S3: Time is of the Essence

Participants

 * Hildae
 * Aurora Evelyn Lucia
 * Gerdo Stoneseer
 * Lur ShellCrusher
 * Doris Fern
 * Franny

Summary
Was it merely a murder, or was it a message? Why oh why would someone kill poor Goober? Well, besides him being a thief and an eyesore, there didn’t seem to be many reliable leads. As a cleric of proven skill and prowess Gerdo knew exactly what course of action to take. Grabbing his bottle of booze, he drained that shit into the mouth of the body and began to quietly slur some sacred words of power. A moment of awkward silence ensued, during which something was evidently supposed to happen, but didn’t. Aurora rolled her eyes and Lur squawked indignantly, reaffirmed in his belief of Gerdo’s magic being cursed. Suddenly, the blade in Goober’s chest began to quiver and the dissipate in a puff of ghastly smoke. Everyone looked nervously at Gerdo, who shrugged and said “I don’t think that was me.”

Before any further crime scene investigation/ruination could occur, Pirjo rushed into the Mattress Wholesale. After offering her condolences for whichever member of the Witch Pinchers it was, Pirjo revealed that she was there on another urgent matter, requiring their immediate assistance. She had offered the services of the Witch Pinchers to aid with a complicated hostage situation occurring in the Overhang. Gerdo and a few of the other party members expressed some skepticism at their presence being more appropriate than the Red Guard for such an important and critical matter, but Pirjo insisted that it would make more sense once they were there and that “Time is of the Essence”©. She also promised them that she would be able to offer them assistance with determining what had happened with Goober, as well as a hefty reward if they could deal with the situation before it escalated any further. Gerdo felt especially uneasy about leaving Goober’s body in Pirjo’s care and refused to leave him behind, leaving Aurora, Hildae and Lur to take on whoever was responsible for the trouble in the Overhang.

An excessive bout of crab dialogue was interrupted by Pirjo reiterating that “Time is of the Essence”©, herding the three of them into her platypus-drawn carriage. Upon arrival, they were greeted by three strange individuals, the most imposing of which was a rather large skeletal soldier wearing a regal set of armour and carrying a massive blade on her shoulders. She introduced herself as Captain Wene Page of the Overhang guard and revealed that the other two were another set of recruits brought in by Pirjo to assist. There was Doris Fern, the odd horse-headed sorcerer who was in search of an easy way to make money and Franny, the stoic and brash valk warrior who was seeking information and support in her quest to topple the rule of a mad scientist wreaking havoc in the Crow’s Nest. With introductions out of the way, Captain Wene reiterated the situation to the three of them, barely containing her anger while doing so.

The capital of the Overhang, the Overkeep, had been overtaken by a group of cultists who had issued no demands, but had activated a sweeping magical field spreading across the Overkeep’s grounds that would slowly rip apart any undead that entered it. This presented a problem for the defense forces of the Overhang which were largely comprised of undead soldiers, which the the Scarlet Sanctum seemed unlikely to bolster in a timely fashion. Having updated the mercenaries, Wene Page saluted them and then marched off to tend to other possible solutions regarding the siege.

Meanwhile, back at the Mattress Wholesale, Gerdo had acquired a sponge from a nearby Sponge Emporium and was using it to collect the alcohol that he’d wasted on Goober into his flask. Using the diluted corpse alcohol, Gerdo began to cast a powerful spell, drawing the spirit of a strange creature into the body of Goober, reanimating him into a servant that would come to call himself Puzuzu. Having completed the ritual, Gerdo left the Wholesale in haste with Puzuzu in tow, aiming to arrive just in time to help.

The approach to the keep was halted when the party reached a long and winding hedge maze. Franny immediately went to work on the hedge, perhaps a little too zealously, destroying a significant amount of the hedge that Wene had asked them not to harm too much. The noise unfortunately drew the attention of a crowd of animated corpses that began to slowly approach, threatening to overwhelm them. With some flashy moves from Franny and Aurora alongside Lur’s intimidating shouts of “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR”, the bodies were repelled. Hearing a noise from behind, the heroes prepared for another attack, but were instead greeted by Gerdo and Puzuzu. Hildae, Lur and Aurora were stunned by the unsettling presence of their until recently deceased comrade, while Doris leapt into action believing him to be another of the reanimated dead. Doris didn’t seem particularly confident in his melee skills and somehow managed to strike himself in the head, instead of Puzuzu.

