Session 15: The one where the party meets a vampire or something I don’t know it’s pretty unclear (March 22, 2023)
Last session, having just won the Labyrinth of Death, the party said goodbye to Joshy. When asked, Joshy said they could find him at Joe’s Furniture Repair in the Heights when he’s not at the Circle. They were then greeted by Otto, the minotaur who designed the Labyrinth, who offered them Karrl, the now-normal-sized octopus Rormir had charmed. They received a small portable tank to carry him in and a larger one to put him in at rest, and headed out.
Just before arriving at Aqua Vita, the inn they leased two suites in, Elias suddenly grabbed the small brass object he had received from Captain Nanda del Becco out of his pocket and ran to the roof of the inn. He was cagey about its purpose, with the others only determining that it could open and had some scratches on the upper inner lid. Elias said he would like to meditate, causing the others to leave him to sit and stare at it on the roof.
He then pulled out a book and started practicing magic. Triggered by anger at Joshy having forgiven someone who betrayed him, he cast Mage Hand for the first time. Driven by this emotion, he then headed to Euxine Wares and accosted the owner Henry Randall. Before passing out from a combination dagger/booming blade strike, Henry revealed that the “L” in “L.D.” stood for “Lucien” and that whoever or whatever that acronym represented seemed to be based out of Fleetwood. It seemed that Henry did not deal with L.D. very frequently, or very recently.
The party slept. Rormir dreamed he was back in the Underwild, the plane he is from. There Urobor, the snake spirit that sent him to the material plane, asked what he had learned so far. He seemed pleased with Rormir’s progress, especially in recognizing the value of preventing Jude from dying. He then warned Rormir that the imbalance he is on the trail of is deeper and more complicated than it seems and will require wisdom to defeat.
After awaking, the party headed downstairs to come across Thom, who looked tired and ragged. He claimed to have just slept poorly, but inspection revealed that it seemed like he had been out all night. What’s more, the metal cylinder he was in Arkos to sell at auction was suddenly showing imperfections. Heph inspected both Thom and the cylinder to find an ancient, primordial magic beyond what he’d experienced before. We return right before Heph casts Identify to inspect further…
- Heph casts Identify on Thom’s cylinder
and learns:
- The object is thousands of years old
- It seems empty, as if it were capable of containing a spiritual presence which is no longer there
- It seems like the transformation it has undergone so far is part of the intended design of the cylinder, and that eventually it will reveal something, like a puzzle box
- Interacting with it by pressing various places, exposing it to various temperatures, hitting it, touching different materials to it, etc., will cause it to continue to transform if you find the right combinations of stimuli
- The first transformation was probably due to Thom fiddling around with it last night, which also happened to release the spiritual presence inside
- Heph casts Identify on Thom
- He learns that within Thom’s body is another entity lying dormant, presumably from the puzzle box
- The entity within Thom gains control of his body when the moon is in the sky
- This entity is ancient and primordial
- The party huddles
- Heph fills in Thom on what he learned
- Thom still wants to sell the puzzle box at auction so as not to incur a massive loss, but Heph thinks he shouldn’t sell it
- Rormir thinks sitting on the puzzle box might get the entity to re-enter it, and Thom tries this to no avail
- Heph wants to tie Thom up and wait for the moon
- The party huddles up again
- Thom “ahems” to get their attention
- Elias convinces Thom not to sell the puzzle box and to let himself be tied up leading up to moonrise
- Thom asks if the party can help reimburse him for his loss, but is convinced that his life is at stake and that’s more important than money
- The party ties Thom up in the suite that doesn’t have Karrl’s buckets in it
- The party leaves Thom and goes shopping
- They notice more city guards in Quarryview (the commercial district) than there were yesterday
- Elias sees Salty flying between rooftops and runs to catch him
- Heph heads to Nairn’s to buy some splint armor, and talks the merchant down from 220gp to 206gp
- Rormir heads to Excalibur to buy a “weapon of
blue sapphire”
- The merchant, The Majestic Fantastico, is very extra
- Rormir asks for a sapphire sword that will work against spirits
- After some discussion Rormir learns that the cheapest sword available in this store is a ruby-edged short sword for 5,000gp
- He says that it should be free because it’s for the greater good, but Fantastico won’t budge
- Rormir leaves
- While passing an alley, a man in a black cloak and hood tries to get
Rormir’s attention, having heard he’s looking for a weapon of
blue sapphire
- He opens his cloak and shows short swords made from what appear to be precious gems hanging on the inside
- He says the sapphire-bladed short sword is a steal at just 15gp
- Rormir notices some of the blue on the sword is rubbing off on the cloak and other blades
- Rormir rolls high on persuasion and negotiates the man down to 3gp for the sword
- Elias tries to climb up the building Salty flew to, but on a nat 1 athletics falls off and Salty shits on him
- Elias uses Mage Hand to grab Salty out of the air with a 5 strength check contesting Salty’s 4 strength check
