Magic Shop Owners Session 17

Session Notes

Calendar Date: 27-3-596

AI Podcast Overview (From NotebookLM)

To Cook a Body and Cut a Hole in a Wall

Level 1 Map from this session:

• The party awoke to the rattling of the door they had barricaded with furniture from Sarzan's living room in Stagbrook Keep
• The rattling suddenly stopped, the log fire that had been burning for centuries flickered out and then relit itself
• Blood began seeping from everyone's packs. One item from each of their bags had seemingly turned to blood. Moist had lost torches or food and nothing particularly important, but Stinkcat noticed Acman's Gem eye in their pack was vibrating and pulsing. After a short time this stopped.
• Gary the goblin was unfazed by this and slept though the commotion
• The group decided the eye had caused the blood and that they needed to get rid of it
• They then heard a shout from the other side of the door. The people outside claimed they knew who was in there and that they were looking for Sphonyx. One of them, Jutara a tiefling, was Sphonyx's long lost sibling and their others were her travelling companions. Magmaranium a dragonborn who went by Magma for short and Smuv a human arcane bard. They had found out where the party had gone by asking around in Stagbrook.
• Jatumal used his detect evil ability and determined that they were not directly evil, but told the party that his ability suggested bad intentions and that they could be dangerous.
• Sphonyx didn't know she had a sister but was excited about the prospect and encouraged everyone to let them in. Some of the others were wary, but Stinkcat helped Sphonyx unblock the door.
• Scared by the dragon scales and head of the Dragonborn Derek ran up and punched Magma in the face. Sphonyx cast an illusion on Derek so that he believed he was tied up and he couldn't move. Magma chopped Derek's head off and it rolled across Sarzan's rug trailing blood, Derek's body flopped to the floor.
• Geog instantly didn't trust Magma who had killed Derek when he was defenceless. Magma claimed he had attacked first and they had a long debate about this. Most of the rest of the party were wary but actually not too bothered about Derek's death. He had caused nothing but trouble for them. Maia said, "No point crying over spilt Dereks."
• Everyone in the room ran over and started looting Derek's corpse, grabbing what they could. Meanwhile Sphonyx and Jutara chatted about their heritage. Apparently they had the same father who had gotten around a lot, which was why Sphonyx was human but Jutara was tiefling. Jutara had come to reunite with her lost relative.
• Magma liked working with Jutara and was a friend and bodyguard to her, but had been cast out of his dragonborn clan which he had been heir to
• Smuv was an Arcane Bard who had me them on the road and decided to tag along
• Still slightly untrusting, the party decided these newcomers could tag along if they cooked and ate some of Derek. Magma attached him to his polearm and spit roasted him on the ever burning fire.
• It took a while for Derek to cook so Breadwig, Geog and Magma started experimenting with Acman's eye. Magma tried to swallow it, but began choking and had to have the Heimlich manoeuvre to get it out of his mouth.
• Breadwig decided to put the eye into Derek's disembodied head. A rag was put in the head's mouth to prevent it from casting spells if Acman possessed it and an eye was removed by Magma with his claws. The gem was stopped into the socket by Magma and Geog.
• The head rattled on the floor and then came to a stop. Breadwig tried removing the rag from the mouth but the head did not speak. They took the eye and head together and put them in Breadwig's pack
• Derek had cooked and everyone ate some apart from Breadwig and Sphonyx who were both human and disgusted at the thought of eating another human. Smuv, who was also human, didn't seem to care. The others were all different races and were completely unbothered
• After this most of the group were willing to accept the newcomers, Geog was still weary
• Gary woke up and asked what was going on. He was told to shut up by both Sphonyx and Jutara
• Next they travelled to the room to the north which was Sarzan's old bedroom. This was also very cosy compared to the rest of the keep like his living quarters.
• There were three pedestals in the room with items on them. Magma ran for one, Smuv for another, and Jatumal for the last. Magma found a helmet which had a red light on top which flashed when goblins were around dazing those around it. It dazed everyone as Gary stepped into the room. Smuv got a wand of fruit, which could transmute fruit into other fruit. Jatumal found a ring of charm human, which allowed him to cast charm on humans.
• It took a while for them to work out what each of these items did. The wand was identified with the index of wands that Jatumal had found in the library, Sphonyx recognised the ring's enchantment and they learnt what the helmet did by making Gary run back and forth from room to room.
