Sean's Campaign - Session #12

The last game of the year (maybe) was a bit anticlimactic.

Everyone made it, but Joy was late thanks to a work-related Christmas party. It was not a good night for her. She had her character sheet on her, so Ari couldn’t join in on the big fight at all. And when she showed, she had to wait until after the big fight before we popped Ari into the game, which was around an hour of doing nothing.

Don’t expect the podcast for a week or so. Christmas-time barely allows me enough free time to do much more than shop.

We last stopped with the party getting ready to rest after helping Mornal to realize that he was no longer a fun-loving young man like he was tricking himself into believing, but that he was, in fact, an evil undead sorcerer.

First we gathered up Artemis & the unplayable Ari.

Artemis awoke to a muscle-bound man coming from out of a mist saying, “Come with me if you want to live.” with a thick accent.
Sensing a DM plot element, he agreed and followed the large man and mounted a large red dragon who then flew them up to the aerie the joined the two lich towers.
Later that large man turned out to be Marko, well Marko and Bill (or Bob, or whoever I named him).

Prior to resting the party kept asking questions. The delusional Mornal would have kindly answered the questions. The delusions were what had kept his evil side at bay. But his mind was no longer fractured, and he was clearly losing his patience, getting more irritated with every question asked.

Between the prior-to-resting questions and the post-resting questions the party got about as much information they were going to get about Ventraine and the upcoming fight.

- Mornal never visited Ventraine’s tower, but he knew the basic layout of it.
- There were two ways into Ventraine’s tower; above and below. Below meant dealing with more traps. Going above meant sneaking past the lichs’ mounts; a pair of skeletal red dragons that would not attack the party so long as they were with Mornal.
- Mornal is not an aggressive caster. He used illusions for jokes and fun while alive. The most powerful spells he had in his repertoire, from a combat standpoint, were Dispel Magic & Improved Invisibility.
- Mornal could feel the last shreds of his humanity were slipping away, so he used an illusion to show the party where in the nearby mountains that he and Ventraine became liches. They also kept their phylacteries there. Once Ventraine’s body was killed, the party was to immediately destroy Mornal’s body and then find their phylacteries and destroy them as well.

What the players did not know, and now it certainly can’t harm in letting them know, is that he used a shadow demon to spy on Mornal at times. This allowed Ventraine time to cast spells for preparation when the party began their short trek to get to Ventraine from above.

The fight was quite nasty.

On one side was the party (6 strong), Mornal, and Marko (the flesh golem).

On the other side were Ventraine, a shadow demon, and a shield guardian.

The fight occurred in a cramped room only 15’ in diameter and Ventraine had already placed a Blade Barrier in the room (though it did have a short duration after the party paused to cast some last minute buff spells).

The party could only slowly get into the room thanks to the very confining situation. This allowed the shadow demon to attack Artemis at the rear of the party. The demon only dealt 1d6 points of damage with a hit, but the damage caused could only heal with time and not with healing spells. This was a nasty surprise for Artemis who had 6 hit points remaining before the shadow demon was finally dealt with by Zelast and Artemis.

Ventraine had an absurdly high AC of 31 thanks to his magical armor and buffs. Plus he had a DR of 15/bludgeoning and magic. Guess which group of heroes doesn’t have a magic bludgeoning weapon, or any weapon that can deal more than 15 points of damage without getting really lucky.

Well they had Lindo, but the limited maneuvering space made it impossible for him to get to Ventraine. So instead Lindo joined Marko in bashing the shield guardian.

The combat was all over the place really, with everyone doing really good or really bad at some point.

The lowest point for everyone in the group was the Flame Strike that left most of the group in single digit hit points.

The nearly immune Ventraine started off very strong, but slowly dwindled as Mornal stripped away his buff spells with several castings of Dispel Magic.

Eventually Zelast, Lindo, and Sorra were able to corner Ventraine when his minions were gone. Zelast had cast Magic Weapon on Sorra’s warhammer, so Ventraine’s damage resistance was worthless there. Zelast himself was just delivering touch attacks through his hands directly rather than through his weapon. And Lindo was pounding away while invisible thanks to Mornal’s Improved Invisibility Spell.

For whatever reason, Lindo wanted to grapple the lich-cleric. Well it worked beautifully - for half a round. Ventraine successfully cast a Harm spell on Lindo while in the grapple. Lindo absolutely had to make the save as he had only around 50 hit points (after a lot of healing from Ysilia) and a failed save would have put him around -70 hit points.

He made the save, and dropped the grapple go so he could get healed above 1 hp.

