Summary 6/4/22
Table Talk:
Thanks to Diedrik’s suggestion last week i made some skull markers for the map, to cover up monsters that have already been fought and ‘taken off the board’, as it were. I also worked on getting some doors and gates made up for better spatial reasoning. Only one this week, but hopefully more to come. Also, i finally have the scroll that Ari picked up a few weeks ago, and i gave out some tokens of the watch medallions being used to mark defeated Thugs. This should help us keep count of how many have been dealt with.
Something i forgot to mention: when the group discovered the first Thug moving bricks out of the wall and thus found the old cache, those bricks had a slight reddish transparent tint to them, and the bricks on the ground were also red.
There’s some more Lore and world building knowledge, including the piece on Devin, i put up Here. I also spent some time this week going over information about the world with Ashley so that Sorin can inform the party a little bit more about what’s going on. For instance, why the City is the way it is, and why the sewers are how they are.
Diedrik is calling in today but we forgot a speaker so there was some trouble hearing a little bit throughout the game since the phone calling him was sitting inside a plastic cup as an amplifier. So, i don’t have a lot of specifics on spells and actions, because it was hard to make out.
Mechanics:
Thaumaturgy (players handbook pg. 282)
Transmutation cantrip | Casting Time: 1 action |
Range: 30 feet | Components: V | Duration: Up to 1 minute
You manifest a minor wonder, a sign of supernatural power, within range. You create one of the following magical effects within range:
• Your voice booms up to three times as loud as normal for 1 minute.
• You cause flames to flicker, brighten, dim, or change color for 1 minute.
• You cause harmless tremors in the ground for 1 minute.
• You create an instantaneous sound that originates from a point of your choice within range, such as a rumble of thunder, the cry of a raven, or ominous whispers.
• You instantaneously cause an unlocked door or window to fly open or slam shut.
• You alter the appearance of your eyes for 1 minute. If you cast this spell multiple times, you can have up to three of its 1-minute effects active at a time, and you can dismiss such an effect as an action
“I owe you nothing. I'm a Dungeon Master. I create a boundless world and I bind it by rules. Too heavy for a bridge, it breaks. Get hit, take damage. Spend an hour outside someone's front door fighting over who gets to kill him, he leaves through the back!”
-Abed —Dan Harmon and Matt Roller, “Community” Season 5; episode 10 “Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”
With that we are back in the world around mid morning on the 28th of Mirtul (‘The Melting’).
Cypress is petting the cats and the others are investigating this new person in their little sewer-prison-playground.
Everyone roll a— nah just a joke, talk amongst yourselves and introduce each other while i finish my prep work.
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
Chapter 4: How to Make Friends, and Influence People, Without Fireballs
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 4: How to Make Friends, and Influence People, Without Fireballs
With that we are back in the world around mid morning on the 28th of Mirtul (‘The Melting’).
Cypress is petting the cats and the others are investigating this new person in their little sewer-prison-playground.
Everyone rolls ini— nah just a joke, talk amongst yourselves and introduce each other while i finish my prep work.
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 4: How to Make Friends, and Influence People, Without Fireballs:________________________________________________
After everyone is introduced and everyone has a good working knowledge of everyone else (except Ari who is still suspicious of the “unofficial” halfling), there is a small debate on whether or not to talk with Devin and do some shopping.
The three older party members are wavering back and forth on the matter until Cypress asks, “Who’s Devin?”
And just like that a verdict is reached,
“Oh, you HAVE to meet Devin!” All three say together, though Sorin’s voice sounds a little different from the others.
A sacrificial copper, a puff of smoke, a clattering of little claws, and, “Hello, again, little travelers!” Skittering. Claws on stone. “Oh my, and who might this new face be?” Devin moves. In a blink he lays flat on the floor with his neck bent and raised in an ‘s’ shape to put his heads on a level with Cypress’s. He looks at the cleric with each head focused, the center eye of each looking dead on into each of Cypress’s eyes. He is clearly trying to make the hobbit feel uncomforta-MORE uncomfortable. After a brief introduction about buying and selling, Devin is back to his usual shtick.
This time, he is hanging from the ceiling with his heads hanging down at eye level swaying backwards and forwards. Everyone unconsciously starts swaying in time with them. Devin reads off his list of items for today.
Cypress buys all 5 torches and a healer's kit. Sorin buys darts. And, right before Devin leaves back up the drains, Raelle remembers something and turns to the head for selling.
“Did you find out a price for me?” She asks, sparking Sorin to remember he had also asked for a price on an item.
“Ah yes…s…s… For the bottle of Giant Spider’s eyeball ichor, 25 gold. And before you ask, little wizard boy, your Spider’s web sack will go for 2 gold”
Rae sells her bottle-o-disgusting, then beams down eagerly at the most money she’s ever owned.
