Session 74: We’re All the Same on the Inside

 Session 74: We’re All the Same on the Inside

6/9/24-6/15/24, rest 6/16, active 6/17

PC: Valda, Zektel, Cracaryn, Baku

Hench: Arif, Nicky, Bazam

#ACKS

Coming off of the destruction of Korne’s Korrupted Akquila, Team B was ready for adventure. An assassin joined the party, Baku, who was twitchy and weird and immediately got some money from Zektel which he spent to buy a horse and poison.

The group made an appointment to meet with Issac, who wasn’t in town but would be in a few days, so they did some shopping and killed some time. Baku found one of the group’s wanted posters and had them autograph it but fortunately none of the guards recognized them. Zektel bought some snakes from Benny from The Mummy while Baku thoroughly terrified the poor guy.

Baku had heard of the sphinx Meowster Mittens the Magnificent near Riverstride and thought it would be swell to get a reward from Issac for killing or driving him off. When the party learned there were at least 3 of them known to lair there, they scrapped that plan as too dangerous. They did secure a mission to scout the Butzkrag and that became the session.

The group traveled first to Tamaris, a new settlement being established by Redcorn, where Zektel set up his Doctors without Orders tent to tend to the many workmen’s various foot ailments whether they had them or not. Cracaryn followed through with his intent to convert to Law and swear oaths to Ehlonna from last session. Valda vibed with the mercs guarding the location and Baku tried to get in a position to run a con on some of the workmens’ bosses, but they found him frightening and weird.

En route to the Butzkrag, the party came across a large trapdoor spider lair that they miraculously discovered before getting into combat range. Zektel summoned a bear, made it immune to piercing damage with a spell, and that was a pretty short fight. Baku crawled in the hole and came out with a fancy ramen bowl and chopsticks that might be worth something.

Valda stepped on an old trap laid by Volrag’s beastmen while patrolling during camp. Fortunately she didn’t set it off. A lot of conversation was had about how to disarm or disable the apparent pressure plate that was going to trigger some projectiles from a bunker nearby. Baku wanted to shield her with the horses but Zektel refused to risk their transportation, so instead the assassin planted a gem recovered from the spider lair in Cracaryn’s saddlebags during the distraction. Eventually the shaman cast a protection spell on Valda and the thief Arif went to work trying to disarm it.

Arif was humming a tune while he worked, which apparently was a grave mistake as he fumbled his roll and set off the trap. Valda was unharmed due to the spell but Arif was shot down by several ballista bolts. He recovered but was walking wounded the remainder of the session. Also our first genital casualty of the campaign. Poor eunuch.

The Butzkrag was an Aztec-style pyramid with some standing stones around the base and some buildings that had been used by first the occupying forces of Volrag the Fire Giant and then the troops and construction workers under Sebastian of Heironeous. It was abandoned now and the party made their entrance through the irregular staircase at the top.

It had been a long time since the players had been here and they were on different PCs at the time, so they were working on fuzzy memory (no maps) to get things done. Decent recollection of level 1 got them through that quickly but level 2 confused them. With little intel to go on, they wandered in a big loop and eventually stumbled on an Owlbeast lair. They killed the creature and animated it as a zombie with a first level mage spell (tf?) so had big beef in the front rank the remainder of the delve.

The zombie made them reckless, using it to bash down doors in their way rather than check for traps or attempt to open them like people. Attercops in a room full of webs ambushed the group, but it wasn’t much of a fight and after collecting a modest bit of loot they carried on.

Growing frustrated with the haphazard nature of the dungeon, the mapper repeatedly gave up and quit only to return 4 seconds later to call movement to a new room. They finally stumbled on stairs to the next level after a hunch call nearly giving up for good due to the approaching time limit on the session.

This next level was clearly different and jarred some memories from the players. They located an old lab and library that they remembered from their previous delve. The lab was fine but too heavy to carry out. The library was trashed by some hooved menace. Cracaryn was unable to track the creature very far.

After locating the target of their mission, the old sinkhole of evil location where a vampire was destroyed, the group decided that was good enough and left. They rested in the stairwell before continuing but heard hoofbeats approaching from the rear. Out of marching order there was some tension as the door opened behind them to reveal a minotaur. The group offered to chat with him, but he laughed and said, “Nah bruh, we’re good” and closed the door. When the party rushed after in the hopes of a score of treasure, they found two of the creatures discussing the adventurers in the next room. The minotaurs were overheard to sigh and say, “Of course they chased us. Adventurers, man, they’re the worst.”

The fight was on but the zombie owlbeast took a ton of punishment and the minotaurs were killed pretty quickly. I love those creatures but every time I roll them up in a dungeon they get wrecked. RIP Sharkotaurs.

This time Cracaryn’s tracking led the group to the minotaur lair where they discovered a good haul of loot. This was definitely all they wanted so after some math regarding who could carry what they bounced, leaving a shitload of copper behind because it’s copper they aren’t meth heads (yet).

Back to town, collect the reward, and the rest of the session was splitting cash and such.

Musings:

Been a while since Issac was visited by adventurers, it was cool to get him back in the mix. 

The sphinxes have been a pain in the ass the entire campaign and I’m happy to see they’ll remain that way for now. 

Cracaryn’s conversion to Lawful puts a wet blanket on Team B’s original mission statement of being the morally questionable group. I wonder how they’ll adjust. 

I was as lost going back to that dungeon as the players were. The first time, I had clear notions of what and why and where. This time it was restocking, which wasn’t too bad honestly, and just trying to set the right tone. Don’t think I did very well there.