The Count’s Balls

Session 06

TLDR
Important Points
  • We fight the Count’s Rug of Smothering
  • Count Canonbury comes out from within the orb
  • The Count wants to eliminate Bloo, believing them to be a smudge on history

04.03.0347 Evening | Count Canonbury’s Manor, Canonbury, Fusilla

  • Combat time
  • Mage hands tries to lift the rug, the rug swirls up and around and it’s a Rug of Smothering
  • Trembling from the walls we hear loud footsteps, 2 animated armors emerge from the walls
  • The Count is apparently ruining the land the fairies come from
  • Discovered a key with a fish on it
  • In his journal, learned that The Count’s Orb was meant to contain a rift, the Count was a lead researcher
  • He is part of the cult of the fish and needs to meet with other fish bearers
  • Mentions an incident at Crescent Grove where someone broke a seal and a cursed puppet was released (in hindsight, this is Yul)
  • The opening and closing of rifts around Thalanrod caused the Demonic chickens
  • 347 CE - Cave-In was caused by a rift with an unfinished entry
  • Has a list of names, including Astrid von Novis and Frostdir
  • Bloo walks into the mirror, sees a bunch of unfamiliar sights, dies, and comes back in a tortle corpse
Combat with the Rug and 2 Animated Armors but wait there’s more
  • Nim: stabs the armor on the left side of the room, and fucks up the second dagger attack “ah fuck”, and stands there
  • Bloo: Tasha’s Mind Whips Twinned Spells Animated Armor left and the Rug, and then silvery barbs the rug’s saving throw causing it to fail, give Nim advantage, and move back a bit
  • Animated Armor L: bonks Nim
  • Animated Armor R: Bonks Mar, Silvery barbs and causes it to miss, gives advantage to Bugbear, second attack bonks Mar
  • Bugbear: Hunter’s Mark on rug, then shoots the rug with a longbow, straight clean shot
  • Mar: Casts frost fingers at the rug, misty steps 30 feet into the room then runs towards wanda and cosmos (the pixies in the jars that are pink and green)
  • Banana: casts Sacred Flame on the rug, and then moves to stand behind Nim
  • The rug is coiling up a bit
  • Skaga: Whacks Animated Armor R but misses
  • Lyra: casts Firebolt at the rug through the hole that the Bugbear shot, and misses
  • The orb is pulsating and glowing and the colors are shifting radically, dark blues and blacks, in a distant area the bugbear is completely fine, Mar and Skaga feel very debilitating head ache and stun, getting pulled into the orb, Mar is basically up against the orb ^487ae4
    • Loud vvwwwooooooo noise, see a mysterious thing pop out of the orb a tall slender person, straightening a tie, looks over and
    • Mar: “hey what’s up man”
      • Looks around, “hm interesting”
      • This is Count Canonbury (Bugbear confirms it)
        • He’s a living elf
    • Count: “who are all of you”
    • Bugbear: “You know who I am”
    • Count: “Did you let them in?:
    • Bugbear: “I didn’t let them in, I tried to stop them”
    • Count: “you ought to be better at dealing with them”
    • Count: reaches on to belt buckle and clicks a button, hear footsteps running in from hallway, 2 duo drones walking in from behind, the fairies start glowing very brightly
    • Count: pulls out of pocket a small eldritch cannon and throws it on the ground
  • Nim: runs towards the rug and stabs it with a dagger, and then stabs it with the second dagger, the rug shreds and its pieces float to the ground, and then moves between Mar and Banana
    • Count: “that’s a shame, I imported it”
  • Bloo: Attempts to Chill Touch Animated Armor L but missed
  • Count: is hostile towards Banana, Bloo, and Nim, looks suspiciously towards them, sighs, “fine”, cracks his knuckles, his eyes glow, he’s mad, holds a ball of fire over his fingers, and then points three fingers at us ^2f57c6
    • 3 scorching rays, hits Bloo and Banana, Nim casually leans to the side and dodges it
    • The cannon moves closer to Mar
  • Bugbear: Hunter’s Mark on a duo drone, and instantly obliterates one drone with an arrow, and then moves 6 feet towards the room
  • Mar: walk over to Cosmo and Wanda, let them out, point towards the count and say “that’s the person who locked you up” the fairies ignore him, use mage hand to pick up the cannon and point it at the Count
    • Count: “You really think I’d have it fire at myself?”
