Field Mission 6: A Day in Thay, Part 1

[balancemod]

oh man best of luck out there dudes NAVIGATION Click here for the RNG thread! Ready or not, rested or not, it's time to get moving, Reclaimers. You've got a very, very long day ahead of you. And another one. And another one. And, you get the joke. Early Friday morning, with the Director there to see them off, the Reclaimers load up into the Bureau's transportation orbs for the sixth time since this whole ordeal began, and make their way to about a mile or two outside of Thay. It's important to try to stick to the story, at least — that you're all visitors from a faraway school, here to spend some time with the students and faculty of Boarbumps. As much as Lucretia would have liked to join you, she can't. None of the other leading members of the Bureau of Balance can. Whoever enters Thay, after all, is entering a bubble, after all. A time trap. Nobody will be able to leave until the Relic, the Lamp of Undoing, is either retrieved or destroyed. Someone needs to be able to continue if you all can't. 1. SEVEN O'CLOCK ALREADY As we noted in the OOC post, prompts on this log will be a quick few sentences of specific things happening during each hour. It's expected that Reclaimers will be seeing all of these events multiple times! So feel free to play with them as you see fit. If you're not sure if something you want to do would warrant a roll, please ask us in the RNG thread. ○ The Reclaimers have arrived in Thay, much to the curiosity of the highly intelligent, occasionally highly ... suspicious ... residents. Nevertheless, they recognize you as visiting, esteemed students, and, though perhaps still suspicious, welcome you into their fold. Also, as a note: Every time the relic is used, time is reset to this moment. ○ Boarbumps Academy for the Magically Inclined opens its doors to the Reclaimers. This is your first opening to explore the school — afternoon classes begin in an hour. ○ Rainer Arunsun, The Regent of Thay and Highest of the Hermetic Order of Red Wizards, can be seen watching the new arrivals by the entrance to the Red Keep. It's difficult to discern any emotion on her face. Shortly before 1 p.m., she retreats back inside. ○ Afternoon classes at Boarbumps begin, starting with a lecture on the magical circuits of the common toad. If you happen to sit in on this one, as a visitor from another school, you may be asked to assist in the dissection. You will be heckled by the rest of the class as deemed fit. ○ Erinne and Adriel can be seen within the hallways of Boarbumps arguing in a very heated manner. Some... less than choice words are exchanged between the two before one, or both of them take their wands out and begin throwing magic missiles at each other. No one knows why the fight starts, but the two have had bad blood before, and this isn't the first quarrel to happen at Boarbumps between them. A staff member arrives on the scene and is accidentally paralyzed by a misfire. ○ The town proper, surrounding the Red Keep, is open for a farmer's market. A bountiful harvest of goods are on display, but in particular, Thay is known for its amazing quality of medicinal herbs and magical reagants, many of which are rare without travel to the area. The merchants typically shoo students off, unless they have a hall pass provided to them by the faculty to retrieve something of import for class. ○ The second afternoon class at Boarbumps begins. Are you three or four time loops in and in desperate need of a nap? This class, The History of Boarbumps, is for you. You will be treated to a long and droning lecture about how the students attending during Boarbumps' very first semester banded together to stop a particularly plucky troll. Which you'd think would be an interesting tale. It is not. ○ Someone's enchanted several books at the library to begin rattling and shaking from the shelves themselves. All over the racks, spines pop out from their homes and fall to the ground, magically lift up and return to some other, non-Dewey decimal approved locale. Other books begin dancing — yes, you've read this correctly — dancing on the tables. Leon would be going into cardiac arrest at the moment, but it looks like someone's playing a prank in here. Again. This librarian looks far less tilted by this. It must be a somewhat normal afternoon for her. ○ Over in the center of town, music, a single violin playing a mournful tune, begins to play. It's unclear where exactly it's coming from. ○ The third and final afternoon class at Boarbumps — Fighting with Fire — begins. The professor, known to be slightly more unorthodox in her teaching methods, will recruit any Reclaimer who happens to be there to defend themselves from the students' incoming fireball spells. The potency of the fireballs themselves range from the tickle of a candle, to that one time you ate a ghost pepper, to one particularly fiery spell that might actually hurt you. ○ There's a scream in the girls' bathroom on the 3rd floor of Boarbumps. Anyone who enters realizes, very quickly, that no one is actually in there. Apparently, this particular lavatory is haunted. ○ Szass Astrosz dips class to go visit the local shrines within the town of Thay. He's been known to skip class before, so his departure from the halls of Boarbumps is rather nondescript. He spends time there praying quietly to his god. ○ There's a slight catastrophe over in the Town Square. That is to say, a giant spider seems to have escaped from Boarbumps and is terrorizing the vendors, to everyone's surprise. Subdue or dispatch it, it's up to you. ○ There's a scheduled council meeting to take place within the Red Keep, a usual weekly affair where Rainer, Casariel, Onerion, Gromph, and the rest meet to discuss matters of the town. Today's is canceled, as Gromph is called out to take care of the arachnid chaos currently convening around the Town Square. ○ Someone places a standing mirror around the corner of Boarbumps. If you happen to stand in front of it, it doesn't show your reflection — rather, it shows the person that you desire most. The mirror is gone by 5 p.m. ○ Cleanup of whatever damage the spider did is underway. In the meantime, the faculty of Boarbumps and the Hermetic Order of Red Wizards invite the Reclaimers to a small dinner in one of the public meeting rooms at the Red Keep. Every member of the Red Wizards are present, aside from Onerion Wyvernspur and Brian Darling. ○ The shops around the town of Thay begin to close for the evening. People are somewhere between annoyed and blase — the spider escaping was new enough, but weird Magic Things are, as you can imagine, pretty commonplace. ○ Over at The Sleepy Willow, cozy, fluffy pillows are arranged on the floor around a large fireplace. The owners will also serve you dinner, if you decide to skip the meal at The Red Keep. This may be one of the only peaceful moments you have to study everything that you've learned thus far. ○ No matter where you are in Thay, you'll feel the ground rumble underneath your feet. The residents largely pass it off as an earthquake, but will note that they have become much more frequent lately. ○ Towards the latter half of the hour, the rumbling within the school grounds causes several of the animal cages used in Onerion's Wondrous Beasts class to come unfastened as they begin to escape. Shortly thereafter, various beasts of all shapes and sizes are set free and begin running for freedom. None of them seem intent on hurting students, but they look to make an exit out of town in the quickest way possible. ○ Droves of the skeletal undead that are used around town seem to freeze in place, no longer retaining their animation. Whatever they're holding currently falls to the floor. Whatever task they're working on comes to a halt. No one understands why that is, but even the best necromancers around town can't seem to wake them back up. ○ With a sudden loud roar, the ground of the town square suddenly begins to split. People, shops, and everything else begin to drop into the chasm, despite the Red Wizards, and everyone else's, attempts to save them. ○ In the last split second you remember, if you happen to look down in the chasm, you'll notice a pair of bright, glowing eyes. Whatever exactly is down there begins to claw its way to the surface. ○ And then, just as suddenly, your vision turns white, and you're briefly overtaken by dizziness. When the haze clears, you are standing at the entrance to Thay. The sun hangs directly overhead in the sky. You have returned to 12 p.m. 2. OOC: A SPECIAL SHOUTOUT You are welcome to keep track of how your character experiences these time loops as much or as little as you're comfortable with — we'll also be tracking what you all are doing! Our Minato player Kel came up with some extremely snazzy coding if you would like to track how each loop plays out for your character more closely. Thank you, Kel! Of course, this is completely optional. Keep up with as much as you'd like, have fun as you see fit, and we hope you enjoy this mission! blurb code by photosynthesis

