Abyss Modified Session 29: Flights, Discoveries, and Face Bites

Dinak the drow gloomstalker ranger, Buttercup the tiefling swashbuckler bard, Orion the tiefling way of the long death monk, Xanaphia the human wild mage, Thelrum the tortle abjuration wizard, Syre the Yuan-ti whisper bard, Godric the half elf hexblade bard, and Drifting Cloud the tabaxi grave cleric of Anubis made their way to Longsaddle. It was an uneventful journey to the town, and a few well-placed history and arcana checks got them some background history for both the Harpells and Longsaddle itself. They landed their airship near the town and debated on taking their skeletal horses with them.

They ended up walking into town seeing all sorts of normal townsfolk running all sorts of general goods and butcher shops. They gave the party quizzical looks, the group does contain a few different animal people and two tieflings, while they were looking around a non-descript man in bland wizard robes approached them and asked if they were new around town. They told them they needed information about demons, magical locations, and magic and he told them he better take them to the headmistress. They walked and talked with him and loud booms could be heard in the distance. They found the Ivy Manor, a building that looked slightly like a large boot covered in greenery. Their guide was pointing out different sights and before the party knew it they were inside the mansion. They saw two golems walking with a large metallic beam of some kind and their guide realized the golems were going the wrong way and crashing could be heard from that direction. He pointed the party to follow the green lights up the circular stairs to the headmistresses meeting chambers, and he ran off after the golems.

Drifting Cloud was filled with cat folk ancestry random zoomy lust, like a cat at two in the morning attempting to break the sound barrier, and sprinted up the stairs at full speed, leaving his brethren behind. The rest of the party followed, just not as quickly. They found themselves within a large room with a large wooden double door on the far wall and chairs lining the other walls along with six suits of armor. The large doors were closed and Godric knocked on them. A small note came out from under the door, with the words “I will be right out, just finishing up with something here”. He wrote “ok” and sent it back under the door. The doors opened a few moments later and Danica Harpell, the current head mistress and leader of the Ivy Mansion.

She bade them sit, and summoned a large war table with the realms carved into its surface. The party sat with her and discussed what brought them to her in this time of troubles, from the excursion to the Underdark, the rise of the demons, the appearance of Demogorgon, the mushroom wedding taking place soon, the return to the surface, Daddy Fate, and their patron the Companion (nicknamed Beelzeboss, who had told them not to tell anyone about his involvement), and their quest to fix the fallen Mystra temples. Danica gave them advice and a history lesson about the desert they were traveling to first. She pointed out on her map where the High Ice, the Plain of Standing Stones, and the Anauroch desert all met, that was the location of their first temple. She also told them about the fall of Netheril and mentioned Mystra and the flying cities. Xanaphia asked Danica if she knew her grandmother, also named Xanaphia, Danica offered to search her records and see what she could come up with for her.

The group asked for more help and asked why the Ivy Mansion was not launching into attacks against the demons. Danica explained that while they were practitioners of the arcane, many demons were resistant to some magics, also most of the people living in the town are without magic and many of the people in the mansion are just learning to use spells. More of the skilled mages are already out working on other world threatening disasters and would be unable to help until their problems were solved. She was able to give them three barrels of ever flowing water for their airship. They thanked her and with their information and a location, headed back to their airship. Within moments of getting aboard they could tell something was wrong.

The aforementioned water barrels were there, but something else was as well. Thelrum cast see invisibility and could see a small child, maybe two-foot-tall, quietly making his way across the deck of the ship. Thelrum demanded the child empty his pockets. The child, scared because someone could see him while he was invisible, emptied everything out onto the deck of the ship. Small books, a wand, some trail rations, about three gold worth of assorted coins, and some minor spell components. He also has a small animal on him, which he dismissed. Ralph, the halfling child, explained the magic mansion was boring but still dangerous and did not want to stay there any longer, so when he saw a flying ship he decided to climb aboard and see who owned it. Drifting Cloud cast zone of truth and had his khopesh at the ready as the party grilled Ralph for more information. Eventually the group “adopted” Ralph, giving him the job of cleaning the ship and watching out for bad guys. Thelrum took him under his wing and taught him a few spells. Ralph learned unseen servant, making his chores that much easier.

