Summary 8/14/22
Table Talk:
Fig. 69
A quick oversight on my part. A couple weeks back i forgot to reveal to Cypress/Diedrik that the magic caster Thug had a symbol on his tabard. That symbol (the symbol will be described later when found in a scene) is the symbol of the Church of Shadows. If you are unfamiliar with that check here until i get a full thing written up. Since this is my mess up, no rolls are needed and i will simply tell you, Cypress now knows or at least suspects a link between the cult faction within the church and the Thugs.
I also showed everyone a picture that i set up recently for scale. This picture (figure 69 as seen to the right) is all of the professionally printed maps (each one two feet by two feet) so far, all laid out. This is in our garage and roughly the width of an American SUV. There’s a hammer, an ax, and a marker for scale. We’ve been running this game for a while now and i wanted to show everyone just how much ground we’ve covered. I thought this was a cool way to do it. It’s also worth noting that this week we expanded that a great deal, and i need to go and get more maps printed.
“Now bees,” said Granny Weatherwax, “is real magic.” . . . “Your bees,” she went on, “is your mead, your wax, your bee gum, your honey. A wonderful thing is your bee. Ruled by a queen, too,” she added, with a touch of approval.”
-Granny Weatherwax –Terry Pratchett, “Equal Rites”
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 1: Office Full of Frogs:
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 1: Office Full of Frogs:
We pick up loosely where left off before with a bit of exposition on our little cleric’s journey and mission. Pulgrok has asked him why he is down in the sewers and what exactly he is after down here. Cypress explains that while staying in The Temple of Glorious Gods, he learned about some shady dealings going on within The Church of Shadows (get it, shady dealings, church of shadows, ah i crack myself up). There appears to be a cult growing inside the regular church, maligning their good name. This group has been linked to murders and kidnappings throughout the town. When Cypress asked if someone had done anything about it, the priests said they were looking to hire someone to investigate.
And so, thusly it did come to pass, that the holy men of the octagonal temple, robed in hopes and pleas, did bae and beseech the goodly hobbit from beyond the gate; “Look unto this, this wholly unholy mystery of man and magic and god. Find, for us, the one true truth, hidden in the hearts of men and the cellars of gods!” Amen.
Then Cypress learned that he couldn’t get into the church itself under the watching eye of these cultists, so he would have to go in through the crypt underneath the church. And, the only way to get into the crypt was, you guessed it, through the sewers. So this whole time, Cypress has been keeping an eye out and working his way towards finding this crypt. But now that he has seen the symbol of the Church of Shadows on one of the Thugs, he suspects that this cultist faction, and the Thugs are somehow linked.
“So you think that the Thugs we’ve been mugging are in cahoots with this cult and doing a religion crime on the city?”
“Well I don’t think I’ve said the word ‘cahoots’ ever in my life, but basically, yes.” Cypress says with a perfect dead-eyed stare.
A thoughtful Sorin chimes in, “Hmm… Do you think that has anything to do with my um,” he drops his voice to a whisper, “bruise?”
“Your what?” Rae asks.
Cypress grins, “Oh, Sorin woke up this morning with some sort of magical tentacle bruise on his arm that I can’t heal.”
Sorin is now in a small room of nothing but staring eyes. He sighs and shifts his shirt so everyone can see the bruise just above his elbow.
Rae and Ari roll an Arcana check, Rae with Disadvantage for having no experience with casting spells.
Ok everyone but Rae can see the bruise.
“I’m just saying that if a group called the ‘Church of Shadows’ has a scary evil cult, and we take care of one of their magic caster and then I wake up from nightmares to have a weird bruise that won’t heal… anyone else see a possible link here!?” Sorin waves his arm around frantically for everyone to get a good look.
Rae looks a bit confused, “No, I don’t see a link, I don’t even see any bruise. What are you talking about?”
Sorin turns his head and glances at the monk, “Hush there muscles, leave the thinking to the intelligent folks.”
