<style> p { font-size: 13px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em; } .phb:after { content: ""; } </style> # Adventure Log - Festival of Outcasts <div class = "wide"> <br /> <img src="https://www.gmbinder.com/images/1LzhNn8.jpg" style="max-width:100%; height:auto;"> <br /> <br /> <br /> ### The Cast | Player | Character | Alignment | Race | Class (Archetype) | |:-------:|:-----------------------:|:---------:|:---------:|:------------------------------------------------:| | Abraham | GM | \* | \* | \* | | Forest | Okrin Afon | CG | Half-Elf | ~~Oracle (Standard)~~ | | " | " | " | Elf | Magus (Eldritch Archer) | | Gadi | Omar Freefall | CG | Goblin | Wizard (Siege Mage) | | Ian | ~~Orrin Cain~~ | ~~CN~~ | ~~Human~~ | ~~Rogue (Knife Master)~~ | | " | Osfinas Saepio | LG | Half-Elf | Fighter (Dauntless Defender) | | Joe | Armenius Fink | CN | Ratfolk | ~~Wizard (Exploiter)~~ | | " | " | " | " | ~~Alchemist (Preservationist, Construct Rider)~~ | | " | " | " | " | Alchemist (Preservationist) | | Joey | Morgrym Lightbringer | LN | Human | Harbinger (Standard) | | Richard | Aonuma "Dennis" Yushiro | CN | Kitsune | ~~Shifter (Standard)~~ | | " | " | " | " | Monster Trainer (Standard) | </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ### The Story ##### 09/07/2019, Session 01: Meet the Outcasts Blackstone City is one of Foedex Lona's four major metropolises, and like most of the rest of the continent, its population consists primarily of humans. Morgrym Stonehelm was well aware of this, and it had long since stopped being a novel experience, but he still couldn't help but pause to stare at the sight of hundreds of people his own height. He'd made many such stops since leaving Highhelm (and Avistan altogether), but there was always something about how beardless everyone was that made him wonder where all of the men were... But eventually, he finished gawking and shook his head clear; for the young man, this was a big chance. As off-putting as it was, each and every one of these people represented a potential lead for Morgrym's search. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, another adventurer was fitting into the city's demographic makeup a little differently. While there were plenty of non-humans in Blackstone City, they were mostly ones that got along well with humans, like dwarves, elves, and halflings; other races were relatively rare, especially ones known for making trouble. For this reason, among others, the goblin walking out of one of the city's junkyards drew more than a few sidelong glances, though Omar either didn't notice or didn't care about the attention he was receiving. He might simply have been distracted, as he seemed to be constantly arguing with himself, but the strangest part of the whole scene was the airship he had just finished tying down behind a large scrap pile. While the junkyard area was relatively quiet, there was a crowded market just a few streets over with stalls of all kinds. Farmers invited passersby to taste their wares, butchers hung up choice slabs of meat, and bakers piled their products high. Orrin Cain was a longtime customer of most of these vendors, having grown up in this city, and was looking forward to enjoying some freshly baked bread and watching the gaggles of travelers making their way around Blackstone. What he didn't expect, however, was the pull of a hungry goblin tugging at his leg, salivating and fixated on the bread in his hand. Orrin jumped back, but Omar made no attempt to lunge for the human's food; instead, he asked nicely, and in unexpectedly good Common. This surprised Orrin further, but in a good way, and he tore off a chunk of bread for the little greenskin. A few dozen feet away, a smooth voice could be heard greeting each of the stall owners; Okrin Natal never passed up an opportunity for some face time with his constituents. The half-elven diplomat was splitting his time between Blackstone City and the nearby elven settlement, Oras Natal, eager to maintain good relations between his fatherland and motherland, which meant ensuring good public perception. While scanning the crowd, Okrin noticed the best-behaved goblin he'd ever seen and was intrigued enough to stop by to introduce himself to Orrin and Omar. They were both a little reluctant to talk to him at first, but eventually, by promising excitement for the human and food for the goblin, he convinced them to help him serve the citizens of Blackstone by taking on a request from the job board. Blackstone City's job board exists as a way for its citizens to quickly get help with their requests, as well as for the city's governing military body (the Blackstone Legion) to outsource tasks that they're too busy to take on themselves. Anyone can post a request, as long as the board attendant approves it (and them), and by a similar token, anyone can take on a job if they go through the proper motions. The board sits in one of the town squares, near a Legion building, so it gets plenty of traffic; while riskier quests might remain on the board for a while, most mundane ones are completed within a day or two of being posted. Morgrym, expecting to be in the area for a while, had figured that these requests might be a good way to earn some coin to pay for his stay. He was at the job board bright and early to look over the day's options, which consisted of four posts from citizens and two from the Legion. Fancying himself a bit of a warrior, Morgrym paid closer attention to the official requests: he could choose to investigate the recent disappearances of townspeople in the northern forest, or to deliver a parcel to an ex-trading partner on the behalf of the Blackstone Legion. As he considered the list, Morgrym felt someone shove past him to swipe one of the community-posted jobs, a request to help an older woman take care of her cows. He wasn't to know it, but this was Dennis, a kitsune from the area who never kept the same appearance for long. His true form was a mystery to the townsfolk, and he was unknowingly responsible for a fair bit of confusion in the lives of the real versions of his disguises, like questions about why Grandpa was seen running around doing board jobs when he was explicitly told by the doctor to stay home and get some rest. By the time Okrin arrived at the board with Orrin and Omar in tow, Dennis was gone. The half-elf saw Morgrym checking out the delivery mission and warned him that Legion missions usually weren't a good idea to take on alone for newer adventurers; after some brief introductions, they all agreed to work together for this job and split the rewards. During their deliberation, Dennis managed to complete the cow ranching in record time, claiming his reward of homemade cabbage soup and picking up the other Legion mission, the investigation into the recent disappearances. The group of four made their way to the Legion headquarters to pick up the parcel (a small cloth bag that they were not to open under any circumstances), and they found out that the recipient was actually somewhere in the very same forest from which some townsfolk never returned. This raised some discussion about killing two birds with one stone by doing the other Legion mission as well; fortunately, they bumped into a freshly-disguised Dennis as he strode in to get more information on the investigation mission. They convinced him to join them, offering safety in numbers and realizing amongst themselves that two rewards split five ways is better than one reward split four ways. Once the group was fully assembled, they wasted little time in heading out. Omar's personal airship was quite convenient, if a little small, and the flight out of the city was a good opportunity to discuss each party member's abilities. </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> Orrin moved lightly and wielded a pair of daggers, Dennis could grow claws and communicate with the wild, Morgrym practiced unique maneuvers with his shortsword, Omar dabbled in conjuration magic, and Okrin specialized in healing. The trip was really quite peaceful until Morgrym pointed out that they couldn't actually see what was down there in the forest past the treetops, so nobody knew where they were going. This realization prompted Omar to land the ship, but he figured that the best way to make a clearing to land in was through the sudden application of force. As Omar crashed the ship into the trees, Orrin and Dennis (who weren't holding on as tightly as the others) were sent flying. Orrin managed to drift to the side and break his fall with a tumble, gaining a few new scrapes and bruises along the way, but Dennis wasn't so nimble. He was thrown out in front of the ship, bouncing and rolling as it tore up the ground behind him. Battered and disoriented, Dennis was then unable to get out of the way of the ship's bow as it caught up and speared him in the gut! While Okrin ran over to save Dennis, the others stumbled away from the ship. It was only partially wrecked, so Omar was confident that he could repair it with enough time, but that would have to wait; as Dennis woke back up, he pointed in alarm at the three treants lumbering menacingly towards the party from behind. Without missing a beat, Orrin and Morgrym sprung into action, slicing into the plant monsters with double daggers and a short sword respectively. Though this was the first time these two had ever fought together, they made a good pair; Morgrym teleported into place to set up a flank for Orrin, who used the chance to deal a devastating blow. Orrin managed to sever a vital root, leaving the first treant dazed and mindless. On the other side of the ship, Okrin had his hands full; he was still frantically healing Dennis' wounds from the crash, but he also needed to divert some attention to patch up Omar, who had gotten smacked by another one of their foes. In return, Omar summoned a ball of electricity, but it almost got out of his control. The spell scorched the second treant as intended, but also caused a burst of wild magic to wash over the first treant (though to no apparent effect). The battle didn't last much longer once the whole group took part. Dennis, having finally recovered enough to fight, grew a pair of claws and joined the fray, slashing at the third treant and leaving long gashes in its bark. Orrin took a hit but moved around to help Omar, sneak attacking the second treant and cutting it to bits, and Morgrym charged straight at the third treant, piercing its bark cleanly with his now-glowing blade and ending the fight. After the commotion settled down, Omar started experimenting with the treant that was left standing, trying to figure out what effect (if any) his wild magic had on it. He tried to see if it would listen to him, and though he received no response to the initial attempt at giving it orders in Common, the second try in Sylvan worked perfectly; the treant moved south a few feet, as requested. This excited Dennis to no end, prompting him to immediately climb up onto the treant's shoulder, favoring it as a mode of transportation over the ship that skewered him. They others waited a minute to make sure Dennis wasn't about to get beaten to a pulp once more, then joined him up there on the treant's broad shoulders, stabilizing themselves with the various branches that stuck out from its body. They continued exploring, this time on the ground, until they found a seemingly empty campsite. It was nicer than a typical makeshift camp in the woods, with walls made out of actual wooden barricades rather than sheets of cloth. As the party cautiously approached the area, Omar detected traces of magic, but all he could figure out was that it was some sort of trigger effect; this was good enough for Okrin, who tried to go around what they thought was the spell's range, but he ended up activating the effect anyway (which Morgrym could then identify as a scrying spell). With a little more hesitation in their movements, Okrin, Omar, and Dennis continued on into the campsite while Orrin and Morgrym kept watch outside. Though everyone was on the lookout for anything suspicious, none of them noticed the stranger standing amidst the trio who entered until he cleared his throat and introduced himself to them; this man was known as the Enchanter, and he was the intended recipient of the bag that they carried. After they recovered from the surprise, the three party members inside introduced themselves while the other two finished scanning the surrounding area and joined them. When Okrin asked the Enchanter why he no longer did business with the Legion, his response was very vague; all he would say was that the Legion's commander had broken some sort of agreement, and he placed great importance on keeping one's word. Okrin excused himself to relay this information to the rest of the group, but he seemed unsure if they really should give whatever this parcel is to such a mysterious character, since he felt that they had an obligation to make sure they weren't unknowingly contributing to anything too shady. Morgrym, on the other hand, thought it was all pretty cut-and-dry; they had agreed to deliver the package, so that was what they would do. After all, it didn't exactly seem like the world was ending, it was just the rekindling of a business partnership. While the rest of the group discussed what to do, Omar was hoping to acquire some spells from this obviously powerful mage. Okrin cautioned him not to be greedy, but the Enchanter laughed and said that Omar actually wasn't thinking big enough; this man didn't waste his time with simple spells that could be found in libraries and shops, he preferred to deal in more interesting magic (though it always came at a price). Omar, who had spent every last coin he had on his ship, was terribly frightened at what he might have to use to pay this price and crept away to rejoin the others as soon as he could. Everyone else had just about finished their discussion, coming to the conclusion that they should fulfill the mission that they signed up for, so they handed over the parcel (which felt like some sort of gemstone) to the Enchanter. He seemed quite pleased, but before the party left his encampment, Morgrym asked for a token of some kind to bring back to the Blackstone Legion as proof that they had completed their mission. Immediately, the Enchanter produced a scroll, ink, and a quill, suggesting that they both sign it to officially show that party A delivered item B to party C. </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> He spoke as though he were well versed in these matters, which seemed appropriate for a businessman. It was, however, a little confusing to the group; why did the Enchanter want proof that they had delivered the package when he had the item itself? The Enchanter offered no explanation, but eventually agreed to Okrin's proposal of meeting with the commander at the edge of the forest the next day. The party was satisfied with this, so they headed back to town and informed the Blackstone Legion of the meeting they had scheduled on the commander's behalf. They couldn't meet with him directly, but the guards they spoke to assured them that the message would be passed on, and to expect payment after the commander confirmed things with the Enchanter. At this, the group dispersed, agreeing to meet up again the following evening to pick up their rewards. Since nighttime was fast approaching, each of the group members either went directly to bed or did so after shopping at one of the Three Brothers' shops (Jean Paul's general store, Pierre's bakery & butcher shop, or Henri's forge). ##### 09/14/2019, Session 02: A Recipe for Trouble When morning came, Morgrym, Okrin, and Dennis met up again at the job board while Orrin took care of some business he had around town and Omar polished out the scratches on his ship. They collectively decided that they wanted something to do while they waited for that evening, and they figured they worked together well enough together yesterday to try another job today. There were four options on the board: a request from Pierre to acquire the meat of an elusive creature for the Legion commander's daughter's birthday party; a posting from someone that just wanted to make friends and definitely did not need a hitman of any kind, because that would be illegal; a mission from the Legion for a guard to help protect an important delivery from bandits; and a role in a very experimental trial that needed volunteers for something too vaguely-described to understand. They were most interested in the hunting job for Pierre, but as they took it down from the board, they were stopped by a bubbly young woman who introduced herself as Bakko, the board attendant. After swooping in, she noted down the group's names and put the paper back up with a stamp marking the mission as "in progress". Bakko seemed a little naive, as she mentioned her surprise that nobody was taking the job that was clearly just a request for a friend, but she did seem committed to her work. The trio went immediately to see Pierre, asking him specifically about where they could find this creature and how they might identify it. He called it a mollywomp, and he knew precious little about it other than that it was a large mammal that roosted high in the mountains to the east of the city. None of the party had heard of it either, despite Dennis' experience with beasts and Morgrym's encyclopedic knowledge, but they were certainly willing to try taking on this beast; after all, it couldn't be worse than an airship crash, right? They set out without further delay, reaching the base of the mountains relatively quickly thanks to Dennis' and Okrin's navigational ability. As the hunters climbed higher, progressing further than Dennis had ever been in his forays around the area, the woods around them grew sparser and the ground got icier until they reached a frozen plateau populated by 3 very territorial ice elementals. The party immediately split, each member going toe-to-toe with one of the elementals, and it was here that their specialties really became apparent. Dennis had some difficulty actually hitting his foe, but each blow he did land clawed off a massive chunk of ice with it; Morgrym, on the other hand, could consistently strike the elemental and dodge its attacks, but each of his hits was less impactful. Okrin struggled a little more than his companions, having focused more on the diplomatic and restorative arts than actual combat, but the ability to conjure a spear of pure force was nothing to sneeze at. The post-battle recovery was where he really shone, healing every injury to the point where they couldn't tell anyone had been hurt at all. Turning to continue up the mountain, everyone saw something flying towards them from afar; though initially cautious, they soon recognized it as Omar's airship. As he explained after landing, apparently Omar had cleaned up the ship in record time, quickly enough to see the others leaving the city. He was curious about what they were doing, but when he tried to catch up he got lost for a while as the trees blocked them from view. It was only now that they were scaling the mountain that he was able to locate them again, seeing the glint of steel and ice clashing in the battle. Omar was eager to help out once Okrin explained the mission to the goblin, hoping to secure a source of more delicious bread. So, though it took a lot of convincing to get Dennis on board again, the party took flight on the airship once more and made their way up to the mountain's snowy peak. There, they found an odd set of tracks leading to the edge of the cliff; the front legs seemed to be those of a large cat, but the back legs were more reptilian. Following them back to the source, Dennis discovered a cave and rushed into it alone, emerging soon after with an enormous egg in both hands. Almost immediately, everyone heard a piercing shriek as a winged beast roughly as big as the airship came screeching in, and the party got a good look at what they believed could only be the mollywomp they were after. It was a hybrid animal, composed of a lion's body, a dragon's wings, and a spiky tail, but it wasn't a normal manticore; what made it unique was its second head, draconic next to the expected lion one, as though it were a step between manticore and chimera. Dennis tried to use the egg as a shield as he backed away, but this only made the mollywomp angrier; it continued its dive, picking the kitsune up in its claws and flying towards the cliff while the others scrambled into action. While Omar got the ship moving again and tried to position it underneath the beast, Morgrym pulled a long coil of rope from his bag and Okrin summoned a force spear in preparation. In this life-or-death situation, Dennis finally revealed his shapeshifting abilities to the others by changing from his generic human form into the smaller shape of Omar; this new body let him wriggle out of the mollywomp's grasp, landing on the ship with a resounding thud, but it also caused him to drop the beast's egg! </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> As the mollywomp dove through the air to catch it, Omar backed the ship away, hovering in the air above the entrance to its den. The party watched as it set the egg back down in the den and stood protectively in front of the cave opening, eyeing them angrily. Omar, anticipating movement, tried to use his magic to lock its shadow in place, but the mollywomp resisted the spell. That didn't stop Dennis, who decided to follow up by jumping down to attack it but missed the mark entirely, hurting himself by falling dozens of feet for the second time in as many minutes. Morgrym took his cue from Dennis, though he teleported instead of jumping, reappearing safely on the creature's back but still failing to pierce its hide. Okrin, still up on the ship, threw his force spear and managed to pin one of the monster's legs to the ground, but the splash of acid that Omar fired from next ot him missed entirely. In retaliation, the mollywomp attacked the ship, flinging a volley of spikes from its tail that dealt heavy damage to the airship's hull. Dennis and Morgrym continued their assault and both managed to injure the beast, but it struck back by biting at each of them with one of its heads, knocking Dennis unconscious and injuring Morgrym heavily. Okrin saw that he was needed, so he threw himself off the side of the ship to join the two down below; he didn't stick the landing, leaving an imprint in the snow right next to Dennis', but he got right back up and went about bringing the shifter back from the brink of death. Omar gathered as much of his magical power as he could, calling down an aggressive thundercloud to zap the mollywomp but also unleashing a surge of wild magic that reversed the airship's gravity, forcing him to leap for the controls to keep it stationary. During all of this, the beast tore itself free of the force spear, picked its egg back up, and started to fly away. Morgrym, still on its back, tumbled down to the ground to avoid being dropped from higher while Dennis threw his carefully-packed cabbage soup in frustration. Knowing that this was their last chance to take down the monster before it fled, Morgrym teleported back up to slash at it in midair while Okrin fired a ray of heavenly fire, and they finally managed to knock it unconscious. As the mollywomp fell from the sky, Omar caught its body with tendrils of shadow while Dennis dove for the falling egg and Morgrym rolled to soften his landing on the airship. They realized that the shadows wouldn't hold forever, so they used Morgrym's rope to tie the beast to the ship's hull while Okrin healed everyone back up. With the giant body weighing the ship down, the party slowly made their way back to Blackstone City, landed just outside the city's walls and drawing even more attention than usual. Not wanting to wait any longer than necessary, the group sent the fastest among them, Morgrym, running to Pierre's shop to give him the news. The chef was extremely pleased, and gathered his assistants before following Morgrym back out to the ship. As a reward, he invited them all to the commander's daughter's birthday feast in a few days, to taste the meat that they worked so hard to acquire; the party was mostly interested, but Omar expressed his preference for more bread instead. As Pierre and his assistants began working on the mollywomp, the party split in two; Okrin and Morgrym stayed to watch, while Omar accompanied Dennis to see one of the city's animal handlers. Okrin identified the magic that Pierre's people were using on the body, describing to Morgrym how the magic let them bleed it out carefully and stabilize it between withdrawals. Meanwhile, in the city, Dennis sought advice on how he might take care of the mollywomp's egg, which he hadn't let go of since the moment he caught it out of the sky. The trainer he went to initially didn't believe mollywomps were real at all, but changed his tune upon inspection of the egg; he was a little upset that the elder beast was dead, but was still willing to tell Dennis that, based on his knowledge of similar creatures, it likely just needed a good supply of red meat. ##### 09/21/2019, Session 03: Bandits and Bar Fights Later that day, while Dennis was figuring out where he could safely keep the egg, Omar, Morgrym, and Okrin reconvened to watch over the commander's meeting with the Enchanter. They went looking for Orrin, to see if he was available to join them, and on the way bumped into Bakko as she was panicking in front of the job board. She told them about how she was mugged by bandits on her way to put up some fresh jobs, getting robbed of not just her money but all of the requests that she was going to post. They were all citizen requests, not official Legion ones, so Bakko was really worried that these criminals were planning to deceive the requesters and falsely claim the rewards. The group agreed to help out while they were looking around the city anyway, splitting into two groups; Okrin moved south on his own while Omar and Morgrym went together to the north. Some sleuthing led Okrin to a lone bandit who tried to run when faced with the diplomat's tirade on the objective evilness of his actions, and shortly thereafter got knocked out by a ray of magical energy to the back of the head. A quick look through his bag revealed two of the stolen board postings, so Okrin began to drag the unconscious criminal back to where Bakko was waiting. Morgrym and Omar didn't know their way around as well as Okrin, so they were caught by surprise when two bandits jumped them in an alleyway. </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> - party retaliates hard; morgrym feels it's justified to kill one outright, omar magic missiles the other and they give chase when the surviving bandit flees - the rogue escapes with a smoke bomb, but bakko herself runs him down and asks omar to help her carry him in - he isn't strong enough to help, so he looks around and asks morgrym to help - surprisingly, he can do it, and they head to the citadel, meeting up with okrin and his captured rogue - bakko starts putting the jobs back up, tells the party to tell the legion that these guys messed with the job board; morgrym confirms with her that it was totally lawful for him to kill in self-defense, she explains the legion stance and it aligns with morgrym's quite nicely - gate guard says they're too busy for this, omar casts shadow trap, other guards get mad, but okrin defuses it - guards still say they're too busy, party overhears the commander is missing, left the citadel unaccompanied (which he never does) - party decides to head out to rescue him to earn themselves some favor, but omar is low on magic so morgrym suggests getting orrin to join them - omar enjoys telling the party about his new crew spells, morgrym asks around town to find orrin - they hear he's in a tavern, omar tries steal an unconscious man's beer with mage hand but another guy throws a copper at it in midair - morgrym asks that guy if he's seen orrin, he hasn't, omar tries to climb the ladder to the second floor but is stopped by a bouncer - omar tries to keep climbing, bouncer shakes the ladder and omar falls off - barkeeper doesn't like goblins, doesn't believe omar is here looking for a friend ("goblins don't have friends") - omar gets pissed, acid splashes the guy's face, bouncer punches omar - barroom brawl breaks out! - okrin weaves through, tries to talk the innkeeper down and heals his face - tells the bar patrons that they're not being good people at the moment, he's disappointed in them - okrin slaps omar while the bouncer holds him for starting all this, omar shouts back, okrin slaps again - bouncer throws okrin into a nearby chest, morgrym tries to intervene but is muscled back - morgrym watches the bouncer to make sure he doesn't kill omar while okrin mends the damaged tables and chairs - once okrin finishes, the bouncer lets omar out; he leaves with a glare of hatred at the bartender and betrayal at okrin - bartender is happy to let okrin check upstairs for orrin, he's asleep; orrin asked if he missed much - morgrym fills him in on the commander business, they head out after omar - on the walk, morgrym tells orrin about the mollywomp business that morning - omar summons his crew members to prepare the ship while the others catch up - wild magic means they're all drunk - omar's maaad, has one of the cannons aimed at okrin - okrin intimidates him from afar, omar flies ship up a little in fear - okrin: "you're free to fire upon me once you explain why you tried to melt a man's face over a few words" - omar: "his mind was made up, I may as well have proved his point" - orrin's really confused, morgrym explains what happened while okrin and omar talk a little more - omar begins to fly away to the enchanter's place, orrin asks where he's going, no response - morgrym suggests they three go to the meeting spot as well, okrin and orrin agree - omar reaches the enchanter's clearing, calls out for him; gets no response initially, but eventually the enchanter comes out - omar asks about the blackstone commander, enchanter says he stopped by; omar wants details but doesn't want to owe the enchanter anything - enchanter eventually gives up on persuading omar to make a deal, omar begans to walk out, enchanter makes a last ditch effort - "I'll tell you where he is if you come back and visit me later. deal?" offers hand, OMAR SHAKES, magical bond solidifies on handshake - enchanter tells omar the commander had accrued a lot of interest (overshot his 30 day limit by 472 days), omar worries about his own interest... - enchanter has commander making up the interest by doing a job for him at ???? - omar leaves, prepares to sleep there, other three arrive and deliberate getting info from now-asleep omar or looking in enchanter's camp for info on commander - at the advice of one of the crew, they don't bother omar and instead go into camp, where they see the enchanter writing something down - he calls out to them without looking up, morgrym asks if he met with the commander, he says yes - okrin wants to know if he has the commander incapacitated in some way to prevent him from coming back, he says the commander is trying to make up for a broken deal - okrin notices some odd wording, inquires about a magical coercion; gets a non-answer "he knew what he was getting into" - morgrym: "we're just trying to get the man back for his duties and his daughter's birthday", enchanter: "ooh, forgot he had a daughter" oh no </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> - okrin gets into a back and forth about wording - orrin asks if they could take the leader's place, enchanter entertains the idea, but needs them to get the commander back to sign for the switch - morgrym offers a nice sketch of his campsite in exchange for the commander's location... long shot lol, no go - party decides to just wake up omar, find dennis wandering into the forest around omar's ship (maybe he was hunting? idk) - after some discussion, they decide to send dennis up, but the crew members don't want to let him up - eventually, he forcibly scales the ropes and omar wakes up, is willing to talk to dennis - after ranting once more, omar relents; lets everyone up, though he doesn't want okrin near him - party asks if omar learned commander's location, omar looks furtive... reveals he made a deal for this info, but he tells them: the ???? above is a church that worships apsu, a god of travel - they all sleep, dennis keeps watch overnight since he was napping during the day - omar takes them back to the city in the morning, stops by pierre's to get scones for the enchanter (and dennis gets some bread for himself) - morgrym leads the way to the citadel library to find this church of apsu, gets stopped by a guard but knowledge-talks his way past - turns out bakko is the librarian on shift atm, she helps look for the maps and apsu-related texts... one falls on morgrym's head lol - he finds what he needs, church is to the west, apsu is a draconic lg creator god - omar mentions he needs to visit the enchanter asap, they all offer their support/backup - no need to worry, omar and enchanter just enjoy eating scones... - not. old deal's over, but new one is proposed: enchanter's never been able to go in the church, so he wants omar to tell him about the people in it - omar's going to accept it until he learns that enchanter wants a suspiciously detailed account, walks out - he tells the party about it as they eat bread on their way back to the ship - they set out for the apsu church, after a bit they see a rider on horseback riding the opposite direction below them in great haste - they turn around and keep pace with it, dropping lower; they can see he's wearing armor, orrin suggests he might be the commander, morgrym asks if he's blackstone - morgrym wants everyone to stop/land so he can show the guy their blackstone