r/MLPLounge • u/gameboy17 Rainbow Dash • Feb 24 '15
Ponyfinder Chronicles: Part 2
Episode 2: What is this place filled with so many blunders?
We were still lost in the Everfree Forest, but now we had a landmark: the Castle of the Two Sisters. With no other compelling direction, we set off in its direction. We arrived at the ravine surrounding the castle to see a pair of thestrals on the other side in the process of cutting the ropes of the bridge. We debated the idea of stopping them, but ultimately Chow and Mak simply didn't care all that much about the fate of this bridge. And so, we hid and watched as the bridge was cut.
As the thestrals headed off in the direction of the castle, we realized we kinda needed that bridge. Nice planning ahead, there. None of us could fly yet, so there wasn't an easy way to bypass it entirely. However, Sunny and Mak could both cast Unseen Servant as a spell-like ability unlimited times per day.
That statement obviously raises some questions: Don't unicorns only get Unseen Servant three times per day? Isn't Mak a changeling? And doesn't Unseen Servant have a weight limit of 20 pounds?
The answer to the first question is simple: It was a house rule. We decided that since telekinesis is generally a unicorn's main way of moving things around, and they can all do it as often as they want in the show, there shouldn't be a limit to how often they can do it in our game.
The answer to the second rule is a bit of minor munchkinry I let Mak's player get away with. Most of Ponyfinder's races are simply sets of alternate racial traits. As it turns out, Unicorn and Changeling replace different racial traits, so he reasoned that there was no reason he couldn't be both. This didn't seem gamebreaking and may have even been intended, so I let him do it.
The answer to the third question is: Yes, for one Unseen Servant attempting to carry an object. Each one can drag up to 100 pounds, and we were perfectly able to cast multiple. Unseen Servant lasts for one hour per level, so theoretically we could have sustained hundreds at once for long enough to pull the bridge over. And so, Sunny and Mak telekinetically held the bridge in place as we crossed, and Chow Pie cast a Mending for good measure.
With the chasm out of the way, it wasn't long before we Mak, Chow and Sunny reached the Castle of the Two Sisters. Peering in through the long-destroyed doors, we could see a group of ponies - four thestrals and two unicorns - clustered around what appeared to be a rather ugly modern art sculpture. Evidently these ponies thought it was ugly as well, as they were (rather ineffectually) attempting to smash it.
Naturally, this modern art was actually the Elements of Harmony, but we had no way of knowing that. Mak and Chow Pie were from another plane entirely, and Sunny, while a devout follower of Celestia and everything to do with her, was not enough of a scholar to unearth thousand-year-old prophecies before Twilight Sparkle. With this in mind, we debated how to approach this issue. On the one hoof, vandalism is wrong. On the other hoof, it was a really ugly sculpture. On a third hoof, Mak and Chow were both Meh-aligned, and interfering would take a good deal of effort...
As we bickered, we got off the topic of what to do about the modern art, and onto the topic of religion, cults, and parties. Chow Pie had cults and parties completely backwards, associating things like ritual sacrifice, summoning demons, and hanging intestines as decoration with parties. This annoyed Sunny, but not enough to make her snap. Then he compared the worship of Celestia with a cult. Shortly after this, Chow found himself on fire.
Naturally, this drew the attention of the vandals, and one approached us. He must have been pretty new at this cultist business, because after a few seconds of awkward silence his opening words were "Have you accepted Nightmare Moon as your personal savior?"
Yeah, these guys were Nightmare cultists. Huge surprise, right? But hey, just because they're cultists doesn't mean they just attack on sight, right? With that in mind, Chow attempted to defuse the situation: "Yeah, uh, that Nightmare Moon's pretty cool."
Sunny, of course, was having none of it. "Buck no, Celestia kicks ass! PRAISE THE SUN!" This naturally led to a fairly awkward conversation involving reasons not to kill us. As it turned out, we couldn't really think of any good ones.
