Previous session summary here.
I have attempted to condense the retelling to keep it somewhat short.
NOT FOR FELLOW PLAYERS. DM PERMISSIBLE
The players
Ivan (me), NE 4th Rogue assassin (M): Came to the continent from the old world.
Holly, LE Half-elf bard (F): Ivan was attacked by this one in the first session. And probably the reason we’re presently indentured to the state. Old world?
Gabriel, Human LG 4th Paladin (M): from the old world. He has a drinking problem. It’s almost gotten us killed several times. Worshipper of Bahamut.
Tris, high elf 4th Druid (F): Associate of Holly and Eponine. Native.
Eponine, wood elf 4th Barbarian (F): Associate of Holly and Tris. Naut (Seafarer people).
Esther, human ?? ????? (F): 80+ years old cleric or paladin of Bahamut. The aunt of Holly. Of questionable use. Uses a ruler as a weapon. Old world?.
A basic summary of this campaign is that most of us come from a distant continent locked in a state of total war between the Conclave of Juan (a magic user based collection of states), and the Children of Rube (Paladin/Cleric heavy society). It’s a renaissance/early gunpowder era. This new continent is already settled, with various peoples already. It’s roughly based on a game called Greedfall.
We started the session trying to get back to where we came from, New Serene. On the first night of the return trip, the second ox dies, having been bitten by a poisonous snake in the night, after one of the girls fell asleep on watch. The druid turned into an ox (there are some ironies here) and we force marched to get to a settler outpost.
I went to ask the guard to lend us a horse, while the others idled or followed. The guard was not cooperative without documentation, until the barbarian decided to intervene with a threat and demand. Ivan promises to return the horse, while Eponine insists she wants to keep it and sell it, regardless of the law or risk.
When we return to town several things kick off at once. Eponine and I begin to fight over the return of the horse. We would rope several guardsmen and some teenage grooms, whom Eponine was willing to threaten until threatened in return, and relented. While this took place the party is split and the two of us fall behind the group and ultimately end up doing two independent things, for RP related reasons. Ivan is searching for criminal gangs, while Eponine is trying to cool down.
Meanwhile, an old woman approaches the returning group, Esther joins the group while also proving in Ivan’s mind to not be worthwhile and probably a burden. Holly’s demeanor and attitude changes dramatically in her presence. Also it’s quite clear she has some sort of cognitive decline, likely dementia.
Gabriel spots the group and approaches, and is greeted by a hug from Holly, who then insists he carry the rations given to her by Esther. He then divine senses Esther and Minerva and learns that Minerva is considered half undead as far as the spell is concerned.
Minerva appears to be aging rapidly, and visibly over the last few days, and only some of us notice. We were unable to ask her questions on the trip back, with her sleeping most of the way. She awakens, but is paid little mind to the new old lunatic woman, arguments now involving the threatening of minors, illegal resale of guard goods, and other such things, allowing Minerva to wander off in a trance. Ivan and Eponine ignore this and continue to argue.
Tris follows Minerva back to the house, finding magic preventing her from entering. She fails to get into the building. Gabriel, and Holly are dealing with a mad old woman who cannot control her bowels, remember where she is, or take instruction. They make it to the house, and Gabriel barely manages to lever the door open through brute force. Holly slips through, and then the door slams shut with otherworldly energy. In the Wine Cellar, the woman is writing something out in a trance. It’s allowed to continue.
The house goes from maximum security prison mode to normal, when Minerva completes the runic drawings. Gabriel lopes inside, leaving Esther on the porch, while the others rush in to try and assert what happened, what changed, and how concerned they should be. The magic Native doorway that required special access permissions we were unlocking for reasons I no longer remember or think we should have in the first place, was now open. A flight of stairs curved away into the dark, and with a steel metal door marking the threshold.
They decide to wait for a while, but impatience gnaws at the party there, and eventually after a suspicious metallic noise, the party present investigates, trying to be stealthy. The Paladin in chainmail leads. He fails. His punishment besides failing to be stealthy is to be thrust (with Holly in tow) right in front of two utterly bewildering entities that we discovered in a previous session in part. They appeared to be twins, one male, one female. They talked in alternating sync, one finishing the others sentences. When the Paladin’s divine sense is used it gets a bit of everything. This TRUE and FALSE nature appears to persist with everything about the entities in question.
Gabriel issues a warning verbally in front of the two, which is met with a cryptic, only somewhat nonthreatening response. Yes and no, true and false. Cryptic, nonsensical, logic-defying, crap. Things that most definitely shouldn’t exist. Some type of quantum entity was in front of us, the closest thing akin to a god thus far in the setting.
The conversation proceeds in a short way, with direct questions to entities of which we cannot determine alignment, except perhaps finding they are true neutral, and thus their honesty. Then, Minerva and the fact she collapsed is brought up. The entities disappear out of the room, disappearing Minerva with them.
