Session 18, 2008-03-14: The Big Bang

Session 18: wherein a failed quest leads to an exploding temple, and the calling card gets bigger

Players (Characters)
Scott (Filthy Ike)
Jeremy (Flynn Flamm)
Tony (Brother Jakob)
Rachel (Lotus)
Tom (Nathaniel Graythorne)
DM: Catherine

The party spent the next few days in Old Westlay, waiting for their next assignments. Ike and Lotus hung out in the fields, and Lotus made crop circles with her force dinosaurs. As Lotus was out in the fields, she noticed a Marruspawn skulking around spying, and resisted its aura of forgetfulness. Back in town, a little kid asked Jakob "are you a real ogre?" Jakob replied "I'm just a half-ogre." The boy said "wow, that's really cool!" Flynn came upon a group of street musicians competing over a small pot of gold, and decided to accompany a lady who was playing the flute. Needless to say, she won the competition. Gary Stonehearth, a shopkeeper and old friend of Flynn's who'd been watching the competition, called Flynn over. "I remember you; you played the best bass lute in all of Westlay!" He asked Flynn if he'd cleared up the assassination rumor, saying it made no sense for a failed assassination to get him accepted into an elite group of assassins. "Sounds like nobles makin up some hullabaloo", he said. In any case, Mr. Stonehearth offered Flynn an ongoing discount at his shop.

As the party was walking through a run-down part of town, they heard a group of guards yell "hey" and a voice call back "no, wait." A group of guards came running past, and Jakob headed to the corner to see what was happening. There stood a yuan-ti and a human warrior wearing a yellow cloak. Jakob stepped to the front of the pack and used a Shadow Garrotte strike on the yuan-ti. The yuan-ti tried to push Jakob back with telekinesis, and the human called out "you moron, don't!" Nate tried to unluck the yuan-ti as the fighter called out "stop, I command you all, in the name of the house of Grayn!" The guards moved to surround the yuan-ti, saying "don't listen to the illusion!" But Flynn recongized the man, and his name -- Martin Grayn was one of the prisoners who had been rescued from the yuan-ti camp. Flynn yelled out "halt in the name of the kingsmen!" Jakob moved between the guards and the yuan-ti and boomed out "He said, STOP!" The guards and the yuan-ti both stepped back. Martin Grayn said "now, that's enough of that. This guy is a friend." One of the guards was upset, saying "wait, he killed my brother at the gate!" "He's a friend now. Back off." Martin Grayn explained that the yuan-ti had been a prisoner along with the rest of them, and they'd let him out. They were now forming an adventuring group, the Brotherhood of Solace, to rescue other prisoners. Nate offered the yuan-ti a cast of Veil to keep him from getting attacked everywhere he went, and the yuan-ti and Nate swapped knowledge of certain magical effects (Unluck and Shatter Mind Blank.) Nate later learned that Grayn was a shortened form of Graythorne, and that Martin was likely a far-distant relative.

The party met back in the throne room with Joanna and Kerastrix. Also in the room was a goofy little gnome with a huge red device marked "DO NOT TOUCH!" Ike went to fiddle with the contraption, but Jakob wrapped a hand firmly around Ike and held him back. Joanna spoke: "Serpenti has overracted, and most of their clerics are now in the siege camp, leaving their own country virtually undefended." Kerastrix said "the mongoose provokes its prey into striking over and over again. Once the snake is tired and overextended, the mongoose crushes its head. So it will be with you. You will go to the dark temple at Mel-Merrshaulk and destroy it, and the dark god will abandon his people for one hour. During that time, we will strike and kill them here." Westlay would provide sixty eagles and riders (only five had participated in the strike on the Insidious Anklebiters) and the eagles and the Brotherhood of Solace would provide a distraction. Gorlinook the gnome would bring along an "unstable contraption" to destroy the temple.

