S06E09: The Gang Flirts with Death

## Previously on MCVFD

Last time we spent 3 hours deliberately triggering obvious traps in an unlocked room.

Then, we followed the chanting down a hallway into a chapel, where over 2 dozen exhausted-looking worshippers are seated in pews surrounding a magical glowing podium. One collapses before our eyes, turning horrifically into a black stone like the ones we saw outside.

A sexy Priest with extra arms and the opposite-of-extra eyes stands on a dais at the front, escorted by two Girallon guards retroactively named Moe and Curly. He invites us to join in the chanting; we resist his charm, and have a brief moment to decide what we'd like to do.

## Session

### Pray It By Ear

> **Averlyth**: How ready are people for combat?
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> **Sorith**: I’m all about punching some giralllons
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> **Kanye**: I’m *always* ready.
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Brandishing her clipboard, Nissa takes a meaningful step forward and opens her mouth to speak - suddenly, one of the worshippers is hissing at us to sit down ("Idiots!") and play along.

She pauses, then wordlessly grabs the seat next to him, and pretends to chant.

Kanye crouches in the aisle but tries to make it look like he's sitting. It looks vaguely like he may be doing squats.

> **Kanye**: I want to be coiled… like a spring.
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> **DM**: He’s in power armor, it’s probably like a button.
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Um chooses a pew somewhere as out of the way as possible, in some back corner.

> **Kanye**: Couldn’t Um just like… stealth and disappear?
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> **Um**: It’s not *invisibility*
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> **DM:** I just realized Kanye has probably never seen Um in action
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> **Kanye**: Except for this last time! I was right next to the skeleton and I was REALLY impressed.
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Averlyth takes the seat in front of Nissa in an attempt to block line of sight.

Sorith was already situated at a pew from totally-not-getting-charmed the first time.

With the gang all seated, the hot priest is satisfied and Nissa has an opportunity to chat with our mysterious ally, a gold half-dragon paladin.

The paladin looks visibly relieved at our compliance, and covertly asks who sent us.

Nissa says we’re here to install a murderbot.

Apparently we look like obvious adventurers.

The Paladin tells us he arrived a week ago in a group of 5 (hereby dubbed Drag Pals) to kick the Balor’s ass since that's what Paladins do. Not only did they did NOT succeed, everyone involved was captured - including the Balor - and now this guy is the only one left, as all the others have turned into stone from whatever's going on in this room.

We’ve decided this half dragon Paladin is Liberace Jones Junior. Implying there is a gold dragon somewhere named Liberace Jones Senior.

> **Nissa**: I’m Nissa Atlocke, we are Mulmaster County Volunteer Fire Department, You… will have heard of us. Someday.
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Liberace Jones urges us to help him, as he's weak from chanting non-stop and fears he'll meet the same fate as his former companions if we don't. When we hesitate, he insists he doesn't even care if we're there for "the treasure", he just needs our help.

> **Nissa**: We're looking for a magical item and we don’t know what it is
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> **Liberace Jones**: Have you considered the giant glowing magical shrine?
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> **Nissa**: That’s a good hint, thank god you’re here.
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As Nissa shares intel, Kanye observes the head priest for one minute to better "know his enemy". He learns the priest is less armored and also a pussy.
The rest of the group also takes their time perceiving the surroundings and evaluating their options.

> **Sorith**: Does anyone have any mechanisms for setting things on fire?
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> **Kanye**: I’m glad you asked!
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Averlyth notices the podium looks really weird. The block of strange material glows with an inner light of opalescent blue, it’s covered with more of the weird silver wire and there are jewels and other things attached to it. There also appears to be a flaming whip and a long sword crackling with lightning wired into the podium - both larger than what a normal humanoid would use.

Um carefully identifies all the potential exits, including a door at the far end that likely leads to storage.

Kanye apparently wants lights on the exterior of his suit for reasons.

The group is generally agreed on a dramatic entrance right about now.

