Episode 5: We meet our first denizens of the dungeon

Today's offering is going to be a little on the short side, it's been a kooky week. We left off we were starting to explore the dungeon of the mad mage Halaster. So far it's been relatively uneventful. Unit 2408 is following footprints in the dust and we're following him. It? Not sure.

Following the footprints led us to a T intersection, the left branch went a little ways to a dead end, the right branch goes a little ways and then turns off to the left. Luthis gets the idea that something is up with the short arm of the T intersection and investigates and is pretty convinced it's a secret door. There is no way to open it from our side however, so he does the rat-a-tat of "the secret knock". And he hears whispering and scraping of chairs and such.

Luthis though is a Kenku, they do not have language of their own. So he proceeds to repeat everything he hears to the party. Which, admittedly, is a little weird and leads to some strange results sometimes. But in this case it clearly painted the picture of some humanoids speaking common saying things like sshh they're coming. That sort of thing is clearly understood by us all.

Eva then suggests that Talon fly up the other hallway and lure the "bad guys" down our direction. Weirdly, he agrees. She decides that's absolutely a bad idea after he takes off so she follows along. Oddly, Unit 2408 follows her. Melchizedor and Luthis stay at the secret door.

As we kind of do a left, left, left sort of thing we come to a closed and locked door, with a peep hole that is shuttered. So Talon flies up to it and rat-a-tat-tats at it. And we get a response. Evangeline and Unit 2408 stay just around the corner to let Luthis talk to the occupants of this room.

Surprisingly he did pretty good getting the occupants of the room to chat, very distrustingly, but they did eventually open the door. At one point though the leader of the crew said something that was clearly an untruth so Eva steps around the corner ... clearly a demonic tiefling in shining armor with a big holy symbol to Tyr going on there's no mistaking what she is ... and called him out on his untruth.

The banter continued for a few more moments but the wheels eventually came off of the negotiation after Talon dared the leader to have "one of his finger wigglers" try to access the weave of magic. The leader took that to mean attack Talon. So we dove into combat. In the room there's the leader, several "mooks", and a big burly guy along with 3 tables.

When we start this combat only Talon, Evangeline, and Unit 2408 are in the room with the gang as Luthis and Melchizedor are still on the non opening side of the secret door.

First up in the combat round after the gang shuffled themselves into place was oddly Evangeline. Since there were no enemies near her, she strides up to the secret door on this side, realizes she has no clue how it works, and smashes it full-bore with her warhammer. Fight, not finesse.

Luthis goes oh hey I can see now, and demolishes a badguy with a couple of well placed cross-bow shots. Several bad guys moved up next to Talon to attack, semi successfully, and one moved near Evangeline to hit her. Critically. So she decides to give him a taste of her mojo and does "hellish rebuke". Tieflings can, when damaged, return the favor by doing fire damage to their attacker. Eva, being blue, and all about the opposite of hell, actually does a blue blast of cold damage. So she gave the bad guy frostbite because he did damage to her.

Talon damages the bad guys near him pretty handily, and then Melchizedor ponders the not so secret door for a moment and uses the smashed hole to rip the door down and come into the room. Mel also sends his spiritual weapon towards the leader of this gang but misses hitting him.

The big burly guy is like oh well hi there short person and proceeds to fist smash Melchizedor, who does a similar stunt to Eva's and does thunder damage back. See, Melchizedor is a storm cleric of Heironious, so "wrath of the storm" causes thunder or lightening damage to the individual who harms him.

The gang leader strides up to Talon to damage him some more, and the spiritual weapon missed on the attack of opportunity, so Unit 2408 then strides in with his massive sword, turns on rage and smashes down on the gang leader quite handily.

And that's where this episode ends. More in two weeks!