In the morning, the party headed for Mel-Merrshaulk invisibly and on eagleback, with Lotus flying as a normal eagle. Teleporting south, beyond the yuan-ti kingdom, the party noticed the landscape was entirely desert, warmer than expected for this area and time of year. Approaching the yuan-ti capital from the south, it was clear the town was mostly empty. The majority of the people were gone fighting wars. From about 20 miles out, Lotus, with her eagle eyes, could see the head cleric in the temple raising her arms. Suddenly, the party was in a vision.

The Ninja Mongoose Rockstars materialzed in a circular cave with a flat floor and a dark circle in the middle. Five poles had rings on them, and Seth Ness'n (who looked somewhat older) was in the process of placing a sixth ring on the sixth pole. A voice spoke out "the summoning is complete, the final piece is laid, now turn and slay your slayers." The cleric Lotus had just seen was standing on the other side of the chamber, again looking somewhat older, and a spherical cloud with tendrils appeared within the circle. Ike fired an arrow at Seth Ness'n. The voice boomed "no, that will not be done", and Seth Ness'n disappeared through the wall. Ike fired a shot at the other yuan-ti, and the voice again called "not too swift, are you?" as the cleric disappeared through the wall. Ike fired a shot at the strange cloud and yelled at the voice to shut the hell up. Jakob punched the edges of the cloudy creature, which reached out and grabbed him. Lotus flamestriked the cloud and Nate unlucked it. Flynn began signing and playing his healing harp, singing out a description of the undead strength-draining creature and how Seth Ness'n's Resurrection Quest was destined to fail. Ike fired four holy arrows into the cloud and Jakob swung all around himself, and both seriously wounded the undead thing. It clouded over toward Ike and pulled him in, but unluckily for it, drained very little strength. Lotus empowered a Sudden Stalagmite, and the unlucky thing got stuck to it and died. Nate placed a big illusory heart with the text "I wuv you guys, thanks for having us visit" in the middle of the room as the vision ended. Shortly thereafter, Lotus saw the cleric back in the temple, dejected as the Resurrection Quest failed.

The temple to Merrshaulk was atop a hill, and at the base of the hill was a second temple to Senneth, with some sort of cobra as its holy symbol. Several human prisoners were laid out in the sand next to that temple, and a few yuan-ti prisoners were laid on the ground next to the head cleric in the temple to Merrshaulk. The party landed on the roof and Gorlinook, with an eagle keeping him invisible, started preparing his contraption as Martin Grayn and the eagles prepared for their assault on the lower temple. In the chaos down there, hopefully nobody would notice the commotion at the top of the hill. Flynn cast invisibility and haste on the party, and set the Rod of the Mongoose to block sound. Lotus cast Death Ward on Jakob, Nate made the party look like marruspawn with Veil, and Flynn began his song as he signalled the eagles to open fire on the other temple.

Lotus' kelp strand wrapped around the head cleric, but slipped off of her. Flynn fired a shot from his bow of songs and started blocking telepathy with the Rod. Ike took a precise shot, and with a bit of luck from Nate's fatespinning, caused a grievous wound. Jakob jumped forward with a Wolf Fang Strike, numbing the cleric's arm and causing her to drop her scimitar. Nate's Great Thunderclap knocked her over, and Jakob broke her other hand as he pounded her to death. As she died, she still thought the party were marruspawn, and cried "I knew this day would come, you treacherous beasts!" Nate signalled Gorlinook to prep the bomb as the eagles pressed their assault, and he used an illusion to make the temple appear completely normal in the mean time. As the bomb counted down its last few seconds, Derex sent a message about an intercepted communication: the yuan-ti had just sent word that the eagles were in Mer-Merrshaulk and it was time to strike. The party got some distance on the temple as it exploded, and Nate put a huge Ninja Mongoose Rockstars logo in the sky above it. The eagles, NMR, the Brotherhood of Solace, and several prisoners on magic carpets started flying back toward Westlay.

Flynn reached level 13.