### Gorilla Warfare

Averlyth has determined that the best thing to do as the party member with possibly the lowest HP is to walk directly towards the enemy, make them see the whites of her eyes, and cast Lightning Bolt from her Drakeguard bracer.

The two Girallon are promptly bloodied with the full force of the blast.

The priest somehow sees it coming, gets hit with half, and *reveals a resistance to lightning damage*.

Curly, one of the Girallon, comes barreling down the aisle to slam into Averlyth with each of his 4 arms. (Averlyth: "So worth")

All the chanters have suddenly slumped in their pews.

Um runs to the walls and scales the ceiling with his beloved slippers; now in his natural habitat, he fires a fatal crossbolt at the very distracted Curly, who collapses in front of a very grateful cleric.

Sorith approaches the hot priest and spends Qi points to use water whip; the priest is *yet again resistant* to the bludgeoning. Wary of his opponent's unexpected defenses, Sorith maintains patient defense.

Moe, the remaining Girallon, tries to wail upon Sorith - all his claw attacks miss, and his teeth only find air.

Kanye delays his turn to see what Nissa does. He looks at her expectantly.

Nissa tries to roofie the hot priest with Hold Monster, but he just smiles at her charmingly. She's thoroughly charmed.

Kanye points at the hot priest and looks at Nissa for confirmation ("this guy??").

Nissa nods and double points at the hot priest in confirmation ("yes Kanye, that guy").

Kanye does his *absolute* *best* Hulk impression and brutes through the pews, smashing them out of his way as he sprints for the hot priest, using the boosters from his prized power armor for momentum. When he’s close enough, he fully activates the jet pack to launch towards him, grabbing him as he’s flying by, and then smashing him into the wall right behind him.

Kanye had a brief opportunity to choose between smashing the priest into the glowing thing or into the wall. Kanye wisely chooses the wall, crashing into the guy like a freight train and then grappling him upon arrival.

> **DM**: That’s bludgeoning damage, right? You’re hitting him with a fist?
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> **Kanye**: I’m hitting him with me :D
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Kanye is now halfway up the wall with a squashed guy.

> **Kanye**: Now I am going to use him as a weapon
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> **Kanye**: And attack the wall
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> **Kanye**: With him :D
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The gang spends 5 minutes confirming the belt of aggressive grappling is supposed to do piercing damage? Oh turns out it was filed as a short sword somehow.

The priest is still resistant to this damage type.

The priest looks deep into Kanye’s eyes.

He finds himself lost in them.

> **Kanye**: Agh, that’s how I died the first time!
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### Devil's Advocate

Kanye finds the hot priest thoroughly charming. When he suggests that Kanye should let him go and instead go attack the dwarf, Kanye finds himself grinning with delight. Kanye drops him to the floor - he takes some fall damage that he's predictably resistant to - and then turns to face his friends.

Having witnessed Kanye's possession multiple times before, Averlyth attempts to dispel magic - despite her best efforts, Kanye continues to advance on Sorith, perhaps even more menacingly now. Averlyth decides she's had enough time up close and personal with the fight, and runs for the entrance.

Liberace Jones goes for Moe, but doesn’t manage to deal any damage to the remaining Girallon.

Um manages just fine, and Moe's less curly, equally lifeless body hits the ground with a crossbolt in one eye.

Sorith ignores Kanye's unnerving expression to cast Shatter on the hot priest against the back wall - a large noise is now emitting from him, but he again takes half of the damage (though we learn he's NOT resistant to thunder damage!).

The hot priest + Kanye both blow Sorith a synchronized kiss. Sorith stands by with an ever patient defense.

In a strangely familiar move, Nissa attempts to turn the hot priest into a miniature horse. He endures the polymorph attempt, and they blow Nissa a kiss also.

Kanye glides towards Sorith in a T-pose and then fails to grapple him. The priest looks at him in disappointment and instructs Kanye to keep trying. He tries and fails again, crying. (His heart isn't really in it.)

The hot priest looks incredibly irritated. He snaps his fingers, disappears and reappears in the air right next to Kanye.