A few uneventful days later they made it to the border of the Anauroch desert and a few miles further found the High Ice. While traveling south along the edge they found a half buried blue dragon of immense size. They landed the ship and started bashing the teeth out of the jaws. Drifting Cloud wanted claws, so he started digging into the sand. It was slow going but he found a bisected skeleton that looked like it had died fighting the dragon. They took the skeleton’s mithril spear and quite a few teeth back to the ship.

They followed the High Ice south east and eventually came to where the three edges met. There was a large strange mountain structure with a large crack on the side of it. They left Ralph with the ship, telling him to turn invisible if anyone got on the ship that he did not recognize, if all else failed use feather fall and jump off the ship. They also used the largest tooth as an anchor, which was pretty cool. They entered the crack and after a few minutes walking. Guided by Thelrum’s light they noticed the walls had strange pictographs and glyphs. They noticed the sand was collected strangely in the corners of the room and realized the entire structure was upside-down. They investigated the wall art and saw wizards fighting strange billowing windsock shaped monsters. They continued down the central hall and found another sandy room with a door to the north, south, and east, each corner had a blue light ball floating.  They listened carefully at the stone doors and could hear muffled movement on the other side. They arcane locked and alarmed the north and south and readied themselves at the southern door. They checked for traps, finding none and opened the door. Within they could see a broken guardroom, a large desk broken and again upside down, broken shelves, rotten clothing, weapons, two cloaked figures with oversized masks on their faces and red pinpoints in their eyes.

The two creatures rushed the party, wasted bodies covered in scraggly robes. Godric was engaged by one, it reached out and touched him, stunning him. The other creature ran up, its mask opening up into a giant maw, and engulfed Godric’s head, shoulders, and a bit of his chest and bit down. Godric’s allies attacked the creatures, driving them back and stabilizing the now bleeding out Godric. Orion and Buttercup stabbed and punched the creatures, Xanaphia used her elemental spells, Thelrum engulfed the creatures in elemental breath attacks, Syre used dissonant whispers on them, Drifing Cloud battered them with divine magic, and once back up Godric used his booming blade against the creatures.  They ended up driving the monsters back into the chamber they were hiding in and eventually defeating them. On further investigation they found this room was once a guard room and these creatures were some form of undead fiends, what appeared to be a mask was actually the face of the creature.

The party regrouped, healed their Godric a bit, and then opened the north door. Now knowing what these creatures were capable of the party was better prepared and quickly dispatched the two hiding in that room as well. They opened the east door and did not see anything moving in the chamber, there was just the eighty-foot-wide room about forty feet across and with a large broken dining table almost the length of the room broken on the floor and piles of rotted chairs. More blue lights sat in the corners and they can see a few doors leading out of the room. They locked the door with magic and are now making preparations to invade further in next session.

Abyss Modified Session 28: Witches and Airships

Dinak the drow gloomstalker ranger, Buttercup the tiefling swashbuckler bard, Orion the tiefling way of the long death monk, Xanaphia the human wild mage, Godric the half elf hexblade bard, and Drifting Cloud the tabaxi grave cleric of Anubis talked with the gnomes for a bit and found out their leader, Nanfoodle, was an artificer of great skill and the gnomes were thankful for their lives. The worked on the broken balloon and old the party about the orcs that had captured them. The orc tribe worshiped Orcus and were looking for sacrifices for their dark lord and the orcs left behind a few holy symbols of Orcus. The gnomes were traveling between Baldur’s Gate and Daggerford and were attacked by the Misty Wood. The party rested and awoke to the gnomes having expanded the balloon for the craft and attaching a small boat to the bottom of it. the party was excited to have a much better mode of transportation, now knowing their quest would be taking them far across Toril. They thanked the gnomes and headed off towards the Spine of the World to meet with the devil friend hags.

During their travels they saw large swaths of the land were diseased and corrupted by something, wolves with multiple heads and two beaked crows passed by under their airship. They eventually hit the mountains and noticed that the ice coated peaks were melting, another sign of the corruption. They found a clearing with a large gingerbread house and figured they were in the right place. They left a few friends in the ship and climbed down the ropes to investigate further. The walls looked to be gingerbread, the stairs and porch licorice, the windows made of a thin sheet of sugar and the door a large gum drop. Godric played CSI: Forgotten Realms and found large almost two-foot-long foot prints in the snow. The party discussed the joy that could be gained by eating the ginger bread house and heard someone shout from inside the house asking if sister was back with the food yet. The party said no, and a long pointed blue nose stuck out the creaking open front door.

