Session #46

Ok, I’ve finally got a scant few moments to enter this baby into the net.

We had to play this session at Aaron’s place because of some holiday-related complications. That had the potential to cause some real problems because I almost always forget something crucial when I pack up my stuff. But just this once I had brought everything I needed.

Everyone was able to make it this time around, although thanks to the real world and a longer than usual session, Brian and Jeff had to skip out around Midnight. The rest of us were playing until 3am.

I recorded this session and later listened to it at work while taking a few notes. I discovered a few things.

First, I forget quite a few of the little things when typing a session into a blog entry. Nothing major of course, but certainly something that might have been interesting or would have added some flavor.

Next, listening to a recording of yourself playing a role-playing game has got to be almost as boring as watching a golf match followed by one of those river fishing shows.
I think I’d snap if I had to it too often.

And finally, I learned that those hooks you buy to hang large plants from have only a 50 pound weight limit. It’s an inside joke.

This entry will be slightly different. Because the party has explored so much of the region, and they’ve sent most of the region’s inhabitants into hiding, they can basically go wherever they choose to with little to no opposition.

Putting so much of their exploration and finding nothing of real interest onto the map would be a waste of time and web space, so I’m just going to give the highlights.

They did quite a bit of mapping, but found very little of interest.

Now if you have read even a little about the party’s exploits in the region you will have noted that Death Ward has basically made most of the undead in the region impotent. But I will warn you, that had the party not had the spell, they most definitely would not have survived at all. So I’ll warn you potential DM’s of region N, pay close attention to game balance if you’re going to ban or weaken Death Ward. But I figure most groups won’t have enough clerical spells to cover the entire party with that spell, so it may not be an issue.

And this session the party made heavy use of another spell that hosed up the DM’s fun. Antimagic field has basically made 90% of the traps of the region ineffective. All they do is have Krieg walk out front with an Arcane Sight spell, if he sees something that could be a trap he steps aside, then Valden (the source of the Antimagic Field) walks up to the door and nulls the magic. Then Cleez will bash down the door. Sometimes the bashing doesn’t work, so they just back up and use their Wand of Knock and then Valden nulls the spell.

The spell is irritating, but it saves a lot of pointless dice rolling. You’ll find out what I mean later in this session.

Now if you piece the maps together you will notice a big empty spot in the center of the region. The Walls of Force and the bronze doors prevent anyone from reaching this area. The negative energy waves that hit the region seem to originate from there and all of the information the party has heard so far tells them that there is some great evil behind the doors. Is it a demon, devil, powerful undead, or a sleeping god of death? The party has heard many things, but they never had anything solid.

The information they’ve heard is mainly from the mouths, or mouth-like orifices, of evil creatures of the region. And let’s accept it boys and girls, sometimes evil things will lie. The party understands this, so they prepared to convert a Miracle spell into a Commune spell if the opportunity presented itself.

Using a Miracle for a spell like Commune can get them some answers, but it also means that a level 9 spell has been eaten up for the day.

Also, this DM has a bit of a history of screwing over players who are don’t like to risk even the small things. This goes back to a 2E game I ran about 7 years ago where Dale played a cleric that couldn’t even make a slightly risky decision without casting an Augury spell. One thing this DM likes to control is information, and Augury just messes that all up. But I didn’t want to outright ban the spell. So if it was cast sparingly, I let it go through. But Dale couldn’t help himself. So he would cast it multiple times in a session. After awhile I started adding some risk itself to casting the spell and gave it some vague conditions. Something to the extent of “If you cast Augury or similar spell once in a while you are fine. But if you cast them too often then you will have to make a save or lose your clerical spellcasting ability for the day.” I only had to really enforce then once, and he made the save.

Now you might be thinking, “What a jerk! Let they guy cast the spell.” Well of course I knew it was a bit harsh, but you’re supposed to be adventurers. Risk comes with that job.

You’re playing D&D, not 20 Questions.

You have the spell to help aid you in difficult tasks. Your deity, or a servant of your deity, takes some time out their busy day to answer your questions. When asking questions of such an entity make sure the question is something worthy of asking a god; something that would aid you in saving the village, princess, or world (or the reverse if you are evil). But don’t harass your deity with a telemarketing call.

Even after all of these years Dale is still cautious about such spells with me.

Hmm, I should probably start kissing up to Dale. He’ll be running the next campaign, and I really don’t need any grudge monsters thrown at me.

