Our party - children of the rulers of the realm - found the Kobolds in the sealed up basements of their family palace as the dying Duke tasked them with reopening things. After a first encounter where the party reopened and defeated the guardians before a masterpiece, the party returns with the Lady of the House while price negotiations for the masterpiece happens. As the Curator and the Lady of the House negotiate the party is pulled aside by one of the junior kobolds. In pidgin draconic they convey that there are kobolds lost in a painting that they need help to recover and the party agrees to help.
After being brought to a painting, a new batch of hallucinogenic fungus spiked pigment is mixed, the mixing stick is passed around for tasting and two painting apprentices begin to freshen up the first of the canvases - a surreal vision of interwoven steps and stairs as inspired by the staircases of M. C. Escher. Within, the party orients by flinging some buttons over the edge, noting the wierd gravity effects within. The sorceror summons a trio of celestial owls, who appear as if painted in the style of the painting. They fly off to scout, one up the stairs ahead, one down the one behind and one out across the central well - who soon ends up spiralling out of control trying to deal with the shifting sense of 'down'.
With the help of the owls report to the celestial speaking sorceror and some good tracking rolls, the party spots and zeroes in on two kobolds frozen in mid motion. They make their way there and with a little help of message spells they prestidigitate a spark to relight the kobolds protective candles, freeing them to move. They all struggle to retrace the steps, feeling their movements grow heavy and stiff as the paint began to dry once more. Successfully back-tracking their path with the aid of the markings they had cunningly left along the way through the stair-labyrinth they escape once more into the real world.
Time without had passed slower than within, so they chose to continue into the second painting while no one had noticed them missing. As the eldest painting assistant hissed at the two rescued apprentices, our party shuffles over to the next painting and prepares to make their way in.
This was a scene of a frozen lake with a prisoner chained to a sled on the far side of the lake and a hole in the ice. Once inside the scene they find the tracks of the kobolds leading out across the ice towards the sled until there is the hole in the ice. Our party decides to hot-foot it around the lake to the sled rather than risking the ice themselves. They stun the prisoner with magic - a painted shell of an exile that repeated the same few phrases again and again. There was some soul searching about whether it may be a real person emprisoned within the painting but they decided not to deal with that now.
Dragging the sled back around the lake, the slid it out onto the ice, using it to spread their weight until the sorceror could get within reach of the hole in the ice. There he spotted two more kobolds frozen in the water beneath the painted surface. Casting another summon monster for a celestial porpoise, he explained the situation and the porpoise shoved each kobold back out of the lake with a few quick shoves before vanishing. The cleric and bard hauled the sled, sorceror and kobolds back in, just ahead of the cracking ice. Ashore they relit the kobolds candles and once again made their way out just as they began to stiffen and slow.
The grateful apprentices provided the party with some information they sought and grudingly promised to help rescue a castle servant they had helped 'escape' into a painting earlier.
Notes on running the zine - this entire session came off one entry from the random encounter table - that some painters apprentices were lost in the paintings after trying hallucinogenic fungus. It also hit a nice weird theme for a Hallowe'en episode which this was at time of playing. I rolled up a few points about paintings the kobolds were trying to counterfeit and chose the two most interesting ones - the stairs as a labyrinth and the lake for the hazard of the ice.
The players liked this session a lot, loved the puzzle elements of trying to figure out what happened to each set of kobolds, find them and then work out how to get them out. The 'paint drying' aspect gave a nice sense of urgency to it and using distinct styles of painting (Eschers orderly 'drawing' style vs a more impressionistic oil painting style for the lake) gave a good sense of something being really different to the norm.
There will probably be one more major focus session from the zine as one of the paintings - "Ward Against Self" by a Pit Fiend - caused a palace servant to request the kobolds 'help him leave' and has ventured into that painting. The Lady of the House covets what the party has designated 'the murderpainting' which is driving significant worry about what will happen if it is purchased and the fact that the party want to hang onto the masterpiece of their famous ancestor which the kobolds have requested in exchange. Whether or not 'the murderpainting' leaves with the kobolds or stays behind, the current plan is for at least one more delve to rescue the lost servant from the pit fiends painting.
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