A quick summary of many weeks of insanity!
Our group
- Brus Reckoner
- Male half-orc Inquisitor of Yog-Sothoth.
- John “Angel Eyes” Wilmarth
- Male Aasimar Cleric of the mad idiot god Azathoth.
- Fág an Bealach (Faugh)
- Male svirfneblin Brawler of archetype Mutagenic Mauler.
- Bill the Bard
- A lost male human bard with his donkey Bottom.
- Picklick
- Male hobgoblin acrobatic rogue.
Caveat emptor
It’s been pretty busy the last month or so, and I haven’t had the chance to write down the Limen’s House adventures. To right this a little, I’ll give an abbreviated recap. It might make as much sense in this abbreviated form as it would in full detail.
Plane of Fire
The gang had to cross a plain of fire (presumably the Plane of Fire) to get to the back-door of the headquarters of a cult supporting Limen. Along the way they encountered a scouting party complaining (in Infernal) “Where the hell do these humans keep coming from?”
They fought a gorilla-sized Magma Elemental, a very stealthy ifrit ranger riding a hellcat. The Magma Elemental failed on a Murderous Command and Faugh beat the snot out of the hellcat. Picklick unfortunately took the stealthy way around the combat and didn’t get there in time. The ranger stealthed away after a few failed sniper shots.
Limen cult headquarters
The gang ultra-prepared themselves for a raid on the cult headquarters. All the buffs, all the stealth… then found it empty.
Turns out the cultists were across the way having beers in a beer garden. A beer garden suspended in the clouds that looked eerily familiar. Whilst looting the place and preparing haphazardly for an ambush, John found a lever labelled with “DO NOT TOUCH”. His twitchy hand instinctively pulled the switch… and nothing seemed to happen.
Due to some confusion by the cultists and a Silence spell, the Bard noticed that - to his immense surprise - the tower base had exploded and something big and maybe draconic was flying about. They were replaying history! The tower that had collapsed near the plaza turned out to be the one they were now in. Afraid that they (or someone else - it wasn’t clear to the PCs) had unleashed a powerful dragon, they quickly scarpered. Faugh took the unconscious body of the halfling as everyone grabbed bits of evidence or loot. Some of the chaotic priests stayed in the collapsing tower laughing, sighing, screaming.
Bill and John watched the open portal door as the tower on the other side crumbled. As the physical structure was torn apart, the magical energies went haywire. The door on their side collapsed into a tiny black hole, taking part of the castle wall with it.
“Naginita”
They weren’t out of danger yet! Turns out the ifrit scout from before had informed his higher-ups about the invaders. They sent a much tougher party to check it out.
This party was two ifrit sorcerors (one with a magma ooze friend), a huge fire elemental and a hulking ifrit samurai. The samurai shouted at them to “lay down their weapons, and submit to the… hey… is that my naginita?”
This fight was fairly brutal, although was significantly less than it would have been since John had given them all a Resist Fire in preparation for the cultists. A fireball exploded the unconscious halfling but didn’t hurt anyone else. When Bill was grappled by the magma ooze, this would have been a quite scary situation except for the fire protection.
Brus was brutalized by the samurai and fire elemental with reach, while Picklick sneaked his way to a shocking grasp backstab on a hapless sorceror. They survived without casualties, but it was close on Brus and Faugh.
The Hags
The PCs were back, sans Wu-Chi but with a bunch of loot and the cultists mostly dead. There was this problem about temporal loops of causality, but they seemed to have not destroyed any universes… yet.
Coin informed the party that while Limen was hamstrung, they should acquire artifacts and assistants to finish off their portal-destroying device. They had a list of potentials:
- Mother Urchin
- Neko, Picklick’s tempestuous girlfriend catlady
- Shaitan the sorceror
- Dimfuzz, the gnome they had chased a number of times
- Quicksilver, the Paladin that had saved them initially and had avoided death by the dragonkin Xalanth.
The party chose to see Mother Urchin first.
Mother Urchin seemed to have some connection to Coin’s wife. In Coin’s wife’s attempts to rescue Coin from his fate, she had made some alliance with Mother Urchin. Coin was shaky on the actual alliance, but Mother Urchin was renowned for her interest in artifacts.
After tooling up, the PCs headed to the coast via their usual doorway portals. This one opened to a latrine in a bar so they had to casually all stumble from the same toilet into a room full of bored sailors. After some brusque diplomacy (helped by John Wilmarth buying the bar’s prized trophy fish for a handful of gold) they found out that fishing lately had been too dangerous. The region had become home to far too many beasties and their fishing economy plummeted. Many sailors blamed Mother Urchin for the arrival of these beasts. The PCs promised to solve their monster or Hag problem, one way or another.
They bribed a none-too-bright brute to row them out to the island where Mother Urchin lived. This took a little bit of planning on where they wanted to land.
The island itself was shaped vaguely like a flame. There were deep waters either side, a beach to the southeast and the main part of the island was elevated cliffs. To the southeast was a large rockpool with rocks they could clamber over, but not pilot a boat through.
The PCs chose to land on the sandy beach and head northwards. Faugh and Picklick couldn’t really swim, so they feared venturing out into the deeper water.
They wandered along the beach cautiously. Will and Brus noticed a weird draining of water from the cliff along the beach. They went to warn Faugh but it was too late! He was sinking into quicksand!
And that’s when they rolled initiative versus the attacking dire crocodile.
As they tried to pull him out of the quicksand, the crocodile chomped him mightily. Brus rescued him with his newly-acquired Travel domain teleportation ability… But didn’t rescue him far enough for the crocodile to advance and keep attacking.
