4Ward/FrankenFourth: Age of Worms, Episode 501

Cast

• Humal (level 7 wrathful cambion wizard)
• Corzale (level 7 dwarf war cleric)
• Sumia (level 7 elf rogue/ranger)
• Kuhnja'bi (level 7 human w/ devil-in-the-details fighter)
• Cenric (level 7 human fighter)

Summary

After cleaning out Zyrxog's lair, Humal, Sumia, and Cenric followed Corzale back to the temple she was staying at. Corzale had warned the priests that they'd be coming, divulging that Humal was a necromancer, but was still trustworthy. When they arrived they ran into Kuhnja'bi, had traveled to Dovin in order to participate in the champion's games.

The party rested for the rest of the day (which wasn't nearly enough time for them to recover), and after Corzale made Humal promise not to use Zyrxog's notes to create any mimics, doppelgangers, or associated abominations they headed to the mage's guild in order to get their mundane and magical loot identified.

While Humal's membership granted him a discount, it still cost them hundreds of silver pieces to learn that most of the magical swag was in fact cursed: for starters, one of the books would likely damage the reader's mental faculties merely by glancing at its contents, the reliquary would cause whoever wore it to slowly wither away and die, and the sword would render whoever wielded it a frenzied madman.

Even the dagger that Sumia had obsessed over was cursed, that it was less overt than the rest. As best the diviner could tell, it would randomly afflict whoever carried it with varying degrees of misfortune. It was otherwise much more powerful than a normal dagger, and especially so against divine entities. This did little to deter Sumia; as it was she did not think that her luck could get much worse.

The voodoo doll that looked suspiciously like Corzale was impaled by a number of spine devil quills: Humal removed them, which caused the doll to bleed for a time. The psuedodragon statue was actually a petrified pseudodragon, which Humal paid to have restored. The bronze figurine of a more monstrous than usual griffon was a focus that could be used to summon such a creature, though the diviner warned that it would be hostile; Humal would need to find some means to press it into service.

Once they finished deciding what to keep, sell, and discard, Humal purchased a bag of holding and Sumia picked up a novice's tome on divination so that she could try and learn the basics. They then busied themselves translating Zyrxog's ledger. It detailed items that Zyrxog had sold to various clients, the most recent of which was Loris Raknian, who Kuhnja'bi knew to be a retired gladiator that hosted an annual contest in Dovin's arena.

He had purchased something called the Apostolic Scrolls, which Humal had seen referenced in one of Filge's books. It detailed, among other things, a process to create an ulgurstasta, an undead creature that could devour the living and vomit forth undead.

Design Notes

So, it's a good thing the party didn't try using most of the magic stuff they found in the previous session!

In terms of progressing through adventure content, this was a pretty slow session, but there was a lot of dialogue between characters (especially Corzale and Humal). It was refreshing to see two characters have a heated conversation that both players understood was merely "in character". The player of Corzale later mentioned that if things got too bad, he'd simply have Corzale leave and roll up another character, no biggie.

Maria's character picked up a masterwork weapon, because of course her slayer fighter needs more damage output (at something like 2d6+10 3d6+10 damage per hit he sooo doesn't). Currently, masterwork weapons and armor have one or two "slots", and each masterwork trait requires one or two slots (though even one-slot items are pretty rare, and most craftsmen can't make two-slot items). For example, +1 damage is one slot, and +1 to hit is two.

Speaking of crafting, the octopin flesh that Humal wisely kept allowed him to make a suit of (non-magical) leather armor for Sumia, that hardens when she remains still (because the octopins had a similar ability): mechanically, when she doesn't move on her turn her armor gets increased by 1. This is yet another example of treasure that isn't gold or gems or magic items.

Humal will also be able to use the beholder eyes to make potions, maybe a robe of eyes, or even go through the transmutation books and try inserting one into his forehead, giving him an eye ray ability.

Announcements

If you're curious about FrankenFourth and/or Dungeons & Delvers, you can find public alpha documents here and here respectively.

A Sundered World: Player Fragments, the first supplement for A Sundered World, is finally out!

The Paladin is technically the sixth "core" class we've provided an alternative for. If you interested in an alternate class that isn't merely a half-assed reskin, check it out!

By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book, making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print (which you can now do).