A Descent into Dullness

And lo the random of encounter of Big Old Red Dragon and Even Bigger Older Red Dragon was survived.  Big Red was slain and Even Bigger Red fled the battle.  And thus we arrived at the final dungeon, a paritally submerged ziggurat.  And then much time was spent searching for an entrance.  And then once it was found then did an underwater adventure begin.

And so, after much discussion on how to get to the final dungeon frog/men barbarians were encountered.  And just into the start of the non-surprise round it was realized we'd missed an entire chart of underwater combat affects.  And so the battle was reset to start and it was after 10 and so lo the night was called.

This week we fought a bloat wizard and some devils. The spiked ones who got away from us in the armory lo these many weeks ago.  But that poor evil wizard did not have things go its way. Bill's cleric and the summoned paladin reflected his big mass damage spell back on him and then our witch turned him to stone. And then Matt tried to dump the turned to stone bloat wizard into a summoned hungry pit.  To finish him off, from his mindless, statue, essentially DEAD state.  Like 20% of the time Matt's "creativity" can be pure genius.  And 50% of the time its just background sillyness.  And then 30% of the time you want to have someone sit on his character and make them not do anything.

Anyway this led to Matt wandering off invisibly, accompianied by all the pirate swears for almost costing us major NPC loot and important story moving forward clues.  Where he got attacked, by the arch-devil, nearly killed and 'ported away by his contingency spell.  Then we had to break before the fight with the arch devil since Frazer had to get home and relieve the babysitter.

Not a deal accomplished this session.  A late start, down a player and a rain delay causing the group to have to move the gaming table better cover.  Mostly we fought another group of Grey Maiden guards and stumbled into a major encounter in the palace throne room.  So next time the Evil Queen.  Or is it?

First we let our blind wizard wander around, then we fought some evil lady soldiers (who mostly got torn apart by the cleric's dog), looted the room of the absent Bloat Wizard (getting all his spell books) and finally we finished the night with a fight against a band of evil lady devils (who got beat down by magics holy or wall-themed).

After looting the dead devil and assassins we pushed further on into the 4th floor and found...A FINELY MADE BOOKMARK!  With the royal crest on it.  Later we get ambushed by another group of Red Mantis assassins, flinging firebombs from the rafters.  During the fight the RMA leader shows up, all invisible and probably blinking.  She manages to do some decent damage on Krogar with his autocrit vulnerability but barely survives one of his autocrit attacks.  A dimensional anchor from Silius keeps her from escaping while we finish this batch of assassins.

After a brief post-battle healing and looting we continue on, finding an apparently empty room that, after further investigation, reveals an installed phase door.  Testing that we work out that it can be activated by the royal seal, which we have because of that bookmark.  The magical door leads to the Queen's private offices with her assassin and devil contracts and several high level spell scrolls.  This completes the Prove the Crimes of the Queen part of our check-list.  So we head out to set up a meet with the rebel leaders and turn over our new evidence.

Still some a missing priest to locate.  As well as some devils, a Bloat Wizard (whatever that is) and the new Grey Maiden leader to dispose of before going after the three-souled Queen.  Oh and some kind of Blood Pact she set up involving the city residents that also involves those of us who've visited Korvoso in the past.  And of course I've got that Lavish Weddding to set up for Harrow Deck gained djinn fiance.

This session we were down our archwizard as Matt had a previously planned baseball outing with his son.  But we ended up not getting into combat, so that worked out.  Instead we located the missing bones of the dead tiefling noble and returned with them to attic floor.  There new ghost buddy and old ghost guide combined their powers and haunted Harrow (not-Tarot) decks into a Harrow Deck of Many Things.  One where we could spend our Harrow points to cancel out a card and redraw.