Dale: “You see an angry stone giant who looks a lot like Dalron. He mentions something about ‘poetic justice’ as he raises his club and swings it at you.”
Sean: “Eep.”
Jeff: “This is going to be a long campaign for Sean.”
Aaron: “Yeah. Should we help him or let things play out?”
Brian: “Hey Dale, are there any other angry giants that look like Dugan and Torin? Can I roll for them? This is going to be sweet.”
A minute later; Justin: “Oh man, that was awesome!”

Ugh, let’s get back to the actual session.

So instead of burning a Miracle spell yet, they explore some.

As they explored the northern halls of the region, they heard a loud click followed by a powering down sound.

Then a negative energy blasted from the center of the region. Krieg, the only PC not in the Antimagic Field, was immune to the damage because his Death Ward. But, thanks to poetic justice, the rest of the party took a mere 17 points of negative energy damage. The DM smiled.

(The DM mentioned that the powering-down sounded like something akin to the sound the Death Star made when its tractor beam was shut down. This was followed by several of us attempting to imitate the sound. Ugh, we truly are geeks. Hey at least there weren’t any Monty Python quotes this session.)

The party had a bad feeling something more had happened, so they returned to the bronze door area and found that all four of the Walls of Force had changed slightly. Instead of a bright and obvious field of whitish light, they now found that it was rapidly changing colors.

That scared the party pretty good. A wall of Force is easier to beat than a Prismatic Wall. But Dariel took a close look at it and determined that it was “definitely not a prismatic anything.”

And just a scant few moments after the party walked away, they heard another loud click, a powering-down sound, and another negative energy wave (just Valden this time). They rushed back to the walls. This time they found the Walls of Force changing colors at a much slower pace. And they could clearly make out the colors of the wall; red, green, and blue.

They could only guess what this meant. They checked all of the walls and doors again and found the same thing; the walls were pretty and the doors still were missing the keys.

After much talking (and I mean much talking; I could have done my taxes I bet) the party decided that there wasn’t much they could do. So they waited a few minutes and went back to exploring, hoping they could find some clues.

Map A

Well since the party now had their protection against spell traps, the party returned to this area.

Room N74: The first time the party opened the door a Wail of the Banshee killed Zorak. This time the spell didn’t even get to go off.

The room still looked like it did before; a lot of tubes going into a stone structure that held an undead woman in some kind of sleep in a glass coffin.

They discussed freeing the creature, the idea being that it might become an ally. But Sen’s Detect Evil proved that to be impossible.

The thing inside was most definitely evil. And of the groups five members, all have signed The Charter, and three of them are exalted. The Charter might give them some leeway when dealing with evil-types. But an exalted character has no leeway what-so-ever. They can’t even make a simple deal with evil without risking losing their exalted abilities.

So the party left the corpse in the glass coffin.

Room N73: As before, the door to this room had been long ago blasted off its hinges. The inside of the room looked like room N73, except that the glass coffin had been broken from the inside. Whatever it held had broken free long ago.

Out of game information: It held Invistis.

Room N78: Thanks to the Antimagic field, the party was able to get into this room without risking a pesky little trap. But all they found inside was a stone bier set in the middle of the room. The bier had some strong magic on it.

Not having anything better to do, the party had Valden get near the bier so his Antimagic Field would cover it.

A ghostly figure of a woman burst out of the bier. She held out her ghostly holy symbol and shouted “By the light of Selune I command you foul creatures to return to your graves!”

She seemed a bit confused by the party’s reaction, which was the party staring confused at her.

The party explained to her that they weren’t undead, but she was a ghost.

Still just as confused, she welcomed the party to her “home”.
The party tried to talk with her, but she just stared off into space.

And not even a minute after the party had freed her, without a word she glided through the wall, not to be seen again.

Still confused, but more still adventurers, the party searched the room for treasure, and came up with nothing.

Room N77: Similar to room N74, this room was the sleeping prison for another evil creature. But this one scared the party a bit more.

Instead of the desiccated body of a zombie-like woman, the man in the glass coffin has bright red skin and black horns. And of course it was evil.

So they left.

They did some other exploration, also not shown on the maps. They even found a room with three large iron pieces that could, if someone were willing to give it a shot, be fashioned into a sub-standard iron golem (XP and gold would have been required still). But the party didn’t really investigate much into it. So they rusted it.

Shortly afterwards they heard another click, a power-down sound, and another negative energy wave. And like before, they rushed to the bronze doors.

On the humorous side, Valden is down to less than half of his hit points, but he can’t heal himself because the Antimagic Field won’t let him. And he’s afraid to drop the shield in case Invistis drops in for a big hello.

This time they found the walls still there, but now the colors were no longer flashing by. They were shifting from red, to green, to blue, and then back to red. But they were still walls.

