Dale's Campaign - Session #5

Sorry for the late entry, but that tends to happen on busy weeks.

This session was cool because Justin came back for a night. He probably won’t be coming back on a regular basis, maybe once every other month. He really likes the money he gets on Fridays, so he’ll only be showing when he’s not scheduled to work.

He ended up making a temporary gestalt PC, a warlock-ranger. From what I’ve heard of warlocks, they’re only fun when played sporadically, so it’s a good choice on Justin’s part.

Mike couldn’t make it this week. So I played his paladin-fighter (Mark). Well perhaps I overplayed him.

There was a bit of a sad note to this session. Aaron’s wife found a packet of barbeque sauce from Famous Dave’s. So very sad...

While Justin was making his PC, Arriseus, we did something we haven’t had to do in a while; paperwork.

I know it’s a bit odd, but paperwork is needed after any adventure where you get a lot of nice money and loot. You have to go through and split up the treasures, sell the unwanted treasures, craft needed magic items, and then buy more equipment for your character.

So we spent two weeks of game time doing all of the above in the town of Darken Glen. By the end we had: rented a house, scribed several scrolls, bought some masterwork arms and armor for Ian to enchant for us, bought a couple of potions, and crafted a Rope of Climbing.

It was productive and very expensive 2 weeks. In fact Kal only had a single day off the entire time.

Actually that brings up something that kind of bugs me. You can scribe up to 1000gp worth of spells onto a scroll in one day. But to scribe a spell from a scroll into your spellbook, no matter what the level, it takes a full day. I guess it pays off in the later levels, but at low levels it seems wrong to have to spend a day scribing a cantrip into your spellbook. Kal spent 3 days scribing 3 spells, one level 0 spell, one level 1 spell, and one level 2 spell.

But anyway, in that 2 weeks we got to know a few people in town. We found out they had a master innkeeper, a master goldsmith, and a master armorer/weaponsmith. Now I have no idea what a master innkeeper does, but the other two rank high in the to-be-exploited-by-the-PCs factor, especially the armorer.

And boy did we exploit them. Mark got a nice suit of armor and weapon from him (which later was enchanted). And Culan got to know the fellow and worked for and with him. He even helped him with some other things. And thanks to that help, Culan now receives some bonus money every month for his part in a new showering invention.

Kineo, when he wasn’t assisting with item creation, kept a low profile.

Mark, well he was just a warm body this session.

And Kal, well Kal’s a bit of a rake. We refer to it “sewing the seeds”.
We don’t role-play that out, because that’s creepy.

But we did nearly clean out Ian de Magi’s cache of enchanted items for sale.

Ian-de-Magi: “Igor, get back in the shop! We need to make more stuff!”

By the time all of that was done, Justin was done with the creation of Arriseus.

Justin: “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a character with only 37 hit points. I feel like I need a heal right now.”

Ian had Arriseus contact us at our home. He had been told that we needed a guide through the swamps.

So we took him to the Snorting Boar in at 8am. Yes, I said 8am. And a couple of hours and a platinum piece later, he agreed.

Arriseus had a swamp boat (basically just a fancy raft) and he knew where to take us when Ian de Magi pointed us in the right direction of the plot; an old tower once home to someone name Llewellyn.

Arriseus: “Me and Heath Ledger spent two years out there...”
This probably explained why Arriseus was such a wuss.

Before we left (the next morning) we were warned by Ian that if we met “the hound of the moors” and his pack, we’ve gone too far.

So we left, and had forgotten to check if Ian had some potions of water walking too. That’s a big oops with two tanks on this little raft.

As expected, the trip was not without some encounters.

We spotted a pack of hungry lizardfolk taking to the water. So we pulled up to the nearest solid land we can find.

They try to wait us out. When that doesn’t work they sneak away and wait for us from hiding. But we aren’t fooled. So Arriseus cast Entangle where they were at and then we got back in the boat and continued on our trip.

Well one of them was sneaky. He followed us and snuck under our swamp boat and tried to drill a hole in it. Luckily Kal heard the sounds (nat 20 on a listen check). So he summoned a fiendish octopus and ruined the sneaky little punk’s day.

As we traveled further through the swamp the surroundings got nastier.
Then an evil-looking beast burst from the water.
It was an adult khython from the Book of Vile Darkness.

Round 1:
Culan steps off of the confines of the raft and casts Enlarge Person on himself.
Kineo gets towards the rear of the khython and misses with a Shocking Grasp that would have done 6d6+3 damage (4d6 spell + 2d6 sneak attack +3 warmage int bonus).
Kal casts Magic Missile for 8 points of damage at it and steps off the boat.
The khython gets 5 attacks – 4 claws (doing 1d8+3) and a bite (1d6+3+poison). Dale had some good roles to start off with. It attacks Kineo and hits and crits with several of his attacks. When Kineo falls it attacks Arriseus and rips him up good, but doesn’t drop him.
Arriseus steps off the boat and tosses an eldritch blast at the thing for 2d6 damage.
Mark the paladin, the only one remaining on the boat, charges the khython with his smite evil attack and misses.

