Since my backup character is not yet scheduled to make an appearance (probably next session), today I helped the DM run things. This included handling party splits, calculating ship damage and the effects thereof, rules adjudications, and running most of the fights (especially as the monsters involved had all been written up by me as part of my Legend of Zelda Bestiary).
If the previous session was The War, this session was The Siege. After the party got back to the ship, they were commanded by the captain to investigate a number of disturbances detected on board. While they weren't looking, Zerin (who had the orb), believing the party couldn't be trusted, teleported out of there, taking the orb with him. At the same time, a disoriented swordsman appeared on this ship (his backup character; Zerin ain't coming back). Shrugging, the party roped him into helping them out.
They headed toward the engine room first: it had been at 30% power when they returned, having sustained damage from last session, but as they watched the gauge it had fallen to 20%. Belowdecks their progress was immediately obstructed by a quarter of flying skulls, which they dispatched very easily. Not so easy to dispatch, however, were a pair of bat-shrouded, scythe-wielding foes and a giant, shadowy eyeball with tentacles. The bat enemies were defeated without overmuch trouble, but the dark eye proved impervious to both swords and spells. Aleistair's spear* was rather effective, but the real fight-ender was Koslov's discovery that bludgeoning attacks were its greatest vulnerability. During the fight, the ship's last engines went offline and it stalled.
*At the player's request, the DM and I helped re-stat Aleistair as a spear-wielding magic-user. We did, however, mess with him a bit: annoyed at the difficulty of actually getting the player's input beyond "make him good," we, while still adhering to what he wanted, turned the character into an extended (har!) penis joke and collection of double entendres. Real mature, I know, but everyone has been highly amused by the fact that he hasn't caught on yet.
Back to the session: When the party reached the engine room, it had been completely wrecked. The engineers stationed there were incapable of working to fix the engines on account of having been cut in half. Some party members stayed behind to try to get at least one engine up and running again while others began scouting the ship. Gerrard, one of the latter, was ambushed multiple times by robed, masked assassins, though he managed to fight them off. Eventually, Gerrard and Aleistair separately reached the heater room (the ship was held aloft by magically heated helium sacs). By the time they did, the heaters too had been destroyed, and five more eye monsters were waiting in the room. Aleistair's magic remained ineffective, and he quickly withdrew. Gerrard got in some lucky hits with his tentacles (don't ask) and managed to kill the beasts.
While Obelix and Koslov continued laboring to get an engine back online, contact had been completely lost with Missinget, who had dealing with troubles at the front of the ship this whole time, and Gerrard used his psionic powers to attempt to repair the heater. Eventually and with great effort, he succeeded. Meanwhile, the ship began to lose altitude at a gradually-increasing rate, a sign that the gas bags were being destroyed. After some 30 (of 50 total) had been lost, the not-Zerin swordsman found the cause: three axe-wielding golems, the same ones who had smashed up the engine and heater, were wading through the helium envelope, destroying sacs as they went. He managed to distract them for a full minute before taking a mortal chop and being left for dead while the constructs went back to work. Gerrard, luckily, reached the scene at this point and still had enough of a psionic reserve to overcome the golems.
This did not, however, mean victory. Of the 50 helium sacs, only 5 remained, and the ship was plummeting toward the ocean at great speed. Exhausting the Air and Fire elemental cores retrieved from the demon ship way back when would be able to restore the envelope if it weren't for the fact that a gigantic hole had been smashed in the side of the ship. Obelix mimicked a shadow conjuration to duplicate a Web spell and beat the 80% odds of failure to plug the whole. Aleistair then (with Obelix's consent) pulled the water from his body (fatally) to create a water elemental which would shield the web from the incoming rush of fire when the elemental cores were blown. They cleared the area, the cores were blown, and the envelope was successfully refilled (not-Zerin, however, was killed in the blast). One engine had been successfully restores by now, and the ship began to pull up.
All this had been occurring in the rear and mid-ship. Other magical battles between the crew and various fiends had been taking place at the prow, which now sported a massive and weighty tree. The party managed to smash through and dislodge it, relieving the ship of much weight.
The ship had been at 10,000 ft when it began to sink. Less than 1,000 feet from the water, it finally leveled out.
The party then swept the ship for survivors. Less than a quarter of all marines and engineers had survived, and only 3 high-ranking crew members could be found. They went looking for Missinget, starting in the library, where they last had contact with her.
DM: Under one of the bookcases--
Me: *starts playing the theme of Aeris*
Aleistair: Oh, fuck no.
Missinget was found dead, her wounds matching weapons such as Aleistar (or his duplicates) might carry. Another Aleistar doppel was found dead nearby with similar wounds, and the seemingly good doppel sported a wound that would match a drow-made dagger, when questioned too closely about it, however, he said, "too clever," and vanished.
An attempt to scry upon Zerin revealed him walking with a man of unfamiliar appearance who quickly noticed and canceled the scrying.
Recap:
Obelix is dead.
Missinget is dead.
Zerin is AWOL, and he took the orb with him.
Zerin's replacement is dead.
The ship is horribly damaged, currently with 10% engine capacity. (Gerrard's private ship is in better condition)
Well over half the crew is dead.
The party's resources are quite drained.
Hopefully they'll find a spot of civilization before long.
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