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Again we didn't manage to do a lot of things in email in advance of the situation.
Dramatis Personae:
Viepuck, Speaker-to-Luggage, and his familiar Es*tiaslos
Izgil, mooning about as usual
Celyn, who did not get enough stabbing in
Robin, who had a really rough couple of days, and his companion/mount Greymalkin
When we left off, we were escorting a troupe of Tyrwinghans to safety southwards through the territory of the Hunter, a fey with the back end of a bear and the top half of a human who has been abducting people, particularly Tyrwinghans as it happens.
So. We have this piece of glass that if we look through it shows up some people as shiny. Robin is very shiny. Celyn is nearly as much so. Izgil has a hint of shininess to him. Viepuck is not shiny at all. This was being used to find best targets for abductions, from what we could determine.
Viepuck decided to talk to it, and we assembled a set of questions to run through, such as:
You're a broken piece, how many other pieces are there?
What do you understand about your purpose?
How many harpies are there?
Have you seen any captive humans?
The thing's memory is only good for 24 hours, with vagueness before that, but we determined there were five other pieces, and a few other things, including that it was grumpy about being a broken piece and preferred its previous existence, when it reflected the world back and made it beautiful. Izgil is raring to fix it if we can find the other parts. Izgil is also fascinated by the spell that animated the thing long enough for it to be interviewed in the first place.
We travelled through a village we had been to before (the one with the moon temple where Izgil nerded out with the administrator for a day or so) and everyone got a look at us and slammed their doors. We talked to the administrator, who was wary of us and freaked out about Robin and Greymalkin in specific, and managed to coax out of him (after Robin removed himself from the vicinity) that messengers had once again said the party was dead and they were being impersonated by malevolent fairies, and this time it was working for local sentiment, especially since we had educated them about being careful of impostors. We also heard that several villages had been attacked by harpies but nobody had been taken. Having obtained this information we decided the best way to prove that we were not in fact there to trick them and harm them was to bugger off. Celyn went to go comfort Robin, who was wearily bitter about the hostile fey getting their jollies in this regard.
We got the people somewhere where they could get to where they wanted to go without being abducted by hostile fey, and hiked back up a ways and crashed out in a barn, basically. Watches were planned: Celyn, then Robin, then Izgil who can see perfectly well in moonlight (and the moon rises around midnight in current phase), Viepuck.
We were all awakened in the second watch by the sound of Greymalkin losing his temper and fighting something. We get up to find he is fighting a bear, that two giant vultures are in the vicinity, and there is another bear coming in.
We also find that Robin is absent, and his hammer, shield, and lamp are discarded on the ground.
We are not best pleased. Izgil takes out the bear Greymalkin is fighting and the other vulture with a spell. Celyn expresses his displeasure with the situation by teleporting on top of a vulture and sticking his sword into its back, which the vulture found quite startling and alarming actually. (Celyn has gotten better at remembering his entire bag of tricks when he has lost his temper.) While we clean up the remaining stuff (including Celyn killing the vulture he's riding and crashing to the ground) Viepuck casts a fly spell and heads off in what he thinks is the most plausible direction for Robin to have been abducted in.
We finish the fight. To everyone's moderate startlement, Greymalkin, who has only previously communicated telepathically with Robin, roars a furious threat of violence directed at the enemy fey (who he has hated for quite some time, given among other things that they stole his wings). Celyn grabs his armor and puts it on, then heals himself and Greymalkin, and picks up Robin's things; then he and Izgil get on Greymalkin to chase the presumably-harpies. This is a bit tenuous and we suspect we were not going to catch up before getting to the Hunter's lair only we used another fly on Greymalkin, and then a dust of flight, and managed to get enough in range to a) take pot shots at the harpies and b) for Greymalkin to yell in Robin's brain enough that Robin snaps out of the enchantment spell he was hit with and starts to wiggle to slow the flight down. (He has four harpies carrying him, one per limb.)
