Session 23: The King & The Crowned Maniacs

"The King" and "The Mad Prophet" arrive in Gnoma Scotia in search of riches.

Platinum

2/20/20248 min read

Player Characters, Henchmen, Hirelings, & Animals:

The Crowned Maniacs

Lexis King "The King" - Level 1 Human Thief, Neutral Evil

Arctic Thagon "The Mad Prophet" - Level 1 Half-Elf Cleric/Magic User, Chaotic Neutral

Dom Yoda - Level 1 Gnome Illusionist Thief, Neutral Evil

Linkboy Dressed as Jester, Butler (King)

4 Spearmen (Thagon)

2/17/24 Before the session starts, Lexis King seeks out the local thieves guild and advertises for adventurers to join him. A gnome thief meets with them in the Maple Syrup House Tavern. They converse in thieves cant. Lexis claims to be a king who’s kingdom was wiped out by a tsunami in the Shifting Isles, and is in the process of rebuilding his kingdom. The guild representative has his doubts, but he knows a thief when he sees one. To test his abilities, he challenges the king to retrieve some loot from wanted thieves who stole from the wrong people, BP. The culture of the gnomes of Gnoma Scotia makes the entire town reject anyone who does this. “To hurt BP is to hurt the gnomes” He gives the party a publicly available map of the sewers underneath Halifax as they accept the mission.

They take the map and descend down the “bird cage” elevator to the first floor of the dungeon, which is a sewer level clad with brass pipes, valves, and gauges.

They take the first door on the right, then fail open a second door. This commotion startles some badgers that the party surprise, burn with oil, stab with spears, and then smash with their fists the moment the oil dissipates. They try another door, but it’s locked and Lexis can’t figure out how to pick it, so they return to the unlocked door they failed to muscle through. They succeed and enter into a maze of pipes going from the floor to the ceiling. Hidden among the pipes, King notices a 4-spoke handwheel behind a tripwire. It isn’t labeled, but it is painted red (whereas everything else is naked brass) so it looks important. He attempts to disarm the trap but trips it, causing the cap on a pipe to pop off, releasing a gas able to cause a magical fear. Half the party fails their saves and are overcome with fear, causing them to sprint away at max speed. The party gets extremely lucky on their roll for how long the fear lasts, so they are able to catch up to them before losing them to different corners of the dungeon.

They go back to the room with the handwheel, but find it locked! King pulls out his tools and manages to break in. They are weary of what the handwheel might control, so King makes a makeshift Allen key with his thieves tools, removing the handwheel by its set screw. Upon Further inspection of the room, they find a pot with a lid that is labeled “do not touch, needs cleaning” The party takes a wet cloth and cleans off the pot, then slides the lid off with some tools to find a sum of platinum covered in a yellow sticky ooze. They realizes they could equip themselves better if they can spend that platinum so they reseal the pot and take it to town.

They first try to clean it off with water, but that doesn’t really work, it’s too sticky. They try boiling water, but that doesn’t affect it either. Arctic takes it to the adventurer’s guild and the people inside direct him to a mysterious half elf who takes a look at the platinum and recognizes that it’s covered in a magical ooze, and likely requires a secret ingredient to clean off. Arctic casts Chill on the coins, and then tries to smash the ooze. It shatters, but stays stuck to the coins. Eventually the crew buys a couple salt shakers and pours one out on the coins. It doesn’t clean them, but it does noticeably affect the ooze. They take water and their other salt shaker and rinse the coins, finding that the ooze dissolves in the salt water.

Now they count 550 clean, spendable platinum. They buy better gear for their hirelings and The King buys a lavish white horse with blonde hair, and the nicest scale armor available for such a horse and names her Michelle Bolton. As well as some hirelings who agree to take an oath to the king in exchange for extra pay. Arctic gets his guys splint, which is luckily available without a long lead time due to BP’s advanced manufacturing.

They get a drink at the bar and run into Yoda, a bastard son of a former BP executive whose origin is kept a secret by the family. He’s a member of the thieves’ guild and wants to join them in getting the rod of splendor from the wanted thieves below the sewer. The King isn’t too enthused but Yoda uses the illusionist spell “change-self” to convince the party he has some cool tricks up his sleeve.

