I’m a dog I’m a dog I’m a dog

The good good doggos can do some pretty cool stuff. They’re just like wolves but they

• are immune to ice damage
• ignore difficult terrain caused by ice or snow
• act on your turn
• end of list, you don’t get any more extras, don’t at me

But they can also

• die tragically in combat
• die tragically off-screen escorting NPCs to the assumed safety of a village

From Sneak Attack to Snake Eyes

Casimir was half in the bag so went full in the bag once giants all came out. (Oni are technically giants). Frost giant and a pair of oni. A lot of hitting the giants in the dick. I dunno. It’s not important to immortalize that here. We can just shelve that away.

A cruel looking old woman holding a tall staff flashes a fang-filled mouth stained with blood. Her skin is bright blue and her hair white as snow. She wears sashes of tiny skulls around her torso and waist.

Grandmother Nervepeeler comes through on her flying staff and starts trying to attack the heroes but Livius low-key changed the whole scene by launching out counterspells and that banishment. All the ground troops were frustrated by the flying oni and flying hag and the difficult terrain. The dogs were having a grand ole time though. Thirurl even retrieved a heartseeker arrow for Sora. Fun!

A strange creature of metal and stone bursts out of the snow to assist the heroes. He sounds like a country sheriff, whatever that is. He calls himself Kodama Battalion 180 (KB if you’re nasty).

Livius sets the hag on fire and she is super dead. He then drops concentration, the frost giant comes back, raging and resistant to most damage types, but the heroes manage to get him good. Nahk cuts him up and distracts him, but ends up falling prone in front of the giant in a pile of snow. Distracted by this complete failure and somehow still full of fear of Nahk, the giant wobbles in his stance and Sora manages a shot right through the… “thigh”. He is about to fall on top of our good good dog Thirurl but KB sacrifices his body just in time to save the dog from a crushing fate.

Also this gem happened:

7/7 dogs still alive, good job, but I’ll get you next time, my pretty! Eh-heh!

Livius finds a key and his dog Goliath catches the hag’s scent.

KB I guess negs Rho by calling her an “older model” and a “robot”. Rho vehemently denies both of these things, stating that she is created from the island inhabitants’ belief in her.

Oh boy, here I go killing again

The heroes (?) arrive at the hag’s igloo. It’s covered in animal and humanoid parts. Sora checks the door for traps and enters along with Livius and KB. Rho waits outside for the inevitable They find themselves in a room of horrors: 5 adults and one oni are inside the ice walls of this hut while 6 girls are trapped in the ceiling of ice. In the cauldron there is viscera. The gang also find Nervepeeler’s spellbook and a set of letters written in infernal addressed to Natalya. Sora stashes those away for later.

The hut starts to melt! The oni reaches out a hand and blasts KB! Sora and Livius fuck off for a minute. Nahk and Hobbes go in. Hobbes chops off hand. KB starts rescuing people. One turns into an oni! Oh no! Gets killed. Another one is a dud as well. But three are chill. (Hah. Comedy.)

Livius kills the children by radiant-ing them to death, assuming they will transform into hags. Hobbes kills the oni by slowly drilling a rapier through the ice into his eyes and throat. KB kills an oni by chopping its head off after rescuing it from the ice. Pretty rough stuff, gang.

The three survivors (a dwarf man, a human man, and a human woman) all come out of the ice in various states of OK-ness: (“give me a drink”, “point me home,” “don’t fucking talk to me,” respectively).

Sora, Livius, and Cas, the original gang, take flight, following the sled team, and they commiserate about their trust issues, likely stemming from having worked for Hespero.

Anyway pretty tense stuff, good job.

Like Woe

The gang regroups and talks about what to do with the survivors. Rho calms the three of them down.

KB-180 asks the kodama spirits whether bringing the woman back to her home would bring weal or woe and the kodama spirits were like woe. After KB offers to euthanize (!) the woman, she thinks a while and decides against it and agrees to return to the village with the dwarf and the human, along with Thirurl, Rox, and Goliath to help lead the way.

Rho assumes that the woman is the mother of the children that Nervepeeler ate and re-birthed. It is all but confirmed when the woman quietly agrees to return to the Iskos village.

The gang all goes to sleep, achieving a long rest. Casimir wakes up, wondering if it was all just a dream.

It is late night on day 27 since the Battle of Aurochs Island, the first engagement in the Argoti-Mineosi War.

The heroes are on Iskos, having dissipated the white wall, in a cave in the Witch’s Woods.

Four islands left: Iskos, Nistora, Dorost, and Charatos.

One beast left: The Skyswimmer.

You are on a demiplane, and Zulon is arriving on the material plane in four days.

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