Archer Arrowsmith - Human Scout (250 points)
Elana - Human Holy Warrior of Melora, goddess of the wilderness and sea (262 points)
Masha Deathfoot - Human Martial Artist (265 points)
Puddin' Noddington - Gnome Thief (272 points)
Mahk Strawngmussle - Human Labourer (62 points)
Uncle Ruckus - Human Wizard (250 points)
Vaelcor Treehippie - Human Druid (271 points)
Jahn the Bear - Bear (201 points)
Amothius 36th 2546, Kral Aklaz, Upper Floor (Cont.)
The friendly (that is, Control Animal'd) displacer beast was blocking the door, so those outside the room couldn't do much. Jahn and Masha continued to fight the three remaining displacer beasts in close combat inside the room; Masha managed to dodge everything, but Jahn got hit a couple times by tentacles. Elana, thanks to her Holy Might boosting her to Spear-30 and 1d+9 impaling, took out one beast with an eye stab, and a second a moment later with a stab to the vitals. The rest of the displacer beasts were dispatched without further injury.
Vaelcor ordered the friendly displacer beast to head to the wilderness, but Jahn failed a Bad Temper and bashed it in the skull before snapping its neck. The party settled in to rest, and Archer once again skinned the pelts, which Mahk just had to hold, as his backpack was full. Puddin', meanwhile, searched the corpse and found that it was a badly mauled elf with a potion belt containing two potions, a jar of dust/sand, and some kind of herb (insert weed joke here), as well as a coinpurse with 5 silver pieces.
Ruckus smacked his lips and tasted the potions and dust, which were discovered to be potions of Flight and Perception, and Luminous Dust. While Ruckus tried to get the sand out of his teeth, Vaelcor determined that the herb was wolfsbane, and repelled wolves and werewolves, but not displacer beasts. They then started back to the library, to stash the pelts. At the hole that overlooked the farm, Ruckus was sent forwards in the dark at a crawl to cast an illusion to "loop the cameras" on their hallway again.
When he returned to the party and the lantern of Continual Light was turned back on, they noticed that the front of Ruckus' robes were covered in blood. After checking to make sure he wasn't dying of something, they looked around and found a blood trail that he had crawled through, and continued to the south. Thinking Odo necromancer might be up to something, they followed it to the staircase down, and Puddin' was sent down to investigate. Just east of door at the bottom, she saw the "sad dwarf", Sturri, shirtless, covered in blood, and wielding an axe and shield, looking the other way, through the cracked-open door to the farm.
Puddin' returned to the party, and Elana voted to help him, in case he was wounded, so the party all started down the stairs. When they were halfway down the stairs, they heard a loud bellow followed by a groan of pain, and then a heavy thud. Masha made it down first, and looked to the east, where the door to the farm was now open; one giant had a leg missing and was crawling away from Sturri, who quickly finished it off with blows to the skull, and a second lay dead nearby, butchered horrifically.
With his work done, Sturri ran past the party and back upstairs, followed shortly by the party when they heard more heavy footfalls approaching. Archer advocated helping out Sturri because he was "stealing our XP!", but the party decided to just go back to the library and stash the pelts as they'd originally planned. As they approached the hole overlooking the farm from the south, they saw Sturri again hiding there, just as he leaned out and threw an axe, which was followed by a loud thud, and Sturri running away down the halls again.
Looking for alternatives that didn't take them near giants, they examined their maps for a moment. Thanks to a crit on Cartography, Archer realized that they could bypass the lightning door on the second floor, as one of the hallways near the fey court lined up with one in the "wizard area", meaning the stone wall must only be a foot or so thick. They doubled back over the bridge and Ruckus cast Shape Earth, creating a decent opening. Puddin' went ahead to scout and saw the child giant was sitting alone in the lower area playing with some rocks.
The party had a brief discussion about whether or not to kill a child, and decided to leave it alone because "it could still be redeemed" (Archer: "The only truly Evil beings in this world are displacer beasts"). Ruckus cast Simple Illusion again, and they continued on to the library where they stashed the displacer beast pelts. They checked the "mustard gas room", after mistakenly checking a different, empty room they'd already checked. Puddin' looked through the keyhole and saw no gas, but did notice some runes on the far wall. They had no way to deal with them and moved on.
After some discussion, they decided it was most likely that either the vault or the fourth key would be in the crypts, and decided to head down the stairs past the lightning door, but wanted a way to keep it from closing behind them. Eventually, they had Jahn bash the door on the second floor down from the "safe side" as a test; it was further from the giants, so in theory they wouldn't notice. It worked, though it took some time and was quite noisy.
On the way back to the staircase, they looked down on where the child giant had been and noticed that he was gone, so Ruckus didn't bother "looping the cameras". Puddin' was left upstairs to keep watch while Jahn bashed the door down, and just as the door gave way, a group of 4 giants came into the room across the hall and ran back to the party. Ruckus thought he heard one say "I heard some noise on the second floor!", but the others shot down his suggestion of running out to the crypts immediately.
At this point, the party realized that Masha still had the Lantern of Continual Light on full blast, and so the giants definitely knew where they were; they planned while hiding in the stairwell, out of sight. Soon enough, they heard heavy impacts and the floor shuddered, so they put their improvised plan into action: Ruckus cast a Complex Illusion of the party running out the bottom of the staircase, while Masha, who had extinguished the lantern, sprinted out the top.
As she ran out of the shadows, Masha saw that there were now six giants, all wearing transparent helmets of ice that covered the eyes: the four from before, a female giant made of ice, another male in bright white leather armour, with a necklace of skulls that also held the fourth key and the rod segment! The giants swung their massive great axes at her, the leader even leading with a minor feint, but with Dodge-17 she avoided everything, and two were even critically dodged and dropped their axes.
Puddin' took the backpack from Mahk before Disappearing, and then the rest of the party except for Elana and Ruckus (who were both too slow) sprinted out; Vaelcor had to dive to the ground to just break line of sight. The ice giant cast some kind of spell on Mahk, but he succeeded his resistance, and they escaped down the hallway to the west, back towards the fey court. Ruckus cast Haste 3 on Elana, who ran out, but was still attacked, with a volley of thrown boulders and one great axe, all of which fortunately missed.
Ruckus stepped out into the torchlight of the hallway, and cast Blink... but failed, leaving him without a Blocking spell and in the firing line of two giants. The first boulder missed. The second was on target, but he managed to dodge with a Feverish Defense (on exactly a 9). The ice giant cast another spell on Ruckus, and he crit the HT resistance (which was good, because he needed an 8 or less thanks to Unfit). On his next turn, he cast Blink again, this time successfully; he failed the Body Sense roll, but made it out of sight.
Notes:
There was some discussion of the fey trying to trick the party into performing another play with an even simpler and more cliched plot, where the actors would be openly complaining about all of the cliches.
Elana's/Vaelcor's player was slightly confused about where exactly the lightning doors were; they weren't there for the session where they came up to the "wizard area", and didn't realize quite how things lined up (the party's maps of three levels are also on five pages, and so aren't great for quick reference).
Once Ruckus was left alone in the staircase, he realized that he should probably have taken the Flight Potion before Puddin' disappeared with the backpack.
XP was 1 for killing the displacer beasts, MVP went to Ruckus for somehow surviving.
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