Eventually the party achieves close enough that Robin breaks an arm free entirely (he had been holding back for a moment) and starts to actively fight. Es*tiaslos zooms up to the cluster to illuminate them with a carried light spell so it is easier to target them at range, and Viepuck faerie-fires the cluster, getting 3/4 of them. Izgil casts a spell that has gravity effects, affecting half the harpies and making it hard for them to coordinate. Celyn puts an arrow through one, which Robin then stabs with the dagger that he had handy, sending it plummeting to its doom. ("Drop your stuff" does not mean "strip off your utility gear", after all.) The leader harpy tries to enchant the party, and only manages to hit Greymalkin, who winds up frozen in place and profoundly stressed out. Eventually Robin breaks free, Izgil catches him with a feather fall, and the party finishes off the harpies so nobody can come back to report. Robin snaps Greymalkin out of it and hugs Celyn, who stays very close to him as they go back to their campsite, re-sort their stuff, and pay the farmer there to keep an eye on the horses so the party can go deal with the problem.
One of the harpies was carrying a satchel, so Viepuck interrogated it, determining that there were about a dozen harpies remaining (before we killed four), that the camp was busy doing something, possibly leaving? Harpies had been sent to "scout the way", and they would be moving out "as soon as the prisoner arrives". Welp.
(In retrospect, the more sensible thing than what we did would have been to bring the horses with us to the abandoned village and stable them there, but we didn't have the plan to go to the abandoned village at the time.)
We went to the village we had evacuated previously to camp and rest up before going into direct conflict with the Hunter again. While doing so, Viepuck sends a message to the Hunter saying, basically, "Where is Robin if you give him back I'll let you go" and getting a response of "Send Celyn to negotiate and we can talk." Es*tiaslos sneaks up behind the lair and listens at the wall to hear that there is someone sounding smug; this helped Celyn use a potion to place a clair(voy|audi)ence spell in the room and overhear the Hunter using the Duskhound to communicate with the Gloomshaper about how he had found two excellent candidates and expects his trap to snare them soon. The Gloomshaper responds that regardless of success or failure he should come back, because the shifter fey was dead and the Midnight Lady (the hag) had betrayed them. Welp, again.
We assemble a plan that goes roughly like this: using Es*tiaslos's scouting capacities, we know there are two harpies apparently dozing on the cliffs, a bear on patrol, an assortment of ravens present; in the cave appears to be the Hunter and a Duskhound. We will have Celyn and Greymalkin go in the front door as if we are there to parley, Robin (invisible) will be nearby, Viepuck and Izgil will take the different cliffs overlooking the space.
In the game of escalating tit-for-tat, Celyn's sense of how to negotiate parley is not to come in as a petitioner, but to gank the sentry. Celyn is very, very angry; Celyn's two moods this session were roughly 'furious' and 'fussing about Robin'. (But also a weak play doesn't do the right psychological things and starting the fight like that means that the bad guys aren't present at the beginning and we can take out the minions.)
The initial plan is for Greymalkin and Celyn to approach subtly. Greymalkin, who has also lost his temper, is approximately as capable of subtlety as a brick to the face (and rolled like a 3 on his stealth check). He at least did not charge the bear with a battlecry, but the bear sure saw him coming. So Celyn stabbed it; so Izgil dropped a spell severely injuring the harpies; so Viepuck cast a damaging darkness spell over the entrance to the cave. The ravens woke up and started to gather at a stump that seemed to have been decorated; one harpy tried to charm the party (failed) and the other tried to hurt Izgil (failed).
Izgil drops a spell that has one harpy and the ravens all staring at the moon, but the Hunter appears at the stump anyway, hurls a spear at Celyn and then teleports to the spear's location, and demands, "Where's Robin?"
"I see we're negotiating," Celyn says, as he kills off the sentry.
"You started by attacking my bear."
Around this point Robin fairly literally leaps into the combat and hits the Hunter upside the back of the head with a critical hit with the hammer (doing nearly 50 points of damage) and Celyn said, "Behind you."
(Greymalkin is doing a lot of roaring and not a lot of hitting, meanwhile, and Celyn has private thoughts about yeah, remembering how to fight when you're spitting mad is actually hard.)
