Category: Winter Watch

Nala advances through Shadow Cat Gulley and unsurprisingly finds another shadow cat. Tango skulks behind terrain to circle silently around the cat to flank with Nala. A second cat hiding in the long grass flanks around Tango with a bite into his already injured person. Snory transfers life to Tango. What Tango’s response to the surprise cat lacks in initiative it makes up for in brutality. Tango slips away to help with the first cat, already suffering from Nala’s greatsword, Moth’s flurries of punches, and Jim’s magic missiles as delivered by Scram. Tango guts the first cat and returns to his nemesis. Tanking Moth’s tanking health receives a transfer from Snory. Nala’s greatsword finishes the second cat’s focused misery.

A pair of fast-moving mold zombies, attracted by the commotion, shamble up behind the party and slam precarious Snory into unconsciousness. Nala hears her own voice reporting Cleric Down as the zombies head for Scram next, but she and Moth have already engaged with another shadow cat. Tango intercepts the zombies giving Scram room and time to double fireball them. These zombies could use a couple more fireballs, but there aren’t any more. Nala surges a fatal chop to the cat, freeing her and Moth to take up the zombies.

Fifth-generation rogue Tango surveys the dire situation and takes a metaphysical journey back to his third-generation grandfather. Why, back in grampy’s day rogues could access the worlde’s majicks uphill both ways just by tying an onion to their belt, and that’s the way they liked it. Maybe, just maybe, Tango could convince this short-cut, instant-gratification, fifth-generation universe to accept a slight refund of Snory’s life transference. If only Tango concentrates hard enough, is persuasive enough, grasps Snory’s greasy lapels tightly enough – Snory’s healing potion squeezes out of his greasy tunic into Tango’s hands like a can of spinach squeezed from a sailor’s dress whites. That works, too. Tango drags waking Snory to safety and receives a moistened curative benediction to his earhole by way of thanks.

Tango rejoins Nala, Moth, and Scram already in progress just as Nala chops down one of the mold zombies. Tango fatally sneaks on the second. Neither seems disposed to rise again.

The party crosses back over the zombie-resistant slime log for a much-needed hour’s rest. Scram and Tango explore around a little while bandages and salves are liberally applied to the wounded.

Tango proposes a quieter approach back into the gulley’s depths. An apparent dead end is occupied by a slightly larger shadow cat and a quartet of ambling zombies. Tactician Tango proposes initiating an attack from atop the steep gulley wall which would at least hold back the zombies. Moth parkours up the gulley wall and drops a rope end for the less monkish. Snory climbs the offered rope, although Moth really does all the work. Moth ties the line off to a tree. Scram scales the rope which comes easily untied from the tree and throws Scram back into the muddy gulley floor. Nala scales the wall and drops a rope end for Tango to follow. The rope then proves unusable for Scram who falls back into the mud, again. Scram, still tethered to Nala’s line, relies on his confirmation bias and his mizzium apparatus to magic up some levitation for himself. Nala tows him into position.

Dirigible Scram, from his lofty observation post, thumbs up the party before initiating violence and ignites an arcanely recovered fireball into the midst of the loitering cat and zombies. One zombie burns up. The other three gaze up into Snory’s presentation of his Kelemvor’s novelty whip handle and are deificly destroyed. Moth tosses a dart down into the cat which summons it elegantly up the gulley wall and right into Moth’s face, right where he wants it for some blow flurrying. Scram scorches rays from above. Tango sneaks at it from cover. The cat blurs defensively but Nala fatally cleaves it anyway.

Tango and Nala drop down into the gulley to have a look into some conspicuously green shrubbery at the apparent dead end. A narrow path opens into a small cave littered with the bones of less successful adventurers. Freshly muddy footprints lead directly from the cave entrance to a pile of boulders. Tango hears muffled cries as the rest of the party catches up. Ceiling-walking Scram selects a non-load-bearing rock from the safe top of the pile and pulls it free. The wall of boulders collapses precariously toward dodging Nala and Tango and a yet undiscovered third person beyond who ungratefully complains about the lack of caution. Tango scrambles through the new opening and meets one very sarcy Annallee Wysacaryn who deliberately collapsed the back corner of the cave to hold off her feline pursuers.

