Thug Muggers in the Church 3/26/23
Table Talk:
A brief side note here, Diedrik is going to be trying out the name Nymbus. SO, for the following sessions if you see Nymbus this is the same person, and not a new player taking over Cypress.
I posed a question to everyone; after last week’s talk about the CR system, did they want to know what rating (easy, medium, difficult) an encounter has before going in? After some discussion, they opted to keep the Challenge rating a secret, but to find out what it was afterwards.
I also asked about using flat (unadjusted) XP or Adjusted XP for Character Experience points, using adjusted XP would take all the multipliers into account for bigger fights, and would reward more XP after the fights. Meaning they would be leveling up a bit quicker. With no hesitation whatsoever, everyone voted for the option that grants the most XP.
“The five were dressed in billowing habits as white as the walls and the panels of the ceiling. Their antique crones’ faces were framed in wimples just as white, their skin as gray and runneled as droughted earth by comparison. Hanging like phylacteries from the bands of silk imprisoning their hair (if they indeed had hair) were lines of tiny bells which chimed as they moved or spoke. Upon the snowy breasts of their habits was embroidered a blood-red rose . . . the sigul of the Dark Tower.”
—Stephen King, :Everything's Eventual: The Little Sisters of Eluria: III. Five Sisters. Jenna. The Doctors Of Eluria. The Medallion. A Promise Of Silence.”
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Chapter 1: Through the ominous portal
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 1: Through the ominous portal
We start book 3 with looting unconscious bodies… So here we go. “Chapter 1: Through The Ominous Portal”. We stand in the Chamber of the Holy Dead underneath the Church of Shadows. It is a sacred room where dead worshippers have been brought for generations by those close to them to be interred before their final rest. But just lately it’s been used for something else, something much more sinister and controlling. We stand here panting, looking around the room at the dead or unconscious bodies on the floor. The fancy red and white tiles have lots of extra red patches and we can’t tell what’s their blood and what’s our blood. The candles hanging from the ceiling by the large stone door are still gently swinging, two of the braziers got spilled out on the floor and are mostly just a pile of ashes and embers, and one other brazier got blown out somehow during the fight. Ari and Cypress stand over a body that's been ‘Julius Caesared’ at the foot of the steps. Behind them, the magical glowing lines on the plinth are starting to dim and fade, but the portal still looks active. Its light is shimmering in the back of the room, but is that light dimming? Who can say. Rae is standing by them looking around, and hears one of the bodies say in a husky whispered prayer, “G..good. Run master, flee to the *cough* promi-promised lands of the Rat while *cough* these fools ling-linger…bleh. ” Sorin steps over the body he just clothes-lined as he and Akris walk into the room to survey the damage. When he does he feels a magic tingle in his fingertips and looks down to hear the body by the door whisper a single Command word, “Seal”.
Ari runs into the portal, feeling it brush against her skin like a sheet hanging out to dry, and she steps into a small room. It has a gravel floor and simple wooden walls just strong enough to hold the earth back, like all the other Thug rooms we’ve been in in these sewers. She turns to look at the magic portal and from this side she can see it clearly. That magic sheet of shimmering light…. is just a sheet. It’s an ordinary curtain rigged up with some mechanism to make it shift and flow like there's a breeze, and someone has cast a fancy Light spell or maybe two at once on it to make it glow and shimmer in different colors. The tiny room has a little wooden chest, a couple heavy looking sacks, and a cauldron full of a mysterious and ominous liquid. Oh, and a hole. That's really the main thing, a hole with a ladder leading down to a room below.
Sorin leans down over the now-silent Cultist at the door, and pats their pockets, pulling out a Scroll of Cure Wounds.
