March 28th

After resting from the elemental battle, the party descended deeper into the last memory of a banished god to find the last divine spark of the goddess he killed. They found a maze of withered, black hedges upon withered, squishy grass. The evil voice warned them not to try crossing the hedges, and the party did not try that. Instead they battled their way through displacer beasts, wraiths, and a bearhound. In fact, they even charmed a wraith and named him Edward. They acquired two items which they later found out were a rope of stone and a rod of transposition. Finally they made their way to a hydra guarding the way down. After we all worked out the rules for fighting a hydra, the party was victorious. Honestly, the bearhound was a bigger threat.

Descending below the party found themselves on a platform suspended by chains in a massive dark cavern with two wyverns flying around. After first discovering that they would be mutilated without a plan, the party bravely retreated and had Edward guard them while they rested. Then with a plan to delay the poison, the party headed down, summoned fog to allow them time to fasten ropes to the chains and descend to the cave floor below, and easily destroyed the wyverns.

They found piles of bones about the room, and additionally they found a small golden acorn sitting upon a pile of emeralds. Upon finding it, they immediately felt healed and even more powerful. They took their treasure and left. They found that the creatures that before attacked them now fled from the acorn. The grass and hedged turned green and pretty just as hedges and grass are supposed to look.

They returned to the surface and waited for Robin to come get them. They asked her how long they had been in there, and she responded two days. The party really should have figured that it had to be more than two days, but they believed her. They became suspicious when she said they should give her the acorn. After the priest determined that she was evil, he stabbed her. A great battle commenced. The rogue Liam Flynn and the member of the Brethren of Autumn known as Darnell Korrigan came to attack the party. It turned out the woman was another member of the Brethren of Autumn, Kalina Yomaris, in the shape of Robin. Fortunately, the real Robin was nearby and came to help the party. She said she could not have defeated the three of them by herself, so she had to flee and wait for the party to return. It was a great fight around the stones of the moonwell. Liam was killed and Eron ate his heart. Darnell was knocked down and perhaps killed, but Kalina managed to flee with his body was it was clear she could not prevail.

The real High Druidess Robin then suggested that the party should plant the acorn by the moonwell. They did so, and then she poured on some water from it. Very quickly an oak tree began to grow, and by the time the party left 5 days later it was as tall as themselves. Robin was very proud to see it, and she knows that there is no longer any point for any evil groups to come hassle her for the tree. They can no longer make any use of the power. The plants around the tree are looking better, and the land was healing more each day. The damage done to Myrloch Vale by Bhaal over 40 years ago will soon be healed entirely. It is autumn, an odd time for an oak to sprout, but there's no real concern it won't be alright.

Questions remain. Why was the Brethren of Autumn attacking them? Was Monroe involved? What were they after? What will they do next? The party pondered these issues, but decided that if they went after them without Robin at this point they would probably all die horribly (good call). Cathal is most distraught with this situation and he will remain to talk to the druids in Corwell as well as Robin to determine what is happening and what can be done.

The party, however, found that they have a matched set of beautiful matched emeralds worth more than any one person in this small city could possibly afford to buy. They are excited about this wealth, but have placed it in the Corwell keep vault to keep it safe.

As they were all preparing for bed in the Holly Bush inn, there was a knock at the door. It was a gnome looking for heroes. In fact, he was desperate for heroes. His name is Zargofoop, and he is a priest of Gond from the island Lantan. He works in the High Crafthouse of Inspiration and was on a course to become a Techsmith at some point. Now his future with the church of Gond is in question due to a serious mistake he made. He thought he had made a friend named Cenobio, and he talked to him in a bar after work. It seems that Zargofoop was encouraged to reveal information he should not. Thinking it was a friend, he did not see the problem. That was until Cenobio stole the airship. Gond must approve each invention before it is allowed to leave the island. Gond deemed the world was not yet ready for an airship. The priests are encouraged to invent and craft whatever they can, but many things must remain secret knowledge. Zargofoop was ordered to find the airship and either return it or destroy it. There had been sightings in Corwell (the party may recall that before they went to investigate the southern moonwells), and Zargofoop came here. But the trail was cold, and now he is searching for heroes to help him. He knows now that Cenobio was a reaver from the Nelanther Isles, cold rocks in the ocean from which evil men ruin others' lives.

Spring became summer, and now the trees have turned beautiful colors and the last harvest has been gathered. The party has a new quest before them. The chance of death and the chance of glory loom, but they will wait a few days to rest before setting out.

This is part 9, not 8.



I was going to make an evil squished salad with the undead grass, but nothing to be done about that.



I was a little sad about that. It's not in character for Eron to obey the orders of evil voices.



Command Undead, filed under "not present in 4ed".



