Grimwald Microhero

 Our heroic warrior, Grimwald! With and without helm!

(The shield bears the coat of arms of the city)

The Dream Palace (part 4)

After destroying the wights in the Necromantic Lab, the squad found the Skinsaw Shrine. A square-sided pit yawns in the stone floor on the eastern side of this room, its bottom a nest of long metal spikes. On the wall above and behind the pit hangs a large, black metal sculpture of a mask with one starburst eye. Directly above the pit, the ceiling opens into a dark shaft leading upward. A red rug is positioned along the pit's western rim, and a wooden lectern in the room's southeastern corner holds a large book.

Hendred Pratchett

The book is a ledger of Pratchett's crimes, stretching back before the hotel. He saw the murders as acts of religious devotion to Father Skinsaw The list includes many of the Watch's list of missing persons, either by name or description. The book is written in victim blood.

The pit is 10 feet deep and the spike at the bottom are covered in gore.

The faith of the ascended god Norgorber is divided into four distinct branches, each overseeing one aspect of the deity's portfolio. Three are fairly well-known—the Reaper of Reputation (secrets), the Gray Master (thieves), and Blackfingers (poison). The fourth, however, is not readily admitted—that which attracts the most extreme and murderously insane, who commit atrocities as acts of worship to Father Skinsaw. 

Next door is Pratchett's Dungeon, where the squad confronted Pratchett himself, and an undead spirit called a Bitumir, Bitumir are paired spirits that attack as one, with a ghostly wail and a chilling touch.

A large metal dissection table with attached catchment basins stands in the center of this room, with a half-flayed human corpse splayed out atop it. A large desk in an alcove to the southwest is piled high with bottles, alembics, and other glassware half-full of variously colored liquids and powders. Next to it stands an incongruous child-sized bed, its comforter pink and embroidered with happy-looking frogs. Next to the northern wall, a stove with a small mound of coals burning inside keeps a large cauldron warm.

Binumir wailed and some of the squad were taken aback. The chilling touch froze Valcos' soul, and he was relieved when Simi destroyed them with her holy weapon. The rest fo the squad engaged Pratchett, who got the worst of it. He ran, dropping a flask of oil into the burning coals, but Simi pulled it out before it could detonate,

Bitumir

The rest of the squad beat Pratchett handily, in no small part because Pratchett's mobility had been impaired by Jorin's frost magic. pratchett was stripped to the skin and bound several times over - nobody wanted him to "pull a Ralso". More clerics were summoned from the temple to de-consecrate the Skinsaw shrine, and deal with tbe myriad corpses and remaining constructs.

Ralso's diary indicated a planned bank robbery by the Copper Hand, her former criminal gang.

Pratchett was turned over to the Watch, and Sgt. Ollo was impressed, expressing his congratulations that the squad had managed to close the case with speed and thoroughness. TheLietenant only commented "So you solved a case - that's your job. We don't give medals to  you every baker who doesn't burn the bread."

The Dream Palace (part 3)

The squad assembles in the lobby of the Dream Palace, with a cleric name Clarise from Simi's temple in tow should be find other victims of Pratchett's depredations. She uses her supply of potions to heal the damage that Valcos sustained in his heroic re-arrest of Ralso, who is now handcuffed and manacled under their watchful eyes.

Undead Fetus Attack!

Simi re-interviews Ralso, given the preponderance of evidence of her guilt in acting as Pratchett's confederate. She denies any direct wrongdoing, but Valcos is not convinced she should not "perish trying to escape". Ralso tells the squad of the secret ladder to the basement, which is where Pratchett has done most of his evil.

Leaving her in the custody of Jorin and Mister Gone, the squad and Clarise head to the basement. 

The first room is a lab supply room. Long racks of freestanding wooden shelving, all covered with glass bottles and jars of varying sizes, line the eastern and western walls of this rectangular stone room. Inside the jars float embalmed monstrosities ranging from preserved humanoid body parts and whole fetuses to more bizarre curios. Other than the wooden staircase to the northwest, the only exit is a wooden door to the south. 

Six of the bottles contain six Undead Fetus, who free themselves from their bottles and attack. The steench is nauseating, but we dispatch them with only minor injuries. 

