Players (Characters)
Scott (Filthy Ike)
Jeremy (Flynn Flamm)
Tony (Brother Jakob)
Rachel (Lotus)
Tom (Nathaniel Graythorne)
DM: Catherine
For destroying the goblin army, Minellin presented the Ninja Mongoose Rockstars with rewards for "conspicuous awesomeness". He also noted that, during the cleanup of the goblin army, the Waecleftian soldiers found a note on one of the Marruspawn wizards. It detailed the thirsting's harsh effect on Mitzram, and requested that a particular harvest of "northern sweetblood" be increased, for treatment purposes. A map sketched on the back showed the location of the harvesting operation.
Nate disguised the party as Marruspawn wizards and teleported everyone into the eastern forest. Jakob ran up a tree, just because he could. Ike started looking around and soon discovered a tap had been placed in one of the beech trees, and the sap was slowly draining into a bucket. Lotus cast Speak with Plants and got some information from the tree. A group of Marru had been around, putting taps in several trees in the area. They came around about once every other day to collect the sap, and were due sometime later today. Lotus also discovered the tree's favorite color was green.
Ike found some Marruspawn tracks in an obvious circuit and started tracing them backwards. Soon, the party came upon a large marruspawn who looked to have martial training, as well as a smaller marruspawn whose primary purpose was carrying buckets. Flynn turned Ike invisible and Nate made Jakob look much like the big marruspawn. As Flynn questioned the big marruspawn about his operation, including its production rates and such, Nate probed the enemy's thoughts with a pair of spells. He got details on the marruspawn camp and harvesting operation, including the names of this pair (Miniset and Mirok), as well as some details about the thirsting, an ancient curse from an area called the "black hole". He also discovered the marruspawn called NMR "the scourge of the north", which was not nearly so clever as "the chord of DOOM!" At the appropriate signal, Flynn made it clear the Scourge of the North was here with a loud chord, and Ike's precise shot (137 damage) and a disintegrate spell from Nate (113) slew the larger enemy. Jakob leaped at the smaller enemy and killed it with a powerful swing, and Lotus went back to talking to her tree-friend George. As the party was discussing strategy, Jakob experimented with the sap, finding it destroyed a patch of black sand nearby.
Nate disguised himself as Miniset, Jakob as Mirok, and Ike, Lotus, and Flynn as wizards. The party set out for the hidden marruspawn camp, and with details about the illusion hiding it, everyone but Ike was able to see right through the spells. Nate yelled at the bucket-carriers: "go pick up all the sap we left behind. It's out that way!" He'd hoped to separate them from the camp's more powerful residents to make the fight easier. As the weaker creatures were walking away, a wizard stepped around the corner and immediately recognized the party's illusion, yelling out "we're under attack!" Ike pelted the wizard with poison arrows, and Jakob leaped forward to trip and stun the wizard as well as one of his allies. Lotus drowned the stunned wizard. The bucket-carrying marruspawn surrounded Ike and let out stench-filled breath, leading Ike to exclaim "dude, that was a good one! Now pull my finger!" The fighter next to Jakob tried to stand and immediately found himself back on the ground, and another wizard stepped around the corner where Nate was waiting with a spell of Feeblemind. One more fighter stepped around the corner and, thinking Jakob was the little marruspawn Mirok, tried to walk past to join the fight. Jakob tossed him on the ground.
With that, Flynn pulled out his lute and started singing, and Nate boomed out "the scourge of the north is here!" Ike fired four arrows, killing the three enemies that had surrounded him. Jakob pounded on one of the tripped fighters, leaving him so close to death that a bolt of lightning from Lotus killed him. Nate cast solipsism on the other fighter, leaving him in a dreamworld, and leading Lotus to ask "would you cast that on me later? It looks fun." Jakob and Ike finished off the last pair of lesser marruspawn. The party contacted Minellin to let him know about the outpost, the tree sap, and so on. Minellin teleported in to examine the teleportation circle, discovering it led to the center of a large city within Mitzram. Soon, a group of kingsmen arrived to take the base over.
Two days later, Flynn recieved a summons. As a prince of White Fields, he was to participate in a governmental decision. The party arrived at an open theater in White Fields, where several nobles stood nearest the leader whose position they agreed with. Joanna explained: an army of marruspawn was less than two days away, and the attempts to excavate Old Westlay continued to fail. She suspected Mitzram would offer Westlay the same deal as they'd given Serpenti: serve, or die. Charles of Eonsburg suggested Westlay do the honorable thing, and stay to fight. Kerastrix suggested Westlay flee to the stone tower mountains and seek allies. Abel Flamm suggested Westlay should pretend to surrender to Mitzram and then strike them from within. Each presented a basic statement, and the party moved to stand by Kerastrix.
