Week 9: How Attractive!

(Alac was absent from this session. Her character is working with the mages guild to help apprehend the corrupt leader of the city guard!)

Our heroes reunited in the city limits to retrieve the sizable bounty on the vanquished Gnoll assassin. Fortunately, they now had the 10,000 gold required to purchase a charter on a military ship, which had been their goal up until now! Artix may be a little apprehensive of the water though, considering he critically failed an Endurance check against a waterborne disease in the first roll of the session...

The party was surprised to once again find High Warlord Octavius, who had sent them on their mission in the first place, waiting on them in the customs office. It seemed that, although he was very grateful for all of the work they had done, Octavius had one final favor to ask them before the party set sail for dangerous waters: a Thalassian spy, responsible for couriering messages between the treacherous guard captain and the enemy nation, must be found and taken alive for questioning.

After a small amount of sleuthing, our heroes set off for the Great Temple of Erathis*, where the spy was believed to have been posing as a monk. The church itself was an imposing sight, with towering minarets of verdigris-tinged bronze and cyclopean stone masonry, but the bishop was more than willing to guide the party through the labyrinthine temple. Mysteriously, Sister Eleanor, the “monk” in question, was not found in her designated workshop, but rather in the clock tower, tinkering with mysterious glass tubes and metal objects.

*In the DnD universe, Erathis is the god of civilization, progress, and innovation.

Rolith explored the rooftops while Ai No Miko, Dumoose, and Artix “casually” watched the exits of the temple, making sure their quarry would not escape. Cysero decided to play it cool and bluff his way into making Eleanor believe that he was on her side, which seemed to work for a while, but Eleanor was not so easily fooled. She led him to the roof where, with her nefarious intentions hidden from Cysero, she hoped to silence the meddling rouge.

Setting up for the upcoming fight...

Of course, she didn’t know that Rolith heard them coming! He, more afraid of confrontation than gravity, precariously dangled himself from the roof, but was able to climb up in the nick of time and score a surprise round on Eleanor! The rest of the party heard the commotion and arrived soon after.

Eleanor was a powerful Thalassian artificer who wielded a clockwork gauntlet capable of creating magnetic fields around both herself and her enemies. The party was in for quite a surprise when each of them received either a positive or negative charge; being adjacent to someone with the same charge sent both players flying away from each other, and being adjacent to someone with the opposite charged caused both players to become slowed! Worse still, Eleanor commanded magnetic orbs which would fly around the combat area, knocking players over and then detonating with a huge blast radius!

The party’s movement was extremely limited in this battle, and they always had to think on their toes (and in some cases, off their toes!) One particularly hilarious predicament happened when Cysero was knocked into Artix, who was standing near Rolith… and all three of them were positively charged. The result? Cysero spinning wildly in the air between the two warriors, suspended by magnetic force until the bond was broken! Even more funny was when Rolith was stricken with one of Cysero’s crossbow bolts and Ai No Miko’s “Gaze of Defiance” spell in rapid succession when they critically failed… ouch!

During the fight, Artix, Dumoose, and Cysero were all knocked unconscious, although no one died thanks to the diligent efforts of Ai No Miko. Her rapid response was so valuable that it kept Cysero healed and fighting through several near-death experiences! Those exploding orb-bots were pretty nasty! Then again, Cysero did say that Eleanor's country was "ugly" and "smelled like dead cats."

Through perseverance, the party managed to achieve their goal despite Eleanor’s considerable lockdown of their movement abilities. The Thalassian spy was knocked unconscious and taken in for questioning. The party even discovered the strange mechanism she was using to transmit her coded messages to Thalassia.

High Warlord Octavius was overjoyed, both for the party’s heroic actions and for the fact that he finally had enough evidence to apprehend Bruno, the corrupt city guard captain. Everyone was awarded a Medal of the Bronze Defender and promised an exclusive magic item from the city’s well-funded armory!

Next stop, the high seas!