Green Pass Campaign II, Session 5: Swatting Mosquitoes While The World Ends

Tether went home for the summer, so we're down by one player. At this rate, I'm not sure if there will be anything left when he comes back. I spent a while frantically prepping the catacombs before the session, so predictably that was the one place that nobody wanted to go.

June 24, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP

While Malcolm recovered from his excessively intimate encounter with a spiked pit, the rest of the party went back to Centerpost for the week. Piper the bard decided to propose to the long-suffering sage Fridaswitha with a 300 gp ring, which in hindsight should have tipped everyone off to start checking his socks for suicide notes. Frida implored him to retire to a life of musical performance, but instead he slipped off on some scheme to create a complete tailored set of vestments to robe himself as a Necrolyte of Nergal. He decided to keep this new costume secret from the rest of the party as a surprise. Everyone loves surprises.

On the way back, he elected to have a peek at the runic tablet that the sage had pushed away in horror. One glimpse of the cursed runes and Piper promptly took permanent leave of his sanity. No one noticed immediately, given his reputation for erratic behavior. This gave him plenty of time to slip off toward the haunted moorlands by himself, once they had settle back in at the keep's tavern. More on that later!

That face is so wrong

Meanwhile, everyone else (except Meros, who wanted to loot more graves) voted to head to the orc-infested cave area for more clues about the threat from the east that had initially most worried the castellan. They set out along the road, and carefully scouted the entrances to the caves upon arrival. Most of the entrances were dead quiet, but one of them stank horribly and another was emitting a mysterious din of beastly noises. Scouts reported a number of small flying monstrosities within in a generally agitated state (agitated mainly because Finkle dumped a drive-by faerie fire on one). The prospect of something worth smashing excited the martially inclined saurian Zegzinu, who began lumbering toward the cave at top speed (20' per round) in hopes of a fight -- with everyone else following a few steps behind. Upon his unsubtle entrance into the first high cavern in the tunnel network, a group of angry ACKS-style stirges immediately descended to feast upon the party's blood.

The tumult of battle attracted the attention of the cave's real master, a grumpy minotaur, as well as a few hungry beetles. They all moved quickly to the entrance in time to to intercept the second wave of the party's reinforcements and create a thoroughly chaotic melee. The minotaur brained Bartimaeus with an axe, despite heavy damage from Reed's earth's teeth. The stirges managed to extract enough blood from Bar Helm to render him comatose, perforating his limbs, abdomen, and face with their greedy proboscuses probisces probosci pointy-type-noses. Meanwhile, Dunflow's evisceration of the beetles back at the entrance tunnel suggested that Renata was probably rather more unhappy about losing her broadsword (+3, in fact) than was previously appreciated.

Minotaur (by Speeh)

The minotaur's lair was at the end of a mazelike set of passages that would have allowed him to easily pick off scouts one by one, so it was probably lucky that the fight lured him into the open. Behind a stone slab in the lair, the party discovered a collection of treasures, including two locked chests which Zegzinu promptly smashed into smithereens with a spear, the classic lizard lockpick. (Breakin' stuff!) This violent approach tragically resulted in the loss of a growth potion.

Meanwhile, the chorus of voices now swirling inside Piper's head were full of all kinds of helpful advice. Most of the advice revolved around applying his prodigious diplomatic skills toward the considerable challenge of befriending the lonely long-dead champion of Nergal sleeping in the southeastern-most barrow mound. A bit of small talk via more blood-seeping messages in the dust revealed that the Black Legion captain's favorite food was "the marrow of a righteous man's bones", and Sir Pants-on-Head the Bard felt comfortable interpreting this as a generous dinner invitation, to the resounding approval of his newfound cranial interlocutors.

He set himself to work with good cheer, smashing apart the great band-wrought doorway with a pickaxe, and donned the bespoke ceremonial vestments that he had purchased in Centerpost at great personal expense. Oh, but he looked absolutely fabulous in the matching pair of demon-face gloves, crooned the voices. Descending the stairs into the crypt, he discovered a sarcophagus with a bas relief stone-carved knight on the cover, and pushed it aside to reveal a wight -- who was not, in fact, Varghoulis at all, but only his faithful gonfaloniere.

The gonfaloniere was greeted by a rollicking birthday-celebration polka.

Varghoulis himself was in a matching chamber beyond a secret door in an even finer sarcophagus. Opening this sarcophagus (which the wight accomplished with contemptuous ease) had the effect not merely of releasing Lord Varghoulis (Captain of the Black Legion, Champion of Nergal, Inquisitor-General of Umeskelion, and general Scourge of the Living), but also of similarly arousing the entire guards-corps of the legion, including four nearby lieutenants and ten sergeants from an adjacent barrow with their accompanying contingent of adjutants and attachés -- all in an advanced state of decay and undeath. As they broke forth from the earth like frogs boiling out of swamp mud, the sky darkened and erupted into a swirling and crackling vortex of necrotic energy that stretched up into the heavens, a hellstorm that announced apocalyptic doom to everyone for miles in every direction

It was a good bit of solo work, and with his last vestige of sanity the charming and charismatic bard rolled a successful reaction check that established himself as an honorary officer of the Black Legion's fife and drum corps. Which just goes to show that combat skills are vastly overrated, whereas diplomatic specialization comes out ahead every time.

Lord Varghoulis: "Sup, bro."

Casualties
Brother Bartimaeus, addled due to brain trauma (-10% experience, -2 proficiency checks)
Bar Helm, blinded in one eye (-2 ranged attacks, requisite eyepatch)

Treasure and Experience
Coins: 903 gold and 310 electrum (=> 1058 gp)
Gems/Jewelry: 3 pieces of jewelry (1600, 900, 600) (=> 3100 gp)
Trade Goods: a pair of minotaur horns (320 gp)
Items of special interest: 2 potions (gasous form, ?), the minotaur's spear, a suit of ornate plate mail, and a staff

Total nonmagical treasure value: 4478 gp, less 64 gp (20% fee) to appraise jewelry
Gold per share: 465 gp

Explored: minotaur cave complex

Kills: 1 minotaur (320 xp), 9 stirges (117 xp), 3 fire beetles (45 xp)
Put to flight: 2 stirges (25 xp)

Total experience from treasure: 4478 xp
Total experience from kills: 507 xp
Total experience from exploration: 100 xp
Total Experience Gospel Choir: ft. Barry Manilow
Total experience: 5085
Total experience per member: 509 xp

(Note: Mort the Wardog is taking an  experience half-share but not a treasure share. Brother Bartimaeus takes a half-share of each.)

I can't see how Peter's bard is going to survive this, but we can at least rest assured that he'll be remembered fondly as another exemplar of his celebrated profession.