Mall Madness is the fifth episode of Fantasy High: Junior Year.
Intro[]
"Last we left off, our Intrepid Heroes, after a stressful first week of junior year setting up after defeating the Night Yorb and sealing it in the top of Gorgug's van, got back to school. New principal Grix, the warforged interim backup emergency principal dedicated to perfect order, and a new adventuring party, junior year, who I guess flew under the radar because all they've been doing for two and a half years is stomping rats: The Rat Grinders."
"However, all is not lost. Our Intrepid Heroes came together to support a new candidate for student body president. With campaign manager, secret service, and party aficionado at Kristen Applebees' back, can she lose? She's not gonna let a buzzsaw to the head stop her. [...]"
"Lots of exciting things happened. Some other members of the party were a little more stressed. Adaine Abernant, with a whole passel of junior year wizard things to buy, got a part-time job at Oodles of Strudel. And you can see her and Boggy in their paper hats behind the counter selling strudel from an unexplained portal. And our friend Gorgug has shown up with a 400% course load with the athletic requirements of the Owlbears. But he's got some help: his mechanical bird, Cloaca! [...]"
"With all the stresses of the campaign, the prioritization of Kristen's divinity, the goddess Cassandra, of mystery and the night and doubt, was pamphleting here with her newly restored familiar, Kalina, who you can all see not very far away from you down here at the base. The Shadow Cat returns. However, with some rage at having been maybe deprioritized or just sidelined by her one and only cleric and prophet, Kristen Applebees, Cassandra, having been pamphleting by the exit of the escalator, [...] Cassandra has grown a bit in size. Heart rending. All of you appear here on the battlefield in the brand new wizard synod mall. [...]"
Synopsis[]
Round One[]
Sharp, spiky red magical effects -- shatter-stars -- emit from Cassandra and impact various wizards, transforming them into massive, buff alternate versions of themselves and causing them to murder those around them in violent, physical rage.
Adaine, behind the counter of Oodles of Strudel, is first to act. She identifies the shatter-stars as something from the magical school of enchantment, then grabs Kristen and uses dimension door to transport with her to near Cassandra. "I don't feel good about what you've done," Cassandra snarls at Kristen. Boggy gives Kristen the help action with a little wet kiss. Cassandra attempts to cast hold monster on Kristen, but Fig burns the spell out of the air with a counterspell. Adaine asks Kristen whether she should attack Cassandra as a reaction, enraging the goddess and causing her raw magic to manifest three more shatter-stars. One impacts Adaine, but she resists its effect by covering her eyes and mouth as it opens and emits a blast over her like a heat wave; the other two shatter-stars transform two wizards on the balcony above.
Fabian senses that the transformed wizards' apparent chaos is about to roil over into something bigger and more organized. The Bad Kids notice that the synod's astral clock already shows almost an hour after the party began with a view to show that kids are unable to get into Seacaster Manor and are leaving to party elsewhere. Fabian telepathically tells the Hangman to break open the doors to get everyone inside the party. He then uses his kinetic jaunt to attack a transformed centaur wizard and then another nearby transformed wizard, striking them both with strong attacks, one of them a successful goading attack, then backflips onto a table.
Kalina runs up behind Cassandra and vanishes with an invisibility spell -- which Adaine can see through thanks to keeping up a perpetual see invisibility effect. Adaine reads stress from Kalina's body language. Riz hides under a table as a bonus action, then casts Tasha's hideous laughter on one of the transformed wizards, making it fall prone and become incapacitated by involuntary laughter.
The remaining shatter-star on the field speaks the name "Cassandra," and all the enraged wizards move toward Cassandra with hostility, except the one Riz incapacitated and the one Fabian goaded. The latter makes five attacks on Fabian, missing most of them but still dealing significant damage with the rest. One of the enraged wizards makes a whirlwind attack that catches Kristen, Adaine and Kalina in the area of effect as she furiously strikes Cassandra. An enraged wizard centaur strikes Cassandra several times (one of which is deflected by a silvery barbs from Riz) through her shield spell.
