240626 Interrupted getaway
General Summary
Without any further ado, let us dive in to our story, my dearest of readers. I know you are desperate to know what occurred that fateful evening.
“Bugger!” Said Drogon for no particular reason, perhaps he had a moment or prescience of what was to come.
The Merry Band of Tomb Robbing Assassins were all assembled outside the room containing four rather odd, and dare I say creepy looking elves. They had a plan, it was a good, tried and tested plan. The old ‘cast silence on the enemy magic users and wade in with, sword, arrow and spell’. Ah, the smell of originality was palpable in the thick dungeon air.
Jude began the ritual for the spell, but within a minute she was interrupted by a commotion coming from back down the corridor. Sentinel cast invisible and slunk down towards to the noise, hugging walls and light footed in her dainty elven shoes.
She spied the previously freed Elves having a tough time with a number of Fire Giants and one Cloud Giant. They were doing their best to defend themselves with stolen weapons, but the impending slaughter was inevitable. Sentinel relayed the scene telepathically as she returned to the team. Thorg snorted and Kurog laughed, they’d saved them once, they were on their own now. Griff nodded and Drogon looked uncomfortable.
Thorg turned to Jude and said “Well, you tried. Only so much we can do to help them.” He had practiced that sentence in his head before delivering it to the emotional Cleric. He had actually reached the end of it before he realised, he was staring at the back of Jude as she was making her way towards the doom-laden fight. He heard her say “Well, I am going to help them.”
Drogon shrugged and sauntered after her. Thorg muttered “For ducks sake” or something like that. Kurog was heard to say “Tucking Jude!”. Griff just sighed, whilst Sentinel was livid, definitely pink spots appearing on her cheeks as she ground her teeth.
Jude ignored all and rushed to help those poor elves as they were being beaten to a pulp. The red haze well and truly in place, blinding her to her obvious potential demise.
She arrived on the scene to find three Fire Giants, one Cloud Giant, two centaurs and six Elves. The elves were pretty much done as they surrounded the Lady Luthiel desperately trying to defend her. She was also very glad to hear the clanking of armour, the creaking of bow strings and battle-fervour melodies behind her. The team sprang into action.
The giant in front of them took a beating before turning towards Team Heavy Metal and tried to hit back, confused by the mirror images of Thorg. Almost as confused as Thorg is about that spell, almost…
Griff, not happy with an undead horde, decided to expand his menagerie by polymorphing a zombie into a great ape. Sentinel quickly saw an opportunity and commanded the giant to flee, this let the assembled team, elves, undead and now ape all take a swing as it ran by. Ultimately causing its demise.
The cheers were short lived as a new giant appeared from a previously unseen corridor. It was another of the dual shield wielding, juggernaut sized, Fire Giants. It’s super heavy armour not slowing it down in the slightest. Jude reacted quickly and tried to banish the cloud giant and this new interloper. The Cloud Giant disappeared out of this plane but unfortunately leaving the fireshielded giant.
The elves at this point were dropping one by one, so Jude healed the two centaurs so they could continue to defend themselves.
The Juggernaut giant showed the band what it could do. Basically, run at them pushing everyone and everything before it against the spiked, red-hot shield. Thorg fell over, but the rest scooted out of the way. The fight continued with Sentinel again commanding an additional Fire Giant to Flee. Griff’s spells did well, but the real trophy goes to the zombie/ape. He seemed to do more damage than everyone else put together. Another Fire Giant fell and eventually the Juggernaut also fell.
Of course a few ran away, frustratingly. They looked at all of the dead elves and now dead centaurs, they looked at Jude, they looked back at the corpses and then at Jude again. Waiting for her to put two and two together that perhaps this fight might have not been needed. Jude looked at the beautiful Elf Princess and looked sad. “If only I had a diamond, we could bring her back. Anyone?” The heart melted of our own beautiful elf and Sentinel donated her diamond.
Lady Luthiel was very grateful! She promised a reward of twenty thousand gold coins for her rescue. This seemed to make everyone forget that they were going to leave her to die. Jude’s god was obviously quite pleased with her as she found herself with some inspiration to be used at a later date.
Jude was completely unaware of the tuts and eye-rolling going on as they made camp in one of the cells. They all got a full eight hours of undisturbed sleep and felt fully refreshed. Ready to go back to the odd elves and start again. Pretty much where they were a day ago.
The merry band wended its way back to the door that was still ajar after Drogon’s scouting mission from the previous day. Poking his head back around, Drogon could now only see two of the strange elves, the two ladies. He then snuck into the room to have a closer scout of the southern wall.
“Welcome visitors!” shouted a booming voice above the door as he passed the mantle. “Bugger!” thought Drogon as he realised he’d tripped a Magic Mouth spell.