2/18/24 They go into the dungeon and see a spot on their map where they think a secret door might be. They have the half-elf search here and he finds a pathway. They follow the pathway to a door which they realize will lock behind them if they go through it. So they spike the door open. They see another spot that might be a secret door, but don’t find anything. They go through a couple doors and reach an elevator that is clearly marked to go to level 2. They want to clear more of level 1 first, so they turn around and head another direction until they find a firebeetle and a couple sacks of coins locked behind a portcullis. King charges in and rips the fire beetle apart, the party finds 1k copper and silver in the sacks.

They go north both King and the gnome fail to detect the oil flask trap that was placed on a door, one person got a direct hit, and the other made their save so they only got splash damage. The clerical multi class heals the wounded and King decides to step back on some of the door rolls for a bit. They find a set of stairs leading down in this room but decide to take the door instead. Behind this door is a small room with two shriekers next to two chests.

They start combat with the shriekers who shriek calling in 6 kobolds. The party is able to kill one shrieker pretty fast but really struggle on the second one. They split up their forces between the kobolds and remaining shrieker when a couple jackals come into the room. The magic user casts magic missile and the party slashes and stabs it’s way through the jackals kobolds and shriekers. They open the chests and find 1k copper and silver. They go the direction the kobolds and jackals came from and come to a door. They open it and find 11 more kobolds, and one obvious leader. The leader reaches into a sack as the other kobolds engage. but the party manages to slay him before he could pull anything out of it. This causes the rest of the kobolds to flee, with one going to retrieve the sack first. The party manages to slay a few kobolds before they can run, including the one who was going for the sack. They let the others escape and loot the bodies. They look into the sack and find a jackal inside. It must be a Bag of Tricks. After looking at the map, the party realizes the kobolds ran off to a dead-end, so they decide to chase them.

They fail to open the door and the crash alerts another 4 badgers, but this time a gnome is in the party so they are able to communicate with the animals. The badgers say that there is a gas trap down that path, so to be careful. They’ll help you fight the kobolds once the trap is disarmed. Arctic uses the spell “wrap” to wrap a suspected gas trap pipe up before King attempts to disarm it. King fails, and the wrap starts to expand slowly getting bigger and bigger like a balloon. The party wisely GTFO’s and the wrapping pops behind the door as they escape the hallway. The gas starts seeping in from under the door so they retreat even further. They wait out the gas and come back to the trapped door. It’s worth noting that the door is iron, because as they stand there getting ready to give it another shuv, it rusts and then crumbles before them, revealing a rust monster in the room with the kobolds!

Battle begins and the gnome uses a spook spell on the rust monster, causing it to flee into a corner. The badgers attack the kobolds and the rest of the party focuses on ranging the rust monster. The rust monster has 2ac and a good deal of health but the party gets 18-20’s roll after roll as the monster gets pelted with flaming oil flasks and spears in the corner. The instant the magical fear spell wore off, the rust monster dies. The badgers cleaned up the kobolds and were on their way. The party finds 13 gems under the dead rust monster.

Yoda sees his chance and decides to swipe one of the gems for himself. He succeeds his pickpocketing attempt. The party goes back towards the triangle room on their map and finds that it’s locked. They manage to pick the lock and find them selves in a room with a couple of coffers. But the gnome notices that there is a string connecting one of the coffers to a trapdoor in the center of the room. He attempts to disarm the trap but fails, and triggers a mechanism that opens the trap door in the center of the room, revealing an incubation pit with 6 Larvae about 5’ long with human heads. They attack the party and battle commences. The demonic larvae get a few good bites off, killing one of arctic’s hirelings, and damaging others with nasty bites. But the party slays them and burns the bodies in the pit. The party finds 750 electrum in one coffer, and in the other, 275 gold and a key labeled (1) on the handle. They’re feeling pretty good about the loot and Lexis King is counting up the coins and checking on the gems and feels like the blemished star ruby is missing. He asks the gnome to be searched. But the gnome refuses. The King says he’s broken the oath by stealing the ruby! And orders everyone to attack the gnome. The gnome wins initiative semi-miraculously with a natural 6 over the King’s adjusted 5, giving him a chance to open the door at the edge of the triangle and escape – but he fails this roll and does not open the door. He is murdered as he rams into it one final time, lifeless by the time he hits the ground. The evil party takes his spell book and the star ruby, and dumps his body into the Larva pit, then the chaotic cleric burns his body in oil while laughing hysterically. They leave the dungeon and tell the guild that larva got him.