Time: 1/29/23 - 2/15/23 active 2/16/23
PCs: Team A: Gwen, Redcorn, Max, Luther, Caspian
Hench: Eggie, Mushu, Cemil, Amadayo, Maheen
Several sessions back our resident Barbarian Max Bear got level drained by one of those undead critters. Yeah, that one. You know.
It was demoralizing to say the least, but take the good with the bad and carry on. Back then Teutch (Patron mage) was a meanie head but not the villain that Team A believes him to be today and Max had had little to no interaction with him anyway. As the only established high level mage that the party had knowledge of, Max reached out to see what could be done about level draining.
In ACKS, level drain sucks. The xp is lost for good without the use of some powerful magic like Wish or Miracle to recover it. Teutch explained this, but had a lead on a wish scroll in the mountains in the north of the Blemu hills that he would use to recover Max’s lost life energy. But there was a catch! Max had to agree, upon achieving reasonable domain management level, to become a vassal to Teutch’s purple domain.
This hook sat for months while Max’s player had some IRL stuff keeping him out of the game. But today Max was back and hungry for his stolen xp so they decided to give it a shot. Gwen hired some mercs and off they went, with Redcorn and Gwen peeling off at the closest town to Teutchland. After the Trial, they weren’t sure if they were welcome and didn’t want to push it.
Max, Luther, and Caspian went up to the Tower where they met with Lockleaf (Teutch elf ranger hench) and got the map in question. Max agreed to the terms and skedaddled. Lockleaf had shared some tactical information about the place, mostly that since Felini could fly it had no normal stairs or ladders and just weird platforms allegedly. It also had some scary summoned faerie gremlins that were bound to the location. Lockleaf warned them not to fight the creatures as they were very formidable.
They knew the guardians at the place were bad news, so they went back to Deinwick to prepare. They purchased as many climbing, flight, invisibility, etc style potions and scrolls as they could find. They had two bards who could try to use the scrolls, but it was pretty costly if they failed and the scrolls were wasted. Max’s whole plan was to try to recon the place then run in and out with the loot. He was willing to take on the majority of the risk to try to get the scroll.
While the rest of the party shopped, Redcorn was growing increasingly worried about the bad dreams that everyone was having. He cast Commune and asked 3 questions of his deity, Ehlonna: Should I address the cause of the mad dreams? “All Lawful entities should.” Do I know people sufficiently powerful enough to aid me? “Yes” Is it Issac (Patron Paladin)? “Yes”. Bear in mind he also knows Teutch (Patron Mage) and Nekane (Patron Vaultguard), among other domain rulers, so the limitations of Yes or No questions were on display.
It was a pretty long walk to the spot in question but they all had horses and stayed on the Oberholt side of the river, following the road north to Hillfort where they talked about hiring a boat. Felini’s Mansion was in the mountains to the west of Hillfort. There was a tributary river coming out of the mountains near there that they thought would get them quickly where they needed to be, but they couldn’t find a boat captain willing to risk the known Gnoll raiders in the area.
They took a ferry across the Teeser and into the wilderness, following the tributary (I should really name this river) to the west. They’d been lucky so far with random encounters, the few that they had seen turned off by the large party of mercenaries and predatory animals that they had with them. The source of the river turned out to be coming from inside a dwarven hold of some kind, with a large archway that had been vandalized by beastmen but showed the words Slate and Beware pretty clearly in dwarven.
They passed some ruined fortress that had smoke coming out of it like it was inhabited and kept moving, not wanting to get bogged down with whatever trouble might come out of that. They also came upon some river dragons frollicking in the river. Again they chose to evade. Finally, the party stumbled on a wyvern nest, they noped out of that one too and the Wyverns chose to let them leave. I use a rough Battle Rating calculation from Domains at War: Campaigns sometimes to determine how monsters may perceive an enemy.
Up to this point they had been following roads and rivers, which to my mind makes it impossible to get lost. But now they were departing from the river to the interior of the mountains. I rolled a getting lost check but it passed, even with no navigator, and a few lair searches later they found the mansion.
