Summary 5/22/22
Table Talk:
Some discussion about maps and a few quick questions answered, but nothing really substantive.
Also a reminder that the ladder-like pipes where the player summon Devin go down, as well as up.
“The Watch were always careful not to intervene too soon in any brawl where the odds were not heavily stacked in their favor. The job carried a pension, and attracted a cautious, thoughtful kind of man.”
—Terry Prachett, “The Colour of Magic; Chapter 1: The Colour of Magic”
🎲🗡️🔔✨Chapter 3: The Overflow Blocks (cont.):
🎲🗡️🔔✨Chapter 3: The Overflow Blocks (cont.):
Our Fearless team wakes in the late evening of the 27th of Mirtul. After some brief confusion explaining to Bostra what a screen saver is (some sort of water filter i think), we clap our hands together. With our hands and knees on the ground, we crawl back into the sewers.
Back in the mechanical room, there is a bit of discussion on which way to go, until we remember we have some things to sell to Devin, out two-headed-three-armed-lizard-merchant friend. On the way to find him, our fearless crusaders groan as a swarm of rats appears close to where the Giant Rat was on their first night here.
Our heroes are getting pretty good at this teamwork thing, and at killing rats.
Rea must've watched a lot of anime in the monastery because she sweeps her leg around in wide arch knocking three rats in the air, then knees one as she jumps up, and punches out, knocking another against the wall.
As the rats line up to attack Ari seizes the opportunity. She plants one foot and with her rapier out whirls a pirouette slicing through the backs of the vermin.
With the annoying critters out of the way, Devin is brought in.
Ari attempts to haggle on a deck of playing cards, "come on, they don't smell that bad…"
Devin rejects her soundly, "They don't smell that bad for being in the sewers? according to your nose... which has been in the sewers with them."
Rea buys a leather canteen and strikes a deal with Devin on the bottle of spider eye ichor, instead of a silver piece now (maybe good, maybe bad) Devin will check the market and offer a firm price the next time we see him.
Sorin sells the Holy Symbol he found, and strikes the same deal over his spider egg sack, amazingly keeping his cool as he gets more and more uncomfortable from Devin's attempts to flirt with him. Man that lizard tongue sure can put on a show!
With that Devin disappears to ... wherever Devin goes and our party sets off north to see if they can find a gear to open the south gate.
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
Chapter 4: How to Make Friends, and Influence People, with Fireballs
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 4: How to Make Friends, and Influence People, with Fireballs
We head north, past the mechanical room we've grown so used to, with its dials and gears covered in magic runes, leaving the small clicking levers behind us. We pass the first grate that we saw and subsequently opened two days ago, and we head down the smaller tunnel. We look at the small pipes dripping and let out a silent grateful prayer to the engineers who decided to affix them to the walls, and not to the ceiling above our heads.
At the end of the hall we turn to see… cobwebs in a familiar shape cluttering up the hall. With some discussion we back-track and decide to try the side passage we saw before to see… cobwebs in a familiar shape cluttering up the hall.
Rae and Ari come up with a new plan and coax their new magic buddy to try something out. Sorin is all too happy to try and impress the pretty girls.
Standing in the corner where the two tunnels meet, Sorin concentrates. His hand rises and falls with the beat of his heart, then his eyes flash wide open. His hand springs back, wrist at a right angle to his out stretched arm. "F̶͔͂ĩ̶̘̣̽r̵̭͍͑e̴͉̿͒b̵̤̊̚ô̸̤̪l̵̫̝̆t̵͓͑" An arrow made of yellowy orange flames emerges from his palm and flies down the hall. It strikes into the mess of tangled webbing, turning it into a yellow tube of licking flames and smoke.
The Spiders do not like this, and combat ensues.
At this point, the eye of the story shifts. Further down the hall, and a moment back in time.
We’re looking over the shoulder of a man in a dark hooded cape which is painted to look like brick-work. He's taken off his pack and set it on the ground. He has arranged it so that his bedroll cushions his knees from the hard stones. He's muttering quiet swear words to himself as he struggles with the lock in front of him in the dark. It seems like this guy was once an A-tier student at a university devoted to the study of swearing.
There that's it. He's sure he's got the last bit just ri-
CRASH!
