Rokka, Arvos, and I find ourselves standing at the doors outside the giant obsidian construct. Our goal: to find an artifact (an obsidian eye) and destroy it. Looking at the door, we can see that it has two holes; roughly at eye-height, roughly eye-spaced, and roughly eye-shaped. So, yeah. Ghirgaz puts his face to it, and the door warps around his head! It’s only for a moment though, and the doors open. Ghirgaz seems fine.

We enter what appears to be an ornate dining room, with a long table that has an ornate black statue of a woman holding a black orb at each end. Rokka sits first, mid-table, and Ghirgaz and I join him, but at the ends of the table. Rokka pours himself a water and drinks, I ring a bell, and just nothing happens. Interesting note: the food out is seafood, and seems unspoiled.

We decide to move on, and open a door that leads to the kitchen. The far end of the room is curtained off, and the curtain has six dashed lines and one solid line. As we exit the dining room, I could swear the statue’s head turns to follow us. Creepy. Inside this kitchen though is an odd device with four controlled flames coming out of the top – some sort of controlled fire device for cooking? I find a few knives to use as extra weapons – all obsidian. And odd – the initially feel malleable for a quick moment, then harden.

We pull back the curtain, revealing a larger room with a fountain of sorts at the center. There’s a purple orb, from which water is somehow flowing to the fountain below. The walls have murals, one of note has three monks washing their eyes in the fountain, and next to it are three towels. And  as we look closer, we can see that the monks in mural are actually the three of us. Odd. One by one we take a chance and wash our eyes – it stings for a moment (psychic damage), but soon everything seems clearer, sharper. (+2 to perception). When we look again, the figures are not us, but eyeless monks.

The end of this room has the same curtain pattern, and behind it, a dead-end. Or what appears to be – we’re able to detect the outline of a door, and open it, revealing a long hallway with six undulating beams of different colors. Ghirgaz carefully walks down the hall, avoiding the modulating beams. Rokka tests what happens when the beam is broken with a wet wash cloth (soaked in the fountain): seemingly nothing. So, he jumps in the water, and just walks through the first (red) beam. It does actually hurt him (I guess washcloths can’t take psychic damage or something), but we learn something: he saw red colors shift on a door at the end of the hallway. Maybe if we cover all at once, the door will open?

We head back to the dining room, and scoop up all the mashed potatoes we can muster. One by one, I throw mashed potatoes on the light sources, and we advance down the hallway. Each time, the corresponding colors shift and swirl on the door until finally we reach the end, and the door opens.

Looking down the newly revealed long, green-carpeted hallway, there’s a statue at each end separated by 24 floating lenses, each 5ft apart. Ghirgaz the Adventurous decides to turn them so they’re facing each other, and does so while Rokka and I wait in the safety of the now decidedly less-technicolored hallway. A green glow appears, and after a few moments, Ghirgaz turns a statue away and lets us know it’s safe to enter. We do, and he re-turns the statue so it’s “looking” at the other. The walls melt away, and I’m surrounded by images of catastrophic natural disasters – a sort of weather-spurred apocalypse. Rokka is freaking out, and I think he just loses control and casts/throws a fireball at the statue that I’m next to. This would normally be a pretty bad thing – getting friendly fireballed – but I’m able to evade any damage. Ghirgaz turns the statue again, and the walls normalize. At Ghirgaz’s end, there’s a door and six blindfolds beside it. We each take two (may come in handy), and open the door, revealing nothing.

Rather, revealing nothingness. The doorway is impossibly black. Ghirgaz steps in, and disappears. I reach in for him, keeping my feet on this side of the doorway, but nothing. On a gut feeling, I put on a blindfold and walk through. I hear Ghigaz below me – far below me. How? Apparently not wearing the blindfold makes the floor insubstantial, and he fell to a spiked floor below. And he tells us that straight ahead, there’s a door with a blue unearthly light peaking out from the edges. First, we need to get him up. We decide to leave a coil of 50ft rope on the floor, walk back out the door, and remove our blindfolds. This apparently works, as we can feel a heavy tension on the rope soon after, and help Ghirgaz climb back up. We put the blindfolds back on, and follow Ghirgaz across the long, dark room. He opens the door, and we feel a strong heat.