mission paper re: enchanter, dennis is really sketchy to this rider so he refuses to identify himself, asks them who they are; doesn't believe they want to help the legion - he rides all the way back to the city, they follow and land in the usual spot and head to the citadel - guard presence is doubled, say leader won't see anyone, won't let them in until morgrym mentions they know about the enchanter and the commander might want to talk to them; then one of the guards whispers to another, one runs inside for a bit, comes back and says just morgrym can come - orrin wants to come, says he's morgrym's research aide; somehow they get the entire party in - commander klavin, man they saw riding, sitting on a fancy throne; asks them what they know of the enchanter - they talk for a little about the initial job they did and why they went after him - commander wants to know what they want, they want the rewards for their efforts; he lays out an item from the armor for each of them - more efficient ram for omar, flanking gloves for orrin, monk weapon attachment for morgrym, some sort of wok for dennis, ranged cure/inflict pauldrons for okrin - he wants to send them on their way, but morgrym asks how to apply to join the legion - commander will expedite his admission if they guard a train carrying an important package - party leaves with a new mission but feeling a little like they still know nothing about enchanter/commander/apsu church </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 09/28/2019, Session 04: ???? - omar/dennis feel like they need time to settle things here and prepare for the trip, but okrin/orrin/morgrym take a short job from the board to keep themselves warmed up while they wait for the train job and get to know each other's fighting styles even better - pierre needs MORE ingredients! giant bee honey - they end up in an enormous beehive - okrin sees some loose honeycombs, realizes that we might be able to break through walls - orrin tries and fails, morgrym tries and succeeds in prying one off; bees get mad and attack - okrin hits it lightly with inflict, orrin misses, bees sting each of them - morgrym moves in and tests his new flurry technique, slaughters the one on orrin - okrin inflicts again, orrin gets a single stab in - bee hurts itself, traps stinger in wall - morgrym looks for other bees coming their way, none have left their own patrols - okrin hits the stuck bee with his mace, orrin double slices it and cuts it to bits - they consider breaking through a wall; okrin, who considers honeycomb food, casts purify food and drink on the wall to melt it down - three bees await them on the other side; they make similarly short work of them - okrin lets orrin choose between small/med/large heals, gives him a medium - they observe a pattern of shift changing, orrin is the stealthiest of stealth but the others are caught sneaking between shifts - morgrym jumps out to fight one, the bees miss both of them, okrin hits the other with a mace; bees go down after another round of not leaving a scratch - they continue purifying their way through the walls, hear an especially loud buzzing behind one - okrin peeks his head through, sees a queen bee turning the hive's normal honey into special royal honey - pierre gave them a foot-tall jar to fill; if only omar were here (and weren't so afraid of bees) to mage hand the honey over to them - they formulate a plan; morgrym will dash in, scoop, run back, okrin will be ready to patch the hole and heal him while orrin is ready to strike at any that follow - doesn't go so hot, morgrym is immediately fascinated by the queen (with a jar in his hand, no sword) - okrin runs in to free his mind, morgrym scoops up a jarful and dodges a stab from the queen's stinger - all three run back, okrin gets stung by another bee on the way, morgrym puts the jar away and draws his sword - queen bee flies out along the bigger passageway (can't fit in the small hole they made), hoping to come around and catch up to them - as they run, they see that the bees repaired the previous hole they purified! - okrin re-casts their way through, orrin runs ahead, morgrym warp strikes a lone bee - bad idea, queen catches up and knocks him prone with wing wind - he dodges her attack while standing up and he flees to catch up with the others - queen empowers her bee soldiers, they fly at super speed to surround the party - orrin's the one getting flanked, not doing the flanking, this time - morgrym sketches a more beautiful picture as the queen catches up, but okrin is the one who succumbs to the fascination this time; morgrym runs by and shakes him awake - all three keep their footing at her next wing wind - she buffs her soldiers again - okrin starts re-purifying a new hole while morgrym and orrin fight the smaller soldiers (queen can't fit through) - but she spits honey, orrin dodges, morgrym's sketch is melted and he's entangled - last soldier missed so bad he accidentally hit the queen - some workers widen the tunnel for the queen to come through, okrin/orrin go through the next tunnel, morgrym is still stuck - queen stabs morgrym, okrin comes back to heal him and smash the honey-wax - orrin fights off smaller bees while okrin and morgrym fight back, scaring the queen away - they flee successfully and give pierre the honey </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 10/05/2019, Session 05: ???? - okrin, dennis, orrin, morgrym are on train - lieutenant has the item, is somewhere else on the train; they go to find him, okrin confirms he has it - okrin and dennis join the lieutenant's guards, morgrym scans outside, orrin watches the others - as morgrym begins talking to passengers, okrin looks at a broken symbol of apsu hanging on the wall - he tries to use mending to restore its physical form, though he can't bless it, but nothing happens - he reports to the lieutenant, who's worried to hear that the travel god's seal is broken - the sigil has been acting as a charm to ensure safe travels, no bandits or anything; leader sends guard to check windows are sealed - orrin and dennis go to check cargo carriages for stowaways, pass by morgrym, he joins them - every section has a sigil, and every sigil is broken - morgrym and dennis think hard, seems like the sigils were broken not by hand (too uniform) but by the power being cut off - as they pass through the kitchen car, dennis grabs some vegetables and dough for stir fry - they get to a cargo car, dennis looks at guards' shoes while orrin explains to them that they're here on their own inspection cause they were suspicious - explosion from cart to the right! hole blown into the side, bandits coming in! - dennis catches their attention, morgrym and orrin are sneaky - morgrym sneaks outside, sees a rope/wood scaffolding, warp attacks the bandit currently climbing in and almost kills him - dennis moves into the cart and slashes at a bandit, grazing her, she swings back with a similarly weak hit - bandits and other guards fight, orrin moves up to slash hard at a bandit; bandits are afraid, expected weaker guards, but bring in gun backup - morgrym finishes off the one outside and sneaks in the hole behind the gunslingers - dennis continues to slash at the axe wielder, and again she hits him back; orrin gets a hefty double slice and cuts a bandit in pieces - as the gunslingers run, they pass morgrym, who strikes; he kills one, and in his massacre-lust, powers up and slays the other! - dennis and his matched opponent keep swinging at each other over and over, small hits and/or misses; same for guards - orrin shreds another bandit - messenger guard arrives to tell okrin and lieutenant what's happening, they make their way down the cars - they hear a second explosion! guards explain to lieutenant that the bandits must've blown another hole open - lietenant wants to get in rearmost car, past everyone, and detach? - back in the fight, morgrym tries to climb the scaffolding but fails, barely not falling off the train - the velociraptor dennis finally takes down his rival - orrin and the guards finally kill the last bandit in the car, dennis picks up the two fallen pistols - okrin's car's hole has a similar group of bandits, but with a scary lady, tara, that the lieutenant recognizes and is surprised is here - these new bandits are sandwiched as orrin, morgrym, and dennis (still a dinosaur) enter from the other side - dennis runs around the outer path, like morgrym did on the other car - tara makes a beeline for the lieutenant, morgrym asks orrin what he's waiting/delaying for as he stealthily runs and hides behind cargo after marking some of them - orrin gets shot again, lieutenant performs a "tactical retreat" and has okrin cover him; okrin blasts tara nonlethally - orrin moves in to slash, dennis notices bandits climbing onto other cars and notes them for later, then bursts in the opening and attacks - tara leaps past guards and okrin to continue running at lieutenant - morgrym leaps to to strike, fails and throws his shortsword, but still punches a guy - punched guy fails in the same way, throws his own shortsword! - one of the gunners gets up onto a crate and shoots orrin - commander/tara chase is still ongoing as they flee back up the cars, one of the guards joins the chase, a bandit attacks him - okrin fires another admonishing ray at tara's back, shoots wide - everyone keeps fighting, chase moves to the next car, we can't see anything - morgrym slinks past the swordsman who still has his sword and picks up the one the other dropped, other guy picks up morgrym's sword! since they threw their weapons past each other - other guy gets killed by dennis, drops morgrym's sword, morgrym gets shot - okrin summons a force spear and joins the chase - orrin climbs up on a box to fight the remaining gunslinger - velociraptor dennis runs to join okrin, gets cut on the way - they see lieutenant and tara fighting, she's trying to put him in a stranglehold but failing; he's swinging with his mace, smacks her hard - okrin throws his force spear at tara, hits - tara grabs the other guard, grapples him as a meat shield - other carriage, morgrym and orrin try to attack fleeing gunner but miss their attacks - back here, tara is using guard as a shield, blocks dennis' slash with his body - tara shrugs off okrin's doom, he walks past her while her hands are full to be next to the lieutenant - lieutenant swings at tara again, she can't get the guard in the way this time </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> - orrin and morgrym keep fighting last gunner and swordsman - orrin blasts tara nonlethally again, knocks her out! grappled guard grabs her this time - dennis hears something from a side room, opens the door and sees a bandit under the bed; jumps on the bed to slam the bandit - bandit in another side room has a passenger hostage, wants to trade her for tara; lieutenant has to consider the decision, asks okrin - okrin tries to convince the bandit that the fight was already over, and they'd go easier on him if he gave up now - he doesn't listen, so okrin admonishing rays him like he did to tara; guy is left barely conscious - dino dennis bursts through the wall, startling the bandit so much that he drops the hostage and is maced by the lieutenant - last swordsbandit makes his way over as orrin and morgrym attack last gunbandit, they finish off the remaining mooks here and morgrym gets his sword back - okrin checks the remaining rooms in the car, ensures no more bandits, dennis crushes bandit-under-the-bed to death - morgrym and orrin join the others, dennis fills them in while okrin goes to pick up a gun from a body like dennis did earlier - okrin tells lieutenant about commander's trip to apsu, asks if this has anything to do with apsu sigil breaking - lieutenant tells okrin not to say anything to anyone about commander at that church; being a leader requires tough decisions and personal sacrifice - okrin heals everyone, guards shackle tara - morgrym gathers weapons and armor for maybe arming future legion soldiers or just resale, lieutenant assures him that the legion is rich enough to not need this ragtag stuff (and, adding to it, that they'll be handsomely rewarded), morgrym's all yessir - lieutenant explains how he knew tara: she was an ex-blackstone soldier exiled for her repeated crimes (beating up her little sister's bullies; her sister is bakko btw); other bandits are also exiles but not trained soldiers - suspect the attack is for money and anti-blackstone sentiment, rather than them knowing of the special item or anything </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 10/26/2019, Session 06: ???? - omar tending to ship, dennis passed out from cabbage alcohol - others get a courier with letter; local lord has passed away, party has been given manor for their recent aid to the city... as long as they spend a night in it - they go in, wall candelabras make their shadows move in an odd way - okrin finds a pantry, purifies rotten food - morgrym thinks about what he heard of this lord; recluse, sent servants on errands, wife and daughter went missing years ago; no idea why they as a party were chosen - they continue in, following the left wall like a maze; see a greenhouse with empty/dirt-only pots - next room has paintings of man, man/wife/daughter, and too-clawed-up-to-determine - next is locked, morgrym goes danny phantom; carpentry materials, staircase down - morgrym is distracted, but the other two notice the shadows get even worse, okrin tries to ignore it (used to being haunted), orrin moves back out to hallway, scared - okrin tries to use an the awl to lockpick a door next to the staircase, he can't; morgrym goes through, hoping to unlock it again - he can't unlock it! skeleton on the floor! it has four arms (was human, post-mortem modification)! and gets up to swipe at him! - he misses his attacks, so does it, okrin fails to break in, orrin is back in the entrance hall, avoiding looking at shadows - morgrym kills it in one slash, tells okrin to save his energy slamming; he can walk back through the wall in a minute or so - back at the front door, orrin's shadow is growing fangs and claws; runs back to the others to warn them, morgrym tells him about skeleton - morgrym comes out, has orrin inspect his shadow; it's also less humanoid, more feral/bestial - next room has an altar to orcus, demon lord of undead; okrin repeatedly channels positive energy to dispel some of the negative energy in the room; something in the basement starts thumping - next room is locked, morgrym doesn't want a repeat so he doesn't go through the wall; okrin tries to open it, gets jolted by black lightning - they go back to the front, explore the rooms on the other side of the main staircase - one has a piano, okrin plays; thumping in basement stops, then resumes when he's done playing - next room has a mummy! it shambles towards them, okrin channels energy to make it flee, it jumps out the window - notebook on table: "day 37, subject uncooperative, testing progressed but end goal not acheived, need more subjects" - dennis finally woke up, stumbles in; okrin gives him the cabbage he purified from the pantry - next room has shelves of books, next has coffin, okrin detects no undead in it - on their way upstairs, dennis notices their weird shadows, freaks out - they try going up, but they teleport back down to the bottom of the stairs when they step on the top step - they decide to go downstairs and see what's down there (okrin stays playing the piano to soothe it, other 3 go down) - they hear gurgling, stealthily creep down the passageway, see 6 snoozing flesh golems - an unknown scream from elsewhere in the basement wakes the golems; orrin and dennis hide, morgrym gets noticed - dennis tries to draw their attention elsewhere by throwing bread, doesn't work - morgrym fights them as they gather around to slam him, dennis and orrin draw half of them off - they slay the golems, with everyone getting clawed at; orrin accidentally wounds dennis - the flesh golems seemed rejuvenated each time they successfully hit - morgrym showed off some new powers, striking two creatures at once with a reflection and dodging an attack by teleporting a few feet away, leaving behind an illusory afterimage - okrin's been playing the piano the whole time, eventually he gets tired and flubs some notes - the three below hear rumbling from south, remember scream from north - dennis stays raptor, runs upstairs to get okrin; okrin follows him back down - orrin and morgrym have looked north, see a man lying at the foot of three ghoul-goblins (ghoublins) - they decide to wait for the other two, since the creatures seem more interested in looting the man's bag than actually killing him - okrin heals the others when he comes down, dennis throws his wok as a distraction - they run out to catch the ghoublins by surprise, though they hear whatever was to the south getting closer - orrin, skulking underhandedly delivers an optimally sneaky surprise attack that instagibs one - okrin blasts the second one with his now-ranged inflict, kills it - third tries to flee, dennis chases it down and kills it with a raptor bite - key falls out of its pocket! dennis picks it up, they hear bigger thumping coming closer - okrin cures the wounds of the man on the ground, asks him to help fight whatever's coming their way; his name is samuel - they see the monster, disgusting hitmonlee-vertical-mouth thing, hide around the corner and wait in stealth to get the jump on it - monster's tongue lashes out, hits orrin haaard - morgrym goes incorporeal, pops out of the wall on the other side of it, lands one of three attacks - okrin identifies it as a necrocraft, stitched together from various corpses; is unable to make it flee like the mummy did - monster grabs samuel with tongue lash, pulls him in, agonizing scream - dennis bites and slashes at the necrocraft, not enough to make it let go of samuel - orrin cuts at it for good damage, flanking it with morgrym, who unleashes a perfectly precise flurry for even more damage - from their combined hurt, the monster lets go of samuel, whom okrin heals back to consciousness and tells to scurry away behind him - monster grabs samuel again! rips him to shreds fully this time, consumes the limbs to heal some of its wounds </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> - raptor-dennis bites and double claws, but gets sickened from its flesh - orrin strikes true, but morgrym fails spectacularly and misses so badly he gets caught in the creature's tongue - okrin pops energy body and walks through orrin to heal him - beast swallows morgrym whole; dennis keeps clawing, orrin double slices, they cut morgrym free! - necrocraft tries to grab the ghoublin bodies with its tongue to heal from, okrin stabs at it with his newly-summoned divine trident, but it heals more than it takes as it incorporates their flesh into its own - dennis, orrin, morgrym, and okrin keep poking away at it with their weapons, dodging its tongue, eventually it falls! - they explore further, pick up a second key down where the monster came from - they go back up to the ground floor, that door that blasted okrin now opens with one of the keys - strange, ritualistic/summoning markings on floor; okrin creates water to disrupt them - other key opens room in back, another body; this one, however, is relatively fresh, and the guy seems roughly samuel's age (younger than the lord was) - they go up the stairs back in the big ritual chamber; unlike the teleport-booby-trapped main stairs, these actually do let them go upstairs - seemingly normal upper level with a few bedrooms, but they hear a cry from somewhere; also, they notice they have no shadows anymore - most of the rooms seem old and untouched, but one seems recently-lived-in - they hear a whimper, and this time can pinpoint it from the biggest bedroom - morgrym peeks through the wall incorporeal before reeling back - he sees a little girl, whimpering, but she has no face, just bare skull; also, she's surrounded by four shadowy figures - he relays the info to the others, terrified; okrin is unperturbed and goes in, summoning his force spear - the shadows breathe out more darkness, covering the entire room, but okrin's energy body counters it - orrin comes in and stabs at one, dissipating it; it was okrin's mutated shadow, now normal and present below him once more - morgrym comes in and correctly identifies them as shadows, incorporeal undead creatures; marks the one he thinks is his own - okrin uses his force spear to destroy orrin's shadow, it goes back to him - dennis' shadow moves forward, too close to okrin's energy body; it destroys the shadow, which goes back to dennis - orrin stabs twice, giving morgrym his shadow back - all the shadows gone, little girl has normal face, says thanks, fades away - they notice the sun rising, mansion is ours, gg - btw local animal trainer hatched the mollywomp, now old enough to learn commands; dennis hugs it when they get back </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 11/09/2019, Session 07: ???? - daughter's party! they show up in nice outfits, not armor, weapons confiscated at the door - okrin hits up a guy dining, black/red suit/cane, laughs at his jokes and introduces himself... he seems familiar to okrin and orrin, but they can't place it - morgrym thanks pierre for getting them in; pierre sees dennis climbing up a pillar, drags him down before resuming his convo with morgrym - morgrym sees one fellow guest clad in full armor, approaches him to ask how he got to keep his outfit; squeaky voice responded but didn't give a straight answer, just that he didn't like to take it off; morgrym suspects some sort of monster marks - people eating, chatting, mingling, but dennis notices one looking particularly shifty and nervous - dennis introduces himself, but is too awkward to get anything beyond the man's name (robert) - orrin goes over to help, is a little more suave, learns about his banking job, senses nothing wrong - they tell him about how they provided the mollywomp meat for this banquet, he gets bored and leaves them - armenius fink, the man in armor, overhears that they're adventurers and comes over to advertise his gear - commander makes a toast to honor cassandra's birthday, guards come in with package - it's a rainbow shawl from the feathers of a peacock, she twirls and he explains that it's functional too, can block line of sight - circle disperses, party is kinda split: - orrin hears some scratching from inside fink's armor, armenius nervously says it's his imagination - morgrym chats up bakko, she introduces him to cassandra, who's impressed that he helped take down the mollywomp - dennis and okrin see robert reach for something from underneath his cloak - okrin rushes over to try to distract him with conversation, robert quickly pulls his empty hand out - robert's being really vague, okrin is suspicious; dennis, trying to sneak around, trips and falls next to them - robert excuses himself and moves away quickly - one lord, percival, introduces himself to okrin, says he had once visited oras natal; offers okrin further diplomatic work under him - cassandra and bakko have been really good, inseparable friends, walking around together - commander comes over to greet the party, sees armenius fink with them instead of omar; asks why he has armor on - "it doesn't come off" "why" "maybe we should talk about this in private", commander sends one of his guards to hear fink's story - morgrym and okrin see robert approach cassandra quickly, okrin tries to talk once more but gets brushed off - robert tries to pull a dagger but gets tripped and dragged away - commander has lieutenant take assailant away for "questioning" - man in red approached the party to ask what happened, they can tell him what but not why - lieutenant bursts in, commander calls him and the party up to talk - "assassin sent by kayn" - commander's estranged son (or so morgrym knew from the nobles' gossip)! but cassandra didn't know she had a brother! - commander tells a story - citadel used to be ruled by a man named bartimaeus, corrupt, cronyism, etc; locals contacted blackstone legion (then a group of mercenaries) - it was commander's wife's home, so he acquiesced and helped the people rebel and take over; everything was well and good - but kayn was upset, he had been on bartimaeus's good side (commander felt like kayn saw bartimaeus as more of a father than his actual dad); kayn felt it was his time to rule, came screaming at commander - kayn sent a lightning bolt at commander, but lieutenant pulled him away, saving his life, and chased kayn away - lieutenant has discovered kayn's men's hideout, wants party to gather intel; lieutenant gives them directions, bakko will go with them to report - commander seems to have assumed fink was part of the party, they don't know what happened to omar so they figure they could use a replacement (though they don't quite trust him yet) - on their way out, guy in red/black reveals himself to be the enchanter, wants to hear about their mission, offers aid if they ever find themselves in trouble - most of the party reacts poorly, but fink considers it - pierre stops them, hooligans have vandalized the bread-making shop! erected statues to block all the doors - they tell him they'll do it later - henri gives them each a robe that gives them bonuses to disguise as the military camp they're infiltrating - once they're on the road, fink opens up a hatch on the torso of his armor, reveals a few things - the armor doesn't have a full person wearing it, it's a construct piloted by a ratfolk! brown cloak, robe made of twine - also little tiny poppets performing maintenance on the inside, creep out bakko; also, his cane is a petrifern (captain scuffles) - construct armor is named archibald (armor remarkably constructed having ...TODO...) - party stops to stare a bit, but then continue walking, fink pulls out two masterwork daggers to sell orrin - fink notices a man observing them from a tree; "orrin, if you'd like to try them out...", then he closes the hatch - most of the party moves forward, pretending not to notice, while morgrym sneaks up to under his tree - dennis has his mollywomp come flying in to try knocking the guy out of the tree, but fails - he starts to run, morgrym chases and cuts him trying to slow him down, hits but doesn't kill - others run to catch up, fink has a poppet open his hatch so he can throw out a color spray, but the foe shrugs it off - okrin heats up his weapon, makes him drop it, dennis comes around to knock him out, morgrym ties him up - dennis introduces the party to his mollywomp, dennis... - party has archibald and molllywomp hold the guy down, then okrin heals him awake </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> - scout says they'll send people if he doesn't report back, morgrym suggests to dennis he transforms into this guy to infiltrate - okrin thinks we should bring tied up guy back to lieutenant, since he's good at extracting information; others agree - after they drag him back and hand him off, they realize that this time lost probably meant that the guys realized their scout was gone - morgrym comes up with a way to salvage the plan: have dennis still pretend to be the guy, bring one of the others as a "prisoner" to explain why he took so long ("I got jumped, but I got the guy") - dennis brings okrin, fink is invisible, morgrym and okrin are sneaking behind them - but wait, bakko! what do they do about her... maybe dennis captured both her and okrin - they approach, mollywomp scouts, fink is worried that his invis will run out so he wants to go in as a prisoner too - upon dennis' entrance, the camp is surprised at his return after so long, with prisoners - unfortunately, he wasn't very convincing in his story; they didn't believe their buddy could win a 1v3 - okrin puts on a show of being a terrified prisoner, helps sell the lie - they get let in, orrin and morgrym move to get closer; morgrym goes incorp and phases through the wall, though one of the guards noticed movement and he had to duck back out - kayn (lord kayn, in this camp) addresses the disguised dennis, has him bring forward one of the prisoners (okrin) - kayn asks about the commander, disappointed that he's still alive; not sure he should let these men live, hands begin to crackle with lightning - dennis suggests the bandits hire the party as mercenaries to kill cassandra, okrin explains that they had access to that celebration - okrin asks about the glowing green pit in the center of camp, kayn demonstrates by throwing in a chicken and an axe; out comes bladebeak! like quest for camelot! he demos again with a man holding a flail! - he explains that, in exchange for letting them live, he'll have the captured members of the party ride a covered carriage into the city to get his hybrid weapon people in - kayn gets suspicious when dennis tries to sleep on the ground, asks if he doesn't remember where his tent is; dennis is so nervous that he makes kayn think he's not who he says he is; "can't even remember his own name" - dennis tries to call his mollywomp in to carry him away, but kayn scorches them both with a lightning bolt, kills the mollywomp and injures dennis - okrin sneakily lands an admonishing ray, kayn basically shrugs it off and tosses a bunch more of his men into the pit to convert - orrin, after seeing the lightning bolt and hearing the commotion, climbs over the wall near him and moves further into the camp - morgrym does the same but incorporeal through - flail monsters start swinging, orrin dodges, fink and okrin are protected by their armor - human enemies attack, orrin gets chopped, bakko dodges - kayn exerts some sort of aura, everyone is pressured and takes penalties - dennis fails to move kayn, okrin pushes one of the flail men back into the pit, tosses a cabbage in, out comes a half mech half veggie... wtf - morgrym throws out a flurry at bladebeak and a reflected flurry at kayn but missed everything! fumbles! bladebeak has him on the ground! but he stands up, so that's something - bakko gets smacked by cabbage warrior for 1 damage lol - okrin gets chopped by an axeman, responds by telling him he'll be the next cabbage man - archibald gets crit dented by a flail man, dennis gets off easy with a single spear poke, orrin dodges a flail and morgrym dodges bladebeak - kayn begins to levitate, hair flowing - orrin strikes at kayn but fails so badly that he throws a dagger that slides in through archibald and hits fink - bakko puts an enemy to sleep - morgrym flurries and slays bladebeak, ha - they get surrounded, orrin gets knocked out - kayn releases his gathered power... knocks out dennis, kills fink, unconscious orrin, and his men... morgrym is barely alive, okrin and bakko are okay cause they've been far away the whole time - morgrym goes incorporeal and speeds away but goes down to a lightning bolt - only unconscious though, not dead - okrin calls upon the enchanter, who is willing to revive/restore orrin/fink/archibald in exchange for the party collecting 50 souls for him (and if they fail, okrin's soul is on the line) - okrin thinks about the church of apsu having high level clerics, he asks how cheap it would be just to ask for a mass teleport there; enchanter just wants 1 soul in 1 week - okrin finds out that the commander had murdered all of the people there when he was running away that one time - enchanter reappears, offers old deal, 15 souls total now; okrin takes it </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 11/16/2019, Session 08: ???? - party wakes up, decides to look for souls in job board postings - repair broken fence, find lost cat, "adventurers needed: dungeon too hard, want teammates" - fink excited about fence repair, old man upset to see giant rat, asks okrin to get rid of the vermin - okrin tosses fink onto the other side of the fence and starts casting mending, fink uses his tools to fix it from the other side - okrin bluffs, pretends it was his magic that did it - back on the adventurer posting, there's a little insignia; fink presses it, three adventurers appear behind the party - heavy armored man with tower shield, brock, introduced himself with doran (rifle) and echo (hood, cloak, book) - they have an issue; THEY have to ask THE SPHINX a riddle - during introductions, they have a hard time believing fink is a real party member and not an oversized familiar - other party opens a portal with a magic item, they come out to a cave with a sphinx on top - it's upset that they all shared the standard riddle's answer - they give him a few, he gets them wrong but insists that he's right - eventually they just decide to walk on in, he doesn't stop them; says that he's there to stop people from leaving, not entering - fink realizes the sphinx is going crazy in his old age - they rush in, see a lot of stone statues - writing on the opposite wall, okrin doesn't get it, morgrym identifies it as terran; translates a lot of cryptic platitudes - fink tries to detect traces of magic on the nearest statue, they're all moderately magical (conjuration and transmutation) - so are the hallways around the room, just conjuration; they throw rocks down it, nothing happens - fink sends his one remaining poppet down a hallway to see what happens, it appears in a hallway on the opposite side of the room; they realize it's the case for all 8 (including the one they came in through) - okrin steps onto the stone in the center with the 8 statues, floor shakes, a big animated stone statue bursts through the floor - it asks why they're there, when they respond it says there's no treasure and they should leave - they ask how, he shrugs - they look around, see scrape marks where the stone statues were moved; brock and dennis move to get them back into their original places - earth spirit tells them that the test has now begun, takes combat stance - morgrym charges, hits but the damage is shrugged off (dr); dennis