Sat Feb 4 17:15:52 EST 2023 Ed DMing, me, Scott, Steve, Anthony. Last time, on January 7, Zoozeki and crew discovered an old journal that lead to a dungeon on an island in the mountains. This was the journal our characters in the flashback "oneshot" campaign had been keeping. We convinced the friendly shoggoth to join our part, killed the two evil "kids", and got some magic loot. Loot from last time? We take a long rest in _Leomund's Tiny Hut_ and cast _Identify_ on everything. * Shield with mechanical mouth: can be used like _Magic Mouth_ or infused with one spell of level 1-3 (like a Ring of Spell Storing). * Brazier of Summoning: portable with tripod; a Brazier of Infinite Imps. * Paldin's helmet with unicorn horn (radiates enchantment magic): replaces wearer's inner moral qualms and replaces them with self-righteous bluster; increases morale of followers. * Bronze short sword: unique item: The Albion Blade; in weilder's brain, it blasts either the song "No Future" by Sex Pistols (if you're being cowardly) or "England Belongs to Me" by Cock Spar; the song gets louder and louder until it leaks out the weilder's head and becomes audible to tohers; +-1 to +-4 to initiative. * four robots We head down the mountain. Two paths: left and down, or just down. Scott sends aloft his familiar to scout. To the left is a primative village doing a lot of leather tanning. Straight down are twenty hovering broomsticks. We meet back up with the golemologists, and head toward the broomsticks. There's a cave opening near the broomsticks with a little smoke coming out. Zoozeki sends his bat into the cave. Eighteen elderly women (like Halloween witches) sit in a circle and two fey creatures with horns. A lumpy, misshapen figure in the shadow bangs on drums made of human skulls. We contemplate a false flag operation to steal a broomstick and frame the primative villagers. Are they canibals tanning _human_ skin? Smudge sneaks into the primitive village and confirms that they are cooking human flesh and tanning human skin. Looks they might be a dragon cult. Zoozeki _polymorphs_ his bat familiar into a primative, and has it steal a broom from the witches, whistling and making rude gestures. The bat flies the broom toward the village. The witches follow to the village. The bat flies into the village headman's hut, then dismisses into its pocket dimension. Scott's owl watches from the sky. The witches slaughter the villagers. The witches don't really take any losses. The witches make off with the human skin book cover material (but leave the giant human skin gloves). We go to the village after the witches leave and loot a few things, including a silver dragon idol. There is a path out of the village going further down the mountain. [Anthony has to drop off.] We go down the mountain. It's a peaceful journey, and we start to smell the sea. We look out over what looks like an ancient greek metropolis, but with statues of apes. Ape Athens. Do the golemologiest want to kill Oothereon? Zoozeki casts _detect thoughts_ while Kristabell and Smudge talk to them about Oothereon. They want trade with the apemen, and don't seem to have bad motives, as far as Zoozeki can tell from their thoughts. We wander around the city. There are apes wearing togas. We go to the palace to see Oothereon. We catch up with him and introduce the golemologists. We go to dinner with Oothereon. Oothereon tell us about the civil war where he was able to defeat his brother to seize the throne. But his brother's son fled to the islands to the north and allied with a red dragon and a mercenary company (The Ragged Ascots). Oothereon doesn't know which of his lords he can trust.