“Oh so you want to die? Okay, cool, cool, thanks for letting me know.” Rae walks away from the group muttering murder plots under her breath.
Ari turns back to Cypress, “So it sounds like we need to get you to the crypt under this church, and if they are linked then we can probably find and knock out more Thugs along the way. Which works well for all of us to get paid. Do you know where we need to go?”
Pulgrok offers, “The *croak* crypt I think you are looking for… is too the south east.” He pronounces the word in an over enunciated staccato and then scratches his head, making a suction-cup sound, “You have been to one crypt already, but if that is not the one, then the *croak* crypt just southeast of that one is the next closest to find.”
“Alright, well then it sounds like we have a plan.”
“*croak* Before you go, I want to remind you, *croak* that I will need a name for your group by tomorrow in order to pay you.”
Cypress glances at his companions and then walks up to the table and looks down at the paperwork, without a word he writes “Thug Muggers” and sets down the pen walking back to the others.
Pulgrok picks up the paper, adjusts his glasses, reads the name, and bursts out laughing. With an echoing sound like a metal chair scooting against a tile floor, Pulgrok laughs. “Thug Muggers,” more scraping laughter that hurts the DM’s throat, “an excellent *croak* name!”
With Pulgrok’s laughter echoing in the background (and my throat hurting) We head out into the hallway.
“Ok so which way?”
“South.”
“Um…” Ari stalls, pointing around in a circle.
“To the right, here,follow me.”
We start heading south and then we remember, “Oh that’s right, that green glowy room, let's check that out and see what that’s all about. It’s more or less on the way.”
Chapter 2: Clever Name About Filtration
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Chapter 2: Clever Name About Filtration 🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
Through the hallway in front of us, we can make out some sort of fountain rimmed in gold, but mostly all we see is a ploom of smoky mist roughly in a 4DD569 shade of green.
As we enter the room, we get a better look at a magical exchanging machine, and it smells like a fresh lemon – because anything clean always smells like fresh lemon. The room is mostly divided in two.
To our left is the fountain. It has three tiered layers sticking out of the floor, each one is a deep matte black and is ringed by a gold edge covered in runes. At the top of the fountain is a long pole set at an angle almost like a sundial. As we stare at it we hear a click and notice it rotate slightly. This pole is solid gold and after a second we realize that this is where the smoky steam is coming from. It is rising off the golden bar with a quiet hiss as little droplets flow down the pole, pooling in the top tier of the fountain, then the second pool, then the third, and then the swirling milky liquid flows out channels and gussets in the side walls, into grates on the floor.
The other half of the room is taken up by a stone… Anti-fountain? Pit? Funnel? Funnel i guess. Like the fountain, it has three layers to it, each collecting from the ring above it, but this time the liquid is traveling down into the floor. It sinks down about four feet and we see it pooling at the bottom as crystal clear water. We also notice that the stone here is a generic gray like granite or cement, and that there are some spiky roots zigzagging their way throughout it.
That's the big and interesting stuff. The corners have a mix of supplies; one has a stack of boxes, and we can see some 1A92D1 blue glowing crystals in a crate on top. The corner furthest from us has a few casks, each large enough for Ari and Rae to both hang out comfortably in. The corner to our left is a shallow countertop with shelves. On top of the counter are some test tubes and charts. Beneath it on the shelves are random bits of specialized equipment we don’t recognize. Some are complex swirling rods of gold, and some are blocky ruby hammers. Lastly, the corner next to us has several bags and sacks piled up and you can see a few DFA4C4 pink glowing potatoes spilling out of it.
The DM is rolling some dice, but nothing happens… yet.
With a knowledge check, Sorin understands some of the basics about what exactly is going on in this room. “This is the heart of sewers, or at least I think it is.” He looks around and pieces a bit more of it together, “This is how it filters the water. That green mist is some sort of off-gassing byproduct as the water gets transformed and then somehow it’s being condensed and filtered back into regular water with those roots, if you look you can see a little bit of that milky film on them.
