Teayu 2nd 1518 TH
This Way Out
Part 1 of 3 Stream
GM Note
At the start of this session I forgot to inform the players what has happened to Yargai, so we retconned it a few minutes later. As the person who played Yargai has left the group I decided that after he drank from the red fountains, that this turned out to be a lethal poison. Also to prevent the group trying to revive him this poison turn his body to mush from the inside out and as such was beyond any healing help.
We start this session with group moving in to the room to the South where they have been asked to free the Fire Spirits to Fire Eagle and have been warned that it will burn them all when they enter the room.
Fire Pit Room
Up ahead you can see an illuminated room and in the air is an aroma of incense. You can just see there is a brazier in the entrance to this room. If incense is burning then someone may be there or has been there recently.
Getting closer to the room you see a few steps leading down in to a chamber on the East wall a Small Statue of Raggok, in his Pre Scourge none Mad form holding out a platter.
Not long after the group enter the room and the Fire Eagle appears as it comes round the corner from a lava pit. After the first round of attacks and the Fire Eagle fire balling the room, Kor’Milan uses a very interesting tactic, that wasn’t planned for from my design.
Kor’Milan decided to use Hold Elemental Spirit, even though it wasn’t a spirit in my initial notes. As it was interesting and cool I decided to go with it. He instructed the group not to attack, held the spirit and allowed it to take the Fire Golem Furvis from his hands. As it did so, it flew back into the lava pit, embraced the Golem and eventually dissipated away into nothing. Leaving the Golem floating on the lava, which Kor’Milan then retrieved.
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I liked the change in the phoenix room. I knew you had a different solution in mind, but seeing as Kor’Milan was hell bent on not killing the elemental you change it up. The good thing about the change was that it was consistent with his previous experience of setting those elementals free, it made sense he’d expect this to work and you made it happen.
Kallias
After the Undead Fire Eagle, or Bound Fire Eagle Spirit, the group investigate the room. First of all Vinessa discovers a secret door leading to a spiral staircase going up. This looks to have never been opened, or at least not opened for aeons.
Kallias then goes to investigate the marble bowl on top of the altar.
Looking ahead you see what looks like an alter surrounded by four candles as you get closer all four candles spontaneously ignite. Now you can clearly see a dagger with a wavy edge on the side of the altar. Kallais immediately remembers what the Ally Spirits said, that this is most likely the Dagger Of Aseroth.
Looking into the marble bowl in the centre of the plinth, which has been carved from the plinth, you first see that it’s full of blood with occasional bubbles popping on its surface, The blood then appears to drain away and then you see what looks like a freshly cut out heart, still beating. As you look, and wonder who or what did this the heart disappears the bowl fills with blood once more. A few moments later the blood empties out of the bowl and a hand appears in the bottom with the fingers moving.
At this Kallias grabs the hand out of the bowl and feels a server coldness track up his arm then through his chest and seemingly encompasses his heart upon which he falls to the floor in excruciating pain. receives
The bowl continues with the process and they see an Eye with a blue iris appearing to be looking around. A tongue wiggling about and half a Windlings chest with a wing attached that’s flapping about. And continues to change to all manner of dissected body parts as time passes, but for the time they are observing they never see any part repeated.
At this Vinessa comes up with the idea to stay whatever body part is in the bowl with the Dagger Of Aseroth. Upon doing this the body part fades away, the candles go out and the Bowl appears to become inert and no more blood or body parts are seen.
GM Note
This was purely for flavour, but as so often happens when I’ve added something with an as yet reason for the thing to be there, they have mostly all become intertwined into the plot, as this will later down the line when it becomes appropriate to do so.
All that is left now is to return to King Undast Valzals Tomb and collect the Heart Of Garlen from Thystonius who reminds them of what she had previously told the group.
Honour him and choose thy receptacle and receive your gifts. Any who do not head my message will be imprisoned here for all eternity.
GM Note
I had to try and make this more obvious than previously as the players had assumed they could only take one item from one chest, which isn’t what I had intended. I intended for them to take as much as they like from one chest each. So I emphasised GIFTS and A in the above sentence and then give a few extra hints for them to work out what Thystonius meant.
They click fairly quickly and Kallias decides to risk it and takes a whole load of books, as many as he can cram into his backpack, and nothing appears to happen. Kor’Milan gets a large selection of True Elemental Kernels and Vinessa takes a large number of Oricalcum Coins.
The group now choose to go up via the spiral staircase and after an arduous trek, they eventually find a secret door that opens out into the cave where they initially started from.
Knights Of The Night
Part 2 of 3 Stream
Now that the group are back in the cave, Vinessa sneaks slowly outside and senses that a trap is bring set, most likely by the Knights Of The Night. She manages to get back in to the cave without being noticed and informs the group on what she has discovered,. The group now set about devising a plan of action for leaving the cave. They eventually set on getting on the mounts and charging out as fast as possible in the hopes that they will surprise the Knights Of The Night and then make their escape down the mountain path.
GM Note
A few things went wrong from my perspective during this combat. Firstly I hadn’t really paid full attention to the groups real intentions when they decided to charge out of the cave. This meant that the Trolls appearance happened immediately, when I had intended them to appear a few rounds into the combat. I did this as I thought they were going to charge off and escape, so I blocked that from happening. If I had listened they did indeed intend to just charge of round the first corner then wait for the Knights Of The Night to come after them and try and catch them unawares as they came round the corner.
Secondly, I rolled dice during the first round for NPC vs NPC combat. This was tedious for the players as they watched me roll dice against myself in essence. Fortunately I realised this and didn’t do it after the first round. But that first round had already lasted 30 minutes and the next 4 rounds combined lasted 30 minutes, which just shows how much time I wasted here.
This is a schoolboy error, as even in the very first session we played, we had a combat with lots of NPCs against monsters and I never rolled any dice for them at all. How the hell did I forget such a simple thing now, especially as I have more experience. Fortunately I recovered quickly, but that doesn’t excuse the wasted 30 minutes in my opinion.
After the battle had ended, I had the Fire Blade leader slaughter the remaining member of the Knights Of The Night. This was a massive error, not giving the group an opportunity to question the surrendering member. I should have allowed this to happen and then after that allowed them to be murdered. Have the group lost out on some information? No, but this would have been a good opportunity to share some information, that I have planned for later via a different method, but it would have fitted in here very well, probably a better place for that information to have been revealed.
Homeward Bound
Part 3 of 3 Stream
The rest of the session was narrated, just to get them back to Darranis for the end of the Session as we have a new player starting in Session 22 and I don’t want them sitting around for an hour waiting to start to play whilst I role play with the group on things we can do via discord in the week leading up to this session.
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