Session 35 - The One Where Singing Bob Dies
In-game timeline: DR1489 Eleint 20 - Eleint 24
Our "Heroes" stay the night in Whitewater and head back to Neverwinter the following morning. Carro is a little quiet on the journey, having had a slightly restless and dream-filled night. Upon arrival at the large city, Mahtis heads off to find Devon, TC visits Togruk and Kandi manages to find passage for them all on a ship heading close to Abbey Isle the following morning. In the afternoon they all meet up again and share their recent experiences and information with each other.
Carro heads with Kandi to a local library and looks up information on legends based around the area of the elven High Forest. Surrounded by hundreds of books, and having very little time, Carro just picks out the first book that seems relevant to the area, which seems to relate to a legend concerning a Siren named Angelica and the village of Mistloch. It was all very interesting and Carro took copious notes. Kandi, meanwhile, sat outside the library and played his flute, to the annoyance of the locals who were trying to sleep.
The following morning the party head to the Docks district and find Trax, a gnome ship captain who is passing the Abbey Isle on his next journey. They pay for passage and get on board the Eighth Wave.
The journey is swift, and they arrive only a couple of days later, in the early morning. Captain Trax agrees that on his return journey they will stop and wait, looking to see if there is a signal on the beach and if so, will wait for them to row back to the ship. It is likely that they will arrive back here in three days' time, and Trax will wait for six hours, flying specific colours so they know it is him, before leaving the area and heading to Waterdeep, which will be their next port of call on the return journey.
The party take a rowboat and row themselves to the southern shore of the island as the Eighth Wave continued on its journey.
On the white sands of the small beach they pull up the rowboat and hide it behind a rock. Mahtis turns herself into a large dog for some reason. There is an obvious, and solitary, path leading between the cliffs into the vast dunes beyond. This path is flanked on the beach by two posts, each bearing a sign marked "PRIVATE". Mahtis the dog seems to sniff something in the sand and draws the others' attention to it. This turns out to be the body of a halfling female, half buried in the sand.
Kandi looks at the marks on the body and ascertains that she was killed primarily by numerous sword cuts, possibly a few days or a week old, but also has a lot of flesh that seems to have been clawed or bitten clean from her bones in places, likely after death.
TC loots the body and finds some radiant tokens, marking the body as probably one of the Radiant Sisters pirates, a few pieces of gold, and a note with some letters and numbers marked on it.
Standing at the start of a path which seems to fade in the sand after a short distance in the dunes, there are very few landmarks to indicate where to go. Mahtis, still in dog form, sniffs at the dead halfling's body and then picks up her scent, despite it being days old, and she is able to follow the path that she took out of the dunes. The group decide to follow Mahtis on this trail.
After only a few hundred yards following this scent, the group suddenly spot a shifting in the sands ahead. As they watch, they are surprised, and a little concerned, to see four skeletons rising from the dunes. These skeletons look to be made of some form of clear crystal with a bluish tinge, though they also appear to have a red glowing crystal within them, about where the heart would be.
As these four crystal skeletons run towards the party, Mahtis changes back from a dog into her normal dragonborn form and they prepare for battle!
The poor skeletons did not bargain on meeting the well-oiled machine that is this party, though. Mahtis, quick as a flash after turning back from a dog, fires off an Entangle spell and manages to restrain three of the four crystal forms before they are able to do anything. Kandi follows this up with a Shatter spell, completely destroying two of the skeletons.
Confident, though somewhat surprised, at their effectiveness in this battle so far, the party get cocky. One of the restrained skeletons breaks free from the out-of-place vines that are grasping his legs, and runs towards TC. Carro runs over to engage this one and smashes it with his shortsword. At this point the group realise that hitting them in close quarters is not ideal, as it takes some damage (though not as much as Carro hoped from the attack) but immediately responds by firing small shards of crystals all around. Both TC and Carro try to dodge these crystals to avoid taking damage themselves, but fail and they are pierced by small crystals. A critical hit from Carro on his next attack almost brings the skeleton down, but not quite.
With one skeleton still restrained, and another looking very damaged, the party are confident. Especially as TC then manages to take down the skeleton attacking him. However, they then spot three more of these creatures rise from the sands before them. TC, under direction from Carro, stabs through the crystal ribcage of the fallen skeleton before him and shatters the red crystal heart.
Kandi decides to mock the skeletons in a vicious manner, managing to upset the strange creature to the point of harming it. Carro delivers some good blows to skeletons near to him, though manages to do more damage to himself from the flying shards of crystal than he does to the skeletons. The skeleton who is still restrained by the entangling vines has given up on his sword and fires an arrow towards Carro. He misses, and all his mates are unimpressed at his efforts.
TC makes some impressive swings with Dragonsboon against one of the two skeletons facing him, and scores some hits, though the damage being done doesn't seem as good as it could be. He does manage to stop "Singing Bob", the skeleton in front of him, from reciting Elton John's "I'm Still Standing", so Dragonsboon did achieve something.
With an unexpected co-ordinated response from the party, Kandi mocking, Mahtis firing off Frostbite, and Carro and TC swishing their swords, the skeletons don't stand much of a chance, though the crystal shards are nibbling away at our "Heroes" health. As the skeletons fall to the blows, the party do realise what they suspected - destroying the crystal "heart" is needed, or the skeletons just stand up again and continue the fight!
This resilience ensures the fight lasts longer than it would otherwise, as a couple of the skeletons manage to rise before anyone can destroy their hearts, but eventually the group do dispose of all the skeletons that appeared, all red crystal hearts destroyed.
And so we leave our "Heroes" having travelled only a couple of hundred yards into a large desert of sand and wondering in which direction they should move now…