Annallee travelled to Shadow Cat Gulley because of the ready availability of lightning which she hoped to harness into her Khyber dragon shard. Tango observes what a mighty fine crystal Annallee has there, ideal for compensating one’s rescuers if they are at all common? Psh as if. In that case, maybe Tango could carry it for her while safeguarding her life on the way out of here? Umm no. Tango agrees they will save her life first, and THEN discuss Annellee’s generous gratitude later at Quietreach. Quietreach? That changes everything! Any friend of Solana’s can totally borrow the shard … briefly.

Back in Quietreach, Xalver reminds Alpha Company of the three Eberron airships recovered by teacher’s pet Charlie Company from beneath the City of Shade. Completion of the airship restoration, explains technomancer Solana, requires only a few elemental channel gems that can be sourced from Annallee Wysacaryn, an elven wizard who will have nothing at all to do with elephants. Rodolf has a door that will conveniently pop them safely near Annallee’s abode in Shadow Cat Gulley.

A river of non-trivial width and volumetric flow courses through the rain-soaked gulley. Tango reaches down to touch a skull and receives a pre-recorded message:

Greetings, brave traveler! I am the skull of Abraxis the Mighty, a genie of some renown. Although I left this mortal coil ages ago, my skull still possesses the means to grant a single wish. To earn this wish, simply shout to the heavens whatever it is you desire most.

Tango, desiring an untapped skull wish the most, shouts nothing and slips the skull into his pocket. Thinking outside the box, Tango attempts to scale the steep gulley edge. The box thinks outside of Tango and he slides back into the gulley.

Scram wishes he had a skull genie and stares longingly into the foggy distance where there may or may not be something staring longingly back at him.

The burble of gulley water is interrupted by the mighty caw, caw of an overcrow that incapacitates much of the party, compelling them to caw and flap uselessly. An unkindness of ravens swoops through the party peckingly. Scram unleashes shocking grasp and yells his trademark warcry which the ravens happily emulate. The echoing cacophony of Carnage! fills the gulley. Snory traces the forested edge of the gulley until he sights and blights the boss raven. A pair of shadow cats take advantage of the scrum to make a snack of Scram and Nala. Nala’s greatsword pivots from raven to cat. Moth flurries punches through seemingly invincible waves of ravens to get to Nala’s cat. Tango notices Scram is on the proverbial ropes and sneakily stabs his cat in its flank. The cat turns to bite Tango as Scram splashes a vitriolic sphere. Tango sneaks a fatal stab at the acid-washed cat. Scram witch bolts Nala’s cat down leaving only the ravens to punch, sword, and toll.

A short rest restores much needed vitality.

The party next regards the slime-covered tree trunk fallen across the swole river. Enthusiastic Moth proficiently glides across the improvised bridge and charges into a mob of zombies dispensing qi-fueled flurries of blows. Nala issues a warning javelin and joins Moth. They work back-to-back proficiently beating on the surrounding zombies while Snory and Tango fiddle with a buried bag of holding. Blurry Scram attempts to freeze the river with his mizzium apparatus.

Tango sneaks around behind the zombies, pausing only to see if a long-fallen skeleton decaying in the mud would grant him any wishes. It does not.

Zombies die, but the slain zombies tend not to remain reliably dead until Scram, finally successful at crossing the log, fireballs the clog of zombies into ash.

Ash, Barika, and Sqyylarr check out an exceptionally well-stocked wine room featuring a range of vintages, from the Sword Coast Classic Thunderbyyrdd to a few bougie bottles of Chateau du Dionysus. But no secret doors or misplaced tuna at all, only wine.

Watc ponders any significance or purpose to the tabletop game interrupted by the brutal destruction of the pair of war mages. None.

Ander and Ten check out the barrels and casks; the beer seems depleted far ahead of the dried foodstuffs and wine. Still, something about the room really bugs Ten. He tugs experimentally on a couple of the wall sconces revealing only rust flakes and builder-grade. Symmetry compels Ten to the wall opposite the wine room where he feels the anticipated telltale draft of a secret door in the wall.

