Session 29 - Now We're PIRATES!

 16th Jul 2021 - 19:45 - 23:30

In-game timeline: Start of session: 1489DR Marpenoth 12. End of session: 1489DR Marpenoth 12

Our "Heroes" are mid-Gauntlet, trying to prove that they are willing and able to become pirate members of the Radiant Sisters gang. With "Teamwork" and "Bravery" already bested, only "Sacrifice" and "Intelligence" remain. Or so they thought…

The next challenge is again a pool of liquid - this time in a pool that covers most of the room, and this time it is not an open water pool, but a relatively shallow pool… of acid!

The task seems to be to get a heavy anchor over to the far side of the room in order to unlock the door. After much discussion and debate, Derrick reminds the others that he is wearing a nice pair of boots, that, despite his exhaustion, give him decent movement and jumping ability. They seem perfect for this task!

Derrick lifts the heavy anchor and uses his magic boots to leap across the pool of acid. His exhaustion, and the weight of the anchor, does prevent him from making the leap in one bound, but he is able to do it in two, and only takes a little damage from the acid when his first jump lands him in the pool, and he is able to avoid dropping the anchor in the pool, with the help of some Bardic Inspiration from Iwee. The crowds cheer, and Derrick's "Magic Boy" moniker seems to be growing in volume - the pirate crowd know that magic must have been involved somewhere!

Derrick's boots are looking a lot tattier than they once were, having now been dunked in acid, but they seem to still function. He places the heavy anchor in the depression on the other side and the exit door unlocks. The rest of the party, still standing on the other side of the acid pool, groan with disappointment when they realise the pool does not automatically drain at this point.

Next up is Iwee, concerned that she is only a little taller than the pool itself. A cunning plan is needed.

Luckily, cunning plans are exactly the single thing that this group is good at. Derrick and Karoshi hold either end of a rope, and Iwee tightrope walks across it, using the side wall for balance, and some well-placed Bardic Inspiration to aid the multitude of strength and acrobatics checks that this required. Amazingly, and to much cheering and impromptu singing of Bree's Shanty, she made it across! No one was more surprised than the DM.

Now only Karoshi and Jaxii remained on the wrong side of the pool. Not wanting to get her clawed feet wet, Jaxii decides to pole-vault across in style, using a javelin as a pole, and the wall as 'flair'. Amazingly, she managed it - even in her exhausted state! The crowd went wild. Jaxii did take a dip in the pond at the end of the feat, but ignored the slight pain and did a cartwheel as a finale, showering some of the watching pirates with droplets of acid from her feet as she did so.

Karoshi, not to be outdone, decides to try the same, hoping that using the opposite wall would make up for doing the same thing twice. Feeling Inspired previously, and using that inspiration, he manages the acrobatics even better than Jaxii, though the crowd, who have seen all this before, were less impressed and already started to filter out of the room to the next.

Surmising that the acid room was testing "Sacrifice", and pleased with themselves that they managed it with only limited health loss, the party realised that only the "Intelligence" test remained.

They were worried.

Rightly so.

A sign in the next room warned them: "Beware All Magic", and presented them with platforms in a quipper-infested pool. Each platform displayed a glowing rune. Derrick thought he recognised one of the runes as representing a school of magic, though he wasn’t certain. The party would need to jump across the platforms to reach the door beyond. They debated a while on which platform, and therefore which rune, to try first.

Unsurprisingly, Derrick was the first to act. He jumped. And was sliced by daggers that flew up from the platform he now stood on. Bad move. What was worse, all the runes then changed, scuppering any longer-term plans the group had made. Except they hadn't made any, so it didn’t really scupper anything.

They slowly and carefully proceeded to test out the different runes, and were attacked each and every time. By thorny, entangling vines. By the shouts and screams of children in their head. By spears. By fireballs, and by four stirges that seemed to appear from nowhere. At this point they were convinced that every rune was bad. 

It turned out, however, that they were just extremely unlucky! The final two runes that they tried - the final two types of runes on display, in fact, were safe. Once they had this knowledge, they could work out a way to cross the room safely and reach the other side, to shouts and cries of encouragement from above.

The door-with-no-handle proved no match for Karoshi's wisdom, and the team exited what they thought was the last test, very pleased with themselves.

But a crumpled note thrown down by Brynn from above hinted at a final test and gave them a useful clue as to what was to come. They were allowed to short rest, which they did, and managed to ignore the hint on the note, even though they knew what they were about to face.

They were given a chance to "say goodbye to their former selves" in a room with a mirror, individually. Derrick refused to look at his reflection - which is most unusual for Derrick and took a lot of self-control, Iwee and Karoshi stared at theirs and Jaxii threw a cherry pie at the mirror, REALLY pissing off Kraster, who would have to clean up the mess afterwards.

After resting and healing they were taken to the doors of an arena, where they had a chance to prepare themselves for the final fight. Iwee made herself invisible, Karoshi Blessed them. That was all the preparation they thought they needed.

And so they entered the arena, ringed by a viewing platform attended by maybe 50 or so pirates, as well as some shark-heads and three dark-skinned ugly elven women sitting on stone seats on the far side. But the crowd were the least of their worries. At the side of the arena they were faced with… themselves!

