Castle Xyntillan Session 13: The Knight, the Goat and the Wine Cellar

In the last sessions, the party made their way back to town with a gigantic haul, made it back to the castle just in time for the wedding, tangled with a succubus, outwitted Maltricia, and drunkenly celebrated their victory. What challenges will present themselves moving forward? How will Maltricia strike back against them? Find out in this week's session of Castle Xyntillan!

The Party

Longo Lightfoot, Halfling Thief, wears a sky-blue headscarf. Played by CaptainSabatini.
Corby the Joyful, Human Cleric of Sucellus, wears a short, conical hat. Played by diregrizzlybear.
Idred the Most Omniscient, Human MU, wears a full-visored greathelm. Played by David Perry.
Boroth Swinney the Joyous, Human Fighter, wears a masked helm depicting a happy human face. Played by Justin Hamilton.
Francois, Light Footman, noticeably dogless. 

Rodolfo, Heavy Footman, running from a warrant in town.

Hubert, Heavy Footman.

Gwynefa, Arbalist.

Herman, Arbalist, escaped convict and former boar.

Emil, Lightbearer, strange obsession with some Malevols.

Karo, Arbalist.

Allan, Arbalist, claims to know a great secret, pursues a Malevol for past crimes.

Bruno, Light Footman, a talented sharpshooter.

LaBeouf, Camp Cook.
Raymond, Mule.

Casualties

None

Loot

Valuable barrel of wine (not recovered)

The Wishbone

Means of Turning

The Game

• After the wedding, the party made their way back to Tours-en-Savoy. For the first time in weeks, they were both flush with cash, and had the time to use it. Obviously, they got down to carousing. 
• Longo got down to his usual routine of gambling and drinking, with Idred by his side offering advice and jumping in when the pot grew big. They predictably lost, but it hardly made a dent in their fortunes.
• Boroth went back to the Cathouse to play Kriegspiel (no, really) and, despite paying an arm and a leg for a coach, lost big.
• Corby had the tamest time out of all of them, barely even doing any drinking. He claimed that, as a cleric of the god of wine, he couldn't let his tolerance get too high, and needed a week to come down.
• At the end of that week, the hung over party woke up to a knock at their door.

Longo: Boroth! Go get it you're the door guy.

•  Outside was Giacomo, looking much healthier. After a brief panic that he might have been turned into a vampire, the party let him in and settled down to business. He was looking for an escort to Xyntillan's gates, where he had some business. The party had already planned to return there; not exactly much to do in Tours-en-Savoy besides kill your liver.
• They ran some errands and picked up hirelings to replace the secret agents. Then, seeing they still had a mountain of coin left over, they all bought horses, and Longo sprung for a camp cook, LaBeouf, to improve the experience of traveling to and from Xyntillan.
• On the way to Xyntillan for their latest adventure, the party was split on what to pursue there. They had more than enough loose ends calling their attention.

Idred: Maybe we could go hunting for dicks.

Longo: Wait, what?!

Idred: Sorry, that sounds so weird out context.

• In the end, they decided to explore the dungeon level, down the staircase they discovered several sessions back. Down the stairs from the butler's room, the party discovered a wine cellar, barrels piled to the low roof. They tapped a few barrels, and found both a vat of green slime, and a fragile oak barrel filled with an old, valuable vintage.

The Wine Cellar, Gerard Dou

• In order to get a better look at the room, Idred uncovered his sunstone. The light revealed the extent of the cellar, as well as several slits in a nearby wall. Immediately, a bell began to ring from behind them, and the party heard footsteps from the east. They hid, covered the sunstone and waited in ambush.
• Then, the footsteps came closer; this time from the northwest. The stumbling of skeletons, and a set of heavy footsteps, like a man in armor. The party strategized quickly and moved in a pincer.
• Half the party faced the incoming encounter with a torch head on. They saw three of the partly-fleshy skeletons which they had encountered before, with collars around their necks and chains held by a tall, armored figure behind them. On closer inspection, the armor was visibly damaged, but had been repaired with human flesh and bone, and had a pauldron made from the skull of a dog. This was the same animated armor which had destroyed half the party two expeditions ago!
• The armored figure pushed them forward, and the skeletons attacked. They were slow and the party got in their first volley and turning. Strangely, the armor didn't charge to attack, and grew confused when the skeletons ran. A cry came from the northwest door, telling the armor to retreat. In the dim light, the party saw a hunchback, which quickly ran off in the opposite direction.
• Then the other half of the party came around from the other side; Idred launched a Web spell, trapping the armor and skeletons. They proceeded to dispatch the enemies at range. The armor, now dispatched, had a well worked blade on it; a bone-hilted damascened longsword. The bone crossguard bore the name: The Wishbone. They gave it to Boroth, his collection of magic weapons starting to take form, and asked him to query Scrupulous if it knew anything about the blade.

