so now that I’ve given this blog a lil context on who Eska even is lmaooo: we wrapped up the second arc of the campaign last session, and BOY DID WE DO IT WITH A BANG:
After rescuing the Jormun Arakosh from the temple of Umberlee, we had all headed under the sea to put a stop to this “something is raising hordes of undead pirate ghosts” problem. Discovering that the Jormun, who live underwater and all, were being hit by the problem 10x worse, Arakosh decided to come with us to keep more of their people from getting absolutely fuckign shredded.
We made our way through the perilous deep-sea cavern that was the source of the problem in true Sonata Form fashion: with Cash stealing every single bit of loot possible for himself and Eska having a claustrophobia-induced panic attack when their shell got stuck in a narrow stone crevice
but also with a lot of avoiding having to kill things through Eska’s Calm Emotions and Arakosh’s knowledge of the local fishy wildlife. Eska continues to be really really grateful that the party is willing to give their whole “avoid killing a thing for defending its territory/just trying to live its life” thing a chance, this party is so good
So for the most part, we’re still pretty intact and good to go on spell slots by the time we hit the endboss chamber: the wreck of a ship, where the body of Munin (the missing Jormun leader) and the trident that’s an important relic of her people lie fallen. Arakosh rushes over to her (and Eska comes the fuck with them because FINAL BOSS SENSES TINGLING DON’T STRAND THE CLERIC NEXT TO WHATEVER’S GONNA POP OUT), and.... nothing pops out
Rather, the trident starts to glow, and Munin’s decomposing 14-foot-tall corpse rises, ready to KICK OUR SHIT
And kick our shit, it does. Eska starts off with a Stunning Strike and uses that moment to take the trident from Munin, and Eustace hits her body with a Dispel Magic. For a moment, she falls, and we’ve all got our pretty clear proof that “oh, hm, okay, something is magically puppeting her, wonder if it has anything to do with this big glowy trident,” buuuut IT AIN’T THAT EASY FAM
The trident gets its own legendary actions, you see
So it simply recasts whatever it’s using to raise Munin, then summons itself back into her hand. Since she’s no longer stunned, she lets us know what she can do: about 3d8+9 damage per attack
She lets us know this by IMPALING OUR ROGUE A LITTLE BIT, y’know, as one does
Cash takes 23 HP of damage, and Eska, who heals by losing their own HP, has 23 HP left
Meanwhile, Synn, being a gnoll, has been in combat for like three rounds, and thus starts making Wisdom saving throws. She fails, which means she goes absolutely berserk AND IS ABOUT TO START THRASHING THE PARTY’S SHIT WITH MUNIN AND THE TRIDENT TOO
So here’s how Eska’s turn goes down:
They’re an unarmed fighter, so they can’t really do damage to the trident itself and stop it that way. They also realize that hitting Munin is pretty useless, because we’ve witnessed the trident can just animate her corpse all over again. They also also cannot tank by keeping Munin stuck engaged with them, because one of the legendary actions she can do each turn is a free Disengage
but they can still heal, at least, as long as they’ve got that one last ki point in their tank
So they swim up to Cash, pull the trident out of his chest, and heal him for 22 HP, knocking themself down to 1 hit point. They’ve got the trident in their big scaly mitt again, but they know it can just poof itself right back into Munin’s hand if they just sit there doing nothing with it. This thing can do a LOT of damage, both it and Munin still look like they’ve got plenty of juice, and that’s all without factoring in the 2d12+10 or so of damage per round that Synn is about to unleash on us
shit’s fucked
so eska
tries to shove the trident
into their bag of holding
It actively resists, so we make it a Strength contest. Fork rolls a 23, ESKA ROLLS A 24. THEY DO IT. THEY PUT A FORK IN A BAG. DM sits in stunned silence for a second, then goes “uh, let me check something real quick”
“...so it turns out that the inside of a bag of holding is a different plane”
“and it can’t use its magic across planes”
“so uh Munin’s body falls limp once more”
AND WE’VE SOLVED HER DEAD FISH PUZZLE
unfortunately, we have not solved the “our ranger wants to kill us” puzzle, Eska is still at 1 HP, and is entirely out of ki. They can’t Calm Emotions this away, they fail an attempt at grappling Synn, Eustace fails a Persuasion roll to chill her down, the rest of the party is ready to kill her
And Eustace’s violin, which has been previously established to be sentient and capable of magic WAY beyond our level, pipes up with a Command with an insanely high DC, and forces Synn to calm down before shit goes full PVP.
Said god-violin then teleports us out of the dungeon with Munin’s body and directly in front of the Jormun throne room, where Eska tries very very hard to tactfully explain to the current acting leader that uh. “hey so your cherished important relic is the thing responsible for wiping out half your city and it was also trying to Weekend at Bernie’s your mom’s corpse into killing us”
Discussions are had. We figure this trident is one of those Sentient And Very Dangerous relics our sponsor is sending us to find, the Jormun leader wisely does not want to risk pulling the trident back out and getting the undead up in their shit all over again, and it’s eventually decided that we’ll bring the fork back with us to the Marquess (our sponsor), in hopes that it can be calmed, sealed, or barring that... destroyed?
but for now, we recover, because our ranger and bard are both Cutscene Unconscious, funerary rites must be prepared for Munin, Arakosh has to decide what they want to do from there, and the whole party’s prrrrobably due for a meeting on the whole “if we hadn’t been THIS lucky about neutralizing the boss and the NPC-violin chilling her out, then Synn could have gotten all of us killed” dilemma
Hello, readers, and welcome to our final week of the season! To celebrate, we’ll be sharing Famous Finales all week long, and I’m up first! I hope you’ll forgive me for going very nostaglic here... I spent the afternoon yesterday celebrating the end of the year with my Opera Workshop teens, and we found ourselves watching old videos, including some from the very first year of our workshop, when they learned the second act of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, including this epic finale. This piece is close to my heart, and always such a revelation for young singers, especially. Though I know this piece inside and out, it never fails to show me something new every time.
We hope you’ll enjoy the week! Much more to come! - Melinda Beasi
so now that the school year’s almost over (and ib with it lmao), i finally feel comfortable posting this! i wrote a fugue for flute, bb clarinet, and bassoon; the fun part is that it’s also in sonata form :3c most of it is in 3/4, but part of the development happens to be in 5/4, lmao. it’s actually in mixolydian as the tonic bc sometimes you just gotta write in mixolydian
since ib requires a live recording, i was really lucky to be able to get some people from my school’s band to play it, including the lovely @littleclementine on flute!! thanks for making it sound great <3
