Xine Fury's Campaign Journals: March 2015

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Shattered Star: The Power of Lust

Game Date: 3/28/2015
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 21
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Bjertha (Matt) - Dwarf Fighter
Carlie Nackle (Angela, 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:

Our party fully rested after a fight with a group of Gray Maidens, today we proceeded to climb a large spiral staircase. We ended up in a room with eight alcoves. Seven of the alcoves had statues featuring each of the seven deadly sins. It took us a minute to figure out which statue represented which sin. The one confusing us most was greed, because it appeared to be offering a gift to one of the other statues.

Some words carved in the floor instructed us to "embrace the lady and the lie". We took this to mean the statues of Lust (because it was a statue of Sorshen), and Greed (because the statue was deceptive). We hugged the statues, and the empty alcove filled with mist. Stepping into the mist teleported us to another area.

We wound up in a pair of seven-sided (and hard to draw) rooms with serpent mosaics on the floor. At first this separated the party, but our rooms weren't far from each other. As our two groups reunited in the large connecting chamber, another woman stepped out from a room on the opposite side. It was Oriana, leader of the Gray Maidens. She began to address Tai (who looks like her master the Runelord Sorshen), but our ex-Maiden Fellany wasn't in the mood to talk. Fight!

There wasn't a lot of moving around in this fight. We pretty much surrounded her early on, and just kept whacking away. Oriana's full plate made her hard to hit, and her Great Weapon Master ability meant that she hit hard. Luckily, Slancio used effects that gave her disadvantage on attacks, so she missed a lot. Tai finally delivered the killing blow.

We looted the body, and took a short rest while we identified her items and attuned ourselves to our new equipment. Bjertha got a Sentinel Shield (advantage on initiative and perception), and unfortunately accepted a cursed +1 Sword of Vengeance (which compels Bjertha to repeatedly attack anyone who damages her... not much of a change from her usual strategy anyway). Tai got a Cloak of Spell Resistance (but later gave it to Meruca). Fellany donned Oriana's armor, and took the Maiden's Helm (advantage on Intimidate checks, and the Command spell 3/day). We also found the key to a locked chest we found in an earlier session.

The floor had two large snake mosaics, and a couple of wheels which rotated the entire mosaics. We experimented with aligning the snakes in different ways. When the two snakes were head-to-head, a golden mist appeared, and we hopped in. This teleported us to a large round bedroom. The room had several columns, some of which bore the bodies of tortured Maidens. On a raised platform was a canopy bed, upon which the real Sorshen watched us appear. She made some playfully suggestive comments, and Tai attacked her.

On Fellany's turn, she used her Maiden's Helm to command Sorshen: "Faint". While the Runelored was prone, Bjertha attacked her four times. Then Sorshen commanded Bjertha to attack Fellany. A confuse spell hit Meruca, Bjertha, and Fellany, mostly causing them to walk in random directions.

Sorshen was easy to hit, but she had powerful mind spells and multiple fireballs. These fireballs knocked a few of us down to zero. Finally Tai hit Sorshen with a crit, combined with one of Slancio's inspirations, for a total of 35 damage. This dropped the Runelord. We did some healing and looted everything that wasn't nailed down.

Tai got some Boots of Speed, which is going to make the Monk a mobile monster. Slancio got a wand of Dimension Door (14 charges left, not rechargeable). We also found a few healing potions. There were two gems on the bed's headboard, which matched some slots on more snake mosaics in the room. Slancio used his Whispering Coin to get a hint on which mosaic to use, and we teleported once again.

We appeared in a magic-filled room filled with still more loot, including the Shard of Lust we'd been seeking. We grabbed everything and sorted it out later. We made our way back to the Gray Maidens' barracks, opened the locked chest, rested more, and took stock of our inventory.

The chest had over 4,000 gold. We also ended up with an Orb of Consumption, a Bag of Holding, a Breastplate of Fortification (AC 16+Dex, 25% chance to negate crits), Boots of Striding & Springing (walk 30, jump farther), an Immovable Rod, Goggles of Night, Ring of Lightning Resistance, and some valuable gems.

