Dale's Campaign - Session #10

Well I was kind of bitchy at this session.

Do you know what is really hard for me? It’s being a DM and then not being a DM and letting someone else do it. I have to constantly say to myself “Just because they don’t do it the way you would do it, doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.”

So I usually try to keep my complaints contained, but with varying success.

Dale has a lot of pros and cons to his style of running a D&D game, which I believe I’ve spelled out before.

What I try to do is to offer my opinion, but without intentionally being a big jerk about it. But thanks my real life charisma of 6, it doesn’t come out that way.

For instance, we had a couple of potions (oils) that we needed to get identified while we were in town during this session. Kal went to the alchemist and asked how much to identify the potion and the oil we had. The cost was 100gp each. So Kal gave the guy a rude gesture and left.

Dale was a little confused by this I think, so I explained to him that an alchemist doesn’t need to cast the Identify spell on a potion, he just needs to test it.

And Dale’s retort was something like “Well how much should it cost?”

I figured 25gp was fair but still a little high, so Dale said 15gp was good.

I would have been fine with it either way. But anything over 25gp seems outrageous for a potion that probably only costs 50gp to buy.

And this is how it usually goes for me. If I’m right, the other players agree. If I’m wrong, they offer counterpoints. And in the end Dale still decides, because of the (in)famous Rule #0 “The DM is always right.”, but he considers what has been said.

Or maybe that’s Rule #1 and Rule #0 is “Have fun.”
Whichever, it doesn’t matter to me.

That’s usually how we work out any disagreements in our group.

In fact from all recent memory, any time we had a heated argument it was because someone wasn’t paying attention and got confused, or because someone was an idiot who wanted to argue for arguments sake.

But anyway, our game went well and everyone was there.

We last stopped at the temple to Mark’s deity (Mahnway I think).

A mysterious voice had told us a new history of the Darken Moor area and how it became what it is today.

Dale kind of did a rewind and basically allowed us to ask the mysterious voice questions, but we had to show the proper respect (translation: we had to make a Diplomacy or Gather Information skill check versus DC30). And a little something in the offering plate couldn’t hurt (translation: 100gp in the offering plate gives us +1 on the roll).

And here is what we asked and the answers:

How do we restore the swamps to their original state?
You must, of course, remove the heart of evil.

What is the heart of evil?
(Failed check – one of many)

Where does Growlgretch live?
It didn’t know.

Where do we find the ghost of the failed hero?
It didn’t know

Any questions about the hags and other more recent events of the area the voice didn’t know. We concluded that it must be too old too know the newer things.

But it did know how to solve the puzzle from the doorway to the building of ancients that the Brothers Grimm were trying to break into all those weeks ago.

Is the ruined village not far from here the epicenter of the evil?
Not likely. The village’s name is Dagger Ford. Find the Heart of Evil. He has drawn all of the evil here.

Where can we find more information about the heart of evil?
Why you are in the place.

How do we get past those clay golems guarding the crypt below?
You have been found worthy. (Translation: You aren’t evil and you’ve shown respect.)

So we prepped up and entered the crypt guarded by the 2 clay golems.

Down there we find 10 sarcophagi and a magically maintained library.

We perused the library to the best of our abilities. And we found the roster and history of the Brotherhood of the Radiant Light.

The Brotherhood of Radiant Light was a group of 10 adventurers, mostly paladins, who fought evil. Their greatest fight was against the dark wizard Holtrus.

(Holtrus is the same fellow from the story last week.)

When Holtrus attempted to achieve lichdom, the Brotherhood collapsed their keep, Radiant’s Rest, on top of him.

But that failed to stop him entirely. Although he did not become a lich, he did become a dark and powerful spirit of some sort.

(I’ll bet you that if I went and bought the Libris Mortis I’d find out what kind of spirit that was.)

Then we had a discussion about whether or not the Brotherhood of the Radiant Light would allow us their magical equipment so long as we used it to fight the causes of evil, especially the same ones that the Brotherhood fought against.

So we returned to ask the voice if it was ok to open the sarcophagi and take or “borrow” any items of interest to our cause.

“Borrow? All we ask is that we not be left weaponless.”
(Translation: Take a penny, leave a penny.)

By the time we left the temple, that 90,000cp we started with became 0cp.
And we were all happy with that.

Sean: “Best use of copper, ever.”

And really, I kind of like the idea of getting a new weapon and having to do something other than selling your old weapon. It’s more of a role-playing thing I guess.

