For the purposes of actually having a sizeable chunk to write about, I’ve condensed a couple of sessions of the game together into this post.
So, the party were in the palace prison and had released a whole lot of people from the dungeons. Whilst some stayed to provide a safe fallback position, the rest joined the party in heading up the stairs to a courtyard.
Various guards manned the doors to the armoury and the palace, though a sizeable group were clearly absent pushing back the mob attacking the palace gates.
The party wasted no time, dispatching a good few before others ran off. Many of the prisoners ran off after them, leaving the party with just two extra members – the high priest of Perun and the high priest of the Ognebog, though the high priest of Perun had been rendered mute and not very helpful somehow.
Once the guards were taken care of, two more statues with chains emerged from the facade of the armoury and were pretty swiftly dealt with as well, as were a handful of rat-men wearing palace guard armour, who emerged from the palace at one point.
In the armoury, the party found some weapons, reloaded on ammunition, and broke into a locked chest – finding inside some mildly magical items – a sword, some nice armour, a cloak that smelled old but looked impeccably clean, and some potions.
Back outside the armoury, one of the palace doors burst open and various members of the ship’s crew appeared. They were running from a truly huge swarm of spiders.
Of course, the party decided to check the armoury for lamp oil and set the palace gates blazing before the spiders arrived.
A very effective tactic.
Heading into the palace, the group ended up in the throne room antechamber once more but were facing more guards, the captain of the palace guard and yet more zombie statues – one of which was cast in golden armour and wielding a much larger chain which it liked to swing overhead.
With not much healing left, the party managed to defeat all comers, and now they were faced solely with the throne room itself.
After bashing the door with a ram to get inside, they found the Tsarevna stood at the shoulder of her grandfather, Kolschei the Deathless. In front of him sat the Tsarevna’s brothers, and in front of the party were four more of the ratmen palace guard – who lasted about two seconds before three of them were dead and the fourth ran out through a side passage!
The Kobold held aloft the box which had until recently contained Kolschei’s soul in an egg, yelling ‘we have your soul!’
The Tabaxi swaggered up to the thrones, proudly proclaiming ‘the King is dead, long live the Queen’ and producing the large white egg in front of the crowd.
Whilst the Tsarevna was very happy at that, Kolschei simply muttered ‘wrong egg’ and flung the Tabaxi back fifteen feet with a loud snap of his fingers.
It was at this point that the twig given to the group by Baba Yaga was snapped.
Kolschei began to drift slightly away from the floor, cursing, shouting and clutching at his chest. As his body rapidly aged and turned to dust, a vague shape of his soul was visible, and appeared to be repeatedly stabbed with white-hot needles of some kind.
The sound of Baba Yaga laughing loudly echoed around the chamber as with a final blood-curdling scream Kolschei disappeared.
As her first act, the Tsarevna rewarded the group for killing her grandfather by slashing at her hand with an ornate dagger and conjuring a screaming portal to who-knows-where, from which emerged something a bit like a spider.
If a spider has no hair, was covered in slime, had ten legs, way too many eyes that looked human, and several mouths.
Yeah.
The party managed to take out each of the brothers before too much happened – the Kobold even ran around to the back of the throne, up behind the Tsarevna and hit her repeatedly and hard with a stick!
Oh, and the spider-thing exploded in a cloud of freezing cold fire when it died.
As everything was defeated except the Tsarevna, with her last defiant act she thrust the dagger into her chest, disappearing into another portal as another spider-thing emerged. Cue more anger and more cold fire – enough to knock out the Ranger but the Tiefling had kept her last healing spell just in case!
And that was it, Kolschei was dead and the royal family defeated. Now the island could get back to whatever life used to be like.
Hooray!
jot jot ïota 