It was a gothic style house set into the side of a mountain about 30’ off the ground. It was made of crazy orange and blue zig-zagging patterns, clearly fashioned primarily from magic. This was definitely the place as described by Teutch’s map.
Max has spent quite a bit of gold on resources, scoring some potions and scrolls to aid with the heist. The plan was to sneak in using gaseous form, recon, then get out. Use the rest of the stuff to blitzkrieg wherever the scroll might be then escape all while avoiding the very powerful guardians of the joint.
Max stripped down and Redcorn helped him up to the ledge with his flying animals. Max popped his gas potion and squeezed inside through this two story tall air intake that was sucking fresh mountain air into the building. It revealed a very large spherical room. He was able to pull loose from the very strong air current that flowed into another chamber to the north.
There was a curtain left and right at different heights along the wall. He could see through the twitching curtains on the left some very bright light so wafted over there and slid through into another, somewhat smaller spherical room filled with mirrors and lenses, with the top part of the room made entirely of glass.
It was extremely bright and hot in there, so he wasn’t gonna be able to stay long. He saw a small desk with some nerd stuff on it, beakers and the like, but no books or scrolls so off he went, through the next curtain on the north wall. This room was about 1/3rd filled with lava, with the molten rock flowing in one spot on the north wall and out another on the west. Again, super hot so he needed to get out quick.
He chose to backtrack rather than risk getting burned up over the lava. From the entry chamber he checked the opposite curtain which led into an absolutely dark room, no light at all, so he backed out of there as well. With only one direction left and certain that time was running out on his potion, Max went into the air flow and into the northern room.
I had him make a saving throw vs. paralysis or be carried out of the enormous vents on the northern wall of the next room. He made it so he was able to separate himself from the air flow and into a hanging garden of wind chimes, bells, and other types of tinkling instruments. It was loud and a little disconcerting. A curtain left and curtain right led out of this room. He broke the one on the right which revealed a study of sorts, a large platform over another spherical room. But this one had tasteful sky lights and no wild elemental shenanigans.
Max had been in here quite a few turns and didn’t know how much time he had left on his potion, so he went back into the chime room with the intent to leave. Unfortunately, 3 of Felini’s Gremlins had moseyed into this room on their oversized dragonfly wings and were loitering about. They were medium sized golden skinned elves with large pitch black eyes and according to Teutch were summoned here from Elfland and cursed to guard this place.
Max was kind of stuck but they hadn’t seen him yet, so he floated into the airflow that shot him out of the back of the room and into the mountain air behind the building. He tried to fly as quick as he could back over to the front where the party was waiting but his potion ran out part way down the front side of the mountain and he had to sit his bare ass on a rocky icy boulder to keep from falling to his death.
Redcorn sent his griffon to go get him and he took a little damage from the claws and being naked, but Max was recovered and dressed soon after. They figured the study was likely the spot for the scroll, so they put together their remaining scrolls and potions to try to get invisibility, climbing, and silence. Gwendolyn as the highest level bard made the rolls for the scrolls, failing on invisibility but succeeding on spider climb. Redcorn cast the silence on a rock that Max picked up and put in his pocket.
The barbarian grabbed a couple ropes and grappling hooks and went back in, this time opening the front door. He made it into the room with the chimes, but unfortunately so did 4 of the Gremlins. Max being a barbarian kept him from being surprised and he threw his hands up “Whoa whoa whoa!!!”
I rolled a reaction check and they didn’t immediately eviscerate him, but they hovered nearer and loomed ominously. “Leave,” stated the lead one. Max made his case which was basically, “Hey listen you’re trapped here right? I think my friends and I can get you out, but you gotta let us try. Let us get to the study where Felini kept his magic and we’ll use it to get you out!”