• During this experimentation the rest of the room was explored. It was quite well decorated with tapestries and paintings. Some tattered robes were found and some surprisingly intact wizard hats. A few members of the group took hats of varying colours, they had no special effects.
• Behind a painting a secret door was found, chanting 'nepo' opened it and revealed the room where they had tapped the rust monster weeks before. It began running for the but Maia shouted 'esolc' to close the door before the rust monster reached it.
• Looking at their map they determined that they could cut a hole in the wall on the west of the bedroom to get to the passage there and avoid the rust monster. This seemed like the best way out now since the vault room was inaccessible. Geog initially began mining with a pickaxe that Maia had, but the wall was solid and he determined it would take at least a day to get through with his dwarf stone knowledge.
• Stinkcat then pulled out the crystal dagger and decided they could cut a hole with it. They could only cut as deep as the blade so would have to cut progressively narrower holes within holes, but would eventually get through. Stinkcat began cutting and Geog helped away while the others explored the nearby rooms.
• They found a room to the north of the room with the vats that had a huge carved map table of Elbon, but it was different. There was a large town where the Howling woods now were and a small settlement near Hazelmond. The other towns and villages on the current maps weren't there. Breadwig noted these down.
• They then moved into the painting room where they had taken Sarzan's painting from
• Countless paintings line the walls of the very tall room. They depicted various different scenes, most were landscapes or buildings.
• Breadwig pulled one of the walls of a sword in a stone. The back said "The Sword That Ended a Civilization"
• 'Nepo' was announced, the imaged shimmered, and the party members entered the painting
• Inside the sword in the stone shone in a forest clearing and a much younger Sarzan was humming away. He said, "Oh hello," enthusiastically.
• They questioned him for some time and discovered that each of the paintings in the room likely also had a copy of Sarzan in it. He would make a copy of himself inside the canvas to paint the paints for him and each had a snapshot of his mind at the time they were painted.
• Breadwig asked him about the sword and the painting while the others looked for the newest looking painting in the room. Breadwig discovered that the sword had been used by Redron, an elf, to end the war that had caused the great collapse. It was a magical sword that had allowed him to singlehandedly slay hundreds of dwarves that were coming to massacre defenceless elves singlehandedly. Then with the dwarven army dead the elves had intended to do practically the same in return. Redron had also slain their army. Redron then killed himself, upset at such a loss of life. The sword had been encased in this stone to prevent its use for evil. With all the great powers killed, and such a loss of population much knowledge both magical and technical was lost to time.
• Maia used her levitating boots and found a painting that was much less dusty than the others but it looked hastily drawn and was all in shades of grey. It was the opening of a cave with complete darkness at the end
• She brought the painting down from the top of the wall and the party went inside
• A Sarzan with no hair, who looked older than anyone that any of the party had ever seen was hobbling around inside
• He mumbled about the end, about stopping the evil from the depths, that he had done something unspeakable, let something awful out. He was mostly incoherent and begged for death. After attempted questioning he said little more, but asked them to go deep into the keep and stop what he had done. He did suggest that Acman's eye had half a soul in it though and that he had done a similar thing to his own soul many times. His soul had been split into chairs and sticks and a book. Acman was not him though, this was another wizard in the gem eye.
• They asked the younger Sarzan in the first painting about this and he knew nothing and said the original Sarzan would only visit him occasionally. The party agreed to take the young Sarzan painting with them, put Acman's eye, still in Derek's head, into the cave painting and used Magma's dragon breath to burn it.
• The cave painting created a huge column of flame that rose to the ceiling and then went out. It turned to ash and there was no sign of Acman's eye. It seemed that was the end of Acman.
• With that they returned to Stinkcat and Geog who had finished cutting the hole. They told them what they had found out and they all decided to go deeper into the keep to stop whatever Sarzan had started