The party stacks up at the secret door with vaguely readied violence while Ten pops the door open for the element of surprise. However, it is the party who is surprised by the element of fire as a fireball trap explodes into the room. Contrite Ten casts an apologetic mass cure wounds and charges into the secret room with summoned shillelagh. Fortunately, yet unfortunately, he absorbs a salvo of magic missiles from none other than Ulrozax himself and a snakebite from Ulrozax’s strange coworker.

Irritated protests fly out of the room: What are you doing here? I’m not finished! Firebolts fly into the room at Ulrozax and his appropriately named snake friend, Snake With A Hundred Mage Hands, interrupting their work around a purpley, waverly, arch-shaped portal thing. Ash and Barika go for Snake and take him out. Sqyylarr charges in, just about to smash Ulrozax, when Watc steals her glory with an immolation so nasty that Ulrozax flees the plane through the arch portal.

Even in a room stuffed to overflowing with magic, Sqyylarr easily spots the mission objective astral sapphire sitting next to a book on a stand. Braced for catastrophe, she picks the sapphire up. Nothing terrible happens so she hands it off to Watc. Watc inspects the adjacent book and discovers Ulrozax’s spellbook for locating his obsession, APPOTHROMAX the esoteric dragon. Watc liberates the spellbook for later study and recordation [demiplane, gate, guards and wards, forcecage].

Although entirely accomplished by virtue of Ten’s devastating circumvention of Ulrozax’s generations of planning, the party elects to continue exploration of what seems to be a perpetual pocket dimension derived from Mordenkainen’s magnificent mansion, mindful of the possibly the mansion is considerably less perpetual now that immolating Ulrozax has fled the plane.

The party retraces back through the bathing room and proceeds south into a series of dorm rooms. Most of the rooms are easily accessible, but one conspicuously interesting door is magically locked. The locked door causes Barika to go insane when she attacks it with her axe, and she wanders aimlessly around into a room farther south floored with practice runes. Ander reduces the door off its hinges and it falls weirdly into the plush bedroom beyond. Ten dispels the door ward that made Barika go crazy and tosses a handful of sand all around the weird door into the weird bedroom. The sand falls unevenly. Sqyylarr enters the room and reveals a time differential: time in the room passes considerably faster than time outside the room, perfect for an overachieving wizard studying to execute his nefarious plan to locate APPROTHROMAX.

Ten chases down Barika and removes the curse of insanity. Ander struggles with his own sanity reconciling the time differential in Ulrozax’s bedroom and decides what would really help is a good night’s rest outside the contorted bedroom. His plans are interrupted 48 minutes later when the others emerge fully rested from the bedroom.

Barika and Sqyylarr rifle through the research papers scattered along the coffee tables of the luxurious sitting room just liberated from a pair of war mages. Sqyylarr hands the puzzling documents off to Ander who determines the in-progress research does not amount to much.

Ash probes west into a conservatory with a water feature, a statue, and a selection of greenery photosynthed by a floating radiant sphere. A fey drake emerges from the rustling bushes. Ash and Sqyylarr resist its hypnotic pattern. Lil’ Drake does not avoid Barika’s hypnotic ear scritching and is placated long enough for Ash to clear the conservatory of anything interesting or useful or valuable. Barika points out that Lil’ Drake is the greatest treasure of all. The greatest treasure of all peacefully returns to its habitat.

Ten emits an aura of vitality to restore Ander’s health. When Ash mentions that the conservatory statue of Ulrozax looks exactly like the defeated war mage, Ten is momentarily disappointed at the ease of their victory until he realizes the two war mages also look exactly like each other. Interesting.

The party crosses back through the library into a dining room to the north that features seating for 15 and a roaring fireplace behind the master’s seat at the north end of the table. A cone of fire shoots from the fireplace at Ash, compliments of a lumbering altar flame golem. The golem burns a path of destruction trying to get to Ash who reacts to escape the hot contact. Ranged attacks and social distancing are the tactics of choice for the fire-averse party. Watc and Ander survive fire cones thanks to Ander’s flash of genius. Barika charges in with her ice breath and extinguishes the golem. Most of the dining room continues to smolder.

A short rest in the dining room invites closer examination of the cupboards, but the contents are mundane.

