Age of Ashes #92: A Great Defeat Called Duneshadow

In two missing chapters (that included a hiatus), the party won leadership of the Gladiators’ Guild, which installed Normal Person 2.0 as its guildmaster. The party continued influencing guilds to vote to oppose the Scarlet Triad. They also conducted an elaborate heist, securing invitations and donning disguises, into an exclusive Scarlet Triad slave auction. They found the slaves (which included the leader of the Jewelers’ Guild) and are trying to break out! (-GM)

3rd of Rova, 4720 AR

Duneshadow

The party finishes their fight with the mage and her calikangs, snatch a look at their bodies and run. Then Goodfellow tries to blow the place up. The party finds a dagger, a healing potion, some perfume, a wand, a ledger, and a shield.

Normal Person discovers that this shield is an artifact that can explode on command, but he sells it. Rem searches for clues and tips to help find the mythical camel. The rest of the party spends a few days trying to convince the guilds to vote against the Scarlet Triad and try to find more info on DUNESHADOW, the legendary purple-striped camel.

Normal Person goes to the court to find out why a metalworker in the Order of the Anvil was framed by the Scarlet Triad and who the people in the case were.

The party searches 90 miles from Katapesh. After five hours, the party fails to find the camel and they decide to leave, but they practically have to drag Rem away. After that moment, Rem changes. The party hears that a huge fire battle attacked a camping caravan, so they teleport down to the spot where it happened and see nothing. The party looks everywhere, only seeing a huge bloody battle with wreckage everywhere. The party remembers the attack happened at night, so the party rests, waiting for the monster of a beetle to strike.

They all lie down, but Rem has another idea: what does a FIRE BREATHING beetle do? It breathes fire, so rem digs a 4-5 foot hole and lies down in it, then goes to sleep. The party notices a bump under the sand (oh jeez I wonder what that is). The bump starts moving quickly toward the party, then stops about 10 feet away.

Everyone gets ready, standing up straight and putting up their shields, but Rem just stays flat, places his staff on his chest, and covers his mouth. The large beetle jumps out of the sand and sprays the whole party with fire (all but Rem). After the wave of fire, Rem jumps out of the hole and shoots a huge ball of death at the beetle, taking out its pain and sadness on the unrelated creature.

Normal Person and Vinny smack on the beetle, getting it to around half health, then Rem drops a herald of Sarenrae, blessing everyone. Then Normal Person hits it crazy hard, dealing even more damage, then Vinny misses.

-Rem (Cort)

============================
Godfrey “The Great” Goodfellow, human summoner 15
–and Vinny (demon eidolon)
Ible Clack II, goblin gunslinger 16
Normal Person 2.0, human fighter 16
Remissionem, kobold (angelic) sorcerer 16
Septius Augustus, human-mummy psychic, 15

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Age of Ashes #89: Fighting for Power

In three missing chapters(!), the party went through the next elf gate and saved a halfling desert town from a wendigo and powerful sandstorm. They reach the great trading city of Katapesh, the headquarters of the Scarlet Triad, and are now are turning the members of the Council of Guilds against the Scarlet Triad. They take on the head of the gladiators’ guild and fight for leadership! (-GM)

1st of Rova, 4720 AR

Bshez “Sand Claws” Shak

The party is finished with their battle with the giant spider and are challenged by Bshez “Sand Claws” Shak. We are now trying to convince a bunch of guilds to drop the Scarlet Triad. Rem births cows. Goodfellow captures escaped slaves. Ible helps build homes. Rem convinces the Union of Breeders that the Scarlet Triad is tipping over their pregnant cows. Deku and Goodfellow make counterfeit money to pay off loans to buy as many slaves as possible. The party then starts preparing for a heist and rescue some guild masters by making invitations and scoping out the area for a while.

Calikang

The party starts a battle with Bshez in the arena, and she summons a bunch of six-armed creatures called calikangs. Now its a 6v4, and Bshez still says it’s unfair to her. They all start using breath weapons, which heal them and damage the party at the same time.

