Rappan Athuk #2 - The Ruined Tower

Well if you’re tuning in this week to see if the party made it to the dungeon, sorry.

Maybe next session they’ll make it there, but I did some planning to make sure the party didn’t quite make it to the dungeon right off. It appears that my plans worked.

Hey, it happens occasionally.

Our last session we stopped after the party helped Itchy and Mayor Wyrm (nicknamed Mayor McStealy by Brian).

Vars, Sasha, and Saver dislike the mayor quite a bit and are entertaining thoughts of getting rid of him. Emanuel, being a paladin, believes that in spite of the mayor’s problems (using village money for himself), he was legally elected by the village and it is not his responsibility to remove the mayor unless he is ordered to do so or the mayor does something obviously evil.

(I’m sure some puritan paladin type people think this is not very paladin-like, but I can see Aaron’s logic. Besides, maybe there’s a law on the books that says the mayor can charge what he likes, and can use the village’s taxes however he sees fit.)

But anyway, making sure not to flaunt it and thus attract attention, the party took their meager new money to the inn and paid for their rooms, all in copper and otherwise wasted the night away in the Grey Horse Inn.

They heard no new rumors, but they did find out that the waitress in the place is a “pro”. That gave the group a minor shudder as they realized where she did her business.

The next morning the group got together to discuss their plans prior to going downstairs to the tavern section of the inn.

Emanuel went along with the party, though not sure what it would gain them. He would cast his paladin Detect Evil and scan the village, starting with the inn patrons. Since he only had to concentrate to keep the spell going, it wouldn’t be obvious to most people what they were doing.

Sasha led the way, making sure no one would accidentally bumped Emanuel and ruining it for them. And they found not a single spec of evil in the tavern, not even Kriel, the owner.

So they headed out to the street, but Emanuel wasn’t paying attention to the door frame and ruined his own concentration (Aaron rolled a natural 1 on a d20).

With that plan out the window, the party decided to go with Emanuel’s plan – to find the graveyard that leads to Rappan Athuk.

They looked out nearby but found no signs pointing the way.

Not sure who to ask, they started with the logical first choice; the innkeeper. At this point I think the group finally got it through their heads about this village being the adventurer equivalent of a tourist trap.

A few minutes later the party left the inn with a hand drawn map of the region, showing where Rappan Athuk was, 50gp lighter, and they weren’t even sure that the map was legitimate.

The map did show a faint trail, a trail they were able to find with a little difficulty as they have no one with tracking.

(I had Sasha do Survival skill checks that became more difficult the farther they followed the trail.)

A little more than an hour later they had made it out of the nearby plains and farmlands and into the forest to the south of the village. But an hour into the forest Sasha lost the trail and couldn’t find the trail behind them to backtrack. All she could do was determine which direction was north, so using their map they decided to head east until they hit the swamp and then could head back north and to the village the long way, assuming everything went their way.

Another couple hours later they spotted some light from a clearing and some grey stone some 100’ away. Being adventurers, they had to check it out. Vars and Saver searched 50’ ahead of Sasha and Emanuel.

They found a ruined tower surrounded by a rusting iron fence. The tower was currently 2-3 stories tall with plenty of rubble in the courtyard with scorch marks evident from the inside of the rubble they could make out. They surmised, probably correctly, that a magic-user was involved.

Prior to them getting a chance to check out the gate to the iron fence, something invisible started beating the daylights out of Saver.

They found out after they killed it that it was a phantom fungus, but it took them forever to kill it. That 50% conceal roll just hurt them.

Once they confirmed the gate was unlocked and untrapped they moved into the courtyard to check the door to the tower in the same way.

Vars found no trap, but Saver’s Detect Magic spell showed evocation magic, so Vars checked again and found a trap again. But his removal/bypass of the trap triggered it, costing him a giant 2 hit points from a level 1 Burning Hands spell. Everyone else had moved a safe distance away.

But them being farther away was not a good thing as an allip rose from the rubble on the ground babbling about extraplanar creatures, mathematical concepts, schizophrenia, and the soul. The babbling hypnotized Saver and Emanuel, putting them out of the fight.

This left Sasha and Vars to fight the creature by themselves, which was going to be difficult as it did Wisdom damage (so their extra hit points meant nothing), was incorporeal (50% miss chance), and had DR5/Magic.