Other wizards approach, urging everyone in the fray to break it up. Fig uses suggestion to order one of them to counterspell any harmful spell against Kristen, to which he readily agrees, introducing him as Conor Counterspell. She also gives bardic inspiration to Cassandra, encouraging her to resist her despair and anger. "Please get back!" shouts Cassandra, and a wave of damage emits from her, catching Kristen and everyone else within 20 feet -- except the remaining shatter-star.
Gorgug eyes the red shatter-star, trying to identify whether it's the same type of thing that Lydia Barkrock had absorbed, but concludes easily that it's different, with this one thrumming more quickly and angrily. Gorgug attacks the enraged wizard flanking Fabian, connecting three times.
Kristen turns to Cassandra and apologizes for her neglect. On a religion check, she understands that Cassandra is not under a curse that greater restoration would help much with, but there is some profound effect on her nevertheless. Kristen commits her action to a natural 20 persuasion check that calms Cassandra and quells the red glow within her chest. As she heals, her body expels seven shatter-stars. "I'm just really scared, I think," Cassandra says. "And I'm fucking pissed, because I wanted to help." Kristen sees another vein of red briefly appear as Cassandra tries to speak about why she's upset, but Cassandra swallows her words upon seeing Kristen flinch at her anger. Kristen also uses healing word to get herself off death's door.
Round Two[]
Adaine draws on what she learned from the Oodles of Strudel handbook to call a mall cop, who chastises the shatter-stars but is legally unable to touch them or cast spells on them. Wanting to protect Cassandra from the stars, Adaine offers to help her get away, but Cassandra turns her down -- but mutters toward the shatter-stars about how she "thought you were dead", which Kristen recognizes is not related to her time as the Nightmare King. Instead, Adaine casts true strike and steel wind strike to attack five of the shatter-stars, hitting four of them and bringing them within an inch of destruction. Boggy again gives Kristen the help action.
Kalina looks over at Riz and says to him, "Ragh Barkrock", while Cassandra thanks Fig for her advice. Cassandra begins casts a mass dispelling, saying, "time for a little bit of mystery". As she does so, Fig's stomach gurgles, and a fire elemental runs up to Fig to offer her a plate of shrimp. She reaches a little too hard for the plate, knocking it over, and a shrimp goes flying into Cassandra's throat as she casts her spell. The mage incapacitated by Riz's laughter spell hysterically knocks a wet-floor sign off the balcony, and it falls into Cassandra's head and stuns her. As the fire elemental turns away, the Bad Kids notice a splatter of tartar sauce on Fig's shirt and realize she has become as unlucky as Gilear once was. She admits to her weird pact with the mysterious stomach-gurgling patron she tapped into during the Night Yorb battle. In a moment of vision, Fig and Adaine both see gleaming golden armor saying, "It was not yours to take", and a portent of future Fig in the Armor of Pride unmaking the world with a wave of unluck.
The shatter-stars variously make their attacks and move, one of them getting shattered in an attack of opportunity by Kristen. Adaine uses a portent roll to avoid succumbing to another shatter-star's rage effect. Fig uses cutting words but is still unable to save Conor Counterspell from being transformed into another musclebound rage mage. Another shatter-star attempts to release above Cassandra, but Kalina intercepts it and takes in the effect, not transforming but shimmying in aggressive cat body language.
Fabian checks in with the Hangman, who has gotten all the partiers inside with a rumor that Fabian's going to make a grand entrance. Fabian destroys a shatter-star, lands goading attacks on the heavily injured centaur wizard and another wizard, and tries unsuccessfully to stab Kalina (even after Fig counterspells her shield). Fabian leaps onto the synod's astral clock and sees within it a vision of his aged, elderly future self saying, "I never got to be a maximum legend." Finally, Fabian fails an attempt to goad all the mall's wizards to attack their transformed peers.
Kalina kneels down and delivers the Heimlich maneuver to Cassandra, dislodging the shrimp, but then her eyes go red and she slits the goddess' throat, saying, "I liked you better as the Nightmare King." Bleeding out, Cassandra's anger begins to emerge again. Riz breaks his concentration on Tasha's hideous laughter to cast compelled duel on Kalina to distract her, which succeeds with the help of Adaine's portent roll.
