sent a sending spell to Al-Hassan to inform the authorities of the situation and arranged for a contingent of Hassanian soldiers to meet them near the border to make the drop-off.

The travel to the border was long and uneventful save for a brief trip into a town near the desert. The town was being torn apart by two warring gangs who were each looking for a leg up on the other to drive out the competition and be the only business around. The villagers begged the PCs for help, but they blew through the little village and left the gangs to their own devices. The justification was that dropping off Sarika was for the greater good. They met with the Hassanian soldiers a few days later, tossed Sarika out of the group (though Ashlyn did give her a fond hug farewell), and trekked west to the location of the Southern Lode.

A few days of hiking through the Thornewaste later, the PCs realized they were being followed by a suspicious looking man dressed in a wide brimmed hat and black trenchcoat. Jasaad hailed him with a cantrip, and the man introduced himself as Mog Blackthorn, hunter of the Thornewaste and disciple of the Ghost Lord.

"Ghost Lord?" Ashlyn asked. "Does he have anything to do with an old dwarven mine?"
"No ma'am," Mog replied. "If you need directions to the old mine, there's a village not far from here. I could show you the way. Perhaps the locals could point you in the right direction."
"We've got a map," Flint replied.
"Ahh, a fellow ranger!" Mog said excitedly. "Our quarry may differ, but I wish you success on your hunt, brother. Let me know sometime if you wish to engage in jolly cooperation."

The PCs bid farewell to Mog and pressed on toward the Southern Lode.

SleepyShadow
2019-02-03, 09:47 AM
I'm sorry for letting the campaign journal fall by the wayside for so long. Two of the players (Flint and Ashlyn) had to move on relatively short notice, so I had to truncate the campaign A LOT to get a satisfactory ending out of it. But we did finish the campaign! I just haven't finished the journal yet. I'll get the last few sessions up soon, since it wouldn't be fair to let a finished campaign go without a finished journal.

Not too much to say here. The mines turned out to be a three session dungeon crawl with a lot of small fun bits and little in the way of narrative growth. Then again, it's a dungeon crawl, so I'm not sure what I expected. Anyway, rather than giving a blow-by-blow of the various combat encounters throughout the mine, I'll just give a list of highlights.


Some javelin throwing desert troglodytes made Zeke decide "penetration" was not what he thought it would be like.
A guest player (a friend of ours from the local game store) charged down a hallway and got clowned by a bunch of low-level bandits.
Saorise hates being on full time ambulance mode.
Flint took "Dragon" as his second favored enemy, and made quick work of the blue dragon mid-dungeon.
Even in big groups, chokers mean nothing past level 5.
Ashlyn got pinned to the floor by a javelin, spent four turns stuck and getting pelted with projectiles, and Saorise set her on fire.
"A big and interesting room? Quick! Lure the monsters out into the boring hallway!"
Ashlyn confessed her love to Saorise, and promised not to ditch her at the first sign of a higher charisma.
Zeke and Jasaad conspired to write smutty fanfiction about Ashlyn and Saorise.
Saorise learned how to summon a water elemental and used it to fistfight a fire elemental "Real Steel" style.
A delusional naga had taken over the mines, and the party even humored her and let her monologue for a bit.
Jasaad took the dead naga's magic ring that made the wearer count as an elemental, since nobody thought it would be useful.
A dwarven lich was laid to rest once the party gave him back his magic slippers.


Once outside the mine, the party ran across a small number of Zene nomads traveling through the Thornwaste. Their group consisted of a half-dozen teenagers and their parental guardian (a mid-level barbarian/druid following the kids around while wild shaped as a bear). Flint shot the bear until it turned into a man, and promptly told the druid off about how he was a terrible mentor. The rest of the party exchanged weird looks when Flint decided to forcefully adopt the six kids (keep in mind, Flint was maybe three years older than the Zene teens).

Regardless of poor life choices, the party struck out farther into the desert and headed for the city of Al-Hassan to pawn off the literal wagonload of vendor trash they had acquired in the mine.

