Beyond the Crystal Caverns - Session 7

= Cicadas and Lobsters, Oh My =

3 May 2021

Having just fought off two giant bloody demon birds, the reluctant warrior group are tired, bloody, and about to face something like 30 smaller flying blood misting demons that have just popped into the ritual ground above the Citadel. There are some very small ones, like flying baby demons, and some larger ones. They all bear a resemblance to cicadas.

They start by rolling initiative, because they know it’s about to go down.

River 24

Mila 18

Rio  11

Arcturus 14

Ah’Beng 20

Ak’athla dirty 20

As they prepare to once again fight for their lives, the sounds of battle drift up to them from the Citadel below. Arcturus and Ak’athla notice that the World Tree seems to be glowing brighter and repelling the bloody beasts. Some of the beasts seem to be making their way to the ritual circles, the ones with the runes inscribed on the ground underneath.

River calls on the power of lightning, and zaps a large creature that looks like a giant cicada mixed with a scorpion. The nasty beast uses it’s tail stinger to absorb and neutralize the damage.

Ak’athla zaps one of the creatures with Moonbeam, and it’s bloody skin blisters and cracks and bubbles at the touch of the light. The beast flaps and flops around, near the ground.

Ah’Beng moves up to the creature that’s been Mooned, and kicks at it once, which the beast dodges...straight into a massive stomp on it’s chest, squishing it dead.

Mila masterfully draws and fires two arrows, which sprout out of a creatures eyes like eyestalks, and render it so very dead.

Hari the young City Guard looks around in mild panic at the swarming demons. He readies a crossbow, and moves closer to Ak’athla. He shoots at a monster, but the wind pushes his bolt out of the way, and it thunks harmlessly into the wall.

Arcturus asks what the heck the ritual circles do and why the monsters are heading towards it. Hari stammers out that they use them to call reinforcements. Arcturus curses - if the priests can use them, the demons probably can as well. He moves towards the circles and shoots at one of the smaller flying baby demons, which just about explodes into a shower of ichor. He shifts his aim and shoots at the giant cicada/blood bird.

Rio pulls out a huge roll of paper, and folds it into a massive paper crane. The human-sized paper bird flies toward the big cicada, and Rio blasts it with a 9th level firebolt from a wand. The huge flapping firebird smashes into the monster with a shower of sparking paper and flaming cicada. One of the little burnt floating pieces of paper flies over to Arcturus, transforms into a small paper cicada, and lands on his shoulder for bardic inspiration.

The Psychotic Cicada moves towards the group of people that keep trying to hurt it, managing to poison Ah’Beng for 14 pts.

River quickly dispatches another flying baby heading towards a circle, then pivots and casts wall of flame across the northernmost circle. The flames react in a way she’s never seen before. As they cross the ritual circle, the fire jumps higher and burns with a dazzling white hot heat. The runes under the circle start to glow through the sand covering them.

Ak’athla relocates his Moonbeam onto the Psychotic Cicada, doing what damage he can. He rolls for insight, but Hari follows behind him, and starts singing “That’s Amore”, trying to express his ever-growing affection for Ak’athla. The insight fails due to Hari’s distraction.

Ah’Beng winds up like a baseball pitcher and slaps the face of the biggest baddie on the field, rocking it’s head back on segmented neck plates. Winding up to slap it again, Psycho Cicada reaches out a segmented limb and swipes Ah’Beng’s hand away for 4 damage.

Mila puts Hunter’s Mark on the Queen C, and then shoots it pew pew with two arrows.

Hari’s blood, which had spilled and soaked into the sand, gets really freaky. The blood starts to rise up out of the sand like a bloody ghost. Two pseudopods extend from the amorphous blob and grab Hari. He gets hoisted up into the air by his waist and feet, and he’s in bad shape.