Dariel took a chance and tried to cast Disintegrate at it. His disintegration beam hit its mark. Nothing happened.

Ok, that’s not quite true. I made Brian think that the beam was reflecting back at Dariel. I even had him roll a ranged touch attack against Dariel. I told him I was only kidding.

I do that stuff way too often.

The party did their usual walking to check out every door, but as before, they found the same thing.

Eventually they had to move on or die of boredom.

Map B

Room N180: The last time the party entered this room, they only did for a brief moment. It was dark, radiated all kinds of magic, and worst of all, when Dariel attempted to dispel the darkness of the room, it responded with an arcane blast of power.

This time the party rebuffed and entered the room. Well they tried to. The moment Valden crossed the threshold into the room; the Antimagic Field reacted to the pure chaotic magic of this room. The field burst and a backlash caused a 10d6 damage arcane blast to all within 20’ of the door.

Turning lemons into lemonade, the party used this as an opportunity to heal up.

Coincidentally, Krieg is using up his wand of healing. I think it’s because he’s afraid of losing them to a certain lich’s Mordenkainen’s Disjunction. But that’s just a guess.
;)

Afterwards, the party entered the whole of the room. They could swear that as they walked their way through the room that they saw shadows moving in the corners and the stone itself changing very slowly. But it could have just been their lighting mixing with the magical darkness of the room.

The party had worked their way through this whole room but had found nothing but two large vertebrae fused together with a severely bent piece of iron.

Cursing at their total lack of luck of finding anything they leave the room to...

Hallway N179: Cleez bashes this door open. He is rewarded with four nicely sized meteors to his chest that then explode into fireballs.

The trap is a Meteor Swarm spell. Cleez takes some impact damage, but thanks to his barbarian damage reduction, he takes a whole 12 points of damage. And he is more or less immune to the fire damage.

And so is the rest of the party. Well not Krieg. He takes some damage, but the overall damage total is not even 30 hit points.

That is some pathetic damage for a level 9 evocation spell.

Next time I use a Meteor Swarm spell, it’s going to do sonic damage.

Ah who am I kidding? There’s a good chance they would suppress the spell-trap with Antimagic Field. And even without the field I bet they’d still be fine afterwards.

Room N169: The lack of dust around a few spots on the floor leads the party to believe that some thing or things had once stood in this room for a long time.

This isn’t the first time they’ve seen this kind of thing. They suspect that Invistis has gathered up his construct troops.

Room N170: This floor radiated all kinds of magic and upon the floor was a large spreading of a red oily substance.

No longer with an Antimagic Field and totally rogueless, Thundercat steps onto the oily substance. A Greater Shout hits for some minor damage. Woohoo…some more minor damage caused by a high-level spell.

Room N171: The same as in room N169, footprints on the floor where some thing or things had stood for a long time. But now they are gone.

The party continues to search the northern edge of the region, connecting various points of their mapping, and filling in areas of the map in the hopes of finding something to answer their questions or some good loot. Which do you think they wanted more?

Only two more things of interest happened.

The first was that they found a couple more dread wraiths. And as expected, they ran away as fast as their incorporeal forms could take them.

The second was a fourth and final click, power-down, and negative energy blast combo.

The party woke from their immune-to-everything-the-DM-can-throw-at-them reverie and rush back to the colorful walls and bronze doors. This time they found only a bronze door. The Walls of Force were gone.

Once again the party had to sit at the northern door and wait for something to happen and hope it goes their way.

They didn’t have to wait long.

Instead of a click, they heard a loud ka-chung sound. The sound was immediately followed by a powering-up sound. No negative energy blast though, not that the party didn’t prepare for it.

The party ran to the eastern bronze door to find no creature stirring, not even a mouse. But they did find a plain large bronze door. Where previously there was a key-contraption was now plain bronze.

Then another ka-chung and power-up sound hit the area.

The party ran back to the north door. They found it the same as it was when they left it.

The party’s current ideas are:
- The demon in the center of the region has figured a way out.
- Invistis has found a way to free the demon with only 3 of the 4 keys.
- Invistis is opening the doors and the party is the only thing standing in his way from opening the north door and their key is the key needed to open the west door.

All of the options lead to combat, so they begin buffing up.

“Drop the ruby star and step away from the door adventurers! I learned much from our last meeting and am quite prepared to deal with you.”

The party gives a rude response.

“I understand that your heroism is forcing you to be this stupid. And it’s getting really irritating. Do as your told children!”

