It's not our fault - tales of the guild team that really should have stayed at home

[rebelpyroflame]

Session 12, part 1 the trip back

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We start off the session with a quick explanation what happened on the journey back. We investigated the equipment we had gotten off the poachers and found:
• a large quantity of various pelts and firs
• many sets of snowshoes and warm winter clothing
• several vials, including a vial of sparkly dust and a vial of black sludge
• 20 sets of elven rations
• A double sided cloak
• 2 “laser” pistols
We investigated the best we could and found that the vial of sparkly dust was diamond dust, while the guns had some kind of crystal on the end that allows them to cast a scorching ray like attack. Ocelot hands me one of the guns for me to figure out how it works (and even lets me keep it afterwards) and I proceed to teach him what the activation while we both aim at the cover Draspher is hiding behind, and much fun is had by all.

We also do all our levelling up on the journey:
I (Jaune) use my ninja trick to learn improved two weapon fighting, and as we had hit level 8 I place the point to boost my intelligence to 14, spending the extra skill points in intimidate and sense motive to make myself an even better party face

Occelot boosted his dex to 19 and spent the combat feat he got as a gunslinger to get twf. He now had a gun in each hand, using his belt to reload the single shot pistol in his left hand while relying on the extra revolver cartridges in his right to keep up the rate of fire

Draspher got a level 1 and a level 4 spell. He decided to go with Adhesive Spittle and summon monster IV

Yurion got a silence spell as her new learned spell

Vex took another level in paladin and upon receiving her new sheet was surprised to realise the range of feats and abilities she had, and the fact she was a spellcaster

Sim got another level in druid and here ability to wildshape has now improved. I fully intend to milk her for all the poison I can get at the first downtime opportunity. She has also decided to follow her true life calling by taking ranks in profession courtesan.

After the last session the DM considered how he had been running things and had realised a huge flaw in what he had been doing. For our HP he had just given us all the maximum roll for our hit dice every level. This meant that that every party member had a HUGE number of hit points and it was ridiculously hard to take us down (see last entry with Draspher the pincushion as evidence of this). To remedy this, he decided to have everyone roll new HP values, leaving everyone at about half their previous values (funnily enough, I now have 1 more HP than the paladin and the same AC).

Part 2, call to action

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As we get back to the hideout we see a flurry of activity. By the looks of it there packing up shop ready to move out fast, with ninja-san arguing with someone outside the building. We go over and ask ninja-san what’s going on.

It turns out that thanks to reports of the “mad bomber” being seen in the area (whole group glares at Draspher who claims innocence on account of his hat of disguise making him look nothing like himself) he’s having to close up shop and move to a new safe house. Unfortunately, despite my questioning on whether Draspher was spotted, or if it was a copycat Ninja-san doesn’t have time to investigate. That also means he doesn’t have anyone who could help the fellow he’s talking to. As a group we decide to volunteer our services, so long as it didn’t interfere with the other mission. Ninja-san thinks about it and reluctantly acknowledge that although it’s not ideal, we are the only free agents and having us away from the safe house was actually useful when the authorities came around. He agrees to send us out and introduces us to Sayid.

Sayid is a merchant from . He had been making his way home from a long trip when he felt a terrible presence approaching the place. He came to the guild for help, but found that ninja-san had no free agents until we arrived. Ninja san warns us to take supplies and water with us. We take the rations captured from the poachers, give Sim the vials and leave ninja san with most of the rest. Ocelot also takes the captured snowshoes, thinking that they could be useful in crossing the desert sands.

We head off in the guild glider (a small faster airship that the guild uses mostly as a taxi service) and soon arrive on the outskirts of the desert. We will walk along one of the main roads and arrive into town by the afternoon.

As we are walking we notice a number of corpses lining the roads. We examine them and Draspher becomes increasingly paranoid zombies throughout this, insisting on casting detect magic constantly to try and spot them early while throwing out various theories about everything he hears. All we can tell about the bodies is that there not magic, they were running from town, and they seem incredibly malnourished. We see more bodies in fresher conditions the closer we get to town, and we hear noises just ahead.

Part 3, under the same sun

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As we approach, we start to plan as we roll initiative. Yurian decides she wants to cast silence on Ocelots guns so he can snipe quietly, and I attempt to outline a plan where he flanks one side away from us (so our casters can still cast), Draspher casts a fireball in the middle of them and Sim immediately after summons something big to distract them before we move in. Unfortunately, a combination of no-one caring and the silence spell going up makes this pointless. This single silence spell messes up a lot of our actions in this coming battle.

