Tuesday, March 23, 2021

EvilParty: Naval-gazing

We begin the battle, ramming through a couple of smaller ships from the side, then smashing into a larger ship from behind and coming to a stop midway down the hull. Jenny rips a guy apart with the claws, and the rest of us are preserving our spells. The plan is basically to rip our way out the side and let the boat sink. Which... works just fine, as it happens.

The naval battle has ground into a close-quarters, pitched fight in towards the shore; we turn and charge the biggest of the King's Navy, smashing in from the rear and stopping about a third of the way up the hull. Interestingly, this puts us directly in the middle of a bunch of prisoners.

One of them is nobly dressed and now also rather damaged. This being DnD, and they being high-level, they're all tough enough to survive being run over by a giant mechanical crab.

Chuck open the cloaca and drops out of the Crab. Hatch pops out behind him and drops a fireball on the troops/sailors in front of the crab. A bunch of swashbucklers die, but not all of them; there are also some barbarians, who take some damage.

Then Jenny drops out, and moves over to the swashbucklers and just... slaughters them. She finishes by attacking one of the barbarians... but then two of the remaining swashbucklers charge her and die horribly as she intercepts them, allowing her to attack the barbarian again. There are no swashbucklers left. It's... Jenny-cide.

The barbarian rages and attacks, doing enough damage for Jenny to at least notice. The other barbarians move in, trying to swarm her, and run right into her spiked chain instead. Durest moves out and taps one of the barbarians on the shoulder, inflicting wounds and killing him.

Chuck turns back to the prisoners.

Elf Guard #1: "Stay back!"

Chuck: "It's okay, we're here to rescue you!"

These aren't true elves, but they're  super-high pedigree elves.

Chuck: "You see, we killed all those guys. We can take one with us."

Noblewoman: "Fools! Soriah Saltfisher is on the deck! She's one of the most powerful druids in the King's Navy!"

Chuck: "That's why we're going to scuttle the ship."

Hatch fires of a trio of scorching rays at the remaining barbarians, taking down two of the three. Jenny takes the last one down.

A ranger appears on the stairs further up the hold, and puts some arrows in Jenny; then the druid comes down and hits us with Flame Strike. Durest saves, but Jenny goes down; Durest immediately reaches down and heals her. Chuck tosses a fireball at the newcomers.

Ramekin follows up by dropping grease under their feet, leaving both the newcomers flat-footed. Hatch moves forward and off to one side, angling to take out the druid, and casts Disintegrate.

The druid... she survives it. Hatch follows up with quickened scorching rays to finish her off.

Jenny moves up to attack the Wood Elf ranger. He attempts to flee, and Jenny attacks him. She hits him, but he manages to climb up and out onto the deck.

Chuck: "See, we took care of the druid. Time to go! Let's run."

Elves: "We're with you! Which way is out of here?"

Chuck: "Up the ladder and out. Let us scout it first, though."

Hatch heads to the stairs and flies up to look out of the top. Jenny comes up the ladder behind him and moves into the archers and wipes out everyone in reach. The ranger has just thrown himself over the side of the boat and onto his alligator companion, and it is swimming away as fast as possible.

Durest comes up the ladder and proceeds to the forecastle; the two guys up there see him and jump off the boat. Chuck climbs out a hole and up the hull and onto the poop deck, scaring off the guys up there.

Hatch makes some room for himself and drops a fireball on another nearby enemy boat. It's one of the smaller ones, and the decktop devastation is... total.

Jenny moves on to the remainder of the archers. There are still four warriors on the deck; they all try to attack Hatch. Hatch, however, took some damage on the way up, and he's protected by Displacement.

Durest fires off the catapult, hitting the ranger but failing to kill him. Chuck decides to ignore him, and drops a Fireball on another nearby ship. A magical sphere protects the central section of the deck, unfortunately.

Hatch ascends higher into the air. (He has a semi-permanent Fly spell on him, and is currently about thirty feet above the deck.)

Jenny, annoyed that she has nobody to kill, heads back down to the Crab. The Elf Noble tries to tell her about some device that's preventing teleportation, but Jenny says that makes no sense and heads into the crab. Durest, not knowing how to reset the catapult, turns and heads belowdeck as well.

Noblewoman: "You! Dwarf! Do you have any brains?"

Durest: "Aye, lass! I keep them in a jar under the stairs!"

Noblewoman: "So there's something preventing reinforcements from teleporting in. Some device, here on the ship!"

Durest, smiling: "...Is it fragile?"

The boat that Chuck tried to fireball is now definitely looking our way, but he's too far away most targeted spell attacks. They throw Fireballs back at him -- four of them. Then the Solari casts Disintegrate on him. Chuck assumes Gaseous form and retreats towards the lower deck. Hatch follows him down.

Durest locates the room with the device and starts beating on the cage around it. Hatch unlatches the cage, and Durest smashes the device, which promptly explodes and hurts him a lot. Hatch, who is also in the room, is hurt less.

So, our vampire is back in his coffin and the rest of us are in reasonable shape. It'll be an hour before Chuck is solid again. But, we can still break some boats from below...

Next time.

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