Ventraine had taken quite a few lumps recently, and was now in bad shape.

The DM had been rolling poorly for Ventraine’s attacks (there’s a definite downside to rolling in front of everyone if you can’t roll above an 8), and the party had chewed away a large sum of his hit points. When he went to heal himself with an Inflict Wounds spell, I rolled a natural 1 for defensive casting.

The next round he was at less than 10 hit points, so he cast a Mislead spell (turns you invisible, leaves an illusory you to distract your enemies). But Mornal had nothing better to do than prepare a counterspell, and he ruined Ventraine’s “get away” spell.

Lindo then finished him off.

On a side note, Dale has vowed never to pick on the monk class ever again.

Mornal then threw his arms open and told the party to finish him before his dark side took over. And they did. Scratch two liches.

Another side note, they did not get full XP for two liches (CR14 each). They got XP for about an 11CR because they had help. I should have given them less thanks to the DM’s inability to roll double digits.

Now the adventurer’s caved in to their nature; they searched for treasure.

Boy did they find treasure. Although I have given them a lot of stuff, I seemed to end up taking it away in some form or another (raising the dead), or the magic items were pretty weak. This treasure haul made up for it quite a bit. They walked away with over 30,000gp worth of gold, gems, and jewelry and several permanent items easily worth another 40,000gp. It’s the first such large cache I’ve given in this campaign and I think it puts them about where they should be.

But rather than rest, they knew they had no time to relax. Either lich could gain a new form in just a few days.

They left the tower, which involved dealing with a few new traps and had to get past the Reverse Gravity spiked pits again.

But they forgot about the topiary guardians.

I love it when they make it easy on me.

With their arcane casters’ fire spells, this combat was ten times easier and lasted hardly three rounds.

The gate was no longer mobbed by the mayor, but there were a lot of zombies hanging around - too many for the depleted party to deal with.

So they rested and nuked their way out of town afterwards.

There were no signs of any non-zombie creatures other than a flying black horse that teleported away with its rider. But the party didn’t exactly stick around to investigate.

They headed to the mountains to the south, with Trebor leading the way (he is a scout after all).

The mountains were treacherous and easy to get lost in, leaving the party in a perfect position for a pair of young red dragons to harass.

The party was on a narrow ledge, while the dragons could easily walk along the side of the mountain.

Those dragons tore the party up bad.

Ari died when she failed her save versus 40+ points of fiery dragon breath.

Artemis dropped to negative hp and was raised back up, only to miss with an empowered orb spell that would have dropped one of the dragons.

Trebor moved to a flanking position on one dragon with Sorra & Lindo. The dragon quickly solved that problem, leaving Trebor as a bleeding stain on the ground.

Zelast once against found it easier to cast Shocking Grasp directly rather than through his sword, because the dragon’s touch AC was much lower than its standard AC.

Ysilia spent a couple of round healing before she joined others bleeding on the ground.

Lindo, hmm, I don’t remember much of what he did other than dropping the first dragon, which he then rubbed in.
I’m sure Allen will remind me more specifically what Lindo did.

Sorra drank a potion of Spider Climb which gave her maneuverability that others in the group did not. That allowed her to move around combat much easier, and her high AC gave her some staying power. Which in turn took the heat off of the rest of the party; this is Sorra’s usual tactic.

When the second dragon finally dropped, the party was in pathetic shape.

Healing unguents were used, and healing wands were heavily drained, but the party was put back in order, minus Ari.

After the fourth day of getting nowhere in the mountains, a bugbear shaman of the Grishnaka tribe took pity upon them. It helped that the party took out those dragons, as they had been preying upon the bugbear’s tribe.

He made his presence known and offered to be a guide for the party, for a price of 1000gp. Through some diplomacy the party got him to raise Ari, at a cost of 10000gp plus they supply the diamonds.

On the plus side he reduced his 1000gp guide price to merely 500gp.

With Ari back, the shaman led them to the “dark place” the party sought, a cave that he refused to enter.

The party searched inside and found…nothing but bones. They searched the place inside and out. They cast spells of detection. Those and everything else they tried came up with nothing.

They came to the obvious conclusion; at least one of the liches had reformed his body and left with the other lich or his phylactery.

All attempts to get any aid concerning the liches from the bugbear were flatly rejected. He had no intentions of crossing anything as powerful as a lich.

The party had failed in this task, so now it was time to leave the mountains.

The shaman’s price was another 1000gp.

See you all in several weeks.

Sean's Campaign - Session #11

This was another odd but enjoyable session.

