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Pits & Poops

The party continued their trek into the unknown wilds outside of Praxis in search of the Sekerren Ruins. At dawn on the last day of their journey, Mikolash received a magical message from a fat, wealthy-looking human man with a large white mustache telling her that the bounty in the Ruins was cancelled and that the party would receive 100gp for their troubles in town. She told the party, and they set about deciding whether to listen to the warning. After some discussion, they determined that they didn't trust the message, so they would continue their investigation as planned. As they continued onward, the forest grew wilder and more sinister, but the remarkable survival abilities of Ayala and especially Chort kept them on track. As they continued through the trees, they found a trail apparently hacked and burned through the woods that seemed to lead in the direction of the ruins. They decided to follow the trail, which made their travels much faster.

Around midday, Ayala noticed some strange monkeys in the trees up ahead of the party. Although they seemed unnaturally aggressive, she carefully and respectfully tried to calm them, and it might have worked if Charlie hadn't taken the opportunity to smash one of them against the ground. The monkeys responded with some umbrage and surprisingly acidic flung poo to that unproked assault, and the fight was on. The party slowly and painstakingly brought each of the monkeys down while dealing with implausibly large quantities of acidic poo, and the fight might have proceeded more easily if Mikolash and Chort hadn't spend most of their time running away, trying to convince the party to run away, and/or hiding behind pointless barriers because the poo was icky. Nevertheless, they eventually prevailed through that entirely necessary fight and continued on their way.

As evening approached, the party found that their way was blocked by a suspicious section of the ground that closer inspection revealed to contain a massive, twenty foot long pit trap. This proved to be the most difficult and complex obstacle the party had yet encountered. Ayala leapt easily to the other side with her water jet and began twiddling her thumbs and pointlessly sprinkling the spikes at the bottom of the pit trap with water. Charlie realized that he could easily fling the entire party harmlessly across and chose not to do anything with that knowledge. Mikolash argued with the universe about the implausible and unrealistic restrictions that it placed on her by restricting the walls she could create to be strictly vertical in nature, dramatically lowering their usefulness in this and almost every other situation. Camilla rolled up her sleeves and got to work chopping trees, which was an admirable display of initiative only slightly hampered the fact that she could only create swords, which are not known for their tree-cutting abilities, and the fact that she had no particular strength or martial skill. Chort generally tried to help with plan creation, especially the part of plan creation that involved him reminding people that he couldn't accomplish any athletic feats requiring any semblance of even normal human agility. Eventually, the party concocted a clever plan involving chopping down nearby trees and bridging them across the gap using Mikolash's walls as a building block.

Before the party could finish their construction project, an ominous clanking of armor from the direction of the ruins brought their efforts to a halt. A humanoid man in jet black full plate informed them that he was, unfortunately, obligated to kill them to prevent them from reaching the ruins, and the fight was on. The armored figure seemed to shrug off all of their attacks with apparent ease as he made his implacable way towards them, and they realized to their dismay that he was a Null. Chort was able to hold him off at the edge of the pit trap for a while with some forceful shoves into the pit, but he eventually leapt and climbed into the middle of the party with surprising ease despite his obvious encumbrance. Over time, the party's continued barrage of attacks finally registered in bits and pieces, and he flew into a rage, eventually taking out an ominous-looing and obviously magical orb and apologizing that it had to end this way. However, as he raised the orb and tried to smash it to the ground, Charlie's doll leapt up and stole the orb with stunning ease. The warrior was so shocked at his sudden disarming, combined with his significant wounds, that he surrendered. After that, there were some shenanigans where the party tried to get the orb back from the doll and nearly set it off themselves for no good reason, but fate smiled on them and it didn't detonate prematurely.

The warrior introduced himself as Gregory. He explained that he was a member of a relatively elite faction of the Nullwardens called the Void Guard. Members at his rank were granted special dispensation to use magical tools to accomplish the aims of the Nullwardens, such as the orb he tried to detonate on the party. He had been sent to prevent the mercenaries from reaching the Sekerren Ruins for reasons that were not revealed to him, and had already killed another group of mercenaries who had tried to reach the ruins. The party talked with him and tried to convince him to join them, offering to help him learn the secrets of the ruins that he was obviously curious about himself. After some deliberation, he agreed to help the party under three conditions: they had to leave him alive, let him keep his equipment, and avoid revealing the fact that he helped them to anyone in town. The party readily agreed, and they went back to his shelter near the ruins to rest the night.

Join us this week to explore the Ruins (or die trying)!

Stupid Awards

Ayala: Mikolash: Camilla: Chort: Charlie:
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