Session 17: It's Still Winter's Crest and Shit is Still Weird
General Summary
So yeah, we all got kicked out of the tavern so Night That Eats Stars and Ellina could spend some alone time together. *insert sexual innuendo hand gestures here* We weren't quite sure what to do next, but we were sure we were suspicious as hell of Tilana, so Cillian sent invisible Randy to follow her. It turns out Tilana isn't doing anything super sus FOR NOW. She was just going to some guy's dorm room. Fucking must be in the air or something this weekend. Randy tried to sneak in behind her by turning himself into a roly poly. I guess he has some sort of voyeurism fetish after yesterday's exploits. Anyway, he didn't make it in.
We were back at square one, no more info on Tilana and still no idea what to do with this cursed flask. Cillian and Skoldreg thought someone should probably drink out of it. I felt like this is probably what we shouldn't do, but we've established I'm not very smart. Cillian and Skoldreg's main concern was which of them was going to be the one to take a drink. They both argued that they were prolific drinkers and were well suited to the task. Finally, Cillian relented and said Skoldreg could go first. Skoldreg turns up the cursed flask and takes a big swig. He said there was some top shelf liquor in there. It must be nice to have professor money. Anyway, that's beside the point. Skoldreg spilled some of the fancy booze on his face and beard and it did not look fancy at all. It was all black and oily and super gross like the black goop we found in the library and the tavern when shit got weird before. The rest of us were kind of grossed out, but Skoldreg said this booze made him feel like he wasn't afraid of anything. I feel like that is pretty normal for booze though, right?
Anyway, so now we knew the booze tasted great, but probably wasn't actually booze, but was instead some sort of magical ooze that we keep seeing all over campus. We still don't know wtf to do about it though. We talked about going to figure out why Tilana and them were after this flask, but decided it was better to go as a group. So we waited for Night to come back. She did not come back that night. Good for her.
We all met up at the fountain the next morning. Night told me I would get the exclusive deets on her hook up with Ellina, so we could publish a story. Nice. We moved on to discussing the flask which was not nearly as interesting as tiefling sexytimes. Oh well. Night used some of her magic to identify the flask, but we still weren't able to tell anything about the nature of the curse that had been placed on it. While we were inspecting the flask and debating what to do with it, Skoldreg noticed a creepy dude hovering in the fountain. We told him he was creeping us out and he should move on. He didn't. Eventually, we decided he must be the ghost of Winter's Crest to come or something. He said he wasn't a ghost at all. Apparently he's just some creepy ass dude that chills out in fountains in soggy ass clothes. Whatever, he told us he had come there to take us to the oracle. None of us had any idea what that meant. We asked if there would be breakfast. He didn't respond, just teleported us away.
Suddenly we were in some strange ring forest looking place that opened up to a weird icy spiky center. The trees in the area caught on magically caught on fire when we appeared and I felt pretty bad about that because I remember those pamphlets they gave us on my first field trip to Exandria that had Li'l Smoke the Owlbear talking about how you shouldn't burn down the trees in Exandria like we do in the Shadowfell. Anyway, suddenly a strange lady hovering in the air over the ice pit appeared. Maybe she's the one that caused the trees to catch on fire. We asked the floating lady if she was the one who summoned us here and if she had brought breakfast. She didn't really answer us and instead told us that there would be "consequences to last night's actions" in a big ominous sounding voice. We all got super worried that that meant Night had caught an STI last night with Ellina. The floating lady said we caused some bad in the world but she couldn't tell the nature or extent. This lady has some cool tricks with the hovering and the forest fire and stuff, but she does not seem to be very good at her job of oracling. We told her that sounded bad, but we really couldn't do anything about it until we had had something to eat because some of us get low blood sugar and stuff. I explained how my parents cut me off after trying to murder my classmates and my dog, so I had no money for food and was just like super ravenous. She seemed kind of sympathetic abotu that and told me that was sad, so I asked her if she would want to be a mother figure for me. She said no, but she'd still get us breakfast. Maybe she'll be willing to be like my cool aunt or something. I hope so, because she made us a badass magic breakfast that cured diseases and made us feel extra healthy. Now it doesn't even matter if any of us got STIs or not. Thanks Auntie, O.