Cypress walks over and stands in the middle of the room. He glares around at the empty pews before spinning on his heels and pointing an angry finger at the empty plinth. “You are an idiot!” He shouts. “RaTs Do WhAt ThEy WaNt AnD hUmP wHaT tHeY wAnT…” he mocks and kicks the embers of a fallen brazier. “You know, rats are actually highly intelligent and have a complex social structure!” The other Thug Muggers watch on as the little Cleric rants for a while. After this little bit of catharsis, his shoulders sag with relief and Cypress looks up with a back-to-business attitude. “Anyways, are any of you all bloodied?”
Sorin coughs up some blood and raises a hand, “Um… I am yeah.” Cypress casts Cure Wounds on him, and then Sorin holds up the Scroll he just found, “Any chance you can do this one too?”
Cypress sighs, but accepts it. Sorin sits down on a bench and they unfurl the Scroll. It is covered with runic symbols and stenciled drawings of muscles and organs, and together, they wrap it around Sorin’s chest like a bandage. Then Cypress lays their hands on the scroll and closes their eyes. They summon a connection with the Goddess Sheela and let that familiar stream of life flow over their shoulders like a waterfall. It cascades down their arms, and twists up their hands, seeping into the paper of the Scroll. The force of Sheela’s will lifts the letters, runes, and symbols off the page and pushes them into Sorin’s body. He gasps and the icy cold symbols wrap around his spine and lungs, stapling them back together and making the damaged organs grow back, before the ink fades away into another realm.
Following the Homebrew rules i’ve established with Scrolls; since Cypress already knows this spell, it doesn’t use a spell slot and he gains advantage on all the dice rolls for it.
As Cypress steps down off the bench, and Sorin takes the blank Scroll off his chest and pulls his shirt back down. We hear a rumbling. Everyone looks to the gate, and we see the statue in the crypt emerging from behind the staircase. The red lantern in its hand swings as it takes slow, lumbering footsteps towards the gate. Immediately, Rae jumps into action, stepping and jumping on the stone benches to race across the room. In a flash, she is at the gate and closing it. She steps back as the statue takes another slow step. That won’t hold it back for long though.
Bored, because no one followed her, Ari steps back into the room to see everyone gathered at the other end of the room, looking at the gate.
Cypress prods an unconscious Cultist searching for loot. In this case, Cypress doesn’t get anything, but Nymbus gets a DM explanation. So at any time they can ask about something going on in a dungeon or the world to get more information about a situation or lore.
Rae turns around, waves at Ari, and proceeds to loot a body. She prods the robes, trying to find an opening, and something heavy clangs to the floor at their feet. Rae picks up the Maul and gives it an experimental swing.
Remembering his injuries, Sorin retreats to the steps, and loots a body far away from the door. He pulls a brass ring off a finger, and then grabs the glass eye that falls out of the hazy magic mask and tries to roll away.
Huffing, Ari walks past everyone to see what had their attention a moment ago, and sees the statue in the crypt. By now, it is almost to the gate. Its slow movement creeping towards us ominously. Trying to think of ways to stop it from getting in, Ari tries to use her innate Thaumaturgy to close the door, but the stone is too heavy and refuses to budge. As she begins to panic, the giant stone hand of the statue grabs the corner of the door, leaving crack lines in it. The door slams shut with a bang and a whoomph of air. “There,” Ari says triumphantly, “Problem solved, it can’t get in.”
“Unless it’s blocking the door,” Rae points out.
From the other side of the door comes a series of thuds.
“In which case,” Cypress continues.
A single loud knock hits the stone slab.
“We can’t get out.” Sorin finishes, thinking that, just maybe, he should’ve warned everyone about the ‘Seal’ Command spell he heard a minute ago.
Everyone heads towards the ‘Magic’ portal, with Ari laughing, “Oh, yeah the portal is totally harmless.”
On the way, Cypress checks the pockets of one of the robes figures and finds a Scroll of Magic Missile.
Everyone gets a good look at the tiny room behind the ‘Magic Portal’.
At the table, Sarah and Ashley laugh again. Remember how Sarah was sure there wouldn’t be a portal, and then there was a portal and she spent a week getting teased? Well, turns out she was right after all. What a twist!
