Session 37: What The Whales Know.

Player Characters, Henchmen, Hirings, & Animals:

The Crowned Maniacs

Lexus King - Level 3 Thief Neutral Evil

The Mad Prophet - Level 2 Magic User/ Cleric Chaotic Neutral

Captain D - Level 2 Fighter Lawful Evil

John Arbuckle - Level 2 Magic User Neutral

5 Paradisan Marines (Arbuckle)

The party’s goal is to initiate a Battle Braunstein this session, Lexus supposes he can start a war between the elves and the Paradisans/gnomes with a false flag attack. King has been meeting the party every two weeks at the dock on the North side of the peninsula. He tells them his plan from there. The party will attempt to to sink an oil tanker and blame it on the elves. They’ll leverage captain D’s position with the marines to get access to 4 small kegs of black powder. The Mad Prophet will throw some platinum in to help Captain D acquire the kegs. He will purchase the kegs from Gnometanamo bay and will open the lid and begin the drying out process. (Bulk black powder is stored wet so that it won’t explode)

The mad prophet and Captain D are drinking at their favorite bar in Halifax when an unknown elf comes up to them. “Psst.. guys it’s me, Jon Arbuckle” I’ve got an illusionist who is willing to make us all look like elves” The crew is frightened at first, not believing it really is Jon, due to the effective illusion. He tells them info about the plan that only Jon would know though, so they believe him and follow the elf to the society of spurious semblances, where Jon introduces them to an illusionist. The old man agrees to make four of them look like South Pole elves, no questions asked… for all the money Jon Arbuckle possesses. He agrees, and soon Captain D, and three of the party’s hirelings are transformed to look like elves. The mad prophet is already a half-elf, so he chooses to be the one who doesn’t get the illusory disguises.

Now that the party are disguised to look like elves, they head out for the rendezvous point.

The sailing is fine until they get a couple hours from the dock. 60 feet ahead of the boat, surfaces a snarling face, almost like a sea dragon. Steam bursts from its mouth as it roars and dives under the surface, now a dark mound underwater charging towards the ship. Unaware of what they are facing, The Mad Prophet casts the “Scare” spell, Captain D and the marines fire muskets. The Dragon Turtle wins initiative, and surfaces next to the boat, causing a 50/50 roll to capsize. Luckily the boat doesn’t capsize, but it rocks back and forth. The musket balls bounce off the thick shell of the dragon turtle, and the scare spell is ineffective on this 12 hit dice monster. The party declares actions for the next turn: Captain D will steer the boat away, and the rest of the party holds on for dear life. Luckily, they win initiative so they just have to survive opportunity attacks from the dragon turtle. The turtle rips holes into the side of the boat, striking with both claws, but his powerful bite slips off the boat and he chomps into nothing but water. The boat is damaged, but is still seaworthy. The ship is faster than the beast, so once they have broken contact they are able to sail away from the encounter.

After evading the dragon turtle the party loops back around to the dock they’ve been meeting King at. They make what repairs they can to the boat and then follow the road until they find a town that looks exactly how King has described Digby. (location on the mountain, greenhouses, the Hampton Inn he is staying at is there) They make their way to the Hampton. Once inside, they see a crowd of people gathered around a couple of figures chugging brewskies “Drink! Drink! Drink” the crowd cheers while the two figures tilt their heads back and finish their drinks. The party comes closer and sees that it is their leader, Lexus King pounding shoeys with the Duke of this hamlet. Lexus has been getting by easily in town, becoming a favorite drinking buddy of the Duke.

Jon decides to challenge the Duke to a drinking contest. The Duke has already been drinking heavily today, so he decides to pour himself a mug of water, and pours Jon Arbuckle a pint… of whiskey. He puts the mug in front of Jon and raises his glass of water to him in cheers. Arbuckle protests at first but the Duke pressures him into drinking the whiskey. Everyone in the bar is now dead silent and looking at Jon, who is currently disguised as an elf. Halfway through the pint the mad prophet uses a cough cantrip on Arbuckle, he’s already gagging from the whiskey so the cough sets him over the edge and he drop the glass down and pukes a little bit. Party foul! The Duke takes the remaining whiskey and slams it after finishing his water, but also gags and winces. The Duke is whiskey drunk and getting angry so he tells Jon to get out of his sight. Lexus excuses himself to talk with the Mad Prophet in his hotel room, who is the only one he recognizes at this point. A crowd of fawning women try to follow them into the room (due to the rod of splendor effects), but Lexus locks them out to meet with the crew.