He remained invisible and silent but one of the elves caught him with a Command compelling him to reveal himself. Drogon, although compelled to do so, was quite creative in his way of interpreting the command. “Tada!” he shouted as be backstabbed the elf, causing a fairly nasty wound.
Team Heavy Metal burst into the room to take up their tanking position, with Jude casting silence over the far end of the room, nullifying the female elf caster. The other two elves appeared from behind the curtains at the back of the room. Looking slightly embarrassed and shifty. Dear reader, I
know not, and further - I don’t want to know, what they were up to.
Kurog was the fastest and took a mighty series of swings with his great sword. Years of training had honed his skills to the point of almost watching a dance. His foot work was on point and the whole room stopped to watch this personification of tiger’s grace mixed with water’s fluidity. So, it was a huge surprise to all that he not only missed every swing but nearly cut off his own foot and was a whisker from beheading Sentinel, who was in a different room!
A series of arrows flew at Thorg from our antagonists, all aimed at the mirrors of the Eldrich Knight and missed, eliciting curses from the Elves. Sentinel saw her chance and cast her most powerful spell, Synaptic Static and it hit all four of the grey skinned meanies, causing much pain and gnashing of teeth. They were obviously befuddled but still fully combat ready.
Thorg stepped up to the plate and found himself faced with his long-term friend Drogon trying to stab him, as he was still charmed by the elves. Thorg raised a quizzical eyebrow as the diminutive rogue bounced around his feet, missing him with every blow and shouting “Bugger!” a lot. Thorg
shook his head after being almost mesmerised by the amusing performance and followed Kurog’s example by nearly killing people in a distant town as his swings wildly missed their intended targets.
This was going to be a caster versus caster fight it seemed. The elves replied by firing bolts of lightning into our hapless heroes, the smell of ozone and burnt hair was thick in the air. Griff replied with the animated coin trick, smashing his foes, one copper piece at time.
Team Melee finally got their act together and starting hitting and hitting hard, laying scything cuts into the elven wheat. With spells firing back and forth taking their toll on both sides. Eventually, the elven female drew a wand from her belt and drew a door in the stone wall behind her. A portal
opened and the enemies ran towards it, all nicely lined up. Jude jumped onto the table for dramatic effect and launched her own big spell, frying them all, like bugs under a magnifying glass. The elves looked in bad shape, the Synaptic Static causing them to fall prey to every spell. Through the portal the heroes could see a long corridor ending in a wall with a huge stone face affixed to it, its open maw gaping as elves as the bundled in.
In an obvious hurry, the wand wielder closed the portal with a flourish rescuing all of them from certain death at the hands of our band of avaricious adventurers. Well, all elves but one. The trailing elf was neatly bisected by the sudden appearance of a wall half way through him. The poor fellow didn’t get a chance to even look surprised as his demi-corpse slid to the ground. That’s when the laughter started and the jokes began.
“Ah come on, that was just a half-hearted attack!” said Thorg
“He’s just a fraction of his former self these days,” grinned Griff
“I am trying to make up a joke, but they aren’t half as good as yours,” guffawed Sentinel
“I think that joke divided the room,” smiled Jude
“Their plan was ok, but only half-baked,” said Drogon shaking off the effects of the charm
Kurog looked confused for a minute, then laughed loudly as he got it and joined in. “He’s dead, hahaha,” and looked around expectantly. Sentinel gave him a nice hug and he received a round of warm understanding smiles.
Most of what the team found on the body was destroyed including some (previously) magical armour, apart from a medallion with a scary symbol on it and a map, now blood splattered. Both can be seen on display in the Balder’s Gate Bugle’s archive.
Further exploration found that the table Jude was standing on had a very important map on it, she backed up carefully so the team could examine it. It was a map of the known world with various locations indicated with white and black bejewelled markers. Ranke, had a standing black piece and
fallen white piece. The Theocracy had a standing white and black piece. Other locations had fallen black pieces, like the hill giant fort. Obviously, these were where the team had foiled the plans of some as yet unknown and unseen puppet master.
The room revealed little else apart from some clothes that the team took to use as future disguises. They did notice a statuette on one table. a demonic horned figure wielding a Flamberge style sword. It was then that the table burst into flames destroying everything on it, including the map. The furniture was definitely from a different age and looked of a style from millennia ago, with spider motifs carved into the various pieces. The tapestries were of gruesome and some very risque and debauched scenes, one showed an underground city. No outside views at all. Griff was spotted by Sentinel cutting out one of the more graphic scenes. “For personal use!” he assured her.
What does it all mean? Who were these elves? What was the statuette depicting? Why all the spiders and caves in the furniture and tapestries? Oh, my blessed reader, you’ll just have to wait a few short days to find out the answers, or perhaps the next session will just generate more questions. Until then, sleep well, safe in the knowledge the Band of Tomb Robbing Assassins is “protecting” all of us still.
Report Date
26 Jun 2024
Primary Location
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