Don’t let the treasure escape!

After seeing the Treasure Guy flee with the treasure, Louie and Dennis called The Captain out from the ship, and pursued.

Entering the next carriage, we saw the door ahead closing, and a vast staircase going up. Dennis heard steps above, so he flew up to check to see if the Treasure Guy was up there.

Dennis’ mistake

Mistake may be too strong a word - the door ahead wouldn’t have worked with our ticket anyway. However, upon reaching the top of the staircase - and having seen various toys scattered on the stairs - the illusion at the top faded away to reveal a Clockwork Beholder. It fancied itself some sort of playwright, and wanted us to see its show.

Offended by it’s racist stereotype accent, Dennis noped out of there to go to the door - where the ticket didn’t work, anyway.

Attack of the Toymaker

Initiative order went The Captain, Dennis, Louie, then the Clockwork Beholder. After every players turn, the Beholder got a lair action which was a toy attacking. On its turn, the beholder used 3 random eye beams.

As the party was 150’ below the Beholder, the early rounds were light on damage. A lot of toys attacked, and were destroyed. The notable toy for damage was a Deck of Cards, which did (if I recall correctly) over 50 damage to The Captain. The Captain spent most of the rest of the combat hiding and using sneak attack with his bow. Whilst hiding, he befriended a living doll, which he called Orianna Marianna Panache.

Dennis flew right up to the Beholder on the first round of combat, but was hit by an eye beam that knocked him prone (damn STR saves!), and he fell all the way back down. No damage, though, because Monk. Boy, Ethan hates Monks.

The Captain’s sneak attacks were the MVP of the combat, with 2 critical hits doing a combined total of 108 damage. Other notable events were:

  • Louie doing a ranged Divine Smite with a magic 8-ball, which he got to keep, smashing the Beholders primary eye.
  • Dennis finally getting into melee, hitting 3 times in a round to discover it was immune to poison and the stunned condition.
  • Dennis completely misunderstanding the layout and remaining flying over a 150’ drop, despite there being a perfectly serviceable platform to stand on for melee.

Once dead, the Beholders body was found to contain 3 tickets for the next carriage.

Treasure:

  • 2000 platinum pieces.
  • A living doll which is now The Captains best friend.
  • A barely living Teddy Bear which we need to get Rusty to fix. Dennis hopes it will become Chastiefol.*
  • A deck of throwing cards.
  • A magic eight ball that does 1d12 damage at range, has infinite range, and can channel Divine Smite. Unfortunately doesn’t come back, like Mjolnir.
  • All the Clockwork Beholders eye stalks, and part of it’s main eye (which could take control of other people’s spells).
  • 3 tickets

Unfortunately, much of this is stored in Louie’s portable hole. This will become important later.

Onwards to Glory! Infamy’s just like glory, right?

Upon entering the next carriage, we found an enormous gathering of, frankly disgusting, poor people. Honestly, they were packed in like sardines, and they smelled.

Unfortunately, none of our tickets worked to get us further along the train, so The Captain offered one Dragon for a ticket further up the train. An old man tried to con us, and we were really good - we didn’t stab him or anything. His brother then got involved in the conversation, and during that time, someone pickpocketed the portable hole off Louie.

Dennis and the Captain immediately attempted to track down the perpetrator, but this was effectively impossible, as we discovered later that the thief was a shapeshifter, so none of our perception or memory helped at all.

Louie had the best idea, and cast Locate Object to find his portable hole. Ethan apparently:

  • Wasn’t aware that Louie could cast that; and
  • Also wasn’t aware that it would work on magic items.

The shapeshifter then immediately:

  • Somehow became aware that we were tracking them using magic tracking;
  • Shapeshifted into an inanimate object (I call BS); and
  • Because they were now an inanimate object, Locate Object stopped working (I call BS again).

In the process of trying to find them, we:

  • Pissed off a lot of people by shining light on them.
  • Discovered a hidden cache of food that someone had been stealing, and gave it back to the people. We go no credit for that.
  • Pissed off some more people by giving them an uncontrollable urge to get wet.
  • Seriously contemplated poisoning the entire carriage. I mean, who’d care? They’re poor!
  • Moonbeamed quite a lot of inanimate objects to try and reveal the shapeshifter, but it mysteriously managed to avoid it every time.
  • Some girl was stupid enough to think that pouring boiling tea over herself was equivalent to immersing herself in liquid or mud - and where did she even get the tea in a carraige where all the liquid intake was apparently from meatloaf? Honestly, that’s just natural selection at that point.

Eventually the shapeshifter was spotted, basically because Ethan said so - nothing we did was ever going to work - and despite Dennis immediately saying he goes as fast as he can to throw a knife at her, she managed to shift from a teacup into a woman, move across the carriage to the door, activate it with a ticket, retrieve the ticket, turn around, speak to the entire carriage, drop the ticket, and make her escape - all before anybody could move.

The end of the session saw the ticket she dropped sitting in a circle of moonbeam.

Note - Chastiefol

Apart from the magic abilities of the item Chastiefol from the Seven Deadly Sins, there are 2 interesting linguistic items of note:

  • In medieval French, Chastiefol is the name of Excalibur.
  • In old French, Chastiefol means “to punish the fool”. Very Mr T.