Sunday, July 03, 2005

Session #30

"Celebrate the birth of your nation by blowing up a small part of it."

Dungeon masters, did you ever have a day where your players made things harder on themselves than was needed?

Well welcome to this session. The party played it slow and smart. But they overdid it at one point.

Sometimes the way to go is to shoot first and ask questions later.

Well this session and its attendance were interesting. Brian, Justin, Dale, and Aaron arrived on time. A couple hours later Joe showed up. Then Brian had to leave after the main fight ended. A couple minutes after that, Jeff showed up just to see what he missed (his work had him do a single-day out of town business trip).

Map

The heroes woke from their rest. Currently they have 2 tasks at hand; to find and defeat Tyrus, and to save the long-haired lady from the "Dark One".

At this time the party has mapped out the vast majority of the region. But not every single nook and cranny. And sadly this region, unlike the previous ones, needs to be scoured to solve its puzzles and find it secrets.

First the party thought they had solved the puzzle of the lady. So Zorak cast Invisibility on everyone (to hide from the mephits) and they all went to the ziggurat/pyramid that is... (well after they worked out the logistics of everyone being invisible)

Area V1: This ziggurat is only about 10' tall at its highest point. It had only 2 tiers and a statue of the long-haired lady, her hand outstretched as if to hold something. A plaque at the base read (in celestial):

Five to unbind,
One to complete,
My beloved children,
Rise to their feat.

Senmonious had the mithril orb so he placed it in her hands. Nothing. The party waited. Still nothing.

So he retrieved the mithril orb.

Now the party had thought they had solved all of the puzzles, but no. They only had flipped 2 of the switches, rather than all 5. The party had made the mistake of thinking that the puzzles to get to the switch-statue rooms were also part of the overall puzzle.

So now the party had to go find themselves 3 more statues with switches.

First they used their remaining time being Invisible to scout out more of the map. But that turned up nothing.

So they put their scout to use. Zorak casts Invisibility and Fly on Torin, allowing Torin to investigate unseen and unfettered by nasty obstacles...like gravity and lava.

So Torin spent the next 10 minutes scouting out the river of lava and the open areas near it.

But that also turned up nothing more than where the first 2 fire giants attacked the party oh so long ago.

And since the party has killed most of the non-mephit inhabitants of the region, once again random monsters are all but unheard of. (That does not mean the DM isn't rolling :)).

So now the party has to pull out their map and begin looking again at what they've missed.

Room J50: The party had been here before. This is where the powered up rasts nearly TPK'd the party and Senmonious's quick thinking saved them.

Now the party waited out in the hall, while Sen moved in to scout out what would be Room J53. Originally Torin was with Sen, but...

When they entered, the rasts came out and got near the party, but not within striking range. The agitated rasts freaked out Torin and Sen enough to make Torin head back to the hallway.

So Sen went through this puzzle alone. Sen tried the door to room J53, but it was locked. So he went back to J50 and noticed the 2 alcoves, one with a statue, and one without.

Since this puzzle was repeating itself, he knew what to do. He moved the statue from one alcove to another and then heard a click.

Room J53: Another lichen covered statue of a beautiful, long-haired woman. He searched the statue and found a switch.

Hooray! Kind of.

Everytime the party flipped one of these switches something bad has happened. The first time Krieg got blasted with a Harm spell. The second time the whole party was hit with a Dictum spell.

But this time, nothing happened. Afterwards Sen was to flip all of these switches. They suspected, and were correct, that only those of lawful good alignment could flip these switches without harm.

And there was singing off to the west.

Room V1 (again): Zorak returned here alone and invisible, just in case. Nope, nothing again.

Back to the map...

Ok, now last session the party had defeated the fiery ogre magi. But they were in such bad shape afterwards that they didn't investigate too much afterwards. And at the beginning of this session, they had forgotten about it. Until now anyway.

Room J48: Another puzzle where the party had to turn some statues...snore...

And the image of the beautiful woman returned and said something to the party about slving the puzzle...snore...

This time the party heard 2 clicks from secret doors they had found but had not tried to open yet.

Room J47: Another statue of the woman. Sen flipped the switch and singing was heard.

Room J49: And another statue of the woman. Sen flipped the switch and singing was heard.

Now the party returns to their sleeping room and rests up. They don't quite trust this woman. They think the celestials may have put her in here for a reason. But they had to check it out. They accepted that for all they knew, this was how you find the dragon.

Area V1 (one more time): Rested up and invisible again, the party puts the mithril orb in the statue's hands. The statue moves and slides to the left, revealing a stairway below and the horrid stench of death coming from it.

