Victor Ashborn joins the party to hunt Barnaby. They search Voorman's shop and learn that he was building astronomical clocks, mechanical spiders, and automatons. They defeat the automaton Hestor and her astronomical clock spider god Chronos, and stop them from ending time. Kiltak confronts his parents' killer Grunvaldr. Grunvaldr transforms into a gargantuan red dragon, but the party kills him in the streets of Braddock.
Rob said before the game that his character Barnaby, who betrayed the party in Game 15, would become an NPC for the last few games of the campaign. He brought a new character, the druid Victor, but held off for the game to start to introduce him.
Fayne missed Game 15, so I revisited a few of the warmup items from Game 15:
During the games I often put NPC and place names up on a whiteboard, as they come up in the game. I asked if the players actually found these helpful, and they said yes, particularly for some of the weird names in Hollin.
We finished the last game just as the party encountered three large mechanical spiders, in the first basement of Voorman's prosthetic shop. Now they rolled initiative and fought them, but the spiders were rickety and Kiltak and Virgil destroyed them early in the first round.
Voorman's prosthetics shop, first basement
They went into (6). There they found:
This room is like the spider worktable upstairs, except the spiders are bigger, like the size of a big dog.
They asked if the spiders were like windup toys. I said yes, although bigger, similar to the spiders they'd just fought in the hall.
They went back into the hall (3) to go to (7), but as they did a huge mastiff dog came down the stairs, Rob's new character Victor in dog form. Rob described the dog's entrance as (my notes):
A huge mastiff dog comes down the stairs. It has white fur with a little brown streak on the top, and it comes down, looks around, and takes a couple big sniffs like Wolverine. It sniffs Kiltak, then Elgis, Haden, and Virgil. It sneezes at Virgil and then turns around and starts sniffing some pieces [of the destroyed spiders, or pieces of the rubble that's everywhere?]. He kind of goes up on his hind legs and morphs into 7'3" human. He's an enormous guy with wild crazy hair like a mane with patches of white. He's old, wearing armor, and has a spear in hand.
He looks at you and says, "Where's Barnaby?"
The party talked with him:
Kiltak: If I see that little fucker I'm going to kill him.
Victor: I don't want him dead - his fate will be worse than that. But we are aligned.
Rob: Victor is hypersensitive to smells, so town is somewhat distracting.
Haden: Who are you?
Victor: Victor Ashborn. The last of my clan. Barnaby came to our clan three years ago. We had a sickness we could not heal, but he could heal it. He said it was from his god. And then everything was good...he helped us. But he said the sickness came from a neighboring group - to stop the sickness we would have to attack them. We went to war and we were slaughtered. They also killed our village, everyone there. And Barnaby laughed the entire time. And then he had disappeared. I have been tracking him across this continent for many years. His scent has led me here. He is up to his old tricks.
Kiltak: [Describes Barnaby's betrayal of the party at the Brock House monument.] We don't know where he is.
Victor: That is frustrating. Why are we fighting wooden spiders?
Kiltak: We're looking for my parents' murderers.
Victor joined them and they went to (7).
There are three female mannequins in this room, each seated at writing desks. There is a worktable nearby with some stuff on it.
They examined the mannequins.
Each mannequin has a winding key in its head and a camshaft in its spine. Each has written a small neat pile of papers, but has wound down and gone still.
They asked what the mannequins were writing, and I asked them to do an Arcana check. They rolled a 15:
Since they'd passed the Arcana check, I also asked them to do a Religion check, but they only rolled a 5 and didn't learn anything more.
Christian asked how many spell scrolls were there and I said five; Haden took the five scrolls. They wound up one of the mannequins and it started to write more Pneuma scrolls.
They didn't examine the stuff on the worktable, but went to room (5).
There are two female mannequins, seated at a keyboard and harp. There is also a worktable nearby, with several cams and a couple of empty camshafts on it.
The party can see the mannequins have winding keys in the back of their heads, and if they look closer, can find that they have a camshaft in the spine.
They decided to wind up the two mannequins at the same time, and the two played a song together. They briefly discussed posing the mannequins in a mischievous way to confuse adventuring parties that came through the shop in the future.
They again didn't examine the cams or camshafts on the worktable, but went to (2).
There are two female mannequins standing here, which have winding keys in the back of their heads and camshafts in their spines.
I believe the party wound them up:
They wave, bow, and/or turn their heads, kind of like Chuck E. Cheese animatronics. Their motion is rickety.
Again with an eye toward future adventuring parties playing through Voorman's shop, they wrote "we were here" on the wall, along with their names.
They went down the stairs to the second basement, which was just one room.