When it was over Vars had a wisdom of 5 (from 12 or so), and the two hypnotized PC’s snapped out of it 1 round later, as always.

(Party hits level 2.)

Eventually Vars was able to disable the trap and unlock the door to the tower.

Inside was nothing but rubble everywhere and a somewhat intact set of stairs leading up to the second story.

They searched through what rubble they could get to and did find a ruined rug covering something metallic on the floor. It would take an hour to remove the rubble, so they made a note of the spot and went upstairs.

Well first Vars had to check every single stair. Apparently a wisdom score of 5 means you’re paranoid.

When he reached the door at the landing he found no trap and the door was unlocked, so he slowly opened the door an inch.

He was so cautious at opening the Emanuel yelled out “Ok, that’s enough! Being careful is one thing, but this is ridiculous.”

The room was utterly spotless and tidy, containing only a desk and chair, and a stool circled by 4 covered easels.

A Detect Magic showed that whatever was on the easels was magical and the room was magically lit.

They searched the rest of the room, but found nothing. Then the desk – also nothing.

Emanuel went alone to search the nearest easel, causing the trap to trigger.

The tarrasque burst from the floor, but Emanuel made his Will save, so he saw the illusion for what it was, negating the power of the Phantasmal Killer trap.

But mirrors resting on the easel’s falling and breaking was real, as were the four feral demons that burst from them.

Note: Feral demons come from one demon being split into multiple separate creatures. As one feral in the pack is killed, each of the others get stronger (+1 AC, strength, hit dice, BAB, 1/3 increase in CR).

The ferals were a tough fight, and it took forever because the ferals had DR5/magic, giving them plenty of time to beat the daylights out of the party.

Alas the DM barely rolled double-digits a quarter of the time.

But on the bright side the changes I made to combat movement worked quite well. There were attacks of opportunity, but players’ movements took moments rather than half a minute. I was quite pleased with that.

On the PC side, everyone put a lot into the fight and no one could say they didn’t add something this fight.

Sasha’s greataxe didn’t hit a lot (poor rolling), but it left a big mark when it hit.
Emanuel’s high AC allowed him some freedom to be in the center of the combat and to pick and choose who to attack.
Saver’s Sleep and curing spells did a lot to keep the ferals on the defensive and himself standing (Dale loves unintentionally making his PC’s targets).
The star of this combat was Vars who got to put his dual-wielding bastard sword to use and combine it with sneak attack.

The only treasure they found was a simple bronze key and a bunch of broken easels and mirror shards.

After confirming that there were no viable exits in this room (destroyed stairs up that lead to the new roof), they went back down to the first floor to check out the metallic thing in the floor they found earlier.

They cleared the rubble and debris covering it; they found a bronze door on the floor with a keyhole in the center of it.

They unlocked it easily with the bronze key, after Vars checked it for traps of course.

Inside was a very tight set of spiral stairs leading beyond their sight, which they descended.

They estimated they climbed down about 100’ into a semi-natural cavern.

It was warm, big enough that their light sources didn’t show any edges beyond where they were.

They were very low on spells and other resources, so they headed back up the staircase, locked it, fortified the front door with rubble and rested the night.

Surprisingly no random encounters happened upon them.

They discussed using this place as a base of operations, but they’re lost, so they have just a rough idea of where in the woods they are. So maybe they’ll think about that another time.

When morning came, back down the hole they went.

They circumnavigated the cavern, figuring it to be about 200’ wide, roughly round, and about 70’ high.

With no small amount of trepidation they walked towards the center of the room.

Emanuel cast Dancing lights to get a better view of the place before stepping into something they couldn’t handle. The many little lights illuminated a large pile of coins in the center of the room.

Then a long, red, serpentine head peered at them from out of the darkness.

“Why does such a tasty morsel disturb my sleep?”
After a few moments of “Oh crap” player conversation, Sasha responded.
“Do you know the owner of the tower?”
“Oh yes, I do.”
“We killed him.”
“Oh really? I see.”

Then the head pulled away from the light, they heard a woosh in the air, and they never saw the head again.

The party, being very cautious because they’re used to my DM’ing style, didn’t trust that the thing had left. But eventually they couldn’t help themselves and checked out the pile of coins.

They found some gems and jewelry (400gp’s worth overall), a suit of masterwork half-plate, a pair of magical bracers, and a potion (later identified as a potion of Darkvision), and 10,000 coins – all copper.