*Roll for Initiative*

We’re fighting this whirlwind of heat blind, and we shortly make it through the door, not without getting a bit singed. Well, except for Rokka – pretty hard to singe a Fire Genasi. No longer blindfolded, we can actually fight what appears to be a blue Fire Dancers Swarm. We’ve done a lot of damage to it, and decide to make the easy/smart call to finish this fight: we close the door on it. After all, it didn’t seem like it could make it through at full strength…

This room is not only thankfully filled with light, but is devoid of enemies … so far. There are four crates though, only one of which chirps like crickets. The other three have miscellaneous supplies and rations, so we decide to eat a bit and take a short rest. After a bit, we hear the shattering of glass on the other side of the other door in this room.

I open the door to another dark room. Not magically dark, though. Nearby is a giant scorpion in a glass cage. Black, with a red stripe. It turns to me, and strikes the glass with the stinger, leaving a black, inky blot on the glass … and a few cracks? I close the door quickly, grab a bag from one of the open crates, and open the chirping crate. It’s filled with very large crickets, and I scoop as many as I can into the bag. I go first back into the room, and the caged scorpion strikes the galls again, increasing the number and length of the cracks.

*THUMP! Roll for Initiative*

I guess I now know why we heard braking glass earlier – a giant scorpion has just dropped from the ceiling. I toss the crickets to a corner away from the direction I’m going, and encourage the other two to follow, quickly. We all make it through relatively unscathed (the good ole’ bag o’ giant crickets diversion helped), and close the door behind us. There’s a large statue at one end of this hallway, and a set of double-doors next to us. The scorpions are thrashing the door we just went through, so decide to go through the double doors and hide from them. At least if we have to fight them now, we’ll be able to see them better.

They make it through that door, and we wait quietly and rest while they investigate. They seem to have lost our scent, and there’s easy prey in that dark room, so they leave us be. We warily continue down the hallway, and as we approach the large statue, its eyes light up and waves at us, congratulating us on making it this far. We squeeze by, go through a door at the end of the hallway, and bar it behind us.

It’s a library – filled with nothing of real use as all the books appear to be in an odd, ancient language. Ghirgaz does find an odd mirror though, and keeps it. We do find an altar with unlit candles though, and Rokka lights them. A set of double-doors are revealed, and eye on a long stalk extends, looks at us, and retreats back into/through the door.

We, of course, open the doors and follow/investigate. They open to a hallway heading to the left, then right, then right again – it must wrap around a room. We head down the hallway, Ghirgaz ahead of Rokka and I. At the end is a doorway, and apparently a trapped floor, as Ghirgaz falls into a pit. Again. As Rokka are about to turn the corner and help Ghirgaz, we’re each suddenly somehow surrounded by these swirling clouds of hundreds of … eyeballs? Gross, sure, but thematically appropriate for this odd place.

My eyes … my eyes are trying to join the swarm! Have you ever tried really hard to keep your eyes closed? I’m not talking about trying to resist peeking at a gift, but keeping your eyes closed for the sake of keeping them. I don’t recommend it, it’s extremely unpleasant.

Apparently (thankfully) Ghirgaz is out of the pit, because he thunderclaps, drawing the eyes swirling around me towards him. I’m not out of the clear though – because as I see him start to get enveloped, I get enveloped by the one that was swarming Rokka. Rokka’s unsure what to do, especially since his eyes are now in the swarm surrounding me! We tell him to throw a fireball to a spot between our yelling voices, and he does.