The party explain how they got an illusionist to make them look like elves, so they are ready to attack an oil tanker and kick off a war. They return to the ship and sail out towards the entrance to Halifax. Here they wait a couple days until they see a lone oil tanker making its way in the rough direction of Paradiso. They wait about 8 hours before heading out in the direction of the tanker. They are about a days worth of travel from Halifax when they catch up to the tanker. Nothing but ocean surrounds them on all sides. No people are there to see what transpires here. However, a group of killer whales begin to surface near the party, blasting air out of their blowholes and replenishing their oxygen. The mad prophet must have seen this one coming, because he has prepared speak with animals, which he will cast to converse with the killer whales. The Mad prophet makes his case to the whales that the oil ship is a whaling ship. There is a chance when speak with animals is cast the animals will do a favor for the cleric, and since he rolls that chance he is able to convince them the ship is a whaling ship, so the whales agree to help sink them.

The whales surround the tanker, and begin ramming and biting into the hull. The tanker crew mans the battle stations and begin blasting their cannons, injuring some whales and even blasting one of the orcas in the head, killing it. This enrages the whales further which bite again and deal over 100 damage to the hull of the ship, which causes it to flood and start sinking into the ocean. The whales pick off the floating survivors one by one, and then grab some crates of food that were stored on the ship and swim away

The party watches all of this from a distance until the orcas leave and then they pull up to the scene of the carnage. Oil is spilling out causing a slick on the top of the ocean. They throw one of their blackpowder kegs on top of the wreckage, sail some distance away, and then the mad prophet fires a magic missile at the keg. The keg explodes, igniting the massive oil pool and shredding a good portion of the ship. Black smoke billows into the sky as crude fossil fuels combust on the ocean surface.

The party sails back towards Gnoma Scotia and remove their disguises. Captain D leaves them in a cove and sails to Gnometanamo bay to alert the marines that some elves have attacked an oil ship. The marines send two ships to investigate the source of the black smoke on the ocean. A Fighter and Assassin will come with Captain D to see the wreckage. By the time they arrive, the fire has fizzled out but there is floating debris and some unburned oil coating the surface of the ocean. The assassin dives in to look for evidence, he finds wooden debris that has been shattered as if by explosives. He returns to the ship and concludes “No natural cause would have done this”

They go back to Gnometanamo bay with the fighter and assassin convinced, but the head honcho on the base isn’t entirely convinced it was elves, but he wants the elves to be investigated. Elves were last seen in this area going in and out of the sewers in Halifax. He gives Captain D a team of marines to command for this investigative mission.

Captain D comes back to the cove they left Lexus at and find him with a total face covering. His face is wrapped up to conceal his identity. The marines are weirded out by this, but are easy to convince due to high charisma. They go to Halifax and enter the sewers.

They recognize the secret door that the mad prophet found last time, enter it, and walk down the hallway towards the elevator to level 2. King checks under the door that leads to level 2 with his mirror and sees evidence of elves. He writes down “Elves!” on a piece of paper and hands it to the party (he is still wrapped up to conceal his identity from the marines and can’t speak out loud.) The Mad Prophet takes off his helmet and goes to listen at the door. He hears some elvish speak including the word for larvae. He casts bless on the party as they prepare to enter the room. The party busts down the door and rushes in with Jon Arbuckle casting magic missile from behind. A couple marines die in the first round and a third takes a non-fatal blow from the sword of an elf. The next round mad prophet casts hold person, removing 3 elves from the fight, King moves into position for a backstab, and more marines shuffle into the room with Captain D. King gets the backstab with his sword of water breathing which causes his victim to gurgle and sound like he’s drowning as he dies. The party kills the remaining combatant elves after some rounds of melee.

The three held elves get tied up and questioned. The party convinces the elves to take them to their leader. The elves agree to cooperate under duress. They claim to be led by a cleric deep in the dungeon.

The elves lead the party to a door but want the thief to check it first. King doesn’t see any traps, but he makes an elf open the door. The elf fails to open the door so Captain D bravely opens it. They get led to a staircase that leads back up to level 1. The party is skeptical and says “Hey didn’t you say your leader is deeper in the dungeon?” The elves explain that to go deeper, they must go up to a connecting corridor on level 1 first. The party tentatively agrees to follow the elves but they are suspicious. They go up the stairs.

