GM Rat Sass's Legacy of Fire (Inactive)

Game Master GM Rat Sass

Round 4, Init 20

"Hey! Hit me, Lunkhead!" Otah tries to get the attention of large sized foe.

Horsechopper: 1d20 + 9 + 2 ⇒ (10) + 9 + 2 = 21 for: 1d10 + 5 ⇒ (4) + 5 = 9
Don't you dare ignore me!

Round: 3, Initiative: 9

In an effort to remain standing, Aldebert touches himself, Lay on Hands: 3d6 ⇒ (4, 2, 6) = 12 (swift).

He then focuses on trying to do to him, what he’s doing to me.
Gretiem Bite: 1d20 + 6 + 2 ⇒ (14) + 6 + 2 = 22 (flank) damage: 2d4 + 4 ⇒ (2, 3) + 4 = 9
Hammer (magic): 1d20 + 7 + 5 ⇒ (10) + 7 + 5 = 22 (bless, smite, flank) damage: 1d6 + 7 + 5 ⇒ (5) + 7 + 5 = 17 (smite)

”Blow for blow, my god, my brother, and my friends protect me. You shall fall being protected by no society of your own.”

The giant seems off balance after Otah's strike. Taking advantage of the show of weakness, Greteim bites solidly into the creatures stunted legs. It falls to the ground motionless. A final hammer strike ensures the beast will not be getting back up. The individuals look on relieved, but hesitant to move from their corners.

Combat is over.

Otah watches the beast crumple before Aldebert.

"Well done!" he prods the thing with the sharp edge of his weapon just to make sure though.

Looking over, he observes the other people in the room. "Tell me Aldebert, how much do you think they fear you now?"

He jogs on over and stands in front of the small group. "Otah Cragsmith. Who be you? How come you by this creatures side?"

Pent moves over to the corners, lowering his crossbow. He waves at his Sarahtar, which nods to the gnome, and slashes the giant a final time, punctuating Pent's earlier promise.

"There. Now, I think it'll be a very strange day when that giant ever threatens you again, although from his size and anger, you're likelier to encounter him in your nightmares, but those will pass after awhile of living well beyond him."

The gnome listens as Otah offers up his name, clapping him on the back. "Oh, yeah! Names!! Good to have them, good to share them! My name's Pent. Technically, it's Sir Pent, but we don't go with that part of it, because it sounds stuffy, and I have no place to put all the flowers folks are throwing at my feet. You must have names too. Care to share?"

Ami rushes to his brother. They pause only briefly to allow Yeen to tear out the giant's throat while dodging Sarahtar.

"Brother! You are amazing! I cannot believe you still stand...I thought you gone with its first blows!" Ami cheers more loudly than he usually speaks.

Ami calms a bit, beckoning his brother closer.

"That was amazing."

1d8 + 5 ⇒ (8) + 5 = 13 CLW

”Thank you Ami, that was quite refreshing - and much needed. I think I’m OK for now, thanks to your help and Pent’s. Good flank Otah, that was helpful. I like how you weave in and out of the battle. I need to learn to do that. Mahdi, on fire as always.” he grins.

He pulls Gretiem up and over to the remaining humans. ”I’m Aldebert and this here’s my brother Amiamble.” He looks to them for answers to his friends questions.

The pair continue to look at the fallen giant, stealing glances occasionally at one another. Though they look toward the nearby door, they don't move toward it. Instead, they seem to slide to the floor - exhausted not much comes from them beyond quite thanks.

"Thank you... Yes, thanks."

Ami and Yeen go to check out the humans, no longer saying much. He freely creates water (no, not the way that Pent 'creates' yellow water...the spell) for those who desire it.

Sarenrae asks that we lead by example. I'll try it out...even with humans.

Ami will let Aldebert do the talking.

Talkative pair.

"Look, we're not here to hurt you, we're here to kill some gnolls, but all we've found so far are their minions. How did you come to be here? Do you want us to escort you back to civilization? We can, but we need to move on before we move back - it might be a while. Days even."

"We've rations we can share," he gestures to his brother, "and water a plenty. Just stay well back and you should be OK."

Diplomacy: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (1) + 8 = 9

Oops.

The pair gulp up the water thirstily, but don't seem to think much of Aldebert's words. Eventually one of them responds.

"No small thanks to killing that beast, but if I were you I'd get out of here while you can. Point us to the way you came in and we'll take our chances." After drinking some more water the one that has spoken the most collapses against the wall - breathing hard, eyes closed he doesn't appear to have much more to say. The other keeps looking between Mahdi and Pent while remaining quiet.

Mahdi examines his fingernails as the other rush to greet the poor humans. It's a bit awkward, when you just roasted two of their number to death.

"Sorry about your... companions," he says at last. "I hope you weren't, ah. Close."

And beyond that he won't lose any sleep over it, thank you. They attacked him. Mahdi pokes at the giant's mangled body, looking to see if he had any possessions of interest. detect magic

"...as far as you lot getting out of here, our path leads through the territory of fire salamanders; we are most likely going to have to fight our way out, which means I wouldn't suggest going through on your own," he says with faux cheer.

