10 Lamashan 4715
Sunday
Session 37
-Rebellion Turn (Mechanics in Sesh 39)
-Meet the Black Eyes Street gang
-Head into the tunnels below Lucky Bones
Session 38
- Initiative against Otyughs
Session 39
Zach manages to place Ayse and Ham back on safe ground, when Ayse says he spots something at the bottom corner of the pit. Zach flies him in but they don’t see anything further. The lever for the trap is found, and once flipped, the platform ringing the pit returns. Ayse deduces how the trap works and conveys that to the party. The group reconvenes to push further in.
At the far end of the hall are a set of double doors with a strange, hazy symbol on them. Unbeknownst to them, the symbol takes on a different shape for each person:
- Ham saw Raven with a white half-mask
- Ayse saw a burning house
- Tahllulah saw mangled devil silhouette
- Lucius saw a flaming great sword
- Perfidus saw a humanoid forehead with ruby
- Zach saw a fish symbol wearing armor
Much conversation and consternation ensues regarding the symbol and its meaning, but Ayse is able to identify it as an arcane lock with some strange, exaggerated effects. he pulls out a scroll of knock and disables it for 10 minutes, but the doors behind don’t budge, so Ham and Zach destroy them. Whilst this occurs, Ayse and Lucius look to the text on the symbol which was written by the Hellknights that sealed this section off. It reads something to the effect of “This place is sealed by the authority of the Hellknights of the Torrent, may the souls of the Gray Spiders put to rest here be damned”. Looking beyond the now open doorway, the halls splinter off to many more doors. Knowing that the cultists couldn’t have gone that way, the group continues to the only other remaining door.
Ham hears strange chanting from within, and shoves the doors open with his shoulder. A brief conversation occurs, as the group takes in the massive chamber beyond, filled with multiple statues, many cultists, a giant wasp, and an altar with a woman lain across. The “leader” of this group, identified by her ornate wasp-like mask, invites the group in, so Ham takes a step and the floor before him erupts in an explosion.
Combat ensues.
The Ravens are swarmed with nets and rays of magic, as they struggle to get a foothold into the room. Two devils appear from stealth, and deal massive damage with their polearms. Ham and Perfidus are caught by abyssal bleeding wounds, and Ham nearly goes down. Perfidus manages to catch one of the cultists in a bead of force, and bisects the room with the dome of force it produces. Tahlulah fires of a bolt of electrical magic, the power of which staggers god himself, and nearly fells one of the devils in a single hit. The group pushes to stabilize and even the odds, while the leader goes invisible and starts to skulk around the outskirts of the room.
One devil is dropped, and the wasp follow shortly behind, emboldening the Ravens grim outlook as they redouble their efforts.
Session 40
In the midst of the fighting, the invisible leader dashes out of the entryway according to Ayse, While the remaining devil is smashed by Zach. Lacula is grabbed by one of the cultists, and threatened as a hostage, though she’s quickly dispatched and the cultists are felled one by one. Eventually, the only enemy remaining is the final cultist who was trapped in the done of force. While waiting out the expiration of the magic, the party sets about looting the room, and comforting Lacula, who is slowly rousing.
Ham, Tallulah, and Zach discuss the nature of Zach’s body in the material plane and take stock of what he does and doesn’t have (ie. blood, clothes, genitals), and how Tallulah professed love for Lacula mid fight. Ayse pulls Lucius aside while Perfidus looks after Lacula. Ayse expresses concern over Lucius asking him to make drugs. Says Lucius has been acting strange, and gives Lucius a vial of something, but refuses to say what it is when Lucius asks. Lucius gets frustrated as Ayse continues to dodge the question and just keeps saying that something is up with Lucius. Lucius argues that he’s upset that Ayse is “prescribing” him something, not telling him what it is, and that Ayse doesnt even know what (if anything) is “wrong”, on top of also not getting what he asked Ayse to make.
Ayse finally relents, and tells Lucius that its an anti-plague to help fight disease. Lucius reminds Ayse that he’s immune to disease. Ayse says hes just trying to help, and Lucius says that this is in no way helping and trying to prescribe something to someone when you have no idea whats going on is concerning. Ayse brushes this off, and say to let him know if theres anything he needs, and Lucius says yea “ the stuff I asked you to make that you said you would” and Ayse returns to looting.
Lucius opens the final door, finding a small sleeping room/shrine area. He goes about destroying the shrine, breaking a profane statue, and coincidentally finds a strange, black scroll with silver/white writing, amongst a few other ordinary scrolls not from the statue. He puts a few other texts, along with the scrolls, into his bag, and takes a seat on the cot to smoke.
Perfidus finally gets Lacula up and talking, though she looks run ragged and distressed. She starts asking after the twins, and reveals that they were going to tell her how she died. She tells the story of two strange figures walking in to her shop and telling exotic tales to catch her attention. They made claims that they were going to fix things in Kintargo, and convinced her to follow them to the casino where they beat and bound her and locked her away. Perfidus does his best to heal and comfort her.
As the timer on the force sphere get close to expiring, the other four Ravens sans Lucius cover the exits and try to convince the remaining cultist to give up. With seconds left on the dome, the cultist take a potion and goes invisible. The group tries to convince her further, but the door to the room Lucius is in opens. Perfidus commands Zach to get her. Zach runs in, yell to Lucius that they are not alone, and in one massive cleave he drops the hammer onto the invisible woman, killing her.
Lucius thanks him and asks Zach to take her corpse on his way out. He obliges, leaving Lucius to “meditate”. The party comb the ritual room for any remaining items or points of interest. The only thing standing out, save for the pink dust carried by each cultist, is a strange symbol carved into the wall behind the main statue behind the altar. Lucius eventually makes his way back out, and gets Zach to help him move the statue, revealing what Ayse identifies to be the symbol of Norgorber. Lucius askes Zach to remove it, and the earth breaker gets to work.
With the symbol removed, and only the hallway behind the lock remaining, it is decided that Zach and Perfidus will guard that hallway entrance while the rest of the party quickly returns Lacula to Setrona at the Nail. While dropping her off, Setrona remarks on the number of poeple the Ravens are dragging out of the “abandoned” casino, and states that the Dotarri were at the Iudimus tenement when she returned the twins, and are taking credit for their return. A quick 20 minute round trip, and the party reunites outside the arcane lock, which has since reformed and is once again blocking the hallway, despite the door being gone.
Ayse whips out another “Knock” spell after ensuring the group has one more to get out at the end of their exploration. They push into the sealed off wing of the complex, searching door by door down the first hallway, revealing multiple rotted bedrooms with opium pipes. They get to a larger double door at the end, and open it to find a sort of dining room. Multiple boxes and shelves of items cover the walls of the oval shaped room, with a long table in the middles surrounded by chairs.
As the group steps in, they notice a skeleton on the far wall, as a strange form begins to wisp up from it, forming into the incorporeal shape of a halfling woman….
Session 41