Session 48 Recap

Aengumios 3, 2372 (cont.)

Morning. Early Spring. Plants are starting to grow.

We head to the parade grounds to meet the King’s men. When we arrive we see carts full of supplies, horses, and two squadrons of the King’s soldiers. The man in charge (Col. William, human) comes up to greet us. Says the squadrons are ready when we are. We notice most of the army is also human like the colonel. We have a brief discussion about how we are traveling. In the end it's decided that Athena, Naeren, Mags, and Tolvin will all ride in the carts while Azi, Vista, and Sorcha will ride on horseback.

Brief history of the war. The war was fast. Peace was settled and the army disbursed. These guys are the ends that stay around because they had nothing else to do and now they’re bored and itching for a fight.

We head south out of the city. It is a day's ride to the fort. We chit chat along the way. What do they know about what's going on? They know a little but the King told them they had to do this so they’re doing this. William also sees this as a fabulous training exercise for his men. William asks if any of us served in the army or fought in the war? No but we’ve become good friends with Nalagon and she fought. William says he has fond memories of Nalagon. As we pass people we realize the army is sizing each and everyone one of them up and assessing their threat level. (These people really want to fight someone). We inform William that Naeren and Mag’s are extremely precious cargo and must be protected at all cost. Roger that.

We come to a tree with a sign on it. It says “Good Luck Gregor”. A mile down the road we hear a muffled cry for help. A tree has fallen on top of a humanoid (hobgoblin) and he’s stuck. He doesn’t know how he got into this situation, he laid down for a nap and woke up with a tree on top of him. Some of the soldiers think this could be a trap and ready their weapons for a fight. William gives them a look saying cool it down. Althena levitates the tree off the hobgoblin and he moves away from the floating tree. He looks around at the group and becomes a little panicky, I mean who wouldn’t once they realize this lot is surrounding them.

The hobgoblin (who I believe doesn’t have a name) brushes the dirt off of him. We notice he’s very well dressed for a hobgoblin. We ask him what he’s up to. Tells us he was on his way to the capital. He’s a historian and was heading to the libraries of the capital to research information of the war. He recognizes William as the man in charge of the army and hands him a piece of paper saying he would love to chat about his experiences. He takes his leave and heads towards the capital.

We continue on the road south. William reads the paper, rips it up and throws it on the ground (that will be a 50 gold piece fine for littering). We come to another tree with a sign on it. This once reads “Good Luck, Peter”. And a little further down the road there’s another sign, this one to a dude named Kevin (is he a little yellow dude in denim overalls?) William starts looking around with a confused look on his face. What is it? We’ve been walking for a good while now and we should have hit the river by now. It’s midday.

We come to another sign on a tree. This one saying “Good Luck, You’re Gonna Need it”. Okay a little weird. Tolvin realizes part of the sign has been erased and rewritten several times. As we continue on there’s another sign and Azi starts getting a sense of Deja Vu. Something isn't right. This sign reads “Haven’t figured it out yet, Tolvin?”

Okay time to investigate. Azi, Tolvin, and Vistra get on the carpet and up for a look. At 50 feet high, we are clear of the trees and can see the river in the distance. Go higher to 100 feet and nothing changes. We stay at 100 feet but send Archimedes higher. He sees a long stretch of road with tracks getting heavy around the sign but vanish out of thin air and little further down the road. Holy Shit, we’ve been time looping this whole time. We send Archy further to where the tracks end and tell him to keep going. All of a sudden he is now behind us.

We take the carpet to the end of the loop. Tolvin cast detect magic but nothing lights up except us on the carpet. This isn’t a magical barrier. We move the carpet forward and we loop back behind the group. This time the sign lights up with illusion and transmutation magic. We cast dispel magic and the magical signature on the sign fades away. We send Archy ahead to see what happens and he appears behind us. We start low level flying approximately 30 feet up flying end to end, just keep looping back and forth.

We finally notice near the end of the loop where the tracks disappear, there is a large stone level with the ground in the road. We head to investigate the rock/stone (it had an identity crisis). There are no tracks around and it doesn’t light up with any kind of magic. William has his soldiers move the stone and under it is a magical spell stone. Azi dispels its magic. We can now see ahead of us and it’s also a lot later in the day then we thought. It’s now dusk. We move down the road a little (I missed some stuff here). Rest for the night.

Aengumios 4, 2372

Morning. We break camp and continue on down the road. We follow the road/river until they separate. Midday we see the fort and the big oak tree. We send two scouts to see what awaits us inside the fort. They come back with a note. “Yeenoghu (gnoll god) sends his regards” signed F.

We explain who Yeenoghu is to us and who F is. We know something is gonna happen as soon as we go inside. We prepare for battle. We leave half the army outside to guard Naeren and Mags while the rest of us go in. We enter and surprisingly aren’t attacked right away. There is a collapse door at the main gate and the walls surrounding the area are 10 feet thick. It's a massive tower with a battlement.

Is it possible to kill a demon god? Yes it's possible but hard. Most just go to another plane and recover until they can come back to this one.

Tolvin takes a group of archers to the top of the battlements. Inside the fort is abandoned. There’s a building in the back with two doors. Vistra hears some grunting noises from the building. So that’s where they’re hiding. The soldiers start making noise and there is series of howls coming from the inside of the building. The doors fly open and nine gnolls come running out (they’re probably a little ticked that we “killed” they’re demon god).

Highlights of Round 1 of Combat. Tolvin cast Dragon's Breath on Archey (He can now breathe fire, 48 sessions later he’s finally doing something) Sorcha is paralyzed Vistra summons a Dragon and turns into Sitka

At this point the DM is broken at the summoning of a dragon that we had to stop. DRAGON up next when we turn. Dragon’s name in Toothless.