Brooke: “Did you say those potatoes are glowing pink?”
Yeah, kind of a faint soft glow.
Brooke: “Ari picks up a potato.”
Um… ok, you are holding a pink potato.
Brooke: “Cool.”
Nothing happens by the way, you’re just holding a potato.
Brooke: “Oh, ok then put it back.”
“Wait” Raelle-The-Curious jumps in grabbing the potato before Ari puts it back. She stands in front of everyone, like a kid in a middle school cafeteria. “Who dares to my lick it?”
Silence… in both worlds.
“Well fine but I’m still licking it.” Rae sticks out her tongue to give the potato a good tasty lick.
Um… I guess roll a Con save.
Rae takes 1 damage as the potato shocks her like a small taser. “OW!”
Sorin snorts with laughter.
Sarah: “I throw the potato at him.”
Ashley before i can say anything: “I dodge!”
I…i…i mean… roll an attack and contest it with a dex check i guess… is this really what we’re doing?
The potato flies past Sorin and splats in a faintly glowing pink splotch on the wall.
Cypress immediately turns on Rae, “That’s coming out of YOUR pay!”
“Yeah,” Ari says, trying so very hard to hide her laughter behind a stern face.
I just want to share with you, dear reader, that in my notes this whole exchange is noted at “get potato, lick potato, ow potato, splat potato”. So i guess i’m just as bad as them.
Having done what they came for – which was apparently licking an electric potato i guess, our um… heroes embark through this room and to the east.
Now we're in a short hallway with a path south and a path straight ahead, the path straight ahead has a familiar 4DD569ish light glowing out of an archway.
The DM is rolling some dice, but nothing happens… yet.
The group goes straight forward to (presumably) the next filtration room. As we come to the opening of this room we see a green mist.. and nothing else. The smoky mist is so thick here it looks like an opaque green wall.
Rae covers her mouth. With a fear of what these rooms might do to her she says, “I don’t wanna know what that stuff does when you breathe it.”
And with that thought bouncing around their brains, the group slowly backs away to take the southbound hallway. After a short passage we come to an intersection with two brightly lit rooms, on either side. We decide to ‘split up and investigate, gang’.
Sorin and Cypress take the room on the right. Rae and Ari take the room on the left – then Daphne and I will go upstairs to look for clues.
The DM is rolling some dice, but nothing happens… yet.
These mechanical rooms look just about the same as the others we’ve been in. There is a large sewer pipe on the far wall leading out of the room, as well as one to the wall next to you leading out.
There are some dials with letters and symbols on them. There are some large gears and chain pulleys built into a concrete block above a large drain. There are some wooden pipes and a large wooden chain pull like you've used before.
The main difference here is that this room is actually lit up. The torch in a bracket by the interference is actually lit and the room is bright.
After a cursory look around the group gives a collective shrug, comes back to reform into a clump, and continues down the main hallway.
The DM is rolling some dice, but nothing happens… yet.
We come to a four-way intersection with a grate in the floor. Everyone talks for a minute debating whether to go south again or east this time. Looking to the east, it does seem to open up to a larger room ahead. Ari takes out her map to see if she has recently learned how to read it.
The DM is rolling some dice, but nothing happens… still...
After some arranging, and rearranging the map, Sorin starts walking down the hallway to the east. It’s much quieter than usual. Sorin looks around and then backtracks, seeing his friends in the south hallway. He runs to catch up.
The DM is rolling some dice, but nothing happens… yet.
After a short passage we come to an intersection with two brightly lit mechanical rooms, on either side. Once again the group splits up to poke a head in.
These mechanical rooms look just about the same as the others we’ve been in. There is a large sewer pipe on the far wall leading… you get it.
The DM is rolling some dice, but nothing happens… yet.