The rope of stone is probably for drowning people or bondage scenes. The rod of transposition is going to be sheer awesome.



Only because of the exploding door we took right before the bearhound were we in super trouble.

The hydra rules are pretty messed up. I think I've run about 2 hydras in each edition of the game. Also note that sunder is ahistorical as a combat maneuver, though it does at least make some sense for fighting a hydra. Not that fighting a hydra makes all that much sense.



You are skipping over the best roll of the night, wherein the rogue had 7 Con left after the Wyvern sting fucked him long and slow, failed his second saving throw, and then you rolled 2d6 while we all had huge fucking eyeballs watching your face for the twitch that would mean a dead rogue.

I mean, living with a Con of 2 is pretty aces. That's worse than a CANCER PATIENT.



Easily? Yea, I guess that's fair. We rolled well on saves that time, and it was delayed in any event. Not taking 14 points of collective Con damage before the init cycle had wrapped around is better than, you know, taking that Con damage.



Because it would be totally unreasonable for the magical place that bends space and magic to also bend time.

What we should have done is rolled Survival to estimate the time spent underground when we were there.

I have at this point gone ahead with the "nah, let's move forward" plan twice instead of rememming spells. This is mostly because as a DM I've always found it somewhat frustrating and silly when the plot is supposed to move along, and the wizard is squatting at a tent within sight of the city, refusing to enter until he has his city spells up.

After this, I have become that wizard. Both times I've gone along instead of stopping at a stupid point have ended in tears. NEVER AGAIN!



I really liked that stab. That spear is a very pleasing weapon.



Battles versus other characters with classes are cool. Everything is so much more vivid because the HP totals are so low and everything is all about how the dice go. It's very swingy and if you mess up you usually pay for it, but if you don't you can really kick ass.



I really wish someone in this group had played arena in WoW. The bitch humped pillars like a gladiator resto druid, is all I'm gonna say on that.



I have a special hatred for someone who betrays. I think most of us do. That guy really fucked us over, and killed the first good guy we dealt with, making us look like villains. Really didn't like him.



Yea, we'll get her too. Currently the tyranny of her cartoid artery is oppressing the free flow of rich arterial blood onto the ground, so we'll have to see to righting that injustice.



Strictly speaking, it was taller than Sunny.



See, that's pretty great, a good ending to a chapter.


A few.

I explained this in the context of a cartoid artery earlier, but basically the underlying cause is clear: they still draw breath. Once we have fixed this oversight, they won't be attacking us any more.



Well, it would be good to figure out what exactly they were planning on doing with the acorn. We can perhaps ask the ranger later. I think he wants to get his fucking spleen pounded more by the monk at his earliest convenience, but first we are going to go to an island filled with chibi horrors so we can rescue their floating bathtub, during which time I'm sure they will consult their codex evillica and figure out what their next plan for world domination is.

On an interesting point, the enemy group consists of a lot of nature oriented folks, and they were seeking a natural artifact (essentially) for evil purposes- but were those purposes in line with nature, opposed to it, or not involved at all? My point is, it would be odd if they were the ones riling up the Northmen or the folks who set up those undead fire-things in our future base, unless it was all part of their plan to get the acorn.



I think I'll have some questions for him, but I'll put them in another post. What was he *told* the brotherhood of autumn was? I mean, how were they going to get him to go along with their plan? "Well, here's a good hearted druid, we'll train him up and then later teach him the ways of EVILTANGLE MWWUUUU-HA-HA-HA!". We're still missing stuff.



You left out the part where you got rid of the airships that exist somewhere, thus eliminating air pirates, the air brigade, air swashbucklers, and pretty much an entire genre of awesome. You are such a hater



I want to point out that it is inherently awesome that at this point we all basically bunk together for security, no matter where we go. It's like, of course there's four men and a drowess in a room together YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?

STOP JUDGING US



Boy is that dude on the wrong island.



For anyone reading, this is an earlier mistake, from before he came to the island of backwater seeking heroes.



I have sympathy for an experimental airship thief.



I'm really of the impression that if secrecy is your game, you sort of need to find something else to worship you besides gnomes. For instance, a ninja clan. Or a breed of mobile fungus. These things keep secrets.



Yea, but we didn't think it was the only airship in the world, patent protected by the craziest diety that doesn't want to put out the sun, we thought it was one of the hella cool ones from somewhere far away.



But without a good trail, I think we are heading south first to Lantaan- though if someone has seen it recently, it might actually be more clever to head over to the islands to the east where they are probably docked.




I'll bring up the possibility of pooling gold for a rope trick spell, if available. One way or the other, I suspect I'll call a familiar. I'll also spend days sleeping in a bed instead of outdoors, in a shack, on stone stairs, or guarded by temporarily compelled undead.

