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Gyrre:
Okay, looks like we've got Ms. Caswell mostly sorted out.

She's one of a handful of children born into the Dancing Flesh cult[1], along with Tomelise (deceased boyfriend) and one other I don't know the name or whereabouts of yet. Her duties within the cult were to throw corpses into the necrotic biomass and shoot[2] anyone who got too close to the compound[3]. Her parents were fanatical loonies to the point where they sacrificed themselves to the biomass in an effort to help boost Excellence's standing/rank in the cult. Either shortly after or shortly before, Tomelise is caught trying to sabotage the biomass. So he gets made an example of[4]. About 3 days after all of that, she overhears some of the higher-ups discussing just throwing her in the biomass instead of promoting her.

Naturally this broke Excellence a bit. With all of the messed up stuff she's seen and the recent loss, Excellence has an epiphany that she should leave the cult and seek redemption. She changed her name[5] and alignment from chaotic evil to chaotic neutral. She made a pact with a newly formed celestial[6], stole a Cloak of Arachnida and a pair of Winged Boots, and snuck off into the desert in the middle of the night with the only piece of Tomelise she had left. An orb made from one of his heel bones that she made as a spell focus.

Did I mention that she broke a bit? She has full on stress induced hallucinations of being able to see and hear Tom's spirit. Each day she pricks her left ring finger with a hairpin and drips 3 drops of blood on her bone spell focus and polishes it. She believes that if she doesn't do this every day, Tom's spirit will leave her all alone. Not sure how that'll all play out with Arkin being her patron. He was a very good man. Even for an Aasimar (hence the full angel promotion). If he finds out, I'm sure he'll try to help her work through the trauma. Maybe even become a sort of second father figure, making the pact more than just a job.

BTW, I should probably mention that since she's seeking redemption and has a pact of the blade with a celestial, there's a bunch of sells my DM and I figured were off limits for her to pick up. They're mostly necromancy and evocation spells. But, since she was a worshipper of the eldritch horror that is Sovarez, she does get access to Eldritch Blast. I've got agonizing blast and eldritch spear as invocations already, but I'm still depating on repelling blast. I also need to decide between Flesh to Stone and Investiture of Ice for my first arcanum since we're about to ding to lvl 11.

[1] Despite being 1000 strong, they've got a staggeringly low birth rate for having existed 2 decades. Granted, birth is kind of the exact opposite of their goals.
[2]Weapon Master feat; shotgun, LMG, halberd, and battleaxe
[3] the aforementioned City of Ruins
[4] Flayed and acid poured in the wounds. "Traitors are unworthy of the dancing flesh and we dare not sully it with their blood or bones."
[5] Formerly 'Theophania'. She never liked it anyway.
[6] Arkin Icewind became a full-fledged angel upon being disintegrated and wound up working in the pacts department due to his background in arcana.
EDIT: fixing typos

Gyrre:
Oh boy.....
A few things from a few sessions.

1) Upon learning of the cultists' plan, our paladin got all gung ho about storming the City of Ruin[1]. After some persuation checks and reminding him that the cult hada A LOT of warlock members, a compromise was made to pick off patrols some ways outside the City of Ruins. I forget who, but someone suggested an uneasy alliance with HQ. So, we used the magic chest we had to send a message to them[2]. They agreed that the Cult of the Dancing Flesh was especially dangerous and needed to be stopped[3]. They sent out their elite sniping squad to pick off patrols from the other side of the city.

We were going to build a small, innocuous base about 10 miles from the cultist head quarters by combining her Mold Earth with EC's Flaming Sphere  But Dr. Cerulean got a nat20 when asked to do a performance check. So she "went all Anna and Elsa" and ended up making a castle of glass and sand. Which, of course, attracted the cultist patrols. So our archanist spent the rest of the session turning it into a layer while the bloodhunter, paladin and barbarian went off to kill said patrols.
My brother learned then learned the hard way that barbarians should always start combat by raging. His barbarian didn't die to either patrol[4]. He died to a few giant vultures when he failed a persuasion check while testing out his ritual only Speak With Animals primal path feature.

