USPS Session 34: The Looming Tower

General Summary

As Willow and Nessa depart from the rest of both the USPS and the IRS, they stand at bronze platform on the tower sitting in the center of Kavios as they prepare for the difficult stronghold which stands before them.
As Cal exchanges the recipe for the Short/Long Rest potions to Harvoni, she and Diaga get right to work, crafting a few of them for each of themselves, as well as for their other party members
The IRS begin to take their leave, having crafted all they needed, and made all the necessary preparations, they head inside the entrance to the tower and split off towards the East in hopes to find whatever is powering the spire
The USPS aim to strike close to Ondska himself, who should be high up in the tower's loft on its West side according to their theories
After the plan is set, Rumple has a stroke of genius, using Harvoni's Altmat armor to convert a +3 vial of Blood which Diaga has into a +3 Liquid (Ooze), allowing him to finally assemble his Mythic Weapon
As Rumple wields the Nulims-Khölstsus, he feels it vibrate with a hunger for murderous intent, somewhat matching his own
While Rumple's rage builds, a ton of soldiers seem to be heading straight for the tower from both sides, wherein the Vomethndan and Ezlekhian forces seem to come to a head
With Clan Valross of Vomethnda on the landing's West side, and the Bambaian Regime on the East side, both sides raise their weapons at one another and fling insults
That's when a familiar face, Captain Lukas, commands the presence of the whole crowd as he attempts to persuade the two sides to work together to investigate the tower
Assuring that the tower is surely not a Vomethndan weapon, and the Ezlekhian general corroborating it's not theirs, the two groups agree to help out the USPS even if they have to lay down their lives, if it helps to stop the violence
Lukas also lets the USPS know that he's not exactly sure how he was given the title of a captain, but his men have just been rolling with it. As the nearly 30 of them head indoors, Willow catches Lukas up on her dead girlfriend in a funny trauma dump moment
As the group enters the tower, it stinks of death, and the sound of cracking bones and zombified moans only intensify the further they march into the room
The 30 troops line up awaiting Captain Lukas's order, and he has a heroic speech where they must make some distance for the USPS to launch ahead and take the tower down from its inside
Lukas then whips out a fancy large shield with a Memory Stone embedded in it, and creates a large column force field for his men to fight behind
As Lukas orders his men to fire, the sound of the undead screeching and moaning fills the chamber and the USPS begin moving towards the staircase on the chamber's other side
Lukas fires behind him a sacred flame which he emboldens, and it is even further strengthened seemingly by the power of his shield
Striding ahead, Diaga blasts through a legion of mummies with a firebomb and makes it to the staircase
Willow and Rumple follow next, with a slash from Rumple's new weapon and a not-so successful attack from Willow, Willow takes quite a bit of damage back as she heads towards the staircase
Harvoni Wild Shapes and charges from the back, allowing all four of them to (mostly) safely cross the undead-laidened foyer
As the crew look back, they see Captain Lukas one last time as him and his men fight away valiantly. Hopefully he'll inform the powers that be of Ondska's role in all of this...
As the party ascend up a spiral staircase, they notice they are finally at ground level, and hear the thundering sounds of gears up ahead
The USPS enter a large room which they take a rest in. Looking around, they see a floor covered in Misimi Bronze gears, pipes all over the walls, and a large pipe in the room's center which has marking which Diaga translates to "Service Elevator"
Noting that this Service Elevator leads to a bunch of different paths, Willow wants to break some stuff in this tower and begins trying to disrupt gears with a sword (which she loses) and then the spell Plant Growth
Even with massive vines in hand, Willow cannot fully break the assembly of gears in the room, but she still does massive damage as plenty of gears burst and pipes explode off of the walls, releasing soul energy out of the masses
Just as a set of nanobots enter the room to repair some of the gears, the rest of the party are sucked up into the large Service Elevator in the chamber's center completely unprovoked, save for Diaga who hangs on and is left alone in the maintenance room
Diaga then takes a hidden staircase up to the Equilizing Chamber, detecting Willow's presence as she flies hundreds of feet up into the air at remarkable speeds
Speaking of Willow, she is dropped off into a red-hot chamber with tubes of fire a plenty acting as the room's flooring
As she feels completely surrounded, her Siren's Song shines and she begins to see a glowing crystal off in the distance
If the heat weren't too hot to handle, lava begins to flow into the room on a random interval, indicating that Willow must proceed through the room with haste!
As Willow looks between the flames, she spots none other than an ethereal Brynhil who is so relieved to see Willow alive that she begins crying
Brynhil exclaims that everything has been a completely incomprehensible blur since she was stuffed into a crystal, but this is one of the few moments of clarity she has had
Willow catches Brynhil up to date before Brynhil begins moving her hands and seems to have control of the fire in the room
As the two work together, they form a path in between the flames and eventually Willow makes it to the other side
Willow tries to hug Brynhil, but only feels a breeze as her body meets Brynhil's incorporeal form
As they share a happy cry, and Brynhil's ethereal body begins to fade, Willow informs Brynhil of her plan to reincarnate Brynhil
Brynhil asks if this is what Willow will want, even if she will be in a new body, which Willow responds with "Of course!  I love you for your personality"
As Brynhil utters the words "You're amazing, and that's why I love..." she fades away
With a pregnant pause in the air, Brynhil phases back into existence and says "I love you too" before disappearing and leaving the chamber with a sanguine feeling
As Willow leaves her trial chamber, we cut to Rumple who tumbles into a chamber smelling of sourness and is dimly lit by only a few torches
Rumple looks throughout the chamber and sees that a large section of it is covered in purple slime, finding this slime to be particularly bothersome but not toxic or deadly
As he approaches the stairs which lay at the chamber's end, a purple humanoid-shaped slime creatures gets in his way and asks why he's leaving so soon
The slime says that Rumple has walked into the waste disposal chamber, and that therefore he is to be disposed of per "the master's orders"
Rumple's Nulims-Khölstsus shines with a bloody sheen as the two begin to face off
A hard fought battle ensues, with Rumple laying plenty of slices into the ooze while it smashes its amorphous fists into Rumple.  Near the halfway point, the slime begins to try and suffocate Rumple to pretty great success, causing him to down a few potions, spawning a set of wildly-magical Flumph's from his Binge Drinker feat
As the Flumphs distract the ooze, Rumple gets an opening and goes on the offensive, slicing at the ooze until its on its last goopy legs
The ooze tries to hold Rumple still once more, but Rumple manages to land a shot of his Junk Gun on the ooze, killing it with a firey explosion
As Rumple collects vials of ooze from the purple remains in front of him, he heads up a staircase and meets up with Willow, whom the two wonder where Harvoni and Diaga have went...