So we head south again until we come to the end of this long hallway, with a path to a filter room on the right, and a path to a filter room on the left. Once again Ari reaches for the bulge in her trousers and whips out something long and… oh it’s the map.
Now, here we have to pause and acknowledge that this map is pretty hard to read. In fiction it’s because it’s dirty and smudged and found in the sewers. In our world, it is because of a printing error when i printed the map out on an old Taco Bell bag to make it look more olde worlde.
So after some figuring and looking at the map the Thug Muggers figure the need to jig west and then go south again and then east again to get to the entrance to that crypt. They walk through the filter room there and this time the golden rod is covered in something like a frost and not letting off any steamy mist.
The DM is rolling some dice, but nothing happens… i really should have made that threshold lower. *sigh* Oh well.
Out of the filtration room we have a long north/south hallway, and this time, we know that we need to head south. But Ari is curious and takes a quick glance the other way. There is a sign, a stone sign in the middle of the hallway, in fact it almost blocks the hallway with just enough room to move around it to one side.
“Yeah, um, I’ll be right back, I wanna see what that sign says.” Ari motions to the others to stay and jogs up to it.
It is a simple stone sign, though the base of it does seem to have some kind of reinforcement to it. In large friendly letters at eye level it just says “CAUTION”
“Caution, what is-,” Ari looks around the sign and into the large room beyond. Her eyes go wide and she backs away then heads back to the rest of the team. “Alright, let’s go, south it is.”
“Wait, what was it?”
“Big-giant-angry-slimy-cube-thing with bones and swords and bits and a coffin lid and a half rotten hand floating in it.”
That’s right folks. It is the dreaded Gelatinous Cube!
Much to my personal disappointment – our heroes decide to take the sensible option, and head south. (I mean, it makes sense, it’s the direction they need to go, it’s the direction they were already headed – and there’s no gigantic cube of death ready to destroy them… but still… Bummer.)
Reader, if you’re thinking to yourself, “wow, I’ve been reading this for a while now and there hasn’t really been much action lately.” Then i have some good news.
Everyone but Rae, Roll Initiative. Rae, you get to take 12 damage and your strength is reduced by 2 as a living Shadow encircles you and Dracula-bite’s your neck.
Rae reacts quickly, punching to the side of her own head, but the Shadows dodges and moves above her to strike again.
Before it can strike, Cypress sets off a flare of Sacred Flame.
As the first spark forms the Shadow leaps down and back onto Rae.
Sorin throws both his hands wide and releases a spray of Magic Missile against the undead fiend for 10 damage.
Ari thinks quickly and grabs the Shadow by the face, gouging her fingers into its eye sockets! …except that her hands pass right through… perhaps she was thinking a little too quickly.
The Shadow bites at Rae again now. This time it is on the other side of her neck as it does 6 more damage, reducing her strength by another 2.
My favorite sentence to type in these by the way – Rae has had enough. She reaches back, punching the thing as hard as she can. The punch lands, but only for 3 damage – okay, not as hard as she can then. She summons her monkly Ki energy and lashes out. The first punch misses, but it’s a feint. Rae grabs the Shadow in a reverse headlock, dragging its body over her shoulder. With her last attack Rae bites into the Shadow, giving it a taste of its own medicine, and ripping her head away and tearing its very shape apart with her teeth.
And with that, the humanoid shape begins to fade and shred apart into nothingness. A decisive killing blow by Raelle-the-Bitey!
We all stand in the hall for a minute panting before once again heading south. This time Ari is back in front. (I think Rae might not be taking point for a while after that.).
Shortly after that, we roll a perception check and notice that the bricks in the wall to our right have a faint reddish color to it… hmmmm…..
“But that’s to the west, and we need to head east. It’s exactly not where we need to be going.”
“Okay, yeah, but we are here to take out Thugs.”
“Plus we get paid for taking out Thugs.”