"But what can you tell us of this fellow? How long have you been prisoners?"

Pent sidles up alongside Mahdi, suspecting that the second slave is deaf. He looks up at the fire mage, and begins to translate in pantomime.

"Sorry about your... companions. I hope you weren't, ah. Close."

Pent puts on a sad facial expression, and points at the marshfellows. He presses his hands together and shakes them fervently while looking upwards, then points at the living slaves, then to the bodies. He then hugs Mahdi's leg, while pointing back and forth between the fire mage and himself, while shaking his head.

"... as far as you lot getting out of here, our path leads through the territory of fire salamanders; we are most likely going to have to fight our way out, which means I wouldn't suggest going through on your own."

Pent lets go of Mahdi, making a circle gesture to rope together the two slaves, while running in place. He makes a wandering hand gesture demonstrating a path, while feigning terror to the left, then terror to the right. He sticks out his tongue, and makes a scary reptile-like face, demonstrating a heretofore never seen feature of the gnome- his tongue is easily long enough to reach the tip of his nose, and then some.

He returns to the running-in-place pantomime, while punching to the left, then punching to the right. He wiggles his fingers, showing strength. He lowers all fingers except his middle finger, and shakes his head, while smashing the poor, lonely finger due to its vulnerability.

"But what can you tell us of this fellow? How long have you been prisoners?"

Pent points at the giant, and waves his hand in a come-here gesture, trying to get the words to come out of the slaves, in one form or another. He starts pulling taffy, then pantomimes wrist chains, walking around dejectedly, before returning to Mahdi's side, and crosses his arms.

"Remove yourself from my leg immediately, Pent."

Pent almost loses his place in retrieving all that Mahdi says, but manages to stay on point.

"Remove yourself from my leg immediately, Pent."

Pent turns to a smaller Pent next to him, and wags his finger, prying the invisible gnome off the visible gnome's leg.

"Oh my gods," the wizard groans, looking skyward. "Alright, let me put it in smaller words for you: don't touch me unless I'm dying, you scatological schemer!"

Aldebert watches Pent's pantomime with interest, though he doesn't really follow all of it. In the end he figures that's a good thing...

He shakes his head to clear it, and talks to the wretches. "As you want of course. You're not our prisoners or anything, I just think you'd be better off taking a little nap here a moment while we do our thing, then we can help you out at least. Point you toward the nearest settlement."

Assuming they stick to their decision, Aldebert escorts them to the ladder at least and tells them how to get out from there.

Returning to the group he says, "Well, where to from here? There are a couple doors we passed up that I'd like to check, but then I think we dig out this door." he gestures to the pile of detritus covering the door in the 'throne' room.

I moved Aldebert on the map to where I think we should check out next. Happy to go another direction too if anyone has a different idea.

"Alright...don't touch me unless I'm dying, you scatological schemer!"

LOL@entire scene. +1 more for scatological.

Ami giggles from under his scarf. He wonders why his brother thinks the humans will survive 'out there' on their own.

lol as well

Otah wanders with Aldebert. "Let's see what we can scrounge up, shall we. Also, dodging in and out of a fight is just learning how to not get hit while doing it."

Sealed door

With the room open it is clear that the sound of gnolls has been echoing off sealed doors, as now the sound can be heard from the barricaded doors.

we aim to please

Sorry, Lareg, just clarifying, the armor is not magical, but it is a +1?

Mahdi brushes his hands off. "Nothing enchanted," he says in curt dismissal. If it ain't magic, he ain't interested. He does side-eye the barricaded doors.

Quietly, Mahdi says to the others, "What exactly do you think the set-up is, here? This fellow was no gnoll-- but is he at war with the gnolls? Because unless I miss my guess, that is the sound of gnollish barking and growling behind these doors..."

He looks again to the former slave-wretches. "What know you of the gnolls hereabouts? If we're to lead you safely out, we must perforce be alive: if you can shed some light on what's beyond that door, we have better odds of that," he says pointedly.

Diplomacy: 1d20 + 1 ⇒ (14) + 1 = 15

Masterwork, so yes - just +1.

The least talkative of the two looks up at Mahdi, clearly fearful. As a pool of liquid gathers on the floor he stammers out an answer.

"They.. the gnolls. They kept us. We worked. He did the same after escaping."

The gnome looks down, somewhat disheartened that their conversation is enough to trigger a fear-reflex in the poor soul. That is quickly forgotten, as the deaf person starts to speak, and not only speak, but answer what had been said previously. Pent frowns, and wipes the beads of sweat from his forehead.

"You mean to say that you could hear us just fine, the whole time? You made me gesticulate like a court jester, what, for nothing? For your amusement..?" The gnome shudders a little, then flaps his hands in a dismissive gesture. "Well, glad you can speak, for what it's worth now. Sorry you can't hold your bladder. Here... lemme help you with that..." Pent squeezes his fist together, as he aims a quick streaming burst of water at the ex-slave's groin. He frowns, realizing that it makes the ex-slave look like he peed his pants, so he brings a second creation of water, this time in the form of a downpour, soaking the ex-slave evenly. "There." The gnome nods his head, proud of his work.