    • Mar: shrugs
    • Moves towards the pile of stuff in the back right corner of the room
  • Banana: Guiding Bolts on Animated Armor R, stumbles back a bit
  • Skaga: Hits Animated Armor R with Halberd with Smite, Skaga starts glowing and the armor collapses as it starts smoking, then starts marching towards the count, closer to Mar and Cosmo and Wanda
  • Lyra: The Chromatic Orb misses against the duo drone
  • The orb glows, and it pulls us 50 feet towards the orb, and Mar, Skaga, and the Count are smushed against the glass, everyone gets dragged in except Lyra
    • The Count looks a little disoriented
  • Nim: throws the message stone (which tells Seliph our location) at the Count’s head (for one damage) straight in the head
    • The Count: “Gah fuck”
    • The stone shatters and you hear a bjjeeewwww
    • Walks behind Mar and Skaga
    • Mage hands the bag over the orb, and now it looks like a disco ball
  • Bloo: casts Detect Thoughts on the Count, moves back a little bit
    • “I need to eliminate that thing” (referring to Bloo)
    • “I’m going to rectify its entire existence, that smudge on history. A stain, is what you are, blob”
  • The Count: looks angrily at Bloo and Nim, scorn and determination, casts Vortex Warp, teleports Bloo into the back right corner onto a pile of stuff, hear machinery, something whirrs up, and from underneath the spikes, a bunch of spikes shoots up, which Bloo dodges, but now caged in, points at Banana, “you’re next”
  • Bugbear: shoots and missed the duo drone
  • Mar: the pixies look traumatized, their face looks black, don’t respond to conversation, Mar walks around to be by the Count and uses Sword Burst, the glass is sliced and shattered on the side with the Count, but the side with Skaga and Nim are fine, then Misty Steps back to the side without the broken hole in the glass
  • Banana: offers a banana to the fairies, who slowly starts to drift towards Banana, Banana walks towards them to be beside them, they take the banana and hold it together
    • Banana: “Do you like the count?”
    • The fairies shake their heads
    • Guiding bolts The Count who is stunned back, which hurts
    • He’s sweating a bit
  • Skaga: moves over to the fairy, whisper to the fairies and ask them “what happened here, what did the count do” ^b333ee
    • Fairies: “Where are you from?”
    • Skaga: “Came from your land long ago”
    • Fairies: “So you know how it was once beautiful”
    • Skaga: “It’s rather dull here”
    • Fairies: “This man sighs is ruining our lands”
    • Skaga: “Ruining it you say”
    • Fairies: “Yes”
    • Hurls a javelin at the count and hits, impaled his left shoulder with it, see blood pouring out of his arm
    • Count: “I’m wasting my time with you” looks around
  • Lyra: casts Chromatic Orb on the count, she glows purple and sparks fly out of her eyes, and suddenly a giant pressure wave fires towards the count and is knocked over on his back, he coughs up blood (thunder Chromatic Orb) then proceeds to flop on the ground
  • Duo Drone walks up a bit
  • Nim: walks up and stabs him, twirl your knife, “you don’t know the forces you’re playing with”
    • Count: “you don’t know what you’ve unleashed”
    • Count points at banana “you don’t understand what that thing is”
      • Banana: “I’m your mom”
    • Nim points blade at him, knocks him out, then kicks him in the balls
    • The cannon disappears
  • Bloo: Misty steps to the count, gadgets on his belt, arm is still impaled, a couple remote controls on his belt
    • One square, has a dpad, and has 2 buttons, and a switch
    • A potion of healing
    • A broken dagger in a sack, blade was melted
    • A spell scroll
    • Copper plated key that’s slightly rusted
    • Bloo takes the dagger and the spell scroll
      • The dagger is burnt at a very high temp it was likely high level fire spell or he dropped it into lava
      • Dagger has engraving: Draconic
    • Nim takes the potion of healing and the key and the 2 empty flasks
  • Bugbear: shoots the duo drone and instantly obliterates him too
  • Mar: walks over to Bloo, Bloo hands him the Fly spell scroll, walks a bit towards the left armor
  • Banana: goes to Nim and gets 2 empty flasks, and then casts sacred flame on the left armor, then walks up to the body of the Count and gets 4 oz of blood in one flask
  • Skaga: keeps talking to the fairies ^a46d2e
    • Fairies: “These ppl have been entering, ppl have been coming to our realm, ppl from this world, it’s been going on for decades, please help us stop this”
    • Skaga: “And him?”
