Thunderspire Labyrinth #10 & #11
Yeah, it’s been a while since I updated.
The holidays have always hosed over our gaming, and this year is no different.
In fact, for the first time in a very long time they played a week without me (Dale ran a one-shot) and one of the sessions listed here, I arrived late, so the group prepped up their PC’s for Dale’s upcoming campaign.
We have two sessions left in the year and I want to finish this module by then so Dale can start up his campaign at the start of the New Year.
Our lineup for session #10:
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 8 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 7 dragonborn paladin
Mike, playing Ander, the level 7 elf cleric/ranger
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 6 eladrin wizard
Dale, playing Brom, the level 6 tiefling warlock
(I could be off on the levels.)
The last session we stopped with the group about to begin their search for 3 of 4 items that would allow them to take some kind of challenge or test. The four items are a mask, a blade, a bell, and a tome (the one item they had already).
The three remaining items were in rooms adjacent to the central area, where they talked to the ghosts last week, and where the final “challenge” will take place once they put all 4 items on 4 runed circles simultaneously.
Note: The runed circles are nowhere near one another, and are separated by doors and other obstacles. This could prove to be a problem later on once the party begins the challenge.
And they’re doing all of this to find a gnoll chieftain who might know something about Paldemar.
The first room the party entered opened up to a 10’x10’ room with a curtain covering the entrance to a much larger room.
Hadarai detected magic from beyond the curtain and got an “overwhelming” response.
When Valenae peeked into the room from around the edge of the curtain he was attacked by his own reflection in a mirror; a beam shot from his eyes and narrowly missed him.
This very large room had several columns with mirrors on their sides that attacked anyone who had their eyes open or attacked them.
Over the span of a couple of rounds Valenae, Brom, and Hadarai attacked the closest mirror. In turn each of them disappeared and was teleported into a dark room that wasn’t so empty.
It had a desperate and starving gnoll in there that had fallen for the same trap a few days prior. The gnoll did some damage to the three new visitors, but he didn’t last long.
That brings us to Earl and Ander.
Ander had the bright idea of pulling the curtain down and walking along the edge of the room, so he and Earl avoided every single mirror in the place.
At the other end of this L-shaped room they came to a second curtain that held a shrine to Baphomet, the mask they were looking for, and a couple of boneshard skeletons that gave them a run for their money.
A successful religion skill check told them that if they put their hand on a minotaur-sized hand imprint on the shrine, it might do something interesting. In this case, empty out the “holding room” that Valenae, Brom, and Hadarai had been sent to.
Ander, for whatever reason, tried the mask on. Then he punched Earl in the face. Then he took the mask off. (The mask gives darkvision, but if you’re bloodied you attack the nearest person to you.)
Next they rested up in the central room and investigated it a bit. While doing that the evil of the Abyss bled into this reality and the party got a glimpse of it, and was rewarded with a penalty to their Will defenses for a while thanks to all the lovely things they saw.
The next door they could not open, but heard chanting more than a few feet away from the door. They noted this for later and moved on to another room.
This semi-donut-shaped room had several pillars of many people that began chanting and grasping wildly at the air around them in an obvious bit of insanity.
At the end of each round all of the pillars in the room would do something different; from as simple as attacking or grabbing, to something fun like teleporting people around them.
I refereed that as “Pillar Time”.
What the party didn’t see, thanks to poor rolling, was the 6 carnage demons hiding near the pillars on the ceiling.
And to make it even worse the party entered the room with no defensive formation and also split up to go around the “hole” in the donut-shaped room. The simply expected the pillars to be the reason they were on initiative.
When they spotted the shrine that had the bell hidden near it, they had trouble missing the barlgura demon guarding the shrine.
When they got too close to the shrine all of the carnage demons dropped from the ceiling and began attacking the party while the barlgura stayed near the shrine.
Surrounded and spread out, the party knew they stepped in something bad, so they began to pull back.
