Time: 2/19/13, Rest 2/22/23, Active 2/23/23
PCs: Blair, Bigtoe, Braxton, Martin (hench Issac), Kemini (hench Issac), Sebastian (hench Issac), Hess (hench Issac)
Hench: Jahanaray, Isabel, Goda, Selena (her name changes every session)
Team B was back at it this session considering so little time had passed and they really wanted to get this thing squared away. During downtime they met with Lord Issac’s (patron Paladin) right hand Father Sebastian of Heironeous (cleric) who had arrived at Castle Deinwick with heavy reinforcements and supplies to tackle a significant sinkhole of evil. Sebastian agreed to escort them to the location and take care of the heavy lifting with the sinkhole once the PCs cleared it out. He even offered several of Issac’s henchmen to aid in the clearing. Paladin gonna Paladin I guess.
They scared off the random encounters, I forget what all they were, due to the size of their crew and arrived at the Oasis. The troops secured a base camp while the PCs sent in Blair (Nightblade) to scout. She made her swim checks and secured their safety relays for the heavies to be able to navigate the underwater cave complex later.
At the grotto she found a bit of a different scene than before, with an established guard of blinded gnolls and cultist handlers holding the beach head. She was very careful to surface at the back end of the pool and once she realized it was guarded she immediately left to notify the party who planned their assault.
The narrow nature of the cave system prevented them from storming the grotto in full force, so Blair and Bigtoe landed first with the rest of the assault team streaming in after. One of the cultists ran off to presumably warn the others while the rest of the guard force engaged. It was a pretty standard engagement with Bigtoe’s high AC on full display and the blinded gnolls attacking with elite precision as long as they got commands from a cleric. Blair caught a Cause Fear spell from one of the enemy clerics and swam back through the caves but not before unleashing a clutch of Summoned Berserkers into the scrum. Two turns duration is brutal and she was basically gone the rest of the fight.
Towards the end of the fight with the cultists, Scott the Cyclops was disturbed from his throne and again shouted down through the window above the grotto. This time Bigtoe shouted something offensive and insulting back. I don’t know if he felt emboldened by the presence of Issac’s henchmen or what. Scott wasn’t having it and stomped off to go squish the little invaders his massive footsteps receding deeper into his side of the complex.
It was gonna take a few rounds for him to get there and the party did their best to finish off the gnolls because they didn’t want a fight on two fronts. They had one gnoll still engaged by the time the Cyclops made his appearance, hurling a boulder and smearing the remaining berserker across the grotto’s floor. I failed to cleave here and it keeps me awake at night.
On the next round, Martin (hench Paladin) took a boulder to the chest but shook it off and charged the Cyclops, landing a solid blow. Bigtoe (Machinist) and Isabel (Fighter) followed, with Braxton (explorer) landing a solid critical hit from his longbow that almost put out Scott’s eye. This is where things took an unfortunate turn.
We’re almost 30 sessions into Oberholt and the PCs have rarely, if ever, fought anything truly powerful. They’re very good about talking their way through things or very lucky in reaction checks. Encounters with Simba, Meowster Mittens, and the like have been narrowly avoided through luck or skill. Flexing their high AC on goblins and orcs has been a lot of fun for them. This was an eye-opening turn of events I believe.
With three engaged in melee, Scott swapped to his massive club and in rapid succession drove Martin into the ground and eliminated Bigtoe with the cleave that I remembered this time. He missed the following cleave against Isabel and Jahanaray’s attempts to blind him with Light spells failed. The next swing pulverized Isabel and he let loose a deep chuckle.
Here I rolled a few morale checks, which Jahanaray the cleric passed but Kemini the mage failed. Kemini dove into the pool and dragged himself to safety while Jahanaray’s maximum morale role had him trying to figure out how to rescue his boss (Bigtoe). Scott was out of rocks so he picked a corpse at random, which was Bigtoe’s, and threw him at the cleric with the intent to kill him. Despite making contact, the damage was low and the cleric weathered the shot.
This development made the decision easy so Braxton dove and Jahanaray dragged Bigtoe’s body into the pool, where they cooperated to extract him. They were pulled from the drop point by the waiting soldiers and morale was pretty low. Bigtoe used a fate point and caught some healing from his cleric to get back in action. The others that fell were left behind.
While they recovered and talked options, Blair shook off the Mylar blanket and hot tea that they gave her for the fear spell and dove back in. She swam into the grotto again and peeked, the light spells from Jahanaray still active. She saw Scott talking with one of the cultists at the mouth of their small corridor, which the evil human was apparently using as cover. They argued back and forth for a second before the human scampered away. The Cyclops grabbed a few gnoll corpses and left towards his side of the grotto.