Back in fighting shape, Ander steps through the swinging doors west into the kitchen where recent food preparation is in evidence but not recent cooks. Suspicious Ander waves his screwdriver around menacingly to encourage cooperation. A little fellow, Baker Boi, pops out of hiding and surrenders on behalf of his diligent crew. They are just cooks cooking for the master, whatever his name might be. Nothing to kill here except these tasty bribe muffins [1d4 healing] which Ander accepts. Barika kills a muffin right away.

The party leaves the kitchen staff in peace and returns to the undead mailroom near the entry portal, having explored all known rooms to the west. They stack up on the eastern door with prepared spells and weapons. Barika enters a bathing room and explores the effects of the warm bath on her toes. There is a closed door south, a closed door east, and an open set of stairs down north. Tactician Ten proposes the unsecured north stairs should be the priority. Watc expeditiously wanders north and notes a pair of war mages wargaming at a table while a flesh golem meanders amongst a considerable collection of kegs. Watc fireballs the lot of them. They retaliate with bolts, missiles, and slams. Ander re-retaliates with a second fireball. The mages re-re-retaliate with a counter spell. Ash goads the golem and Sqyylarr finishes it. Firebolting Watc charges a mage. The panicky second mage fireballs the room without first studying spell sculpture and frags his buddy. Several launched items fly at the survivor until Ash’s prey slayer slays the mage prey.

Taco-cat abides.

Three strong, padlocked chains secure the prominently central sarcophagus, either because the contents are too valuable, or the contents are too dangerous for nosey adventurers. Nosey adventurer Watc detects residual magic around the chains, but nothing compared to the rich emanation of abjuration magic beneath her feet. Ten-blessed Sqyylarr and Barika muscle the chains off in a totally noncompetitive way that Barika totally wins. They ease the heavy stone lid off the final resting place of some stone stairs proceeding downward.

Barika leads the party down into a plush little office with a desk and a few chairs. Stone etchings adorn the north and south walls. Sqyylarr reads a helpful note on the desk: One door to knowledge, One door to power, My name holds the key.

Ander speculates one chair might represent knowledge and another power but finds they both represent only a comfortable seating position. Ten finds a list of curated books in the desk and notices a possible Ulrozax acrostic among the highly amusing titles.

Ash, drawn to the conspicuously under-utilized wall behind the desk, locates the hidden latch that opens a secret panel concealing a bookshelf. Ten helps Sqyylarr with her letterin’ as she and Barika pull the seven Ulrozax books partially out where they lock into place and glow affirmingly. The north etching, attracting Watc with a beacon of detected magic, begins to shimmer portal-like.

Ten and Ash unflinchingly reconnoiter through the shimmering portal and find a heavy, rich curtain between them and an elaborately plush conference room where six spectral attendees convene around a table of documents. Barika, afraid of no ghosts, steps through the doorway which sets off an alarm as well as a personal announcement welcoming her to her death. Barika dodges.

Ander ballistas a specter back on the table and scorches the spectral team-leading wraith. The specters mob Ander who seems impossibly immune to their life draining attempts. They pivot to Barika without much improvement. Ten summons a spiritual weapon and utters some words of radiance that prove fatal to one specter. Barika and Sqyylarr crash into the specters with supporting artillery from Ander and Ash. Ten radiates words and his spiritual weapon claims the final, fatal strike on the wraith leader.

The documents central to the undead meeting seem to be correspondence from field agents concerned with optimizing access to the astral sea, uncoincidentally also the purpose of the sapphire-activated astral throne.

The next room through the western door is a library containing an apparently domestic cat, to which Barika runs, and a fine collection of books, to which Ander runs. The cat remains on a chair studying the history of smells on Sqyylarr’s well-travelled fingers. The books go into Ander’s extra-dimensional storage for later study.

Ash’s interest focuses on the pair of henceforth unnoticed war mages observing the obnoxiously bold intruders from a sitting room to the south. Ash greets them optimistically. The diplomatic outreach is rebuked by firebolt. Ash rebuts with a fatal, pushing, sneaking, vicious arrow.