A little shaken up by the crocodile attack, they decided that instead of climbing along the cliff walls over the ocean, they’d climb on top of the central part of the island. They didn’t want to fall in and risk more crocodiles.
Luckily they made some good stealth and survival rolls to avoid a nest of Sea Drakes, and made their way to a hidden inlet on the north side.
The inlet was quite the sight - a ship had tried to squeeze into the cave but got caught and broke in half. Not quite sinking, but still blocking the inlet. Around the marooned ship was a thick carpet of bottles with messages inside them. This reminded the PCs of an encounter very early in the campaign. They were worried.
Unfortunately they were above the ship and needed to get down. While everyone was tying ropes to themselves, Brus decided to take courageous first step…
He jumped and landed flat on his face on a small outcropping of rock. He rolled to the side and slipped straight off the rock, plunging deep into the water with his heavy armour. He quickly launched a teleportation spell to the shipwreck… But emerged at the algae-slimed, diagonally angled deck… So he slipped again and plunged into the water in the inlet.
So from his party’s perspective they saw him brace courageously and jump. They then heard, CLANG CRASH, “by Yog-sothoth’s… whoa, whooooa”, SPLASH, “Yog-Sothoth help me!”, WHOOMP, “Whoa whoa whoa!”, THUD, *slide*, SPLASH. All out of sight. It was beautiful pratfall comedy.
Brus had fallen into a small coral cay, populated by a giant octopus, hungry moray eels and none of the rest of his party. He scrambled into the ship… only to be attacked by a giant crab. It was not Brus’ day.
After a lot of prevaricating, the rest of the team joined him and scared off the giant octopus. They then attempted some bizarre underwater cable-car experiment with Brus walking forward to provide a strong anchor line for the rest of them. He unfortunately drew the rope across sharp coral whilst fighting off moray eels and the rope snapped. The others eventually tried to follow him, only to be attacked by the giant octopus and more eels. Brus had had enough and bit the octopus with all his might, turning it into calamari chunks before everyone was drowned.
After collecting themselves, the PCs stomped down a coral corridor about ankle-deep in water. It turned into a dark cave, so they approached cautiously. A small clutch of fishmen (actually Ceratioidi) scampered between the rocks as the Bard lead the way. Out of the darkness came an alluring light, but the Bard was also doing a song and dance. A clash of the fascinate effects. It was an awkward standoff, but the bard talked to the ceratioidi and managed to negotiate that the PCs could walk on by (for a gold coin or so). Some of the PCs were outraged at the thought of parting with even a single GP, but they managed to walk through without a fight.
The PCs pushed on deeper into an underground cavern, illuminated by a hole in the ceiling up to the sky. The area was a large, shallow beach (mostly underwater) with a deep section to the northeast and huts along the south edge. In the middle of the huts - still in the water - was a half-ring of chairs. A hag sat in the main one, with a beautiful young woman (naked and covered in roiling sea foam) off to one side. They stood underneath a totem.
“Ah,” said the Hag. “Here’s the blood in this morning’s tea.”
“Not sure what that means,” said the Bard. “But we are looking for Mother Urchin.”
“Yes, yes. It is I. What brings such violence into my abode?”
“I, er, we mean you no harm or disrespect, er, madam. We have been sent by Coin.”
Mother Urchin was stirring starfish into a magma vent that doubled as her cauldron. Her turtle wearily opened an eye at them.
“Coin you say?”
Meanwhile, Picklick and Faugh had Water Walking and Invisibility on and were attempting to sneak around the sides.
“Yes, you knew his wife?”
The hags snickered to each other. “You could say that we hold her in high esteem.”
At that point, another hag emerged and screamed, “You!” at them. It was the hag from the lighthouse, Foetia, all those sessions ago. There was a bit of discussion amongst the witches (“It’s them!” “The lighthouse vandals?” “Yes!”) and it was getting more and more awkward, but diplomacy continued.
This was getting too witchy-poo creepy for the PCs. They were clearly on the backfoot and out of diplomatic ammunition, so it was then that Picklick decided he’d sneak attack her. Combat was on!
Immediately, Foetia ran behind a hut, out of sight. She had released a captive of theirs and then banged on the hut to rouse her other hag sister. Faugh, however, was there waiting for her and quickly battered her brains out on the corner of the hut. At that time, her sister emerged from the hut (which had a weird cover of frost, despite the tropical setting.) It was Caelanthra, the Winter Hag from the observatory!
All of the PCs past sins were coming back to bite them. Almost literally!
Caelanthra flew over the water, chilling it in her wake. She blasted most of the PCs with a Cone of Cold as they ganged up on Mother Urchin. Aelgin has swiftly moved to deeper water and was firing streams of water at John (only to miss Every. Freaking. Time.)
Meanwhile, Foetia’s champion had emerged - a crackling, whirling cloud of electric eels in the form of a distraught man. The eelman dodged Faugh’s attempts to attack him and punched him hard back. While the party was split, it was looking a bit dicey for Faugh.
Eventually they cut Mother Urchin to death, destroyed the eyes of Caelanthra with a Blindness spell, punched her snow monkey familiar to death, and beat down the eelman. Aelgin managed to make a quick escape, and the wereshark never made an appearance. The sea hag coven was dead, and the PCs picked over the loot.
A ghastly find - the totem was actually the remains of Coin’s wife, strung up like a crucifix. This was the hag’s twisted reverence for Coin’s wife and the reason for their chuckles before. They claimed a bunch of ancient relics from Mother Urchin’s stash, unceremoniously took the remains of Coin’s wife and the urchin-encrusted book of limenology she had written in, and made their way home.
Note: Due to being very busy making the finale, I never finished these writeups. The players still mention set-pieces in the campaign, so I think it was a success.