Vulture Clash is the ninth episode of Fantasy High: Junior Year.
Intro[]
"Last we left off, our Intrepid Heroes were in the midst of the Frostyfaire Folk Festival facing down none other than Interim Emergency Backup Principal Grix, who had sprung out over the tree to attack Ruben, the member of the Rat Grinders and frontman of My Clerical Gnomance. ..."
"There were some intense confrontations last time between Gorgug and his parents, and sort of how they were running the lead-up to the Frostyfaire Folk Festival. ... This is also where you had a conversation with Ruben where he came out of his disguise as an old sort of druid and seemed to say that he's never taken a shit and also was getting mobbed for autographs. So, not a very honest gnomish bard, all things being equal. This is also the day that you found, in Mordred Manor, you pored through all the notes from Cormyr and Rana, Lydia Barkrock's old adventuring party, that were all about Bakur the fiend, the ritual that he tried to pull off in the Red Waste, and all this stuff about Obliviati Mori, the gods remembering their dead but not being able to break that sort of silence to mortals. If mortals had forgotten a god and thereby banished it to the Astral Realm, the gods are not allowed to circle back and be like, "Hey, wait, a couple of you. Come back. Worship my old pal.""
"All of that unfolding, the battle raged, lawnmowers and various other devices that had been retrofitted for some, you know, totally healthy adult activity in the privacy of their own tree. Noticing a vulture perched on a piece of scaffolding, the spell-less Kristen Applebees, still separated from her deity, wandered forward to address the bird. And rather than simply sort of squawking and flying away, the bird was happy to bring you screaming into the Vulture Dimension! Which, once again, you are now all entering. You are entering the Vulture Dimension."
Synopsis[]
As The Bad Kids enter the Vulture Dimension, Riz feels the concentration from Grix's dominate monster drop, and after a couple of rounds, the stunned party members recover from being stunned. The Vulture King challenges the party to answer his riddle, which they must answer simultaneously. If they are not all correct, they will be destroyed. The Bad Kids spend several minutes trying and failing to rules-lawyer the circumstances of the answering. The riddle is ultimately: "Vultures, yea or nay?" The Bad Kids all exclaim, "Yea!" and pass. The Vulture King commands his underlings to rip his body apart and gifts the Bad Kids with his remains, which are a collection of magical items.
In a burst of feathers, the Bad Kids disappear from the Vulture Dimension and reappear at the Frostyfaire Folk Festival at the Thistlespring Tree a few moments after they had departed. In the meantime, many bots are down, many people have fled, the members of My Clerical Gnomance are badly injured, and Grix is now benefiting from a mirror image spell and has concentration on a hold person spell on Ruben Hopclap, who appears to have been in the process of casting a spell himself.
Battle, Round Three, continued[]
The battle picks back up from Fig's turn. Fig casts fireball on Grix, whose attempt at counterspell is in turn counterspelled by Fig herself. After taking light damage, Grix returns fire with a lightning cantrip that strikes Fig.
With his returning weapon, Gorgug hurls his axe twice recklessly at Grix, which strike thanks to Grix's reaction being expended and unavailable for shield. The first attack strikes true, and the second destroys one of the three mirror image duplicates. Gorgug enters a rage, and Grix strikes him as well with a lightning cantrip.
Adaine sends her elemental up to attack Grix twice, striking both times, again thanks to the lack of shield. The elemental's first attack hits him, ripping the casing off the front of his body and breaking his concentration, while the second strike destroys another duplicate. With a bonus action, Adaine casts true strike and then casts chromatic orb to annihilate the last duplicate.
As Grix's concentration breaks, Ruben's spell energy is released with a radiating guitar riff, and all the Bad Kids get a bardic inspiration die. Seeing this, Grix turns his attention away from the Bad Kids and attempts to cast a forcecage spell to entrap Ruben again, but Adaine counterspells him.
Round Four[]
Grix uses a lair action to catch Adaine, Gorgug, Riz and Kristen in a powerful lightning spell that knocks out Adaine and heavily damages Gorgug and Kristen, while Riz manages to dodge and avoid damage.
Fabian runs up onto the stage to acrobatically leap to attack Grix, who immediately casts shield. Nevertheless, one attack from Fandrangor lands past the shield, which Fabian pumps a 3rd-level spell slot into and makes a goading attack with a slashing bardic flourish. The heavy damage destroys Grix, his voice box whirring "p- per- perfect order" as he is dismantled into a pile of parts on the ground.
After the battle[]
Ruben greets the crowd after the battle ends, and Fig, still disguised as Wanda Childa, casts a minor illusion to make it appear she's leaving on a bus, destination "Anywhere", as she skateboards away. After hiding and dropping her disguise, Fig returns to find Agent Cuspin Clark asking the crowd if they'd seen the bus. Gorgug shoos him away with an oink, and Kristen heals Adaine to bring her back from unconsciousness.
Wilma and Digby Thistlespring thank the Bad Kids for saving the day, and together they all investigate Grix's remains. They take his hard drive to bring to the AV club for further investigation later. The remains also include Arthur Aguefort's arcane mark, indicating he did indeed make Grix. Adaine's identify spell points out that Grix's programming was set to enforce the school's bylaws in case the superintendent's office was looking into the Aguefort Adventuring Academy in its principal's absence. With certainty, Adaine is able to determine Grix was not tampered with, and the Bad Kids speculate that either Arthur Aguefort simply made the robot without thinking about the consequences, or that the bylaws were tampered with to indirectly affect Grix.