For the second war mage, Ten tries diplomacy the other way around, starting with a death toll and a ridiculously debilitating harm spell and ending with a demand for surrender. A fireball is the war mage’s answer to the proposed surrender, so Sqyylarr blinds him. The war mage’s final words before Barika chops him down are, I R BLYND which must be the name of his supervisor or something.

Watc collects the cat with a mizziumed finding of familiar. The cat supposes its name is Steve, but Watc recalls recently being boiled by a dragon turtle of similar name and instead settles on Honorable Taco-Cat Not-Steve Duke of Cuddles.

Cleric Ten finds the party just waking from a long rest, eyes the piles of defeated undead and undefeated dead, and transmutes the shillelagh aspect of his club. Barika wastes no time opening the door across the hall to find a room strewn with rubble and a couple of sarcophagi. Barika wastes only a little time returning to the hall to express her rage before returning to examine the north sarcophagus, already open and mostly empty. Watc kicks through the rubble and frostbites a lurking huecuva. The lid flies off the south sarcophagus and a second huecuva pops out in time to see his buddy pitched into the wall by Ander’s firebolt and eldritch cannon combo. Ten utters a word of radiance before luring the huecuva into Sqyylarr’s sentineling smash and fatal follow-up. Ash sneaks a final arrow into the other prey.

Observant Barika locates a secret door behind the rubble. Sqyylarr leads the party into the secret earthen passage beyond up to the unsecret side of the far secret door. The small, secret room is crowded with urns and what seems like a lucrative collection of treasure chests at first, but conceal a deadly secret. Watc knocks open a convenient padlock and the roused mimic attempts to eat her face. Sqyylarr destroys the mimic and regards the other five treasure chests suspiciously. Ash and Watc excuse themselves as Ander adopts a reconnaissance-by-fire tactic. Sqyylarr, Barika, and Ten ruin each mimic as it is revealed. Having run out of mimics and chests to provoke, Ander invites the urns to leave peacefully and obliterates the most valuable one as a demonstration of his zeal.

Ash locates a secret door on the other side of the mimic room. Through the door Sqyylarr finds yet more sarcophagi, dust, and an ouchy layer of green slime on the floor. Ander declares that the solution to pollution is dilution and washes the acid slime against the far wall with his decanter of endless geysering. The party crosses the room unperturbed by the displaced slime.

Through the unbarred door beyond the slime is a collapsed tunnel. Ash warns of a shifty shadow. The shadow gives Watc a touch of necrosis. Readied Ander gives the shadow a taste of firebolt. The shadow absorbs back into the rubble. Barika hoists her greataxe, ready for the shadow’s return. The shadow, not one to disappoint, foolishly emerges to necrotize Barika but fatally catches her greataxe right in its shadowy vital bits.

The next door opens into a grand hall lined with sarcophagi beneath a high, columned ceiling. A large, fancy, jade sarcophagus, disturbingly chained closed, prominently adorns a central dais. Sqyylarr and Watc try to pull the lid off the nearest mundane sarcophagus but find the effort is unnecessary as several mummies all around the room eagerly pop their own lids off and gaze dreadfully at the party. Ander scorches rays, fires off his cannon, and closes the door behind him as he advances to the rear.

Cleric Ten rises on light-draining night steps and turns the mummies from his righteously floating vantage. Ten designates unfleeing mummies to be pasted by Barika and Sqyylarr in battle order. Controlling Ash goads the unturned into distraction. Ten drops a circle of power to ward the mummies’ attempts to curse and rot. Ander pops into the room momentarily to lend his ballistics and check on the battle progress. Progress is favorable and well-coordinated until a sneaky, spider-climbing vampire spawn claws at screaming Ten from the ceiling.

Barika chops through a mummy and flings a handaxe at the ceiling vampire in a single motion. Ten, maintaining concentration on his power circle, telekinetically yanks the vampire off the ceiling and crashes it to the floor within reach of Sqyylarr. Sqyylarr brutally pulverizes the prone vampire with repeated, heavy, surging, overhead smashes. Not much remains of the unspawned vampire spawn, not much that’s solid at least. Suck on that.

Ander ballistas the last turnt mummy into the wall it has been hugging. Barika takes long steps to chop the mummy. Ten’s thorn whip snaps around Barika and slays the mummy.

