Thug Muggers in the Sewers 3/30/24
Table Talk:
Ashley and i talked about this before, but Sorin never actually took the time to learn Misty Step after he bought the spell. So on the next rest, he’ll have to do that to resolve this.
Cypress’s armor is now a -1 from the acid damage of the Black Pudding. Sorin doesn’t have armor, but it basically burned lots of holes in his shirt. I’m going to give him a -1 AC penalty for fighting with essentially no real clothes, instead of the -2 he would’ve taken with armor, that feels like a fair enough compromise.
Two-Headed Calf by Laura Gilpin
Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.
🍮🛡️🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 12: The Poison Pudding (cont.)
🍮🛡️🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 12: The Poison Pudding (cont.)
The young man’s feet hurt.
He sets the battered briefcase down on the stone wall next to the bank’s stairs and reaches down to rub the heel of shoes. Never mind. Guess that’s just bare heel now. Another hole to mend. He sighs and stands up to adjust his threadbare coat. Just in time, he spots the woman trying to snatch his briefcase from the other side of the wall. He yanks it back and the woman runs off cackling with giddy laughter.
‘What’s become of the city?’ he thinks as he walks across Fly St, ‘she didn’t even look like, well I’m not judging, be she was just… some woman, not down and out or anything’. ‘And it’s not like I have anything to steal, well, not really, and I definitely don’t look like I do’. He walks on, turning around the wall of the university and smelling the tanneries, ‘hell, the bank’s troll almost threw me out as a beggar when I went in’.
In the lesser square he finds a familiar face behind the counter of a junk peddler stall. After a short exchange he pulls out a string of odd metal bits and unties one of the notched pennies cut in half on it. He hands it over and, smiling at the old gnoll, takes a tiny cutoff of scrap leather. He moseys over to one of the benches. Right before he sits down, he remembers the thief from before and decides to sit on top of his beaten old case on the bench.
He crosses his legs and looks at the shoe before taking it off and stretching out his toes. Then he takes a bent, straightened, and scuffed needle out of the brim of his hat and starts slowly rubbing the toe of the shoe between his palms. Eventually the heat warms up the pitch gum left there just enough, and he scrapes it off with the needle, then quickly spreads it in a loose circle around the bit of tiny scrap leather before pressing it over the hole. As he holds it there to keep it warm for a minute, he looks up at the dimming sky. Maybe he’ll – hehe ‘he’ll’ and he’s fixing his ‘heel’, he chuckles around the needle gripped in his teeth. But, maybe he’ll have enough time to go walk by the river. It’s always so nice when the stars are just starting to come out, and the light bouncing over the mountains turns the water yellow. He pulls his hands away and yanks out a piece of the tough grass from the ground next to him. He starts looping the grass in rough stitches on the corners of the patch.
At least he got the loan. It took all day and it took begging at every bank and noble doorstep in the city, but he got it.
The city, no - the world, was about to change forever.
Sixty feet below and a few blocks east, the world is very much still the same.
In alphabetical order, Ari is still dripping with blood trying to forget how she died. The Black Pudding is currently outside of time and space, but not for long. Bostra is eyeing the hole in Cypress’s armor. Cypress is still coming back to unconsciousness and trying to find out what happened in the last few seconds. The Gas Spore is just an exploded plant shell – like an umbrella turned inside out. The Gazer is deflating in a puddle on the floor. The Ghast is dead – again. The Ghoul is re-dead with him, the Husk Zombie exploded… Oh wait, one thing is different. Rae did finally stop hitting Sorin for trying to lock himself in a pocket dimension with a gigantic monster slime beast made of vengeance-driven sentient poisonous acid sludge from deep under the earth. Hmm… i wonder what it’s doing now…
Ari readies her bow for an attack – while hiding under the table, like the big brave adventurer she is.
Cypress stands firmly in the entrance, just in front of Bostra, and readies a spell of his own. His fingers are splayed out as the glow of divine light sparks across them from tip to tip.
Rae lets go of the wizard, and nocks a bolt in her crossbow.
Inside the pocket dimension of Sorin’s Rope Trick, the Black Pudding fails a Con Save, and then follows the order to attack. With rage sloshing about inside it, it descends the rope. The globules of slurry look like giant black fists dripping with poisonous acidic goo. It picks up the pace and-
Ari rolls out from the table to kneel in a firing stance, and lets her arrow fly. The Sneak Attack hits the slime, taking chunks out of the main body, and splatters them on the wall. Then she tucks her bow under her leg and rolls back into the shadows.