runs in, trips as he goes and gets flung into the other wall - okrin fires an admonishing ray, stone guy is immune; doran shoots his gun, mostly shrugged off again - brock moves forward to have morgrym's back; fink goes invisible - echo invigorates okrin (elder -> charisma) and dennis (youth -> strength) - stone giant magically pulls a statue towards him, smashes it into okrin and morgrym for hefty damage and leaving okrin lame - morgrym, extremely injured all of a sudden, fights on for his life, going incorporeal and flurrying, three hits for massive damage - dennis charges back in from the opposite wall but misses his bite - okrin channels to heal brock, morgrym, and himself - doran fires again, still not piercing much; fink hastes the crew - stone guy burrows down into the ground and glides through the earth again, knocking morgrym, fink, and okrin prone once more - dennis spreads some sticks on the ground to track the ripples in the earth, okrin lights up with energy body, echo gives morgrym fast healing, fink levitates - stone guy comes back up! pulls another rock, morgrym fumbles his dodge just like the last time, bleeding on the ground now - dennis runs at him velociraptoring again, keeps dodging AoOs; okrin touches morgrym and heals him, casts and does it again - doran, who was next to where the giant earth elemental popped up, runs screaming; brock shield bashes for okay damage - fink levitates invisibly towards dennis, hoping to eventually give him mage armor - statue guy kicks more statues around, knocks doran out and hurts dennis - morgrym steps through okrin's energy body to heal up again, begins moving to rejoin the fight - okrin and echo both heal doran, stone guy shatters one of his statues, dennis and morgrym and fink go blind&deaf for a round - morgrym hits his one swing, even through blindness - so does raid-boss-dennis-buffed-by-echo/brock/fink, at least for two of his four attacks, and the earth spirit begins to fall - spirit tells them they've passed the test, while okrin heals everyone, doran took from the earth guy a tablet inscribed with runes - doran identifies it as a novel spell of some kind, calls back to his crew that he got the treasure - fink takes the big emerald from the earth elemental's belt - okrin inquires about the goal of the test, "to see if you were worthy"; previously hidden door to the surface opens - they ask what'll happen to him, he says his body will melt into the earth and his spirit will linger - party goes to see the tablet the others are studying, unique spell that allows raising/shattering stone statues like he did - doran pulls it away, wants to sell it, it would be worth less if he let fink learn it - they all walk out, see the sphinx's tail swinging in front of the entrance, discuss how to get out (fink doesn't have enough invis for everyone) - echo runs out first, everyone else runs a different way while the sphinx chases echo, echo warps back to his previous position and joins the others, all get back to the citadel - enchanter approaches them after seeing the 3x3x3ft. cube emerald, dollar signs in his eyes; introduces himself to brock/echo/doran - he's willing to take the gem in exchange for cutting down their needed souls from 12 to 6; okrin goes hard on the sale, critically convinces him it's worth 8 instead, so they just need 4 - after enchanter leaves, okrin asks rifleman doran to show him how to shoot the pistol he picked up a while ago - fink asks echo about what he does, gets explanation about chronomancy; divine caster worshipping kronos, so can't exchange arcane secrets with him, sorry </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 11/23/2019, Session 09: ???? - a day of downtime - dennis goes up to the mountain to commune for 24 hours to get his mollywomp buddy back - orrin checks out the job board, takes a request to clear out scorpions from the mine that supplies henri, hopes to do it with everyone tomorrow - morgrym commissions fink to start making handwraps of extra readied maneuver, but they can't finish it in one day - instead, fink sets up shop to try to sell his wares, but is largely ignored; steps on his old poppet as he crafts a new one - morgrym records his notes/sketches on the very eventful past few days, then meets up with orrin - okrin doesn't want to wait around, just goes and buys a ring of protection - next day, they go to the citadel to finally report about the scouting mission to the commander - okrin explains the danger, bluffs that they just survived by getting lucky, doesn't mention enchanter - morgrym sketches a map of the camp and where it is relative to the city - they figure that the best way to get the captured scout's soul for the enchanter is to come clean to the commander - commander's shocked, gets a blackstone alchemist to come check out the soul-sucking stones - mage whispers to commander, he explains death vs soul-damnation to party and refuses to give them even prisoners; they kinda agree with him, honestly - but he's okay with them hunting bandits outside his territory, he just really cares for his own people - morgrym offers the same "use someone as bait" plan as he did for kayn's camp; fink will be a merchant (which he is) and the rest will hide in the wagon, they'll wait for highwaymen - after a bit of travel, dennis notices bushes rustling; fink doesn't see them in time, 3 bandits pop up right next to him - fink squeaks and directs them to the back - okrin blasts one nonlethally, fink turns invisible and scurries away, morgrym strikes one and confuses him, orrin cuts with extreme precision - dennis and orrin tie them all up, party plans to have okrin and orrin be tough cop and incompetent cop (to get the bandits to loosen up) - they get the bandits' names, fink inscribes them on some of the gems; okrin pretends to be legion, convinces them to be willingly "knocked out" again post-interview for transport back to the citadel - okrin, orrin, and morgrym each touch one of the bandits with the corresponding gem, gems light up with soul energy; fink puts them in his handy haversack - they pass the occasional other traveling merchant on the way to the next city, but no more bandits; legion's done a good job of cleaning up - they get to [TODO CITY NAME] and fink goes to be his normal merchant self, selling minor magic items; this gives them gold income to pay as taxes to the merchant guild that sold fink the caravan when they get back (dude's very impressed) - they return to the legion, see bakko sad (she heard something about her sister returning but on trial); okrin tells her about the train attack tara led, bakko gets very upset and storms off in a huff - party goes back to their ex-haunted manor in the woods, run into one more bandit whom they take for the final owed soul - they summon the enchanter, he examines the gems and nods to himself, satisfied; floating contract reappears midair and burns to ashes - enchanter stays for dinner, dennis makes pizza and fink makes pies </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 11/30/2019, Session 10: ???? - party goes to board again, since only morgrym and orrin want to do the scorpion thing - they try to find a missing cat, only orrin notices it; he points it out to dennis, who dives too eagerly, stumbling and slicing it to pieces - they slink off, fink drags them to the general store, looking for magical scrolls - fink and okrin don't love the selection, but they do see some scrolls of restoration; fink and orrin buy 2 each and have okrin remove their negative levels - they go back to the board, morgrym prods dennis to apologize to the girl about her cat but he's reluctant; he eventually does go looking, approaches her, but she flees in terror on sight - they go to henri to get info about the giant scorpion job, morgrym's excited to fight mindless things with no choices or morally-gray-stuff involved whatsoever - at the mines, they see six giant scorpions - fink gives everyone haste, morgrym uses it to run in and teleport behind them, striking the rearmost scorpion and dodging its counterattack - the other scorpions run forward to meet the rest of the party, dennis gets stung, then he and his mollywomp tear into that scorpion together - okrin blasts a nearby one, fink goes invisible, orrin rushes in and slaughters the one morgrym initiated on - morgrym moves back towards the others to fight another scorpion, slows it and avoids its retaliation again - scorpion near okrin gets its stinger caught in a rock, dennis and pet attack another one near them - as everyone kills all but one of the remaining scorpions, okrin feels the ground rumbling, humongous enraged mama scorpion pops up - okrin blasts it, fink realizes it has tremorsense and levitates, then reduces morgrym's size; mini morgrym and dennis throw out flurries of strikes at the big scorpion - fink shrinks orrin and he joins the multihit fray, scorpion shrugs off morgrym's slow and paralyzes orrin and dennis - okrin channels to keep everyone topped up, morgrym pulls paralyzed orrin a few feet out of reach - scorpion re-paralyzes dennis, but at least the baby mollywomp bites it; okrin heals dennis and fink fires a magic missile - while fink and okrin are plinking away with missiles and rays, scorpion misses all of its attacks on morgrym and orrin, they respond with multiple stabs and slashes each for big damage, then it paralyzes them both; dennis is just trying to hit through its hard shell - scorpion resists fink's slow, morgrym gets unparalyzed but orrin doesn't; okrin heals orrin - scorpion and dennis each miss all their attacks, okrin hits it with a final nonlethal ray and it falls unconscious - the party scavenges some vials of paralyzing venom and some carapace pieces for armor - upon returning to henri, he promises to craft each of them a +1 (or equivalent) magic armor or weapon - henri promises to have the items in a few days, they see a large crowd when they leave - follow the flow of people to the town square, see robert get executed for treason - then round two comes up with tara, but she's nowhere to be seen - it's actually canceled due to "clerical error"; fink sees through the lie, calls it out to the others - party goes to follow the lieutenant back to the citadel, hear yelling coming from the commander's office - lieutenant comes out, surprised to see them; they reveal their suspicions, lieutenant brings them inside - lieutenant tells party she somehow escaped, no destruction, no bribery, no invis, nothing - dennis suspects bakko of sneaking her sister out, commander says she's been in the library; party runs to check - no bakko, but a list of the attendants of cassandra's bday party; orrin sees a crease that indicates it was gripped at the enchanter's name - party decides to give chase, tell the commander they have a clue but don't reveal anything about the enchanter </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 12/07/2019, Session 11: ???? - while party is asleep, orrin and okrin hear a knock at the door - orrin opens it, sees a legion guard panting - "commander's daughter is missing! I've been sent to fetch you all" - they wake up the others, except fink who's too fast asleep - they go back to the citadel, commander informs them that it didn't seem like an abduction, suspect she wanted to go find bakko herself - commander: "do whatever it takes to find cassandra and bring her home; I'll even pardon bakko and tara" - morgrym: "can do, maybe, I hope, sir" - as they walk out discussing where to look first, like the enchanter's place, enchanter appears ("my ears were ringing!") - offers location of cass/bakko/tara for free, seems to have an ulterior motive but doesn't explicitly want anything from the party - when they were kids, cass and bakko used to play in a childhood hideaway, they're almost certainly there - enchanter suddenly warps the party there, they don't know how to get back (besides asking their targets) - big jungle temple, word search on a wall, entrance is blocked off; they find "cassandra" and "bakko" in it, and the vines blocking the way retract when they touch the names - as they stealthily (besides okrin) make their way down the tunnel, vines close behind them - they see bakko and a centaur-like creature but half-human, half-drake, holding a spear - they call out, creature is tara (proud of her "upgrade") - bakko's not happy to see them, doesn't want to work together, but admits they're also here to save cassandra - 3 doors, with "2" "4" "8"; each person has a number over their head, has to go through doors in pairs - little tablet with notes of "every set of numbers has a mathemagical value", gives calculation example with [3, 7] - "first you square them: 3 * 3 = 9, 7 * 7 = 49; then you add the digits of the products: 9 + 4 + 9 = 22; then you add the digits of the sum: 2 + 2 = 4; and thus, the mathemagical value of the set [3, 7] is 4" - these weren't here when the girls played here as kids - bakko 1, tara 2, dennis 4, morgrym 5, orrin 6, okrin 7 - bakko and morgrym can go through door 8 - orrin and tara can go through door 4 - dennis and okrin can go through door 2 - as they go through, okrin and dennis see a pretty well-furnished dungeon room with a big mirror - it has writing: "you must look most closely at that which you cannot see" - okrin notices that a box in front of one of the doors doesn't appear in the mirror - he examines it closely, sees the box slightly shifting in place; it recoils when he pokes it - it's a mimic! it tries to eat the mollywomp, dennis gets mad and bites it back as a raptor, and okrin summons two force spears - they kill it, search it, find a key - orrin and tara are in the next room: just a big fire pit and 4 piles of rgby sand, one in each corner - tara seems bored, orrin tosses some of the yellow sand into the pyre - fire turns yellow, an air elemental appears, blows orrin to the ground! - tara perks up, moves to fight it, charges and stabs; orrin gets up and slices it - blue sand this time, water elemental; after they kill it, they notice the fire changed from yellow to blue - then red, fire elemental; orrin drops one of his daggers into the brazier, it turns back from red to blue thanks to his dagger's frost - tara whoops the elemental this time, then they do the green sand, an earth elemental spawns but also another water because of the leftover blue tint - earth one punches him, water misses, tara comes to help and they kill the elementals - orrin noticed that the fire was also larger when it was two-colored, tara wants to try every color now - orrin's sad that he can't reach his dagger, but they do it; 4 elementals, one per type, spawn - orrin moves behind tara, 3 of the 4 hit her, 1 misses; orrin kills the air one - she tanks some more, does a sweeping attack, he kills the earth one; she finishes off the other two - fire pit crumbles, reveals staircase below, orrin gets his dropped dagger - bakko and morgrym see a corridor with some barrels and a big sliding puzzle on the other end of an owlbear - morgym gets to work on it, but partway through one of the barrels shakes and two kobolds jump out and attack - morgrym flurries one kobold down, bakko sleeps the other, lets her raven familiar tear its throat out - morgrym finishes the puzzle, it swings open as a door, he and bakko go through - everyone's paths have now converged! - bakko tends to tara's wounds, while okrin channels, so dennis and morgrym are good, but orrin still needs additional care - they proceed, see a great chamber with an unconscious cassandra on the ground and a big live owlbear sitting next to her - bakko thinks she recognizes it, but it snaps at her! combat time - biiig room, so they start running in - bakko protects ollie the owlbear by turning tara's brutal charge nonlethal with a zone of mercy - dennis runs up and says hi ollie, ollie yells back (in common) about how mad he is that the girls stopped visiting him - he was so happy that cass came back, but she tried to leave, so he stopped her - dennis fails to wild empathy talk him down, so ollie slashes at him incredibly hard - morgrym and okrin run up, dennis keeps trying to calm the owlbear down - he accidentally scratches it while hugging it, ollie roars bakko, okrin, orrin are deafened </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> - morgrym walks up, gets bitten, but still hits, as does orrin - okrin tries to get it to be friendly, but it's too mad and resists - dennis hugs it again, says he gets it, he used to be lonely too, but he has these guys now - ollie feels remorse, sees bakko cradling cassandra, cass wakes up, greets the party in surprise, ollie apologizes - they feel hopeful they can keep ollie in the citadel if they talk to the animal trainer who helped with the mollywomp - they move to leave, but bakko and tara don't budge; party promises they can return, commander's willing to pardon them - but they say it's not that, they owe the enchanter one and have to do something for him - at first she doesn't want to share the contract details, but the party explains they've had dealings with the enchanter before (save them in exchange for "magic materials") - he gave tara her new form and bakko unique magic, they agreed to be his assistants for an unknown amount of time - everyone goes to the cave entrance, tara and bakko say bye to cassie and disappear in red smoke, cassandra and ollie lead the party back to the citadel - animal handler takes ollie in, the rest go to see the commander; he's so relieved, cass tells him what happened, he thanks the party - they excuse themselves, okrin heals everyone, they call it an early night because they got up so early - next morning, they find a package waiting for them; note stamped with legion symbol, letter from commander: "go to this address, speak with marcus, he'll restore your decrepit house" </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 12/21/2019, Session 12: ???? - house under construction - check the job board the next day, one of the jobs was torn in half! torn off in a hurry, something about a friend going missing - fink hopes to find trace footprints, but it's cobblestone not dirt - morgrym looks around for bakko's replacement to ask about the person who took it, but the spot hasn't been filled yet - they give up on that, fink pulls down the "who looks more fashionable" job, is approached by two strangers, milo and morgan - morgan has a dark full body suit of armor, milo has a partial orange one - milo calls morgan an edgelord, morgrym nudges orrin like "hey that's us too lol" - okrin votes for milo, the rest vote for morgan - milo gets mad, challenges morgan to a duel; morgan says nah, we've done this too many times, why don't these voters fight for us? crew battle - milo grabs some familiar faces to help out okrin: otis (gunslinger), doran (shield guy), echo (time mage) - they explain that the nobles have a fighting arena where all damage is nonlethal (so no murder, just show fights) and they have an audience to entertain (special perform check, bonuses from taking penalties to how they fight) - 2v2 crew battle, side 1 is morgrym/orrin and fink/dennis, side 2 is otis/doran and echo/okrin - orrin and morgrym run up, otis shoots them, doran moves to protect otis, shield bashes morgrym to the ground - morgrym has been very entertaining, npcs kinda, orrin not so much - morgrym gets back up, he and orrin slash and stab, otis keeps shooting, orrin hits doran hard while morgrym confuses otis - otis babbles, morgrym takes a penalty to hit to put on a show, goes incorporeal and flurries doran, doran entertains perfectly - doran tries to push otis out of the way, morgrym and orrin ko otis as he tries - morgrym and orrin finish off doran too, then echo undoes it! orrin knocks him down again, for real this time; okrin comes in, summons force spears - morgrym gets a vital hit on echo, but fails to confuse him as he did to otis; echo spawns sands of time sandstorm around himself, morgrym gets knocked out - dennis comes in, orrin slices echo up, okrin heals echo - orrin also goes down to the sandstorm, fink comes in and hastens dennis and his mollywomp; mollywomp roars, echo and okrin resist the deafening - fink's 6 mirror images form a rat swarm, crowd goes wild, okrin sends his 6 spears to turn dennis into a pincushion, then dennis ALSO goes down to the sandstorm - fink tries to slow okrin for an amazing maximum amount of flair, but got kinda distracted by how much the crowd loved him and okrin was fine - okrin summons 6 more force spears to join the 3 ones he kept from last time - echo marks fink with delay, slows fink's casting time - mollywomp is also amazingly entertaining, crowd loves how he perseveres even without dennis - orrin plays "how many force spears does it take to get to the center of a baby mollywomp", answer was 3 - the rest go at fink, 1 hits fink, 1 hits an image, 1 hits fink, 2 hit an image, 1 hits fink - echo falls, couldn't delay the damage dennis dealt to him any further - fink flies out of range of okrin and his spears, okrin casts doom and fink is shaken - fink pops off a few magic missiles, orrin casts shield, fink tries color spray but again sacrifices too much potency for the crowd's favor - orrin's spears hit all 3 of fink's images, 1 hits fink - fink goes invisible, okrin tries to catch him in a zone of truth and ask where he is but doesn't get an answer - fink goes visible as he tries another color spray, fails but in an entertaining way, okrin finally takes him out with a searing ray - milo brags, morgan says hey let's count points... morgan's team wins by like ~910 to ~860! - each participant gets 8000gp as prize/consolation money </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 12/28/2019, Session 13: ???? - party wakes up in their newly renovated home, okrin hears someone at the door; carlo, new job board attendant (and milo's nephew), introduces himself - says he tracked down the other piece of that torn mission and wants these adventurers to complete it, he's worried about the subject of the quest - okrin wakes up the others, tells them the details and they all follow carlo - party notices omar's back with them! he says something about falling unconscious while reading a book - anyway, woman (sarah) answers the door that carlo knocked on; her friend, lucas, is the one who didn't come home they day before yesterday - he's a sous chef for pierre, she thinks that would be a good place to start - party tells sarah they'll send news through carlo if they find anything - they greet pierre, he gives omar a fresh loaf of bread as they ask about lucas - he says lucas didn't seem to have any enemies or other jobs, but he was studying to be a cleric of apsu - morgyrm remembers the commander's row with the church of apsu, orrin suggests asking pierre about how long lucas had studied before disappearing, but he chases them out after omar insults him by implying he might have any stale/leftover bread - they start asking around to see if there's anyone else in the area studying to worship apsu, omar starts with the local drunk outside pierre's restaurant, he refuses to talk without booze - orrin remembers the tavern omar got them kicked out of, they send okrin to get some - drunk drains the bottle with a belch, in his gratitude relays to them a story of how a few nights ago he heard a louder ruckus than normal and saw some tracks in the dirt as though the loser of the fight got dragged away - they move to follow the tracks; orrin: "thank you for the info mr drunk man", drunk: "come back anytime, bartender knows me and refuses service so I need runners", morgrym: "try to do less rule evading around here, but yeah thanks" - the tracks end at a frozen river, omar tries some magic to help him track the injured man but gets nowhere, tries to cross - ice cracks beneath his feet, omar plunges into the freezing water but holds on to the edge of the hole in the ice - dennis sends mollywomp to pick up omar and deposit him on the far side - orrin notices markings on the tree trunks on their side, dennis suggests all four patterns should be superimposed, morgrym and orrin get to it - they come up with a contiguous line, okrin sees it as which sections of ice are thickest - he and orrin cross safely to join omar, dennis flies across with mollywomp, morgrym teleports across and appears next to orrin - omar picks up the trail like a bloodhound, leads them northwest to an icy lake, where dennis sees an icy serpent resting dormant - as they all creep around the side, the serpent wakes up and asks them who they are; morgrym explains they're do-gooders looking to help one of their citizens, okrin expands with more details - serpent asks riddles: "what kind of room can't be entered?", dennis: "mushroom"; "tender but not eaten, minted but cannot sweeten", morgrym: "money"; "chef, a smith, a farmer, an accountant, a prostitute, a writer, and a warrior, which keeps me sorted/sordid/sworded?" okrin: "all"? no, it was accountant (sorted), prostitute (sordid), smith (sworded), he attacks because they got the last one wrong! - morgrym starts the fight by teleporting up to the serpent's head, striking, and teleporting back to safety - okrin summons force spears - serpent spits icy breath at omar and dennis, dennis avoids some of it but omar takes the full brunt - omar sneezes fire back, his intuition that the serpent is vulnerable to fire was correct - orrin darts nimbly across the ice, avoids falling into any thin patches, stabs - mollywomp roars, deafens serpent, dennis pounces as velociraptor and bites/claws - morgrym goes ethereal to stay nimble on the ice, strikes the serpent and confuses it - okrin hurls many force spears to finish the serpent off and they proceed onward - this time, they see a river that's not frozen over; it's flowing quite rapidly, and it's 100 ft across - the tracks lead to the edge, where there's a panel with a passcode entry and some numbers in columns, supposedly they can summon a bridge - they try a few transformations on the numbers in these columns, nothing happens until they try the same mathemagical formula that let them through the doors in the jungle temple; ice bridge forms! - as they cross, troll jumps up and demands 100 gold each! orrin pays, okrin haggles down to 65 gold - omar tries to create his own bridge and it fails to form because of some magical wall - morgrym pays the now higher price of 120 but signals to orrin to steal from the troll while morgrym distracts him, they get 40 gold to split - omar tries to sneak across invisible but gets smelled and swung at, the bridge breaks - dennis turns into a dragonfly and he and his and mollywomp stay flying but are still blocked by this magic that doesn't let you through unless you're in contact with the bridge - omar tries to grab onto his teammates as he falls and is saved by the mollywomp, the troll actually falls - dennis re-types in the numbers and a new troll appears, doesn't believe their bluff that they paid the previous troll - invisible omar makes it across this time, dennis stealths across as well - morgrym picks the tracks back up and everyone continues north, they eventually find a cottage, suspect that the tracks end here </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> - with the entire party's support, okrin climbs up onto a section of the roof next to a window to peer in; morgrym teleports up to join him, patting him on the shoulder on landing; omar barely makes it up with dennis and orrin's help; dennis flies up as a dragonfly; omar notices a guard coming because he heard omar climb loudly, puts orrin on a clock; orrin scrambles up just in time, everyone goes unnoticed - this guard is one of kayn's weird hybrid flail men! - omar wanted to climb down the chimney, but there's fire/smoke; okrin reminds him of the window next to the section of roof they climbed - okrin peers through, sees nobody, just a nice cozy cottage; omar detects magic, senses nothing - they open the window and sneak in, neither guard outside notices; morgrym pokes around for something going down, since he suspects there has to be more to this cottage than just this floor, but finds nothing; omar, however, finds a tile that's kind of out of alignment, morgrym helps him lift it and they see part of a hatch, it's covered by four tiles total that they eventually strip away - at morgrym's urging, orrin checks and believes there's no mundane traps, and omar detects no magic - they open the hatch, see a ladder down to stone hallway; dennis (darkvision) goes first, sees more guards patrolling down there - dennis sneaks past, omar vanishes and goes as well, the guards are then super suspicious and notice orrin! they charge, orrin runs back to morgrym and okrin before turning and attacking the closer one, gets flailed in return - okrin shoots a searing light, morgrym goes to town with his new iron knuckle steel flurry wombo and takes it out - other one comes, orrin and okrin lay into it with dagger and searing light, morgrym whiffs entirely, this one is slower but they wear it down - they rejoin the rest, okrin heals everyone and they proceed into the next room, where they see two doors; they enter the left one, everyone but okrin and his clanky armor proceed quietly - okrin hears the muffled voices of two men talking behind a door, hard to tell but something about a process and ahead of schedule, will soon possess something, they hear kayn's name - peering through the keyhole, he sees a restrained man surrounded by mad scientists and a man with four big floating gloves - technician pushes button, man on table (with an apsu tattoo) screams - party discusses what to do, morgrym suggests people scout out nearby corridors before barging in so they don't get sandwiched, dennis and orrin go - they find cells, see two with prisoners and one empty; they introduce themselves as nora, cleric of apsu, and lucas (!!), cleric-in-training of apsu; orrin picks their cell locks while dennis tells the rest - they scout out the rest of the area, then bust in, scientist and apprentices fight back while floating hand man tries to rush out the back door - omar misses scorching ray, okrin hits alchemist with inflict, dennis and orrin move up to them, morgrym runs and warps after hand man - scientist drops smoke bomb to run out back too, younger scientists aim syringe crossbows at omar, okrin, orrin, they miss okrin and orrin resists the effect, but omar is confused - orrin runs through smoke to chase and attack scientist, okrin throws summoned spears at apprentice scientists and kills one of them - hand man grapples and pins and constricts morgrym all in one go with his four hands, dennis runs in to attack one of the hands - omar hurts himself in his confusion, scientist reaches out and shocks orrin - morgrym temporally reverts being pinned, then since he's just grappled strikes the hand and warp 5 feet back - okrin gets critically syringe-shot, is confused too like omar; orrin stabs the scientist - okrin throws a force spear at the man on the table in his confusion, but barely grazes him - hand man grapples both dennis and his mollywomp, but doesn't pin, then leaves the floating hands there and begins climbing the ladder - dennis and his animal fail to break the grapple, omar babbles, scientist accidentally shocks himself </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 01/04/2020, Session 14: ???? - fink has finally left his lab in the house and seen their note and managed to track the rest of the party to this laboratory, meanwhile orrin has been knocked out by the drugs and electricity - morgrym fails to free dennis from the hand grappling him, so he goes to help nora and lucas against the two scientist helpers going after them - fink tries to dispel the hand, flubs his magic completely, and okrin hurts himself in his confusion - dennis breaks free on his own, as does his mollywomp, and he scrambles up the ladder to the hand-man (who kicks him, but dennis holds on) - omar also hurts himself in his confusion, so badly that it clears his head - lucas resists a syringe, but nora gets confused - hand man escapes as morgrym tries to confuse one of the scientists (and fails) - head scientist zaps fink hard, who turns invisible - okrin, still confused, stabs the prisoner on the table - dennis makes it outside, sees the glove man getting away and the two weapon-human hybrid guards blocking his way - omar fires two scorching rays at the head scientist, one hits and singes him - two syringes fail to pierce okrin's armor, and morgrym dodges two more - nora and lucas run to the ladder where dennis is, morgrym kills one of the scientists near him - head scientist throws glitterdust, reveals (and blinds) fink, fink begins summoning earth elementals - okrin breaks free of the confusion, heals the prisoner on the table, and spears one of the scientists attacking him - dennis has returned, pouncing as a raptor at the head scientist, omar pins him with his own shadow - scientist pulls a control lever, robot claw arm drops down and tries to grab okrin, who barely dodges - morgrym gets shot despite his dodging and illusory defense, succumbs to the confusion - head scientist zaps dennis with a touch, fink's summoning finishes and he hastes them - the elementals surround the doctor, pummeling him, as does dennis - dennis examines the doctor, sees he has two more of the weird pouches that pop and rejuvenate him (already used one) - omar summons an aggressive thundercloud on the doctor, zapping him, but his wild magic turns the man invisible - okrin gets grabbed by the claw arm this time, morgrym temporally reverses his confusion - okrin throws spears, fumbles one of them and knocks out the still-strapped-in prisoner (who okrin now sees has still been getting hurt by the experiment table), others take out one of the scientists - dennis swipes at the doctor further, last scientist near morgrym keeps running, last scientist near okrin uses the control panel to lift him in the air - morgrym teleports after apprentice scientist, cuts