Tyrian Strikes Back

Session 21

 * Google Document (8-1-19)

Tyrian’s here and we’re ready for a showdown! Julius and Erak run up to attack him, and Erak manages to poke him in the eye. Reides, on the other, gets as far away from Tyrian as he can. Kilwin looks over Tyrian for weapons and spots a few knives but no rapier. He yells at Tyrian a bit and basically asks what his problem is before hitting him with a Guiding Bolt. Tyrian says we destroyed his ambitions, but Kilwin thinks that trying to run a crime syndicate and assassinate the count are not very good ambitions to have! Jorah shoots him in the shoulder and taunts him about the cloak he took from Tyrian, but Tyrian just pulls the bolt out of himself and breaks it. He spins it in his hand before putting it between his fingers and using it as a brass knuckle against Erak. Tyrian taunts Erak by telling him he’s weak and that he hasn’t grown at all. Erak aims his axe for the shoulder that Jorah shot, hoping to reduce Tyrian’s number of hands, and lands a good hit but doesn’t manage to dismember Tyrian. However, he notices that Tyrian’s wounds appear to be stitching themselves together. Tyrian calls for someone to do something, and a shadowy figure appears behind Kilwin. It strikes at Jorah, both damaging him and sapping his strength. Kilwin tells Tyrian that he’s not done talking to him before attempting to heal Jorah and attacking the shadow with his mace. He hits it, but his attack doesn’t seem to be particularly effective. Another shadow appears to attack Kilwin, and then a third. Tyrian explains that he knew he’d need this backup so he could kill Kilwin first. In the meantime, Tyrian wounds have begun to heal. Reides tries to explain that saying “Fuck your kingdom” wasn’t really a personal thing, and that he doesn’t care for most kingdoms! His ice magic doesn’t seem particularly effective on the shadows either. Kilwin also points out that Tyrian doesn’t really have any place getting angry with Reides for saying a bad word, since he left us a note with the same bad word in it and had to have written that first. Erak leaves Tyrian behind to help Kilwin deal with the shadows. Jorah backs away from the shadows and fires a shot at Tyrian, getting him in the eye. He suggests that we ignore the shadows and focus on the revenant. Marcyra’s fire magic is also not particularly effective against the shadows, but she still kills two of them with one spell and it’s mad sexy. With Erak gone, Tyrian turns his attention to Julius and knocks her unconscious before seriously injuring Slumberjack with his second punch. Erak wonders out loud if Jorah read the revenant book and tries to attack a shadow, but accidentally shreds Reides’s bedroll instead. Reides does manage to kill the last shadow with Magic Missile. He explains to Jorah that we can’t actually kill Tyrian. Kilwin finishes this explanation by saying that even if we manage to destroy Tyrian’s body, he’ll just get a new one. He continues to ask Tyrian what his problem is, particularly why he attacked Julius when she’s literally a dog. Tyrian puts his foot on Julius’s body and says that this isn’t a dog, this is vengeance. Kilwin heals Julius and breaks it to Tyrian that no one liked him! His subordinates were afraid of him, even while we were the ones attacking them. He says he’d feel bad for Tyrian, but it doesn’t stop him from hitting him with Sacred Flame. Jorah doesn’t know how to trap Tyrian, but fires a crossbow bolt into his foot. It hits him pretty badly, but he just stomps the bolt in half. Tyrian knocks out Slumberjack and goes for Jorah, but Jorah manages to avoid his attack. Erak manages to grapple Tyrian and Reides runs up behind Tyrian and, with the help of Erak’s grapple, gets the bag over Tyrian’s head and pulls it down over Tyrian’s entire body. He closes the bag, containing Tyrian within, before promptly falling to his knees, crying. The fake smile is gone! Jorah uses some of his rope to tie up the bag. Kilwin heals Slumberjack and offers to cast Calm Emotions on Reides, and Reides takes him up on it. Thanks to the spell, Reides stops crying and Kilwin gets a chance to take some deep breaths. Kilwin suggests to Reides that when they get to Falas, they find another old lady and help her move. Reides likes that idea! Jorah asks how long we need to keep the bag closed and the rest of the party tells him it’ll be a year. Jorah admits to feeling a little bad for Tyrian being trapped in there, but we are under no circumstances opening that bag or selling it. Jorah asks for some help in moving the bodies, since he’s shaking under the weight of his gear thanks to the shadows sapping his strength. Kilwin realizes he is also having a tough time because of that! Slumberjack, Erak, and Reides help move the bodies of the zombies out of the main camp area and into the bushes. Reides examines his bedroll and realizes it’s pretty much ruined, both from Erak’s axe and a strange residue that the shadows left behind. Kilwin offers him his since he still has a blanket, but his bedroll is also covered in the shadow residue, so Reides doesn’t really want it. Jorah’s tent, despite getting trampled during the fight, is still in decent shape. Jorah turns his attention to Julius, and he babies her a little. The rain begins to taper off and the sun finally emerges. Erak examines the shadow residue, but it just gets his hands nasty. Reides recognizes it as a component in some alchemical mixtures, but still doesn’t really want anything to do with it. He also realizes that the creatures were shadows, which are drawn to good, pious people as their negative desires tend to be pushed further into the shadows where they can feast. He also realizes that their strength-lowering effect could’ve killed Kilwin and Jorah after a few more hits. Reides wants to burn his bedroll and Marcyra happily does it. Kilwin holds onto his though, since he wants to just clean it up. Jorah gets some of the shadow residue from the ground and puts it in his mess kit before tying that up too.