2) The next session we got a message from the HQ elite unit requesting immediate backup, as 4 of their members had "disappeared into the sand with only a greenish flash" being seen. By the time we get over there, it's just three of them left; two nameless soldiers and the level 20 paladin. We watched as another one disappeared under the sand just before a friggin' ancient white dragon came out of the ground! The dragon easily took out Soldier B with its breath weapon and knocked Haravor[5] down to 25% health. Then, the DM tells me to make an insight check on the AWD, which EC passes. "It's looking at you funny." Then, each time it surfaces near EC or attacks the rest of the party, the DM tells us that it took care to avoid hitting EC.

At that point I figure it must be Granny Gumgum[6] controlling her familiar (which I failed the roll to remember). We all held our actions waiting for the dragon to surface again and Granny Gumgum failed her Con check for holding True Polymorph. Que Granny's theme and an hour long fight. We nearly got her beat but me, the arcanist, and the sorcerer were out of spells so we couldn't counterspell her 3rd attempt at Dimension door.

After the fight, EC got a message from Granny requesting they "have a talk". The paladin player decides to started acting like a stereotypical paladin and demands to know if EC is with them or against them. I already knew that this was likely how EC was getting the Tome of Leadership as I had guessed exactly why our backup characters were getting our previous character's memories through an off-handed coment[7]. So after a bit of an in character argument (and shooting the tower with EB in frustration) we decided to split the party. Excellence would talk to Granny as a distraction while the work their way through the underground tunnels.

Everyone started from the underground entrance and cloudwalked to their respective destinations. As Granny Mother-Gothel'd it up voicing concernfor EC's decisions and her running off and 'getting involved with a bad group', the rest of the party fought a Rabbit of Caerbannog that was guarding the underground's entrance at the City of Ruin. It lasted 3 rounds [8]. After guilt tripping the hell out of EC and giving a sizable chunk of lore dump, the rest of the party interrupts a big reveal by pretending to be messengers.

Another fight ensued. EC (i.e. I) was uncertain what to do[9], so EC nat20s on pretending to have had Hold Person cast on her on the second or 3rd round. Two more rounds in, she starts firing Eldritch Blast at Granny and shouts "I'm sorry" each time. Zero (the lvl20 monk) shows up and Bastion manages to convince her to help us out. Her minigun jams almost immediately and she just follows for the rest of the fight. Thankfully the paladin and bloodhunter can keep up with her (barely). Me and the sorcerer use Counterspell to stop some nasty attacks while we're still in range, while the archanist gives the paladin and bloodhunter Haste. I hit Granny once and accidentally hit the bloodhunter once (nat1). And the bloodhunter manages to use some bloodright that prevents a specific spell from going off to block Granny's attempts at Dimension Door. We almost have her down[10], when she uses her last arcanum to polymorph into an Ancient White Dragon again and fly off down the underground tunnels. Then, a set of charges went off and the tunnels collapsed behind her.

We leveled up twice for surviving her twice.

Bastion is down, Marius has 5 hit points, the 3 of us who can heal are out of means to do so; so Granny got away. Zero comes up to Excellence and says "I recognize you. You're part of the cult, aren't you?" Bastion's player character accusingly says 'yes', I roll my eyes and have EC say "Formerly." Zero announces that she's going to make sure and the session ends there. The DM and I have a private chat  RP chat and EC gets more lore dump. Including that Zero is in fact "The Shadow" Granny mentioned and that she's second in command of the cult. Threats are made, questions are askedb and Zero reveals that she has a crush on Marius. The chat ends with EC having to explain what "girltalk" is to a 300 year old monk and being told "Well enjoy more moments like that as much as you can. Around here those will be rare."