During the night, Slancio - who is carrying the Lust shard - became overcome with a "longing" (if you know what I mean), which gave him the same effect as poison. (Thomas: "If this lasts more than four hours, I should see a doctor, right?") Tai helped him overcome it, but without that shard's Ioun Stone the feeling would come back every 12 hours.

We made our way back through the bowels of the Lighthouse. We recovered Jasper's body, put it in Sorshen's crypt, took Tai's original body, and finally left the building. Back through the swamps. Eventually we reached Hassani's compound, but it was now a smoking ruin. We investigated the bodies and found that some had died of axe wounds, and others had been chewed up.

After days of travel, we got back to town and headed straight for Heidmarch Manor. Sheila gave Slancio the Ioun Stone, calming his loins and giving him a +2 Charisma. Sheila also went ahead and gave us the stone for the next shard we'll seek, the Shard of Gluttony. Bjertha is carrying this stone, which gives her +2 CON. We learned that the next shard is in the far away town of Kaer Maga. We'll begin that journey after about twenty days of downtime.

Glad to have a second chance at life, Tai returned her original body to her mother. While Tai tried to hide the fact that her mind was in a new body, her deception may not have been successful. Slancio got a visit from his girlfriend. Bjertha was visited by a gnome named Mortimer, who gave us a side mission in Kaer Maga: there is a family of Golem makers there, and he wants some of their scraps so he can reverse engineer the process. Meruca got a visit from a member of the Nightscales criminal organization, who wants her to deliver a severed tattooed hand to Kaer Maga.

We all leveled. With much updating of character sheets and plenty of downtime before our next trip, we ended the session.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

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.

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Shattered Star: Daefu! Gesundheit.

Game Date: 3/14/2015
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 19
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

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

The Session:
Last week we lost Shemus, and left off on an underground beach with two tunnels and a secret door. We could smell death down one tunnel, and heard screaming down another. While we wanted to take a rest, the screaming was too urgent to ignore. Tai scouted ahead. The tunnel ended at more water, and on a small island she saw a Sea Hag torturing a bound woman. Tai taunted the hag into following her into the tunnels. The Sea Hag, who called herself Daefu, dove into the water, along with her minions, a bunch of dog-faced Gremlins with lobster claws.

We tried to bottleneck them in the tunnel, but they came down both tunnels so it didn't work like we'd hoped. The gremlins were easy to kill, but they could throw water balls that restrained their targets. Daefu managed to cast "Death Glare" on Bjertha, instantly dropping the Dwarf to 0 hit points. Then one of the gremlins cast sleep on Tai (also hitting another gremlin), leaving the party tankless. But Carlie, Maruca, and Slancio still managed to finish off the hag.

After waking Tai and healing Bjertha, we rescued the tied-up woman. Her name was Fellany Mertien, one of the Gray Maidens - a rival group we've been tracking since we got here. Fellany had betrayed the Gray Maidens, so she was happy to join our party and help us form a strategy to take them down. She told us that behind the secret door we'd find some rooms the Maidens had been using as a base.

Before going on the attack, we looted the area and rested. In the Daefu's nest we found a bag of gems, and a couple of magic stones containing trapped elementals. We also found a talisman that helps protect the bearer from disease and poison. When we were ready to move on, we went through the secret room and opened the next door. We disturbed a group of six Gray Maidens sitting at a table playing cards. Tai tried to bluff them, but failed. The fight was on!

At first the fight was contained to the doorway. The Maidens had special pack advantages when they were near each other, so Carlie cast a Web spell to help control their movements. The Maidens had unusually high AC, so we missed a lot. As their numbers dwindled, they moved across the room and we followed. Carlie cast an Illusion spell depicting another Web spell, but it didn't fool them long. One of the Maidens knocked on the door on the other end of the room.

We tried pushing the room's large table forward to block the back door, but it was so heavy we couldn't push it fast enough. The door opened, and four more Maidens joined the fight. However, these women had apparently been bathing, and hadn't had time to put on their armor. After a couple of rounds they closed the door again and fled. Once we finished off the last of the armored Maidens, we went through the door and pursued the bathers. We passed through a bathing room, and went down a grand hallway. They tried to ambush us from behind some statues, but they kept missing. It didn't take long to finish them off.