The fight continues, with the Hunter continuing to try to stomp Celyn into the ground (to the point that I cast my illusory double and had it heal me because it can't suffer from attacks of opportunity)*. The guy has an attitude problem and keeps yelling "lie down dog" at Celyn, who keeps making his will saves. Robin has a few more criticals in there. Izgil makes Robin Large again. Viepuck tries to get the guy to drop his spear, which he makes vanish and conjures a new one while saying, "No."? We are a little unclear on the deal here. At some point Es*tiaslos spits poison in his face that makes him drop his spear anyway, then steals it and drags it out of immediate grab range. In short, we beat it down to the point that it starts looking Really Worried and peering back towards the cave entrance (through the black darkness of the Hunger of Hadar) but finally the Duskhound, a bit the worse for wear, emerges.
* The bad guy's response to the clone was "I'll take both of you and leave Robin alone" which was clearly insincere on several levels among them that he clearly could tell it was an illusion. That just made Celyn angrier.
The Hunter orders it to stay here and hold us, casts misty step, and gets the hell out of dodge, pursued by Es*tiaslos and Viepuck. Robin and Celyn and Greymalkin are left dealing with the Duskhound, which we are diligent about. It, at least, is focusing attention on Robin, who has both the armor class and the hit points to handle that sort of attention. (Even on misses it does 4hp damage.)
The fleeing Hunter is basically rolling down a cliffside (though competently enough to not take damage) and Viepuck drops another Hunger of Hadar in his way, but he blasts through fast enough to only take one round of damage even with the speed reduction involved. Es*tiaslos gets a few poison shots off, one of which confuses him about his running and sends him back our way for a moment before he resumes fleeing, but the matter of actually chasing him down and finishing him off is not complete. Viepuck sits down and basically starts crying because if he'd cast a fly rather than the hunger he might've been able to keep up long enough to eldritch bolt the guy to death. Robin and Greymalkin are deprived of appropriate closure, and Celyn still has not, as he wants to, skewered that guy's eyes.
There we end.
Dramatis Personae:
Viepuck, Speaker-to-Luggage, and his familiar Es*tiaslos
Izgil, mooning about as usual
Celyn, who did not get enough stabbing in
Robin, who had a really rough couple of days, and his companion/mount Greymalkin
When we left off, we were escorting a troupe of Tyrwinghans to safety southwards through the territory of the Hunter, a fey with the back end of a bear and the top half of a human who has been abducting people, particularly Tyrwinghans as it happens.
So. We have this piece of glass that if we look through it shows up some people as shiny. Robin is very shiny. Celyn is nearly as much so. Izgil has a hint of shininess to him. Viepuck is not shiny at all. This was being used to find best targets for abductions, from what we could determine.
Viepuck decided to talk to it, and we assembled a set of questions to run through, such as:
You're a broken piece, how many other pieces are there?
What do you understand about your purpose?
How many harpies are there?
Have you seen any captive humans?
The thing's memory is only good for 24 hours, with vagueness before that, but we determined there were five other pieces, and a few other things, including that it was grumpy about being a broken piece and preferred its previous existence, when it reflected the world back and made it beautiful. Izgil is raring to fix it if we can find the other parts. Izgil is also fascinated by the spell that animated the thing long enough for it to be interviewed in the first place.
We travelled through a village we had been to before (the one with the moon temple where Izgil nerded out with the administrator for a day or so) and everyone got a look at us and slammed their doors. We talked to the administrator, who was wary of us and freaked out about Robin and Greymalkin in specific, and managed to coax out of him (after Robin removed himself from the vicinity) that messengers had once again said the party was dead and they were being impersonated by malevolent fairies, and this time it was working for local sentiment, especially since we had educated them about being careful of impostors. We also heard that several villages had been attacked by harpies but nobody had been taken. Having obtained this information we decided the best way to prove that we were not in fact there to trick them and harm them was to bugger off. Celyn went to go comfort Robin, who was wearily bitter about the hostile fey getting their jollies in this regard.