The Sacred Flame leaps from Cypress’s hand, and ignites. Unfortunately, it ignites in the exact stop where Ari’s arrow just tore away a large wet chunk of the oily beast. The spell fizzles out without touching the monster.
With a ‘thwunk’, Rae’s bolt sails into the air, cutting the rope and leaving some of the Pudding behind in the closing portal.
The escaping steam from the Pudding sounds like a hissing scream of rage as it rushes down the rope and across the floor. It slams into Cyress, and divides itself into two smaller waves of darkness as the cleric falls unconscious.
Sorin unleashes Magic Missile at third level and the concussive force of the blows leave the two piles of slime looking watery and runny, as if it’s taking effort for them to hold together.
Ari grabs one of her few remaining +1 arrows and nocks it. Then she huffs in and out, speeding her breath and her heart faster and faster. She runs for the wall, jumps on the box there and pirouettes, forcing her back firming against the solid wall. She holds her breath and uses the high ground to clearly aim her shot before firing! With the arrow loosed, she rolls forward again, to land with her back to the table leg. When she turns her head to look, she can see only one mound of Black ooze remaining upright, next to a slowly expanding puddle on the floor.
Cypress, give me a Death Save.
Nymbus: “And, that’s a nat’ 20.
Inside the burning slurry of hate, Cypress manages to hold on to consciousness. The puddle has divided around him now, with one a lifeless puddle on the ground, and he staggers back out of its clutches.
Rae lets her next crossbow bolt fly, but it goes wide as she sees her friend stumbling back. With her insane speed, she almost drops the crossbow as she zips through the boxed hallway and around both corners to stand next to the healer, readying her Ki to dodge the next attack and keep Cypress safe.
The remaining Pudding divides again, the two smaller piles of muck lunging at both Rae and Cypress, but missing as Rae dodges, and pulls Cypress back to safety.
“I’m gonna need a looong rest…” Sorin mutters under his breath as he empties his last powerful reserves of magik. The glowing Missiles of light blow the two smaller slimes apart in a spray. And with that, the fight is finally over. Sorin breathes out a sigh of relief, and feeling the ache in every muscle in his body (even his tongue), he lays flat out on the floor.
“I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna kill him.” Rae takes off in a dead sprint.
Bostra sees her coming, from his spot in the corner and waves, “Is the fight over then?”
“Gonna kill’im, gonna kill’im!” is her only response.
With a high Insight Roll, Bostra pieces it together and sprints after the monk.
Sorin can hear the angry running feet. In an awkward crab scuttle, he scurries back to a standing position, jerkily climbing his back up the wall. “Look I ju-”
Rae’s hand grabs his cloak and his throat, pushing him against the wall, “Don’t! YOU Ev-”
She lets go and Sorin lands on his feet as Bostra tackles her in a flying leap, body checking her and dragging her to one side.
Whistling and twiddling his thumbs, Sorin back into the room and waves to Cypress, subtly making sure he’s in direct line of sight with the other adult.
Ari walks by Sorin, patting him on the back, and going to calm down her friend and protector, Raelle-the stubbornly-angry-and-defiant-despite-the-fact-that-she-did-the-same-thing-like-two-days-ago (i agree, that one was too long). She finds Rae on the floor with Bostra ready to finish his hold on her.
“Are you really gonna fight me on this, Rae?”
“...not physically fist fight you, no.”
“Let it go. You would’ve done the same thing. Hells you HAVE done the same thing.”
Rae flops her feet on the cobbles in childish tantrum, “Goddammit!”
Bostra leans in and whispers, “Which god? Take your pick, I'm on good terms with several these days.”
After, Ari taps Bostra’s shoulder, and he stands up, dusting himself off. He walks back into the room and Ari helps her friend up, but stops her from going back just yet, “He’s right you know…”
Coming back into the room, Bostra nods at Sorin and raises an eyebrow, “I assume we’re okay?” Unsaid, hovering inside the spaces of the four simple words, are the facts that Bostra tackled Sorin, and just stopped someone from tackling him, and stood up for the boy – his past as a soldier understanding and respecting Sorin’s willingness to sacrifice himself for the platoon.
