DM Elanmorin's Hell' Rebels

Game Master Nathan Hartshorn

Elurius will provide Guidance whenever and wherever she can, if you only ask! Feel free to throw in into rolls, when appropriate!

Elurius reaches over and taps Lirotha on the shoulder, humming the same tune as before.

Appraise: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (20) + 5 = 25

Rocco looks up at the door, then wheels around to face Elurius and Oren. "It ain't my fault if you buncha hags are all concerned about yer beauty sleep! Now back off and let me work this out, wouldja? This ain't some ordinary door and that ain't some ordinary lock. The way I see it, we can either take the time to pick the lock right, or we can bash it down--though it'd probably take us doing it with Oren's adamantine head!"

He turns back to face the door again and huffs in frustration, "Thing is, there's that arcane lock on there. If we could get that off, it'd make my job a whole lot easier! But it sounds like the Head Hag over there is having trouble with it herself."

Big door...scary door...don't like door...don't like things past door neither...

Kurglunn stands and stares at the large, menacing-looking door with a look of fear and non-comprehension, his mind (or what's left of it after his death and return from the stream that was meant to bear him to Pharasma's realm) filled with the thoughts of how little he wanted to go past that door.

"Alright, big guy. Sorry to do this to ya again, but I think you're up."

Kurglunn freezes as he hears Rocco speaking to him. He turns to the halfling and says with a quivering ectoplasmic lip, "But Kurglunn don't like door. Don't wanna go past door."

"I know, buddy, but we need you to go in there. Just quick. See if you can let us in. Just like we did at Wex's apartment, remember? It's easy! And we'll be there right away once you do. Or if you can't, then just come on back out and we'll figure out something else."

Kurglunn remains silent for a long while as he turns over what Rocco has said in his mind. The door really was scary, and he could practically feel the evil things that lurked on the other side. Still, Kurglunn trusts Rocco. So finally, he assents to go through to the other side with a simple nod of his head.

Without any further complaints, the phantom turns and pushes his ectoplasmic form through the wall to the north of the door, then turns again to pop out into the chamber behind the sealed doors. He moves to the doors and tries to find a way to open the lock or the magical seal from the inside.

GM, any roll I can make or other action to either aid Rocco's Disable Device or something similar?

@Rocco/Kurglunn: the problem here is twofold. The door has an excellent lock and is rather sturdy. On top of those daunting qualities it's also protected by an arcane lock which increases the DC for disable device checks by 10. I'm willing top allow aid another checks with disable device but it's trained only and even taking 20 I can't see how you could beat DC40. Your best bet seems to be dispelling arcane lock OR find an alternative way leading to the upper part of the dungeon. Knock MIGHT be another alternative though

Lirotha tries to dispel the arcane lock placed on the door... but her attempt fails miserably!

Lirotha waves her arms.

"I'm calling this. We come back tomorrow. Let's go get some rest, buy some scrolls of knock or dispel magic to open this door properly."

Valrani smiles as she looks at the situation.

"If we can't go through the doors, what about the walls around them?"

She starts to recite some arcane laws about the properties of stone...
Casts stone shape. Will is that to make a hole in the wall next to the door, large enough to have folk go through.

@Lirotha: getting a scroll of Knock is no problem, but remember you'll still have to beat a DC30 check. Knock supresses Arcane Lock for 10 minutes. You could probably convince someone to pay for such a spell. That said...

Valrani decides to bypass the door entirely and uses her natural magic to reshape a small part opf the wall nearby into a small opening, just enough to allow normal sized people to pass through.

As they do so, the Silver Ravens enter a two sided lobby, sporting doors to the north, the east and smaller ones on the lobby's side itself.
More worryingly, long, mournful moans of a few dozen starving souls sigh out in greeting as the Ravens advance. They also notice how the air in these halls seems noticeably colder — only a few degrees above freezing, in fact - and light sources seem slightly oppressed, as if they were finding it more difficult to illuminate the halls. Distant gasps and moans and the sound of chewing and gasping periodically echo through the halls, but disturbingly, not veryone present hears them all simultaneously.

The Ravens expected an haunted place. Seems like they were right...

What do you do?

"Stay alert. Let's set a party formation: Oren...you and Val take the point with Kurglunn ranging ahead a bit to warn us, then Rocco and Elurious in the middle with the Hound and I trailing the rear. Agreed? Let's check the Eastern hall doors first. Rocco? Feel free to advance Kurglunn and begin. Hound? I expect you to watch our rear carefully. I'll be trying to apply my magic as best as I can as needed. Let's go."

I took the liberty of moving our icons on the map. Feel free to adjust as needed!

Valrani prepares herself a bit, muttering something about trees protecting her.
Casts barkskin

Oren nodded at the plan, and waited on Kurgluun to take the lead.

