Ep 1301: Deep pondering and froggy humanoids

Today's game day was a little light, so I'm going to try something a little different today and include some of our incredible role-playing from our private chat group. I'm still working on how to write dialog, so bare with me.

When last we left our brave band of adventurers we had successfully slain Mary the Vampire, the Mindflayer, several swarms of bats/rats and a group of steam mephits.

Leoven is in a bad mental place from almost becoming dinner for both the vampire and the Mindflayer. Our resident ranger prefers his wide open spaces, but we're under a lake of ooze in a pocket dimension laboratory ... not exactly conducive to his love of nature. So he tries to pace around the remains of the laboratory.

At this point, Elle tries to help. She walks up to Leoven, offers an apple, and softly asks in Elvish "Do you want to talk about things?" Leoven, however, was not receptive to this so looks around the ruins of the lab for something to hang out in, but gives up and walks away to go hang from the ceiling in the corner. His cloak allows him to walk up walls and ceilings, spider-man style.

Magnus decides to chime in with "Elle, must you continue your destruction at this time? Leoven doesn't seem to be in the mood." After a moment of gaping at him she responds with a very confused "Um, I'm not destroying things? I mean, I did, during the battle, that's inevitable with my spells. But, yes, I'll leave Leoven alone. " She then goes off to another corner and sits down with Gearbox (her robot follower) to have a chat. Or try to, her and Gearbox don't have a language in common.

Magnus then raises his voice so that whole group can hear and goes for an inspiring speech "Look, I understand that this wasn't a glorious victory like some in our past against the great dragons. However, today we eliminated creatures most evil that if left alone would certainly cause suffering. Our cause here was righteous. In addition, we also achieved our objective in obtaining the suit of armor so that we can continue our quests. Don't look so dour. I suggest we move ourselves above the ooze to a less foul location in this city and there take our rest before the journey back."

After a few more minutes of the party recovering from the battle Magnus speaks up again "The path we walk is difficult. The challenges set before us are immense. It should be clear that our task will take us places we do not want to go, to do acts that most will shy away from, and to fight foes that cause most of the mortal races to cower in fear. But if we shirk back from our duty, then who will take up this mantle? What we do, we do so that others may live without facing these fears. We can be the bulwark of civilization. This is a task I take gladly."

After processing Magnus' speech for a few minutes Elle responds with "Magnus, I was trying to help Leoven, he seems troubled. Granted, my tactics for that are definitely lacking, but I was trying to help. I am not destroying anything that did not need destroying. I *am* capable of doing more than destroying things though. Whether or not *you* believe it. "

"I know my strengths, and they do not lie in interpersonal skills. I did not mean to offend." Magnus then moves to inspect the apparatus that held the armor and pretends to inspect it.

From the corner of the ceiling we hear Leoven chime in with "Agreed. We should go at once." Leoven then descends down the wall and makes his way to the lobster-device.

"I do want to point out that I have virtually no ability to rescue anyone if you fall in right now, that fight used a fair chunk of my magic. But yes, this place is disturbing and I would like to get out" Elle responds with. She then proceeds to start picking up any documentation/notes from the laboratory that weren't destroyed by her fire so we can later figure a way to power the armor.

While Magnus, Elle, and Leoven were having their conversation, Tsedek was listening in and looting the room of valuables, and there's quite a bit available in this room. Also of note: the jars of hearts are still intact, they were not inevertantly damaged by the earlier battle.

After looting the room, before we leave, Elle will ask the party "Is there any objections to me destroying these poor hearts. I do not like seeing the remains of these creatures being enslaved like this." She pauses, and then continue with a grimace "OK, maybe I am only good at destroying."

Itanis pipes up with "Before we do that, we need to determine how these were related to the suit. Are they simply the charging station?" Magnus then states "We should be quite careful with the knowledge we gained from Kwalish. In the wrong hands this information could be used to bring much harm and suffering. Look at the experimentation and the horrors we have found here."

"As with magic, or the sword, none of these are innately evil. It is how use use it that matters." Responds Itanis, while using minor illusions to tell this as an animated story as he makes this statement. He then returns to studying the set up with Tsedek.

While they were studying the hearts/setup Elle walks straight up to Magnus, looks him straight in the eye, and tells him "I am not mad at you big guy. THe night we drew tarot cards from Mary I felt something monumental shift in my head. I've been trying to figure out how to deal with that since then. So I've been a bit off kilter and trying to adjust. I apologize for snapping at you, it is not your fault. " she sighs deeply at this point then says "And you do speak true, I do destroy things." She then returns to gathering up the notes.

Magnus and Itanis then start up a conversation about the armor and how to charge it. "I have several batteries to charge this armor's special abilities. That will suffice. I will not stand for the enslavement of others in order to power a device. I do not understand how this mechanism works, but I can see that if stealing life from these beings is what is required to power the armor - it is not justified."

"I don't disagree, this should be destroyed and is evil, but we should study it first. Unless we feel we have learned all we can for the upkeep of this armor?" responds Itanis. Magnus comes back with "If we can find a way to power this device, and perhaps the island, without using living beings as the power source - that would be a good thing. But such research is beyond me, I'll leave that to the group."

Itanis then turns to Tsedek "I think you may have a broader mind for this. While I can assist with some of the magic behind it, I'm hoping your experience around traps and other engineered devices we can maximize our efforts."

Itanis and Tsedek then spend a fair amount of time studying things and as we were leaving Magnus and Elle destroyed things. Including the hearts in jars. We also got a long rest in here to restore our health and wits. We then piloted the lobster out of the ooze, Tsedek wants to keep it.

About 1/2 a mile out of the ooze and on dry land, some of us start hearing booming steps. As we kept going, the steps get louder ... and there's a wet slap to go with it. Boom, slap, boom, slap. Rather quite disturbing so we stop the lobster and disembark.

Leoven, Tsedek, and Itanis scout ahead while Magnus and Elle stay at the lobster. They're sneakier, Magnus isn't sneaky at all. Also Magnus decides this would be a great time to start a long spell. He did say Elle could go ahead with the rest of the party, but Elle is quite aware of how annoying it can be to have a long spell interrupted.

The advance party spot two small, gnome or halfling sized, creatures kinda doing a step-hop down the path towards us. One is blue, one is green, and they are chittering at each other. So Tsedek decides to toss Hold Person on the pair of them. The green creature fails his save so is frozen in place.

This freaks out the blue creature, who reaches over to shake his held friend, then turns to run. At this point, we fell into combat initiative mode. Leoven, who is probably a bit trigger happy from his close call, lets loose with a couple of arrows and damages the blue creature a lot.

Itanis throws up a water sphere around the blue creature before it could run away. Turns out these creatures are some sort of froggy humanoids. Also, we still hear the boom-slap coming closer. So Tsedek shoves the green, held, creature into Itanis' water sphere, so Itanis proceeds to send the sphere off a cliff ... and then cancels the spell. As the two creatures plunged to their death they let out a froggy yodel of alert.

Around the corner comes a troop of 8 froggy humanoids who spot the main party and start booking it right for them. Tsedek does what he's good at, moves off to the side and hides.

The boom-slap is still happening, and it's getting closer.

And that was the end of today's game session.