at him - head doctor drinks from vial, gains a magical glow (sr, though nobody recognizes it) - some of the elementals hit him, fink gives himself a magical shield - okrin realizes he's too weak to pull free of the claw, decides to heal the prisoner below him, who wakes up - dennis tries to steal whatever's in the doctor's pouch, fails - omar's lightning fails to break the doctor's new spell resistance - morgrym's target keeps fleeing, takes an AoO and limps into the room rummaging around; omar is grabbed by another mechanical arm like okrin - morgrym enters, sees his target with a suicide vest strapped on, strikes and teleports out as the scientist dies and explodes, smoke trailing out of the room he ran into - scientist dominates fink, commands him to command earth elementals to move fink into the room to be grappled by the mechanical arms - omar opens a spiked pit under the doctor, who falls in and gets poked and cut - morgrym goes incorporeal and walks through walls to stand above the pit, marks and unmarks the doctor to gain another mirror image - dennis drops some rotten stir fry into the pit, doctor avoids being sickened but is bludgeoned by the wok - the mollywomp wants to roar at the doc, has to choose between hitting lucas and morgrym, morgrym feels he can take it (especially with his re-sketching reality) but he fumbles and is deafened (unlike the doctor) - omar's thundercloud drops into the pit, still can't break spell resistance; omar throws acid at scientist controlling robo arms, he shrugs it off (used to worse chemicals) - morgrym teleports down to strike the doctor and warps back, but misses his swing entirely as he avoids the spikes in the pit - doctor orders fink to send elementals after morgrym, okrin throws force spears at the last scientist but misses most of them - mollywomp roars at doctor again, deafens him this time; omar covers the scientist's control terminal with a cube of dirt, rendering it unusable - scientist flees, morgrym chases, okrin shows him his fate and confuses him - dennis picks up a small nearby bench and throws it down into the pit, injuring the doctor - morgrym flurries and kills fleeing scientist, summoned elementals disappear - doctor climbs out of the pit with the help of the bench, releases fink from dominate as a show of good faith as he surrenders - omar wants his head on a spike, morgrym thinks they should bring him to the legion - dennis escorts him into the other room, has him free omar, okrin, and fink from the claw arms, and the third unnamed prisoner from the table - dennis checks on nora and lucas as he lets okrin and morgrym grill the doctor, okrin also heals the table prisoner back to consciousness </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> - doctor leads them to another chamber with many prisoners, also releases them; he speaks of having no employer loyalty and just wanting to live, he can always find more work - okrin's haunted ghost pulls out the scroll he found earlier in the puzzle room with the mimic, he casts comprehend languages and reads it, realizes it's lore about apsu - as they bring back the doctor and all of the freed prisoners back to the citadel, they find out every prisoner was a follower of apsu (and not all were from the church that was attacked, and those that were had been taken before that attack) - guards escort the victims to the infirmary and the doctor to a cell, party escorts lucas back to sara, she gives them by way of reward for saving his sous chef an invitation from pierre to a feast tomorrow as the guests of honor - they rest up, go to the feast the next day, it's delicious and everyone is celebrating until they hear a loud knock at the door - several legion guards enter, have everyone freeze; they're looking for something - lucas is super nervous, flees out the back door but bumps into the lieutenant, commander's right-hand man - lieutenant tries to take in lucas for giving aid to a terrorist, pierre defends him - morgrym and okrin go to stand up for pierre as the lieutenant takes him in as well for harboring lucas; lieutenant is shaken but carries out his duty - party goes to legion hq, is kept waiting for a bit before they see the commander - "been a while, how are you?" "better than the man we just rescued >:[" - commander explains that lucas was suspected of aiding tara (he liked her); okrin argues that pierre would have no way of knowing and doesn't deserves punishment - they tell the party to come back tomorrow, party also asks about rescued prisoners; those with minor injuries went home, major stayed in infirmary - group goes home, okrin tells them about the apsu lore scroll he read; apsu (creation) vs. dahak (destruction) war, apsu created a gate (divini ingresso) for his favorite followers to come receive some of his power so they could help apsu win, later he broke the gate into 5 pieces and scattered them, many have looked, all have failed - they return the next day, commander tells them they've found pierre innocent and he's been released; morgrym asks about what lucas did, commander can't elaborate without revealing legion weaknesses; morgrym says he can't help patch up weaknesses if he doesn't have details, they say they have stonemasons already hard at work, so fink offers his services as a craftsman, but he's waved off too </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 01/11/2020, Session 15: ???? - town's monster tamer, raphael, came to check in on dennis and mollywomp, asks party (morgrym, okrin, fink) to help him wrangle a few kaprosuchus (crocodiles) without killing them - orrin was ????, dennis was chatting with ollie - they figure out a plan: fink will enlarge tamer and reduce morgrym, tamer will wrassle one, okrin will blast nonlethally, morgrym will kite them into a group for fink to grapple with tentacles - starts as planned: morgrym warps in to get their attention, starts kiting, okrin is blasting, fink summons bait (giant frogs) - then swamp geysers started blasting upwards! hurt some of the monsters - two of the three summoned frogs get eaten, and the crocs drag them below the surface - morgrym's next swing fails to pierce the croc's hide, okrin lands another admonishment, raphael goes in and grabs a croc from behind - fink summons a field of dark mossy tree root tentacles from the marsh, but they can't grasp the crocs! - one of them grabs fink and drags him under, morgrym teleports over and slashes at it just under the surface to free fink - okrin keeps admonishing, raph keeps wrangling, tentacles grapple crocs this time - fink gets tail-slapped as he casts fly and escapes upwards, getting dangerously hurt - morgrym downs a croc, then fumbles as he strikes another, slubbing so badly he has to temporally adjust back out of its jaws - fink distracts some of the crocs with ghost sounds like frogs, morgrym and okrin keep fighting, raph still grappling - a croc gets a really good hit on okrin, drags him under like what happened to fink, morgrym warps over to help him too - fink keeps baiting crocs around with frog sounds, geyser throws them around, morgrym comes to strike at them while okrin admonishes from afar, also throwing a stake of cold iron - in the end, they knock out every croc but the one raph has been taming, he finishes with it at the same time and gives them each 6000gp </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 01/18/2020, Session 16: ???? - morgrym's asleep, orrin/okrin/fink/dennis all hear a knock - the enchanter has come to visit - "I have an inquiry for you all, may I come in?" "is that the inquiry?" "no", shoves his way in lol - poppets go to wake morgrym up so he can be there for the enchanter's deal he's offering - he needs the party's help to fulfill his end of a bargain; extermination of someone (some sort of undead, that makes okrin happy and morgrym's satisfied it's monster extermination and not illegal assassination) - this undead is intelligent, used to be human, has goons; guards a mine that the enchanter wants access to for another client - also, bakko and tara will help out! enchanter teleports them all somewhere - blatant crypt of the decrodancer ripoff; mine has been terraformed to resemble a dance floor with alternating green/blue squares, they hear some sort of music - necrobard is surrounded by three groups (red/black, green/yellow, blue/white), each with a banshee, two undead mages, and four skeleton warriors - bakko hops on tara and they charge forth, fink hastes the party, banshees each summon another skeleton, party runs in - floor zaps morgrym, morgrym/tara/dennis get up there first and start attacking, orrin gets zapped too (green tiles zap, blue don't) - orrin instakills one of the yellow skeletons, mollywomp roars and shatters two more, dennis fumbles and just starts dancing - skeleton tries to shield bash morgrym, goes through his incorporeal form, other one smacks orrin - morgrym kills a black one, it explodes in return; okrin flies into the center of the yellow ones and channels positive energy in a big burst - necrodancer makes bakko and tara dance, undead mages give skeletons extra actions to swarm the party - they push orrin back into a green square, try to do the same to morgrym but hit an image, necrodancer force pushes bakko and tara away - morgrym teleports behind the yellow banshee, strikes at her, realizes she's incorporeal by how he only hits half as hard - okrin's channel makes banshee scream, hurting himself and morgrym; fink shrinks orrin and morgrym, gets deafened by mollywomp's roar as raptor dennis tears into a skeleton - morgrym goes incorporeal and gets a crazy good crit flurry to kill the yellow banshee and cleaves a nearby skeleton, takes scream/explosion damage in return - some skeletons merge into a super one to be big and swat fink out of the air - okrin heals fink, orrin reaches bakko and gets healed, fink goes invisible while prone and scurries away from the skeletons, mages make everyone dance - as orrin comes back into the fight, party tries to stop dancing as the other mages close in, fink summons a hound archon to help - skeletons merge to form a second big one, okrin blasts the necrodancer's lute, damaged but not destroyed - morgrym and orrin both almost fumble against the same target, fink's archon leaves two scratches in the floor, bakko's zone of carnage lets dennis chain-kill 3 skeletons - fight drags on, damage dealers get low, okrin does his best to fly around with his winged boots to heal them while fink summons distractions </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 01/25/2020, Session 17: ???? - dennis unconscious in corner, okrin okay, morgrym/orrin/fink blinded by disco gemstones - morgrym lashes out at the banshee he last saw, hurting it but getting a sonic earful in return - okrin heals himself and orrin, orrin comes to help morgrym but misses the banshee due to blindness - fink summons five earth elementals, has one shove orrin off the green tile, others attack skeleton - bakko and tara keep trying to excavate a big ruby, orrin gets smacked by a skeleton and shoved back onto a green tile - another skeleton whirlwinds and knocks back the four elementals around him, morgrym naturally succeeds not dancing again, okrin starts dancing - necrodancer screams at okrin, knocks him out of the air - morgrym clears his eyes for this round, marks the skeletons, and flurries hard to kill this second banshee (whose scream wounds him and orrin and kills three elementals) - okrin heals dennis, dennis finally wakes up, mollywomp attacks a mage, orrin gets knocked out by the floor zap - dennis and pet start dancing together, two skeletons come for morgrym but both miss, but the floor takes him out too like okrin - okrin heals okrin and morgrym back to consciousness, dennis goes raptor and kills a mage, mollywomp roars at another - orrin almost kills one of the last skeletons, fink spawns black tentacles under necrodancer and lute, grab the guy but not his instrument - boss yells magic at fink, he starts bleeding out on the ground, about to actually die to the floor; morgrym kills a skeleton - okrin swoops in to heal fink, tentacles grapple both boss and instrument this time, morgrym gets shield bashed (through his images) and falls unconscious once more - dennis charges the necrodancer, who laughs off his talon swipes; orrin charges and destroys the penultimate skeleton - tara heals bakko, last skeleton attacks unconscious morgrym but hits an image, okrin heals orrin, orrin attacks last mage - dennis keeps attacking boss, skeleton hits morgrym and he goes back to bleeding out, but okrin heals him; orrin is blind again but kills the last mage - morgrym yells at the others to get tara to do something, then kills the last skeleton; okrin heals fink - most of the party is occupied with the necrodancer, banshee knocks morgrym down again so okrin gets him back up - dennis keeps attacking the lute, orrin asks bakko what they're doing with the ruby, she says she and tara were sent for these gems - after much seesaw-ing of the party going down and getting back up, the necrodancer's biggest roar kills fink and knocks out morgrym and orrin; the enchanter's voice echoes in okrin and dennis' heads asking if they're done this time around - the party wakes up all at full health and no resources used back at the manor; as far as they can tell, the last thing they remember was helping raphael with the crocs, before the enchanter came - but fink and morgrym have big brain int crits; fink can tell time has passed that they somehow weren't aware of, morgrym remembers that they do know someone capable of modifying memories (the enchanter)... then the knock comes </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 02/01/2020, Session 18: ???? - fink scrambles to see through the peephole, morgrym struggles to lift him up to help - dennis lets enchanter in, enchanter makes his offer, party accepts (though okrin is still sleeping this time) - enchanter gives them more info on the necrodancer this time around, morgrym shrewdly suspects enchanter having so much info, enchanter calls him the smart one (fink lets him think that) - morgrym shakes his hand this time, grimacing and promising internally to investigate this mining baron the enchanter his helping to make sure he's all above-board (since the enchanter wouldn't confirm it) - after the group prepares, they get warped into the mines! necrodancer is apoplectic, "you again!?" - orrin pulls out his hidden daggers and instakills one of the skeletons, whose death zaps morgrym via floor tile - fink goes invis, calls for the others to get close so he can haste; morgrym moves next to orrin and makes mirror images - mollywomp attacks skeleton, dennis attacks banshee, who screams and hurts orrin, morgrym, dennis - skeletons move in, miss morgrym, shove dennis and orrin onto green tiles - each banshee summons a new skeleton; necrodancer makes floor shock dennis and orrin, then sings, empowering skeletons - orrin shifts and slaughters a skeleton, making the floor light up again and hurting dennis - fink makes the party fast, morgrym studies banshees and goes incorporeal to match her, flurrying and hitting all three times to kill her! but her screams hurt, hitting orrin and dennis worse than morgrym - mollywomp roars at banshee and some skellies, she screams back at everyone but fink; everyone's getting pretty wounded - banshees make more skeletons, some of them attempt to hit morgrym but he's still incorporeal; fink shrinks orrin - floor changes color, necro song slows down! buffs them in a different way, banshees seem empowered now instead of skellies - orrin flanks with morgrym, takes out two skeletons; fink tries to make black tentacles but finds out the hard way the necrodancer's song now comes with spell fail chance - morgrym dodges some skeleton swipes as he moves closer to the next banshee; mollywomp roars again, but this time the party got clear of the banshee's reply in their screaming contest - morgrym loses 2 of his 3 images to skelly shield shoves, orrin dodges one; orrin moves up with morgrym, kills another skeleton - fink tries to confuse some of the banshees, but his spell fizzles again - morgrym asks orrin if he can take another yell ("no"), so he tells orrin to get clear and hits skelly while waiting to hit banshee - mollywomp eats a snack and slams a skeleton; music and floor color change again, everyone but dennis begins to dance! fink realizes that not resisting and dancing willingly means they don't get a save but they just lose move action instead of full - enchanter drops okrin in with a puff of red smoke, "better late than never!"; okrin activates his boots and flies over to heal orrin - morgrym (dancing willingly) is reassured now that orrin won't die from a scream, so he once more goes incorp and flurries; this time he crits, slaughtering the second banshee, but her yell hurts him, okrin, and orrin, and also orrin goes deaf - mollywomp dances, gets attacked by a skeleton; dennis comes in and kills a skeleton, and the floor pulses again but cold this time (different color = different damage type) - floor color changes back, dancing ends, but skeletons are buffed again; but they're so bad that one hits his ally while trying to hit the mollywomp; but they're so good that dennis, orrin, and morgrym are each grappled and moved onto a danger tile, getting zapped by electricity once more - orrin kills two more skellies, but the floor reactivates twice and he/morgrym/dennis are all hurt again - okrin heals morgrym then flies over to holy smite the skeletons and banshees near the mollywomp, killing many skellies but zapping the crew hard again, morgrym gets off a bad tile and focuses to spawn more mirror images - dennis moves but immediately gets pushed back, fink finishes summoning air elementals behind the lute, they go whirlwind but the lute resists their attempts to move it; necrodancer is enraged - fink shrinks morgrym, okrin moves to the center and channels to heal everyone; morgrym is emboldened to continue banshee duty and kill the third banshee, missing one attack but the other two take her out as she was weakened by the mollywomp's roaring, but her death scream hurts fink, dennis, morgrym - dennis kills a skeleton, mollywomp attacks another; others push fink and orrin onto frost tiles as the dance tune plays again - orrin shifts and kills one of the last few skeletons, fink levitates, okrin summons force spears - dennis goes to shove a banshee so her scream is further away from the others (saves fink), skeleton tries to shove him on the way but only makes him push further; mollywomp kills a skeleton - orrin is shoved and floor-zapped again, kills the penultimate skeleton but zaps himself in doing so (forgot to shift off before) - fink starts summoning more air elementals, okrin channels to heal everyone, morgrym takes out the fourth and final banshee - mollywomp kills final skeleton, shocking orrin one last time; dennis tries to grab lute but it dodges - necro changes tune, floor hits orrin with acid, orrin slashes at lute, damaging it but it purges all of the party's buffs - okrin throws all six spears, morgrym teleport strikes, mollywomp roars, all at the lute; necrodancer roars, lute's on-damaged effect changes and everyone other than okrin and morgrym flee - necrodancer's channelling finishes, every tile lights up with acid, cold, and shock; orrin is staggered again - okrin reactivates fly boots, fink reduces morgrym, morgrym flurries lute, fink realizes it's almost destroyed, its discordant sounds force everyone to flee again; orrin charges back in, almost destroys it - but the color has changed, third type of harsh sound, everyone but okrin is concussed; fink is too dazed to do anything - okrin channels, morgrym shakes off the concussion and charges in to hit the lute, not quite breaking it but setting off another round of concussions for all but dennis and his pet - floor bursts again, hurting all but okrin and mollywomp; orrin is too concussed to finish off the lute - fink attempts to dispel any magic on the necrodancer, but he had no more active effects - okrin fires a searing ray and finally destroys the lute, causing the necrodancer to scream and wither away - enchanter, having been watching, warps them back, rewards them </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 02/15/2020, Session 19: ???? - another knock, orrin answers to see a blackstone guard come to fetch the party for the commander, so he wakes the others - after fink finishes crafting a saddle for dennis/mollywomp, they head over - commander has a colleague, ozymandias, head of sandstone legion (another stronghold city), who would like to borrow some help from the blackstone; party is sweetspot of not irreplaceable like lieutenant, but more competent than grunts - they head home to pack then hop on the train! when they arrive, they see a variety of things that they considered exotic, like a bazaar and a snake charmer and a sword swallower, and another location of pierre's restaurant! - they head to the sandstone citadel to meet ozymandias; he mentions rumors of a buried temple somewhere, and he doesn't want to waste his own men's time, but while he was chatting with the blackstone commander, blackstone offered party's help - he does want to test the party though; he brings them to dunes that have giant sand worms below them - fink and morgrym have heard of them before; know of their tremorsense and dr and sand spit - party figures they should all fly; dennis turns into dragonfly, orrin rides mollywomp, okrin activates boots, fink casts fly on himself and morgrym (and also reduces orrin and morgrym) - dennis gives some of his magic popcorn to morgrym and orrin to protect them from the mollywomp roar, then throws bread on the sand between the flying party to mimic footsteps... but his throw is wimpy and a worm jumps up, grazing dennis and hitting okrin! they're both hurt, but okrin escapes being swallowed whole - everyone readies themselves to strike at the worms when they show themselves, fink summons black tentacles to wriggle around and bait multiple worms, bringing them to the surface - readied actions pop, morgrym teleports in and back while okrin throws force spears, mollywomp screams - after they take out the worms, okrin sees a crew sneaking up behind ozymandais with weapons drawn and fires two admonishing rays, though only one hits - a worm appears and dives at them, but all four raiders dodge then throw giant shurikens at okrin and ozymandias' guards - orrin flies over on the mollywomp and stabs at one of the assassins, morgrym does the same to a second; neither dies, but it seems close - dragonfly dennis comes in and finishes one of them, fink finishes summoning an air elemental and confuses one of the remaining attackers; okrin calls down a holy smite on all three - all the commotion brings two more worms up, hurting almost every combatant; one of the assassins takes the chance to hit morgrym with a shuriken, another hurts himself in his confusion, the last sand-warp-jumps to one of ozymandias's guards and slashes at him from behind - ozymandias counters with a sand blast from his staff, party cleans up the last two with a particularly critical nonlethal ray from okrin, orrin scratches mollywomp under his chin - but dennis gets swallowed by a worm and brought underground! stomach acid burns him, fink has air elemental stir up sand to bait worm back, okrin tries to fry it while morgrym teleport attacks it, and they hurt it badly enough to make it spit him out - but while okrin heals everyone, he accidentally includes some of the assassins in the aoe! - they attack ozymandias as one, he's wounded! orrin tries to go help but gets hit by 3 shurikens! but he still knocks one back down (permanently) - morgrym tries to move in, realizes their reactions are on point and decides to teleport in instead, knocking another unconscious - dragonfly dennis comes in for the last assailant, and fink's magic missile finishes him off - the guards take away the assassins that survived back to citadel, party takes apart worms for vials of stomach acid - ozymandias offers to put the the party up in a nearby inn as thanks </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 02/22/2020, Session 20: ???? - they see the commander in the morning, who shows them to the pyramid he wants them to investigate - they're at the top of a hill, and they see a man at the bottom; the guy with the 4 floating hands from the lab! he approaches ozy - "ozymandius, come to see me acquire another treasure?" "ilya, come to rob another grave?" "no, it's archaeology, you're just jealous" - okrin notices that ilya recognizes them, but both sides keep silent; ilya walks off, ozy is mad and wants the party to beat him to the treasure - fink and morgrym know that places like this often have many traps to defend the valuables that these people were buried with - party enters, slab drops behind them as soon as they all enter; they realize there were pressure plates that kept the door open, but now they're stuck - fink pulls from his robe of infinite twine to mark their path, okrin investigates the sarcophagi; he detects undead, but nothing happens so the party boards up those doors with statues - as they go through the labyrinth, they avoid an arrow trap by ducking underneath, but later get swarmed by scarabs! but the mollywomp roars them to death - they find an explorer's pack in a side room, along with a sliding puzzle of a fox on the wall; when solved, it gives them knowledge of the scarab traps - orrin matrix dodges a swinging axe, then they stumble upon a magic ricochet robots ("dancing genies") board that invites them to play; they win with a close 8-7, and are rewarded with a little gold minotaur trophy of true form - fink's alert poppet comes running up to him, as he was instructed to do when someone else entered the pyramid - they proceed a little more carefully, finding (and flipping over) another sarcophagus, which rattles angrily - in a later room, they find a long-dead skeleton with local clothes - they narrowly dodge a new trap, trip wire with acid fog - at some point, fink realizes that his twine has gone especially limp! he asks morgrym to check - morgrym finds that the rope has been cut near the doors, and the statues they moved have been moved back - he doesn't notice anything else odd, so he ties the rope back up around the pillars and investigates the side rooms; when he sees all the sarcophagi lids ajar, he runs back to the rest of the group to warn them about a potential mummy attack - and, soon enough, they reach a big center room in the labyrinth with a bunch of minotaur mummies! only 4 though, and there were 9 sarcophagi - fink is bodyblocked by the mollywomp so can't help much, but the others get into the room and take them out without too much injury - ilya emerges from the shadows and confirms their deduction that there are more mummies somewhere - morgrym asks if hes there to kill them, ilya asks why he would do that, morgrym gets into a "we know that you know that we know who you are" etc. - ilya says that he was impressed with their ability to fend off the undead, wants to know if they can work together and split the loot - party asks how they know he's capable, he sends some floating hands to drag in 2 more mummies (supposedly slain by him); now 6/9 are accounted for - they end up refusing him though, and he walks away </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 03/07/2020, Session 21: ???? - when the fight is over, the party notices the labyrinth has rearranged itself - morgrym and fink lead the way towards further investigation, fink dodges an arrow trap - a mummy awaits around the corner! they take it out easily, mummy disarmed itself with its flailing - they reach a side room, it shows signs of being explored recently, but the party doesn't remember doing so - all dead ends, they back up to the central area and check another route; okrin takes out the mummy this time - third time, dennis and orrin get this one; but instead of a dead end, this one leads to a big room! - 26 statues, hieroglyphs on the floor; each statue has a symbol matching one of the tiles - but the party doesn't know which ones they need to bring the statues for - luckily, there's a memory card puzzle in the room on the right, morgrym matches everything in a little over a minute and the cards corresponding to the 4 important tiles stay face-up while the others flip back over - okrin sees ilya come up behind them, morgrym remains reserved about his involvement so tries to avoid giving it away - ilya looks in the room on the left, similar memory puzzle there, he's completing it very quickly, but his are a different four! - the party finishes putting their four statues on the matching tiles, hear stone grinding but nothing else happens - they then do ilya's four, since he seems non-hostile for now; more grinding, but back wall still doesn't move - then the dancing genie construct, rukh, (this labyrinth's tour guide) comes, advises them that these statues need to be placed in a certain order; he'll tell them if they beat him in a game - "light and dark" (othello/reversi) - game takes a while, so fink just goes to reorder them because he realized the symbols matched the letters in "minotaur", so that's probably the order; he has dennis come to do the heavy lifting - before he does, he slips morgrym a vial of sand worm stomach acid and nods his head at ilya - this time, with the right order, a big stone slab rises, and a giant minotaur comes out! and morgrym takes the chance to coat his weapon and stab ilya! - morgrym making the sneak attack (instead of, say, orrin) on ilya (who had not recently attacked them) was a little uncharacteristic, maybe (since he's still kinda young) his emotions got the best of him, couldn't stand the perceived injustice of knowing that ilya worked with evil people like kayn (back when ilya grappled him in the lab) yet was still walking around freely? </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 03/14/2020, Session 22: ???? - as the minotaur slowly rumbles forward, ilya backhands morgrym and sends him flying - okrin gets in range to channel and heal the party, fink goes invisible - dennis approaches the minotaur and tries to communicate with him, speaking of board games and fun times; the beast looks at him, unswayed - it then charges forward, knocking morgrym and okrin to the left and right and smashing the statues he hits - ilya flees into a side passage, orrin follows but gets grappled as he rounds the corner - morgrym goes around to help him flank, but is stopped by an ankheg popping up! then another! but they both miss, he proceeds - okrin gives dennis enhanced diplomacy, fink starts magically flying and heads towards the side room he saw morgrym go into - dennis keeps trying to talk to the minotaur, but can't seem to find the right words to say - minotaur roars, debris falls from the ceiling, scarab swarm annoys fink - ilya throws orrin at morgrym and knocks them both down as he runs back out towards okrin in the main chamber - orrin chases, morgrym tries to do so as well by going ethereal but the walls fight back and make him confused - okrin readies himself to bestow a curse on the minotaur if it charges him, fink flies over and reduces orrin - third time's the charm - dennis' empathy gets him a sense that the minotaur is stressed about something, dennis mimes that okrin is friend and ilya is foe - minotaur charges at ilya, happens to hit fink too - ilya dodges, fink gets smacked and falls out of the air - another ankheg sprouts and grapples orrin's leg, ilya runs from the minotaur and morgrym shakes off his stupor long enough to strike as he passes - morgrym is confused, fink tries but fails to dispel it then decides to explore the area the minotaur came from, sickened by the corpses he finds, also sees shackles minotaur escaped from; doesn't find any artifacts - dennis asks rukh for advice/info about minotaur (humans go into the chamber, minotaurs come out!) - mollywomp gets swarmed by scarabs, minotaur charges, morgrym dodges but okrin gets trampled - morgrym reverts his confusion, okrin heals himself, fink flies after ilya, but bumps his head and ilya hears him - dennis asks around who has the golden statue they got from rukh, okrin does; morgrym helpfully reminds them it has true form magic, but the target needs to be willing or helpless - mollywomp frees orrin from the creature grabbing him by killing it - minotaur charges ilya, can't get into the room, more debris falls - morgrym goes to okrin, okrin heals him and hands him the statuette, morgrym runs back towards beast - fink breaks invis trying to confuse ilya, but ilya resists; mollywomp roars to wipe out swarms - dennis calms down minotaur, BUT THEN ilya pulls out an amulet and touches it to the minotaur, who fumbles and this almost-gentle-giant becomes enraged, sending dennis flying across the room! - the others realize something is wrong; okrin approaches, intending to use his curse of friendship - fink fails to escape ilya's grip, dennis' communication now falls on deaf ears; minotaur charges him - ilya pins fink and drags him deeper, blocking the doorway with a statue; orrin, reduced, slips between its legs to give chase - morgrym can't do much to calm the minotaur down, so he tosses okrin the true from idol then teleports past the blocked doorway to join orrin and fink - okrin tries to curse the minotaur to be willing, but it resists; fink is still stuck - dennis tries to climb the minotaur to pull off the amulet that ilya stuck to him; he has the mollywomp flail around to distract the beast, so he gets about halfway up; the minotaur then slams dennis into the wall, but the shifter holds on - ilya uses his 2nd and 3rd hands to grapple orrin and morgrym, morgrym temporally reverts it and the 4th hand hits one of his images; orrin just breaks the grapple with ease - morgrym claims ilya, then uses the item fink gave him to reflect