You see (too soon, Leo?), with Ghirgaz and I being a 6th level monk and a 7th level rogue respectively, we both have Evasion. The swirling eye clouds? Nope. Neither of us take damage, while they are all but obliterated. I’m thinking we should call this move/tactic Friendly Fire(ball)™ for future use. Well anyways, I teleport 10 out of the remains of my swarm over to Ghirgaz, and of course it follows. Rokka finishes it off with the same tactic, using Burning Hands. *phew*

I push open the (hopefully final) door, and gasp. There’s a depiction of a huge eye in the floor, fashioned from precious metals and gems. The walls provide a 360 degree view of Athus. And in the middle, on a pedestal, is a smoky crystal orb with tiny obsidian flakes. In my head (and the others, I assume) I hear a voice to ask any question, and it will reply with a truthful answer.

My question: Where can I find Sovra? It replies that he is the Prince of Fire, and I will find him with the Fire Cultists, reigning over them.

Ghirgaz’s question: How can we destroy you? It replies with fire.

I’m not sure I heard Rokka’s Q and A, as I was a bit preoccupied with the first two answers, but next thing I know, Rokka fireballs the eye.

There’s a large blast of heat, and the walls drop. We find ourselves back on the arid desert of Athus, obsidian whipping around us at a furious pace, until the nothing remains but the hot sun above us.

Slowly but surely, we make our trek back to the rest of our party.

Session Date: 05/25/17, Prior Journal XP: 400, Session XP: 2,666, Total XP: 34,452
Title Source: Goatwhore – Invocation to the Obsidian Moon

/* A bit of house-keeping:
* Mike and I forgot about the Wild Talent for this newer char, so now Nuunya has:
* Psychic Teleport: Once per rest, I can teleport 10ft to a location I can see as a full move.
*/

I rejoin the party, after taking a shift or two of guarding the Sand Witch. Apparently, I’ve missed things. Seems like we’re good with these Thri-Kreen, and we’re chasing down this other party of mutated? creatures that may be called Thor-Kreen. They’re an hour ahead of us, and after a short discussion we decide to catch up by taking a faster, but obviously more dangerous path.

We approach the canyon, and it is indeed a more dangerous route – let’s hope it is worth it. Flying through it is a sort of defiling-magic driven sandstorm. Except, it’s really made of obsidian instead of sand. This won’t be fun.

We all take various routes we deem best for each of us – my method involves doing two slow moves in a row (moving slowly helps prevent damage from the obsidian-laden ground) and then kinda hunkering down to reduce flying obsidian damage. Ghirgaz, Arvos, and I haul over to a cave opening we see on a sort of “island” in the middle of the canyon. The respite if brief though, as these sort of defiling-magic obsidian spider constructs start to amble towards us in the cave. Ghirgaz (our new “leader” – missed that too, apparently) tells Arvos and I to book it through the cave and get back outside. Ghirgaz follows us, and towards the end of the cave thunderclaps the spiders to shards. We continue on and out of the canyon, even though a quite large defiling-magic obsidian spider construct appears from nowhere to stop Rokka and Kary, we all make it out relatively unharmed.

There does seem to be a sadness in our thri-kreen guide’s eyes, or maybe I’m just projecting. But I turn around and see what they see, and it might be sadness, after all. In the distance on a plateau is a huge moth beast. A jalath’gak, but MUCH bigger. And they’re loading prisoners onto it.

Arvos and I climb up to a nearby plateau so that Arvos can try to communicate with it. It’s in vain though, as it appears to be charmed by 3 individuals right by it. Arvos and I decide that sine we have the element of surprise, the best route is to just attack. We dial in on the biggest/baddest one. I plant an arrow in his collarbone, and reknock an arrow as Arvos drops a bolt of lightning on him and one of his allies. Before the thunderclap even has time to reach us, I loose my second arrow and drop the biggest threat.

The lightning strike provided a pretty good signal to the rest of the party that initiative had been rolled, and shortly, we were in the thick of it. In the end, a thor-kreen footsoldier or two had fled, their compatriots and superiors blood was being soaked up by the dry earth, and the jalath’gak had taken off, with Kary in pursuit. The rest of us take off after Kary, and find him on the ground with the beast, now dead.

