Session 29
Fact Sheet: Friendship is magic!
Players present: Ecchima, Marty, Meinhart and Tuur. Vinnie was excuses. Dins was our GM.
Date: Wed 27-09-23
Date in-universe: it's fantasy Saturday!
Major developments:
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Previously: session 28 Plants vs Zombies
Up next: session 30 Let's get at the root of this problem
Notes
We're shaking off the encounter with the wolf still grumpy at Lutiel despite our rescuing him & with the zombified people, including Lutiel's colleagues, a random traveller and a member of the Gilded Blade.
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As Daisy and Bella Swan guide us, rocks start cropping up between the plants. Eventually we reach a clearing with a stone multi-storey building in the centre. It's overgrown, both by the original forest and the red vines. It's made of strange stones, carved to look like an eerie white bark under the sun. This very elegant building was clearly a place where the followers of Soliman and of Taurillon could break bread.
The top floor rises into a domelike shape made of weaving branches, once beautiful but now overtaken by the vines.
Daisy announces we've arrived, and suggests she does the talking.
As we file in, Cedar attempts to hold back Fyllion, asking for a private conversation. After an initial hesitation, Fyllion agrees & they step aside for a moment.
The others head inside, into the dark of the temple. The only illumination comes from the circle open to the sky, rather like the moonpools in Lunaire sanctums. Since this is a Soliman shrine, it's got a golden dome that can open, but it's almost completely overgrown, much like all the windows. Surprisingly, the red vines that invaded don't seem hostile. They don't have their barbs out or anything, as if the inhabitant found a way to co-exist.
On a beautifully carved throne near the altar sits a slightly larger than average frog, cutely blinking in that way amphibians do. Daisy cheerily greets him & with a low and soothing voice, the frog shares his pleasure at her return, and how he’s even more delighted to see she brought friends. As Storm introduces the crew & our mission to help Lutiel unfuck this forest from these vines, Bog nods that our goals might indeed align.
He's also relieved to hear Daisy and Cedar found their master, Fyllion. When he notices Storm's sandals of the seraphim, he explains he means no disrespect by living in this temple. Though he's not religious, he assures us he found the temple empty, he appreciates the beauty and the safety this place offers.
As one eye swivels to El's Lunaire mask, while the other amphibian eye remains fixed on Storm's Soliman sandals, Bog continues in his rich and warm voice: he's not religious because in his experience, the gods are just remote, mostly uninvolved entities. They uphold and represent natural forces in the world, but too often people are too fast to see the divine in mundane things. It's only natural, after all, to want to feel important. That's why people tell themselves that the gods are a lot more present than they really are. Worshippers just give their loyalty away to gods, instead of to their friends!
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Fyllion and Cedar both have something they want to discuss.
Fyllion is eager to know more about his identity. Did his previous form look like this, or was it very different? He looked a bit more fay-like & of course he wore his natural crown. Neither Fyllion or Cedar know where this crown is. Perhaps he gave to a dryad?
Cedar wants to check if Fyllion is sure that we can trust Lutiel. He underlines that every animal seems angry at him. Of course "disasters through the absence of proper leadership" is a sore subject right now, what with Fyllion’s own absence and the stuff with captain Magpie, but Lutiel doesn't seem to care much about collateral damage, so we should plan accordingly, right?
Also, Cedar likes Fyllion, and this version more than his previous incarnation. He's less of a coward & less mercurial, which makes it easier to get along with him. At the same time, even though Fyllion seem to grasp the scale and impact of his losses, many things were taken from him, from his memories to his powers. Cedar isn't sure Fyllion is still able to help his followers, not like he once did.
Fyllion thanks Cedar for his bravery in raising this concern, giving Cedar a bit of a hug. Cedar bleats that Fyllion seems to be so much better now compared to his assholery before.
Fyllion promises he'll do anything to get his memories, his partner & his powers back, but he won't forget who and how he is now. Cedar thinks this is a lovely idea, but the reason he thinks Fyllion won't be able to help his followers has nothing to do with his powers…
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Bog continues: friendship is what matters most to him, because at best the gods are abstractions, and at worst, you're dealing with something much worse... You see, there are plenty of other entities looking to squeeze some benefit from someone's desperate prayer. After all, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled, is making you believe he doesn't exist, so you'll never suspect he's playing both sides of the chess board.
Coming to the point, he asks why we brought Virgil's totem into his home. He can smell it through the leaden box and through El’s backpack. El rejoins Storm had already explained we’ve had several harrowing previous adventures & this is one of the remnants. We didn’t figure it was safe to just dump it by the side of the road, so we locked it up in Gladiola’s lead box. If Bog has any advice on how to dispose of it…?