Sorin nods and shuffles his feet, not trusting himself to talk.
Bostra walks by and pats his knee, “You did good.” Then he goes to check on Cypress. “Well how’re you feeling?”
“I’m breathing.”
After a few seconds of silent eye contact, Bostra sighs, “Thanks. Good talk, plenty of info, lots to go on.” Then he walks back to examine the room.
Cypress looks over the old gnome’s shoulder at the wizard and in a stern voice, chides him. “No, self sacrificing!”
As he looks up at the cauldron, Bostra mutters under his breath, “Meh, I get it.”
While they dust themselves off and Ari attempts to soothe the savage Rae, tZulèe begins to re-coalesce out of the walls.
Nymbus, make a Constitution Saving Throw for tZulèe, this one is easy.
Nymbus, a bit nervous: “10.”
Okay, great. It is not poisoned. I decided to base that on the amount of time you guys were fighting and it was in the wall. The longer the fight, the harder the Save. It was six rounds, so the DC was 6. Now for the tougher roll, i’m going to reverse that. I need a Constitution Check from tZulèe with a DC of 14.
Nymbus, excited and defiant: “21!”
Awesome! So tZulèe has now absorbed some of the poison from the wall and contained it. You can see the little purple veins of it flowing through the divine green light that holds the gargoyle together. tZulèe is now poisonous. When it attacks, if it hits, the enemy makes a DC 14 Con Save, or becomes poisoned (no damage, just standard disadvantage on attacks). Also mark two more points on the bond tracker for tZulèe. One for the order to stay in the wall, and one for the success with the poison.
Nymbus: “Woohoo I’m halfway to full!”
“Can we please take a rest? A nice, long, long one?” Sorin asks, digging in his bag for his bed roll as Ari and Rae come back into the room.
“Not in here…” Bostra’s voice is distracted, “The poison and Black Pudding are gone, but look at the walls, it was here long enough to mark the space for sure.” Indeed, as we look around, we see that the truly ominous black gloom that shadows the room is gone. Well, mostly gone, faded to smudges and a faint background aura of darkness.
“It’ll be fine for us to be here for a little while,” Bostra continues as he puffs a cigar to life, “but, it’s like radiation, too long on here, and we’ll all be sick for days.” Then after a few puffs, he adds, “only we’ll be darkly giving off shadows instead of glowing.”
“Okay, well we can leave right?” Rae asks. “The Pudding thing was the poison and we stopped it?”
“How much is left in the machine and the water supply?” Cypress asks, eyeing the cauldron.
“Exactly,” Bostra nods and stands on the table, “The fight was the first half, but now we need to stop the machine.”
Sorin lights up, “oh cool, so we just need to break it!” His fingers spark to life.
Bostra eyes him and gently pushes the wizard’s hand down. “Maybe… But I think first we should try to find a way that doesn’t destroy the whole machine.”
While everyone decides what to do, Cypress takes their empty Health potion bottle and fills it with the poisoned water pouring out from the front of the massive iron cauldron.
After some discussion, Ari and Rae go behind the furnace and find the valves for the incoming water.
“Ready? And. Turn.” Cypress calls out to avoid another ‘on three or three and then go’.
With a thrum, then a hum, then a hiss, then a whistle; the valves come to a close. The furnaces keep banging on though, getting faster and faster with no new water to pump.
“Uh…”
They keep going and we can see the wavy lines of hot air around them.
“What do we do guys?”
The pumps and arms continue to cycle, spinning up faster and faster. As nails start to ping off the wooden arms, the bricks of the fire bits below begin to glow red with the heat.
“We got them hot to start them last time, so we need to cool them off!”
“What's the opposite of fire?”
Together, Ari, Cypress and Rae get the barrel full of swords and weapons, and wedge it under the draining cauldron. Once it’s mostly full they walk it over to the first fire pit and dump it in.
“Oh wait!”
It’s too late, the swords in the barrel dump out with the water and turn to a pile of lumpy sticks at the bottom of the pit. Ari and Rae are still looking over the edge, when the plume of poisonous purple steam waffs into their watering eyes.
As he ducks back behind the barrel, the purple haze of the steam reminds Cypress of a time when he woke up in the deep woods on a voyage of fasting. He’d come to in time to see the mushrooms sporing. The thin raise of light showing the cloudy mists of the mushroom’s dust floating in the air above him.