Campaign

Lines Drawn in the Sand

Protagonists

Harvoni Bodma

True Neutral* Shifter (Apothecary)
Druid 7

59 / 59 HP

STR
10

DEX
15

CON
17

INT
15

WIS
18

CHA
11

Roger

Neutral Evil Fallen Aasimar (Outlander)
Warlock 7
Fighter 1

59 / 59 HP

STR
13

DEX
12

CON
14

INT
9

WIS
13

CHA
18

Willow Ulgen

LG Satyr (Noble)
Bard 9

72 / 72 HP

STR
10

DEX
16

CON
17

INT
13

WIS
14

CHA
20

Diaga

True Neutral Yuan-Ti (Mystek Punk)
Fighter 10
Wizard 3

132 / 132 HP

STR
16

DEX
10

CON
16

INT
16

WIS
9

CHA
10

Rumple Bumpskin

Forest Gnome (Noble)
Rogue 8

34 / 34 HP

STR
11

DEX
18

CON
10

INT
14

WIS
9

CHA
7

Lukas Johannsen

Lawful Neutral "Human" (Former Vomethndan Crestmember)
Sorcerer 2

15 / 15 HP

STR
8

DEX
12

CON
15

INT
10

WIS
9

CHA
19

Report Date

30 Apr 2025

Primary Location

Kavios

Related Characters

• Lukas Johannsen