Our party eliminates half of the Cult of the Sanguine Skull.
Characters
- Florby, the Elven Alchemist
- Apicius, the Farming Gorumond Fighter
- Brother Murray, the Cleric of Light Above
- Yarlexia, the escaped slave-turned-Witch Elf
- Wulfwig the Ponderous, Cleric of Light Above
- Steven the non-descript, an average mentalist mage
Downtime
Florby spent the week of downtime adventuring. They were abducted by a mad noble and their entourage looking for a tournament. Arriving at an abandoned monastery that had been turned into a statuary, the noble challenged a statue, which rose to meet them and struck down the crazed gentry. In the chaos Florby escaped, but had no chance to steal any goods.
Apicius proposed that Labrix the hireling wed his cousin, and tend to his farm, and in exchange, Apicius would eventually give Labrix his own sheep flock. The hireling agreed, and in the revelry of the wedding, Apicius became drunk and got into the losing side of a knife fight.
Brother Murray spent the week training his animals to obey simple commands, as well as investigating the locked box the party had acquired last session, finding it magical.
Yarlexia told fortunes and read tarot, receiving a working wage of silver.
Wulfwig decided to drink the week away, falling in with some bandits known as Hegrit’s Harpies, and suffered a massive hangover.
Session Report
Florby tried to pick the lockbox but got sprayed with acid, receiving notable scars to their torso, inhibiting breathing for a while. Inside lay an iron statue of a dwarf, carved into it a curse one could levy at an adversary to “ruin their fingers.”
Yarlexia attempted to summon a demon, slaying a scoundrel from the Copper Cockatrice to do so and called into her protection a humanoid pig/owl demon named Bechisi, who Yarlexia renamed Betty.
The group returned to the cult’s hideout, finding a massive wasp nest on the ascend, and ambushing the two huntsmen who served as guards, learning a bit more of the cult’s intentions, which mostly dealt with traversing through cycles of undead and rebirth.
Yarlexia took the form of one of the hunters and investigated the cave, while the others prepared to tumble rocks and even the tower if need be when enemies were drawn out.
Yarlexia spoke the cult’s secret phrase given to her by the hunter, which turned out to be a signal – the cultist she was conversing with sounded an alarm, ran behind a portcullis, and unleashed a horde of zombies. She began her escape back to the entrance, but as she made her way down the hallway – guards from the other direction were marching at her with bows, she decided to unleash Betsy upon them and make her way out of the cave.
The party waited as zombies followed out, saving the avalanche for the many cultists who came later to see if their pets had dispatched the invaders. The flesh of these dead cultists drew the zombies, and the party made quick work of them as well.
They also witnessed unusual, chaotic operations in the gully before the cult’s cave – dogmen crawling out of a bubbling pit of earth, and a massive bull-headed man disgusted by the carnage before the cult cave.
Entering into the cult complex, they found Betsy had fallen into a pit trap, and freed it – but were immediately attacked as the demon was no longer bound to Yarlexia. In the combat, Yarlexia continued to intone pacts and words of command and was eventually able to wrest Betsy back to her side.
The group proceeds north, finding four acolytes in a store room. They enter into combat and their hireling Hingle is decapitated by an acolyte. Eliminating two in combat, they get the other half to surrender, and piece out a few more details of the cult before delivering justice to these foul necromancers.
Having eliminated half of the cult’s numbers, losing a hireling, and taking some damage from the combats, they decide to make it back to Fortress Solae and recuperate before a final? assault on the cult.