Since Bog hedges about sharing his knowledge about dealing with evil totems, Storm changes track: maybe we can share what we know about Virgil, since Bog immediately knew his name & lineage, which is basically all we know, except for Virgil's disinterest in foot pics.
Bog explains Virgil was in the forest, shortly before the whole trouble with the vines started. It looks like he dispatched fiends into the woods, looking for an angel... they only managed to find a dryad. When they interrogated her, she didn't give up any information, despite being tortured. Eventually the pain drove her mad. When her mind irrevocably broke, Virgil was furious & punished his fiendish minions by leaving them behind in this plane, making them the problem of everyone here in the forest.
Bog concludes his explanation with a sigh: let's just hope Virgil doesn't involve his father. That's Daeis the deceiver, a fiend you don't want to mess with. If you are on a fully grown fiend’s radar, consider your life forfeit.
As we shift uneasily, Ezra and Hali explain we've lost our memories, so we don't really know how we're involved, neither with this mysterious angel, nor with Virgil or potentially his father. We’re also dealing with a lot of other threads, including presents from Taurillon & Lunaire, and we have no real idea how it all ties together, so yeah…
Luckily, Bog blinks at us in his cute amphibian way and explains he’s more than willing to wait and see. Till we get to know each other through and through, he agrees to add us to his circle of friends, as Daisy has suggested.
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Cedar thinks Fyllion won't be able to help his followers and friends, not because of his powers but because he's become a better person. He goes on to explain…
The portal in The Vale is closed, not because it failed, but because the elder dryad responsible for it, is holding it closed - she went mad from the fiendish torture she suffered at Virgil’s orders, and now she's spreading her madness and her disease through the forest. The other dryads flee from her, none will rise to replace her. This poses two problems the new and improved Fyllion won’t be able to solve, in Cedar’s estimation:
- Someone has to kill the mad elder dryad, it’s the only way to trigger the emergence of a new elder dryad to maintain and guard the portal between the Fey Wild and the mortal plane
- Cedar claims everyone agrees Fyllion's new friends are to blame for this whole mess with the portal and the dryad: it's because of them that the Cambian devil Virgil and his fiends knew to follow Fyllion to this forest, after he’d been safe for such a long time in Ifykon’s care… so it’s their fault the dryad was tortured into madness & the whole forest got covered with these vines
Cedar goes on to explain this change in Fyllion prompted him to take action. You see, Bog makes thralls out of the mortal remains of people he finds in the forest. Remember those zombies shuffling after us during the fight to help the wolf? That’s the result… That's why Cedar kept Fyllion outside, while whatever's going down inside, is going down.
As Fyllion gapes in outrage at Cedar, Cedar snaps that Fyllion doesn’t grasp how dire their situations were and are: Bog made Daisy and Cedar into warlocks, granting them powers to give them some measure of safety when no one else wanted to help.
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Bog continues: speaking of my circle of friends, let me introduce you to some of them, they've been waiting so patiently in the shadows. We suddenly notices we're surrounded by the zombie-like creatures who also fought the vines strangling Frauki the wolf!
We spot that Daisy is no longer next to us. She looses an entanglement spell, catching everyone but El. She also yanks down a lever, a portcullis comes down & Fyllion and Ceder are locked outside, while the rest of us are trapped inside.
- thanks to their innate alertness, El is aware we're surrounded by druid zombies, moving fast & wielding sharp claws. El launches an Eldrin's blast at a zombie, but misses. Stepping out Daisy's tangling plants, they start hurrying over to the wheel that probably operates the golden dome. At first contact, it feels pretty stuck.
- Hali squeals she has a friend too & brings forth Brighty, the shiny leggy shark. She orders him to attack! Brighty rips into the closest zombie with a NATURAL EIGHT
- Daisy flutters over the portcullis. Through the bars, she grins at Fyllion that as a coward, he's in his right place, outside of the action. With a snap, she becomes invisible
- captain Ezra joins El near the rudder & starts pulling on it with all their piratey expertise. Thanks to a NATURAL ONE, it barely moves. Still, we see the segments of the golden dome shift & spot a glowing prismatic crystal in the middle. Hali recognizes it (with a NATURAL TWENTY) as a means of refracting the sun's light over the worshippers. Ezra shifts into their weretiger form
- suddenly Ezra feels eyes on their back, their body quakes and their lifeforce drains, lips cracking and mouth drying... As our captain flinches, for a moment, Hali notices a huge shape on the parapet running along the walls on the first floor level. By the time Hali points and screams we should look, the shape has melted away again...