Or at least, faced with Iwee, Karoshi and Jaxii. Derrick was nowhere to be seen.

"Go for the healer!" was good-Iwee's bloodthirsty shout to her team, effectively calling for them to attack evil-Iwee. And so they tried. Good-Derrick took advantage of his magic boots to sprint over to the evil group, ready to attack evil-Iwee.

Meanwhile the evil group, not seeing good-Iwee anywhere, decide to make a beeline for good-Jaxii, as she was closest, and two of the evil party were moving quite slowly due to exhaustion. Evil-Derrick suddenly appeared in front of good-Jaxii and attacked, making the most of his invisibility and his double-attacks. Luckily good-Jaxii managed to avoid most of his attacks, but was hit by a couple, and, since she was not yet raging, took full damage. Evil-Karoshi joined in with the attacks on good-Jaxii, using a glowing, and seemingly quite accurate, weapon. Good-Jaxii was suffering! Good-Karoshi came over to help, but his weapon was proving less effective than the glowing warhammer of evil-Karoshi.

Meanwhile good-Derrick piled in to evil-Iwee with an enthusiasm fuelled no doubt by the pent-up vitriol from all the bardic jibes Iwee had made towards Derrick since they met only a few weeks ago. He managed considerable damage, forcing evil-Iwee to make herself invisible and retreat.

This left evil-Jaxii to attack good-Derrick, whilst the good-Jaxii had to cope with evil-Derrick and evil-Karoshi. Luckily good-Iwee was around to help, and she gave good-Jaxii much needed healing. 

Good-Derrick was meanwhile getting the best of evil-Jaxii, however. They exchanged blows, with Jaxii's rage absorbing damage, but Derrick's double-attack proving to be the most effective, and eventually evil-Jaxii also fell. 

It was at this point that good-Jaxii, very damaged, fell asleep on the battlefield. Luckily evil-Derrick also fell asleep, having only similar health to good-Jaxii. Evil-Iwee suddenly appeared from the other side of the arena, having cast Sleep on the group, to quite good effect. Derrick rushed over to the now visible evil-Iwee and brought her down before she could do any more damage or healing.

Evil-Karoshi was standing above a sleeping good-Jaxii and evil-Derrick. With a flourish he smashed his warhammer onto the sleeping good, Jaxii, rendering her incapacitated and having to save against death.

Good-Iwee quickly brought good-Jaxii round, and good-Karoshi, having seen evil-Karoshitake out good-Jaxii in a similar way, took the opportunity to smash a sleeping evil-Derrick into incapacitation, managing to remove him as a threat.

Good Derrick, impressed at his own performance in this battle and looking for a hat-trick, ran over to the remaining battle, which now involved a very injured good-Jaxii, and two healthy Karoshis, with a healthy good-Iwee helping out from the side. Thinks were not looking good for the last remaining evil twin (Karoshi), but he would have still been able to potentially take good-Jaxii down for a second time were it not for him missing with his swing. Taking advantage of this rare mistake, the good versions of Jaxii, Karoshi and Derrick all hit with their swings on the evil paladin, and he was brought down under the hail of blows.

And so the "good" versions of the team prevailed.

The crowd seemed pleased at the spectacle. It was a close fight, and a good one. Some Radiant Tokens were thrown into the arena, to be collected by the party. As they dusted themselves off, they spotted the three dark-skinned elven looking women rise to leave. Derrick, unusually for him, prostrated himself before them and they looked down at the party before leaving.

This gave the group an opportunity to see the women more closely. The shark-headed people seemed to be guarding them, and the women each wore simple garb, but included some lavish jewellery, including a crown each. One of the women seemed to favour green gems, another blue and the third seem to adorn herself in red gems and jewellery, including what looked like a large, red ruby in her crown. Karoshi seemed to recognise the shape of this jewel.

The group were beckoned out of the arena via a far door by an elderly dwarf who introduced himself as Brighton. After some nudging and re-reading of backstory notes, Jaxii realised that she had been told about Brighton, and she mentioned that they knew Bernard, aka Shrike, and were looking for Jaxii's mother, whose real name Jaxii kept forgetting, but luckily Brighton knew she meant Tamara.

Before they were able to have a long discussion with Brighton he quickly brought them to a comfortable room but told them that The Baron, one of the shark-heads, was going to come along and test their commitment to being part of the Radiant Sisters. Failure to convince him could be very damaging to their health, so they needed to do what they could to deceive The Baron. Brighton had a useful concoction that could help them with this, but he only had one dose available. The party needed to quickly decide how they were going to do this.

As they made their decision they were interrupted by two shark-heads who opened their door and held it open for a very large, very muscular and very impressive, four-armed shark-head who struggled to get through the narrow door. This was obviously The Baron!

He asked each in turn whether they were committed to the Radiant Sisters, and seemed to look directly into their souls as they tried to answer as convincingly as they could. All were exhausted, and this didn't help their chances. But three of them felt inspired by acts they had previously performed and they used this (i.e. they used their inspiration) to help them. Brighton's potion also helped and they all managed (some of them only just!) to convince The Baron of their commitment to the cause. At this, The Baron left.

And so we leave out "Heroes", now members of the notorious pirate band, the Radiant Sisters. Knackered, they just want to sleep.