That’s when “Pillar Time” hit with a “reality warp” and teleported the party randomly throughout the room, spreading them even farther apart.
We noted that sometimes it’s better to take multiple opportunity attacks than face the special attacks that might be used against you.
The saving grace the party had was that none of the demons had a defense above 20.
Slowly and very painfully the party fought back the carnage demons, and finally faced off and took down the barlgura.
Hidden under a loose tile near the shrine was the bell they needed. When they finally found it, they grabbed it and ran before “Pillar Time” hurt them anymore.
It took them over 5 rounds to get out of the room thanks to the random effects of the pillars.
At least I enjoyed the chaos.
The party had been sufficiently drained, so they decided to rest in a small room (10’x15’) in the complex rather than risk the unknown by leaving the area.
It took them 8 hours to get 6 hours of rest thanks to the “closeness” of this place to the Abyss. This included a fight with a barlgura that just appeared from out of nowhere and attacked.
The final item room, the one containing the blade, made some sloshing, water sounds when they listened to it at the door.
They opened to find not a room full of water, but one full of blood that was 6’ deep save for a divider in the center of the room, a pair of very large minotaur statues, and a pair of pedestals each holding one half of a dagger.
They correctly deduced that these minotaur statues were not of the stationary kind. They spun around and slapped their scourge-laden whips at anyone in the room.
Ander also noticed some “forms” hiding in the blood.
But it really didn’t matter. Earl had some Boots of Wavestriding and ran from one end of the room to a corner holding the dagger’s hilt and then to another corner holding the blade.
What should have been a nasty encounter was barely noticeable overall as all my rolls against Earl were of the single-digit variety.
With that they returned to the central room and set up to place the 4 items on the runed circles.
It was late so we stopped there, hoping to get back to this as soon as we can.
And thus begins session #11
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 8 eladrin rogue
Mike, playing Ander, the level 7 elf cleric/ranger
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 6 eladrin wizard
Dale, playing Brom, the level 6 tiefling warlock
Justin, playing Stout, the level 6 dwarf fighter
Scattered throughout the testing area were the 5 PC’s, with Ander, Valenae, and Stout each by themselves to place their item on the rune.
Each item was placed in each rune, the runes glowed, the items disappeared, then a thunderous roar erupted from the center of the testing area, and traps attacked from the rooms that contained the runes.
Stout was skewered when a pair of oversized crossbows dropped out from the ceiling and shot at him. He left the area the first chance he had.
Ander was attacked by a whirlwind, but he quickly left the room and it did not follow.
Ander then joined Valenae who was surrounded by skeletons grasping at him from the floor. They both left that room the first opportunity they had.
Hadarai and Brom had a simple trap, a pair of busts of Baphomet that screeched out a terrifying scream that forced them into the center run of the testing area.
The center run contained a giant, rolling, spiked, black ball of force that went in a continuous circuit. This “Doom Sphere” didn’t hurt a single PC, but was a constant headache to the group.
And finally the thunderous roar was from the Guardian, a young green dragon. Now the dragon alone versus this party would have been shred to pieces. Even two of these dragons against this party would be “about right”. But when you add in all of the traps and the party starting off pretty separated, this one dragon had a slightly better chance of survival.
The dragon had an instinctive knowledge of where the Doom Sphere was, a tactical need to keep the party separate from one another, an ability to slide a target 2 squares every round (possibly into the path of the Doom Sphere), and a preference to go after solitary targets – especially the lightly armored or unarmored kind.
Accordingly, Hadarai took the brunt of the attacks from the Guardian.
All of the traps, its mobility, and the separated party couldn’t give the dragon enough of an advantage to do anything more than hurt the party slightly.
By the time the tenth round came, the Guardian was dead and the party safely avoided the other obstacles until only door left unopened by the party opened and fog rolled in from beyond it.
The party then stepped forth.
And we had to stop after that one long fight.
The holidays have always hosed over our gaming, and this year is no different.