SleepyShadow
2019-02-11, 10:46 AM
The party dropped off the half-dozen nomad kids in Al-Hassan, and were soon escorted into the palace by some local guards. Sultana Sarissa gave the party her personal thanks for rescuing Princess Sarika (whether Flint wanted to or not) and asked for their help with another matter. The promise of several thousand gold was enough to sway the PCs to her cause. Another group of adventurers (one led by their old pal Silvarus) had been sent out to investigate the Monastery of Two Winds, since divination magic had revealed the monastery had the secret to bypassing the firestorm protecting the heart of the dead goddess. However, Al-Hassan had lost contact with the first adventuring group, and the sultana was becoming increasingly concerned something had happened to them. The party agreed to investigate, since it was the most solid lead they had to put an end to the Ragesian Incursion. Sultana Sarissa introduced the party to a Zene named Weeping Raven (Monk 4/Psychic Warrior 5), who offered to guide the PCs to the monastery, since she had friendly dealings with the monks there in the past. The sultana offered them a day's rest, and the next day her palace wizard teleported them to the town closest to the monastery in Tularus.

The teleport spell went awry thanks to a magical pillar in the capital city of Tularus; the pillar acted like a lightning rod, changing the destination of any teleport spell targeted or cast within a mile of it. The party got teleported to the base of the pillar, which was surrounded by a lead cage and guarded by a half dozen archers. After a brief exchange with the guard captain, the party was released with apologies. The party even thought having such a defense was a good idea, since a large part of the Ragesian army had dimension door as a racial ability. The PCs met with the Khan of Tularus, who offered the party passage through his land and horses to ride upon. He also offered them a night's stay with his harem, which all but Jasaad declined.

The next few days passed by uneventfully as the party travelled through the steppes. They chatted with Weeping Raven a while, who told them a little about psionics and philosophy (I'd say more, but Raven's philosophy was a touch long winded and makes for dull reading). The PCs had a short encounter with some Ragesian scouts accompanied by a worg riding goblin sorcerer. The fight was brutal but short. Jasaad tried to 3v1 an inquisitor and a pair of swordsages (went poorly for him), Zeke and Raven worked together to handle the warblades trying to go after the back line, Saorise and Flint contributed damage wherever on the battlefield they felt like, and the goblin sorcerer got off one good volley of spells before Ashlyn closed the gap and spanked him with her magic resistance. A failed saving throw against a slow spell meant the sorcerer was practically worthless by round three and dead by round five.

After the battle, the party headed up to the top of the plateau where the Monastery of Two Winds was hidden. Surrounding the town built around the monastery was an entire battalion of Ragesian soldiers. However, rather than attack the party en masse, the guards at the rear dispondantly told the party to "go away."

"You're not attacking?" Ashlyn asked.
"Too much work," the guard replied.
"What are you doing, then?"
"Sieging the city, but that's a lot of work, too. So we're taking a break until General Irmentrude gets back. We were supposed to be at the monastery gates yesterday, but that's hard."
"General Irmentrude?"
"Yeah, she went to get reinforcements or something. I don't really care. Lieutenant Jahara is in charge right now, but she's drunk like the rest of us. The general will probably execute her, but she doesn't care."
"Can you come down from your watch tower?"
"Sure, it's easier than being up here ..."
"Easiest diplomatic encounter ever," Jasaad chuckled.

The party took the guard's weapons and left him tied up at the edge of the Ragesian encampment. He thanked them for the break. The party then nervously walked through the army's encampment, but the closest thing to resistance they got were a few sleepy calls of "hey, don't do that". Once inside the town, things were much the same as they were in the encampment. Townsfolk milled aimlessly in the streets, or slept in the streets, or just lay on the ground staring up at the sky. Raven suggested going to the tavern, since her old master was the barkeep and he might have more information. The party agreed, and inside the tavern they found more townsfolk, and a handful of Ragesians, sitting around quietly drinking. The barkeep seemed unaffected by the strange malaise, but he was clearly on edge. He smiled warmly at the party when he realized they weren't affected. The barkeep didn't know what the strange calm was all about, but he told the PCs it started shortly after the Ragesians began their attack on the town. At first he suspected them until he saw the calm had taken hold of them as well. When asked about Silvarus and the other adventuring party, the barkeep said he had seen them both before and after the attack. They had been trying to gain access to the monastery, but had been denied several times. The last he saw of them was most of their group heading up to the monastery once more, though he did notice one of the elves in the group was missing.