Boroth: Are you implying all blades know each other.

• A little mystery intrigued them. The enemy had come from the northwest, but when the alarm had sounded, they had heard footsteps from the east, and there was no passage in that direction. They searched the barrels, looking for a secret door or a hidden passage. They found nothing, but banging on the barrels one by one to see if they were all full, the party found an empty one; it covered a hole in the floor, which led even further down, and the whole thing smelled distinctly of goat.

Longo: I'm the smallest, so I have to go down the goat-hole don't I?

Party: Yup.

Idred: Shall we see how deep the goat-hole goes?

• Longo rappeled down the narrow chimney. It turned out to not be very deep at all, and a short passage led to a partly-lit cave. Mossy and stinking of goat, he found... a satyr, dressed in robes and cowering in a corner.
• After a brief exchange of threats, they mutually determined neither was a servant of the Malevols, and the satyr introduced itself as Bumble. Longo called the party in, repeatedly shutting down the satyr's attempts to play the pipes. When it became clear that the party didn't altogether know what the cave was, Bumble grinned and led them to the source of the light: a cave opening. 

The Forest of Bere, J.M.W. Turner

• Outside was a forest in the throes of autumn, the sun hanging at high noon. The party knew that outside, it was late spring, and it wasn't noon yet. This was the Indoornesse, a neverending, self-repeating realm underneath Castle Xyntillan; the domain of Runcius Malevol, the anti-druid, who could only be killed at a stone circle in the heart of the woods where he performs foul rituals.
• The party learned all of this by getting Bumble drunk on bottle of wine from town. He also informed them of the identity of the hunchback they encountered before, a venomous little man named Mandrake Malevol. 
• Climbing up the chimney and returning to the castle, they followed the trail of the escaped hunchback. They were led though a room filled with giant, anthropomorphic beets, which were loudly snoring at the moment. The room also hosted a large number of growing tubers, and a marble statue of a woman in a revealing shawl.

Longo: Is there a pedestal?

GM: Yes.

Longo: That's the one thing I remember from art class. They need pedestals or else their ankles break.

• The next room over, they heard shouting, and the sound of excavation. Inside, several dozen animated tools worked to dig out the floor of the room. The shouting was coming from a coffin, partly buried. It wasn't screaming, but oratory, a speech exhorting the tools to throw off their chains. The party conversed with the voice inside for a time, until the spirit within simply phased though the lid and stood before them. This was Charles Malevol, philosopher. The party played along with him, and he joyfully offered them the contents of his coffin: three volumes of unreadable gibberish and a paired hammer and sickle, which allowed the turning of animated objects by non-clerics.
• With some interesting new items in their arsenal, a possible piece of treasure marked for later retrieval, and a new enemy stalking their steps, the session ended.

Takeaways

The fight with the animated armor (I called it the Gristle Knight) was one I expected to be tactical and climactic, facing down a dangerous old enemy, learning its secret weakness, using the obscure item in their arsenal which would be very useful. Instead, they used a single spell to turn the fight to their advantage and ended it quickly and decisively. The S&W rules for Web are pretty sparse, but I looked at the AD&D spell list which had more detail. It went into detail about how webbing could be used and destroyed, but not if a trapped enemy could be hit with ranged attacks while inside. I keep worrying I adjudicated it wrong.

Anyway, here's the statblock.

Gristle Knight: Fighter 4+4; AC 2 [17]; Sav 11; Atk, sword 1d8+1; Spec distribute attacks among 4HD of opponents, immune to fire, attacks at +9; ML 11; AL C; The Wishbone. 

Hp     26 

Blind, but can sense heat in 10’, hotter objects hide cooler ones. 

The Wishbone: Bone-hilted damascened longsword +1. An exiled animated armor, cursed to wander Xyntillan’s halls. Recently released from containment by the Groomsmen, whose hirelings it decimated. It has repaired itself using bone and gristle from the dead hirelings, including making a pauldron from the skull of Fideaux the hunting dog.

Next Chapter: Machinations of the Malicious Mixer