Erak asks if anyone wants burgers. Most of us do! Slumberjack is a vegan though, so Erak uses some of the materials in his rations to make a vegan patty for them. Reides and Marcyra help him shape the patties and cook, while Slumberjack takes a nap and Jorah and Kilwin take a short rest, recovering their strength. The burgers turn out extremely good! Erak credits Reides and Marcyra for their help, and Marcyra gives Reides a high-five, along with the first genuine smile the party has seen from her. The party then notices that Slumberjack has taken their whole mask off to eat their burger. They appear to be a drow with pointed teeth, glowing black eyes, and long black hair in a bun that’s shaved at the sides. They also have several piercings, including an eyebrow hoop, an industrial, and a septum piercing. Marcyra tries very hard not to stare, but Kilwin and Reides end up staring at them anyway. They ask if there’s something on their face, and Kilwin just expresses surprise that he’s seeing their face. Reides compliments Slumberjack’s piercings and they thank him and say that they’re a sign of honor. Reides says his piercings are just there to look pretty, but Slumberjack says they suit him. Marcyra says she’s been thinking about getting a few more piercings, and Slumberjack offers to give her a septum piercing, but she was thinking about some more earrings. Slumberjack explains that their industrial piercing is sacred to their people, and that they killed the man who gave it to them soon after. Kilwin asks why and Slumberjack explains that he did it wrong and it was supposed to be on the lobe. Marcyra sympathizes. While eating his burger, Kilwin asks if piercings hurt after you get them and learns that aftercare can be annoying, but generally they only hurt afterward if they get infected. Kilwin was just curious! Erak asks Reides how aftercare for piercings works underwater, but he says he got all of his after coming to the surface. Reides asks Kilwin if he has singing experience with hymns, which he does, but Kilwin doesn’t think he’s a very good singer! Reides is a little disappointed.

Kilwin asks the party if we want to keep going to Falas or head back to Vilais Watch. He doesn’t feel great about leaving so abruptly! Marcyra is reluctant though, since if things went really badly, we might really be in for it if we go back. Jorah realizes he heard a few things about the aftermath of our time there on his way out of town. He tells us that the mayor was captured and Drakov was exonerated. Apparently, Grinlief didn’t quite escape safely from the mansion, and was paralyzed by a ghoul behind the house. He was the one leading the mayor’s arrest, apparently though, which Jorah has a hard time believing based on his brief interaction of getting arrested by Grinlief. He also heard that the mayor killed Meredith at some point after we left. Slumberjack says they knew he was a bad guy. Kilwin thinks that’s weird, since they were definitely both alive but unconscious when we left them. He suggests that Tyrian probably did it for some reason. Erak and Marcyra don’t contradict him. Most of the party wants to press on to Falas, but Kilwin feels bad about what happened to Grinlief (indirectly because of us) and wants to try healing him if he can. Reides also says that he needs gold dust for a spell he wants to cast to help secure the Bag of Holding, and that maybe Castel has some. We do technically have enough gold for the spell, but we don’t really have the means to convert it into dust. Erak points out that we’re only about a day out from Vilais Watch, so we wouldn’t lose much time backtracking. Also, it would be nice to spend the night in an inn. This pretty much sells the party on the idea, so Jorah calls his horse over and Slumberjack puts their mask back on.

We spend the rest of the day heading back to Vilais Watch. The guards at the front gate recognize us from when we were fleeing town and are a little surprised that the mayor was actually a werewolf and that Grinlief actually knew this. After a brief conversation about pudding, they let in the town. We decide to check in with Castel first. We find Shadow outside his store and Erak goes to pet her, but she quickly leaves him to rub up against Jorah’s legs. Jorah recognizes her and says he didn’t realize we were talking about Sean Castel. Castel emerges from his store and gives Jorah a friendly greeting. Jorah tells Castel that he hasn’t lost his sword, but that it hasn’t gotten a lot of use yet. He offers to give it back if Castel wants it, but Castel doesn’t see the point if it has seen bloodshed yet. Castel holds Shadow up to Julius and, when Julius doesn’t seem fazed, puts her on top of her. Reides asks Castel if he has any gold dust, but he says he only has one. Jorah asks if he has hand crossbows. Apparently, he has a lot! Most of them are currently nonfunctioning, though. He goes inside for a bit and comes back from one of the working ones. Jorah offers 50 gold and his extra leather armor for it, but his offer is a little low until he throws in the shadow residue. Castel explains that the crossbow was sold to him by a Knight of Falas, but not one of the famous ones, who was having a hard time financially. Kilwin asks if we can browse inside the store, so we all go in. We discover that the entire store has been rearranged into pillars. Kilwin does some browsing on his own, while Reides purchases a bedroll, and asks Castel about the gold dust. Castel finds a single speck of gold dust on the table and offers it to Reides for 5 gold. After some deliberation, Reides decides to take it, so Castel decides to just give it to him for 1 copper. Castel also suggests we see Grinlief before leaving town for real, especially since he knows we were working with him and he might have some form of payment for us. We decide to head there next. Kilwin says he wants to talk with Castel about something really fast, but he’ll catch up. Pretty soon after the party has left Castel’s, Kilwin rejoins them.