Demon's Hand

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Session 2 of Secrets in the Stone, the 1st episode of the 1st season of A Brighter Sun (Overall session #2).

Took place on February 26th, 2026. PCs were level 5.

Synopsis

SESSION SUMMARY

The party was ambushed by rival guild Demon's Hand (Haken, Ulu, Lisi, Orson) en route to the Undercroft entrance. Using gas, pits, spores, withering touches, and persuasion, they defeated the foes non-lethally. Confiscated a Froststeel short sword. Convinced the escorting Templar knight to leave, entered the aqueduct system, navigated to sewers with Seeking Star spell (after a mishap), and encountered a ghoul pack at the cliffhanger.

TIMELINE OF EVENTS

1. Ambushed by Demon's Hand party outside Undercroft entrance
2. Evya deploys sleep gas canister, affecting Ulu and Lisi
3. Orson creates terror pit, party mostly avoids fall damage
4. Pip uses spores to poison Haken
5. Eres withers Haken with Kiss of Death, severely weakening him
6. Viz persuades Orson and Haken to retreat
7. Party disarms and binds Haken briefly, loots Froststeel short sword
8. Convince Templar knight to abandon escort
9. Cast Seeking Star to track dwarf quarry Haybar, follow through aqueducts
10. Enter deeper sewers, spot quarry's carved passage, hear ghouls approaching

CHARACTERS & NPCs

• Haken - Leader of Demon's Hand Half frost giant psychopath, rogue with Frost Giant Ancestry and Froststeel soul blade.

• Ulu - Warrior in Demon's Hand Frugal, seasoned, disciplined; fell asleep from gas.

• Lisi - Blood Witch in Demon's Hand Reluctant participant; affected by gas.

• Orson - Arcanist in Demon's Hand Stores mana as body fat; cast Terra Forza.

• Haybar - Quarry Dwarf tracked via Seeking Star; entered Undercroft.

• Templar Knight - Escort Awaits party with key to Undercroft door; has mount.

LOCATIONS

• City of Tyr Surface city with laws restricting magic; undercroft accessible via doorway.

• Undercroft Underground area below Tyr where magic use is authorized.

• Aqueduct Fresh water channels, 3 squares wide with walkways; leads to major and capillary sections.

• Sewer Level two output network with black water channels; mold, slime, and ooze present.

• Dwarven Ramp Perfectly rectangular hole in wall with fused stone stairs carved by dwarven scions.

LOOT & ITEMS

• Froststeel Short Sword Dex-based magical weapon made of enchanted stone, always cold to the touch. On hit, target suffers chilled. +4 critical range against chilled targets, +8 versus rooted. Note: Confiscated from Haken after combat.

COMBAT ENCOUNTERS

• Encounter at Midnight route to Undercroft doorway Enemies: Haken, Ulu, Lisi, Orson Outcome: Party victorious, enemies retreated Loot: Froststeel Short Sword

• Encounter at Undercroft sewer level 2 Enemies: Ghouls Outcome: Combat initiated but not resolved (teased for next session)

MEMORABLE QUOTES

"Look, bud. You took your shot. And you blew it. So why don't you get the fuck out of here before I make you disappear." — Viz

"Shit. What the fuck? I thought you said no magic. It wasn't magic. Bitch." — Lisi

"I thought you didn't believe in trains. I believe in twine." — Haken

NEXT STEPS

• Engage or evade the ghoul pack • Continue tracking Haybar deeper into Undercroft sewers

