Shattered Star: ...Aaaand We're Back.

Game Date: 7/11/2015
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 29
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

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

The Session:
To recap, we got our asses kicked last session.  Bjertha, Meruca, and Carlie were dead.  Fellany, Slancio, and Tai were at zero hit points in a hostile environment.  Today, Slancio opened his eyes to find an undead woman squatting over him.  She seemed friendly, though she had gone through our backpacks and collected all our gold.  Slancio got up, rummaged through his backpack for his last few healing potions, and used them to revive Fellany and Tai.  Then they gathered up all their belongings (including their fallen comrades) and went back through the portal.

Back at the library, Slancio realized he'd need the gold to get us raised.  So he asked the undead woman for our gold back.  It looked like there was going to be a fight, but Slancio rolled a 30 on his persuasion check, and the woman agreed to take a much smaller share of the gold.  Then Slancio pointed her to the undead-friendly parts of town and she went on her way.

The next order of business was to raise the dead party members.  Bjertha and Carlie just got raised normally, but Meruca got reincarnated as an Elf.  They also went ahead and got rid of Bjertha's cursed sword.  We bought a few more supplies, then took a long rest before heading back to the pocket dimension.

In the other dimension, we explored the final few rooms of the keep.  We found the stables and a jet black carriage.  In a room containing a statue of the dark rider, Slancio tripped an arrow trap.  But he survived, and came away with a hideous new harp made from a dead pixie.  Meanwhile, Tai found a skeleton key hidden on the statue.

Next we looked in the room with the pool, where we fought the Mohrgs last session.  Tai tiptoed around the edge of the pool, looking for the source of something magical we had detected.  Behind a loose stone, she found a magic club.  We'd now double checked all the rooms we'd previously cleared, and it was time to open the last few doors we'd yet to explore.

We used the skeleton key on some double doors.  The next room was empty except for a small round well.  We could hear a hum coming from somewhere, and the water detected as magical.  We tried a few things, but could figure out what the pool had to do with anything, so we continued on.  There was another set of double doors on the other side of the room, which also opened with the skeleton key.

In the final room we saw a horrifying pillar, made of both mechanical and organic parts.  Integrated into the pillar were the corpses of three angelic beings.  At the top of the pillar was our prize - the Shard of Gluttony.  Once we took the shard, the entire dimension started to shake.  Maruca and Carlie failed a save and were inflicted with the "Curse of Living Death" (disadvantage on CHA checks, and treated as undead for certain effects).

We headed back to the portal to leave the dimension.  As we approached the portal, we encountered our questgivers.  A Chrestomath (brain) and two Caulborns.  They demanded the shard, and we had to fight them.  We tried to control their movement with Evard's Black Tentacles and Entangle spells.  We concentrated on the brain first, doing our best to keep him from using mind powers on us. 

Meruca was hit with a confusion spell early on, but kept rolling high on her confusion rolls, allowing her to act normally.  Tai finished off the brain after a couple of rounds.  Carlie hit the two Caulborns with a lightning bolt.  Meruca annihilated the final monster with a hit that did 30 damage (even though the monster only had 2 hp left at the time).  The battle over, we tried to use the portal.

Nope.  It was powered by the creatures we just killed.  Now we had no way home, and the dimension continued to shudder like it would dissipate soon.  So now we went back over every room with a fine toothed comb, trying to find what we'd missed.  In one secret door we found a jet black longsword (undead bane), and a helmet with ram horns (hat of disguise).  In another room we found a picture that kept changing landscapes.  We thought it might be an alternate portal, but no, it was basically just a screensaver.

We tried driving the carriage, but that didn't accomplish anything.  In the library, we found a magic book and a magic pair of women's legs (the less said about, the better).  We went back to the well, to see if maybe it was a portal.  No, it was actually regenerating the body of the dark rider.  But we did realize that the room's hum wasn't coming from the well.  The hum led us to a secret door, filled with the machinery that keeps this keep running.  A bit more searching, and we found some scrolls of Plane Shift, which we used to get back home.

Instead of transporting back to Kaer Maga, we skipped the long ride home and transported straight to Magnimar. We found ourselves on the city's giant bridge.  We headed back to Heidmarch Manor to update Sheila, took some downtime, removed Meruca's and Carlie's curse, and prepared for the next leg of the campaign.  Next session we'll begin the quest for the next shard.  Our search will begin at a place called Windsong Abbey.

XP:  We each received 1950 experience points, bringing us up to 39,353.