Ash opens a door up on the mezzanine he occupied as a firing position. A locked treasure chest just beyond a winged warrior woman statue attracts a precautionary arrow from his longbow. It’s either a genuine chest or a well-disciplined mimic. Barika moves closer to determine which, and the statue’s considerable stone sword falls on her attackingly. Barika returns strikes on the completely indifferent statue. Ash notices a pressure plate under Barika’s weighty feet and concocts a cunning plan to defeat the statue: step over the plate. That solution is too simple for artificer Ander who helps himself to the statue sword arm’s essential animating clockworks.

Ander picks the lock easily but regrets his success when he finds within the chest a macabre human corpse, its eternal scream captured in the molten gold poured over its head and torso. The assembly is as valuable as it is disgusting.

Ander inquires of the hideous left and right barbed devils guarding the Crypt of the Church of the Weeping Mother whether either of them identify as the evil wizard Ulrozax. They growl in negative combative anticipation. Ander panics when his force ballista fires wildly into the crypt wall but regains his composure to catapult a dusty old heavy brass tankard from a table into Left devil’s barbed face. Sqyylarr limbos under the bar that once held the stone door, now laying shrunkingly useless in the dirt, and smashes the left devil. Ash joins in with a critically sneaky longbow. The furious left devil tail spins Barika. The perfectly healthy and smirky right devil tail spins at Sqyylarr but gets tail jammed into furniture. Sqyylarr smashes away the devil’s smirk. Some hits and even more misses are traded until Sqyylarr surges into action and smashes the devil out of both devils, pulverizing them beyond Ash’s ability to even figure out what they were. Watc snags a bag of powdered ruby spell components [2000 gp] from under the barbed devil table.

The party descends the stairs into the dim, cold, spider-webby, purplish, subsurface of the crypt. A shadow rises from the floor ahead of Barika and menacingly slaps an unsolicited shadowy hand on her chest. Upset Barika greataxes the pervy shadow back into nonexistence. #metoo

Sqyylarr, protected by Ash from goods and evils, presses ahead to a suddenly revealed and undoubtedly evil bodak. She smashes it bloody. Ander, distracted by Sqyylarr’s frantic smashing, releases the firebolt he realizes he’s been holding. After more firebolt and ballista action, the bodak death gazes Ander into severe necrosis. Artificer Ander, regarding his unscathed artificial limb, observes, No veins, no pains! Ash figures out the death gaze in time to avert it and shouts a warning. Constitutional Sqyylarr smashes into the bodak while gaze-averting Ander and Barika wildly hurl ballistas, firebolts, and hand axes down the hall. Sqyylarr, worried about stray projectiles as much as any death gaze, presses her luck to get a final, fatal smash on the bodak.

Barika takes up the lead and finds the next shadow. She greataxes it bloody and Ash precisely finishes it.

Ander takes the next corner and observes a cadre of approaching skelingtons. A fireball clears the corridor leaving only a couple of armored varieties which Watc reckons for huecuvas. Barika and Sqyylarr charge up while Ash and Ander provide ranged support dropping both. Ash puffs the smoke off his hot, vicious longbow after one huecuva shot.

The five doors and one reptilian statue along this hall are checked while the party takes a short rest. Barika and Ash find a room with some glowing runes, possibly celestial, and sarcophagi that yield a couple more woke huecuvas. Barika gets baned. Ash applies a characteristically complicated series of arrows which protrude from the huecuva in impossibly conflicting directions, and Barika and Sqyylarr each drop one huecuva leaving the room available for a long rest.

Having smoked the horned devil in the west bedroom, the party splits organically to ascend the parallel staircases up across a mezzanine overlooking the sanctuary and into a meeting room to the north. Ten’s aura of vitality revitalizes Sqyylarr and the others as needed. Ash covers a roof hatch at the top of a ladder on the north wall while the party assesses the room’s religious contents and incompetently destroys some furniture. Sqyylarr notices a drip “falling” from floor to ceiling for no good reason. Ander experimentally injects decantered water, part of which also flows upward. Watc reckons the anomaly to be a benign bit of remainder magic and dispels it.

