Cal has reclaimed the Arkenstab, and Talos is on the ropes! But Andalla has transformed into a goristro demon that is unlikely to serve you beer, and they both still have a boatload of hit points… Will Talos succeed in entering a berserker rage and laying waste to Alye’adu? Or will Bec enchant him again into an oblivion of giggles? FIND OUT NEXT TIME
Callie’s Journal
Rumble in the Jungle
–OR–
Cat-tastrophe
The battle situation has developed not necessarily to the party’s advantage.
Oz stabbed the centaur. The centaur looks bad but not dead.
Freki has “attuned” one of his remaining four arrows, so he has three left that are not attuned.
Vondal directed Murky up toward the horse-man.
Bec does Magic Missile and hits it!
I attack with Spiritual Weapon! It glances off the demon’s thick hide, boo. I move a little over to my left so I can affect both enemies with my Spirit Guardians. They don’t get an opportunity to swipe at me because they’re both slowed, haha.
The monster lady saves and takes only 5 points of radiant damage from the Spirit Guardians. Then she starts casting a 6th-level divine spell called Blade Barrier that slices through four of us. She is a shaman. She also moves towards everyone.
The centaur turns into a were-tiger-centaur and says “You all stink of the gods. How fortunate for me.” Then he does something and we feel a pull at our souls. Bec failed the save, so she feels…depleted in some ineffable, non-numeric kind of way. Everyone else is OK for now. Murky is unaffected. Hugin and Munin are affected somehow, although Freki doesn’t find out about that until later.
Oz feels ice climbing up his legs and needs a strength save. He fails and takes 9 points of cold damage and his speed is reduced.
Cal fails his save against the soul-stealer too. He strikes out at Talos and hits! He is bleeding from all over his body. His second strike runs Talos through! But then Talos says, “Pathetic!” and gets back to his feet.
Talos screams a battle cry and I feel a divine energy of some kind. Cal feels that he is tapping into Cal’s power somehow.
Oz attacks. Talos is just death-saving at this point. Oz is unable to finish him off, so he calls Monkey Caesar into play.
Cal realizes that Talos will live as long as he is enraged, so he calls out, “Stop the rage!” But he’s been knocked down and is prone.
Freki fires his special arrow point-blank into Talos. It does damage, although the creature kind of shrugs it off. He tries to climb up the neck and doesn’t succeed but doesn’t fall off.
Vondal banishes the enemies. They’re gone for a little while. We get the opportunity to rearrange our battle order and prepare actions.
I break concentration on my Spirit Guardians and cast Calm Emotions at fifth level on Talos as soon as they reappear (it has to be 5th or above to hit Talos because he has an Ion Stone or something that absorbs spells 4th level or lower). He barely manages to throw off the calm, but he looks tired now and the cold doesn’t return.
Vondal did Shocking Grasp with Murky.
Oz finally gets his natural 20 roll that gives him some ridiculous attack with his horn blade. He cuts Talos into halves (104 points of damage, whoooaaaaaa).
Bec attempts to cast a spell on the orc, but she’s resistant to magic and nothing happens.
Freki claws at the orc. He does a total of 24 damage.
The orc casts Revivify on Talos, knitting his halves back together. She then changes back into an orc from her other form.
Talos gets to his feet and casts Heal. He puts his ax on his back and says, “Enough! I yield for now.”
Oz says, “He really pulled himself together!”
In accordance with Selva custom, Talos allows us to name our terms (“war price”).
Cal is keeping his sword. Freki takes the ax and gives it to Cal, who hands it back (sensing as he does so that Talos is relieved to have it back). All Cal wanted was his original sword back! Talos mentions that we don’t even know what we are.
Freki says, “We want the bracers. And we want you to leave this space. And also, what is it you think we are?”
He says, “You are godlings. If you become like the others, I will have to kill you. What I don’t understand is how you don’t know.”
Talos stole the god-ling-ness??? from Bec and Cal during the fight. That’s why they felt they had lost something.
Freki asks, “Why do you want to kill the gods?”
“Because they deserve it. You could all join me. You are worthy to join the Malosi.”
