Saturday, March 30, 2024

Nightwick Abbey - Session 89 - "Old Men Crossed With Nude Mice"

Previously, in Nightwick Abbey...

Want to learn more about the world of Nightwick from Miranda Elkins? You can follow her blog here and the ongoing development of Nightwick Abbey at her Patreon here.

Session 89 - 28th of Primes, 1398

This week's adventurers:

Mayfly (Magician 5) 

Mechtilde (Fighter 5)

Ulf (Magician 4)

Liminal Space (Changeling 4)

Poppy (Fighter 3) 

Voorhis (Cleric 3)

Krupe (Cleric 3)

Thekla (Magician 2)

Hirelings: Niklaus (Fighter 1), Assman (Fighter 1)

Down to the Abbey

This week we decide to play things safe and go down to level 2, to the realm of the Bleeding Baroness. Mechtilde insists that she needs to extract a sample from the Gibbet Cage monsters down there.

We enter Nightwick Abbey through the remains of an old bell tower that still sticks out of the ground. On our was through level 1, we come across a door swollen shut, blocking our path.

We suspect that something is behind the door so Mayfly casts ESP and shifts his focus to behind the door. He detects a group of very simple thoughts on the other side.

Baptize a Rat

Mechtilde forces open the door to reveal several Dregs - short figures that resemble old men crossed with nude mice.

They're grouped up around a baptismal font, trying to push one of their members up into the font to drink from it.

Mayfly grabs a stool from the previous room and props it up against the font, like a plank in a dumpster to let out a raccoon, and they silently applaud us.

One of the Dregs scampers up the stool and successfully laps up some water from the dirty font.

It immediately swells up to the size of a grown human, with a murderous glint in its eyes.

It Turns Out The Key to Dueling is the Friends We Made Along the Way

Mechtilde steps forward and challenges this new beast to single combat while Mayfly places wagers with another Dreg.

Mechtilde misses her first attack and the Giant Dreg retaliates by hitting her for 4 damage

Mechtilde pushes him down and the remaining Dregs flee out the other door.

With Mechtilde performing poorly and the audience gone, we no longer feel the need to protect Mechtildes honor over her safety and so the rest of our melee fighters pile into the room while Ulf casts Light upon the rat-man.

He blinds the creature and our fighters and clerics quickly put him down.

While Voorhis binds Mechtilde's wounds, we study the fountain, which appears to be water with a strange smell.

Foreshadowing

Curiousity gets the better of him and Liminal Space drinks some of the baptismal water.

He feels different, but isn't sure how it affected him. 

Mayfly listens at his stomach and, after a moment, stands up and declares that something bad will probably happen to him but he's not sure what.

Likely his fey nature as a changeling has protected him...for now.

Zombies Hate This One Trick

We continue on, pass a lectern room, to a door that is also swollen shut.

Mayfly focuses his ESP to the next room, and thinks he senses the confused hive mind of the fungus zombies.

Mechtilde covers her mouth with a rag and forces open the door.

Sure enough, there are four of the fungus zombies waiting behind the door. It's a little concerning seeing them here as they are typically found on level 2.

Not wanting to deal with their deadly spores, Mayfly shoots off a Fireball and kills them all.

Back to Level 2

We safely make it to level 2, stepping out into a small 30' by 20' room with two pillars gently trickling down blood.

We begin to traverse the well mapped out floor, north first, then west, and make it past the stairs down to level 3 and continue on, past that, to the room where we once held the ghostly trial.

We open the door west onto a t-junction - corridors stretch out west, north, and south.

We see figures moving in the darkness to the west and Mayfly detects a strong urge for blood through ESP.

We go north, not wanting to mess with all that, and enter into an empty 30' by 30' room with doors on each wall.

The Hunt for the Great Gibbet

Mayfly picks up beings with his ESP to the east and west.

We think a Gibbet Cage beast is to the east, based on our prior journeys down here and so go that way.

Mechtilde aggressively forces open the next door, revealing a 30' by 20' room with a door on the opposite wall. 

(Not) Dealing with the Devilmen

We hear a hideous bleating as we open the door. Inside the room, we see three devilmen surrounding a goatman tied to a table, torturing it.

Neither group wants much to do with the others, so we pass by them to the next room, opening up the door to reveal one of the monstrous gibbet cages we set out to find.

A massive beast consisting of several undead bodies fused together within a single cage, it scuttles up to us and grabs Mechtilde.

Art by Chris Hüth

You Do What to the Creature?!?

Mayfly casts Web upon the creature and Liminal attempts to activate his baptismal font powers, whatever they may be.

Mechtilde manages to stab her spear-bellows contraption into the creature and sucks out some of its monster juices(?).

The next round, Mechtilde drops her spear and picks up her sword Dhinron to swing at the creature while the rest of the party tries to pull her free.

Mechtilde managers to break free and slays the zombie with Dhinron. In this room beyond it is a really nice couch, which Mayfly insists we take back with us.

Back to the Village

After the combat, Liminal gets a strange look in his eye and snaps to attention and walks over to the Devilmen and Goatman and kills them with his sword.

We find silver torture equipment on the Devilmen - we hopefully won't use it, but it's surely worth something. We load it on top of the couch which we make our hirelings carry and manage to safely make it out of the abbey.

We sell the treasure for 2,000sp total (1,000 for the couch, 1,000 for the silver tools) and each recieve 222sp and 340xp.

This was enough for our hireling Assman to level up!



No comments:

Post a Comment

Nightwick Abbey - Session 89 - "Old Men Crossed With Nude Mice"

Previously, in Nightwick Abbey... Want to learn more about the world of Nightwick from Miranda Elkins? You can follow her blog here and the...