- one zombie claws at Brighty and hurts our shark, one moves towards Hali and hits once (since she's hurt, she loses control of Brighty & the shark disappears), one attacks Storm once and the last one hits Ezra twice
- Bog ribbits at us & poofs out of existence. In its place, we see a human-sized, vile-looking amphibian creature with horns. It sneers at us "what did you expect" and turns invisible
- Lutiel grumbles he refuses to let us die here. He becomes tree-like, with a bark-like texture to his skin. He's a bit surprised to see a hint of vines present, but he just swings his staff & activates shillelagh. He hobbles away to a new position
- Fyllion is staring through the bars of the portcullis, with Cedar clinging to his tunic. He asks Cedar if Bog is going to kill him too, should Fyllion walk into the fight. Cedar thinks so, Bog doesn't know Fyllion & what he's heard about Fyllion doesn't make him like Fyllion very much. Fyllion sighs that he won't let his current friends down in the same way he's let down his servants and followers before... Fyllion squares his shoulders & flutters his cloak of celestial feathers & declares with thaumaturgy "Bog, you step beyond your purview, these are already my friends. You can’t have them & if you harm them, prepare for my wrath". There's no real response beyond Cedar's bleating to please not antagonise Bog
- Storm whispers a prayer "please Soliman, help your sandals help this dome" & he kicks open 2 segments of the golden dome. A pretty ray of light glitters from the crystal & lights up half of the space. A lot of shadows are dispelled, making it harder for our enemies to hide. Voguing to his inner beat, Storm tries to beguile Bog and Daisy, but Bog can't see Storm, so that fails. Daisy is hit with a NATURAL FOUR though. At Storm’s request, Bella Swan starts a loop around the shrine, exploring the shadows for enemies, but she can't spot anyone right now.
- Cedar pleads for Fyllion's forgiveness & starts tickling him. Fyllion falls on the ground & Cedar is contemplating if he can drag Fyllion away. Fyllion's thaumaturgic laughter echoes through the woods & the temple.
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- El throws an Eldrin's Blast on the weakest zombie & despite hitting it, it only does a NATURAL ONE of damage. Parts of the body are flaking off now. We see they don't look like rotted corpses the way the zombies on the Flensed Servant did, these are a lot more desiccated
- Hali struggles free from Daisy's trap & shifts into her starry form. She shoots the weakest zombie & the reanimated corpse explodes. Hali chooses a new position
- we don't know what Daisy, still invisible, is doing
- Ezra hacks at the zombie attacking them with their shortswords. Baaloo tries to slam into the zombie to push it away from Ezra, but the zombie resists our friendly sand snake
- the mysterious enemy in the shadows lets their voice echo through the room : “an arch fey threat followed by giggles... sounds fascinating if it weren’t so ludicrous. Feel free to come to me first, but I have other matters to attend to right now". Storm also feels how any moisture as well as his life force are being sucked away. This must be how the zombies came to be! Hali taunts "Virgil wouldn't be too happy about this, you know, Bog". In the extra light from the crystal, we see a gigantic horned amphibian, hidden among the red vines. It's Czernobog, the devil toad! Was the Bog on the throne a puppet or is it his son…?
- Hali escapes the zombie attacking her, but Storm is badly hurt & Ezra goes down (thanks to an attack with a NATURAL TWENTY)
- we don't know what the quasit formerly known as Bog is doing. We figure this is Czernobog's familiar
- Lutiel complains this fight isn't going well but still hurries over to Ezra & casts a healing spell on them. Lutiel scolds our captain that all these detours are disastrous & how will they get us out of here, and Ezra gapes at the gaslighting
- Fyllion doesn't manage to resist Cedar’s spell & keeps giggling
- Storm activates his primal savagery and claws at the nearest zombie. Bella Swan trumpets when she flies by Czernobog, but of course we've all already seen him on the upper balcony
- Cedar starts dragging at Fyllion, but their size difference and Fyllion's masses of luggage make it hard going
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- For a split second, El wonders if Virgil could be of help here, but they don't really believe in the whole "enemy of my enemy is my friend" approach, so they prefer another Eldrin's Blast and the crackling black beam vaporizes another zombie! El checks on Ezra and implores them to come up with a plan to deal with the big toad. Ezra groans as they struggle to catch their breath
- Hali swings her scimitar & looses a starry arrow, hurting both remaining zombies
- we still don't see Daisy
- Ezra drops their shortswords & uses the blood bow against Czernobog with Baaloo's help. The arrow hits a layer of energy around the toad, but doesn't actually pierces his skin. Ezra asks the flying carpet to hover over Storm, should he need help escaping
- Czernobog's draining ability recharges and this time he targets Hali. Fortunately our genasi resists his attempt! He's surprised she's so juicy as moisture beads on her skin, faster than he can wick it away. With a chortle that he hopes her power and life force will be equally juicy, Czernobog slinks back into the shadows between the plants and the vines & we lose sight of him
- one zombie follows Hali, hitting her once & the other knocks Storm unconscious
- the quasit remains invisible
- Lutiel stares in dismay at Storm going down, and turns to attack the zombie chasing Hali with his staff. The creature is badly damaged
- the unsettling mixture of Fyllion’s laughter and sobbing keeps echoing around us all, he still can't get up
- Storm fails a death save
- Cedar keeps dragging Fyllion away : “I just want you to be safe, just let them die, it won't be long now”!
