S05E12: We Killed Three Suits of Armor and Explored a Room Full of Mist

Presented with a choice between lizardfolk and cultists, the gang decides to explore a room full of mist. Kanye gets scared. Um murders a haunted suit of armor.
After reaching the second floor of the pyramid, the gang finds a group of lizardfolk hyping themselves up to go attack the cultists who recently invaded the floor, killing a bunch of them. However, the siren call of a mysterious room proves irresistible, and the gang explored as much as they could before a stink cloud trap drove them out, stumbling directly into the next room, where they were attacked by haunted suits of armor.
== Background ==
Averlyth, catching Kanye up: “Were you there when we impersonated a god?”
Um: “The first time?”
Long story short, our mission is to find and recover the Forest Psalm (a weapon of mass destruction) before anybody else can get their hands on it. Unfortunately, we are racing someone.
We saw an archaeologist at the University named Kentucky Bourbon (sort of a blaxploitation Indiana Jones) who told us about the journal of Velma the Vaccinated - who was famous for defeating Peter the Perturbed - that detailed the location of Peter’s Pyramid.
Right before we got to Peter’s island, a group arrived before us. Shit’s all fucked up when we get there (wild magic err where) and there are wood elves guarding the pyramid. We then go inside and then there are like mazes and and a chimaera and stuff. Nissa had scouted the entire map as a mist so we know exactly what’s going down.
She had found a room with some cultists, a room with ancient things, a room with lizard folk getting ready to attack the cultists, an old abandoned infirmary, another old abandoned storage room.
We had successfully negotiated with the chimaera blocking us in the room and then went through a portal that materialized us onto the next floor.
== Session ==
— What Nissa comprehended from the Lizardfolk’s room —
It appears that the Lizard folks had been defeated by the cultists recently. They were kicked out of their main room and are now hyping themselves up for attack.
The group immediately decides to egg the lizardfolk on and help them with their fight, but debate whether or not to explore the surroundings first.
=== Entering the Mist-Filled Room ===
To no surprise, everyone's attention is gradually drawn to the room labeled "Mist", which was the room Nissa had gotten the least amount of information about because of all the darkness.Kanye: “I want to kick down the door, surprise the darkness and attack it with advantage.”The group spends the next twenty minutes overthinking how to scientifically test the properties of the mist without taking any damage.Averlyth: “Who would be the fastest at closing a door?”Kanye: “I can close a door real fast!”Carlos: “I don’t think … I’ve ever seen you close a door.”Kanye starts limbering up and doing stretches. Carlos prepares to just open the door himself.Kanye gasps.Averlyth: “What?”Kanye: “If it’s a creature, I can observe it for one minute”Everyone is capable of doing this.Carlos: “Wait, so you’re just looking at it? What are you hitting it with while you’re looking at it?”Carlos opens the door a few inches and a little bit of mist bleeds out of the room, some of it pooling around his foot but not hurting him. As a magic user, he’s able to identify it as a natural mist with an unnatural source, but it dissipates pretty quickly outside the room. Nissa notices it’s definitely magical.
Kanye contemplates tying a rope around Woodhouse’s leg and sending him in. Nissa contemplates tying a rope around Kanye’s leg and sending him in. Kanye contemplates going in with his fiery glaives (and maybe with rope?).
The group briefly forgets why we’re checking out the mist room.
Kanye ties a rope around himself, smacks his Woolley Berserker gloves to make sparks and then charges into the room without checking to see if anyone is holding the rope - he is immediately enveloped and disappears into the wall of fog. The sparks are soon not visible and all of the sounds he's making are muffled.
Kanye is completely lost.
He’s striking sparks as much as he can, but only lighting the mist directly around himself. It starts to throw him into a mild panic, and then he remembers what his mom told him to do when he gets lost and sits down, not crying.
About 30 seconds after we’ve lost contact with Kanye, Carlos calls him on the fartie talkie and asks if he’s all right.Carlos: “You all right, buddy?”Kanye: “I am not okay.”Carlos asks Kanye if he can “hear this”, and then screams at the top of his lungs. Kanye suddenly hears a bloodcurdling scream and announces to the fartie talkie that he is going towards the screams. Then he runs into a wall. He checks for traps.