           The hag looked ancient, her frame bent and hobbled. The party mentioned they were there to bargain with her for information so she invited them in. Drifting Cloud offered her some venison jerky as well, making a fast friend. On a taffy couch they saw another hag, bundled up in a ridiculous number of white pelts with just her nose sticking out. The group told the main witch that they were sent to look for the lost temples of Mystra and she excitedly told them she could help, but would just need a favor from them as well as a trade. They gave her four drow dresses Dinak had been holding on to, setting them on a large double cookie with frosting in the middle table. Godric showed her the Slaad soul gem he had but did not hand it over. She asked the party to help deal with a minor problem, she and her sisters had captured a dumb pig demon many years back within a lesser shrine to Mystra and needed that cleared out before she could really help them.

Loud booming footsteps shook the house as they were informed the youngest sister was returning. They looked out the sugar glass windows and could see a gigantic hag with multiple dead yetis over her shoulder running towards the gingerbread house. The main witch sent them with her giant sister to a cave in the mountains, the site of the shrine with the pig demon. The ice around it was melting but after a few feet of traveling into the tunnel they realized the water was running back up to the surface against gravity. They saw a green light ahead of them and noticed a strange band of runes across the threshold Gordic, Orion, and Xanaphia went into the main chamber, which had a green glowing altar on the far side. Godric had turned invisible and gave a quick look around the area. At that point they heard a booming laughter fill the room and echoing down the hallway. Orion and Xanaphia had approached into the room as well, the three of them saw a horrible pig faced with a bear body and winged demon clutched to the ceiling. Its greasy fear aura hit them and Godric and Xanaphia were instantly terrified of this creature and wanted nothing more than to run away. Orion resisted but got caught in the effect the next round. The beast hopped to the ground, walked up to the trio and almost bit Godric in half, his invisibility did nothing, and clawed both Xanaphia and Orion. The group outside the room rushed to the edge of the magic barrier and looked in to see blood flying out of their friends and the demon.

Dinak launched arrows at the monster, hitting with only one and expending his elemental bow string to make it fire, seeing a lesser effect than he had hoped for. Buttercup flew in and stabbed the demon and retreated out of the room again by disengaging. Drifting Cloud dropped his guardian of the faith, a spectral Anubis wielding a khopesh, dead center in the room. The guardian lashed out at the demon, forcing it to rethink its options, not having any way of avoiding it. Orion broke demon fear and launched into multiple strikes against it, Drifing Cloud gave Dinak the holy weapon spells, adding radiant damage to every arrow he shot, Dinak also summoned a healing spirit to try to help out Godric, Xanaphia, and Orion. Godric misty stepped away from the demon but it followed him moments later. The demon bit Godric again and lashed out at anyone else close enough for its claws. It was finally brought down by Orion, causing it to melt into grimy soot. The group watched as the green corrupted light on the altar gave way to a more healtyh looking blue light. In the walls of the chamber they could now see faint magically webbing, representing the weave of magic. They collected the tusks from this demon and put some if its sludgy ashes into a few jars.

They started heading back to the gingerbread house and the youngest but largest sister picked up the badly wounded Godric and carried him back, he was covered in blood. They talked with the quest giving hag, whose name was Thessrel, and traded their items for her information. She was happy they killed the demon. The temples were not close together, one was in the Anauroch desert, another was in a cloud giant ruin, one was in Chult, another was within the Sunset Mountains, one was on the Moonshae isles, and the last was in Thay. The witches showed them on their maps where the locations were as well as the path the cloud giant ruins usually took, since it seems to travel. The witches gave them a strange chest that was cold on the inside and was full of yeti meat. Drifting Cloud received a gingerbread catfolk cookie.

