DND Blog

A place to keep DND session recaps, from various campaigns.

The Ninety-Second Session

September 30, 2023, Campaign: As the ground quakes, evil wakes

Jerry dies. Jerry lives. We smash the canoptic jars. We recover Ockoh and some flail snail shells..

Table of Contents

  1. Last session
  2. The carvings
  3. The second floor
  4. Jerry's death
  5. Ockoh
  6. Exploring Wint's Lair
  7. Next Session

Last session

We lost the dragon's corpse, but helped repair Lanthet. We went back to Sky Diamond, and helped the city heal up. We went to Sky Diamond, and the four deans invited us into a hearing. They're going to address the issue of the Great Banyo Tree, with Dean Kamal as the vanguard. He teleports us to Barehold, and then off to the tree. We go to the pyramid and find that guards from Quadroads and the West Haven are there. They haven't been able to get in; we go in and do some smashing to make the ground floor safe.

The carvings

Ryltar carefully walks up the stairs, taking a look at the wall carvings. They're in Dwarvish for some reason. Jerry takes a look, too.

  1. The first pillar shows a tall muscular male with the dancing Khopesh stabbing someone. This pillar names the khopesh: Ecthrosis.
  2. The same guy is depicted wearing a billowing cape and holding a bow, shooting many arrows at others.
  3. The third pillar shows him throwing lightning, spearing multiple people. It is labeled, "Degrazil Maberus, Butcher of Othe, wielding Norrix."

The three are labeled: This is his youth. He was entombed to prevent his reunion with his mistress, Silra Edenair.

Other carvings ring the room. Going counter-clockwise:

  1. A large circle encompassing three ovals stacked one atop each other. The bottom one hows a wasteland of mountains and barren fields. The middle and largest oval shows forests, mountains, towns, cities, farmland, and people. The top oval shows a wondrous splendor of foliag and whimsical fey creatures.
  2. The second scene repeats the oval motif. The bottom oval shows the same landscape, now with shadowy figures peeking around rocks. The middle oval shows a figure looking out of a village set asunder by a figure cloaked in shadows, with the flames behind him. The top oval shows the fey creatures looking down in sadness.
  3. The bottom oval is the same size as the top oval, with the shadowed creatures increased in number and size. The middle oval shows the onlooker in the middle of a field, holdin a pointed crystal, and nearby stands that shadowy figure among a crowd of cloaked figures. The top oval shows the fey creatures looking down in horror.
  4. The middle oval shows the crystal being held by a woman bathed in light, with beams of light radiating out and piercing the top and bottom ovals in places. In the top oval, the fey creatures are intrigued, and draw closer. In the bottom oval, the shadowy creatures disperse and cower away from the light.
  5. The three ovals, with boundaries broken, draw near, with a great tree emerging in the middle, taking up nearly the entire circle.
  6. A circle filled with a depiction of a utopia, with a maternal figure standing triumphantly in front of the great central tree.

Ryltar: The Butcher of Othe thing happened early in his story, but it looks like he was around for most of the Divergence. The top oval always represents the Fey or the Fey Realm.

The second floor

Vurguron peeks his head over the stairs. He looks for traps and finds none. He goes to look at the stone chests.

  1. The first chest has a depiction of a khopesh. There is no feel of anything arcane that he can detect from the outside.
  2. The second shows a javelin of lightning. There is a faint magical essence surrounding this box.

He opens the javelin chest. The air sparks, and a streak of lightning bursts forth from the chest. With a 19 on his Dexterity save, he still gets zapped. It leaps off him, bounces off the wall, and with a 10 it shocks Ryltar, and bounces to Percival, whose 12 earns him a shock. Vurguron task 29 lightning. Ryltar and Percival take 59.

Jerry is next, and with a 4 Charisma she hears: "You wield the master's weapon. You have it on your person. Remove those who trespass this sacred land."

She has the lightning javelin from back at the horde. She's possessed.

She draws the javelin of lightning. It's strength-based and deals 1d6 piercing.