After a couple seconds the statue was fully open. Then, as the party descended the stairs, the statue began sliding back closed.

Region V

(This map had to be scanned in directly from the book. Sorry for the curve.)

Room V2: As the party descended the stairs into this tomb, they saw a relief of angelic beings fighting demonic/devilish beings and at the bottom of it was the depiction of fallen celestial.

In a sweet voice, "At last, my heroes have come to save me! Come quickly, I am trapped by fiends..."

The party attempted to ask questions by yelling them, with no results.

Room V3: (Room V4 was not entered, but was very similar to this one)

Three granite sarcophogi lay closed in the center of this hallway.

"You may calm down. There is no purpose in further ruses. Come in, my heroes. It is not often I receive visitors. I am so lonely in this dreadful place. Come visit me and share conversation with an old soul."

The party attempted to ask her questions again by yelling down the hallway. Still with no response.

By now the heroes knew this was all a trap. A woman that desperately needed their help turns out to be just fine after they enter an unopenable tomb, and then they see sarcophagi...riiiight.

Zorak cast Detect Magic. One of the sarcophogi radiated some necromancy. So the party chose not to molest them.

Rooms V5, V6, & V7: More sarcophogi. More radiated necromancy. One radiated evocation and it was open.

"Do not be afraid, revered guests. My children are safe with me."

Children? Wouldn't that fill you with joy?

Once again the party attempted to ask questions, with the same result.

After that they checked out the open sarcophogus that radiated evocation magic (V6). Torin's searching turned up nothing except a couple of rats frozen together in a block of ice.

Thunderclease moved the rats after it was determined the magic came from beneat them. He was then blasted with 12 points of cold damage.

He kept the rats.

Room V8: As the party entered this room, it burst into light as several candles. Sitting atop a single sarcophogus was the angellically beautiful woman that the party had seen many times. Effectively dressed in her very thin "night clothes", this woman oozed seduction and acted upon it. Around the room were a dozen of her "servants".

"What took you so long? You may call me Serratine. Please take a seat."

The party chose to stand.

The entire time in this area, Senmonious had been detecting evil. So he decided to scan Serratine. Bad move. One bad saving throw later and Sen took a seat on the floor.

Afterwards she told them that she had been the most beautiful of all of the angels in the heavens. Many angels sought her to be their own. But she was with Kator, and he became jealous. He eventually rallied those in the heavens to cast her down out of his jealousy.

She says that she can never leave this tomb, but she does seek revenge and that's where the party comes into play. She has a Ring of Wishes that she is willing to give to the party if they promise to bring her the one who closed her tomb, a celestial named Cyrlebrai.

Basically the next 10 minutes resulted in circular question asking by the party to her where she basically repeated herself. In the process Torin sat down in the same manner as Sen.

Eventually Zorak came into a verbal confrontation with her, while avoiding her gaze. (He even avoided looking at the DM during this time.)

Her last words before combat began were, "Foolish, grotesque mortal, you shall be consumed with a vile unrest."

Early rounds: The 12 servants rush towards the party. Senmonious ends up receiving a few negative levels thanks to the servants (who are now obviously vampire spawn).
Zorak casts Haste on the party and Fireball on the spawn.
Thunderclease, not being afraid of combat when there's no giant around, wades into melee and barely receives a scratch. He mows down at least one spawn a round. And in one round he takes out 4.
Valden casts his combat prep spells.
Krieg attempts to turn, but Aaron's on a low rolling streak and there's something hampering his turning abilities.
Torin and Senmonious team up to protect the casters while letting Cleez go on the offensive.
Serratine casts Fly and Greater Invisibility. Eventually she flies in behind Cleez and drains a couple of levels from him.

Middle rounds:
There's only a handful of spawn left. Krieg uses his mega-turn from his clerical sun domain to finish them off.
Serratine wades around the battlefield while invisible, draining a few more levels here and there, including from the use of Enervation.
Valden responds with an Invisibility Purge.
That causes Serratine to fly up to the ceiling to avoide melee, and then out of range of the purge spell. While she is doing that, Krieg and Zorak attempt a targeted Dispel Magic on her. But they both fail on all attempts.

