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- Adrian Silverstrength (Human Paladin)
- Buppido Diinkarazan (Rock Gnome Cleric/Wizard)
- Sephrenia (High Elf Cleric) – Not Present This Session
- Don Kannin (Half-Elf Ranger)
- Korra (Air Genasi Rogue)
- Elon Dusk (Tiefling Artificer) – Missed first half of the session
- As the party continues to examine the cathedral portion of this pyramid; they take notice that some of the runes either indicate that this pyramid can fly or that somewhere within the pyramid is a “flying vessel”
- Don rejoins the others in the cathedral and asks about the statue and the runes; and Buppido explains they’re clearly gnome runes (he’d know, because he’s a gnome; he assures Don – but Korra is standing behind Buppido shaking her head in disagreement), while Adrian explains that there’s warnings about “Don’t Awaken The Guardian” (and Korra asks if that might mean the statues where the word was “Awaken The Guardian”)
- Sephrenia seems transfixed by the statue with the snake arms – her mind spiraling, recalling something she’d heard long, long ago – as a child – and suddenly she enters the same elf-like trance that normally allows for a short rest – but now, she is catatonic as her mind traces back the steps of her memory (DM Note – Sephrenia missed this session, but I ended up developing some more lore for the ‘snake armed statue’ and changed it to fit something that would tie to Sephrenia – and directly sent her a message of what her ‘mind trip’ reveals about the snake armed statue. I try to give something to players who missed a session to come back and be able to roleplay stuff rather than just playing catch up)
- Buppido doesn’t pay attention to the fact that Sephrenia seems to have gone catatonic and tries to open one of the sarcophagus – but can’t seem to do it and warns the party members that these sarcophagus were clearly magically sealed
- Adrian signals Don to help him get the lid moved, and together they’re able to slide open one of the sarcophagus
- Looking inside, they see a humanoid that appears to be an elf – with pointed ears, long, flowing brown hair – but his skin is a yellowish-green tone, with almost a scale like look to it; his hands folded over his chest, resting on the hilt of a sword with ancient runes on it
- Since Sephrenia seems to be in a trance, Adrian calls over Buppido and proceeds to pick him up and ask if the item looks cursed – Buppido, still being held up by Adrian – begins casting Ritual – Detect Magic
- The figure inside the sarcophagus suddenly opens their eyes and sits up; still holding Buppido, Adrian slowly backs up and Buppido mutters, “Definitely sensing a curse…”
- The figure, sword in hand, slowly begins to crawl out of the sarcophagus
- The unusual figure seems focused on Bupiddo, since Buppido is the one casting magic
- Adrian moves Buppido to the left and the mysterious figure keeps watching Buppido
- Adrian throws Buppido towards Don, but Don side steps it – but Buppido manages to land on his feet but loses concentration of the Ritual spell he was casting – Buppido looks at Adrian and shouts, “You are the worse meditation platform!”
- Unfortunately, no one notices that the second sarcophagus has opened and another figure has climbed out of there
- The first one lunges for Korra who is standing closest to Sephrenia and hits once, but misses the second time
- Korra clasps her head, warning the others that when these creatures hit with their blade, they also do some kind of mental damage
- Buppido leaps on top of the sarcophagus casts Tasha’s Caustic Brew – both fail to avoid the acidic spell
- The second, seeing he’s a ranged attack, rushes towards Don and swings – hitting with one, and like Korra, he feels a searing pain in his skull; but the second swing misses
- Korra strikes the Githyanki in front of her with her Venom Dagger and successfully injects the venom into the Githyanki, causing significant damage
- Adrian casts Protection from Good and Evil upon himself, then invokes the Channel Divinity – Champion Challenge on both Githyanki
- The first Githyanki is unable to avoid the challenge and turns on Adrian and though the first strike misses; the second one lands a critical strike (Natural 20)
- The hit is so hard, that it breaks Adrian’s concentration and the Protection from Good and Evil drops (Although, it did not matter because the Githyanki were neither fey nor undead, as Adrian had believed since they were in a sarcophagus – they were merely magically in a “hibernation”/suspended animation state)
- Don uses Zephyr Strike to get out of the range of the Githyanki doing a back flip – then drops an attack midway through the flip – which manages to hit and do significant damage – and manages to kill the first Githyanki
- Buppido fires a Fire Bolt at the remaining Githyanki who was on Adrian; and saves on his next Wisdom save which allows him to break free of Adrian’s Champion Challenge – and goes for Buppido who’d just thrown a fire bolt at him; and it would have hit had Buppido not used a reaction to cast Shield
- Korra leaps on the Githyanki and plunges the dagger deep into his throat, after using her hand to pull his head back, and injects the venom into his neck, and she whispers, “I hope you die peacefully.”
