Radha Felflame 4/6/23

 We begin with Trieskan, who is deftly climbing down the side of the bridge to join the action, seeing several of his colleagues covered in a spectral web, as well as the wizard who is running away from the party being chased by Bingdor's magical triangle.

Trieskan takes a shot right at the wizard with the crossbow, rolling a 23 on the hit dice. Regular damage will be dealt. DM does some math and begrudgingly acknowledges a hit. Damage roll - six whopping damage.

The wizard takes the arrow and he yelps an agonizing yelp. Everyone heard the arrow - a real thump into the crazed wiz.

Braces turn. He misty steps behind the wiz. taunting him meanly "counter spell this, beyotch", aiming to sweep the legs of the wiz with the warpick. Attack roll comes out on the table, with a twelve. Damn.. It's a miss. The wiz in his pain and pathetic state and despite the advantage Brace had with his sneaky move, jumps over the warpick. Now Brace bonks him on the back with a nat 20, for a 27 to hit. Damage roll comes out on the table for 13 damage. The wiz is knocked unconcious.

Heyyyy!

Brace has a look to make sure the wiz is still alive, and is able to deduce that he's still alive, clutching the spellbook in his arm. Brace attempts to snatch the spellbook from his hands. As he gets closer to the spellbook, he starts to feel static energy, and decides to try and wedge the spellbook out with the warpick, and it knocks it loose easily. As soon as he tries to pick up the book he feels a powerful static shock, and quickly drops the book.

Brace with some quick thinking wraps up the book in his warm winter blanket and no longer feels any static. Good thinking.

The party considers how best to constrain the wizard so that he can't misty step away. Ireena starts rifling through the wizards pockets and scores a few silver. A little disappointing, shouldn't be loaded with cash?

Trieskan offers to keep an eye on the wizard while the rest of the party grabs some dinner. Bingdor decides to investigate the nearby fire pit. Sure. Brace looks around the room and Bingdor looks at the pit. A couple bad investigation and perception rolls leave the party without a lot of additional information. Some Amazon packages with blank notebooks, and a general/average room. There's a pile of boxes with a layer of dust on top of an old linen table. Brace opens the top of the box with a box cutter and inside he finds... some picture frames in the plastic/cellophane packaging. There's a ton of these frames - a wholesale amount of frames. At first the frame is totally blank, and an image slowly reveals itself. It's a cleaner looking Mordenkainen.

Up on the bridge, there's a slight whirring sound barely perceptible to Bingdor.

Brace tries to smash one of the picture frames. He hits against the floor a couple times. It's not even glass - more of a fake composite material. The picture slides out. He rips up the picture which falls to the ground, and there's no more phantasml image. He works further down the room and discovers a stone staircase. Brace wants to move up the stairs.

Radha wants to have a closer look at the wizard, thinking maybe he's possessed by the Old Ones. A weak arcana roll doesn't reveal any obvious afflictions or possessions. Trieskan hogties the wiz. Brace decides to give the wiz a good old sip of old Holy Water. Nothing happens though! The team decides to head up the staircase with Brace tossing the wiz over his shoulder. At the top of the stairs is a stone trap door with a latch. Trieskan steps in to examine the latch and door, checking for traps. He scans for anything noticeable and is confident there aren't any and is able to move with a push, and carefully opens the door all th eway. As soon as the door is opened all the way, it slams back down. He hears a chittering insect above and a plume of dust falls onto the party, causing temporary blindess to the crew. With his darkvision he can see the outline of an empty room. Trieskan hoists the wiz up. Not as heavy as he thought, and he chucks him over onto the floor and climbs out onto the next floor. He fires up a torch quickly and immediately notices some new activity. There's a pile of stones in the corner and two sets of antennae flickering around and two sets of insect eyes, and they get irate at the full light of the torch.