They repeat the process for the second fire pit – with Ari and Rae shielding themselves from the steam this time. The mechanical arms begin to slow, and gradually come to a stop.
Time to loot!
Sorin rummages through the alchemy table in the middle of the room finding this and that, odds and ends, and all the general assortment of random things that he needs to refill his spell component pouch.
Rae sees Ari looking the other way, and takes the chance to loot the body of the Ghoul that she gored, without her seeing.
Um, just give me an Investigation Roll.
Sarah with her head down: “ Oh no. It’s a 1.”
Rae sees the glint of gold in an unusual place. She reaches her hand into the holes in his chest made by Ari’s horns a few days ago. Out of each hole she pulls a gold bar (100 gp each). Then gulps as she looks up to see Ari staring at her. “Um, sorry,” her meek voice is barely audible.
Nymbus: “Hey, Brooke, if Ari’s horns are magic and make wounds turn to gold I have a business idea for you. ... Just think, if greater injury equals more money we could really make a killing”
Cypress is going through the boxes and crates when they suddenly roll a high Religion Check. They feel a tug on their sleeve. The gargoyle’s normally placid wooden eyes are glowing from the green holy light of Sheela within it. In a voice, more feminine than usual, tZulèe points to the entryway “I was in the walls. She showed it to me. She says it’s for you.”
Hesitant of traps, but trusting their familiar and their god, the cleric follows the gargoyle into the hallway. After a few steps tZulèe points down at one of the drainage grates in the floor. The green glow in its eyes sparks down its arm and jumps into the holes of the grate, leaving a tiny dim light that only lasts a second. Cypress lifts the iron cover off the hole and looks down inside. There, stuck on a nail, is a Necklace of Prayer Beads. It must’ve fallen off someone in the city ages ago and slowly slid down the pipes before stopping – by divine luck – here for him to find.
Ari keeps looking around the room, but her eyes keep dragging back to the sword that the Ghast had drawn from the barrel. Finally she goes and examines it. It’s still in its sheath, and even the sheath is quite a find. Red leather, with black vines. She loves the etching on the knuckle gause and reads the Infernal runes there. She clicks the sword out of its sheath, it’s a rapier, a Rapier of Life Stealing, and – despite Brooke trying to metagame… – Ari greedily takes it.
Sorin goes over the collapsed leathery, plant umbrella of the exploded Gas Spore. With a rag over his mouth, he scoops some of the settled spore dust into a pouch.
To no one’s surprises, Rae is messing around with dead body parts again. She scrapes together two bottles of da da da dada duh MUMMY DUST! – er *cough* uh sorry – zombie dust from the Husk Zombie that almost ended her. Then while Cypress attends to the bodies, she collects the severed jaw bone and the four eye stalks off the dead-undead Gazer.
Cypress arranges all the three bodies of the dead-undead Thugs (or is undead-dead the proper use case?) along the south wall. South being more holy in a plant religion since that side always gets more sunlight. Then he sprinkles them with holy water and rolls a 21 Religion Check and recites a special prayer for the undead that Nymbus said he’d write before i published this
With a 19 on her Nature Check, Ari is aware of her disease, and her upcoming death in six days. “Bostra, How do I cure the Gas Spores?”
Bostra’s hand makes a rough grating sound on his unshaven chin. “You need curing magic. A Potion of Vitality or a spell of Lesser Restoration. Of course finding a Periapt of Health would be ideal, but it’s unlikely down here.” He thinks for a moment, “At least unlikely now. Before all this there were probably a few around. But with these guys actively engaging in poison… I can't imagine there are any left just laying around.”
“We need to rest!” an exhausted Sorin moans, slumping against the table. “If we're not doing it here, then where’re we going?”
“South.” Rae and Cypress each say in unison without thinking.
“Fine, then let's get going.” the wizard’s pouty trudging-stomps echo out of the room.
It’s one of those heavy ironbound doors, the ones with the two porthole windows and the leather airtight gasket around it that lead from the nice somewhat-safe sewer corridors to the unknown caves beyond. Rae and Cypress feel quite compelled to open it, but Ari is arguing that we should look through the windows first and assess the area. As they bicker about it, Sorin groans and walks up to the door, yanking it open. “There. It’s done, let's go look and see.
Rae is first into the cave, with Cypress close behind. After less than three steps into the cave tunnel, they each feel a wet sucking pop on their back/shoulder/sides.