============================================================ SESSION TRANSCRIPT

Now this is where our starting video would be if I had one. I do, but it's still needs some work. Just picture the anime style opener and you know, do theater of the mind. Last session you received your first B-Class Commission as a trial her ascension with the backing of the guild master herself. You've taken out an unusual case where you'll be operating inside the city of Tyr itself. You have the right to use your magic and use your authority while in the undercroft of the city. While on the surface level you have to obey all laws that all other civilians have to obey. This is a problem. Because on your midnight route to the... The doorway into the Undercroft that your quarry used... You were ambushed by a party from Demon's Hand. A rival guild that takes pleasure in messing with you. No one more so than the current erstwhile leader, Haken, who is a frost giant. And he's, I mean, I guess maybe, you know, maybe like half frost giant. He's maybe about nine feet tall. He is a bonafide psychopath. And he's just in it for the killing. He's accompanied by the only slightly smaller, frugal, Ulu, and seasoned, disciplined warrior. The Blood Witch, Lisi, who you may never have had a run in with before. She doesn't really like this sort of thing. And the Arcanist, Orson, has the unique ability to store mana in the form of body fat. And that's totally why he eats 5,000 calories. You find yourself under attack. And so, as I stall to find the right music, I get to say for the first time in this campaign, roll initiative. And your initiative has been rolled. You should see it in the chat. I don't know if you do. You probably see round one has begun Evya started her turn. Do you see any chat? It says they're all undefined in mine. I see the initiative is rolled, but it says they're all undefined. Do you see... Yeah, okay. So you see round one has begun. Evya started her turn. How did this break? Are there any errors? No errors. All right. Well... guess we're just going with whatever order that it came up because it says ev and define how can i define this undefined everybody's undefined this used to work akka is moving first but i guess if he's just so so fast she's going to try to stop him does that even put them in the right order what order are they in because i cannot see initiative order Yeah, that's the thing I was wondering. I can see the initiative order, and I think that's a thing where only I can see it. But it does say who has started their turn, so it'll at least give you. But yeah, it's Evie, Haken, Viz, Pip, Orson, Eres, Six, Ulu, Lise. I wonder if it's because the tokens weren't impersonated yet, maybe? They might not have... Oh, they don't have dexterity. That's why. It would be a pain in the ass to set all of these. The actions should still work. Let's find out. She pulls out some sort of tube with, like, some piping and a crude trigger and shoots a gas canister. She's going to use... Noxious Choking Gas. Oh, Sleep Gas. She is ranked two. Yeah. Yeah, that would be good. Sleep Gas. DC 19. She got a plus 10. That's probably right. That's a really good plus. I think she has maybe an implement. All right. So saving throws. Those don't exist. Note to self. All right. I should keep track of all these. Play test issues. Show initiative order to players. Initiative is undefined. Even if the token doesn't have dexterity, it should still That was something I specifically specified when I built this, but whatever. Also, character import should bring in the stats, stupid decks, et cetera, as properties and add an action for each one. Okay, so this is going to be annoying. I'm going to have to bounce over to their fucking sheets. Uh... It's no more annoying than if I was using Google Sheets, I guess. All right, Orson, we'll start with you. What's your con? Plus seven. Roll. 20. Orson is not effective. Just barely. Hulu, you're next. What's your con? Plus seven. Six plus seven is not good enough. The mighty warrior is going to take a little nappy poo. Interesting. I don't have a condition for sleep. I'll just use stunned. Lisey, what's your con? Probably not that bad. She is a blood bitch. Where is the character? Where the fuck is she? She's not associated with the campaign. Link to campaign, ABS. There we go. Plus two. Good luck. I should probably indicate where this gas canister is or the cloud too. By the way, this doesn't count as magic. What is the radius? Circle three. That's really appreciated. So make sure we're all staying out of magic territory. Exactly. Add artwork. Google image. Gas canister. Do alarms start going off if we gas? I mean, it's not like there's a magic detection field. It's more like, will a guard see you? Oh, I know. I know. It's just a joke. And I mean, that's not crazy. If Kallak was still alive and was currently in his tower, he probably could sense magic anyways. All right. Gas canister. Aura. Three, circle three. Red. Suck on it, Mantul. And look, it moves. It moves with the gas canister. I'm just assuming you're guys seeing all of this. All right, Hakan, you're up. I can see the gas. I can see the canister, and I can see the circle. Okay. He has a plus six. All right, he's got to get a 13. He rolled a 17. He's fine. He's too tall. The gas is sinking to the ground. This is a very... Lame D&D fight music. What is this, Mario 3? Okay. Evie. She activates her power armor and little like flip plates come. These little chitinous plates fall over into this sort of scale mail. She's an arducer. All right, her turn is over. Auken's going to attack. Oh, I need facing indicators. Those don't exist. Add facing indicators to Junkos. And the ability to set face them. So does he have... No, yeah, he's a rogue. He doesn't have like power charge or anything. He has an action called Frost Giant. What does that do? It's a power called