The Bad Kids survey the crowd and notice a conspicuous, suspicious absence of the other Rat Grinders. Under the stage, they find several red, glowing little cable connectors. Gorgug, with his artificer expertise, recognizes that the electrical connections don't make sense, and Riz realizes they're arranged as a 24-sided star, right beneath where Ruben would have been standing. He is absent, though, having run off after Wanda Childa. Gorgug unplugs one connector, returning the array to an ordinary blue arcanotech glow. Riz deduces that the array was used to release or channel some kind of energy or magic, perhaps related to rage, during the My Chemical Gnomance concert.
The Bad Kids, seeking to look into the Rat Grinders' secrets, decide to head off to the Far Haven Woods to talk to the rats there that the Rat Grinders had been using to level grind. With Adaine recording on video, Fabian eats the Tongue of the Vulture King to be able to speak with animals as Kristen lures over a rat. Under questioning, the rat tells Fabian that last year, Lucy Frostblade started to bring the rats back from the dead after the other Rat Grinders had left after a grinding session, and that she used to call him Spot. When Spot expresses reticence to reveal more, Fig casts a minor illusion of the Sexy Rat for a moment before Kristen squishes it, alarming Spot. As Fabian steers the conversation back with the help of Fig's bardic inspiration, Spot accidentally reveals the existence of a Rat World beneath the school before offering to take the Bad Kids to a secret place deep in the woods. Spot guides the Bad Kids through the woods toward Lake Shimmerstone, where Kristen remarks on how mystery-vibey the environment looks, at which the shards of Cassandra begin to glow. Spot splits off to make sure no other rats are paying their respects to Lucy at the moment, but Fabian's stomach gurgles and an owl swoops down and eats Spot.
Without their guide, the group searches on their own, and Riz is shocked to discover the body of Yolanda Badgood, expertly hidden. Riz determines she's been dead about three hours and her body was torn apart by immense concussive force damage, which the Bad Kids suspect was caused by Ruben's released magical energy during the concert hours earlier. Adaine casts identify on the bracelet Yolanda had given Kristen, determining it is a channel to divine power for clerics without a deity. While trying to raise dead, Kristen sees the name of something she cannot read on Yolanda's sternum and realizes someone has performed an unholy last rites, using the name of a dead god to force her soul to the beyond past raising. Through the Ethereal Plane, Adaine sees the same unnameable name underneath a nearby tree, where the Bad Kids find the months-old body of Lucy Frostblade. Her body shows signs of being killed by a variety of different types of attacks by multiple assailants. Gorgug identifies that the knocked-down trees around were knocked down by giants to hide Lucy's body, and Yolanda presumably died searching for Lucy's body. Kristen reaches out to the remnants of Cassandra for a divine intervention, but is able only to hear the goddess faintly whispering, "Spies, tongue, curse." Kristen uses spare the dying to soothe the distant souls of Yolanda and Lucy, a miracle of mystery that re-grants Kristen her full spellcasting.
With Adaine having collected a sample of cursed soil from the site, Riz calls Molman Holden from the Soil Club and arranges to meet up to analyze it. On their way out, the Bad Kids cover their tracks, and day breaks. Fabian anonymously calls in a tip to the police about the site of the bodies, but the call is abruptly transferred to Agent Clark at the Council of Chosen, and Kristen shouts "Hilda"'s name in the background before Fabian hangs up.
Downtime[]
The Bad Kids go into a period of downtime as their stressful night ends and they go back into daily life.
Riz gets an A in his rogue classes, hands off the soil sample to Molman to study, and rounds up more geeks to vote for Kristen. He misses an outing with Sklonda to visit his dad's grave, but as they talk afterward, she happens to mention her legal case has ended because her clients died suspiciously.
Looking to destress from the discovery of the bodies, Fabian dips into his wealth to hire a bunch of nurses to offer B12 shots to help relax his friends.
With the help of Adaine's portent roll as she coaches Gorgug on focusing on spells during his rage, Gorgug stands up to Porter Cliffbreaker. Porter is impressed by the video of Gorgug oinking at Agent Clark, and the two bond. Porter gives Gorgug an A+ in barbarian class, signs his MCAT, and offers Gorgug access to bureaucratic loopholes like the "Last Stand exam" now that Grix is not standing in the way of it. Gorgug also gets an A+ in artificer first year, takes a stress token to get a C in artificer second year, and Riz takes a stress token to help Gorgug study and get a C in artificer third year. In Owlbears practice, Gorgug manages a comeback from his previous failure and avoids being cut from the team. Unable to devote time to his relationships, Gorgug misses spending quality time with Roz and Gorbag.
Adaine gets an A in her wizard classes despite her teacher Tiberia Runestaff criticizing the quality of her material components. Aelwyn reaches out to check on Adaine and is surprised to hear she's working at Basrar's. She comes by to visit Adaine at work one weekend to give her a reality check on being able to earn 10 barrels of diamonds on a part-time waitress's paycheck. As Adaine takes her lunch break, Aelwyn alludes to having access to capital to fund Adaine's studies, and as her crystal wallpaper pops up with "OK" with a checkmark, Adaine realizes Aelwyn is working for Kipperlilly Copperkettle. Aelwyn agrees to share dirt on Kipperlilly with Adaine.
Locations[]
Characters[]
The Bad Kids[]
New[]
- The Vulture King
- Spot
Returning[]
- Principal Arcturus Grix
- Ruben Hopclap
- Wilma and Digby Thistlespring
- Agent Cuspin Clark
- Molman Holden
- Sklonda Gukgak
- Porter Cliffbreaker
- Gorthalax the Insatiable
- Tiberia Runestaff
- Aelwyn Abernant
Mentioned[]
- Suspicious Vulture
- Arthur Aguefort
- Lucy Frostblade
- Yolanda Badgood
- Roz
- Gorbag
- Kipperlilly Copperkettle
- Mazey Phaedra
Clips[]