Flayed Skins

The next room is a bloody mess. Six flayed humanoid skins hang like tapestries along the stone walls of this long hallway, some edges tacked out taut to display their gruesome features, others hanging in long tatters. Some appear old and leathery, while others are fresh enough to still stink in the cold room, the blood having dripped down the stone in dried brown smears into the long metal-grated drain in the floor. The exits are through a door in the northwestern corner and a set of double doors on the northern wall to the east. 

As the squad enters the room, the six flayed skins fly to attack, trying to wrap themselves around the squad members like a straightjacket. Grimwald finds himself caught, but breaks free - forewarned, the rest of the squad avoid a similar circumstance and together they shred the enemies.

The double doors to the north wall lead to the lair of the Ochre Jelly. A large, circular well fifteen feet wide dominates the western section of this large stone chamber. Directly above the well, a matching circular hole in the ceiling extends up into darkness, its sides mirror-smooth. Doors exit the room to the south and northwest, and a corridor leading east bears two more. A metal basket with a ten-foot-long handle is propped up in the room's northwestern corner. 

This is Pratchett's "garbage disposal". allowing him to get rid of corpses with no evidence. The Ochre Jelly surges to attack the squad. The squad first learned from Ahmoset Nez in the House of Planes that Pratchett had an Ochre Jelly, and so they researched the beast; they knew that only bludgeoning weapons would be effective. 

And fire. Valcos throws the four bottles of Alchemist Fire they had taken from the fighting goblins on their first patrol. Grimbold wielded his mace and shield. Simi willed her rapier to metamorphosize into a mace, and Valcos gapes in amazement as she slams it into the blob and knocks it backwards. Pumpelly attacks it will a sonic boom, and follows it up with Biting Words, causing it psychic damage.

Ochre Jelly

The squad pummel the beast until it heads to the bottom of the well, trying to escape down the drainpipe. Nobody is willing to jump down and challenge the woulded creature, so they drop flaming torches into it while Pumpelly stands on the rim and rains down a hail of sling bullets, killing it.

"Let the record show that the creature was killed by a bard with a rock," Pumpelly said. Nobody disputed his assessment.

Adjacent to the room was a  chamber with a heavy, industrial-looking forge with a basin for melting metal. The equipment looks old and half-ruined, with a severely cracked chimney extending up along the back wall.  The basin contains a few items from victims; a locked inscribed with "To Anastasia, my love" and a ring with the image of Rusty the Rust Monster from the menagerie. They are put into the Bag of Holding as evidence.  

Healing party, the Smelting Room with evidence that this was where Pratchett disposed of bodies, after the Ochre Jelly was done melting their flesh.

Next the squad discovers a Necromantic Lab. A long wooden workbench along the north wall in the western portion of this room is crowded with books, scrolls, small bottles, and the skull of some ursine predator and is watched over by a humanoid skeleton on a wire stand. To the east, two open iron-barred cages collectively contain three slumped and decaying humanoid corpses. 

To nobody's surprise, the corpses animate and attack. These unfortunate souls are Wights, created by Pratchett's necromancy, seeking to drain the life from the living. Clarise holds one at bay while the squad destroys the other two, then destroys it. The room contains several volumes of horrific necromancy, a spellbook, two scrolls, and a passel of spell components. All go into the Bag of Holding as evidence. 

(To be continued in the next game)

 

The Dream Palace (part 2)

(Note - Many of the descriptions from the game were in present tense, but I did not feel like updating t the past tense to match the rest of the narrative).

After dealing with the Mimic pirate chest, the squad moved on to other rooms on the first floor. Each of the hotel guest rooms had a decor, and some of them had peepholes and still others deadly traps

Ralso

The Guillotine Room had huge wooden bed stands against the eastern wall of this room. In place of an ordinary headboard, the bed sports a guillotine's scaffold complete with raised blade, though the scaffold's track indicates that even if the blade somehow fell it would land safely behind a wooden guard separating the guillotine from guests' pillows. A tattered and stained flag of red, white, and blue hangs on the southern wall. 

The squad entered the room, and the guillotine blade detached itself and came flying to attack Simi. It was difficult to damage with rapiers, but Mr. Gone's fist did the job. The squad tossed the room while Valcos practices his medical skills.

In a room decorated like an ice cavern, Pumpelly stopped Simi from discovering a trapdoor, presumably leading to the basement.