Gerdo was quick to explain the circumstances behind Goober’s reanimation and the seven of them were quickly back on their way to the Underkeep. As they climbed the front steps of the building, they saw corpses of the Underkeep guard strewn violently across the ground. On guard, they entered the main foyer and were silently greeted by a robed figure wearing a mask at the top of the steps. Aurora attempted to challenge him to a duel, charging forward while doing so, when the cultist raised his arms causing them to glow. A set of chains raced down from the ceiling and attempted to bind her, forcing her to dodge out of the way. Puzuzu distracted the chains with his gross zombie body and the rest of them prepared to get into positions to attack. Doris cast a powerful fireball at the robed figure, knocking him backwards with a raspy yell. The man was quickly back on his feet and the light began to emanate from his hands again as the doors behind them came to life and began swinging their lurching bodies down towards them.

During the doorway's assault, Gerdo's warhammer was destroyed, Doris received another blow to the head and Hildae was forced to the ground. While on the ground, Hildae was forced to her efforts to support her teammates through singing about crabs. Using her newfound crab blessing as inspiration, Franny took that moment to sprint up towards the top of the stairs and leap, flying towards the cultist with her trident prepared to stab into him. The triple blades dug violently into his shoulder, pinning him to the ground as he roared in pain. His hands began to glow again and the trident itself floated into the air, before flying directly at Franny, who just managed to tumble out of the way. Back on the ground floor, Lur was attempting to assist Hildae back into the action by lifting her into the air, which Hildae angrily resisted due to his lack of having consulted her beforehand. Hildae then used her hardened carapace to strike out at the chains that were binding Puzuzu, causing them to fall to the ground.

Seeing Franny in trouble, Aurora leapt up two stairs at a time and made a powerful strike on the cultist, finally bringing him to his knees, too weak to continue fighting. Franny walked up to him and attempted to threaten him into revealing what was going on, but the cultist merely laughed at her, prompting Franny to strike at him a little too strongly. The life faded from his eyes and Franny looked around awkwardly and tried to play it off like she did it on purpose.

Beyond the foyer of the underkeep the party would find the main chamber, where three more robed figures had taken up position around a giant pink crystal. While one of the cultists continued to cast some kind of spell on the crystal, the other two noticed the approaching party and began casting. Lur immediately pointed one of his claws at the pair of them and began to taunt the two of them, which earned him the rage of the shorter foe. A giant hand raised up from the ground and firmly grasped Lur, aiming to crush him. Hildae used her bard intuition to determine that the cultists were hiding something on their person.

The other cultist more calmly began to summon a second pair of hands from the stone of the steps leading up to the central platform. Some more combat ensued in which the smaller cultist was killed by Lur. The other cultist’s calm was broken by his companion’s death, and he retaliated by bringing down the ceiling. Lur raced up to the other cultist and attempted to throw him in to harm’s away, instead throwing him just far enough that he ended up out of harm’s way from the falling ceiling. The channelling cultist finished what he was doing, causing the pink crystal to fade and fall to the ground in a thundering crash. “We’ve done what we came here for..” he whispered before beginning to slink away. Mere moments before he could escape, Hildae gave Doris a boost with a particularly inspiring crab song about crabs, which gave him the strength he needed to strike the bird-masked cultist with a lethal set of fireballs.

Seeing the writing on the wall, the remaining cultist attempted to escape by summoning mouth monsters from one of the walls of the chamber. Leaping past the creatures, Franny and Lur combined their efforts to fly out the hole in the wall by having Franny carry Lur forward dangling from a rope. In spite of their efforts, the two of them lost the cultist and Lur had to strain with all his might to prevent the two of them from going careening off a cliff.

Back in the central chamber, the remaining party began to examine the corpses and found it difficult to pry into the robes of the cultists. The material of them appeared to be unable to be ripped. Aurora managed to open up the robes of the bird-masked cultist through a hole created by Doris’s fireball to find a green emerald within. The green emerald began to pulse and become a stream of particles that joined with the crystal within Aurora’s broach. The corpses then began to smoke and dissipate away, leaving behind their robes for the party to keep. They considered taking the giant pink crystal with them until they heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Thinking quickly, Doris turned himself invisible, while the rest of them thought it best to simply try greeting whoever was approaching. It turned out that a portion of the RedGuard had been summoned to help and they were quick to tell the five of them to surrender themselves to their custody. It seemed as though they might have to go quietly until Hildae managed to bluff that they were just hostages and that the remaining cultists were just beyond.

Spoils

 * Emerald fragment
 * Resistant robes