Frost Giant. Oh, it's a custom power for his racial ability. Okay. Should probably be Frost Giant Ancestry. Fingers of Frost. Info. I mean, he likes stabbing. He's just going to Soul Blade. He thinks Aeris is weak looking as he's a fool. I don't see her armor class. Of course, it didn't get pulled in from the character sheet. It is 17. He just barely made it. But you can dodge. You can parry with your claws. I will try to parry. Okay. According to your character sheet, you know, plus four. dodge parry block match just wait pull the claws out but he's just so quick now the soul blade does feel vitality normal melee attack he inflicts damage gain one vitae he doesn't actually have advantage he's a rogue attacking without a sneak attack so he just gains vitae it doesn't do anything different to you It didn't roll damage either. What is he attacking with? Imported a frost steel. It's a dagger to him. It's more like a short sword. Imported weapon attack actions aren't rolling damage. Which is weird because that's something they specifically do. Alright. So I'm going to roll 2d8 plus... Oh, my deft peridot. I can dodge without spending any... Oh, true. You can attempt a dodge as an immediate action. Oh, man. What was his roll? His roll was 18. I'd still have to hit, like, a 16. No, a 12. 12? No. 14. Oh, you have natural armor, right? Yeah. Natural armor. Is that just AC? Yeah. I feel like there's also one that gives you damage reduction. That's my dragons. I thought I had DR. Building characters in the middle of combat. Yeah, I know. Let's see. DR, Argnus, Tiefling, Dragon. OK. Well, let's, we'll just edit her character real quick. Feats. I mean, you gotta always use more of those. Scales of the Dragon. Gain DR equal to, we'll say, your convent. That'll help. Back to math. So he did, I pushed a change so this gray color wouldn't be unreadable in the chat log, but I guess it didn't make it. So that does 10 damage. And of course your hit points didn't carry over either. So I'll have to assign them. Cole, if you could assign hit points to Pip, that would be great. Six has 35 hit points. What's my max? Does it, let's sneeze. It's 35. And no bars, huh? Let me check the campaign. Bars, HP system defaults. The bar is not rendering. Bars are not rendering. Possibly only system defaults. Let me double check by making Another bar for hit points called HP2. Doesn't work. Add bar button does nothing. Excellent. I don't think he has cleave. His turn is over. Viz! You tried to leap to your defense, but he somehow was too slow. He's not really a fighter. He's more of a rogue fighter. Hey, I've got a soul blade too, fucker. Oh yeah, maybe he shouldn't use magic. He's just going to attack with his own soul blade. Fucking shit! And by the way, I couldn't actually edit Pip's, I couldn't figure out how to, oh there it is, okay, how many? Yeah, it's in the token context. Okay, how much does she, okay, nevermind, sorry for interrupting. You have, Pip has 35 hit points. Six has 45. I was on the wrong tab. And now she has seven. Now she has zero. What the fuck? I fixed this bug. Okay, her hit points change to a random number every time I select her. We'll have to track it some other way. Token... I have manually put in 28 as my current hit points, and my token lets me do that, but it doesn't have... I can't reset max HP. There's no other way for me to track it, but my token wouldn't say... I can see the metadata, and it said... Okay, it just disappeared. That's weird. Or was that a tooltip? That might have been a tooltip. And it said, according to the metadata, it had 60 hit points, so... All right. We'll just... So... HP 35 or 45. Okay. Biz, yeah, that plus 11, so... Character in Fort Attacks have the Kong map. He does not have a plus 11. That's basically impossible at this level. He'll hit a 25. All right. How about a parry or dodge attempt from the big rogue? All right, big rogue. plus eight, oh five, yeah, I needn't have bothered. Stab! Aha! I do 2v8 plus eight as well. Except he does more because he's using a special weapon. So, oh also, are you threatening? No, he has a reach. Damn, that would give him advantage. So on hit, half of crit bonus damage repeats, okay. Did he get a critical threat? 17? Oh, 18 is his crit. Oh well. I just did two games. I already rolled it. 16. How many hit points does he have? I literally don't even see the hit points. I'll have to calculate them myself. Five times five, 25. Constitution 6, 30, 55. 16. That's 39. Ugh. The only way to iron out these issues. Pip, it's yours. Yes. Alright. Um... Spore. Yeah, probably gonna... do some sporing. I'm gonna activate the spores that allow us communicate with each other telepathically. And then... The monster configurator is broken. Damn it. There are some guards. see what Google has for me. You can continue. Um... Hold on. And then, um... Oh, can I use those same spores that I'm releasing to do phytotoxin to the enemies? But not us. Not my friends. Maybe? Let me search phytotoxin. So phytotoxin is... Okay, poison damage. So spores definitely... I mean, okay. If you want to get technical, spores aren't plants, but I think the idea... So if you do a spore burst... No, if you do... Okay, so... Magic mushrooms is a target. Fungal... Cordyceps is a target. You usually don't have any AoE damage spores. But you do have AoE spores. Yeah. Spores got a single target. Okay. Well then, none of that matters I guess. What other attacks do you have? There's supposed to be a spore. Okay, so I guess it's just not written here, but you can do poison damage in an AoE, but it doesn't discriminate between friend and foe. Okay. I can't copy. You are not in line of sight of any guards at the moment. So do you want to hit? You can hit him alone or you could hit any two of the back Well, not any two, any two that are close to each other. I'm going to hit him, I think, for now. Okay. So it does damage, but as you said, you also have phytotoxin, so it does ongoing damage. And he's poison. So roll spores. Okay. two characters and tokens use pronouns in initiative has started for 27 look well he'll try to pass this save even though this is safe to end premature but he failed anyway poisoned I don't have a poisoned I'll use Weekend. And roll 2d8, just use the, just type it in the chat, 2d8 plus, I guess 10. That's probably, yeah. Character second level nav needs grouping, sorting, et cetera. I see you rolled 23. Okay, it's not telling me what it rolled. You don't see your own chat message? So I see eight plus 10. Oh, it's highlighted. It's a color problem. Oh, okay. Yeah, if you highlight the text, you'll see the 23. Okay. Yeah, it's using these dumb colors. So that is 16. 