The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty
After Cpl. Motuy leaves, Makpov pulls Quimarel aside. It seems he has some moral qualms about sleeping with someone for information -- unusual, given that “seduce them” has been his go-to solution to most problems thus far.
“No, it’s okay,” Quimarel assures him. “You slept with him because he paid you. The information was a separate thing.”
Makpov accepts this.
Out of character, the game is derailed by some nonsense with a kitchen knife. Band-Aids are applied, and we return to the table.
Quimarel reviews, with the others, the information they have gathered on the trap situation,
“There’s a trap in the basement area where the vault is. The guard we spoke to says there’s a switch to turn it off, but he doesn’t know where it is because it’s above his pay grade.”
“Do we have any ideas other than just booking it in there?” asks Hiddlebatch.
“Well, we’re going to show up with whores and provide a distraction… while we are distracting them very thoroughly, you Jaunt through the walls.”
“I have to already be inside if you want me to be close enough to Jaunt into the vault.”
Tamarie suggests how she could help. “I could disguise myself, run in and say, ‘hey, whores are out here!’”
Quimarel finds this entertaining. “Whore delivery. Harlot-gram.”
Makpov OOC: Please tip your driver; whores carry less than $20 in cash.
Hiddlebatch makes sure Quimarel knows what she’s getting into. “If they aren’t distracted, you’re going to have to have sex with them anyway. Then the next night, we use fire. Those are our only real options. And if you get caught, blame it all on them. You’re a pillar of the community trying to raise the morale of the town.”
Having concocted their Plan, the party approaches the Royal Intelligence Corps that night. Quimarel approaches first, with several of her employees and some wine.
Quimarel OOC: I saunter, and… stuff… I don’t know how to do this sort of thing. And I go “Haaaaaay”. Is the guard from earlier one of the ones outside?Cpl. Motuy is the picture of subtlety. “Hello, scantily-clad women I have never met!”
[Nonsense ensues, in which I try to get someone to hand me the coin I flipped earlier, locate it, then clumsily learn that half-dollars don’t flip well and make crappy d2s.]
GM: Okay… heads. He’s one of the outside guards at the moment.
Quimarel OOC: So we saunter up to him and go. “Haaaaaay”. But, you know, in a sexy way.
Makpov: And Makpov.Quimarel takes control of the conversation away from those two. “We just thought you boys could use a little break. You work so hard.”
Cpl. Motuy: And scantily-clad hyena!
Motuy continues to be subtle. “We do work so hard. Is not… is not that right, Cpl. Bogdun?”
Cpl. Bogdun nods.
Motuy goes on, “Yes, we do work so hard. We should take these lovely young ladies inside.”
“That would be a fantastic idea,” Quimarel says.
GM: Are you… taking pictures of me doing the NPC stuff?
Makpov OOC: I took a video!
GM: You should delete that.
[Makpov’s player shows the others her cell-phone video]
Quimarel OOC: And the GM goes to drown himself in the lake in shame!
GM: I’m just letting the dog out.
Quimarel OOC: In shame!
The guards escort Quimarel and her employees into the lobby/common area. During the day, this is where people who have business with the RIC wait -- it’s the only room you can get into without having to talk your way past a guard. During the night, there are still guards, but there’s also lots of unoccupied furniture. The exterior guards start explaining the “ale and whores” situation to the interior guards, and Quimarel carefully ensures that the door is left open so Hiddlebatch can slip through.
Motuy goes up to his co-workers. “Ladies and gentlemen. We have these impromptu whores and booze. I suggest we not think about why.”
Quimarel OOC: Don’t look a gift whore in the mouth.Motuy and the other guards discuss. “Should we get the upstairs folk in on this?”
“I don’t know, Specialist Ouryka still owes me five silver. Maybe we should leave her out of it.”
Tamarie: We could give you an extra five silver worth of services.After some discussion, Quimarel manages to convince them that all five of the guards need to be here, and also gets them to move this party to the scriptorium. “I can do a lot of things with a writing-desk.”
GM: You’re not even a whore! You’re a tailor!
Tamarie OOC: I have four raccoon arms! They are all deft!
GM: Are you even in here?
Tamarie OOC: I don’t know!
Hiddlebatch OOC: You’re outside with me. You’re just saying this to me and I’m very confused.
Tamarie, to Hiddlebatch: I have four raccoon arms!
GM: It’s an all-purpose sentence. It could mean anything.
Hiddlebatch and Tamarie slip into the lobby once everyone’s gone, and start staring at the door to the basement, wishing the rogue weren’t so busy with her orgy so that someone could check for traps. So H considers using her Ethereal Jaunt trick right away, and hoping the map was accurate enough that she can navigate into the vault before it wears off.
[The game comes to a momentary pause while I go stop my dog from trying to eat an umbrella. The recording catches Makpov’s player talking to her dog.]
