We picked up right in the middle of the action. The Mouther was dead but the Fighter was still blinded. He managed to find a skin of water to wash off some of the goo which reduced his duration by half. The Holy Paladin rejoined the fight and chargers into the Drowned Maiden. The Rogue was desperate to get away from her before she lost any more STR. That fight was basically a mad scramble with 4-5-6 of us beating on her, trying to get away from her hair. She did significant damage, drained the Swashbuckler Paladin, and hung around for several rounds. Ironically it was the newly sighted Fighter who stuck the final blow.
Meanwhile, despite the low hit probability of the bugbears on the Monk, Andy managed to roll 2-3 19s and drop him again. The Monk came in already hurt and those bugbears did 2d8+ per blow. The last assassin was dispatched soon enough and the jungle girl got over to help the Monk. (Most of us were unaware of his peril since we were still on the other side of the silence.) Once the Maiden was killed, everyone started heading over to the bugbears. It was a bit of a bottle neck and they still had a lot of hit points but they were taken down. The Rogue started opening the cages. The captives were pirates, sailors and nobles. All starved and unable to help in the fight. Unfortunately, and to no one’s surprise, Red was not among them. We were told he had just been taken to be sacrificed. Time was of the essence, no time for a rest. To the boss battle.
So the corridor led to the sea and the pirate ship docked in the cove. There were several pirates and acolytes along the way but the only real threat was the pirate captain, working on the ceremony to gate in the Kraken spawn. The acolytes were pretty useless but what they did do is cast Sanctuary on the captain, making it risky to target him with anything significant (like a spell). People piled in as they could, killing the puds along the way. The captain did manage to cast a Hold Person on the Rouge and the Swashbuckler but one saved and one was freed when the captain lost concentration so neither had to face an automatic crit. Basically it was a race against time as we charged, he fell back and the puds threw themselves in the way.
Then the Holy Paladin finally managed to get into the room. He decided to go “outside the box” and attack the seal rather than the summoner. He invoked his lay on hands for positive energy, his magic sword, his inspiration, burn a spell for extra holy damage, a role played god call and maybe a few more things and struck the seal. He rolled poorly but since he had invoked his inspiration, he got another roll and did better. His magic sword saved. Andy was so impressed, he said that the seal did indeed break, hurling the Kraken Spawn back to the depths. As a last act, it grabbed the despondent captain and drug him down too. And so, in a flash, it was all over. Andy later revealed that the monster was very powerful and about the only chance we had, particularly in our depleted state, was to prevent it from appearing. A very Cthulhu-esque ending.
So we gathered the prisoners and got on the ship. The ship had some cash and a +1 cloak of protection which was given to the Wizard. Unfortunately, we missed out on whatever the captain had on him. There was nothing in the cave worth much. The captain’s log told of how he heard a voice, bringing him to this island. He then started taking steps to gate this thing in, guided by the voice. The pirate that helped us claimed to have joined in order to bring down the pirates but when they turned out to be cultists, she was pretty much trapped. She and jungle girl returned with us. We figured to keep the ship. I think the plan was to have her serve as first mate and “acting” captain when the Swashbuckler Paladin is off adventuring with us. Some of those details are to be worked out. Hopefully we can figure out how to make it self-sustaining and battle ready so that we can use it to take on the pirate most of us are after.
We made 5th. Dan is going to add 3 levels of Warlock on the front end and then continue on as a Sorcerer to give him a broader power base at the cost of delayed access to high level spells. I think everyone else continued on as expected. We’ll probably play next week since we’re all trapped at home.