Ari goes to open the box by the ladder and stops cold. (She rolled a Nat’ 1 detecting traps) She sees the string running from the latch, to inside the box. The type of string that can only lead to an explosive device!
“What’s wrong?”
“This box is rigged to explode!”
Sorin thinks for a second about the lock she picked so good that is broke apart. He steps over to take a look and sees a piece of string or yarn cut off from some clothing laying on the chest. It is attached to nothing. He sighs and goes to wipe it away when Ari’s hand darts out and grabs his wrist.
Rae holds her staff up to his throat, “What are you, possessed? Did that Cult guy get in your head? She said it’s rigged to explode! Are you trying to blow us up?”
Sorin gulps, “I um, I don’t think it is though. That string isn’t attached to anything, I think it just fell off one of those robes.”
In Cypress’s head, he hears the ploig ploig of the broken lock spring and grabs the bridge of their nose. “Ari, just check again please, just to be safe.”
Ari nods at Rae who grabs Sorin’s hand and then she lets go of him to examine the box. She sees a harmless piece of string, and knocks it off the box. It floats harmlessly to the floor. Ari coughs and opens the box.
Rae lets go of Sorin and drops her staff, it floats harmlessly behind her. She backs out into the chamber to loot some more and gives Sorin the ‘ok, but I'm still watching you’ eyes.
While Ari takes the Cult robe out of the box, and crams it in her pack, Cypress grabs the hem of the shimmering ‘magic portal’ curtain and tugs. The top corner comes loose, but a rope from the breeze mechanism stays looped around the curtain rod, leaving the whole thing hanging at an angle and looking ridiculous.
Back on the altar steps, Rae finds a Can of Spiders in someone's pocket, while Ari looks down the ladder to investigate the floor below.
Sorin whispers to Akris to go find the Cult leader, and the little Flying Snake floats down the ladder and disappears from view.
Cypress walks back into the camber out to finish looting, and finds a small figurine of a rabbit and a Goblin with a raised club. Rae passes him on her way back and he says he’s gonna grab the last Cultist and then meet up down the ladder. On the last Cultist he finds a pair of +5 boots.
Rae descends the ladder to find Sorin and Ari in another small room. Like the one above, this one is about the size of a pantry and only has the ladder going up, and two hallways going out.
Cypress tugs on the curtain of the ‘magic portal’ and yanks the curtain rod off the wall where it gets caught in the ropes of the swaying mechanism, Then, they climb down the ladder. The room is very cramped and Ari leads the way to the southeast hallway. The Thug Muggers creep along and come to a junction. Looking to each side, Ari sees a long tunnel to her right and a room with a dim glow just up ahead to the left. She waves to the others and they head up to the room.
This is a bigger room than the other two, and in the corner is a golden statue. It is positioned atop a latticework of iron and brass bars that encase a fire pit. The fire is mostly dead now, with only a few embers remaining. Next to the statue is a stack of wood and two cauldrons with mysterious blue and green mixtures in them. Next to these cauldrons is an exit to the room. In the corner across from the statue is a chest, and in the other corner by our entrance is a mostly-empty weapons rack.
Ari goes over to loot the box.
With a critical eye on the statue, Cypress rolls a religion check. It’s not any religious icon they can remember. It is a tall robed figure in a kind of blank moretta mask, with an occult symbol stamped in the place a mouth would be. They do notice something peculiar, however. The metal eyes of the statue, behind its mask, seem to be moving and taking us in, watching us and calculating. The whole statue seems to be moving in the tiniest ways, the littlest movements of living creatures not moving, but as Cypress watches, the movements fade. As the embers below fizzle out, the statue seems to grow cold and freeze from the bottom up. Cypress peers closer at the statue and-
There is an explosion!
Ari lifted the lid of the box without seeing the trip wire. She takes 6 damage and is flung across the room, landing in the (fortunately) mostly empty weapon rack. Sorin and Cypress are knocked forward and each take 3 damage from the shock wave before patting out the tiny flames on their clothes.