Our targets are three Giant Scorpions feasting on a body. Ocelot does go to one side and opens fire with his new laser gun (which he and I insist on calling them despite the DM frequently saying that there not) and it’s pretty effective. I go out on the other side and prepare my shadow clones for defence, hoping to move into flanking afterwards. One of the scorpions immediately goes for the guy who shot it with lasers, just falling short of hitting him until the DM shows us that the claws have reach, slashing Ocelot quite painfully. Seeing this, Vex charged in for a bull rush, getting in between Ocelot and the Scorpion.

Following this a second Scorpion goes to the first one’s side and both engage Vex, while the third decides the 4 or 5 guys who look a lot alike are good enough targets. Draspher desides to test out his new spell, and summons a salt mephit behind the scorpions, and Yurion moves up to cast a bless spell while Sim summons a constrictor behind the first scorpion giving Vex flanking. Unfortunatly, Vex had completely forgotten that Ocelot’s pistols still had a silence spell cast on them, completely negating her own spell as she moved behind him. At the DM’s suggestion, Vex decides to try out her twf and tw cleave feats by drawing her wakazahi alongside her keen katana and, alongside a volley of fire from Ocelot, devastates the first scorpion in a single round.

I re-manoeuvre myself, one of my shadow clones taking a scorpion stinger to the face, to get behind the second scorpion in flanking. This messes up Drasphers plan, so re re-positions his salt mephit so it is in range of the second and third scorpion and tries to use its special ability. The DM asks him to roll wisdom.

He gets a 0.

The group collapses in laughter.

So, he uses the mephit’s ability to draw all the moisture from other creatures around itself against the scorpions. Unfortunately, either (as the DM had tried to say) such abilities are ineffective against creatures who live in the desert, or he just rolled terribly, as it has virtually no effect. For his turn he tries out ghost sounds to make the sound of a dragon focused on the mephit in an attempt to intimidate them. Luckily most of the party was inside a silence spell, so only Sim and myself were affected.

Yurion happens to look across the giant scorpion to see me turning pale, and start shouting and gesturing wildly, unable to hear a word about “the damn desert dragons are here”

The next few rounds were very disappointing for me personally. Just as I am about to try out my new twf feat on the scorpion vex and ocelot have an encore, finishing it in a single round. Just as I position myself next turn behind the last scorpion, Ocelot has his first Critical roll in the entire campaign, and devastated it with a x4 critical pistol shot.

We clean up after the battle, the scorpions feasting on a body with no major traits separating it from the previous bodies. Despite my best efforts I was unable to get even a drop of poison out of the scorpions stingers. The only thing of note was that even the scorpions seemed malnourished like every other body here. We re-convene with Sayid and head to town.

Part 4, bust up at the mediocre camp- corral

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As we are headed into town, we pass by a couple of camps that line the city and we hear a commotion. We see one guy being held back by two others while a third is trying to talk him down. As we approach, we hear the three begging there “captain” to please pull himself back together and stop this, before he throws off the two holding his arms and jumps on top of the third, raining blows down while yelling frenziedly.

Immediately we dash over. I try shoulder bashing him off, but he barely notices I’m there. Draspher uses his adhesive spittle to bind the guy, but he breaks out of it in a moment and attacks again. Ocelot pulls of a fairly acrobatic leap over everyone to get behind the guy so we can start flanking him, but one of the others gets between him and the captain. My own attempts to knock him out prove pointless. Yurian ideally ponders the point she could stop this whole encounter with a single command spell, then goes back to reading her book. The conflict finally ends when Vex comes over and in a single motion grabs and restrains him. We drag him over to a tree and tie him up. While we talk with the other men, vex decides to heal the fallen guy.

It’s at this point OOC that vex decides she wants to play a lesbian. The DM gives her a look, then continues, explaining that the guy vex saved is actually a girl, and she looks up at her with an awestruck expression. (nothing to do with anything really, but it was a funny/odd moment I felt worth documenting)

While this was going on, the rest of us start trying to get answers about what’s going on in town. The guys are mercenaries and have only been in town a few weeks. It turns out that the whole town is built around an oasis run by the “white-water” group. The town used to be doing really well, up until the point where the group started raising the price of water. Slowly but surely the town started to decline as people and companies couldn’t keep up and had to move elsewhere to live. The farmers couldn’t produce crops properly due to costs and everywhere started feeling the effects of the famine.