  1. Round 1.
    1. Jerry pops Web. Ryltar and Percival are bound; Vurguron are not. Hear eyes crackle with lightning. Charisma save 12 and she takes 21 lightning.
    2. Vurguron runs downstairs, through the webs, and sees Jerry. He Dashes towards her.
    3. Percival casts Tasha's Hideous Laughter on Jerry; she falls prone and laughs.
    4. Ryltar casts Slow on Jerry and she fails the save, and is slowed. Then he steps into shadows, and moves well away.
  2. Round 2.
    1. Jerry is incapacitated from laughter. Fails the saves against Slow, Tasha's, and the possession, taking a little lightning damage.
    2. Vurguron continues to evade the webs. He grapples her, 19 against her 20, and they both spend their Bardic Inspiration, his 5 against her 9, 24 vs 29, but Percival Cutting Words it to take 7 from her, and now she's grappled. Incapacitated, prone, grappled, and slowed.
    3. Percival tries to take the javelin. Her 20 + 11 versus his 13; he gets zapped. Bonus action: he pulls a toy top from the Vest of Many Pockets.\
    4. Ryltar is free of the webs. He doesn't have any way to help, so he goes upstairs. He uses Mage Hand to try to close the box. It doesn't move; it's heavier than 10 pounds.
  3. Round 3.
    1. Jerry is still slowed and incapacitated, and fails against the charisma check and takes only 7 lightning damage.
    2. Vurguron continues to grapple Jerry.
    3. Percival reminds the table that Web is a concentration check, and the Web disappears. He uses Mass Suggest on Jerry, telling her: "Drop the javelin, and cease attacking your party members." She fails the Wisdom save, and acts on the suggestion.
    4. Ryltar asks: "Should I close the box?"
      He gets a "I guess" from downstairs, so he tries to push it closed, and uses the quarterstaff for advantage, and moves it a little, but doesn't get it quite closed.
  4. Round 4
    1. Jerry is still grappled, incapacitated, slowed, laughing, and can't react to the Suggestion to drop the staff.
    2. Vurguron continues to grapple Jerry.
    3. Percival takes the javelin. He throws it out the door.
    4. Ryltar closes the lid.

Jerry feels the energy leave her. "Oouucchh," says Jerry, in between uncontrollable laughter, slowed, grappled, incapacitated. Ryltar drops Slow, and walks downstairs. "That really fucking hurt," he says, his hair standing on end.

"What will we do next?" asks Percival, spinning his top.

"Want to take a short rest?" suggests Ryltar. He's still got 1 HP.

The laughter stops eventually, and the lightning has ceased. Jerry says she's not opposed.

We take a short rest where we are. 45 minutes in, the skulls reform themselves, and so Ryltar and Percival and Jerry get up to smash the skulls. Jerry takes out one.

  1. Round 1: the Skulls again!
    1. Jerry pops Hunter's Mark and smashes the second skull with a combined 40 damage in two swings of the Moon Scythe
    2. Percival moves to another skull and hits it with his rapier, dealing 6 damage.
    3. Ryltar casts Blink and moves to where he can see them.\
    4. The skulls fireball for a little damage.
    5. Vurguron smashes the third.
  2. Round 2.
    1. Jerry smashes the fourth skull.

Ryltar throws pieces of the skull onto the disintegration trap, and nothing happens. He heads upstairs.

The third stone chest has a depiction of the cloak, which as far as we know was stolen from the port town in Setton. Ryltar looks for any magical traces on the chest, and sees a thread of the Weave hooked on the lid, triggering some magic effect when the hatch opens.

We all retreat downstairs; Ryltar turns into a Giant Ape and opens the box. With a 15 Charisma, something happens. Downstairs, we hear a scraping of stone.

Percival cautiously goes up there. Nothing happens.

He looks at the chest. Nothing happens.

He throws the top in the chest. Nothing happens.

He looks in the chest. Nothing happens.

He sees a small presentation box like you might use for clothes, and a small bird-headed jar.

He calls people back up.

Jerry smashes the canoptic jar. There's a bit of dry twisted stuff in there. She pulls out some oil and sets it on fire. The fire burs sickly for a bit and then flickers out. The entrails are unharmed. We Mage Hand the entrails into a bucket summoned from the Abracadabrus.

Ryltar has appeared 500 feet away, out over the lake. He falls into the clean part of the lake. He starts swimming back to shore.

Ryltar reaches the shore and climbs the pyramid and tries to tear it apart as a Giant Ape. With a natural 29 he moves the top six inches, and decides to continue doing so. The noise startles those of us in the pyramid.

We leave the gold in the box.

The lightning javelin stone chest has a smattering of gold, the stand for the javelin, and a jackal-headed jar. Percival takes the jar.

For the khopesh chest, Percival creates a Bixby's Hand and tells it to open the chest after we all go downstairs. We hear a "shing!" noise, and go up to look at what's happening.

There's a floating cloud of spectral daggers.

Percival then uses the Hand to open the sarcophagus.

An expanding sphere of black necrotic damage comes out, rapidly filling the pyramid and growing beyond it.

Ryltar is still a giant ape, still outside, takes damage, and continues to try to disassemble the pyramid. He isn't able to shift the stones with anything less than a natural 20. He sees three guards die; he slides down the pyramid and gestures at the rest to tell them to leave, pack up. He brings the three bodies over to them.

Jerry's death

Jerry had only 16 HP; she drops and dies.

Vurguron and Percival see this happen, and Percival examines her cold body. He casts Revivify, spending a 300gp diamond.

The spell Revivify sends out a lifeline to the soul. The ritual strengthens the spell and tries to pull the soul back. It gets harder after every death, and after every failed resurrection attempt.

Ryltar looks through the door and sees the body; he drops the giant ape and Dimension Door inside.

