"Hey, Meredith! Would it be safer to have an unseen servant touch and carry the book instead of one of us? Or can we just dump it in a bag or sack or wrapped in a bedsheet to get it to somewhere safe enough to figure things out?"
All that babbled as Bell keeps a light touch on Erudisia's arm and sharing a warm 'anchoring touch'.
Meredith is just about to pick the book up when Mage Hand is mentioned, she looks down at her recently endangered hands, " Of course.......what the hell am I doing!"'.
She casts Mage Hand to retrieve the book/music box ignoring the other items for now.
" Do we have a led lined box or a hand vat of acid?"
A spectral, floating hand appears above the drawer, and it turns its palm to face upward toward the bard, spreading its fingers in a ‘What would you have me do’ gesture. At Meredith’s urging, it descends into the inky mist, its fingers fumbling under the book before grasping it and raising it out of the drawer. Meredith, Bell and Erudisia stand back as the inky mist falls away from the mysterious book, though the necrotic blackness still pipes indolently out of its edges.
The tome is a children’s book with a square cover made of wood and copper, each edge of it eighteen inches long. The front bears a faded, hand-painted rendering of a round millstone. The book’s spine is a silver music box – a mechanical curiosity, certainly of gnomish design – heavily dented at one end. The book hovers in the air before you, bobbing slightly in the firm grip of Meredith’s conjuration.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
Erudisia chimes in weakly. “If all else fails, I have a … space for it. Though I might only access it once a day, and if we are wrong and the effect linger while the artifact persists we will be prevented from acting further for far too long. A last resort, if we cannot destroy it?”
The temperature drops again. You each feel blinding rage overwhelming your heart as it did earlier. Somehow, you fight it off this time without succumbing to it. But when the sensation passes — you see each other singing before noticing you are part of it — you are all singing the Shemshime Rhyme, having been rendered unable to concentrate on not singing it for the last minute. You hear the song, too, echoing through the deep underbelly of Candlekeep as the Eternal Chant continues to carry the fateful melody.
Your skin prickles. Your peripheral vision latches with horror on something it doesn’t want to — not in the least.
As you slowly turn to face it, the corner of Crinkle’s room behind you, the black mist rises like a ghoulish nightflower turning upward to face the full moon. With terrible gravity, arms and legs begin to separate from the stem, and an eight foot-tall humanoid figure begins to take shape, a dark nimbus of black mist licking frantically around its edges.
(It is not yet fully formed.)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
With only a desperate last look at her companions faces the invisible Meredith Dashes out of there trying to get out of the building.....and possibly to a forge or some other very hot fire.
Meredith dashes out of the room and down the hallway to the kitchen and then up the spiral staircase at a dead run.
There are no forges, no smithy, nothing so dangerous to books, save the tall crenelated walls hanging over the crashing ocean breakers far below.
Bell and Erudisia, the thing is still being born (or reborn). It is still incorporeal. You have two full rounds before it will fully form. You can post 2 rounds of actions. After you have done so, I will describe what happens when Meredith trips over a child’s toy at the top of the stairs.
(Damian_May please hold until then.)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
Bell takes a calming breath and begins chanting Sacred Flame
A brilliant column of light erupts from the heavens, or in this case, the dark ceiling, and descends with divine fury upon the ethereal foe. The spectral form, a shimmering distortion of darkness and malice, convulses as the holy radiance makes contact. Bell knows it is not a flame of fire, but of pure, white radiance. It burns without heat, a sanctified fire that scours at a spiritual level.
{Save vs Dex 13} or take 3 bloody pts of radiant damage
Bell watches with a keen eye to discern if the sacred fire even works on the solidifying form. What she had hoped may have been wishful thinking versus the reality of the moment.
Erudisia draws on the powers of the storm. The upsets, the turns, the unsettling and panicked events of the evening mean thoughts of tempest and imbalance are easy to find, and even as the Eldritch Blast flies loose, a Gust of Wind follows on its tails, pushing on the incorporeal horror.
To Hit: Nat 20 + 5 == 25 Dmg: 8 (fire) (( double the roll for being a Nat20 )) To Hit: 18 + 5 == 23 Dmg: 7 To Hit: 5 + 5 == 10 Dmg: 6
A trio of crimson-hot rays lance out from Bell's hand, flying true towards the spectral form.
The first ray strikes the dark form's chest, and instead of passing through, it causes the very essence of the spirit to shudder. The sound is a sharp crackle, like a log bursting in a bonfire. The magical flame superheats the incorporeal matter, causing the spectral form to ripple like a heat haze and lose its definition.
The other two rays follow, with at least one ray doing almost as much damage as the first. Each creating new rents in the form's vaporous torso. For a moment, the entity is visible not as a black, spectral figure, but as a writhing mass of superheated spirit-stuff.