In fact, for the first time in a very long time they played a week without me (Dale ran a one-shot) and one of the sessions listed here, I arrived late, so the group prepped up their PC’s for Dale’s upcoming campaign.
We have two sessions left in the year and I want to finish this module by then so Dale can start up his campaign at the start of the New Year.
Our lineup for session #10:
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 8 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 7 dragonborn paladin
Mike, playing Ander, the level 7 elf cleric/ranger
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 6 eladrin wizard
Dale, playing Brom, the level 6 tiefling warlock
(I could be off on the levels.)
The last session we stopped with the group about to begin their search for 3 of 4 items that would allow them to take some kind of challenge or test. The four items are a mask, a blade, a bell, and a tome (the one item they had already).
The three remaining items were in rooms adjacent to the central area, where they talked to the ghosts last week, and where the final “challenge” will take place once they put all 4 items on 4 runed circles simultaneously.
Note: The runed circles are nowhere near one another, and are separated by doors and other obstacles. This could prove to be a problem later on once the party begins the challenge.
And they’re doing all of this to find a gnoll chieftain who might know something about Paldemar.
The first room the party entered opened up to a 10’x10’ room with a curtain covering the entrance to a much larger room.
Hadarai detected magic from beyond the curtain and got an “overwhelming” response.
When Valenae peeked into the room from around the edge of the curtain he was attacked by his own reflection in a mirror; a beam shot from his eyes and narrowly missed him.
This very large room had several columns with mirrors on their sides that attacked anyone who had their eyes open or attacked them.
Over the span of a couple of rounds Valenae, Brom, and Hadarai attacked the closest mirror. In turn each of them disappeared and was teleported into a dark room that wasn’t so empty.
It had a desperate and starving gnoll in there that had fallen for the same trap a few days prior. The gnoll did some damage to the three new visitors, but he didn’t last long.
That brings us to Earl and Ander.
Ander had the bright idea of pulling the curtain down and walking along the edge of the room, so he and Earl avoided every single mirror in the place.
At the other end of this L-shaped room they came to a second curtain that held a shrine to Baphomet, the mask they were looking for, and a couple of boneshard skeletons that gave them a run for their money.
A successful religion skill check told them that if they put their hand on a minotaur-sized hand imprint on the shrine, it might do something interesting. In this case, empty out the “holding room” that Valenae, Brom, and Hadarai had been sent to.
Ander, for whatever reason, tried the mask on. Then he punched Earl in the face. Then he took the mask off. (The mask gives darkvision, but if you’re bloodied you attack the nearest person to you.)
Next they rested up in the central room and investigated it a bit. While doing that the evil of the Abyss bled into this reality and the party got a glimpse of it, and was rewarded with a penalty to their Will defenses for a while thanks to all the lovely things they saw.
The next door they could not open, but heard chanting more than a few feet away from the door. They noted this for later and moved on to another room.
This semi-donut-shaped room had several pillars of many people that began chanting and grasping wildly at the air around them in an obvious bit of insanity.
At the end of each round all of the pillars in the room would do something different; from as simple as attacking or grabbing, to something fun like teleporting people around them.
I refereed that as “Pillar Time”.
What the party didn’t see, thanks to poor rolling, was the 6 carnage demons hiding near the pillars on the ceiling.
And to make it even worse the party entered the room with no defensive formation and also split up to go around the “hole” in the donut-shaped room. The simply expected the pillars to be the reason they were on initiative.
When they spotted the shrine that had the bell hidden near it, they had trouble missing the barlgura demon guarding the shrine.
When they got too close to the shrine all of the carnage demons dropped from the ceiling and began attacking the party while the barlgura stayed near the shrine.
Surrounded and spread out, the party knew they stepped in something bad, so they began to pull back.
That’s when “Pillar Time” hit with a “reality warp” and teleported the party randomly throughout the room, spreading them even farther apart.
