RECAP: 5th Avengers, 5-24-20

By Tucker

We leave the manor house to seek out the bookseller. As the group leaves the manor house, Geth notices that Culdock seems worried, but then relieved. He asks him what the matter is, but Culdock says everything is fine. They proceed to the library, which turns out to be more of a bookstore.
We arrive at the shop, a three-story building with an old woman named Uza Solips. She claims that inside, there is a beast which she describes as a floating ball with other balls surrounding it, which she says are blinking. She says that it inside and it is after her cat. She wants us to go in after it.
Lauris asks her if she has any books on the Stone of Golorr. She is quite upset at asking and says that we ought to save her cat.

Culdock can hear the sounds of a cat being tormented upstairs. He charges in, with Lauris in tow. They come to a door with the sound of mewing beyond. Culdock barges through, with Lauris, Geth and Jarry behind. In the room is a gazer hovering over a table.

Jarry hits the Gazer with Magic Missile, then Lauris follows up with a sneak attack, cutting one of the Gazer’s eyes off. The cat sounds stop. Jarry sees an eye come around and look directly at him, and a beam of light shoots out of it towards him, while taking a bite at Lauris. The beam of light hits Jarry square on the chest and with a smile he begins to move quite slowly.

Geth Wild Shapes into the form of a lion and charges the gazer. He pounces on it and grabs hold but rolls with it, and bites it for damage. He spins with it and pulls the aberration upside down.

Culdock looks around and sees that the cat is still alive and not injured. He advances and casts Guiding Bolt on the Gazer. It blows a large chunk out of the beholder. Jarry is moving at half of his usual speed. Teetering around in a confused manner, he blasts away another part of it with another round of Magic Missile. Lauris finishes it off with a blow from his rapier, and Geth manages to let go and escape the deflated Gazer body, avoiding becoming trapped beneath it.

Uza comes in and thanks us all and hands Jarry a book. Uza starts cleaning up the place. She says she has heard of the Stone of Golorr but has no books about it. Uza begins asking questions of us about the Stone of Golorr, but we tell her that we will be asking the questions, threaten her cat and then tell her to tell us if she finds the Stone.

We head back to the manor house and spend the rest of the afternoon there. People of various trades are in and out but it’s not nearly as busy as it used to be. When we wake up in the morning, the symbol of the Harpers has been placed in front of the establishment. We head out to the outlying villages to check out the scarecrows. When we arrive, we can see that no one is present. Culdock sees a leathery creature flapping around on top of a building and recognizes it as the same kind of creature from the windmill. Several more swarm out from behind them, and they attack. Lauris casts Booming Blade and swings at one of the imps. Lauris suffers a blow from an imp and Geth follows up with a blow from his scimitar. Culdock casts Spiritual Guardians on the area, and Jarry follows up with Flaming Sphere. He sees the imp jump right into the sphere, and then remembers that Culdock yelled that fire heals imps last encounter.

One of the imps moves to attack Geth, and takes damage from Spiritual Guardians on the way. Lauris swings his rapier at the imp inside the ball of fire, hits, and disengages. The imp hiding in the fire heals some from the fire but loses it immediately upon moving to attack Culdock, hitting him with a claw. Geth casts Call Lightning and produces a bolt of lightning that fried three imps immediately. Culdock swings his warhammer at the last imp, scoring a glancing blow before Jarry hit it with Magic Missile.

As the last one falls, several more imps arrive. Lauris strikes one with a volley of arrows but they don’t seem to do as much damage as he thought they should. Geth strikes two with a lightning bolt that seemed less powerful than perhaps it ought to have been. Culdock casts Guiding Bolt on another. The imps all swarm Culdock, and Jarry connects Magic Missiles to the one closest to him. Combat proceeds like so for a while until only one imp remains, which Lauris skewered with a sneak attack.

The imps, being from another plane of existence, begin to disintegrate into nothingness. We are struck by the fact that there is simply no one around; we were ambushed.

There’s nothing special about the area we are in; it is a nondescript area with no shops and a gathering area. We come across a distraught human. Culdock tells the man not to worry, that he eats scarecrows for lunch. The man appeals to us to help and to talk some sense into our priest.
The man tells us to stick to the path and to avoid the signs of dead animals or crop destruction. Lauris asks for information regarding mage activity in the area, and the man says that they ran a wizard out of town years ago for grave-robbing, but those are just stories they tell their children these days.

Sensing that we are undeterred by his warnings, the man runs away in a panic. For the moment, things seem normal. Heading down the road, something seems off. Culdock and Lauris both sense this, and Geth points to a dead oxen, apparently dead just for the sake of killing it. Culdock, picking up some plants, says they are hay, but Geth can tell that they are just weeds.

After arguing about it, it becomes apparent that there is a jumble of footprints around the ox, and that there is clearly more than one scarecrow.

Jarry set about figuring out how many creatures attacked the ox, and calculated that five creatures killed the animal.

We pitch camp.