Percival sets up the Revivify:

The spell accumulates. The diamond shatters, spreads of Jerry, sinks into her, and disappears. She draws breath, at 1 HP.

The strain of passing on and coming back has given Jerry white hair.

We decide to split the party:

  1. Ryltar and Jerry will Dimension Door out with the bucket of entrails and Jackal-headed Jar.
  2. Percival will Polymorph as a large ape, grab the jars from the knife chest and the sarcophagus, grab Vurguron, and Dimension Door outside.

Ryltar gets out, and tells the soldiers to stay away.

Percival takes two jars from the sarcophagus and one from the khopesh chest, getting hit by 2 daggers for 21 slashing. He makes it to the stairs and demorphs, grabs Vurguron, and Dimension Doors. It fails with a 16. He tries again, upcasting it to 7th level, rolls a 28, and gets out.

Jerry dumps some holy water in the bucket. Ryltar and Percival GTFO. The smoke curls out of the bucket; the entrails crisp and carbonize.

Percival cracks open the next jar. He casts Living Armor and smashes them open one by one, pouring holy water in and mixing in the entrails.

This was too easy, we think.

"There were some bloated zombies when we arrived," say the soldiers.

Jerry looks around for tracks of the undead. Though there have been many soldiers around, with a natural 20 there are distinct signs of a march of the undead, headed east.

We accept the guards' offer of camping with them, but decide to keep our own watches.

We get a long rest.

Ockoh

So what do we do next?

We decide to go to Wint's Lair and finally free Ockoh.

We teleport in.

There's one figure, throat slit, turned to stone. There's also a Dwarf with his hands outstretched.

We pull out a Potion of Depetrification and slather it all over Ockoh. He loses his grey coloration and continues talking: "But I beg of tyou— The bitch put a spell on me! What happened?"

He takes some time to adjust to the reality of time passage. But he also says that Dirius made him smuggle. He was a simple Oosah salesman, and Dirius made him fit someone in his cart, and go through Sky Diamond. She made him sneak a Drow out of Sky Diamond, and the battle crickets, and then he went on the expedition. Dirius said that we betrayed the expedition and stole the Ice Heart — Ryltar shows it to him — and he had a big crystal, and then, Poof. He was here.

Did we get his cart? It fell in one of the halls.

So we go find the cart, in one of the halls with the illusionary floods.

We offer Ockoh the job at the Regular Inn, and he accepts.

60 feet down, there's a glinting sheen of something on the cart. Jerry identifies the four snails as Flail Snails. They're Large creatures, and they're sitting on the cart. Their shells are highly valued due to the magically-reflective properties. Killing them by cracking them open isn't a good idea, and magic cast on them might have adverse effects on the caster. They're not active.

As Jerry approaches down the wall, the snails start to move. Jerry pulls some salt off the salt lick and dusts it down onto the food cart. The snails don't react; her Animal Handling is 7.

Ryltar casts Fairy Fire on them. They're all illuminated in sparkly purple.

The snails flail at the wall under Jerry.

Jerry tries to slice an eyestalk, and misses.

Ryltar manages to hit an eyestalk with Ray of Frost and it shatters. Another one bounces off the snail, back towards Ryltar, and he shields against it.

Jerry kills two more eyestalks.

Ryltar Shadow Steps down and casts Cone of Cold in the snails' direction. One is frozen solid; the other four dash towards him at 20 feet per round. He's 40 feet away from them. He casts again and kills another,

Jerry gets stunned by some magical effect, and stays hanging off the wall.

Ryltar sees that they're within 20 feet of him, so he Shadow Steps past them. They turn around; he kills a third.

Time passes and he manages to kill them. He does get clipped with one of his own spells, for 12, but they do all die.

Jerry is left holding the torch to thaw the one which is frozen solid.

The cart is accordioned, unfortunately. Ryltar can't repair it, but Jerry can pick it up, and so Ryltar Shadow Steps her back up onto the path. Ockoh is very sad, but we tell him we can buy him a new one. There's a few pieces of metal that we decide to pull off as scrap, and the sign.

Ryltar wants to go visit Wint's chambers.

Exploring Wint's Lair

Oooh, the tree chamber makes sense now! Wint was dating a druid!

We go to the chamber where Wint had been entombed in an ice column, and Ryltar tells him about the things Belladonna has gotten up to. He asks for advice. His voice echoes in the empty room.

Flail snail shells weigh about 250 lbs, and can sell for upwards of 5000 gold.

We decide to keep one shell intact, and break down the others for parts. With a 24 we are able to able to recover 3 pieces 1.5 feet by 2 feet, weighting 150 pounds, plus 100 pounds of powder and shells. With the big shell we are able to scoop out the guts. Ryltar and Jerry Dimension Door the shell back up to the walkway.

There's nothing else in the other rooms; either we stole it or Dirius did. The only things left are the tree and the goodberries.

We loaf off for the rest of the day, catching Ockoh up on stuff. He's only worried about whether he's going to be hired at the inn.

Next Session