- The party hears Sephrenia muttering something in her trance, as she suddenly begins flailing – and then the party hears a rumbling sound behind them – and the statue with snake arms suddenly takes like (DM Note – Just used the stats of an Earth Elemental)
- Adrian casts Shield of Faith on himself
- Don fires two shots – and one hits the earth elemental – but it’s not enough to pierce its thick hide (Flavoring just 1 off by the AC hit)
- The Earth Elemental – for some reason – focuses primarily on the unconscious Sephrenia and pounds her twice with its powerful fits; and Sephrenia goes from appearing to be in a trance, to clearly being rendered unconscious (DM Note – Normally I wouldn’t attack a player who isn’t there; but the reason it went for Sephrenia is in a Direct Message I sent to her that goes with the lore I created for all of this – I would not have, no matter what killed her character, even if it had rolled enough damage to do so)
- Seeing that the earth elemental seemed to focus on Sephrenia – Buppido deduces this creature must have some form of intelligence and casts Raulothim’s Psychic Lance which it fails to save against, causing massive damage to its stony form
- Korra launches a Fire Bolt but it misses, firing into the darkness of the cathedral
- Adrian rushes up and strikes with his longsword – and expends a Divine Smite dealing some additional damage
- Don fires two shots, the first missing; but the second landing a solid hit against the Earth Elemental
- Buppido fires a Fire Bolt while the elemental is incapacitated – however, it’s not enough to pierce the earth elemental’s stony hide
- Korra leaps towards the earth elemental and extends the shadow blade and shoves it through the earth elemental’s head and does massive damage
- Adrian swings again, and hits – extending another Divine Smite into the creature’s stony body
- Don fires two shots; first one missing again, but the second one lands another hit
- The Earth Elemental takes two swings at Adrian and misses both time
- Buppido does Toll the Dead – and it’s clear this Earth Elemental is barely hanging on (DM Note – I revealed to the party that it has 127 hit points and the party, in total, has done 126 points of damage to it)
- Korra leaps in and once again – shoves the Shadow Blade into the Earth Elemental’s brain yet again – letting it crumble beneath her as she does an acrobatic leap from it – and sends it toppling towards Adrian
- But Adrian leaps out of the way of the crumbling stone
- Buppido grabs the gem eyes that had been a part of the earth elemental and notices that they’re warm to the touch and quickly puts them in his pocket
- Elon Dusk arrives after the battle and looks around and says, “Hey guys! I think this thing is a ship!”
- Adrian turns and looks at the newest party member and growls, “Where have you been?”
- The party checks on Sephrenia and puts her up against the pew and gives her some light healing, but she does not come out of her trance
- Korra asks Elon Dusk, “What do you mean you saw a golden ship?”
- Elon Dusk explains it was in the runes (DM Note – I had plans of a Spelljammer inside this pyramid but the part of the “golden ship rune” – the player, Elon Dusk, made this part up; but I decided to roll with it and make it a thing – and worked it into the session)
- Korra asks Elon Dusk to see this golden ship icon
- Elon takes her back to the first room – where they’d fought Ankarin, the Mummy Lord – and presses the golden ship rune icon – and several blue lines move through the wall, and lead into the cathedral and then beyond one of the walls – seemingly disappearing through the wall
- The gems that Buppido had taken suddenly begin to burn; and he manages to get them out – and throws them on the ground – and the gems vibrate – and point in a specific direction, acting like a compass
- Adrian notices that Buppido had left with Korra and Elon Dusk and never got around to casting Detect Magic on the odd sword from the Githyanki
- Buppido uses Mage Hand and walks past Adrian, who is about to say something, but doesn’t say anything as Buppido passes him by. Buppido comes to a wall – where the blue energy lines were – and uses his Mage Hand to put the gems into two small slits in the wall
- A door suddenly opens there, and Buppido proceeds to enter the dark hallway where there is no light; but his dark vision allows him to see as if it was dimlight
- Adrian and Don examine the two bodies and the sarcophagus
- Elsewhere, Elon turns to Korra and explains, “My hand is tired. Can you start pressing it?”
- Korra says, “Maybe we should wait. See if it does anything.” Both of them unaware that pressing the button had triggered the gem eyes that Buppido had
- Elon explains, “We need to keep pressing it to charge the ship.”
- Korra leaves Elon in that room, and returns back to the Cathedral – and sees Sephrenia is still laying down; Don and Adrian are examining the sarcophagus while Korra notices a large wall seems to have opened just beyond where the earth elemental was
- Adrian decides to pick up the main Githyanki’s sword – and proceeds to successfully avoid whatever dire effects it had – but bestows a vision into Adrian’s mind where he sees a large wooden ship flying through an ocean – but there are suns, and worlds, and creatures of all kinds
- Korra looks at Adrian and sees his pale expression, “What’s wrong with you?”