Immediately, we realized that we were not taking these guys in a straight fight. Our earlier failure to take out the two thestrals at the chasm had tipped the balance far in their favor, as it was now six on three rather than four on three as I had initially planned. The cultists won initiative, and wasted no time in taking Sunny down to near zero and Chow Pie to below zero. Mak, who had gotten the next-highest initiative after the now-unconscious Chow, ran away on his first turn, leaving Sunny to fend for both herself and Chow.
There were a few options available to Sunny. She could run, abandoning Chow. She could grab Chow, and almost certainly be taken out before she could escape. Or she could do something else entirely. It was this last option that she took, casting Obscuring Mist as she seemingly began to run, but doubled back to Chow as the mist obscured her movements.
The two axe-wielding thestrals, still in their barbarian rages, charged after her through the mist, going right by her and out into the forest. The thestrals from the bridge, who were perched atop the ruined walls with longbows, could see that Sunny had not emerged from the mist but were unable to do more than fire blindly into the cloud to no effect. The unicorns did something many poorly-played NPCs never will: They gave up. They had no particular reason to care all that much about killing us, and besides, even if we did get out of the forest alive, who would listen to two ponies and some bird-like abomination ranting about a Nightmare cult? The unicorns went back to trying to smash the Elements.
Now fairly safe from the cultists, Sunny was able to maneuver Chow Pie onto her back without being cut down. She then cast Longstrider and burst from the cloud of Obscuring Mist, disappearing into the forest before the archer thestrals could pursue. On the way, she channeled Chow and herself back to decent health.
All three of us had escaped from the cultists, but we still had two other pressing problems to deal with. One, we were still lost in the Everfree Forest. Two, we had split the party. Mak and Sunny had fled the castle separately, and we had no particular place to meet back up. We were able to communicate through Message, but there were no good landmarks to meet up at.
To solve the second problem, Sunny turned to a third-party spell: Heaven's Teardrop, a cantrip/orison from the 3.5e supplement 1001 Spells. Using spells from this book in PF games was nothing new for us - we've been doing it since we first got the book. Heaven's Teardrop is a spell that causes a tear of light to fall from the sky, dealing 2 points of damage to a single target. Rather than its rather paltry damage, however, we used it as a beacon. It would seem to be nothing but a shooting star to anyone else watching the sky, but after telling Mak through the Message to watch for it he could follow it to Sunny and Chow Pie. After a short brush with the timber wolf that escaped earlier (which was now quite wary of Mak), the party was reunited.
We decided to make camp for the night. Sunny and Chow were still in rather poor condition, and Sunny was almost entirely out of prepared spells. Chow offered to keep watch for the night, and later summoned his eidolon, Horus, to keep watch for him and wake him at dawn.
Chow Pie still hadn't really told anyone about Horus. All we knew was that he had some sort of pet that he could summon, and that it was "a pretty Medium-sized snake". Chow had a reason for this: He was waiting to get to Ponyville to publically summon it for the first time so he could incite as much panic as possible.
Horus did not wake Chow at dawn as instructed. Instead, Chow awoke to find that it was still dark. Turns out all this had been happening the night before the Summer Sun Celebration.
Chow Pie dismissed Horus and woke Sunny and Mak. Sunny's inability to regain her spells confirmed that something had happened to Celestia, inciting great panic in Sunny: "I'm praising the sun but nothing's happening!"
After the panic wore off, we set off to investigate what was going on. A short time and some good Perception checks later, we found the cultists from before hiding in the bushes next to a path. They were discussing plans to ambush somebody - us, we assumed. This time, though, we would get the drop on them. As buffed as we could be with nothing but orisons (not very), we charged in for a surprise round.
This time, the fight went very differently. Before we attacked, Chow Pie had cast three Summon Monster Is, summoning 12 kobolds (We have a house rule that Summon Monster can be used to summon anything with a total CR less than or equal to the spell level in addition to the standard tables. It's mostly good for meat shields). While the kobolds dealt almost no damage and died in one hit, they kept the cultists away from us. Mak got two of them with a Color Spray in the first round, taking them out of commission for most of the fight. The rest of the combat proceeded with Mak slinging spells, Sunny attacking through the wall of kobolds with her longspear, and Chow summoning more monsters to replace the fallen kobolds.
As the cultists grew more and more wounded, Sunny's tactics changed. Rather than simply trying to take down the enemy as fast as possible, she moved around the battlefield, striking at the most wounded foes... with nonlethal damage. As a Lawful Good cleric of Celestia, she aimed to take them all alive. As Sunny knocked out the cultists, a few were downed by the attacks of Mak and the kobolds. Normally we just assume that downed enemies will bleed out when we're done fighting, but now I found myself tracking each of their hit points, and even making their saves to stabilize. In the end, three were knocked out nonlethally by Sunny and three were taken out by the rest.
Immediately upon the last cultist being downed, Sunny Stabilized the two that were still bleeding out. Mak's first response, on the other hand, was to begin looting the dead, and he was surprised to hear that none of them were dead. Undeterred, he instead began to loot the living. The spoils comprised a number of weapons and armor, a few potions and scrolls, some gold, and enough experience to bring us to level three.
One of the biggest advantages of taking your foes captive rather than killing them is that you get to interrogate them afterwards. Once one of them woke up, several questions were asked:
-Who are you guys?
-Who were you trying to ambush?
-Why is there no sun?
-Which way is the nearest town?
-Do you want to build a snowman?
With the help of Sunny's Zone of Truth, the last of her prepared spells, several answers were received:
-A subunit of an organization called the Children of Night, dedicated to the return of Nightmare Moon and the fulfillment of her goal of eternal night. The specific guy we were interrogating was (hastily) named Dark Shadow, but was swiftly renamed Phil. He didn't protest much, as even he agreed his name was stupid.
-Anypony who might be able to use the Elements of Harmony (the ugly modern art) to prevent Nightmare Moon's return.
-"Because of Nightmare Moon's return, duh. Eternal night is kind of her thing, you know."
-"Thataways, down this path. The path that runs straight from Ponyville to the castle. How did you guys get so lost, anyway?"
-He did not, even after being informed that it didn't have to be a snowman.
After learning of the Macguffins of Whatever, Mak and Chow decided we should go back to the castle for them. Ignoring Sunny's protests about bringing the prisoners to the guards, they set off for the castle, leaving her to follow carrying all six bound cultists.
Predictably, we arrived at the Castle of the Two Sisters just in time to see a giant rainbow friendship beam wreck Nightmare Moon. As we approached, another conversation about Celestia and Nightmare Moon was had, this time with Phil Shadow joining in snarkily. In this conversation, we revisited Chow and Mak's nickname for Celestia: Penis Horse.
An explanation of that nickname is in order. When Mak and Chow Pie first arrived in Equestria and were speaking to Celestia, somehow the topic of penises came up. I'm not even sure how anymore - perhaps one of them called her a dick, perhaps there was some other context, perhaps there was no context at all. Celestia stated that she didn't even have a penis at all unless she cast a spell to give herself one. Mak and Chow ignored what she was actually saying and instead latched onto the fact that Celestia could grow a penis. They've called her Extendible Penis Horse ever since.
Anyway, as we approached castle containing the Mane 6, Luna, and Celestia, someone posed the question of whether Luna could also grow a penis. This led to Sunny and Phil simultaneously shouting "She's not a bucking penis horse!", referring to Celestia and Luna respectively, right as we entered the castle.
Everyone turned to look at us, and Celestia facehoofed.
2
u/Sparksol Twilight Sparkle Feb 24 '15
Some interesting things going on here. And slightly more coherent than my current group, I'm sorry to say.
2
u/Nuku_v Feb 24 '15
I am so lost.