Session 12: "Showdown in Moontown."
(October 21)
At the Roving Eye tavern, Ward heads upstairs to the party's rooms to rest. She walks into an ambush. A tall, burly, and rather hairy human man seizes her from behind and clamps a hand over her mouth, while a halfling girl—perhaps 12 years old—menaces her with a dagger. Ward's efforts to break free are useless, and she is intimidated by the dagger-wielding street urchin, who demands to know whether Ward and her crew work for the bandit Sashi, and what they've been doing for him. Ward and her two ambushers quickly realize that they're all on the same side, united in working against Sashi, and the man releases her. Ward unties Bargin, who had been bound and gagged in the corner.
The halfling girl introduces herself as Monkey, and the human man as Bear. (Bear rolls his eyes at these nicknames but says nothing.) Monkey says they come from a hidden part of the city called Moontown, and that they're trying to find out what has transpired between Sashi and the boss of Moontown, a man they call "Lord Sombir." Sombir had been the protector of the "moonies" for some fifteen years, organizing their community and orchestrating small-time thievery in the city above Moontown while restraining the "moonies" from any risky jobs or violent actions that would cause the cityfolk to rise up and seek them out. Sombir and Sashi had been rivals during this time, striving for control over Rajgan's riverside districts. A tense equilibrium had existed between the rival gangs, both staying clear of the other gang's territory—until about three weeks ago.
That's when a change came over "Lord Sombir." He refused to leave his shack, and began issuing orders for riskier and riskier jobs that the moonies would undertake on behalf of his old rival Sashi. Recently a small group of moonies had been busted breaking into the Scriptorium, Rajgan's wizarding college. Sombir would summon important members of the Moontown community to see him, and these people would thereafter remain in his shack, backing up his orders and pressuring their own family members to perform these dangerous heists that Sombir ordered. Monkey and Bear want to find out from Sashi's underlings the truth of the two gang bosses' sudden detente.
Meanwhile, down at the Roving Eye's bar downstairs, Sunrise and Vaelin drink with the tavern's mascot, the spectator called Large Lenny. Lenny has taken a liking to Sunrise, whose single eye exudes class and dignity, not like those "hideous two-eyed freaks." Lenny tells Sunrise that the balance of power has shifted in the city, that the werefolk "moonies" from Moontown now work on behalf of Sashi and his gang; Lenny suspects that Sashi has either done away with or come to some kind of understanding with Sombir, the leader of the werefolk.
Dara follows Ward upstairs and finds the door blocked (Bear is sitting against it to keep out unexpected company while he and Monkey talk with Ward). When Ward lets her inside, the two of them agree that the oblex bomb they've been tracking down—the one sent to Sashi, the only one that slipped through their fingers—must have been used to consume and create a duplicate of Sombir, as well as those "moonies" who were invited to meet with him after the change.
When Sunrise and Vaelin are called upstairs to meet with Monkey and Bear, they share what Lenny told them—the "moonies" are werefolk. Against Bear's objections, Monkey (dejected that their new friends know the truth and might shun them) shifts into a weremonkey with golden-brown fur and a prehensile tail that twitches and curls with her anxiety. She calms when Sunrise sits beside her and lets her groom his fur.
Dara and Ward take this moment to leave Monkey in the room while they bring Bear out into the hall, where they tell him the full story about how oblexes eat people's memories and kill them before extruding a duplicate, indistinguishable from the original except for the faint smell of sulfur. Bear is riven with grief and rage—his brother, Halja, was among those who had been invited into the shack and had been "living" there ever since. Bear wants to take his big battleaxe and destroy the oblex immediately, but Dara and Ward convince him to meet with the party in the morning, and lead them into Moontown to fight the ooze together.
The next morning, Monkey and Bear lead the party through old sewers away from the river, guiding them past crude traps and fortifications meant to discourage intruders. Along the way Monkey and Bear fill in some backstory: "Lord Sombir" was Sombir Dravash, a fallen paladin who left his order and sought out the company of the werefolk. He pressured Bear and Bear's brother Halja about giving him the werebear curse, but the two refused. Sombir would just laugh and say they would come around and turn him soon enough; he refused to be turned by any other lycanthrope. Sombir was beloved by most of the werefolk, who welcomed his efforts to restrain their more violent members and keep the community as a whole safe from persecution. His second-in-command was a dwarf mercenary and former gladiator named Gora, who excels at combat with spear and shield. Gora, in it for the money, is still working for the new "Sombir," following his new, more violent and risky orders and enforcing his commands in Moontown now that "Sombir" no longer left his shack.