The group got into their flying ship and wanted to grab some more supplies for the trip, checking their map for any nearby bigger cities. They settled on Longsaddle, knowing it had some magical folk living there and possible could get some more solid information on Mystra as well. as they flew to the south west they watched over the sides and saw more of the corrupted landscape and by chance happened to see a few cloaked figures heading to a small mound as the sun was setting. They headed down to the mound and found four skeletal mages incanting prayers to Orcus and seeking his blessings. The party did not like the sound of that and could see there was something stirring magically between the undead. The party snuck up and killed all the skeletons before they could react. They tracked the skeletons from where they came from and after again a chance clue, found a rift in the ground with four mostly unembellished stone sarcophagi that had a sigil to Orcus on each. As a worshiper of Anubis, Drifting Cloud remembered Orcus and his army of undead would have goals that go against the will of Anubis. Having a secondary goal in might the party made their way back to their ship and from there Longsaddle.

Abyss Modified Session 27: Contracts

Buttercup, Dinak, Drifting Cloud, Godric, Orion, Thelrum, and Xanaphia started the nights adventure in the bar discussing contracts with the Companion. Thelrum used magic to see if there were any magical secrets hidden within the text. There were many.

The basics of the contract were as follows “This contract does legally bind the following members of the adventuring party known as (still no party name) into the service of one known as The Companion, Bearer of Many Names, the Nine Crowned King. The service will involve but will not be limited to destroying the demonic plague that is tearing across Toril. The way they complete this task is up to them and the one offering this service will not be held accountable for their actions unless they are successful in removing the mentioned threats present in relation to demons. If they fail in this task, they and their belongings will be inherited both body and soul to above mentioned employer.” Standard contract stuff. The party signed.

As the odd red ink dried the group watched at the Companion’s white bushy beard pulled back into a deep pitch-black goatee and his skin became a devious shade of crimson. They were dealing with a devil. It seemed the devils and the demons don’t really get along and have been fighting in a war for quite some time. Thelrum took out his book on the Blood War and started verifying the Companion’s story. It seemed the old goddess Mystra had a few temples hidden across the land and the party was to go and fix all of them. A difficult task for most but their locations are only known to a group of hags up within the frost of Icewind Dale. The Companion told them to travel there and bring a gift with them for the hags, so they don’t try to eat the party. Also the group was not to tell anyone about their contract or that they knew the Companion.

Godric and Drifting Cloud talked to a wizard in town trying to figure out what a few of their long-owned items were and dumping out old liquified rations from the Underdark out into the trash. They figured the Slaad gem they had would make a good gift. Taking in this pile of information the party grabbed cold weather gear, told their skeletal horses to follow the hot air balloon, and took to the sky. Their first day of travel was mostly boring, with only one shimmering white movement on the horizon, they figured it was probably a dragon so not much they could do about that. When night fell Dinak cast his rope trick and a few of the party climbed into the extradimensional space and tied the hot air balloon off to the aforementioned rope. The rest of the party slept in the balloon. During the night they heard hooting of well distant owls and saw figures searching the forest below them for something.

In the morning they started drifting further along their path to Icewind Dale and noticed smoke coming from what appeared to be a burning caravan with an encampment beyond it. They got closer and spotted a well armored orc by the largest tent. He ordered someone to bring him food and reentered the tent. Thelrum launched a fireball into the tent, destroying it and angering the still hungry chieftain. Chaos reigned and the orc summoned his wizard, who threw a fireball at the hot air balloon. The party did not expect this. The balloon ruptured, the basket caught fire, and the party started flying. Thelrum used his ring of feather fall, Buttercup used her wings to fly off, and Xanaphia cast feather fall on everyone else. As they made their way down the orcs started firing bows at them and several orc warriors and an ettin started running up to intercept the slowly falling party. Also three gryphons with orc riders took to the sky. The party slowly made their way to the ground and proceded to murder the orcs, vexing the wizard, the chieftain started running away, the ettin put up his best fight, and the gryphons were driven off after their riders were killed, one of which did perish and land on top of its rider, snapping the orcs neck. Orion was able to get in many good hits, Xanaphia danced away from wild surges, Buttercup impaled orcs and gryphon riders, Thelrum dazzled the party with a feat of martial magic, attacking multiple targets with melee strikes and teleporting between them, Dinak took out the distant threats, Drifting Cloud summoned a swarm of scarabs which started eating people, and Godric fought valiantly against his foes with booming blade and hexes. As the chieftain was throwing his minions behind him Dinak did him in with arrows.

The rest of the orc force ran away once the leader started running, leaving behind the gnomes they had attacked and captured. The gnomes were traveling merchants and engineers and as a thank you for saving them were going to fix the balloon and make it better with gnomish enchantments. We ended there for the night.