Voorman's prosthetics shop, second basement
The stair here goes up and down. The stairwell and the rest of the room are liberally cluttered with rocks and gravel.
The room has three chairs in the northwest corner - mannequins are seated on two of them. There is a worktable nearby.
However, you are alarmed to see wide streaks of dried blood on the floor, all the way across the room, from chairs in the northwest corner of the room to the southeast corner, where you see two bodies.
They also saw bloody footprints from the northwest to the southwest, and going down the stairwell.
They examined the two men. Elgis made a History check that revealed:
DC 15: From some subtleties of his dress, and the fashion of his haircut and beard, you think one of the men is from the Caliphate.
And Virgil made a Religion check that revealed:
DC 20: From that man's dress, you know that he is a Runepriest from the Caliphate.
They tried to wind up the two mannequins. There were no camshafts in their spines though, so winding had no effect, and Rob commented, "Worst toy ever."
They searched the bodies for items, and found:
They rolled 17 Religion and learned:
DC 15: Rune magic is from the Caliphate.
Rob intuited that Pneuma might be like Revivify. They discussed how the men might have been dragged along the swath of blood on the floor. Haden asked if they'd been dragged or had dragged themselves - maybe they were trying to get away from something? They asked how the men were killed. Victor rolled 24 Medicine and I said they'd been killed by "blunt force trauma."
They decided to cast Pneuma on one of the dummies. Casting it, they learned that Pneuma was a fire and air elemental spell that gave objects breath, motion, and senses. When the spell was cast, the mannequin stood up at attention, but didn't immediately do anything - although animated, it didn't seem to have any will.
They questioned the mannequin but it couldn't speak. They told it to "go find Barnaby" but it didn't seem to process their command. They told it to do five jumping jacks, which it did. They told it to dance, and dance with Virgil, and it did both, although not well. They told it to grab Virgil's butt, which it did.
They told the mannequin to re-enact what had happened in this room, but I ruled that it wasn't conscious then, so didn't know.
I believe they told it to go down the stairs and bring something back, which it did, bringing back some rubble. They told it more specifically to go downstairs and see if there was a mannequin down there with blood on it, and come back and report with a thumbs up for "yes" and a thumbs down for "no." It left and came back five minutes later giving a thumbs up. They similarly asked for a thumbs up if the bloody mannequin was friendly and a thumbs down if not; it gave a thumbs down.
They wanted to have the mannequin do something more productive, so Elgis snuck down the stairs to peek into the third basement.
Voorman's prosthetics shop, third basement
There he saw:
You see a large room, 30 feet x 75 feet.
Up and down the long east and west sides of the room, there are twenty mannequins / automatons standing at workstations, building more automatons. At the far northeast corner of the room, part of the wall and floor have been dug out, and a tunnel goes down from there. Big mechanical spiders - the dog-sized ones - are going in and out of the tunnel, bringing rubble out and dumping it everywhere in this room.
The stair ends on this floor, it doesn't go down any further.
Elgis used his Gemfire Amulet to put a gemfire in the midst of the twenty working mannequins, but they didn't react to it. He commanded the mannequin to "go hug the bloodied mannequin." It went down the long room to the tunnel, went down the tunnel, and didn't come back.
The party crossed through the third basement, past the twenty mannequins, and into the fourth basement.
Voorman's prosthetics shop, fourth basement
They exited the tunnel into the basement at (A). Immediately in front of them at (B), they found an altar with an open book on it. I said in an earlier adventure, they'd found Manfred Unger's Astronomical Clocks and the End Time in Gramercy Books. Now on the altar they found:
Astronomical Clocks and the End Time, Volume 2, by Manfred Unger
As they finished examining the book:
Chronos, a Huge mechanical spider, comes out of the big opening E. Some parts of Chronos are similar to those on the smaller mechanical spiders you've already seen, and Chronos's giant multi-segment legs are similar to the camshaft thigh you found with the caterpillar toy. There are two astronomical clocks on Chronos, one on its belly and one on its back.
A mannequin comes out of C, and bows down to Chronos, praying. From the prayer, you can deduce that she constructed Chronos, it is her god, and that she just finished praying for its blessing.
The mannequin was bloodied - the mannequin who killed the two men upstairs. For reference, I told them the mannequin's name was Hestor. They asked what the blessing was that she received from praying to Chronos, but I said they didn't know yet. I said explicitly that like the clocks described in Manfred's Volume 2, Chronos was designed to end time.
They rolled initiative.
