Castle Xyntillan Session 20: Hoard of the Hell-Pigeons

In the last session, the party fought a ghost pirate, met a strange lady living in the castle, discovered the identity of the masked warrior, entered the donjon tower and conversed with the Blind Beast of Xyntillan. Now they must contend with an ambush by a hunter and his dog pack. What lies on the upper levels of the tower? What about the mummy that the Blind Beast warned them about? Will they finally get some treasure? All this and more 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.

Clovis, Heavy Footman.

Eric, Light Footman and cart driver.

LaBeouf, Camp Cook.
Raymond, Mule.

Casualties

Herman, slain by the hunter's arrow

Loot

Loot: 2 golden urns (with the Otusson brothers inside), 2000gp each

5717 gp cash

Ambrose's Mirth, 5000gp 

Silver drinking horn, 350gp 

Heart-shaped locket, 1250gp 

Boots of Levitation

Quality plate armor, unidentified

The Game

• Longo had just ducked back into the tower, and the hunter was leading his dogs into the castle, along a path that the party knew led towards their position. They quickly came up with a battle plan. They dug in their heels, set arbalists along the lip of the pit, and set the stairs on fire.

Idred: If we're going to set the stairs on fire, you shouldn't be on the first floor.

Longo: Fair.

• The dogs burst in through the door and the first three of them fell under crossbow bolts, but the hunter came in behind them and swiftly loosed two arrows. Both struck their mark, injuring one arbalist and immediately killing Herman. 

• Idred retaliated with a Sleep spell, which pacified the remaining dogs, and in the next round the party moved everyone back from the lip. Seeing his minions neutralized and the only way to his enemies through a flaming stairway, the hunter blew on a horn and disappeared.

GM: Are you going to go down there and eliminate the sleeping dogs?

Corby: This is the worst part of the sleep spell.

• The party took stock. Most of their hirelings held their ground when Herman was felled, and they pressed onward. As they discussed their next move, they heard an odd tweeting sound from Herman's corpse, and watched a diminutive blue songbird emerge from his mouth.

Boroth: I didn't know Herman was a mother!

Longo: Did your mother eat live birds?

Boroth: That is his child!

Longo: I thought it was his lunch.

• Idred approached it, and it hopped onto his finger happily. For the remainder of the session, it found a perch on his shoulder.
• Longo returned to his project of climbing the rungs, now avoiding the one which the Blind Beast pointed out. He made it safely onto the third floor of the tower, and saw it was a great, pillared room, with a pair of stoppered golden urns on the steps of a curtained dais. The skull-locked door was a mechanical terror from the other side, and he concluded that if he had failed to pick it, he would have triggered some form of trap. He managed to open it simply from the inside.
• Poking at the urns, they heard it echo more than it should have, and listening to it, they heard a whispering 'Let me ouuuut.'

That is absolutely something you should let out.

• They interrogated the voice within, which claimed that within the urn was the treasure of a lifetime. It identified itself as Erol, son of Otus, and its brother in the other urn as Dan. The party suspected that these might be the mummies that BB had warned them about.

Longo: Are you a mummy?

Voice: I am not a mummy.

Longo: Are you a daddy?

Voice: Insolent cur!

Longo: Sounds like mummy talk to me.

• Behind the heavy drapes, Idred found a crude bronze owl idol, perched over a stained altar. They briefly inspected it, and afterwards decided to leave it be.
• They heard the bell toll above them, and knew there must be some way up to the top. They searched about for paths up, and came across a hidden ladder going up. Boroth poked his head up, retching from the smell of pigeon guano, and he saw that the top of the belltower was populated by several horse-sized pigeons and their young, with the corpses of another adventuring party scattered about.

Boroth: You know what we must do now.

Corby: Find pigeon sized horses and duel them.

Longo: Should we go full Korgoth? It seems like she should cover ourselves in their poop.

Corby: Sounds like you're volunteering.

• The party stuffed their ears with wax to avoid being defeaned if the bell was hit in combat, and set into motion their battle plan. Idred went up the ladder first, his recently acquired Wand of Fear in hand. He kept on the ladder as he blasted the pigeons twice, and wound up scaring all but two of the adults and a handful of the chicks, too young to fly.
• Idred dropped down and gave the floor to the melee bunch. Boroth, Longo and Corby stormed up, and Corby finally got some good use of his hammer. They were joined by hirelings in subsequent rounds, but the pigeons stood no chance. They couldn't manage a single hit, while the players rolled very well, and slaughtered the adults. In the aftermath of the combat, one of the chicks, about the size of a turkey, waddled over to the party and tried to intimidate them. The party gave it some food and it went scurrying back to the nest.