Abyss Modified Session 26: Nobles and Dragons

Our adventure tonight started with the party fresh out of the magic extra-dimensional tent, Thelrum, Tamin, Drifting Cloud, Buttercup, Syre, and Dinak taking the halflings back to Thistlebottom. The travel went quickly, they had both the kirin and the unicorn with them, scaring off most of the monsters. Once arriving in the empty town, they helped the halflings rebuild their lives, or at least helping them build a fence to keep out bad things. The halflings bid them farewell and thanked them for all they did to help them.

They spent some time discussing whether or not to fly on their hot air balloon to Baldur’s Gate or if they should take their new steeds, the skeletal horses. After a few minutes of option weighing they chose to take the skeletal horses, that way Syre’s white dragon cohort could follow along. The rest of the party that was not actively there took the hot air balloon and Telegar to Baldur’s gate ahead of the rest of the group. The white dragon had been charmed but the time the party spent in the magic tent expended the duration and the dragon just stuck around because it had no clue where its family was. So, the party made their way west, watching as the cute dragon kept making strange cooing noises and staring into the sky, looking sad and flying about, ogling shining thing like coins or buckles.

Eventually the baby dragon grew very excited and the party heard a roar, much louder and closer than they would have liked, and suddenly a large sized white dragon busted into the scene, attacking Syre, the one between it and the baby dragon. The group attempted a counter attack, from skeletal horseback, some tried turning invisible, but dragons have blindsight and hilarity ensued. Both Syre and Dinak were caught in the breath attack of the larger dragon, taking massive damage. The little dragon realized he could do this too, and also hit them with its frosty breath. The party started launching a defense but the larger dragon picked up the baby, took to the sky, and started flying away, leaving the party frost bitten and without a dragon. They had lost a few of their skeletal horses in the scuffle as well.

They picked themselves up, healed, and argued about for a bit, blaming each other, eventually hitting the road again. They traveled until night fell and made camp. Thelrum used illusion to mask their camp to look less like a clearing and more like a forest. During Tamin’s watch he heard talking in the woods so he went to investigate, finding two younger humans trapped in the illusion. They were complaining about the thickness of branches barring their path. Both Tamin and Buttercup snuck up and disarmed the pair.

It turned out they were two noble brats that had run away from home with most of their father’s cutlery and nice dishes slung in sacks over their backs. They wanted to make their own adventuring group and were attempting to track the party to steal from them. It turned out they were terrible at this as well. Drifting Cloud set up a zone of truth spell and with the rest of the party interrogated the two young adults, Hengle and Franzwort. They had no life skills so Syre, Buttercup, and Dinak wanted to kill them. Drifting Cloud wanted to keep them alive and Thelrum suggested to take them back to their parents and maybe collect a bounty or reward, and with them being nobles possibly even warm beds and food for a few days. Tamin, having somewhat of a thieving streak himself, vouched for the kids and wanted to take them under his wing, which they were thankful for.

They tasked Hengel and Franzwort in setting their camps, catching and preparing food for dinner, and carrying their heavier gear. They proved to be somewhat useful in this but potentially murderous eyes of the party watched them, the party making sure they did not get betrayed and poisoned by talentless noble brats. The kids turned out to be pretty good hunters and gatherers, showing up with entire deer and a wide plethora of vegetables for every meal. The group was suspicious so they summoned another zone of truth and found out the pair had found a deer trapped by a farmer that was trying to keep the deer out of his fields and had also pillaged said fields themselves for their meals. They claimed it was fine, their dad was in charge of this area anyways. The party made them apologize to the farmer and return what they taken. They continued their journey well into the evening, knowing they would make it to the noble estate the next day.

That night they set up camp and watches as normal. They noticed there was an oversized owl that was watching over them and it nodded and flew off. Later, Buttercup saw a strange ghostly figure standing in the mist on her watch. The figure watched the sun come up over the hills and silently screamed as the sunlight hit it, dissolving in the beams of light. The next morning, they continued their journey. They passed a few other travelers, their two thieves avoiding eye contact with anyone on the road. They eventually made their way to a well-manicured estate northeast of Baldur’s Gate. They followed the topiary flanked main road to a large main house, seeing other buildings in the area and noticing servants working to maintain such a lavish estate.