After we ate, Auntie O told us we needed to focus on the changes we had created. That was cryptic as hell. But then she threw out some weird beads that teleported us to a very creepy weird, bloody version of Strixhaven. There were some strange hooded figures that we thought Cathia Franic might know. She didn't. I guess you can't even assume even all hooded figures know each other. Anyway, we carefully make our way down the stairs into the courtyard near where the fountain should be. There's no fountain and the courtyard seems to just be hanging over a big drop off to the abyss. Some of the hooded figures were hanging out smoking. Skoldreg approached one of the smokers and the dude was high af. He offered Skoldreg a toke. Skoldreg partakes and IMMEDIATELY gets stoner brain and can't remember shit. The stoner tried to introduce himself to Skoldreg but said he couldn't really remember his name only that it may have started with a D. Skoldreg figures out because even though he has stoner brain, he's still super smart. It's Dominique Paraguan, the drug dealer from our time! Dominique seems to have really gone downhill. He doesn't remember anything about anything. He told Skoldreg "shit's good, but some of these fuckers need to chill." We have no idea what that means. He invites the rest of us to smoke with him, but we don't want to. He's really trying to make Cillian do some drugs, but Cillian doesn't want to because we see this guy has swiss cheese brain. Eventually, instead of giving up, Dominque just blew some powdery drugs in right in Cillian's face. Fuck that. Consent matters. You can't just drug someone. Randy stung Dominque and the rest of us started kicking his ass.
Night summons Little Sister and sends her after Dominque. After a few swipes, Dominique raged out and turned into some gross fleshy mass of terribleness. The flesh monster tried to claw at Skoldreg, Cillian and Randy. They all dodged out of the way. I zapped the flesh thing with a chaos bolt, Skoldreg smacked it with his bonking hammer like a meat tenderizer, Cillian tolled dead on him, Cathia hit him with a chromatic orb and Night pulled out another animal, this time a badger named Mushroom Mushroom. Mushroom Mushroom starts feeding on the flesh mound and just chomps him to death. We looted some drugs out of the fleshy chunks, though I'm not sure that we actually want to use them.
We kept moving on and it wasn't long before we came across a future version of another classmate. This one was Vixen Sparejaw and he also seemed to have mush for brains. We asked him if he remembered us. He said no and asked if we had "drank of the truth." This sounded like some Church of Vecna summer camp shit that made my skin crawl, but Cillian kept it cool. He lied and told Vixen we had. Vixen said we must be here for the event. I told him I had been doing too many of Dominique's drugs and I couldn't remember what the event was. He told us the event was when the portal would be opened and the blood god would come through, then we would shed blood. Super. Great. Cool. Glad we're here for that. Cillian seemed unrattled by this and asked Vixen if he had read from the sacred text. When Vixen said no, Cillian told him those who hadn't read the sacred text would be slain and damned to the land of eternal defeat. Vixen said he was bored and wanted to engage in bloodsport. Cillian told him we would but only if we all performed the sacred pre-blood sport ritual. Cillian is a really good bullshitter. Vixen said he didn't know what it was. Cillian said we need to stand at the edges of the ring to the abyss and say some sacred words.
It seemed like Vixen was buying it, so Cillian knelt down and told him to go to the other side of the platform. Instead, shithead Vixen started trying to drag Cillian off the edge. I flew in, grabbed Cillian, and thunder punched future Vixen away, sending him straight back into Skoldreg's bonking hammer like some sort of badass baseball pitch. He turned around and tried to attack Skoldreg but he missed. Idiot. Night got out another animal, her weasel, Duke. Duke and Little Sister successfully bit Vixen, but Mushroom Mushroom must have still been full from eating Dominque because he didn't do anything. Catha orb'd him and Cillian blasted. Skoldreg finished him off with a final slam of his bonking hammer. RIP future Vixen.