Rae also takes 3 damage and is flung from the force of the blast, but the Spider Climb spell is still active and without thinking, she lands confused and upside down on the ceiling, muttering, “Oh come on.”
After the explosion, our ears seem to ring with silence when we hear a soft metallic laugh like two sheets of metal rubbing against each other. And a creaky iron voice says, “So, just a couple of fools then. This will be easy after all…” Before trailing away and letting the ringing silence retake us.
When Cypress looks at the statue again, it is cold and still. They nudge Sorin and have him take a look.
Sorin takes a minute to read the runes etched in the metal bands over the fire pit. He stands up, “I thought so,” he says. “It’s a Sending Statute. It’s a bit like our Sending Stones only instead of just hearing, you can see the person on the other end, and they can see you.” (Think Star Wars holograms but made of gold statues and powered by fire that softens the metal enough so that it can move). “They’re super expensive. I know they have a few in The Palace for diplomatic political stuff, and there is a rumor that there is one in the Highhead Channcelmaster’s office at the university. But, yeah, they have to be solid gold so only super important people and really rich churches have them.”
At that point, Akris returns hissing, “I followed hisss trail, and I found a camp. He’sss passst that but,” He looks shy and hisses, “I didn’t want to go too far thisss time…”
With that, everyone lines up, and in the usual Ari-Rae-Cypress-Sorin or ‘ARCS’ single file order, they walk down the tunnel Akris came from to the camp.
It’s a small camp room. In the middle is a fire pit with some long cooking skewers and a cooking pot. Along the straight wall is a stack of canvas bundles, a small table with some clay jars, a few crates and barrels of food stuffs, four chests, and in the corner, a crate full of glass beer and wine bottles. The other side of the room is made up of two walls at opposing angles making a sort of triangle. On the far side of this wall is a low table with some cushions around it, and in the corner are two bed rolls laid out atop a heap of animal skins and stolen rugs. And at the edge of this wall by us are several more rugs and cushions piled up. It looks like two people were camping here frequently, but they left room for a third.
Immediately spying the chest that he remembers having seen himself seeing in the vision he saw himself see, Sorin grabs it and pulls it into the corner. Then he grabs a bottle of wine to try and stave off a bad headache from all the see-sawing of the chronology in his head. (HA! I’m proud of that pun). He gazes longingly at it waiting for the others to fall asleep.
Before Sorin can sit down and stare at a chest (and not a sexy orc chest this time), Cypress says, “Hey Sorin, why don’t you set up an alarm spell by that door out of here, just in case.”
“You’re right that’s a good idea,” Sorin says reluctantly, and sets the Alarm by the short tunnel to the door.
Ari takes a bottle of beer for herself and slides it into a pouch on her pack to have alcohol for a later spell component.
Rae looks distressed but resigned as she looks at the familiar pile of rugs.
Discussing it over a meal, Cypress convinces everyone that it's a good idea to take a Long Rest instead of just chasing after the Cult Leader. As a show of good will, Cypress offers to take the first watch, and everyone begins to bed down.
But first, Ari goes over and opens the second smaller chest. Inside is just an envelope. She cautiously picks it up and looks at it. The ink on the outside is smudged, and there seems to be a small lump inside. She carefully opens it and tips out the contents. It is a small round button, some kind of copper or maybe an impure gold. It has a loop on the back to stitch it onto clothes and the front is embossed with 2 joined triangles. The note inside explains.
“I had our friend make this ‘Rewind Button’ up for you, careful where you sew it though, they’re illegal in the city, so don’t get caught using it. Just tap it and you can push back time to the last thing you did. But BE CAREFUL! Everyone around you will remember everything that you did before touching it.”