There was a comfortable lounge for the patrons of the hotel.  A large stone fireplace takes up the northeastern corner of this comfortable reading room. Bookshelves line the walls, and overstuffed armchairs dot the floor in small knots to facilitate conversation. In the southwestern corner is a small bar with racks of glassware.  There was a mediocre selection of alcohol behind the bar. The room had no patrons nor staff.

The Honeymoon Suite was next. Colorful silks hang from the ceiling of this large bedroom over an oversized canopy bed, a low divan, and an abundance of scattered cushions. Curtains conceal windows to the north, and double doors of angled wooden slats can be closed to partition oft a private bathroom to the south or opened to leave the facilities exposed to the rest of the room. A massive moth-eaten tapestry on the eastern wall depicts a satyr and a nymph about to do something scandalous on the sandy shore of a desert oasis. The bed held a pair newlyweds, and with a "Paron us. Pray continue!" the squad left them to their activities.   

The kitchen has been kept clean kitchen contains a large wood-burning stove and brick oven that vent out the side of the building, as well as a gleaming metal hand pump and basin inset into one of the many counters. The western wall holds a recessed pantry with shelves full of dried and preserved goods. Innumerable pots and pans hang from hooks in the ceiling, and a large stone larder takes up the room's southwestern corner.  The pantry hid a secret door which led to a peephole to the Honeymoon suite.

The cheap room was Bunk Room. Several bunk beds have been set up around the perimeter of this windowless stone room. At the foot of each bed are two lockable wooden cabinets. 

The Children Room was so named because it was scaled down for the shorter demihumans. This room is packed tight with a full-sized bed, a smaller children's bed, a crib, and a dresser with a stuffed fabric goblin sitting atop it. The candy-striped walls are lined with pictures of clowns and happy-looking animals. A dwarven mining family was currently occupying the chamber.

The Brass Room was one of the rooms visible from the cloak room off the lobby. The trap had been disarmed by the runes found there. This windowless stone bedroom is decorated entirely in brass and iron, with a massive brass four-poster bed in the center of the eastern wall, a wrought-iron clothes rack, and two iron chairs at a metal table in a small alcove to the west. The walls are painted with red and yellow flames and hung with shadowbox-style artwork formed of overlapping thin steel plates, all depicting a fiery city of onion domes and minarets. 

The Bearded Devil

The Chelish Room was a vision of Hell. Red stone inlays form a pentagram encircled by runes on the floor in the center of this room. To the west stands a wrought ­iron four-poster bed with an iron sculpture of a grinning imp atop each of its upright pillars. Opposite the bed is a wardrobe depicting agonized humans skewered on pitchforks. The walls are painted black and draped in long, regal streamers of crimson cloth. The summoning circle was a trap, summoning a Bearded Devil, which attacked the squad, wounding Simi. Simi and Valcos proceeded to cut the thing to ribbons, and the devil went back to Hell. 

 "What the Hell - literally?" said Jorin. "Who puts a portal to Hell in a hotel room?"

"Apparently Pratchett does..." grumbled Grimwald.

The squad found a Recording Rod, which had captured the battle with the Bearded Devil. The squad took it as evidence.

The hotel Dining Room was empty of patrons. This magnificent dining hall boasts huge glass windows along its curved wall that looks out at the cobblestone street, as well as a wagon-wheel chandelier attached to the ceiling. Two long wooden tables with benches fill the western space, while a large round table surrounded by chairs occupies the circular part of the room. 

Having exhausted the first floor, the squad headed to the west wing of the second floor.

The first room they found was a Storage Room. This large storage closet is packed with cleaning supplies and construction tools. Vlacos was gratified to discover a box with a fine set of healer's tools, which he appropriated for use. 

The Cloud Room was decorated like cloud - hence the name. The floor of this room is covered in soft white carpet. A fluffy white duvet tops a bed against the southern wall like whipped cream on a pie, and the walls and ceiling are painted sky blue with murals of clouds and a long bramble stretching from the floor up to a flying castle. A large bank of built-in drawers and cabinets lines the western wall, including an elaborate silver-­framed mirror that hangs in the southwestern corner.  Upon entering the squad scented leaking gas, so they shut the door and continued to search.

The Cavern Bedroom was a Dwarven dream of decor. This darkened bedroom has been decorated to resemble a natural cavern, with gray stone walls made of plaster and a simple stone ledge supporting the mattress. A single unlit gas lamp protrudes from the wall over a built-in stone chest of drawers in an alcove to the east, and gem-colored pieces of glass sparkle from a carving of a mountain wearing a crown on the northern wall. There was a breakaway floor that threatened to send Simi down a chute, but she managed to catch herself on the edge, and Grimwald helped her up.

