Post date: Sep 02, 2016 1:45:31 AM
These session summaries were originally posted to The Piazza in March and June 2016, and have been edited to remove spoilers for future sessions. Out-of-character commentary is in italics.
Now that "Winds of Freeport" has concluded, GM Notes for "Gorilla Island" (with stat blocks and other details) have been posted to this wiki.
Session 39 (3/26/2016)
The party continued through the girallon caves. The next few chambers connected with other cave entrances that they had seen from outside. They fought another girallon (a normal one, this time), a couple more kech, and a mobat as they passed through these rooms.
They reached the last cave in the complex, where one last kech was attempting to flee on the back of its mobat mount. As it started to fly away, the hadozee Inacio leaped out of the cave and knocked the kech out of its saddle. The kech fell 30 feet or so to the hard floor of the ravine, while Inacio used his wing-flaps to gently glide down beside it. The druid Larkspur wild shaped into pteranodon form to chase after the now unencumbered bat. Both flying beasts bit large chunks of flesh out of the other, but the druid had the advantage in hit points and speed, so soon downed her prey. Meanwhile, Inacio made short work of the battered kech, while the other PCs started to search the caves.
The caves did not yield up any more treasure beyond the kech's longbows and arrows. After the druid returned, she was able to find signs that these caves were (at least occasionally) home to one or two more girallons than they had encountered. This tallied with the fact that they had killed two of the four-armed apes at the stone circle. They concluded that their hunt had inflicted significant losses on the local population, and with the possessed priest dead, the survivors elsewhere on Gorilla Island would pose no organized danger for the foreseeable future. The party returned to the Growler, and rested and healed as the crew took the ship back around to the vanaras' side of the island.
Back at the treetop village, the party reported their mighty deeds to the assembled members of the tribe. The news of the high girallon's death was met with much rejoicing, and a great feast was held in the party's honor. "Grandfather" agreed to send word to the Children of Der-Maga to help the heroes find the merfolk they sought.
Harissa asked about the dragon that lived in or near the volcano, because she felt that removing that threat would be a suitable new goal for her companions. Grandfather could not tell them much more about the dragon than they already knew, but spoke of a vanara called "Featherhead" who might. This hermit and his fiery bird friend lived a bit further up the cone of Mount Girallon than the shrine the party was recently shown.
The next day, two of the village priests, Wokah and Nayla, escorted the party back to Der-Maga's shrine, and performed a ritual involving burning pungent herbs on an altar, playing musical instruments, and chanting in order to attract the attention of the goddess's Children. After several minutes of this, Damarak spotted two flying creatures exit the mouth of the rock formation known as Ape Rock. When he pointed these out to his allies, Issalia identified them as derhii, a species of intelligent, winged gorilla [Bestiary 3], and determined that the booming noises they made as they descended were some sort of signal that strangers had come to the shrine.
Nayla greeted the two derhii (a male and a female) in Auran with great reverence, and explained the reason for the summons. Issalia, as a sylph, easily understood them, and elaborated further. She spoke about Damarak's vision of the mermaid Sushandrali, the party's killing of the girallon leader and finding the evil demon-ape idol, and their interest in learning more about the dragon. The derhii stated that their silverback would need to determine what to do with the idol. He described the dragon as being black like lava, at least as big as a derhii, and not being bothered by the heat of the volcano. His people had seen merfolk off of Dawn Point (the island's eastern peninsula).
The derhii also warned the party to beware the spirits of the lava within the mountain. Their people knew of a safe way into the heart of the volcano through "the face of the goddess" (the caves in Ape Rock), but the tribe's silverback would need to give permission for them to pass that way. With no more questions for the moment, the derhii withdrew a short ways in order to send booming messages to their leader, who soon flew down from one of the eyes of Ape Rock. This powerful derhii wore green-scaled hide armor, and had a well-defined patch of silver fur across his back, head, and arms. Issalia realized that the fierce glare he turned on the party as he landed was some kind of magic ability to detect evil. (This suggested that he had some sort of paladin or inquisitor powers.)