After the PCs left the tavern, they all had to roll Wisdom saves. Except for Jasaad, since he was wearing the ring from the lode that made him count as an elemental. Most of the party passed, but Ashlyn botched her save and dreamily followed the rest of the group around wondering aloud why they were working so hard. Dragging her along with them, the party headed up the winding cliff-side pass to the monastery. They passed by a bald monk woman who tried to wave them over, but the group ignored her and made a beeline up the mountain path.

SleepyShadow
2019-02-19, 09:42 AM
The party headed up to the monastery, fought off a couple air elementals, and got turned away at the front gate by a grumpy elven woman named Cai Lee Tzu. She told the PCs that all access to the Monastery of Two Winds was denied until the supernatural calm was resolved. Disappointed, the party headed back to town and found the calm was already starting to fracture. Townsfolk who had been sleeping in the streets were now furiously attacking inanimate objects. A group of Ragesian soldiers had also snapped, screaming nonsensical orders at each other as they lashed out at random, attacking whomever came too close to their group with brutal ferocity.

The PCs butchered them like dogs.

Soon after the encounter, the town baker rushed up to the PCs and told them his guest had to speak with them. The party followed the baker back to his shop and met with an elven man named Shalen Lendar. The elf told the PCs about coming to the town with Silvarus and the other members of their group, and that they had been denied access to the monastery before the calm hit. When the Ragesians started their assault on the village, the strange calm fell over the entire region. Shalen struggled to remember the next few weeks, but he recalled getting an invitation from the monastery. He remembered the others leaving, but he couldn't bring himself to crawl out of bed and follow them. He didn't know how long they had been gone before he had been snapped out of the calm by accidentally spilling hot coffee on himself. Ever since then, he's been searching the town for his missing friends. He told the PCs how he cut his arms to keep himself awake. A quick Medicine check revealed he hadn't slept in several days.

"Are we sure this guy isn't a shadar-kai?" Jasaad laughed.
"Be nice to the poor man," Weeping Raven admonished.

They spent the night at the bakery, and the next day a messenger from the local healing house arrived on-scene and invited the PCs over, stating that one of their patients had urgently requested to speak with them. After a few jokes about how popular they were becoming, the PCs followed the priest over to the house of healing. There, on a cot in the back room, was the same bald woman who had tried to get their attention the day prior. Her form shifted between that of a woman, that of a man, and that of a smokey dragon. The strange being gave the group a faint smile.

"My name is Balance," the entity said weakly. "You have encountered my kind before, on less than pleasant terms. I am a trillith."
"Hey guys, a dream elemental not trying to eat us," Flint said. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you have something to do with this?"
"The calm is my doing, yes," Balance answered.
"Why are you doing this?" Saoirse asked.
"I love this village," Balance replied. "It is has been my home only a short while, but I love this place. I wanted to protect it the only way I knew how. But I can't keep going any longer."

She died screaming a few moments later, and that's when all hell broke loose. The Ragesian reinforcements had arrived, led by General Imiza Irmentrude, and it was time to purge! However, since the most of the actual Ragesians were still hung over from the weeks long calm effect, and the town's entire population consisted of monks either retired or in-training, Imiza's victory was not exactly guaranteed. Most of the attacking force consisted of dirtbag mercenaries and gnolls, with only perhaps a dozen actual Ragesians forming a sort of central command. Naturally, the PCs leapt to the defense of the village and made their stand outside of the tavern (I'm assuming for easy access to beer and pretzels in-between fighting). Wave after wave of mercenaries crashed upon the party, but the heroes stood firm and utterly annihilated whatever came their way. After the cannon fodder had gotten torn to pieces by the party, Imiza and her elite squad arrived on scene.