It had a couple combats, a couple puzzles, and a little role-playing. It had a hiccup or two, but the game was quite fun.

I did have to do a little bit of railroading, but I didn’t cross the line and tell the players every single thing they had to do. And I gave them more than one opportunity to just say “screw this!” and skip town.

Dale and Joy could not make it thanks to familial obligations. And to make things worse, they didn’t leave their character sheets for us. So the party was deprived of its two main arcane casters. Had this been any other session it would have been a bad night for everyone else.

But the joke’s on Dale and Joy who are both lagging behind in XP and levels. They’ll catch up a little after the New Year. I don’t want any PC to lag more than two levels behind the rest of the group, but usually that issue resolves itself barring excessive absences. And to add insult to injury - this session netted the group a sizeable chunk of XP that was only split 5 ways instead of 7.

Speaking of not gaming, next week will probably be our last night for the year thanks to the holidays. That’s usually what happens, so it’s not like it’s a surprise.

Last we stopped the party was discussing entering Krendalar to raise some hell because someone fed them diseased food. Had that not happened they might have left the city and its illusions in peace. Apparently this group doesn’t take kindly to being filled with a double dose of Filth Fever.

They waited until night time, which is shortly after 6pm for this time of year, before entering the city.

They were hoping to find a city that was inactive because the illusion would shut down when day was gone. But no, they found a city that was busy closing up for the night. People were hurrying to finish their last tasks of the evening while the lanterns were being lit on the street corners.

With that potential option ruined, they decided to head for the heart of the city; to the tower; the only structure in the city that they weren’t allowed access.

Still there stood the two large guards, preventing access to the courtyard of the tower; a large gate of iron bars.

This time the party was spoiling for a fight. They started an argument with the guards, who threatened to get physical. Then Sorra said that all the guards had to do was to take the first swing.

So he did. He hurt Sorra a little, who then returned swing.

The combat lasted maybe a half-dozen rounds before the party won.

There are two things to note for this combat. First, I rolled pathetically bad. These guys had three swings each with their large longswords and I was lucky to hit once in a round. Second, the party was rolling critical hits like crazy. But unfortunately for them, those solids hits didn’t do any more damage.

As the combat finished up the mayor and a few concerned citizens rushed forward with questions like “What in the world are you doing!?”

The party (not wanting to fight a potential mob of angry townsfolk, who could be just about anything being covered up by illusions) quickly put their halfling rogue, Trebor, into action on the locked gate.

(Several years back, during the last year of 2E, I asked a long time gamer what he would rather face; a level 20 evoker with massive direct damage spells, or a level 20 illusionist. He shuddered at the thought of having to fight an illusionist that powerful.)

Justin quickly rolled a natural 20, so the gate was unlocked with a mere flick of the wrist from Trebor. Within moments the party was on the other side of the gate.

Trebor tried to lock the gate and jam the lock, but could only re-lock it.

Right after that the townsfolk, led by the mayor, were at the gate with angry screams of “Get out of there!”

The party’s response, “Come get us.”

The mayor’s response was to shoot his tongue out at Sorra, which missed.

The party stepped 5’ back.

Then the mayor started saying more dark and evil things like “Come here or we’ll feast on your soul!” And the crowd at the gate got larger.

So the party ran the 100’ dash to the door of the tower, hoping to make it to safety inside the tower before the lock was opened by the mob.

I love it when the players make it easy for me.

In their hurry they failed to notice that some of the overgrown shrubs and vines were actually mobile and waiting in ambush.

A group of 4 topiary guardian boars and a topiary guardian lion rushed the party when they made it the tower door.

It only took a couple of rounds for the party to realize that they were in deep trouble. The guardians weren’t going down easy, they had no casters with fire spells, and the mob now had a hammer and was trying to break the lock open.

Trebor once again went to work on the new door, this time finding it unlocked but too heavy for him to open.

On his next action, Lindo the monk tumbled his way out of combat (+13 to his tumble checks, can only fail on a natural 1). He yanked the door open and everything went white.

When they could see again they found themselves in a large 100’ foot square room with a very large chessboard in front of them, with 4 man-sized marble chess pieces (rook, bishop, queen, & king) and 4 man-sized stained-glass chess pieces (also rook, bishop, queen, & king). There were a couple of marble pawns standing guard over the party.

And finally Ysilia was held in mid-air, dangling over the chess board.

An unseen, young man’s voice said, “Oh my, a damsel in distress! I hope she has friends who can play chess. And if you succeed in this minor test, it is me you will have impressed.”

