16th - 17th Eyre, 999 YK
- Ell recaps the session (even though he wasn't there), earning an advance for Damien d'Orien.
- Speaking of Damien, he now wanders into the Shining Valley, covered in dirt and grime.
- He gets surrounded by harpies, and confronted by Mieno. She doesn't mention the other heroes, but grills him on who he is and how he found this place.
- Mieno angrily drags him to the rest of the group and shouts at them. "Who the hell is this man!?"
- DAMIEN! YOU'RE ALIVE!
- Mieno tells them off, nobody mentioned they had a missing party member! "Sorry, Mieno!"
- "SORRY MIENO!? WHAT ABOUT ME!?"
- Mieno asks if there are any other wayward travellers? They do a head count to make sure. Damien grumbles that he'd been missing for 2 days and no one even mentioned it?
- Apparently they poured one out for him, so there's that
- Damien gets out a guidebook and shows them all the first rule of adventuring: don't leave anyone behind! It says it right there!
- They all tell him that he wandered off! It's all his fault, actually.
- Damien is starving, he's only eaten raw cave mushrooms for two days. He had no cooking equipment, Ban has it all.
- Yashira asks if Damien has ever cooked a meal for himself? He says of course he has!
- He just didn't bring cooking equipment because Ban brought it.
- "You didn't bring cooking equipment but you did remember feather fall tokens?"
- Nerys says they're really sorry, Damien
- Mieno stomps off to get them some food. She comes back with some fish, placing a big plate of them in the middle of the cave. She then leaves.
- Ban can work with this! He asks if anyone has any vegetables? Or mushrooms?
- Boy howdy does Damien have some mushrooms! He has also has a baggy of spiders.
- Ban says one source of protein per meal. Fish and mushrooms it is!
- Charlie falls asleep in the corner.
- Nerys helps Ban cook by chopping the mushrooms. They go to do it with their axe (it's been raining so it must be clean) but Ban gives them a chopping knife instead.
- Damien already has gastric distress, he doesn't need a dirty axe being used for cooking!
- Unfortunately, the mushrooms are poisonous! So now everyone but Nerys and Ruckus (who have sturdier constitutions) have food poisoning.
- Ban is distraught, what happened!? He should have known the mushrooms were bad
- Nerys offers to hold anyone's hair if they need to puke
- Ruckus is drawing up some blueprints for how he can modify his exo-suit
- The group have a bad night's sleep and re-establish their relationship tags with each other.
- They also earn an advance on the fellowship theme, gaining the power tag "Dumb Luck"
- They are woken in the night by a shrill sound, followed by Mieno appearing in the cave and snarling at them. It seems they were followed, and now the valley is under attack!
- "If this wasn't you, drive them off!"
- The heroes emerge from the cave to see harpies fighting dozens of large, hyena-like humanoids.
- They agree they need to help, and they engage the gnolls.
- Nerys thinks back (with Yashira's help) and identifies several instances of them leaving evidence of their passage. They fucked up!
- Ban doesn't think that's very helpful right now!
- The harpies seem to be losing. Several of the gnolls peel off to attack the heroes.
- Nerys begins reciting a story, attempting to demoralise or scare the gnolls. Magic is weaved into the words, and Nerys radiates tension as she tells a story about body horror and murder. This intimidates the gnolls.
- Charlie charges in, and starts blasting ice beams at the gnolls, bolstered by Nerys music (but also hindered by his gastric distress). He manages to summon a suit of ice armour as he takes an axe blade to the shoulder
- Damien rushes in to help, drawing his rapier for the first time in the campaign. He magically bolsters his speed and pushes the gnoll off of Charlie, but the gnolls parries his follow up and then clamps down on his arm, snapping the bone and causing him to drop his rapier. He screams and makes eye contact with Yashira.
- Yashira snaps into action. She recognises she's not suited to fight groups, so she focuses on taking the heat off of the others and focus on evasion. She weaves through the gnolls, getting two of them to hit each other. She then rips off some cloth and triages Damien's arm, tying a broken spear haft to it to splint it as she pulls him back from the front line.
- She then calls for Ban to help! Shit's fucked!
- Ban charges in with his frying pan, determined to break some legs. Yashira thought of Ban as warm and fuzzy, called to him for comfort, but he's a whirling machine of violence and outright kills a gnoll, sending teeth flying. Good gods.
- Ruckus runs up, deploying his exosuit, and attempts to create space between the gnolls and the others so he can follow up with his grenade launcher. The grenade launcher works a little too well, and the launcher is destroyed, but it fucks up the gnolls.
- The gnolls dealt with, a gang of goblins comes charging into the valley brandishing jagged axes and knives.