Imiza and her squad proved a fairly difficult challenge. She was a 12th level Marshal by this point, and was backed by a half dozen Ragesians of various classes. She was a pretty terrifying combatant as she rode around on her upgraded destrachan mount, using her aura buffs to make even the low-level Ragesians into actual threats. Still, the PCs weren't quite out of resources by this point, and they recognized Imiza for what she was: a lynchpin. So the party focused all of their damage on her, completely ignoring the rank-and-file despite the significant damage the PCs were taking in return. About two rounds into the fight, Weeping Raven was killed after falling unconscious. This let the party know that there weren't going to be any prisoners taken this time. The Ragesians were playing for keeps. Six rounds of combat later, General Irmentrude fell. With their commander defeated, the captain accompanying Imiza's squad held up one hand and shouted a single command.

"Retreat!"

The party was completely out of gas by now, and didn't bother pursuing the fleeing soldiers. They collected the bodies of Raven and Imiza, and took them both back to the house of healing for a Raise Dead, some R&R, and the hope of getting Imiza to tell them what the hell was going on.

SleepyShadow
2019-03-25, 02:07 PM
The PCs were able to smooth talk Imiza into telling them what was going on by bribing her with real food. She was sick of eating sugary Ragesian rations, and sold her countryfolk out for a plate of bacon. Imiza told the PCs after her failure to capture and hold Princess Sarika, she had attempted to leave the war behind her. She had assumed Empress Zarouhi would have her imprisoned lover executed for the failure. She had wandered from place to place, never really finding acceptance anywhere, and ended up in Sapphire after hearing about the refugee camp there. By chance, she happened upon the party, noting dryly that she had tried to join their ranks. Unfortunately for her, somebody in Sapphire contacted the Ragesian army and told them where she was (Imiza assumed it was one of the refugees, but in actuality it was Katarina who ratted her out). As punishment for Imiza's attempted betrayal, a biomancer used flesh-warping magic to turn her beloved hippogriff mount into a wretched destrachan. Imiza was then forced back to the front lines, with orders given to sack the mountain village as retribution for the Monastery of Two Winds betraying them.

"The Monastery betrayed you?" Saoirse asked. "How?"
"One of the two leaders, a man named Pilus, offered us a way to bypass the firestorm protecting the heart of the dead goddess," Imiza replied. "The firestorm has resisted all of our attempts to bypass it, so we were forced to turn to outside aid. Pilus took the substantial payment and never contacted us again. My army came to attack, but we were afflicted by the calm. I'm sure you know the rest."
"Sounds like Pilus is the one we need to talk to," Jasaad said.
"We still need to investigate the valley below the Monastery," Saoirse reminded him. "That's the most likely place for Silvarus and his group to have gone."

Before the point could be argued, the sound of Weeping Raven's screams from the other room quickly drew their attention. The PCs rushed in to find her being attacked by ... something. Raven was obviously trying to fend off multiple attackers, and reacted to the pummeling blows she was receiving, but in her weakened state from just being brought back from the dead, there was little she could do against her unseen assailants. Confused, the party moved in to fight ... whatever was attacking her.

Welcome to the wonderful world of fighting invisible stalkers.

Most of the fight was spend just trying to locate where the monsters were at while simultaneously keeping them from dragging Weeping Raven away. Thankfully, the invisible stalkers quickly fell once they had been pinpointed. As soon as the battle was over, Saoirse and Ashlyn stormed back over to Imiza while Zeke tended to Raven's injuries. The boys poked around the hideout for more invisible monsters, but were unable to find any.

"Were those monsters yours?" Saoirse asked.
"I use soldiers, not monsters," Imiza scoffed. "Besides, if I was trying to escape I would've simply done so by now."
"Oh yeah, dimension door..."
"If my people think I'm dead then I'm free to do as I please."
"Do you know who sent the wind monsters?" Ashlyn asked. "Wait, duh, I just answered my own question."
"Yeah, the temple," Saoirse replied. "Pilus, maybe?"
"Either him, or his henchwoman," Imiza said. "Ashlyn, you look remarkably similar to her."
"Well, you look like ... all the other ... tall blonde people with eyepatches," Ashlyn retorted.
"If you're going after her, I want to come with you," Imiza said. "She's the one that turned poor Friedrick into that monster."
"No tricks?" Saoirse asked suspiciously.
"No tricks."

