The Copper Piece Gang

D&D Session Summary

This session picked up in the upper library levels of the citadel, with the party trying to move on after exhausting the obvious clues in the books above. What should have been a cautious transition into the next room immediately turned into one of the strangest scenes the campaign had produced so far. A sudden blast hit Zarnak and Rae from behind and drove them into a chamber dominated by a bizarre machine: gold and blue, surrounded by pulsing floating orbs, wrapped in cold mist, and alive with gears and arcane motion. Two humanoid constructs stood beside it in the process of thawing out, each still clutching books and scrolls.

The party reacted with exactly the kind of practical nonsense that had started to define them. Before the constructs fully came online, Zarnak and another party member tied them up. Rae quickly recognized that the machine was power-cycling and could be manipulated through arcane means, while Nucky used his barp to meddle with the blaring siren tone. The constructs did not speak, but one of them clearly tried to communicate through gestures. Rather than simply destroy it, the party took the risk of untying one construct and following where it wanted to go.

Then everything broke loose at once. Nucky tried to leap the chasm to help and came up short, ending up dangling. Krovuur rushed to help but initially ran to the wrong side because he could not see exactly where Nucky was. Meanwhile, Rae made the dangerous choice to interfere directly with the machine by driving his dagger toward it in hopes of changing its destination or interrupting the cycle. Instead of neatly shutting anything down, he triggered something far worse.

Rae and Zarnak were hurled seventy-five thousand years into the future.

The description of that future was brief and terrifying. The upper layers of the citadel were gone. Green flames burned through a dead ruin. Strange life forms moved through the wreckage, some noticing the intruders and some ignoring them. Telepathic entities demanded surrender of the device and ordered cranial cessation, which made it clear the party had landed in a time when the machine, or things like it, still mattered to something alien and hostile. Rae tried to play dead, then tried to survive mentally when one of the entities pushed into his mind. He endured it, but not cleanly. The encounter left a permanent mark on him, and his hair turned a gray-white shade from the shock and psychic damage.

Back in the present, the rest of the party was not exactly having an easier time. The floor collapsed during the scramble to recover Nucky, and the Ring of Feather Fall kept the situation from becoming fatal, though not from becoming worse. The collapse dumped part of the party onto a lower level occupied by trolls. Krovuur jumped down into the mess with them, which was brave in theory and disastrous in practice, because the strange influence already affecting him flared again. Instead of being a reliable ally, Krovuur repeatedly fell into bouts of murderous magical instability and started blasting friend and foe alike.

That lower-floor fight became a chaotic knot of bad luck, domination effects, troll pressure, and accidental party damage. Nucky and another ally ended up under hostile influence as well, creating a brief but dangerous stretch where the party’s biggest threat was not only the trolls but each other. Rae and Zarnak eventually returned from the future jump, uncertain at first whether they had even made it back to the right time because everything looked still and empty.

From there, the session delivered several memorable action beats in quick succession. Zarnak spotted a strange hazy creature moving across the widened chasm and went after it aggressively, including a leap that caused still more structural collapse. Goblin Preparedness came back in one of the funniest and most useful ways possible when the party justified a slip and opening against the hazy enemy with a banana peel, setting up a sneak attack. Zarnak and the creature plunged seventy feet, with Zarnak taking the hit in the most rogue way possible and surviving it. Rae wall-ran down with Quickling Stride to rejoin the fight.

The party slowly regained control. Krovuur had at least one huge turn where, after a tense setup and some reroll-fueled recovery, he managed to land an attack sequence that dazed and dropped enemies prone. Nucky contributed with healing and banished one enemy to the Feywild. The hazy, mind-affecting creature eventually retreated after creating more trouble with floating stone attacks, and the trolls were beaten back enough to force a change in tempo.

That was when the real problem surfaced. One of the trolls ran off to get reinforcements.

The party was badly hurt, low on resources, and not in any shape for a leisurely search. They squeezed out an emergency short rest and relied on the goblin’s crude map of the floor. Naturally, they still ended up running the trapped corridor.

Before that, they did try to be clever. They checked doors, picked weak locks, discovered barred passages, and considered several alternatives. One of the best ideas of the session came when the party decided to rip doors from their hinges and carry them like improvised tower shields. With doors raised as cover, they advanced down the center of the corridor hoping to outlast whatever the arrow slits were designed to throw at them.

The corridor trap went off exactly as badly as it should have. Green poison gas poured from the ceiling, bars slammed down, and arrows began hammering into the makeshift shields. On the far side, ogrekin appeared and moved to cut the party off. What followed was a running fight inside a kill box, with the party trying to avoid choking in the gas, absorb the arrow fire, and keep the melee threat from pinning them in place.

Eventually they pushed into a nearby lair-like room tied to the troll defenders. Once the party realized nobody was currently occupying the advantageous overlook, the tone shifted from run for your lives to hold this ground and make them pay for coming through. The session ended with the party bruised, bloodied, and still improvising, but now setting an ambush.

Quick Recap

• The party entered a chamber with a strange blue-and-gold machine and two thawing humanoid constructs.
• They tied up the constructs, tried to communicate with them, and realized the machine was power-cycling through arcane energy.
• Nucky used his barp to interfere with the alarm while Rae tried to manipulate the machine directly.
• Rae and Zarnak were thrown 75,000 years into the future and saw a ruined citadel, green fire, and hostile telepathic entities.
• Rae survived a mental assault from those future beings, but the experience permanently turned his hair gray-white.
• Back in the present, a floor collapse dropped part of the party to a lower level with trolls, and the Ring of Feather Fall saved them from worse.
• Krovuur repeatedly lost control and blasted allies as well as enemies, making the lower-level fight chaotic and dangerous.
• Zarnak used Goblin Preparedness in a ridiculous but effective way to help against a hazy mind-affecting enemy, then survived a seventy-foot plunge.
• Rae used Quickling Stride to wall-run down and rejoin the fight in style.
• The party stabilized the situation, banished one enemy to the Feywild, and forced a troll to run for reinforcements.
• They ripped doors off their hinges and used them as mobile shields while running a trapped corridor full of poison gas, arrow slits, and ogrekin.
• The session ended with the group setting up an ambush and planning to reset the trap before reinforcements arrived.