Rappan: They're really not from around here

Session 261 was played on 8/11/24

Nick, Fighter 7 (Me)
Borumar, ½ Orc Thief (Josh)
Blotto, Goblin Fighter (Lanse)
Morgana, wizard (Rob)
Koltic, Cleric 7 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 5 (NPC)

The party descended the stairs down into the rancid pit. The rough stairs circle round and round, and open up at the bottom unto a weird worked stone(?) passage. In addition to the rancid smell, a gibberish noise can be heard, and just as the last of the party steps into the hall, the bell that the blue lord warned the party about sounds, and the gibberish gets louder and faster.

There’s no real choice on where to go, so the party follows the hall and the noise. The hall opens to a heptagonal chamber with a black obelisk in the center of it. 2 other exits head out of the room, one open, the other blocked by a weird metal wire lattice. The spidery writing on the obelisk is intriguing, but the chanting gibberish is more pressing, and of course its coming from the blocked passage. Thankfully the party quickly discovers that the wires can be yanked out of the wall with a little effort. They make a hole big enough to pass through.

The long passage opens up into a hexagonal chamber with a large pool of steaming bubbling green… goo? Surrounding the pool, waving their tentacles, are 4… things. Standing far too tall, and adhering to no known anatomy anyone in the party had ever seen. Koltic blessed the party and casts Striking on Borumar before Morgana opened things with a fireball. The flames only fully engulfed one of the aliens. Another was burned, but the other 2 the flames failed to touch. The magic bent around them! Combat was joined.  With well practiced skill, they focused on the most injured of the aliens first. Lor’Koth is the first to drop from the alien’s mighty swings. Not only did the tentacles hurt, but they yanked various senses from the party. The loss of the sense of smell/taste was actually a blessing given the rancid smell from the pool… Burumar’s enhanced striking is dispelled as he got into melee range.. After Lor’Koth, Nick, Morgana, Blotto, and then Borumar all fall. Koltic spends the entire battle running from body to body giving them the Water of Life and getting them back on their feet, and as he wasn’t a direct threat, the aliens to their detriment ignored him.

While the party defeated the aliens, it was a desperately close thing. Another round, or another alien, and it would have been a TPK.

Gains:
Kills: 4 alien things
Losses:

Rappan: The Blue Lord

Session 260 was played on 8/4/24

Nick, Fighter 7 (Me)
Borumar, ½ Orc Thief (Josh)
Blotto, Goblin Fighter (Lanse)
Morgana, wizard (Rob)
Koltic, Cleric 7 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 5 (NPC)

Looting the vault, they find coins, jewels, some magic dust, boots, a ring of the triton, and 2 potions of polymorph self.

Returning to the main hall they head south and come to a large chamber containing a huge fountain of the Blue Lord, the walls decorated with moving scenes of ocean creatures. The far wall has an open rough passage emitting a green mist. The watery light grows brighter as the party enters.

“It seems I am too late, my temple is destroyed” a voice rings out. The water of the fountain forms into a 15’ tall avatar of the Blue Lord.
“How can we help?” Borumar asks.
“Avenge the desecration of this holy place.”
“Who do we have to kill?”
“Aliens. Invaders to our world that wish to release their alien god.”
“What else do we need to know?”
“A gong will sound when the time grows short. Stop the aliens from completing their ritual before the time runs out.

Blotto asks for specifics, but the Blue Lord has few. “My magic can’t touch them, they are so foreign to our reality.

Koltic asks for a boon. The Blue Lord offers The Water of Life. While within these walls a single gulp will restore you to the condition you were in upon entering the temple, but be warned, it can only be used once. A second dose will kill you.

With that the Blue Lord sinks back into the water, and the light of the room takes on a greenish tint to match the vapors rising up from the doorway. Doing their best to ignore the rancid smell, the party headed down the passage. A long straight walk eventually brought the party to a rough chamber with 2 exits. A collapsed stair heading up, and an open one with the stair circling down. The green mist was even thicker here, and the smell worse. Blotto pees down the open tunnel.. It was hard to be sure, but it might have improved the smell.

Gains: vials of the water of life, the treasure of the vault
Kills:
Losses:

Rappan: Looting the Vault

Session 259 was played on 7/28/24

Nick, Fighter 7 (Me)
Borumar, ½ Orc Thief (Josh)
Blotto, Goblin Fighter (Lanse)
Morgana, wizard (Rob)
Koltic, Cleric 7 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 5 (NPC)

Koltic spends some time with the poor broken man. He thinks he might be able to help him, but not here, and not now. With the amulet removed, and the Jinn gone, he’s not in imminent danger. They make sure he has some water and food, and leave him.

