EFFORTPOST Darklands LP XII: Halloween Edition

Darklands Series

1 - Darklands LP Part I

2 - Darklands LP Part II: Charles Bronson Edition

3 - Darklands LP III: Nuns and Coins

4 - Darklands LP Ep IV: Introduction to Equipment & Combat

5 - Darklands LP Part V: We finally briefly go out into the dark lands

6 - Darklands LP VI: We actually start a quest!

7 - Darklands LP VII: We reach our destination

8 - Darklands LP VIII: Raubritter confrontation & learning how combat works

9 - Darklands LP IX: I'm not giving you my goddarn alchemical materials

10 - Darklands LP X: We actually do some alchemy!

11 - Darklands LP XI: The Main Plot

The Witches' Sabbat

It's Halloween today, October 31, 1402, so it's time to take on the forces of darkness once again.

In our last episode, we finally made it to the witches' Sabbat, basically ComicCon for Satanists. Day one has a bit of an amusement park feel, but they seem to be building up to a big event tomorrow. We're going to do what we can to ruin their fun. But hopefully we won't have to slaughter everyone here. Even these people can still be saved if they repent.

Let's start out with the food. It's what Anthony Bourdain would do.

It's not ideal, but let's at least give these babies a quick baptism while we can.

We really do not want to attract too much attention, so we better be careful the next place we go.

Okay, let's see what's going on by the stream. Ugh. This is no good. But I'll try to give these people a chance. I'll boost Sasha's Speak Common and Charisma even higher and have her try to persuade them this is wrong. St. John Chrysostom is an obvious choice. One of the most important figures in the development of the early church, he was renowned for his oratory. Chrysostom literally is "Golden Mouth", exactly what we need now. Sasha now has 99 Speak Common but you can never be sure of success in dangerous situations like this.

As demonstrated here. Looks like these guys are gonna have to die.

They're very poorly equipped and no trouble to beat, but I expect we'll get in multiple combats before the Sabbat is over and we won't have a chance to heal between them, so any damage done here will add up. That cultist with his flail turns out to be more dangerous than I thought and Redactor gets hurt a bit.

We've drawn too much suspicion to ourselves. This busybody is going catch us eventually if we don't do better. I'll use the "yeah, I'm up to something" line, hoping to confuse him for now.

Let's check out the broom-riding and see if this really is as cute as they make it out to be in childrens' books. Oh no, it's actually awful.

Sasha still has her Speak Common boosted so maybe she can at least convince these people. She fails again and we have to kill these people too. I've consistently been getting really bad luck throughout this. Maybe Halloween isn't my lucky day.

Let's see what's going on at the altar. So that's what this is all about. They're summoning a demon. Satanists are so lame. It really is a ripoff of Burning Man.

We're under a lot of suspicion but there is absolutely no way I'd ever consider engaging in this kind of blasphemy.

My party has pretty terrible Stealth skill, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at failing this check.

Despite screwing up everything we tried to do, we managed to get by using brute force. Our party is hardly even injured. That chainmail really makes a huge difference when going up against a mob of poorly-armed enemies.

The fortress monastery? What's that? I guess we'll find out someday.

I have Sasha try to win over the baptism crowd and she fails yet again. Then it's summoning time. So that's where the Fortress Monastery is. I always knew that the Danes were Satanic.

We've got practically no injuries and most of our Divine Favor left. And for this special occasion I'm going to break out the alchemy. I'm passing out:

• Hardarmor - One for everyone. This will increase the quality and boost the effective thickness of the armor by +2, better than even plate without alchemical enhancement.

• Fleadust & Arabian Fire - Two for everyone. The offensive potions you want to spread around through your party. If one guy is carrying them all he might be engaged and unable to throw.

• Essence of Grace - The healing potion. There's no mechanic in the game to stop you from just chugging these constantly, which isn't really a fun way to play, so I'm going to arbitrarily limit us to three per person for now.

I won't bother invoking saintly aid to improve our weapon skills since they're already into the 80s. Okay, let's do this.

The demon turns out to be pretty weak. Am I over-prepared for this battle?

Now is the hard part. The high witch will be tossing potions and her minions have flails, which with 4 penetration would match our chainmail if it wasn't alchemically enhanced.

The fight is tougher than we've had in a long time, but not too challenging. The enemy can't penetrate our armor so they do very little damage to our Strength, but there's a lot of them and they land a lot of non-penetrating hits that do a few points of Endurance damage. Sasha takes an Essence of Grace to keep from getting knocked out.

The second wave is just like the first, but this time I'm a little smarter about defeating them in detail. Nathan manages to slip past the cultists to get to the high witch but she hits with him Fleadust or something, greatly reducing his skills, so he has trouble hitting her, but it's over soon enough.

We now have a clear mission ahead of us: Go to Denmark and assault the Fortress Monastery!

Sorry for this being so anti-climactic. I didn't realize how powerful my party had become and I wanted to make sure to explain all the main systems of the game before going forward with the main plot. Don't worry, it gets much more difficult.

Happy Halloween!