Kanye asks Carlos to scream again and Carlos starts screaming the song “It’s the end of the world”. Carlos' screams are definitely quieter now. Averlyth decides to just start tugging on the rope Kanye is tied to while Carlos is screaming.
Kanye is tugged along the wall, and then reaches a corner.
Um checks the infirmary just down the hall of the mist room. It appears to be a room where the mad wizard performed experiments on people. Not really much of an infirmary, is it.
=== Nissa Joins Kanye in the Closet ===
Kanye feels around the corner and feels a wall. He checks for traps again and then opens the door - the mist in front of him spills into the room, but the room that he’s looking into is completely unaffected by the mist, and his dark vision works. He sees shelves, surfaces covered in what appears to be primitive religious objects. He tests his berserker claws - sparks fly like expected.
It seems to be a storage room containing items of obvious, if primitive religious significance. Kanye ties the rope to something in the room and tells the group to follow the rope to him. Nissa, with a great deal of faith in Kanye, effortlessly follows the rope to the storage room.
Kanye gives her a high five (low five for Kanye).
Nissa recognizes the items as belonging to the lizardfolk in this area. While not intimately familiar with the items, they seem to be for the ceremonial process of determining a successor. It seems like they have been untouched for years, though well-cared for. Nissa reports back her findings on the fartie talkie and notes that it doesn’t seem related to the forest psalm.
Nissa gets into Kanye’s harness and pulls out her walking stick to see how high the ceilings are. The ceiling in the storage room is normal, but she’s unable to reach the ceiling of the misty room.
Before Kanye and Nissa leave the room, Carlos casts Ray of Frost into the room to see how the mist reacts - the front condenses into snow, and the mist is almost instantly replaced. The spell didn’t provide any visibility.
Carlos does it a couple more times to make a snowball.
2 things in the room catch Kanye’s eye - a giant cloak with black feathers and a mask that was made out of a skull and some feathers. He snags the mask for himself and then the cloak as per Averlyth's request for her goth wardrobe.
Nissa ties her rope in a loop around the other rope and then ties the other end of her rope around Kanye like a dog on a run.
=== Kanye and Nissa Go Spelunking ===
Kanye goes right, follows the wall a little ways, and it again turns a corner. He turns around the corner and then notices the ground is getting harder and harder to walk on - more rubble and stones, and the wall is getting rougher too.
About 15 feet ahead of him he bumps into another wall. He keeps following it, then runs into another wall about 10 -15 feet that way. He follows the wall back out about 10 - 15 feet and then it goes to his left. He follows it and it’s only a few feet wide, and then it recedes away from him.
At this point the group is lost so the DM starts drawing a map.
Kanye keeps going along that wall and then starts running out of rope, so he starts back tracking to the storage. Now he has found a door! Now the group is having trouble figuring out what to do with the rope because the engineers want to optimize a path from Kanye to the entrance.
The DM looks for another marker color for rope.
=== The Stink Cloud ===
Kanye attempts to kick in the door, but it’s big and heavy and resists his efforts. Also the instant he touches the door, there’s an ear-splitting farting noise and a noxious fume spills into the air. Both Kanye and Nissa are incapacitated and retching.
The group outside the mist room hears nothing. Then they hear vomiting on the fartie talkie while Kanye may or may not be attempting to send "puking" in morse code. With superhuman effort, Kanye and Nissa make their way back out into the hallway, gasping for air. Kanye’s pride is a little hit, having to walk away from a door he couldn’t kick down.
The group decides to walk into the “infirmary” next. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything useful. The corners are full of dust and rubble, but the main path through the room is clear; seems like the lizardfolk probably come here on the regular.
=== Animated Armor Attack ===
Um peeks through a shortcut from the infirmary into what appears to be a storage room. There are suits of armors, and a rotting pile of skin and wood. Carlos goes to the pile for a skin scrap for Doctor Snuggleface. Suddenly, there’s a loud clattering, a menacing red light and the suits of armors come to life.
Hearing the noise, Averlyth runs towards the doorway and casts a Guiding Bolt at the armor approaching Carlos - it passes through where the throat would be and hits the wall on the far side, glittering religiously.
Carlos casts spider walk, grabs Doctor Snuggleface under one arm and clambers up the wall, barely avoiding the suits of armor.
Nissa runs into the room and assumes “battle” position on Kanye and casts Bane on all of them, criticizing the quality of the armor - the enemies look a little discouraged and the light dims just a little.
