Episode 1405: Cultists try to get a little up close and personal

We had a full house today! It was fun! And according to our random observers, we're quite entertaining in person. As a reminder, this party is comprised of:

Tsedek, our charming Tiefling Rogue

Itanis, a devious High Elf Wizard, fond of controlling any situation we may find ourselves in

Leoven, our quiet but effective Wood Elf Ranger

Magnus, the Human Paladin of Heironious, he has followed a vengeance path

Elle, the small but sparky High Elf Wizard, fond of blowing things up with lots of fire

When last we left this party, Tsedek, Magnus, and Elle had just handily destroyed a lot of cultists and a pair of animated bone arms. Itanis and Leoven didn't participate because their players weren't available, so we just had them standing over-watch while the rest took care of business.

After the fight the five of us start investigating the room, and Magnus is quite interested in the artwork. There are several pieces of art depicting dracholichs, which are undead dragons, and he calls out "Hey Elle, can you come light these paintings on fire?" With a look of disbelief, Elle spits out "Really?!" He was like "yes, really, we have run across previous art depicting evil that became evil". Itanis decides to laugh and ask incredulously "Elle, why are you questioning Magnus on this?" In utter confusion she stalks off and starts lighting the paintings on fire using her bonfire spell.

Realizing this room was going to start filling up with smoke, we decide to vacate this room via the teleportation circle. We just kept going down the list of buttons, and the next one was a flame, and most everyone laughed and said why not. So we hit the flame button.

This room was again a round tower room, with a lovely bonfire going in the middle of the room that oddly wasn't creating any smoke, and the bones of a dragon wrapped around the fire. Woah! Just as we took that in, 6 cultists start hurling daggers at us, hitting Leoven a couple of times and Elle several times. Ow. Then the cultists rush the teleportation circle and smash a button on the control panel - we just don't know which one.

Next thing we know we're in another room, no bonfire this time but a work bench and some sort of glass/crystal over head. We took in the fact that there were more three more regular cultists plus a cultist wizard in this room, in time to get into combat. Magnus hollers "Elle, do your thing!", she responds with "Only if you heal me" and proceeds to drop a fireball point blank on the party. As the flames explode out from Magnus and fade away, three cultists are dead, three others are a bit crispy, and none of the party are harmed.

Magnus reaches back and touches Elle, healing her significantly. Itanis pulls out an oldie but goodie ... he summons his water sphere and manages to catch the cultist wizard and two other cultists into it. Leoven pulls a spiderman and goes up to the ceiling to start shooting cultists. Tsedek mutters something about "Didn't think I'd be around this much flame since I left Hell" and whips one of the crispy cultists to death, then scoots towards the cultists in/around the water sphere.

The three cultists in the water sphere attempt to vacate it, only one was successful though, so he was flat on his back on the floor. The two still by Magnus make attempts at him but miss.

But now three cultists are all lined up prettily in a row, so Elle steps over lining herself up to get off a perfect lighting bolt, zorched them all good, killing one. Magnus does the smashing thing he's so good at, taking care of the two crispy cultists that were with the party. Itanis proceeds to use his water sphere to suck up another cultist, and Leoven shoots the wizard so very dead. Tsedek then sets his deadly whip to work, hitting one of the water sphere stuck cultists with so much damage he wraps the whip around the fellow's neck and pops his head right off.

Elle turned a little green, and not with envy.

The one cultist in the water sphere tries to attack Tsedek to no avail, and the one prone gets up to run away. Magnus, however, has ways of dealing with that and smashes this cultist mightily. He wasn't dead, but he was in very bad shape.

Elle throws firebolt at the one in the water sphere and it finally died, and then Magnus finishes off the badly injured one in front of him as Tsedek yells "WAIT!" a fraction of a second too late, the cultist was already dead.

So we get to investigating the room to realize it is some sort of observatory. While Tsedek tries to figure out if he can remove the telescope (it's huge so no), Elle starts pondering the books but they're just star mapping so she has no interest. Tsedek did gather those up, he knows a guy who can get some gold for them. Someone searched the wizard and found an hourglass shaped key, so we kept that too.

Otherwise there wasn't much of interest here, so we return to the teleportation circle and hit the flame button again - we want to see what's going on with that bone dragon.

Returning to the room with the bonfire and the bone dragon we get to examining it. It appears to be a juvenile blue dragon. After a little joking about how we don't need it's head to complete our set, we're only missing black and red, Magnus picks it up anyway. He then proceeds to put his shield away and puts his arm through the eye sockets. Yep, Magnus is now wearing a blue dragon skull as a shield. Should help his intimidation checks!

And that's where we left things this week. More in the future of course!