We looked around. In the room where they'd been playing cards, there were several crates full of supplies. There was one sturdy locked chest we couldn't get open, but Fellany informed us that Orianna, the leader of the Gray Maidens, held the key. In the hallway there were several statues, and some gold plates on the floor. Down one secret passage there was a room full of traps. There was a vial of something hanging from the ceiling, but we set off a trap while trying to investigate. The trap cast a confusion spell on Slancio and Meruca, so we held them until it wore off. At the end of the statue-lined hallway was a trash room. Bjertha burst through the door so hard she nearly fell into the trash pit.

We studied the statues more. There was a message: "By my touch you may enter the glory of my inner sanctum." Sorshen's double entendres are not particularly subtle, but then we are looking for the Lust shard after all. We experimented with standing on different plates while people touched different statues. After touching a combination of statues, we all teleported... but not all to the same place. Bjertha, Carlie, and Slancio wound up in the trap room, setting off more confusion traps. In her addled state, Bjertha went on a short rampage which destroyed a lot of perfume vials.

We realized that we must touch the four statues in a specific order, then stand on a specific plate. Once we finally got everything right, we teleported again, this time to the same place as the rest of the party... hopefully. We'll find out next session.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

We put Tai, Slancio, and Bjertha in one boat, Maruca and Carlie took another, and Shemus took the third. Shemus checked out the waterfall while the rest of us took a more direct route towards the other dock. A few yards in, we saw several bony hands reach out of the water. Our ships were surrounded by several lacedons - aquatic ghouls. We tried to turn around and head back to the platform, but the ghouls were too fast. They started tipping our boats, dumping some of us into the water.

Fighting in the water was pretty tough. We had disadvantage on most attacks, and our movement speed was halved. Some of the ghouls' attacks also paralyzed us, making it difficult to swim. Luckily, Shemus still had a scroll of water breathing, which he cast on the party. Tai hit a couple of ghouls with Frightful Presence, and Carlie blasted a few with a Shatter spell. Meruca nearly died at one point, and Tai finished the fight with a couple of Sleep spells.

After the fight, we continued to the other platform. We docked and found a red door with some panels depicting Sorshen. We pressed the center panel and the door opened. Through the door was a large hall. There was a center row of columns, and the walls were covered with more lewd frescoes. The hall ended with a throne room. Sitting on the throne was a Cave Giant, surrounded by chests and guarded by two monitor lizards. The giant spoke with Sorshen's voice: "Kneel to me now, and I will only eat one of you."

Tai replied, "I think you're sitting in my chair." There was a bit more banter, then the fight began. During the battle, the giant would throw the chests at us, which turned out to be full of rotting meat. The lizards didn't give us a lot of trouble, but the giant hit hard. It knocked Tai and Carlie down to zero during the fight, but they recovered. After it finally died, we took a long rest in the throne room. We also found a platinum plaque on the wall, which we carefully pried off to sell later.

Back in the boats, we continued to explore the underground cavern. Past the second platform the passage narrowed. As we floated down one wide hallway, a pair of giant bat creatures swooped overhead. We sailed on without a fight. Eventually the cavern opened up into another large chamber, with a beach at one end. Some of us started hearing whispers. Suddenly Slancio, Carlie, and Tai stood up and started removing their gear.

Tai was the first to finish disrobing, and she was compelled to dive into the water. Carlie was farther behind, while Slancio would take many rounds to remove his armor. The rest of us did our best to restrain Carlie and Slancio, but Tai was long gone. As Tai swam towards the beach, a pair of giant eels emerged and grappled her. We had our hands full trying to fight the eels while restraining the bewitched party members.

Tai eventually made her save against the compulsion, but Carlie got loose and made it to the beach. The gnome started digging wildly at one of the walls. One of the eels pulled Shemus under the water, grappling the ranger and dragging him away from us. Tai and Meruca fired after the eel with their ranged attacks, while Bjertha chased it in one of the rowboats. We finally finished off the eel, but we were too late to save Shemus. Our ranger had been chewed to death by the eel.

Back on the beach, we found a secret door where Carlie had been digging. Once the door opened, Carlie and Slancio went back to normal. We entered the secret room, and ended the session there.