Session 17: Knocking Our Skulls Together
The party moves on to inspect the next room, across the hall from the dining room.Clarence stays behind in the dining room to rest, waiting 10 minutes for his lay on hands to renew.
The 20’ x 20’ parlor room contains comfortable chairs and other fine furnishings. In the corner of the room is a large ornate vase. Up against the south wall is a matching pair of wooden chairs and a solid block table with a marble surface marked into black and white squares. Pieces have been laid out on the squares for the Game Kings & Pawns (chess), a popular game played amongst nobility. It appears as if someone left a game unfinished.
The room appears safe at first glance.
The fireplace is lit, but it gives off no heat, only light.
The elk's head on the wall follows the party with its eyes.
Sartorii drapes a blanket over the elk's head. The party then spends 10 minutes puzzling over the chess board.
It is black's turn.
Rutana points out that moving any of the pawns would be unwise. Sartorii suggests knight to C3.
There's a click, then a little drawer opens on the side of the table. Sartorii retrieves the skull from inside and holds it up triumphantly!
The party scooches out to explore the next room.
The Sprite mage hands the blanket off the elk head, revealing it to now just be bone. He hands the blanket to Sartorii.
Sartorii opens the next door, revealing another parlor.
This 25’ x 20’ room is filled with two ornate divans, several chairs and tables. The walls of the room are entirely covered with mounted butterflies of all shapes, sizes and colors. Sitting on one of the tables is a jar which contains what appear to be three live butterflies. At the bottom of a jar is a golden yellow gemstone.
Clarence inspects the butterflies in the jar. If they are natural, they are not anything he recognizes. He does recognize some of the butterflies on the wall as mundane things.
Sartorii takes the jar, flips it upside down, cracks the lid a bit, and jiggles it around until the gem comes out. One butterfly escapes, too.
The butterfly that made it out grows rapidly. The party skitters out as the giant butterfly swoops after them.
They slam the door shut just as the rest of the butterflies start to flap their wings, hundreds of wings beating out a sound like rain.
The Sprite appraises the gem when they're safe. It's nothing special, could sell for maybe 100g.
And then, the last room on this floor.
This 15’ x 35’ room once served as the manor’s kitchen. The room has several work tables and a large fireplace dominates the northern wall. There is a large collection of cooking utensils and pans. A row of clay jars rests on a shelf along the south wall. Sitting on the largest of the tables is a wooden bowl containing three oddly colored apples. There is a bright blue one, a bright red one and one that is yellow. There is a narrow stairwell that leads up to the second floor and a door to the left of the fireplace that appears to lead outside.
Rutana inspects the apples and discovers they're not dyed, not painted, they're just....like that.
Sartorii touches the blue apple with a knife.
The knife turns blue, and Sartorii does too.
The Sprite touches his staff to the apple. The staff turns blue. He does too.
Sartorii takes his staff and touches it to the blue and red apples at the same time.
The staff turns purple!
And so does Sartorii. She hands it back to a red Sprite.
(Rutana sighing about everyone touching everything. Sartorii threatens to give her blue hair and pronouns.)
To the goal of covering up the apples, the party searches for cheesecloth.
Sartorii finds cheesecloth, plus some rice. All the rice turns purple when touched, except for something in the middle; a ring with a gemstone, with a thin blue film on it.
Sartorii puts on the ring. She has an effect now, but she doesn't know what.
The Sprite mage hands the cheesecloth over the bowl, drops it on top, then ties them up to put them in the bag of holding.
Looking around, the northern door leads to a stairwell going up.
The Sprite and Egoron check the door to the south.
Egoron opens the door. Inside is unyielding, impenetrable darkness.
The Sprite closes the door.
"Wait, just like that?" Egoron asks.
"Hold on, let's think about this. I gotta check my spellbook."
Sartorii opens the door. Inside is unyielding, impenetrable darkness.
She sticks her hand in to try and make the darkness purple.
Nothing happens.
Rutana steps forward to inspect the darkness.
It's just a normal magical darkness. It can't hurt.
Sartorii steps into the room using her rapier as a walking stick.
The moment she enters the room she makes a Fortitude saving throw, gets 20.
As she feels her way across the walls, she feels shelves bearing cans and jars, normal pantry shit. Partway through her hand falls on something fleshy.
("Fondles it I guess." "Do you now. How do I want to do this...")
Fortitude save. 9.
...Nothing happens.
Along the back wall, her hand runs across something that feels rather like bone.
She picks it up.
She also finds a box of 7 potions, and 2 more bottles that feel vastly different than the others.
She scoops them into her bag, completes the loop, and wanders out.
Sartorii emerges victorious, telling the party she found some stuff and some flesh! And that she needs to wash her hands.
