Session 42: Enter The Neon Ziggy

This session report is coming out a couple months late because it happened on July 13th, and some crazy news broke halfway into the session that made our silly little game seem insignificant for a while. Love your family, get right with God, do everything you need to do because you never know when it could all be taken away from you.

The ranger couldn’t buy a ticket off a hippie last session, so he has been scoping out the ziggurat during downtime and he sees that security has gotten pretty lax, they’re not even checking tickets of people entering the concert anymore. So he decides to go in. The half-elf bouncers notice he is a newcomer and ask him for his ticket, but he’s like, “why didn’t you check the other guys? “ the half-elves explain how everyone in town pretty much has a ticket to this concert by now since it’s been going on for a month and since he’s a human he sticks out as a new attendee and they make him buy a ticket. Once inside, he recognizes Soul King Brook is the performer. While listening to the music in the venue he becomes charmed by Soul King, and just by being there the Ranger has feelings of contributing to something. After checking out the concert for a while a bouncer comes up to him, saying that Soul King noticed him in the crowd and has a message for him. The ranger follows the bouncer to just behind the stage and Soul King sends a telepathic message to him.

“To tell you the truth I've wanted to stop playing this concert for a while now, but I cannot. Only a bardic song of this magnitude can repel night hags from this city. They are drawn to the smell of the great evils under this Ziggurat. Every soul listening to the concert boosts my song’s effect and no less than 100 spectators are required. She will try to return here so long as the three evils that tempt her lie in waking rest below. She has slain many good people but seeks evil vessels above all. Brook asks him a favor, please vanquish these evils so that I can stop playing this song to protect the city. He explains how the bottom third level of the crypt connects to the space below the ziggurat.

The ranger will gather up the party and head to the church to help free their old friend Brook, here they will meet Zinfadel who had arrived 1 week earlier and is in the two-week process of leveling up. Due to the urgency of the situation, he will eat the 1500 gold sunk cost for the first week to join them on the adventure even though he’s xp locked. Solid lawful good character decision. A little context here:

Last session they sent a letter to the church of Halifax about the evil cleric/magic user they found in the church with undead and how everyone at the church had been slaughtered. In response, the church sends a cleric, zinfandel to investigate. They give him a scroll of abjure and a scroll of remove paralysis since they know there were ghouls around and suspect the cleric/mu was dabbling in demonic gating. He comes with some foot soldiers that have silver plated scimitars.

He arrives at the church and makes his way towards the crypt. He runs into a group of wights down there which are digging tunnels in the crypt and attack. The wights kill one of his men, but the slain man doesn’t die, he transforms into a wight him self! Zinfadel’s group get over their inhibitions and kill their former crewmember and the rest of the wights, finding a sum of treasure that xp locks zinfandel. He goes back to the church to process this traumatic experience (level up) but it’s a 2 week task and he will be interrupted by the rest of the party showing up after only 1 week. This is where they begin the dungeon delve.

Some hippies have wandered into the first floor of the dungeon, are drinking the church’s wine, fornicating in their cellars and doing drugs. The cleric burns the blankets and some treasure is gated behind traps that the party trigger with 10 foot poles. They come across a hippie wearing a wizard’s hat just as he wakes up from a drug induced state. He pats all around and seems to be missing his spellbook. He promises to share a spell with the magic user if they find his book, and to pay the others in electrum for their troubles. The party asks what’s under his trapdoor and get him to admit it’s his treasure. He doesn’t smell like dead bodies or look all that evil so they can’t justify stealing his treasure from him even though he’s defenseless. He pulls out some mushrooms and goes into a drug induced state as the party moves on.

They come across a coffin and suspecting more undead, open the lid. But the body looks like a regular guy in nice clothes so they decide not to desecrate it and move on. They end up cornering a group of gnolls, who charge and kill dirty Dan, the hireling that survived a frost giant pummeling last session, oof! They get some electrum for their troubles. When they make it back to the wizard’s room they find him in a tussel with 6 goblins. They’re able to save him and he thanks them profusely.

They find a puddle of water with a skull in it in a hallway and try to turn undead, but nothing happens. They avoid it for now. In the next room they find a leather pouch on the floor, which they grab, setting off a spear trap. Inside the pouch are some unidentified herbs and a flask of tonic.

On the next floor they find a tub of similar tonic, mysteriously bubbling even though there is no known source of carbonation. Expecting a magic pool, the ranger takes a dip in the tonic. The tub then animates and asks the ranger, “What is your wish?“ without hesitation the ranger wishes to destroy the evil in Annapolis. The tub thinks about it for a few seconds, and then zaps the ranger for 18 damage. “Wrong alignment buddy! You’re not evil but I only associate with those that are lawful and just” Zynfadel, being lawful good alignment takes the chance and gets in the pool now, and the tub asks again, “What is your wish” Zynfadel isn’t quite sure what to wish for yet, so they decide to delay the wish until they are on the way back out of the dungeon.

They find a room with a prism in the center that works kind of like a security camera TV setup. It shows two other rooms, one with a bag of peanuts, and one with a stone chest. They see something transparent lift up the lid and slither out of the chest when they pear into this screen.

The next room has a swinging axe pendulum with what looks like sacks of coins on the other side. The cleric casts “aid” the level 2 UE spell to give Regulus a temporary hit point boost so he can jump to the other side. He gets clipped by the axe on his way over, but for less than the temporary hit point boost. To his dismay, the sacks only have silver in them so he doesn’t even take them cause it’s not worth the weight this deep in the dungeon. He doesn’t want to get hit by the axe again, so he tries to magic missile the hinge of the axe. The hinge fails its save against the missile and snaps off, sending the axe-pendulum into the wall of the dungeon. They move on and a portcullis slams shut behind them after they go into the next room, so they’ll have to find a different way back. They know the general layout of the dungeon so they aren’t too concerned with this.

