Kingmaker: Sound of a Thousand Screams, Session 15, Part 3

The final confrontation with Queen Nyrissa continued!

Falling Action

After re-attaching her severed head, Nyrissa re-upped her displacement with Quicken Spell, then sucked the breath out of Satampra the swashbuckler with a Persistent suffocation. He failed one of the saving throws and started choking; he would drop to 0 hit points on his next turn, and then would have to keep making saves to stay alive!

Aakif the arcanist came to the rescue with a greater dispel magic, cast to affect an area instead of a single person. In doing so he hoped to both strip away more of the Queen’s wards, free Orseen the gnoll warpriest from the effects of her euphoric tranquility, and stop the suffocation from affecting the Emperor. The wizard rolled poorly, but had a 20 “banked” via Prescience, and used that to save the swashbuckler from an(other) untimely death. Aakif then shifted to his backup plan for Orseen, which was to fire off a barrage of Quickened magic missiles, aiming one at the warpriest (any damage broke tranquility for a round) and the rest at the faerie queen (who was immune thanks to shield).

As part of the lair action, the summoned storm giant and mire worm attacks the PCs, and then the Green Lady forced a “forgotten time” to overwrite the area. Walls crumbled or became whole or changed material entirely, and the general environs re-arranged themselves to conform to some other reality. The Queen chose a time where she was positioned near the front door of the sanctum, the PCs were at the far end, and the giant and worm blocked their path to her. As part of this action, the players each got to choose to regain a cast spell or used spell slot, or to heal 30 hit points.

Orseen, able to act for a brief moment and eternally trying to recreate the one time he cast dispel magic and saved the day, attempted to dispel the summoned mire worm. And it worked! As the worm was pulled back to whence it came, the gnoll surged forward to get within striking distance of Nyrissa, suffering a blow from the storm giant along the way. Seeing how effective Orseen’s prayer was, Kwin the dwarven cleric decided that the warpriest had the right idea, and promptly used an area-effect greater dispel to banish the storm giant, leaving the Green Lady without any bodyguards! Unfortunately, the dispel also managed to remove the mass fly spell on the PCs, reducing their mobility by a good amount.

After recovering his breath and overcoming his confusion as to how he had suddenly ended up standing near the throne, Satampra ran forward and leapt atop the pedestal that held the large crystal bottle. The bottle was, the party strongly suspected, the intended prison for the Stolen Lands should the Queen’s ritual be completed. The swashbuckler savagely kicked the bottle into the air, and it shot across the room and shattered against a wall!

The Green Lady healed herself, and attempted a Quickened suggestion on Briar’s bearer, asking the swashbuckler to take his rightful place upon the throne and to remain there. Despite the stoke to his ego, Satampra made that particular saving throw. Another greater dispel magic from Aakif took down Nyrissa’s shield spell, and another Quickened magic missile targeted both Orseen (again upsetting his tranquility) and the Queen (who was no longer protected against the attack).

An increasingly desperate Nyrissa summoned an air elemental with the lair action, which promptly caught up the dwarf in a whirlwind. But Kwin merely used his Dimensional Hop domain ability to teleport out of the entrapping winds, and spoke a prayer of break enchantment to the warpriest, which shattered the euphoric tranquility once and for all.

The melee machines were pressing in upon the Queen now! She cast a Quickened shield and unleashed a firestorm that swept the room, though only Orseen failed the saving throw. Aakif used the Dimensional Slide exploit to suddenly appear behind her, cast Quickened true strike, and then Otto’s irresistible dance. Nyrissa made the saving throw but would still be forced to dance for a round.

Luckily for her, it was time for the lair action, and the dancing queen chose another forgotten time in order to re-arrange the combatants. Now that he was no longer in melee range, Orseen dispelled the air elemental and closed the distance to the Green Lady, healing himself with Fervor on the way. The cleric followed, and bestowed a cure critical wounds upon the warpriest, who had been left in bad shape by the firestorm. Satampra likewise charged up, and thought he had landed a solid blow on the Queen, but it turned out to only be her displaced image. On her turn she was forced to dance, triggering an attack of opportunity from the Emperor, which also hit her displacement.

Another greater dispel from the arcanist took down Nyrissa’s freedom of movement and resist electricity, though his Quickened enervation still missed. The Green Lady summoned a humongous crocodile, which immediately bit Satampra, and then the gnoll as the warpriest ran past. But it was not enough to stop Orseen, who reached Nyrissa and swung his greatsword in a Vital Strike. The blade bit deep into her body, and with a wail of anger and unfathomable loss, the Queen of Forgotten Time collapsed to the ground.

The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen

Aakif dispelled the crocodile, and Kwin worked on healing Orseen, while Satampra lined up Briar to deliver a decapitation strike against the faerie queen. But Briar wouldn’t do it. “That’s my body, you can’t behead it! We have to get me out of this sword and back into it!”

So… we were now in very uncharted waters. The adventure lets you know that Briar is Nyrissa’s ability to love or somesuch, but never says what that means in terms of how Briar thinks or acts, or in how Nyrissa thinks or acts, or what to do if the two are reunited, or what if one dies and the other remains. Nyrissa was laying there dying, Briar believed herself to be the true Queen, and… now what?

I didn’t have any firm ideas, and so I let the players take the lead. They quickly scouted the rest of the sanctum and found Nyrissa’s bed chamber, and moved the body there. After searching through the notes and books there and finding nothing immediately useful, Aakif attempted a limited wish to move the spirit in Briar into the Green Lady’s body. Would that be enough? I rolled some dice to see, with a vague target in my head. The result was close but not an unassailable success, which I interpreted as a partial victory. The wish visibly healed the body of its wounds, and Aakif sensed that it had also prepped the vessel to receive the sword’s sentience, but was unable to finish the job.

Satampra had the idea that maybe Briar had to be on, or in, the body to effect the transfer. “On” seemed to be the much less damaging option, so they tried that first, but nothing happened. So the Emperor picked up the weapon once more, carefully lined up Briar’s tip over Nyrissa’s heart, and then ever-so-slowly pushed the blade in.

There was no blood, so sign of a cut even, as the sword pierced the green, thorny flesh. Nor did there seem to be any resistance, Satampra thought; the blade did not catch on bones or the bed frame underneath as the cold iron was swallowed up by the Queen’s body. Soon it had sunk down all the way down to the thorn-wrapped hilt. Satampra cautious removed his hand, and when he did so the room seemed to vibrate with a deep bass hum that built in intensity. The party cast about for some sign of what was happening, but they were interrupted by a flash of white light and a loud KRANG sound, and found themselves momentarily blinded!

When their sight returned, they could see that Briar was now resting on the stone floor, and that Nyrissa’s body was still supine atop the luxurious bed, whole and unblemished. The Green Lady’s eyes then fluttered open, and she turned to gaze at the assembled mortals in wonder.

Next: epilogue!