And not but a few moments later, dwarves pup up from the ground and have us surrounded! Ghirgaz has us all throw our hands up, as he recognizes some of their gear as being from a nearby monastery. And right he is! Bruldren, an old friend recognizes him! The other lower their weapons, and we talk. There’s a new rift in the nearby mountains – a rift created recently by earthquakes. And from that rift came multiple huge structures made of obsidian. The thor-kreen moved in quick, and made them their home. Or perhaps the thor-kreen actually made them?

We’re thanked by our thri-kreen guide for freeing those of his people we were able to free, gives us directions to their meeting place, and spray a pheromone on us, marking us as allies. I’m happy to have this alliance, but do these pheromones have to smell so bad?

Unlocked: Thri-Kreen as a playable race!
Session Date 05/11/17 XP: 1,500, (missed last 2 sessions due to UK trip) Total XP: 31,586
Title: Goatwhore – Baptized in a Storm of Swords

We split into two-ish groups: Rokka, Sampson (The Markovian), and myself are on the left on crodlus, Kary is in the air, and everyone else is on the right. We start to close, when two giant columns of rock erupt from the earth! If this isn’t the work of earth cultists (and I don’t think it is), then what sort of monstrosity could do this?

I don’t really have any time to contemplate this, since as soon as I zig-zag out of the way, we’re under attack from multiple fronts. My crodlu is hit with a harpoon from the ship – and while it’s been hurt badly, Arvos’ crodlu is pinned to the ground and killed by a harpoon. Arvos being Arvos, he literally hits the ground running, but as a carapaced elk of sorts, and charges towards the ship.

A beetle swoops down at me, and its thri-kreen rider attacks at me, but misses. It’s only polite that I extend the same greeting, with the same result. Rokka is a bit more efficient – he sends flames to those attacked me, killing the rear rider but leaving the pilot and beetle alive.

The immediate threat to me cleared, I turn my attention to the Sand Witch. I can see a Feathergale Knight, some thin squires, and the mutineers. I knock an arrow and find revenge on the ballisteer that injured my crodlu, killing him with a single arrow. One down.

*cue more earth shaking*

What. The. Hell. I don’t know what’s causing this, but we already have enough on our hands with the thri-kreen attacking us from the sky, and these people trying to kill us with our own ship. Well, one enemy at a time, I guess.

Arvos summons lightning from the sky (that’s … that’s new), bringing it down on the ship’s sail – not a terrible thing to patch, but it’ll certainly slow the ship down and help everyone close on it sooner. I take a shot and hit the other ballisteer, but fail to do him in to my chagrin – he’s apparently a polite fellow and returns my greeting in kind. Ouch.

Ghirgaz – who is somehow on the back of a beetle – thunderclaps the usurpers on the ship, and jumps onto the Sand Witch. Finally – a beachhead of sorts! I close as well, and I jump off my crodlu to get on the ship, it succumbs to its earlier wound and dies. Unfortunately, this is just enough of a distance to throw me off, sending me rolling to the ground. But, I recover quickly and am onboard! I’m [ ] close to attacking the nearest enemy when there’s this huge explosion!

A huge sand worm emerges from the ground, and is headed right for the Sand Witch!

Shiiiiiiiiit. Well, that certainly explains things. Okay, time to clear the soon-to-be deadweight from the ship and get her back up to speed. At least the thri-kreen have circled around and started focusing on the worm. Ghirgaz and I start working on the crew as Arvos again summons the lightning, but targets the knight, and takes him out. Ghirgaz takes the helm (Jesus Ghirgaz take the wheel!) and as he starts making manouvers, I man the ballista and plant a harpoon in the worm. Seeing that the thri-kreen are no longer a threat (to us), we regroup and unleash hell onto the worm, eventually driving it away and back underground.

One of the thri-kreen lands and dismounts, and we approach – cautiously but less so than in our prior encounters with the thri-kreen. There’s a bit of language barrier, but we’re able to communicate. His name isn’t really pronounceable, but is okay with being referred to as Chief Click-Clack. He is impressed with us – says we’re the craziest two-arms that he’s ever seen. He holds no ill will towards us for taking out a fewf of his fighters, and sensing an incredible opportunity, we offer half of the newly dead to him and his people, if he would care to feast with us. He accepts our offer.