Then I explained the game rules to the group. They each represented a piece on the chessboard, and had to act on their action or not move at all. The goal was to take your opponent’s king. They had 30 seconds to decide what move to make, and could receive help from the group for the first 20 seconds.

Other than how the pieces moved, the game did not run like normal chess. Each piece moved on its own initiative and there was no requirement to get out of check ASAP.

Zelast (Brian) was the white king.
Sorra (Aaron) was the white queen.
Trebor (Justin) was the white rook.
Lindo (Allen) was the white bishop.

I would run the black pieces. I would use no strategy or any such thing (not that I could anyway as I suck at chess). Basically black looked to take out pieces and not have pieces taken.

Without going into each move, after a while it was down to 2 pieces. Then it was down to both kings and the party’s rook. Shortly thereafter it was obvious the party had won, so the black king took the rook then to be taken by the white king.

When the black king was taken, Ysilia was ported to the ground and the chess board disappeared, leaving the room bare save for the party and a glowing purple circle of light in the center of the room.

After some testing and searching, the party individually jumped into the circle only to be teleported somewhere new.

This new room was a circular 80’ diameter, that had each PC appear in a randomly determined spot on the edge of room.

The same young man’s voice says, “Such amazing skills they teach kids these days, something truly worthy or praise. In this test you’ll have fun with a maze. But failure shows you a rusty red haze.”

This test looked much better on paper than it did in actual play.

The 80’ room was a maze comprised of invisible walls of force. The party starts out separated and must get to the center of the room. But in the meantime a couple of rust monsters get to run rampant through the maze, using their scent ability to follow the maze rather than using logic. Plus a large rust monster was stuck in the center of the room that could not move, but it had reach and it was where the party needed to get.

But the true kicker of this challenge was that every round the invisible walls would change by rotating among a series of 4 different mazes. This really confused everyone as what they thought was an open area was now a wall, and what was once a wall is now open.

Alas it did not work out in the manner I had intended. The test became nothing but tedium for all and there was very little fun in it except for Lindo, who could face the rust monsters without fear of losing anything of real value. Next time I do something like that I’ll make it much smaller, probably only 40’ across rather than 80’.

Eh, live and learn.

The fix for the unexpected tedium came when Brian had Zelast cast Detect Magic. I decided that the spell made the walls visible to all for the duration.

Now it was only a matter of time before the task was finished.

But it did cost the party some nice things to rust. Sorra lost her plate mail armor. Trebor lost his halfling-sized chain shirt. Lindo lost some shurikens and a miner’s pick that he was carrying around for no reason. Sorra also lost a warhammer, but she lost it by swinging it only one time will a full power attack doing over 30 points of damage to a rust monster with less than that.

Once that test was beat, they jumped into the circle to be teleported to a hallway, a simple 40’ long hallway.

The door they stood closest to was open, leading directly outside where they were prior to entering the tower, and the other was closed almost beckoning them forward.

Since they were adventurers, they decided to move forward into the tower.

They were about to casually stride forward but then one of them noticed a small, curled, white feather casually floating up and down in the center of the hallway.

Something as simple as a feather in a hallway just screamed “trap!” to the party, so Trebor the rogue/scout moved forward to investigate.

Now the group knows how I do things, and I know how they do things. So naturally I have to use that against them from time to time.

So when I asked where Trebor was going to search for traps, Justin responded by saying 5’ away from the feather.

I knew he would think that way. That’s why the trap was 10’ away from the feather. And there was more.

The feather floated in the center of the trap that spanned 20’ of the hallway. The trap had 3 components. The first component was a 30’ deep spiked pit on the floor. The second component was a 30’ deep spiked pit on the ceiling. The third component was a Reverse Gravity spell that would turn off and on, driving the trap’s unfortunate victim up and down into the spikes over and over like a giant perpetual meat tenderizer.

(As an emergency out the feather was a Ring of Feather Fall in case the party had a moment of stupidity.)

Trebor walked right up to the trap, and it opened up below him. But he made the save, so he didn’t fall in.

So the party, still unaware that this was anything more than a standard pit trap, decided to have someone jump the 20’ across pit.

The best choice for them was Lindo. With a good run he jumped the pit.

He needed a 20 to clear the 20’ and got a 27. But I had given him a 50/50 change to receive a -8 penalty to the roll, in the event that he jumped the pit while gravity was reversed. He failed the 50/50 roll which netted him a 19 result, which left him dangling from the edge of the new pit that opened up on the ceiling.

Then it reversed, and he fell back down to normal gravity. But monks have that darn Slow Fall ability, so he was able to get out of the situation after a round or two with only some minor damage.

