Really old Mutated Undead Turtle.

As the party finds itself spread around a turtle island, they see the Dreadnaught sail into view. The Captain, Dennis, and Thauvin stand on the upper decks, coming to join the fight.

Initiative! Horus gets 33. Dennis 26. The Captain 23. Rusty 23, but slower. Louie and Raymond 21. The Turtle 19. The Dreadnaught 17. Cleetus 14. Thauvin 13.

Round 1

Horus has to save against swamp slime at the start of his turn, and fails, so he is partially paralyzed. He still manages to shoot the turtle, but he misses. He gets to save against paralysis again at the end of his turn, and frees himself.

Dennis activates Step of the Wind, and brings Thauvia with him. They cross the map entirely to the point that Dennis identified as the most vulnerable spot on the turtles body. The Turtle spits crap at us as we approach - Dennis makes his Dex save and takes no damage. Thauvia also made her save, but doesn’t have evasion, and takes 49 necrotic damage.

The Captain fires an arrow from the Dreadnaught, but misses this things ridiculous AC. 29 to hit is insufficient. He gets the Dreadnaught to fire chains onto the beast to anchor it to the ship.

Rusty fails his save against the tendrils and is grappled. He takes a little necrotic damage, but otherwise does not care. He takes a swing at the tentacles with his hammer but is not capable of breaching that insane AC. Minion fires Shatter from his spell storing device, and does almost the minimum possible damage - 4 on 3d8 - which is then halved because this thing made its CON save. It did teach us that it is susceptible to Thunder damage, though, and takes a persistent penalty from the nervous damage. Wit also fails his save vs grapple, also doesn’t care, and casts Haste on Thauvia.

Louie jumps down into the cavern with Thauvia and Dennis and starts swinging. Turns out this is the vulnerable place because the AC is lower here, and Louie goes to fucking town. 56 damage, then 51 damage from two successive non-critical hits. Raymond joins the party with 42.

Now it’s the dragons turn, and it has incredible luck. It starts by getting a critical hit on The Captain, but Horus casts Silvery Barbs and puts a stop to that. The re-roll was a miss. Next it takes a swing at Cleetus, and gets another critical hit. This time Wit casts Silvery Barbs (though he was sorely tempted by Temporal Shunt), but this time the re-roll is still a hit. Cleetus takes damage, and is swallowed. The tail takes a swing at the people in the weak spot. Dennis makes his save and has evasion, so takes no damage. Thauvia makes her save, but takes half damage. Raymond fails his save but has evasion and takes half damage. Louie fails his save and takes full damage.

Finally the Turtle tries to submerge, but the chains from the Dreadnaught hold it up - on one side, at least. Thauvia jumps on Raymond and she, Raymond and Louie fly upwards away from the encroaching water. Cleetus is inside the beast, so it makes no difference to him. The Captain and Horus are on the up side of the Turtle and stay out of the water anyway. Rusty and Wit are grappled and pulled under, but they have a plan. Dennis is not grappled, but he just doesn’t care and stays on station. Above water, under water - it’s all the same to him.

The Dreadnaught gets a go. It fails its contested STR check, and the chains holding up the Turtle break. It then opens fire with its broadsides, but misses that stupid AC all 3 times.

Cleetus, inside the Turtle’s mouth, makes his save against being swallowed. He takes a fair bit of acid damage, but then does some amateur dentistry from inside and knocks out a few teeth, and the over-swing cuts through a cheek. His first hit is a crit, and when that happens, Dennis notices that a scale falls off the Turtle at the weak spot. Dennis relays this information to Wit, who passes it on to everyone else. Cleetus, emboldened by this success, keeps going and even uses his action surge to fish for more crits - but no luck. He finishes his turn by using some of his movement to exit via the hole he cut in the cheek.

Thauvia jumps down from Raymond and starts swinging at the beast, but she’s no longer in the weak spot, and cannot beat that ridiculous AC.

Round 2

Horus jumps down into the underwater cloaca where Dennis is. He attacks and does 19 necrotic with a crit, the card effect of which was that the beast gets disadvantage on attacks against Horus from now on. Unfortunately, the necrotic damage heals the beast for 39HP. This has the side-effect of confusing the stupid creature into thinking Horus was his friend, which gives Horus another free action. Learning from that mistake, he casts Guiding Bolt on it (radiant damage) and crits again! 43 radiant damage and a scale falls off, and the crit card says triple damage, so after some back and forth, 3 scales fall off! We’re at 5 from 6 required scales! Horus is the crit god.

Dennis now decides to go to work. He has advantage on his first attack (thanks Horus), and chains that up with every hit with his Gloves of Soul Catching to get advantage on all 5 of his hits. 10 rolls of d20, and not a single crit. A metric shitload of damage, though - somewhere in the range of 170HP. It’s looking even sicker than normal.

Now it’s The Captain’s turn, and Oh My God. He rolls a crit too, on a sneak attack, and somehow manages to draw the same triple damage card. 297 points of damage, and 3 more scales fly off the weak spot.

It’s practically dead now anyway, but Dennis applies the poison to the exposed area, and it dies for good now.

It’s final words, whispered to Cleetus (who is swimming by its head) are “Avenge the love I had in life - my handsome Zaratan.” Thauvin makes a survival check to remember that Zaratan is a mythical elemental turtle, who has been sleeping - pretty much forever. I’m certain that has nothing to do with the mountain range called “Sleeping Beast Mountains”. That’s definitely just poetic license for a volcanic range.