The group emerges at last in a vast sinkhole, much larger than the sinkhole that hides Sashi's headquarters—a giant collapsed cave overgrown with treeferns and huge trees, with occasional cleared spaces for garden plots and rough shacks. The morning sky is visible overhead, though the sun is not yet high enough to shine down into the sinkhole.
The main path cuts between fallen blocks of limestone and towering trees, making for easy walking, but it leads them directly to waiting sentries: Sombir's lieutenant Gora; a devious wererat named Arna; and a wereboar. Gora calls out to Bear, "Where have you been, Balwant? Who are you bringing into Moontown?"
Vaelin proclaims that they're here on a mission from Sashi, and to stand aside if they know what's best for them. Gora lets them pass, but Bear whispers that she'll attack from behind, and sure enough, Gora whistles and three werewolves jump snarling from the trees and boulders and the attack begins. Vaelin and Ward are bitten but resist the lycanthropy curse. Arna shifts into a giant rat, and is chased and killed by Sunrise. Dara kills the wereboar and turns him into a specter, which remains at her command for the rest of the day. Gora uses her spear and shield against Vaelin but is finally beaten down until she surrenders, with Vaelin (on his horse) and the specter looming over her.. She's only in this for the money, and her life is even more important than the pay. The two surviving werewolves give her side-eye but have no choice but to surrender as well. Bear tells the party that one of the werewolves can be trusted to cooperate once he knows the truth, but the other quite enjoys the new state of affairs and should be kept from raising the alarm.
Gora (suitably bribed with 30 gp), Bear, and Monkey all head into the heart of Moontown to gather allies and create a distraction. With his brother and his boss dead, Bear sees no reason to linger in Moontown, so he and Monkey gather their possessions and important keepsakes before torching his hut. This draws guards away from Sombir's shack and gives the party an opportunity. Sunrise sneaks in close to a window and peeps inside, seeing four exact duplicates—one matching the description of Sombir, three matching werefolk "summoned" to meet with him in the last few weeks—sitting motionless at a table, as if shut off until they're required. Ward throws one of the giff grenades through a window, dealing damage to the oblex through its extruded duplicates, and then Vaelin busts through another window, flashing his Chevalier badge and ordering surrender in the name of Rajgan and the Empress. The oblex eats some of his memories, blunting his abilities, but Dara and Sunrise burst through the door and the fight is on.
Dara spots the slimy tendrils from the duplicates leading under a locked door, but has little time to act on the information. The party battles the four duplicates, not quite sure if they represent one or multiple oblexes. Sunrise attempts to swing on a chandelier to deliver a blow, but fumbles. A successful smite from Vaelin causes the duplicate he was battling to collapse and liquify, as do all the other duplicates, spattering the party with red glop. A horrible watery roar is heard from behind the locked door, and a tremendous wet thud, then silence. Dara peeks in through the keyhole and sees a red, shapeless mass of ooze slowly collapsing into the floor, the shapes of bones and armor floating in the goop.
Vaelin manages to break down the door with his crowbar, hampered still by his reduced abilities. The party mucks through the dissolving slime to find armor matching the description of Sombir's plate, as well as his +1 silvered sword. They also find and retrieve, one by one, a spellcasting focus made of dark blue blown glass (worth 25 gp), 390 gold pieces, and 780 copper pieces. Dara finds a skull with distinctively ursine characteristics, most likely that of Bear's brother. They also find a potion of greater healing, still intact in its bottle.
In the final room of the shack, which had been Sombir's bed chamber, the party locates a small hoard hidden under the floorboards. It contains three more potions of greater healing, a potion of water breathing, a ring of water walking, 500 gp, and 780 sp.
After a short rest, Vaelin's mind recovers, and he regains his full abilities. Bear, Monkey, and Gora are all offered crew positions on the airship. Monkey leaps and scrambles over everyone in her excitement at getting to travel the world, and brags about all the monsters she will slay as an adventurer. Bear, with nothing left to him now except for being Monkey's caretaker, solemnly agrees to come along. Gora hires on for gold, her bruised ego mingling with respect for the party's fighting prowess and evident success as adventurers. (They got themselves an airship, they gotta be doing something right.)
The party discusses how to act against Sashi, now that defeating Sashi's oblex has given them a ticking clock (some werefolk would be all too eager to share the tale of these outsiders who busted in and slew the ooze). They decide to let the news reach Sashi organically, and perhaps draw him out of his stronghold in the sinkhole closer to the river.
While they discuss, Bear, Monkey, and the other moonies bring the bones and other remains to the Moontown cemetery, and quietly bury everything.
