as written by the cavalier Olmas Lurecia, himself.<\/p>\n
It was unusual to be doing battle so early in the day.\u00a0 After arguing with the yeti, and then killing a half dozen of them, and dispelling an ice storm … it was still at least two hours before lunch.\u00a0 Our magic wielders found their magic moderately depleted much earlier in the day than usual, and we’d really made very little progress.\u00a0 So we decided to spend much of the day resting and, for our magic wielders, recovering spells.<\/p>\n
To ensure that we would not be surprised and they could indeed recover their spells, we were extra diligent with the guard around the caravan.\u00a0 To the rear, we had a stone wall that (we hoped) the wardens would not be able to get over or around.\u00a0 And then, to the yeti side of the caravan, we had the bridge with the anti-life shell over it.\u00a0 But we weren’t entirely sure the yeti couldn’t bypass that.<\/p>\n
There was a long discussion about the ghost sword we had obtained.\u00a0 We now had the ability (or at least the opportunity) to banish a possessing spirit.\u00a0 Should we be trying to defeat the yeti king, or exorcise him?\u00a0 Sparna agreed to take it up, but as a group we were still undecided on how to proceed the next day.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, I tried to find some common ground with the yeti.\u00a0 I saw one yeti watching from behind a rock, and I wanted to show him we were harmless, so I tried standing with my sword sheathed and my arms open.\u00a0 That got no reaction.\u00a0 I told him to come out with open arms and we would welcome him, but of course he did not understand Common.<\/p>\n
Shortly, however, three more yeti appeared, also taking cover.<\/p>\n
I asked Ivan to cast continual light on a small rock, and I underhanded it towards the yeti.\u00a0 The yeti looked a little nervous, but didn’t approach it.\u00a0 “C’mon, pick it up” I yelled but they just looked at the rock.\u00a0 I conferred with Ivan, and he cast light on a bigger, slightly-smaller-than-head sized rock. The other rock stopped glowing, and I tossed the bigger one.<\/p>\n
The yeti disappeared, and then reappeared with an object. One tossed it to us over the chasm – it was the revenant’s head.\u00a0 Clearly he was not understanding.\u00a0 Sparna kicked the head into the chasm.<\/p>\n
I threw another large glowing stone.\u00a0 It was ignored.<\/p>\n
At this point, Sparna and Ivan talked quietly for a moment and then Sparna turned and faced the yeti.\u00a0 Ivan mumbled quietly and Sparna suddenly increased in size to that of a small yeti, and Kali, getting into the swing of things, created the image of an ioun stone circling his head.\u00a0 With a look of anger, Sparna took the head of Katiana (I missed how THAT made it out there!) and in a split second and with a gesture from Ivan, it too was glowing.\u00a0 Sparna threw the head across the chasm.<\/p>\n
The yeti threw the head back.<\/p>\n
Ivan cast comprehend languages and began translating for us as Sparna kicked the head into the chasm and stared hostilely at the lead yeti.\u00a0 The staredown was on.<\/p>\n
The yeti did not break gaze as he said, “Come, cowards, and meet king.”<\/p>\n
Kali made the ioun stone circle Sparna one last time before it flung itself at the leader.\u00a0 The leader dodged and called for more yeti, including “the king’s men”.\u00a0 And soon, 10 or so yeti were crowding the entrance, now some with spears.\u00a0 They were gesturing and shouting and the leader said, “Come now and be escorted to king for death sentence.”<\/p>\n
Clearly this little bit of negotiation was not working, and I was tired of it.\u00a0 Now that there were distance weapons (spears) on the other side, I was feeling less charitable.\u00a0 So I drew my bow, nocked an arrow and hit the leader.<\/p>\n
He was clearly surprised, but on our side, Ivan was quick to let more arrows fly and they too hit the leader.\u00a0 In a twisted bit of logic, the leader threw his spear at Sparna (!) and hit him good.\u00a0 Another spear missed him.\u00a0 Kali cast an aqueous orb as this strange, distance battle over the chasm continued.\u00a0 Both Ivan and I hit our targets again, and the leader looked to be bleeding pretty good.<\/p>\n
After a bit of confusion the horde of yeti hastily retreated to less open positions, and no clear target presented itself anymore.\u00a0 Ivan defiantly threw an obscene gesture that, I think, transcends spoken word.\u00a0 Qatana healed Sparna as both Ivan and I hit with arrows one last time before the yeti disappeared entirely.<\/p>\n
Diplomacy is harder than it looks.<\/p>\n
(around lunch)<\/p>\n
We heard a noise from the rear of the caravan.\u00a0 Qatana flew high enough to see over the stone wall she had erected, and saw more of the headless zombies mindlessly trying to walk through the wall.\u00a0 While they appeared to be in no danger of reaching us, Qatana nevertheless lit them on fire with oil until they stopped twitching their charred limbs.<\/p>\n
That night, after dinner, Kali proposed a startling plan: she would go invisible, and fly into the throne room and see if there was evidence that the king was an oni, or evidence that the king was Katiana’s ghost.\u00a0 Although it was of general consensus that we needed to deal with the yetis in order to make progress, there had been absolutely no consensus on how best to do that.\u00a0 I was convinced that if we could limit the yeti to one or two at a time we could methodically slice through them.\u00a0 Kali, and I think one or two others, were opposed to the needless killing of the yeti.\u00a0 Frankly, I was too if I could be shown it was really needless but I saw no other way.\u00a0 Sparna, bearer of the ghost sword, was willing to plunge the sword into the king if we had evidence that he was possessed instead of being a polymorphed oni or even just an angry yeti leader … but he could do much more damage with his usual weapons if there was no need to exorcise a spirit and was wary of going in under-armed.<\/p>\n