He tells us that the worms have been overactive lately – riled up. He seems to think it was chasing the Sand Witch, somehow thinking it was a potential mate. And Chief is particularly taken with / impressed by Rokka. So much so, that he gives him a thr-kreen name which roughly translates to “Spicyboy” – SPICYBOY! BAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! It was so hard to not burst out in front of the chief at the moment – but we’re never going to let that one go.

He also thankfully shows us the gesture/signal for “trade” so that hopefully we’ll have less treacherous encouters with the thri-kreen. And then, in what I can only call apprecivomit (equal amounts of disgust and appreciation), he sprays us with some truly foul pheromones that apparently mark us as “protected”. I can only hope that the smell goes away without reducing the effectiveness of the pheromone.

I float an idea to Click-Clack – perhaps we could get the tracked worm to pick our trail back up and lead it towards the Feathergale Spire? Someone else chimes in that we suspect the Feathergale are upsetting the balance, and teaming up would help restore balance. He’s willing to help, but first we need to go to the Hive to meet their thri-Queen.

Did … did we just become allies with the thri-kreen? As odd as that sounds, this very much works for me. Can you imagine the look in the Feathergale’s eyes when they see the Sand Witch tearing across the desert with a giant worm and a thri-kreen army in tow? I can, and it’s delicious. And after that? The fire cultists and the sweet sweet taste of revenge that Arvos and I will savor.

Tags: Sampson, Markovian, crodlu, thri-kreen, Sand Witch, Feathergale, Feathergale Knight, Sand Worm, Chief Click-Clack, Spicyboy, thri-queen

Session Date 03/30/17 XP: 3,000, Prior Journal XP: 400, Total XP: 29,886
Title: Nancy Sinatra – Lightning’s Girl

A gong rings out, and we walk back into the arena for the third and hopefully final time. The sand has been removed, exposing wooden planks, many with regular holes bored into them, presumably for added fuckery. The walls are covered with razor wire, and opposite us are two hulking behemoths of men: The Markovian Brothers. I act first as before, and launch an arrow into the shirtless one, but he seems unfazed. Crap.

As I watch them to try to suss out their strategy, I notice something odd. One “whiffs” while attacking, while the other closes on Kary and misses him – and at the apex of his backswing, seems to point ever-so-breifly at the crack in the dome? Are they sending us a message?

I knock an arrow, and just barely miss one of the Markovians on purpose. He reacts as I thought he might – by faking and acting like I’d hit him. I next target the other, and “accidentally” trip, sending my arrow to the crack in the ceiling as a verification that we’re now all on thet same side.

The shirtless one (that I now regret shooting) closes on me, and attacks, but “clumsily” loses his axe. He instead grapples me and lifts me up – thankfully, too. Not a moment later a bunch of spikes come shooting out of those holes bored into the planks. In my head, when our eyes are locked, I hear him say to me “Get ready to hold on!”

I don’t really have time to process what that means, as he throws me across the arena to the crack in the ceiling, and I do indeed hold on for dear life. Guards quickly start to close on me as I start cutting away at the structure of the dome. The crowd and the guards have noticed, and a few spears are thrown my way – all thankfully miss. The guards must not see a lot of action – I’m clinging to a roof, a target that can’t dodge. Hardly a difficult target – but then again I’m not exactly complaining about their apparent lack of skill. It doesn’t take much longer to finish cutting a hole, and I’m through. I may be safe from spears on this side, but there are guards closing on me.

All of a sudden, I hear this great *FWOOOOOSH* – apparently Rokka was in the crowd, and let loose a fireball in the dome. Immediately, there’s screaming and the distinctive smell of charred flesh. One of the Markovians joins me on the other side of the dome, taking guards down left and right. He is soon overcome, and takes out a number of guards with him, with his voice in my head telling us to get out, to go. Kary picks up the fleeing announcer, flies up, and drops him on yet more guards.