The weights involved in everything cost a lot of time while the group figured out how to best handle it. This will improve in time as they learn more on how to deal with it, and they come to the conclusion that some money isn’t worth carrying around, especially when it reduces your effective dexterity score for armor class.

When they were sure the tower was cleared out, they left it and continued their journey east towards the swamp.

A while later they once again saw a bit of grey stone in the trees; a 12’ tall stone obelisk (6’ wide at the base).

They found no writing, but detected some faint magic. They had heard no stories, nor read any books about such a thing (i.e. skill checks failed).

Saver attempted to talk to it by naming deities and what not, but the obelisk seemed unimpressed by his knowledge.

With no options left, they decided to ask about it back in town, then continued east.

Eventually they did actually run into the edge of the swamp, then followed that edge north until they got to the delta of the Mudd Flow at which point they headed west.

They arrived back at the village of Lhend shortly after 4pm and seven hours of walking.

(Note: their lack of random encounters was uncanny. Had they actually had one more XP-giving encounter, they probably would have made level 3. Level 3 is where the fun begins and this was a pretty heavy XP session thanks to the ferals.)

Their first stop was Trake’s Armory where they traded in the masterwork full-plate for some gold and a masterwork bastard sword consignment.

Saver then committed a minor faux pas when he asked if Trake could enchant some armor and weapons. Last session Trake made it clear he could help make items if a description was made, but he could not (and would not) enchant any items. Trake less than politely scolded Saver and asked everyone to leave so he could get back to work.

Saver also irritated Korjo (the half-orc baker) by asking for a free sample and Georg (the butcher) for haggling – all while trying to buy some simple trail rations. It wasn’t the best role-playing night for Dale.

Once again the party paid for their room at the Grey Horse Inn all in copper.

The party went to Tantagel’s Magic Emporium to have the bracers identified, but were rudely informed by Teebin that they don’t perform that service.

At this point the entire party is not happy with the way the village is treating them (price gouging and the like) and all but Emanuel began entertaining ideas on how to improve that.

The party split up to take care of their individual agendas.

Sasha bought some more trail rations then went back to the inn to clean it…again.

Emanuel went to the shrine of Pelor for prayer and to help clean it, then went to help Sasha with her giant task of cleaning the inn rooms.

Vars and Saver went to the Enchanted Temple of Wee Jas hoping that a temple to the goddess of magic would be interested in identifying magic items. Jorgleen coolly informed them that the temple does no such things. Saver handed her 10gp and asked if she knew of anyone who would perform that task and she mentioned that a fellow named Grulsim could do what they asked.

Then Vars asked her if she was involved with Tantagel or Teebin (now nicknamed Teabag). She responded no. That made them happy and they left.

Eager for another irritating conversation with Teebin, Saver returned to Tantagel’s and asked how much a scroll of Identify would cost, if they had one. Answer: 250gp.

Then Saver talks with the mayor about creating a shrine to Fharlanghn. The mayor responds that for a simple shrine, the construction fees and various taxes should come to around 1000gp.

Vars, with an excellent Gather Information skill check, found out plenty about Grulsim: He lives on the outskirts of the village, charges 200gp for a single magic item identification, the item must be left with him overnight, and that the party has seen Grulsim before at the inn but had no reason to talk with him.

Vars finds Grulsim at inn, buys him a drink, and begins a conversation with him. Not long into it, the conversation leads to Tantagel’s Magic Emporium. Grulsim tells Vars that the items may be high priced, but the store only needs to make a small sale a week to be profitable, it is the only such place in town, and it has some items delivered from outside the town.

Vars then alludes to maybe Grulsim being the front man for such a store with the party’s backing rather than just being the guy who identifies items. Grulsim replies that he’s not interested as he is happy with his position and ends the conversation, not liking where it’s heading.

When Sasha and Emanuel finally get their rooms as clean as they can, they find the old potion lady they talked to last session. She identifies the potions the party has for 5gp a piece. They ask her how much to get her business back up and running. She answers 250gp for materials, but it won’t matter as Tantagel will just drop his costs to less than she can price them and she’ll end up back where she was. But she appreciates the thought and if they are willing to help an old lady, she’d be more than happy to make up the costs to them.

And with that the session was over.

Will they finally get to Rappan Athuk next session? I sure hope so, but that’s really not up to me.