Session 41: Fruits & Shadows

Antonio Downs Fighter

Lvl 3 lieutenant

Lvl 1 light horsemen sargeant and his raiders

Orwell the Onery MU

Heinrich MU

Using their riches from last session, the party will acquire a farm and use Antonio Downs’ farming ability to keep the land up and Orwell the Onery’s husbandry to start keeping dairy cows.

The magic users will also research a bunch of spells, Orwell fails to learn friends, but learns whip. Heinrich will learn strength, which will really beef up Antonio downs when he uses it.

They start in the Edinburgh dungeon and notice the first room is covered with the corpses of trogolodytes, they are very messily crushed around the room. They salvage a couple troglodyte javelins. They continue and run into 6 hobgoblins. Heinrich beefs up Antonio downs with a strength spell giving him the strength of a cloud giant. The party kills the hobgoblins and continues till they run into a handful of fire beetles, which they smash, looting some copper and silver along the way.

They find a room with three crates in them, and pay some hirelings to open the crates. The first and third crates are full of bananas, and the middle crate has a small chest inside. The rest of the party stands back and Antonio Downs opens the chest, revealing a strange looking fruit. Orwell has heard of this kind of fruit, and says that he will eat it. It tastes awful. Nothing seems to happen so they continue towards the caryatid column room.

They have forgotten about a pit trap that has been reset but Antonio Downs makes his save and doesn’t fall down while he’s leading the way. They get to the room with the caryatid columns but realize they left the key with Manfred! The columns materialize and threaten retaliation if they try to open the door without the key. The columns seem pretty strong so they decide to go another route.

On this path they open a door and a shadow scurries past them and lodges itself behind Heinrich. When he moves it moves in turn to stay behind him. It appears to be ethereal and the party cannot seem to touch it. They shrug and continue into the next room which has a spiked pit trap that Antonio Downs triggers. He makes his save to not fall in, but then the thing behind Heinrich attempts to push him, forcing him to make the save again and cartwheel around the pit. The party is no longer going to accept adventuring with this weird shadow creature sabotaging them so they decided to go to Gielinor and see if he can help get rid of it. Gielinor recognizes the thing and informs the party that anything Heinrich does while it has him as a host will be easier, but at the cost of disadvantaging everyone else around him. He sells them a rod of etherealness with an unknown number of charges for 2000 gold. The rod will let Heinrich take 3 other people with him to confront the being in the ethereal plane but the rest of the party don’t want to mess with it so Heinrich hires 3 hobilars and asks Manfred to help. Manfred is the PC with the key to the caryatid column door but the irl person is not at this session. Manfred gives them the key but says he has to go pray and they can’t find him after that so Heinrich chooses to take his 3 hobilars and confront the being.

Once in the material plane the being tries to convince Heinrich that he is a blessing and can help him with anything he tries to do, but Heinrich doesn’t want to be abandoned by the party because surely no one would party with a person who’s ethereal parasite pushes them into spiked pit traps. Heinrich casts magic missile and the shadow attacks him. The missile goes off and the shadow hits Heinrich for half his health. The next round Heinrich’s spell is interrupted but his hobilars are able to kill the ethereal being, who disappears as their spear pierces the robes. Heinrich grabs the beings robes after it falls with as the last round of etherealness wears off. He takes the robe back to Gielinor who identifies the robes as robes of etherealness. Anyone who puts them on will immediately become ethereal. Gielinor kind of wishes they let him get the shadow creature, and says to bring them here next time and he’ll take it off their hands, though they are so rare he doubts the party will see another one.

They go back to the dungeon and the caryatid columns do not bother them since they have the key. The party taunts the lifeless columns as they go down to the next floor. The room they fought the troglodytes in last session is found, but now they see 16 more troglodyte corpses smashed around like they did upstairs, in addition to the five they slew last session. Heinrich gives Antonio Downs a moderate boost with a strength spell but nothing spectacular like yesterday. They look through a portcullis and see a web covered room with a giant spider. They throw burning oil through the portcullis and light up the webs, which flares up the webs and the papers, wooden desks in the room and damage s the spider slightly which scurries off. Antonio opens the portcullis with his exceptional strength and chases the spider down the hall with his men while the magic users search the room. They don’t find anything more than charred desks due to the flames so they soon follow the path to meet up with Antonio Downs. They show up to find that he has slain the giant spider as well as two ogrillons! This room has a gross slime on the walls, so Orwell dumps out some water and fills the container up with the slime.

