Session 70: Trees Rock (December 12, 2024)
Last session, our heroes made their way through the Old Dalin Palace in search of the Root Stone. Upon being detected by a single guard patrolling the ballroom, they dragged him into a dining prep room, stuffed his mouth with cloth, and Pokémoned his ass into Maho’s sword. They then took his armor and a gold pyramid on a table and explored the space. They found a kitchen in which was a box of mysterious paints, as well as a couple toques blanches, one of which complete with a rodent resident. Venturing out, Elias turned invisible and did the money-on-a-string trick with a guard outside using a picture of his kids, and Delilas convinced him nothing was amiss by dressing in the discarded armor and giving a thumbs up.
Elias scouted ahead invisibly while Heph, Maho, and Delilas waited in a coat check room. He entered the main foyer of the palace and ran into some trouble sneaking back to where he learned the Vassal King’s chamber was. Failing to convince the guards at the chamber door to leave their post, he summoned an illusory red dragon and chaos ensued, allowing him to run up the stairs and Fey Step into the king’s chamber, where the royal highness was sitting upon his throne in a side room.
Not to be left out, Heph used the paints they found to draw a sequence of trap doors in the ceilings, eventually leading the rest of the party to the roof. The party converged in the king’s chamber, as Elias tried to convince the king to leave with him while guards kicked down the door. The party fought, Maho growing large and drawing attacks while the others attempted to escape. Heph located the Root Stone in a mimic and led it out through the hole he painted in the wall.
Seeing Elias was leading the king away, the guards targeted him, knocking him out. The party did manage to escape to the roof, however, an unconscious Elias on a distraught Delilas’s shoulder, as they prepared to retrace their steps back out of the Palace.
- Heph is in the ballroom with the defeated mimic, and
Delilas is carrying the unconscious Elias on her
back, Maho and the king with them
- Maho tries to stabilize Elias, but is unsuccessful
- Maho and Delilas hear Jarles trying to figure out what is going on, and Maho yells at him because he has nothing to contribute
- Delilas communicates to Heph that Elias is down and asks if he can help
- Heph says he can help, they just need to get Elias back quickly, and uses his Pearl of Power to regain a spell slot
- Maho leads the group through the trapdoor, dropping down into the room with the bear skin rug
- The guards debate for a moment, then drop down onto the roof and begin pursuing
- The group closes the trapdoor leading to the roof and drops down to the
ballroom
- Maho covers the trapdoor with the rug
- Delilas tries to lower Elias down, but ends up dropping him, causing him to fail a few death saves (at two failures, two successes)
- Heph heals Elias for a bunch of health, who proceeds to sit upright rapidly and yells “OW!” from being dropped
- Delilas hugs Elias, and he hugs her back
- We hear some clanking from above as the guards find the trapdoor under the bearskin rug and start to head down
- The group heads back into the storage room, and upon saying Gerald’s name, he
waddles out between the boxes
- Aeveron couldn’t quite remember the name of the spirit who guarded this entrance, it was Gerald
- Gerald leads the group between the boxes, eventually leading back to the flower field, and we find ourselves again in Gerald’s garden
- Looking back to the palace there is a frenzy of activity
- Gerald thanks us for giving him a friend, and Elias grabs the Sphinx head and brings it up to the garden, to make it easier for them to talk
- Gerald tells us the guards won’t be able to follow us to the garden, and realizing we are safe for the moment, Heph suggests we try to disguise the king a bit before we emerge from a barrel in the basement of the bar
- Maho asks if we can disguise him with a bucket over his head, which Elias agrees with, and Elias gives the king his fine clothes turned inside out
- Elias carves some eyeholes and a smiling mouth in the bucket Maho had, making a terrible screeching noise, and gives it to the king when he finishes changing
- Elias takes the king’s actual fine clothes for himself, muttering that he got an upgrade
- The group heads through the tunnel with the king, and arriving at the barrel,
we can hear John Wick sobbing from the other side
- Heph pops out of the barrel and says “Oh hey John!”, and he stops sobbing and says hi back
- Everyone starts climbing out of the barrel, Elias saying the barrel is bigger on the inside
- The bartender asks if we were really all in the barrel, and Heph says yes, and Elias introduces the king as Jorf the Bucket Man™
- We went to find entertainment and found Jorf in the barrel
- Elias says it was a great party let’s go home, and Maho says oh you finished the cake, I guess the party is over
- John tries to play along, and unconvincingly says he ate the cake all on his own because it’s his birthday, and winks at no one in particular
- Heph says “Well John we should get you home, you’ve had quite a day”
- He thanks the group for spending his “birthday” with him, and thanks the bartender for listening to his woes, and flips her a couple of gold
- Elias grabs the king and Delilas’ arms and leads them out, Heph, Maho and John following
- Loriel starts poking her head into the empty barrel…
- Back up at the main level, there are a few more people than there were before,
but it’s still early in the day
- The bartender upstairs looks at the group and smiles, but doesn’t obstruct anyone from leaving