Ok. Which door do you wish to open first? I'll go with the one near Kurglunn unless you didn't mean to get it open yet

Kurglunn flings the door in front of him open and reveals what amounts to a small private room, once upon a time used for gambling, it seems. Getting the nearbt door opened yelds an identical result.
The furniture in each room is old, moldering, and decaying from the moisture. The only feature of note seems to be a couple of elaborately decorated hookah siting on a small stand in each room.

Where next?

I was going to let Rocco/Kurglunn decide, but that's fine. Might as well keep things moving. We will move on to the Double doors at the end after the first two.

"[b]Lets deal with the elephant in the room. Or the scratching anyway.[p/b]" sighs Valrani.

She listens for where the scratching sounds are coming from.
perception: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (1) + 11 = 12

And then prepares her self further.

Casts bulls strength

Elurius tries to stride down the hallway with confidence, but at every moan, groan or gasp anywhere near by causes her to flinch or give a tiny eep of surprise. She sticks as close to Valrani ahead of her. But the fear causes her to focus solely on the back of Val's head, trying to keep from screwing her eyes closed.

Perception: 1d20 - 1 ⇒ (10) - 1 = 9

I hope this isn't a haunt! Elurius has only one thing that might cause damage if the thing is considered evil, otherwise she's got no way to attack it unless weapons work.

Rocco enters in and grows completely serious. "This place is suffused with death," he says in a low growl of a voice. "Keep your eyes peeled and your weapons ready, not that they'll necessarily do any good, depending on what we run into."

As Kurglunn opens each of the private chambers, Rocco peers in at the hookah on the desks and tries to quickly gauge their value.

Appraise: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (18) + 5 = 23
Appraise: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (8) + 5 = 13

"Eh. Decent. We could come back and pick those up on our way out," he comments quickly to the group before carrying on.

As the group arrives at the double doors at the end of the hall, Rocco gives the signal for Kurglunn to open them up.

Kurglunn opens the doors!
Oh, and Elurius, I bought a scroll that can help us with haunts if we run into one. Can anybody roll Knowledge (religion) to figure out if this place is a haunt, though? I stupidly haven't put any ranks into it!

Kurglunn flings the doors open but does not enter himself. Inside the room he can spot a long mahogany gambling table sitting at the center of the chamber, surrounded by richly carved chairs fitted with silk cushions. Shelves carved into the walls hold old broken bottles, while benches with padded seats sit against the walls under these shelves. All of the furnishings are moldering and decaying... as is the skeleton of a halfling clad in dark leather armor and clutching a handful of bone dice, slumped in a chair at the northern head of the table...

Perception 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (16) + 9 = 25

Oren takes a good long look into the room, before stepping in, assuming she didn’t see any5ning out of kilter. She purposely avoids the corpse unless Rocco indicates it is clear of traps.

As Oren enters the room, a faint milky shimmering dances in the air around the halfling corpse, then quickly coalesces into the ghostly form an attractive but wild-eyed halfling woman. She smiles sweetly at the
Tien woman as the bone dice her skeleton touches float into the air and spin before her. She speaks in a soft, musical voice:“A wager? A game? I’ve waited ages for a game. These bones are lucky tonight! Will you wager part of yourself for my secrets, my friends?”

Smirking Lirotha quips.

"Let's let Rocco handle this. Short knows short. Death recognizes life."

Rocco walks in and passes by Oren, laying a hand on Oren's arm as he walks by to reassure her.

The halfling stands a short distance from the spectral halfling, then reaches inside his cloak. With a smooth motion, he pulls his apparently empty hand back out again and raising it in front of himself. "So who're you," he asks the spectral figure as he begins to move his fingers, a gold coin tumbling between them, "You own this place or just the last one to lose your shirt at the table?"

"Hey there, handsome fellow! I'll tell you my name and possibly much more if you play a game with me. It's been so very long! You know “odds and evens”, right? If not I can explain the rules easily enough! So... will you play? Oh... Tell me you will, pretty please?"

Odds and evens is a game you played before at the Tooth and Nail. It's been some time though, so here's a refresher on the rules.

If you decide to play the Ghost is so happy it gives you the right top call odd or even. When you do, we'll roll several rounds at the same time. The ghost will always choose 2 as the number of throws.

”Are you sure you know what you are doing here, Rocco?”

Let's do this this way to make things move faster: give me 10 different "even/odd directions" and I'll roll for both the Ghost and Rocco. You need to accept the game before we start though

Rocco tilts his head slightly at the ghost's suggested game. "Sure, I know odds and evens. Before I go making any wagers, though, tell me what you want from me if I lose."

Assuming I'll accept the game eventually, my calls are in the spoiler below...

Before we start: each time you win you get to ask a question the ghost will answer at the best of her ability. Any time she wins... she touches one of you and steals a part of your vital essence. Basically this means you take ability damage to a randomlyu determined ability score. Since this could incapacitate you I'm going to randomly determine who gets hit. Letting Rocco do this alone would be a tad too cruel for the poor halfling...