A discussion like this continues for a bit, and is finally resolved into a decision when someone points out, “If we think the Thugs are linked to this cult thing, then we might learn more about it by taking them out.” And the balance is shifted in favor of the yellowred brick road. So once again, we find ourselves taking apart another wall.
Chapter 2: The War Room
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
Chapter 2: The War Room 🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
We are in another dark tunnel with a gravel floor and wooden walls running at an odd angle to the walls of the sewers. Recognizing it as the familiar work of the Thugs, Ari immediately looks around with a keen eye for traps. She doesn’t see any so she waves to the rest of the team to follow behind her and to stay quiet and slow. She sneaks forward to a turn in the tunnel and stops. Down this hall Ari can see light; the light is in front of someone and their shadow is pacing back and forth. Ari turns back to the group and brings her fingers to her lips.
She hears a raspy hissing sort of voice. Not enough to make out everything being said, but she does catch some phrases.
“… going as we planned…”
“the constabulary…”
“… idiots think they can…”
“… think we’re doing here?”
Ari signs to the others to stay put behind the corner of the wall. She slowly draws out an arrow and her short bow, then starts creeping forward.
“What was that!? Go check the entry’s make sure we're still alone!”
Ari freezes, readying her bow for a fast attack. Prepared for someone to run down her tunnel and find her.
A moment passes and Ari realizes she’s still holding her breath. She lets it out slowly and creeps forward a few more steps to the entrance of this room. In front of her, standing at a large table is a tall figure with a tail swishing back and forth.
Ari crouches to the floor, softly sets one knee to the ground, draws the arrow back to her cheek, and whispers, “sneak attack,” as she fires.
To the surprise of absolutely no-one, Ari was aiming for the knee.
As an arrowhead suddenly appears coming out of his knee cap, the man lets out a howl. Turning around in the most painful pirouette of his life, he sees Ari crouching in the entrance to the room.
With that, we are in imitative order, let the fight... BEGIN!
Ari’s sneak attack does a solid 12 damage to the Wererat. Oh yeah – it’s a Wererat.
He turns around to throw a knife at Ari, but misses. He throws two more knives and one hits.
Rae runs into the room drawing her bow and striking the Wererat’s other knee for 5 more damage.
The Wererat screams. “COME BACK HERE AND HELP ME YOU FOOLS!”
A Thug comes back into the room from our left. They stop for a second and think. They have no ranged weapon, and they can’t get within melee range in this turn. The Thug does the only sensible thing, and throws their sword at Rae. The sword hits, but fortunately not with any of the sharp parts. Cypress comes into the room and does – something i can’t remember just now – for 4 more damage to the Wererat.
The Wererat shouts again, “DO SOMETHING, AND HELP ME!”
A second Thug enters the room from the archway across the table from us. She throws a health potion splashing it onto the Wererat and recovering 19 health.
A groan goes up around the table.
Sorin gets into the room and casts Magic Missile taking away 9 of that health the Wererat just recovered.
Ari comes up from her crouch, draws her rapier, and slashes the Wererat across the chest for 6 more.
The Wererat doesn’t even flinch. As Ari cuts him deep across the chest he doesn’t so much as blink. He maintains locked constant eye contact as he looks down on her and whispers, “You’re nothing, and you even know that deep down. That’s why you shot me from the shadows. You could never fight me head on. I’ll kill and destroy you and your friends, and then I’ll hunt down and destroy everything you’ve ever loved, you worthless puny worm.” The whispering rattles through Ari’s head echoing over and over as she crumples to the ground clutching her head and taking 13 psychic damage from Dissonant Whispers.
*throat clearing* Rae has had enough. She swings her staff at the Wererat for 4 damage, then summons the last of her sacred Ki for a flurry of blows. She drops her staff. The Wererat sees it and ducks, but the second blow hits him square in the jaw for 2 damage now, and an impacted molar (you’re welcome Rae).
