Shattered Star: Dance Off!

Game Date: 3/21/2015
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 20
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Bjertha (Matt) - Dwarf Fighter
Carlie Nackle (Thomas, subbing for Chere) - Gnome Wizard
Fellany Mertien (Cliff) - Human Fighter
Maruca (Daniel) - Human Ranger /Cleric/Rogue
Slancio Brioso (Thomas) - Human Bard
Tai Lindro (Angela) - Human Monk/Warlock

The Session:
Last session once again ended with us teleporting teleporting to an unknown location.  Today began with part of the party surrounded by lust-themed Sinspawn.  Once the full party had arrived, we tried talking to the Sinspawn in various languages.  Carlie said something in Thassalonian, but it only riled them up.  Despite her attempts to apologize, and Tai's attempts to command them, a fight was inevitable.

We all moved to protect Carlie from the Sinspawn.  Luckily the enemies clustered, making them a good target for Carlie's Shatter spell.  Meruca took a lot of damage in this fight, getting hit with a Lust effect (similar to poison) twice as well as getting stunned.  Fellany finished off the final Sinspawn.  We had a choice between a flight of stairs and a side tunnel.  We tried the stairs first.

At the top of the stairs we could hear the sounds of a party.  We quietly opened some doors and found a balcony, which overlooked a grand ballroom.  It was full of masked dancers.  Sorshen sat on a throne at one end of the room.  We suspected that the dancers were an illusion.

We split the party - Carlie, Maruca, and Tai stayed on the balcony, while Bjertha, Fellany, and Slancio took the hallway until it led to the lower level of the ballroom.  When we finally made our presence known, the crowd stopped dancing, and Sorshen rose from her throne to make a speech.  Tai attacked one of the dancers, proving it was an illusion.  One dancer attacked us, so we all ganged up on that one.

The non-illusory dancer - actually a Sinspawn called Chanukrah - held up a wand and fired a lightning bolt at Fellany and Bjertha.  It was a huge amount of damage, enough to drop Fellany.  Bjertha also got hit by a fear spell, causing her to drop her axe and flee down the side door.  She missed the rest of the fight as she kept running down the hallway. 

The illusions dropped, and the rest of the partygoers vanished, including Sorshen.  The Sinspawn fired another bolt of lightning, this one dropping Tai.  She got healed, got back up again, and got dropped again.  After her next heal she finished off the Sinspawn.

On the Sinspawn's corpse we found three very useful wands - Fly, Acid Arrow, and Lightning Bolt.  Fly has a limited number of charges, but the other two recharge some uses each day.  That Lightning Bolt wand is going to prove very useful.  We also found a secret door.  We took a short rest before trying to enter it.  The door was trapped.  Tai attempted to disable the trap, but failed.  However, nothing went off, so we didn't know what the trap did.  Carlie opened the door with Mage Hand, and we passed through into an octagonal room with mosaics on the walls.

In the next room there was a large column / spiral staircase in the center, and some torture devices.  Six Gray Maidens stood before us, but since Tai looks like Sorshen, they didn't attack right away.  Tai called Carlie over and introduced them to the Maidens, and Carlie fired off a shot from the Lightning Wand.  She only hit three, two of which saved, but they still took significant damage to start off the fight.

The Maidens started ganging up on Carlie at first, so we had to protect her.  Meruca made use of the staircase for some ranged attacks.  During the fight, one Maiden banged on another door to call for reinforcements, and several more joined the fracas.  Once again Carlie got to use Shatter on a  cluster of enemies.  At one point Tai nearly died, failing two death saves before getting healed by Slancio.  Carlie also went down during the fight, but survived.  Fellany delivered the final blow on the last Maiden.

Bjertha took a +1 longsword from the leader, Slancio leveled, and we took a long rest.  We ended the session there.  Next week we'll head up the staircase.