The ‘Rewind Button’ is a small gold button you can add to any piece of non-armor clothing. Sewing this button on is part of the required attunement. Once attuned, the wearer can touch the button to "rewind" their last action. After a bad roll, or outcome, the character can touch the button and time will reset to up to just before their last action (attack, strength contest, will save, etc.). Or in combat it can be used as a reaction to revert time up to one turn to just before the wearer’s last action. BUT, everyone in the area, or who was affected by that action will know it happened and remember it. So if a surprise attack doesn't work (bad roll), the player can reset, but the attacked character will know the wearer tried to attack. The ‘Rewind Button’ can be used once per gameplay.
Can you believe this was on iStock!?
Ari yawns and makes a note to spend her watch sewing it onto her clothes somewhere, then lays down to rest her weary horns.
Rae is just beginning to drift off to sleep, and thinking maybe she misunderstood the vision she had, when she gasps. Soft frilly lace loops around her throat and tightens, cutting off her breathing.
Cypress turns away from the door to see a Rug wrapping around Rae’s body like someone trying to put her in the trunk of a car to dispose of her body. “UP! UP! UP! Rae is getting attacked!” Then, they reach out their hand and cast Poison Spray for 12 damage on the Rug.
(Fun side note, the Rug Of Smothering has a cool thing called Damage Transfer: “While it is grappling a creature, the rug takes only half the damage dealt to it, and the creature grappled by the rug takes the other half.” So it only takes 6 damage and Rae, wrapped up inside it, takes the other 6 damage.)
The Rug of smothering has fully engulfed Rae now and begins squeezing her for 11 more damage.
Ari and Sorin are barely awake, and Ari gets to her feet, stumbling and finding her rapier.
Sorin casts a Firebolt from his prone position on the bed roll, but still manages to hit the Rug dealing 8 damage (4 to the Rug and 4 to Rae).
Cypress casts Thorn Whip for 6 more damage (3 to the Rug and 3 to Rae), and this time, without letting the ethereal whip disappear, he pulls on the vines, letting the sharp thorns dig in and begin to uncurl the Rug.
With the advantage given by Cypress, Rae manages to pull herself out of the rug, and lays gasping on the floor as the Rug of Smothering hovers in the air deciding on its next victim.
Ari steps over and slashes the rug. With no one inside it, the rug takes the full 10 damage.
Sorin’s second Firebolt (nat’ 20) hits the rug creating a large hole with fibers burning in a widening circle.
Cypress pulls back his Thorn Whip dragging the thorns through the woven threads and shredding it into pieces.
The Rug of Smothering hangs in the air for just a moment until the slashed and ripped pieces are burned away and its ashes fall on top of Rae as she finally catches her breath.
That seems like a really good place to end.
…But one more thing.
During the Long Rest, when everyone got back to sleep, and Sorin was taking his turn on watch, He dug through the boxes and boxes of boxes and boxes of boxes inside boxes in his box. What he found was a Pocket Hole.
The ‘Pocket Hole’ is an amorphous hole with gold edging that must be sewn into a pocket to work. This sewing is part of the attunement to use it. Once attuned, the user can reach through the hole into a random container in whatever room they are in. To do this, assign a number to each container in the room going left to right spiraling out from the user. Then, roll the dice with the closest total number to the highest number assigned. For example if there are 5 containers in a room, roll a D6 and reroll it if it is a 6. The number rolled, is the container the user's hand goes into when reaching into the ‘Pocket Hole’
“A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob.”
-Stilgar Ben Fifrawi –Frank Herbert, “Dune: Chapter 32”
Table talk:
The Rug of Smothering (an actual core D&D monster) is a CR 2, which is a trivial, bordering on easy, fight.
During the game, when we got to the point of Akris reporting back, i had to spend some time remembering what his voice sounded like. I asked Nymbus if they might be able to make me something like Justin’s Voiceatron 5000 on The Adventure Zone, that their editor made for him. A collection of voice snippets i can use to listen to and know what voice each character has.
I will be trying this week to get Stat Blocks and Item Cards made up for Ari’s Life Steal Dagger, Cypress’s Mushroom Mace, Ari’s Rewind Button, and Sorin’s Pocket Hole and Rae’s Sentimental Cloth.