• The treasure in the aerie was extensive. They scanned it with Detect Magic, and found both a set of plate armor and a pair of winged boots fit the bill. A silver drinking horn and a heart locket were recovered from another body. The big score was a massive coin pile, and the cherry on top was a fist-sized ruby. This was something Longo recognized from sordid thieves' tales in backroom bars, a gemstone called Ambrose's Mirth, the centerpiece of the Royal Treasury and the ultimate object of all thieves, until it was stolen one night and nobody took the credit.
• In all their accounting, the party failed to notice the approach of two masked ninjas to the aerie. These had peace ties on their swords, and one carried a white flag.

Corby: There's something disturbing about flag-waving ninjas.

• They stepped forward wordlessly and presented a sealed letter. Longo took it, and saw it was sealed with the sigil of a locust in flight, which they had never seen before. It read:

A man of arms to his fellows, greetings. Since our paths are soon to intersect, I extend the courtesy of fair warning. My services have been retained for the present period by Mssr Rel, who is of your acquaintance, for the express purpose of bringing to heel the armed gang known publicly as ‘The Groomsmen,’ and to subsequently recover and account for items unlawfully acquired by them. It is my firm desire to see this duty done swiftly and with minimal conflict, as is in our common interest. I propose a peaceable meeting of our respective parties under the truce of the Tours-en-Savoy Prefecture to arrive at an amicable agreement. My servants who delivered this letter are authorized to carry back your response. You have ten minutes by the hourglass to give a formal response from the breaking of the seal. Farewell. 

-    Chief Auditor, Neutralization Ltd.

Longo: What do the smart people say?

Party: Remains silent

• The ninjas gave them a modicum of privacy to discuss, and the party soon came to a consensus. They sent back a polite message agreeing to a peaceful meeting and requesting notice as to who could attend and how to prepare documentation. The ninjas noted it all on their legal pads, then took a swan dive off the aerie.

Audit ninjas!

• Boroth laid claim to the winged boots, and immediately decided to put them on. The wings fluttered about, and in testing them out, he figured out that he could hover in the air. With further practice, he could move up and down, albeit quite slowly.

Boroth: I am now lord of the skies!

Longo: Jump off the tower, see how well they work.

Idred: That's not levitation, that's verticalation.

• As they searched high and low about the tower to ensure they didn't miss anything, Longo noticed an extra balcony, leading to a section of the tower they had thought was entirely walled off. Longo descended on his own with a rope, listened at the door and entered.
• Within, he saw a huge glass coffin, containing the preserved body of a beautiful princess bedecked in jewels, and kneeling at the foot of the coffin was Adelaide Malevol.
• She regarded Longo coolly, and invited him to kneel with her. Within the coffin was her elder sister, Aurora Malevol, imprisoned by the family for disobedience. In their conversation, she asked Longo to intercede with her husband on her behalf, as he constantly avoided her.

Longo: Okay guys I feel bad now. 

• Longo left the crypt behind, and the party decided not to chase after the possible treasure within. They had far too much on hand at the moment. From there followed a scheme to get all the gold and the urns down to ground level, which involved tarp, ropes and Boroth's newfound ability to move up and down very slowly. They eventually got it all down, and were moving it through the courtyard at a slow pace, when they noticed the bags of gold were beginning to lighten.
• From behind the bushes, the party had been ambushed by packs of animated hands, which scurried about on the ground, clutched loose gold when it left the party's sight, and hobbled back to safety. Corby attempted to turn them, but while he incinerated them by the dozen, more just kept coming, and they became more aggressive when the party blocked their efforts to grab coins. In the end, the party booked it out double-quick, allowing the hands to steal almost 300gp from the sacks.
• Still, they made it safely back to the cart. Idred shooed the songbird off his shoulder (at a previous point in the session it had spoken to him in Angela's voice) and it flew into the trees. The party returned to Tours-en-Savoy from their newest expedition, still mostly intact, and with one of their biggest hauls yet in tow.

Takeaways

When I rolled up the random encounters for the session, I saw that the two ninjas, which both had well below average hit points, would have no chance of surviving the party. I decided instead that they could serve a purpose in forwarding the enemy plot.

The animated hands were an odd case to adjudicate, as I wasn't perfectly clear if they were undead, and since they were swarms, whether clerical turning would have any effect. I decided on a middle path. Corby was able to turn several individual hands, burning them away, but the swarm itself was just weakened. In effect, his Turn dealt direct Hp damage to them.

Weird shit continues to happen on the GM end. In the fight with the dogs, the arbalists managed to roll the exact damage values, corresponding to the Hp of each dog, in order. 

Next Chapter: A Walk Down Memory Corridor