Big people are stupid

The party proceeds to the Carpe Collossus, which turns out to be a giant in a box, with one arm poking out. We all go to ride, The Captain first, then Louie, then Dennis would have gone.

Unfortunately, the moment Louie touches the giants hand, it fails its CON check vs poison and immediately starts screaming and thrashing its hand around. The Captain and Louie both pass their STR checks, for now.

The Captain takes advantage of the confusion to run up the giants arm and crawls into the box. In there, he sees that the giant is standing on a stick that looks suspiciously like what we were sent to retrieve. He attempts to retrieve it, fails, hides behind the giants own foot (which works!), then tries again, succeeds, and flees the box while the giant wails “My toy!”. The Captain takes mercy on him and tosses him one one of his old rapiers. “New toy!”

While this was happening, Louie finally failed his STR checks and was thrown into the air, to be recovered by Dennis holding a spear for Louie to grab. The Captain took advantage of this excitement to exit the box unseen, hiding the stick in his pants. We returned to the train station and delivered the stick to Watt.

Where we crush the carnivale

Watt informs us that the next component needed to reconstruct the train is Hecna’s eye. We were all excited to do some organ removal, but Watt told us that it was actually an artifact at the center of the Ferris wheel. Apparently it made the wheel go round, provided power to a fair chuck of the Revalia, and also gave Hecna his ability to see out of all the posters.

We went to the Ferris wheel, and Raymond and Dennis go for a ride. When he’s far enough up that nobody from the ground can see him, he turns invisible, flies to the center, and tries to lever the eye out - but it will take 100 points of damage, and it’s going slow. Dennis goes back to the car before the end of his turn, at which point he becomes visible. Rinse, repeat.

At this point, the ride operator gets worried about the sounds emanating from the ride and goes up to check. He starts repairing it, which isn’t fair. So the party starts a crowd chant - “Let it fall! Let it fall!” After enough persuasion, the operator gets on board for this plan and breaks it himself.

Three things happen simultaneously - Raymond jumps clear, Hecna’s eye falls to the ground (crushing one clown), and the wheel started to roll away, vigorously helped by Dennis. While everyone is watching the wheel crushing random revellers and rides, The Captain and Louie shove Hecna’s eye (which is pretty big - 8 feet across) into Louie’s portable hole.

Once again, back to the station to deliver it to Watt.

First combat goes well

Watt tells us the next thing we need is Cicero’s chair. It is in the Tunnel of Love. Off we go. We climb into a swan boat and start up our theme song.

In the first chamber, we start to hear the singing of 3 Soloists (cheapskate wannabe ugly-ass Sirens). Louie fails his CHA save (how?) and is beguiled by one, who then pushes his head under the water. We still have no idea what the stupid thing was trying to achieve, pushing an amphibious frog’s head under water, but these guys were apparently taking a dump when brains were handed out.

Dennis goes next, and stabs the one holding Louie first, paralyzing it. Then he moves to the next one, same result. Two down. Dennis moves to the next one - misses. Bugger. Dennis ends his turn standing in front of the only moving enemy. The Captain then decides to show off, and hits the Soloist in front of Dennis with an arrow, I think, doing 67 points of damage, and launching it 10 feet into the air. It promptly falls back to the floor, taking another 6 points of falling damage. Raymond got into the act too, but the stupid thing was still - just - alive.

Louie swam across the stream to attack the Soloist that wasn’t his friend, and kills it in 2 hits. Dennis is starting to get annoyed by the Paladin and Rogue who can do astronomical damage to the opponents that he has helpfully paralyzed for them, allowing them automatic crits.

The active Soloist attempts to Polymorph us, but we made our saves, so he wasted that turn. Dennis paralyzes it, The Captain kills it, Louie makes his CHA save, and turns around and kills his “friend”. Combat over. That went pretty well.