- Elias leads the group out of the tavern, and after some discussion the group decides to head by the cave first, then head to the meeting location previously decided North of Circle Grove
- Karrl scouts ahead, and finds that there is a lot of Order of Steel activity fanning out from the Palace, and Heph relays this and says we should get moving
- On the way, Heph feels the bad vibes coming from the stone getting worse, and Elias asks “Jorf” about the chest, and he explains that it made him feel very uncomfortable and he tried his best to stay away from it
- It gave him awful nightmares and he couldn’t sleep near it
- Heph asks how and when it got there, and he replied that some Order of Steel soldiers, looking a bit peaky, brought in a sack saying they would guard him and the stone at the same time, and they put it in the king’s strongbox
- Heph can tell the stone seems to have a deific power like other artifacts he’s seen, but stronger and more detached, and decides prolonged exposure to it, especially direct contact, would be detrimental
- Scouting ahead, Karrl sees that there are 4 Order of Steel
soldiers standing near the top of the cave, and a very fat pigeon wheezes his
way up to us and lands on Maho’s shoulder and breathes heavy to
catch his breath
- Maho says hey there lady, and Salty replies hey lady, and peels a mask off and reveals Ana sitting on Maho’s shoulder, Salty sitting on her shoulder
- She relays that some attention was drawn to the cave, and they will probably be discovered before too long
- Elias is feeling a sense of urgency to get to his parents, and he decides to pull the frost giant out of the ground to try to scare them to drop off the cliff
- Elias is already charging towards the cliff, Delilas and Maho with him, Heph a few steps behind
- They are fully distracted by looking over the cliff, and Delilas manages to snag a bucket from the ground just before Maho steps on it, managing to keep the group stealthy
- When the group is about 60 feet away, Elias pops up the ice giant
behind the soldiers
- They all stare stone-faced at the giant, seemingly completely unfazed by it, one of them immediately identifying it as an illusion
- However, it has succeeded in distracting them, and Elias manages to shoot an arrow into one of their faces, causing him to stumble backwards and fall backwards off the cliff
- Heph shoots lightning at two of the guards, dealing some damage to both and causing both to stumble back and fall off the cliff
- Maho charges the remaining guard, dropping a shoulder and absolutely bodying him off the cliff
- Looking over the cliff, we see them all splashing in the water as the Goldblums descend on them
- Elias sets up a rope and climbs down to the cave, completely
forgetting about the giant, the group following close behind
- Elias’ parents are near the entrance, having come out when they heard the bodies splash
- Elias tell them it’s time to go, and his mom wants to pack up, his dad realizes there’s urgency, and Heph tells her the board paid off and it’s okay to leave it behind
- Elias asks Heph to burn some evidence, and Heph launches a few Fire Bolts into the room, quickly engulfing the place into flames
- Heph notes that we have a habit of leaving places on fire, but at least this time we aren’t leaving through a hole in the wall
- Getting to the top, Elias’ mom is surprised by the frost giant, which Elias dubs “Gost Friant”, and he orders the giant back into the ground, and the frost giant winks at Elias’ dad without Elias’ prompting and sinks into the ground while saluting
- Elias wants to take his parents to their house, but Heph is concerned about the neighbors noticing, and Elias asks Ana if he can trust her to get his parents stealthily into their house, which she agrees to do
- Elias wants Delilas to go too, and she fights him for it, and Heph jumps in to try to convince Elias that we likely need her
- Delilas seems to be barely standing, and Elias really encourages her to back down, and Heph stops trying to convince him she should go
- She doesn’t want to stay behind, and Elias tries to convince her she just needs to rest a bit and regain some strength, but she doesn’t seem entirely convinced
- She finally seems to reluctantly agree to help get their parents settled, and to meet us on the boat back to the material plane
- She tells Elias not to die, he says “when have I ever died” and tries to run off, and Maho grabs him, saying she’s sick of him always running off, and it’s disrespectful
- Before Delilas goes with their parents, Elias walks over and gives her a hug, and thanks her for saving him, and she pulls back and tells Elias that he’s had so many opportunities to run (meeting her, learning of Kogar in Bad Zamdorf, learning Ash was with him) and he hasn’t, and that counts for something
- Elias looks back and Maho, Heph, and the void where Rormir was, and notes that he has in fact changed a bit recently, and Delilas tells him to stop running into danger
- Elias is absentmindedly turning over the watch in his pocket as he thinks about running into danger
- Delilas instructs Maho to keep Elias alive, and she heads off with Ana in the direction of their house
- Elias also hugs his parents before they leave, and they say it was good to see him, and they ask if he’ll be leaving soon, to which he replies he will, but he promises to come visit, and hugs them both again
- Elias also hugs Ana, and says she will see us soon, and awkwardly says bye before she leaves
- Elias asks his parents if they have any juicy gossip on the royal family, reveals they have the king, and then when his parents seems surprised about that, the group runs away
- Elias asks if we should bring the king, and Heph says