Kali elaborated on her plan. With detect magic running, she should be able to make that determination.\u00a0 We would advance to a point nearby and she could use a Message spell to communicate what she learned back to us.\u00a0 We would then adjust our strategy appropriately.\u00a0 It was a plan that put Kali at great risk, but it also gave us a possibility of resolving the situation without annihilating the yeti.\u00a0 If the king could be made our friend, a simple command from him would save us many battles.\u00a0 And even if I thought it possible to destroy all the yeti, I was by no means certain that it would not come at the cost of the lives of some of our party.<\/p>\n
So while I believe the group was still divided on what the yeti king actually was, we did come to the agreement that Kali’s plan gave us the best chance of success.\u00a0 Normally, the well-armed and buff Radella would be our choice for spy, but this mission required more magic than mere silence.<\/p>\n
It was around 7:15am, I think, when I heard Sparna yell something across the chasm and – did I hear right? – something in the language of the yeti?\u00a0 Later, he told me he’d spent much of his watch learning and practicing the language.\u00a0 Astonishing.\u00a0 I later asked Suishen if he could learn new languages, and with typical disdain, he responded that language was only useful in slowing down conversation and the world would be better if everyone was telepathic.\u00a0 I took that as a no.<\/p>\n
We prepared for our foray.\u00a0 In addition to all the spells Kali would need, we used resist cold (I used protection from cold, from Suishen) and variants of fly or airwalk and dark vision. Kali added magic circle; if she was right and Katiana’s ghost was involved, that ward might give a possessed creature another opportunity to shake it off.<\/p>\n
We crossed the chasm and noted there were no yeti present.\u00a0 Kali added comprehend languages to her spells and took off. We needed to give her 30-60 seconds to get there first and communicate back to us.\u00a0 I told Suishen to turn the flame on.<\/p>\n
We quickly reached the other anti-life shell, and two yeti – I think at least one was one we’d hit yesterday – silently glowered at us from the other side.\u00a0 With the assistance of Ivan, I took another glowing rock and tossed it over to them.\u00a0 They were unimpressed. Apparently somebody had updated them on the fact that not everything glowed was fire.\u00a0 Sparna announced, “Let us pass, and will spare your lives”.<\/p>\n
Surprisingly, the yeti replied, “Ok”.\u00a0 And they each stood off to one side.\u00a0 This soooo smelled like a trap, but this was the plan.\u00a0 We flew or walked over the anti-life sphere, as appropriate, and proceeded to the throne room.\u00a0 Although there were many yeti there – probably more than a dozen – they just stood and stared at us. Qatana announced there was a magical aura over the whole room.<\/p>\n
And no king.\u00a0 Sparna pointed this out: “Where is your king???”\u00a0 Qatana cast invisibility purge – cleverly missing Kali – as one of the yeti moved down off a ledge and announced, “King? You want king?\u00a0 ATTACK!”\u00a0 And the battle we’d hoped to avoid began – including a lightning bolt directed at me.\u00a0 Wait, lightning??<\/p>\n
The mayhem had barely begun when another yeti emerged from a stone wall. Really.\u00a0 Judging from the others’ reactions that had to be the king.\u00a0 Kali, who saw the lightning and already knew what the king looked like from previous scrying, realized this really might be Katiana and that this was her chance. Kali flew over the king and put him within the influence of her magic circle.\u00a0 It had <\/span>some<\/em><\/span><\/b> of the desired effect, as the king cried out, “Stop fighting! Evil spirit … help me defeat evil spirit!”<\/p>\n The yeti stopped, but were very uncertain.<\/p>\n Sparna stepped up and explained before he swung that he must hit the king with the magic sword to expel the spirit.\u00a0 The king agreed, as Kali reached down and applied a magic circle directly to the king.<\/p>\n The sword hit, but the king was still fighting possession and Katiana was still shooting lightning.<\/p>\n Sparna hit again and this time, Katiana’s ghost emerged from the king, cackling as though it was all her idea.\u00a0 With her flying, and incorporeal, only we could defeat this enemy now.\u00a0 There was dispel magic, and there were magic missiles, and there were force beings, and there was, of course, Suishen and flames and shrieking (from Katiana).\u00a0 She summoned a lightning elemental, but just as quickly Ivan made it go back.\u00a0 It was Radella that had the killing blow – or at least so we believe since it seems we killed Katiana once before – and the room was finally silent for a bit.<\/p>\n Now the real diplomacy began, as praise was heaped on each party, and gifts exchanged: the king gave us the ioun stone, and we gave him a magic breastplate. Backs were slapped, hands were shaken, and promises were made.\u00a0 We told the king that the revenant was dead and he was pleased.\u00a0 We told him the shadows were gone and he was pleased.<\/p>\n [445] ioun stone of Alertness (dark blue)<\/p>\n The king spoke Common, thankfully, but that also meant I got to hear the exchange between the king and Qatana about how Pookie was responsible for his being freed.\u00a0 It’s a tortuous story, but the next party coming through the caverns will likely find yeti-art resembling a warrior mouse-yeti.\u00a0 And Qatana will be insufferable for a week.<\/p>\n The King, whose name was Bormurg, also, of course, gave us free passage through his realm, but commented that only a few minutes away the road ended in a blank wall.\u00a0 He was confident his powerful new friends would figure out how to pass through the wall however.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" as written by the cavalier Olmas Lurecia, himself. Sunday, Calistril 1 It was unusual to be doing battle so early in the day.\u00a0 After arguing with the yeti, and then killing a half dozen of them, and dispelling an ice storm … it was still at least two hours before lunch.\u00a0 Our magic wielders found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-3094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-olmas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3094"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3096,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions\/3096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}