With the coast clear, Blair took a risk and ran up to grab Martin and drag him back to the pool. She pulled him out using the safety lines where the waiting crew extracted him. Sebastian was able to hit him with Restore Life and Limb on site, but his Tampering with Mortality roll was pretty low so he was down for the session.
Blair returned and listened carefully, not hearing or seeing anything but needing her own light. She drew the dagger that Sebastian had cast continual light on and used it to scout around. She ran for Isabel’s corpse after seeing no enemies but the thudding footsteps of Scott the Cyclops were rapidly approaching. She decided to grab the fighter and drag her towards the water, sinking into the pool with a raised middle finger as Scott came back. The Cyclops noticed corpses missing and complained in a loud stupid voice but did not see Blair slip away.
The party retreated to Teutch’s tower where they laid Martin up to rest and tried to recover. Sebastian was going to Restore Isabel, but needed to rest himself. He chose to hold the base camp rather than retreat. They begged some resources off of Teutch who loaned them some armor. Then they returned to the oasis for round 2.
Again, Blair went in first to scout. This time the lights were out, the corpses were gone, and no one was on guard. She crept forward and after some discussion over the table decided that Scott was wounded and probably had the same healing rules that the PCs did, right? So she started off into his side of the complex, shielding her dagger to carefully limit how much light she was showing. The huge natural corridor led to the northeast and more branching intersections but Blair’s tracking was able to lead her to his primary chamber overlooking the grotto.
She carefully ascended the huge platforms acting as natural steps to his living area, terrified because she couldn’t hear or see him anywhere. Once she got close to the top, the elf could hear Scott’s deep breathing of sleep. Blair climbed up to peek over and see if she could locate him, which she could. She slid her dagger forward for light as carefully as she could and waited, but the Cyclops did not stir. She dropped down and cast Summon Berserkers at the top of the ledge, who howled into existence and attacked the nearest enemy, the sleeping Cyclops.
Blair stayed low and let the Berserkers go to town. She watched one launched over her head into the space beyond the light and heard the rest smashed. She cast another batch of them at the top of the ledge to the same results, with Scott stomping around and exclaiming, “Ow, ow, ouch!” and looking for any other enemies. Blair crept over the edge of the ledge and moved as silently as possible behind the wounded Cyclops where she drew her Laughing Skull sword and stabbed him in the femoral artery. He swung in a rage over her head and fell dead, blood pouring over the platform and by the throne of skulls that he used as his seat of power.
She cut off his finger and toted it out as proof of the deed, I guess for bragging rights cuz they woulda probably believed her if she just told them. The troops and other members of the base camp were suitably impressed and Sebastian and Hess, the heavier hitters of the Issac henches present, opted to enter as well to make sure this thing got done.
The rest of the dungeon was really mop up. There were only a few enemies left which set an ambush in a storage room deep in the place but were unable to cause any significant harm. There were a few undead by the sinkhole but not nearly enough as there should have been and Sebastian took care of them easily with turn undead. They uncovered some modest treasure from the cult but Scott the Cyclops had some real loot. They also found a madman’s chaotic manifesto from the High Priest’s chamber which they gave over to Kemini to research. A knock spell and dispel magic spell were both tried against the warded door but no results there.
The party left Sebastian’s crew to secure the dungeon and start work on the sinkhole destruction. This crew had the manpower to bust open Scott’s entry to the dungeon and use it for their new base camp. With the first level of the dungeon on lockdown this effectively became a construction site. When prompted during the following downtime about aiding in the cost of building the shrine the PCs were conspicuously silent, responding in discord only in memes of being unavailable. Issac took careful note of names.
Teutch aided the party in identifying their magic items. Bigtoe stayed to continue researching in his workshop while the others left for Deinwick.
Musings:
Missed another cleave, shame on me. It was a good session that had a lot of tense moments. Big monsters are big scary, but Fate Points are a little OP. I believe I’m gonna reduce max fate points to 1, with some recovery options. Seeing Patrons and PCs work together against a world wide event is cool. They definitely struck a blow against the Dark Hymn, if for different reasons. I don’t know what happens next but I’m excited to see it.
Blair, Bigtoe, Braxton, Martin, Kemini
Jahanaray, Isabel
Blair, Bigtoe, Braxton, Sebastian, Hess, Kemini
Jahanaray
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