The party discusses their options and agrees to attempt to make some kind of agreement with Invistis.

The end result: Invistis will allow them to rest and the party promises to return for a final showdown with him.

“What kind of deal is that?” you say. Well as should be expected, Invistis knows some things they don’t.

They use their Wind Walk spell and begin the 5 round process of turning gaseous. But something goes wrong. The ruby star and the bone scrollcase that holds the 2 scrolls (of Freedom and Imprisonment) are in Krieg’s backpack and do not turn gaseous when Krieg does.

That plan is immediately abandoned and Invistis laughs at them.

So they begin walking towards the exit of the region. They come to several vrocks, iron golems, and shield guardians, who let them pass, but just barely.

One thing I failed to mention last week was that the scrolls of Imprisonment and Freedom could not enter the area of the Antimagic Field. This was why Krieg was holding them. Since he wanted to use Arcane Sight, he had to remain outside of the Antimagic Field. So he became the obvious choice for the party.

When the party reached the silvery-blue field that kept the undead in, it also kept something else in. Both scrolls and the ruby star were refusing to leave the area.

The party had taken the ruby star out of the region before, but now something was preventing that from happening.

Invistis laughs.

So now the party has to find a safe place to sleep in. One that prevents the negative energy waves from hitting them while they sleep. They pick the perfect location for this purpose; Room N224: the Prophecy Room.

Since they have the opportunity now, Valden casts Miracle and uses it to emulate a Commune Spell.

That means the party gets 18 questions that can be answered in “yes”, “no”, or “maybe”.

(Much more time is spent on this one. The DM proceeded to eat one of the two bags of Gummi-Savers that were brought as a bribe. Half an hour later the DM crashed from the sugar rush. I think it might be time to abandon the Gummi-Savers and go with something like steak fajitas for bribes.)

The questions:
Note: For legal and shortness reasons the word “demon” refers to the great unknown evil in the center of the region.

1) Do we have the power to defeat the demon?
Yes

2) Can the demon escape its prison within a year if we don’t intervene?
Yes

3) Can the demon escape its prison without the key?
Yes

4) Can the demon escape the dungeon?
Yes

5) Once placed, can the keys be removed?
No

6) Should we free to demon to advance our cause?
Maybe

7) Would we do well to open the sarcophagus with the silver stitching?
No

8) Will the demon turn on the lich (Invistis) shortly after release?
Maybe

9) Will the demon attack us upon release?
Yes

10) Is the lich’s phylactery within the dungeon?
Yes

11) Do we have the power to defeat the lich?
Yes

12) Is the demon more powerful than Tyrus, the Devourer of Kingdoms?
Yes

13) Would the Imprisonment and Freedom scrolls we have work on the demon?
No

14) Would the Imprisonment and Freedom scrolls we have work on the lich?
No

15) Would the ghost priestess of Selune assist us ever?
No

16) Do we have to battle the demon to defeat it?
Yes

17) Will the lich betray the demon shortly after release?
No

18) Does the demon have a phylactery?
No

I have no idea how much that helped them. But they have more pressing matters at the time being.

The party rested and prepped up for a combat. The most crucial spells cast at the time are Antimagic Field and Polymorph Any Object on Senmonious to make him a rust monster.

Map C

The party leaves the room and travels round by round until the DM says to roll initiative. Additionally everyone is in the Antimagic Field, except for Krieg who brings up the rear.

But what they don’t see is that Invistis has already placed his minions (5 summoned vrocks, 5 iron golems, and 5 shield guardians) and prepared for combat. He has quite a bit of knowledge of the area and basically can pin the heroes down. He also knew the party would have to sleep in a protected room since they couldn’t leave the region. This gave him plenty of time to gather his remaining constructs.

The party goes from room N224 to room N223, and then to the western hallway leaving room N223.

As the party reaches the T-intersection they see the lich waiting for them in room N211. He is guarded by 2 shield guardians directly on his flanks and 2 iron golems who stand at the entrance to the room. (The lich is also just an image of the lich, who is really just in an out of sight corner of the same room.)

“Drop the star heroes; this is your last chance.”

“We intend to place the key into the door.”

“Sorry, you’ve proven you can’t be trusted. Drop the star or prepare to suffer.”

The time and size of the combat prevents and easy round by round, so I’ll do my best for a general accounting of combat.

Early rounds:
Two vrocks block the northern corridor and approach the party.
Three vrocks come in behind the party; they had been waiting in room N213.
Thunderclease likes the idea of charging directly to the lich, past his protectors. He changes his mind when he gets to the 4-way intersection and sees a shield guardian and an iron golem blocking each corridor.
The party’s tactical plan begins to fracture. Instead of fighting as a single group, each one begins to do his own thing. The party ends up having a fight on 5 fronts.

