Game Report: The Arcer

With the Traitor’s Lot successfully reforged, Ishtahar felt the pull of the weapon, and the One knew that the longer the artifact was in their house, the more danger they were in. The party decided that it was time to leave, but were kind of hoping that they wouldn’t have to walk.
As luck would have it, the morning they were packing up and saying goodbye to Leroy, they were approached a finely-dressed man who introduced himself as Rasputin Gold and offered them a ride. After some questioning and finding out if he was legit (Rasputin merely asserted that he hoped he would assist them on an errand or two), they decided to take him up on his offer.

It turned out he owned a flying boat called the Arcer, which ran a small crew and was stationed outside. As they walked up to the ship while the captain ran over the finer points of his fine ship, they rounded the corner to find it set upon by a small squadron of air elementals.

The party leapt into action to help defend the ship as the crew members, a small group of bullywogs and some other humanoids, were quickly incapacitated by the elementals. The wizard turns his attention to a rock elemental who was tossing exploding stones into combat and managed to push him off a pier to the sand below. The rest of the party had trouble gaining ground when they were set upon by the cyclones who frequently tossed creatures into the air.
Eventually the party overtook the minions and gained access to the ship, although not without many unfortunate detours upwards. Nari-Kar found herself 20 feet up, but managed to prevent a quick descent by summoning her newly befriended earth mephit familiar directly underneath her feet, a clever trick indeed. They took a long while eating through the elemental’s hit points, but eventually defeated the group.

They set sail shortly after, and was introduced to the crew. Esme, an elf healer, spent a few minutes bringing the slain bullywogs back to life. Rasputin noted that bullywogs were so unnatural that it was easy to take them from death’s door, making for mighty cheap labor. A grumbling deurgar started barking orders at the recently revived bullywogs, and a slim man with ridiculously red hair started hitting on all the female members of the party. Ishtahar felt the need to speak with the bullywogs, only to find them incredibly disgusting. They also discovered that the boat was possessed with an air elemental named Booth who was disliked by his compatriots, explaining the earlier attack.

After sailing for a few hours, they catch a strange sight on the blue desert, a metal man being harried by a group of centaurs. It was Mute, obviously injured, and they quickly jumped off the boat to save him. They seemed to hold their own against the large creatures, able to deflect their massive attacks and stand against their anti-maneuvering abilities. The archers who stood a long ways from the combat were eventually drawn in the warlock, and the large open space proved easy to move in.

After defeating the centaurs, they check on Mute, who seems a little more somber than usual, and offer him a ride to wherever he is going. He accepts, and they continue south towards the Salt City to revisit the warlord’s allies, the Order of Gold.

Lessons Learned: Pretty standard session, a bit of a curfuffle with the maps but otherwise it worked. The crew of the Arcer should be interesting for as long as they remain. I severely nerfed how the crew members acted, as it seemed really unfair to have 10 extra allies in every combat. I also didn’t expect the bullywogs to be given anything but a cursory glance, creatures I could randomly kill whenever I felt the urge, but the warlock’s player interest in them only provided for more comedy, as I handed off the duties of vocalizing the disgusting creatures to the wizard’s player, which lead to a hilarious exchange.