We noted that sometimes it’s better to take multiple opportunity attacks than face the special attacks that might be used against you.
The saving grace the party had was that none of the demons had a defense above 20.
Slowly and very painfully the party fought back the carnage demons, and finally faced off and took down the barlgura.
Hidden under a loose tile near the shrine was the bell they needed. When they finally found it, they grabbed it and ran before “Pillar Time” hurt them anymore.
It took them over 5 rounds to get out of the room thanks to the random effects of the pillars.
At least I enjoyed the chaos.
The party had been sufficiently drained, so they decided to rest in a small room (10’x15’) in the complex rather than risk the unknown by leaving the area.
It took them 8 hours to get 6 hours of rest thanks to the “closeness” of this place to the Abyss. This included a fight with a barlgura that just appeared from out of nowhere and attacked.
The final item room, the one containing the blade, made some sloshing, water sounds when they listened to it at the door.
They opened to find not a room full of water, but one full of blood that was 6’ deep save for a divider in the center of the room, a pair of very large minotaur statues, and a pair of pedestals each holding one half of a dagger.
They correctly deduced that these minotaur statues were not of the stationary kind. They spun around and slapped their scourge-laden whips at anyone in the room.
Ander also noticed some “forms” hiding in the blood.
But it really didn’t matter. Earl had some Boots of Wavestriding and ran from one end of the room to a corner holding the dagger’s hilt and then to another corner holding the blade.
What should have been a nasty encounter was barely noticeable overall as all my rolls against Earl were of the single-digit variety.
With that they returned to the central room and set up to place the 4 items on the runed circles.
It was late so we stopped there, hoping to get back to this as soon as we can.
And thus begins session #11
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 8 eladrin rogue
Mike, playing Ander, the level 7 elf cleric/ranger
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 6 eladrin wizard
Dale, playing Brom, the level 6 tiefling warlock
Justin, playing Stout, the level 6 dwarf fighter
Scattered throughout the testing area were the 5 PC’s, with Ander, Valenae, and Stout each by themselves to place their item on the rune.
Each item was placed in each rune, the runes glowed, the items disappeared, then a thunderous roar erupted from the center of the testing area, and traps attacked from the rooms that contained the runes.
Stout was skewered when a pair of oversized crossbows dropped out from the ceiling and shot at him. He left the area the first chance he had.
Ander was attacked by a whirlwind, but he quickly left the room and it did not follow.
Ander then joined Valenae who was surrounded by skeletons grasping at him from the floor. They both left that room the first opportunity they had.
Hadarai and Brom had a simple trap, a pair of busts of Baphomet that screeched out a terrifying scream that forced them into the center run of the testing area.
The center run contained a giant, rolling, spiked, black ball of force that went in a continuous circuit. This “Doom Sphere” didn’t hurt a single PC, but was a constant headache to the group.
And finally the thunderous roar was from the Guardian, a young green dragon. Now the dragon alone versus this party would have been shred to pieces. Even two of these dragons against this party would be “about right”. But when you add in all of the traps and the party starting off pretty separated, this one dragon had a slightly better chance of survival.
The dragon had an instinctive knowledge of where the Doom Sphere was, a tactical need to keep the party separate from one another, an ability to slide a target 2 squares every round (possibly into the path of the Doom Sphere), and a preference to go after solitary targets – especially the lightly armored or unarmored kind.
Accordingly, Hadarai took the brunt of the attacks from the Guardian.
All of the traps, its mobility, and the separated party couldn’t give the dragon enough of an advantage to do anything more than hurt the party slightly.
By the time the tenth round came, the Guardian was dead and the party safely avoided the other obstacles until only door left unopened by the party opened and fog rolled in from beyond it.
The party then stepped forth.
And we had to stop after that one long fight.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 1:55 PM
1 Comments:
Our fight against a green dragon was similarly long. It took us one whole session to take him down. It was still a blast, though, so no complaints here.
Jay
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