He leans in, telepathically makes Kanye raise his visor, and then gives him a great big kiss on the mouth. Kanye takes a whopping amount of psychic damage, and his max hit points are reduced by the same amount.

After the teleportation, we can now all see that the hot priests’s true form as an incubus. Sorith has a friend who smoked weed in a limo with incubus once.

Averlyth yells at Kanye that he promised himself to Bane - Kanye immediately snaps out of it, pushing the incubus away. (“Not like this!”)

Kanye pushed him far enough away that Liberace can now blow fire on him, bloodying him (though he is *also* resistant to fire, yada yada).

Um shares with the group that he misheard “Dispel Magic” for the past 2 turns as “The Spell Magic”.

Um's now feeling a little hesitant - girallons were fine, but this new enemy is magical and stuff. He takes aim with his crossbow, looks away and fires.

> **DM**: man that Medusa *fucked* you guys up
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The incubus now has a cross bolt sticking out of his shoulder but it’s still kinda hot somehow.

Sorith punches the hot priest once, he blocks the second one, then he lands the third.

Nissa hasn’t actually gotten up from the pew, she’s just been swinging her legs back and forth as all the action went by. She decides it’s horn time, scurries up in front of Sorith, and takes happy aim at the hottie.

> **Nissa**: KANYE! EAR MUFFS!
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Kanye hears the command, looks at the business end of the horn, and then goes the fastest perpendicular direction out of the horn's cone of influence. The hot incubus slashes at him on the way out.

Nissa blows her horn in the chapel, deafening the incubus and dealing 9 Thunder damage. He staggers back, looking super distracted. The horn does NOT explode on her.

Seeing our target close to death, Kanye fires a laser from his power armor.

> **Kanye**: You told me you loved me!!!!!
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Kanye remembers to track the second charge used and does NOT pay with blood, no matter how much his suit creepily prompts him for it. He suddenly needs Woodhouse’s help on how on earth he’s supposed to make a ranged attack. Then he asks his computer (who is now referring to him as bloodbag?) how to use a superiority die. He totally hits dat ass.

> **DM**: The hot priest falls to the floor, he’s now a smoking hot priest.
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Liberace Jones drops to a knee, totally drained. A bloodied Averlyth casts a prayer to heal herself, the paladin, and 4 of the worshippers that look closest to death.

The group suddenly realizes we’ve made quite a lot of noise, between the shatter and the lightning bolt and the horn. It also won't take long before other workers in the Temple of Doom construction site may realize the ever present chanting has finally stopped.

Averlyth casts Thaumaturgy to amplify her own voice so she can chant at the hallway to buy the group some time. She does so very convincingly, as she’s heard quite a lot of the specific chanting while we were here, and there's no way this is the first time she's droned on for hours.

Kanye checks for loot, in case that incubus was hiding something in his extremely tight pants. He’s reasonably confident there's nothing of value.

Um goes to investigate the strange podium.

### Deft At The Altar

Looking around the thing - though no master of technomancy - Um recognizes some of the style. The strange silver wiring we saw before is wrapped around the block of material the podium is made out of. Entwined in the silver wire are a lot of bits that just look decorative, but also 3 gems that he believes are components of the Infernal Machine. He could probably work them out of the wire using thieves tools given his dexterity.

Also worked into the wires around the podiums are 2 oversized weapons, one of which is a flaming whip and the other is a massive longsword crackling with electricity. They are obviously magic weapons, and the whole thing feels oddly like a trap.

Kanye also gives the glowing thing an ocular patdown. It is definitely glowing blue.

Nissa reaches into her pack and puts a gold star on Kanye’s chest for not touching the glowing thing. Kanye celebrates with a mystery drink that turns out to be Surge, made from his sweat.

> **Kanye**: Qwalish you beautiful bastard, you did it again.
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Nissa thinks back to what she researched on the Tomb of Horrors. There’s a lot of famous stuff associated with it - most famously, Asaract the lich’s jeweled skull, which is a magic item that contains his essence, but she’s never heard of a glowing blue podium or a demon chained to a wall. So either things have changed or these things *will* change by the future.

