¶ Session 032 - The Drowning Lecture 🚿
¶ The Class is Dismissed 🏫
The Sooties found themselves in the chaos of the ruined lecture hall, where the party were besieged by the restless dead. The primary antagonist, a spectral figure dubbed "Professor Dunk" floated above the desks, flanked by wailing, ghost-like students. The air was thick with ectoplasm and the deafening, unearthly screeches of the spirits, which battered the party’s resolve and left them gripped by supernatural fear.
Otto, fighting through the terror, took a tactical approach. He calculated the optimal angles of attack, his Smoking Sword carving through the ghostly mist. While he deftly avoided the worst of the ethereal blows by using his shield and his allies as cover, he shouted distractions to the spirits, creating openings for Nitro and Clutch to exploit.
¶ The Spirit Trap and The Dunk 👻
Nitro took the fight directly to the Professor. She retrieved a Spirit Trap—a magical net from the group's stash—and hurled it at the floating academic. The net struck true, tangling the ghost's incorporeal form. Showing incredible athleticism, Nitro leaped into the air, grabbed the netting, and slammed the Professor down to the floorboards.
However, the ghost was not finished. He reached out with a withered hand, draining Nitro’s vitality to heal his own essence, leaving her physically enfeebled. Undeterred and matching the ghosts' rage with her own screams, Nitro decided to use the environment to her advantage. She grappled the entangled Professor and shoved him forcefully into a decorative clam filled with brackish water sitting on a nearby pedestal.
The effect was instantaneous. The moment the ghost touched the water, he vanished with a final, gurgling shriek, seemingly banished or transported by the strange liquid.
¶ The Flying Monk 📖
Meanwhile, Clutch utilized stumbled and weaved through the battlefield. Calling upon a Bless spell to bolster the party's accuracy, he took to the air, flying upward to engage the remaining floating spirits on their own level.
The battle ended with a poetic flourish. Clutch, hovering near the high ceiling, dispatched the final spirit by slamming a heavy book into its face—a fitting end for a phantom student. Silence finally returned to the lecture hall.
¶ The Oxidized Bell 🔔
After Otto tended to the party’s wounds the group turned their attention to escape. The room seemed sealed, save for a suspicious section of the wall near a collapsed tower structure. Nitro, opting for a direct solution, punched a hole straight through the rotted wood and plaster.
Through the breach, they discovered a vertical shaft open to the gray sky above. Below them, the shaft was flooded with dark, murky water. Peering through the gloom, they spotted the massive, oxidized green shape of a copper bell submerged in the depths, along with a staircase spiraling down into the water.
¶ Into the Depths 🌊
Needing to scout ahead, Nitro consumed a Bubbling Scale, causing a patch of scales to erupt on her skin and granting her the ability to hold her breath for an extended period. She dove into the flooded shaft, confirming that the stairs led deep into a submerged chamber, but she was forced to return before her air ran out.
The party faced a logistical problem: how to get everyone down the flooded stairwell. The solution lay in the very object that had banished Professor Dunk. Clutch inspected the burbling clam in the lecture hall and identified its occult properties. It was no mere decoration, but a magical font. By submerging their heads in the clam's brackish water, the party could gain the ability to breathe underwater, opening the way to the sunken bell tower below.