So we opened the sarcophagi of the Brotherhood of the Radiant Light.
And we found some powerful stuff:
- “The Song of Dawn” – a +3 lawful heavy mace of disrupting (taken by Mark)
- A Staff of Illumination (20 charges) (taken by Jaxil)
- A scroll of Ethereal Jaunt (taken by Kineo)
- A scroll of Undeath to Death (taken by Kineo)
- “The Reaper of the Sun” – a Sun Blade (taken by Culan)
- A Rod of Grievous Wounds (not taken)

At the worst we lost a +1 magic item per item taken.

Kal had no want for the 2 scrolls, one was basically of no use to him for several levels (and even then its usefulness is limited) and the other was a necromancy spell (a forbidden school to him).

At this point I wasn’t happy because the scrolls sucked and one of the fighters had just received an item worth 98,000gp and the other was over 50,000gp. And the Rod of Grievous wounds is a horrible magic item.

Heck Kal’s follower received a better item.

After Aaron and I pointed out that our PCs were hosed (Kal had 2 permanent magic items at this point – a vest resistance +1 and a level 2 Pearl of Power).

Dale listened to our complaint and agreed. We didn’t want a powerful magic item, but we did want a useful one.

So Dale pulled out the magic rod chart and let us roll.
We ignored the Rod of Greater Maximize Spell that Aaron rolled, but he did get a Rod of Splendor for Kineo (main bonuses – a Pavilion of Splendor once per week and a +4 bonus to charisma.)
Kal received an item that covered a potential scary tactical hole for a guy that is almost a pure caster; a Rod of Greater Silent Spell.

And Kal left in the sarcophagi a couple wands and his Pearl of Power.

The voice then let us know that we would be allowed to spend just one night’s rest there safely.

So we rested and when we awoke we had an all day Bless spell on us.

Then we headed back to Dagger Ford.
And I would not be surprised if that temple were to never appear to us again.

We didn’t get very far before something happened.

A pair of trolls were hiding underwater and waiting for us to pass over them.

When we did, they burst from the water and tried to knock our magic canoe over (yeah “magic canoe” sounds silly to me too, but the Beatles made a lot of money on something very similar).

We immediately sprang into action.
Kal and Jaxil both cast Fly and got out of there.
Culan cast Water Walking on himself and Mark.

Dale was on another bad rolling night and missed several times, never hitting more than once for each of the trolls.

Kineo was in melee, not something he likes, but he had no option. He used the spell Persistent Blade to give him a free minor attack that also provides flanking – a key thing for him.

Kal summoned a fiendish crocodile to give flanking and to slow any regeneration.

After that there was nothing the trolls could do to stop from being shredded into pieces by the party. Then Kal summoned an octopus to bring their bodies to the shore where we gave the trolls a proper burial in flame (Kineo cast Flaming Sphere and parked it right on top of them).

While everyone was doing that, Kal decided to spend his last couple of rounds of his Fly spell scouting from 250’ up in the air.

He saw, over a mile in the distance, 2 dark flying things in the distance. One of them was large and the other looked familiar.

Kal immediately dropped to the ground and warned everyone (he memorizes a Feather Fall spell almost always – just in case).

We had about 6 rounds before combat began, and we made use of them.

Kal cast Keen Edge on Culan’s and Mark’s weapons, Levitate, Haste, and Barkskin on himself and Kineo.

Jaxil cast Protection from Evil on himself, Remove Fear on Kineo (who has the worst saves of the group and did not stand near the paladin), and Prayer.

Culan cast several spells on himself, including Lesser Holy Transformation to turn himself into a stronger and flying melee-freak. He also gives all of us acid resistance 20 with a Mass Energy Resistance spell.

On the last round of prep time, Kineo made sure they noticed us (it was not needed though). He blasted at the little one with a Lightning Bolt.

We made sure not to all be standing in a nice straight line for the dragon either.

Round 1:
Kineo blasts the juvenile black dragon with a Lightning Bolt. It saves and takes only 12 points of damage.

Round 2:
Mark readies an action in case one of the dragons gets near us.
Kineo cast a Fireball at the 2 of them, and breaks through momma’s spell resistance
Kal, using the DMGII teamwork rules drops a Flame Strike on the 2 dragons, but he doesn’t break through momma’s spell resistance.
The momma dragon fails to bug any of us with her dragon fear but she does go after Kineo with her acid breath since he so conveniently made a target of himself. He ends up only taking 3 points of damage – even though he failed his save.
Culan flies up to the juvenile one and hurts it pretty bad.
The young one, being a flying creature without the ability to hover, continues to fly in a straight line. This gives Kineo an attack of opportunity, which he crits with for 92 points of damage.

