Sarah

Apart from locating Irenicus, our other mission was finding who had stolen Adalon’s eggs. It seems reasonable to expect these two things to be connected.

On first arriving in Ust Natha, we;; we were foreigners and treated accordingly. Obviously, we are strong enough to stand up for ourselves, but it would be best to go with the flow. For a while.

We were directed to a warrior named Soulafan, who would be our guide (babysitter?) for our time in the city. First order of business he said, was to rescue a matron’s daughter who’d been abducted by Illithids. This was outside of the city, actually near where we’d already destroyed an Illithid compound.

Fighting Illithids is always a little dangerous. But we’ve become dangerous ourselves.
Illithids all too often have Umber Hulks with them.

Mission accomplished, we rescued an ungrateful brat of a woman named Phaerie.

We’ve hardly had a chance to talk Imoen! I am so pleased to have you back with us. I missed you. And Chuck has been a wreck!

We met back in an Inn. We were told we had a couple days to explore the City before we would be needed again. Exploring a Drow city is really not a fun thing. We saw a cage match, a single Drow warrior took on five less experienced young men. I couldn’t help myself, and it seemed in character, so mocked the coward who fought children for easy kills.

His “honor” was offended, so I cut him to pieces. And his matron (? or owner?) too.

At least the rooms at the Inn were comfortable.
Chuck and I tried really hard not to laugh together, or be too loud with anything. We’re all worried about what might be “un-Drow-like”!

“I feel like I’m cheating on you, with you”.

We were sent to kill a beholder in the City. It was just a base model with none of the fancy options.
Then, of all things, they wanted us to go kill a Deep Gnome patrol. To “put a little fear in them”. Soulafan was sent with us again. I was briefly worried we’d have to kill him to protect the gnomes. Fortunately, he viewed this whole mission as so far beneath him, it was easy to convince him to go home.

The Deep Gnomes were quite alarmed at our mission! But we calmed them down and just took some “damaged” gear with us as proof of our viciousness.

Next, Phaerie wanted us to kill Soulafan. We decided to follow the same mission plan we used against the Deep Gnomes. We’re getting quite good at faking our kills.

Now things got interesting. We were tasked with assisting a Demon summoning. We were tasked with locating some special supplies, which we already had with us. The Drow would use Silver Dragon eggs as an offering. So we’ve located one of our main objectives.
Phaerie wanted us to swap the real eggs with fakes she’d had made, in hopes of getting her mother killed by the demon. Then we ran into Soulafan who also had some fake eggs, pretty sure we’d have a use for them. Its nice when a solution falls in your lap.

The real eggs were in a vault guarded by Stone and Clay Golems.

We switched the real ones with Phaerie’s fakes, then gave Soulafan’s fakes to Phaerie. Keeping the real ones in Chuck’s Bag of Holding.

Eh, the demon was not real pleased with two sets of fake eggs.

“Veldrin, what have you done to me!”

He immolated Phaerie and her mother. We ran, time to get out of the city.

Adalon was pleased, the happiest we’d seen her. Our Drow disguises were dispelled and she showed us to the surface.

It was glorious to be above ground again!

As we battled our way clear of the Underdark, we encountered an Army of refugee Elves. They were the survivors of a force that had left their home city of Suldanesslar to block the Drow. But the Drow (with Irenicus we learned) had broken past them, and managed to hide their own home city from them!
After a sometimes tense exchange of information, in the Elves were frustratingly tight lipped, we learned they need an item called the Rynn Lanthorn to find their way home. We all guessed it was with Bhodi, possibly back in her old haunt under Athkatla.

We knew where we had to go.

2 responses to “Chuck: Update 25”

  1. Zeno Avatar

    The cage duel looks fun. Can’t remember the last time I actually did that one. Just been a while since I’ve run a character who would do it – for a variety of reasons. He certainly is enough of a git to tempt you.

    Jaheira always works so well as a Drow. Her natural expressions just fit. A simple color swap and she’s perfect. Not that she would appreciate the sentiment…

    The Illithid came out nicely. The Umber Hulks are always a pain. Difficult even by themselves not mixed into the action. And they suffer from a problem I’m having a lot right now – difficulty controlling size. Sometimes you can say (rogue women,5’10”) fighting (demon man,9’6′) and it will listen. Sometimes it won’t. And words like “large”, “huge”, and “gigantic” are massively inconsistent. Just really irritating sometimes.

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    1. atcDave Avatar
      atcDave

      Jaheira so often comes out well. I use your description as a starting point, then modify as needed for the situation. But if Minsc is the hardest NPC to get right, I think Jaheira is the easiest.

      It is funny to me how much the same comparison works for Illithids and Umber Hulks! The illithid, seems like I get at least one good one in every set. But the Umber Hulks, yeah, not so much. I *think* it doesn’t seem to know actual measures at all. As you said, you can give actual measures and it seems to do nothing. Remember the problems I had getting Pikwell consistent in range of situations. And on simple descriptors, it’s not clear to me if it has a consistent progression or not? My impression is, that “giant” is really big. House size or bigger. But large, huge, massive? I just try a few until something seems to work.

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