Ivan reenters the mainstay of events, while reading through a letter sent to Gabriel, is moved out of Gabriel's room by magic. He stows the stolen letter, and attempts to reenter the room he was removed from, weapon drawn, finding the two alien entities and Minerva. His demands are met with force. He is magically bound by Hold Person, and removed by another magic, likely telekinesis.
When the rest of the party finds him, Ivan has a flask of oil lit like a molotov and is prepared to cast it into the room to which the others stop him, though no real argument wins Ivan over. Survival is more the motive for snuffing the flame out by retightening the cap over it. Gabriel re-enters and asks a few questions, and finds all his stuff missing. Ivan meanwhile collects his stuff, all of it, and is painful and tiring as it is.
An examination of the unlocked room is made, while under observation of the female version, named Nadia. The male is Aidan. Several extremely detailed books are on the shelves, dealing with advanced topics such as biology, allegedly written by the creatures themselves. Some notes are made, and eventually we leave. Gabriel is whisked away when he desires a private conversation with the entities, for some reason.
Eventually Ivan decides he has had enough and isn’t going to stay any longer. Gabriel catches him on the way out, trying to warn him of what he learned (claiming benevolence on their part), to which Ivan brushes him off insisting on the insanity of staying in the heart of something we have zero understanding of. Ivan points to the example of a sleeping Esther being escorted to the guest bedrooms on magic that is lifting her, Nadia in close at hand. They are powerful, they are not to be trusted. The degree of caution that should be wielded is not being handled properly. Gabriel also learns that of the original party, Ivan is probably the richest member at present.
Ivan would then make a report to the woman who is effectively our handler, a gunslinger, fighter/mage (dunno, she can turn invisible somehow), named Vera. He finds her extraordinarily tired, grumpy, and on edge. Less than a week ago the Paladin roused an army of undead horrors to attack the city because he was drunk. And maybe, we aren’t sure, the captain of the guard is implicated in the plot too, in some way we don’t understand. People keep flying off half cocked, stymieing any attempt at a plan in pure haste and arrogance. Accusation has been made, and if he is playing for the other enemy team he now knows we know something, even if it’s absolute fucking nothing when weighed on the scales.
Ivan departs, returning to the tavern, (despite being a city, there is only one place) and orders food for himself and refuses to pay the tab of the Paladin. The Paladin cheats a man out of alcohol, and the Barbarian manages to pour flaming alcohol onto her face. They walk back drunk, and find Aidan waiting at the door, and refuse their request for yet more alcohol.
Then it’s the dream sequence time! Ivan sleeps peacefully. Some of them learn some things, of which what is passed on is fragmentary. And Eponine the Barbarian wakes up screaming because she decided to try the third choice the dream gives you.
The short summary of the dreams:
You wake up in a simple room of white. Out the door, you will initially see the doors of the others who succeeded/failed the roll. Everyone is standing on a paving stone that floats in infinite darkness. You are given two options, to either go left or right. To the left a door with a man; right a woman. Both are very similar to Nadia and Aidan. They will answer some questions, depending on what you ask them. They refuse some questions. Choosing neither path and stepping off into the darkness leads you to fall… and find yourself … somewhere.
Returning to Eponine, she woke up screaming because she looked at a Medusa, and was petrifying. The present party is spooked. Nadia then serves tea, which the Paladin on some unnamed suspicion checks for poison, disease, etc. He finds that while Nadia is some hideous monster fit to be studied in a CDC lab rigged up with a thermonuclear bomb in the attic, but the tea is just fine, and takes a sip. He does not convey what he learns IC.
Ivan then comes and calls for Gabriel, who then calls for the rest of the party while Ivan begins to walk away from the house, past a ring of glowing stones. We know they indicate an “ocean guardian”, something referred to as a “nadaig” and looks something akin to this. Where it is, we have no clue.
Ivan explains what he learned, his likely near miss with one of the enemies responsible for the attack, hunting and killing isolated civilians. Some arguments are had, and then the party decides we’ll follow Esther’s lead as she insists she can somehow trick the captain of the guard into displaying his true allegiance.
IHolly and Esther went in, and … Esther claimed to be a direct superior of the captain. The DM decided on the spot that the result of the rolls divined the captain into the position of being part of the bluffed order. We still ultimately learned nothing from the event except for a set of facts we already knew.
The plan then moves to trying to either locate the eldritch necromancers, or contact the thieves guild known as the Theater. I made a few notes to check out the Theater, checking a sewer entrance, finding it marked with an X indicating it’s an exit. Ivan wanted to leave it for another day. The others did not. We went in. There was a single encountered trap consisting of a metallic tripwire. Then we found a door.
Ivan took a moment to listen, and hear voices talking, and given the design of the door, convoyed and talked a short few seconds, before cutting off further talk by knocking, sure it was the Theater. A looking port slide opened, the man asking for tickets. Ivan passed the man his, and was granted access. We ended the game there for the evening.
