Don't step on my Bluetspur Shoes
Session Twenty-Four - Ethan's campaign goes off the rails.
More Plants! More Zombies!
After significant effort was put toward recreating the scene, combat resumes at the start of Round 4!
Round 4
Dennis stuns and paralyzes the crap out the hulk before him, then flies back up.
The Captain then double sneak attacks the same Hulk using his awesome Bow of Awesomeness, and kills it.
Louie and Raymond proceed to beat on groups 1 & 2 of the zombies goblins, destroying them both.
The Seer waves his hands in the air like he just doesn’t care.
The remaining Hulk flies up to Dennis, hits him and stuns him. Dennis falls to the ground.
Round 5
Dennis astonishes the hulk by unstunning himself, and flies up to him. Where he stuns and paralyzes him, and for some reason, this time that causes the hulk to fall to the ground. Dennis follows him down and proceeds to wail on him until he runs out of attacks.
The Captain reprises his customary role, and kill-steals Dennis’ hulk.
Three new seers are seen approaching. The one in the lead psychic bombs Louie. The second one kills Raymond. The third has a go at Louie, but misses.
Louie attempts to return fire, but it is limited in effectiveness, as they only take the magic portion of the damage.
The original seer summons The Emissary, a truly massive bastard of an abomination. We all hear a voice in our heads, but nobody remembers what it said because we ignored it. The Emissary vomits at Louie, doing 62 damage and creating 2 more hulks. The hulks then beat on Louie, dropping him.
Round 6
Dennis flies all the way across the map in a single turn, and punches Louie back to life, with a Flurry of Healing Hands for 42 HP healing.
(What did The Captain do this round?)
One of the Seers psychoblasts Dennis and drops him. The second hits him too, causing a failed death save.
Louie lays on hands for a measly 5HP, but Dennis is back up.
The Emissary blasts Louie and Dennis, and Dennis is down again.
A hooded figure appears and throws a disk in the air, which magic missiles Dennis through all his death saves. Dennis’ body vanishes. The three new seers and the hulks then focus fire on the hooded figure. The Emissary moves toward the Town Hall.
Round 7
It’s Dennis’ go, but he’s dead. He’s trapped in liquid. He can vaguely hear a conversation:
“This is a problem. We did not expect Vilgax to involve himself. We cannot afford to let him expose us.”
“He wasn’t meant to be there. Have faith. The plan will still work.”
“As far as we can tell, we have jammed all communication and prevented him from communicating with them directly.”
Now The Captain gets a go. He notices that Dennis’ body is gone. He attacks the Emissary twice.
The seers throw a psychoblast at Louie. The hooded figure casts shield on Louie, making him immune to psychoblasts. Louie looks at the disk that killed Dennis. It is playing Snake. Louie picks it up, and feels cold, and damp (just like home!). He smells refuse and filth (still like home!). He sees a canyon of rotted flesh and bones. Then he sees a flash of an image, of a trap door, then a manor. A successful history check and he recognises one of the buildings in town. It is the Rembrandt Manor. He yells this information to The Captain, then shatters the Hulks.
The hooded figure disappears. The seers throw a psychoblast at The Captain, which hits, but he uses Uncanny Dodge and halves the damage (after a short rule discussion).
The Emissary moves forward and his antimagic field reaches the Leomunds Tiny Hut, which disappears. Rusty springs into action, and picks up the Orb just as its Force Condom also disappears.
When he does so, The Captain hears the following voice speak in his head: “At last, the veil lifts; I can reach you. What you perceive is but a mirage. Dismantle another obelisk to unearth the hidden verity.” In an instant, the connection fades, leaving only silence in its wake.
Rusty hears none of this. He runs to the back of the Town Hall (just out of range of the antimagic field), drills a small hole through the back wall to peek through, cast Invisibility on himself and them Misty Steps 30 feet behind the town hall, at which point he takes off with his shiny new boots of flying. And keeps running. There was some discussion about truesight and nondetection later, but we eventually agreed that truesight did operate exactly like the spell true seeing, and so was considered a divination effect, which Rusty is immune to - so he gets away clean!
Now that the hooded figure is gone, the Hulks return toward Louie - but he shot their wings off earlier, so they’re walking now. The fall into the bridge trap and get mauled by sharks. Chastened and more careful now, they spot the web trap before hitting it, and walk around. They take swings at Louie, but miss.