For those not familiar with D&D's deck of many things, its basically random draws from a standard 54-card deck where each card has a different magical effect, some good and some bad.  So each of us choose to take the maximum four draws (with Matt getting the chance to choose when he returns next session), which if it weren't for those Harrow point cancels is just NUTS.  Even if I was the only one who pulled disaster cards that had to be avoided, the Idiot which would have drained 3 points from each of my mental stats and one that would have disintegrated me.  I ended up with a true & false vision to be determined later, something called the Theater to be revealed later, an engagement to a genie and a Redo any one choice my character has ever made.

Bill & Eric, among other things, both got the +1 level card.  Aaron ended up with Immunity to fire/Vulnrebility to Acid, +30 base movement (but 3 more forced deck draws), Automatic critical hit confirmation for him and when people crit against him, 4 pet giant ants and then I forget the rest.  Krogar the Fighter is more than a little double-plus bad-ass now; on top of where he was a 15-straight Fighter.

More of a prepatory session as we attempted to check off that missing priest bullet point before going after any of the Storm the Castle ones.  But we learned that said missing priest was probably in the castle as his sister is the evil trainer for the Grey Maidens.  So after some Keystone Cops style breaking and entering involving an alarmed door we checked our maps and our spell-load and headed for the roof of the castle.  Where exploring the uppermost level mostly what we found is the fire safety is shockingly poor.  I mean there are rooms storing skeins of whole, alcohol, a granary and oil soaked rags and deitrius all next to each other.  But no combat or encounters as yet.  Except for finding a hidden room with the ghostly remnant of the ex-king's tiefling half-brother who asked us to bring him his bones.  I'm guessing thats to set up a safe camp zone in the castle.  So next time we'll probably be 'porting down to the bottom dungeon level to try and find said bones.

We start with the duel against Triffaccir about to begin and the return of Matt's wizard and Eric's arcane archer.  After a few rounds with the rest of the group observiving Bill's cleric spots that Triffy isn't what he appears.  This leads to Sillius the wizard wandering over under an anti-magic shell.  Which is aggravating in that it suprresses all MY magic items and buffs, but does reveal that Triffy is a disguised efreet.  This quickly turns the duel into a mass combat with the efreet taking flight and unleashing mutliple scorching rays.  Eventually the evil genie is defeated by a mulitude of enchanted arrow strikes from Thrumm the A.A, spells from Terry the cleric and the witch and flying attacks by Terry's celestial dog mount and Krogar the Pig (given flight by me).  Sillius, the high level wizard, mostly tried to get the efreet to look at him and his symbol of stunning.  Of course getting hit by a half-dozen rays did mean Terry died before the end of the fight.  Of course at our level thats a pretty short term effect.

So the first of our Defeat the Queen goals was accomplished and I got some new blood to drink so I could learn scorching ray.

And so we officially begin "Crown of Fangs", the final installment of the Curse of the Crimson Crown.  And everyone is back with their character's from the last module almost three years ago.  My pirate captain, the elven magus Fenyx Asher; Bill's halfling cleric of Shelyn, Terry (with celestial hound mount/follower); Frazer's fighter Krogar (with witch follower); Eric's arcane archer Thrumm and Matt back in the group with his wizard Sillius.  Following a not-so-short loot division and shopping we teleported back to Korvosa where Queen Ileosa's enthrallment to her hat continued.

The party met with the various NPCs/rebel leaders from the previous modules and got the general Sub-quests that needed to be compleated before charges could be brought against the Evil Queen, parliamentary style!  Anyway, next session should see us going after one of the items on that list, a new "hero" who has been taking down groups of fake rebels.

And the group did press on without resting and confronted the slyph mistress of ravens.  And lo did swarms suck in the dealing of irritating amounts of damage.  But Eramus the Investigator was able to use his remaining flaming loogies and the aviary was cleansed and looted.  Then to the resting, cause the cleric's player hath dropped out for a time.  And so Eramus must now be the group healer.

Then to the final boss.  And the witch-boss' goat was smited.  As was the witch-boss.  And his summoned baby ice elementals.  And so next session will be the wrap up.  As well as the prep for the return to the roommate's Carrion Crown Crimson Throne campaign.