Previous Next

The Quest To Avoid Exposition

Last week, the party was attacked by cultist guards who had been alerted to their presence. The guards entered their tunnel and tried to kill them, but quickly discovered that tunnel-fighting was very disadvantageous for them. They were considering a tactical retreat when Shanky aggressively defecated over all of them1. That convinced them to accelerate their departure, but one unfortunate guard slipped as he tried to get away. Instantly, Shanky was on top of him, shanking mercilessly and messily as the rest of the guards fled. Before they all escaped, the party even managed to knock one of them unconscious, giving them a prisoner to interrogate later.

As the party celebrated their glorious victory, Shanky snuck off down the tunnel again to see what the guards were up to. However, when he poked his head out the door, he was grabbed - one of the guards had been waiting for him! Despite his furious attempts to struggle free2, he was held tight. The guards shouted down the tunnel at the rest of the party that they had captured the party's gnome, and that the party would have to come get him, in an obvious attempt to get the party out of the tunnel so they could fight with the full advantage of numbers.

The party ran off to save Shanky and arrived at the end of the tunnel before long. However, before they could charge bravely in to save him, Lester distracted the guards with his illusions, allowing Shanky to break free. The guards were taken by surprise, but sprinted after the gnome to capture him - right into the tunnel, where the party was ready and waiting. Ione released a particularly devastating dragon breath that killed six guards at once, and the rest of the guards fell back in fear, allowing Shanky to rejoin the party.

Now safe in the tunnel for the time being, the party decided to rest and recuperate. After a while, they heard a series of loud explosions and screams coming from outside the tunnel. They ignored the sounds and continued resting. After they were finished, Cayosin looked outside and saw that all of the guards were gone, and an unfamiliar figure was approaching them: a heavily wounded elf, surrounded in an aura of fire and clad in a bloody and ill-fitting breastplate from one of the guards. Cayosin called out to him, and although a language barrier prevented full communication, they determined that neither one of them wanted to kill the other. Before long, the rest of the party arrived, and others were able to understand the elf's more modern speech.

The elf introduced himself as Brand. Like them, he had been mind-controlled to be a cultist for the past seven years, and had just broken free when the earthquake hit. He had been with a larger group, but the guards had killed the rest of his group when they tried to escape, and only he was left. The party healed his wounds, which he was grateful for, and welcomed him to their group so they could all try to escape together.

With their new ally, the party turned their attention to their prisoner. They woke him up and began interrogating him. He was terrified of them, and quite forthcoming with information. He explained that the area in the center of the room was called the Pit, and that it held various prisoners, livestock, and ritual components. It contained a powerful magical field that prevented anyone in the Pit from leaving it, with the exception of the Sages and the Messengers, and somehow prevented the prisoners and creatures within the Pit from hurting each other or interfering with the valuable components contained within. The Sages were a group of powerful cultist mages who travelled between this dome and mysterious other places, though no one knew where they went or what they were trying to do. The Messengers were a subset of the cultist guards, with one Messenger in each group of guards. Unlike the other guards, the Messengers had the special ability to enter and leave the Pit, which they did to bring food and ritual components out as necessary. After the guard seemed to be out of useful information, Shanky dropkicked him into the Pit.

The party turned their attention to exploration. Since the other guard groups seemed to be ignoring them for the time being, they opened the nearby steel doors and found tunnels leading to similar ritual chambers. In one of the passages, they found that the earthquake had damaged a wall and revealed a hidden chamber containing equipment. They deduced that there was probably a similar chamber in their tunnel, and returned to search. Sure enough, after an hour of searching their tunnel, they found all of the equipment that had been taken from them when they arrived seven years ago.

Newly undenuded, the party began searching other tunnels for similar chambers full of loot. Most of the other tunnels had chambers that had been long empty, but they kept searching just in case. As they tried to leave one of the tunnels, they found the steel doors leading to the main chamber closed and seemingly locked. A voice from the other side cackled malevolently and introduced itself as one of the Obelisk Sages. It was in the middle of informing the party of their foolishness and impending demise when Ione shattered the door into pieces and the party charged forward. The Sage was caught by surprise, and tried to retreat behind his guards, but Taito was too quick for him to get away. The party fought with remarkable tactical acumen and coordination, and with Brand's help they quickly dispatched the guards. However, they were unable to meaningfully harm the Sage, and when his guards were slain, he escaped the party by leaping into the Pit. He was apparently unaffected by the Pit's magic, and quickly walked to the center, where he disappeared into the ground.

Next week, the party will continue their quest to escape the dome, get revenge on Demogorgon and his cultists, and/or find more loot!

  1. He only actually hit one of the guards. However, Lester the Jester cast an illusion that made it appear as if he had released a massive storm that hit all of them.
  2. And his creative attempt to urinate on his captor to make himself more slippery.

Stupid Awards

Cayosin Ione Shanky Taito Uguisudani Lester Brand Guard The Sage Everyone
Previous Next