Second combat, less so

Moving in to the next chamber, we see 2 vampires having a romantic dinner by the side of the stream. Dennis wins initiative, and thinks he’ll try ranged combat for a change. Won’t make that mistake again. He rolled a 1 both times for how many cards he could throw, and did negligible damage to one of the vampires. The male, a warrior, jumped across to the boat and immediately paralyzed Dennis. He then proceeded to whale on Raymond, completely missing the fact that Louie was in the boat too.

While this is going on, The Captain jumps ashore and starts hitting the female, a Sorcerer. He’s doing pretty good damage, but she’s regenerating like crazy, and he’s making slow headway. During this, she summons some swarms of bats, which are annoying.

Raymond goes down, and vanishes back to his home plane. A partially digested, dead, halfling clown with a dagger in his neck falls out, and we all wonder where that came from. At this point, Louie goes off. He starts beating the ever loving crap out of the warrior, with stacks of nice radiant smiting damage that prevents him from regenerating. That fool goes down pretty fast.

Dennis gets unparalyzed by Louie, jumps over to the Sorcerer to hit her, and she uses her reaction to paralyze him before he can get a shot off. She fires off a Mirror Image, so The Captain is sometimes doing damage, sometimes popping images. Just as Dennis gets unparalyzed again, she turns invisible and we can’t find her. She casts Blight on The Captain from hiding, the coward. We spend the time unparalyzing The Captain (when did that happen?) and killing bats.

After some soul-searching (impressive, as vampires don’t have souls, do they?), the Sorcerer decides to drop Concentration on Greater Invisibility to cast Slow on the party. Would have been good if we didn’t all make our saves. Louie had the next turn, and went over to the boat (where she was) and hit her - except for Silvery Barbs. He tried 3 times, and missed every time. But the 4th time worked - natural 20! Boom!

There was some cleaning up of bats after that, but it was a bit anti-climactic, to be honest. :)

Punished for being careful

The party was a bit worse for wear after that, and elected to take a short rest to regain HP. One hour later, we proceeded downstream.

We find Cicero strangling a boat, for some reason, while whining like a big whinger about something stupid that I should have remembered - apparently there are 2 characters that need to die before Hecna is mortal or some rubbish. Anyway, he sees us and says “So, you are here again!”. We assumed he was talking to Louie, because Dennis and The Captain were both invisible. Louie chats with Cicero for a while, and Cicero tells him Hecna charged in here half an hour ago and took his chair. The party is understandably disappointed by this. Louie asks where Hecna went, and Cicero points him in the direction of a closet. As soon as Louie moves to the closet, Cicero tackles him from behind, pushes him in, jumps in with him, and slams the door. Repressed and acting out, much?

Turns out, Cicero was only trying to possess Louie to use his body to escape. That was a relief! He rolled pretty well, too, but as Ethan learned, you just can not possess a Paladin. Louie then one-shotted him.

Louie got Cicero’s Baton, the Tunnel of Love disintegrated (which we are assuming exposed the vampired coffins to sunlight, finishing them off).

End scene

Cicero’s Jeweled Baton

Wondrous item, legendary (requires attunement by a bard, sorcerer or warlock)

This tarnished, ivory-colored wooden stick is bejeweled with rubies. The baton is cone-shaped, with a large fist on the thicker end. The baton can be wielded as a simple melee weapon, doing 1d8 bludgeoning damage. You have a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon.

Command Performance. Cicero’s Jeweled Baton has 5 charges. While holding the baton, you can use an action to put on a show (1 charge). You make a Charisma (Performance) check, which acts as the DC for each creature within 120 feet that can see you. They must use their reaction to make a Charisma (Performance) check, imitating your performance. If a creature fails the check against the DC set by your Performance check by 10 or more, it becomes stunned until the end of its next turn. If you use the last charge, you must roll a d20. On a 20, the baton regains one charge, and you have advantage on your next Charisma (Performance) check. On a 1, the baton is destroyed.