The words, “Thanks for the lift” hover in our minds as the grayish-brown Puppeteer Parasites arise and float away from their temporary hosts. The roses and rows of teeth underneath them no longer appear as tiny bone dry and bone white barbs, but they are dripping with blood and flicks of skins. They also no longer look like flat flaps of leather, but now they look plump and full, resembling large rocks as they pump the air and move away. (Cypress’s gained 20 HP, and Rae’s gained 15)
Rae readie’s her staff, disgusted and affronted – about to murder the thing that fed on her for a day and a half and used her like a taxi.
“Nature is… Nature is beautiful…” Cypress’s unsteady shaking hand rests on Rae’s staff, “and I'm about to vomit.”
Remembering that her friend only has 1 HP left, and those creatures are now better fed and healthier than ever, Rae sighs and helps Cypress back into the Sewers. They close the doors and everyone starts setting up camp.
Honestly, I thought those would be a minor detour, not something that played a heavy role and lasted seven sessions across more than two game days and almost two months of our time – yes i stopped writing just to look that up, you shouldn’t be surprised.
So for Long Rests, i’ve been letting you guys do two tasks on top of sleeping, but with how depleted you all are, i’m gonna say you only get one task, unless you want to take penalties.
Bostra takes everyones camp mugs, and Rae’s special goblet, lining them up in a row next to the brazier. With a nod of thanks, he takes Cypress’ skillet and starts warming it on the coals. He digs through his bag and pulls out seven balls – like cheeses tied up with twine – placing them onto the skillet without removing the paper or the string, but leaving the tied knot on the underside against the hot pan. As the bottoms of the paper start to darken, he picks them up one by one and turns them over, then one by one unties them. Each ball, or pouch spills out something that looks like a mound of sand and he pulls the slips of corn husk paper out from under the sand, tossing this in the fire underneath. After a few minutes, the sand piles begin to puff up like clouds, and Bostra takes the pan off the brazier and sets it on the cold brick floor. Despite our expectations, the puffy sand-clouds don’t deflate, but seem to turn rigid on the outsides like a crust. Bostra picks up each of the mugs, and drags them through the pillowy crusty sand clouds, scooping some into each cup. He shakes a blue glass bottle and uncorks it. It smells like oil and beer, and he pours it into each of the cups with a fizz. After stirring each cup, he hands them around, “Drink up before it goes sour.” Then he upends the bottle on the skillet and slides the leftover bit under the belly of the fire pot to keep warm. “If anyone wants seconds, they should stop being salty in about twenty minutes. He points to the pan with the doughy breadlike mound rising on it, “but you’ll wanna chew it by then.”
When we hold the drink up to our lips, it smells like a goldeny yellow somewhere between ECBB00 and FFE91B. Tipping it up, it looks and feels in our mouths like a gritty smoothie, something like instant mashed potatoes with too much water. But, after we swallow, it tastes like a pink sunrise all over our body. We can feel it soaking into our muscles and giving us back our strength. After a full mug, Cypress and Rae each go for seconds – Cypress out of inbuilt hobbit hunger, and Rae out of curiosity. They find that what’s left on the skillet has become a sort of stretchy bread, and it tastes like very heavy eggs weighed down and reinforced with steel plate armor.
While we eat, Bostra lectures us on tactics. “Cypress, you have a feat of leadership, why not use it? Did any of you look around the last room for resources? Did you inspect the field of battle before the first attack?” His hands move back and forth like movement commands, “Take time a moment to assess each enemy. Discover their weakness, AND their strengths! Know what will and won’t be useful against them.” He paces back and forth, “You have familiars, use them. They can always retreat, same as you, but if you die in a fight, who will take care of them, huh?” He huffs out a sigh, trying to lighten up, “Cypress, that was a good use of the holy light to heal your friends in the last part there. But, Turn Undead would've been useful at the start with four zombie types in the room.” He goes on for a while, sometimes repeating himself, half scolding half lecturing until finally he runs out of steam. “You did good… I just… Just think things through a bit more.” He sits down and lights another cigar, “Battles are fought with big muscles, but they’re won with bigger brains.”
Suitably chastised, everyone goes about their tasks.
Cypress spends a while after eating, attuning to the Necklace of Prayer beads. We are using the random element for this, so with a dice roll, it has four beads, and they won’t know which spells are contained until using it. For the first four uses, each bead’s spell will be determined by a random dice roll then the spell will ‘lock in’ permanently.
