Rappan Athuk #13 - The Kidnapping

We have a running joke in our group about WotC owning D&D: One day you’ll have to buy a case of PHB’s in order to get that rare wizard class.

It’s a silly joke referring to the makers of Magic: the Gathering turning D&D into a collectible book game, but these last couple of weeks we’ve seen something disturbing.

Over the past few years we’ve used note cards with pertinent information written on it for buffs and effects and such to help speed our game.

With all the special powers and abilities that 4E PC’s someone on ENWorld decided to print them out and glue the printout onto Magic cards.

Although humorous to us, it did give us pause.

But anyway…

Justin couldn’t make it to this session for work related reasons and Brian was on vacation (I think).

Due to the randomness of half our players’ attendance anymore, we’ve discussed recruiting someone new to the group, but I don’t think we’re going to just yet. We’re probably just going to keep our eyes open just in case.

Dale thought he found someone near us but he steadfastly refuses to play 4E, so we won’t bother him any. Though you have to wonder about people like that sometimes – they don’t have a group and want to be in one, but limit themselves to a restriction that may prevent them from finding a group.

So with just Aaron and Dale, each got to play 2 PC’s, and that meant Dale got to poof in a new PC.

Sir Daroughten, a lawful-evil, flail-wielding knight/fighter with a penchant for tripping

Since we only have a few weeks (6 at most I would guess) I’ve decided to just have fun with the game.

So for Sir Rotten’s equipment (yeah, I said rotten) I gave him some interesting items, with the best item being a cursed one.

The Ivory Skull is obviously a flail made of enchanted ivory shaped into a spiked skull. When underground or in darkness it is a +1 Undead Bane flail, when in sunlight it is a -2 weapon, and when not in either of those (overcast) it just a masterwork flail. The curse is that the wielder will never use another weapon except his own fist (and even then only if he has to) and jealously protects the Skull from would-be thieves.

The best part of the skull (in my opinion) is that when its wielder is killed, he is immediately raised if possible and has 25% of his maximum hit points. This effect ages the wielder 1d4 human equivalent years and drains the color from the wielder’s hair and skin, leaving him with a skeletal visage for the world to see.

We stopped last week with the party leaving the lair of Scramge the Illusionist.

Out poofed Spot and in poofed Sir Daroughten, and we began.

On this level they have only one unexplored door to the south, so off they went.

The door opened to a winding passage that ended in a door with several gold pieces scattered on the floor in front of the door.

An obvious trap, but it needed triggering, so GI volunteered.

Only two of the six arrows hit him, for a whopping 3 damage.

The gold pieces were painted lead to boot.

The next room had a pair of solid stone doors and the door the party chose led to a ruined church-like room with a dozen ghouls (not even a fight for the group now). What the party didn’t know was that the door was a one-way door and now they’re forced to move forward.

They contemplated using their pick to hack open the door, but decided it wasn’t worth it. They’re good on food and have all the spells they need to survive in the dungeon for a good long while.

Level 4

Note: The second incarnation of Dargo is named Dargotu. Yeah, Aaron and Dale stopped trying to think of clever names a long time ago.

While the party was investigating a door, Dargotu was scouting out a side tunnel. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t have darkvision so the Everburning Torch he carries got him some unwanted attention.

When he hadn’t returned in a timely manner the rest of the party went to check on him.

The side passage opened up into an ogre lair. The ogres had grabbed Dargotu and stuffed him in a bag, presumably for later eating.

So when the party got to the end of the natural 5’ winding passage, they were greeted by 6 ogres and 2 ogres pulling a bag along with them.

The ogres lasted 3 rounds maybe, even though they tried to throw their longspears at the obvious wizard. I rolled very poorly for the combat.

When they confronted the 2 ogres with Dargotu’s feigning unconscious body in bag, the ogres threatened to smash the halfling to goo (two coup de graces).

They were forced to let the ogres escape down another size tunnel.

The party backed away and decided to try to sneak around and use what they thought would be a back door and cut off the ogres’ escape route.

Too bad for the party they were missing two crucial bits of information. First the ogres were heading down to another level of the dungeon, and second the door they were trying to open was part of a trap.

The trap was supposed to be triggered at the end of the passage the party was in, trapping them in a dead-end passage with a dropping portcullis while the door opened and released a black pudding that would then slide through the portcullis and swallow up the party.

But they prematurely bashed open the door and released the pudding.

Since the pudding is so slow and the party wasn’t trapped, they were able to evade the pudding and return to the passage the ogres took and chase them down.

The ogre had been moving slowly through the passageway meant for medium creatures allowing the party to reach them just as they had reached the end of the passageway.

A Web spell from Saver prevented the ogres from getting out of the tunnel. The rear ogre turned to face the party (he was doomed) while the front ogre kept the sack holding Dargotu and tried to push his way out of the Web.

With the rear ogre down, Saver dismisses the Web so the rest of the group can get at the last ogre.

The ogre tosses the bag one way and runs another, but thanks to spells like Spiritual Weapon, Magic Missile, and Scorching Ray he became just another corpse in the dungeon. He almost got away though.

The party returned to the ogres’ lair and looted it for plenty of treasure, then went back smashed the black pudding into whatever a black pudding turns into when it’s dead.

Next they returned to the third level of the dungeon and rested in a room inside a Rope Trick spell of Saver’s and we stopped there for the night.