We got the people somewhere where they could get to where they wanted to go without being abducted by hostile fey, and hiked back up a ways and crashed out in a barn, basically. Watches were planned: Celyn, then Robin, then Izgil who can see perfectly well in moonlight (and the moon rises around midnight in current phase), Viepuck.
We were all awakened in the second watch by the sound of Greymalkin losing his temper and fighting something. We get up to find he is fighting a bear, that two giant vultures are in the vicinity, and there is another bear coming in.
We also find that Robin is absent, and his hammer, shield, and lamp are discarded on the ground.
We are not best pleased. Izgil takes out the bear Greymalkin is fighting and the other vulture with a spell. Celyn expresses his displeasure with the situation by teleporting on top of a vulture and sticking his sword into its back, which the vulture found quite startling and alarming actually. (Celyn has gotten better at remembering his entire bag of tricks when he has lost his temper.) While we clean up the remaining stuff (including Celyn killing the vulture he's riding and crashing to the ground) Viepuck casts a fly spell and heads off in what he thinks is the most plausible direction for Robin to have been abducted in.
We finish the fight. To everyone's moderate startlement, Greymalkin, who has only previously communicated telepathically with Robin, roars a furious threat of violence directed at the enemy fey (who he has hated for quite some time, given among other things that they stole his wings). Celyn grabs his armor and puts it on, then heals himself and Greymalkin, and picks up Robin's things; then he and Izgil get on Greymalkin to chase the presumably-harpies. This is a bit tenuous and we suspect we were not going to catch up before getting to the Hunter's lair only we used another fly on Greymalkin, and then a dust of flight, and managed to get enough in range to a) take pot shots at the harpies and b) for Greymalkin to yell in Robin's brain enough that Robin snaps out of the enchantment spell he was hit with and starts to wiggle to slow the flight down. (He has four harpies carrying him, one per limb.)
Eventually the party achieves close enough that Robin breaks an arm free entirely (he had been holding back for a moment) and starts to actively fight. Es*tiaslos zooms up to the cluster to illuminate them with a carried light spell so it is easier to target them at range, and Viepuck faerie-fires the cluster, getting 3/4 of them. Izgil casts a spell that has gravity effects, affecting half the harpies and making it hard for them to coordinate. Celyn puts an arrow through one, which Robin then stabs with the dagger that he had handy, sending it plummeting to its doom. ("Drop your stuff" does not mean "strip off your utility gear", after all.) The leader harpy tries to enchant the party, and only manages to hit Greymalkin, who winds up frozen in place and profoundly stressed out. Eventually Robin breaks free, Izgil catches him with a feather fall, and the party finishes off the harpies so nobody can come back to report. Robin snaps Greymalkin out of it and hugs Celyn, who stays very close to him as they go back to their campsite, re-sort their stuff, and pay the farmer there to keep an eye on the horses so the party can go deal with the problem.
One of the harpies was carrying a satchel, so Viepuck interrogated it, determining that there were about a dozen harpies remaining (before we killed four), that the camp was busy doing something, possibly leaving? Harpies had been sent to "scout the way", and they would be moving out "as soon as the prisoner arrives". Welp.
(In retrospect, the more sensible thing than what we did would have been to bring the horses with us to the abandoned village and stable them there, but we didn't have the plan to go to the abandoned village at the time.)
We went to the village we had evacuated previously to camp and rest up before going into direct conflict with the Hunter again. While doing so, Viepuck sends a message to the Hunter saying, basically, "Where is Robin if you give him back I'll let you go" and getting a response of "Send Celyn to negotiate and we can talk." Es*tiaslos sneaks up behind the lair and listens at the wall to hear that there is someone sounding smug; this helped Celyn use a potion to place a clair(voy|audi)ence spell in the room and overhear the Hunter using the Duskhound to communicate with the Gloomshaper about how he had found two excellent candidates and expects his trap to snare them soon. The Gloomshaper responds that regardless of success or failure he should come back, because the shifter fey was dead and the Midnight Lady (the hag) had betrayed them. Welp, again.