Danger in the Darkness

• The party found on their map from Lucinda that the stairs to the lower level were south of the library
• They returned back to the room where they had dodged the disintegration wand with ease and then went through the room to the west finding a corridor with two dead ends. At the end of one they said 'nepo' and opened a secret door to the library. They began to question Sarzan's reuse of the same password everywhere
• In the library the ten of them worked together to throw all the books into the painting and Maia asked young Sarzan to paint a library to store them. He did and was happy to have something to do other than painting the landscape. He was also excited about the books. The party hoped that they could find Sarzan's soul tomb among them later and also do some research.
• They then moved south into a room with four stone statues of elves. Each had a stone sword apart from one who had a metal sword with a white gem in the centre of the blade and pommel.
• Magma and Maia tried to pull the blade from the statue. Magma was unable to and stumbled away but Maia pulled the sword away shattering the stone hand that had clasped it.
• The other hand of the statue grabbed out for the sword as all four statues began to move to attack. Maia was unable to keep hold of the sword as the statue shook her off.
• Sphonyx cast an illusion for the statues to believe a meteor had hit them. Four of them collapsed to the ground. Stinkcat ran along them chopping their heads off with the crystal dagger.
• Jatumal aimed a disintegration arrow at the chest of the still moving statue, the one with the gem sword. It caused the centre of the statue to crumble and the arm holding the sword fell away casting the sword along the ground.
• Everyone began attacking the still living statue. Many blows glanced off. Geog took a chunk off with Darkfire.
• The statue formed fire in the back of its throat and the spouted lava at Sphonyx and Geog. It burned and they had to jump out of little puddles of lava that had been produced.
• More blows glanced off the stone and then Jutara picked the gem sword from the ground and swung it at the statue. Electricity sparked around the statue and it crumbled to pieces on the floor. The sword was some for a lightning blade
• Geog was angry with Gary for not helping in the fight. He said they needed to pay him more, everyone had been alright anyway. He then told them how he had saved all of their lives they day before by killing the ant and unbinding Geog's armour.
• The party discovered a saw blade trap in the corridor to the stairs to the second level. Breadwig stuck his pole across a slit in the floor and it did a loop of the passage before returning into the wall.
• After some thought Geog discovered he could say 'mrasid', disarm backwards, to disarm the traps. This seemed to work on other traps in the keep too.
• Breadwig tried 'esir', rise backwards, to open the vault back up but that didn't work.
• They all went down to the second level of the keep
  Finding the Dragon Skeleton:
  