his strike, hurting ilya and at the same time breaking the grip of the floating hand that held armenius fink - okrin tries to curse the minotaur again but it resists; fink spawns mirror images and backs away from ilya - dennis climbs the rest of the way up the minotaur's back and rips the amulet out, it loses its frenzy but cries out in pain - ilya sends all 4 grappling hands at morgrym, two destroy his remaining images and he dodges the other two - he throws a flashbang, but fink/orrin/morgrym all look away in time - morgrym steps up and flurries, hitting hard with the first blow but stumbling and tripping as he attempts the second - orrin attacks ilya, not as effectively as he'd like because morgrym's prone and can't flank ilya with him - okrin presses the idol on the minotaur, a flash of purple light reveals an aventurer, milo - seems like an archaeologist - okrin heads towards the rubble blockage, fink gives orrin greater invis - ilya destroys morgrym's image and grapples both him and fink; they fail to break out, but while ilya gloats as he squeezes them, orrin strikes while invisible! he misses 2 of his 3 attacks, maybe not super used to being invisible, but the one he lands huuurts - okrin heals dennnis and shifts the rubble out of the way, dennis moves in to join the fight with ilya but misses everything - orrin gets grappled too, okrin heals fink and summons force spears; mollywomp yells and finishes off one of the hands - ilya gets so mad that he lets go of the others and sends all of his hands at dennis, but he can't grab him! - morgrym, freed, slices at ilya and finishes him off; okrin curses him to misremember these events as the minotaur singlehandedly taking out ilya and the party coming to his rescue - ilya wakes up from being healed, the memories took; milo explains to everyone how he turned into a minotaur when he killed the previous one (but he ended up killing the rest of his party) - he found no treasure here, but says there's treasure elsewhere! a library under the sands, the party agrees to help him explore it - dennis and fink invite rukh to come back with them, fink grabs the amulet to study and learn dominate monster later - ozymandius is waiting outside to hear what they got; they explain milo and the map he found </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 03/21/2020, Session 23: ???? - they gang goes shopping in town the next day before heading for the library on the map - dennis buys a scarf, the others go window shopping for ideas and materials to have fink make them - okrin wants fink to make new armor, so he sells his old armor to a shopkeeper; shoppie doesn't believe it saved him from a minotaur, thinks monsters are rare, okrin calls dennis and mollyomp over, shoppie is scared and pays up - they find milo, he leads them to a friend of his who can help him decipher the map's ancient arabian (he only knows relatively recent modern arabian) - bartimaeus, a gruff old human alchemist, lets them in; he can help with the map, but he needs their help first - a student of his messed up an ingredients request from a genie and ended up getting turned into an orange newt - they lament using up their true form statue, but fink thinks he can craft an ointment that does something similar - the party pools their funds and morgrym goes out to buy ingredients as fink's runner - percival the tiefling is un-newted! morgrym sees the tail and red skin, jokes that it didn't work all the way - bartimaeus translates and identifies things on the map, as per his word; he and percival want to come, interested in the potential knowledge - they wait a week so fink can craft some smaller items, then head out on the sand speeder ozymandius lent them - during orrin's watch the first night, he hears a strange noise; he lets fink (who's staying up crafting) know, and they listen carefully - fink doesn't hear it, but okrin finds a group of people behind a rock across the bridge next to their camp, they wake the others - at this sign of trouble, dennis hands out his special popcorn to the party, and gives the mollywomp its roar-enhancing treat - orrin and fink try to investigate, but fink is amazingly un-stealthy and alerts these mysterious people - they decide to call out and ask who the strangers are, the question is turned back and it devolves into curiosity about fink's now-further-reduced size - turns out these people are highwaymen, eventually they just decide to attack the party to rob their corpses - okrin shows the swordsman his early judgement, confusing him; the enemy mage creates a whirlwind of sand - morgrym gets his mirror images, dennis charges in and attacks the mage (cleric) - fink scurries over to orrin and has his petrifern deliver greater invisibility; okrin notices three more bandits coming up the ravine - the confused warrior babbles, his ally slashes at dennis, okrin summons force spears - the newer bandits swing at fink, mad at his initial provocation, wounding him noticeably - mollywomp roars and raptor dennis claws, still attacking the first two, but they don't finish anyone off - morgrym warps to the new arrivals and hits one with a force touch, then fink encloses them in a wall of force - enemy clerics enlarge some nearby bugs, 6 giant centipedes attack; 3 on dennis, 2 on morgrym, 1 on fink, but all miss - okrin throws his spears and kills one of the bugs, injures another; now-un-confused warrior attacks dennis - one bandit acrobatics-es his way out of the force cage (friend boosted him), but misses his attack on fink - dennis and mollywomp take out one cleric and three centipedes, morgrym's chain teleport takes out two bugs and hurts the other cleric - fink begins summoning a bearded devil, remaining cleric casts burrow and tunnels away through the ground - seeing that fink has this in hand, morgrym pulls out a torch and begins investigating where the bandits came from and maybe where the one got away, dennis joins him but finds nothing further - the bearded devil appears next to fink, man in force cage thinks he's safe, then devil warps into the cage with an evil grin - morgrym can't bear to watch, though he knows this is technically self-defense (gone a little far), so he goes scouting - after a few rounds of bearded devil beatdown, fink lets dennis' mollywomp roar for a mercy kill </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 03/28/2020, Session 24: ???? - fink teleports rukh back to the house, comes back with omar! - as they all return to the ship, omar helps bartimaeus steer as fink takes lookout from the top; the others chat or sleep - a sandstorm pops up, fink crawls down and, as bartimaeus does his best to escape the storm, he ends up steering them right by a nomadic settlement - their mast broke in the storm, and the ship wouldn't be able to carry them any further in its current condition - the locals agreed to repair the damage that their ship had taken, on one condition: the party would participate in one of their local customs, the fight pits! - this offer was extended to them by the boss, sett, a massive 8 ft. human (they think?) who looks ready to brawl - bartimaeus instantly accepts the offer; morgrym asks percival how to get his teacher to come back, the apprentice explains how bartimaeus is too trusting - the others take a bit more convincing, okrin and omar in particular; sett, bartimaeus, and the other travelers that blew in a week or so ago for similar reasons (doran and echo! otis has personal business at home) drink cactus juice while they watch - sett's surprised they know each other, orrin tells him about their previous tournament, sett mentions how perfect their prior experience was for the fight pit here - meanwhile, okrin is still resisting, trying to summon something while talking to echo and doran, but they like the fight pit idea (and reward) - omar tries to hydraulic push one of the warriors, but they don't really move anywhere, they just get wet and glare at him - okrin finishes summoning his hound archon, which attacks his foe with a greatsword, the nomads are freaking out at this point - omar creates a wall of stone around the warrior he soaked, but his wild magic means that pink bubbles, rather than words, exit his mouth when he tries to speak! - eventually the two resisting are convinced that this was meant to come across as a friendly (if rough) offer, not menacing, but cultural differences - sett's amused, he likes to see people's fighting prowess - misunderstanding is cleared up, everyone has time to rest and prepare for the big fight - 4 teams of 2, winning team gets to fight sett, but regardless of outcome his people will repair the ship in exchange for this entertainment - morgrym and orrin, okrin and dennis, fink and omar, echo and doran </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 04/04/2020, Session 25: ???? - party converges on doran and echo (except the wizards, they're off in the corner doing something nobody knows) - morgrym gets images, mollywomp roars, okrin tries to warp doran's armor but ekko has a weird time portal that makes it succumb to the fail chance (same with morgrym's re-marking) - echo's sandstorm also hurts orrin and morgrym, okrin dispels it, dennis attacks doran, orrin makes it in while doran blocks morgrym using his tower shield and orrin sneakily stabs doran HARD - echo reverts the damage orrin did to doran, okrin warps doran's shield and armor beyond recognition! he flees, orrin and morgrym stab and slash as they go - mollywomp and morgrym chase, hitting the stripped doran, while omar keeps summoning animals on top of one of the rock pillars (while mad at fink, who flew them up too high) - omar's wild magic pops, opening a rift that more wild animals (not under his control) fall out of, above the central pillar, as he creates a ramp of stone to let his summons down - morgrym and orrin finish off doran and echo (morgrym's massacre gets him both last hits, so he steals extra health), and nomads come onto the field to pull the unconscious pair off - the wild boars suicide dive off the central pillar at the ankylosaurus that fink summoned, and omar messages the whole party to let them know this portal will last a while - orrin turns on the mollywomp, sneak attacking it but missing some of his stabs; okrin dispels the wild rift - fink's ankylosaurus crits dennis from below with an amazing tail smash, deals massive damage but doesn't stun him, omar sends a cheetah - mollywomp roars at the sneaky duo, deafened orrin full attacks and slaughters it (knowing that dennis can bring it back) - okrin gets revenge, inflicting critical wounds and knocking orrin unconscious; fink summons another ankylosaurus, the animals charge okrin and dennis - dennis attacks the first one, wounding it heavily, and morgrym finishes it off; okrin tries to critically injure morgrym, but hits an image instead - morgrym slays the second ankylosaurus, and omar creates an aggressive thundercloud on him, which he dodges; his animals attack, and also miss so bad that his cheetah hurts his boar - his four eagles attack dennis, who responds by taking out a bunch of them; morgrym swaps stances to be less evasive but see invis, and runs over at fink, taking flight as he goes - omar summons another cloud, this time on okrin, but he baaarely gets out of the way; okrin responds by showing him his early judgement, fascinating him </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 04/11/2020, Session 26: ???? - dragonfly dennis flies at omar and bites him, morgrym flies up towards fink but the wizard confuses him and he hurts himself instead - omar drops a lightning arc on dennis and okrin, okrin hits omar with force spears, fink flies away from morgrymm - morgrym's confusion makes him attack the summoned creatures near him instead of chase fink; omar runs away from dennis, but fink knocks him out with force spears - morgrym babbles, okrin flies towards him (and as he goes away from dennis, he sees that dennis has been turned invisible by omar's wild magic, but it was suppressed by okrin's spell until now) - fink's giant ant tries to sting morgrym, but misses; dennis comes charging in, morgrym reflection attacks him along with fink's ant - okrin comes in to heal dennis, dennis destroys two of morgrym's images and then actually hurting him - morgrym keeps babbling, dennis finishes all his images, fink does something invis off behind a rock; morgrym heals from attacking dennis, okrin heals dennis - fink summons another ankylosaurus, it comes running at the others; dennis misses attacking morgrym, morgrym keeps drain tanking off dennis - fink's dinosaur FLIES AT OKRIN and smacks him with its tail! dennis disengages from morgrym and goes to where he thinks he saw the dinosaur charge from - morgrym's final bit of confusion has him try to attack the dino, eating an AoO for his troubles and failing to break through the mage armor fink put on it - okrin files straight up, ankylosaurus swings twice at morgrym but misses (unused to being off the ground?) - morgrym is finally in control of himself, moves up and spawns images; okrin goes energy body, fink sees dennis' invis run out - morgrym flies away from the dinosaur, okrin heals himself, fink summons a pterodactyl next to dennis, but it misses its attack - morgrym takes a HEAVY hit from the ankylosaurus, and while severely injured, he goes ghost and flurries it to slay it - okrin heals himself and flies down towards dennis, fink gives himself mage armor and sends the pterodactyl after dennis, who turns and cuts it out of the air - dennis comes closer to morgrym, who creates an image; he sees/hears a revived orrin cheering him on in the stands - fink sends an air elemental towards okrin, dennis hits morgrym, who goes ghost and hits back to heal himself - okrin flies across past dennis and morgrym, fink's air elemental chases him and hits him with a flyby slam, and he's summoning another - morgrym lifesteals on dennis and reflects it on the first elemental as well, okrin channels to cure dennis then gets rushed by the second elemental - fink summons a bird, dennis full attacks morgrym, who strikes back and finally knocks him out! crowd cheers - okrin summons a new set of force spears, is slammed by the elemental but it's such a minor blow that he doesn't care; okrin crits the elemental as it flies away - fink sends a magical message of good luck to the others, has his invisible familiar ride a summoned eagle - okrin hits morgrym with a barrage, one is particularly devastating and morgrym is on death's door - fink's familiar gives morgrym greater invisibility and the bird flies back - morgrym appreciates it but is super lawful and doesn't want to spoil the teams, so he flies right at okrin and flurries, hitting all three massive blows, but okrin remains standing! - okrin has ONE final force spear, and he throws it at morgrym, ignoring his incorporealness, and he FINALLY takes morgrym out - fink throws a splash of acid at okrin, hitting but not doing much; okrin's last spear is wasted on one of fink's many mirror images - okrin summons hedging weapons (his budget blistering blades), fink keeps using acid splash - this goes on for quite a few rounds, acid splash and mirror images and a summoned bird vs a mace and healing - sett's begun to get bored, dennis and morgrym convince him that they've passed the threshold for being worthy to fight him, so now sett will let them deliberate to decide which party members will take him on - the whole party discusses, decides on orrin and fink </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 04/18/2020, Session 27: ???? - sett brings the gang back to the arena the next day, dennis gives fast-healing-when-below-half cookies to fink and orrin - fink spent last night crafting a leather harness for orrin to carry him in - the arena is a chariot race! morgrym, okrin, and dennis are in the stands with a crowd of nomads, fink and orrin are down at the carts with sett - there are people on the inside of the track, standing on short pillars, holding weapons that the contestants can take if they slow down, race is 8 laps, winner gets a number of free hits equal to their lap lead at the start of the real fight - as the race starts, fink hastes the horses and sett's chariot hits some debris and stumbles! - sett catches up as okrin grabs a hook-on-a-rope from someone, fink lights a spark on sett's chariot that he has to slow down a bit to put out - orrin grabs caltrops, fink tries to slow sett (who almost surged ahead) and his horses, but it fails to affect any of them and sett laughs it off - sett drifts around and slides in front of the others, grabbing a bag of some sort of powder from the center people; orrin tries to throw his grappling hook, but misses - as orrin brings them in close, on the 4th lap at this point, fink summons a horse right in front of sett's two horses! as they all get entangled, sett's chariot veers towards the party's! - they collide, sett is thrown from his chariot into theirs as his goes swerving at the crowd! he punches orrin with a mighty blow - fink throws pocket sand, but sett wipes it away as it flies; he then picks orrin up, fink in pocket, and tosses them into his now-broken chariot! - fink starts mending it, orrin gets them back on track as set gets moving with their hasted horses - fink dispels the haste and orrin nails his horse-guiding perfectly, so they take the lead back as they start the 6th lap - and somehow, orrin gets it perfect again! but sett uses some sort of ball-bearing-shooter to launch scattershot at them, but orrin swerves the cart to dodge perfectly! - they drop caltrops behind them, which sett cleanly dodges, and they finish the race just a few dozen feet ahead! - sett gives them a single swing (a dagger strike from orrin), some people come to clean up the carts, then they get into the center of the track and fight for real! - sett starts it off with a solid punch to orrin's face, fink tries to cast greater invis defensively but loses the spell, orrin attacks four times but with surprisingly poor form, missing everything; sett's having fun dodging - sett has an idea and sprints away from fink and orrin, fink turns orrin invisible properly this time, orrin chases - sett punches the pillar, attempting to bring it down, fink calculates its trajectory and guides orrin out of the way, orrin gets a good sneaky attack off - sett finishes taking down the pillar, but it doesn't hit the party members; fink casts fly on orrin, orrin full attacks sett, hitting two out of five, then shifts diagonally - sett picks up the massive pillar and swings in a circle around him, bludgeoning fink and orrin and knocking them into the sand, revealing them via outline - orrin brushes the sand off, effectively going invis once more, and sett spends some time looking around for them while fink begins summoning an ankylosaurus - dino appears flanking sett and smacks him, but sett grabs at the area where he saw orrin before, throwing him into the dino! - they heal from the cookies they had earlier, but they're huuurt; orrin moves in and gets off one more attack - sett charges the ankylosaurus, taking a hit from orrin and the dino as he moves in, then grabs the dino and leaps up into the air before smashing it down into the ground (morgrym's faint cheer can be heard, "eat it dino!") - orrin misses his next swing, fink makes him levitate to help contribute to his movement, sett finishes the ankylosaurus - orrin gets off another full round attack, but misses all but one hit thanks to being floating around unstable; he notices that sett seems to be healing some of their damage - fink dismisses levitate, orrin keeps hitting, sett readies himself for something; fink tries to whisper a message to ask okrin how to counter fast healing, but by some miracle, sett hears it! - sett quickly reaches out and grabs fink, pulling him out and revealing him; fink fails his attempt to wriggle free pretty terribly - orrin deals immense damage, but it's not enough to free fink (who's taking a careful look at sett's magic brass knuckles) - while sett tries to finish off fink, orrin swings wildly, finally knocking out sett but also knocking out fink as he falls out of sett's hands! - the rest of the party comes out, okrin channels and the unconscious two wake up - sett congratulates them with a reward in coins, the nomads loved the entertainment, and also their ship has been repaired - before they leave for real, they stick around so fink can craft some items for orrin </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 04/25/2020, Session 28: ???? - the party reaches the location marked on the map, where they find, amidst some ruins, a large fountain - fink examines it and finds two strong auras, conjuration and abjuration - bartimaeus follows up, theorizes that what they're looking for is below the fountain - morgrym suspects, and fink confirms, that the conjuration is just the water creation - bartimaeus reads over the runes and comes to the conclusion that any arcane/occult caster can keep the slab open by channeling some of their magic into it - the party debates trying to stone shape the slab permanently open, but bartimaeus and milo volunteer to stay behind to watch the ship and the entrance - they find a room of bookshelves, some of which are magical; fink, dennis, and okrin all somehow notice that there's an odd pattern to the number of books in each cubby - fink sees that 6,3,3;4,3,7;10,0,10 can be rearranged into 4,4,4;4,4,4;4,4,4, but it doesn't change anything - okrin notices a particularly well-handled book, the history of the solaren; orrin and morgrym each recall bits about them from this name, they were the personal advisers/attendants/bodyguards of the ancient pharaohs before modern sandstone legion times - okrin identifies an illusion aura on this book, but fink is able to pick it up with mage hand... and the bookshelf, properly weighted, slides out of the way! - the book itself is empty, but they all see a major image illusion of a pharaoh receiving news of an army approaching, and responding to alert the solaren - the next room has a similar bookshelf blocking their path, they try moving books so the shelves match the counts in the previous rooms, but no good - after a lot of brainstorming, fink and morgrym see a pattern in how, in the previous room, they vertically sum to the bottom ones - then fink notices that they also horizontally sum to the right ones! with this, the party is able to rearrange the books one last time, and this bookshelf also slides aside - the illusion this time is an army of several hundred, including battering rams they use to break down a gate, panicked people are scattering - the next room contains, in addition to bookshelves, two hyaenodons! morgrym warps behind them as orrin runs up, slashing and stabbing - fink conjures mage armor while okrin throws an admonishing ray, dennis feeds his pet a snack as it flies forward to slam - both beasts miss morgrym, and he dazes one; orrin then full attacks, killing one with two hits, then shifting in, then killing the other with his other two hits! - pondering the corpses, morgrym realizes that they were able to survive here by eating the rats that would otherwise prey on the books - then they solve this bookshelf puzzle; its illusion shows the invaders start to ransack but then a lightning arrow flies out, zapping a dozen of them, and the scene pans to a woman with long blonde hair, a crackling bow, and an aura of lightning - the next room has five hyaenodons, the party all eats dennis' popcorn so they're immune to the mollywomp's roar - fink tries to bait them in, looking like a juicy rat, and the party makes pretty short work of all five - next puzzle's illusion is a herculean man throwing a mighty spear which then bursts into a barrage of icicle spears as the original returns to his hand - four more hyenas, then book puzzle, this one's illusion has a woman with a scythe and some sort of mass hold person/levitate bloodbending, and her scythe drinks its victims blood to glow deeper red - no hyenas in the next room, next illusion is a man with brass knuckles who slams an invader into some other ones like sett does, cocky "come at me" wave - 3 hyenas, then the illusion: fifth solaren, greatsword wielder, cuts a raging swath through the horde of invaders - final puzzle and illusion: all 5 solaren reporting in to the pharaoh that the invading force has been eradicated, he thanks them for their service - by the way, orrin finds it a little unsettling that milo and bartimaeus, an alchemist and archeologist, were willing to miss out on all of this - past all the bookshelves is a staircase up to some sort of garden-living quarters combo with a massive talking fox (and some smaller ones) - he asks them for introduction very politely; his name is koga and he requests that each guest donate a piece of knowledge - morgrym sketches out an illustration manual of the maneuver he custom researched, dark reflection; koga is impressed by something he hasn't seen before and has another fox take the scroll into the archives in back - fink has morgrym help him draw blueprints for archibald, koga is again impressed with this new knowledge and has a servant add it to his archives - dennis offers the recipe for his roar-enhancing snack, again all good with koga - orrin demonstrates how to underhandedly feint for max damage sneak attack, okrin gives the text concerning a divine gate, same response - koga's satisfied, lets them into this deeper section of the library (but warns them off one particular forbidden section) </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 05/02/2020, Session 29: ???? - morgrym finds martial maneuver manuscripts, okrin and fink find books of spells, dennis finds studies of an animal aspect, orrin finds notes on advanced rogue talents (maybe all demonstrated via major images?) - morgrym thanks koga, wonders if there's any knowledge they should bring back to ozymandius - okrin asks for info about the enchanter, it's in the forbidden section - he asks about the blackstone legion, sees images of churches being dismantled, commander would rather people focus on what's down here - he also sees the previous commander, bartimaeus, looks very similar to the alchemist who came with the party! - most of the party hears footsteps (dennis hears it as 3 sets), it seems like people are coming up the same way the party did - kayn, ilya, and bartimaeus! they each present something to koga - as they proceed, ilya sees orrin hiding, sends one of his hands to point him out to kayn - they all recognize him; ilya still thinks of the party as friends because curse, so he greets orrin warmly when he recognizes him,but bartimaeus tells kayn that if orrin's here, so to is the rest of the party - orrin overhears all this, bluffs that he's here alone; kayn and ilya believe him, but bartimaeus came here with everyone, pushes on him a bit, but gives up when kayn talks to koga - okrin, still with an attendant, learns from more recorded illusions about kayn's search for the divine gate pieces - kayn asks koga about the location of the weapons of the solaren, koga gives him the book on solaren history - this illusion shows a later time than the previous - pharoah is being confronted by the greatsword solaren, aatrox, others are watching; "why do you rule when we do the work?" vs "if you want to rule, you don't deserve to" - scythe girl, alyssa, holds off the other solaren with her recently-blood-bathed weapon while aatrox rushes the pharoah, crushing his scarab swarms - the three think they've taken out alyssa, but she rises from the pool of blood and kills spear-wielder, then bow - pharoah's sandstorm incantation finishes, he puts the bow and spear in their wielders' hands and causes them to disappear in a flash of light, leaving only the weapons behind - brass knuckle wielder brings aatrox and alyssa to pharoah, who causes them to disappear too; has the pugilist, the last solaren, take the blades away and bury them deep - scene ends, koga can't tell kayn where the weapons are, kayn gets mad, orrin scurries away - bartimaeus enters morgrym's room, morgrym hides behind the door perfectly - dennis tries the same with ilya, but is seen, but he's in his fox form instead of human form so he's unrecognized, ilya makes small talk, dennis turns back to be recognized - kayn keeps accosting koga, who decides to humor him: "you can take one piece of knowledge from the forbidden section if you enter this story and reach the end", presents a book - and he extends this information to all of the library's current guests, the party all meets up back in the center - bartimaeus stays outside, but ilya and kayn enter the book, as does the party - as they go, koga says "btw, it's an action-adventure story!" and then they find themselves in front of an ENORMOUS beholder, as big as an house! - fink and morgrym identify it as a mega-beholder (lasers from eyes), buffed by the power of imagination/fantasy! mass of tentacles instead of flight, party better not fall off these stone pillar islands - fink identifies an anti-magic ray leveled at them from its big eye, and tentacles come slamming down! - kayn flies, party notices his wings, morgrym identifies them as from him being sylph - orrin leaps over to ilya and kayn, dennis goes to the other side and brings fink on the mollywomp, fink quickly studies - ilya squeezes the eyeball near him/kayn/orrin, it pops into goo and sickens them - morgrym leaps not left or right but forward, leaping to th next pillar then off it to fly to the third - left and right tentacles smash, left attacks orrin/ilya/kayn but misses now that its eye is popped, right attacks okrin/dennis/mollywomp/fink and hits - each group (orrin/ilya/kayn, morgrym, okrin/dennis/mollywomp/fink) fights their nearby tentacle/eye, gets gooped - beast charges his eyebeams, blasting morgrym/okrin/dennis/mollywomp/fink with a ray of disorientation, then sleep - eventually, each group takes theirs out, with the group of 5 finishing a round early and helping the solo morgrym by chain buffing (okrin gives fink blessing of fervor so he can reach morgrym with reduce) - another tentacle comes up on the left, kayn buffs ilya and [a very cautious] orrin, who slaughter it - morgrym joins the group on the right to take out the other new one </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 05/09/2020, Session 30: ???? - fink hastes the group, ilya picks up orrin and flies over to the others, orrin takes out that tentacle - okrin channels, healing most of the group, but it reinvigorates the tentacle! it slams down again before kayn takes it out with a blast of lightning - beholder sends out a series of disintegration beams, hitting morgrym with 0, orrin with 1, and each of the rest with 2! - dennis fumbles thanks to goo in his eyes and falls off the pillar! but he manages to catch himself before falling too far - orrin comes over to help morgrym and dennis take out another tentacle - next wave of eyebeams puts everyone besides orrin and okrin to sleep! - okrin wakes kayn and ilya, orrin wakes morgrym who wakes dennis - after some more fighting, they take out all of the tentacles and make it to the big eye itself, which fink has confused - eventually, they slay it! woooo! - then the storybook zooms out, we go back to the start of the story: various suitors trying to win the heart of one princess lucina, and her father has set up a series of challenges to see who's worthy - as koga narrates, fink/okrin/dennis/morgrym take on the forms/roles of existing characters (kevin/krista/mera/velos), orrin/kayn/ilya remain themselves - it's almost like possession, they know they need to play as these characters and drive this story to the end (they chose these inserts, morgrym recognized the legendary velos, fink wants to know what it's like to be beefy as kevin, etc.) - more suitors appear, all the suitors present themselves to the king with a short introduction - out-of-book-character, orrin asks koga why this story and realizes that this is one of the fox's favorites, though he's embarrassed about it </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 05/16/2020, Session 31: ???? - koga turns the page and brings them to the first challenge - key ingredient for princess favorite perfume is a flower deep in a dangerous forest (redonia); they all agree, though velos senses something off when krista initially asks why the king wanted the flower - velos' knowledge tells him it's a deep crimson flower, he shares the info with just his party (not kayn, ilya, or the other book characters) - mera and krista see something they suspect to be it, the party starts moving - except kevin, he's chilling by some purple flowers, an npc asks him for one, he obliges, then goes back to doing the backstroke in midair - krista examines a fallen tree, finds lightning scorch marks, sees bees clustered around flowers - krista uses mage hand to sneakily pull one flower, mera runs up and grabs one stealthily, kayn asks how krista did it and tries to do the same - kayn isn't as sneaky as krista, a bee gets mad and stings him, then he starts to hallucinate orrin and velos as giant bees - he tries to blast them with lightning, velos dodges but orrin doesn't; he fires again at kevin and two npcs and they hurt, kevin fires lightning back but misses - velos sees actual giant humanoid bees, turns out the little bees in the flowers can animorph! and kayn, thanks to one of their stings, sees everyone else as them too! - mera runs but shoots a bee with his gun, ilya tries to snap kayn out of his haze but fails, then just restrains him - velos lets a blazing arrow loose and mera finishes off with a diamond spray while krista shoots at the one orrin's feinting, kevin's throwing lightning at the one near him and the npcs - after some fighting, they take out most of the bees, but as velos pins one to a tree, he notices that the sand pit is shifting, shouts to everyone - a mass of writhing tentacles and flowers bursts