Round 8
Dennis is still dead. The Captain runs into Rembrandt Manor (after a quick reliable lockpick) and finds the trapdoor, which he goes through after another quick reliable lockpick. Inside, he meets Not the Nothick, and after trading some secrets with him, Not guides him down into the canyon where he finds the still forms of Dennis and Raymond. He shakes them awake. Some more discussion with Not reveals that the hooded figures that delivered them took Blackrazor away with them - Raymond no longer has it. Raymond and Dennis are back on full HP and resources. Nice.
Raymond picks us all up and climbs back to the bottom of the trapdoor.
At some point last round or this one, Louie gets dropped and has to make at least one death save, which succeeds.
The Emissary vomits all over the Manor, dissolving large chunks of wall and roof, and badly hurting everyone inside. In addition, there are 2 new hulks outside the Manor now.
Round 9
Dennis flies straight up 55’ through the roof (taking some acid damage on the way). From there, he can see everyone on the field - The Captain is badly hurt, Raymond and Not are hurt, and Louie is down. Even Dennis is a bit poorly. He’s positioned himself well, though - exactly 60’ from Louie’s body, and 55’ from the rest of the party. He pulls out and reads his scroll of Mass Heal, bringing everyone in the party (including Not) up to full HP.
The Captain sneaks out of the cellar and sneak attacks one of the hulks to death.
Louie shatters the 2 hulks near him again.
The Emissary uses a psychic lash on Dennis, missing twice but hitting once.
Round 10
Dennis flies down to the original seer, hitting him once and critical hitting him twice, doing lots of damage. The card effect of his second critical was to allow another party member to also attack the target as a reaction, which The Captain took - also doing a critical, and thereby maintaining his long held practice of stealing Dennis’ kills! Unfortunately, killing the summoner did not unsummon the Emissary. Bugger.
The Captain, on his turn, proceeded to sneak attack the remaining hulk. His first shot with a rapier caused it to fall down and 5 feet back, so for his second shot, he used his bow - which ricocheted off the hulks boot, and struck the Emissary, killing it. As it died, it released a pulse of energy which killed all the abberations within range. This is a true account of exactly what happened.
Combat over!
The Captain tells all the villagers the good news, and proceeds to disarm all the traps. Rusty notices that the Emissary has fallen and slowly swings around to carefully return to town.
After much persuasion, the Captain convinces Dennis to suicide so he can get more intel on the hooded figures. We have Louie standing by, physically holding on to Dennis’ body, ready to cast Revivify. Dennis kills himself.
His body immediately disappears.
He hears the following conversation: “Don’t worry, they’re eating out of the palm of our hand. Where is Vilgax?”
“Our last ping showed he is moving toward Icewind Dale for the other shard. But with the subjects already having a shard, it will be a problem.”
“Don’t worry, Vilgax will be dead. He will be hunted by the silly one with the hat.”
“Wait, one of the subjects has died. It must be a glitch. Redeploy.”
Back in town, Louie is panicking. However, he notices some hooded figures moving through the Ethereal toward the manor. He waves at them, and they take fright and scarper.
Back with Dennis: “I don’t know how, but in our main deployment phase, they’re already there.”
“Don’t worry, put them in the outhouse deployment. They’ll never find them there.”
Back in town, Louie is now panicking more. The Captain thinks that the obvious solution is to kill himself, which he does. His body does not disappear, and Louie gets to revivify him - briefly.
While ‘dead’, The Captain hears: “I think they are starting to get suspicious. Reboot initiated.”
Combat over!
The Captain tells all the villagers the good news, and proceeds to disarm all the traps. Rusty notices that the Emissary has fallen and slowly swings around to carefully return to town.
Dennis notices he has a range of new scars that weren’t there before, and when he touches them, he has visions, returning to him his memory of what happened the last time.
How to get there.
Dennis tells the rest of the party what he remembers, and they start brainstorming what to do. Rusty is saying that he can grant everyone the ability to see the robed figures with See Invisibility, but the spell to interact with them is too high level for him. Etherealness is a seventh level spell. However, he should be able to craft some Oil of Etherealness with a bit of time - for some reason it is much lower rarity than the level of the spell would suggest. Now if he can just work out a recipe.
The Captain interrupts, saying “We need to go the the Ethereal, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“To the Ethereal what, exactly?”
“The Ethereal plane.”
“And how do you move between planes?”
CLANG. That was the noise of Rusty facepalming. Moments later we all form a circle and Rusty transports us all to the Ethereal Plane using a Plane Shift spell from his Amulet of the Planes.
It is immediately apparent that we are now in Bluetspur.
The moment we arrive we hear a voice, we are approached by a figure who says “I am Vilgax. I mean you no harm. I see you have escaped the simulation. I believe your true bodies are imprisoned in Mt Makab.”