Bell’s sacred fire cascades downwards, shimmering uncertainly, as Erudisia’s twisting blast erupts with a deafening clap of thunder and the dark spirit disappears momentarily. But it seems to reconstitute itself almost immediately and continues to grow as soon as the radiance recedes.
But there’s no question that the young wizard’s beams of flame strike the thing and draw red incisions across it, leaving flaming scars. Yet Bell’s arcane training tells her the thing should have been nearly destroyed by her rays. It must be resistant to fire!
The rush of wind which Erudisia’s thunderclap seemed to presage now roars at the spirit like a focused hurricane, but whether it is the creature’s innate strength or because it is still part shadow, it remains where it is. But as it solidifies, it finds itself no longer immune to the whooshing gale and flies backwards, slamming upright into the chamber’s southern wall and pinned there momentarily by the winds answering to the Moonshae Lady’s will.
A voice sounds in both of your heads as the spirit solidifies into an eight foot-tall lanky shadow with evil eyes, white spaces in its seeping blackness.
“I am Shemshime. Long have I waited, trapped in a nameless void. Do you think you can hold me? Listen to what I tell you. You will release me. Your luck has changed, girls.”
Meredith had taken the spiral stairs three at a time, rushing headlong up and away from the solidifying shadow to find a way to destroy the book which seems to have brought it into being. But as she mounts the final stair, Gailby’s bright eyes find Meredith's from across the archive, and the bard fails to notice a rag doll in the shadow of the top step. She steps on it, trips, and slams to the floor. The book, held in front of her, splays open when it hits the ground.
The book has no pages in the typical sense, but when it opens, it reveals a pop-up cutaway illustration. A quaint watermill made of painted panels of wood, tin, canvas, and leather in which three mechanized scenes take place. Each scene features cutout figurines, members of a family, dying in a series of grisly ways as a shadowy figure looks on. The images are as follows:
A mother chops off the feet and ear of her husband with a scythe.
The family dog bites off the mother’s hand.
The son drowns in a river while washing clothes.
And, Meredith notices that there is another panel which seems to be stuck closed.
When it opens, Ebder and Gailby and Little One are drawn closer to see what you Meredith -- and they -- hear. The music box that makes up the spine of the book begins to play, and a tiny gnomish voice sings the song you’ve grown to fear:
See a mother scything wheat Forgotten husband sleeping near With one swing she took his feet With another took his ear
Does the shadow have a name? SHEMSHIME Causes grief, avoids the blame SHEMSHIME
See a dog that knows how to heel Never heeds plea nor command Mother gave it a tasty meal Dog chose instead to eat her hand
Does the shadow have a name? SHEMSHIME Causes grief, avoids the blame SHEMSHIME
See a son doing his chore Washing clothes for folk in town Fell into the river’s roar Sank to the bottom and drowned
Does the shadow have a name? SHEMSHIME Causes grief, avoids the blame SHEMSHIME
This is the rhyme as you have heard it so far. But when the music box gets to this spot, the final pop-up seems to shiver, unable to open, and the music box makes a clicking sound, as if broken. You notice again the dent in the silver music box spine of the book. It seems this damage is keeping the book from playing and revealing the final scene…
Meredith begins the next round on her knees in front of the book where it lies on the floor. Gailby, Ebder and Little One are surrounding the book and looking at her quizzically.
Bell and Erudisia are now facing the shadow that calls itself Shemshime. They may act before it.
Meredith gets to her feet and snatches up the book, thanking the Little God of Dents for small mercies. She wants to get outside...there is a Temple of Oghma in Candlekeep....she runs towards it desperately...
Bell sees that her effort so far has been minimal if not useless. "When in doubt, fireba.... wait, I don't have fireball," she grumbled, "But I DO haveMagic Missile ."
A flicker of light sparked at her fingertips, gathering into a searing point of azure energy. With a flick of her wrist and a whispered word of power, the nascent spell erupted creating three shimmering darts of pure force which hurtled through the gloom with a sound like tearing silk, leaving a coruscating afterimage in the heavy, cold air.
The missiles struck with a sharp crack of displaced air and energy, the magical force impact blooming like a starburst against the ephemeral void. Tendrils of darkness recoiled, hissing as they temporarily evaporated under the bright, artificial energy bursts, before rushing back in to swallow the fading light whole.
"Hey, Meredith! Would it be safer to have an unseen servant touch and carry the book instead of one of us? Or can we just dump it in a bag or sack or wrapped in a bedsheet to get it to somewhere safe enough to figure things out?"
All that babbled as Bell keeps a light touch on Erudisia's arm and sharing a warm 'anchoring touch'.