"GREAT!" the ghost giggles in delight before introducing herself "You may call me Guildmistress Lorelu. The game is, of course,“odds and evens”, I'm sure a smart and good looking fellow like yourself surely knows it by heart..."

Rocco won 7 "hands" out of 10 so you get to ask 7 questions to Lorelu. He also lost 3 times though so Lorelu will "feed" on your life force 3 times as well

"Damn... you are good! Or are you cheating somehow? I warn you, you won't like what happens if I catch you cheating..." Lorelu's ghost says sounding irate...

Before we continue, ask your questions. Also, you might roll a Sense Motive check

"Keep it quick people. These herbs I've taken wont last long." sighs Valrani.

She keeps an ear out for where the other sounds are coming from.

My Question one: Who or what is the most dangerous enemy we may face here? Question two: Is there anything here that will give us an advantage over the undead that currently reside here? Question three: where is the most valuable hidden treasure we can find? Does that sound good so far? I guess the GM will roll randomly for who gets the hits?

Sense Motive: 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (18) + 4 = 22

"Cheat?! Me?! Oh, Mistress Lorelu, you wound me deeply," Rocco says with a grin. "Why would I need to cheat when I'm just so skilled?"

Lirotha: I like those questions. I believe we get 4 more, since I won a total of 7 rounds of the game. I think we should also ask some basic background questions, like: What happened here to make this place so full of undeath?
Rocco would also like to ask something like, Would you like to be put to rest? and How can we help you find rest?
As for the ability damage, the GM determined who was getting hit in the "Lorelu Feeds" spoiler above.

Fair enough. I say ask them!

So far we have 5 questions. You've got 2 more

"I'd like to what you know about the new visitors who were brought in by the river below us." suggests Valrani

"And yes, we should bring out your bones to the light of day and give you final rest. Would that also put your colleagues to rest as well?"

Nodding, Lirotha frowns again.

"Incorporeal undead are some of the worst my pretties. We must be careful."

Lirotha then pulls out her new wand.

Valrani asks the 6th question

[/spoiler]

Lirotha nods and goes ahead and casts her Mage Armor spell at this point.

Just to be clear do you want to spend the time you need to bring Lorelu's bones up above now?

How long will it take?

10 minutes to go up and back down. More if you mean to bury her, but it's not dawn yet and you promised to let the sun shine on her bones before burying her remains

"As the sun has yet to rise, I don't think we can take your bones up to the street just yet. But we will as we depart." says Valrani to the ghost.

You leave Lorelu for now, with the promise of giving her rest as soon as the sun raises again. For some reason she seems to trust you and you are free to explore the rest of the complex...

So who takes her hits?

Go to GM’s Thursday 5:41 post and open the spoilers. It tells you who was touched.

Oren felt weakened after the encounter, but more prepared to delve into this area now.

Missed that! Thanks. Adjusted everyone on the Map. Moved everybody to the other hallway. If he's still up to it, can Kurglunn open the doors directly ahead of us? Was that damage or drain on our people BTW? Did anybody lose anything that will hurt them a lot in combat? Elurious, do you have any 'lesser restorations' memorized?

"I'm sorry my friends, but we need to keep moving."

Elurius stays silent and watches the whole interchange with the ghost from the far side of the room, clearly not trusting her but also not willing to get any closer, she does watch the ghost sap the strength of Oren, Kurglunn and Talon with horror, fascination and quite a bit of fear. She opens her mouth for the first time as she calls them over to her and she gives them a tentative look over. "You aren't feeling too odd are you? Nothing other than a little tired? No sense of dying or turning into a ghost right? Grandma once told me about Jian-shi that feed by stealing a person's chi and turn them into a ghost or another Jian-shi! You don't feel like that's been done to you, right? You're good to keep going on, right?"

Elurius doesn't have that as a spell known (spontaneous casters and limited spells, argh) but she does have one scroll of it if anyone is feeling they need to be healed now.

Unless someone needs it desperately, I say save it for an emergency.

Kurglunn could use the lesser restoration if that'd be alright. He got zapped for 3 strength damage, and that's pretty much his bread and butter for combat. He's currently at a score of 9 for strength after the touch.
We also have one more question available from Lorelu. Going off the questions proposed in Discussion, I doubt she'll know all that much about Thrune, but it could be interesting to see if she knows anything about the old Silver Ravens. Let's go with that.

As the rest of the group begins to turn for the door after promising to put Lorelu to rest, Rocco lingers as he continues to watch the ghost. "Wait," he says suddenly, "You've been down here a long time. Maybe you know some old friends of ours. They called themselves the Silver Ravens. Do you know anything about them?"

Kurglunn whimpers at Elurius and her scary questions about turning into some horrifying undead creature

If his strength is that low, I say use it on Kurgluun , then.

Where now?

People?

I thought I said earlier we should have Kurglunn open the doors at the end of the hall first this time. Straight ahead. Does anybody have any problems with that?