This post is mostly for Grant, Kelly, and Scott. Layth showed up last night and we soloed for a little while before Ashley got home and joined in. This is what happened.
So Bad Ray the katana wielding mage was wandering through a village on his way to Mistfall. He walks strait past the wailing woman in the town square and the creepy looking castle on the hill, but stops to help when he sees a little red headed kid being carried up the hill by a tentacle faced crocodile man. Ray climbed a tree and dive-bomb stabbed the thing in the head. Then he freed the kid and reverted to his initial strategy of ignoring the dungeon, continuing on his way to the big city.
Night was falling as he arrived in Mistfall, so Bad Ray naturally decided to wander around looking for a bank to rob. He glued (spell on page 8 of the 52 Pages RPG) the guard’s feet to the spot and murdered him from behind, but the victim was screaming for help as he died. People were coming, so Ray grabbed the dead man’s armor and ran to a tavern on the shady side of town, where he engaged in mutually consensual intercourse with an overweight young woman, whose name he forgot to ask. I guess that’s just what you do after you fail to rob a bank? After that he suddenly remembered the creepy castle and decided to go back.
That’s when Ashley got home so from here on in it makes a little more sense. Molly and Bad Ray found the secret back entrance and got in through the basement, where they found body parts everywhere in one room and a creature with one leg and four arms in the next, imprisoned in a giant glass ball with a magic circle around the base exactly like the Sandman.
Ray immediately befriended it, and it telepathically communicated to him and Molly that:
-it had followed a giant tentacled brain creature called a grell across the multiverse because it had taken its “other”
-that its other and therefore the grell were in this castle
-that the grell and its followers had known the friendly creature was on its way and tricked it
-that its supernaturally hard glass prison has a “molecular structure that should be vulnerable to the correct vibrational frequency” (whatever that means).
Molly tried to pick the lockpick her way into the treasury but that was a bust. They did, however, find a shrine to a tentacled brain creature (which matched the idol in the pocket of the thing Ray killed). Then they found the secret door that led to a pool of water with brain stems swimming around like sperm, and a re-statted mind flayer on a throne. After a short argument they killed the shit out of it, took its robe (which puts out all nearby light sources whenever its wearer sings the chorus to this) and staff, and headed upstairs. After a couple lobotomy-style-zombies almost killed Bad Ray, they headed back to town to stock up on healing potions and rest at the inn.
The next morning, they wake up to an armored man, accompanied by two robed figures like the thing Bad Ray ninja assassinated a few days ago, ringing the bell in the town square and demanding to know who had killed his father. Ray, being quite Bad, poked his head out the window and responded “I killed your daddy, beeyotch!” even though he legitimately hadn’t figured out who the guy’s dad was yet.
Molly dropped some burning oil onto one of the reptilian things as they approached the inn and sort of freestyle rappelled down to stab it in the neck when it stop-drop-rolled, while Ray set up a magic mouth + fear trap and hid in the closet (hurr hurr). The other monster failed its save and ran as the armored dude was climbing the steps, Molly close behind. Ray glued his feet to the spot and Molly tied him up from behind, then they tied him to a chair and tortured the hell out of him.
They learned that:
-the mind flayer was the dude’s dad…
-…who was in a transitional stage on his way to becoming a “higher power”
before they fucked up and told each other out loud that they weren’t gonna let him live anyway and he clammed up and got himself executed.
Then the a tavern worker, who (because I felt like it) was the mother of the little red headed kid Ray had heroically saved, came upstairs to assess the situation. From her, they learned that:
-the man they’d just tortured and killed was one Lord Highrock.
-everyone knows his father died years ago.
-she doesn’t know exactly how or when he died, and she doesn’t know anyone who was at the funeral.
-there aren’t as many people in Highrock Village as there used to be, but as far as the woman knows no one has died in years. She thinks they must have all moved or something.
-it sounds to her like those dead people Molly and Ray found were probably all from out of town, and therefore not her problem.
-no one goes up to the castle ever.
-she has no recollection of the bell ringing or the robed crocodilians. In fact, she doesn’t see the charred corpse of the one Molly killed even when she’s looking right at it.
-(I swear I rolled this one randomly on my rumors table) old man Highrock was once gifted a sword that, when struck against a hard surface, emits a single perfect and terrible note, unlike any sound heard in music or nature.
And that’s where we ended the session. They haven’t gone shopping for supplies yet, so think about what you want to stock up on if you’re showing up next time. It’s not a big town but there’s an apothecary that sells a few simple potions, ingredients, and alchemy equipment, a general store that sells basic equipment (we’ll say that includes matchlock muskets, powder and shot), and a few of the basic village services like a blacksmith and tanner.