Meredith is just about to pick the book up when Mage Hand is mentioned, she looks down at her recently endangered hands, " Of course.......what the hell am I doing!"'.
She casts Mage Hand to retrieve the book/music box ignoring the other items for now.
" Do we have a led lined box or a hand vat of acid?"
A spectral, floating hand appears above the drawer, and it turns its palm to face upward toward the bard, spreading its fingers in a ‘What would you have me do’ gesture. At Meredith’s urging, it descends into the inky mist, its fingers fumbling under the book before grasping it and raising it out of the drawer. Meredith, Bell and Erudisia stand back as the inky mist falls away from the mysterious book, though the necrotic blackness still pipes indolently out of its edges.
The tome is a children’s book with a square cover made of wood and copper, each edge of it eighteen inches long. The front bears a faded, hand-painted rendering of a round millstone. The book’s spine is a silver music box – a mechanical curiosity, certainly of gnomish design – heavily dented at one end. The book hovers in the air before you, bobbing slightly in the firm grip of Meredith’s conjuration.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
" Anyone have a handy pool of lava or bottomless void?", Meredith ventured.
" Like anything really..."
Bell
Perception Check: 10
Insight Check: 22
"Why is there a picture of a millstone on the cover? I don't remember any mention of a millstone in the song everyone keeps repeating..."
Erudisia chimes in weakly. “If all else fails, I have a … space for it. Though I might only access it once a day, and if we are wrong and the effect linger while the artifact persists we will be prevented from acting further for far too long. A last resort, if we cannot destroy it?”
The temperature drops again. You each feel blinding rage overwhelming your heart as it did earlier. Somehow, you fight it off this time without succumbing to it. But when the sensation passes — you see each other singing before noticing you are part of it — you are all singing the Shemshime Rhyme, having been rendered unable to concentrate on not singing it for the last minute. You hear the song, too, echoing through the deep underbelly of Candlekeep as the Eternal Chant continues to carry the fateful melody.
Your skin prickles. Your peripheral vision latches with horror on something it doesn’t want to — not in the least.
As you slowly turn to face it, the corner of Crinkle’s room behind you, the black mist rises like a ghoulish nightflower turning upward to face the full moon. With terrible gravity, arms and legs begin to separate from the stem, and an eight foot-tall humanoid figure begins to take shape, a dark nimbus of black mist licking frantically around its edges.
(It is not yet fully formed.)
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
(That 22 tells Bell the answer may be inside the book.)
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Erudisia gasps at this enormous shadow, this horror forming before them, now that Meredith has the book. Some noxious guardian. Sheshime, herself?
Erudisia does not know. Only, it must not be allowed to take the book from them.
She taps Meredith on the arm. “Flee,” she says and casts Invisibility.
With only a desperate last look at her companions faces the invisible Meredith Dashes out of there trying to get out of the building.....and possibly to a forge or some other very hot fire.
Rolls if needed-
Acrobatics- 7
Athletics- 20
Meredith dashes out of the room and down the hallway to the kitchen and then up the spiral staircase at a dead run.
There are no forges, no smithy, nothing so dangerous to books, save the tall crenelated walls hanging over the crashing ocean breakers far below.
Bell and Erudisia, the thing is still being born (or reborn). It is still incorporeal. You have two full rounds before it will fully form. You can post 2 rounds of actions. After you have done so, I will describe what happens when Meredith trips over a child’s toy at the top of the stairs.
(Damian_May please hold until then.)
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Bell takes a calming breath and begins chanting Sacred Flame
A brilliant column of light erupts from the heavens, or in this case, the dark ceiling, and descends with divine fury upon the ethereal foe. The spectral form, a shimmering distortion of darkness and malice, convulses as the holy radiance makes contact. Bell knows it is not a flame of fire, but of pure, white radiance. It burns without heat, a sanctified fire that scours at a spiritual level.
{Save vs Dex 13} or take 3 bloody pts of radiant damage
Bell watches with a keen eye to discern if the sacred fire even works on the solidifying form. What she had hoped may have been wishful thinking versus the reality of the moment.
Perception Check: A bloody 4.
Erudisia draws on the powers of the storm. The upsets, the turns, the unsettling and panicked events of the evening mean thoughts of tempest and imbalance are easy to find, and even as the Eldritch Blast flies loose, a Gust of Wind follows on its tails, pushing on the incorporeal horror.
(Eldritch Blast: Attack - 11. Damage 16 if hits (14 force, 2 thunder))
(Gust of Wind: strength save 14)
Bell can not tell if her attempt at Sacred Flame harmed or hampered the spectral form so she decides it it time to pull out all the stops.