Goodfellow sends a huge bolt of light from the sky, exploding with light, and heals them with it because it turns out they heal whenever someone deals energy damage to them. A huge attack by the party almost kills one of the calikangs, then it dies to fire. Meanwhile, Bshez Shak yells at the crowd, riling them up giving herself and her friends a bonus. Soon after, another dies by Vinny. Then the first damage is dealt to Ible and another is killed by Deku. Rem heals Goodfellow many times and Bshez finally catches on and starts to attack him, but he cringes at her attack and saves himself. But then the last one hits Rem knocking him unconscious.

-Rem (Cort)

============================
Calvin Magoo, gnoll magus 15
Deku, goblin alchemist 16
Godfrey “The Great” Goodfellow, human summoner 15
–and Vinny (demon eidolon)
Normal Person 2.0, human fighter 16
Remissionem, kobold (angelic) sorcerer 15

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Age of Ashes #85: A Dragon’s Hoard

In two missing chapters, the party delved beneath the Temple and confronted the dragon ruling over the underground city, which killed Remissionem! The party regrouped and returned to avenge him… (-GM)

20th of Erastus, 4720 AR

“There was a boom and a flash and a globe of darkness engulfed our foes…”

Our party returned to a sooty boiling cave preparing to fight a dragon. They leapt into battle using the power of cold as a weapon on our side. All of us, versus four behemoths of fire.

We leapt into battle, quickly dispatching the two weaker opponents that plagued us. But only a little into the battle there was a boom and a flash and a globe of darkness engulfed our foes. This drained the dragon very low, and we took it out shortly after. 

Then we focused our attention on the last foe in the room. Just as big as the others, he got us all lower before we took it out and headed across the lake of lava to the treasure hoard of the dragon.

After searching through all the treasure, it hit us. WE WERE RICH! There were magic items and enough gold to keep us all living well for a million years.  Of the notable ones, there was a fancy unique artifact for Deku and a +3 rune for Normal Person. We returned to Breachill to shop and spend.

Today, we leave our adventurers well off, rather than where we normally leave them (in some horrible place where they must fight for their lives).

-Deku (Keaton)

(Two months later, they used the guiding chisel artifact to go through the second-to-last elven gate, the Duskgate!)

============================
Calvin Magoo, gnoll magus 14
Deku, goblin alchemist 15
Godfrey “The Great” Goodfellow, human summoner 14
–and Vinny (demon eidolon)
Normal Person 2.0, human fighter 15
Remissionem, kobold (angelic) sorcerer 13

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Tomb of Annihilation #58: Guardians of Stone

In five(!) missing chapters of our story, the party found many eye-sized colorful globes and used them to open a door and encountered a mighty beholder! The party descended into the fourth level of the dungeon and encountered a mirror of life-trapping, which produced several enemies… and allies, including a champion of the city of Omu. A mad scientist joined the party as well, who now continues their story. (-GM) 

13th of Flamerule (“Summertide”), 1493 DR

The party descended deeper into the dungeon, where they found a group of gargoyles, which had been mutated to gain an increase in size, as well as an extra pair of arms. The foul elemental abominations caused a great deal of trouble for the party, due to their infuriating tendency to fly far out of arm’s reach, leaving spells and ranged weapons as the only ways to harm them. It didn’t help that they could withstand colossal amounts of punishment before the fight (and life) finally went out of them. Fortunately, the valiant adventurers eventually managed to vanquish their stoney foes. They then prepared to venture even further into the gullet of the tomb…

-Dr. Trentford (Sam Ra.)

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Axik the Artificer, dragonborn artificer 11
Bellow-boy the Toxic, dragonborn paladin 10
Bob Dewbreaker, half-elven paladin 3/sorcerer 9
Boblin the Goblin, goblin fighter 9
Dr. Trentford, simic hybrid artificer 10

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Age of Ashes #82: The Temple of All Gods

In four(!) missing chapters of our tale, the party killed the leader of the Starved who were serving the dragon Veshumirix. They then proceed with their assault on the old Temple of All Gods, where they hope to defeat the Scarlet Triad leader Ilssrah Embermead. There they meet two dimensional wanderers who join their group. (-GM)

15th of Desnus, 4720 AR

Ilssrah Embermead

Our party picks back up in a room. A dark room. With Deku providing the only light in the party, the solemn adventures cast eerie shadows on the stone walls. After walking through several rooms, the party stumbles across a statue of the goddess of marriage. Normal Person investigates the statue, only to find rings around the statue. The party decides that the rings are a symbol of the goddess, and even though the party cautions him against it, Normal Person takes the rings as a gift from Ronald Lump.

