The Valley #18-19

Well my life is a bit full of things at the moment, and no chance of it letting up.

No worries, I won’t be doing a “blog-fade” as it’s called.

At worst there will just be a continued series of multi-session entries every 2-4 weeks.

After 5+ years there’s no way I’m going to just fade away so long as I’ve got something D&D’ish to write about.

It appears the Valley will be continuing uninterrupted for a bit longer than planned as Dale is taking an involuntary extended vacation from the game due to health reasons.

That means we need to push to get new members now. We actually did have a waiting list a few years back, but it’s been so long that I figure those players probably have a group already.

Dale had been looking around on various websites geared towards player recruitment with not so hopeful results.

Unfortunately too many people can’t play on Friday evenings, are too young, are smurfing insane, or want to play an older or heavily house-ruled version of D&D.

Personally I don’t understand how some people without a group can demand that a whole group stop how they play so they can let this new guy join.

And yes, about five years ago, we had a guy tell us that if we wanted him to join our group we would have to “unlearn” 3E. For the first time ever, my response was more polite than Dale’s. While I tried to educate the guy and make him aware of how ignorant he was about 3E, Dale’s response was “Tell him to f--- off.”

Way too many gamers are more arrogant than they ought to be.

Now if someone were to join the group and, after a while, made a reasonable case for a change, we might listen. But no one is going to come to the group and start dictating to us how our group is going to be.

Someone like that will be booted before 9pm on his first day.

There’s only going to be one self-appointed asshole in this group, and that’s me. And that means I’m the guy who says what several in the group want to say, but are too polite to say.

Recruit A: “Hey, I’d love to join your group, but I can only play Saturday evenings. Is that possible?”
Me: “Sorry, but we can’t do that.” Then I usually add, “But contact Yottaquest. They have multiple games of Living Forgotten Realms running or may know of a group that has a spot open.”

Recruit B: “HEY! I luvz DnD. Can I play?”
Me: “No” or no response at all.

Recruit C: “Hi my name is ----. I use to play D&D back in 2nd Edition and was looking to get back into it. Do you have a spot open?”
Me: “We do. Tell me more about yourself and we’ll go on from there.”

Recruit D: “Hi my name is ----. I’m new to the area and am looking for a game…”
Me: See the response to Recruit C.

If you think that maybe I’m a little too harsh or closed-minded, remember that I’ve played D&D since I was 14 (37 now) and I have seen the damage that a destabilizing player can do to a group. I’m also not going to risk health and home of me or another group member.

Maybe one day I’ll write a post about my early years of D&D that helped form my reasoning.

Session 18 had everyone but Dale, so Ander just faded to the background for the time being.
Session 19 did not have Dale or Mike, so we left Ander in the background and Kergan snuck away before 19 started.

I intend to give story reasons for their disappearances.

Our cast for Session 18:
Admon (Scott); level 8 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 8 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 8 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 7 dwarf rogue

Duncan and Kergan started off the day comparing notes about what they’ve learned about Mayor Ryan and Niyah.

(Admon still spends at least 5-6 hours a day studying Ivellios’s tomes.)

Things discussed:
Laws were being passed without the general populace knowing.
Niyah was controlling the mayor.
The mayor and Niyah are engaged.
Upon the death of a council member or the mayor, that person’s spouse would take over until replaced by a new appointee or elected person.
All this time the group has been working on getting the mayor more power.

They inform Edward and Admon this information and decide that their first step is to figure out how to determine if someone is currently being enthralled by Niyah.

After some bad starts, they hire a charm expert from the School of Wizardry and put him on retainer for possible future needs.
His best advice to determine if someone is charmed is to try to get the charmed person to do something that person wouldn’t usually do.
The group was hoping for something a little bit more straight forward (like a ritual to dispel a charm), but that’s all they can get.

Kergan takes it upon himself to tell Jason Adrek of the Church of Brekaneth. He isn’t available but Girvan Torl (the elder paladin) is.

Kergan tells him everything about Niyah and the mayor and Torl says he’ll relay it to Jason Adrek.
Torl does no such thing.

Kergan rejoins the group and is promptly punched in the face by Duncan.
Kergan doesn’t strike him back, saying something more akin to “WTF?!”
Duncan decides that Kergan is not charmed and heals him (it was a crit punch).

