Shattered Star: The Dancing Giant

Game Date: 5/21/2016
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 55
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Bjertha Brawlbaker (Matt) - Dwarf Fighter
Fellany Mertien (Gary) - Human Fighter
Gustav Greycastle (Matt, subbing for Graham) - Human Necromancer
Maruca (Daniel) - Elf Ranger/Cleric/Rogue
Slancio Brioso (Thomas) - Human Bard

The Session:

We left off still teleporting through a series of rooms.  Today's first room contained a black crystal shelf holding some silver bars, and a 15-foot tall statue of Xin.  Of course the statue came to life and fought us, that's just what statues do.  If Bjertha ever rules Magnimaar, the first thing she's going to do is throw all sculptors in jail. This statue was difficult to hit due to being obscured, and only certain weapons could harm it.  It had heat and cold powers, and the room itself also kept running hot and cold on us.

When the room would go cold, it got difficult to walk. When it got hot, we took damage.  We finally wore it down, and Fellany made the final hit.  The room continued to get hot and cold after the statue died, so we didn't stay long.  We gathered up the silver bars (which were skymetal) and teleported again.

The next room was full of poison gas. We held our breath when we could, but it we knew we had to get through this one quickly.  We met a Marilith named Belmedra.  Slancio flirted with her a bit, and she revealed that she wished to be released.  The two were really hitting it off until she noticed Maruca opening the exit door.  Fighting ensued.

The door led to a long hallway, and the more vulnerable party members headed there while our tanks held off Belmedra.  Surprise, she can teleport!  She reappeared in the hallway next to Slancio and Gustav.  With six quick sword attacks, she did a massive amount of damage to Slancio.  But despite her multiple attacks, she wasn't that tough, and we quickly finished her off.  We took a short rest and opened the door on the other end of the hallway.

The next room was filled with gears and golem parts.  We were almost disappointed that nothing tried to kill us.  Gustav used his Orrery to see visions of the past.  He saw scenes of Xin working with gears and building an army of clockwork soldiers.  When we were done looking around, we proceeded through another door.

The next room had crumbling walls, and was filled with a smoky haze.  On the ground was the body of a 40 foot giant. Gustav got a vision of Xin, who had just finished building a war machine.  A giant appeared behind Xin and attacked him.  With his last bit of strength, Xin killed the giant with an explosive spell.  Once the vision was over, Gustav wanted to revive the giant's body for his undead horde, but the giant was one step ahead of him.  It started climbing to its feet.

Gustav tried talking to the giant in Thassalonian, arguing that the enemy of our enemy is our friend.  The giant replied that he had to kill us because he had a contract.  Fight!  Slancio started things off by casting an "Irresistible Dance" spell on the giant.  This kept him dancing for several rounds, which helped us out tremendously.  Plus it was a funny mental image.  Gustav tried using Command Undead on him, but he saved.

The giant was immune to fire, cold, lightning, and probably a few other things we didn't try.  He had gems embedded in his skin that would sometimes explode with bursts of sparks.  At one point he used a powerful "Hellfire Orb" spell.  We hit him with a lot of powerful attacks, Bjertha's Undead Bane longsword coming in especially handy.  In the end, though, Gustav finished him off with a cherry-tapping Magic Missile.

We ended the session there.  Gustav might still raise the giant for his army.  We reached level 17 with 228,030 XP.  We're going to take a long rest here to level up.

Shattered Star: Four Rooms

Game Date: 5/14/2016
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 54
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Bjertha Brawlbaker (Matt) - Dwarf Fighter
Fellany Mertien (Gary) - Human Fighter
Gustav Greycastle (Graham) - Human Necromancer
Maruca (Daniel) - Elf Ranger/Cleric/Rogue
Slancio Brioso (Thomas) - Human Bard

The Session:
After finishing off last week's Bythos Aeon, we took a closer look at the contraption being held by a statue.  It was a Timeglass, which Gustav used to look into the past.  He saw civilized-looking troll, with whom he could only communicate one way.  Gustav tried to give the troll a bit of insider info about the future, and the troll wrote it down.  This troll was a seer who had given us a prophecy many, many sessions ago, and Gustav just completed a stable time loop.  Science!

Right now we're in a series of rooms that can only be reached by teleporting.  The next room contained seven crystal statues of Runelords.  A couple of them were holding large hunks of black metal ore, and each one had a halberd at their side.  As we approached, some of them knelt as if offering tribute.  Being genre savvy enough to know there was going to be a fight, we started grabbing the halberds to get them away from our future enemies.  We didn't get far before the battle started.

One of the statues was inhabited by the spirit of Xin.  It was the only one casting spells, so we tried to keep a zone of Silence around it.  Gustav used a spell to animate some of the halberds, making them attack the Runelords.  We found that the halberds did full damage the statues, while our own weapons did not, so our melee characters started switching to the halberds.  At one point Xin used Prismatic Spray which hurt a lot of us.

Gustav managed to do huge amounts of damage with his undead followers' Magic Missiles, and a well-cast Chain Lightning finished off Xin.  Then Gustav got knocked out for a few rounds.  Meruca and Slancio both used more Lightning attacks to wear down our opponents.  Then Gustav got up and cast Fireball on a few.  Bjertha killed two statues in one turn, and Gustav finished off the final Runelord statue.