After going up a few more floors, the party hears voices coming from an adjacent room. After charging in, they find several Scarlet Triad agents and quickly dispatch them. In the next room, there are forges and stairs to the next level of the dungeon. On the next floor, there are iron golems and a dwarf, llssrah Embermead. After taunting the adventurers, she sics the iron golems on the party.

Shortly after, a man resembling Willy Wonka walks into the room. After chanting, he summons a large eidolon and sics it on the enemies. After a long hard battle full of crits, resistance and lots of misses, the party defeats the two golems and chases the dwarf down. The entire party follows, as she leads them to a room where there is a monster of many corpses joined together. Our fight continues…

-Deku (Keaton)

============================
Calvin Magoo, gnoll magus 13
Deku, goblin alchemist 15
Godfrey “The Great” Goodfellow, human summoner 13
–and Vinny (demon eidolon)
Normal Person 2.0, human fighter 15
Remissionem, kobold (angelic) sorcerer 13

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Age of Ashes #77: Racing to Base Place

On their quest to stop the Scarlet Triad’s latest scheme, the party breaks through the Scarlet Triad’s outpost and emerges into the undead-infested former dwarven city of Saggorak. (-GM)

7th of Desnus, 4720 AR

The alchemist Zuferian

We continue our fight. We are all barely still conscious, and I am bleeding, on fire, and covered in acid, but I get some lucky hits on our enemies, delaying them enough to allow us to stay in the fight. Pretty quickly, we have dealt with all of the Scarlet Triad agents, leaving only Zuferian. We charge and surround her, but she steps away. I run up to her and attack, knocking her off her feet, and the fight is soon over.

We rest, recovering from the fight. I patch our wounds while Deku repairs my armor. We search the hideout for magic items, finding magic leather armor, a magical mace, new alchemist’s goggles for Deku, and, best of all, a suit of +2 greater resilient plate armor! Unfortunately, because I just got my fancy new shield, I don’t get it. We transfer the runes onto Calvin’s armor, before making our way to the base place in Saggorak that we found a map to. Calvin uses his ritual magic to summon a super expensive magic taxi, and we start to make our way to the base place. We see skeletons in buildings and lurking in alleyways, but they all hide from us, until some of them don’t.

 

Age of Ashes #76: Once Again, the Scarlet Triad

The party ventures down the tunnel leading to the Scarlet Triad outside of the dwarven city of Kovlar. (-GM)

7th of Desnus, 4720 AR

The alchemist Zuferian

As we check back in on our intrepid adventurers, they venture down the tunnel under the neighboring undead city of Saggorak, leading out of the forge they fought so hard to capture. Normal Person is the one to lead the party down a hall to a chamber, where there were guards that immediately attacked us. The guards were clearly Scarlet Triad and were dispatched with ease before the final one fled up a staircase off to one side.

We quickly tracked him down and, as it turned out, he had led us right to the rest of the lair. There was a door, and as soon as we got near someone asked, “Who is it?”

We busted the door down and advanced into the room. There were several more scarlet triad agents and an alchemist. The alchemist stayed in the back and threw bombs and elixirs to support the agents.

As we fought through agent after agent, Calvin Magoo and Buckswasher went down. Deku provided some vital healing, and the fight continued. We backed ourselves into a doorway, and Normal Person tanked, providing shelter for the entire party. 

Unfortunately, Calvin Magoo went down again and Deku had to drag him into the safety of the door. Deku took out one final person and the session came to a close.   

-Deku (Keaton)

============================
Buckswasher, tengu swashbuckler 12
Calvin Magoo, gnoll magus 12
Deku, goblin alchemist 13
Normal Person 2.0, human fighter 14

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Age of Ashes #75: The Hidden Forge

In two missing chapters of our tale, some party members were relieved by other members of the Ronald Worshipping Guild, the veteran alchemist Deku and a new fighter-caster named Calvin Magoo. The party fought members of the dwarven city guard who were led by a traitor in their midst. He worked for a member of the Scarlet Triad who planned to raid the town. The party explores the “Hidden Forge,”, a shrine of the cult of Droskar beneath the city. (-GM)

5th of Desnus, 4720 AR

“An unnaturally massive dwarf is pulling the door open and preparing to fight us.”