After future Vixen died, someone came rushing up to us. We were ready to attack, but she introduced herself as Aurora Wynterstarr and told us she was also here to try to sort shit out. She told us that in the past (but in a time that's still the future for us - this is really confusing) someone blew up our bar with us in it. That sounds like some bullshit. Why would anyone want to kill us? She did tell us that before our bar was blown up it was apparently pretty lit. There were bottomless drinks and paid fights, and apparently some murder. So at least there's that.
I was still trying to wrap my head around learning I'm going to be blown up one day, so I don't know how but somehow we ended up getting into it with Aurora. We were probably just in a shitty mood from everyone we met turning into flesh monsters that tried to murder us and from learning we are going to die a fiery death in the future which is also somehow the past. Anyway, Aurora said Cillian was racist and he responded to that by hitting on her. It was all very confusing. Finally after ranting at us for a bunch of other stuff, Aurora told us we caused this whole shitshow because we stole the flask and the Oriq stole it from us. That didn't mean anything to me, so I asked her wtf the Oriq was. I'm still not entirely clear, but apparently the Oriq is an organization of some pretty shitty people. Aurora made a terrible pun about them and somehow this lead to her and Cillian flirting again. I don't know man. But we went with Aurora to the site where the blood god ritual was supposed to be happening. There was a robed person leading the ritual and pouring out of the the cursed flask in a circle around them. The weird black goo was there.
There was a loud boom and giant fleshy monster appeared behind the robed weirdo. I guess this is the blood god? Whoever or whatever it was, it was a giant asshole, because it immediately beheaded the robed guy and threw his head at us! The head rolled right to feet and came to a stop looking up at us. It wasn't a robed rando, it was Tilana! We ran TF away, chased by the blood god flesh monster person thing the entire way! We made it back to where we came in and started screaming for Auntie O to teleport us back.
Suddenly we were back in Auntie O's fiery forest ring thing. We told her about what we had seen and that the Oriq were behind all this shit. We told her Tilana appeared to be the big dick in charge in the future. I suggested we kill her, but Auntie O said no. I offered to make it look like an accident at the pub. She still said no. She said she would destroy the flask for us. Now we are suspicious of her, which is terrible, because Auntie O really became like a mentor to me in the hour and a half I've known her and I honestly just can't lose another role model.
Auntie O said if we give her the flask she will give us all a Boone. I asked if we all had to share the same Boone, or there were gonna be like multiple Boones. Cillian asked if Randy and Night's animals could have their own Boones, but Auntie O said the Boones were just for students. Randy got pissed and was all "what the fuck?" Auntie O wasn't having any of it though, so she zapped him to a pocket dimension and told us (mostly me) to shut up so we could all get our Boones. We gave her the flask and she brought out a stack of presents all individually wrapped and perfectly lettered. It was a lot of mixed emotions for me. I thought we were all going to get like an unseen servant or like a sexy bodyguard named Boone or something, but clearly she just meant a Winter's Crest gift. I don't know why she calls them Boone, but it was pretty cool just the same. No one has ever gotten me a Winter's Crest gift before. I cried a little but I tried not to let anyone see it. So yeah, anyway, Cathia got an arcane grimoire (+1). Cillian got a rod of the pact keeper (+1). I got a wand of the war mage (+1). Night got a Rhythm makers drum. And Skoldreg got a fullerine charm. And the best gift of all.... Auntie O gave all of us permission to call her Auntie O. She really is the best.
Okay, that's all for now. I need to get some rest so I can start making an Aunt's Day gift for Auntie O.