The juvenile black dragon drops into the water in 2 separate pieces.

Momma dragon sees this and, being chaotic evil, keeps flying in her current direction and flees.

All of our attempts to track her down fail; including summoning a celestial giant eagle. She notices this and dives into the water far away so we can’t follow her.

So we took out a dragon, and would have gotten the momma had she not ran. But we blew a lot of spells for her and were now quite low on our higher level spells.

But we had enough to move on, it was still early in the day, and several of our spells were still going (10 min/level).

And as if on cue, 2 bearded devils (barbazus) were sitting and conversing on a small island on the river as we floated near.

And combat began when they summoned in a bunch of lemures; 34 of them in fact.

Kineo cast Stinking Cloud that nearly covered the entire island. But then we found out that devils are immune to poison. So that was the waste of a spell and hindered us in combat.

But that’s ok. Thanks to Great Cleave and Lightning Bolt spells, there weren’t enough of them to even worry about afterwards.

The combat took longer than the dragon one, but there was less real danger to any of us.

When that was over we decided to rest on the small island.

While resting we were caught off guard by a specter in the middle of the night.

Kineo, Culan, and Mark tried to do the combat without waking up the casters, Kal & Jaxil, but the specter became too dangerous so the casters had to be woken up.

Not much later it poofed.

But it did leave a scar on Culan who woke up the next morning 1 level lower than before.
That meant we had to head back to town to get the level restored.
The irony here is that had anyone else lost their level, Culan could have restored it.

Since we had another chance for role-playing, we did.

Kineo went back to the evil Lindepohl’s house to learn more dark things. And while there he met up with the Brothers Grimm and chatted with them for awhile.

He also read up on a historical book, which told some stories of ancient battles from an evil point of view.

Kal did some minor chatting with Ian de Magi and as a thanks from Dale (for taking care of the paperwork) he gave Kal a scroll of Summon Lesser Ally to summon a holy deva one time.

Kal asked him a few questions:
How do we stop Growlgretch from getting away?
Set a trap for it. Its lair is probably underwater.

Would using the tiles as a trap against the Brothers Grimm be considered a violation of the rules of hospitality in the eyes the gods?
Most likely, and doing so would get you cursed.

How do the hags know so much about what happens in town?
They most likely have a scrying item or items somewhere in town.
And when they show up to take the maiden, they show up in force.

What do you know of Holtrus?
I know very little.

After all that was said and done we returned to Dagger Ford and continued clearing it out, starting with a ruined temple.

From the outside we saw a very nicely figured lady, but from the back.
Mark’s Detect Evil lit up big time.

Then she tried to turn around and look at us. This is one of those times when everyone knows what this thing could be, but, metagaming being a bad thing, we couldn’t do anything about it.

Round 1:
Jaxil thinks she’s an evil priestess so he casts Silence.
Kal succeeds on his Knowledge: Arcana with a nat 20. “Hide your eyes. She’s a medusa.” Then Kal uses the only charge he had on his Wand of Fireballs (level 8 caster).
Mark then charges her with a smite evil and crits her for more than enough damage to put her deep into negatives.

We cut off her head and hide it in a bag without looking at it, just to be safe.
(And of course we take her loot. We’re still adventurers after all.)

Next we moved to the last standing building in the village; a large building.

From what we could see inside from the outside was a large black mass of something.

We figured it was an ooze of some type, and then it started moving towards us.

Since oozes and jellies and such are know to split apart when hit by some weapons, or even worse – they destroy those weapons, the front line fighters were loathe to fight this thing.

So Kal called in the fire brigade. He used 2 Monster Summoning IV spells to call in 1d3 Monster Summoning III class creatures. In this case, it was small fire elementals (4 in all). They only had 13 hit points, and couldn’t do much damage but they do fire damage and have no weapons to worry about.

And Kineo did his usual. He cast Lesser Sonic Orb at it for a few rounds.

It took out one elemental per round, but it never touched any of us. In fact, Mark, Culan, and Jaxil had a nice conversation about metaphysics while Kal and Kineo were working.

And even though Dale wanted to ignore the fire elementals and come for us, he couldn’t. The elementals were placed to perfectly block its path, and the pudding was utterly non-intelligent.

Gee, I don’t know why Dale has developed a DM versus the players attitude.
;)

And we stopped there for the evening.

Next week we’ll be missing Mike, but unless someone else cancels, we’re still gaming.