Ptolus:ReqSum15
From RainGamersWiki
March 28, 2009
(Resuming our previous 'fun')
Upon taking drinks by Otto and Kekitat, and receiving various effects for either of them, we realized that taking extra drinks would be potentially bad news. Otto listened and heard what could be spiders down the west hallway, and Mulwrit attempted to tie off the doors to the south, and they flexed and then broke open despite being tied off. Coming through we 'discovered' our latest friend, that being a big blue Gnoll. (Angash). He stands approximately 9' tall, has cloven hooves, and wields what appears to be a gold battle axe. Mulwrit attacked the gnoll's battleaxe deftly, and Kekitat managed to swat at some flies that were a good 2 feet to the right of the gnoll. As a returned favor, Angash gave Kekitat a nice smacking with his own battleaxe.
After several more strokes and hits against Angash and getting and keeping him stunned with various feats of Awesome, a female blue gnoll finally broke through the Eastern doors wearing banded mail, a wooden shield, and carrying a huge wooden shield. She managed to fire off a Shield of Faith on the male. More and more scuffling prevailed with Kekitat starting a majestic display of entirely fucking up nearly every attack against this dog. Apparently the kitty has a problem attacking something looking more canine. Brugul managed to knock out both Cheval and Otto with her flail. With starting another combat rotation going, Shilukar came out of his spare room and called the combat to a temporary halt. Both the gnolls stopped, and I jumped over to aid Cheval to try and ensure he didn't die. Otto then pulled his gun and pointed it at Shilukar, bluffing with a 'If you surrender now, you might live through it.' I addressed Shilukar as well, to try and move the encounter to a non-violent type.
Shilukar then offered to host further discussion in his lah-bohr-uh-toh-ree. On entering, we found ourselves in the 20' tall room with many too many large glass cylinders of various fluids containing various creatures from human to not at all human. Otto and I discussed various points of interest with the dark elf, and he finally said that he wanted the device that would open any box in the city, and that the resolution we sought was within a box in his room. He then took us to his room, and it turned out to be a 3' cube of metal, with a circular impression on the top, but no other visible means of entering or opening the box. Otto dropped a copper coin on the surface in the ring. As it hit, the circular area turned mostly aerated, and the copper piece was sucked down into the box.
The box was revealed to be a Chaositech Storage Cube. He then mentioned that going to the finest keymaker in the City will potentially reveal what we seek. Otto then said that Neveran might be the person we wished to see. We left, escorted with the two remaining blue gnolls. We wandered back to The Ghostly Minstrel, and crashed for the evening. In the morning, we moved forward with the plan of attempting to obtain the original key and then getting a forgery made for it. We then headed to Hammer St. and Hammer Close after getting breakfast. On the way there, we found a trio of Delvers that were leading along a chained manticore. This is the 19th of New Year, and it is partly cloudy and rainy.
We found the shop that had a large wooden key above the door, figured this was the correct shop to enter, and did so. Inside we found a human and a dwarf. The dwarf spoke up, and offered to help us in Neveran's absence. We took the back room to discuss the item we required, with the dwarf, and through the conversation, we discovered that the dwarf was available to help our cause. We brought him back to the house that we're 'caring for' on Dead Orc Lane. On the way, Otto compared 'notes' with the Dwarf on finger juggling caltrops/other items across knuckles and such. He then relayed that Neveran had been 'escorted' off once he had created the key by a group of Chaos cultists. It seems he is being held somewhere in the Pythoness Mansion. We returned to The Ghostly Minstrel to reconvene the group. The dwarf introduced himself as Côr D'wardal of Ptolus. We had lunch courtesy of Côr and then everyone went to sleep for a mid-day nap since we're going to launch the investigation after midnight tonight. We all reconvene downstairs at around 10P that evening. We made the decisions to head to the Mansion, and if investigated by the guards in the area, inform them that we're on the way to The Pale Tower.
4 persons in full armor, bearing the shield bearing the crest of Keepers of the Veil, ran up behind us as we were coming up along Emperor's Road. They raced past talking amongst themselves but had no interest in us. We continued through and ended up on Toner St which was the location of Pythoness Mansion. It turned out to be a rather impressive carved stone structure very reminiscent of a castle. I sensed there were HUGE auras of magic, but at least one of them was a Warding spell to ensure things didn't get out, rather than were kept out. Otto and Côr went up to the main gate, with Otto leading the way entirely unstealthily with the new guy doing a substantially better job. We started to enter the castle courtyard, and only encountered disused items, and debris. Côr tossed one of his juggling balls into the tapestry and heard an 'oomph' from behind it. Suddenly, 2 Ratlings up on the overhead bridge 12' above the area with powder bombs that they rained down on us. From behind the curtain, a 'Ratbrute' emerged as well, to take heavy damage. Côr managed to take out one of the Ratlings with his crossbow of lightning flinging. The Ratbrute turned out to be more of a challenge, but not nearly the same challenge as we faced with the blue Gnolls at least. After much brutality, Otto finally dispatched the Ratbrute. Mulwrit also took out a Ratling with a thrown axe attack.