XOXO,
Dahlia
We were back at square one, no more info on Tilana and still no idea what to do with this cursed flask. Cillian and Skoldreg thought someone should probably drink out of it. I felt like this is probably what we shouldn't do, but we've established I'm not very smart. Cillian and Skoldreg's main concern was which of them was going to be the one to take a drink. They both argued that they were prolific drinkers and were well suited to the task. Finally, Cillian relented and said Skoldreg could go first. Skoldreg turns up the cursed flask and takes a big swig. He said there was some top shelf liquor in there. It must be nice to have professor money. Anyway, that's beside the point. Skoldreg spilled some of the fancy booze on his face and beard and it did not look fancy at all. It was all black and oily and super gross like the black goop we found in the library and the tavern when shit got weird before. The rest of us were kind of grossed out, but Skoldreg said this booze made him feel like he wasn't afraid of anything. I feel like that is pretty normal for booze though, right?
Anyway, so now we knew the booze tasted great, but probably wasn't actually booze, but was instead some sort of magical ooze that we keep seeing all over campus. We still don't know wtf to do about it though. We talked about going to figure out why Tilana and them were after this flask, but decided it was better to go as a group. So we waited for Night to come back. She did not come back that night. Good for her.
We all met up at the fountain the next morning. Night told me I would get the exclusive deets on her hook up with Ellina, so we could publish a story. Nice. We moved on to discussing the flask which was not nearly as interesting as tiefling sexytimes. Oh well. Night used some of her magic to identify the flask, but we still weren't able to tell anything about the nature of the curse that had been placed on it. While we were inspecting the flask and debating what to do with it, Skoldreg noticed a creepy dude hovering in the fountain. We told him he was creeping us out and he should move on. He didn't. Eventually, we decided he must be the ghost of Winter's Crest to come or something. He said he wasn't a ghost at all. Apparently he's just some creepy ass dude that chills out in fountains in soggy ass clothes. Whatever, he told us he had come there to take us to the oracle. None of us had any idea what that meant. We asked if there would be breakfast. He didn't respond, just teleported us away.
Suddenly we were in some strange ring forest looking place that opened up to a weird icy spiky center. The trees in the area caught on magically caught on fire when we appeared and I felt pretty bad about that because I remember those pamphlets they gave us on my first field trip to Exandria that had Li'l Smoke the Owlbear talking about how you shouldn't burn down the trees in Exandria like we do in the Shadowfell. Anyway, suddenly a strange lady hovering in the air over the ice pit appeared. Maybe she's the one that caused the trees to catch on fire. We asked the floating lady if she was the one who summoned us here and if she had brought breakfast. She didn't really answer us and instead told us that there would be "consequences to last night's actions" in a big ominous sounding voice. We all got super worried that that meant Night had caught an STI last night with Ellina. The floating lady said we caused some bad in the world but she couldn't tell the nature or extent. This lady has some cool tricks with the hovering and the forest fire and stuff, but she does not seem to be very good at her job of oracling. We told her that sounded bad, but we really couldn't do anything about it until we had had something to eat because some of us get low blood sugar and stuff. I explained how my parents cut me off after trying to murder my classmates and my dog, so I had no money for food and was just like super ravenous. She seemed kind of sympathetic abotu that and told me that was sad, so I asked her if she would want to be a mother figure for me. She said no, but she'd still get us breakfast. Maybe she'll be willing to be like my cool aunt or something. I hope so, because she made us a badass magic breakfast that cured diseases and made us feel extra healthy. Now it doesn't even matter if any of us got STIs or not. Thanks Auntie, O.