forth! kevin blasts it but it's immune to electricity, the archers shoot it with fiery arrows - one of the npcs, torvald, converts kevin's lightning to cold damage, the big vine beast shoots out sleep powder that affects orrin, mera, and rin (an npc) - they all blast away at it as it spits acid back, also tosses out poison powder - as the rest of them fight the monster, mera captures the giant bee-man that velos pinned to a tree - eventually, after many arrows and blasts, orrin finishes it with a sneaky whirlwind of dagger stabs </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 05/23/2020, Session 32: ???? - second test: princess likes stardust jewelry... like, actual stardust - party is taken aback, but the king provides items for surviving in space and collecting the dust - then the king sends them to the astral plane via teleportation pad! a bunch of floating platforms/islands/land masses/mini asteroids - they collect some stardust, then a massive astral dragon appears and confronts them! - party can't figure out how to return the stardust to him from their collecting gloves, so he gets mad and the remaining stars start orbiting around him - kayn runs to a portal, starts trying to activate it, so the dragon fires the stars at the party! they're hurt, and more importantly, the portals are damaged - they can still warp around the rocks, but can't teleport home... so they start collecting stardust from the stars the dragon threw - mera decides to send pikachu at the dragon, but pikachu misses and falls into space! velos fires two flaming arrows, one hits - orrin and kevin collect more stardust, kayn blasts lightning, dragon's concentration breaks and his stars stop spinning, so he attacks with his breath weapon - velos and krista also collect, this whole process repeats, torvalds comes to heal orrin - varus warps to the land with orrin/velos/torvald/rin, casts something on rin - rin charges velos and slashes with his sword! - velos tries to fight back but misses so badly he shoots rin's and torvald's gloves off, releasing their stardust; kevin also fails collecting badly enough to somehow duplicate some dust - as the others keep collecting, velos fails to realize varus is behind rin's attack, has a hard time piercing rin's armor - as varus warps to another island, orrin comes to help velos but rin knocks him out! dragon blasts torvald - rin goes op and takes velos' bow and kicks him almost over the edge, but rin finally is undominated and helps him back up - krista collects more, dragon blasts orrin but the barely-conscious rogue dodges perfectly - after a lot more collecting, since the dragon's defenses seem to go down when he loses stars, they finally knock him out and he fades into the void - kevin has taken a liking to torvald, so decides to give him their stardust later (they just need to get to the end of the story, not necessarily win) - velos goes to confront rin, but his memory is hazy; velos goes to ask varus, since he was on their island as well, but varus is warping around - the others finish collecting the last stars while velos chases varus, eventually catches him and pins him down for interrogation - orrin senses something fishy about his answers, velos tries to intimidate varus into telling the truth but fails - varus tries to kick velos from the ground, hoping to knock him over the edge, but fails; velos uses this to convince the orrin to help him tie up varus - they have mera's pikachu drag him back, velos wants him brought before the king for his murderous attempt to breach the contest's rules - basically mini court, with the king calling up rin for more info on varus' denial and velos getting orrin and mera to support his claims - king doesn't want anyone deceitful or weak-willed for a successor, banishes varus and rin from the competition - the whole party agrees with kevin now, they all give kevin their stardust, velos calls him out to the king as a good man who came to help when the scuffle happened - mera notices something off about the king as he accepts the stardust, a little too eager to receive the stardust, mera realizes they've never actually seen the princess... </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 05/30/2020, Session 33: ???? - final challenge: fetch the (temperamental) prince, rocco, so he can be a guest at the princess' wedding - they fins themselves on a beach, many islands populated by undine, fishing and chatting and going about their day - they go ask some of the people in this fishing village if they know a rocco, but no good - orrin gets the sense that one of them, the one whose role is to greet newcomers, borza, might be rocco in disguise, since he was slow to respond to borza - he shares with velos, who calls the others together with a fiery signal arrow and they discuss, kayn agrees since he's gotten a lot of conflicting information about borza - meanwhile, mera's been bugging borza this whole time, he gets fed up and runs/swims to another island - they give chase, mera distracts him while krista dispels his illusion! it's rocco, surprise, mera casts hold person - rocco breaks out, but they explain everything, rocco doesn't get along with his dad but is worried about his sister (especially from how eager the king was) so he'll go back with them if they succeed at his challenge - they all make their way to a cliff where he points out a bunch of sahuagin that he wants them to take out - they start blasting and shooting, easy pickings until a giant fish-eel with lobster claws shows up! - they frantically throw everything they have, kevin's and kayn's electricity are extremely valuable - it gets rough for a moment when the beast sends a tidal wave at them and ilya gets grabbed by a vortex of swirling water, but they skewer it eventually - before they return to the throne room, party asks rocco about king; he had a room in the castle that nobody else was allowed in, he had his men take bodies out sometimes under the cover of night - when they get back, king horace chooses torvalds as lucina's husband-to-be! wedding in four days - at the wedding, lucina and torvalds kiss, but the rings the king gave them are enchanted and purple energy crackles and a beholder appears and eats them! - they all see the cutscene of their previous beholder fight, then the king blows up with energy and confronts them! </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 06/06/2020, Session 34: ???? - paladin prince rocco and antipaladin king horace strike at each other, rocco fails initially but horace wounds him in return - krista throws a lightning bolt, velos fires some arrows, kevin gathers power, mera charges in - repeat, with kevin delivering maximized thunderstorms and velos charging up a scorching shot and krista delivering a hail of arrows and mera smacking away, but horace's spell resistance is hard for some of them to get around - horace eventually stops fighting rocco alone and approaches the rest, throws krista at kevin with a big shadowy arm, mollywomp deafens him with a roar - rocco tackles horace, velos barely gets out of the way - as the fight wears on, horace dodges some of their attacks by disappearing through a portal - rocco heals velos, horace gets mad and casts isolation on him, but he didn't need to cooperate anyway - more fighting, blasting, isolating, velos misses a lot but then manages to pin horace to a pillar with an exceptionally well-placed shot - mera rushes him before he can wrench himself free while the others barrage horace and rocco heals them - kevin hastes velos, who finally starts hitting again, krista and mera are consistent - horace knocks rocco into the chasm, he flies back up in time to see kevin ride his blast over and zap horace to death - koga reads epilogue, rocco takes over as king </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 06/13/2020, Session 35: ???? - koga brings them out of the book! okrin retained krista's magic archery skill instead of his oracle abilities, same with dennis and mera - as a reward for the entertainment, koga grants them each one piece of knowledge! brings them one by one into the forbidden section - okrin first, book floats out with illusory projection, "movie" shows his requested info: the enchanter's past - a baby is born, but his mother dies in childbirth, father becomes alcoholic and beats him for years, fancily dressed man finds the kid's body in the mud - this man, the collector, casts speak with dead, talks to the kid, resurrects him in exchange for the signing of a contract - the kid now has a nice red suit, matching the collector's blue suit, the boy (now known as the enchanter) kills his father before heading out with the collector - fink's next, asks for how to craft more efficiently - koga brings out a book that fink is somehow able to speed read in minutes, he learns how to craft at twice the speed - koga also, as a bonus gift, gives fink some knowledge that he'd long awaited about ilya and his magic fists - ilya was a street thief, then moved on to break-in burglaries, then set his eyes on a castle treasury - as he reaches the vault, he finds a girl already there, having beat him to it; they cooperate and rob it together - but the girl sets off a trap, he helps her instead of leaving, mutilating his hands in the barbed wire - they barely get out, natasha tends to his wounds, they become lovers and partners in crime (she robs, he fences) - they move to a new city, masuko, but a local thug, borko, hit them up with a protection racket - they refused, and a few days later ilya found his home aflame, natasha burning alive; he tried to rescue her but couldn't, and his old hand wounds from the barbed wire reopened - the gathered crowd stopped him from joining her in the fire; he woke up later with red suit (the enchanter) standing over him - dennis is next, asks about their favorite story character, torvald - paladin serving oath of generosity, always helped others, was very grateful when the party helped him in return - orrin asks about the church of apsu - woman running through forest, ignoring the scratches on the way, shows up at a church of apsu - midnight blue suit (the collector) casually chases her via teleportation, she reaches the church and cries out for sanctuary, a priest saves her - she promises to serve the church if they would protect her from the collector coming for her debt, priest informs collector and he goes away - later, collector, enchanter, and blackstone legion commander are all talking, then they sign a contract, then the commander rides out to the apsu church, we hear the woman's scream (and 6 others') - on his way back, the commander sees an airship... - morgrym asks about his birth parents - this time, the illusory image has koga's narration - parents, ethan and lenora met 35 years ago, at the academy of archaeology, then set out to explore the world together - koga calls them extraordinary; each new place they discovered led to more noble houses wanting to fund their ventures - ater 15 exciting years, they wanted to settle before the danger got them, so they settled down - but eventually the sandstone legion contacted them, they figured they'd go for one final journey - ethan and lenora lightbringer contacted their friends jorg and erna stonehelm, asking them to watch their newborn baby morgrym for just a few weeks - but the weeks turned to months turned to years, the stonehelms raised morgrym like their own child and never told him because they didn't want him to worry - koga tells morgrym that their mission from ozymandius was for them to discover this very library! - and they did! they learned a lot, especially from the forbidden section, while koga was out, so koga couldn't let them go - morgrym frantically looks around but trips, koga continues - koga gave them a line out to a being of enough power to supply them with mortal stuff like food/water... the enchanter! - he pops in, explains that he supplied them in exchange for them giving him knowledge, greets koga and morgrym, morgrym rushes him along - enchanter pulls out two amulets, which glow, and two people come out! morgrym's parents are shocked, morgrym runs to them, they hug and go off to tell of their adventures - after a bit, enchanter comes to collect his monthly knowledge, ethan and lenora give him a scroll each - morgrym talks with them further, asks koga if he can do more for the great fox so he can be rewarded with more knowledges, enough to cover all the pieces of information his parents researched so they can be freed... it's over 200 - he doesn't know quite what to do, he'll ask fink about magic ways to keep in touch with them when he eventually leaves, but for now he just wants to sit and talk with them - in the meantime, fink is tinkering, orrin is napping, dennis is caring for his pet, okrin learns the heroism spell from a book - ilya and kayn get impatient, they enter the forbidden section! - koga greets them (a little unhappily), morgrym doesn't hear what they want, koga shows them something - kayn goes "oh, HE (kayn's father, blackstone legion commander) has it!?" and he and ilya run out, grab bartimaeus/milo, and leave - before they all head out, morgrym talks with koga and gets an amulet of sending that will let him contact the fox, who will let him know when his parents are available to talk - and they're all welcome to come back any time </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> - fink teleports them to ozymandias' throne room, they tell him about the big library and koga the guardian fox spirit - morgrym gets upset when ozymandias admits that yes, he sent morgrym's parents to find the library - they present him some of the things they learned in the library, or secrets about how to get into the library itself and what happens if you sneak into the forbidden section, and are rewarded with 10000gp each - fink teleports them to the blackstone legion citadel, morgrym shows his badge to get in - commander is morose, but perks up at the party's return - they warn him that kayn is probably coming to steal a divine gate piece, he sighs - commander explains that he and the lieutenant set out to find one recently, but when the lieutenant touched the red broadsword that they discovered on a distant mountain, he turned into this weird red demon-man and ran off, yelling about carnage - and the piece the commander already had, the party delivered to the enchanter for their very first mission! the bag they weren't supposed to open - enchanter appears, and for the very first time, he's not smiling; displays an illusory screen showing a recording of a figure attacking koga's library! - it's aatrox, the evil broadsword man, come to get revenge on koga for giving the other solaren the tools to trap him - aatrox chases koga through the library, killing the characters koga's spawning from the books and reveling in the massacre - koga gets to the forbidden section, puts up its defenses for a bit; calls in enchanter, quickly amends ethan and lenora's contract - gives morgrym's parents the ability to freely move between the material plane and his demiplane where he stores the library's knowledge (that's the real substance, everything that normally resides in the library is kind of like the display versions), has them inherit library if koga dies - asks enchanter to stop aatrox from destroying koga's amassed knowledge - enchanter warps ethan and lenora and all the display books/scrolls to koga's plane of knowledge, now it's just aatrox and koga - koga puts up a good fight, but aatrox eventually wins :( recording over </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 06/20/2020, Session 36: ???? - morgrym uses his amulet to contact his parents, makes sure they're okay and asks what they know about the gate pieces/weapons - they don't know where the sword and spear are, but they do know where the scythe, bow, and brass knuckles are - sett has knuckles, enchanter has scythe - koga knew where the bow was and morgrym's parents suspect that, since he liked them, koga dropped hints to the party about that somehow in one of the scenes he showed the party - as they think back, fink remembers the story of ilya's past; the item that ilya's future wife touched that was trapped was the bow - party deliberates about what to do; they feel like the enchanter has become a little more trustworthy, so they don't try to get his piece - orrin goes to ask the commander about his issue with the church of apsu, gets a response that it was just a contractual obligation, nothing personal about apsu - they decide to hit up sett before confronting aatrox, though there is the issue of actually finding his band of nomads - fink teleports them to the arena colosseum they fought in before, but they find nobody here - some scouting reveals footsteps a week or two old, they wait until nighttime and throw fireballs up as signal flares - later, during okrin's watch, he hears slithering! but he kills the lamia without issue - during their watches, morgrym sees a basilisk and orrin another lamia, but they let the monsters pass by without engaging them - after a few more days of waiting, they see a crowd of nomads approaching, with sett at the lead - they pull him aside and ask about aatrox, he sits them down and tells them about the solaren, heroes of the old civilization, under ozark (ozymandias' ancestor) - when aatrox rebelled, ozark put everyone but sett into their weapons (aatrox and alyssa into sword and scythe respectively as punishment, the others into bow and spear to save them from dying) - sett thought the two traitors were still buried in the desert where he left them 8000 years ago - they talk it over, sett warns them about how aatrox is unkillable, party calls up enchanter to ask how he's keeping the scythe locked away - but he created a whole demiplane for housing it, he can't do another - they try teleport to ozymandias to see if he knows anything about how ozark made the solaren weapons (since sett is coming, okrin hops in a bag of holding and holds his breath) - but fink ends up teleporting them off course by dozens of miles! and when he tries again, the spell fizzles out entirely... third try works! - ozymandias tries to feign ignorance, but okrin calls him out; he doesn't want to see his ancestor's finest work destroyed - he won't help, but he will point them towards the special workshop (though he won't go in, it's heavily trapped) </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 06/27/2020, Session 37: ???? - they enter fairly stealthily, scanning for magic, but they find nothing as dennis falls - proceed through the dungeon-like halls, they find a room with a pressure plate trap that they avoid - fink casts spider climb and scrambles up the wall to see what the trap would've released from the ceiling, breathes in the gas and loses some int - they keep going through corridors and junctions until they find a room full of constructs (clockwork titans and mages) - the party tries to sneak into position, but the constructs notice fink! - fight ensues, casters trap the party in hungry earth and make them afraid - dennis/pikachu's lightning, okrin's arrows, orrin's sneak attacks all do well against the clockwork titans - fink hastens the party and levitates orrin to stop him from running away when hit by a fear effect - morgrym avoids an icy prison, steals the magic, and uses it on the clockwork mage - a fireball almost kills fink, but they all make it through - the final one, trapped in ice by morgrym's copied magic, is turned into a pincushion by okrin - all of the doors suddenly close, illusory words appear: "seek the way out" - they see clockwork gear tiles on the wall - memory game! they recognize a few tiles: - ozark, ozymandias' ancestor, creator of the divine gate/solaren's weapons in this workshop - divine gate, before being broken - fight between apsu and dahak (father and son dragon deities, creation and destruction) - sett, brass knuckle solaren - cynthia, ice spear solaren - gallo, lightning bow solaren - aatrox, angry greatsword solaren - alyssa, blood scythe solaren - koga, library curator - hoard-of-all-hoards dragon, name unknown - desert where aatrox and alyssa's weapons were initially buried - masuko throneroom (host to a citadel like blackstone and sandstone) - ocean to cross to reach masuko - colosseum where they fought sett - laboratory where they fought dr ziegler and ilya - when they finish the puzzle, the doors lift! - further exploration reveals some dead ends, then a room with an obsidian golem! it throws a cone of obsidian shards - okrin hits it with a snowball arrow combo, morgrym fails to activate his new sharding enchantment so his swing does nothing - fink tells them how it works with his knowledge, morgrym curses the golem to take damage when it deals it, the others pour on the damage - it explodes when it dies, dealing hefty damage and knocking orrin unconscious, but the party heals up - they then encounter a massive juggernaut construct, with stacking stats and a chance to ignore a good amount of damage - they realize it's dedicated to apsu (won't attack fellow apsu followers), so fink starts crafting little silver dragons and they make it safely past - they avoid further traps, sneak into another large room (though dennis is louder than the others) - they find two clockwork mages and a jade colossus! it's immune to all magic besides shatter and disintegrate - they almost sneak past, but dennis gets caught like a deer in headlights! though he instantly casts invisibility and catches up to the others - then they all lean in to listen at a big set of doors, but it's a mimic and bites them! orrin, okrin, and fink get pulled in - morgrym dazes it with his essence strike, and the others extricate themselves from the mimic's mouth and run further down the hallway - the next room has a massive clockwork goliath, vulnerable to electricity but able to self-destruct - dennis, still invisible, scouts the hallway ahead; the party takes turns using fink's reduce ring and having dennis ferry them across in a bag of holding - eventually, they find a room with 3 boxes drawn on the floor tiles waiting to be drawn in - fink tries writing RUN, but the letters disappear after a few seconds - orrin writes M (for the memory puzzle) in the first box, and it stays </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 07/03/2020, Session 38: ???? - they realize they need to find two other letters behind other minibosses, go back to the goliath - pikachu charges in and gets slashed, unable to land its attacks in return; the clockwork goliath's chestplate opens and it fires a cannon! - the rest of the party begins to move, morgrym goes through the wall to flank while orrin charges up the hall - dennis spawns ball lightnings, okrin fires arrows, morgrym and orrin close in and get whirlwind attacked - as fink catches up with the others, dennis and okrin lay on the damage from afar while orrin and morgrym leave in preparation for the self-destruction - after a further barrage, the goliath finally goes down and explodes - the party goes back in and sees each pillar around the room lit up to one of three degrees, tapping one increases the level of it and all adjacent by one level - when they finally solve it, they see a glowing letter T - they go back for the last miniboss, the jade colossus - fink separates it from the two clockwork mages with a wall of force, then sends an invisible orrin at the mages - orrin and pikachu take out the mages, fink examines the colossus; immune to magic (besides shatter and disintegrate) - fink drops the wall, his summoned tiger and dennis' pikachu and orrin charge in but have a hard time getting through the hardness, morgrym lands a teleport hit but it's not super impactful, some of okrin's arrows hit solidly - the colossus hits the tiger but misses morgrym, morgrym curses it to take reflected damage, orrin fumbles hard and hits the tiger - it takes some time, but eventually the colossus shatters - this final puzzle is basically rush hour, the final letter is S - when they enter the letters, the ceiling begins to descend as ozark's voiceover tells them they have 3 minutes to solve this final puzzle - they rotated a piece of schematic to change four boxes to three, solving it in thirty seconds, and a trapdoor in the floor springs open! - they enter the workshop, there are schematics and prototypes everywhere; orrin finds a box with 10 colored dots, and for this puzzle the party connects the wires without crossing - an illusion of ozark appears from the box, and the recording explains that the gate needs to be reforged together before being properly destroyed - once that's done, pass through the gate and (before being disintegrated by the energy in the divine plane) recite an incantation: "rimoe la poro divinatia delano epituro" </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 07/11/2020, Session 39: ???? - the party finds their old member omar! his wild magic teleported him here - aatrox throws the juggernaut they found through the air and screams bloody murder! - okrin asks him to calm down, rejected, throws enervation, orrin gets a hidden weapon sneak attack off - omar's air geyser doesn't break through aatrox's spell resistance - aatrox brings down his massive sword a few times, dashing around and slamming the party, turning the stone floor to rubble - fink, on okrin's shoulder, hastes himself/okrin/omar/morgrym; - dennis goes invis, pikachu bites aatrox - morgrym flies in and delivers his smoking mirror curse, it takes hold but he realizes that it won't last as long as normal - aatrox's next set of attacks comes out, orrin dodges perfectly and morgrym teleports away, okrin and dennis get kinda hurt, omar and fink get hit hard - omar loses his summon, and aatrox summons infernal chains to entangle okrin! which throws off okrin's enervation, he fumbles and it goes wild, hitting omar! - omar's feeling awful at this point, climbs up a rope trick into a pocket portal - aatrox full triple strike combos both morgrym and orrin, then throws more chains, this time on fink, but the ratfolk's knowledge-turned-power helps him dodge - fink realizes that he can probably find something useful elsewhere in the workshop, dennis goes with him - the others keep fighting, with omar popping out of his hole to blast out a hefty chain lighting, healing off it from his wild magic! - aatrox approaches okrin in the corner, charging up some sort of powerful attack, but morgrym slows him and interrupts it - omar casts form of the dragon, fink discovers the prototype for ozark's tool that was used to trap aatrox in his sword initially - meanwhile, dennis came back to help, but his chain lightning bounces off aatrox's spell resistance and hits morgrym! - okrin puts out an amazing volley of arrows, with four arrows hitting like ten! and okrin immediately follows up with a nice set of sneak attacks - dragon-omar spits a line of electricity, aatrox (now cornered by omar, orrin, and morgrym) spreads his combo among them, knocking orrin unconscious - fink starts pouring his magic into the device as he brings it back to the others, as okrin lands another amazing volley! - aatrox's body falls with a cry, but his sword stays floating, party estimates they have a few seconds before he revives using the energy stored in his blade - they try to use walls of force and stone to separate the sword from the lieutenant's body, but fail to overcome the sword's resistance to magic </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 07/25/2020, Session 40: ???? - as aatrox rises again, bigger and even scarier, some of the party get panicked by his fear aura - okrin and morgrym stand their ground, okrin delivers an amazingly deadly storm of arrows yet again - as fink continues working in the back, the others run back to aatrox and keep fighting - dennis buffs morgrym and orrin while they flank aatrox; orrin strikes true, morgrym gets hit by aatrox's infernal chains but steals the magic himself - omar summons a rhino, which fumbles its charge and goes so far off course that it flings okrin into omar's rope trick portal! and his fireball can't pierce aatrox's spell resistance - but dennis follows up with a perfectly piercing arc of lightning for solid damage, though he still couldn't disrupt aatrox's concentration on the strike he's charging up, and dennis' pikachu gives fink heroism - aatrox sunders morgrym, swapping their health percentages (morgrym at full and aatrox at one-third become the other way around)! - aatrox realizes fink is missing, flies away from the others; okrin shoots at him as he goes, but now that aatrox isn't up close, his magical miss chance shield protects him - orrin and omar's rhino chase, but don't manage to hit; dennis has pikachu turn fink invisible, then he un-summons pikachu from over by fink then summons his mollywomp instead - aatrox keeps searching, but down the wrong hallway; with a final surge of magic, fink finishes opening the puzzle-locked prototype box - within, he finds a magical sealing gauntlet! he just needs to get in close and touch aatrox to force him back into the sword, trapping him just temporarily - the mollywomp berry delivery service drops off buff berries to the rest of the party, they all prepare for him to come back out of the deep darkness that omar laid down - aatrox catches them by surprise, impaling orrin and killing him instantly! the others cry out in shock, rage, and mourning - okrin fires more arrows, omar throws balls of lightning, dennis adds acid fog to the darkness - morgrym sends a sharding image of his sword into the darkness to curse aatrox, fink enlarges himself to better fit the gauntlet - fink starts approaches the main room invisibly, but aatrox is approaching that room as the one he hasn't checked - the rest of the party attacks enough to draw his attention, omar in particular lands a very useful serenity spell... - ... but it's not enough to stop aatrox from hitting pikachu so hard that he flies into the acid fog and dissipates back into energy! the backlash his dennis hard, but doesn't knock him out - morgrym finally finishes using his stolen magic to swap his health back with aatrox, but the others had hurt aatrox enough that morgrym actually ended up giving him some health! - as the party begins to feel like aatrox will never fall, fink charges in and touches him! aatrox screams out in wrath, but he gets sucked back into his sword </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 08/01/2020, Session 41: ???? - okrin tries shooting the inanimate sword, but it has no effect - morgrym and okrin carry orrin's body out, dennis has his mollywomp bring the lieutenant's body - omar and fink stay behind, fixing up an airship and crafting off blueprints respectively, while the others go to the throne room - they find slaughtered guards, then ozymandias and sett warp in - the party explains what happened, brings them downstairs to talk to fink about the gauntlet - when dennis brings up bartimaeus as the scryer behind how aatrox got to them, ozymandius makes the connection that bartimaeus must've also been behind him and sett being temporally displaced while aatrox tore up their place - ozymandius and sett watch over aatrox while the others heal, sleep, and teleport back to the blackstone legion (except omar, who summons crew members to fly his new small airships back) - they're showed to the commander, to whom they explain everything; he has his men take the lieutenant's body, and morgrym resigns from the legion because he feels like the legions can't adequately deal with the solaren - the party goes back to their mansion and gives orrin a viking send-off, pyre on the water - they spend a few days recuperating, okrin calls up the enchanter to ask about how they can store aatrox's sword more safely - he says ozymandius and sett should have it taken care of - they agree that they as a group should take care off the solaren weapons, so they decide to head after the bow, last known to be in the vaults of the masuko (a city that, unlike blackstone/sandstone, is not set up as a legion) - omar takes them there via his airship, it takes them four days (three of which were over the ocean) before they reach masuko, finding it covered in snow and bordered by icy mountains - when they get there, they see people pouring out of a courthouse, one passerby (anna) answers their questions - apparently someone was just on trial for double murder, and is about to face trial by combat out in the arena (defendant + defense attorney vs. detective + prosecuting attorney, judge as referee) - they decide to spectate, and the defense attorney (osfinas saepio) is staring down his rival, the prosecuting attorney (nigel flemington) - the judge (grover clark) explains that the prosecution (including the detective, gustavo meyer) has one minute to knock the defendant (marcus salmo) unconscious - the prosecution gets buffs for the combat because they won the courtroom trial - osfinas sets his tower shield down as total cover in front of marcus, deflects a thrown spear - gustavo runs forward with an illusory duplicate, catching osfinas off guard, as nigel sends a barrage of spears - they continue to fight back and forth, mostly nigel and gustavo on the offense and marcus and osfinas on the defense - one of the highlights is osfinas catching gustavo's leap on his massive tower shield and shoving him aside - it gets down to the wire, but the defense clutches it out! those involved leave the field, but osfinas stays to contemplate how close it was - the party doesn't leave with the crowd, fink wants to go inspect osfinas' shield, offers to improve it if he can - osfinas is a little taken aback, but finds the party interesting and agrees when morgrym asks him to show them around town </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 08/08/2020, Session 42: ???? - osfinas shows them around, they ask specifially about the earl, borko; they'd need to make an appointment to see him - some of them recognize