16. So you wanna do this with magic after? Orson. There's spores and poison gas everywhere. He staggers forward to get out of the cloud. There's spores. No. I can't burn them off of you. However, I can deal with that weirdo with the antenna. He begins to conjure the forma of terror. Terror. Well, yeah. The ground beneath your hands and feet. I mean, it's beneath your hands. Also, start shaking. Oh, I already rolled. I don't need to roll again. You got a 20, so he didn't fail. In the 10-foot square... All right, drawing tools. I haven't used you in a while. Let's see if they still work. Stroke color, fill color. I'll make it blue. Snap to grid. Yes, do you see that shape? Yes. Yay! Yes, but it's covering us all up. Yes, I can't edit it. Can't edit the shape, color. When selected, the drawing tools should be. I will make a new substitute color with transparency. Oh good. It remembers my settings from last time. Nope. That's not the color I said to use. Fuck. All right. I'll just make it, um, hollow. Transparent. Fill and shape, show and fight. Drawings should be, I'll let it draw my lair. Below, draw the wings. All right, no fill. Thicker stroke, sex joke. Nope, I accidentally moved you. Jesus Christ. Okay. It didn't come in. That area sinks into the ground. by 20 feet. It sinks like a fast elevator, so it's disconcerting. Oh, no, nevermind. You do have to make dex saves. Roll dex saves, DC 20. Shit. The hit area of the drawings is annoying, but I'm selecting both, so I guess that's fine. Five, heavy fall prone. Condition prone. Prone. Can't set condition prone. Condition prone. The falling damage shall be... 8. Oh, I'm going to try to... You both have wings. This is a moot point. Don't roll anything. Oh, yeah. You both spawn your wings and gently float. And you can probably quite possibly fly out. In fact, ad hoc ruling, do roll a deck save if you want to use your wings to slow the descent long enough for you to move five feet and then not be in the pit. Yes, that sounds like a good plan. Seven times five, 35. She took eight damage. How do I roll as a d20 plus something? Just type 1d20 plus the number. Like, here's 1d20 plus 7. No brackets or anything fancy. If you literally want to type the text 1d20 plus 7, just wrap it in quotes. That's it. Is that me? Ty is you, yes. Am I logged in as... because you're logged in as Victoria. I'm logged in as Nicole. Who the fuck am I? I have a name. I'm Ty. Why am I Ty? There is an impersonate, but I'm not impersonating him. Okay, weird. So I have your result 17. That's good enough. How about Pip? I rolled a six, but I didn't do the plus. I don't think your dex is that high. You fall into the pit, slowly taking no damage, and you are not prone. You are now a little bit closer to him. He looks a little weakened by all this coughing and gagging. His confidence is somewhat shaken. Oh, darn. What would you like to do? Oh, one more thing I have to do, actually. I'm going to roll a perception check from that guard. And I'm going to roll with disadvantage because he's really far away. Interesting. I did two 1d10 plus 1d20 plus 10s, but only one of them rendered. All right. He got lucky. It's my turn now? Yes, now it's your turn. Okay. Okay. It's like, excuse me. We were trying to cross here. Maybe you made a mistake where you were going. And she's going to, this is how she's going to stealth it. She's going to try and pass by him as she's walking by without any inherent use of magic. It's going to look like you're going to touch him only as I'm trying to pass by him. You're going to have genu. Shoulder check. But going to be trying to do a weaken on him at the same time as I pass by. So roll a dex-based attack, but yeah, just dex. Where is your character sheet? There's just no rhyme or reason to how these character sheets are. So I roll like my dragon ancestry or just roll a d20 plus... my dex. So dex for the touch attack, but that doesn't set the DC correctly. Interesting. Systemate as a philosophy, never roll two checks for the same action. So yeah, I do. This is your time, roll charisma instead. Oh, okay. Where's your character shape? It's gone. Oh, Jesus. Okay, I'm fucking blind. You have a plus eight, or possibly higher if you have a casting intent. I haven't chosen one, so I won't pretend I know. 27. Yeah, that easily, you make it look like an accident. What was the point? Withered his arms. He's already got disadvantage. Now he does half damage. Ugh. And she did make move action because it's a part of a move action, so she's now on the other side. With disadvantage. I gave this some flanking too. And that is going to have consequences. So what he type was eight. Now does this work? Apply disadvantage. You can take any roll you make and apply. disadvantage or advantage or reroll. You can also, oh yeah, so you just rolled charisma, right? I'm gonna click assign to action. Fuck, it doesn't work. So assign to action allows you to take a roll you just made, like 1d20 plus eight and turn that into an action. What a little quality of life step that doesn't fucking work. Create macro, also does nothing. Oh yeah, so