Session 119 - Interlude

General Summary

• The party, minus Dazki and Barry who were still on watch, entered a door that had mysteriously appeared near where they were resting.
• It led to a pocket dimension with three inhabitants:
• Ivan Ironhand, an elderly dwarf who has all but rejected the traditional dwarven ways. He runs the place.
• Mary Jane, a very forgetful dryad who does the cooking around the place.
• Darla, Ironhand's adopted daughter. She's a vampire.
• They explained that their pocket dimension opens to the world in random places, so they've gotten into the habit of serving dinner for whoever happens to be around.
• The group decided to pass the time by sharing stories from their past, occasionally interrupted by Mary Jane bringing in the next course — or else, someone leaving to fetch her whenever it seemed that she had forgotten.
• Though Grogery was initially antagonistic towards Darla, Mary Jane had discretely passed him notes to try to placate him, even as Darla would egg him on, going so far as to nickname him "Sunbeam".
• Darla eventually revealed that having to subsist on blood from animals (which Ironhand regularly summons) is a horrible existence; at each of these dinner parties, it's all she can do to keep herself from drinking the blood of the new guests who come in. She just wants to die, but Ironhand won't let her.
• Throughout the dinner, magical candles at each place setting would occasionally flicker. This seemed to happen whenever someone told a lie.
• When Dwardazik's candle flickered too much, he was immediately sent back outside by a magical force.
• At Darla's insistence, Ironhand re-opened the door, but this seemed to be very difficult for him, so that was a one-time deal.
• After seeing how the candles worked, Grogery took an opportunity to confront Ironhand about the real reason why Ironhand keeps Darla as close as he does, knowing that Ironhand either would not be able to lie — or, if he did, then he would have to face the same consequences as Dwardazik.
• Ironhand lied and said that he was protecting the rest of the world from Darla's vampiric ways, which was enough to send him back to his home plane.
• With Ironhand gone, the mansion faded away, leaving the party members back where they had been resting, with some mementos.

Full Recap

None this week. This was a one-shot that one of the players ran while the usual DM was absent, and it was suggested that the usual full recap would not be needed, so I've just gone a tiny bit more into detail on the General Summary section (still leaving out a handful of big things) and left it there.