he’s probably motivated to overthrow Kogar as well
- After some debate, Heph turns to the king and asks what his preference is, and he seems to want to come with the group and meet the resistance, since that’s the closest he has to an army
- Heph tries to get Elias to go to Circle Grove, and Elias finally learns that Heph has the root stone, and Maho seems perplexed how it took him so long to figure this out
- Elias leads us through the city
- On the way, Elias asks the king how long he’s been cooped up, and he says they managed to hold him off for a bit, then he was on the run for a while before he was finally captured, paraded around, and was locked up in his home for years now
- Seeing the current state of Dalin, the king remarks that it’s a lot less green than it used to be, and Elias concurs with that
- Seeing the flames of Northrun, he notes that also seems very new, and the spirits seem unhappy, but Elias explains that the root stone might help them be less angry
- Nobody in the group really knows anything about the stone
- Approaching Circle Grove we see the people still dancing, looking rather worse for wear
- Heph messages the tree “How should we return your stone?”, and the tree asks if we have it, and upon saying he does, the tree asks Heph to approach, which he does cautiously
- Heph pulls out the stone, saying he thinks this is the stone, although he’s not sure if it’s okay
- When the stone comes out, everyone feels incredibly uneasy, and to Heph it feels cold, the cold of a windless cloudless winter day, a heavy cold
- The ground starts to rumble, and the branches of the tree rattle, and a voice comes from the tree and says “It has returned, take it to the clearing, we will guide the way”, and the people who have been dancing endlessly suddenly stop and collapse from exhaustion
- It seems to be specifying a specific clearing, but the language it’s speaking is not its native language, and Common is too imprecise to specify exactly which clearing
- We can see the flaming trees start to go out a bit and form a path through the
Northrun, and Heph grabs the group and heads into the woods
- Heph keeps the stone out so the trees can sense it, but Heph is definitely having difficulty fighting off the sensation, and throws up in his mouth a bit
- He sees the vision the king was talking about for a moment, feeling the molten ground start to cool as a shadow descended from the sky, and manages to shake it off and keep going
- Not too deep into the Northrun, they find a crowd of the resistance members gathered, and Elias throws his hood up to hide
- Saraen approaches, and the other members of the council are there, along with a variety of resistance members, all looking a bit rough
- Saraen asks if we were successful, Heph says yes, and Maho tells her there is another matter, but it can wait until after the stone is returned
- Saraen starts to talk a bit about how Delilas’ mission is so important, and asks where Delilas is, but Heph derails the conversation because he wants to get the stone returned
- The resistance follows Heph through the path in the trees, heading deeper into the woods, until it eventually opens into an area, and we are disoriented and have no idea if we’ve been there before
- There is one massive tall tree in the center, with roots snaking in and out of the soil, and at the base of the trunk of the tree, beneath the roots, there is a cavity dug out
- Heph messages the tree, asking it if it is the keeper of the root stone, and it replies it was in the earth before it was sprouted, but it sat under the tree
- Heph says well I have it here, I’m going to approach and put it back, and the roots open to give a space
- Heph rushes up to the tree, and gets the vision again, but it feels like it is forward in time, the shadow has fully descended and the sea of magma has cooled and hardened into the dark black stone that the tunnels beneath the city were made from, and looking around Heph sees centuries/eons/millennia pass, and he sees cracks form, the skies clear of smoke, and one single stem sprouts that is the beginning of the tree that begins the forest
- As Heph places the stone beneath the roots, the roots snap down to protect it, and the soil vibrates and the stone sinks into the ground until it is no longer visible, and there is a sudden shockwave that runs through the ground, spreading in all directions, and the trees extinguish their flames as the shockwave spreads out
- There is a moment of silence, then the trees start to slowly straighten up, the branches stand up, the blackened wood turns brown, and leaves start to sprout, until suddenly we are once again standing in a full forest
- The tree in front of Heph says, in a voice seeming to vibrate from the Earth itself, “We are the children of the Earth. Our strength has returned and we are driven to protect it. Where are the thieves who took the stone?”
- Heph replies the Order of the Steel is the culprit, but the trees don’t seem to understand and ask which direction, so Heph turns to Elias and asks him where the palace is
- Elias points towards the palace and says “the king of the thieves is not there right now but his palace is that way” and the trees reply that “his palace will not stand”, Maho asks them to spare the duck, which they say they will do, and Elias also mentions the ministry of unity in the building next door, maybe take that too, and they say they will destroy all that is in their path
- The roots of the trees lift up out of the ground, and the trees stand up and begin marching on the palace
- Maho nervously looks at the king, and the king nervously looks back and says “I guess we’ve got an army”