After we ate, Auntie O told us we needed to focus on the changes we had created. That was cryptic as hell. But then she threw out some weird beads that teleported us to a very creepy weird, bloody version of Strixhaven. There were some strange hooded figures that we thought Cathia Franic might know. She didn't. I guess you can't even assume even all hooded figures know each other. Anyway, we carefully make our way down the stairs into the courtyard near where the fountain should be. There's no fountain and the courtyard seems to just be hanging over a big drop off to the abyss. Some of the hooded figures were hanging out smoking. Skoldreg approached one of the smokers and the dude was high af. He offered Skoldreg a toke. Skoldreg partakes and IMMEDIATELY gets stoner brain and can't remember shit. The stoner tried to introduce himself to Skoldreg but said he couldn't really remember his name only that it may have started with a D. Skoldreg figures out because even though he has stoner brain, he's still super smart. It's Dominique Paraguan, the drug dealer from our time! Dominique seems to have really gone downhill. He doesn't remember anything about anything. He told Skoldreg "shit's good, but some of these fuckers need to chill." We have no idea what that means. He invites the rest of us to smoke with him, but we don't want to. He's really trying to make Cillian do some drugs, but Cillian doesn't want to because we see this guy has swiss cheese brain. Eventually, instead of giving up, Dominque just blew some powdery drugs in right in Cillian's face. Fuck that. Consent matters. You can't just drug someone. Randy stung Dominque and the rest of us started kicking his ass.
Night summons Little Sister and sends her after Dominque. After a few swipes, Dominique raged out and turned into some gross fleshy mass of terribleness. The flesh monster tried to claw at Skoldreg, Cillian and Randy. They all dodged out of the way. I zapped the flesh thing with a chaos bolt, Skoldreg smacked it with his bonking hammer like a meat tenderizer, Cillian tolled dead on him, Cathia hit him with a chromatic orb and Night pulled out another animal, this time a badger named Mushroom Mushroom. Mushroom Mushroom starts feeding on the flesh mound and just chomps him to death. We looted some drugs out of the fleshy chunks, though I'm not sure that we actually want to use them.
We kept moving on and it wasn't long before we came across a future version of another classmate. This one was Vixen Sparejaw and he also seemed to have mush for brains. We asked him if he remembered us. He said no and asked if we had "drank of the truth." This sounded like some Church of Vecna summer camp shit that made my skin crawl, but Cillian kept it cool. He lied and told Vixen we had. Vixen said we must be here for the event. I told him I had been doing too many of Dominique's drugs and I couldn't remember what the event was. He told us the event was when the portal would be opened and the blood god would come through, then we would shed blood. Super. Great. Cool. Glad we're here for that. Cillian seemed unrattled by this and asked Vixen if he had read from the sacred text. When Vixen said no, Cillian told him those who hadn't read the sacred text would be slain and damned to the land of eternal defeat. Vixen said he was bored and wanted to engage in bloodsport. Cillian told him we would but only if we all performed the sacred pre-blood sport ritual. Cillian is a really good bullshitter. Vixen said he didn't know what it was. Cillian said we need to stand at the edges of the ring to the abyss and say some sacred words.
It seemed like Vixen was buying it, so Cillian knelt down and told him to go to the other side of the platform. Instead, shithead Vixen started trying to drag Cillian off the edge. I flew in, grabbed Cillian, and thunder punched future Vixen away, sending him straight back into Skoldreg's bonking hammer like some sort of badass baseball pitch. He turned around and tried to attack Skoldreg but he missed. Idiot. Night got out another animal, her weasel, Duke. Duke and Little Sister successfully bit Vixen, but Mushroom Mushroom must have still been full from eating Dominque because he didn't do anything. Catha orb'd him and Cillian blasted. Skoldreg finished him off with a final slam of his bonking hammer. RIP future Vixen.
After future Vixen died, someone came rushing up to us. We were ready to attack, but she introduced herself as Aurora Wynterstarr and told us she was also here to try to sort shit out. She told us that in the past (but in a time that's still the future for us - this is really confusing) someone blew up our bar with us in it. That sounds like some bullshit. Why would anyone want to kill us? She did tell us that before our bar was blown up it was apparently pretty lit. There were bottomless drinks and paid fights, and apparently some murder. So at least there's that.