- Nerys frantically flips through their book for a story about sleepwalking, and attempts to put the goblins to sleep. It does make them drowsy, but the goblins jeer at them and make them feel demoralised.
- Yashira scoops up some of the gnoll teeth that Ban scattered and then throws them (with some gold) at the goblins to distract them (as teeth are a currency in Droaam).
- It's somewhat effective, but Yashira gets a goblin shiv for her trouble. "Get gobsliced!"
- She kicks the goblin away but keeps the knife in her abdomen to prevent it bleeding further. She turns to Charlie and tells him to try and end this quickly, it'd be great if he could do that again
- Ruckus begins gathering stuff off the floor and jury rigs a smoke bomb but it blows up in his hands before he can throw it.
- Charlie freezes the ground beneath the goblins, to make them fall over and into each other. They avoid it though, and Charlie not only gets stabbed, but some of the goblins peel off and start heading deeper into the valley.
- Charlie yells at Ban to stop them!
- Ban chases after the goblins with his frying pan, catching up to them and just dashing their brains across the ground but getting a few cuts in the process.
- Damien backs off from the conflict, given his injury, and tries to rally the defenders, but he shits himself and vomits due to the food poisoning and completely takes the wind out of his own sails.
- He looks to Nerys for help. please. please help him.
- Nerys puts their book on the floor and stands on it for a little more height, and tries to rally the defenders (and recover from Damien's shitshow), but they slip on the book and fall over, and then let out a nervous little fart. They look to Ban.
- Ban runs to Charlie and administers a healing potion to him, healing the axe wound and giving him a rallying slap on the butt.
- Charlie mimics the action of loosing an arrow from a bow and conjures an arrow of ice, but the ogre bats his arm aside and clobbers him to the ground.
- From the ground, bleeding, he looks to Yashira and screams "help me!"
- Yashira lets out a high pitched whistle to get Mieno's attention, throwing a dagger into the air and yelling at her to go high while Yashira goes low. Yashira slides between the ogres legs and slashes its ankle while Mieno goes for the eyes.
- Ruckus siezes the initiative and charges in with his exosuit and tries to punch in the ogres knee whilst it's getting up. The ogre sees him approaching, grabs the arm of his exosuit and rips it off.
- It's all up to Damien, who is on the floor covered in unforgivable things.
- He slams his fist on the floor and declares "I will not die today! Not with shit covered pants!"
- He picks up his rapier in his off-hand, and channels the power of his dragonmark to launch his rapier into the ogres eye. The ogre retaliates by throwing Ruckus at him.
- It's all on Ban to finish the fight. He rushes up to the ogre, sweeping between its legs and cracking its knee cap to bring it down, and then brings the frying pan into the back of its head and take it down.
- Victory is upon them! The invaders are fleeing. Mieno calls out to them to chase, they can't let any escape!
- The heroes are pretty beat up and aren't sure they can take more fighting. Damien recovers his rapier from the ogre. Ruckus quickly repairs his exosuit. They give chase.
- They chase the gnolls into the tunnels, and see Mieno facing off against a particularly large one. She is losing.
- They run to assist.
- They catch up to the pair, and Mieno has lost. The gnoll offers the party a deal, they don't have to die with the harpies.
- They refuse, and the gnoll goes to kill Mieno. Damien teleports to parry the attack, and then ripostes, stabbing the gnoll in the shoulder.
- Braavik takes note of Damien's broken arm and lunges over Mieno to try and bite him. Nerys arrives just in time and tries to jam her axe haft into the gnoll's mouth to block it, but the gnoll adjusts course and bites down on their arm, breaking it.
- Charlie responds to Nerys' scream, and summons ice heels on Braavik's legs to try and knock him off balance. They are the cuntiest high heels anyone has ever seen.
- Charlie set em up, Ruckus knocks em down. He rushes forward and swings his wrench using his exosuit and caves the gnolls skull in.
- Mieno gets back to her feet, and they see that the battle is won. Mieno says they can loot the dead.
- Damien slips away and gets his fresh underwear and spare trousers out of his bag.
- Ruckus replenishes his raw materials by taking weapons and such. He then tries to fix his suit, but only breaks it again. He'll fix it later.
- Ban cleans his frying pan, and then cooks a Meal That Can Heal to deal with their injuries. It's not enough to deal with Damien or Nerys' broken arms though, they'll need proper medical attention when they get back to Sharn.
- They spend the remainder of the time waiting for the sapphire to charge, and then Mieno shows them a shortcut back out into the mountains. They then have a long hike back to Sharn.
- Damien leverages some connections in Ardev and gets them on a coach the rest of the way.
- We'll do them handing the mission in next time.