We assemble a plan that goes roughly like this: using Es*tiaslos's scouting capacities, we know there are two harpies apparently dozing on the cliffs, a bear on patrol, an assortment of ravens present; in the cave appears to be the Hunter and a Duskhound. We will have Celyn and Greymalkin go in the front door as if we are there to parley, Robin (invisible) will be nearby, Viepuck and Izgil will take the different cliffs overlooking the space.
In the game of escalating tit-for-tat, Celyn's sense of how to negotiate parley is not to come in as a petitioner, but to gank the sentry. Celyn is very, very angry; Celyn's two moods this session were roughly 'furious' and 'fussing about Robin'. (But also a weak play doesn't do the right psychological things and starting the fight like that means that the bad guys aren't present at the beginning and we can take out the minions.)
The initial plan is for Greymalkin and Celyn to approach subtly. Greymalkin, who has also lost his temper, is approximately as capable of subtlety as a brick to the face (and rolled like a 3 on his stealth check). He at least did not charge the bear with a battlecry, but the bear sure saw him coming. So Celyn stabbed it; so Izgil dropped a spell severely injuring the harpies; so Viepuck cast a damaging darkness spell over the entrance to the cave. The ravens woke up and started to gather at a stump that seemed to have been decorated; one harpy tried to charm the party (failed) and the other tried to hurt Izgil (failed).
Izgil drops a spell that has one harpy and the ravens all staring at the moon, but the Hunter appears at the stump anyway, hurls a spear at Celyn and then teleports to the spear's location, and demands, "Where's Robin?"
"I see we're negotiating," Celyn says, as he kills off the sentry.
"You started by attacking my bear."
Around this point Robin fairly literally leaps into the combat and hits the Hunter upside the back of the head with a critical hit with the hammer (doing nearly 50 points of damage) and Celyn said, "Behind you."
(Greymalkin is doing a lot of roaring and not a lot of hitting, meanwhile, and Celyn has private thoughts about yeah, remembering how to fight when you're spitting mad is actually hard.)
The fight continues, with the Hunter continuing to try to stomp Celyn into the ground (to the point that I cast my illusory double and had it heal me because it can't suffer from attacks of opportunity)*. The guy has an attitude problem and keeps yelling "lie down dog" at Celyn, who keeps making his will saves. Robin has a few more criticals in there. Izgil makes Robin Large again. Viepuck tries to get the guy to drop his spear, which he makes vanish and conjures a new one while saying, "No."? We are a little unclear on the deal here. At some point Es*tiaslos spits poison in his face that makes him drop his spear anyway, then steals it and drags it out of immediate grab range. In short, we beat it down to the point that it starts looking Really Worried and peering back towards the cave entrance (through the black darkness of the Hunger of Hadar) but finally the Duskhound, a bit the worse for wear, emerges.
* The bad guy's response to the clone was "I'll take both of you and leave Robin alone" which was clearly insincere on several levels among them that he clearly could tell it was an illusion. That just made Celyn angrier.
The Hunter orders it to stay here and hold us, casts misty step, and gets the hell out of dodge, pursued by Es*tiaslos and Viepuck. Robin and Celyn and Greymalkin are left dealing with the Duskhound, which we are diligent about. It, at least, is focusing attention on Robin, who has both the armor class and the hit points to handle that sort of attention. (Even on misses it does 4hp damage.)
The fleeing Hunter is basically rolling down a cliffside (though competently enough to not take damage) and Viepuck drops another Hunger of Hadar in his way, but he blasts through fast enough to only take one round of damage even with the speed reduction involved. Es*tiaslos gets a few poison shots off, one of which confuses him about his running and sends him back our way for a moment before he resumes fleeing, but the matter of actually chasing him down and finishing him off is not complete. Viepuck sits down and basically starts crying because if he'd cast a fly rather than the hunger he might've been able to keep up long enough to eldritch bolt the guy to death. Robin and Greymalkin are deprived of appropriate closure, and Celyn still has not, as he wants to, skewered that guy's eyes.
There we end.