The silverback asked to see the idol, and snarled when he recognized the hated image of the demon lord Gral-Bara. He insisted that the stone statuette must be hurled into the fire of the mountain. He agreed to allow the party to pass through the goddess's face to do so, but informed them that there was no way to access those caves except by flying.
The party wanted to visit the hermit Featherhead before trying to tackle the problem to how to ascend to Ape Rock, so bid the derhii farewell in order to do that. Wokah and Nayla led them to a stone hut with a forge and workshop, and a line of barrels outside. A vanara wearing an elaborate feather headdress, a chain shirt (the first metal armor the parry had seen on the island!), and a pair of swords appeared, and spoke to them in oddly-accented Common. Harissa explained their interest in the dragon, and Featherhead informed them that it was a lava drake: a beast less intelligent than a true dragon, but still dangerous, who spits lava and is immune to the volcano's heat. He also warned them that the volcano spirits were magma elementals of various sizes. He confirmed the party's guess that there was almost certainly a portal to an elemental plane inside the mountain--but that it was deep in the magma itself, and thus impossible for them to use.
Featherhead called for his friend Flametail, who had been inside the crater itself at least once. This ally turned out to be a golden-red, man-sized bird resembling a phoenix, with ghostly flames surrounding its beak and talons. (Issalia recognized that Flametail must be an eidolon, which meant that Featherhead was probably a summoner.) The bird and vanara conferred in some cawing, birdlike language. then Flametail addressed the party in more fluent Common than his master: There is no easy way down to the drake's lair from the crater--the rock falls too steeply within. The drake prefers hunting fresh meat to eating carrion (which dashed the party's hopes that they could somehow dupe it into eating poisoned girallon carcasses). The lava drake normally keeps to the central portion of the island, and avoids Rocky Fist Point due to another dragon lairing there. (Featherhead and Flametail were impressed to hear that the party had already eliminated that drake.)
The party must now make their plans for how to take on the lava drake--including how to reach the derhii caves in Ape Rock. Once they've dealt with the dragon, they will go seek out the merfolk so that Damarak can finally meet the mermaid of his dreams.
The fights with the girallons and their leader these past two sessions have put the PCs very close to having enough XP for 9th level. That will be the last time that they will level before we put the campaign on indefinite hiatus in order to run other games. They are very eager to finally get there, and are hoping that I let them do so they will have their new powers before entering the volcano to battle the lava drake, magma elementals, and other dangers found there.
Session 40 (4/23/2016)
I decided to go ahead and give the players enough XP for 9th level now, so here is a recap of the party after that advancement:
Harissa, female azhari freebooter 9; with her cohort, Virali, female nagaji bard 7 (arcane duelist)
Larkspur, female undine druid 9; with Atoll, crocodile animal companion
Inacio, male vanara [hadozee] ranger 7 (sea dog, urban ranger)/ monster slayer 2; with Lapras, elasmosaurus animal companion
Damarak, male undine cleric 9 (Melkarth, god of strength)
Issalia, female sylph witch 9 (trickery); with Titania, owl familiar
The party searched for a good place to lure out and ambush the lava drake. Once they found a likely spot, Issalia created an illusion of a party of wounded vanara limping along the edge of the forest. In order to make the show more lifelike, and to have a couple real combatants close to the drake if and when it fell for the ruse, Virali and Inacio posed as members of the hunting party.
Eventually they caught the drake's attention, and it flew closer and spit lava at the vanaras. Inacio was hit, but thanks to a resist energy spell, took next to no damage.
Harissa tried to leap to grab the low-flying dragon, but was smacked by its tail instead. Larkspur cast animal growth on Atoll, but the crocodile also failed to leap high enough to hit the dragon, as did Inacio. Damarak then cast a wall of stone immediately in front of their foe, which forced the drake to pull up sharp and hover to continue its attacks. The wall allowed Inacio to climb within reach of the lava drake, and Larkspur hurt it severely with a quench spell.
