Agents of the Darklands, Part 2: In Company of Forgotten Evils

Game Master thunderbeard

So our bloody skeleton dire shark boat is going to leave a pretty big bloody wake.

Kinda cool. Also maybe a liability.

Wouldn't other sharks try to eat it?

I don't think so. Pretty sure most animals can sense the inherent wrongness of undead and steer clear of them.

Fair enough

Let's have someone else negotiate with the psychic fish monsters, shall we? If the dragon does it we're in for a fight.

Let's have someone else negotiate with the psychic fish monsters, shall we? If the dragon does it we're in for a fight.

I gave it a go, but it may end the same way.

John will probably interject at some point, but wants to make sure it's cool to give away the boat, which i think we should if it'll get us in.

Dragons do not tend to easily part with their possessions. Gifts arent a thing. Tributes are what the weak give to the strong when they have no choice.

If they want my shark boat, they're going to have to come take it. I have three different plans to obliterate this place already. I'd be thrilled to get to use one.

Dragons do not tend to easily part with their possessions. Gifts arent a thing. Tributes are what the weak give to the strong when they have no choice.

If they want my shark boat, they're going to have to come take it. I have three different plans to obliterate this place already. I'd be thrilled to get to use one.

My god, I love this character. lol

yes, but it could be a trojan horse of sorts.

you could give it to them so we could get inside, and still destroy the place afterwards and take it back.

Now that is a good idea. Pitch it that way and Anaxian will go along with it.

can he pitch it safely? telepathically?

Heh. Just remember, Aboleths may be villainous, but they're also the most patient creatures you'll ever meet.

Telepathy only goes where you want it to. As far as I understand, the only way to eavesdrop on telepathy would be to have Detect Thoughts going, which both of us are immune to. The rules are a bit unclear on exactly how it works, but I'm pretty sure we can brain-talk without being easily overheard.

We're in weird territory. I think it's entirely a DM Fiat. Of course if we're in the shark, as I think we are, the alboleth can't see us and probably not hear us. John could simply speak quietly to Anaxian. Or short of that hand gestures.

Also: With Illia-'s ridiculous will save, she might have a decent chance to tell whether the telepathic fish an illusion if she sees it do anything other than hover in place.

I thought you had to interact with illusions to even get a save against them.

Admittedly, Illusion magic is the one I''m least familiar with. It has always struck me as an entire school of magic devoted to GM fiat and fiddly rules. I prefer the effects of my magic to be somewhat predictable.

Also.. True Seeeeeeeeing!

Right. Trump card. Well played.

That will come in super handy.

I hate Aboleth so much. They are the awfullest and they make my skin crawl. There's not a single other monster in the game that disturbs me more.

Do we have to negotiate with them? Can't we just kill them all?

You negotiate with them... so that you can get into optimal backstabbing range.

I like them. and other deep-dwelling aberrations like illithid. all that ancient knowledge, just under the surface...

True Seeing is 120', though. If she, say, fires an arrow at one from a mile away, that counts as negotiating.

I love aboleths, but I have a feeling they're about to become the comic relief villains of this campaign (the way mind-flayers always seem to wind up) thanks to the precautions you've all taken.

I f%#~ing hope so.

In my 5th ed game, we spent five sessions, tracking an aboleth through the catacombs beneath a city whose water supply it was poisoning, foiled by new illusions each time (and a dragon turtle, which we had to buy dragon-slaying weapons to kill). Finally, we caught the damn thing—and there were too of them.

I asked what it would take to get them to return to the plane of water (where aboleths are from in 5e) and shut behind them the portal that the campaign villain had used to summon them in the first place. One of them responded that my mind-reading intelligent sword seemed like a good trade. I asked if he wanted to see it more closely; he did. With my Cloak of the Manta Ray, my barbarian swam over to show the aboleth the sword. He asked if he could have it; I responded, "yes," and drove the thing into his gut three times.

Following a volley of arrows and spells from my allies, there was one aboleth left. He agreed to leave and shut the portal behind him in exchange for not being given the sword.

Very nice.

(This is, of course, one of the many tales of my 5e character, "Swordhawk: The Worst Elf")

awesome haha

(His theme song is "na na na na SWORD HAWK!" That's the entire song, but he sings it in the two seconds at the beginning of ever battle. Swordhawk, The Worst Elf, refuses to wear anything that he hasn't killed in the last year. He was raised by bears, after his Elven parents abandoned him in the woods for being a terrible child, and then the wolves who had taken him in abandoned him in the deeper woods for being a terrible wolf. He prefers to fight in combat by riding a wildshaped druid and dual-wielding lances. His spirit totem animal, when he calls it, is a hawk riding a wolf riding a bear)

Also: Kind of curious about how Anaxian has three plans ready to destroy an underwater city. (One of my potential ways to resolve this probably involves player meta-knowledge of Golarion's geography, but I am confident that this party will find some fun way to ruin all that's left of one of Golarion's largest and most ancient cities)

Well, I still have quite a bit of unspent/un crafted cash. Enough to build a ring gate. Underwater ecosystems are delicate. One ring here and the other in a large body of subfreezing freshwater, like glacial runoff, would pretty much do it. Cold freshwater won't actually mix with saltwater quickly. It would take a while, but pretty soon nothing native down here could survive.

Also, Delyliath still owes me two favors. I'd be willing to bet she could pretty well yank the local saghuin population out from under the aboleth.

Lastly, my new body is, essentially, a lava dragon. It is immune to fire, has the ability to soften stone at will, has adamantine claws and a burrow speed. I'm not sure how long it would take to fill this whole crevasse with lava, but I'm very patient.