create macro is the thing that I said. Assign an action is if you just did a naked roll and you're like, oh wait, that should have been Chill Touch, you can assign it to Chill Touch and it'll re-render as if you had rolled Chill Touch with that roll. Oh, okay. Very clever. You can say something. Yes. Ulu. Ulu is asleep and already failed his contract. Unless he has to do it twice? Sneak gas. Con ends. Succeed if con save or fall asleep, con ends. Oh, but only if no longer in the gas. It is sleep though. He could be woken up if one of his allies was smart enough to like kick him or something. So yeah, Ulu's turn is over. Lisey's turn is over. Back to Evie round two. Fuck! Fucker! I knew I should have took rocket boots. I'm gonna get the fuck out of here. Mutagen Indictor. Make myself super strong. So just climb. Make a climb check. Plus fucking zero. Great. Okay. Sorry. I'm gonna save to end. No, you don't. You already rolled it. isn't over. You think you can kill me? Go ahead and try. He readies an action. Who said we wanted to kill you? Nobody said anything about killing anyone. Well, it's not going to be too hasty. As he's sizing him up with the... Expecting some sort of subterfuge, Viz is nonetheless in a position to deliver a sneak attack. So... Fuck it. What are you gonna do? Yeah, he'll just attack. Fizz, Soulblade. So as he goes to attack, Hawken just does like a, I'm gonna make you flinch thing. And he loses his nerve and fucking fumbles the attack. Natural one. Fucking scrub. Pip, you are in the pit with Evie, but you have wings. Do you have, can I see your character? What happens if I click open character? Interesting. Oh, very interesting. That's okay. That's not your Pip. That's my Pip. Put your Pip on the map. I want to see what happens. Okay. See if I can figure out how to do that. Import character. You can right click on the map. Okay. Import character. It should show your characters. Yes. Import pip. Should open the create token modal. Yeah. And she should already have character art. Nope. Really? Oh, well, yeah. You might not have given it already. Actually, let me try to So I can link it. I can link it to... Yeah, but your token is already linked. No, add a new character. Import refresh. Don't link. I will give her the artwork. Mostly, I just want to see if I can see your character by following the edit character link. Even though you haven't shared it with me, so I technically shouldn't be able to. Coming along? Oh, it might have put her in the wrong place. Yes. It put her in 0-0. Thought I fixed that bug just today. Alright. Add artwork. Tyburn. Nope. That's definitely not right. Image. Pip. Pip portrait. Here. I'll do alternate portrait. I know which one's which. Okay, I can see absorb magic fans as a kiss of death. I can see this. Can I see the character? Failed to load character data. Okay, cool. So there's not a huge security hole. That's better. And I just closed the map because I'm stupid. Alright. So, what were we doing? Okay, so... It was my turn to do something. Yes. I wanted to see your character, but I can't. So... You tell me. But I can at least... of death. Absorb. So, I can't see your feats. What feats do you have? Do you have any open feet slots? I have two open feet slots. Do you have any wings? Phytotoxin, Leatherworking, Reactive Absorb. Bad luck. So, you need... You don't have wings unless you take the feat for wings. And the first one, the first level feat lets you slow fall. And the second level, which you can take at five, lets you actually levitate. Those don't exist yet, so don't worry about your character sheet. If you want those, declare them now. Yeah, I do need to fly. All right. So you can levitate up to 30 feet, easily exiting Once you exit the pit, you could also move 10 feet horizontally. Or straight up, if you want. Probably straight up. Yeah, so that I can do above aerial attacks. Badge SVG. Oh, yeah. I'm adding a flying condition. That was quick. Alright, you're now flying. Flying? Great. I'm awesome. Alright. What spell or whatever would you like to do? I'm going to cast bad luck on... I guess that's... Is that an always active thing, bad luck? It's just if you take someone's roll. So that is reactive. So when you roll a d20 result, you can store the result. So that's not an action. That's just a reaction to re-rolling a d20. Now... What powers do you have again? Fe Ancestry, Absorb Magic, Kiss of Death, and Drain Soul. Okay. Okay, there is actually a hex power that gives somebody bad luck, but I don't think it does. That's fine. So you could use Drain Soul, but that's not ranged. Let me click your thing again. You could Kiss of Death, that's also not ranged. Welcome to the pain of being a witch. Would you like the Fe's Gloves? That would be a good one for her to have, for sure. Okay, let's assume you have those. Alright, then I'm gonna, if I can do that, then I'm gonna, um, gonna weaken, I think. With, um, drain soul? Uh... Kiss of death. Kiss of death, yeah, yeah. You conjure a phantom hand, and it And you touch him and it inflicts damage. And, oh yeah. Okay. You're using withering touch. Okay. That'll do ability damage. Roll an attack. Kiss of death should do that if you click it, maybe. It's not in there for some reason. Roll with your other, the alternate token has kiss of death. That's our combat form. Actually, that's just what she looks like all the time. Gaze of death, 26. Might be a little high, but 25, 26, what is. While I'm rolling saves, you go ahead and roll damage. 2d12 plus 10. No, sorry. 2d12 plus 15. Con half, DC 20. What is your con, mister? Six. 1d 20 plus 6 versus 25. He got 16. He fails. Damage roll. What is his hit points? I know somebody hurt him. 16 out of 55. to do. So, negative 21 of 55. As the hand touches him, he withers and necroses and he looks like you just transmogrified him into a zombie. And much like a zombie, he's still moving. You do 10 strength damage. You said weaken? Okay, his strength is now six. And he's weakened on top of that. He's so withered and emaciated. That's gonna be really hard for the Gart to spot. We're gonna apply disadvantage. He just looks like a frail old male giant. Yeah. I'm just like... Oh, look like the crippled old man can copy somewhere now. He is not dying because he has frozen blood. Of course he does. Although he doesn't have grudge, so he doesn't have a lot of ways to capitalize on it. The initiative tracker disappeared. Fuck, interesting. Initiative tracker disappears. No way to restore. This is not the same order, but okay. If I remember, it was Evie first, then Huck, and then... Oh, it's not letting me... Oh, she goes next round? Okay, that's right. She just went. And then I don't fucking remember. Gas canister, you don't get an initiative. Lulu goes after him. I'm just gonna just fucking just do it differently. I don't remember. Pip just went, so that makes sense. Okay. So it's his turn again. He reaches with his withered, emaciated hand at... He learned his lesson. He's gonna attack Viz. Ooh, almost a crit. So cold. Except it only does medium cold damage. It's actually not really a good move. He should use a sneak hit. No, he has no advantage. He's fighting like a fighter, not a fucking rogue. All right, GD8 plus eight. Yeah, no, it makes sense. You weakened the shit out of him. He's got to use magic to hurt anyone. Viz, have you taken any damage? Oh, boy. I think he did. But I don't see his hit points, so I guess he's full. Boy, he is trying to put himself back to sleep. So what, 21, Viz. Do you have reactive absorb? I don't think he has absorb at all. He does. He just doesn't have reactive absorb, but he needs more feats. He holds up his left hand in an attempt to counter... He did roll a really fucking good DC, though. The thing about absorb... Oh, fuck. I think he... Absorb, it's not about beating the DC. Yes, it is. Okay. Absorbs and spells energy and takes no damage. No thanks, not today. Okay, dragon-y. Dragon time. Orson is looking a little worried. I don't know. What the hell's wrong with you two? He looks back and sees them sleeping. Oh, shit. Oh, they're sleeping. You might want to go wake them up and get out of here. It sounds like it's past your bedtime. Fuck. Haken. I try and strongly convince him of that. That is my... Roll persuasion, also known as a charisma check. You have... I think you have advantage because he's down 2.5 allies. The situation is turning pretty poorly. 25. That's without advantage. With advantage, it's also 25. Fuck. You need to get the fuck out of here, man. He looks like he's ready to just beat it. Uh, Ulu gets a fresh save. See? No, he doesn't get a save. He's still in the game. No, he's still in the fucking gas. It is, oh, it's your turn. Hey, while we're, while we're, oh, he doesn't have a shadow pin. I was gonna have him shadow pin the gas canister just before Orson could move it away. You know, buddy, you don't look like you're doing so well. You might want to let your friends get you to somewhere to rest. Let me just see if I can remove this curse from you. He casts Absorb Magic. on frozen blood. No, no, no! Don't do that. Fuck! All right, he's now dying. I don't have a dying. We'll just remember it is dying. I'll call it stunned. I'm missing a lot of conditions. Orson, fuck. Because there would be so many if you list all of them. Orson, do you have... Oh, he doesn't. But Terra could work. Okay. Well, if a spell works the first time, why not try it again? He turns around. Terra Forza. Excellent roll. He creates a very small pit that the gas canister falls into. And the others start. But they still have to pass a save to Waco. He provokes an attack of opportunity from Eri, but I don't know if you want to take it. I'm not going to take it. I'm not going to take it. Okay. He's hustling away. He's waddling. Let me see. He's following my suggestion. I'm not going to counter. It's counterintuitive to attack somebody who's following my work. My persuasion. All right. Pip. All enemies are now in retreat. In submissive state. Your friends are in retreat. If you want to, you can do something declarative. If you want to... If you're doing something that's hostile, we'll stay in combat. but if it's non-hostile, we can go into non-hostile mode. Yeah, we can go into non-hostile mode, because I don't know how many things really I'm doing. I might absorb some negative magic. I think we should go into, let's just stay in the situation. We haven't been seen. Nobody's seen us. Okay. Biz kneels down. Oh, could one of you ladies help, Abby? Okay. He kneels down to the dying cross giant and disarms him, binds his hands, and then transfuses one hit point into him. He's still really fucked up. I'm leaving him until he's out of range. He's not gonna get young again until he leaves our immediate vicinity. we have any sort of binding? No. I'm taking mutagen. I really was kind of hamstrung by artifice things that are feasible with this tech level. The starts to wake up. Look, bud. You took your shot. And you blew it. So why don't you get the fuck out of here before I make you disappear. I thought you didn't believe in trains. I believe in twine. As he struggles to stand up while frail and weak and with his hands tied behind his back, Hulu does eventually wake up and just sort of calmly helps Haken back to his feet. He gives you all kind of a glower, but he's mostly helping him. And without saying a word, you can tell he's trying to impress upon him. Don't be an idiot. Let's get out while the getting's good. Orson completely ignores Lisey, but Lulu gives her a kick. Wake up. Shit. What the fuck? I thought you said no magic. It wasn't magic. Bitch. She gives you the stink eye, but is wise enough to realize this would be a bad fight to pick. They limp away and defeat. Do do do do do do do