Game summary for September 11, 2018, Reign of Winter campaign, Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, for Phoenix Gaming Club. Session included: Erris (Arctic Elf Bloodrager played by Casey Scruggs), Iguruzu Koshin (Human Monk played by Peyton Harmon), Magnus Erlingsson (Human Cleric played by Chris Harmon), and Svala Alehorn (Orc Unchained Barbarian played by Todd Hughes). Game Master for this session was Charles Plemons.
The team spent a few moments healing themselves and then ascended the tower to find the three coffins containing the recuperating Brothers Three. The group tore the boards off the windows and burned them all up in the sun! With the domination broken, they could see out the windows the soldiers to begin coming to themselves and getting confused.
The party then ascended the stairs behind the World Engine and found numerous open nesting dolls with tiny screaming souls within attached via wires to a large nesting doll painted like a matronly woman. The group surmised it is some kind of battery and disconnected it. This caused a prismatic blast throughout the room, searing several of the team with energy. Koshi, holding the doll, suddenly had empathic feels of anger, hope, excitement, and desire to return to the Dancing Hut. An explosion rocked the church, and the team headed downstairs to find the World Engine exploded. They searched the rubble and found several magical items including ring gates and a well of many worlds! For a while, they debated how to move among the soldiers with Rasputin’s slain body. Finally, Greta threw him on the ground and shaved his beard and hair. They had already taken his robes, so he no longer appeared at all the same.
The group used their hats of disguise to go to retrieve Viktor and Anastasia. They found her locked in closet and Viktor dead from a self-inflicted gunshot. The group disguised her as well and walked right out the front gates with other soldiers wandering off. They discovered several of the mystical guardians of the camp inert or dead.
When the team arrived at the Dancing Hut, it went wild with apparent excitement before finally letting them in. Inside, the Coffin Man and Shatha were playing cards. The daemon greeted Anastasia as “honored granddaughter.” Koshi had a strong feeling to go “up”, and the group ascended through a trap door and found themselves in some kind of large ravine filled with mist and a dusting of snow. A warm pool of water surrounded by ferns and trees lie nearby filled with the crashing fall of water from up above, causing numerous rainbows in the misty air. An enormous tree rose up by the falls, and the team approached.
From within the tree, a norn appeared! She introduced herself as Vigliv and claimed to be Baba Yaga’s mentor and ally. She told the team to rescue Baba Yaga and save their world, they must destroy the nesting doll prison in which she is currently imprisoned. She told them they would need to gather Baba Yaga’s fate, power, death, life, and blood. No sooner did she tell them this than an enormous catoblepas attacked from the water!
Koshi stepped up and began wrestling with the beast as the team closed in and hit it with axe and sword. The monster breathed toxic breath across the entire team, but thanks to their ongoing heroes’ feast, none were affected! Koshi pinned the monster to the ground and began squeezing the life out of it as the barrage of blades continued to fall. Quickly, Erris landed a killing blow.
Vigliv re-appeared and instructed Magnus to take a golden thread of fate and wrap it around the doll, dip both in the toxic blood of the beast, and wash them in the water of the pool. Doing so infused Baba Yaga’s fate from the thread into her prison and caused one layer of the nesting doll to fall off! Immediately, the team could all feel the empathic feelings of Baba Yaga, not just the person touching the doll. Her prison had weakened!