The rage mages goaded by Fabian attempt to climb the clock to chase after him, but fail and instead just hurl tables at him, provoking the mall cop to fix the tables. Gorgug gets an attack of opportunity against another rage mage as it approaches Cassandra. Another rage mage's whirlwind attack destroys another shatter-star, prompts Kalina to use misty escape to turn invisible and teleport a short distance away, and knocks out Kristen. Amid a staggering number of strikes on her, Cassandra fails a saving throw that begins a transformation that will end on her next turn.
Fig casts healing word to get Kristen back up and eldritch blasts the last remaining shatter-star. Conor Counterspell, transformed into a rage mage, asks Fig what to do, and she directs him to engage the rage mage next to him. Gorgug strikes the shatter-star twice, including with a crit, to destroy it. With another crit, he also knocks a nearby rage mage prone. At the end of his turn, Cassandra continues to grow larger and more covered in red veins, attacking the prone mage with a cantrip of red light.
Kristen, on an insight roll, realizes Cassandra is not turning back into the Nightmare King, but that the light of rage is still a hot, destructive thing that is hurting her, whereas the brief moment when she said "I'm pissed" after being healed looked like a healthier outlet. Kristen jumps onto Cassandra's back and hugs her, telling her it's OK to express her anger in a safe way and they should talk about it later, while using her Staff of Doubt to release a wave of dispel magic into Cassandra's chest. Sensing that there is not time to wait for later, Kristen taps into Cassandra's rage to communicate with her, calling her anger a gift, but this is still not quite enough to get through to her.
Round Three[]
Knowing Cassandra is about to act, Adaine also casts dispel magic with the help action from Boggy, but also narrowly fails. As Cassandra's turn begins, she starts to use a 9th level spell slot to cast circle of death. Fig and Adaine both attempt counterspells, the latter succeeding.
After the battle[]
Conor Counterspell hurls his quarterstaff into the mall clock, shattering it and causing Fabian to fall -- and everyone else, falling through a vision of astral clocks and landing in front of Seacaster Manor, 10 seconds before they left to jump into the portal before the battle. They shout advice to their past selves, distilling down to "cast bless" and "don't eat shrimp", before their past selves jump into the portal. Mazey casually arrives for the party, greeting the confused Bad Kids as they try to wrap their heads around the time loop they just experienced.
Kristen mentally reaches out to listen to what may be going on with Cassandra, but instead gets an ominous, deep-voiced message: "She is at my side once more. Do you wish for divinity?" The voice offers to give Kristen "a master you deserve", and a slimy, rotting YES! falls out of a portal, which Kristen banishes. The voice tells Kristen it is coming for her, and it will break her irrevocably, before she closes the line of communication. Kristen thinks back on Cassandra saying to the shatter-stars that she "thought you were dead", connecting this to the synod's location in the Astral Realm.
In hopes of ascertaining a potential connection to Lydia Barkrock's chest gem, the Bad Kids approach Ragh, who is covered in butter in preparation for the shrimp jump. Before they can speak about it, they're interrupted by the arrival of all the seniors. In crisis, Kristen surreptitiously bows out of the shrimp jump with invisibility from Riz, and Fig disguises herself as Kristen for the shrimp jump. The Hangman is embarrassed by the costume Torek made him but shows appreciation for Fig calling him cute as a shrimp.
Kids from all across town stream in, from Aguefort, Hudol and Mumple alike. Fig-as-Kristen revs the Hangman, casts a fireball to light up the tartar sauce pool, and prepares to jump. Fabian announces Kristen's presidential campaign to the crowd, and on a natural 20, Fig makes an incredible jump with a kickflip, stunning all the onlookers in awe and applause. As the party kicks off, Mazey proclaims Fabian a "maximum legend."
Locations[]
Characters[]
The Bad Kids[]
New[]
Returning[]
- Cassandra
- Kalina
- Boggy the Froggy
- Cloaca
- The Hangman
- Mazey Phaedra
- YES!
- Ragh Barkrock
- Torek Railgrinder
- Max Durden
Mentioned[]
- The Nightmare King
- Lydia Barkrock
- Pok Gukgak
- Gilear Faeth
- The Night Yorb
- Arianwen Abernant
- Craig
- Zelda Donovan
Clips[]