Now that I'm giving it some real thought, there's also the whole Shadowpocalypse thing. I've always wanted to do that. No daylight down here, and not much in the way of posative energy among the natives. Do you know how many shadows can fit in a bag of holding? They have no mass or volume, so the answer is "enough"

Dust of Dryness springs to mind too. It's cheap. It eats a lot of water into a bead. That's not that bad down here. It would just knock things around a little in a small area. What's bad is releasing all that water into an enclosed space in a place that already has the highest possible water pressure on the planet. I'm willing to bet there's a fault line down here that I could crack open with a few of those. It would be like sea floor fracking.

Lastly, I hear this city was designed and built by a necromancer. I can effect the undead as though they were alive. I can also possess undead things and use my spells and supernatural abilities from inside the possessed "body." Paralyzing Touch, for instance...

Then there are the abilities of the rest of the group.

Dris moves so fast that just swimming in a circle could cause a vortex current. He also still has Shimsil, who's possession DC is worse than an Aboleth's and harder to break because it isn't actually a spell.

Sir John is pretty much immune to everything an Aboleth normally brings to bear, and has the whole cleric spell list to play with. Plane Shift is on that list. There's all kinds of awful stuff possible with that one.

Illia has true sight, an invincible AC and a will save that makes the brain fish cry. Oh, and she can teleport at will. She's the ultimate decoy. We put her somewhere that they have to pay attention to, and while they're busy the rest of us sow catastrophe.

Meridian can re-manifest herself as needed. That means if we took the time to do a little scrying we could put her pretty much anywhere. Nothing like a telekinetic in your base, in a place where the effective weight of everything is reduced by the environment. Her and Illia working together would be really hard to deal with.

The more I think about it the more I like our odds. They better have some truely horrible things up their sleeves or we're going to steamroll them.

Ahaha. That's some real good engineering up there.

I never expect this party to get themselves killed. But there's always the worst-case scenario where the two liches have to reconstruct themselves for 10 days and Illia- or Meredian have to teleport everyone's corpses out to get resurrected before y'all regroup.

My math sucks, and its also 8:30 in morning of the first day of New York Comic Con, but I think, if Dris takes the run action, his speed is 92mph.

Nope. Alacritous bumps it up to 120 mph. That'll get you a decent dust devil, but not a house-wrecking tornado.

Oh P.S., the Keeper should look something like this

Oh P.S., the Keeper should look something like this

Adorable. I'd like one as a pet.

Water is different from air. It helps sustain it's own force once it gets moving, which in turn moves more of it. A 120 mile an hour wake behind a man-sized object moving in a circle will start to generate its own momentum. It has to do with how water transfers energy.

If we enlarged him so he could move four times as much water as he passed, it would be a lot worse.

I'll do some calculations and get back to you in this.

Keep in mind that while Sir John can access the cleric list, he has a laughably low CL and cant do high level spells without scroll use.

Er... Wind Walk speed is powered by a "gust of wind." I'm letting him move at that ridiculous speed underwater because Freedom of Movement lets him ignore the viscosity of water, but that also means he's cutting through it, not pushing it with him; there's consideration of momentum and impulse here to think about.

Er... Wind Walk speed is powered by a "gust of wind." I'm letting him move at that ridiculous speed underwater because Freedom of Movement lets him ignore the viscosity of water, but that also means he's cutting through it, not pushing it with him; there's consideration of momentum and impulse here to think about.

If he's got FOM on then he's not even disturbing the water as he passes. Not good for making a vortex, but It's great for stealth.

Ah. I hadn't considered that. You're right.

Keep in mind that while Sir John can access the cleric list, he has a laughably low CL and cant do high level spells without scroll use.

I'm curious about Sir John's build, actually. Why is he a cleric? Or, rather, why didn't his high stat go into wisdom?

What does that 20 intelligence get you?

He's more machine than man... I mean, Warder than Cleric.

You know, I completely forgot about all the multiclassing going on. Nevermind.

Edit- Just realized I forgot to roll New Anaxian's hit points.
7d8 + 8 + 1d10 + 45 + 18 + 11 ⇒ (7, 2, 8, 7, 6, 1, 7) + 8 + (5) + 45 + 18 + 11 = 125

Eh, my thoughts on the Sir John character (in the plot) were "divine necromancer lich, super old." I hadn't actually statted the NPC, which is why I thought he could make a good candidate for Tenro's interests.

Yeah the PrC advances cleric and warder so the idea was more self/party buff while fighting (saving standard actions) and area buffs that help (as a field commander should) and heals when needed. Enough undead stuff to keep troops around him when needed, though that is more suitable for a traditional ground combat which is not our MO. So that part is more for story purposes.

With the illithid (ZDT) gone, i'd have probably made an illithid instead. But here we are, heh.

Well, considering that we've never seen your face under that helmet, you could be an Illithid for all we know.

John han't done a whole lot of things that require mechanics so far in the game. If you wanted to rework him from Human to Illithid I don't think anyone would mind.

Heh, yeah. You could turn Illithid psion caster levels into cleric caster levels if you wanted, but you'd have a lot less warder abilities to tap into. Illithiliches are definitely a thing, and they're usually total outcasts from mind-flayer society.

Heh, yeah. You could turn Illithid psion caster levels into cleric caster levels if you wanted, but you'd have a lot less warder abilities to tap into. Illithiliches are definitely a thing, and they're usually total outcasts from mind-flayer society.

They're called Alhoun.

It's all quite Disguisting.

Anaxian can fix that. He's very big on skin care.