I knew the addition of a 12th level Marshal into a group of 9th level adventurers would tip the scales dramatically in the party's favor, but it was our second to last session and wouldn't really matter in the long run. The party cautiously returned Imiza's equipment and headed off to the Forbidden Valley. They brought Weeping Raven along with them, promising to do their best to keep her out of harm's way. Along the path up the mountain, the party was attacked by a group of eight monks from the monastery. Now, I'm not sure who thought a handful of monks (even when backed by a half-dragon manticore) would be a match for any group of 9th level adventurers, but suffice to say even in 5th edition they weren't going to stand a chance. The monks were butchered in short order, and the half-dragon manticore went down soon thereafter. The party collected the loot and trekked down into the valley.

Shortly after they reached the valley, the PCs came across what seemed to be a tower. In reality, it was an illusion covering a pit where the entrance to the underground biomancy lab was. Ashlyn tumbled through the illusory tower, hit the ground hard, and was swiftly attacked by fleshy abominations covered in ice. To the party's dismay, the monstrosities were quite clearly the remains of Silvarus and his group of adventurers. The rest of the party scrambled down the cliff to aid Ashlyn, and together they laid their friends to rest. Spurred on by their desire for revenge, the party rested up and plunged into the biomancy lab.

After an uneventful encounter with a half-elemental minotaur (they killed the damned thing in two rounds :smallsigh: ), the party made it to the final chamber of the laboratory, where they found a study with a desk, piles of paper, and familiar elf girl tied up in the corner. It was Silvarus's daughter.

"That explains why they came here unprepared," Saoirse said.
"Yeah, but we haven't found anything strong enough to take them down," Ashlyn replied nervously. "So what happened to them?"
"I killed them," a voice said just before a lightning bolt ripped through the party.

Cai Lei Wsu, the gatekeeper from the monastery (Monk 5/Cleric 2/Sorcerer 8) tore into the party, expositing as she did so. The rug in the center of the room was also a mimic, and it did its best to help Cai Lei, though it wasn't much of a threat to the PCs. Cai Lei was every bit the terror I had hoped she would be. Even with Ashlyn cutting magic damage in half with her paladin aura, Cai Lei played basketball with the PCs. At one point during the battle, she made an offer to Ashlyn.

"Join me, Ashlyn," she said, "and we can rule this new world ... together!"
"Why would I ever join you?!" Ashlyn shouted.
"Ashlyn, I am your mother!"
"That can't be true! My mother is supposed to be a good person!"
"Search your feelings! You know it to be true!"

The battle took a solid hour to complete, and by the end Cai Lei Wsu was dead, Ashlyn was in tears, and nobody had any resources left. The party collected the dead body, and the little elf girl, but before they could do anything else, a red light began to pulse throughout the complex as a wailing siren accompanied a deep rumbling. The PCs hauled it toward the exit as the entire building began to collapse around them.

Because of course it does :smallbiggrin:

They managed to make it almost to the exit before tragedy struck. Ashlyn botched a Dex save and was knocked prone by falling debris. She was too far away from the exit to make it before the building would collapse. She was out of spells and couldn't misty step. The rest of the party was at the exit and was too far to help. Imiza grit her teeth, used her racial dimension door ability, and hurled Ashlyn clear of the building just before the ceiling collapsed on top of her. Imiza was dead and gone.

The party had no time to mourn, as six tornadoes were bearing down on their location. They scrambled up the cliff side and sprinted away from the lab just before the tornadoes converged on the spot and annihilated every trace of the lab.

TL;DR - We're in the end game now.

SleepyShadow
2019-06-27, 12:13 PM
Since my players have been bugging me to finish this up, I suppose it's only fair to do so before I start a new campaign.