Arcturus dashes forward towards the giant cicada. He slides on his knees in a pool of ichor, showing off what a great fabulous fighter he is. The blood that covers his body starts to feel like it’s crawling on his skin... Arcturus isn’t paying attention, because he rolled a Nat 20 for 66 fabulous points of damage with his sword Naomi. He slices across the creature, coating Ah’Beng with a spray of nasty ichorous blood. To his shock and horror, Ah’Beng can feel it sort of crawling on his skin.

Rio makes a history roll to determine what he knows of combat and general war fighting. He plays with paper, he doesn’t go to war! Rio pulls out another large roll of paper and creates a human sized four legged beast with a flower shaped head and he tells it to “GO”. As it comes to life, Rio runs and jumps into this opening roughly where a butthole would be while at the same time casting polymorph. The paper creature grows and expands, turning into a triceratops around Rio, who then runs for River. Because Rio is an asshole, as he’s running, the triceratops poops right on top of Ak’athla, but at least a small paper insect crawls out for bardic inspiration.

River is confronted with a cockroach looking monster called a “BichieFacie”. The appearance of this monster causes a small amount of fear.

The disgusting, battered Psychotic Cicada reaches around and grabs at Arcturus, but only does 11 pts of damage.

The two ritual circles that don’t have fire on them start to glow, and a dome like shape starts to form over the tops of them. The wee cicadas that are hovering over the circles seem to get trapped in an invisible restraint of energy, and begin moving slowly in the growing domes.

River jumps on the back of the paper triceratops to escape her fear.

Ak’athla slashes at the blood monster holding Hari captive, smashing it with a halberd, and then hitting it with some thunder damage courtesy of his “1d8 worth of inspiring poop”. The blood monster starts to loosen it’s grasp, and Ak’athla finishes it off with a bit of Smite help from his Lady. He sees that Hari is weakened, but his eyes are open at least. Ak’athla tosses Hari a sweet wink of Bless.

Ah’Beng wipes the blood off his face, and lashes out with a ferocious kick at Psychotic Cicada. His foot connects hard, and the bits of exterior shell start falling off of it’s body. Ah’Beng sinks his foot deep into the thorax, and yanks it out, finally ending the giant creature’s life. He runs over and hops on the triceratops with River.

Mila sees that two of the ritual circles have slow moving baby cicadas inside them, with red tendrils coming off their bodies. She shoots twice at the bugs inside them. The first shot misses, and the bug turns it head to follow it, missing seeing the arrow that ends it’s life. She yells out “Arcti, do you see this?”

Arcturus hears voices in his head, and starts to sing a song called “Psychotic Cicada”, (around the 2 hr mark) which is brilliant and earns him a point of inspiration. He takes some shots with his crossbow and slams a bolt into one of the slow bugs.

Rio-Ceratopsian backs up a few feet and then runs forward, trampling the monster that made River scared. Without stopping, he runs forward to the northern circle with the flame wall burning across it. He sends a mental image to Mila of her heading to the circle as well.

RIver jumps off the back of her brother, and drops her concentration on the wall of fire. She moves it east, to a golden circle with a dome over it. Inside the dome, a giant hulking red monster is forming. She encircles the entire dome with the flames inward towards the red giant. The flame leaps insanely high, causing the runes to glow, as had happened on the northern red circle. The monster screams in rage and pain.

Ah’Beng dashes as close as he can to the blue circle towards the southern summoning circle.

Mila moves right up to River using misty step, joining her in the northern red circle. She knows there’s a monster in the gold circle to the east, but can’t see it well through the flames. She shoots anyway, as there’s only so much space the monster could be occupying. One of her bolts hits it’s mark and the monster cries out again.

Hari sees the large monster everyone is concentrating on, and trudges towards the monster appearing in the southern blue circle. He squares his shoulders and does his duty, and shots at it with his crossbow. He manages to  clip the 4-armed dog-faced red monster.

Artcurus also runs to the southern blue circle, and shoots at the thing. His bolt seems to just slide off it’s back. He does manage to fight off the monster’s aura. He moves to the step of the arena above him.