So the party brainstorms for a while, coming up with ideas that just aren’t suitable until they decide to throw Xavius a bachelor party as an excuse to get him boozed up and talkative.

So Duncan spends 100gp of his own money to prep up for this thing (we ignored what specifically that money was going towards).

So a day later the group is faking drinking while the mayor is getting plastered.

As expected they guide the conversation towards Niyah.

Xavius praises her in every way, including her being invaluable in aiding him in the right ways to say things to people on a political level.

He also tells them that the whole “spouse takes over when you die” bit of the law was suggested by her.

As for the reason why they couldn’t read about any recently passed laws, well that was because of the volatility of the Ironmonger/Silverhome debate as either side was looking for any reason to discredit the other, and some were willing to take down anyone who thought would vote against them. But since the vote is over, things will return to the way they were in a month or two.

The Anti-zombie serum is still a high priority, though there always seems to be something that is slowing down its development (needing components, other crises).

Kergan suggests that maybe Niyah has too much of a hold on him. So the mayor punches him and demands he take it back.

“Why am I getting punched by people that are my friends?”

At that they decide he’s way too far gone to be useful, and take him back home to a waiting Niyah and put him to bed.

The next morning Kergan wonders who’s going to punch him today.

He also attempts to bluff his way past the mayor’s guards claiming to be her new bodyguard. It doesn’t work. The guard tells him that without the proper notice from his superiors he can’t let Kergan in.

So Kergan waits for her to leave the mayor’s house and then tails her as she casually strolls through the general market area.

She makes several stops at places that sell magic-related materials and reagents but buys nothing. But she still brings a smile to the proprietor’s faces.

Afterwards Kergan stops at the shops and claims to be Niyah’s assistant and he was sent to pick up something she wanted to buy. He’s told that she never buys anything.

At this point the group is out of ideas as they can’t think of a single way to expose her without the results making it look they were the bad guys and Niyah is just an innocent victim of ruthless adventurers…so the DM helps them out.

Kergan eventually has a conversation with his Thieves’ Guild contact.

Kergan is told that the guild has determined that Niyah is evil and uncontrollable by the guild, so her execution has been called for and it is Kergan’s job to do so

Kergan explains that he can’t get his friends to go along (specifically the paladin) without some kind of verifiable proof that she’s a devil/demon.

A few hours later his contact procures a magical bell. When rung and there only normal people are nearby (5 squares) the bells rings like normal, but if demons or devils are around it makes a dull thud.

The group’s retained School of Wizardry charm expert confirms that is indeed what the bell does (and also mentions that a similar item disappearing not long ago from another school member).

To cover their asses they bring along the mage and Girvan Torl (he will “ensure that justice is served”).

That day they confronted her and she was visibly annoyed at always being hounded by Kergan and his friends.

They ring the bell without her nearby, then with her nearby and it acts as expected.

She scoffs at the broken bell and they put her under arrest.
She stares at Girvan and asks, “I’m not under arrest am I dear?”
His face goes blank and stares into space.

Edward grabs her and she shouts “Don’t touch me! And don’t call me Niyah. My name is Stefforri and I am your doom.”

She turns into a succubus, a hell hound appears by her side, and we go on initiative.

They quickly find out that she has 3 resistances – 20 to fire (devil), 5 to cold (frost adept), and 5 to radiant (sorcerer) – which really put a damper on their damage doing abilities.

This makes Scott cry as he’s given Admon an exceptionally large number of fire based spells and rolled a crit with his Fireball, doing only 11 damage with it.

Girvan begins silently running interference for Stefforri yet not directly attacking the party (+2 to all of her defenses when he is adjacent to her).

The fight itself took forever thanks to the resistances had by all.

When she was about done, she threw a clear crystal up in there air, where it exploded. A round or two later a white dragon swooped in and picked her dying body up off the ground.

Scott didn’t particularly like this fight because he was reduced to only using Magic Missile. But that isn’t my fault, it’s his. Everyone has pointed out that he needs something more than just fire powers in his repertoire. (He’s been working on it.)

Thus ends Session 18 and begins Session 19.

Note: I had made the module for this session hard for 4 PC’s, when Mike had to cancel I both had to power down the module and power up the players.

So I took out some monsters, made some traps less difficult, let the PC’s have a spontaneous extended rest, and gave each PC a bonus action point to use in each combat (to somewhat simulate an extra PC), but I also cut out some XP (which they still got plenty of).