Photo of the beginning of the fight.
(Justin threw all those d6’s to show off.)

Jeff: “Have you guys ever heard of the Kobayashi Maru? It’s an unwinnable scenario. We’re screwed.”

Ah Jeff, he’s the group’s optimist.

Middle rounds:
The party begins to wake up to their situation. Plus they are at the point where iron golems really can’t hurt them.
Krieg maintains his position in the hallway and prepares to fight the Vrocks attacking from the rear. In a single round he casts a quickened Divine Power followed by a normal Righteous Might. He then does a formidable job keeping the vrocks at bay. He even gets a critical hit with his +2 ghost touch energy blade scythe (he got that from Vinara; it’s a +8 equivalent weapon) on an AoO.
Valden blocks the main hallway at the T-intersection. His Antimagic Field protects him from the lich, and he is able to move within 10’ feet of the 2 vrocks and “captures” them. Since the vrocks are summoned, the magic that summoned them is nulled. But they don’t disappear. They turn into shadowy figures of themselves and can do nothing but wait. The down side is that this also pins Valden to the spot or a Vrock is freed.
Senmonious takes the shape of a rust monster once the leaves Valden’s Antimagic Field, and proceeds to rust the 2 iron golems blocking the corridors.
Cleez gives up on attacking the lich and instead decides to take out shield guardians. He makes light work of them.
Dariel aids Krieg and rebuffs the party members that have any of their spells dispelled (like Haste).
Invistis repeats a similar previous trick. He casts Time Stop, fills up the area his image stands in with an Obscuring Mist, and runs to the western side of the combat area. From there he attempts to cast domination and charm spells on Cleez. Luckily for the party Cleez makes all of the saves or Invistis rolls a natural 1 versus the Spell Resistance spell on Cleez.

Later rounds:
Senmonious tracks down the remaining iron golems and rusts them. He even uses the scent ability to find them.
After Cleez finishes off the nearby shield guardians, he and Valden are able to drop the Antimagic Field and free the Vrocks and then hack them to death.
Dariel continues to aid both of the fronts he is facing, such as disintegrating a Wall of Force that blocks Cleez from combat.
Krieg continues his fight with the vrocks.
Eventually the whole party (except Senmonious who is stuck in rust monster shape) focuses on these last few monsters.
Invistis uses another Time Stop to maneuver himself around the battlefield. This includes the Wall of Force that Dariel later Disintegrated.

The remaining combat is in the hallway west of room N223 with Invistis trying to dominate Krieg while invisible and flying and his remaining vrock and 2 shield guardians deal with melee.

When Krieg casts Invisibility Purge and only 1 shield guardian remains, Invistis knows he is once again in trouble. He casts Horrid Wilting at the party and flees.

The party attempts to chase him down, or even cut him off, but when he moves out of line of sight of Krieg, Invistis’s Greater Invisibility functions again.

When Dariel catches a glimpse of Invistis with his See Invisibility, Krieg gets back within line of sight and uses a Miracle spell to emulate a Control Undead spell (or Dominate Undead, whichever).
Invistis’s Spell Turning spell had long been used up, so Invistis needed to make a DC24 Will save. He could only fail on a roll of 1 or 2.

He rolled a 19.

And he was pissed.

“How dare you!”

Invistis had planned his spell selection not on direct damage spells, but on domination spells to both turn the party on one another and to use Cleez to get the ruby star and bring it to him.

But that didn’t mean he had no damage spells remaining. He had another Horrid Wilting and Krieg had really gotten under his skin with such an arrogant attempt to control him.

Krieg failed his save versus the Horrid Wilting, which would have left him below -50hp. But he used his once per level re-roll to try again. This time he saved and stayed there comfortably at -6hp.

Invistis flew away from combat. But now he has no minions to protect himself, at least that’s what the party believes.

Senmonious isn’t too happy either. He believes that had Krieg dismissed the Polymorph spell and Dariel cast fly on him earlier, he could have gotten to Invistis and really laid into him.

But that is just a “what if” kind of thing.

Valden heals Krieg.

Then the party hears another ka-chung and powering up sound as Invistis put the third key into the north bronze door.

The only one that remains to be placed is the party’s.

Once again a fight with Invistis comes to a draw. But with each one Invistis has lost something while the party doesn’t really change.

Our next session will be 1/6/06.
And unless the guys do something way out in left field, the group will fight a creature known as The World Eater.