Off to Ludendorf

All aboard the Dreadnaught, we head for Ludendorf. A long rest is had by all. Rusty tries tinkering eye beam adapters for Wit, and succeeds on the Aversion, Fear, Psychic, Stun and Telekinesis rays. He fails on the Slow ray though, and will have to have another go later.

On our trip we pass Schloss Cutter, which appears abandoned. Rusty notes that for later squatting rights. We also pass Schloss Aubrecker, which The Captain informs us is the residence of Baron Vilhelm von Aubrecker, the ruler of Lamordia. He hasn’t been seen for 20 years, and all communication is through his butler. Not at all suspicious.

The Dreadnaught anchors in Ludendorf harbout, and we go ashore to find Professor Conrad Eisenheit. He turns out to be easy to locate, and we relay to him the events of Turtle island. He is saddened to hear of the death of his friend John Smith, but astonished that we dealt with the Turtle. He’s so happy that he ups the reward from one writ, to one writ each. Nice. He also gives us all photo IDs for University access.

While we are chatting, Dr Amelia finds us, and has a religious experience just looking at CC. She hands over a writ, and Rusty reluctantly transfers control of CC to her.

Louie is not, as it turns out, a diplomat

At the university, we see a noticeboard that alerts us to a quest:

URGENT: Investigation Required

The University of Ludendorf seeks qualified individuals to investigate the disappearance of three separate expeditions in the Sleeping Beast Mountains. All standard expedition protocols were followed. Each group maintained regular communication until final transmissions.

First Expedition (Six Months Ago): Four scholars investigating unusual lightning patterns in the eastern mountains. Last communication reported discovering stone structures of unknown origin.

Second Expedition (Four Months Ago): Military patrol of eight soldiers sent to locate first expedition. Final message indicated contact with hostile entities. Nature of entities not specified before communication ceased.

Third Expedition (Two Months Ago): Team of six mountaineers and professional trackers. Last transmission reported finding recent habitation signs, including tracks, discarded materials, and what appeared to be organised camps. Communication ended abruptly.

Compensation: 200 Lamodes for confirmed information regarding expedition fates. Additional 300 Lamodes for return of survivors. Additional compensation available for information regarding the source of disappearances.

Report to Administrator Kristoff Halmein

We also spot a young lady, carrying alchemical supplies and rushing to her next class. It’s Helena. Louie yells “Helena”, and she turns around. Louie obviously wants to run this interaction, so we leave him to it.

We should not have left him to it.

Helena takes it surprisingly well, probably only because Ethan was incapable of role playing that train wreck off the cuff. She proceeds to her next class, but Rusty was expecting another party kill attributed to blunt speech. She does tell us that her cousin, Joseph, has disappeared recently. She has been meaning to look into it, but hasn’t had time. We agree to do so for her. Everyone was feeling pretty sorry for her by this point.

Widow Kessler’s Rooms

Despite sounding like a house of ill repute, Joseph’s land lady turns out to be entirely unattractive, a bit suspicious, and smelling of burnt cabbage. We had almost won her over when Martin appears in Joseph’s rooms, sees us, and does a runner. Well, if they’re not guilty, why would they run? Thauvia takes off after Martin. I should point out that Martin is a weedy academic type, wearing glasses. Being spear tackled by Thauvia was probably a terrifying experience for him, and certainly a terminal experience for his glasses. Widow Kessler was not happy about us manhandling her patrons, but it was pretty obvious Martin was trying to hide something, so she gave us 5 minutes of leeway. Largely because Thauvia growled at her.

Martin crumbles like a biscuit in hot tea, and we end up learning quite a bit. Joseph needed money, and was considering doing some work for Professor Gedding, the head administrator of the University Hospital. He was concerned about the non-disclosure agreements that were required before they would even tell him what he would be doing, and more concerned that they required him to sign over his flesh rights. He was pretty sure that was illegal.

Martin was particularly concerned because another friend of his, Clara Brenner, also started work for Professor Gedding, and disappeared shortly thereafter.

Joseph’s lockbox yields 22 Lamode and some notes that corroborate Martin’s story. We release Martin, and exit Joseph’s room to find the Widow Kessler with 3 Helmed Horrors (the backbone of the Ludendorf constabulary) in tow. She yells out to Martin to see that he is all right, then dismisses the Horrors with an admonition to do better preventing graffiti on her back fence.

To the University!

First, we visit the library, and the staff there were unexpectedly helpful. The books we were looking for - anything by Rustinium or The Alchemist (who we now know is the good clone of Strahd) - were all missing. They are apparently in the possession of one or more high ranking members of the university staff, but the clerk would not reveal who. Depressed, we moved on toward the hospital.

On the way, we stumble across a ridiculously popular lecture being given by Professor Henry Vilmer, or who we know as Joseph Mengele. He was talking about his experiments in preserving life in cerebral tissue after bodily death, and has apparently made some progress. It seems obvious to us that he is just chasing the work already done by Dr Mordenheim, and is also conducting highly unethical experiments on living subjects. Well, living subjects at the start of the experiment, anyway.

We also note that there are 2 students in the audience that appear extremely uneasy with the lecture, but we’ll have to follow that up later.

Rusty notices another lecture theatre across the hall, much smaller, where Professor Kellen (his name was written on the blackboard) is giving a lecture on Cephalopods. This caught Rusty’s attention for two reasons. The runes that Professor Kellen is writing on the blackboard are written in Qua’lith, the language of the Mind Flayers, and also because Flumphs are Cephalopods. Indeed, there are drawings of Flumphs on the blackboard. Rusty asks Louie to take a close look at Kellen, because the only way he could have seen a Flumph was if he had come across Rusty’s parents. Rusty thinks this is Xal’itith in disguise.

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