After a good chunk of time discussing and planning, they eventually were able to get a rope across to Lindo, who then anchored it to the nearby door, and everyone was able to slowly get across.

Next they opened the door and saw a circular stairway leading up. Once they had all climbed up the stairs, the stairs retracted into the floor of this new room and created a table.

On the table were 4 glass beads; a red, a blue, a white, and a brown. And in the center of the table was a grey glass bead that was a button.

The room was another circular room but with a small niche in the 4 “corners” of the round room. Each niche was just a small bit bigger than the glass beads.

Once again the familiar voice said, “Sorry about all that you have endured, but I must say there is more. Four elements in life we’ve heard before. But they don’t tell you that they run in a ring. Round and round like a clock’s circular swing. Too each there is one who it will oppose. To each there is one that gives it great woes. Too each there is one whose weakness it knows.”

The party figured this one out on the first try. They placed the beads in the proper order and then pressed the button. Five elementals appeared in the room, air, earth, fire, water, and storm. They raced towards one another and annihilated themselves.

Had the party gotten it wrong, they would have had to face all 5 elementals over and over again until they figured it out.
The voice returned and said, “’Victory’ they’ll shout for year after year. Heroes like you deserve such great cheer. Impressed, I am, by your display of power, so come see me, if you can, in the great western tower.”

Then another set of circular stairways descended from the ceiling leading up to another new level.

This was another small hallway that ended with a door heading east and a door heading west.

So they headed west, right after Trebor found, and eventually removed a Burning Hands trap that was on the door and constantly resetting.

This door led them to yet another set of circular stairs that went up for over 40’ until it eventually came to a trap door. Once Trebor disarmed the Fireball trap, they moved to the new room.

Zelast entered first because Sorra lost her armor earlier.

Inside was a nicely furnished room with two young men of about 17 years waiting for them and smiling.

One, dressed in wizardly robes, spoke, “Zelast! You guys finally made it! I’m so happy to see you pass all my tests and” blah blah blah.

He introduced himself as Mornal and his beefy friend as Marko.

Mornal was ecstatic that the group had made it. He also bragged about his illusions.

When the party asked why he tried to poison them with diseased food he laughed and said he would never do anything like that. His illusions don’t hurt people.

The party tried to argue it with him, but he refused to hear it. His illusions were under his control and the only other living people around were Marko and his friend in the other tower, Ventraine.

At some point I allowed them to make a Will save with a high DC. Only Lindo passed, then I had Allen roll a fear save. He failed that horribly so I told him that Lindo was out of commission until otherwise told.

Eventually the group questioned Mornal that the illusions were even his, because he was way too young to be that powerful. After some back and forth conversation the group convinced him to dispel his illusions. So he did.

The nice room they were in did not change. But Marko and Mornal did.

Marko was instead a large human-like creature that was comprised of several body parts stitched together. Marko was in fact Marko and Bob, a flesh golem.

Mornal was instead a skeletal creature with dark red points of lights for eyes, a lich.

At that point everyone had to make a fear save. Well, not Lindo, he already failed it and failed it so bad that he froze in place.

Everyone except Zelast and Ysilia failed, and ran down the stairs in fear. But Zelast kept talking.

It’s not like he had any other option that didn’t involve kissing his ass goodbye.

(Eventually the rest of the party returned when the fear wore off.)

Zelast broke the news to Mornal that he was dead. Which he refused to believe at first, but a little bit at a time he broke out of his denial and told them what happened.

His “friend” Ventraine was a cleric of a god of trickery (and evil). Mornal was quite naïve and this allowed Ventraine to use him for his illusions.

Ventraine convinced Mornal that the happenings of the apocalypse were in fact a joke and he could make it funnier by tricking the guards. This proved to be fatal for the guards and eventually the city fell.

Afterwards they both fled to the network of caves in the mountains nearby where Ventraine continued to prey upon Mornal and they both became liches. And eventually they returned to Krendalar to rebuild it.

Mornal’s sanity long ago repressed the horrible things he took part in and has lived a lie ever since.

While he rebuilt Krendalar, mostly with illusions, Ventraine had been using the city as a death trap.

Mornal cast a Clairvoyance spell and saw what his illusions had been covering up; mohrgs, ghouls, zombies, and more were the true citizens of the town.

But the party ended the non-magical illusion Ventraine had put on Mornal, giving Mornal the first moment of clarity he’s had in a year.

And Mornal isn’t happy. Ventraine had cost him his life and family and future.

Mornal then tells the party to rest up.

Ventraine is going to pay!