    • Fairies: “He’s one of the researchers”
    • Skaga: “One of them? Not worth saving is he”
    • Fairies: “He might know some things, there is merit”
    • Fairies: “We can open the banana on our own”
  • Lyra: Chromatic orbs and misses, moves towards the count
  • Nim: picks up the papers and reads them
    • More notes, remnants of the journal, hands papers to Mar and mage hands high fives
The Count’s Journal
  • Full journal across span of 2 years, in short notes a bunch of information about The Count’s Orb
    • Orb wasn’t actually created as an orb, the glass contains a rift, the orb was constructed around the rift
    • Count was lead researcher, became paranoid and distrustful, his wording gets more and more crazy
    • Cryptic things:
      • Fish logo, sketch that matches the red herring crystal
      • Says that it’s not the only one of its kind, he needs to meet up with the other bearers of the fish
      • Mentions an incident a few months back in crescent grove and ruins, notes that there must’ve been an idiot who broke the seal, a cursed puppet that rumors are spreading, but no puppets will reach Fusilla because of distance ^45371e
        • Cursed blood puppet
      • Demonic chickens outrage from a few years back, a bunch of animals were able to talk and talk and sentient like humans, but it’s not magical, rifts were opening and closing ^1a5ec3
        • A rift that happened 2 nights prior, unfinished entry, big shake related to 347 CE - Cave-In
    • 2 names, “Astrid von Novis” (one of the archmages in the counsel, one of the strongest mages in the world), another name, first one is scratched out, says “Frostdir” below it, paired names, diagram of map, northern most part of Fusilla which has a ruin ^c455da
      • A bunch of names that are not recognized
      • Grouped by affiliation
  • Mar goes to go back to armor, and mends it, and gets a suit of armor
  • Bugbear walks over the orb, the sack is not closed, it’s just over the orb
  • Skaga asks the fairies, the orb is one-way portal
  • Bugbear tries to pull the drawstring, pulls really hard and hears a little snap, it appears to be glass but not the orb itself, the glass pedestal broke
    • Picks it up with ease, still glowing like a disco ball
  • Mar investigates the mechanical box in the back left corner of the room, it looks like it has hinges, not a duo drone, fully deactivated, fully devoid of anything that could make it move
  • Mar uses Mage Hand to open the box, it’s a lifeless autognome, a mechanical gnome, but it seems dead, it’s just a machine, it seems like it was once alive, research assistant
  • Bugbear pitches the autognome at Mar and Mar will hit it with the bat, Mar throws the axe, let’s it spin, and then catches it again like a baseball player, and then whacks the autognome with the flat side of the axe, and whacks it perfectly into the spikes
  • Fairies: “just leave us here”, as eating banana
  • Bugbear carries the count marine style, and Nim sticks with Bugbear, Skaga checks in with the fairies, walk towards the mirror, Bloo touches the mirror, feels like being pulled in
  • Skaga Mar and Nim and Lyra and hold the rope tied around Bloo’s waist to prevent falling in
  • Bloo sees a flash of light, see a lot of people Bloo doesn’t recognize, tall strong human man, massive greatsword, short gnome with a wrench sitting on a thing, flash by
    • Bloo walks in a bit more
    • Bloo is on the complete other side of the mirror now but the rope is still taut
    • The party pulls on the rope, and it’s much lighter now, bloo’s body flops out and it’s a corpse
    • Noise from adjacent room, clinks,
    • Something happened to the orb
    • Flash and sound from the other room
    • See a limp kenku body, it doesn’t feel like a corpse, no blood no pulse, like nothing was here from the mirror
    • Hear noise and flash of light from the other room
    • This corpse appears to be dead for a very long long time
  • Mar looks over into the other room, formerly where the orb is there’s a tiny glint, and over where the spikes are there’s a bit of rustling
  • Bugbear slipped past all of the rest of the party and is basically gone now
  • Mar investigates the rustling, Bugbear comes back??? and the count’s body is gone
    • Bugbear investigates the kenku, killed by magical damage
  • Mar approaches cautiously, see something weird blobby ish rustling over to a pile, it’s a green blob, Mar looks at it,
    • Inside the rustling pile of things, and something emerges from the pile, up come a tortle but it’s body is rigid and now more fluid
    • A tortle corpse under the pile of spikes, and now Bloo inhabits a tortle
    • The fairies look at Skaga, “The creature you were with is fine”