Sorin pauses for a minute thinking about the value the taylors, rope layers, and other artisans up above will have with the webbing. Then he remembers he is stuck down here with no way to sell to them, and he decides to give in. Lastly Sorin asks Devin for a price on small spider poison sacks, and a dead baby Violet Mushroom.
Then, with a sound like an iron golem licking ice cubes off a stone floor, everyone’s favorite two-headed-three-armed-two-tailed-lizard-man is gone.
“We were headed south I think.” Ari says.
“Oh yeah, because we’d heard that grate move so it should be open now.” Rae replies.
We head that way.
A few steps later, “Wait, I forgot, I have that scroll, lets see what it says.” Ari uncurls the scroll found on the Thug and reads aloud:
You idiots! The watch is catching on to us.
Remember what the RATS said.
If you ever want to be “promoted” to a RAT
then you’d better shape up and either get some
animals captured, or bring the RAT “priest” some damn gold.
Now get back to work!
Everyone puzzles over this for a moment, and then decides to continue on down the path. Maybe it will make more sense as we go on.
A few steps later, “Wait, I, I think I figured it out!” Sorin explains that it finally clicked with him what the whole thing in the room full of mushrooms was.
Lore! The sewers of Nibiru are a magical place. Literally they use magic to function. The sewers collect gray water (don’t think about it) from all over the city and bring it to water treatment hubs. The water treatment works partly with mechanical functions, and partly with magicks. Think steampunk meets old world alchemy. In order to power all this magic, the people who built the sewers tapped into areas of naturally occurring magical phenomena. Things like Violet mushrooms, special rocks, etc. The system harvests those natural magic deposits as sort of collected batteries to power the whole operation.
As Sorin is explaining this, everyone is discussing it and making a lot of noise, it attracts Rats.
Sorin promptly fails the initiative roll with a natural 1, so he is still talking when the Rats attack. Okay book-worm, we get it, knowledge is important, but so is not being devoured by Rats in an underground sewer tunnel.
The Rat swarm attacks, biting out.
Cypress casts, and the small space is filled with light.
As Sorin talks on, a new Rat sneaks in from the north, biting him on the ankle with another Rat in tow behind it.
But wait, one of the cats has come to help! Here’s a fun rhyme kids:
“The Cat bites the Rat,
The Rat bites the Cat.
The Wizard lifts the Rat,
and-casts-firebolt-with-it still-in-his-hands-singeing-its-skin-into-a-falling-trickle-of-ash-and-leaving-nothing-but-tiny-bones,
where all its hopes and dreams used to live.
. . .
something, something,
something rhyming with -at
dumpty dumpty dum.”
The Cat runs away and Sorin stomps the other Rat into the cobblestones. Then, Sorin turns back around to discover that everyone else has almost finished with the Rat Swarm.
Cypress pulls his mace out on the last of the chittering vermin, and slams it down. It looks a lot like popping a water balloon, expect instead of water it’s one of those blood donation bags.
LOOT TIME! Actually everyone is pretty disgusted by that last blow. Except Ari. Maybe it’s a demon thing. She pulls off a few little rat claws and paws, as a trophy.
With that, everyone thinks maybe it would be a good idea to have a chat in Bostra’s little camp room, and take a breather.
Inside, Sorin and Bostra pass the short-rest by explaining a bit about the city to their new foreigner friends.
More Lore! The capital city, Nibiru, is home to all types, but you mostly see above-ground folks (Elves, Humans, hill Dwarves, Aarakocra, Tortles, etc.) The City of Nibiru's border (and thus The Constabulary’s jurisdiction line) ends at the wall surrounding the city, but it also ends (with a couple basement exceptions) about 10 feet underground.
There is a city deep beneath Nibiru. This city is also the capital of its own country, and is mostly populated by underground dwellers (Molepeople, Dark Elves, Deep Dwarves, Trolls, Bullywogs, Goblins, etc.)
“Oh ok, so are we in this other city now that we’re in the sewers?”
Well, not quite. The sewers are a space between. Just like how there are fields, countrysides, and forests in the horizontal space between villages and towns; these sewers are part of the vertical space between the two cities. So you guys are technically on the border between the two counties (just vertically) in a kind of no-man’s land that both countries use. But, The Constabulary going down here might be seen as an act of war, with an official state presence claiming territory.
With that out of the way, and some well earned one-hit-dice-lunch, it’s time to back our bags and see what this new corridor to the south has for us.
The tunnel heads south and then quickly east. As soon as there is a split in two directions, our team of heroes takes the south tunnel again.