Kanye instructs Woodhouse to play his theme song and then lights up his glaives threateningly. He swings his polearm towards the nearest suit of armor - completely misses - but then nails him with the wooden back end of the polearm and pretends it was on purpose. Kanye’s attack knocks the helmet off. He does not appear blinded.Kanye: “I prepare for my second attack!”Um: “You have a lot of attacks”DM: “This is literally what he is designed to do.”Kanye has great aim for his second attack.Kanye: “Now I will damage him! This time with the sharp end!”Kanye stabs the armor, but doesn’t successfully remove the gauntlet - his goal is to test whether the armor is levitating the sword or relying on the gauntlet to wield it.
Kanye decides to go on a surge and attack some more.Um: “At least you’re on my side.”Kanye starts flailing wildly and does not make any contact with the armor. The light flickers out a bit, something else clanks, but then nothing else happens.
Um joins Carlos on the ceiling.
After getting up to the ceiling, Um fires a crossbow at the helmet of one of the suits of armor, but it glances off.
The suits of armor just barely miss Kanye. Another suit of armor slashes Averlyth. One misses and goes out the hallway - she tries to close the door on it, but the door is very heavy and been propped open for awhile, so it waddles back in.
Averlyth makes her way to the far end of the room and then Blesses the full party, after seeing how effective Nissa’s Bane was.
=== The Gang Forgets How Combat Works ===
Carlos has equipped a laser rifle.Carlos: “So I’m going to attack the guy with a laser rifle”DM: “Okay. … …. ..”Carlos: “Oh, do I have to roll something?”Doctor Snuggleface wiggles as Carlos is taking the shot, throwing his aim off. Fortunately, the laser didn’t hit Nissa or Kanye either. The laser looks pretty cool, it made a pre-recorded sound of the Nintendo duck hunt gun because laser guns are too quiet normally (they were making people uncomfortable so the company added artificial noises in later versions). There’s like a little animation of the dog laughing when Carlos misses.
Nissa starts singing Taylor Swift at the undamaged armor in front of her - it gets visibly shaken (the light turns pink???) and it starts twitching and then it runs away from her - and full tilt at Averlyth.
Kanye, still obsessed with the technicalities of the magical battle armor, goes to rip the arm off himself. He grabs the shoulder, struggles a bit, and then his fingers slip into the armor - he’s able to feel some sort of energy resistance, though there’s no flesh there, and then takes the armor off entirely. There’s now a light-based arm where the removed gauntlet is. Kanye proceeds to swing at the arm of light.Kanye: “I hit! How much damage do I do?”DM: “??You tell me??”Kanye proceeds to spent 5 minutes trying to calculate how many additional attacks he can do, and then he misses anyways
Carlos takes another potshot at an armor and misses.
An armor swings at Kanye and misses - this time he remembers he can Riposte! He rolls a lot of dice successfully and then forgets what he was doing. Now he’s successfully finished off the headless suit of armor in front of him.
The one running after Averlyth takes a swing, but misses. The suit of armor that clambered through the door and takes a swing at Kanye, but misses.
Averlyth backs off from the armor in front of her and shoots off another Guiding Bolt, but it also misses this one. We're doing swell this session.
Carlos sends out a chromatic orb that floats down into the armor before detonating into a majestic storm of lightning. The pieces go flying, and then before the light creature inside can disappear, it jumps onto the ceiling and slashes at Carlos before disappearing.
=== Victory Through Shame ===
Nissa yells at the remaining armor across the room “YOU CAN’T APPRECIATE TAYLOR SWIFT AND ALSO YOUR ARMOR IS BROKEN DOWN AND OH MY GOD AREN’T YOU EMBARRASSED RIGHT NOW”.
The armor is totally ashamed of himself and runs out the hallway sobbing.Kanye: “I mean, these things have all been in the Pyramid for ages, just waiting to be sprung like a trap. Killing them now is like a mercy, right?”DM: “This is a slippery slope, my friend.”Carlos: “I mean, does it count if they’re not people?”Averlyth: “They don’t like Taylor Swift, that doesn’t mean they’re not people.”As everyone is celebrating Nissa scaring the armor away, Um drops from the ceiling and surprise shanks it prison style to death.Carlos: “Jeez, Um, he was leaving.”Category:Episodes