They run into a lone bugbear but it wasn’t a match for the party so they continue and go to the next room which they recognize from the prism cam, the room with a bag of peanuts. They can see the first prism room from the screen here, so they know whatever slithered out of the stone chest could have seen them while they were in there.

They take a path around and find some rags and guano in a room with a huge brass horn. They’ll find some alchemy supplies (alembic, jars) with piercers overhead but miraculously not get surprised by them and use lasso’s to bring them down first before getting the alembic and extra jars. Eventually they find themselves in the room with the stone chests they saw on the prism screen. A slithering tracker tries to sneak behind the party and this slips by everyone unnoticed– except for the illusionist henchman that rolled a 4 on this 5% chance. He is able to point in the direction of the tracker and the party declares actions. They win initiative bigly and the, the magic user catches it in a stinking cloud, and hirelings throw spears. The stinking cloud is effective and gives the party a few rounds of safe range attacks in to kill the tracker. Regulus slices off a chunk of the tracker and uses the rags to guide the sample into a jar without directly touching it.

The party is getting depleted on spells so they decide to leave the dungeon, but this means they will have to make that wish at the tub, because the wish is only held for 1 day. The wish will only be able to destroy one of the evils, so Zinfadel chooses to destroy the closest of the three. The bubbles in the tub subside, and the tonic goes flat. Presumably the closest evil has been destroyed… After recharging their spells and healing up they will go back down to confirm. The stairs to the next floor were right by the slithering tracker room so they go there quickly at 5x speed and come downstairs to level 3.

On this level they’re going to find an arras tapestry and behind it, an ivory statuette. They’ll pocket this and run into a character party that has also been charmed by Brook to clear out the evils so that he can stop playing the concert. They share a common goal so the party with a cleric and fighter decide to join them. They run into a room with barrels of wine, and wheels of cheese that 33 giant rats are getting into and spoiling themselves on. The magic user casts stinking cloud, stinking about a third of them, the illusionist uses a phantasmal force, making a third of them fall into illusory pits with spears and die in their minds, and the ranger will use his flamethrower. The ranger will then dispatch the ones caught in the stinking cloud to finish them off with his flamethrower. The party’s splash attacks have been very effective, but this room is now dangerously smokey and lacking oxygen as all the wooden support structures are smoldering so they retreat and use a different path to go around.

They encounter a group of 6 bugbears on their path around, the bugbears split up half on the party and half on the npc party they encountered. Chants, magic missiles, and blows are exchanged and the bugbears drop some pocket change and 6 gems. The npc party evaluates the gems and decides they don’t want them. On this path they find some bellows, which they take to the smoky rat room hoping to blow some smoke or something. That doesn’t work out so Regalus takes a deep breath and runs in to open one of the doors on the other side of the room to let some air in. He fails so the other PC’s come with him for a second try and bust open the door. Cold air blows in from the door they opened and the rest of the group comes in now.

They approach a circular room with stairs leading up to a platform in the center. Atop the platform is a sarcophagus with dried worms peaking out of the crevices. The sarcophagus appears to be made of copper with an electrum plating, but the plating has worn off considerably and the copper parts have corroded into a grimy patina that is flaking off the electrum veneer. The party carefully approaches and heaves the lid off of the sarcophagus. Inside they see a pile of ashes where they would expect the body to be, and at the base of the sarcophagus there is a collection of treasures. Some coins, death and blood runes, a wrought silver military pick, a periapt, and two gems. One of the gems is a black opal, and the other is a humongous emerald of exquisite rarity.

The NPC party is astonished that the evil in this sarcophagus has been slain already because the party hasn’t told them about zinfadel’s wish. They take a look at the gems and their eyes widen. The split of treasure is agreed upon, the NPC party wants the royal gems, and the players will take the silver pick, periapt, runes and coins.

1000 silver 50xp

Emerald ring worth 3k

1 copper coin (party graciously lets Zynfadel donate 100% of this to his church)

825 electrum 412xp

250 gold 250 xp

2k copper 10 xp

1k silver 50 xp

2.2k silver 110 xp

2500 electrum 1250 xp

Arras tapestry 10 gp

Ivory statuette 50 gp

4k gold

Sapphire ring worth 5k

6 gems:

Jet 500g

hematite 500 g

topaz 200g

alexandrite 50 g

star rose quartz 100g

amethyst 200g

60 blood runes 100 death runes 160 xp to Regalus

Wrought silver military pick 500xp to Macready

Periapt 2500 xp - ???

16,9,22 hp shriekers x3 62

3 gnolls 134 xp

6 goblins 27 hp 87 xp

7 bugbears 80 hp 1265 xp

33 giant rats 297 xp

Piercer x3 180xp

Slithering tracker 16 hp 360xp

Kyuss – 215 xp

Alchemy/miscellaneous items taken to the base

Roasted shrieker slices, slice of slithering tracker in a jar, mushrooms from hippie pouch, sage, piercer bits, alembic, jar of orange liquid, jar of tonic, plumbs, feathers, parchment, silver awl, pestle and mortar, fenugreek seeds, leather pouch with unidentified herbs, pouch of guano, bag of rags, 3 jars, bellows,