-Erasmus asks Stebe (calls him "Steben" haha)
about the Tarokka deck.
-Erasmus warns Stebe
not to take the cards from the Vistani (very wise of Erasmus, in hindsight!)
but Stebe ignores him and takes them anyway.
-"I'd
be worried about something...sticking...on those cards" (everyone
laughs and starts making jokes; Erasmus was right though!!)
-(Suddenly
we all get lost in speculating about if the printing press has been invented
yet in Toril (the world of Forgotten Realms), and apparently at this point it
HAS been invented in the East, but the technology is still very primitive
in Faerûn. So that's kind of neat! I end up ruling that the
printing press doesn't really exist in Faerûn, but it does exist maybe in
the East, so it looks like he was more or less correct in this
assumption. However, his explanation of the Tripitaka Koreana not being
movable type or whatever is a complete mess haha. Then the conversation
gets completely derailed as the topic changes to Leonardo da Vinci, then the
Ornithopter card from Magic: the Gathering (lol), blah blah)
-Stebe begins to browse the deck.
The deck looks very strange, but interesting, as every card seems to have
arcane symbols and imagery and shit.
-Edward asks Stebe
to draw one of the cards for him.
-Stebe
makes a spread of the cards (demonstrating his masterful sleight-of-hand skill
(lol)) and flicks a card over to Edward.
-Edward catches it, but finds the card to be extremely hot so he drops
it. Edward then says that he doesn't think they should fuck around with
the cards anymore; Erasmus agrees.
-Stebe puts the cards back into their leather case. As
they're going to sleep, Stebe rests the deck next to him.
-The PCs are getting tired so
they decide to go to sleep.
-Stebe sleeps in a
huge bag (which also carries his brass flute and clothes and shit).
-Erasmus goes to
sleep first (I guess we don't know if he has a sleeping bag or not haha).
-Edward has first
watch (each shift is four hours).
-Edward tries to stay awake but he's been
drinking so it's a bit of a struggle. He looks up at the moon and starts
to hum a tune to himself (Dean Martin's "That's Amore" (because of
its reference to the moon in the lyrics) which of course ushers in other goofy
jokes).
-(At this
point, we get off topic again because the I award the PCs a point of
inspiration for role-playing so well, but Anson comments "I'm not even
going to write that down" which is in reference to our friend Tony from
our old D&D group when we were kids who wouldn't bother recording XP if he
felt it was too low haha).
-Edward finally dozes off, but
hes awoken when the strangers start to stir and quietly wake up.
-Eventually, Vela
makes eye contact with Edward; her eyes gleam with "gleeful, malicious hate".
-She
whispers to him, "Remember what I said."
-Before long
they're all up and they leave the campsite, although all of their bags (save
for one) and belongings and shit are still there for some reason.
-Edward
waits for the strangers to leave before he starts to wake up Erasmus and Stebe.
-Erasmus and Stebe wake up.
-Stebe grabs the Tarokka deck.
-Edward tells them that the strangers have left.
-Stebe starts to look through the strangers' belongings; he finds
another jug of booze and starts to drink it (haha). He also finds
some strange-smelling herbs.
-The PCs don't recognize the scent or appearance of
the herbs, although it does remind Edward vaguely of perhaps some of the street
drugs that were around where he used to live (very mysterious...).
-The PCs decide to follow the
strangers.
-Erasmus draws his
quarterstaff (although he emphasizes that he wants to make it look like he's
using it as a walking stick, not a weapon); Stebe draws his flute (lol).
-Edward emphasizes
that they should all sneakily follow the strangers.
-(This
confuses Brad, who thinks that they should just run after them. However,
Yosie raises the question of if he's able to sneak because he's wearing armor,
which also confuses Brad because he doesn't think Erasmus would be sleeping in
his armor (which is a good point) but Anson doesn't see the problem with their
characters sleeping in armor so we just decide that it's too hard to figure
out. Finally, it's determined that Erasmus is wearing his armor but
they're not going to sneak after the strangers, they're just going to follow
them normally)
-So, as the PCs continue they find that
it's still quite dark out so it's difficult to see, and also it starts to get a
little windy. Soon they find themselves walking up a hill which comes to
a plateau at the top. At the top the wind really starts to pick up.
-In the distance they can make some sort
of a fire burning. As they get closer they can see that the strangers are
all standing around the fire.
-It's unclear as to if the strangers know the PCs are there.
-The fire is coming
from an eleven-pointed metal star which has been set aflame. It rests on
some sort of a stand.
-They can see Vela
pulling out her hair, ripping at her flesh, and shrieking, "TIAMAT!!