Makpov OOC: I just want you to know that you’re better than her.
After a brief singalong to the Proclaimers’ "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)", the game gets back on track.Eventually, it is decided that they are going to risk that door being trapped, because if they don’t get through it, Hiddlebatch might not have enough time on its Ethereal Jaunt to reach the vault. Hiddlebatch gives some instructions to Tamarie in case something goes horribly wrong. “If you hear me screaming really loud, come get me. Our alibi is that we came here looking for the whores.” Tamarie tries and fails to pick the lock, then opts to take 20 to try again. She also successfully makes a stealth check to avoid attracting attention from the scriptorium.
Hiddlebatch slips through the door, crosses the records room, then Jaunts down the stairway into the vault. H runs through the wall, avoiding the attention of any horrible monsters from whatever weird demi-plane it’s travelling through. It begins looking around the room with its hobgoblin darkvision. There are a couple shelves on the walls, lined with preserved herbs -- H’s Knowledge [nature] identifies a sizable stash of probably-confiscated visionvine, a hallucinogenic drug common in this region -- and another shelf with a number of small curios. A cage hanging from the wall holds an old leatherbound book. A large, detailed ogre statue takes up one corner of the room, and there’s a birdcage hanging from the ceiling that holds a little winged figure who appears to be in a drugged stupor. Hiddlebatch recognizes the winged figure as an atomie despite its very low Knowledge [nature] roll to identify it -- it’s pretty easy, since a local tavern called the Flayed Faerie has a preserved atomie hanging out front as a sign. (Remember, most of the populace of this town are technically Chaotic Evil.)
H throws out a Detect Good, and finds nothing. It then tries a Detect Magic, and a number of things light up: the curios on the shelf, and a few things in the big trunk in the corner. H recognizes the items on the shelf (Knowledge [arcana] roll: natural 20):
- Candle of Truth
- 3 deactivated Eyes of Jak (these are from a previous campaign, in which Hiddlebatch’s and Quimarel’s characters participated -- they’re little carven eyeballs that essentially function as permanent Arcane Eyes, and were the preferred surveillance method of the now-destroyed lich Jak the Panoptic.)
- 1 Eye of the Sleeper (Another of Jak the Panoptic’s inventions -- it’s used to create an unknowing sleeper agent. It comes with Clairaudience/Clairvoyance, a 1/day Dominate Person, and a Flesh to Stone failsafe.)
- A quill that should be paired with an Inkwell of Authority, a communications device that the Cult of Hextor used to use before they were wiped out and their territory became the Black Sands. It’s no good unless you have both a quill and an inkwell, though.
Hiddlebatch doesn’t see the glaive it’s been sent here to get, but notices that the trunk in the corner is probably big enough to hold one, and it does have a few magical auras in it. H considers this. H considers that she can’t search for traps. H decides to hide behind the ogre statue and cast Knock. The trunk opens anticlimactically.
H goes to look into the trunk. It contains a number of containers with disturbingly-organic contents, A Knowledge [nature] check tells Hiddlebatch that it is looking at a small phial of basilisk bile --
Quimarel OOC: Worst Dr. Seuss book ever.-- a pouch of powdered unicorn horn, a box of wyvern bones, a jar of viper teeth, and a few pickled troll hearts. H also identifies an egg in a glass box as belonging to a harpy. A Knowledge [arcana] roll does little for Hiddlebatch, as this is way outside of its field. H can tell, however, that a witch might use these as ritual components. The trunk also contains a stack of parchment scrolls, and what looks like the golden haft of a polearm. Knowledge [arcana] leads Hiddlebatch to suspect that the glaive has no blade because it is a Brilliant Energy weapon, and the blade will pop into existence with a command word. (This is then explained out of character as “magical lightsaber”.)
The parchments prove to be spell scrolls, none of which contain spells H has even heard of before. Assumedly, they were custom-made by the witch who used to own this stuff (or members of her coven.)
 |
| The text of the spells follows: |
Ruinous Gift
Level: 7
Casting Time: One minute
Casting Time: One minute
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: Touch
Target: An item you own
Effect: Cursed item
Duration: Permanent
Saving Throw: n/a
Spell Resistance: n/a
The item on which this spell is cast will bring bad luck and financial ruin to the owner. The only way to end the effect other than breaking the spell through arcane means is to give the item to another, who must accept it of their own free will.
The spell must initially be cast upon an item you own, and then you must give the item to another.
The owner of the Ruinous Gift, in addition to taking a -5 penalty to all checks, is subject to the dire version of Murphy’s Law: everything that might go wrong, will go wrong, in the worst possible way, at the worst possible time.
Broneden’s True Empathy
The spell must initially be cast upon an item you own, and then you must give the item to another.
