ASE: Session Ten

Date: Lapin 16th-18th
Weather: Overcast

Party:
Cedar (Warrior / Beastmaster)
Cloud Nine (Invoker)
Firion (Warrior / Thought Noble)
Mars (Thought Noble / Healer)
Nanashi (Warrior / Expert)

Cohorts:
Jenny
Raymond (Axebeak)
Rex (Wolf)
Zord (Zard)

Summary:
The party explores the throne room, finding a storage closet to the southeast. Surprise! Balloons drifted down and ambushed them, trying to suck their lifeforce out. Popping the balloons, they search the room and found a worn brochure for DynMat in a coat pocket.
Going north, they encounter giant earwigs, to which they're put to sleep and killed. The party leads the way down the winding halls and find fire beetles scratching on the door. They seemed to want the rotting fish smell from the other side of the door. Cedar and Nanashi pry the door open, finding gaunt, sickly troglodytes on the other side. The beetles immediately rush in to try to eat the trogs, but the party figures that potential allies were worth more than giving bugs a meal.

A fight ensues, and the troglodytes are mostly saved. As the trogs weren't quite in the position to fight the party, they shared their thanks to the party by giving them some information on the dungeon: The level they're on is the Dungeon Highway, they were part of a raiding party from the lower levels, there's a secret passage behind the throne, and they revealed the existence of Under-Miami on level 5. The party leaves the troglodytes to their own devices, the lizard creatures harvesting the fire beetle glands to use in Under-Miami glowsticks.

The party continues to explore, coming across a massive pile of treasure out in the open! Mars, being the convincing sort, makes his cohort Jenny touch it. This causes the treasure mollusk to attack, nearly killing Jenny! Another fight ensues, the mollusk being pelted with arrows and bolts until it keels over. As Jenny considers re-negotiating her contract, everyone else moves onto the next room to check the note on a mummified corpse, seeing something about a skull that can bring people back.

Deciding this was enough for now, they retreat to the surface, only stopping to check the throne passageway before heading back to Chlemsfoldshire. Cedar gets wind of his tribe needing help to stop some poachers, so he leaves the party temporarily. Meanwhile, yet another enterprising soul is eager to join up...

Treasure:
-Two shortswords
-120 sp

Rumors:
-Odd cultists are gathering in the nearby forest
-A hole has opened up in a large oak tree, with a lot of strange things within
-There's a strange bottle being sold with a sandy coastal beach trapped inside
-A few adventurers are planning on raiding a cloud giant's castle for treasure

Crafting:
-Quick-Draw Mechanism for Aria's Sword (Progress: 3/14)
-Hurlant Repair (Progress: 4/7)

Experience:
Aria (lv 3, 7 xp)
Cedar (lv 4, 12 xp)
Celica (lv 3, 6 xp)
Cloud Nine (lv 2, 5 xp)
Firion (lv 2, 3 xp)
Laguna (lv 3, 8 xp)
Mars (lv 1, 1 xp)
Nanashi (lv 1, 1 xp)

My Thoughts: A series of unfortunate happenstances caused this game to be delayed multiple times. I was afraid the spark and momentum would be gone but my players seemed to enjoy it. I'm still worried I'll tire of the game, but it's largely the prepwork I put on myself (as I run on FoundryVTT) that hinders me.