The Thug to our right starts thinking again. They CAN get in range for a melee attack, but they don’t have a sword. In a moment of brilliant deduction they pick up the nearest item, a wooden chest, and hurl it across the room. Rae and Cypress both duck and it lands on the ground next to them.
Cypress calmly takes a moment and walks around the edge of the fight. He does that thing with his hands where you measure up angles for a kick, adjusts for wind, and casts. A cone of Burning Hands hits the Thugs (9 damage each) and the Wererat (1/2 damage), but not Cypress’s fellow Thug Muggers. After casting, i assume he does something cool like blows the smoke off a finger gun, or dusting off his shoulder.
Then the Thug nearest him kicks him in the chest.
Not to be out classed, Sorin decides to cast another Magic Missile for his final spell slot of the day. In a brief table top moment, i tell Ashley she has to pick the targets before rolling damage, and Sorin decides to cast the three missiles, one each of the three enemies. The Thug by Cypress takes 2 damage, the Thug that likes to throw things, takes 4 damage, and the Wererat collapses in front of Ari and Rae.
Ari gets up, grabbing her rapier again and slashing against the Thug that kicked Cypress.
Rea runs at the other Thug popping them in the face for 2 damage with her staff.
I’m renaming the throwy-Thug to “Hulkamania” because they are about to run wild up in here! With no weapons left, Hulkamania reaches for the nearest chair, lifts it over his head, and smashes it down on Rae’s back.
Cypress pulls out his Mace and as he lunges at the Thug that kicked him and Ari shouts, “His knee cap, get him in the knee cap!”
“What’s wrong with you?”
Cypress hit the Thug, knocking him unconscious.
Sorin Casts Firebolt at Hulkamania, staggering him back for 9 damage. Ari figures she’s low on arrows so she throws a dart, hitting the wall for 4 damage.
Followed by Rae, who also misses.
The panicking Thug looks around the room seeing their other two compatriots out cold and makes a run for it. Not to escape, though. No, Hulkamania is too clever to try something as basic as escaping. They run to the corner of the room and fling open the door to the cage with the large angry rat in it. Laughing, he shouts. “Get ‘em!”
The giant rat is pissed, and like most pissed off rats, it attacks the thing closest to it. Hulkamania’s remaining HP is taken out by a single Rat bite.
Cypress you’re up.
Diedrik: “Who’s left?”
Just the rat.
Deidrick: “Awe I don’t want to hurt it…”
Cypress reaches into his bag and throws a chunk of bread next to the rat. The rat does not care.
Sorin casts Firebolt at the Rat, doing 1 damage. And, as a side effect, making some delicious toast.
The Rat bites Rae, who looks over and says, “Sorry Cypress,” before bringing her staff on it hard, ending the fight.
And that’s where we left it. At the beginning of the fight we actually had a discussion about the time, because someone had a hard out, but we judged we had just enough time for the fight.
I do want to take a second to highlight that after the XP for the fight (once added up and divided), each PC gets one hundred and… 69 – nice nice nice nice nice – experience.
“They’re little snotheads who don’t understand that they’re being egged on, that someone’s taking advantage of their childish stupidity by feeding them slogans about freedom.”
-Yarpen Zigrin -Andrzej Sapkowski, “Blood of Elves: Chapter 4”
Table talk:
We had a hard out again this time, so we had to cut off at the finish of the fight. Next time we’ll open up with a proper description of our surroundings and some well-earned looting.
We did a LOT today, and to be honest, most of it was stuff i really hadn’t planned on happening for a while. I had some stuff planned, but i really did not think we would get this far already. So this week i will be stepping things up, and working on getting more proper maps printed and laminated, as well as some more prewritten descriptions and such. I’m sorry for the delay, but thank you all for bearing with me. Since we aren’t running a book campaign, it just takes time for me to get everything done.
I tried to include more in the way of damage and stats in the summary this time, so please let me know what you think.
