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Previously on Rime of the Frostmaiden
Starring:
Valravn, level 10 Eladrin Bard of Eloquence
Fray, level 10 Halfling Barbarian of the Beast
Celeste, level 10 Half-orc Sun Soul Monk
Edmond, Level 10 Human Alchemist Artificer
Thimbleweed, level 10 Gnome Swarmkeeper Ranger
The mutilated, addled Dzaan in the cage held little answers; he could barely do anything but repeat his own name over and over again.
The rest of the party drops down to the second level. In a northern door they could hear a weird squelching sound. Opening it spilled darkness all around them.
Thimbleweed reacts instantly, casting a Daylight spell and revealing a pair of Freezing Shadow Oozes who had crept in from the buried earth outside.
Everyone charges into the doorway to attack the slow-moving oozes and their freezing aura. The surviving ooze snuffs out the magical light, but Thimbleweed responds by casting Faerie Fire.
Ironically the Ooze makes the save while half the party fails. But the light helps them regardless, temporarily negating the Shadow Ooze’s darkness.
Also, they get to glow hot pink within the darkness, which probably looked pretty damn cool.
With the oozes gone, Fray finds a reading room engulfed in magical silence. She loots the glowing orb that seems to be creating the effect, but will have to identify it later.
All doors lead to collapsed stairways. The only way down deeper into the upside-down tower is to continue taking the man-made tunnels buried into the ground.
First they decide how to deal with the caged crazy man. Edmond randomly summons a magic animal from his Bag of Tricks, awkwardly pulling out a large Polar Bear in the small tower. He then opens the cage, grabs the squirming, leg-less Dzaan, and ties him to the bear. For, uh, safety reasons.
The bear’s too big to go down the hall, and Fray’s had enough. She jumps down into the third level, into the laboratory.
The laboratory has several shelves and books strewn about, and a blown-out wall leading to another room with a shrine.
It’s also full of several Dzaan look-alikes. But these figures are more mutated, with melted faces, extra limbs, and razor-sharp teeth. They hiss at her angrily. She hisses back, because she’s Fray.
Fray attacks the nearest clone-monster and Thimbleweed floats down after her. But some of the Dzaans can still cast spells, and he’s nailed with a Confusion spell.
Celeste slow falls down and starts nailing another spell-caster in a doorway. He casts Animate Objects on the bookshelves and books and flees into the back room. The third caster uses Phantasmal Force on Celeste, convincing her that the passageway is blocked by a stretched Dzaan-wall blocking the path.
Edmond flies down, Thorn Whips one of the more monstrous clones, and drags him into the hole, dropping him into an even lower level of the dungeon. Sounds of angry humanoids can be heard growling from below.
By the time Valravn drops down it’s getting quite crowded. Thimbleweed shrugs off the Confusion, but the Dzaan-clone responds by casting Slow. Three Dzaans, three concentration spells baby!
This DM is EXTREMELY happy to nail Valravn with a taste of his own medicine.
Edmond flies down the next hole ever so carefully to see what’s down there, seeing a dining room full of more Dzaan-mutants. Many of them are even more mutated, with tentacle limbs and split-mouths full of teeth.
Edmond responds by dropping a frag grenade (looted from Id Ascendant) and flying back up. Ha! Fun move, but now that room full of monsters is very pissed (and slightly crispy).
Valarvn does not like being magically slowed, and responds by casting “Mass Headache” (Synaptic Static), hitting literally everyone in the room, in the hopes of knocking out these concentration-spells (and/or killing the mages).
Hilariously the spell does neither, as all three roll dynamite saving throws.
The party is not so lucky. Edmond’s Flash of Genius helps Thimbleweed, but Celeste and Fray both suffer nasty psychic damage and become muddled.
As you can imagine, Fray is officially PISSED OFF at Valravn!
First she takes her anger out on the mages. With one of the animated bookshelves destroyed, she rushes through the phantom monster-doorway that only Celeste sees, and murders a mage, which deactivates the rest of the objects.
The other Dzaan-mages fire painful Magic Missiles. The mutant-Dzaan that had been dropped into the lower level finally climbs back up, now half-charred from a grenade, and swiftly gets an arrow in the eye.
Valravn nails one of the mages with a Psychic Lance, exploding his brains. Fray kills the last mage, runs back to the main room, and angrily grabs Valravn. He rolls a nat 20 on the Acrobatics check to avoid the grapple, but she uses her final Cannibal-dice to succeed!
Shocking everyone, she grabs him and jumps down into the next level! At the same time, another Dzaan-mutant is climbing up the tunnel, leading to a temporarily split-party as we deal with a second wave of mutant Dzaan-clones, in one of the most epic battles of the campaign.
MVPC – Valravn
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