Monday, October 24, 2022

Fresh Juice - Nightwick Abbey - Session 35

Session 35 - 20th of Shocktober 1391

This week's adventurers:

Sotar (Cleric 3)

Blossom (Rogue 3)

Mayfly (Magic User 3)

Anston (Fighter 1)

Liminal Space (Changeling 1)

Cherwe (Cleric 3)

Mechtild (Fighter 1)

Maelwyn (Cleric 1)

Verinka (Changeling 1)

Hirelings:

Heyno (Blossom)

Ticze (Blossom)

Benish (Liminal)

Gerung (Liminal)

Mikush (Verinka)

Elger (Mayfly)

Grolmes (Mayfly)

Gele (Sotar)

Downtime In the Village

Mechtild is fully healed with a prosthetic leg and returns to delve into Nightwick. We're also joined by the cleric Maelwyn. Mechtild spent the past weeks searching for rumors about treasure in the abbey and finds two: 1) the Sword Brothers (founders of Nightwick Abbey) once set up a chapel in the abbey containing a relic from the desert land. The relic is a shard from the god of law which was turned into a sword and 2) there is an amulet of Protection from Demons somewhere in the abbey. The party decides to journey to level 2 in search of an orange juicing machine that they think can be worth quite a bit.

It is a misty, grey day as the party sets out early for Nightwick Abbey. The fey-touched changelings in the party, Liminal Space and Verinka, look especially weird in the fog.


A Complication in Nightwick

The party decided to enter through the east tower, for a change, on their way to level 2. We soon find that the abbey has shifted at some point. Possibly from when they cauterized some wall tumors a while back. Where their path to level two should be, they only find a 10' by 10' room blocking their progress. This could be a problem - we'll need to spend several sessions remapping this part of level 1 to see what it looks like now. We choose to leave the abbey and return through the west tower to take a different route to the level 2 stairs. As we approach a room next to the stairwell, Blossom stops us from entering, having noticed think piece of twine running around 4 columns in the middle of the room - clearly some type of trap. We carefully walk around them and continue south to the room with the stairway.

There, we run into a lone manimal - cursed creatures made by a being known as the Master who have a penchant for betraying us when convenient. Mayfly questions him. We find out his name is Looker and he was sent over here to look for some missing manimals. Mayfly uses his connection to the Master to convince Looker to go down with us to level 2 in search of the orange juice machine.

The brief stretch of level 2 that we explored this week.


A Juicer and Devilmen

The journey down to level 2 is strange - the stairs twist and turn and seem to go on for longer than they should. As we finally reach the landing at the bottom of the stairs, Looker gets nervous. "She is close," is the only explanation he offers. The room we're in has two columns with a red liquid flowing out of them and a single door on the other side. We find out from Looker that someone known as the Leader or the Lawgiver has other body parts of the Master. Hearing nothing to the north, Blossom leads us through the door and we find a garbage can filled with orange peels outside of the room that should contain the juicer. Looker retrieves a single orange seed from the can for Mayfly. Listening at the door to the juicer room, Blossom hears a "ka-chunk" sound and some profanities. Looker doesn't want us to open the door, stating that we'll be spotted by the servants of the Lady.

Mayfly casts ESP and detects one mind behind the door - it's angry that the juicer is broken and thinking about how a roomful of devilmen will be angry that it is broken too. Mechtild opens the door to reveal a lone devilman trying to fix the machine - which is sputtering and spraying out a whitish-orange liquid. Liminal casts Hypnotism on him and tells him to lie down while Blossom ties him up. Inside the room, we find 3 crates of oranges (worth 100sp each). We debate leaving the machine here in the hopes that we can continue to come and take fresh crates of oranges, but we ultimately decide to take the machine and be quick about it. We move it onto a floating disk and hear arguments coming from a door to the north. Mayfly's ESP is still active and he scans to the north - he detects a number of minds wondering where the oranges were. We take this as our cue to leave before anyone comes into the room to investigate, bringing the tied up devilman with us.

Back to the Village

As we leave, we hear the sound of grinding gears from the east. Crossing a hallway, we see a number of wheels with skeletons tied to them rolling down the hallway to us. Verinka casts Fog between us and them while Sotar, who already has Protection from Evil cast, stands in front of her to block. Verinka's spell goes off and we hear crashing through the fog. Without wasting a moment, we book it out of Nightwick and head back to the village. In addition to our other loot, we found 4 silver bowls on level 1 and the captive devilman has a silver necklace, 10sp, a longsword, and blackened chainmail armor. We debate briefly what to do with him but settle on nothing. Sotar levels up to level 4 and Liminal Space to level 2. Liminal learns the spell Auditory Illusion and Sotar gains access to level 2 spells, including Hold Person, Know Alignment, Silence, and Snake Charm! We also learn that there have been some lightning strikes on the necromancer Halfdan's tower ever since we sold that machinery to him. If we could find more such machinery, 



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