45 - Holding Out for a Hero
Previous session: 44 - Drugs, Love & Party Hard
The floor is wet, and all is left is a hand and a Jellyfish Dress.
Persy dives to grab the hand. Upon inspection, it's definitively a hand.
Once attuned and the user fully submerged, they become incorporeal within the water and grants the following:
- Attack rolls have disadvantage to hit you.
- You have resistance to non-magical damage.
- You have a swimming speed of 60ft.
- As a Bonus Action, you can make a tentacle attack, dealing 1d8 + [STR or DEX] piercing damage. On a hit, the hit creature must roll a CON Save DC 18, or be paralyzed for a minute.
However, the wearer is vulnerable to Lightning damage at all times while they're attuned to the item.
Persy then do it on the hand, and while identifying, we learn two things:
- It wasn't this girl's real hand, it seems that it belongs to somebody else, but we don't know who.
- We're not entirely sure if it's for a door, portal or chest, but it's one of four keys required to open that closed element.
Persy grabs one of the old robes to transform it into rags, to wrap the hand and tie it up somewhere in his bag.
We return to the apartment, and when we got there, we hear some kind of struggle or fight happening inside the place.
As it would take too long to Nesvalyn to lockpick the door, Persy casts [Shatter] on the door, which blows the door, and with enough momentum gives us the opportunity to get inside.
↪[DEX Save - Pass ✔] And when he's poking his head in, he dodges a whip coming through.
When we all enter, everything has been destroyed and thrown away. Ana is standing there, holding a chair as a shield, and in her other hand a whip made of a thorn. Billi is shapeshifted as a Lion, and they've been fighting over something.
Ana seems hurt, and some scars are on the Lioness.
She scuffs a couple of times and leaps on Persy, sniffing him, searching for the drugs.
As he pulls out the bag, she shifts back to her human form, and grabs her bag.
After a few minutes, Ana and Billi snorts the drugs, and they're snuggling together and ignoring us.
Persy looks at the shattered door.
Persy has some flashbacks from the Giants' Graveyard, and is leading the way out to retrieve Gecko Girl. We find her crashed on a couch, under a drug.
Meeting a hero......
Nesvalyn approaches Gecko Girl.
By being closer to her, we can tell she's in street clothes, and pretty fucked up due to that Ketamine.
The rest of the party is in.
↪ [CON Save] It hits the spot for Senri, Persy doesn't feel anything, and Axel is shorter and is melting slightly.
As she got away, there's a banter between Persy and Axel, as Axel seems really affected by the Ketamine and is melting away. Persy uses a bag to carry them outside.
We're following her for an one hour, and we learn more about the Freelancers. They're some kind of local folk heroes, but as the underdogs role. As none of them are related to Druid Corps or Death Inc, and they take care of stuff the corporations don't want to handle. But from what we hear, they're not really good at it.
Finally, we make it out and reach our boat. The sunlight seems pretty intense (especially for Senri).
↪ [WIS Save - Fail ❌] Senri does a quick bump, and gets back inside to have a more bearable light for her.
We see Sabine sitting on the boat, but there's someone else standing next to her. It seems that Sabine is tied. The intruder wears a black dress with different shades of red and beige, like it's a candle light is being shined on the boat. An undead woman with long should hair, her hand is wrapped around Sabine's hair.
[Perception - Fail ❌] Axel doesn't hear anything.
[Insight] Axel is sitting in there, chilling, and understand more about themselves, being a creation due their reincarnation cycle interrupted, a soul inside a puddle inside in a burlap sac.
A quick strategy happens between Nesvalyn and Persy, as it could be worth attacking her now to avoid the traps and her preparation, but Axel and Reylynn are not in their state to fight properly.
We decide to let her go and do it her way.
An undead girl gets out, shrieks to the sight of Kaj and explodes.
↪[DEX Save] The explosion deals 30 points to Persy and is thrown away, Senri sees it coming and manages to grab Axel and takes no damage, and Nesvalyn takes no damage.
Gecko Girl, being behind us and closer to the explosion, is on the deck face down, one of her arms is gone. She stands up using her valid arm.
Her arm regenerates quickly.
Our ship is fully destroyed, limiting our moving plans.
She clicks on something and we see a red light, and we notice she has an invisible ship.
She walks and misses the gangway, but catches up last minute and finally manages to reach it finally. It seems to be a pretty sizeable boat for what we feel and guess.
And we that, she takes off and starts driving for a while.
After 3 hours of driving, we arrive at this inconspicuous building in NoMaLa, like a rundown apartment. She parks her invisible boat, gets up, stumbles, walks down the parking lot, and we make our way into this building led by Gecko Girl.
The Freelancers' HQ...
We finally arrive at a apartment, with three people sit in the room at different places.
We recognize immediately Captain Comrade.
Then, this young looking half-elf, wearing pink and purple catsuit (similar colors to Axel).
And finally a large figure, dressed in all black mask with the hood down. They have the head shape of a hippo and a large body. Sitting on their shoulder are some birds.
And they start arguing to each other (as we often do), and the two other Freelancers join the discussion.
Axel wants to interrupt, but Nesvalyn holds them as if it's based on how it happens with the party, they should be done in a while.
Which was correct, but after almost an hour later.
Fling let go a snort.
Time passes, and Detour gets back with some first price snacks.
And finally, the Black Slime arrives.
Axel gets ignored, as they all leave the room to discuss. After a while, they get back.
Axel suggests the showdown/kidnapping of Sabine from Kaj to prove ourselves. They suggest to have Black Slime with us.
It is pretty unanimous that we're taking Black Slime, to let them focus on Sabine's safety while we fight.
As we agree to do that, we decide to rest for the night to be ready for tomorrow.
[Perception - Pass ✔] Persy notices that Nesvalyn's eyes reflect a whole galaxy, instead of his purple eyes. Once he calmed down, his eyes turned back to their regular color.
The duo leaves to go on the roof of the building.
Nesvalyn pulls out a small golden device.
Nesvalyn nods and hands over the trinket.
↪ [Identify] The Heart of Gold is so pure that it doesn't have a school magic.
When activated, it messes with the fabric of reality, and changes the probability of the outcome to a more favorable one.
It works the same way as Sprigg's magic does.
✒ Added Nesvalyn's side on 41 - Once More, With Dessert > Back on known waters.
Axel goes to check if Black Slime is fine with the gun use.
We take off to the Arena, being in the Grinder district, which will take a few hours to reach.
The showdown...
We're landing near the rendez-vous point and talk about our plan.
So far, we're taking the main entrance and let Black Slime helping Sabine once freed and take her safely.
Nesvalyn raises the [Psychic Whispers] with the party and Black Slime for 5 hours.
On the way, Persy uses the Cat’s Claw Brooch to have the [Fire Shield (Chill)].
As soon we open the door to the Arena, there's loud live music playing, which we presume is Kaj singing. Between us and the stage are hundreds of undead jumping and dancing to the music.
Sabine is being held as a counter weight to the giant disco ball in the middle of the place.
The crowd turns to us.
We're crossing the whole crowd, silently.
The crowd remains silent, then everybody points at Senri.
The Black Slime appears from nowhere, and starts to do these martial arts movements, and many water bubbles appear around them. They explode all around the arena, and extinguishes the starting fire.
Kaj leaves behind her another hand.
[Medicine - Pass ✔] Nesvalyn finds a fleshy tube, which happens to be Kaj's larynx.
Next session: 46 - Welcome to the showbiz