- “I saw… space… and a flying ship…” Adrian explains
- Korra shakes her head wondering if everyone is going crazy and tells Adrian to go see Elon Dusk, who is pressing a button to “power up” the flying ship
- Korra shakes her head, “Why is there a hole in the wall? And where is Buppido?” And in that moment she knows where Buppido is
- Meanwhile, Buppido walking down the dark chamber that he’d unlocked suddenly finds himself struck by something wet in the dark as a Huge Gray Ooze, which had been laying dormant is suddenly disturbed by Buppido’s gentle gnome footsteps
- Buppido quickly touches the creature and polymorph’s it into a turtle
- Walking back to the others in the Cathedral, Buppido extends his open palm to Korra and shows her a turtle; she’d seen such creatures before, on the Plane of Water, when her family would visit there – before the war on the planes broke out – but it seemed odd for a turtle to be in such a barren landscape without water. “Where did you find that?” Korra asked
- Buppido goes on to explain how he – and he alone – found the secret passage behind the stone statue thing – and while down there – it got much colder and more moist – and that’s where he encountered the slime – which at that point he extends his hand out and shows the turtle again – and explains how he’d polymorphed it into a “murder turtle.”
- Korra explains, “You should talk to Elon Dusk. Because he’s busy pressing a button in the other room.”
- “So you think pressing the button burned my pants?” Buppido asks
- “Well, I don’t know about any burning sensation in your pants, but him pressing the button probably opened the door,” Korra explains
- Meanwhile, Adrian reaches Elon in the other room and explains what he saw when he picked up the sword. Elon tell Adrian to keep pressing the button and takes the sword by the hilt – and he has a vision of a large ship that looks like a floating squid in space before being pulled back to reality
- Elon now notices (he’d been too focused on the button before), that a small golden lion rune was lighting up each time the button was pressed; timing it with Adrian pressing the golden ship, Elon presses on the golden lion – and suddenly a golden light shows wings around the lion
- Meanwhile back in the cathedral portion of the room, Korra and Buppido are talking and miss what pressing the lion does in the cathedral room; as Buppido asks Korra to hold the “murder turtle” so he can cast a spell real quick; and she asks why she didn’t leave it where she found it and he explains because it would have wandered off
- Buppido sets down the murder turtle, and it slowly begins to wander off as Buppido begins casting a healing spell on himself
- Korra, not noticing the murder turtle is slowly making its way, begins to explain to Don, “So this numbskull over here,” she says, with a quick jab of her thumb towards Buppido, “decided to morph some kind of creature he met down in that passage over there,” she says, pointing to the secret passage that had been opened, “and turned it into a turtle and brought it back up here.”
- Don kneels down and picks up the small turtle, “This thing?”
- Korra raises an eyebrow, “Yes. Apparently it’s some kind of monster that burned him. See how his robes have holes?”
- Elon and Adrian return from the other room and enter the cathedral and Elon says, “What are you doing with a turtle? Throw that thing in the sarcophagus and let’s get to moving. We need to find the flying ship.”
- Buppido raises his eye brow, “Just know that thing is very dangerous.”
- Don places him in the sarcophagus – and tries to close it – however is not able to (Strength DC 15)
- Adrian tries it with Don helping him (DC now raised to 16, due to failed attempt)
- Buppido then tries to shove it himself
- Adrian and Korra decide to lift her between them and manage to do so
- Korra realizes she can just cast Levitate and carry Sephrenia that way
- Elon marches into the dark hall, with Buppido marching about fifteen feet behind him; followed by Korra following – pulling Sephrenia along – then Adrian and Don following behind
- Elon marching ahead, gets to the area of the passage that begins to get cooler, and has moisture; and he walks through the creature
- Buppido pauses, “This is where I found the murder turtle,” he explains. Buppido tries to leap over it and takes some very, very minor damage as the acidity gets through the sole of his boot.
- Korra, Don, and Adrian all make it through the acidic liquid
- Going for another 120 feet; they reach a dead end, where there is a massive door with chains all across it
- From the other side of the door, there’s an uncanny loud roar that comes from there…
- Elon Dusk holds out the sword, “I can’t explain it, but this sword, from the guy in the sarcophagus is the key – we need to put it inside the lion. And then the lion will get wings. And this whole pyramid will fly.” (DM Note – the player was making all of this up; this part, however, I did not incorporate and chalked it up for the character’s eccentric madness)
- The party heads back to the main treasure room to take a long rest…