Virgil kicked things off by moving up to the altar and hiding behind it, and taking a bow sneak attack on Hestor, which hit. In response, Chronos took a Legendary Action to bless Hestor, and the party now saw that Chronos's blessing was Haste.
Hestor now started her ritual End Time, which would cause Chronos to end time if completed. I told the players that Hestor would need 10 minutes of Concentration to complete the ritual.
In response to another PC's turn, Chronos took another Legendary Action, hitting Kiltak with Constant Spacetime Velocity:
Constant Spacetime Velocity
Chronos chooses one target. The target must succeed on a DC 18 Wisdom saving throw or immediately move its speed in a straight line in random direction, and be affected by this ability for the duration.
A creature affected by this ability makes another Wisdom saving throw at the end of its turn. On a successful save, the effect ends for it. Else the creature again moves its speed in a straight line in random direction.
Although the movement is forced movement, the target is susceptible to opportunity attacks.
Kiltak failed his Wisdom save and was forced to move away from Chronos.
They succeeded on a Nature check to understand Constant Spacetime Velocity and discovered:
DC 15: Everything moves through four-dimensional spacetime at a constant speed, the speed of light c. Chronos decreases your speed through time, which forcibly increases your speed through space to maintain this constant.
When the party damaged Chronos, three mechanical spiders came out of (D). They crawled over Chronos and repaired him, each repairing 1d4 of damage.
However, the party beat Hestor and Chronos pretty quickly, killing Hestor in round 2 and Chronos in round 3, and stopping End Time. The players commented that the fight was a little anticlimactic for a boss fight, which was true, but as the DM I knew that there was a more dramatic fight coming up.
In the wreckage of the beaten Chronos, they found Chrono's clock gyro and gear train.
Chronos's gear train, Chronos's clock gyro
Chronos's gear train and clock gyro each grant the bearer one portent a day, equivalent to a Divination wizard's daily portents:
"...glimpses of the future begin to press in on your awareness. When you finish a long rest, roll [one d20] and record the [number] rolled. You can replace any attack roll, saving throw, or ability check made by you or a creature that you can see with [this] foretelling rolls. You must choose to do so before the roll, and you can replace a roll in this way only once per turn.
Each foretelling roll can be used only once. When you finish a long rest, you lose any unused foretelling rolls."
Elgis claimed the book, Astronomical Clocks and the End Time, Volume 2, and we rolled to see who of Haden, Kiltak, or Victor would get Chronos's clock gyro and gear train. Haden claimed the clock gyro and Victor claimed the gear train.
They looked in (C), (D), and (E) to see where they led, but they were just little dens.
They left and took a long rest.
Kiltak had long been looking for his parents' murderer, who was missing an eye, and in Game 12, Anya had told Kiltak that the prosthetist Voorman made glass eyes. At Voorman's shop in Game 15, they'd found a package with a glass eye addressed to:
Grunvaldr
Grunvaldr's Antiques
249 Market Street
Braddock
They went there now. They found a small shop just down Market Street from the Mooncalf, with a narrow storefront and two stories. Going in:
The shop's ground floor is cluttered with baroque-looking antiques. A few elderly folks are working at desks nestled among the antiques, bookkeeping and restoring items. There's a stair that goes up and down.
A bell on the shop door rings when you come in. A man gets up from the nearest desk and says warmly, "Welcome to Grunvaldr's Antiques, I'm Lester. How can I help you?"
Kiltak asked if Grunvaldr was there.
Lester says that Grunvaldr is working on the second floor. He invites them to go up, saying Grunvaldr will be happy to help them with anything.
They went up to the second floor.
The second floor is also crowded with antiques. There's just one desk on this floor, at the far end. When the party comes up, a man working there stands up and looks them over.
The man looks about forty and wears a long coat of scale armor. He has a scar down the front of his face, on the right side, and a yellow glass eye. He says:
"Ah, Kiltak Bloodbane, and Kiltak's party too. What a pleasure. I thought Kazola's disappearance might lead you here."
Kiltak ignored Grunvaldr's comment about Kazola. Instead he said, "Yeah, I think I'm going to kill you now."
I believe Mike asked to roll initiative, but I said that Grunvaldr paralyzed the party, and he said:
Kiltak says that his parents Ragnar and Freya were "adventurers who traveled the world testing their skills in battle" and that they were killed by "old enemies." Of course that's all bullshit - the biggest lies are the lies we tell ourselves.
Kiltak's parents did travel the world, but as thieves, and Ragnar stole the sword Oath Keeper from my hoard.
Grunvaldr picked up a paperweight from his desk, and continued:
Oath Keeper was my least valuable item - this piece of glass junk is worth more than Oath Keeper. But of course, the sheer pettiness of Ragnar's theft is what disturbed me. When Ragnar stopped travelling and settled down in Hollin, my researchers found him, and I went to his home and cut him down.
Kiltak's mother Freya was there, and I killed her too. Freya wasn't a thief, but to borrow a phrase from Kiltak, she had it coming.
Kiltak was just a child then, but he took up Oath Keeper and fought back. He cut my face and blinded my right eye, and escaped.
I've bided my time since then, watching Kiltak from afar. Revenge is a dish best served cold. But I was also waiting for Kiltak to peak, for him to grow into a worthy opponent, a Hero with a capital H.
Kiltak is still a small fish though. For today, I'll just take Oath Keeper and leave Kiltak for another time, when killing him would be a proper challenge.
Kiltak said, "I'm going to cut your head off and put it on a spike for the whole world." Grunvaldr drew his sword and freed the party from their paralyzation, and they rolled initiative.
Kiltak and Virgil were first in the initiative order, and they both rolled criticals on Grunvaldr. He went down on one knee, and with Kiltak and Virgil apparently routing him, Rob said he was "a little conflicted" that the fight was five on one.
But Grunvaldr went next. Suddenly there was a tremendous explosion, and the party found themselves lying prone on the edge of a smoking 70-foot-wide crater where Grunvaldr's shop had been. Everything inside the crater was destroyed. Outside the crater's 35-foot radius, foundations of some nearby shops remained, but the actual buildings had been destroyed. Outside a 50-foot radius, shops were still standing, but the sides of many had been blown away, leaving gaping views into their interiors. People who worked in them or had been walking down Market were now running everywhere, like ants whose anthill had been kicked over.
Grunvaldr's antique shop, former location of
More alarming though, a Gargantuan red dragon in the crater's center was looming over them - Grunvaldr in his dragon form. The dragon was panning his head left and right, spraying napalm-like fire everywhere. They noticed that the dragon Grunvaldur had a cruel scar down the right side of his face and was missing his right eye, just like the human Grunvaldr.
Grunvaldr
Grunvaldr said:
Over the years I killed hundreds of the world's historic heroes. I killed Gradska, and I killed the first Gradskan king of Hollin, Marduk, and took his crown. I destroyed Naumkaeg's fleet as it returned from looting the new world, and those ships had more gold than the rest of humanity combined. I hunted down many of the Ninety-Nine, the gods of the Caliphate. I burned the Inkeri capitol Highpyre and took Lethe's star, which lit Highpyre through the long arctic winter.
And now I'm going to kill you.
Kiltak responded, "This is going to be your last fight, because I'm going to kill you."
Grunvaldr focused his attacks on Kiltak through the fight. He hit Kiltak in the first round with two claw attacks, but Kiltak's Rage gave him resistance to the claws' Slashing damage.
On the second round Grunvaldr hit Kiltak, Elgis, and Victor with his Fire Breath. He flew up 20 feet, flapping his enormous wings, and the gust drove the party back 10 feet. In response, Victor cast Jump on Kiltak so he could jump the 20 feet onto Grunvaldr on his turn. Meanwhile, Elgis tied a rope to a javelin and threw it into Grunvaldr's hide, and used an Action Surge and Athletics to climb up the rope and up to the back of Grunvaldr's neck. Haden also joined in, using Dreadful Step to teleport onto Grunvaldr's back.
Human Grunvaldr had drawn his greatsword and in round 3, in the chaos, Victor noticed it on the ground near Kiltak. We briefly discussed whether Grunvaldr's sword would be better than Oath Keeper, a +1 greatsword, and I just said that Grunvaldr had disparaged Oath Keeper in his monologue. Kiltak dropped Oath Keeper and picked up Grunvaldr's sword, and Jump'ed onto Grunvaldr. (I soon revealed that Grunvaldr's sword was Gradska's +2 sword, which Grunvaldr had taken when he killed Gradska millenia ago.)
For his part, Grunvaldr again focused his multiattack on Kiltak in round 3, hitting him for 46 damage. However, Kiltak's resistance from raging again cut this in half and he stayed up.
Elgis responded by swinging Kiltak on his rope, up to Grunvaldr's face, and Kiltak used Grunvaldr's sword to destroy Grunvaldr's remaining eye. Now blinded, Grunvaldr went into a frenzy, trying to shake Elgis, Haden, and Kiltak off, but all three hung on. Kiltak delivered the killing blow at the beginning of round 4, and Grunvaldr crashed back into the crater.
Here is an AI podcast from Gemini Notebook recapping this game, and here is one discussing the threads and questions that remain for the last few games of the campaign.