We continue our fight with the remaining golem. Deku uses his new experimental dogslicer to attack. I could never use such an unreliable weapon, but maybe that’s why I’m not an alchemist. I manage to knock the golem prone, and use its momentary weakness to quickly dispatch it. 

The door to the next room has the words “Profess the Faith” written on it. I say the name of the foul god that these cultists worship, and it slides open. While I am at first happy that we have solved the puzzle, that is clearly not what happened, because an unnaturally massive dwarf is pulling the door open and preparing to fight us. I also see human trying (and failing) to hide in the shadows. After a challenging fight, I manage to kill the giant dwarf with a well-timed blow to the head. It shrinks; it actually was a duergar and its size was the result of magic. The human tries to run, but I knock her down, and she quickly submits.

She tells us that the hideout has been taken over by the Scarlet Triad, who seem to crop up everywhere these days. Embermead is their leader here, apparently. She has made a deal with a dragon that lives in the mountain that the city is built in. The dragon gets slaves from the city and lots of wealth and magic items, and Embermead gets part of an orb of dragonkind, a very powerful magic item that I do not completely understand. Embermead also wants to team up with the dragon to attack Kovlar.

“Are you SLAVES?”

We turn our hostage in to the authorities, then return to the hideout. We enter the forge, which is filled with slaves. They are supervised by a fiery undead dwarf. It asks if we are slaves and tells us to drop our weapons. I manage to pretend like I can’t hear it until I can get close enough to attack. It shoots out a cloud of fire that severely burns me and blinds me. Luckily, this morning I practiced my technique against unseen opponents, but it still presents a challenge.

Seeing that the fight is not winnable, we retreat, although A Mountain is captured. We muster the guard and return to finish it off. This time, the fates favor us and we are able to easily win the fight. I heal A Mountain and myself, and we explore the forge. We find a tunnel that we think leads to the workshop/hideout that we found, but there is a lot more to explore and many more secrets to uncover.

-Normal Person 2.0 (Sam)

============================
Buckswasher, tengu swashbuckler 12
Calvin Magoo, gnoll magus 12
Deku, goblin alchemist 13
Normal Person 2.0, human fighter 13

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Tomb of Annihilation #52: The Ticking of the Clock

In two missing chapters of our story, some party members turned into rodents and explored more of the third level, encountering a room with an insanity-inducing wind trap, a room with teleporting platforms leading to a chest and clay golem, and a strange door with a round mirror and ten indentations around it. Meanwhile they are finding crystal “eyes” in the dungeon. (-GM) 

10th of Flamerule (“Summertide”), 1493 DR (Dalereckoning)

Goblin the Boblin tries to cast fly to get over the chasm. His unpredictable magic sputters out for a second, and then Goblin disappears. Luckily, a few seconds later, I see him floating towards me as a ghost. He turns back into himself and we continue. 

At the mirror, I try to put eyes into the niches along the outside. Each one makes my reflection look ~10 human years older, or about 15 years for me. My reflection also starts looking sickly once all 4 eyes are in. Other than that, though, nothing else happens.

Axik and I go into the confusing spinning room together. The door locks behind us, and the room begins spinning. The devils on the walls come to life and breathe glitter on us, blinding us. I try to use my immovable rod to steady myself, but fail. Spikes coming from the walls knock me out, but Axik heals me just as Bellowboy manages to rip the door off its hinges with his god-imbued strength and save us. As we try to rest, we are attacked by a small group of su-monsters. After killing them, we finally get to long rest.

“The hags seem to be counting down to something to do with the prophecy, but I’m not sure what…”

I wake up in the middle of the night, panting. The hags have given me a nightmare! In the morning, I don’t feel rested at all, and I am barely able to get up, let alone brave more of the deadly traps in this cursed dungeon. The hags seem to be counting down to something to do with the prophecy, but I’m not sure what. All I know is we should probably get down to the bottom level before they finish counting in six days.

