Rise of The Runelords: Chapter 4

Burnt Offerings Part 2

We started our latest session deep in the bowels of the Temple of Wrath beneath Sandpoint. Seeing as we had expended many of our spells and abilities on that stupid quasit fight from the last post, we elected to spike the door to the temple shut and attempt to rest. But as with all good plans, this one was destined for failure. Within merely an hour someone came knocking at our door.

"Open up!" said a voice in goblin, "I must see Mistress!"
Jinx was the only one in the party who spoke goblin, and he reacted on instinct. "What's the password?"
Jinx's bluff roll is bad, due to Charisma being a dump stat, but whomever is on the other side of the door is even worse.
"What password?" it asks.
"You need password to see Mistress. No see her without password."
"Oh ok, can you give her message? Tell Mistress there are intruders."
"Sure. I tell"
"Oh and what is password? For next time."
Jinx consults his die. "'Poodle' is password."
"Thank you."

Sadly it didn't work for long, as we didn't get a full rest period before the pounding on the door returned, this time with a shout of "POODLE!!" The mutant goblin owner of the voice, it turns out, was able to spit acid and ended up dissolving the door and coming to see what we had done with its mistress. Needless to say this mutant, three armed, low ph goblin was taken apart bit by green smelly bit.

The rest of the dungeon was actually pretty uneventful because there were many monsters left. There was a room full of zombies in holes which probably would've been more of a problem if there'd been... well... anything else in there as well, but there wasn't so we just dispatched the zombies and looked around a bit.

It's odd what players will fixate on sometimes. When we found a strange room on which a levitation spell had been made permanent. Inside floated some objects: a book, a scroll, a wand, and a dead raven with maggots floating around it. It look suspicious so we hesitated entry at first, but after a Detect Magic spell and a high spellcraft roll revealed it to not be dangerous, Jinx deftly flew in and retrieved what items seems valuable. Afterward Storm insisted on retrieving the raven's body, even after being told it wasn't magical, and seemed very disappointed that there wasn't more to it

After leaving the temple/caverns/tunnels/dungeon under the glassworks, we rested and recouperated in the local inn and then met with the town guard. Seeing as the bad dude we'd killed last time's journal said the goblins were planning on attacking the town, we decided to take the fight to them.

So we traveled out to Thistletop and broke in, fought some goblins and discovered a gobin shaman. Jinx did a Reckless Dweomer in hopes of triggering some sort of bad news wild surge against an annoying goblin druid, but it just succeeded to cast Burning Hands and did two damage. Which is where we decided to end the session.

Rise of The Runelords: Chapters 1-3

Burnt Offerings Part 1

Since I'm starting this log some time after our 4th session of play, I'm going to give a quick recount of the first few sessions without worrying too much about getting everything down just right. I'll try to be more detailed in later posts but this is just to catch us up to the present.

The story starts in Sandpoint, a small town on the Varisian coast. Our heroes have gathered with many others for the Swallowtail Festival the town is hosting to commemorate the consecration of the town's temple. We listened to some speeches by the mayor and the sheriff and so on, until *gasp* goblins attack!

Storm distinguishes herself early, racking up massive blow after massive blow with her trusty earth breaker. Roger, Maple, and Maple's roc (named Rocky) all did their various parts, whilst Jinx took cantrip potshots at the occasional goblin to little effect. But a well-timed Color Spray does incapacitate a cluster of targets, letting the rest of the party dispatch them at their leisure.

The town counts themselves lucky to have had such a band of adventurers in their midst to come to their rescue, and rejoices. We so impress one of the nobles of the town that he invited us to go boar hunting with him.

Before retiring though, we are led to investigate the nature of the raid, and find that the real goal of it was to allow someone to sneak in and make off with the body of the town's former priest, Father Tobyn. Intrigue is afoot!

The boar hunt goes fairly swimmingly, with Maple's detect animal spell allowing us to spot a second boar hidden among the foliage before it managed to surprised us. But a fateful attempt at a sleep spell by Jinx results in his trusty magics running wild and (unbeknownst to the party at the time) enlarging the height of all gnomes within many miles by nearly two feet! Any gnome who failed the save is a medium sized creature!

The party is later approached by a fearful woman, who tells them of trouble at her house and a 'monster' in her child's closet. But the monster is a mere goblin and is dispatched with ease. Although not without a wild surge silencing a party member and many townsfolk.

Then the party is approached by a servant of the local barkeep, with whom we have been quite friendly during this time, to tell us she has gone missing and providing us a note in a foreign tongue (which our learned barbarian could decypher) leading us to investigate the local glass works.

Inside were more goblins under the command of the captured barkeeps evil monk half-brother, whom we ended up splattering to a wall (thanks again to a high damage roll from the earth breaker). On his person we found a journal written by no sane hand that talked of demons and in the basement were smugglers tunnels that led to a demonic warren of some kind.

As is our way, we stumbled upon the hardest fight of the dungeon almost immediately, a summoning quasit with an evil pool from which she could spawn creatures. In fact, her combination of flying and damage resistance was causing us a lot of trouble until an attempt at a magic missile by Jinx strangely caused the quasit's dress to spring to life and devour her. In the same battle, another wild surge had caused the stone to soak up the liquid of the pool as well. Leading to Jinx effectively and completely accidentally taking care of the two largest threats we would face.

Notable Loot:
+1 Ring of Protection for Jinx

Introductions

Cast of Characters

• Jinx
• Tiefling Wild Mage: Our hero or our villain or the guy in the middle or the guy on the edge. It all depends on the roll of the die!
• Player: Scott
• Roger
• Human Cleric: May chaos reign.
• Player: Brian
• Maple
• Half-elf Druid: Stumbled out of the woods one day. Has a little roc that's still pretty big.
• Player: Arielle
• Storm
• Half-elf Barbarian: Smartest barbarian ever. Gets distracted eas... squirrel!
• Player: Lauren

• Game Master: Zach
• The all-seeing all-knowing eye! Praise be to he!

Few weeks ago our game master, Zach, decided to put his custom written campaign on hiatus and switch us to a pre-made campaign path Rise of the Runelords. We all put together new characters and started to play. Zach was kind enough to help me adapt a homebrewed rule set for a Wild Mage class which has turned out to be a lot of fun.

In order to help remember our play time a bit better, I've decided to write up a quick summary of the session each week to post here.