Hugin and Munin land on Freki’s shoulders. He feels comforted, aww. He checks in with them. They say something happened to them that they do not understand, but they’re OK now.
A big suit of armor comes clanking up to us with Sabrina on its shoulder. The orc turns into a raven and flies over to the armor, landing on the other shoulder.
Talos promises not to harm the people of this village. He says again that we could join his tribe if they want. Then he says to Freki, “I’m glad at least one person from your village was strong enough to survive.” Freki notices that he has a very self-satisfied smirk as he does so. Then Talos rushes over to the armor and they all vanish.
Marigold apologizes for being unable to do anything. She explains that they were unable to move or possibly didn’t exist for a little while. Bec asks if they saw the suit of armor, but Marigold doesn’t recall. We (not Oz) remembers the suit of armor from when we met Sabrina before. It protects her.
Bec is thinking they might have had their memories modified or been banished, although all we saw was them running into the trees, so we don’t know for sure.
A dwarf villager opines that whatever happened to them “felt psionic.” Bec says Sabrina may be a githzerai, and the dwarf is like, “I knew it!!!”
Vondal goes to check on Mallory. He’s still there, right where we left him. He tells Sima’s doppelganger that she can imprint on him, with the price being that she has to figure out a better way of doing things.
Marigold says, “We’re changing the rotation then, so I can leave!”
Oz blabs that Bec took Isis’s body and has it, so Bec apologizes for her cultural insensitivity and she and Callie take the body out of the portable hole and lay it out so they can see it. The villagers are all shocked.
Vondal mentions that he’s older than he looks, like the villager who looks like a child. Later, she’s munching on some of Vondal’s cookies. Freki also notices that suddenly she has a ring that she didn’t have before. And hey, Vondal is missing a ring!
Vondal orders the kid to give the ring back before she gets hurt. He gives her a cookie because rewarding bad behavior is what grandpas do. Michael gives Allen an inspiration point for that! Vondal proceeds to give the kid a whole grandpa lecture along with it. He doesn’t roll well, so he takes her word for it that she’s totally taking it all in and learning.
Changelings are dead forever once they’re dead, so there’s no chance we could revive Fake Isis.
Aina (?) asks whether we knew that centaur. Freki explains that he sensed our innate goodness, or at least trying-to-be-goodness. Callie feels like maybe she knows something, but can’t quite grasp what. But she doesn’t think Talos was lying or mistaken; he was right in some way.
The villagers want to know what happened with Isis. There seems to be no point in keeping anything from them, especially since Vondal is going to spill it anyway. Bec says something about the cult of the white crane and the dwarf guy objects that it isn’t a cult, but a “force of nature” that has “done nothing but benefit us.” Isis was the leader of the village, but she was deposed for saying bad words about the white crane.
We explain about the blood mage gnome that was inside the hamadryad Phoebe and how Isis tried to protect him after he was expelled from Phoebe’s body. He escaped, but Oz killed Isis.
Aina says to Vondal and Bec that she knows the centaur, or at least her double does. Talos has attacked the Lord of the Devils, Azmodeus, many times. She asks if Bec/Vondal knows why he would do that. Vondal tells her that they met him once before in some kind of demiplane. Talos expressed admiration for Cal’s sword and was angry at us for invading his territory. Bec recalls that Azmodeus might be almost a god himself, and Talos seems to hate any kind of god. Aina tells Vondal and Bec to keep their conversation to themselves.
Vondal and Bec head off to take a look at the destroyed “door” to the village. Seeing them, Callie joins them. Vondal wants to dump some flux into the door. Callie casts Augury (knowledge domain, once per day) to ask Erathis whether this will have a good result or not. Weal! It’s a go!
Vondal’s magic gets sucked up and woven into a wild magic door. Aina is shocked that Vondal is so powerful.
Open questions and next steps
- Should we try to recover Sima’s body and see if we can revive her? Or will one of us volunteer to be the anchor for Sima’s double?
- What happened to Mallory, and is there anything we can do for him? Vondal wants to find Mallory’s doppelganger.
- What was Talos talking about?
- Vondal has a big lead on what happened to the SPI agents, and will want to follow up on it.
- Freki wants to find out what happened to Hugin and Munin. They were somehow held at bay during the battle.