ALL-POWERFUL MOTHER DRAGON!! GLORY!! GLORY!! GLORY!!"
-(My voice kind of cracks on the third
"GLORY!!" haha)
-The others begin
to yell "GLORY!!" as well.
-The PCs can see that the strangers are all holding daggers in
each hand as well.
-(It's not clear how exactly they're pulling out
their hair and scratching themselves while also holding a dagger in each hand or
why they don't just cut themselves with the daggers but whatever)
-(Brad
then makes a side note that perhaps this is when I could have told the PCs that
all of this could have been avoided if they had just killed the strangers while
they were all partying earlier that evening at the campfire haha (which is a
great point!!). We riff on that for a bit).
-The strangers continue to shriek "GLORY!!" or
"BLACK STAR OF CHAOS, I CALL UPON YOU!!" and shit like that.
-(At this point, Brad realizes that he's heard
the name "Tiamat" before IRL but can't remember where he's heard it
from)
-Erasmus starts to get really freaked out.
-Stebe notices that not just Vela's eyes are still purple, but
the others now have glowing blue eyes (except for Fordrick (the dude who has
the white eye like Cable from the X-Men); he just has one glowing blue eye, of
course). Also, blood is streaming down their arms from self-mutilation.
-Fordrick yells, "BLACK STAR OF CHAOS!! MOTHER DRAGON!!
THY WILL BE DONE!!"
-Then the strangers all drop their daggers and pull out vials of
an unknown liquid before quaffing them. After a few seconds, they drop to
the ground, shaking.
-It's presumed that they're all dead.
-Edward says, "Well, that was the best summer
solstice I've ever had" (ahahaha).
-Edward draws his shortsword
and heads over to the dead bodies. Stebe and Erasmus follow.
-It looks like
some work had gone into setting the ritual up in terms of assembling the altar,
drawing a circle in the ground around it, etc. so they deduce that this had
probably been set up by the strangers earlier in the evening (before they
encountered the PCs) since they wouldn't have had time to get all of this ready
after waking up and before the PCs arrived at the scene.
-The corpses have
foam coming out of their mouths, and their eyes are no longer glowing.
Vela's eyes are no longer purple.
-The PCs check
their pulse; the strangers are all clearly dead.
-There's still
traces of liquid inside of the vials; it appears purplish in color.
-(Yosie
makes a joke about cursing at the liquid to see if it bubbles (Ghostbusters 2
reference) haha)
-Edward kicks over
the flaming altar.
-It's unclear as
to if the wind starting to gust is related to the ritual.
-Stebe stands in
the middle of the corpses and draws a card from the Tarokka deck.
-It's the
VI of Cups (The Lord of Pleasure)- there's a bed of flowers/plants with two
stems coming up out of it (this is incorrect, there's actually six!
oops!) intertwined; at the end of the stems are blooming flowers with water
flowing down from the flowers into two cups and then the water from these cups
overflows into two more cups below it and then same thing again (hence, six
cups... sorry for the shitty description! It's difficult to describe!!).
-Stebe, being familiar with fortune-telling due to his background in
entertainment, tries to determine if this is significant but nothing seems to
jump out at him (although maybe it's something worth remembering, just in
case).
-Erasmus
investigates the bodies, looking for any scars, tattoos, religious symbols or
jewelry, etc.
-He finds
that all of them have self-inflicted scars that resemble 11-pointed stars (of
varying sizes).
-Stebe tries to
determine if there's anything going on with the moon or the sky or the woods or
whatever, but doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary.
-Edward
suggests heading to Greenest to see if the cultists had any family there.
-(Yosie tries to remember their names- there was Fordrick (Anson calls
him "Foreskin", lots of laughs), Corbyn, Scaz (they never actually
talked to him or learned his name explicitly, but I guess they would have been
introduced at some point earlier in the evening), Vela, and Pearl (same thing
as Scaz).
-The PCs head back to their
campsite and go back to sleep.
-Edward continues
his watch and then Erasmus takes over for the rest of the night.
-Stebe doesn't
take watch at all and just sleeps (rude haha).
-Erasmus is
finally starting to doze off as dawn approaches, when suddenly he hears this
deafening roar echoing from high up in the sky and sees a huge blue dragon
flying overhead.
-(I
thought this would have really blown everyone away because it's a great ending
for the first episode, but I don't think they were really that amazed
haha. It was a really cool scene in my imagination, though!)
-(Even
though the episode is over, the players continue to speculate about what would
have happened if they had just killed the cultists at the campfire before they
could perform the ritual, if there was any connection with the ritual and the
dragon, etc.)
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