Ep 1212: One bounce forward, three steps into what the heck is that thing

At the end of last session we realized Tsedek was no where to be found. Magnus, Itanis, Leoven, and Elle were atop a clock tower talking with a lady warlock whose travelling companion is missing. She had informed us that this square building off to the east had "vehicles" that could get us to where the item of great value is ... which is in a domed building off to the west. We have limited ability to get around due to the 30' deep lake of acidic ooze below us, and a very limited ability to remove people if they fall into it.

So Magnus and Elle came up with a not so good plan of travelling to the domed building to the west and letting Magnus dive in (he'll sink like a rock being a big muscled human in full plate) and then misty step back out with Elle nearby to pop in and save him if need be. The problem with this is Magnus will take damage and Elle likely would as well, depending on how his retrieval goes. And misty step only goes 30' to boot so the odds are Elle's going in after him. But, they're both willing to try this stunt. They may both be a bit crazy.

Itanis chimes in with maybe we can travel over to the domed building to the west and then use wall of force or wall of fire to do a "parting of the red sea" to cause an acidic ooze free tunnel for Magnus to jump down and retrieve the item. Elle on standby to retrieve him as needed. This has less chance of serious damage, so that's what we decide to do.

Magnus wasn't fond of going over to the square building to the east to get this mysterious "vehicle", as he puts it "he doesn't understand all that mechanical nonsense". Elle's OK bypassing the unknown "vehicle" as she's got a lot more faith in her and Itanis' magical skills than some crazy mechanical widget.

So the lady warlock agrees to help us get over to the domed building to the west if we keep an eye out for her travelling companion. Yep, we're travelling via hamster ball again. With a power boost by Magnus' war horse. Worked once, should work again right?

Well, maybe not. So we get the hamster ball all situated and we all crawl in, Magnus summons his war horse, lines everything up, and asks the horse to punt. And punt he did. But his angle was wrong and we kinda did a pin-ball ricochet game off of a building, bounced off the ooze, flew up and then crashed through the roof of a cathedral. We busted through the wood roof and then through some glass. A whole lot of glass.

Our crash landing caused us some damage, and the warlock lost her concentration so we lost our hamster ball. While catching our breath, Magnus does his divine sense and almost literally starts growling and stalking off to find stairs. Turns out, he pinged an undead evil thing below us, so we must find it and kill it.

Depending on the ooze situation, of course.

So we find stairs down from the attics and there is weirdly no ooze inside this cathedral. There are murals, shackles, dusty remains of curtains and cushions, but no ooze. A couple of folks took a moment to peruse the murals and got the impression that the glass statues are villagers. Unfortunately it was loud in the lunch room so I didn't catch all the details of this part of the conversation.

As we're perusing the main floor of this cathedral, Magnus does another divine sense to get the direction of the creature and takes off towards it. As it comes around the corner towards us. Turns out, it's a medusa. Sorta? It's an undead medusa snake? It's large, it's creepy, it has snake hair. I'm just going to call it a medusa even though that's not fully accurate.

Magnus growls out "Elllllllle! Kill it!" as he's wading in. She had already gotten that memo, but is amused anyway.

Elle got a drop on everyone else and lit herself on fire (investiture of flame) so that she gets some resistances, creates light, and can shoot beams of fire at the thing. She promptly shoots a beam of fire damage at it and hits it solidly. As she's not entirely certain if it is a true medusa, or some sort of weird undead snake, or both, she's staring at the big body of the creature for this. She's reckless but not stupid - as Itanis is always muttering.

Then the medusa went, bolted right past Elle and bee-lined straight for Leoven, who had set himself towards the rear of the party. It did take a swipe at her as it went past, missed, but took more fire damage (her flames deal fire damage within 5' of her - even to the party). Once it got to Leoven it did swipe and hit him.

Then Magnus went. It's an undead creature, he's geared towards eradicating these sorts of evil, so he went full vow of enmity smite thee mode. Does 75 points of damage to the creature. It is unamused with us right now.

And that's where our lunch ended.

You may be wondering where Tsedek is in all of this. Well, that's the thing ... we don't know. I did overhear part of his story, but I will get the full thing from him once he returns to us and post it as a special edition or something to that effect. There is rogue shenanigans and more undead creepiness from what I'm hearing.