the earl's name; borko is the same thug who hit up ilya and natasha for a protection racket - osfinas confides in them that he'd like to become stronger to win his cases better, wants to join their party for a bit - as they're talking, the captain of the guard approaches the group, informing them that omar supposedly murdered a woman, maya levic, near his airship - as he gets taken away, the rest of the party asks osfinas to help them defend omar in exchange - osfinas wants to go to the scene of the crime, so they lead him to the airship, where they see the prosecutor's office's detective, gustavo - he won't let them onto the scene until they get the paperwork saying osfinas is officially omar's defense attorney - they head to the docks to charter a ship to the prison/warden island - they find omar when they get inside and get his signature on osfinas' form, then head back to the ship - gustavo begrudgingly accepts the form, then shares the autopsy report with osfinas (offense and defense share info here, for fair trial purposes) - gunshot wound to the chest, matching blood spatter on the inner ship wall; victim was wearing lighter clothes than would be normal here - they board and investigate; dennis realizes that this blood spray was consistent with a gunshot, yes, but the bullet would've come from further away, not on the boat - they go to ask gustavo about maya, he says he'll tell them if they acquire some rare tea leaves for him to give nigel as a birthday present - before they accept, they go to ask at the nearby houses about the gunshot - most have nothing, but one lady, alice tells them that she already told gustavo she heard a scream last night, saw the victim collapse at the sound of gunshot (though she didn't see the shooter), so alice called the guards - they decide to go to the inn to see if the innkeeper saw omar leave last night; todd was on the night shift, so he's asleep, but the current keeper wrote down their question for him ("did you see our goblin leaving around 3-4 in the morning?") - morgrym figures that the best way to prove omar innocent is to find the real murderer, so osfinas wants more info on her; they go accept gustavo's deal - he needs leaves from the vestok vine (thin, light blue, cold environment), as many as possible; gives them a map - they head to the northeastern mountains, and dennis leads them down the path according to the map - okrin sees a clearing at the end of the path, they all begin searching - morgrym and armenius know what it looks like, but can't find any around here; okrin and osfinas scan the area well, but don't recognize it when they see it; dennis has the right combo and finds what they're looking for - as the party approaches the vines, osfinas and okrin feel tremors and call them out to the others - morgrym sends an illusory duplicate (complete with sound/smell/thermal) over one as bait, fink hastes everyone - a giant frost worm bursts out and bites into morgrym's illusion! - dennis blasts the worm with lightning and okrin fires a volley of glowing arrows, dealing hefty damage - morgrym flies towards the worm but gets grappled, goes incorporeal to escape; osfinas gives morgrym his battle bond - fink tries to slow the worm, but fails; dennis uses his monster trainer abilities to capture the frost worm! - the group moves towards where they found the other worm, morgrym goes fishing with another illusion and the second worm pops up - but then a third one comes up from behind them and spits icy breath! osfinas and okrin weather it with ease, morgrym teleports away, dennis isn't in range, fink suffers heavily - dennis buffs the party, okrin tosses a fireball and gives his armor cold resistance - morgrym warps to one of his illusions, detonating it and then striking the worm that was attacking it; osfinas comes up and tries to concuss it, but misses - okrin sends another full volley, killing that injured worm, while fink confuses the other one (then morgrym paralyzes it and osfinas concusses it) - dennis captures the heavily-locked-down frost worm, and okrin notices that these worms seem to have had their natural armor augmented by something manmade! - morgrym and osfinas handle the vines too poorly to recover any leaves, but okrin gets a leaf, fink gets some seeds, and dennis gets multiple leaves - they return to gustavo and give him some vestok leaves - he brings them to maya's house and shows them her painting easel; one of the canvasses flipped over the back is unlike the others, a picture of a mask instead of mountains/trees/etc. plus it's way more detailed, took much more time - after gustavo leaves, okrin searches the house but finds nothing else strange; morgrym sketches a copy of the mask painting - okrin asks osfinas about the local criminals, there's a mafia of sorts - fink and morgrym confirm in their knowledge that this mask design doesn't seem to have any known historical significance, not like the solaren weapons </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 08/15/2020, Session 43: ???? - morgrym and osfinas talk more about the mafia, apparently they have a club where you need a mask to get in and most people don't even know where it is - the detectives have figured out how to create counterfeit masks so they can keep an eye on the crime, osfinas shows them to gustavo's office - okrin asks osfinas how far this evidence share should go, they decide to show him the mask sketch; meanwhile, dennis' new worm confirms that it was a masked man that replaced its natural armor with man-made - gustavo is willing to let them talk to his mask guy, but this new guy needs a favor from them; clear out the monster in the bay that's hurting his ships, and he gives them goggles that let them swim better and breathe underwater - the party goes to the asylum to ask the lone survivor of the last attack what the beast was like, he lashes out a little so osfinas cleanly pins him against the wall - fink confirms that his babbling isn't magically induced, dennis casts sleep and then telepathic bond; they see a vision of this sailor, sarkovi, on a boat, and a massive silhouette comes up from below, tearing the ship in half; it's a kraken! morgrym and dennis are shaken/traumatized by what they see - fink recalls some useful information about krakens; very fast for their size, and they have some sort of magic as well - fink has the party bring him to a magic consumables shop, so he can buy a scroll of emergency force sphere - morgrym tries to buy it for him, since fink still looks like a small rat, but he's too nervous to haggle, so okrin steps in - they then head straight to the bay, no time to waste! after diving, they swim further out, and dennis sees the kraken approach! - dennis warns and buffs the party, and the kraken whips up a whirlpool around them; fink hastens everyone and okrin sends some magic missiles - as osfinas designates morgrym as his partner, the kraken constricts okrin and the whirlpool hammers the others, though fink's emergency force sphere saves him and morgrym - morgrym warps himself and fink out, dennis fires a cone of cold at the kraken, okrin fails to escape the tentacles - the kraken begins to spin with okrin wrapped in a tentacle, swinging him into osfinas, morgrym, and fink, then spawns a concealing ink cloud - morgrym reaches out and teleports the kraken out of the ink, forcing it to leave okrin behind - dennis' frost worm bites twice, and dennis himself slows the kraken; okrin swims towards the kraken and dives into its mouth, swimming neatly past the teeth to the inside of its stomach - the others all surround the kraken, attacking as best as they can, especially with dennis' ball lightning, though fink's water elemental was a little iffy - okrin, still inside the kraken, lets out a full scorching volley that kills the beast! - as a reward, they each got a criminal mask </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 08/22/2020, Session 44: ???? - omar, in prison, tries to send a magical message to the party, and his wild magic turns him invisible! - a passing guard opens the cell to investigate, and omar slips out, making his way to the confiscated items - he tries to get his items via mage hand, but his wild magic opens every door nearby! instant prison riot - omar dazzles a nearby guard with a flare to rescue the only friend he made on the inside, a half-orc named grug - the prison warden steps out, omar and grug split to avoid him, the goblin finds a thin tree and cuts it down with acid - omar and grug hop on the log and float away, the warden helps his men quash the riot; omar leads grug back to the ship and they sneak on board - he actually succeeds messaging the party this time, tells them he escaped and that he and grug will try to work the case from their end - he finds where the gun was shot from, there are weird rectangular blocky indents - sniper rifle tripod! - omar has fink craft some hats of alter self for him and grug, and they rejoin the party, and everyone heads to the club - fink, okrin, and osfinas get stopped for being good-aligned, but talk their way in - morgrym and osfinas eavesdrop while the others bribe the bartender for info about the town's best contract killer, apparently he has some magic camera - there are two people in the club with magic items, the party talks about how to approach them - the one okrin approaches ends up being a pimp, the one omar goes to is a drug dealer - the pimp looks distressed suddenly, osfinas notices him leaving in haste and points it out to morgrym, who follows stealthily; he doesn't find out much other than the house he returned to - the others, still inside, observe the monthly slave auction; omar recognizes one of them as a fellow (ex-)inmate, but they don't really get much other than feelings of disgust - someone tries to recruit osfinas for a mlm, the party now notices a trend; all of the notable people they've interacted with here have been involved with missing people somehow </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 08/29/2020, Session 45: ???? - they rest, then morgrym sneaks into the house to which he followed the pimp last night with his ghost form and fink's invis spell - he finds a sleeping woman, sketches her, and a man at a table, sketches him; the man hears something, but dismisses it as a rodent - morgrym brings the sketches back to the party, hoping osfinas can identify them - he can't, so they go to gustavo; he doesn't care about the sketch of the woman, but ushers them into his office upon seeing the man - he tells them that this man, donovan, is actually already working with the detectives! and that they shouldn't blow his cover, but should to talk him for more info - when they knock and tell donovan that gustavo sent them, he ushers them into his home and serves them tea with leaves from the vestok vine - he tells them he already spoke to gustavo's people, but he'll tell them again; the earl, borko, paid for one of donovan's guys (anton) often, and gustavo wanted dirt on the earl, so he approached donovan - but anton's now missing and gustavo's agent who was supposed to watch over anton hasn't checked in recently; the party suspects this is maya - when they return to gustavo, he's worried upon hearing that other people claimed to be gustavo's people, and he confirms that maya was his agent - gustavo asks the party to help him figure out what the earl is up to, and postpones omar's trial indefinitely - back in the club that night, okrin notices a man with a camera, which he was on the lookout for last night - omar approaches him and makes it through some awkward conversation, but fails to hire the contract killer; omar signals to morgrym to follow him - after fink makes morgrym invisible, morgrym tries to phase through the bathroom wall; he manages to resisting a teleport trap, but can't go through the walls - he leaves the bar but the bouncer sees him through the invis and confronts him, though morgrym makes it past with an excuse about not wanting to be seen coming out of here - unfortunately, neither morgrym nor fink can see where the cameraman went, so they wait for the others to come outside - omar summons a blink dog and fink turns his familiar into a dog, but neither dog catches scent of the trail - thankfully, okrin spots him and points him out to the others; he goes invisibly flying after the cameraman, morgrym goes into his blur/see-invis stance and throws fink up to him - the rest of the party then follows morgrym as he follows okrin and fink as they're stealthily following the camerman - as they reach the end of town, okrin realizes they've been following an illusion the whole time! he tells the others - they go back and find three sets of footprints (besides theirs) leaving the club; okrin and fink take one, morgrym and omar the next, dennis and osfinas the last - they realize that one of the paths lead out to the forest, which is where the cameraman mentioned to omar he'd be putting on some sort of demonstration - as they proceed into the forest, two ice plant monsters burst out of the ground and launch bursts of ice at okrin! - morgrym attacks one of them, first stealing its ice strike powers then teleporting behind it and critically striking, barely taking it out! - then a missile (large bullet?) comes flying through the forest from afar, destroying the illusion morgrym left behind - as osfinas runs across the snowy forest floor to morgrym, he sets off a large spore trap, taking mental damage - another missile hits pikachu, omar hides in a globe of invulnerability after summoning an ankylosaurus - the next one would hit okrin, but he dodges, so it hits osfinas instead! or, it would, if he didn't set his shield down as cover - they continue forward, dodging bullets (of which every fourth shot hits harder) and setting off traps and killing plants - most of the party does okay, but fink (in okrin's pocket) takes too many bullets and goes unconscious! thankfully, dennis reaches in and heals him </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 09/05/2020, Session 46: ???? - the party continues to progress, with a slightly-restored fink teleporting into osfinas' pocket - every so often, the extra-lethal purple-glowing shots fly through with unerring accuracy despite some of the party's invisibility - ambushing ice-spitting flowers almost kill fink, who barely survives yet again (only due to osfinas' quick shielding) - they set off a fair number of spore traps along the way, taking heavy mental damage - the assassin, prone behind his massive gun, is unready for their arrival and dies to okrin's arrows, but he releases a dead man's switch that sets off a massive version of the flower traps; okrin, osfinas, and fink all fall unconscious - omar and dennis make sure they're all okay while morgrym peels the masks off the assassin and the dead girl near him; he doesn't recognize either, but the girl seems like she was a hostage rather than an accomplice - the conscious half of the party load the others onto dennis' monsters and they ride back to town; omar wants a cleric to speak with dead to prove this shooter was behind it all - omar and his new lackey guard the bodies on the ship while morgrym and dennis go fetch gustavo and bring him back; he brings scrolls of restoration - after osfinas, okrin, and fink are restored, they tell gustavo what happened (and confirmed the girl was an innocent hostage) - gustavo identifies the girl as olivia, an apprentice baker and friend of anton, but has nothing on the sniper - the sniper has photos of maya and olivia and anton (happy, though, not fearing for their life); gustavo is still worried about anton, but everyone rests for the night </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 09/12/2020, Session 47: ???? - they tell the guards at the earl's that their "friend" followed pharasma, so they don't want a resurrection, just a conversation; the guard has okrin come in to pick up the scroll of speak with dead - they return to the ship and speak with olivia, whose only useful information was that anton was often at donovan's house and she was knocked out on her way home from the bakery - they retrace her route with okrin wearing omar's disguising mask to look like olivia, and as he passes by donovan's house he reaches out and pulls her in, says he thought she was gone - he doesn't tell okrin much they don't already know; anton has been taken and likely brought to the earl - okrin continues on to olivia's home and doesn't end up finding anything of note - the group decides to have dennis annd omar parade through town disguised as olivia and anton, hoping to provoke a reaction from whoever took them - as they walk through town selling bread, someone named soma approaches them like "hey friends!" omar says he was concussed and forgets soma, soma reminds them that he and olivia and anton all went to school together, and they hung out a few weeks ago - but as he leans in close to hug them, he whispers "I know what's going on" and snaps his fingers, teleporting himself and "anton" somewhere - as "olivia" starts screaming, donovan comes up to her again asking what's going on, when he brings her back to his house again she pretends to faint so the others can sneak up to his windows and listen in - however, dennis fails his stealth and donovan gets suspicious and realizes it's a mask; he reaches out and dennis loses his senses - morgrym comes inside and pokes his sword into donovan's back, telling him that they're all on the same side; he lowers his sword as a show of faith - they get to talking, donovan is sad to hear olivia's dead, tells them that he heard that the earl was the one who sent the hitman to kidnap anton (unusual, normally he just murders) - but then he reveals that he's also one of the people on the earl's payroll! he paralyzes them all and has guards come tie them up </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 09/19/2020, Session 48: ???? - everyone's blindfolded, but they get the sense that the wagon they're in is heading in the direction of the earl's residence - eventually they stop and get brought inside, and when the blindfolds lift they realize that they all have the anti-magic collars they saw on the slaves - they stand before borko, the earl of masuko, who asks why they're here; okrin gives a non-answer to avoid revealing anything about the solaren weapons, while morgrym gets incensed about the chain of murders that involved the unjust jailing of his friend - osfinas is recognized by borko, who gets enraged when when osfinas calls him "poor management"; osfinas tries to set up a deal for them to keep things quiet, but borko sends them to the slave auctioneer - but he does appreciate shows of might, so their collars pop off and their weapons are returned; if they defeat the auctioneer, they win a second audience with borko, but if they lose, they actually get sold as slaves - as osfinas runs forward, the auctioneer summons three monsters; dennis recognizes him as a fellow monster trainer - everyone else runs up to the monsters (with morgrym picking up fink along the way) while okrin starts firing - fink walls out some of the monsters with a wall of force, one of the monsters fails to grapple osfinas, another burrows into the floor - as morgrym goes ghost, drops fink, and teleports past the wall, the burrowed monster comes up under the rat, but fink puts an emergency force sphere down - fink enlarges pikachu, osfinas and pikachu work together to slam the burrower, okrin shoots the grappler, morgrym resists the glowing monster's blinding gaze - morgrym fails to forcibly teleport the blinding deer over to the others, okrin dimension doors past the force wall so he can continue shooting the auctioneer - the grappler picks up pikachu and throws it at fink, interrupting his summoning! but okrin lands a critically accurate volley, forcing the antlered creature to block for the auctioneer, and morgrym hits them both with a wave of force - fink gets chased by the burrower while dennis swaps pikachu out for gyarados (the ice worm), okrin misses his next few shots thanks to the floor-electricity-induced muscle spasms (which also cause fink to fail to re-prepare) - morgrym dazes the auctioneer, and okrin shoots him again for the kill; the guards come back and, true to borko's word, respect the party as having shown their strength; they bring the party back to borko, but don't tie them up or take their weapons this time - the earl offers them places among his men, but before they can respond, donovan bursts in demanding to know where anton is (since he held up his end and delivered the snoopers) - borko points at a closet and donovan opens it, screaming as he sees anton's corpse; but before he can finish his chanting, borko teleports behind him and stabs through his chest - borko calmly returns to his conversation with the party, giving them time to consider his offer - they want to stay to find omar and learn more about vault access, despite this reminder of what he does to traitors - borko offers to give them omar back as long as they work for him while they're in town, morgrym and fink and okrin make sure to iron out the details (can't stop them from leaving town, etc.) before they all accept - their first job: bring back ilya, dead or alive (but preferably alive) </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 10/03/2020, Session 49: ???? - the party debates whether to hunt or work with ilya; they decide to choose later, based on his reaction - they offer to scry on ilya in front of borko if he pays for it, he agrees so fink begins the process - while waiting for the cast time, morgrym asks about the bathroom and skulks around, notes a more heavily guarded door that he suspects to be the vault - the scrying happens; they see ilya at natasha's grave, borko tells the party ilya's probably coming to kill him - okrin inquires about the location of the cemetery (northeast past the woods), borko gives directions and they head out - they reach a bridge over a frozen river, okrin identifies an illusion magic aura set in the middle of the bridge - he shoots an arrow, which is cut in half; they suspect an invisible swordsman, morgrym switches stances to see it; purple, horned humanoid with sharp claws and a smoky blue and white robe - further consideration has morgrym realize this is an incorporeal undead who collects lost souls, explains why he's lingering before an abandoned graveyard - they teleport past the soul harvester, breaking through his attempt to chain them in place; when they land, osfinas sees ilya in the graveyard dozens of feet away - they greet him, tell him they were sent to kill him before he could kill borko, they ask ilya to work together with them - he agrees, suggests the decollate spell to sneak him in as a "beheaded" corpse; they go make a deal with the soul harvester, he teaches fink the spell - the party recognizes some floating souls around the soul harvester, recognize him as the enchanter's mentor, the collector - they talk about the enchanter for a bit, the collector gets slightly worried when his message to the enchanter is ignored - he teaches them the spell on the condition that they put borko's soul into a gem that he gives them within the next 2 days - they bring the decollated ilya to borko (in a large sack), and okrin spins a yarn of how they got the jump on him; as the only one with a sword, morgrym chimes in when he asks about the killing blow - he believes them, and right after the party pockets their rewards, ilya's floating hands attack the guards while his real hands reattach his head and he confronts borko! - ilya pins down some of the guards, borko slams his sword down and the ground ripples, knocking some of them prone - dennis summons pikachu, osfinas moves to protect ilya, and fink hastes the others - okrin throws a fireball at another group of guards, singeing them, and morgrym follows up with a cone of force - ilya barely gets an artificial hand up in time to protect himself from borko's plunging strike - the 6 blasted guards run in, striking at morgrym (who teleports away), okrin (who dodges), fink, and dennis (who get hit) - one of the grappled guards breaks free, but fails to hurt osfinas while he gives his bonded bonuses to ilya - dennis has pikachu bite and claw the like of soldiers that ran in, cleaning up 3 of the 6; okrin fires at the grappled set, finishing off 3 of the 4 - fink summons a massive demon spider (bebilith) behind borko that bites into him, rotting some of his flesh - morgrym and one of his illusory doubles strike at borko and one of his men, paralyzing the guard but only slowing the earl - borko casts some hefty magic and revives all of his fallen guards! okrin focus fires borko while fink lightning bolts a line of guards - ilya keeps grabbing guards while osfinas bodyblocks for him, but borko gives them a surge of strength and they break free - fink saves himself from borko's attack with an emergency force sphere, osfinas runs around boosting the others' attacks/defenses - dennis hits 8 of the 10 guards with a big chain lightning and okrin launches another volley at borko - morgrym hijacks the full revive burst power borko used, borko goes full turtle and puts down a combo magical/physical/anchoring defensive field around him - the last 3 guards rush the demon spider, and it tears them to shreds while dennis shoots them with his gun - osfinas boosts okrin's accuracy as he rains down on borko's barrier, finally shattering it; morgrym strides up for the followup but fumbles both attacks, narrowly avoiding critically failing each of them - borko double-mind-crushes, inflicting massive damage based on the party's mental prowess; fink dies oughtright! he died invisible, but dennis has pikachu dispel it - morgrym runs over to fink and picks him up, then warps the corpse over to his last illusion, away from the anti-magic field pikachu brought over to borko - borko fails his third mind crush because of the field, osfinas aids okrin again in dealing huge damage to borko while morgrym restores fink with the magic he stole - ilya's magic hands grab borko's limbs and begins pulling, but then he has two more hands appear with a scarlet scythe that slashes borko and drinks the spurting blood - ilya gloats, but borko sneers as he dies, "the bow's already gone"; okrin collects his soul in the gem - the collector appears and takes the gem, but is scared off when he sees ilya with the scythe; he's become alyssa's willing host - the party confronts him about wanting power to bring back natasha, but he's actually bent on destroying the world and bringing everyone else to her; since the party was previously nice to him, he'll end them last </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 10/17/2020, Session 50: ???? - ilya walks away, speaking about some sort of a reunion; the party tries to get him to say with whom, but he won't - fink begins re-summoning his demon spider, morgrym teleports in and out to hit but one of ilya's hands blocks it, same happens with two of okrin's three arrows - ilya splits the two hands not holding the scythe into four then summons a fountain of blood; the bodies of borko and his guards get absorbed and turned into sanguine horrors! - dennis and pikachu send some remarkably effective chain lightnings bouncing across the blood elementals, but fink's confusion doesn't break through ilya's spell resistance - morgrym warps ilya away from his hands, but the ones holding the scythe go with him and alyssa gives him a "nice try" through ilya - ilya casts something unidentifiable, affecting everyone but okrin with some magical bleed; the sanguine horrors start slamming fink and throwing bloody missiles at the others - spider barely avoids double fumble, while morgrym lifesteals away the bleed damage he took - okrin, morgrym, and fink's spider keep attacking ilya while dennis keeps fighting the horrors; morgrym curses ilya to take the damage he deals - ilya has difficulty hitting morgrym through his mirror images, so he bloodbends morgrym to walk away from him and towards the sanguine horrors so they can slam him - ilya lifesteals hard off morgrym, outdoing the curse, and moves towards the fountain to drink from it, revitalizing himself - as they continue to fight, ilya talks about how he misses his wife but he can see her in the afterlife, but he doesn't want to be selfish, he'll free everyone before he goes - ilya calls a truce, scrys in his fountain to show them dr ziegler working for blackstone commander/lieutenant and ozymandias - he says they're experimenting with pulling apsu energy from worshippers to trace the divine weapons, the party watches as they revive aatrox and blast him with disintegration - morgrym asks why alyssa is still here instead of joining aatrox, she says that was the aforementioned reunion and then the party watches as ilya disappears and they see him appear in the scryed laboratory, breaking machines and killing scientists - as aatrox struggles free, sett tackles him, and the lieutenant runs away with the commander, the party just keeps watching everything through the scrying - ozymandias accosts ilya, tries to smush him between summoned pyramids, ilya brings down the lab with an earthquake </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 11/07/2020, Session 51: ???? - the party hears footsteps approaching, so they all hide; in comes nigel and a bunch of guards! - they came to investigate, nigel accuses okrin (who was less stealthy) of killing borko; he explains about ilya, but nigel still wants to take him in - okrin freaks out and teleports back to the mansion, morgrym calls out for the others to huddle up as he brings fink to them, fink teleports the rest back - after they reconvene, they decide to teleport to the sandstone legion to check out the scene - the palace has turned into a giant crater! it doesn't look like anyone escaped - morgrym asks a local what happened, they didn't see much from out here; a guard tries to warn them off, but the party wants to help - fink casts animal growth and ant haul on dennis' pets so they can help clear the rubble; as they proceed, okrin sees a magic aura, fink recognizes it as aatrox - the party decides to pitch a tent near the palace and rest up while keeping watch; on okrin's shift, he notices that aatrox's aura is rising, as are sett's and alyssa's - he wakes the rest, they try to use dennis' monsters to free sett and bury the others while asking guards to evacuate and form a perimeter </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 11/14/2020, Session 52: ???? - as aatrox finishes climbing out, the fatigued party hastily prepares with bonds and berries - he's enraged upon seeing them, attacks immediately; the party fights back as best as they can, doing significant damage - fink in particular is working on a sealing gauntlet prototype while the others hammer aatrox, but after less than a minute, they notice alyssa breaking free! - before alyssa-ilya can interfere too much, morgrym paralyzes the wounded aatrox and dennis activates fink's gauntlet - aatrox gets sucked into his sword, but a burst of brilliant white light accompanied the activation - a wild magic event! it drained fink of his casting ability, and dennis has the potential to trigger wild magic like omar - the party wakes up in the center of a chalk summoning circle in some sort of study! they're greeted by a girl, melissa penbrooke - she's surprised there are multiple of them, she expected to summon a single archon, figures she's a prodigy - they ask where they are, apparently the "kingdom" of andoran; it's a parliamentary democracy, and it's actually south of the five kings mountains (where morgrym came from, hence his knowledge) - they ask melissa to scry on the city of the sandstone legion, and morgrym draws sketches of ilya and sett to use as a reference - she reports that ilya was running through the desert, with sett and some of his crew chasing after - satisfied, the party asks melissa what she'd like help with; her parents and 7 older siblings have given her a magic test that she has to pass to find them - they sleep in some of her spare rooms, ready to help her out in exchange for her scrying help and to make up for replacing her summon - the next morning, they gather and find fink with his new pet, a construct owl named artemis; avian robotic transporter, earlier made in security - melissa's job is underwater, so the party gets out their goggles from masuko and she teleports them to an underwater throne; there's a scroll somewhere there that they need to retrieve </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 11/21/2020, Session 53: ???? - okrin's magic sight shows a box on the throne with an enchantment aura, he uses telekinesis to pull it towards them - they find a magic flow-style puzzle on it, and upon solving it the box opens; the scroll within reads like an inverted binding spell - morgrym asks melissa about exotic (extraplanar) "pets" her family might have that they'll encounter; she instead figures that they should activate the scroll here, so she does - the party hears a loud scraping sound, and osfinas notices from the deep dark water underneath the throne emerge two figures swimming rapidly - TWO OCEAN DRAGONS! - melissa confidently throws a super-metamagic'd snowball, but it dissipates at flies through the water - okrin realizes his bow will be less effective, so he summons a magic spear but fails to pierce the nearer dragon's hide - it tries to hit osfinas, but bites its own tail instead! morgrym comes in and blinds it, but it retaliates, missing due to a combination of concealment and morgrym's mirror images - the other dragon, after bull rushing through morgrym's distracting illusion, lobs an explosive ball of frost at dennis, fink, their pets, and melissa, hurting them and slowing them down; melissa burns herself free - fink and his owl move in on the near one that the others are attacking, melissa casts shout on the one she now faces alone - morgrym moves around for the flank and dazes the near dragon, but the other one rushes through osfinas, okrin, and dennis, then follows up with a cone of cold - the party's softened up the incompetent dragon, so dennis tries capturing it while the rest help melissa kill the scary dragon - as in, they fight it below the threshold and suddenly she hits it with power word kill, meanwhile eventually dennis captures the first dragon - when both dragons go down, the throne cracks open and a teleport-enchanted amethyst gem floats out; melissa's ecstatic that she passed the test, but the party warns her that it might just be the first part - turns out she was right, they're brought to her parents, audrey and jonathan, who congratulate her! melissa introduces the party to her parents, then asks after her siblings; they're on a field trip with their uncle keith to the forest of laywood - the party stays for dinner, unseen servants deliver an extravagant course, they chat for a while until osfinas recognizes him as the collector! after dinner, they say bye to melissa and her mother, then talk with the collector - he wants to keep this side of him from his family, so he wants to make a deal with them - they deliberate, settling on something like the gauntlet to let them keep aatrox/alyssa suppressed - while they talk, okrin calls the enchanter, but bakko answers, saying he's too injured from ilya's attack, needs weeks to recover - collector would need to call in favors to get something like what they want, so he needs the party to do something more for him </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 11/28/2020, Session 54: ???? - while they wait and deliberate, omar comes through the door! the collector had found him somewhere - the collector says that, while ozark may have gone to apsu's afterlife, that doesn't mean he's unreachable/unable to make them a new gauntlet - but first, he wants them to sign a contract saying that he owns their souls if they tell other people what they learn here; after okrin and omar get him to agree to their proposed modifications, they sign - he's willing to hook them up with a round trip to apsu's realm as long as they take care of an egg (2 feet, purple with orange spots) for him until it hatches - when they agree, he brings them to the parlor to meet the guy who'll take them to apsu's realm; the enchanter! he has a friend in the boneyard - he taps them and their souls fade out of their bodies; they're in this gray, desolate plain standing in line, shuffling towards a giant gate guarded by two psychopomps - the enchanter's friend passes by and marks them such that they'll go to apsu, but only omar notices him, faint as he is - they end up in apsu's realm, sky-swimming around the floating islands until they find ozark on a workshop-esque island - they explain, he challenges them to a game of dancing genies if they want his help - it's a close, intense game, down to the wire, but dennis catches him messing up a house rule, so he gives them the win (and the schematic)! - the party barely has time to memorize the schematics before they get brought back to the material plane, and after reporting a successful mission, they're teleported back to their mansion by the collector </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 12/05/2020, Session 55: ???? - the party realizes that fink's shift from wizard to alchemist has left him unable to craft the gauntlet - and they can't commission a random person or they break the contract, and they can't truly resurrect ozark to do it because of how long he's been dead - omar and fink are trying to figure out how to magically polymorph a mundane, crafted gauntlet - morgrym wonders if they can somehow get ozark to possess one of them from beyond the grave and craft through their hands; figures that a solaren might know more about the possession aspect - dennis remembers the sliding puzzles that showed solaren locations, he suspects that the spear is in a mountain somewhere - as they talk, morgrym feels the collector scrying, and then the collector actually pops in (they said his name and had the pens that he gave them) - they ask him to approve the bow/spear solaren as trusted beings, he'll do so if they kill a "bad guy" for him; morgrym suggests they find out the target first and the collector can erase their memories if they won't do it - omar refuses, everyone else agrees, the target is kayn; fink is super excited - amendment added: they're trusted, and when kayn is actually dead, the collector will provide info on how to find one of those two solaren - he also gives them their first set of instructions for the egg: there's a river near masuko that remains permanently unfrozen, they need to submerge the egg for a minute - omar comes back, fink explains who kayn is and why they're okay with attacking him (rip archibald) - omar does first want to try getting some scrolls (eagle's splendor, bestow insight) that will help him have a chance of successfully using a scroll of wish to make the gauntlet work without having to do the solaren/ozark thing - he gets the basic ones, then follows the shopkeeper's instructions to the more niche shop to get the wish scroll itself - thankfully okrin went with him, and caught this other shopkeeper out; he was trying to sell omar a fake, so they left in disgust - when they return, the group decides to go to masuko and submerge the egg, since they have definitive info there instead of speculation about kayn/solaren - they fly on omar's ship and eventually find the river, some of them stay on the ship while others accompany dennis' ice worm on its way to submerge the egg in the transmutation-aura river - before they dunk it, they notice large chunks of ice at the bottom (!) of the river; as they expected, upon dunking the egg, it glowed blurple and the ice elementals at the bottom woke up - omar summons a fire elemental and has his crew members man the cannons, osfinas jumps down out of the ship, morgrym flies over to help him and uses reflections of himself to help shred the first, okrin stays on the ship and looses a volley of scorching ray arrows to wipe out another, but more keep coming! - they slam the fire elemental, fink rides artemis in to bomb a different pair, the ship's cannons fire barrages - this goes on for half a minute, many sets of elementals coming to attack the intruders </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 12/12/2020, Session 56: ???? - halfway through the minute, a man in furs appears, watching over the fight disapprovingly - dennis puts him in a force cage until they finish off the last of the elementals, but the nature protector summons a t-rex to crush the force cage - they argue back and forth about how soon the party needs to leave the forest (now!, according to the druid) until he has the t-rex leap up onto the ship! - meanwhile, he throws 2 hatchets at dennis' ice worm, who drops the egg! it floats up the river, but osfinas and okrin recover it while dennis fights the wild man - omar, frightened, turns into a dragon and flies away after setting his ship to rise; on board, morgrym and fink fight the dinosaur - when omar makes it back to the ship, he has his crew roll the ship, dumping the dinosaur! morgrym flies fine, but fink's owl gets clipped in the rotation; fink barely holds on for dear life! - the party then converges on the hatchet-throwing conservationist, now that he's the only foe left, causing him to flee, but they knock him out as he runs - the egg finishes its minute-long subversion, and its purple exterior is now webbed with lines of light blue - they tie up their visitor and heal him awake so they can explain once more they just needed a minute, then let him go and fly home </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 01/02/2021, Session 57: ???? - the party talks to the collector again and spends a while debating how to protect the egg after learning that he stole it from a poacher who wants it back - they settle on creating a safety chamber inside artemis and casting nondetection, so they go shopping for materials and spells before they head out to check on sett/alyssilya - they can't find them, but a local shady dude behind the apothecary has info on where a currently unwielded solaren weapon (so either the bow or the spear) will be soon - but first, he wants them to break a friend of his out of prison in the blackstone legion! okrin goes in alone first to do some scouting - they decide the best course is to explain the truth to the blackstone commander, he agrees to let them take out the prisoner (who thinks they have powerful connections), but he does eventually want this thief back </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 01/09/2021, Session 58: ???? - back in sandstone, their contact mentioned that he has a fence/launderer friend who's auctioning the lightning bow in masuko in 2 days, in some sort of mask-only club - heeeey, that's all familiar! but he notices the party's reaction and asks for details, then scampers off with his rescued robber friend when they mention they helped take out masuko's leader - they take to the skies in omar's ship, leaving it disguised as a cloud above masuko as they fly down invisibly - they head to gustavo to ask about the bow, trying to figure out whether it's feasible to win it at auction or whether they need to try intercepting it beforehand - he's not in his office, his secretary points them to the castle instead, where they find him talking with nigel - gustavo is happy to see them, nigel conflicted (they killed the sitting earl, but as a result gustavo and nigel gained power) but he considers them even - gustavo explains that the bow is likely already secured by the auction house, so the party should probably try to win the auction - they understand the bow would cost a LOT of gold, but they'll bankroll it if the party kills a preacher that the public is close to rallying behind - the party kind of balks at this, so they look into pulling off a heist instead, either of funds from the casino near the club or of the bow itself from the auction house - they come up with a plan to sit at the bar again and eavesdrop on the auction, then jump the winner and claim the bow themselves </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 01/16/2021, Session 59: ???? - dennis and okrin scout for info the preacher, find pamphlet of korada (ng, peace, meditation) - then they all don their masks and enter the club, okrin asks the bartender if he knows anything about the new auctioneer but gets nothing, asks other patrons instead - they find out he keeps the items in his own demiplane! this is enough to dissuade them from a pure heist, they decide to go forward with the more grabby plan - the next morning, they find the preacher and his following is quite small; they inquire, and find out it was surprisingly large one day a few weeks ago (after a murder at the town square made people scared and anti-violent) but is usually small - they wait a bit for the auction to start, and while the others go in, morgrym waits on a nearby roof to sketch people as they enter, ideally without their masks, to identify them later - a few other items go by, but eventually they bring out the solaren lightning bow, it goes to a tall man in blue for 730k - dennis telepathically tells pikachu, who's outside with morgrym, and pikachu flips through morgrym's sketches to point him out; they're now ready in cast their target gets ahead of the others - back inside, the auctioneer hands out the bidders' prizes, saving the bow for last; since it's so valuable, he has that man come with him to his demiplane - after ~10 minutes, they leave and he has the box! he goes outside, and morgrym teleports in to paralyze him, but the man turns his attack back! morgrym temporally reverts and teleports to a nearby roof, but the stranger's piercing gaze finds him and he hits morgrym with a power word blind - while morgrym unblinds himself and pikachu fails to hit, the stranger touches pikachu and paralyzes him - dennis senses this telepathically, so he heals himself and it transfers to pikachu, who then is free and heals morgrym - morgrym tries to convince the man that the solaren were real and explain why he needs the bow, the guy doesn't believe him but he humors morgrym and opens the box so morgrym touches the bow to prove it! - he's super electrified, then flashbang! morgrym hears the voice of the bow solaren, he thinks at the solaren to share the memories of what aatrox and alyssa did, the bow solaren (gallo) agrees to work against their common enemy; morgrym asks gallo to wait for a better host (okrin) to come, the stranger (rowan) is shocked and in disbelief but believes them - soon enough, the others arrive and morgrym gives okrin the bow and he undergoes the possession while rowan complains about his 730k gold gone; the party gives him their mansion address and promises to pay him back </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 01/23/2021, Session 60: ???? - the party rests and goes to a shop to buy a scroll of scrying, morgrym draws a likeness of kayn so fink can focus - kayn fails his will save, and the party sees him conversing with his father the commander, his sister cassandra, and the lieutenant - kayn's explaining to them how he's upset with ilya for abandoning him for alyssa, so he's asking to rejoin the family; cassandra is on his side, the lieutenant is against it, the commander is deep in thought - they teleport back to their mansion and head to the citadel, the guards won't let them into the meeting so they wait outside - eventually they're let in, and it's just the commander and lieutenant; however, okrin notices one of the floor tiles has abjuration magic and decides to call them out while explaining the bow story like "whoa is that a tunnel? commander this is unsafe we could be spied upon!" - morgrym phases through the floor under the pretense of a security check and finds kayn and cassandra there, the commander has them come up for the conversation - they somehow (commander: "kayn, this is how you show you've repented") manage to negotiate to kill then resurrect kayn so they can tell the collector they've killed him so they can get the spear solaren info - fink makes a poison for kayn to take and the commander calls on an old cleric friend to resurrect him, then they go to the mansion and call the collector to present the body and explain - he's kind upset but also impressed, so he scrys and shows them a mountain range in the northeast; the spear is in a dragon's hoard! - but first, he has the next egg step for them; south of those mountains, there's a jungle with monstrous plants that would make good food - he teleports them there, and they immediately see a giant sleeping plant beast, a zomok, surrounded by sentient mushrooms (fungal leshys) that they want to collect - the rest of the party hides while pikachu tries to pull up a mushroom but it screams, waking up the monster! - everyone pitches in a little, but fink's flurry of bombs makes quick work of it, so they finish collecting the mushrooms and teleport home </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 02/06/2021, Session 61: ???? - the party teleports back to the forest and head north to the mountains - they meet a man and his two pet wolves in a cabin who warns them away from the dragon, but they go anyway - as they fly up to the mountain peak, osfinas and fink fall off artemis! but okrin catches them and puts them back on the bird - after recovering, they spot a large, flat ledge that they suspect to be an opening deeper into the mountains - but fink gets distracted while pointing it out and falls again! this time, morgrym teleports over to catch him - eventually, they all manage to land and osfinas is the only one able to see through the snow - ice elementals! - there are about two dozen, the party takes them out as quickly as possible but the barrage of icicles destroys artemis! fink can't repair her until they get home, so he summons a fire elemental - as for the others, osfinas blocks a bunch of the icicles with his shield, dennis has his sea dragon spit steam, osfinas rains down a variety of elemental arrows, and morgrym shatters them with force and sword swings (except for one that's particularly great at resisting morgrym in particular, to the point where he knocks morgrym out, forcing him to revive with a counter - morgrym finally takes it out by teleporting it over to osfinas, where it shatters on impact) - after a long, hard-fought battle, they finally take out all of the elementals and find an illusory chunk of rock wall, and they walk straight through it! </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 02/20/2021, Session 62: ???? - as they go in, fink stumbles over a pressure plate and gets shot by an arrow trap, and morgrym gets hit with mental stat gas - okrin uses a flaming arrow to burn the gas away so they can all go through, but dennis' new ice elemental triggers a flame pillar trap and burns into a puddle - okrin points out the next two traps, morgrym disables the tripwire successfully but accidentally sets off the pressure plate - they find a wall of force blocking their path; morgrym teleports himself and osfinas over, but they're upside-down on the other side! - something about this wall messed with them, it flips them as they travel through the astral plane! they go back and touch an orb they found in a side room that also flipped them, so this way when they cross the wall they end up right-side-up - they then find an actual paved area with walls and rooms instead of a rough cave - they find murals of warriors and a silver dragon, along with bags of gold that are actually mimics! - at the back of the room are two dark tunnels; they look down one and see some discarded weapons and armor but not much else, ending in a large chamber - as they get closer, okrin detects massive amounts of necromanctic magic! - morgrym sends an illusion as bait and a skeleton bursts up from the ground to attack it, and a stone wall falls into place behind them! partway through the fight, some caster skeletons join in! the party eventually takes them all out, but as the skeletons died they exploded in negative energy </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 02/27/2021, Session 63: ???? - the party stops to heal up as they return to the main chamber, then go back to the other tunnel - they find a fountain with a draconic inscription that speaks of how, upon drinking, the pure will be healed and the evil will face their inner demons - when morgrym approaches it and holds up his mirror, he sees his reflection but not his reflection's reflection in his mirror, nor does his illusory duplicate have a reflection in the water; he suspects that the reflections in this fountain are based on life, not light - at the same time, okrin finds a series of pressure plates at the back of the room - when osfinas touches the water, it ripples, but the reflections don't... then he sips the water and is healed a bit, but then his reflection climbs out of the fountain! - it stands in front of osfinas, staring at him, and when he waves, it waves back! - fink notes 10 pressure plates, and okrin suggests that each of the 5 party members needs to stand in pairs with their reflection? since from what he remembered, more plates were added as each member looked into the fountain - okrin follows osfinas' example and drinks, and his reflection climbs up out of the fountain as well! they take their places next to osfinas and his doppelganger on the plates - morgrym and fink do the same, with morgrym first creating a few illusory duplicates and inviting his doppelganger to join the gang and fink being extremely wary of his - dennis tries to have pikachu stand on his matching plate, but nothing happens; he gives in and drinks, and his doppelganger climbs out as well - once everyone is lined up, the reflections all ask in unison: "are you pure of heart?" and the party answers affirmatively one by one - then they say "lies soothe the mind, don't they?" and point out the deals with the contract devils; then the reflections get ready to fight! - it's frantic and intense, they all know what each other can do and the osfinases in particular are doing an excellent job of setting up combat patrols to bonk each other's teammates </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 03/13/2021, Session 64: ???? - morgrym manages to take out fake dennis, just as dennis and osfinas take out fake okrin; okrin almost gets fake fink, but he barely holds on - fake morgrym is having issues with okrin (hijacked lightning only to find that okrin healed from it), so he goes after morgrym, but morgrym counters to swap their places and get fake morgrym to trap himself back as a reflection! - fake fink hides in fake osfinas' pocket and lobs bombs, almost killing morgrym; osfinas and morgrym work together to distract osfinas while okrin fires away - dennis enlarges his pet ice worm, which bites into fake osfinas and lifts him into the air (with fake fink still in his pocket), and the party takes the chance to finish them off! okrin gets the killing blow on fake osfinas with a cosmic arrow, and fake fink dissolves in he ice worm's stomach - their path back to the main hall is unblocked, and they find a third (new) passageway waiting for them there </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 03/20/2021, Session 65: ???? - the party heals up and gets some rest, with dennis' monsters keeping watch - the man in the cottage outside the mountain comes in with his two wolves and talks to them; he's surprised that they're still alive, figures he was gonna clean up their bodies, but he just wishes them good luck - as they proceed into the third chamber, they find two large marble/gold statues and the silver dragon sleeping on its hoard behind - okrin suspects that the statues are constructs so he tries to pull one underground with his magic burrowing, but isn't strong enough - close investigation by fink confirms that they are constructs unlike any he's ever seen - he also notices that the dragon, agatha, shifted in her sleep - morgrym flies fink over to the dragon so he can try injecting skinsend; she opens an eye and calls out to them, asking them to stop and bring their friends - as everyone approaches, most of them resist her frightful presence, but dennis is afraid and throws his master ball by reflex - as the dragon is sucked into his essence, her soul power is so strong that she possesses his body! - after a grueling fight in which the rest of the party knocks out all of dennis' pets, the shock helps him break free and expel the dragon - they argue back and forth, cynthia (the solaren in the spear) is willing to go with them once she talks to gallo but agatha doesn't want to let them go - osfinas dives for the spear, becoming cynthia's new host; it fuses with his shield, taking the form of icicle spikes - the party clusters around okrin in an attempt to teleport out, but one of the marble statues absorbs okrin's spell! - both statues fly over to the group and land with a smash </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 03/27/2021, Session 66: ???? - they begin to fight the dragon for real! she sets up a wind wall to block projectiles, then hurls osfinas at his lined-up party members - she magically shares half her damage with morgrym, and the statues absorb the healing magic dennis tries to use on him! - morgrym/dennis/osfinas do their best to distract and survive while okrin/fink put out as much damage as possible - it takes a while and multiple of them almost lose their lives, but the party eventually slays the dragon! and help themselves to its hoard... </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 04/10/2021, Session 67: ???? - they head back to masuko to pay off their debt to rowan, but find it destroyed! the city is rubble, and its citizens lay dead in the streets - the party finds footprints from a large group of quadrupedal animals with clawed, webbed feet, but precious little else - after they spend a while investigating and find nothing more of value, they teleport to the blackstone citadel to tell the commander - but he was waiting for them, he has more info; bartimaeus wants the solaren bow, and destroyed masuko as an example to threaten the commander - dennis captures his old friend the owlbear, then the lieutenant leads them to a prisoner they captured, an ally of bartiumaeus - fink is able to read the scroll (in protean) that this man was caught transporting for bartimaeus, it's instructions on how to set up a gate spell but with no creature limit (though a concentration duration limit) - they have trouble figuring out how to interrogate him without letting him open his mouth to teleport away, until they settle on using detect thoughts (morgrym takes fink to buy a scroll) and prompting the prisoner's thoughts with a question - they mostly get "don't think about the monsters, don't think about the monsters, don't think about the monsters!" - fink also sees some sort of hideaway in the man's thoughts, he describes it to morgrym, who sketches it out and shows everyone; they come to the conclusion that bartimaeus probably has a personal demiplane - dennis also identifies a monster in the sketch, a chernobue, and figures out that this was probably what bartimaeus summoned to raze masuko - they figure that they need to bait bartimaeus out, so they tell the commander to respond to bartimaeus that he's willing to make a deal - but bartimaeus responds and isn't coming himself; he's sending a lackey, which foils their plan to jump him, so they give up on that idea and the party prepares to defend from the incoming invasion - the commander/cassandra/kayn/lieutenant stand with the soldiers guarding the west gate while the party stands with the soldiers guarding the east - they position with the 3 groups of soldiers guarding the gate: dennis and his pet to the northeast, okrin and fink to the east, morgrym and osfinas to the southeast - bartimaeus magically broadcasts his warning to the city, telling the citizens that their blood will be on their commander's hands for refusing a transaction - then the portals open! five of them! each one held open by two bartimaeuses, with chernobues pouring out </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 05/01/2021, Session 68: ???? - many blackstone soldiers die in the battle, and a lot of the party members come close to death themselves - osfinas feints and concusses them, dennis blasts lightning, okrin rains arrows, fink tosses bombs, morgrym slashes and stabs - fink summons two azatas to help, morgrym runs around the qlippoths and deliberately gets hit in order to strike back as much as possible - in the end, they destroy all of the copies of himself that bartimaeus pulled from other timelines, and they close the portals and kill all of the qlippoths! </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 05/29/2021, Session 69: ???? - they head over to the west side where they find the commander and lieutenant holding this timeline's bartimaeus hostage - they're blocking teleports, but he tries to use some sort of time magic to escape, but midsentence he starts coughing up more and more blood - they identify the cause as a spell from a sanguine sorcerer, and they only know one of those: alyssa - fink's dispel bomb stops bartimaeus from dying, but a sunburst spell finishes him off - as the party frantically looks for the source of these spells, one of dennis' pets sees alyssilya hundreds of feet in the air and descending towards them - he offers them a deal; he'll spare their lives if they give him the solaren weapons - they refuse, so he starts turning bodies into sanguine horrors, some inside - the commander/lieutenant/cassandra/kayn/guards go to help the citizens while the party takes on alyssiya himself! - he has 8 hands this time, and 3 of them lift osfinas into the air! 1 tries to grapple fink but he has freedom of movement and summons a swarm of army ants to counter, some of the other hands try to attack morgrym (who hits back), okrin and dennis fire from the back - alyssilya plagues them with sanguine handicaps and inhibitors, but fink's medical expertise saves them from excessive bleeding - dennis makes a prismatic wall and uses breath of the wild to push alyssilya into it! - the fight continues for a little while longer once alyssilya returns to sanity (and the material plane), but dennis' meteor swarm ends it - as he dies, ilya's grateful that he can at last be with his wife... but alyssa's not done yet! </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 06/05/2021, Session 70: ???? - alyssa, now in the form of an immense blood elemental with ilya's corpse at its center, is forcibly keeping herself stable for the moment - she grabs fink and stuffs him into the chest cavity with ilya, while osfinas feints to give morgrym and himself attacks of opportunity, okrin fires his arrows, and dennis heals and his pet blasts - when they corner her, she creates a wall of corpses that reach out and try to grab the frontliners! - after a long, hard-fought battle, fink's final (ice) bomb kills alyssa, shattering her blood form as the scythe clatters to the ground - they then recieve telepathic invites to melissa penbrooke's birthday party... - the party explores the city and sees a destroyed sanguine fountain, thanks to the blackstone legion - as they clean up the aftermath, the party keeps watch and rests up so okrin can use telekinesis to carry the scythe </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 06/12/2021, Session 71: ???? - the party brings the scythe back and puts it in a lead-lined lockbox, then goes shopping and relaxes for a day - then they head to melissa's birthday party when someone comes to pick them up and teleport them there - the collector, jonah penbrooke, melissa's father, greets them and says the egg should hatch in a few hours, it'll imprint with melissa and be her birthday present - one of melissa's siblings is rowan, who's still a little peeved that they took the solaren weapon he wanted - they all chat and eat, but then as jonah tries to give melissa the egg, a bunch of nature-looking people teleport in and yell at them to stop! - they accuse the collector of stealing the egg and attack! earth and ice spells, summoned wolf beast, etc. - but they give up before they die, they don't want to lose their lives to save the egg that the collector stole from them - after the fight, the egg hatches while melissa holds it, and out comes a baby manticore! - they go in and have cake </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 06/26/2021, Session 72: ???? - after fink tends to okrin's wounds, okrin notices a strange creature (an egg with legs) wandering outside - the collector facepalms, this must've gotten out of the kitchen, these egg creatures are the secret behind why the cake was so delicious - after dennis captures it, they head home and rest up - the next day, they take a few tries to scry on sett and find him at the rubble of the sandstone legion - morgrym stays behind to guard the scythe while the others teleport to him - they bring sett back home so he can pick up the scythe, then all teleport back to the desert and arrange the solaren weapons in a circle - when sett places his brass knuckles as the final one, he's a little sad that he couldn't go down fighting but the party promises to honor him in the legends - morgrym reads out the chant that his parents sent him from their research, and all of them besides dennis fail to resist getting pulled into the portal that opens! he dives in after the rest anyway! - they find themselves in front of a sliding ice puzzle, and they push off from each rock to get to the end - after a second ice puzzle room, the next room has a detonated explosive lying around and some numbers drawn in blood on the floor that come into vision as the party steps in each area (minesweeper) - they do pretty well, but osfinas gets a little too confident and some magical blood falls on him, okrin, and fink, causing their primary ability scores to drain - after more minesweeping and occasional healing of mistakes, they finally make it to the end of the next puzzle room </div> \pagebreakNum <div class = "wide"> ##### 07/17/2021, Session 73: ???? - the party stands before a dark hallway, and they go through it to find a massive arena - they can't see anyone in the seats, but they can hear them chattering - but more importantly, across from them in the arena is a massive, red, scaly beast! six limbs, no wings, spiky tail - as they step into the arena, an announcer introduces both the party and the beast (a thrasfyr, nicknamed the thrasher) - it rips free of its chains to put on a show for the crowd, osfinas and morgrym run forward to hit it, fink throws bombs from osfinas' pocket, okrin and dennis and his monster lob arrows and spells from the back - the thrasher wraps a chain around osfinas and hurls him at okrin! - as fink hurls freezing bombs, the creature somehow shrugs off part of the damage! - the party tries other things, but they eventually figure out that the thrasher can only take so much damage in a given 6-second period - dennis' new egg monster eventually manages to throw enough magical eggs to convert the thrasher into a fellow egg with legs! - they see ozark walking towards them, clapping slowly, as he congratulates them on completing the solaren-themed challenges (gallo/cynthia, then alyssa/aatrox, and now sett) - he doesn't want to part with his divine gate so easily, so he challenges them to a game of dancing genies! - they emerge victorious, he admits it was just a formality anyway and he just needed a reason to part with his favorite creation - then he takes them out of the divine gate's realm and over to the boneyard! turns out they died when they entered the divine gate, and now they need sorting - THE END! :D </div> <div class = "pageNumber auto"></div>