We took a short rest and teleported to the next room. There was a massive cauldron and lot of liquid metal in this room.  A pair of humanoids formed from the metal in the cauldron, coalescing into the shape of Xin.  They spoke to us in Thassalonian, which only Gustav spoke.  They asked us about the progress of their army.  Gustav bluffed okay, but then they asked Bjertha a question.  Gustav quickly slipped her the tongue cast a "Tongues" spell on her so she could speak Thassalonian.  Deception is one of Bjertha's worst skills, but she rolled a 20 and we avoided a fight.  We teleported again.

In the next room we saw two insubstantial Dread Wraths guarding a fancy scimitar.  They had the ability to reduce your CON and lower your max HP.  This could have been a bad fight, but our party necromancer managed to dominate one of them right at the beginning.  Their attacks were necromancy based, so they couldn't actually hurt each other, but Gustav had the dominated one pick up the scimitar (a "Ghost Touch" weapon), to attack the other.  Some Magic Missiles finished it off.

With that one gone, we had to decide what to do with the dominated one.  It turned out she couldn't leave this room, so there was no reason to keep her with us.  Gustav asked her for any information she could give us, and then we destroyed her.  We teleported again.  In the next room there were two Crystal Guardians, and a lot of weapons on the walls.  The weapons were designed to do extra damage versus constructs, so some of us went right for them.

The Guardians had a breath weapon which could turn people into crystal.  The good news is that you get to save again at the end of your turn, so the effect usually wore off quickly.  They also did bleed damage.  Gustav animated some of the weapons on the walls, and the battle was over pretty quickly.  Fellany finished off the final Guardian.

We ended the session there, ready to teleport again.

Shattered Star: Gustav Gets Stoned

Game Date: 4/30/2016
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 53
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Bjertha Brawlbaker (Matt) - Dwarf Fighter
Fellany Mertien (Gary) - Human Fighter
Gustav Greycastle (Graham) - Human Necromancer
Maruca (Daniel) - Elf Ranger/Cleric/Rogue
Slancio Brioso (Thomas) - Human Bard

The Session:

We're still exploring every room in Xin's tower.  Last week we opened a few doors and fought a few monsters.  There was one room in particular that we thought we'd cleared, but apparently not.  Gustav went inside alone for a better look, and was promptly attacked by a "Retriever" construct.  The rest of us were occupied elsewhere, and didn't notice he was in trouble for a couple of rounds. 

Gustav fled the room while sending his zombies against the Retriever.  The enemy then used a power on Gustav that turned him to stone.  The rest of us saw Gustav's statue and joined the battle.  Meruca also got petrified, but luckily for both of them the effect was only temporary.  It was a tough monster because it had several elemental beam attacks, and we had disadvantage on most attacks against it.  Bjertha dealt the final blow.

In another room we found a lot of floating flotsam, including coins and a magic rod.  Bjertha went in to grab the rod, and four crystals started moving towards her.  Bjertha left the room as Gustav ordered his zombie dragon to attack the crystals.  The crystals did a high damage attack on the dragon, turning it into crystal statue.  Our crystalline opponents were immune to slashing and piercing damage, but it turned out they were highly vulnerable to bashing.  Bjertha and Fellany blocked the doorway, using shield bashes and punches to damage them.  Bjertha killed two of them, Fellany destroyed one, and Meruca finished off the final crystal.

The rod turned out to be a valuable magic implement... for Warlocks.  Oh well, it's still probably worth some money.  We couldn't heal the dragon, so we attempted to teleport it back to town.  Due to some wards in the tower, our attempt shattered the dragon.  Gustav stored the pieces in his portable hole for later.

In another room we found a silvery chair with a rune-etched disc floating above it.  We'd seen one of these before, it's allows Wizards to access every spell for a specific school of magic.  We went back out into the hallway and went through the door at the end.  There we saw another spell chair.  Gustav is very happy to have access to all these spells. 

On the far end of the room was an archway entrance covered in crystals.  Gustav touched a crystal, and a spectral hand reached through the crystal barrier and grappled him.  Crystal daggers fired from the walls and damaged all of us.  Slancio cast Freedom of Movement to free Gustav, and the rest of us bashed the crystals to pieces. 

We went through the archway and entered a round room.  The walls were pitch black and absorbed light.  In the center, on the floor, there was a teleportation circle.  We decided not to go through yet, as there was still one more room on this level we hadn't seen.  We took a long rest and checked out the final door.  It was another round room, with the remains of clockwork musicians.  We saw another crystal hand appear, but we didn't see a point in fighting this one.  We went back to the teleportation room.

The teleporter sent us to a square room with coppery walls, covered in murals depicting Xin.  On one end there was a statue of Xin holding some sort of contraption.  Before we could investigate, we were hit by a Slow spell with a high save DC.  A "Bythos Aeon" (a sort of four-armed tornado-looking monster) attacked us.  The Aeon started the fight by hitting all of us with a "Circle of Death" spell... which wasn't nearly as scary as it sounded.

Deciding turnabout was fair play, Gustav cast slow on the Aeon.  Our party members gradually saved against our slow effect (Bjertha was last).  The Aeon attempted to cast Mass Inflict Wounds, but Slancio counterspelled it.  Meruca finished off the Aeon and we ended the session.

Reminder:
There is no game on 5/7.  Our next game will be 5/14.