Bounty Hunters - Session 13

Escape Plan

• Elian and Whip inspect their surroundings
  • Cut stone walls. Secure iron door, floor-to-ceiling, with a shutter hole at bottom (for food) and top (for yelling commands).
  • Their gear is gone, but they aren't naked, nor are they bound.
  • They chat with their cellmates, and learn some things.
    • Gratt is the name of the talkative one. The others presumably have names too, but are pissed (at each other) and not inclined to talk. They have been there a day, Gratt almost a week (he thinks, he's guessing based on mealtimes).
    • The population isn't stable, on a regular basis people are pulled out only to never be seen again.
    • When they pull people out, they line them up against the wall, bombard them with sleep spells, and when they come to someone is gone.
    • All of them are, indeed, vagrants that got picked off from isolation after being driven out from habitation by vermin.
    • Sometimes they hear screams.
  • Elian judges that they're basically in earnest. Whip is too busy feeling around for advantages.
    • He can summon his weapons, and gives Gratt a dagger, "just in case".
• The rest of the group holes up and takes a rest, planning out their next move.
• They figure logistics are on the side of the cultists, so resting to fully regain capacity is not desirable. They scout out the center.
• The place is barricaded, doors patched with boards. Castigators stand guard at the front.
• A sleep spell takes out one, an arrow takes out the other.
• Joana uses disguise self and dons a robe. She hasn't heard a voice, so she just peeks inside. More cultists are milling around.
• They put the bodies out of sight and circle around. Two more castigators guard a side door.
• Sleep fails, and the castigators go on alert. A round of attacks and another sleep, and they are down before they can raise the alarm.
• Joana presses the advantage, assuming the form and voice of one of these guards. They open the door (which is locked).
• Another castigator inside is surprised. Joana spins a yarn about someone forgetting to lock the door. The castigator says he's going to get someone with a key to sort it out, and to get back out there.
• A round of attacks at his back, and he does not go down. The fight starts in earnest.
  • He retreats, and will frustratingly manage to stay up for most of the fight.
  • The gang presses in. Clearing to one side, they find a suspicious ritual chamber and two surprised magicians, who then become dead magicians. One drops a glowing dagger, that Bern quickly scoops up.
    • A ritual is in progress, with a piece of amber held on a dais. Madrin disrupts it by taking the amber with a magic hand--it becomes a burnt-out husk upon leaving its perch.
  • There's a bit of an impasse at the door, as it is held on one side.
• Meanwhile, a detachment goes to take care of the prisoners.
  • Elian and Whip comply with the rest and stand with their backs to the wall. Sleep spells come, which don't affect Elian and can't pass Whip's hitpoint total, but they both pretend to sleep anyway (after some pretend resistance).
  • The detachment files in, scribner leading, glossolalists flanking, castigators and an evangelist head honcho in the rear.
  • Whip springs into action, and a surprised scribner dies with a sword through his neck. Elian shakes things up with an erupting earth, and then goes wolf-shaped. A pitched battle starts, with the melee combatants trading blows while the chickenshit evangelist pops mind control spells from the rear before booking (while holding the Barbarian King's Buckler, sadly for Whip).
• Back up stairs, Bern forces the stalemate out by popping a potion of hill giant strength and slamming a door open against two very surprised castigators.
  • Pitched battle ensues. Castigators and glossolalists file in and harrass the very-much-not-melee-enthused party members, while scribners plug a flank with create bonfire. Joana slings devastating chaos bolts, but after a particularly massive one something snaps and chaotic energy begins flowing into her. She has no idea what is going on.
  • Bern is very deadly. Madrin, out of spell slots, does her best. Bern is forced to retreat into the ritual room where she alternates firing shots and closing the door.
  • The castigators are felled, but two glossolalists remain. One knocks down Joana and, screaming, wails on her corpse. Astonishingly, he misses more than he hits, but Joana still dies the next round. One chases Bern and the other goes after Madrin, who are both in terrible shape.
  • Madrin is felled temporarily, but Bern brings her back.
  • From Joana's corpse flows a great, swirling vortex of impossible energy.
  • A last desperate shot from Bern, and then Madrin, fells one of the glossolalists. The last one loses his trance and books it. The Bounty Hunters pursue to the door, but he gets away.
• At this point, Whip and Elian have dealt with their resistance and are finding their way back upstairs. Whip peeks up just long enough to see no resistance (the scribners have fled), and runs back down to get their gear. Elian arrives in the main hallway just in time to see...
  • ...an extremely tall, extremely naked, impossibly beautiful woman coalesce from the vortex. She has long, purple hair, a small tail, and two short horns.
  • The being turns to Elian and says something in a language of gutteral screeches and howls, with an expression of surprisingly human puzzlement. Elian, still a wolf, cocks his head to one side.
• Bern and Madrin get back and are surprised to see this scene. Some language stumbles later, and it turns out that the being is Joana, who is very surprised to see her own corpse at her feet.
  • The party puzzles over this predicament. Whip arrives some minutes, his arms full of his and Elian's gear and the chapterhouse's petty cash (1500 gp). He is as shocked as everyone else.
    • She is clothed by this point, although this doesn't stop him from noticing a conflict with his normally very collegial feelings toward fellow bounty hunter. Thankfully for his legendarily awkward social presence, he suppresses it as hard as he can.
  • Whip was not able to recover any documents--they were burned (presumably by the escaping scribners).
• The party does a leisurely inspection of the rest of the building while they catch their breaths.
  • They find no other real (portable) valuables.
  • They do find loads of amber, and a curious casting area (where the mold has a sticky detritus rather than metal slag). A large barrel is filled with cast-offs, all cracked in two down the middle, but otherwise looking much like the piece Madrin pulled off the dais. Bern pockets a matching pair.
  • There is a room with a manacle-equipped table.
  • There is also a room filled to the brim with corpses. Apart from a small, oval-shaped irritation in the center of the chest, they are otherwise untouched.
  • They do what they can to ruin the ritual room for easy recovery, wake up the prisoners, lock the remaining cultists in the in the cell, and go off to tell the authorities.

Root and Branch

• With three witnesses, a literal dungeon, a pile of corpses and otherwise lots of crazy occult bullshit to point at, the Bounty Hunters find the audience here much more receptive to their story than previously. The Lord Mayor immediately moves to strip and secure the building, and invites them to a congratulatory state dinner.
  • Just beforehand, he meets them in private to get the real talking in. He is genuinely happy to have this problem rooted out in his midst, and to have a windfall of occult bullshit and amber.
  • He promises to immediately outlaw the cult from either entry or practice within the domain he supervises, and to spread the word to other important people (some of which are, presumably, important people in other towns).
  • The party also extracts a promise for him not to sell the amber off in the direction of Nia-Agliare, as well.
  • Under Elian's gentle nudge, they also hatch a plan to build the chapterhouse into a halfway-house for the poor. The Lord Mayor is considerably less enthused by this suggestion, but after a gentle reminder that people who aren't homeless are in a better position to contribute taxes, and that doing so would lessen his surface area to future cult attempts, he relents (it helps that the party promises to fund the venture entirely from their own funds). He promises to make the edict deeding the property to them that day.
• The party will settle for a couple of weeks to get it all set up, and that's where they are left.

Awards

• A moon-touched dagger
• 1500 gp
• 250 pp
• 850 exp to all for Clearing out the Chapter House
• 300 exp to all for Living Prisoners
• 350 exp to all for Crestence Safe House