Rio-Ceratopsian thunders forwards to the southern blue circle and attacks the demon with a giant roar. The monster’s aura crashes through the triceratops shell, breaking Rio’s concentration. The dino starts to flake and fall apart, crumbling into flakes of paper again. Rio is left standing just outside the blue circle, a pile of paper flakes at his feet.

The demon in the eastern circle tries to cast dispel magic. The flames dim slightly, and then roar back up strong and white hot, damaging the monster for 40 points.

RIver stands in the northern red circle, and uses the lighting wand to attack the eastern gold circle. She feels a burst of energy and the want bucks in her hand, and a gout of energy blazes into the demon for 78 pts of damage, as the circles seem to increase magic used in them.

Ak’athla moves his moonbeam the last few feet into the southern circle and right on top of the dog-faced-lobster demon.

Ah’Beng runs up to the southern lobster beast, intent on doing more punching and kicking at demons. Despite their size difference, he takes a shot, punching around the infernal torso. He manages to inflict 11 pts of damage before the creature brushes him aside like a small pest.

Mila moves her Hunter’s Mark onto the southern beast, and shoots it for a small amount of damage. The team is slowly picking points off this demon.

Arcturus, on the higher level tier, runs forward with his sword Naomi drawn, and leaps off the tier onto the back of the southern monster. Hey, it worked well for him before... It works pretty well this time too. He leaps and lets out a war cry, slicing into the fiend for 71 pts of damage.

Rio kneels down and scoops up remaining scraps of his triceratops. Holding them in both of his cupped hands like water, he tosses them in the air towards the southern blue circle monster, and yells PAPER CUTS. The power of the circle magnifies the level three spell. The paper that would normally turn into sharp edges this time sharpens into diamond hard shards around his head and chest. He tries to retreat from the circle, and the beast smacks him with a lower hand, then reflexively grabs at him with an upper claw., drawing him in. Rio doges his own flying shards, and yells at Arcturus. “You’re the Captain, don’t let me down”. A paper shard detaches from the cloud and flies to circle Arcturus’s head  for a Mote of Inspiration. A demonic voice appears in his head whispering “why do you seek to protect this pitiful plane, you are throwing your life away”. Rio tries to fake out the demon by flattering him and agreeing with him, which the demon believes thanks to a Nat 20. “Good”, and releases Rio. “Kill them all, we have a ritual to complete”, the demon finishes.

Ak’athla’s moonbeam touches the demon and rips at it’s skin with holy light.

The eastern demon flies straight up into the air and over the fire, landing outside the flaming circle. It takes some damage doing so, but makes it out of the circle.

River steps forward a few feet, and casts Shatter on the demon that just leapt out of the circle. It takes another 32 points of thunder damage from her magical attack. She casts it while the beast is still in the air coming over the flame, and the creature thuds into the ground painfully.

Ak’athla gets as close as he can to the creature and whips out his dagger. He throws it with max force at the demon, while casting 2d level Divine Smite for 24 pts of radiant damage and 8 pts of staggering. The dagger flies straight and true from his hand, stabbing deeply into the demons arm. The Divine Smite causes a giant chunk of flesh to come out of the arm. Ak’athla looks over at Hari and grabs his crotch in celebration, and then tosses Hari a saucy wink.

Hari looks back at him slightly confused, but also kind of hopeful.

Ah’Beng keeps punching at the monster. As it staggers sideways, he grabs it’s horns and smashes the monster right in the side of it’s head, killing it with 7 pts of punching damage. He grabs Ak’athla’s dagger and races towards the remaining creature near the eastern circle.

Mila aims, she shoots, she scoooreesssss! Her arrows thwack into the remaining demon, and it crumples to the ground, finally dead.

The divine gods tell the sweaty, tired, dirty, bloody warriors that they can level up to a 9. They let out a weak cheer, and then Mila tells the divine voice, “but we’re only a level 7”. The divine voice must have been pleased with their works this day, and booms out “You know what? Fuck it, you’re a level 9. You want to be a level 9, you’re a level 9”.

Sounds of battle still drift up from the Citadel below.