Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Alligator Staffs and Shadow Pterodactyls - guest post

A while back I posted about the weekly email one of the players in my 4e group sends out after the session; he usually puts a brief recap in the email and puts out the next date for group confirmation.  I have to post this weeks email - it picks up right where my last post left off, and Mike does a great job of describing all the crazy twists that happened last session.  So I will sign off here and let Mike (Tilia's player in my 4e group) take it away - Carl


Heya all!

Wow...what a session!

So, it all starts with us sitting around deciding on what to do? After a lot of debating over island, other cities, inventing things, we manage to make our air ship a hover ship with some of the rituals we learned from the golden flying shield Antillia received. We also managed to mount some of the insect leg rail cannons we created on the sides. Then we used a huge chunk of battery meteorite metal and attached lightning rods to charge it in the upcoming storm! Shortly after that we headed out to meet the Song People who supposedly know a lot about the island we need to head to. Tit'sua told us that it was their spirits that inhabit the island and keep the Fierce People away. Talking with these people is our number one priority, because they are also responsible for some of the celestial magic. However, on the way to them we ran into a patch of forest where the trees appeared dead and they had huge burls growing in the middle of them. The only remnants of life were three shadow peacocks, which we appropriately dubbed "Shadow-Cocks" and some grass shoots that came up out of the ground when we touched down. ‘Tillia, being the ever curious botanist, decided to touch one of the shoots and try communicating with it. (Rolling a Nat 20) She was sucked in to the Shadow World, inside one of the burls, and found out that the plants in the area had all their roots in the shadow world, twined together into those huge burls in the trees. Amazed she began to examine them and found out the burls were the control center for all the plants in the area. She immediately stopped the shoots of grass from growing, as they apparently grew into creatures that would attack the party.

While messing around in the shadow world however, Antillia began to feel a presence. It was trying to shunt her out of the shadow, how rude! It turned out to be an old looking man with an alligator staff. He apparently owned this section of trees and was offended someone was “trespassing” into his creations in the shadow world. So, ‘Tillia used one of the dark nuts to unleash a Bor along the line he was trying to force her out with and attempted to use the nut to suck him in, kind of like a trap. The party had begun to wonder where ‘Tillia had gone, so Bob touched one of the shoots of plant and began to work on making a psychic link with her. She got it and everything he thought to her was SUPER fast. ‘Tillia’s return responses were incredibly slow, this gave us an idea that time moved different in the Shadow World. ‘Tillia had thought herself gone only 12 seconds, but it had been 10 minutes on the real world. This gave us excellent insight to the time changes and also let the party know ‘Tillia was ok. She was then pushed out of the Shadow World and realized our loveable Chmee had set the nearby trees on fire. She looked around the burl and noticed all these crazy plants growing up into it, so she harvested some. (The coolest description being the corn, with each kernel being a face in either extreme agony or pleasure, twitching like a Hellraiser movie) She then harvested as much as she could, coerced one of the Shadow-cocks (with Beautiful Bob’s telepathic help) into being her friend so she could jump down onto it and ride it away. Meanwhile, Bob and Hammer rocked the other two Shadow-cocks and Hammer managed to harvest their feathers. ‘Tillia put out the fire with her ice form and we all quickly hopped onto the air ship with out new shadow-cock pet. I told them of the old man and we all decided we should confront him, so we turned the ship in order to do so…and WHAM! He was coming straight for us! Slightly worried we moved towards him in a calm pace, Hammer and Chmee sighting him in with rail cannons as soon as he was in range. It turns out he was riding a mind-controlled shadow-pterodactyl. After Chmee and Hammer let loose with a mighty blast, he leaped off the beast and began using his staff to fly around us, attempting to flank us with the pterodactyl.

Whew…what a fight it was! Chmee (having fallen asleep) was down and out. The pterodactyl was destroying us from one side and the old man was on the ship doing crazy knife fighter maneuvers. He took Hammer and Bob to extremely low health (actually knocking Hammer unconscious at one point) and his staff dominated ‘Tillia for a few rounds and made her pop her Kariki’Kalos horn bubble that she was flying with. She plummeted and the old man managed to continue tearing up our crew, but Hammer lit into him with some mighty swings of his electric charged axe and had him running. Bob had used his coercive strikes to keep the pterodactyl chewing on it’s master. It turns out the old man’s dagger was draining life, so thankfully we got Hammer back to his feet before the old man could suck out his soul. With one mighty swing, Hammer got the old man fleeing for his life. He leaped over the edge onto the staff…at which point ‘Tillia had used her golden shield to keep herself from making a new indent into the earth and flew up within range of the air ship to blast her Kariki’Kalos horn’s call to battle effect. She did so and managed to stun and knock prone the staff, the pterodactyl(who fell onto the ship) and the old man. He saved just before hitting the ground and ‘Tillia dropper herself with the shield, trying to land on top of him. Even Hammer threw the unconscious pterodactyl down to try and hit him with no luck. He ate some of that wicked corn, turned into a little pig, and lunged at ‘Tillia with his evil dagger for one tooth. However, just before he reach ‘Tillia, Chmee’s player woke up…and sate those fateful words. “I fire the rail cannon at the pig. Nat 20.” And so…the pig took 110 damage and was burnt to a crisp before it could touch ‘Tillia. There was a huge release of tension and many relieved sighs let out, but ‘Tillia had a feeling something might be up so she grabbed his dagger and stabbed it into his chest, sucking out his soul before it could escape.

This being done, we all sat around and realized that…we may want to talk to this guy. The alligator staff flew off to get his wife, the pterodactyl was set free as a good friend, and let us know he HAD a wife for the staff to run to. We sat around with the soul sucking dagger, pondering how to bring the man back to life to chat with him and had a discussion on if he was REALLY evil and not just misunderstood. Also, there was talk of who shot first…us or him?

Well, we decided, in the end, to use the dagger as a focus for a raise dead and bring him back to life. So…awesome dagger in hand, was now pounds of residuum and a much weakened old man. We told him his staff had flown off to find his wife and he immediately freaked out…so…that is how the session ended. Us with weakened old man, answering questions, and suddenly being panicked when he learned his wife was on the way. If she’s tough enough to scare him….well…I’m shacking in my boots a little right now.

What did we learn?

The Shadow World time moves slower than real world time.
Alligator staves with giant white glowing spheres can dominate and ruin your life.
Air ships that can levitate are useful.
Falling hurts.
Shape-shifting were-pigs are deadly.
Wives of shape-shifting were-pigs are deadlier than their husbands.
When one of our healers is asleep, someone falls unconscious.
Rail guns are the new way to cook pork.
Knowing is half the battle, unfortunately, doing things right is the other half.

So….who’s on for the 4th of February?! Whew…that was a lot of writing and a damn good session last time. Let’s get some answers and gtfo before his wife goes crazy on us.

-Mike P.

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