3) Bastion's player didn't show up, so we had an combat free session. Zero tells the rest of the that she is infact the 2nd in command of the cult and mentions their plans for the Drake  Eater bones. While being truthful, Marius and the Professor figure out that she's not saying everything. We manage to diplomatically come to a solution. "If Sovarez really just wants to either be free or go back to sleep, then let's just use that transport you mentioned to get to the moon, have the 'gods' put her  back to sleep, and then you can kill them."[11][12][13]

After all of that, we search the now abandoned city trying to loot it. I space out on checking for traps and immediately get blasted out of Granny Gumgum's house by the explosion. Thankfully, I'm tanky as hell for a spell caster [14]. I added additional 15 psychic damage since she's hurt by the fact that 'Granny didn't trust her', bring me down to 130HP. The rest of the ccity had pretty much been cleared out. But the Cloak of Arachnida I have came in useful for bypassing a few traps. We got a warhammer, 12 knives, 9 glass vials, 6 vials of strong poison[15], a cart and donkey, and we found out that Prof Cerulean stopped counting birthdays a long time ago and now tracks her age by climate change[16].

After that, we head back to base via cart. We got about halfway before we remembed the minigun  with perfectly good battery Zero dropped, and we decided to go back for it.  It's a four hour ride to the castle, so EC  starts reading the tome. Bastion is dragged inside and left unconscious on the floor of the foyer, and we everyone goes about some personal stuff. EC use Bastion as a chair and finishing reading the Tome of Leadership two days straight using Bastion [17] and her hallucination of Tomelise to practice. I got a 19 on the performance check for practicing, so even when Marius checked in on her and discovered that she's a bit crazy, he thought she was doing pretty well [18].

After zonking out and recovering from 1 of 2 exhaustion points, we headed back to the harbor to report to the info broker. We got paid the offered price, a bonus for helping him save a lot of money with the previous info, and an additional bonus for helping him save further with the new info. He offered us 10K gold if we could stop the ccult grom stage-4ing the Drake Eater bones and stated that it's pretty much a suicide mission since most of the cult was headed that way. Which served as a cut scene to introduce my brother's new monk.
"Offer of 10K GP to those who can succeed. No guarantee of survival."

Once he joined the party, we all hopped back on rthe cart and headed out. The DM had us roll a flat d20 and asked for our results. Then he informed us that it was an encounter roll. My nat1 and the bloodhunter's 4 guaranteed that we encountered the purple worms stirred up by the tunnel's collapse during Granny's escape. And that's where we ended that session.

 [1] cultists base
[2] pair of magic chest that just pass objects/creatures between the two unless a command phrase is spoken; "keep it".
[3] see "Ancient Drake Eater" post from page 1 of this thread. They're trying to get to HQ to steal one's bones.
[4] both a combination of warlocks and gunslingers.
[5] HQ paladin
[6] Leader of the Cult of the Dancing Flesh, lvl 20 pact of the chain hexblade warlock and holder of the warlock specific  legendary item.
[7] the DM had thanked me via text for making characters that meshed into the story so well. I said something among the lines of 'I like to think of myself as a nanite swarm taking over another NPC when my character dies."
[8] "SMITE SMITE SMITE AS YOU FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!"
[9] Granny Gumgum is the closest thing to family she has left.
[10] kicking myself for not  joining in sooner, but I RP while fighting too
[11] One of the things Zero told EC about was that the gods live on the moon and there's a transportation method being built underground
[12] in this campaign, the gods are actually just people with super advanced and powerful nanites.
[13] said gods killed Zero's mom  and tormented Zero for 20 years. She wants to kill them all, hence her joining the cult and working with  us.
[14] EC's Con is 20, so her base HP iis 196. Con + Tough feat + Abyssal Fortitude. Also, I get temp HP equal to my warlock lvl + my Char mod thanks to my celestial patron.
[15] set up around a trap that would have triggered a Shatter if the sorcerer hadn't counterspelled it
[16] variant human, Primordial older than many dragons
[17] the player is annoying and be kind of a dick. Upon learning I got the tome, he announced his plans to steal it.
[18] my Char mod was +6, now it's +7

EDIT: delineating paragraphs for an easier read

hedgie:
Well, I missed updating for the session two weeks ago due to kinda blacking-out drunk.  This time, we start after having downed the big frightening skeleton, and discovered a room with an awesome looking magic shortbow, and an iron golem standing, frozen between us and the bow.  We assume that it'll activate if we make a move to grab the thing, so for the time being, we start trying to explore more. 