Trieskan draws his sword and lets the gang know that we have company up here. The gang remembers having encountered them before. Trieskan tries to encourage the creatures to move by waving the torch in their direction. Trieskan takes some rope and aims to spider crawl to find a place to hang the rope. Stealth check roll. 21 on the roll. Super stealthy, nimbly nimble guy Trieskan makes his way through the rubble and scaling up the wall, pushes the door that's not even locked. He's in another familiar room with empty notebooks and workbenches. He yells down to the group to come on through, the insects are no real danger.

Bingdor climbs up the rope - super easy - and enters the workshop storage room. Brace goes next, carrying the wiz on his shoulder. Dexterity check roll with disadvantage - it's an 8. He jumps over the rubble and starts pulling himself up. The insect creatures start making a move on Brace. They are creepy - the size of small dogs. Something attracts them to Brace at lightning speed.

Initiative time.

The creepy crawlies are after Brace and his armor starts corroding in front of the party's eyes.

Brace's turn. Wiz over his shoulder and the creepies crawling up his back. He decides to power bomb, plummeting down to the ground. Brace rolls a solid athletics check of 22. He feels that his entire back is now exposed and bare. The crawlies ate through the back of his armor. Radha and Ireena take a look at Brace's back. He's surpisingly bony - less bulky looking without the armor.

Brace now has a -2 AC hit due to the coroded armor.

Brace takes the wiz over hsi shoulder again and climbs up the rope and makes it to the top, no problem. Radha climbs up the rope, with Ireena bringing up the rear. Everyone is back in the first storage room. It's a small room

Mordenkainen starts stirring. Brace offloads the the spellbook to Radha. Ireena jabs Brace in the exposed part of his back. Brace starts a controlled burn of some of the boxes and closes the door behind him. The party is now in the foyer area. The party decides to take the western door up, to the larger foyer with a checkerboard floor and a grand staircase with a red carpet. The party heads up the staircase. Brace takes a step and hears a click. Trieskan wants to take a quick look to see what Brace might be triggering. Trieskan slices through the carpet and sees that the tile pushes down slightly. Trieskan is unable to discern whether or what is triggered at first glance. Trieskan notices only sconces. Bingdor casts detect evil and good to see whether that might reveal anything from the triggered step. The DM sends Bingdor a private message. From what I could deduce, it had something to do with which auras Bingdor could see, but we will never know..


Brace prepares to misty step on the count of three, with the rest of the team holding the rope. Brace misty steps from the center of the pedestal. After the teleport the party can hear the floor click and before mordenkainen can hit the ground, the party pulls him towards them, and he is being dragged along the floor, pulled all the way. Trieskan decides to walk carefully up to the ornate doorway, seemingly not triggering any new traps. Trieskan carefully handles the doorknob, which opens pretty easily. He pushes the door slightly to take a look inside the room. A natural 20 on the perception roll (+4). Trieskan immediately closes the door and senses a creature right behind the door. He couldn't tell what it was but that it was approaching the door too quickly for comfort.

Brace heads toward the door, leaving the Wiz at the end of the hall. Bingdor readies a magic crossbow action - if required (i.e., as long as it's not a child on the other side of the door). Brace readies a defensive action. Radha readies an Eldritch blast.

Trieskan opens the door..

Immediately two blue spectral drooling dogs run out the door dashing at Brace. Radha and Bingdor decide to stand down. Trieskan, however, launches a bolt at one of the beasts. The beast takes a direct hit and slides down to the floor and into the wall and out. The other Mastiff stops in its tracks, sees the other hound is down and runs over to the other Mastiff and sniffs it and nudges it with his head. It takes a look at Brace and growls loudly at Brace and runs at Brace. It attempts to bite Brace in the neck. Even with disadvantage the beast rolls a 19, dealing Brace 7 piercing damage. Brace's spiritual strength allows him to stand his ground, but he rolls a 2 on the followup nature roll. Brace notices that the dog is angry. Brace thinks it's Mordenkainen's dog - "yo I think it's his dog, I saw it in the picture but he's trying to fucking kill me" and wails at the pup with the warpick. The dog takes a direct blow, and falls to the ground, lifeless.

We end shortly after the beast slaughter. gg's see you next time :)