This session was one of the unique ones in our group’s history, because it was one of the few where there was no combat at all. That’s not to say nothing happened; on the contrary, some very interesting things happened. But there was no fighting, or more accurately, no ‘action’ sequences.
The session began with Brakken falling a really, really, dang long way, before SPLAT! But this is D&D, so after everything had gone black, there came a voice. “You really think you can just walk away?”
Brakken’s vision returned as he was picked up by the throat by a nine-foot-tall minotaur construct being, who basically berated him for being an insolent coward and cursed him to suffer in life until he had redeemed himself. In swearing this curse, he revealed himself to be Brakken’s ‘patron’, Adamantine, seemingly the god that chose him for this grand, important task the party has been undertaking. And then he slammed Brakken into a cliff face and everything went black again.
The following morning, Monk woke up and went up on deck to find it conspicuously empty. And then Brakken, in a somewhat confused state, joined him, and that’s when the party discovered that he was now a soul cursed to remain trapped in an empty suit of armour – literally a hollow knight. Needless to say, he did not take this well. But even worse, when he explained what he had done to cause this to happen, Monk wasn’t even angry, he was just disappointed that Brakken hadn’t tried speaking to him first.
The rest of the session was actually downtime, because the party had three and a half days of travel to their next destination and they rolled well enough on their random encounters to not run into anything. But they definitely made the most of that time. Without going into too too much detail…
Brakken spent some time getting used to his new body and, upon discovering that one of the side effects of it is the inability to sleep, started to learn some new skills, primarily smithing with Mortimer as his teacher. He also helped Mortimer, along with Monk, with a project that turned into a pretty awesome sequence.
When Brakken took his long dive, he took the axe he forged alongside Purphoros with him. So with that being gone, all he had access to was an adamantine greatsword that the party got off of the half-orc they defeated in the wrecked train. Considering this, Brakken asked Mortimer if he could imbue it with some arcanite to ‘magic it up’.
However, with no proper forge, Mortimer wasn’t sure he could do anything for him. Except, that’s when Monk came to the rescue. With his affinity to fire, Monk tried to focus to see if his attacks could cause enough fire damage that, over time, he could heat the metal. What he found instead was that he was able to channel his Ki into intense heat, thereby heating the metal into a workable state.
So, the three members of the party crowded into Mortimer’s little workshop on the airship and reforged the sword into an arcanite-empowered greataxe, which Brakken subsequently named ‘Godslayer’ (he was still feeling pretty bitter about the whole hollow knight thing). I have to admit, it was a really awesome moment, with the three of them working together (and, generally, rolling really well – believe me when I say, the axe turned out quite good).
Mortimer spent the rest of his time building Monk a new, mithral hand to replace his missing one. He designed it with an extra special feature: a one-use, electrically-charged metal spike that could be fired out of the palm before requiring reloading. Pretty cool.
Finally, Monk. Monk spent most of his time on the ship helping Mortimer and training, and having a nice chat with Brakken every evening. But there was one other significant moment.
Monk spent quite a bit of time meditating, as is his wont, but in light of the increasing power he seems to be attaining, he had a particular goal in mind while doing so. And he succeeded in his goal, as he found himself back at the obsidian tree with the lady with fire hair. He asked her about himself, and she basically said that the changes were caused by him embracing his fate, and the fire within him awakening as a result.
So, plenty of things seem to be happening with the party.
The session finally ended at the end of the journey, when, after a day or so of flying over the sea, the airship touched down on the beach of a tropical island that appears to be the location of the next shard.
What’s going to happen next? The island is densely packed with jungle, so it looks like next week’s session will be brought to you by the colour green. But where is the shard? What challenges will the party face along the way? Will Brakken ever redeem himself? Will his new axe earn its name? Tune in next week for the answer to at least, like, one of those questions. Maybe two.