Session 90 - Pig-On-A-Spit!

6th October 2024

In-game timeline: Start of session: 1490DR Tarsakh 20. End of session: 1490DR Tarsakh 20

Karoshi leaves Sully on landing (who is too big to come through the door) and enters the ballroom. He sees only "himself" on the dance floor, plus his mentor, sister and mother. Wondering where the others are, but knowing they seemed to try to come out of the door he has just entered, he does the same… and enters the ballroom again by another door. Confused, but fairly quick thinking, he exits that door and arrives in the same playroom that the others entered a couple of minutes earlier.

Derrick spots a colourful pebble in the middle of a large, but otherwise empty chess board that is laid upon the floor, taking up much of the room. He walks onto the board to get the pebble and immediately finds that he has turned into a black bishop as he steps onto the board. Not only that, a shimmering field of pale, translucent light seems to surround the entire board, cutting him off somewhat from the others who are still standing outside the board.

As Derrick considers his position, he spots a large, white queen chess piece appear on the opposite side of the board, who slides across the board towards him!

Meanwhile, as Karoshi appears in the room to the cheers of the other two, their delight is short lived as they see some of the larger toys around the room start to rise up and move slowly, and menacingly, towards them! A pretty doll, a giant teddy bear and a big tin soldier all approach with apparent nasty intentions.

Derrick realises that he is unable to move on the board except as a chess bishop, so he uses his movement to get as close as he can to the pebble, being pursued all the while by a white queen, who obviously has far greater movement options.

Jaxii rushes towards the teddy bear and critical hits it, spilling sawdust and stuffing from its belly. Its fixed expression, made up of large, black buttons and thick cotton thread for its mouth, seems to tighten in pain, though that may have been Jaxii's imagination.

The doll, looking on from further in the room, is not happy at her friend being cut open like this. Her pretty and angelic face changes into an evil grimace as she draws two sharp daggers from the folds of her pale blue dress and rushes towards Jaxii, slashing at the dragonborn with a frenzy. As she cuts at the barbarian, she sings a haunting lullaby, which manages to frighten Jaxii even as she is being cut by the daggers.

As Iwee realises that these strange, animated toys are not affected by mind-control magic, which reduces her effective arsenal, Karoshi aims to help with some protective magic. The bear, meanwhile, opens his large, padded arms and tries to hug Jaxii tightly. He squeezes her life away, but she manages to escape the grapple.

The toy soldier runs over to Iwee and pokes her with his sharpened drumsticks, which cause more damage than expected.

Derrick meanwhile, is continuing to head for the pebble, but the queen is in the way, so he shoves her unceremoniously, winning a strength contest and displacing her. A few more moves later and he is on the same square as the pebble and is able to pick it up. With the queen still in pursuit, he heads to the far side of the board and is able to step off without problem, complete with the pebble in his hand! The queen piece disappears, as does the strange forcefield around the board.

Meanwhile Jaxii is raging against the bear, hitting him wildly and managing to rip the bear's head off, exposing the stuffing down his neck. As Jaxii drops the bear's head to the floor, its body collapses. The doll is not impressed.

With Karoshi and Jaxii focussed on the attacks from the doll, Iwee is faced with the tin soldier. And a clown, that has appeared from under a table nearby. The poor, little gnome struggles with the melee attacks from the soldier, and the mind-lance attacks from the clown, but she makes good use of her Shatter spell.

Jaxii is on form today, and another critical hit makes short work of the doll, allowing both Jaxii and Karoshi to head over and help Iwee. The gnome is boosted by their arrival and critically hits the soldier, showing Jaxii that whatever she can do, Iwee can also do!

With Derrick now off the board, and Jaxii having quickly despatched Cuddles the bear and Isabella the doll, the tide of battle is shifting in favour of our "Heroes". Iwee has still taken considerable damage, but the four of them are able to take out the Captain Ironhelm and Giggles before too much more damage is done - although Derricks attempt to gracefully leap over Iwee and engage a misty-stepped Giggles ends up with the proud fighter sprawled all over the floor after a bad landing. Luckily Jaxii is there to take out the clown before he has a change to take advantage of Derrick's predicament!