In the backdrop of smoke and screaming mayhem, we’re able to escape the dome, and head back to lodgings with our new friend Sampson, The Markovian. He tells us of his tale: he and his now late brother are in service of the God of Death. They’re obviously not afraid to die, but very much want to take as many as they can with them. Skulls for the Skull Throne. He sees something special in us – he sees that the notches that he’d accrue by taking us out would pale compared to our potential to add to the tally.

After catching our breath, we each take a few rubies (the rest are safe under ground) and head to the Sand Witch, still with Dane and Mal. There’s smoke rising in the vicinity of their garage, and as we get closer, we see it’s not just the vicinity. It is their garage. The ship is gone, and there’s blood everywhere. The manticore head from the bow is now where Claude’s (sp?) should be. Raquelle (sp?) is still alive, and is barely able to cough out “mutineers” as she relays what happened: a group of pale, thin air cultists came in, riled up the rest of the crew, and killed those loyal to us. Bev will be ok, as will Mal. But Dane’s parts have been scattered. We all put in a ruby to cover the costs of krudlews and other means of transit to chase down these mutineers. Mal and the Markovian join us.

We can tell the Sand Witch is heading to Feathergale and isn’t making great time, as this crew isn’t a seasoned set when it comes to sleds. And every once in a while, we see a dead mutineer on the ground. We push hard, but try to not overdo it with our krudlews. One of our breaks while foraging for poisoning ingredients (and finding Mandrake Root), I come across Thri-kreen tracks. Fresh ones. Needless to say, we get back on the move, quickly. Later in the day, two beetle-like figures fly by us, high in the air.

It’s not long before we see our ship in the distance. We don’t have long to formulate a plan, as we can hear the familiar sound of the clicking mandibles of the thri-kreen.

It’s not the best, but we have a plan: close on the ship, then split and flank them. Depending on the size of the thri-kreen “swarm”, we might just get lucky and have both sets of enemies fight each other as much or more than us.

That, or we just might have our last battle. Either way, there will be one winner for sure: the God of Death, to whom I say “Not today.”

Session Date 03/16/17 XP: 2,000, Prior Journal XP: 400, Total XP: 26,486.
Title: The Hunt for Red October scene: One Ping Only

So, literally from rags to riches in a day or so. I can work with this. I’ve cleared my debts, but there’s still this heinous (and totally true) accusation about me poisoning someone that I need to clear up.

I don’t really trust the judicial system here though. The dwarven Judicial Guards – Arbiters – are something to … Dredd (sorrynotsorry). The system is unforgiving, and punishment is always the same, and always essentially a death penalty: work in the mines. And I’m not really suiting to mining.

I also don’t want to live in our new house for the rest of my life, and some of this money is waiting to be spend on some sweet metal weapons. I whip up a simple but effective disguise (the best lies have some truth in them), and head out with the others to do some shopping. Since metal weapons bypass DR, I pick up a nice new rapier, two daggers, and 40 metal-tipped arrows. These’ll look nice embedded in Sovra’s corpse, right Arvos?

On our way back though, we’re tempted by a merchant in an alley, selling “special wares”. This may be a trap, but what if it’s not? We have money to spend, and I’ll take any advantage I can when it comes to combat and survival.

Yeah, it’s a trap. Tooootally a trap.

The “elf woman” is really a tengu, and it means to rob us of our new wares. And it’s not just one! There’s one on the other’s shoulders, and on the rooftops and walls that line this courtyard are a number more. We start out strong with Kary killing one outright in some hot (not really) bird-on-bird action. From there, though, it’s not so stellar. There’s only three of us – Kary, Ghirgaz, and myself – and we’re quickly reduced to two as the tarp above us is cuts and falls on us, and Kary is paralyzed by whatever they’re dipped the tips of their crossbow bolts in. Eventually, we all fade to black after putting up the best fight we could.

Predictably, we wake up in a dungeon / holding tank, bound and weaponless. Apparently, we’re up next in the fighting pits. We thankfully don’t have to fight each other, but as we’re lead down the hallway, cheering crowd getting louder, we see our foe: a huge Stygian Scorpion. We’re weaponless, still a bit out of it, and disoriented from going from deep darkness to bright light.

