Castle Xyntillan Session 21: A Walk Down Memory Corridor

In the last session, the party evaded the hunter and his pack, explored the donjon tower, defeated the Pigeons from Hell, ransacked their lair, negotiated with ninja auditors, had a heart-to-heart with Adelaide Malevol, and made it back to town with a massive haul. What was the deal with the weird bird? What will the enemy party do next? 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.

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.

Oscar, Arbalist of unusual strength

LaBeouf, Camp Cook.
Raymond, Mule.

Casualties

None

Loot

Pearls, 640gp

Executioner's leathers +1

The Game

• Returning to Tours-en-Savoy laden with loot, the party gets to work offloading it. Most of it is no trouble, except for the golden urns, which scare off potential buyers on account of the whispering voices within. Until a future time when they can safely exorcise the mummies they think are inside, the party wrapped the urns in chains and left them submerged in a river outside town.

Longo: Corby, can you magic up a way for us to find this place again?

Corby: Yeah, I'll take some paper and a magic pen and make a map.

Boroth: I wish I had access to this sorcery called literacy.

• Over the course of the next week, they partied hard, and got a response from the auditors; the meeting with the enemy party was set a fortnight away. They also got woken up one morning by Murk, the assistant to Brother Michel, who was in quite a frenzy.
• The inquisitor had just fallen sick, which Murk immediately attributed to the party's meddling in the castle, and demanded that they come and undo the damage they caused. The party obliged, and visited Brother Michel in the cloister, where he seemed to have a terrible flu.

Boroth: Looks like we have to exorcise a flu spirit from a monk.

Longo: I've been doing spirits all week and I'm fine.

BEGONE, THOTH!

• After messing around and hiring a barber-surgeon, they manage to extract an object stuck in the inquisitor's throat; a small, blue songbird, the same one that crawled from Herman's throat in the castle! 
• Longo caught the creature in a sack, and Brother Michel begins to improve immediately. They leave his full recovery in the hands of the nuns, and purchase an iron cage from Mordechai to hold the bird. They then began the arduous process of interrogating the bird. Intimidation attempts failed, and it played dumb until Corby cast Speak with Animals, then it dropped the charade. The bird was being controlled by Angela from the castle, who castigated the party for not following her instructions earlier. They come to a mutual understanding, and they let the bird go.
• Reuniting with Brother Michel before resuming their week of debauchery, they followed Angela's instructions by telling him to visit her in the castle. They gave him a section of the map, and warned him that she might be a succubus. He seemed glad for the information, though the notion of fighting a succubus didn't seem to faze him.

Corby: We need some more potions. Our wizard's been drinking them like they're free.

• Luckily, Jacques's shop had just gotten a shipment in, and the party picked up both a potion of healing and a potion of giant strength from him.
• They recruited a new hireling, Oscar, an unusually strong arbalist, before returning promptly to the dungeon. After discussing their next move, and promising to kill Tristano Malevol on their way out, the party got along to clearing out some areas of the castle from their very first expedition.
• A door with the sound of scuttling behind it, spiked shut since their first expedition, was finally beaten down. The party ended up face to face with a swarm of spiders, which they responded to by throwing flaming oil into the room, closing the door, then returning a few round slater to clean up the remnants. Amidst the rubble, decay and webs, they found a cluster of quite valuable pearls.
• Next on the chopping block was the room of partying skeletons that gave them a fright once. They went in like professionals, blasting undead to bits with turnings, arbalist volleys and blades. Two dozen skeletons fell within short order.

Like we rehearsed, attack two at a time and make it look real

• The next order of business was to take down the undead monks in the nearby chapel. It as much as they had left it, decrepit and broken down, but the monks arrived from a side room before their ambush was complete, still, they went down fast. The party kept one of the monks 'alive' and sought to get some information out of him. Asked where he kept the good wine, the last monk nervously pointed them down, to the great underground lake. He gave them a bell from his robe, and insisted that ringing it would cause the guardian of the wine to bring it up to them. The party then let him run off, but Corby dusted him from behind.
• Subsequently, they explored the side rooms, which were lavishly decorated for the monks' revelries, and concealed a secret passage down to the basement level, behind one of the gargoyles.
• The next region of the map to shore up was the area near Maltricia's lair. They tracked down the apartments of a butler, which held the instruments of a stranger form of revelry yet.

Longo: Corby, do they use these in your debauchery rituals?

Corby: I think these guys party harder than I do.

• Among the equipment there was an executioner's leathers, hood and all, which Longo tried on. To his surprise, they fit, and even better than his regular armor.

Corby: Is our halfling in bondage gear now?

GM: Yes.

Boroth: So are we leading you on a leash, or...

• Whilst trying it on, they were interrupted by a wheezing skeleton with a feather duster, which opened the door, froze, slowly closed it again, and could be heard running away as fast as its calcified legs could carry it.

Takeaways

This session was somewhat less eventful than normal, and a lot of it was the party closing gaps in their knowledge and getting revenge on some early encounters that made them run away. I suppose it was cathartic to bring the smackdown on the enemies which in times past intimidated them.

That last encounter was a random one, just a single skeleton with low hit points. Not a threat, and not something that would reasonably attack the party either, so I used it for a little comedic moment.

I'm not entirely happy with how I handled the town section this time around. I had a few events lined up and preempted some challenges the party might have with selling the urns, though I didn't anticipate their solution. The sick inquisitor part felt a bit forced, as did the interrogation of the bird. Granted, it was the party's idea to do so, but I just felt like the way I set up the situation was too constricting.

Next Chapter: Lair of the Vampire Countess