Kanye points at the hot priests dead body and looks at Averlyth for confirmation ("this guy???").

Averlyth sorta confirms ("sure, that guy??").

Kanye picks up the guy and hucks him at the podium without warning Um or Nissa. (Nissa pulls Averlyth aside later to have a discussion about not encouraging him.)

> **DM**: Give me a dexterity check.
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> **Kanye**: I’d like to throw him in an athletic way?
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The corpse flails through the air and collides with the podium, nearly knocking it over. All of a sudden, a bolt of lightning erupts from the sword. Nissa, somewhat experienced with listening to suspicious Kanye noises in the background, jumps out of the way. Um, lost in thought trying to identify how to extract the gems without triggering the trap, gets hit by the trap. The incubus corpse is even smokier and it smells like bacon.

Nissa reaches over and scritches off the gold star.

Um is now very confident this is trapped.

Looking closer, Um recognizes the trap is rigged up to affect anyone that attempts to remove the weapons or the components.

Kanye is very healthy at his reduced maximum hp and TOTALLY not bloodied.

He approaches the dais, announces it loudly this time, and everyone stands back.

> **Kanye**: Everyone remember me! I’m not one for speeches, but I prepared a speech.
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Miraculously, Kanye has sleight of hand from when he was a performing street magician at underground rap battles, and apparently this is all on the wiki?

Kaney carefully waits for the “Do you want to use Blood for this?” dialog to pop up so he can deliberately click “no” to use a charge for the force field. During his speech (which includes an effusive apology for his actions), Nissa walks over and pats Kanye on the back to give him advantage on dexterity.

Liberace is asking Woodhouse if Kanye is always like this. Kanye announces himself as Kanye Cantaliber.

Kanye is going up for a gem and Um hasn’t actually had time to tell anyone that there are fake gems in there.

With completely unearned confidence, Kanye’s fingers snake out and deftly pluck a gem from the wires. He walks back to the group to gift it to Um as an apology.

Um can tell it’s not one of the real gems. Um pats him somewhere reachable and goes “you keep that one buddy”.

Averlyth casts Blessing of the Trickster for Um’s attempt to get a legitimate gem from the podium. He reaches in and plucks one effortlessly.

> **Um**: Please clap
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Kanye, with absolutely not enough knowledge to derive whether or not he’s plucking one of the legitimate gems, deftly extracts yet another gem. He is exceedingly confident this time.

Um informs him it is not a real gem.

Kanye does his best Um thinking impression while inspecting the remaining gems on the podium.

Um effortlessly reaches in and extracts another component. He looks at Kanye again.

Kanye goes for round three; this time, he successfully plucks the last component of the Infernal Machine.

Um pats him somewhere reachable again and says “Good boy”. Then Um takes the gem and puts each of them in a separate small baggy, and then gives them to Nissa because she knows things. Nissa decides to carry all three in the adorable baggies.

Kanye goes for another knowingly fake gem so that he’s able to have 3 fake gems in adorable baggies as a precaution.

A bolt of lightning removes his force field, though he does successfully acquire a third gem for a doppleganger set.

He puts the gems in his power armor, in the various pockets that have apparently been canonically established and already contain a lot of Nissa's belongings.

Kanye, planning to take everything that’s not nailed down, happily uses his current blessed dexterity to extract both the oversized lightning imbued long sword and the flaming whip. Kanye now has 2 giant weapons to use when he next casts Titantic Growth on himself. Also Nissa calls dips on the whip on Satura’s behalf because of historical reasons.

Averlyth continues to chant with the infinitely refreshable Thaumatury cantrip to allow the group to take a long rest. Then, Nissa casts Minor Illusion herself to allow Averlyth to meditate in a trance for 4 hours, and get the same effects.

Next time, the group is dealing with the moral quandary of what to do with the side quests we didn’t finish for people that have been dead for awhile in our timeline.