This leads us into some haunted rooms, filled with ghostly servants, and our door-opening, trap-finding rogue predictably failed her will save and started going Marie Kondo all over the place.  While this would generally be amusing, in looking for things to clean, she started heedlessly moving into other rooms, and had to be stopped before she opened the door to something nasty, especially since we were trying to move quickly to the Big Bad.  I ended up sleeping her[1] and she fell softly into the gunslinger's arms.  He then smacked her with the flat side of an intelligent axe he has that suppresses compulsions for a 10 minutes until we got out of the haunt and made our way to the big bad.

Of course, before we get to the big bad, we encounter some spectres, which were absolutely destroyed by the necromancer's skeleton warrior pet (I got to tag one with a nasty hex using my magic hair, but that was *nothing* compared to what the murder machine can do.  I'm sure that the rogue and archer felt rather inadequate as well by comparison.

So now it's just about time for the big fight.  We buff, and Charlie (the skeleton) opens the door.  The big bad is weaker due to us destroying the spirit anchors that he fed off of, but he still had some nasty prepared for the first thing he saw.  Which means that Chas got hit by some significant charisma drain, thereby fucking his hitpoint total and taking him out of the fight.  The rest of us charge in, attacking with smites, arrows, blades, and a spell that fizzles.[3]  With Chuck out of the way, he starts attacking the gunslinger who ran into melee range to strike with his rapier.  More charisma drain.  I rush him and smack him with hair charged with a "heal" spell,[4]  and even with him saving, he gets hit for 75 damage.  The rest of the group is wearing him down (albeit slowly due to him only taking ½ damage from physical attacks).  Then the good cleric steps in, fully buffed, and wielding the weapon that the paladin who killed these bastards in the first place used.  Smacks the shit out of the fuck with her smite abomination spell running, but he's still up and tags the gunslinger with more drain, making him about as charismatic as the surliest dwarf in the mountain… wait, I lied.  It was actually a little bit lower.

So when it gets to me, it's decision time.  I could smack the undead thing with a cure critical, but I don't know how much health he has, and one more hit would probably kill the gunslinger.  I decide to burn a "limited wish" and the last of my gold to restore him; the rogue promptly knocks off his last 5 hp.  Well, there's a waste of a wish.

Now the curse is cleansed, the breeze starts moving again, and I'm almost surprised that there aren't birds landing on us like a Disney film or Bernie Sanders rally.  Things do shift to a cutscene though, as the spirit of the one murdered by these arseholes, a young prince or noble, first as we watch him die, and then him giving his speech, answering a few questions, and then become touch the blade used by the good cleric to fully empower it to its proper (minor) artefact status.

Now all that remains is to loot the castle of everything that we had skipped, especially 'cos the undead can be properly destroyed, but there is a slight complication.  The nearby orc encampment seems to have gotten the message that the curse is gone, and starts storming the castle to lay claim to everything.

Thus endeth Part One.  I'll get to writing the second part later.

[1] My backup plan if that failed, was to try to force a new saving throw against the compulsion by taunting her about finally learning her place in society[2] and congratulating her upon finally finding an honest and suitable profession.  That may have been enough to trigger the whole "acting against one's nature" to allow a new save.  Thankfully things didn't come to that.

[2] Not as a woman, but as one of the poors

[3] Oops.  Forgot that it was mind-effecting, so the undead was immune.

[4] Pathfinder follows the "revive kills zombie" rules

hedgie:
Double post because it appears that I'll be joining a 5th ed game on Thursday evenings.  I'm playing a tiefling bard (path of the blade) who specialises in thrown knives in combat, and impressive displays with blades and/or fire as a performance thing.  So basically filling the ranged combat and support caster roles.

I'll hopefully get to part 2 of the Pathfinder recap this weekend.

Pilchard123:
Do you mean College of Swords or a homebrewed one? Because the closest thing I know of to Path of the Blade is a Warlock's Pact of the Blade, but that's a Warlock thing rather than a bard.

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