Shortly down this tunnel, there is a glow coming from an off-shoot tunnel back to the west. It is a familiar pink-ish-purple B73DBE glow. Sorin gets a bit nervous, but Cypress very much wants to see these notorious Violet Mushrooms everyone keeps talking about. He is, after all, a cleric of life and nature.
It turns out there are two mushrooms in two rooms. Each one is a small dirt room with a large iron grate in front of it. The one back to the west is nothing special, but the one to the south has a couple of red bricks on the ground by the corner.
Sorin is getting more nervous being near them and encourages everyone to follow him back down the tunnel they were taking before. When he does, he comes to a gate with a large lock on it when suddenly…
Sorin is struck in the shoulder with a crossbow bolt.
Oh, i forgot to mention… Thug, Thug, Thug, there’s a thug! Just making sure you all saw him. Thug!
Cypress rushes forward pushing Sorin, or rather Sorin’s knees, back to safety, and then casts into the room.
The Thug crouches in the corner and readies his next shot as Cypress ducks back around the corner!
Rae rushes up to the gate and lines up a shot of her own through the iron bars. Ari stands beside her friend matching her shot. Both arrows sink deep past his tattered cloak and into his flesh.
The Thug screams and fires off his quarrel, but it clangs against the iron bars. A miss.
The Thug turns towards the corner of the room and shouts, “Go around and get them from the other side.”
Sorin takes up position in the back, away from the gate where the Thug can see him. He closes his eyes and pictures the room as he saw it. He guides the Magic Missiles with his mind’s eye, landing one square in the chest of their attacker.
The Thug is bloodied and weak but reaches into a pouch and slams a glass vial against his arrow wound. The healing potion works fast and he is back up and ready to keep fighting.
Rae keeps his attention, firing through the iron bars as Ari scatters caltrops in the hall behind them, and Sorin stands ready with a dart in hand prepared to throw if anyone comes from behind.
Cypress lays a hand on Sorin and heals his bleeding shoulder.
“Wait what!?”
“You mean you could do that this whole time?”
“Oh yeaaaaahhh… I forgot to mention I’m a healer.” Cypress says, nonplussed.
As Cypress explains, we hear a scream from down the hall by the mushroom cages, and everyone pauses for a second to wonder and hope.
Then, the Thug we’ve been fighting takes this opportunity to attempt to crawl away into a large pipe in the wall of the room.
Rae turns back just in time to see him trying to escape. Together, Ari and Rae land two perfect twin shots in the Thug’s buttocks. Two cheeks, two arrows, two smirking friends, one defeated Thug bleeding from the arse.
After a moment's pause to make sure no one else is coming after them, Sorin and Ari work together to break the lock mechanism (with a gear and the number 5 stamped into it), using a Thaumaturgically enhanced Firebolt. The combination of magic and heat make it easy for Ari to pick the gate open.
Finally in the room now, Rae and Sorin walk over to the Thug half hanging out of the big pipe. They make sure he’s really knocked out, and not just faking to get them close. Then, laughing together, they put a token on him with it looped and hanging off the protruding arrows in the shape of a heart.
That done, they begin a thorough accounting of his belongings. The kind of special accounting that changes the item's label from “theirs” to “mine”.
Rae collects an unknown Key, and a four leaf clover, and Sorin decides he really could use another dagger, thank you.
With the danger passed, everyone takes stock of the room. Ari sees more of those red-tinted bricks on the floor in the corner of this room and decides to take a closer look. When she picks them up, a strange thing happens. The side that had been facing the floor looks exactly the same as the floor tiles, but now in her hand, it’s slowly fading to red. Rae sees this and begins to see a pattern in the wall.
In one spot there is a cluster of bricks that, when you look closely, all have a slight reddish hue. It's almost like in the old Doom™ games where a secret wall would be colored or patterned just a little bit different from all the ones around it.
“I think it means...”
Find out what it means next time on: A Title, That Sounds, Dramatic! [Musical score goes here]
“On this violent, brutish, little planet of ours, it's the survivors who wind up the strongest ones of all”
-Sophia "Shadow Stalker" –Wildbow [J. C. McCray], “Worm”, Chapter 19 Interlude 3
Table talk:
Raelle, Zevari and Sorin all leveled up! After a brief discussion we decided everyone will meet with me independently to level up separately, both to make the crunchy stuff easier on me, and so that everyone gets surprised when their friends have cool new abilities!
Next time, i will give everyone a more definite number of the rations they started with and currently have to keep track of.
I will be looking up more info to set up Cypress’s Spell DC and casting modifiers. I will also get full info on Short Rests, in particular regaining spell slots, and short/long rest for elves who meditate instead of sleep.
