Session #42

Ah the agony of overtime.
It puts you behind on many things.
Like blog updates for instance.

If you are looking to leave a comment on the blog now, you will have to deal with a little extra irritation. This was done to get rid of the irritating spam that I was beginning to get daily on the blog. Towards the end I was getting 5 of them from some love potion jackass.

Once again this session was information gathering more than combat.
Which was probably a good thing since only Brian, Aaron, & Jeff were able to make it to the session.

Map

The party returned from the garrison to continue exploring.
When they put their maps and heads together they decided noticed a large empty area on the map. They had found only 2 ways into that area and both were blocked by bronze doors and force fields.

So they did some exploration and discovered areas N134 & N112. Both were blocked by a force field had a bronze door that had no handle, but instead some kind of item on it with a piece missing. Room N112 had a black circle with an empty area in the shape of a 6-fingered hand. Room N134 had a large copper circle that was missing a piece in the shape of a large key.

The party decided to check out the other 2 doors once again to refresh their memories.

After that the party decided to return to exploring the unknown. But...

Room N140: The party had been in this room before, but had to walk through it to get back to where they hadn't been.

This room had almost killed Dariel with its Wail of the Banshee trap. Otherwise it just had some dead elves that had dug up much of the center of the room.

But when the party walked inside this time, something different happened.

They opened the door and set off the spell, which was summarily ignored thanks to the dang Death Ward spell. But inside was not just rubble and elf corpses, but a skeletal creature wrapped in ancient robes. The trap alerted it to their presence.

"Pardon me. Do you perhaps have some diamond dust?"

"Umm, no."

"Oh. That is a shame. Well if you happen to come across some diamond dust, perhaps you would sell a little to me?"

"We would have no dealings with a creature the likes of you."

Note: Thanks to the party being mostly exalted characters, they are not allowed to let an evil such as this make deals with them.

"Ignorant fools! I know you are! I know what you seek! I give you this warning; leave my area alone! If you are to disrupt this prison, do not do so with mine!"

"We have no choice but to destroy you lich."

Round 1:
Dariel wins initiative. He casts Reverse Gravity to try to knock the lich off balance.
The lich doesn't move. The reverse gravity slightly pulls on the lich's robes, revealing feet that were never touching the ground in the first place.
The lich is next and it gives a maniacal evil laugh after is unleashes a Mordenkainen's Disjunction. And then the lich disappears.

Almost 75% of the PCs magic items are rendered non-magical.
Among them:
Thunderclease's +2 Holy Greatsword
Every permanent magic item Dariel owned
Krieg's Silent Metamagic Rod
Valden's Periapt of Wisdom +2
Senmonious's Ring of Fire Resistance

Well Krieg would have cast Miracle to return the stuff, but since he had just leveled, he didn't have the 5000XP to spend.

But to remove any suspense, by the end of the night he did gain enough XP to cast the spell. But he ended up only gaining 500XP for the night. Heh.

But that was at the end of the night. This happened at the beginning. So the party juggled their remaining items around. And Valden had to give up his status as a warrior cleric and become a walking band-aid cleric, and part time nuker.

Room N139 and other rooms: These rooms are either empty or visited.

Room N138: This room was quite empty. The hallway out of the south of it ended in a false door. When Cleez tried the handle he felt something seeping into his gloved ...um... paw.

It was smeared with black lotus extract. But it was a fortitude save, and it's not hard for Cleez to make a fort save.

Room N127: Two large mohrgs guarded a rod in this otherwise simple room. Combat begins immediately.

Round 1: Standard shmuck combat. Cleez jumps in and hacks at one pretty heavily.
It steps back, pulls out a scroll and casts Cloudkill. Dariel is able to understand the spell with his spellcraft skill, but at difficulty because the language of the spell was very different.
The rest of the party and their spells bring the poor thing down to almost no hp and they dispel the Cloudkill before it can do more than a whole 2 points of constitution damage.

Round 2: The 1st mohrg is brought down.
The 2nd mohrg pulls out its own scroll and casts Horrid Wilting from it. It does heavy damage (18d6) but those with too few hp save and all survive.

Round 3: The 2nd mohrg is brought down.
But a 3rd mohrg riding a zombie wyvern charged the rear of the party from room N128. It assaulted Krieg, whose only company is Dariel.

But no matter. Even a weakened party overmatches the poor critters.
On the zombie wyvern rider was a silver band with the symbol of Jergal on it.

Room N128: A now empty room.

Room N129: A trap in this room combines the effect of 2 Fire Storm spells, each dealing 15d6 damage. The two lead party members, Cleez and Senmonious, take some damage, but since they both have lots of hp and their own personal cleric, it's not that big of a deal.

But it does entertain the DM as the party deals with the locked northern door while being careful of the trap.

In fact they make a lot of noise. Enough to almost "wake the dead".
Yeah, horrible pun, I know.

Room N182: One large mohrg and eight zombie ogres wait here, ready for the party to enter.

Even though I knew this combat posed no real threat to the party, we played it out anyway.

Round 1: Scratch 1 zombie.
Round 2: Thundercat kills 3 zombies. The rest of the party assaults the mohrg.
Round 3: Thundercat kills 2 zombies. The mohrg drops.
Round 4: We didn't bother.

Room N181: The party opens this door and sees fog & darkness and they hear nothing from the room.
Cleez steps through the door and is covered in silence. So he steps back and Dariel casts Greater Dispel Magic into the room.
The result is thunder and lightning from within the room before returning to silence.

Properly creaped out, the party turns around.

Room N184: A mostly empty room. Cleez investigated alone and found nothing. The DM secretly rolled a fortitude save for him to resist the Devil Chills disease. Not a problem.

Room N185: An old, rusty, torturing room. The party quickly searches and leaves. More made disease saves.

Hallway N187: Trapped...lotsa trapped hallways around here. A couple of symbol spells are written on the floor and they are triggered. But nothing happens to anyone because they always make their saves...

Room N195: This room would have otherwise been "empty" save that Detect Magic and Detect Evil both found something powerful behind the wall.
When Cleez investigated the wall, the ceiling collapsed on him doing 32d6 crushing damage (average 112hp damage), no save.
He was totally buried and risked suffocation.
Luckily Dariel had the ability to cast a Disintegrate spell that didn't harm good people.
It also didn't harm the sword.
But it did get rid of the rubble.

So there lies a black-bladed longsword and a crouching Cleez.
The sword radiated an immense evil.
On its black blade, that reflected a reddish light, was the word "Varnarul" which translated to angel-slayer in Infernal.
Dariel began to cast Disintegrate on the thing. It responded by casting Slow on the party and Daze Monster at Dariel.
It then began yelling at the party.

"If the angels couldn't destroy me you pathetic runts couldn't scratch me."

And that began an interesting little discussion where the party tried to get some information from the sword and it either laughed at them or yelled at them some more.

The party wrapped it up and decided they would let the garrison get rid of it.

Well that's all for that session.

Session #43 soon...well maybe.