Max noticed that the gremlins were trembling from the effort of not killing him, the magical compulsion being very strong. “Yes, we will take you. If you fail, we kill you.” The PCs weren’t sure about that so said let Max out to talk it over and they can formulate a plan. The gremlins didn’t gaf about this place, but they were compelled to guard it. If the party could figure a way to free them before the fae monsters failed their saves, then they might be able to loot it freely.
The gremlins agreed to give him time as long as he left. The party put their heads together and really relied on Redcorn for the magical heavy lifting considering his advanced level. Luther the paladin was able to peek in and hit them with a detect evil. They did not register as chaotic or evil, which made helping them suddenly a moral imperative to the Lawful people in the party.
After much book reading, Redcorn decided that dispel magic was the first thing to try. He and Max re-entered the mansion and discussed it with the gremlins. There was some hedging about not killing them if it didn’t work, which the gremlins were unmoved by. Gwendolyn and Caspian, the two bards, dropped some sick beats on them to try to calm them, which seemed to actually work alright (bonus to their saves against bloodthirsty murder).
The first dispel was partially successful, removing the spell that bound the first creature to defend the place. Unfortunately it did not remove the binding to the plane so the creature was still here. It was put much at ease by the lifting of the effect and this earned the party the right to keep trying. The party had demonstrated an ability to at least affect the magic and insisted that they were arguing in good faith.
The next challenge was that Redcorn could only cast this once per DAY, so there was an awful lot of camping on the mountainside outside of this mansion just to wake up and recast Dispel Magic. The rest of the party chilled and guarded and played music and amazingly the few random encounters that hit did not want to engage with the party. Eventually the last gremlin poofed back to its plane as the magic binding it was dispelled, leaving the party to loot the study without any interference, scoring a solid bag full of various gems and jewelry and the target of their search, an arcane scroll.
Out and away they went, successfully finding the river again and following it back to Hillfort. In their travels they came across a band of gnolls that they outnumbered. The gnolls attempted to evade and the party did not pursue, feeling it wise to avoid conflict without a sure sign of treasure. Again their luck was with them and there were few encounters all the way back to Rushford where they left Redcorn and his animals.
This time, however, Gwendolyn thought to brave Teutch’s tower and traveled with the gang to hand the scroll over. When they got there, Teutch’s people gave her the cold shoulder but no one acted against her. She put up a flyer for EARS and played some goat themed music since this was Teutch’s favorite animal and the source of his peasants’ income.
Max handed over the scroll to Lockleaf who passed it onto Teutch. In an extremely rare occurrence, Max heard Teutch actually speak since he had to in order to use the scroll. For those new to Oberholt, Teutch the Alchemist does not waste breath with actual speech, preferring instead to flick out neon letters in the air before him like a magical text message. We’ll leave what Teutch’s voice sounds like to the imagination of the reader.
Anyway, Teutch made good on his promise, casting wish off of the scroll to restore Max’s lost xp to much rejoicing from the table. They met back up and ended the session in Deinwick where they could maybe do some shopping in downtime or something.
Musings:
The overland travel was fortunately close to very obvious landmarks. I wouldn’t mind having them get lost once just to play it out, but they’ve been careful and lucky, so hey good on them. Speaking of luck, another session with relatively few random encounters, particularly while they were camping in the mountains. I expected a dragon or giant or something serious, but a few goblins and critters that didn’t really want to engage them was all that rolled up.
Inside Felini’s mansion was a different story, as the random encounter table included only the gremlins and Max hit them twice during his exploits. Fortunately he wasn’t killed and they won the day. It was cool to see the players take such an interest in these memed up faerie monsters and it really set the tone for the session.
Unfortunately there wasn’t much action and some of the lower level PCs were kind of watching it go down, but hopefully the little loot that they got and restoring a mid level martial character to protect them will help ease any bad feelings from being bored during the heist scene.
Xp from Kills: 0
Xp from Loot: 4760
Total XP: 4760
Cuts: 15
PC: 0% 635 5% 666 10% 698
Hench: 0% 317 5% 333 10% 349
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