While she does that, Rutana closes the door.
Sartorii hands the rest of the party two lesser healing potions, and pockets one.
The other two bottles, one has a sword and one has a shield.
Rutana identifies one as potion of mage armor, and the Sprite identifies the other as magic weapon.
The Sprite pockets the mage armor potion.
Clarence takes the magic weapon potion.
And then, Sartorii shows off the skull she found!
The Sprite peeks out the back door.
There is grass a few feet out, and then a solid wall. Several feet up the wall is painted like the night sky to give the impression this place is larger than it is.
And then, upstairs!
The hallway runs the entire length of the west side of the manor. There must be an open window nearby, as there is a slight breeze in the air.
The party cannot see any open window from where they are.
The Sprite opens the door directly next to the stairwell.
When you open the door to this 10’ x 20’ room you are surprised to find rain pouring from the ceiling. Mold and other vegetation has grown across the floor and walls. At the far end of the chamber is a metal tub which is overflowing with algae filled water.
The Sprite flaps inside.
It's wet. There is nothing in the toilet and sink, but they are overflowing. The water is clean, at least.
He flaps closer to the tub.
A bigass frog peeks its head out and flicks its tongue at the Sprite. It bounces off his mage armor and lands in the toilet.
The Sprite flits back and shoots an electric arc at it.
The frog explodes!
The tub begins to froth, and another skull floats to the surface.
The Sprite picks the skull up with mage hand and flutters out of the room with his prize.
He stuffs the skull in the bag of holding, moves some ways away from the group, and shakes himself off like a dog.
Clarence opens the next door.
This well-lit 20’ x 25’ chamber is the master bedroom. The light is coming from a glass sphere sitting on a dresser. Inside the sphere appears to be a fiery inferno. There is a large bed adorned with furs and a high backed chair with a battle scene between elves and goblins carved into the wood.
Clarence spots a seam in the ceiling. An attic trapdoor, about 4-foot square.
Rutana notices one of the bedside tables has a drawer that's slightly ajar.
Sartorii jumps on the bed and fluffs up her feathers because she's very cozy.
The glass sphere looks as if a jar of water had been filled with glitter and then shaken.
Rutana searches the open drawer and finds a key. The grip of the key is shaped like an open book, engraved to give the impression of pages.
Sartorii stuffs the captured inferno in her bag.
The room goes dark.
Rutana opens the door north of the bed.
This appears to be a private changing room. This 15’ x 20’ room contains an ornate desk with a mirror and a chair. Along the east wall are pegs from which hang a variety of wizardly robes.
Rutana notices when she passes the mirror that her reflection shimmers oddly.
Sartorii steps to the side of the mirror and drapes her blanket over it.
Rutana inspects the robes. They are very ostentatious eccentric, and seem to be a collection from every conceivable culture. Nothing magical, just fancy.
Sartorii considers which robe would look good on her, and which robe would look good changed purple.
Sartorii closes and locks the door.
She walks over to the Sprite and asks, "Do you want to see something cool?"
"Hell yeah." ("Hell yeah?" says the player.)
(The DM then sends the Sprite what he sees in Discord.)
The creature swipes at the Sprite, but it bounces off his mage armor.
The Sprite drains his bonded item to magic missile that bitch and shouts, "Creature! Evil! Bad!"
Sartorii wakes up in the pantry downstairs, tied up. Xalvador hears her squawking and goes down to free her.
The creature starts swiping at the Sprite again, downs him in two hits.
Rutana and Clarence hear the Sprite shouting. Clarence tries to pick the closet's lock, fails, and kicks it down instead.
Rutana enters and triggers her exploit vulnerability. She draws her short sword and exclaims, "Get your hands off our sprite!" and stabs the creature in the back.
The Sprite crit fails his first recovery save, now at Dying 3.
The creature swings at Rutana, getting one glancing blow in.
Sartorii makes it to the top of the stairs. She has her rapier, but no armor.
She enters through the bathroom door, stands over the Sprite, and stabs at the creature with her rapier. Crit plus sneak attack. A second strike, and the creature falls.
Rutana uses her wand of healing, casting an emanation of healing over the whole party.
Sartorii dumps a healing potion on the Sprite as well, getting him up to full.
The Sprite recognizes traces of a Sleep spell that the creature had cast on Sartorii.
Rutana recognizes the creature as a doppleganger. They're the stuff of conspiracy theories, mostly neutral. It's just stuck in here like everything else.
The Sprite touches his staff to the doppleganger and turns it purple.
Xalvador relates how he found Sartorii tied up in the dark closet. Rutana catches everyone up on what happened.
To Be Continued.