This ended up being just about right…almost.

Moments after the white dragon flew off with Stefforri’s unconscious body, Ajell, Polaris’s mate, teleported in. She stated that she had heard rumors of a white dragon hiding in the Valley and her magic had warned her of its presence in the city.

Duncan quickly tells her what happened and soon they were holding onto her back while they are flying off in the direction the white dragon went.

Soon they are on the same level as the plateau and see the Kryptonian-like rock formations that make up much of the lifted land.

They approach a small, snow-covered ledge with a cave opening.

The snow is odd because it is currently mid-spring and there is no snow anywhere else nearby.

As they approach the ledge the white dragon flies at them. Ajell tries to land but is unable make it in time.

The party falls 20-30’ and Ajell yells for them to kill the succubus before she can escape.

They head towards the cave and are met by a tall humanoid-shaped set of rocks connected by flames.
He welcomed them to Stefforri’s lair and informs them that she is entertained by the sport that adventurer’s bring and she has entered her icy chamber to recover from her wounds. In order for the party to enter the chamber the party must first find the Key of Fire’s Hate and the Key of Frost’s Sorrow all while avoiding the guardians of the maze.

(Yeah I know it’s cheesy. Shut up!)

The elemental tells them this as it leads them through the cave which dead-ends into a rock wall with a large chunk missing out of it.
For the party to enter Stefforri’s lair they must take the molten heart of a fire elemental, the tongue of a fire snake, and the wing of a fire bat and then bathe them all in ice and snow that has fallen from above, then put the resulting stone into its place in the wall.

He then apologizes for his actions as he attacks the party and is joined by a fire bat, fire snake, and eventually the cave starts to cave-in a bit (coincidence?).

The party most definitely won, but working together didn’t seem to be their strong suit, so they took plenty of damage (even though two of them had resistance 5 to fire).

Once they had the stone, they placed it in its place and soon were entering a new dungeon which had plenty of faint screams and monstrous growls as well as hot and freezing blasts of air.

And to make it more entertaining, all ranged attacks had their ranges cut in half.

The maze itself was actually quite large, 15’ wide hallways. That should have been an immediate concern to the party.

And while they’re traveling, Niyah/Stefforri is saying things like:
“More of you are coming to see me? I’m so flattered.”
“I’ve had many husbands, and I loved them all dearly. Until death do us part.”
“Poor, poor Xavius. I heard his father died too young. I wonder if it was passed down to his son.”
“Once we finish this I will start again. Soon the Valley and all of its precious magical energies will be mine.”

Their first encounter in the maze was not a fun fight for them.
In fact it beat the daylights out of them.

Justin: “Aw F---!”
Scott: “Run!”

The Eye of Flame Beholder had no interest in letting them run.

The first round made the PC’s want to run, but they stuck it out and worked together (interesting how being about to die does that).

Eventually they won but it cost them quite a few resources, more than I had expected. Several dailies had been used and their only tank had 2 healing surges left.

They had one key and the other was guarded by a white dragon that had many metal plates attached to it, causing it great agony and making its temperament oh so lovely.

Admon had decided to do some scouting while invisible, and although the dragon couldn’t see him…

Admon: “Do you need some help?”
Dragon: While sniffing the air, “Where are you? Show yourself.”
Admon: “I’d rather not.”
Dragon: “I hear you but I don’t see you.”
Admon: “That’s always a good thing.”
Dragon: “Why are you here?”
Admon: “To put an end to somebody.”
Dragon (enraged): “My mistress? You will pay.”

Then we rolled initiative.

The party tried a stalling tactic of having Admon and Duncan look for the key while Edward fought the dragon. This plan ended up being a bad idea as the dragon was doing a nice job of landing blows on the poor paladin (I just kept rolling double digits).

By the end of it Edward had used all of his healing surges and the party had no remaining resources to fight a succubus-sorceress in her own lair.

They would not be able to rest inside the dungeon (heat/cold temperature extremes, and the screams make it hard to rest), so they left the dungeon to left.

Bu the moment they took the keys outside the dungeon, the keys ceased to exist as did the dungeon.

The party was standing by a giant pile of rubble, with two concerned silver dragons towering over them asking if they were ok and if Stefforri was dead.

The party replied that they had failed.