We don’t have time to adjust, if we want to survive. All along the edges of this fighting arena are muderholes with spears sticking out of them, and in between some of those are weapons – mostly bashy smashy weapons, but my eyes catch a glimpse a dagger – maybe not the most useful against our foe, but better than bare fists. I duck and dodge to grab it, and Kary does the same then flies off. Ghirgaz is a natural weapon – not much need of a club, him.

Kary and Ghirgaz waste no time – K flies up and throws down the maul on the scorpion while Ghir just starts beating it about the face. A small scorpion climbs up out of the sand and stings Ghirgaz – by the time I see it it’s too late, but I’m still able to throw my dagger at it and kill it. Now only under attack from one side, Ghirgaz lands a blow that pushes the scorpion back 20ft away from the center of the pit, and it lands prone.

Being handy with poisons, I see an opportunity to contribute to this fight in a more substantial way – the small scorpion that stung Ghirgaz is a Stygian Fat Tail Scorpion – and those have quite a potent sting (+6d6 DAM), as Ghirgaz can no doubt attest to. I dodge past the spears, and wanting to keep my momentum, cartweel-pickup the dagger, cartwheel again, and sink the poisonous dagger blade into the head of the huge scorpion, finishing it off.

The stands are silent for a moment, and then erupt in cheers. These underdogs have given them quite a show – and it seems they have a favored combatant in Kary. They’re all shouting “BIRD MAN! BIRD MAN!” Some weapons are thrown down, and I collect a sling. The announcer informs the crowd that they’ll get more of us soon, and that after the following fight, we’ll be back and up against SUBAK. Kary removes the tail of the huge scorpion, and we head back to the holding area.

During our short rest, I’m able to extract an application of poison. It’s good for 1 minute/3 strikes, and will do +2d6 and the victim will need to make a DC12 save for blindness. The others in here are mostly scared enouogh for their own fate to be worried about us. One woman though, upon hearing that we’re about to fight Subak, comes up to me. Apparently Subak decapitated her husband recently, and gave me two important things:

1. A shiv – while not a formidable weapon, it’s an extra weapon. Everything helps.
2. Information: Subak is blind in his left eye.

Now that is something I can work with! And good thing too – we have to head back out. Upon entering, we see Subak – arguable one of the crowd’s favorites, and I can’t blame them. He’s a large reptilian creature, with metal and glass shards glues to his back and arms. A formidable foe, confident in his abilities. ANd he just stands there, almost taunting us by just waiting. So, I seize the moment and act first (rogues get advantage vs enemies that haven’t acted, and that grants sneak attack: +3d6 DAM) by throwing the poisoned shiv at Subak, and landing the hit! Further, he fails his save and is now fully blind! Kary takes flight (much to the crowd’s delight), and Ghirgaz closes.

While blind, Subak still apparently has a sensational sense of smell when it comes to blood. While I’m fully hale, my friends are not quite, and Subak locks on to them, but especially Kary. An audience member throws a spear down to Subak (like he needs the help), he somehow catches it, and launches it at Kary. He scrapes Kary, but more importantly, hits and cracks the ceiling. Subak diverts his attention to Ghirgaz, and attacks, and is thankfully unaware of me. I pick the poisoned shiv back up, but am unable to hit. Thankfully, he’s still unaware of me, but that doesn’t matter for long. Kary dives down at Subak, sword in claw, and deals a stunning death blow to his head.

The crowd loses it, chanting “FREEDOM” to their swift and unexpected victorsm but the announcer has other plans. He quiets the crowd, and announces that we will have one last trial, tomorrow, against The Markovian Brothers (wait, I thought there was only supposed to be one Markovian?). At least we’ll have all of our belongings back for that fight.

Still, smells like bullshit to me.

Session Date 03/02/17 XP: 2,000 Total XP: 24,086. *LEVEL UP TO 7!*
Title: Tom Waits – In The Colosseum