The group was met by a small elderly gnome butler that thanked them for returning the soon to be punished young lords, who at that point had been grabbed by a few guards from the manor and taken inside. A few in the party mentioned it was a good thing they did not kill the young lords while in front of the butler. Butler informed them that if they had so much as backhanded one of the young lords they would have been hung. The party looked around the premises and noticed most of the gardeners were watching this conversation and up in the manor house they could see a massive man in a robe drinking from a wine bottle. One of the party recognized him and realized that was Lord Thaddeus Bloom, the paladin who, along with his friends, drove off Tiamat and the cult of the dragons less than ten years ago. The group was led to a smaller building, the field house, to use as their lodgings for a few days as a thank you for bringing back the wayward boys. Guards were posted to make sure nobody wandered away.

They made themselves at home, exploring and finding a large library, a modest kitchen, rooms for each of them, and a rather comfy sitting room by the front door. A few of the party investigated the library, finding all sorts of strange books on the history of dragons, the history of the Bloom family, and a secret cubby space. Syre and Thelrum looked into the space to see a large golden book, realizing it was bound in gold dragon scales and locked with adamantine chains. Two bright eyes appeared, belonging to a small clay person, which informed them the book was not for them, and closed the cubby space from the inside.

Buttercup looked around and found a painting of the strange misty figure from the night before and did some digging in the family history side of the library. She found out this elf, Kanther of Lan, was one of the ancestors of the Bloom family and ended up going insane and fell into darkness. It seemed the Bloom family had many intermingling encounters with elves.

Tamin attempted to arrange a meeting with Lord Bloom and impressed one of the stewards assigned to stay with them, claiming to be a distant Lord Snow. They watched as the steward ran back to the main house and started to talk with the older gnome butler. The gnome motioned for him to lean closer and slapping the steward across the face. The steward returned to the party and informed them the lord would not meet with any of them, his thanks was enough for lowly adventurers. They could see the steward’s teeth were bloodstained and his face was already bruising.

They rested for the evening, setting up a watch and a few alarms just in case of funny business. In the middle of the night one of the servants triggered the door alarm but was just bringing in meat for the next days meals. In the middle of the night Dinak felt something strange, noticing a shift in his vision. He woke his allies and they felt ground tremors, just around midnight and an hour later. They had no clue what the source was but none of the patrolling guards seemed to pay it any mind. The party hung out for another day, investigating even more of the books and ended up trading a few with the strange clay man and learned a bit about the Bloodwar, an odd topic but it sounded important. They also were treated to basilisk eggs for breakfast. The gnome butler arrived and told them the lord would not be meeting with them and they would be expected to leave in the next few hours. The party eventually made their way out of the estate, leaving that life of luxury behind.

They quickly found their way to Baldur’s Gate, finding an active if dodgy larger city with a hot air balloon tethered to a guard tower. The guards informed them a group of “heroes” had arrived in the blasted thing and that oddly was the best place for it. They stabled their remaining skeletal horses and told the guard they were looking for the Upturned Flagon. The guard summoned a small adorable child from the street, Billiam, and he took them on a lightning tour across town to a rather trashy dive bar called the Upturned Flagon. They gave him two gold and a silver and he ran off into the crowd before they could adopt him.

Once inside the tavern they saw many other hero types sitting at horrid smelling tables, including what looked like their friends and the strange man from so long ago, the Companion. He summoned them over and they talked about their adventures, Telegar chiming in with bits from his point of view. Companion asked the party about what they wanted for a reward, some wanted money, others wanted magic items. The Companion thanked them again and told them about another bit of work he needed done. There was terrible trouble brewing in the Underdark, and he did not expect it to stay there. The meeting with Bruenor might be to late to stop what was already brewing. Drifting Cloud took this chance to take a step away and commune with Anubis, his patron. He asked a few solid questions, should he stay with the group on this errand, should he work for the Companion, and would Anubis step in if things got bad and help. He got some answers, some clearer than others.

The party wanted to know more about the new work and had some questions about why the Companion had chosen them to ask for help. He gave them vague answers that were relatively unhelpful but felt convincing at least. He brought out a contract for them, and told them he could help them on their journey, but this time he just needed them to sign his contract. We ended there for the night.