Scorching Ray
To Hit: Nat 20 + 5 == 25 Dmg: 8 (fire) (( double the roll for being a Nat20 ))
To Hit: 18 + 5 == 23 Dmg: 7
To Hit: 5 + 5 == 10 Dmg: 6
A trio of crimson-hot rays lance out from Bell's hand, flying true towards the spectral form.
The first ray strikes the dark form's chest, and instead of passing through, it causes the very essence of the spirit to shudder. The sound is a sharp crackle, like a log bursting in a bonfire. The magical flame superheats the incorporeal matter, causing the spectral form to ripple like a heat haze and lose its definition.
The other two rays follow, with at least one ray doing almost as much damage as the first. Each creating new rents in the form's vaporous torso. For a moment, the entity is visible not as a black, spectral figure, but as a writhing mass of superheated spirit-stuff.
DEX vs. DC13: 6
STR vs. DC14: 7
STR vs. DC14: 19
Editing...
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Bell’s sacred fire cascades downwards, shimmering uncertainly, as Erudisia’s twisting blast erupts with a deafening clap of thunder and the dark spirit disappears momentarily. But it seems to reconstitute itself almost immediately and continues to grow as soon as the radiance recedes.
But there’s no question that the young wizard’s beams of flame strike the thing and draw red incisions across it, leaving flaming scars. Yet Bell’s arcane training tells her the thing should have been nearly destroyed by her rays. It must be resistant to fire!
The rush of wind which Erudisia’s thunderclap seemed to presage now roars at the spirit like a focused hurricane, but whether it is the creature’s innate strength or because it is still part shadow, it remains where it is. But as it solidifies, it finds itself no longer immune to the whooshing gale and flies backwards, slamming upright into the chamber’s southern wall and pinned there momentarily by the winds answering to the Moonshae Lady’s will.
A voice sounds in both of your heads as the spirit solidifies into an eight foot-tall lanky shadow with evil eyes, white spaces in its seeping blackness.
“I am Shemshime. Long have I waited, trapped in a nameless void. Do you think you can hold me? Listen to what I tell you. You will release me. Your luck has changed, girls.”
Meredith had taken the spiral stairs three at a time, rushing headlong up and away from the solidifying shadow to find a way to destroy the book which seems to have brought it into being. But as she mounts the final stair, Gailby’s bright eyes find Meredith's from across the archive, and the bard fails to notice a rag doll in the shadow of the top step. She steps on it, trips, and slams to the floor. The book, held in front of her, splays open when it hits the ground.
The book has no pages in the typical sense, but when it opens, it reveals a pop-up cutaway illustration. A quaint watermill made of painted panels of wood, tin, canvas, and leather in which three mechanized scenes take place. Each scene features cutout figurines, members of a family, dying in a series of grisly ways as a shadowy figure looks on. The images are as follows:
A mother chops off the feet and ear of her husband with a scythe.
The family dog bites off the mother’s hand.
The son drowns in a river while washing clothes.
And, Meredith notices that there is another panel which seems to be stuck closed.
When it opens, Ebder and Gailby and Little One are drawn closer to see what you Meredith -- and they -- hear. The music box that makes up the spine of the book begins to play, and a tiny gnomish voice sings the song you’ve grown to fear:
See a mother scything wheat
Forgotten husband sleeping near
With one swing she took his feet
With another took his ear
Does the shadow have a name?
SHEMSHIME
Causes grief, avoids the blame
SHEMSHIME
See a dog that knows how to heel
Never heeds plea nor command
Mother gave it a tasty meal
Dog chose instead to eat her hand
Does the shadow have a name?
SHEMSHIME
Causes grief, avoids the blame
SHEMSHIME
See a son doing his chore
Washing clothes for folk in town
Fell into the river’s roar
Sank to the bottom and drowned
Does the shadow have a name?
SHEMSHIME
Causes grief, avoids the blame
SHEMSHIME
This is the rhyme as you have heard it so far. But when the music box gets to this spot, the final pop-up seems to shiver, unable to open, and the music box makes a clicking sound, as if broken. You notice again the dent in the silver music box spine of the book. It seems this damage is keeping the book from playing and revealing the final scene…
Meredith begins the next round on her knees in front of the book where it lies on the floor. Gailby, Ebder and Little One are surrounding the book and looking at her quizzically.
Bell and Erudisia are now facing the shadow that calls itself Shemshime. They may act before it.
Please post Round 3 actions
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Meredith gets to her feet and snatches up the book, thanking the Little God of Dents for small mercies. She wants to get outside...there is a Temple of Oghma in Candlekeep....she runs towards it desperately...
Unable to do much more. Another thunderous blast of magic flies at Sheshime’s spectre from Erudisia’s weakened arms.
Attack roll: 20. Damage roll: 10 (8 force, 2 thunder)
(Bell's Magic Missiles: 5 , 4 , 5)
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters