Episode 1701: There's something afoot

And we're back with the fun group of powerful, wealthy, and slightly dysfunctional characters from our longest running D&D game. When last we left our much loved party they were home at Dragon's Bane Keep resting, recovering, and learning to live again. There were new spells created, there were relationships healed (or created in the case of the newly married Magnus), intelligence networks grown, and business taken care of. As a reminder this party consists 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

As NPCs our stories also sometimes include:

Lady Emilia, Magnus' wife and the order's day-to-day manager of the flying island turned flying paladin training ground

Gearbox, Elle's mechanical follower friend. He looks like a round ball on legs but think more along the lines of R2D2 in skills and abilities

Melchizedor, the dwarven Cleric of Heironious, who usually remains at Dragon's Bane Keep as the keep and town's protector and faith leader

So after a couple of years of life, living, recovering, studying, and running businesses a couple of things happen. Leoven's network found evidence of someone going around offering "life after death for a princely sum". He, of course, tells Magnus this. Magnus, of course, proceeds to question everyone he can find. But, in a very awkwardly direct way he can be sometimes. So him going around demanding to know where the necromancers are did not really produce the results he wanted/expected.

Also about this time we also started to discuss the book of Vecna we found during the Tiamat campaign. There was, and still is, much discussion over what to do with this evil book. But after the apparent rise of some necromancers offering life after death, Magnus decided he should scry using the book to find the vile necromancers.

That went about as well as one would have expected. He ran into a ... something ... who basically rattled chains and blustered and got Magnus more convinced there's an evil plot by necromancers afoot.

The rest of us are pretty sure that we just got on Vecna's radar.

But, now we're on a hunt for necromancers.

After some more research and exercising of intelligence networks, we weren't sure the main focus was around our keep or Waterdeep/Neverwinter. There's something going on there, sure, but there's no great battles or disturbances going on. But the networks say there's trouble brewing in an area to the southeast of Elle's childhood home.

To travel over land it would be months of travel to get to that region though, and if there's something going on we'd need to get there quicker. If there wasn't anything going on, eliminating it from the puzzle at hand quicker would also be helpful. So, Elle offers up that her and Itanis both know the address to the teleportation circle at her childhood home now and we could port there, then ride about south west from there, chopping a month or two off of travel time. She just needed to walk through first so the guards knew we were friendlies.

Elle's idea was to port there and just go, however, apparently that was not in the cards. It turned into a whole social event, dinner with the family and the party, and Magnus was awkwardly sharing the first (and I think only) elvish word he knows. Inaccurately/inappropriately of course.

But the next morning we head out, on a safe stroll of course. Well, that's what Elle's father thinks anyway. And it did start out pretty uneventful. It did not stay that way though.

A few days in we had stopped for lunch at a lovely little waterfall and pond. Lovely setting, but soon we realize the grove is occupied by a pair of owlbears that proceed out of the den angrily to attack us.

Here's the thing, owlbears really should be smart enough to know we'd splatter them quickly and just leave, so this raised a few eyebrows.

So perhaps we didn't take them as seriously as we should have at first. Itanis freezes the little pond to make it difficult terrain, and prevents the tank from sinking to the bottom and drowning if he falls in. Elle hurls damage at one of them. Magnus walks up to one to start smashing, and Tsedek joins him. Leoven hides somewhere in the forest and starts shooting them.

Only we quickly realized they were far tougher than any owlbear we'd ever even heard of, and they had the ability of charming their attacker into attacking someone else nearby. That little skill nearly was our undoing. And they did a lot of damage when they hit.

Elle got to use her new spell for the first time this battle. Elle's Healing Flame, created by combining her two sides: Fireball (evocation) and Vampiric Touch (necromancy), it burns enemies and transfers their health to friendlies. It is blue flames instead of fireball's red. She used it to damage the owlbear attacking Magnus, and to help heal him some.

After much back and forth with who was charmed and who wasn't, and some close calls, the "owlbears" were dispatched. They were not owlbears at all, they were some sort of evil construct powered by devilish little fiends from one of the hells. They had been using the owlbear disguises to gather intelligence and information, which we found in their cave abode.

So we gathered up the information and kept travelling for awhile to get away from that grove, then set up the mansion* for the night. That night around the dinner table in the mansion we were going through some of the intelligence we found and making notes, and eating/drinking of course, when Leoven handled one specific note.

Turns out that note was booby trapped, if a good person touched it it exploded. Leoven is the only good person in the party (the other 4 are actually neutral). Did some damage to the mansion and Leoven, but nothing permenant.

And that's where I'll leave this tale tonight. More soon!

*mansion: It's a high level "Magnificent Mansion" spell that Elle can cast if that spell slot wasn't used for combat. It's luxurious with private rooms tailored to each party member's preference, a small stable at the front, fine dining/drink, and unseen servants to mend traveling gear/clean/etc. If she uses that spell slot though, they have to rough it in the impenetrable dome tent