The party spoke with Longinus and Pilus (they didn't trust Pilus, but didn't have anyone else to turn to) and were given a magic orb to let them pass through the firestorm. Unfortunately, it created a safe zone with a mile radius, so it was likely the Ragesians would try to follow the party inside. As a show of good faith, Pilus offered two additional favors to the party (I believe I roleplayed him like a Deep South preacher). He gave Jasaad a magic earring (boosted saving throws but also allowed Pilus to speak with him directly; the two quickly hatched a plot to steal the heart of the dead goddess for themselves), and he teleported the party just outside the area of the firestorm. He also teleported them directly into a Ragesian ambush. Le Gasp!

The Ragesians threw the best they had at the PCs, including a half dozen psychic warriors utilizing the Vigor/Share Pain combo, and Major Rosalie Carcano! For hilariously contrived reasons of petty revenge, Saoirse's old captain from her navy days was also there to attack the party. As expected, the single class fighter was underwhelming in battle. The highlight of the fight was when Ashlyn teleported above Rosalie and gave her a stratospheric People's Elbow. Everyone cheered and made wrestling jokes for about five minutes. It was great :smallbiggrin:

Once the battle was complete, the PCs hurried inside the castle where the Heart was hidden away. Since they knew it was kept at the top of the tallest tower, the party didn't explore the castle at all and brute forced their way onto the magic elevator. Said elevator had traps and guardians at every floor that could've been avoided or disabled by various gizmos found throughout the castle, but the PCs managed to plow through all of them - including a permanent Wall of Force at the top intended to squish the PCs flat. With their trial complete, the PCs ventured forth into the top of the tower.

Inside was the barren heart of the long dead goddess, and many obscure texts and clues scrawled along the floor (these would've made sense farther into the campaign, but alas it was not to be). There was also a nifty magic flying chariot, but we'll come back to that in a bit. Before the party could destroy the Heart and end the Ragesian incursion once and for all, there was one final challenger to face down. Coming up the elevator shaft behind them was Zarouhi Orlaith, Empress of Ragesia!

Well, it was just another avatar, but it was the one leading the bulk of the ground forces so it was good enough for us.

The battle was quite climactic, and the party had to use everything at their disposal in order to defeat Zarouhi and her crushing energy chains. Perhaps it would've been more memorable had Jasaad not sprung his betrayal immediately after the battle. As soon as Zarouhi was down, Jasaad used Enemies Abound on Flint, causing him to go berserk and start shooting Saoirse. Jasaad then grabbed the Heart and made a break for the elevator shaft. Unfortunately for him, Ashlyn still had one use of Misty Step left, and thanks to being a Wayfarer Cirquelist, she brought Weeping Raven along with her as she teleported in front of Jasaad. As the lovable coward that he is, he handed over the Heart without a fuss. Flint passed the save on the spell soon after, and all was right with the world.

The party destroyed the Heart, and as soon as they did the firestorm outside the castle ceased. The PCs piled into that nifty flying chariot, crashed through a big stained glass window, and flew off into the sunset ... until they saw Princess Shalo'ha being abducted by Ragesian wyvern knights! The party raced to her rescue, catching her in the flying chariot as she flung herself off the wyvern. They sped off into the sunset for real this time, only briefly considering pushing Jasaad out of the chariot while traveling at mach speed.

The PCs went their separate ways after that. Flint started an owl mail service in Sterich, and spent much of his time training owls and sending mean letters to Princess Sarika. Ashlyn moved to Erelhai-Cinlu to act as Shalo'ha's advisor and liaison with the surface elves (she also kept the magic chariot). Saoirse moved to Sapphire permanently and stayed on as part of the Mage Council (along with Katarina, much to her chagrin). Jasaad and Zeke wrote trashy romance novels, competing with one another in an already crowded market. Zeke won the popularity contest worldwide, but Jasaad started peddling his books in Sigil, and thus reached a wider audience overall. Weeping Raven established a small monastery of her own, teaching her own brand of psychic martial arts.

And somewhere far away, a one-eyed knight, presumed dead by all who knew her, continued her quest to rescue her lover.
TL;DR: My players won D&D.