They have survived the playroom, and gathered another pebble!

 Iwee spots that Isabella was holding a mirror and in this mirror the gnome sees the two Graysing children - tired and afraid and alone. The bard calms them down and learns that the children were playing hide and seek with the pebbles just before all this weirdness took place. She discovers that the other two pebbles were hidden in the cellar - under a barrel, and in the kitchen - within the unlit oven.

Armed with this useful knowledge, our "Heroes" head out of the room to try to find these other two rooms, though not before Iwee takes Isabella's dress, as - despite the multiple cuts in it from Jaxii's blade - it looks very pretty and fits Iwee very well! The gnome also takes the little mirror with her too.

The group arrive back in the main hallway, to be greeted by Sully. After some discussion, they choose another door and head out of that one…

… arriving in a library. A library that seems very normal to them, until they take a step forward and then all fall upwards to land haphazardly on the ceiling! Jaxii catches sight of some movement, which concerns them all, and so they quickly climb through the doorway, via the top of the door, just as a book seems to be flying towards them!

They arrive back in the ballroom, and immediately fall back to the floor, landing on each other. They land close to a table where Castellan is sitting with some others. Jaxii swoons. Derrick recognises Pruni, Mallorn and Esme sitting at another table in the corner. Our "Heroes" try their best to ignore their friends sitting at the tables, and their own personages dancing on the dance floor, and they shuffle along the edge of the room to another door, which takes them back into the hallway again - hello again Sully!

Picking a different door they arrive in a new room - the kitchen, yay!

Derrick hears a voice asking for help, seemingly from the other side of the room. He heads across the kitchen to investigate, accompanied by Jaxii. Iwee aims for the *lit* stove to see if she can see the pebble - Karoshi joins her. At this point all hell breaks loose. Some pots and pans fly off the shelves around the room and seem to head straight for our "Heroes". The door of the stove flies open and a cone of fire belches out of the stove and envelops the party in flame for a brief time. They try to dodge, and many of them make it, but the flames still hurt, despite being resistant to fire. A battle begins!

Jaxii and Derrick try to bash the flying pans out of the air, though they quickly find that more pans soon rise up to replace any that are knocked to the floor. Karoshi attempts to leap on the table by the stove, but slips and falls in front of the burning stove. This proves to be both good and bad. On the negative side, the stove's doors open up wide like giant, metal arms, and drag the prone tiefling into the burning stove's mouth, causing considerable, and continual damage. However, on the positive side it enabled Karoshi to spot the coloured pebble lying within the burning stove, and he reaches out and grabs it.

Meanwhile the others are not only being smashed on the head by flying pans, but they soon realise that these pans are also trying to push their victims towards the centre of the room. The reason for this becomes obvious when once more the stove opens and belches fire into the room, hitting anything in its path, including those that have been pushed towards it by flying pans!

Derrick manages to get into the pantry area, pursued by flying pans. He spots a pretty girl's face in the reflection of the water in a basin and recognises her as the serving girl at the inn - Penny. Derrick considers stopping to chat her up, but thinks better of it and instead grabs a bucket and fills it with water to try to douse the fire in the stove, which he does manage to do, though the stove fire still burns, albeit not quite as fiercely as before.

Karoshi manages to get out of the stove, crawling away from it. As he shouts at the others that he has the pebble, our Heroes watch in horror as the cooking pig that is turning on a spit over coals suddenly jumps up, leaps off the spit stands with the metal bar still running through its cooking body, and hops over towards Derrick. Karoshi manages to open the nearest door and runs through it. The others follow him, pursued by flying pans and a hopping pig-on-a-spit. They tumble through the door, emerging back in the hallway, feeling battered, bruised and somewhat charred. Luckily they are not followed.

And there we leave our "Heroes", complete with 3 pebbles but smelling a little of burnt flesh and cooking bacon, contemplating their next steps…