The players encountered first a patch of swamp with a pungent odor. Starting cautiously across the terrain, the party narrowly avoided a gout of flame that spontaneously burst from the ground. Moving quickly, the party crossed the treacherous landscape without injury.
Turning the corner, the party found a large expanse dotted with muddy graves and caustic pools of acid. As the party entered, an unnoticed helmed skeleton launched a fireball at the party before marching across the field to awaken his comrades. Players moving too closely to the graves ran the risk of also rousing the zombies lurking in the dirt. A quick shot by Kaden pinned the undead commander in place, preventing other zombies from joining the fray. Eventually the skeleton was downed and the necromantic threat ended. Additionally, a key with the image of a cow was recovered from inside one of the sulfurous pools.
The next corridor ended abruptly with two adjacent doors, one made of sturdy oak and the other made of stone. Note that these were not double doors; each door had is own frame and opened independently. The catches on the oak door could be manipulated to spring open, but the stone door would only respond to brute force. Similar doors of wood or stone lucked beyond the first doors. Not just similar, but closer inspection revealed all the oak doors to be exact duplicates, down to patches of color and whorls in the beams. The stone doors proved to be perfect clones as well. While forcing a path through these portals, several more keys were recovered from the mucky floor.
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| Keys recovered from the maze |
The next room featured several wood and canvas automata, all armed with swords, travelling along grooved tracks cut into the stone floor. These devices sprung to life once the party stepped into the room, but a well-placed shatter from Nimblethorn disabled over half of the threats. Quickly dismantling the rest, the party found more keys lodged within the internal clockworks of some constructs.
The party moved on to discover a stone door with a single keyhole and a series of inscribed numbers. for those playing along at home, the numbers were:
The party successfully determined the correct key after brief introspection, opening the door to reveal a demurely dressed red-headed maiden waiting inside the muddy hovel they had first found several days ago. She introduced herself as Nara, an efreet that had been their host for the better part of a week. the party learned that she had been serving Torance Zant in his revenge plot against Bellstone Keep. Her erstwhile master had ventured south into the desert, leaving her with instructions to delay anyone trying to find him or learn his plans. Having fulfilled the letter or her commission, she offered the party a flying carpet to return them swiftly home, specifically to the one person that could help them defy time itself and save the city.
The party arrives at the home of the Guy as small flyers appear in the distance far to the south. The Guy ushers them in quickly, having been expecting them for four days. In exchange for the flying carpet, he gives the party a key that will send his front door four days into the past. The catch is that since the door exists in a quasitemporal state, the party must enter the house and leave through the sewers to permanently establish themselves in the past.
Under the house, the party encounters elementals scouring the foul tunnels, as well as two dueling otyughs. Sunshine, the original inhabitant, had been attacked by a recent interloper and was hiding, protected by the elementals. The party was able to kill the belligerent bully, allowing Sunshine and the elementals to return peacefully to their task. The party exited the sewer to find the Shiennarm Festival still in the early days.
Once back in time, the party talked to Sir Richard, who grudgingly accepts the fantastic story told by the party. Sir Richard is concerned that trying to alert the population or create an obvious aerial defense of the city will disrupt the ongoing festival. Instead, he agrees to use the resources of the knights to hold an archery contest to identify possible defenders qualified to repulse an attack from the sky.
And there we paused for the week.
So a few bookkeeping addenda before wrapping up in preparation for this week (i.e. later today).
The missing sessions will be back-filled when possible. I mostly need a new starting point where players can refer back to and know all their information is current.
The one rules question left from last session dealt with healing during short rests. Our draconic bloodline sorceror gains 1hp/level. Does the healing from spending a hit die also increase by 1 to reflect this increase?
Currently, I'm allowing the extra hp, although a strict reading of the rules does not explicitly support this interpretation. The draconic bloodline benefit is that the character's maximum hit points increase by one per level ("Draconic Resilience" on PHB 102). This rule does not specifically state that the character gains an extra hp each level, although that is the eventual result of this benefit. I have sent a tweet to Mike Mearls for clarification. (I am desperately refraining from asking if detect poison and disease (PHB 231) reveals "venomous" as well as "poisonous" creatures, since the spell only mentions the latter.)
So what was recovered from the hut? It sounded like the players gathered every loose item in sight, all of which ended up in the bag of holding:
- each player ended up with a hunk of charcoal from the brazier
- the glass ball that connects magically to the gem
- a small, humanoid automata crafted from cloth, wood, wire and springs
- several clockwork displays portraying a variety of scenes: horses running laps around a farmer, two yeti throwing snowballs, eight tiny dueling mannequins, an alligator chasing a frog around a pond, and highland kobolds tossing cabers while their clanmates enjoy pie and archery
- three chess sets: a traditional set made of quartz and onyx, a set made of semi-precious stones that look like different plants, and a set of crudely carved troglodytes and goblins from common rocks (note: Kaden still possesses a quartz pawn, but that set already has eight white pawns)
- the helmet from the undead commander
- a small wooden cube with a picture of a door on each side
- dueling longswords made of meteorite metal
This list adds to the previous items collected from the maze: mismatched cold weather gear, nine goodberries, sixteen days of gator meat, a nice gator skin, a solitary quartz chess pawn, and eighty-six teeth from a tyrannosaurus rex.
Hopefully this gives everyone a good idea of where events stand, since the Shiennarm Festival sounds like it's soon going to get very busy.
~Tidwin
09/11/16