At the Roving Eye tavern, Ward heads upstairs to the party's rooms to rest. She walks into an ambush. A tall, burly, and rather hairy human man seizes her from behind and clamps a hand over her mouth, while a halfling girl—perhaps 12 years old—menaces her with a dagger. Ward's efforts to break free are useless, and she is intimidated by the dagger-wielding street urchin, who demands to know whether Ward and her crew work for the bandit Sashi, and what they've been doing for him. Ward and her two ambushers quickly realize that they're all on the same side, united in working against Sashi, and the man releases her. Ward unties Bargin, who had been bound and gagged in the corner.
The halfling girl introduces herself as Monkey, and the human man as Bear. (Bear rolls his eyes at these nicknames but says nothing.) Monkey says they come from a hidden part of the city called Moontown, and that they're trying to find out what has transpired between Sashi and the boss of Moontown, a man they call "Lord Sombir." Sombir had been the protector of the "moonies" for some fifteen years, organizing their community and orchestrating small-time thievery in the city above Moontown while restraining the "moonies" from any risky jobs or violent actions that would cause the cityfolk to rise up and seek them out. Sombir and Sashi had been rivals during this time, striving for control over Rajgan's riverside districts. A tense equilibrium had existed between the rival gangs, both staying clear of the other gang's territory—until about three weeks ago.
That's when a change came over "Lord Sombir." He refused to leave his shack, and began issuing orders for riskier and riskier jobs that the moonies would undertake on behalf of his old rival Sashi. Recently a small group of moonies had been busted breaking into the Scriptorium, Rajgan's wizarding college. Sombir would summon important members of the Moontown community to see him, and these people would thereafter remain in his shack, backing up his orders and pressuring their own family members to perform these dangerous heists that Sombir ordered. Monkey and Bear want to find out from Sashi's underlings the truth of the two gang bosses' sudden detente.
Meanwhile, down at the Roving Eye's bar downstairs, Sunrise and Vaelin drink with the tavern's mascot, the spectator called Large Lenny. Lenny has taken a liking to Sunrise, whose single eye exudes class and dignity, not like those "hideous two-eyed freaks." Lenny tells Sunrise that the balance of power has shifted in the city, that the werefolk "moonies" from Moontown now work on behalf of Sashi and his gang; Lenny suspects that Sashi has either done away with or come to some kind of understanding with Sombir, the leader of the werefolk.
Dara follows Ward upstairs and finds the door blocked (Bear is sitting against it to keep out unexpected company while he and Monkey talk with Ward). When Ward lets her inside, the two of them agree that the oblex bomb they've been tracking down—the one sent to Sashi, the only one that slipped through their fingers—must have been used to consume and create a duplicate of Sombir, as well as those "moonies" who were invited to meet with him after the change.
When Sunrise and Vaelin are called upstairs to meet with Monkey and Bear, they share what Lenny told them—the "moonies" are werefolk. Against Bear's objections, Monkey (dejected that their new friends know the truth and might shun them) shifts into a weremonkey with golden-brown fur and a prehensile tail that twitches and curls with her anxiety. She calms when Sunrise sits beside her and lets her groom his fur.
Dara and Ward take this moment to leave Monkey in the room while they bring Bear out into the hall, where they tell him the full story about how oblexes eat people's memories and kill them before extruding a duplicate, indistinguishable from the original except for the faint smell of sulfur. Bear is riven with grief and rage—his brother, Halja, was among those who had been invited into the shack and had been "living" there ever since. Bear wants to take his big battleaxe and destroy the oblex immediately, but Dara and Ward convince him to meet with the party in the morning, and lead them into Moontown to fight the ooze together.
The next morning, Monkey and Bear lead the party through old sewers away from the river, guiding them past crude traps and fortifications meant to discourage intruders. Along the way Monkey and Bear fill in some backstory: "Lord Sombir" was Sombir Dravash, a fallen paladin who left his order and sought out the company of the werefolk. He pressured Bear and Bear's brother Halja about giving him the werebear curse, but the two refused. Sombir would just laugh and say they would come around and turn him soon enough; he refused to be turned by any other lycanthrope. Sombir was beloved by most of the werefolk, who welcomed his efforts to restrain their more violent members and keep the community as a whole safe from persecution. His second-in-command was a dwarf mercenary and former gladiator named Gora, who excels at combat with spear and shield. Gora, in it for the money, is still working for the new "Sombir," following his new, more violent and risky orders and enforcing his commands in Moontown now that "Sombir" no longer left his shack.