Sorin spends some time Learning the Misty Step spell he bought before leaving town (thereby resolving the paradox, albeit a bit late).
Rae takes the chance to FINALLY attune to her new Ring of Regeneration, which would have really come in handy so many, many times in the last few days…
And while she takes the first watch to let the others rest, Ari will be attuning to her fancy new sword.
Deep in the forest of dreams, Cypress Witchazel opens their eyes. The sky is speckled with light, but instead of stars, they are the tiny dots of sunlight through the thick tree canopy of the Quantolëa Woods (quantolië & olea) not far from where he’d grown up. Only in the dream, this place has also melded with the trunk of the mighty redwood where he first saw the fairies and the true goddess of nature.
He sits up and next to him, the dream of tZulèe sits up as well. In the dream its broken gargoyle body has expanded, the shards hovering further apart to make it the size of a child with the green light showing brightly between them.
With a free and earnest laugh, Cypress helps the dream gargoyle to its feet and they begin to wander the woods. After some time, with that innate dream logic that tells you when the show is about to begin, they come back to the hollow log.
Now the ground is littered with a carpet of tiny bulbous mushrooms, all swollen and about to burst. Cypress and the gargoyle sit in the protection of the giant log and watch as it begins.
The pods swell, convulse, burst, and shrivel. Each sends up a cloud of spores through the air. Some are fat puffs of green, some are shooting streamers of rusty red and some are puffy clouds of gray and blue. It is a firework show put on by nature herself. And shining through it all, in sunlit beams through the leaves, the divine truth and beauty of the goddess of nature watches on – smiling.
Like most elves, Rae doesn’t dream in the way humans do. Instead of a rapid eye movement phase of sleep, their eyes open in the deepest trance of their mediation. Instead of moving around, their eyes stay locked straight ahead and glaze over with a film like tears, composed of the ancient magics that the race inherited when it was born. This magic film on their eyes, enhances their trance and creates visions overlaid on top of the sights of the world around them. Some elves train and take herbs in order to use these visions as predictions of fate; like Arothmǐu before the fight at the Gatchen Damm in the first age of lions.
Rae’s eyes glaze and her sight of the world alters. She see’s Bostra writing, and in her hazy half-dream she can see words forming in curling cursive in the air, almost hearing his voice read them.
“- and most lovely art thoust graces. Forsooth! Tis true that in the bosom of your hearth and that warm nesting of thine heart, it is seen that my desire dost burn as to a forge blown a gust in the bellows of the sea air! My dearest sweetest em-”
Her brain is confused, trying to reject this strange flight of delusion and fancy.
“-and aching heart dost bode inside my chest, to swell and earn for the touch of thy quivering lips against mine. In the heat of that cold summer we did once frolic, and let the tall grasses shield us from the prying eyes of your neighbors. Be they not gentry, ney, nor gentile in their uncourtly desire for your virtue as I didst-”
In her meditation, Rae can feel – and taste – her stomach heave.
“Whence our heavy sighs did settle against the sweat of your your neck and mine brow we did then make and create that most deeply truthful of all loves in the-”
Like Cypress, Sorin’s dream is also based on something that happened today.
In a blink, his shape materializes at the top of the rope, inside the pocket dimension, the fear gripping him. He looks down the hole at the room, surely the dark ooze will be after him in a heartbeat.
His heart beats. He looks around.
This is not his dimension. Not the one he summoned when he cast the spell to escape. Or perhaps it is. It’s hard to tell, in that special fickle way of dreams.
All around him are eyes. Big and small, round and oblong. Pupils of every shape look down on him from irises of every color. Star pupils with red eyes, slit pupils with green eyes, round pupils with white eyes. Every space is filled and crammed. Every eye is unique, and every… last… one… staring at him.
“Eyes of the damned.” He thinks, but doesn’t know.
The panic tightens its hold on him further as the scene changes.
In the center of each pupil a white dot emerges and grows. Each dot becomes a tooth. A fang, pointed straight at his chest.
The room, now a giant mouth of sharply fanged eyes begins to collapse in, closing around him!
From the hole below something enters at his feet.
It’s not the horrible dark ooze he fled from, but something new.
A red mist, like steaming blood erupts around the wizard, shielding him.