- Ana pops up from a manhole cover with the lid still on her head like a hat and asks what he’s doing
- Elias proposes another iteration of their information-sharing
game, but can’t convince Ana to go first so starts to leave
- Ana catches his attention by saying she guesses he doesn’t want to hear her dire warning
- Elias tells her the party learned who bought the Bands of
Loyalty (Bloody Mary)
- In exchange, Ana warns Elias that the party made some people look bad when they absolutely bodied the burglars at Potion Pitstop, and that they’ll likely try again to regain face
- Elias tells her a bit more information, but she says she doesn’t
have much besides the dire warning and pops back into the manhole with
Salty
- Elias lifts the cover back up and picks her up with it
- She just stares at him and he puts her back down
- Elias looks for a shop to sell his gems and comes across
Excalibur
- He sells the gems for 350gp
- The party meets back up and goes into Eau d’Arcane to buy
some magic items
- On the way they notice a larger concentration of city guards around Euxine Wares
- Heph looks at some cool items but is broke after buying his splint armor
- Rormir wants to buy an Alchemy Jug, but doesn’t know how to lie
in service of getting the price lower
- Heph tells him he can’t pull off lying, and needs to try half-truths instead
- Rormir approaches Pierre, the shopkeeper, and tries to convince
him he’s doing him a favor by paying for half the price of the item
- He convinces Pierre to lower the price from 150gp to 148gp
- He then tries to get the Rope of Climbing included in the price, and Pierre says he’ll sell that for 302gp (the list price is 300gp)
- Rormir then rolls a nat 1 on another persuasion check and feels
the Wormwood from the previous day having an effect
- Butterflies start pouring out of his mouth and amassing near the ceiling
- Heph tries to Fire Bolt the butterflies to get rid of them, and Pierre is getting anxious for them to leave
- Elias considers using the Dust of Disappearance to escape with
the Rope of Climbing and Mystery Key, but on an arcana check notices some
sort of security enchantment placed on all the items here
- He decides to just buy the Rope of Climbing and Mystery Key
- The party heads to brunch with Bloody Mary, which is at a fancy place called Ocean’s Bounty near the Circle
- Elias puts on his Mace Windu costume
- Rormir orders one of everything, Heph gets a stack of
pancakes almost as tall as he is, and Elias just orders Belgian
waffles
- Mary gets a rare t-bone steak
- Mary says that the party put on quite a show the previous
day, and asks if they would be interested in becoming gladiators full time
- They show some interest in sometimes dropping by for a fight
- She says they can talk about promotional stuff later, but that they might
want to work on their names
- “Mace Windu” doesn’t have a mace, and “Bat Person” could be punched up a bit
- Mary says that she did a bit of a background check on the
party since they last met and learned about the burglary at Potion
Pitstop
- She also learned that Governor Literi owes them a favor for showing how ineffective the agents being demonstrated to him were
- Heph asks Mary to level about the Bands of
Loyalty
- She explains they’re part of a business venture an old friend of hers is working on
- The Bands were purchased through her so that such a large purchase wouldn’t draw too much attention to him while still so early for his business
- She asks if the party wants to meet this person
- He’ll be at a summit soon to meet and connect with new potential clients
- She slides over a piece of paper which contains the location Bad Zamdorf and the date Mistburn 16, around 20 days in the future
- Rormir asks if she can help destroy someone’s soul
- She says she knows a thing or two about that, and directs her gaze to a large mirror along one wall
- The party sees that she has no reflection
- The party asks about ways to stay in contact with her, and she gestures to her
assistant outside, who hands the party one of a pair of Sending Stones
- Heph takes this
- Heph asks Mary about the entity that is
inhabiting Thom, but she isn’t familiar with specifically what he
is
- She does say the Bismarck Empire has a long and proud history of making puzzle boxes
- She lists reliquaries and phylacteries as containers which can hold spirits
- She’s only a few centuries old she says, not thousands
- She says that bringing Thom to near death likely won’t cause the
transformation, since it seems like the moon is an important part of it
- She would like to be invited if they do bring him near death, though 😈
- The party bids her farewell and heads out to check what items are being sold
at the auction
- The main ones are:
- Cylinder from Bismarck Empire
- Starting bid 500gp
- This is Thom’s puzzle box
- Book from the founding of Arkos, specifically the
Appiattimento when much of the island was flattened
- Starting bid 1,000gp
- A journal from one of the builders who did the labor
- A painting that’s been in the Giamatti family for generations
- Starting bid 600gp
- A pair of chestnut wood Crotala (castanets) belonging to gnomes of
Homeburr some 300 years ago
- Starting bid 100gp
- A colorful hat with bells on several protrusions from Tidefill
- Starting bid 300gp
- Believed to be 500 years old
- A golden candelabra believed to originate from the dwarves of Hamp Desh
- Starting bid 2,000gp
- This is the main attraction
- Cylinder from Bismarck Empire
- The main ones are:
- Heph and Rormir decide to head back to the hotel to
spend some time with Thom
- Elias goes to the auction to see if he can gain any information about people who are interested in the puzzle box