Thursday, May 4, 2023

Nightwick Abbey - Session 54

Previously, in Nightwick Abbey...

Session 54 - 27th of Elders, 1392

This week's adventurers:

Blossom (Rogue 4)

Mayfly (Magician 4)

Cherwe (Cleric 4)

Liminal Space (Changeling 3)

Mechtilde (Fighter 3)

Verinka (Changeling 2)

Ulf (Magician 1)

Hirelings: Gerung Floating Disk (MU 1), Elger, Fredman (Fighter 1)

Downtime in the Village

Over the week, Mayfly made a silver cube reliquary with noble Sotar's teeth, to honor the fallen cleric. Liminal Space sells the cursed sword to Halfdan the Necromancer for 250sp, who is interested in it solely as an artiface from the cursed abbey. Blossom continues to gather information on the Blindfold of St. Candace of the Night, discovering that it is probably held in the sewers of the old city section of Lichgate.

Down in the Abbey

Last week, we made a deal with the Manimals for them to procure some plants from the underground garden of the abbey. We arrive at level 2, unsure if we'll find the plants or a trap there. At the food of the stairs we find....

...two herbs waiting for us. Devil's Horn (an aphrodisiac that we've found previously in the dungeon) and Gax's Quill (part of the raw material for spell scrolls). We immediately turn around and leave to give the herbs to Halfdan. Mission accomplished, I guess.

An Interlocutor in the Way

On on way out of the abbey, back on level 1, just as Mechtilde is proposing we celebrate by going to a hot spring (or making one ourselves by capturing some Fire Babies), we encounter a single Devilman standing across from a pit trap that we must cross. There's typically a plank across the pit that Sotar once set up, but it appears that the Devilman has moved it over to his side. 

The Devilman creepily waves his hand at us, and Liminal Space waves back and winks.

The Devilman winks back.

"Hello. Are you interested?" Liminal calls out.

"Always."

"Do you want to come over to this side?"

"I think you should come over to this side alone, without weapons."

The Devilman tempts us with offers to play Mumblety-Peg (our favorite game) if we come over to his side (without weapons). We debate walking around this obvious trap but there's no short, untrapped route back to the surface, so Liminal Space casts Hypnotism on him and asks him to replace the board across the pit.

He does so, hops into the pit and walks out of sight. Confused as to what his goal was, we cross the put and leave the abbey without incident.

At Halfdan's Tower

We leave the abbey and go straight to Halfdan's tower. Lightning strikes the tower as we approach, a not uncommon occurance ever since we started selling the devious contraptions of Nightwick to him.

His daughter greets us at the door and fetches the Necromancer. Halfdan accepts the herbs and Mayfly unsuccessfully tries to make smalltalk with his supposed mentor, who never seems to remember his name.

Halfdan also agrees to cast Stone to Flesh on the petrified "saint" we have in our basement, but we have to come back the next day.

Bumbling Around

With time to kill in the village, we head over to the Van Toad Trading Company liaison to attempt to get our orange juicer repaired. The van Toad present, Rupert van Toad, offers to have a team repair it for 75gp. Mayfly offers up his magic (cursed) ring in lieu of payment and this offends the frogling and he shoos Mayfly off the premise with a broom.

Back to Halfdan

The next day (the 28th of Elders) we return to Halfdan with the petrified figure purported to be a St. Samson in our basement. We spent most of the morning figuring out how to finagle it out of the basement while Mechtilde bought a cart to carry him to the magician's tower. We also bring along the two devotees of the saint who brought him to Nightwick. Liminal is worried that the statue is secretly a demon in disguise, which would be par for the course for Nightwick. Cherwe casts Detect Evil on it and gets nothing.

Halfdan takes one look at the statue and refuses to unpetrify him. "He's a dumbass and a goody two-shoes," is the reason he gives. After some negotiating, he agrees to do it as a thank you for defeating his rival, Laurentius, back in Knightpath.

Meet St. Samson

The second the spell is cast, Halfdan turns around and goes back inside his tower, slamming the door behind him, leaving a pudgy, balding man with a slight goatee standing before us. St. Samson, in the flesh, is slightly surprised to now be where he is, but he soon recovers and demands to speak to Cherwe's leader, who would be the Bishop of Lychgate.

Talking to him, we soon discover that he is, in fact, a goody two-shoes, who demands his followers to make meticulous reports that we're pretty sure don't get sent anywhere. We do manage to convince him, as a thank you for curing him, to remove Mechtilde's tapeworm and make three additional Remove Disease scrolls, after which, he will leave town, we hope, for good.

A Second Delve into Nightwick

We have time yet to kill in the session and so we decide to pop into level 3 of Nightwick through the crypt entrance. Having never before left this entrance room, we go north into what looks like an ossuary, with shelves lightly packed with skulls. As soon as someone steps foot into the room, the skulls in the ossuary start clacking and Verinka spies a large number of figures in the darkness.

Ulf and Mayfly, near the back of the group, notice that one of the giant angel statues in the room has stepped off of its pedestal and is approaching us. (Player's note: we tend to forget to put strong fighters in the back of the marching order to protect our flank. This week, it really came back to bite us in the ass.) 

Swords and Sorcery

At least 8 cultists come down the hall towards us, with possibly more in the darkness. Mechtilde kills one with a thrown spear and Liminal another with his bow. The angel statues hits Ulf with a sword, but he miraculously survives (he took 2 damage from a 1d10 attack with 3 max hp). Ulf attempts to blind the statue with Light, but it makes its save.

Verinka puts 6 cultists to sleep and we hear in the darkness the sound of the last remaining cultist running away. Mayfly casts Protection from Evil and the statue swings at Ulf again but misses. Behind it, we hear a noise telling us that the other statue is approaching us as well.

Once Cherwe leaves the ossuary and reenters the room to help us fight, the statues thunk back to their pedestals and disengage from combat. We count out blessing and decide to immediately leave Nightwick with no causalities, but before we do, Mayfly casts Fireball on the sleeping cultists to put them to sleep... permanently.

We each received 58xp and no treasure.





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