Atoll, who is a surprisingly good climber for a crocodile, and recently took Improved Natural Attack on her tail slap, climbed the wall of stone and smacked the drake hard. Larkspur hit it with a second quench, and Inacio finished it off with a flurry of two-weapon attacks.
Harissa decapitated the drake to make sure it was dead, and stuffed the head into the party's bag of holding to take back as proof of their deed.
The party then returned to the shrine to make contact with the derhii again. Harissa's lantern of signalling promptly got the winged apes' attention, and the crew asked for passage through their caves to the volcano's interior so that they could fulfill their promise to destroy the evil idol of Gral-Bara. Issalia, a slyph, was able to fly up to Ape Rock by herself, and Larkspur wild shaped into a pteranodon to carry Harissa and Virali. That left Damarak and Inacio to be carried up by the derhii. They entered the apes' caves and were shown a place to rest the night before continuing onward.
Session 41 (5/14/2016)
The next morning, the party headed into the mountain, after a reminder from the derhii to beware the mountain spirits. After a couple hours, they saw red light ahead, and entered a chamber that overlooked a magma chamber. The party saw three magmin near the cliff's edge, but were not spotted in return, allowing them to withdraw to cast resist energy.
Larkspur's quench spell killed two of the magmin outright. Inacio finished off the last one, but his trident was partly melted from the creature's intense heat. Then a gigantic magma elemental climbed up over the cliff's edge and attacked, but was quickly dispatched by the party's weapons and lightning spells.
Issalia, who was carrying the bag of holding, hurled the idol over the cliff and into the magma. Part of the lava seemed to roll over it, which disturbed her.
The party found a ledge that led from the room around the edge of the magma chamber. This took them to the drake's hoard, which was smaller than they had hoped, and consisted largely of piles of gold coins fused together. They headed back to the derhii's cave, and were flown back down to the foot of the mountain.
As promised, the derhii directed them toward a reef a couple miles beyond the island's eastern peninsula. They had seen merfolk in that area from time to time. The party returned to the ship and sailed around to that location.
In the morning, Larkspur investigated the reef from the water, where a merman accosted her. She informed him of her party's efforts to eradicate sea devils, and that two of her companions had had visions leading them to Gorilla Island. The merman, Therandol, came to the ship to hear more details of this from Damarak and Inacio. The cleric's description of the mermaid from his vision matched Therandol's cousin, Sushandrali, who had led their tribe since her mother's death. (That name was familiar to the party, as they had met the dead mother's ghost near Freeport.)
Therandol left to fetch Sushandrali. When he returned with her, seeing the exquisitely beautiful mermaid in the flesh rendered Damarak speechless!
The two merfolk explained that karkinoi (a race of giant crab-men) have been attacking their tribe and abducting their kin over the past couple months. The most recent attack was about a week ago, and Therandol had tracked the karkinoi as far as a river mouth on the nearby peninsula before losing them. Damarak was quick to pledge his help fighting the crab-men, and Larkspur grimly promised to return with their lost kinsfolk, or their remains.
The party sailed back to the island, and Therandol showed where he had last found traces of the karkinoi--a group of small islets where the stream met the sea. The party could see that the stream originated at or near a ruined temple marked in their map, and planned to follow the waterway to its source if they did not encounter the crab-men before then.
I don't normally provide portraits of NPCs in this game, but I did for Sushandrali and her mother's ghost because I did have a specific actress in mind for both: Lily Cole, in her mermaid costume from The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and as the siren from her guest role on Doctor Who. The choice met with Damarak's player's approval!
I've also been trying to snap a few pictures of each of our big fights with my phone. Here are shots from these last two sessions:
Fighting the lava drake: Inacio and Atoll (under animal growth) have climbed the wall of stone to reach the hovering dragon. Harissa reaches up to stab from below.