The owner of the Ruinous Gift, in addition to taking a -5 penalty to all checks, is subject to the dire version of Murphy’s Law: everything that might go wrong, will go wrong, in the worst possible way, at the worst possible time.
Level: 4
Casting Time: One minute
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: One hundred feet
Target: One creature
Effect: Shared emotions
Duration: One hour
Saving Throw: Will Negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
For one hour, the target feels all of the emotions and physical sensations that the caster does, as they occur. The target does not actually take damage if the caster does, but they do feel the accompanying pain.
Serpentine Thief
Level: 5
Casting Time: One minute
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: Ten feet
Target: Snake or other serpentine creature with an Int of 5 or less.
Effect: Assigns a task to the target.
Duration: Ten minutes
Saving Throw: Will negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
When cast on a snake, this spell allows you to instruct the animal to retrieve one item that you can clearly picture in your head. The snake will unerringly go to the target item, and will attempt, to the best of its ability, to retrieve it and bring it back to you. It will stop only for biological necessities.
River Seed
Level: 8
Casting Time: Ten Minutes
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: One hundred feet
Target: 5-ft radius
Effect: Artificial spring
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: n/a
Spell Resistance: n/a
At a point you indicate, a hole is bored straight down through the earth until it hits a subterranean body of water, whereupon it reshapes the stone to cause that water to be continuously forced up, creating an artificial spring.
Magic is not required to sustain the spring’s existence, though the aquifer, subterranean lake, or what have you may eventually run dry.
Primordial Portal
River Seed
Level: 8
Casting Time: Ten Minutes
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: One hundred feet
Target: 5-ft radius
Effect: Artificial spring
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: n/a
Spell Resistance: n/a
At a point you indicate, a hole is bored straight down through the earth until it hits a subterranean body of water, whereupon it reshapes the stone to cause that water to be continuously forced up, creating an artificial spring.
Magic is not required to sustain the spring’s existence, though the aquifer, subterranean lake, or what have you may eventually run dry.
Primordial Portal
Level: 9
Casting Time: One minute
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: One hundred feet
Target: n/a
Effect: Ten-foot-radius portal to pre-designated point in past
Duration: Ten minutes
Saving Throw: n/a
Spell Resistance: n/a
This spell, when cast, creates a two-way portal to a point in the distant past. Targeting a specific time is extremely difficult, and requires a caster level check. The margins of error are so expansive that it is ill-advised for the inexperienced to attempt anything too specific -- you are lucky to get within a few centuries of your target. The portal remains open for ten minutes, and then closes instantaneously. Anything that is partway through the portal when it closes is bisected, so keep your vital organs clear.
When the spell is cast, choose a target time and roll a check: d20 + caster level + Int bonus. Knowledge (History) provides a +2 synergy bonus. Then consult the chart. (Flip a coin to see if the portal’s target is displaced forward or backward in time.) Again, specific targets are very difficult to hit, so this spell is not advised for accessing an exact point in history.
Phoenix Oath
Phoenix Oath
Level: 9
Casting Time: One hour
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: Personal
Target: You
Effect: Future animation of self as undead
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: n/a
Spell Resistance: n/a
When casting this spell, the caster must articulate an oath that they will perform a specific task. If the caster dies with the task incomplete, they will be instantaneously animated as an undead creature of the DM’s choice. The undead creature will be driven to complete the task above all else. If the undead creature is destroyed, they do not animate again. Upon reanimation, the power of the magic sufficiently warps and twists the body and mind of the caster that Raise Dead will not work on their remains -- stronger magic is required.
Nassim’s Scalding Skin
Nassim’s Scalding Skin
Level: 3
Casting Time: One round
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: One hundred feet
Target: One creature
Effect: Continuous fire damage
Duration: One minute
Saving Throw: Fortitude Negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
The target’s own skin becomes extremely hot, and begins to char & blister. The target takes 1d6 fire damage each round.
Grand Frost
Level: 6
Casting Time: One round
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: Personal
Target: You
Effect: Temporary access to cold-based powers
Duration: Concentration (see below)
Saving Throw: n/a
Spell Resistance: n/a
You tap into the energy of the Paraelemental Plane of Ice. For the duration of the spell, you have immunity to cold, your touch deals 3d6 cold damage, and you can cast Ray of Frost at will. In addition, two ice mephits are summoned and do your bidding for the duration of the spell.
This comes with some highly noticeable visual effects: frost forms under your feet, and inverted icicles grow up from your head to create a frozen crown.
In combat, you must make a DC10 Concentration check every round or the spell is dismissed. Out of combat, you must make the check once a minute. Failure means the spell ends.
Hiddlebatch pockets them, and tries to wake up the atomie.
“Hrm? Mblhrmbl. Grfkjbal” It doesn’t seem to be capable of functioning on its own.