Then A couple of weeks ago people started getting this new sickness. They are hungry all the time but they just can’t eat, and soon they just snap losing all coherent thought and attacking anything and anyone around them just like with their captain. The white-water group locked themselves in their main base, and now the entire town must get water from the public troughs. This illness is spreading and no-one know how or why and the town guard is doing all they can to prevent a panic. The only person who claimed that they could cure it was the minister of the local church, but he went missing about two weeks ago.

We suddenly hear a noise from the tree we tied the captain to. He’s regained some rationality, and now he’s begging us to kill him. Things have certainly taken a dark turn indeed.

Part 5, town sights

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We decide to head to the church on the other side of town, but upon looking at the map we decide to drop by the white-water compound and see what’s there first. Along the way we see the town crazy person. She’s and old woman who is ranting about how we have all angered the “scarab king” and this illness is his punishment on us. We start trying to ask her more about it, but Ocelot tells her “I was also sent by the scarab king, and he told me to tell you that if you don’t knock it off then I’ll kill you” so we didn’t get much out of her.

As we approach the massive walls of the white-water group, two guards accost us with crossbows. They tell us if we get any closer they will shoot, so I try and tell them “we’re the new hired help”, “of course you haven’t seen us before, your running out of guys in the town to hire” but there suspicious and one goes in to check while the other just keeps us covered. A passer-by comes up to us and flat out tells us “it’s no use, they’ve locked themselves in there for weeks, no-one comes in and out. Last person anyone saw go in was that priest, and that was two weeks ago”. Seeing this as a dead end, we decide to head up to Sayid’s shop. Just as we’re going down one of the streets, we see tons of city guards piling body bags into a ditch. Next to them are several very large barrels of oil. Some of the bodies are still moving. We approach the captain in charge of this to ask what’s going on. The moment she realises we’re new in town, she has every guard surround us, and utilising all the military power she can bring to bear, she tells us to strip.

As a group we all a little reluctant to start stripping in public surrounded by heavily armed guards. Draspher biggest worry is that they will force him to remove the freshly attuned ring of sustenance making him wait another week for it to work. The captain tells us that there is an area we can strip in private, and that the sorcerer can keep the ring on. As we are stripping she explains that she’s in charge of trying to keep the infection contained, so she needs to check us for bite marks (she doesn’t know that that’s what’s spreading the illness, but it’s all she’s got to go on for the moment). The body’s outside are the dead/infected that she has no choice but destroy in a hope of preventing the continued spread of the illness. Fortunately, none of us have bite wounds, unfortunately Ocelot did get wounded by the scorpions, so he needs more examining. As we wait outside, we here voices from the pit, and amongst them are a cry for help

Part six, dispose with caution

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We immediately try and figure out who said that, but calling out to the person results in six bodies starting to wriggle. So I shout down that if the person is still sane stop wriggling, and two oblige. An argument breaks out in the group over what to do. I tell Yurion to just levitate the two still ones and we’ll examine them, unable to bear the thought of leaving someone to burn to death, but she and Draspher are both reluctant to do anything, figuring that they might be infected and not wanting to risk any contact with them. Ocelot and the captain come out of the tent, and the men start pouring the oil onto the bodies. As we are arguing more and more intensely as time runs out, Ocelot takes things into his own hands, and jumps into the pit, Sim quickly throwing a rope down to help him out.

(as the DM noted at the time, the lawful Neutral character is arguing for saving people’s lives, and the chaotic good/rest of the party is arguing to just stand back and let them burn, even if there mistaken)

We pull them out (draspher summoning a giant bat to grab one that Ocelot dropped) and Yurian goes over to examine them. One of them, probably the one we heard, says “please help me, I’m so hungry” so she slices his throat and drops the body back in. The second one though just seems manic, and a charm person spell from draspher just makes him quiet. It’s pretty clear he’s not infected, just ill with something along the line of Alzheimer’s. We all decide to take him to the church previously mentioned, as the captain mentioned that this would be the best place to take him.

When we arrive, we find the whole main area filled with bodies tied to stretchers, all writhing and a tired looking nun with arms covered in bite marks taking one look at us before complaining about us bringing another one.

Part seven, nun trouble, nun worries

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We drop of our recued homeless guy and start trying to get some info out of her. She’s a bit annoyed at the interruption at first, a quick examination showing the bites on her arms are starting to go septic and she apparently has barely slept since this whole thing began. Luckily Vex has the fatigue curing mercy, so a quick lay on hands from her and our promises that we are here to help leave her in in much better spirits.