A firebolt explodes against the wall just behind him. He swears a very difficult swear, and lets go of the lock picks. He reaches down in the darkness and grabs a wooden ‘T’ shape at his feet. It looks heavy.
As Rae smashes another Spider just as she hears a whooshing sound close to her ear. A deadly whooshing sound.
A crossbow bolt flies past, narrowly missing her shoulder and clanking against the corner wall.
Sorin takes a breath to look into the darkness, "There! I see them!" Another Firebolt flares, screeching down the hall. Sorin is squinting against the darkness, but he sees his aim is off. He can't quite tell where the wall ends and the man begins.
Ari kills off the last of the Spiders and follows the light of the firebolt. She can just make out the man at the other end of the hall.
Rae dashes, sprinting down the hallway, only thinking to try and block off this shadowy crossbowman from shooting her friends!... well friend.
The man in the dark rises, bringing the stalk of the crossbow up over his head. A loud CRACK echoes in the hall as he brains Rae in the side of the head and knocks her off balance. She clings to the wall, trying not to fall down as her vision swirls and swims.
Sorin thinks quickly, and casts in the blink of an eye.
The Thug levels his crossbow, using Rae's shoulder as she slumps against the wall, and adding insult to head injury. He fires! The quarrel hits hard and Sorin grunts. But, the runes of the Blade Ward spell Sorin just cast around himself have stopped most of the bolt’s impact.
The fire of the cobwebs has gone out, but a new light emerges as Zevari's rage grows and the cracks in her horns begin to pulse and glow with an inner fire. She flies down the hallway and lunges at the shadowy crossbowman. His eyes widen in terror at this horrible apparition charging him from the darkness! She strikes hard! Knocking him back down on the floor… and a D20 hits him in the back for some weird reason, weird. Ari knocks him down and backs up to run at him again.
Crawling on the ground, the Thug tries to flee as he hears Ari saying, “Rae, we shouldn’t want to kill him all the way, just want to kill him a little!”
Raelle's staff swings in an arch behind her, gaining speed. Her foot kicks against it making it fly even faster. And then the staff smacks into the chin of the now very unconscious Thug lying on the floor.
And just then the killing blow. Sorin's last firebolt lands right where his head would've been, if he'd managed to crawl away. I guess he was fortunate to be knocked out by a staff to the face?
Everyone takes a moment to catch their breath, except the unconscious Thug laying on the floor in a puddle of sewer-pipe-dripping. Presumably someone takes the time to put a token in his not-quite-a-corpse before looking around this new intersection hallways.
The party all agree that Raelle-the-badly-bruised has earned the right to loot this Thug. She picks up an unbroken arrow, a couple caltrops, a candle, and some linen wraps that can work either as bandages or as wrist coverings.
Sorin takes the Thug's small backpack and bedroll since he was a little un-prepared for all this adventuring. After all, just a couple mornings back when it all began, he was still just trying to get to class.
Ari goes over to get a good look at the gate lock the Thug was working on. She tries to pick it herself but it seems a little bit too secure for her skills. Then she pockets the lock picks. And when she does, she notices a small stamp on the door. Is it a clue?
The stamp is a small mushroom and the number 5 next to it, hammered into the metal.
And now we fade out of the story. Pulling away from our trusty heroes Ari may not be able to get past the gate, but i can see…
I can see the brick paved floor giving way to dirt with little mushrooms growing in the cracks. I can see where the tunnel turns to the right and where the mushrooms start to grow taller and taller. I can see them begin to glow. I can see the purpleish-pinkish B73DBE color they give out in the darkness. And from behind the next turn there, I can see...
Well, that will just have to wait.
“No spells are much good. It takes three months to commit even a simple one to memory, and then once you’ve used it, poof! it’s gone. That’s what’s so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you’re so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half blind from reading old grimoires that you can’t remember what happens next.”
-Rincewind the Wizzard —Terry Pratchett, “The Colour of Magic; Chapter 1: The Colour of Magic”
Table talk:
Everyone is getting very close to leveling up!
I will look up more info on Prone and Resistance to explain better next time and have more info on them in relation when it comes to their role in combat.
Also a brief explanation that i am trying my best to have maps prepped but i'm never completely sure where you all are going (a good thing). But on a 1" grid my current sewer map would be over 10 feet by 10 feet and i don't want to pay to print all of the out just yet.