They check the rest of the VIP rooms, and find some minor treasure. Pressing on they find a big double door that opens out to a large marble platform over the main cavern with a dock down below.

They head back to the main hallway, and check out the next door off of it, finding the suite of the head priest. They search the room for treasure and more importantly, clues. Koltic finds a small secret door with a narrow passage to a vault door. Borumar checks out the passage, and fails to unlock the vault. He swaps places with Morgana who Knocks it open. Nick swaps with Morgana and opens the vault. He is immediately blinded, and placed in a silence field. With his hand still on the door, he slams it silently shut and carefully backs out.

Hours later, the spell effects wear off. Blotto and Borumar head down to the vault door. Upon opening it Borumar is magically Held. Blotto grabs him and starts to drag him back out of the way, but something stings him in the neck. Morgana Dispels Magic, revealing a Naga! Due to the confined space, Fireball isn’t a viable answer, but physical attacks work just fine. Koltic tries to use the Cobra Codex on the Naga, but the Naga makes its save. Some magic missiles, sword and spears, and blows from the goblin’s pole bring an end to the vault’s guardian.

Gains:
Kills: Naga
Losses:

Rappan: Be careful what you put down the drain

Session 258 was played on 6/23/24

Nick, Fighter 7 (Me)
Borumar, ½ Orc Thief (Josh)
Blotto, Goblin Fighter (Lanse)
Morgana, wizard (Rob)
Koltic, Cleric 7 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 5 (NPC)

Exploring around the temple complex, they come to a fancily staged dining hall with a food prep area hidden behind a curtain. Blotto finds the garbage shoot, and pees down into it. There’s a weird screeching noise in response, and Blotto immediately grabs his fishing pole and drops a line down with a glowing coin attached.

Meanwhile Nick is looking at a weird smooth wall. He grabs a wooden plate and tosses it at the wall. It sticks, and starts to smoke, and then dissolves. They decide to just leave that alone, and stay far away from that wall...

Blotto looks down the shoot, and as the line descends, sees tentacles reaching up to the coin. Everyone circles around the hole, and Nick directs them all to start pouring oil down, followed by a torch. More oil is added as the tentacles, while clearly burning, aren’t stopping. A caterpillar-like monster, fully 10’ long, plus tentacles, totally charred and mostly lifeless is thrust up out of the hole, followed by 2 more much more alive creatures.   The waving tentacles miss Blotto, but 3 hit Nick, and he’s suddenly frozen in place. The amigos shoot the one holding Nick with their crossbows, while Koltic throws more oil. Blotto lays into the other, and the burned monsters are quickly put out of their misery.

Continuing the search of the room, they turn up a couple of books that are of interest to Morgana, and then, making sure nothing else is coming up the hole, move deeper into the complex.

Around a corner they come to a series of VIP bedrooms. The first contains a pair of bodies, suicides in the face of whatever horrors were happening in the temple. The next was split by the earthquakes. Deeper in they heard raving, screaming, crying, and another voice calling out “Please! Please help my master!”

Moving to investigate they see a man clearly being tortured, with a large flaming being next to him. “The amulet, remove the amulet from my master’s neck!” The party is skeptical, but unsure what they can do, especially without prep. Koltic casts Remove Curse on the poor man before Blotto steps in to take the amulet. The Jinn swats Blotto. Koltic casts Dispel Magic on the Jinn, which fails to send him home, but does prevent it from attacking the party. Morgana tries Hold Monster, which surprisingly works! She then uses the amulet to send the Jinn home.

Gains:
Kills: 3 carrion crawlers, 1 Jinn
Losses:

September ‘24 In Review

The kid started pre-k this month. Amazingly it took 2.5 weeks before he brought home the first cold. Then it was another week before I came down with it. I also finally started on my Halloween projects for the year. This year it’s an upcycled pallet wood coffin, and a PVC giant spider.  So far I’ve got the coffin lid and bottom made, and now need to make the walls. Currently there’s a pile of disassembled pallet wood piled in my garage that needs the nails pulled out of it before I can do that step, and a pile of about a dozen more pallets stacked outside the garage for future projects. The spider hasn’t even started, but I have gotten the parts for it. We’ll see if I can get it all done over the next 4 weeks.

Gaming
My work game continues. The party has been stomping around the swamp, and going back to the caves. They’ve discovered that the goblins have moved out of their caves, which kinda freaked them out. It’s great seeing new players seeing how their actions impact the world.