do. Anyone want a Frostdale Shorts? I gotta work on those rocket pens. I'll confiscate the blade that was used against us. It is a Froststeel. Froststeel. Short sword. That's a dex-based weapon. Froststeel weapon. So, Froststeel weapon. Always cold at the tush for using contact. It's a magical material set up in the essence of winter itself, blah, blah, blah, blah. On hit, target suffers chilled. You gain plus four critical range against chilled targets and plus eight versus rooted. I just got a short sword. Pretty good effect. Awesome. Although it's called Frost Steely, you can see that it's made out of some sort of stone, but the magical enchantment allows it to hold a sharp edge. Well, you are on your way somewhere. So In fact, you're pretty close. You approach the guards. Was all that ragged? Oh, you know. Just some drunken bums. You get the sense the guard would rather not make a scene. They are so... These are the civil guards, basically police. There is, as mentioned, a knight from the Templars awaiting you. He got here fast because he has a mount. Which he is tied up to a post, not anticipating mounts will fit very nicely into this place. As you... We have an appointment to keep. You have a writ... And of course this guy to vouch for you. So not too many problems. Wait, don't leave me behind. Yep, that was two pips. I'm like, I got four tokens. That's the right number. I do want to take the duplicates spell too. Like mirror image or something. Shadow. I mean, you do need some more shadow and void stuff. Right. Everything checks out. joy. Oh, surely well. They are just guards. The knight is the one who actually had the key to it. There is a... Well, this looks like a city gate. It's very small. It's like a one-person door. It is, in fact, made of iron. So, you know... It's guarded as much to keep people from going through it as to keep people from stealing it. By forging it with chromium and carbon. And it's basically just a very small handed chamber and a stone stairway down. What would you like to do? Let's go down. No. 80. doesn't sound like a legend. Does that sound like a legend? Yeah, kinda. It descends about 30 feet. There are no built-in light sources. None of you have true dark vision, although I do. I snap the fingers in a little flame. Nice. From this point, you are considered in the Undercrossed You may use your magic, but no looting. I'm sorry, I jumped to that conclusion before you said it out loud. I hope that's okay. The Rapport Spores are still active, and Viz thinks at you, do we want to shake this guy or keep him around in case of control? The Templar? Shake him. Yeah. I don't think he was supposed to, was he supposed to accommodate stability? I thought he was just supposed to. No, it was, it, It was not specified. Hey, bud. We got this from here. Don't worry. Take a break. I'll roll my charisma and everything. He... He's not convinced by Viz's charm. You really should. Maybe I could help with some convincing. Give him... Bat your eyelashes. Maybe you're... Your iridescent hair shines. Nope, I'm not as lucky either. I don't trust adventures. Okay. Well... Haven't you already secretly wanted to be one, though? You did get a 17. So... I'm going to... catch you. Do you have an end to that sentence? back up the stairs and slammed the door. What is it we're going to do? Thank you. Abby's already at the bottom investigating the door. Clunk. Masks go on. Oh yes, you have your filters. Mask up. I mean, it is a sewer. I'll just get this door for you. I like the sewer. It's filled with spores and Viruses. Gross oozes. So many oozes of various types and textures. Why would the door be closed? He must have opened it when he came down here. So who closed it? You immediately get hit with a smell. The worst of it has been filtered out. It's a I mean, the air is sweet, so really you don't get hit with a smell. Fip is sad and takes off her mask. This is not a sewer. This is an aqueduct. So this is fresh water, but it's fresh water that's been flowing through stone for 2,000 plus years. There is fucking mold everywhere. They clean it as much as they can. Mmm. mold. You're like a dog in a fucking meat shop. So many interesting mold smells. You basically open right up to a channel where it's three squares wide. The middle square is like a five foot deep channel and water is moving through it at a decent pace. Maybe a good five mile an hour. And there are walkways on both sides, but You could go either way. Got some magic for that. Anybody got any hints? Like, see I'm crying? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't think about this. We'll explain later. Okay. Hold on. We can use magic now, right? We're good to go. Let's do this. Okay. I am going to conjure a stone. that's going to guide us to Haybar. And also light everything up real nice. All right, does it still say Kalem? Okay, it says Stella now. Stella is the correct name. It says Kalem on the page I'm on still. I guess it's not live. The change isn't live. The detail page says still open. However you get to it is fine. So Seeking Star is DC 17 plus. You're tracking him, our Haben. Yes. The dwarf. Okay. So a specific person played, or you've seen in person at least once, I guess temporal vision counts. That is DC plus four. The range. Yeah. Could be long. All right. Roll. charisma base spellcasting skill. Just charisma. Whatever's your fucking character she needs. Okay. I keep expecting you to be sort of underpass. So you have plus eight, unless proven otherwise via implement. Oh, I'm ending addition. Which implement would help? Because I was having a hard time choosing one on this. So, good question. So enchanting set in enchanting, there we go. So if you want higher DCs, the Adepts implement is best. That grants bonus to hit and spell DC. It can also hold concentration for you, which would be useful because this is a concentration spell. All