The Osiris Room was presumably the room that the squad had been warned about in the Hall of Planes; the one with animated statuary.  The walls of this furnished suite appear to be cut from enormous stone blocks and engraved with hieroglyphs. Two large windows on the southern wall overlook the lower roof and street outside. In the western corner of the room is an oversized bed, the frame carved to resemble a stone sarcophagus but containing an ordinary mattress. A huge stone lid is suspended above it from the ceiling by chains. Against the eastern wall is a fireplace with a fine stone mantle flanked on either side by two life-sized humanoid statues, one jackal-headed, the other with a falcon's visage. The northern section of the room sports an oversized stone bathtub with gleaming pump handles.  

Warned about the statues, which Jorin confirmed radiated magic, the squad moved onward.

Mage Captive

They discovered Pratchett's quarters. A large window in the western wall of this office reveals pitched roofs sloping away down the hill and glimpses of the sea beyond. Across from the window is a large wooden desk with a leather top. A closet door juts into the room from the northwest, creating a smaller sleeping alcove to the northeast filled almost entirely by an oversized bed. There were peepholes behind a painting. The desk has normal paperwork, which we put in the bag of holding. There was a peephole into the Cloud Room. along wit the gas tanks. We disabled the gas tanks and continued.

We found an Unfinished Room. This room appears to still be under construction, its walls unfinished and heaps of tools and sawdust scattered across the floor. A fanciful bed frame in the room's center resembles a dragon-headed longboat made out of iron, while above a tattered tarp blocks light from pouring through an open skylight in the ceiling. 

We found a room where Pratchett kept prisoners. This tiled room is bare save for two sets of manacles hanging from opposite walls to the east and west, a nozzle like a showerhead on the southern wall, and a drain in the center of the floor. Red and brown stains streak the floor tiles, and the whole place reeks of filth. The two prisoners had managed to un-manacle themselves. The squad captured them when they attacked, and handcuffed them for their own safety. Simi escorted them to the Lobby while the squad continued to search for other victims.

Doll Constructs

The Doll Room occupied the round tower bedroom. It had prominent windows, an unmade bed, and an oversized wooden armoire with its swinging doors cracked open. An ordinary, full-sized door leads out to the south, but to the west is a half-sized door with no knob, only a lock with a large brass key./ There were two doll constructs. Ascertaining that there was no living occupants, Valcos jimmied the door shut, and the squad continued.  

The next room was the quarters of a Redcap Fey. This dank room reeks of blood, likely thanks to several congealing, fly-covered buckets of the stuff around the chamber's perimeter. Thick, stained carpets cover most of the floor several layers deep, and a similarly bloodstained pallet lies in one corner. Embedded in an alcove in the western wall is a three-foot-tall stone door with a peephole. 

The Redcap attacked with his scythe, wounding Valcos severely before Grimwald cound engage the Fey. Pumpelly attacked with a sonic attack, causing Pumpelly's words to bite like a blade. Jorin cast a Shield spell.and Mr. Gone attacked with flailing fist.

Simi head the ruckus (well, Valcos' screaming like a little girl), and ran back up from the lobby to help.  Grimwald dealt the Recap a stunning blow., knocking the Recap out. 

Redcap Fey

Once more Valcos played medic to Grimwald, but the RedCap stirred and Mr.Gone struck him down again. The Redcap rose again, wounding Valcos further, and Simi put him down. Again.

Simi stole the Redcap's hat, which impeded his ability to heal so swiftly. 

The squad, sans Valcos, took the liberated prisoners first to her mother's shop, where wizard and apprentice were reunited. Simi then took the Redcap to Lt.  Lavarsus Grospek, and got permission to remand the Redcap to her temple. 

While this was going on, Valcos had hid in the bushes to keep the hotel under surveillance while the squad took care of the prisoners. He was very surprised when he saw Ralso approach the building and try to get inside. After a furious battle, Valcos re-arrested Ralso, bleeding onto the street as he handcuffed her.

The squad and a temple cleric returned to the hotel, and all of them assembled in the lobby with Ralso in custody.

Lt. Grospek

(The game ended for the evening, with the squad leveling to Fourth level)