If we're well known enough, I'll also try to put on a few minutes of street shows- last time this happened, we almost got arrested for arcane magic, but maybe we can get some social progress here nowadays, given the whole saving-their-prince thing.

John's analyses are always so much fun to read.

Also, I'd like to point out that I shared in the feasting on Liam's heart. Nothing like a roasted, fresh heart to rejuvenate the soul after a tough battle.

If we're thinking we need to make more money, I'd like to point out that the party has a rogue, a priest that can cast Silence, and a wizard that can cast Invisibility.

Yea, we are kitted out to be pretty good thieves. The emeralds are very valuable, but they won't be useful right away (additionally, they are actually safer where they are, because we don't have anything to spend much of that gold on).

Copying the spell will cost less than 300 gold if his earlier rates are still true (200 for the cost of putting it in the book, plus a fee for letting us copy it). It's really only important if we decide to do more dungeon. Note also that it would only last 5 hours for us currently, which means I'd need to prepare two of them in order to be able to rememorize- but is that really so bad, if it refreshes the cleric?

I fail to see the error.

The guy fucked up. His boss said "You fucked up, now fix it." He assumes that if he is unable to fix it then his rise through the ranks of the temple might be slowed substantially. That's his personal problem. There's the bigger problem, he knows, of having a bunch of evil asshats running around in an airship killing people. He figured he needed 2 things. 1) The location of the airship. 2) Someone to help him. He's been looking for both.

Only 5 hours? I'm not sure how you could get the priest down the rope and back up into a new rope trick without waking him for 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Climbing a rope seems like a terribly unrestful activity.

Is it really 8 hours of sleep that's needed? Or only rest? I mean, if it's sleep, what we did in the dungeon doesn't seem very plausible (8 hours of sleep, 10 minutes of fighting, 8 hours of sleep). I was under the impression that a wizard could sit around for 8 hours leafing through his spellbook, or a priest could meditate, pray, etc. for 8 hours. It's needed to clear his mind and get it ready for spells again, which could be done a number of ways that don't necessarily involve sleep.

That really depends on how much Rope Trick pisses me off, doesn't it?

Lol, you know you can be interrupted for a battle in the middle of the night and still get your sleep.

But clearly this approach will help with some dungeons, especially if we get rocked with a two-day recovery like the wyverns.

BY THE WAY- Liam's fingerbones. I would like to have taken them, if you don't mind me retconning this a tad- we didn't talk about what were doing with the body, after all. While I'm in town I'll see about having someone put the requisite 25 gp worth of whatever they take on them so that I can hand them off to Yenrab (we should split the cost of that 25 gp). Or perhaps Yenrab can create them himself with 25 gp worth of materials?

Now, he'll need to buy incense if he wants to use it (at 25 gp per use), but what could top using http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/augury.htm with the fingerbones of your fallen enemy?

If not, that's ok. The sorceress has fingers too.


Man am I glad that spell has a damned 25 gp per use charge attached to it. That was very annoying when Thrawn used the FUCK out of that shit.

Yeah, that's true. Some people want to play being heroes, some people want to play getting gobs of money.

You can have his finger bones, sure. Just remember my warning that divination will, in pretty much every case, be weaker than it says in the book.

We've been almost as heroic as possible! My point is that he's found a pack of 5th levels, and if he had gone to Waterdeep he could probably interest someone much more powerful (though they would be a lot more likely to steal the ship).

If our goal was just to accumulate money, we would probably have not planted that seed. I'm sure that would be very pricey on the open market! Not to mention the fact that we owe no *inherent* loyalty to the island, except that we are good guys and want to make the world better. I also wouldn't have given my nice blue cloak that I stole fair and square to the deranged rape victim. I'm sure she would have found some rags, leaves, or strips of her flayed former captors.

Giving your stolen clothes to a raving mad rape victim: heroic!

Yea, I'm sure divination will be weaker. But I'm also pretty sure it will still be worth using- Augury is a pretty easy spell to make fair- unlike Locate Object or whatever which is only useful if the getting the object (or finding the person) is only the *first* step (aka, there's this sage on a mountain, and he has a quest for you, but finding him will take this high level divination spell).

"Find the kidnapped princess" can work as long as you're ok with the location of the princess being trivial to find- but "Kill the lich" is pretty much crap if you can home on in him or his phylactry, with buffs blazing and readied actions.

My point is, it'll probably still be worth using augury.

Well, sure, there is always someone more capable. Otherwise you would heroically conquer the world. But in game time, over a month ago a fellow spotted an air ship from Corwell. It's no surprise someone might show up looking for it. Then he asked around about anyone who might help them out. In the tiny backwoods city of Corwell, you're famousish.


Locate object, locate the princess, etc... they ruin the game. Seriously.

Someone needs to sig this. Or make our allowable sigs longer.