• The first room on the second floor was huge, bigger than any they had seen so far, with six giant pillars. Jatumal, Breadwig and Geog approached the centre of the room. Breadwig made himself invisible for this.
• In the middle was a giant dragon skeleton
• Believing they were safe, many of the party ran over to the Skelton. Jutara, Magma and Maia started to try to pry teeth from the skull and Jatumal climbed on top of it.
• While this happened Breadwig noticed the darkness wasn't right. It seemed to close. Then a tar-like black substance began moving across the floor and encased the dragon. It flowed around the bones continuously as the skeleton stood up.
• Most of the party were surprised. Smuv was able to run away. Jatumal shot a disintegration arrow at the neck of the dragon but it missed, passing through the gaps in the bones and creating a hole in the ground with a crash. Breadwig ran around the head and used his disintegration wand on the neck.
• The head of the dragon skeleton fell to the floor. Jatumal stumbled but held onto the dragon head and the tar like creature seeped off the skull and congregated on the rest of the skeleton where the bulk of its mass was already.
• The headless dragon skeleton stumbled forward and began flailing its limbs. They hit Jatumal, Maia, Geog and Magma hard, knocking Jatumal from the skull. Geog was badly wounded without the protection of his armour.
• Geog shouted over at Gary accidentally calling him Greg again and told him to use the wand of unbinding. The tar separated around where the wand hit and it was ineffective. Geog then picked up the goblin and swung him and the wand at the dragon casting the unbinding again with the same result.
• Stinkcat threw a lantern missing and creating a pool of fire near the dragon.
• Magma used his fire breath attack on the creature
• Breadwig used his healing wand on Geog chanting "Being covered in tar, is quite sub par. I am confident we will defeat this dragon, and then we will go to the tavern and raise a flagon," as he did.
• Geog threw Gary toward Jutara who ran to him and grabbed the wand of unbinding. She cast unbinding on the monster successfully. The tar dripped off the dragon bones and slid rapidly along the floor to a door. No one was able to stop it
• Maia recognised this creature from drow folktales that they used to scare children and prevent them from going too deep into the caves. It was an ebonoss, something no one she knew had ever actually seen before
• Everyone was worried. They were all badly wounded. They smashed up the dragon Skelton and took some teeth. Then decided to leave the keep and come back better prepared
• They made their way back to Sarzan's bedroom safely since they had now disabled most of the traps and defeated the monsters along the way. Any still armed traps they disarmed.
• In the corridor that had been opened up by Stinkcat the party made a shield formation with Maia in the lead. She stepped on a pressure plate causing the ceiling to crush down and then retract. Fortunately, she was able to quickly jump back before it squashed her.
• They chanted 'mrasid' and disarmed this trap too
• Through the corridor was some more loose debris from the ignid explosion which they were able to clear and soon they were back in a familiar part of the keep. They easily returned to the surface of Stagbrook from there.

Home Again

• Back in Stagbrook they all went to the Terrible Toad Tavern for a much needed pint.
• Inside they discovered that Pavnutia, the vampire, had gone missing and so had a couple of inhabitants of Stagbrook including the chicken keeper
• They paid Gary 1 platinum piece for good work, made him employee off the month and asked him to return to his job in Stonehaven
• At the shop Rodger sold Geog some chainmail armour to replace his old armour and asked them to set up some supply routes to other towns since Whiterock had fallen into chaos since the thieves guild had taken over. He was originally charging 500 gold and claimed that by bringing so much money into the town it was now worth nothing.
• Geog wasn't happy with this and they began haggling. Rodger wouldn't budge until Jutara mentioned returning to him at night. He said he wouldn't speak to anyone after nightfall and when they began prying he gave them the armour for 50 old as long as they stopped asking questions
• Magma and Smuv stayed and continued to ask questions and blamed the disappearances on Rodger. Rodger got increasingly annoyed and couldn't believe he was being blamed for the disappearances after living in the town for so long when the party had brought a vampire into town only a few days before. He made them leave his shop.
• That night they stayed up and watched Rodger's shop. He stumbled out not long before midnight and headed towards the Howling Woods. As he did there was a full moon and he turned into a werewolf. They left him be.
• Sphonyx decided that was her last adventure and that she would instead tend the Magic shop from then on.
• Stinkcat left for Demonhelm to try and buy better armour, magic recharge crystals and to see what they could do about setting up a trade route
• The others decided to stay in Stagbrook for a week or so to heal, tend to the building work in town, research immortality and what Sarzan was doing with his books, try to get the two Sarzan's from the paintings to communicate, see if they could find any leads on Pavnutia, see if they could find Sarzan's soul book, research the great collapse, and learn more about the deep places of the earth.
• Breadwig was also going to learn the spell to create a painted copy of himself from young Sarzan. Maia was going to try to do some good deeds to offset the evil that had been done by the party. Jatumal wanted to practice with his charm ring on the people of Stagbrook.
• They planned to spend a week or some doing these things while they recovered.

XP

1700 xp = 4 x Living Statue
175 xp = 1 x Rust Monster
800 xp = 1 x Ebonoss
1675 xp = total
2675/9 = 298 xp each

Published Content Used

• OSE (Classic and Advanced)
• Carcass Crawler (Various Issues)
• Creature Compendium