The Acts of The Lords of Rannick, LVII

Good grief, I only just started paying attention to the numbers at the end of those titles and was shocked that it was 57 sessions ago that I started writing these up. Which made me check when we started playing… Mid-April 2010. Pretty much two years ago, Dagfinn, Lonny and Kerplak sauntered into Sandpoint for the Swallowtail Festival, their eyes wide, faces fresh and hit point totals miniscule.

You’ve found out WHY the Festival was disrupted, you’ve found out WHO was ultimately behind the disruption/murder cults/near-invasion and last night, importantly, you found out WHERE he is and got some pointers on how to kill him.

Boom! PROGRESS!

Okay, so the only wings you haven’t been in are Gluttony and Wrath. Let me know which one you want to go in and I’ll have the maps and cards ready.

The Shimmering Veils of Pride

Having made their way past the mirror trap and then taking a few nasty spells from the four identical inhabitants of the vast mirrored room…

…we picked the fight up with the 4 spellcasters invisible and the party spread out. Four menacing looking Stone Giants appeared in the room, but everyone found that funny. No-one was scared the way they were supposed to, which makes a lot of sense because you’ve basically waded through Stone Giant blood to get to this point.

Not that Ron didn’t think of a good use for the giants, staggering towards them and testing the air for hidden assholes by swinging around wildly before faking a fight with the giants. Threat dumped!

On the other side of the Large Peacock dais, Tersplink cast See Invisibility from a scroll, which was a judicious use and then used Dancing Lights to mark the location of the casters: going immediately after the four casters in initiative order really worked out for Tersplink as he was able to keep the lights over them no matter where they moved and let everyone else get on them. Dagfinn cast another Glitterdust, which coated two of the casters in glitter.

Things weren’t going very well for the Casters; in their arrogance they had believed their devastating Empowered Fireballs and Empowered Scorching Rays would have taken care of these interlopers. Now they had to start falling back on less exciting spells and they had to do it while they were getting the shit kicked out of them (metaphorically, unless Ron wants to add extra flavour to his weird monk style). They cast Cones of Cold and a few Scorching Rays, but with limited effect. Something about Rolland being on the other side of the world caused the dice luck the flow the other way last night. I don’t think I’ve rolled so many 2s and 3s since playing 40k.

Albedon had appeared at the doorway, no longer the Dispel-o-bot he was in previous sessions. No, he came in and did what he does best – setting people on fire, hard.

Kerplak had taken to the sky and was peppering them with well-placed bolts, piercing hands and appendixes with gruesome frequency. Dagfinn shouted 3 of them deaf, then gave them the business. Ron rushed over and gave one a lethal Bo Staff Infection.

After the party had managed to get around fighting invisible foes, they were able to bring the casters down pretty quickly.

Thus commenced the looting. Each caster had identical, no tremendously awesome magic gear. I think most of it ended up on the Here Halvard Hold This pile. While that was going on, Ron and Kerplak examined the Peacock. Ron was convinced it was a statue with an illusion on it while Kerplak couldn’t get his mind past how real and awesome a giant peacock is… so he attempted to ride it, obviously.

The vast chamber was also checked out, but appeared to be nothing more than one huge mirror-lined room until Ron examined the glossy feathers of the Peacock’s tail. In the reflection of the room in the tail’s “eyes” he saw the outline of two large doors, hidden behind the mirrors. Looking over at the area, there was nothing visible, but checking carefully having seen the door’s reflection, they found a set of secret double doors.

Inside, they found a musty study. High quality books and furnishings adorned the room, but the funk was definitely coming from the well-dressed corpse slumped in a chair, a book on his lap and a quill in his mouldering hand. The smell was masked by a stick of incense, burning slowly on a peacock statue, which Kerplak purloined.

Of primary concern was the amount of magic gear they could peel off the corpse. The items were better versions of the items the Simulacra had been wearing outside. (If you did some CSI Miami bullshit to this dead guy, you’d find that he was identical in appearance to the four casters outside, with an uptick in verisimilitude now that they were also dead). A nifty Headband of Intellect that Albedon took, making his Int now 26 which is fucking bonkers. A Robe of the Archmagi that Tersplink took, which is also uber-powerful. A ring that nobody really cared for but also a Cape of the Mountebank that Kerplak was all over. Kerplak now has three methods of disappearing in a puff of smoke at his disposal.

Beyond the room, Ron discovered a hallway that led to a room with a mound of skeletons, 200 or so. The answer to that riddle/death metal album cover was found in the book on the dead guy’s lap, albeit after a bit of reading…

Writing in Draconic, the dead guy – Vraxeris – had slipped into a senile state, writing circular or disjointed instructions to himself for pages and pages at a time as his mind slipped away. Further back in the book, they found the last nuggets of information he had managed to get down, corresponding roughly to the time of the Runeforge’s reawakening and the alliance against the Abjurers that left the Halls of Envy in ruins.

Albedon and Dagfinn translated it for everyone, so here it is: