4Ward/FrankenFourth: Age of Worms, Episode 402

Cast

• Humal (level 5 wrathful cambion wizard)
• Corzale (level 5 dwarf war cleric)
• Sumia (level 5 elf rogue/ranger)

Summary

A three hour wait and awkward corpse explanation later, the characters were finally inside Dovin, the Free City.

Obtaining directions to the Garden District was at first delayed by a parade, then complicated when a chimera, part of the aforementioned parade, managed to escape from its cage.

This kind, not the "D&D-ized" version.

Fortunately, the characters were able to put the chimera down with minimal injury, and Humal was even permitted to keep its remains because it saved the parade crew the trouble of cleaning it up themselves.

Despite a rickety cart burdened with remains in various states of decay, the rest of the walk to the Garden District was uneventful. They spoke to Eligos, who not only offered to look into anything and everything concerning Kyuss, but also recommended an inn where they would receive discounted prices if they mentioned his name.

Eligos explained that it would take him a few days to gather up any information he could, so they stopped by the inn, purchased a few nights, and then decided to try and find Filge. Of course they had no idea where he lived, so Humal suggested a two-pronged effort: Sumia and Cenric would root around the Foreign Quarter and see what they could dig up, while he and Corzale would go to the mage's guild and see if they had any information on him.

Once there, Humal paid for any information they had on Filge, and while waiting for the clerk to return registered at the guild for a month, so he could access their library and learn more about necromancy. Since the guild had wizards capable of casting divinations, Corzale paid to have them locate one of the dwarves from her band that had ventured to the surface while hunting Kyuss zombies.

To her surprise, they were able to determine that one of her companions was located in a shrine within the city's Foreign Quarter: they waited just long enough to get the information on Filge, which wasn't much beyond that he apparently had a bounty on his head, before heading there next.

At the shrine Corzale discovered that the companion was Gorath. He had arrived at the shrine a few days ago, feverish and heavily disfigured: his left eye was missing, and the side of his face looked to have been burned by some sort of acid. He had also been carrying the corpse of another dwarf that was missing the top half of his head, as well as everything inside.

While treating Gorath, the healers had managed to extract a green worm from his head: he survived the treatment, but had been catatonic since.

Design Notes

Nothing new, removed, or changed on the game design front. Didn't get a chance to see if raising the cleric Favor cap to level+WIS is too much (only one fight this session). The characters ending up plowing through the chimera encounter with ease, due to both a string of critical hits and terrible rolling on my end.

Here's the statblock for the chimera:

Chimera
Level 6 Large Beast
XP 32

Ability Scores 
STR +4 DEX +2 WIS +2
CON +3 INT -4 CHA 0

Skills
Athletics +6, Perception +6

Defense
Initiative +2
Speed 20 feet/50 feet
Fort 14 Ref 12 Will 12
Armor 1 (thick hide)
Wounds 38 Vitality 19 Total 57

Offense
Multiattack The chimera makes two claw, a gore, and a venomous bite attack against three different targets (due to its shape, it cannot direct attacks against the same target).
Claws +5 to hit; 1d8+4 damage (1 armor piercing). If the attack roll is 18 or higher, the target is also pinned by the chimera. On its turn, a chimera can deal an automatic 2d6+4 damage (1 armor piercing) against a pinned target.
Gore +5 to hit; 1d8+4 damage (1 armor piercing)
Venomous Bite +5 to hit; 1d6+2 damage; if the target suffers Wound damage, it is also poisoned.

Now I gotta stat out doppelgangers, mimics, and illithids for completely related reasons.

Announcements

If you're curious about Dungeons & Delvers, our other tabletop role-playing game that's in the works (and nearly done), you can find public alpha adventure here.

Throughout the month of May, everything in our DriveThruRPG store is 13% off. If you want something and don't use DriveThru, hit us up and we can work something out. We've also added most of our stuff to Tabletop Library and Payhip.

A Sundered World is out (and also available in dead-tree format)! If you for some reason don't want the entire setting, you can just snag the races and classes.

The Beastmaster is also out, and we're working on a cleric and paladin class next. If there's anything you want/don't want to see in those classes, let us know!

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