Ash ascends the ladder and enters the belfry through the hatch. When he circles around the one-ton bell, it swings at him aggressively. He drops below the bell to have a look for an aggressor within the bell, but there is only the clapper. Sqyylarr follows Ash and gets ready to ring the bell but waits for Ash to get clear in case the bell is knocked off by her mighty swing. Watc follows Sqyylarr and deduces that the bell is possessed by Bill the poltergeist. Ander follows Watc and deduces that whatever motivates Bill the Bell, it will be easier to manage at an eighth of its mass. Reduced off its mount, Bill the Bell breaks toward Watc and crashes through the belfry floor landing at Ten’s feet below. Ten need only glare turningly at the bell, and Bill departs to find an easier object to haunt.

The final unexplored room on the east side of the sanctuary is barred from the other side of its door, so the party goes ‘round the outside. The outside door is barred as well but no match for Ander’s force ballista which breaks the door across the bar. Unlimber Sqyylarr removes the bar and enters the bedroom, last occupied by the skeleton on the bed. She pages through a prayer journal and observes some mold-covered dirty dishes on a drainboard. Finding no prayers on Ulrozax, the mission target, she moves past the mold toward the sanctuary door. The mold cold spores Sqyylarr. Barika confirms the trigger by following Sqyylarr. Word of the mold gets back to Ander who breaks into the room through the window. Ten notices another journal and locates a mention of Ulrozax at the end. Ten makes a dramatic reading of the final page. Brother Micah, barricaded in this room, accused Ulrozax of tinkering with the food supply and causing folk to monster out. Ulrozax himself took refuge in the crypt. Mission clues are always in the last place you look.

Watc approaches to study the natural origin of the mold; it has clearly mutated beyond its known mycology and possibly got monstered from eating some of Ulrozax’s superfood. The mold likes Watc’s torch and starts filling the room. She tosses the torch into the corner to amuse the mold and possibly arson a church that has already sustained considerable damage since their visit began.

The mold room is evacuated. Stylish Ten night steps. The party adjourns to the crypt west of the church building and finds the entrance barred from the other side, of course. Passing too close to the graves in the yard invariably causes a shrieking skeleton minion to pop out of the ground, possibly as a single use alarm system. Ten heals up the skeleton dispatchers. Ander selects reduction as the solution to the hefty stone door problem, and the miniaturized door plops out of the entrance. Inside, stairs downward promise a cryptological adventure. The waiting barbed devil that Barika notices promises the adventure will begin immediately.

Barika strolls into the church assessing the floating nave candles, the charro wights, and the unspawned vampire. A barbarian is never late; she arrives precisely when she means to.

Amped Sqyylarr needs something new to fight before all the effects wear off. Ander, with a penchant for locating something new to fight, charges into a side bedroom, ignores the decayed fellow who never got out of bed for a hundred years and his prayer book, and goes right for the clear crystalline decanter. A vigorously reckless shaking of the wonky, clear liquid dumps it out into an angry red cloud of smoke.  The angry red cloud of smoke coalesces into a fork-wielding, fearsome horned devil. Ander, victim of his own success, attempts a hasty retreat out the back door, but he is barred from escape. Ander is forked. Really forked.

Sqyylarr, feeling as though she is not in control of her own actions, critically smashes the devil. Ash, from a hopefully safe position, slayers his prey through the open door. Watc beams sun through the door, but the doubly constitutional devil throws shade. Trapped Ander force ballistas the devil into the wall and empties his entire wand of magic missiles. The wand holds together but barely.

The devil doubles Sqyylarr’s critical injuries back on her, and she is even more forked than Ander. Sqyylarr hastily replies with prodigious smashing. Ash capitalizes on Sqyylarr’s smashy distraction and, taking a breath to goadingly aim a slayer’s sneaky attack, sends a longbowed arrow careening around the devil’s innards. It’s little wonder that Ash gets vertigo keeping up with all the things.

The devil ignores Ash’s goading, forks Barika, and tails Sqyylarr. Ander forces one last ballista and the devil uncoalesces back into smoke leaving nothing for Ander to collect. Sqyylarr unbars the back door and airs out the room.