I was still trying to wrap my head around learning I'm going to be blown up one day, so I don't know how but somehow we ended up getting into it with Aurora. We were probably just in a shitty mood from everyone we met turning into flesh monsters that tried to murder us and from learning we are going to die a fiery death in the future which is also somehow the past. Anyway, Aurora said Cillian was racist and he responded to that by hitting on her. It was all very confusing. Finally after ranting at us for a bunch of other stuff, Aurora told us we caused this whole shitshow because we stole the flask and the Oriq stole it from us. That didn't mean anything to me, so I asked her wtf the Oriq was. I'm still not entirely clear, but apparently the Oriq is an organization of some pretty shitty people. Aurora made a terrible pun about them and somehow this lead to her and Cillian flirting again. I don't know man. But we went with Aurora to the site where the blood god ritual was supposed to be happening. There was a robed person leading the ritual and pouring out of the the cursed flask in a circle around them. The weird black goo was there.
There was a loud boom and giant fleshy monster appeared behind the robed weirdo. I guess this is the blood god? Whoever or whatever it was, it was a giant asshole, because it immediately beheaded the robed guy and threw his head at us! The head rolled right to feet and came to a stop looking up at us. It wasn't a robed rando, it was Tilana! We ran TF away, chased by the blood god flesh monster person thing the entire way! We made it back to where we came in and started screaming for Auntie O to teleport us back.
Suddenly we were back in Auntie O's fiery forest ring thing. We told her about what we had seen and that the Oriq were behind all this shit. We told her Tilana appeared to be the big dick in charge in the future. I suggested we kill her, but Auntie O said no. I offered to make it look like an accident at the pub. She still said no. She said she would destroy the flask for us. Now we are suspicious of her, which is terrible, because Auntie O really became like a mentor to me in the hour and a half I've known her and I honestly just can't lose another role model.
Auntie O said if we give her the flask she will give us all a Boone. I asked if we all had to share the same Boone, or there were gonna be like multiple Boones. Cillian asked if Randy and Night's animals could have their own Boones, but Auntie O said the Boones were just for students. Randy got pissed and was all "what the fuck?" Auntie O wasn't having any of it though, so she zapped him to a pocket dimension and told us (mostly me) to shut up so we could all get our Boones. We gave her the flask and she brought out a stack of presents all individually wrapped and perfectly lettered. It was a lot of mixed emotions for me. I thought we were all going to get like an unseen servant or like a sexy bodyguard named Boone or something, but clearly she just meant a Winter's Crest gift. I don't know why she calls them Boone, but it was pretty cool just the same. No one has ever gotten me a Winter's Crest gift before. I cried a little but I tried not to let anyone see it. So yeah, anyway, Cathia got an arcane grimoire (+1). Cillian got a rod of the pact keeper (+1). I got a wand of the war mage (+1). Night got a Rhythm makers drum. And Skoldreg got a fullerine charm. And the best gift of all.... Auntie O gave all of us permission to call her Auntie O. She really is the best.
Okay, that's all for now. I need to get some rest so I can start making an Aunt's Day gift for Auntie O.
XOXO,
Dahlia
Rewards Granted
arcane grimoire (+1) - Cathia
rod of the pact keeper (+1) - Cillian
wand of the war mage (+1) - Dahlia
rhythm makers drum - Night
fullerine charm - skoldreg
rod of the pact keeper (+1) - Cillian
wand of the war mage (+1) - Dahlia
rhythm makers drum - Night
fullerine charm - skoldreg
Missions/Quests Completed
Figure out what is up with Professor Thorngage and the flask (I guess this is completed?)
Character(s) interacted with
Tilana Kapule
Dominique Paraguan
Vixen Sparejaw
Aurora Wynterstarr
Jadzi, Oracle of Strixhaven, AKA Auntie O
Dominique Paraguan
Vixen Sparejaw
Aurora Wynterstarr
Jadzi, Oracle of Strixhaven, AKA Auntie O
Report Date
19 Jan 2023
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