The group emerges at last in a vast sinkhole, much larger than the sinkhole that hides Sashi's headquarters—a giant collapsed cave overgrown with treeferns and huge trees, with occasional cleared spaces for garden plots and rough shacks. The morning sky is visible overhead, though the sun is not yet high enough to shine down into the sinkhole.
The main path cuts between fallen blocks of limestone and towering trees, making for easy walking, but it leads them directly to waiting sentries: Sombir's lieutenant Gora; a devious wererat named Arna; and a wereboar. Gora calls out to Bear, "Where have you been, Balwant? Who are you bringing into Moontown?"
Vaelin proclaims that they're here on a mission from Sashi, and to stand aside if they know what's best for them. Gora lets them pass, but Bear whispers that she'll attack from behind, and sure enough, Gora whistles and three werewolves jump snarling from the trees and boulders and the attack begins. Vaelin and Ward are bitten but resist the lycanthropy curse. Arna shifts into a giant rat, and is chased and killed by Sunrise. Dara kills the wereboar and turns him into a specter, which remains at her command for the rest of the day. Gora uses her spear and shield against Vaelin but is finally beaten down until she surrenders, with Vaelin (on his horse) and the specter looming over her.. She's only in this for the money, and her life is even more important than the pay. The two surviving werewolves give her side-eye but have no choice but to surrender as well. Bear tells the party that one of the werewolves can be trusted to cooperate once he knows the truth, but the other quite enjoys the new state of affairs and should be kept from raising the alarm.
Gora (suitably bribed with 30 gp), Bear, and Monkey all head into the heart of Moontown to gather allies and create a distraction. With his brother and his boss dead, Bear sees no reason to linger in Moontown, so he and Monkey gather their possessions and important keepsakes before torching his hut. This draws guards away from Sombir's shack and gives the party an opportunity. Sunrise sneaks in close to a window and peeps inside, seeing four exact duplicates—one matching the description of Sombir, three matching werefolk "summoned" to meet with him in the last few weeks—sitting motionless at a table, as if shut off until they're required. Ward throws one of the giff grenades through a window, dealing damage to the oblex through its extruded duplicates, and then Vaelin busts through another window, flashing his Chevalier badge and ordering surrender in the name of Rajgan and the Empress. The oblex eats some of his memories, blunting his abilities, but Dara and Sunrise burst through the door and the fight is on.
Dara spots the slimy tendrils from the duplicates leading under a locked door, but has little time to act on the information. The party battles the four duplicates, not quite sure if they represent one or multiple oblexes. Sunrise attempts to swing on a chandelier to deliver a blow, but fumbles. A successful smite from Vaelin causes the duplicate he was battling to collapse and liquify, as do all the other duplicates, spattering the party with red glop. A horrible watery roar is heard from behind the locked door, and a tremendous wet thud, then silence. Dara peeks in through the keyhole and sees a red, shapeless mass of ooze slowly collapsing into the floor, the shapes of bones and armor floating in the goop.
Vaelin manages to break down the door with his crowbar, hampered still by his reduced abilities. The party mucks through the dissolving slime to find armor matching the description of Sombir's plate, as well as his +1 silvered sword. They also find and retrieve, one by one, a spellcasting focus made of dark blue blown glass (worth 25 gp), 390 gold pieces, and 780 copper pieces. Dara finds a skull with distinctively ursine characteristics, most likely that of Bear's brother. They also find a potion of greater healing, still intact in its bottle.
In the final room of the shack, which had been Sombir's bed chamber, the party locates a small hoard hidden under the floorboards. It contains three more potions of greater healing, a potion of water breathing, a ring of water walking, 500 gp, and 780 sp.
After a short rest, Vaelin's mind recovers, and he regains his full abilities. Bear, Monkey, and Gora are all offered crew positions on the airship. Monkey leaps and scrambles over everyone in her excitement at getting to travel the world, and brags about all the monsters she will slay as an adventurer. Bear, with nothing left to him now except for being Monkey's caretaker, solemnly agrees to come along. Gora hires on for gold, her bruised ego mingling with respect for the party's fighting prowess and evident success as adventurers. (They got themselves an airship, they gotta be doing something right.)
The party discusses how to act against Sashi, now that defeating Sashi's oblex has given them a ticking clock (some werefolk would be all too eager to share the tale of these outsiders who busted in and slew the ooze). They decide to let the news reach Sashi organically, and perhaps draw him out of his stronghold in the sinkhole closer to the river.
While they discuss, Bear, Monkey, and the other moonies bring the bones and other remains to the Moontown cemetery, and quietly bury everything.
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