Comments

[petsthedog]

1. Following up on Rose's birb friendship, Shinjiro is going to try to use Speak with Animals to ask said birb what it knows about the earthquake and if it can take him and Rose to the epicenter. If birb refuses to actually fly that way, he'll ask for directions to the spot instead. Any DC is fine on this!

2. Shinjiro and Minato are diving into the chasm (Shinjiro riding on Castor, Minato via Feather Fall) to confront the monster! Shinjiro's going to try Speak with Animals the moment the chasm starts to open to ask the monster what it wants/why it's attacking the town. If it's unresponsive, however, they're going to try to attack it before the loop resets. Shinjiro has the full set of Fighter abilities as well as Darkvision and Castor, and Minato has a full set of Bard abilities, with Vicious Mockery and Sleep most relevant, along with Orpheus, who reduces damage taken from an enemy.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: if attacking requires the third roll we would like to hold off on that for now.)

[balancemod]

1. What a way to start off these rolls. With a critical failure, Shinjiro's spell takes hold and while he's able to converse with Rose, the conversation goes everywhere but on point towards the earthquake. It leads to a pretty wild goose chase all over town, all to find out that it was showing Shinjiro it's fave hangout spots. If asked what the hell is going on, it'll just reply that it was showing you the best place to get worms, because that's what you're looking for, right? Something seems lost in translation. You lose most of this loop to tracking down a highly unhelpful critter.

2. This goes much, much better than your previous attempt. We gave you a +2 to your result, totaling you up to a 19. The two of you fly down into the chasm- and let's face it, everything is about to crumble around them from the way it seems to be shaking. It's hard to make hide nor hair of what's going on, but eventually, you both witness something that you probably shouldn't.

From your angle, you see a platform, raised in the middle of an even deeper cavern below town. The beast that currently lays in waiting is beginning to rattle. A wingspan, large enough to cover the entire length of the Red Keep begins to unfold. There's an incredibly angry roar that bellows throughout the entire area.

The both of you feel a presence more terrifying than anything you've ever faced before in your lives. We call this, in D&D, a lair action. When you enter the lair of a particularly strong beast, it has the ability to manipulate the area around its home to ward invaders off. What you both get smacked with is called "Frightful Presence," something that causes you to freeze in place, terrified and unable to move forward.

Out of your vantage point, you can barely make out a bullseye lantern in the distance- the hooded lantern is angled, protruding out light in a specific direction that turns to face your area.

It's far away, beyond the limits of your darkvision, but you notice that there's a shimmering dome not far from the origin of the light.

Turning your attention back to the beast, although the both of you are terrified to look, you realize what you're looking at.

An adult black dragon, gargantuan in figure, and ancient in age.

Visibility down here drops to zero as a magical darkness fills the air, unable to be penetrated by darkvision or normal sight.

You don't even get a chance to attack, perhaps out of fear, or perhaps because, right on time, as expected.

You wake up, once again, and it's 12pm.

[petsthedog]

As a quick point of clarification, in the second roll, did Speak With Animals fail or was Shinjiro unable to cast it in the first place due to the lair action Frightful Presence?

[balancemod]

Sorry for not mentioning it up there. It will always fail, and you know it fails. It's a minor technicality, but an important one, nonetheless. Dragons are not animals.