Late rounds: Serratine is backed up into her own crypt room so she can remain invisible. The party tosses a few nuke spells in there, but they see no signs of her dying.
Valden moves forward to bring her back into the range of the Invisibility Purge. And she is still on the ceiling casting spells.
Valden casts Heal and holds the charge, intending to use it as a touch attack on Serratine the vampire. And since he's large size now from his combat buffs, it's more than likely that he'll hit her.
She, knowing full well what that spells mean, casts Hold Monster on him. And he fails his save.
The party, who has no one that can reach her, and has no ranged weapons that can hurt her, stand back and look on impotently. They all believe they have no way to defeat her now.
So while they twiddle their thumbs, Serratine uses this opportunity to wreak more havoc. Including casting more Enervations at the party.
Round after round, Valden fails his Will saves (his best save too).
Further Dispel Magic spells remove a few of her spells, but not the Fly spell.
Aaron, desperate, looks at Krieg's spell list and character sheet to find a spell that will help. He finds one and the DM rolls a mere 2 on the saving throw.
Serratine is now blind.
She turns to gaseous form and attempts to the flee the battlefield. She knows this tomb well, she's been here 1000 years after all. So even being blind only hampers her a little.
So Krieg messes with her head and puts a Wall of Stone in the center of the battlefield. That slows her down.
And when she gets around that and moves into room V6, he blocks her in there with another Wall of Stone. And it's air-tight.

The combat is over, kind of.
The party searches her tomb and finds nothing.
The Hold Monster spell wears off before Valden can remove it (that's how bad Aaron was rolling all night).
And when he able to move again, he makes sure to touch absolutely nothing. The party may need that Heal spell. So he basically stands around touching nothing with his right hand.

Torin and Zorak go searching the area for any doors, secret or otherwise.

The rest of the party goes about staking the vampire spawn, by converting their 10' wooden pole into a dozen stakes.

Several thorough searches later and the party has found nothing, even while using their Wand of Detect Secret Doors.

They realize their only way out is to kill Serratine. But they don't have the proper materials to kill her. They give it a shot anyway.

So Thunderclease and Torin begin working at clearing away the Wall of Stone. Two hours later and they have made a 2" hole in the wall to converse with her.

They say, "Let us free."
She says, "Remove this blindness and we'll talk."

So the party goes back to clearing away the wall.

Twenty more hours later, and a thoroughly exhausted party has removed enough of the stone wall to be able to move through. And through some amazing rolls by Jeff (who recently showed up to the game), Valden still has the Heal spell running (yeah this is stretching the intent of the "holding the charge" rules, but eh).

Round 1:
Thunderclease moves into the room.
Zorak casts Haste.
Krieg casts Silence on Serratine.
Serratine flails blindly, hitting Thunderclease once and draining him.
Krieg begins to very slowly and deliberately move into the room.

Round 2:
Zorak Enlarges Cleez.
Cleez takes a chunk out of Serratine.
Valden makes it through the hole.
Serratine flails about blindly but Cleez makes his Fort saves this time.

Round 3:
Zorak Enlarges Valden.
Valden uses his Heal spell touch attack on Serratine. She makes her save, so only takes 55 damage.
Thunderclease hurts her some more.

She turns gaseous and flies up. But she is not out of the party's range any longer. So she turns back to her solid form.
One last swing by Valden and she's out of hp.

She turns back to gaseous, but her clothing and ring does not.
She rapidly flies back to her tomb, which then seals up and all of her spawn in their sarcophogi burn into nothing.

The party says, "What the..."

But now they have a Ring of Wishes (2 wishes remaining). And can leave.

And Krieg thought the garrison would come save them.
Puh-lease.

One carefully worded wish later, and the party leaves the tomb.

They then return to their room and rest for 2 days.

Note: I don't play where negative levels can become permanent. It is just too nasty. And in this dungeon, it would be a death sentence. So they just keep the negative levels until they shrug them off or get them restored.

And on that note:
Thunderclease leveled (10 barbarian/2 fighter)
Senmonious leveled (11 paladin)
Others are painstakingly close

Next week: Dragon fight?
Man I sure hope so. This region has lasted 2 sessions longer than each of the other regions.

Oh another thing, if you hate 3rd edition. Keep it to yourself.
Thanks.

:)

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I hate thir, no wait its that point fi version of it or then there's that whole advanced debacle that screwed up everything in the first but that really hosed up chainmail which was just about the epitome of, okay wait a minute let me start over.

As always thanks for sharing your delving. Those of us 40 year old, three children under three living in nyc no longer getting to delve surely appreciate it.

D

11:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In my defense for the prolonged Vampire fight... My first instinct was to wall the vampire in with us (I didn't know we were already traped in at that time), and then knock him down to negatives. But we didn't have any way to kill it, so we decided to trap it instead.

That's when we found that we were trapped in, and the only way out was to kill it.

11:16 AM  

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