Kerastrix began the argument: "This is the most dire threat to our kingdom since the War of the Ten Kings. The lesson we learned then is that we must unite or we will lose." Flynn added "we have seen how they operate. You cannot stay and try to serve them partly. You will be slaves at best, and fodder for vile sacrifices at worst. Our only hope is to fight together. It's not honorable to stay and lose and eventually die; the marruspawn want us to do exactly that. We shouldn't fight them on their terms." Abel countered "staying and pretending to serve gives us the most flexibility and versatility." Flynn shot back "there is no flexibility under their rule; you do what they want or you die." Abel again countered "it's least disruptive to our lives if we simply stay here." Flynn's response was devastating to Abel's position: "the marruspawn disrupt everything. If they want something you have, they'll kill you and take it." Throughout this argument, nobles from Abel's coalition, as well as some from Charles', shifted closer to Kerastrix and Flynn.
Charles objected: "we can't abandon Old Westlay! Many of our friends and family are still buried, and we can't let Mitzram simply walk in and conquer them." Flynn answered "by staying to fight, we doom Old Westlay to destruction. We can't win by fighting here." Nate added "we must win, first and foremost. Losing the war is just as bad for Old Westlay as abandoning them; either way, they'll die to Mitzram's onslaught. We have to agree to do what it takes to win, and only once we've decided that can we decide how to rescue them too." By this point, Flynn had persuaded the majority of the nobles that leaving to find allies was the best choice of action. Joanna, on a flying carpet above the middle of the assembly, called a quorum and started moving toward Flynn to declare the decision of the council.
Just then, Lotus noticed some slight distortions in the air, and Jakob heard movement -- invisible creatures were nearby! Lotus cast True Seeing and spotted a group of black yuan-ti abominations with strange tatoos. She called out "assassins!" Jakob's finely tuned hearing let him grab a hold of the nearest enemy, who had been approaching Flynn, and toss it to the ground, where he stood on top of it. That yuan-ti tried to get up but Jakob kept it down. Another yuan-ti leaped onto Menco Flamm's flying carpet and stabbed him with a blurry blade. A third turned the ground beneath the majority of nobles into boiling mud, and a fourth turned a few nobles to salt. Ike, who was standing at a distance in the bleachers (in order to avoid offending the olfactory senses of the nobles) gave himself True Seeing. Lotus tried to drown an abomination, but it was too hearty, and simply spit the water out of its lungs. Kerastrix grabbed and started chewing on one of the spellcasters, and Flynn inspired the party to fight more effectively. Nate disintegrated the invisible blob Kerastrix was busy chewing on, leaving the old dragon with a mouth full of gray dust.
The nobles, surprised by the sudden outbreak of violence, started to flee as Joanna sent for help. Jakob jumped onto Menco's carpet and knocked down the attacking yuan-ti. Still, it was able to stab at Menco, whose lifeless body tumbled off the carpet and into the mud. Another yuan-ti moved beside Nate, and the final one cast flaying windburst toward Lotus and the fleeing nobles. Ike saw Nate was in trouble, so he rained arrows down on the abomination, killing it with a critical hit (and some luck from Nate.) Lotus spit in the eyes of the remaining caster, blinding it and making it that much easier for Kerastrix to maul, though the old dragon, inspired by Flynn's singing, had no trouble tearing the abomination apart. (Nate observed "Kerastrix" rhymes with "ass kicked".) Flynn dispelled the invisibility on the final yuan-ti, allowing Nate to trap it in its own mind with solipsism. Jakob snapped the abomination's neck, and within a few seconds, some local clerics had arrived to restore Menco and other nobles to life.
With the excitement over, Joanna called the meeting back to order, and the assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining with any allies who could be found. As the vote was going on, the party realized the assassins had focused on Menco and Flynn first and foremost. Nate suspected Abel may have been involved, so he borrowed the rod of the mongoose and a spell of invisibility from Flynn, and cast probe thoughts on Abel. He learned that Abel hadn't planned the assassination, but was aware of it through some "contacts". The assassins targeted everyone who wanted to flee -- everyone who wanted to do the one thing Mitzram wasn't planning on. Abel had little other information to offer.
The yuan-ti abominations had tatoos with symbols of Senneth.
Jakob reached level 15.
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