They keep exploring and run into a bugbear in the room the Heinrich recognizes as the one with the rats that had rot grubs in them. They slay the bug bear and pick up some scraps of coins and are now looking at a closed portcullis with a lever on the other side. Orwell pulls out a puppet and piece of string and casts unseen servant, which he has flip the switch. This opens the portcullis in front of them, but sounds all around the dungeon are heard as if several more portcullises have opened up at the same time. The lever room doesn’t have anything other than the lever in it, so they keep searching and find a fighter and 4 humans that have been beat up, tied up, and left for dead here. The 5 have 2000 gold on them and offers to join the party for 1500. The party doesn’t want to do that, but they’re lawful so they won’t just steal the gold either. They offer to free them if they pay the 2000 gold, but they refuse. Antonio Downs leaves them some bananas. As they’re leaving the 5 say that if the party comes back in a week and they are still there they will take the offer.

The party leaves and goes to look into a room that ends up having 34 pairs of Jermelaine eyes peering back at them through tons of cracks in the building’s foundation. The Jermelains rush in with clubs and bonk a couple hirelings unconscious and throw a tangling rope over Antonio Brown. The party pulls Antonio back and start dousing the room in hot oil and casting sleep. The casualties cause the rest of the jermelaines to flee. A few gems are found left behind by the fleeing Jermelaines.

The party keeps exploring and finds some stairs leading down a level. They enter into a room on this floor that has 8 large pedipalps, a cross between a spider and a scorpion. The party kills the strange hybrids and discover 6600 copper in this room. Also in this room is a is a sign with two directions, one that says elevator, and another that says vault. Antonio Downs tries to open the elevator door but can’t because it’s locked. Even with his strength boost he cannot open the locked door, so instead they head towards the vault. They come to a door that looks like a bank vault and Orwell uses knock to make entry. Inside the vault there is a party that is looting it, looking for the drakes bane dagger. After a little bit of talking the party decides the vault crew are enemies and begin the fight by throwing oil and casting sleep. The npc fighter drinks a potion of heroism simultaneously with the sleep spell activating on him, and the npc magic-user casts strength on the sleeping fighter. Since the sleep spell was simultaneous the level boost from the potion hadn’t gone off yet so the sleep spell also gets 6 of the hirelings in the room as well. The npc magic user prepares a burning hands spell towards the party but Antonio’s arrows disrupt the spell, and then Heinrich’s magic missiles finish him off. The last spearmen gets killed in melee, and the slept opponents are executed. The party finds 10 +1 arrows, a composite short bow, potion of invulnerability, and a set of elfin chain on the fighter. Antonio Downs takes these and gives the elfin chain to his Sargent, which is a big upgrade for a light raider. The Magic user’s spellbook, scroll of remove curse, and ring of mammal control are also found. Orwell wants dibs on first choice of spells from the spellbook in exchange for letting Heinrich keep the scroll and ring of mammal control.

Among the vault they find 750 gold, 330 platinum, and a black key that looks like it’s for something important.

On their way back the party checks with the guys that are tied up, and 1 of them decides to pay 400 gold to be rescued. The rest are stubborn and stay, unwilling to pay.

Loot

2 troglodyte javelins - 50 xp

1100 copper 1100 silver – 56 xp

Barrel of mead - 10 xp

Robe of etherealness – 3000 xp Heinrich only

11 copper 14 silver 15 electrum 11 gold – 19 xp

100 gold jasper, 500 gold topaz, 500 gold violet garnet – 1100 xp

Ten +1 arrows – 200 xp

Composite shortbow – 75 xp

Potion of invulnerability – 350 xp

Scroll of remove curse – 500 xp

Ring of mammal control – 1000 xp

Elfin Chain – 75 xp

Mane Mane no-mi (fruit eaten by Orwell)

750 gold – 750 xp

330 platinum – 1650 xp

400 gold – 400 xp

Spell book with magic missile, burning hands, ventriloquism, write, erase, strength – 3500 xp

Total Shared treasure xp 9735 | 3245 xp each (6245 xp for Heinrich)

3900 gold value split 3 ways 1300 gold each

Monster xp

Bugbear – 209 xp

6 hobgoblins – 154 xp

4 fire beetles – 59 xp

Heinrich’s Ethereal shadow monster – 58 xp Heinrich only

Giant spider – 440 xp

2 ogrillons – 107 xp (Antonio Downs only)

20 Jermlaines – 160 xp

8 large pedipalps – 256 xp

Lvl 3 magic user – 111 xp

Lvl 3 fighter – 175 xp

seven spearmen – 106 xp

Total shared monster xp 1670 | 556xp for Orwell - 664 xp for Antonio Downs 614 xp for Heinrich

Orwell total xp (before xp boosts): 3801

Antonio Downs total xp (before xp boosts): 3909

Heinrich total xp (before xp boosts): 6859