This section of level 1 is a windy hallway that leads to an elevator marked “TO LEVEL 3”. Maybe the elves are somewhat trustworthy after all? The elves want King to keep checking for traps, but the evil party makes them open the doors from now on after he checks. The first door they open on level three opens up into a large trapezoid room with a pendulum axe swinging from side to side. Three skeleton archers on the other side of the gap with the pendulum get surprised by the party. The party uses range attacks, King throws daggers, the marines shoot all their muskets; If anyone had keen hearing before this, they no longer do! The skeletons are killed during the three rounds of surprise. The party sees sacks of loot beside the slain skeletons so King nimbly jumps to the pendulum and climbs up to the hinge. Passing his remove traps roll, he hammers the pintle out of the gudgeon and disarms the swinging pendulum. Across the gap the party finds 4k silver, 10 gems, and a quiver holding 19 magic bone arrows.

They continue past the trapezoid room and the elves warn there is a trap in this hallway. King isn’t able to find it however, so the elves want to turn around and take a different path. The Mad Prophet uses the command spell and says “walk!” which makes one of the elves march down the hallway and fall into a spiked pit trap which kills him. The party traverses the side of the pit and continue into a small treasure room filled with chests guarded by an ogre.

King will throw an oil flask at the ogre and the mad prophet will cast scare. The marines will shoot muskets over the frontline shoulders. The oil flask hits and musket balls penetrate the burning ogres skin, then the scare spell takes effect and the ogre begins to flee. A musketball pierces the immolating ogre’s spine as he retreats, dropping him to the ground. The party searches the ogre and finds a gem, wrought gold bracelet, and 1000 copper on his person. Even more significantly, they find 6.6k electrum in the chests he was guarding. The elves lead the way into the next room which has a large tapestry of robot Santa mowing people down with a laser tommy gun, as well as a bookcase with drawings of evil pets: imps, efreetis, homunculi and demonic servants. Jon Arbuckle finds a book entitled “how to care for larvae in the mortal plane” which he takes. The party starts wanting answers on what’s going on with the larvae and feels like the elves are withholding information. (This party found one of the larvae nests in these sewers in a previous session) King stabs one of the two remaining elves to threaten the last one into spilling the beans. The last elf screams “I’ve told you all I know!” and draws the attention of bugbears in the next room.

Half a dozen aggressive bugbears rush into the room and battle ensues. Captain D kills the strongest bugbear with his bastard sword, the magic users dump the rest of their magic missiles, and King takes a couple rounds to sneak around for a backstab. The marines take more casualties but after a handful of combat rounds the bugbears are slain. The bugbears oddly have nothing on them, but the party finds a bugbear box in the room they came from. King checks it for traps and notices that it is trapped with a proximity trap that will only go activate when opened close to the magical source that arms it.

He smiles slyly under his face concealment and writes a message to the mad prophet, who then pushes the last elf in front of the box and uses his last command spell by saying “open!” the elf lifts the lid of the box and the trap activates, fatally shooting three shuriken into his chest before snapping back shut.

The party adds the bugbear box to the rest of their loot and start hauling their treasure out of the dungeon. The loot is quite heavy, but Captain D has plenty of rugged marines to help share the burden with. None of the elves remain to guide them back, but the path to familiar areas is straightforward so they don’t get lost and the trek out of the sewers is uneventful.

The party opens the bugbear box outside of the sewers and discover an exquisite battle axe resting on a mixed pile of coins, 78 copper, 80 silver, 36 electrum, and 30 gold. “Could this axe be magic?” They wonder…

Treasure & XP:

Monster XP 1708xp split 4 ways = 427xp each

9 elves 48 hp – 276xp

3 skeletons 17 hp – 63xp

1 ogre 21 hp – 195xp

6 bugbears 91 hp – 1174xp

Treasure 18986xp split 4 ways = 4746xp each

84 gold – 84xp

6.6k electrum – 13,200xp

1000 copper – 1xp

Quiver with 19 bone arrows +1 – 380xp

11 gems (1 from ogre 10 from skeleton room) 2 gem stones, 2 fancy stones (precious), 1 fancy stone, 4 semi-precious stones, 2 ornamental stones – 3315xp

4k silver – 200xp

Large tapestry of evil Santa – 100xp

1 jewelry, wrought gold bracelet - 1200xp

Bug bear treasure chest:

78 copper

80 silver – 4xp

36 electrum – 72xp

30 gold – 30xp

Bugbear Battle Axe – 400xp

Ranking:

King – E –Backstabbed and detected the bugbear box trap

Mad Prophet – E -commanded elves to hurt themselves, scared ogre, and magic missiled enemies

Jon Arbuckle – E -magic missiled enemies

Captain D – E -led men and fought bravely

5173xp split +20% bonus = 6207xp each for initiating a battle Braunstein in Elite Player Challenge