The Necessary Evil campaign has continued, and our…. Protagonists have infiltrated a secret lab to acquire a teleport device and also to humiliate the guy in charge. Predictably we all forgot about the main objective and focused on the fun of humiliating the worse guy... and the lair self destruct has been turned on! 

Our months-long adventure to the temple of the blue lord in our Stonehell/Rappan game has concluded with a massive tidal wave washing away a large chunk of the land around the temple, including the nearby village… and possibly the city 3 days walk away.  Now that we’re safely back home, the party is looking to head back into Stonehell, but not right away. The spellcasters needed to make some items, and the fighter types want to get in some training and carousing.  Ever have a session that could have been a couple of emails/chats?


Miniatures
I feel like I’ve been saying “It hasn’t been a super productive month” a lot in this section. By raw numbers it is true. On the other hand, when I look at the shelf of 2024 completed minis, it’s getting fuller and fuller. Plus I’m working on a bunch of minis that will be complete next month. I did go a little crazy, and decided it was time to add an LED to my first mini, and also sculpt a big old pile of skulls for a demon to stand on, and somehow got both of those finished. I think October and November will have some fun stuff coming though.

Media
Star Trek Prodigy season 2 rewatch
Star Trek DS9 Past Tense parts 1 + 2 (So depressing…)
Star Trek V (Better than I remembered)
Agatha All Along (SO GOOD)
Dungeon Crawler Carl

Goals for October
Finish the giant spider and coffin before Halloween
Try to get at least 2 session reports written per week.

Rappan Athuk: Sticky in the garden

Session 257 was played on 6/9/24

Nick, Fighter 7 (Me)
Borumar, ½ Orc Thief (Josh)
Blotto, Goblin Fighter (Lanse)
Morgana, wizard (Rob)
Koltic, Cleric 7 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 5 (NPC)

The mimic has Blotto tight, and he can’t bring his fishing pole(arm) to bear Nick charges in, critting on the beast. Aroon hits it hard with his blade, while Jameth falls right onto the best, getting himself stuck. Dropping his (now stuck) spear, Nick pulls out his ax and crits again! Aroon drops his sword, takes a step back and pulls out his crossbow, sinking a bolt, followed by Lor’Koth doing the same. Morgana sinks a dagger into it, and Borumar crits with his bow, ending the life of the mimic. They pull their companions and their weapons free. Blotto pees on the body of the mimic.

Checking around the garden, they’re attacked by carnations. Being just annoying flowers, and not binding mimics, they’re quickly cut down, and Morgana collects seeds to plant at her manor.

Returning to the fountain room, the party rests, staying out of reach of the weird. The next morning Koltic purifies the fountain, and they collect the 2 gems.

Going back over the island, and beyond the garden, they come to a passage that heads out to a cliffside balcony… with a dragonne and its babies. Everyone agrees that they can come back to that later. Continuing into the temple’s inner areas they pass a crack in the worked stone of the hallway that smells of moldy cheese. Blotto rolls a stone into the crack. Someone (something?) rolls it back out. The party agrees that again, not something that needs to be dealt with now.

Deeper in the corridor expands, and the walls are covered in frescoes of sea life. They head west into a side corridor, and find a dusty dormitory with a nice collection of reference books that Morgana snags, and a crystal decanter of endless water! The party pauses here before exploring more.

Gains: decanter of endless water
Kills:
Losses:

Rappan Athuk: Weird things in the water

 Session 256 was played on 6/2/24

Nick, Fighter 7 (Me)
Borumar, ½ Orc Thief (Josh)
Blotto, Goblin Fighter (Lanse)
Morgana, wizard (Rob)
Koltic, Cleric 7 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 5 (NPC)

After the ringing in their ears stopped from the exploding blast spores, the party continued deeper into the sea caves, finding another dry branch. Borumar scouted ahead, and found a small cave full of mushrooms… including shreikers. Rather than mess with them, the party moved on.

In a larger cave, where the torchlight couldn’t reach the end, they spied a bridge linking an island in the caves with a hole in the wall. On the island were some sea lions. The party chased them off. Landed on the island, and headed up the bridge, planning to return and check out the other bridge linking the island to the other side of the cave. A square chamber with a large ornate fountain at the far end was at the end of the bridge. The fountain depicted a massive sea serpent… with emerald eyes. No way this isn’t a trap, but Nick went to pry them out, disturbing the water weird in the fountain. Nick avoids getting grappled (and drowned) by it, and everyone gets out of its reach. Koltic says he can take care of it later.

Crossing back over the bridge to the island, and then over to the other bridge, the party finds a flower garden. Blotto goes sniffing around, picks a planter to pee on, and discovers the hard way that it was a mimic.

Gains:
Kills:
Losses: