Ars Magica Session 1 Notes

Session 1 Recap.

PCs:

Grand Apparitor Veld Dreadbringer (Kes), Leonin Conquest Paladin, he/him.

Tyrant-to-be. Ambitious, career driven, currently hiding the fact he's a paladin and a spellcaster. Wants to rule eventually and will do anything to get there. Lots of fear effects passed off as the Leonin roar.

Finnegan Sidney (Meredith), Tiefling Gloomstalker/Twilight Cleric, she/her.

Murderous hypocrite. She worships a dead goddess floating in the Sea of Time, and carries a piece of the goddess' husk around that grants her magical powers. (I think it's a jar of hair?) Loves order and hates magic-users. But it's fine for her to use magic to hunt down wizards because she has her goddess' blessing and she's doing it for "good."

The Coward Murdoc Kelp (Josephine), Simic Hybrid Aberrant Mind Sorceror, he/him.

Moist coward. Is a spell caster in a city where that's a death sentence. Blackmailed into mage-hunting. Good thing it's not hard to blackmail him. Got a seaweed situation going on.

End-Them-Rightly-With-Mortal-Force Jackson (Ed), Tiefling Battlemaster, he/him.

Military cog. Follows orders and doesn't ask questions. Carries around a small booklet that he quotes numbered precepts from. His higher ups told him not to think about the hypocrisy of working with spellcasters so he doesn't.

The game starts with the camera zooming into the 7th City at the End of the Sea of Time. A Victorian style metropolis. It is shaped like 3 overlapping circles, like a Venn diagram. A huge obelisk made of unidentified grey metal towers at the center of each circle. Each City at the End of the Sea of Time has it's own obelisk. We have 3 cuz we annexed the 4th and 5th City, leading to a huge growth in the size of the city.

Skyships are floating through the air.

Zoom into the Golden Towers. The richest area, close to one of the richest docks.

Immediately we airdrop out of an airship onto the balcony of Lord Florence Ashbee and Lady Samantha Ashbee, with a warrant for Florence Ashbee's arrest. They are minor Lords of the Nine Hells and are known spellcasters but they haven't previously been caught casting spells in the city. They summon their devils in the embassy where we don't have jurisdiction. Florence Ashbee finally slipped up when he used Prestigidation to season shitty food cooked by an undercover cop.

Their devil servants are psionically packing up their furniture and they're clearly preparing to leave the city. Someone's tipped them off that we were coming.

Roll Initiative. As each PC takes their first turn, there's a mini flashback of them hours before the mission.

Grand Apparitor Veld Dreadbringer meets up in his tower office with Aubrey Dijitra, Master of the Secret Police. They are roughly equivalent in position and I don't think they like each other. Aubrey is some sort of super-Doppelganger and mimics Veld's appearance for this conversation. Aubrey was the Vizir of the Hundred-Fold Celestial, the ex-ruler of the 4th City, before it was conquered. Aubrey also controls hundreds of beholder eyes acting as surveillance drones and a bunch of dog-sized crawling claws? (I think) that act as messengers.

Aubrey is giving Veld the bureaucratic runaround about a warrant on Florence Ashbee. "Oh, didn't you receive it yesterday? The Crawling Claw with it must have gotten lost." 

Veld tracks down the claw and finds the warrant.

Apparitor Finnegan Sidney is meeting with the Blade of Justice, Executioner Ruskin van de Velde, a giant Minotaur wielding a massive axe. Though the handle of the axe is in pristine condition the axe head is stained with dried blood. 

"Apparitor, so I hear you're going off to bring in Lord Ashbee. It might not be that bad a mistake if someone slips up and kills him. Lords of the Nine Hells are slimy rats. It would be a real shame if he managed to escape."

"Yes it would. Wouldn't it."

The Coward Murdoc Kelp meets with Grand Arcanist Cipe Pineles AKA That Hypocrite Bitch, finest wizard working with the law to bring down other magic-users. She is blackmailing Murdoc Kelp, otherwise he will be trialled and executed.

"So I heard you would be storming Lord Ashbee's estate today. For the good of the city, it would be perhaps useful to confiscate some of Lord Ashbee's papers. Knowing how he summons demons will allow me to make better wards against them for the city."

"Whatever you say, Grand Arcanist."

End-Them-Rightly-With-Mortal-Force Jackson meets with The People’s Word, Grand Prosecutor Cynthia Prossinger. Air Genasi and aggressively by-the-book to maximise the chance of a successful case.

"We know his wife Samantha Ashbee is a spellcaster, but we don't have any evidence against her. Unfortunately, if we touch her the case could fall apart."

"Ok, so we threaten her husband's life to grab evidence."

"Yes, you understand."

Back to combat.

I don't have the play-by-play of a 6 hour combat. 

Enemy combatants:

Lord Florence Ashbee

Lady Samantha Ashbee

2 Behemoth Devils - Big devils.

2 Bloodriver Psions - Animated blood goo.

2 Bearded Devil servants

An Imp

Ichorstone Bodyguard - Carved stone, with a hole dripping ichor in its chest.

Erinyes Bodyguard - A corrupted angel. 2 arms are holding a bow, 2 others are holding longswords.

Highlights include:

Veld immediately dashing in with his fear to stop Florence escaping. And eating a 7th level Finger of Death and getting impaled and violently un-impaled by the Ichorstone Bodyguard's lance.

Then Veld Channel Divinity fearing basically everything.

Murdoc Kelp summoning a Slaad Amongus and hiding in a corner. And then dying in that corner immediately after setting up a Hunger of Hadar zone.

Murdoc dropping a fireball from that very same corner.

Finnegan Sidney's Twilight Channel Divinity just keeping everyone alive. And her Revivifying Murdoc even though we were heavily debating whether it was worth it.

Oh, and summoning Pro-Choice Spiritual Weapon Judy Hopps.

Bloodriver psions boiling everyone's blood. And then random bearded devil servant #1 kills Murdoc.

Lord Ashbee trying to convince Lady Ashbee to run as we have no evidence against her.

Florence : "Run they have nothing on you!"

Samantha : "I'm not leaving you behind." *Casts Fireball*

Lady Ashbee bonus action kissing Lord Ashbee.

Endy Jackson using goading attack on both Behemoth Devils to tank damage.

Lord Ashbee trying to Banish Lady Ashbee to Hell for the full minute so she can escape. And also catching Endy Jackson in the Banishment. (This Banishment lasts for around 1 hour and 40 minutes IRL)

The Ichorstone Bodyguard tanking insane amounts of damage for Florence and keeping his concentration up. And just leaving black ichor everywhere. And it kills Amogus.

Single-target damage can't break the Concentration as the Ichorstone Bodyguard tanks it, and our only source of AoE damage (Murdoc) is dead.

Veld yo-yoing up and down due to being very low HP and standing on the ichor. Then finally getting annoyed, smites the bodyguard to death and breaks the Banishment concentration with a polearm master bonus action attack.

Murdoc dispelling a full-health summoned Bloodriver Psion.

Pro-Choice Spiritual Weapon Officer Judy Hopps knocking out Lady Ashbee.

We knock both Ashbees out, basically leaving just the corrupted angel bodyguard left.

Murdoc getting knocked unconcious on the opposite corner where he previously died, and nearly getting killed by the same servant again.

Endy sheathing his sword at the end of his turn in order to prepare for throwing javelins at a flying bodyguard next turn. Then immediately drawing out the sword again as the bodyguard flies over to us.

The other 3 just trying to fight the last bodyguard for several rounds while Murdoc is passed out in the corner. We're losing it and hysterical at this point cuz it's like 6 hours in.

After the fight, Murdoc tries to sneak some scrolls. We spot him but he's so greasy that we let it slide.

We escort the Ashbees to the Statue Garden, the bottom floor of a very high-security inverted prison tower. The Warden will take them. The Warden is a 20 foot long giant Basilisk. The Warden turns the Ashbees to stone.

We're evil baby.