It slowly pushes back the domed wall of eyes, and without words or shape, the body language is clear. “Mine.”
On the first watch, Ari is cleaning and honing her new blade.
The quality really is superb. How did such a fine weapon end up here in the sewers? And in the hands of a Thug no less!
She grinds her fangs at the thought.
This rapier should never have been theirs! It belongs in a court, or to a captain at least. No. A lord, or a general. Look at those runes.
She traces the engraving with one pointy fingertip.
The workmanship is astounding. And the inscription was right!
When she holds the blade she can feel the back and forth flow of energy in the spine of the blade.
It really is a Blade of Lifestealing.
She glances at the sword Sorin bought her, but only for a moment.
No one can beat her with this! She’ll just keep healing the longer the fight goes, she’s sure of it.
After a long time, staring and attuning to it, she slides it back into the sheath.
Look at that, even the sheath is so well worked. That design of the black vines is so perfect on the red leather it’s- what? What’s that?
The sword seems stuck, unable to slide all the way into the scabbard. She pulls it out. Pinned to the end is a slip of folded paper.
A note? What is-
She unfolds it frowning.
“Dear Ari,
Enjoy.
- Z”
Ari stands up, jerking herself away, but to her horror, she’s still holding the sword.
She picks up the scabbard from the floor and almost drops it again.
The beautiful vines… They’ve changed, like an illusion. Now she can see the secret.
There is no red leather. Just Black thorns, dripping with blood.
She turns to the knuckle guard, rereading the inscription.
The infernal runes of “Your life in this cut” have changed too.
This is still a Rapier of Lifestealing, but she knows the secret now. Hidden within is a bound soul.
This is a Sword of Vengeance
Ari slumps to the floor. And reads the curse on the blade again, allowing the dismay to grow inside her.
“My revenge in your death.”
“Whatever. A clumsy, awkward success is still a success.”
-Jasmine "Jazz" Bashara –Andy Weir , “Artemis: Chapter 6”
Table talk:
After taking another hit from the Black Pudding, Cypress’s armor now has a -2 on it. It might be time to think about magic armor…
I’ll be working on redoing Devin’s inventory sheet to move up more with where we are now. A few more magic items, and some better gear to match the levels, etc. Though, do remember that, somewhere down here there is another merchant waiting for you. And who knows… maybe I’ve been planning something with them having better gear… who can tell… it’s a mystery… I can tell. I know.
Death Saving Throws and dying. I decided this a while back, but never really officially codified this until now. For our game, i’m throwing out the -10=DEAD rule. In most circumstances, if a character gets hit to or below 0 HP, they will fall unconscious and need to start making Death Saves. Then, if they take damage again while unconscious, it will count as a failed Death Save on the tracker where three failed saves equals death. Any healing will bring a character back to consciousness, but the amount of HP received will by minus the below 0 amount, (ex.: Rae is knocked to -4 and receives Cure Wounds for 6, she is conscious again with 2 HP).
I asked everyone to please look into ordering the miniatures for their characters. I know everyone has made them on HeroForge, because that’s what they’ve given me for pictures, so i’m asking them to get the physical figures. With all the work i’ve been putting into building out the map (pictures, set dressing, props, monsters, miniatures, ect.) i think it would be really nice to step up the PC’s figures to match. Thanks.
So tactics… i actually put most of this in the form of Bostra’s lecture to everyone in the narrative of the summary (by the request of the players, who said that’s what me talking at them felt like in the moment). The basic points were; look around, use Nature Checks, use familiars, use your feats, and loot for resources. Plus the additional snarky comment, that if i can spend hours looking things up, aligning things, and prepping each week before a game, then players can glance over their character sheets and item cards before we play. I’ll admit this was a bit bitchy of me.
I made a mistake in the last fight too. I my notes i had the Ghast as ‘Gha’ and the Ghoul as ‘Gho’ as a result i kept mixing up their actions and abilities, essentially making it a fight with two Ghasts (CR 2) and not a Ghast and a Ghoul (CR 1), so mathematically the fight was just over the line into Deadly, instead of well into the Hard range. As such, i’ve decided to grant the full XP from the math as the two Ghoul’s fight, so that’s 4,800 XP. Then with the XP from stopping the machine, it’s an even 5k. After talking to Brooke and Sarah about the town XP project… I decided to just round it up. Everyone is now level six. Congratulations!