right, so let's do that. I think that's going to be where I have to go with the time stuff, too. I'll probably have to hold concentration on time stuff, too, in some cases. Yeah, a lot of those are concentration spells. So we'll assume we have a plus two for a total of plus 10. Okay. I'm going to see where's my, let's make sure my aspirations are in line. Did I put those? Oh yeah, discovering relics of the past. So I'd claim I have an advantage in this, getting into this dungeon. It's believable. Get property. Let's see if this works. I have created an action for you. Ooh, it does work. Except it added your raw charisma score of 26. So we'll go with, so 16, applied advantage. I don't believe it applied advantage. They were both four. I'm skeptical that it's doing advantage correctly. So let me just roll it again. Take another D20. Well, fuck, you can only roll fours, I see. So your total result was 16. I feel like the kind of thing you would have prepared. Oh, that's right. Prepare actions first. What did we decide prepare actions could do? Well, yeah, that you could get advantage on the spellcasting, too. But you already have advantage. Here's the thing. At a 16... Okay, so you didn't meet the base DC. Okay, so there is... Did I mishap? What were you casting? Tempus? Oh no, Stella. Instead of, oh, it doesn't have Latin. Okay. Seeking star, you pronounced it wrong and it was seeking sheep. Let's see. Let me roll 1d100. What's the consequence of failure? Can I just try again? Yes, but there will be a mishap. So, whoa, that's terrible. Okay. I'm gonna take an injury. Did I blow up my foot or something? I hate that. I hate that response. I'm gonna give you advantage to your D100. Use the higher result. 100, oh boy. I don't know if that one's gonna be good. Roll twice and combine the results. Oh boy. So 40. And 65. All right, these are final. Okay, that one's interesting. So here, I need to record this somewhere. New Girl ABS episode session. Press two. Okay. mishaps. So you don't notice what the 40 does and you don't immediately notice what the 65 does. So I just think it's a great mishap and it's like, oh, that didn't work. That didn't work right. Let me try it again. Exactly. Roll the point of 10 with advantage. So I want to help her. I don't have any other rolls stolen either. There we go. Here we go. Okay, 26. That's pretty damn good. So, base you see 21. So, 26 is one mile radius. Oh, boy. You could really... Yeah, no, I think it's within one mile. This beautiful mode of silvery radiance appears. It's singing a quiet, chiming tune. And it begins to guide you. Moving at about walking speed. You follow through the sewers, well, through the aqueduct, for a fairly long and boring route. Although there's a lot of turns. This is like an intermediate channel. You follow it over to the major channel, which is like four times bigger and is just moving a ton of water. And then you go to another medium channel and then down into a very small sort of capillary room, which is basically just one five foot square wide. And you kind of have to walk like a cowboy because the water channel is in the middle of that square. And normally this isn't really a way to get around town because there's not a lot of access points and they're all sealed off with doors. but you're dealing with a dwarf and you see something interesting, a hole in the wall, perfectly rectangular. It's basically from floor to ceiling, about five feet wide. The stone just moved out of the way and he carved a ramp downward, complete with stairs. You see irregular, oh no, you don't. There are no seams in the stonework. The dwarven scions fused it all together. I assume you follow? Yes. It's hovering down. If it gets too far ahead of you, it stops and like, it doesn't have facing, but you get the distinct impression it turns around to look at you impatiently. Okay, now definitely time for the mask. Yes. This is level two, the output network for the water system, the actual sewer. And the design is very similar. The black water is moving through similar channels. And it's yucky down here. But thank God you have Sweet air. Oh yeah, that's right. What does that roll? Four. Uh, levels five to ten? Sure. Five to ten. You guys have all five. Oh no! Eight. Okay, I know a bottle of sweet air isn't something that's been activated yet. I have to activate that. So that's why I activate down here. Oh, so the filter... Okay, the filter... It just filters out ordinary airborne toxins. Okay, so you can kind of smell. It smells funky, but you're not dying from the smell. And the bottle of sweet air is for more extreme circumstances. That's what I thought. As you're walking along, trying to not slip on the occasional slime that grows onto these sidewalks, Can I ask the slime very nicely not to bother us? She's talking to the slime. No, slimes, listen. Please. There are actually, you can sense sometimes as you're walking through the sewer, there are ooze creatures that live in the sewer flow. But they're not disposed to attack you. You see signs of habitation. You see graffiti. You see like discarded broken items or a bit of food waste. Not much. People down here are pretty hungry. You see excrement? I mean, they could at least do it into the sewer. Thankfully, they're not doing it on the level above. But rather than encountering any of the sewer people that are rumored to exist, you hear something else... and it was faint at first, but gradually grow more certain. And from some of the passages that you passed by in the deep darkness beyond your torch and starlight, You hear things crawling along the walls. You look back, red eyes glowing in the dim light beyond. And shambling toward you are ghouls. A ghoul pack surges forth. You ready yourself. battle. It'll take place next time. With hopefully way fewer bugs in the map tool. Hey, it's usable, man. Hooray, we used it. Hooray, we used it.