Our interrogation reveals a few interesting points. The first incident of note was a traveller coming into town. He had several STD’s, and became extremely irate when told he would have to wait for treatment, then left town with Sayid’s son on some kind of expedition. Shortly after that the first person with the illness was a girl from the brothels. Aside from that there seems to be no rhyme or reasoning behind who gets infected (we deduce from the wounds old enough to become infected on her arms, yet lack of the illness that it can’t be the bites). The priest who said he could cure people was summoned by the white-water group, he went in and never came out leaving the nun and the other sisters to run the increasingly manic situation by themselves. After a bit more prodding, she leaves and comes back with a box. Yurion, Sim and I go with her into a small private room, while the others examine the other patients. The only thing they find is that they seem to be completely immune to Drasphers charm person spell.

In the room the nun shows us what’s in the box. It’s a human bone, covered in glowing carved runes. Yurian notices that the runes are a language close to abyssal but not quite. Apparently, there have been more than a few people who have been infected carrying bones just like this one. They have been storing them because they are obviously evil but they don’t know what they are, what they are for or how they are used. She’s willing to let us have this one to study in the hopes of learning what they are and if they are connected to the illness, but she denies Yurians request to have all the bones to compare differences in the symbols between bones.

As we leave the room one of the patients has a particularly violent struggle against her bonds, and breaks loose although breaking an arm in the process. As she makes a break for the door Ocelot and I run in pursuit of her. Ocelot attempts to pull out his dragon pistol to slow her with an entangling shot, but the sprint makes him fumble and drop the pistol. Draspher picks up the gun and makes to pursue as well, with vex following after (slowed down by her weighted armour) as we all chase the girl running with breath-taking speed down the street.

Part eight, beating for everyone

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We pursue, but she is fast. Luckily, I can tap into my ki, allowing me to move far faster than my normal speed. Although this isn’t quite fast enough to grab her, 10’ away is still close enough to hit her with a tanglefoot bag. It works, tripping her up and letting the two of us catch up, but she manages to break out a moment later. Ocelot then attempts a stunning trick shot by throwing one of his tanglefoot cartridges at her, then shooting that cartridge with a bullet to spread the gunk over her. However, running at that kind of speed tends to mess up your aim something awful, and he ends up killing a civilian, sending everyone watching the scene running and screaming.

I attempt to knock her out, but feints don’t work too well against crazy people and I don’t hit all that hard. But it does get her attention solely on me, and she jumps on top of me, sitting on my chest as she rains down blows taking a fifth of my health in one round. Ocelot decides his priority is covering up his tracks, so leaves me at the mercy of the crazy woman:

Occelot – I’ll be right back
Jaune – Ocelot you ####er, where are you going?
Draspher – Don’t worry, I’m coming to help
Jaune – NO! DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE WITH HIM!

And Draspher lives up to his hard-earned reputation. He tries to stop the mad-woman by firing off an adhesive spittle. Say what you will about his intent, the results fully justify my actions. We both get covered in the stuff, unable to move. Then she breaks out of her bonds. I am trapped under the crazy woman, now literally glued to my chest, who took out a fifth of my health in one turn, unable to move and completely helpless against her.

Just as death seems inevitable, Vex charges in and successfully knocks her off me. Ocelot finally finishes PLANTING A DAGGER ON THE CIVILIAN HE KILLED, and seeing the commotion sends a double tap into the woman’s back, killing her instantly and covering myself and vex in blood (draspher having be shielded by my body).

Draspher attempts to defend his actions, saying “at least I didn’t abandon you, would you rather I did nothing and leave you to die?”. I show him EXACTLY how much I appreciate his help. I punch him, and I don’t stop till I’ve knocked his foolish ass out (in a single round too, thanks sneak attack dice and improved twf). The DM thinks this is both appropriate, and the funniest thing he’s seen, so he allows it.

And that’s where we ended that session. No hard feelings between me and Draspher, although this may come back to bite me in the ass later.

Days in city – 1
Lives saved – 2.5, the Girl being mauled by his commander, the crazy homeless person that almost burnt and the nun we healed (.5)
Lives killed – 3, the one guy we pulled up to stab, the civilian that got shot (she went at him with a knife) and the broken armed escapee that got shot
Vex’s Harem – 2, the Girl being mauled by her commander and the nun
Times Drilled over by Draspher – 2, he convinced me there was a dragon in the desert and got me glued to the ground with a crazy infected woman ready to beat me to death