H considers taking it along too, and stops by the book cage. “Hello?” The book does not respond. Since there’s no writing on the cover, Hiddlebatch has no idea what the book might be about. H decides to take the glaive, the scrolls, the candle, and the Eye of the Sleeper. The theory here is that someone’s going to notice that the place has been burgled anyway, so they might as well go for broke.
A Detect Poison and some Knowledge rolls tell Hiddlebatch that the atomie has been fed a concoction made with the blood of a Corpse Rook, and it will be in this quasi-responsive state for a while yet, until the poison wears off in a couple days. It takes some time for H to decide that it’s worth taking along as well. Hiddlebatch then gathers up her plunder, and prepares to cast Passwall with the glaive… then remembers that it needs a command word. And H can’t do the Ethereal Jaunt thing more than once a day.
At this point, Hiddlebatch botches a Stealth roll…
Yona Tribe Muck-Laugh is out for a midnight stroll to decompress after a long shift waiting tables at the Broken Stone, when she runs smack into the very-recognizable hobgoblin priest from the edge of town. Said priest seems to be sneaking out of the Royal Intelligence Corps with a suspiciously bulging sack over one shoulder. For a second, the two stare at each other in mutual surprise & incomprehension.
Then the crazy priest strikes a pose and booms, “the harlots in there refuse to repent! They will not listen!” Yona is too tired to deal with this crap, so she just nods, smiles, and tries to move on. (Sense Motive: 6) The priest isn’t done yet, though. “You should not be out at this hour either! You should be at temple!” Then it hands her a terrifying carven idol. “This terror will watch you! Do not lose it, or you will die!” (Intimidate: 24)
“O - okay…” Yona decides to head home.
Tamarie and Hiddlebatch take their ill-gotten gains to Hiddlebatch’s chapel outside of town.
Grand Frost
Level: 6
Casting Time: One round
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: Personal
Target: You
Effect: Temporary access to cold-based powers
Duration: Concentration (see below)
Saving Throw: n/a
Spell Resistance: n/a
You tap into the energy of the Paraelemental Plane of Ice. For the duration of the spell, you have immunity to cold, your touch deals 3d6 cold damage, and you can cast Ray of Frost at will. In addition, two ice mephits are summoned and do your bidding for the duration of the spell.
This comes with some highly noticeable visual effects: frost forms under your feet, and inverted icicles grow up from your head to create a frozen crown.
In combat, you must make a DC10 Concentration check every round or the spell is dismissed. Out of combat, you must make the check once a minute. Failure means the spell ends.
Hiddlebatch pockets them, and tries to wake up the atomie.
“Hrm? Mblhrmbl. Grfkjbal” It doesn’t seem to be capable of functioning on its own.
H considers taking it along too, and stops by the book cage. “Hello?” The book does not respond. Since there’s no writing on the cover, Hiddlebatch has no idea what the book might be about. H decides to take the glaive, the scrolls, the candle, and the Eye of the Sleeper. The theory here is that someone’s going to notice that the place has been burgled anyway, so they might as well go for broke.
A Detect Poison and some Knowledge rolls tell Hiddlebatch that the atomie has been fed a concoction made with the blood of a Corpse Rook, and it will be in this quasi-responsive state for a while yet, until the poison wears off in a couple days. It takes some time for H to decide that it’s worth taking along as well. Hiddlebatch then gathers up her plunder, and prepares to cast Passwall with the glaive… then remembers that it needs a command word. And H can’t do the Ethereal Jaunt thing more than once a day.
Hiddlebatch OOC: I’ll just hunker down here overnight and regret all my life choices.Then Hiddlebatch’s player remember she has one casting of Knock left, and suddenly things get a lot easier. The door swings open, and fires a storm of needles… towards the imaginary intruder on the stairs. The guards are still very distracted, and roll a 4 on their Perception check, so they don’t hear anything. Hiddlebatch kicks the needles aside so the guards will be less likely to notice them, and sneaks back out of the building.
At this point, Hiddlebatch botches a Stealth roll…
Yona Tribe Muck-Laugh is out for a midnight stroll to decompress after a long shift waiting tables at the Broken Stone, when she runs smack into the very-recognizable hobgoblin priest from the edge of town. Said priest seems to be sneaking out of the Royal Intelligence Corps with a suspiciously bulging sack over one shoulder. For a second, the two stare at each other in mutual surprise & incomprehension.
Then the crazy priest strikes a pose and booms, “the harlots in there refuse to repent! They will not listen!” Yona is too tired to deal with this crap, so she just nods, smiles, and tries to move on. (Sense Motive: 6) The priest isn’t done yet, though. “You should not be out at this hour either! You should be at temple!” Then it hands her a terrifying carven idol. “This terror will watch you! Do not lose it, or you will die!” (Intimidate: 24)
“O - okay…” Yona decides to head home.
Tamarie and Hiddlebatch take their ill-gotten gains to Hiddlebatch’s chapel outside of town.
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