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Even inside the temple, we feel a change in the atmosphere of the forest. Suddenly, Fyllion realizes just how very very vulnerable he is, lying here on his back on the forest floor, drumming his heels on the ground & writhing with uncontrollable giggles...
A whiff of rotten eggs and sulphur wafts through the air & the dried leaves on the ground rustle under heavy footsteps. Shifting his head, Fyllion gets an upside-down view of the Barghest who's been slowly following us all this time. As the hound-like creature steps into the temple’s clearing, he orates at Cedar: “Well, I could not have asked for a better situation. Thanks, little man, I knew you'd make a good snack at some point, and now you even come with a gift attached, incapacitating your dear master Fyllion”.
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- El blasts another Eldrin's blast but misses the zombie near Hali. With healing light, El revives Storm. Storm is relieved to see the zombie turned away from him, thinking him dead. Combining their natural vision and their mask's talent, El spots Czernobog & chooses a new position
- Hali chops the zombie near her in pieces with her scimitar, but her starry arrow misses the zombie near Storm
- we can't see what Daisy's doing, but Hali can hear her whisper-scolding someone beyond the altar, where no one else seems to be
- Ezra casts fairy fire on Czernobog but the toad resists it. The area is still illuminated though. Ezra throws their poison dagger, but Czernobog is immune to poison... Ezra chooses a new position
- Czernobog scolds Ezra for littering their weapons all over an old temple. He takes an enormous leap and lands between Hali and El. He makes a gruesome bite at a startled El, who's poisoned by the bite (due to a NATURAL ONE con save)! El is left at one HP!
- the last zombie gets to Lutiel & one of his claws rakes over Lutiel's bark-like skin, hurting Lutiel
- the quasit becomes visible again & tries to scare Lutiel, but Lutiel succeeds his wisdom save. Lutiel sneers "vermin" at him. Daisy's held action activates: she becomes visible & cast polymorph on the quasit. The familiar becomes a giant frog. Daisy grouses we're more tenacious than expected!
- Lutiel slams his staff into the approaching zombie. Next, he casts grasping vines at Czernobog, which drag the devil toad away from El and Hali
- Fyllion begs Cedar to stop the laughing spell, so he can save Cedar and himself from the fucking barghest approaching. Fyllion convinces Cedar with a NATURAL TWENTY. Panting, Fyllion takes out his flute & tells the barghest to go fetch pepper and salt in Koh'Shar, it’ll make eating Cedar even more delectable. Unfortunately the music doesn't help & the barghest resists the suggestion. The barghest asks if Fyllion isn't angry after all of this clownery by his friends and servants, but Fyllion is disinclined to continue their discussion of eating or marinating Cedar. Fyllion waves his cloak of inspiration, covering himself, Cedar, Ezra and Bella Swan, granting them all 5 temporary hit points. Cedar keeps clinging to Fyllion's tunic with a frown he'll never abandon his master! Fyllion orders "let's climb, my friend" and they scrabble up the carved walls of the temple
- Since Daisy is focusing on her polymorph spell, her vines disappear so Storm gets up & with a snarl hurtles a crossbow arrow into Daisy. With a DIRTY TWENTY, Storm nails her to the wall. With a sigh like a pinned butterfly, Daisy dies. The giant toad polymorphs back into a cute and tiny quasit
- Cedar keeps up with Fyllion climbing up the building. His attempt at making the bargus laugh, fails
- the barghest seems amused at all these antics & prowls around the building, looking for a way to get in or to follow Fyllion and Cedar up.
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As they're climbing, Fyllion and Cedar see the owlbear Fyllion freed yesterday lumber out of the underbrush! It slams into the barghest & starts mauling the wolflike creature!
Storyline
Previously: session 28
Up next: session 30
Images
| fake-Bog the quasit in his true form | Czernobog the devil toad | a size reference for Cedar the satyr (although he looks a lot cuter) |
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