Round 2:
Culan misses.
Kineo would have gurgled, but he fell face up, drowning isn’t an immediate issue.
Kal casts Mass Snake’s Strike allowing Mark and Culan to attack once again. Both miss.
The khython attacks Mike and brings him to 60% hit points.
Arriseus throws another arcane blast.
Mark misses again.

Round 3:
Culan misses again and takes a 5’ step back.
Kal casts Melf’s Acid Arrow and hits it for 5 points of damage.
The khython only hits once, but it’s a crit for 12 damage leaving Mark at 30% hit points.
Arriseus arcane blast misses.
Mark misses again and steps back.

Round 4:
Culan casts Bull’s Strength and steps back into combat.
Kal’s acid damage is 8 points. Kal moves to Kineo and heals him.
Khython attacks Culan for 15 damage.
Arriseus hits with an arcane blast for 8.
Mark lays on hands on himself bringing him up to 50%.

Round 5:
Culan finally hits and does 4 damage.
Kineo plays dead; “The old Dalron tactic”.
Kal casts Snake’s Strike on Culan. Culan then does 17 damage with his free swing and drops the thing.

Dale: “Well that was unpleasant for you. I’ll have to use more of those.”
Aaron: “I ain’t getting anywhere near combat next time.”

We attempt to find its lair using “lingering evil” with Detect Evil, but it doesn’t work.

While journeying, and using Detect evil, we noticed a bearded devil on a small island.

Arriseus: “Just so I know, you guys aren’t thinking of attacking it are you?”
Kal: “Yeah.”
Culan: “Well yeah.”
Kineo: “Mmm Hmm.”

When we began casting spells, it began summoning aid – to the tune of 17 lemures. He understood that we were prepping for an attack so he did as well.

We couldn’t take on that much action so we turned around.

The devil tried talking to us, but since we had a paladin with us – no deals could have been made.
Not that the party wasn’t willing to listen, but the paladin wouldn’t even listen to the terms and kept responding with nice little phrases like “Die fiend.”

Brian: “Now we all have to agree that none of us will ever play a paladin again.”

Then we came to a tower in ruins.
On the top of the tower was an unmoving gargoyle. It never moved in spite of us always being wary of it.

We carefully searched the ruins of this tower and found much in the way of “wizard stuff” (broken summoning circles and such).
And, of course, we fought some critters that infested the place; a displacer beast and a greater barghest.

Our searching came up with The Diary of Llewellyn, Forest-mage of Darken Glen. Most of it was rubbish to us, but the parts that of interest to us described to us that he had an otyugh in his basement/larder. He hired an elf to take care of the problem, but the elf failed and was killed by the otyugh. So he summoned a displacer beast, and that backfired on him.

Well we killed a displacer beast in the same room with the summoning circle, but we found no body of a wizard. So either Llewellyn escaped or he was eaten.

While we were searching:
Aaron: “I’ll check the toilet for traps.”
Dale: “You find no traps.”
Justin: “Look out! It’s a bidet!”

On the roof, we found the still motionless gargoyle – and we still couldn’t get the thing to move. Not that we didn’t try. We tried so many things that we probably looked like fools on top of the tower.
So it is either just a statue, or it’s not going to animate without something special happening first. Perhaps he is waiting for his master to return?

Since we could no longer go higher in the tower, we had to go down below.
So we prepped up and went down to kill the otyugh.
And we did.
Then a swarm of centipedes swarmed out from the walls.
Some attacks and spell “friendly fire” fixed that issue.

After we searched the basement, we did what we could to prevent anything else from burrowing into the basement. When that doesn’t go as well as we had expected, we just barred the basement door in your standard “Oh no the zombies are coming!” fashion.

Then we thoroughly searched the tower, and came up with nothing new.

It was late, so we called it a night.

What did we learn this week?
Not much really.
We came to the conclusion that although we still praise the Spell Compendium, it feels like WotC is adopting many things from Magic: the Gathering. For example, if they changed the casting time of a spell from “swift action” to “instant” or “interrupt”, I think everyone would understand.

This coming Friday there won’t be a game. Instead we’re attending a “game day” on Saturday and playing probably all day long. Think of it as a gaming mini-convention.

Sometime next week I’m going to try to post of some information of a campaign world I created several years back and have slowly worked on it.
Yeah I know every DM out there has his own home brew world that he thinks is really cool and is sure everyone would love it if only they gave it a chance.
I’m not going to delude myself into that kind of belief. But I do think I have some ideas that people might like to grab and use in their own games.
And besides, it’s not a whole game world. It is just a valley that has been secluded from the outside world for several hundred years.

And if I’m in the mood, I’ll post the background of rant number three.