We make our way to the watery room lined with murals holding real weapons. An archway filled with water blocks our path. When we try to walk through it, it blasts us back, hurting us. I eventually come up with the genius idea to use my immovable rod to hold ourselves in place, and we all eventually get through.

We go through a hallway to the left to find a small room. In the center is a bowl filled with a green liquid, and I see a figure that mirrors my movements in the back of the room. I let it slake its thirst at the font like the poem says to do, and a crystal eye appears in the bowl, but my shadow remains. Unfortunately, it is too far away, but I don’t like the idea of a cursed spirit following me around all the time. It’s unnatural! Hopefully it will fade eventually.

We continue and find a room with a peephole in it. Through it, I see a golden demon mask. In its mouth is a vulture. While I do this, I feel like I can sense the room with the tiles that summon deadly insects. Another weird thing about this tomb, I guess. We step around a wall to find a jackal painting holding the mask. We find and press a secret button, and the stone with the jackal and the mask slides down, revealing the room with the mask.

Axik steps through, and the stone rises again. I go back to looking through the mask. I am somehow able to communicate telepathically with Axik, and I tell him the symbols that appear in the mask’s mouth. He steps on the tiles with those symbols, and makes it to the sarcophagus.

Goblin and I also make our way to the now open sarcophagus. Goblin grabs the bones inside it, and gets possessed by a unicorn bunny spirit, giving him superhuman dexterity. I can’t help feeling bitter that my god, while they mean well and are clearly the best god and all the other gods are terrible and everyone should worship my god and my god only…. Sorry. Got a little carried away there. Sometimes I wonder if there is a downside to all this possession business, but I’m sure these gods only want to help us.

Anyway, what I meant to say was that my god is only powerful enough to make me fall slower, while these other gods are giving truly godlike abilities. Must be that Acererak took the most power away from the best god. Yeah, I’m sure that’s what it is…

-Bob Dewbreaker

============================

Axik the Artificer, dragonborn artificer 10
Bellow-boy the Toxic, dragonborn paladin 9
Bob Dewbreaker, half-elven paladin 3/sorcerer 7
Boblin the Goblin, goblin fighter 8

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Tomb of Annihilation #49: The Price for Greed

In two missing chapters of our tale, the party triggered a room that flooded with wine, escaped, and imprisoned a gray slaad using their magic gem. They found another trickster god and encountered a hostile genie. They sent the slaad on a shopping trip, but days passed and it never came back. They explored the alternate duplicate of the tomb, but the items they found did not return when they came back. They explore more of the dungeon. (-GM) 

10th of Flamerule (“Summertide”), 1493 DR (Dalereckoning)

Wraith

Tired and lost, we wandered. On and on we seemed to go, until finally, we returned to the room with the wine trap. Could this be important? Sunlight leaked into the room and appeared to shine onto the tomb, lighting up the room. We walked past an odd doorway one by one into the room, and inspected the coffin carefully. We figured that it would have a surprise in store for us, but no matter where we looked or what spells we cast, we couldn’t uncover anything.

The party walked around and down the spiral staircase, and as we entered the dirty room below, we found a horrible looking creature, composed completely of meat. We identified it as a Flesh Golem whose hand was on a lever. We pulled the lever, and through a window we saw a room that saw a room that rotated quickly and violently. We moved on along a different path out of the room, eventually finding ourselves in the room with the golden skull. It seemed interesting, and we decided we would revisit it.

We continued, and found another room with a curious looking shrine, depicting images of people working at various tasks. We knew at once that it was the Froghemoth shrine. As we inspected it, Orkan noticed a few coins on the ground, and greedy thoughts filled his mind! He snatched them up at once, and instantly regretted his decision when several Wraiths came flying out from the walls.

The Wraiths writhed all around us, but they were no match for our party. Triumphantly, I struck a killing blow to one, and the battle was won, rewards soon to be reaped.

-Bellow-boy the Toxic (Nat)

============================

Axik the Artificer, dragonborn artificer 10
Bellow-boy the Toxic, dragonborn paladin 9
Bob Dewbreaker, half-elven paladin 3/sorcerer 7
Boblin the Goblin, goblin fighter 8

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