"Alright, let's get down to brass tacks- how big is this place, and how many gnolls are we talking about? We're looking for the Big Boy, the leader of this pack. It's not the big boy over there, right? So, where do we go from here?" Pent puts his hands on his hips, wiping them off from his created water first.

"Oh, and you should totally wait for us to clear this place out. You will likely end up in the gullet of a Roc if you stray from this edifice."

Ami waits for answers...he does not oft speak to strangers, even those he recently rescued.

"Ooootah, Brother? Where do we go next?"

"Out of the frying pan and into the fryer, human?"

"We should not leave strange doors behind us." Otah gestures in the direction down the corridor they came from.

H13 is the door Aldebert's pc is standing in front of, and I don't recall searching through it. We should go through there.

I don't think we have a method of getting through a door quietly, so...

"I agree Otah. Are we ready?"

Aldebert shrugs, takes out his hammer, and begins to batter at the door to tear it down.

Something seems to be hampering the effectiveness of Aldebert's hammer. Looks as if the door is easily withstanding the impacts of the hammer even as they easily connect.

Ami does not laugh as Alde's hammer doesn't even dent the door, after all, if the door was made of giant, it would already be into splinters.

Stupid door.

"Maybe we need to find another way?" Ami points to the giant's room.

"There we double doors that way. Or to the south...there was another way to go."

"Perhaps another door then, Aldebert." Otah suggests, as he shakes his head over his shoulder to indiicate the doors south-west of them.

He moves up to the door, and listens through it, then tries to open them if nothing is amiss.

Perception: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (14) + 2 = 16

Ami follows Otah over to the doors, knowing that others follow.

He nods to Otah, ready for the door to be opened. He pounds his tiny fist into his tiny hand, giving Otah the 'whatfor' signal.

Let's find the gnolls and give them the whatfor.

There is little sound beyond the door, it opens easily to a an empty hallway that leads to another door. Echoing sounds of gnolls seem to come from the south, but it's tough to tell with the rooms and corridors playing tricks on your ears.

Ami snuffles and truffles to the next door, awaiting the troops of halfling and dwarf back ups.

"C'mon brother, or there won't be any gnolls left for you!"

Pent bounds down the hallway, halfway, head half-cocked, after the halfling, hoping to hear hazards ahead.

Perception: 1d20 + 13 ⇒ (3) + 13 = 16

"We got little to nothing out of the slaves. We got little to nothing out of the big lug. We got little to nothing out of the gnoll patrol... we got nothing. We need more insight, intel, inroads, input. We catch a gnoll, we pump it for info before we thump it. Alright?"

"One of the beauties of being in caverns and hills, friend gnome, is that there are only so many ways to go. But we can do it your way."

perception: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (13) + 2 = 15
Otah walks down the hallway, eyes and ears probing the way in front of him. He approaches the double doors at the end of the hallway and presses his ear against them.

I can't tell if there's another hall to the south when reaching the door? Also, I can't see Pent's figure on the map?

backtag Mahdi looks somewhere between sort-of-remorseful about the man's obvious fear, and sort of disgusted about how his body is expressing it. "...I said I was sorry about your companions," he mutters. "Gods, we're not going to hurt you."

Frowning, he shrugs off any vestigial twinges of a conscience that might be trying to get his attention. "Stay here for now, you'll be safe enough. I can't promise anything at all if you run through the salamander territory."

Mahdi saunters after the others, loading his crossbow as he walks, letting Otah's keen dark-sighted eyes see ahead of them.

The sound from beyond the door is absent of gnoll sounds. Beyond the sounds of from behind you there is the slightest sound of air now and then.

Aldebert echoes Mahdi's suggestion, "By all means, wait here a while and we'll see you to safety. At least in as much as we can of course. But if you do decide to trek off on your own, do it quietly and carefully as there are hostiles about."

Aldebert then rushes to catch up to his brother. He moves up to the door, nods to the others, and if no one objects, he opens it. Or tries to anyway.

"Watch our back brother, I feel as though the gnolls are not this way, but rather behind us through that other door we cannot open. We should be wary."

He turns his attention forward and steps, hopefully, into the next chamber.

The door opens slowly, sealed by thick webbing, which also covers the walls of this twenty-foot-wide hall. Though many of the walls are completely obscured by thick sheets of webbing, transforming it into a cloying, musty tube where sounds are eerily muffled, you can see to the south, the web tube cinches down to a ten-foot-wide tunnel. Here and there, large shapes encased in thick webs hang from the walls.

Ami looks into the room and backs Yeen away.

"Spiders? Why'd it hafta be spiders?"

Ami looks at Mahdi expectantly, then remember his alchemist's fires and pulls one out.

"Should we burn the webs away, brother? How can this be the right way with the webs? No gnolls would be here."

Pent stands in the middle of the hallway, watching the halflings waffle about webbing. "This whole place is filled with deathbringers, find something new lingering around every corner here. We're taking chances of missing our mark, should we consider our mark to be the Carrion King itself. The evil hides here. Hides behind doors, hides behind walls, what's to say it doesn't hide behind webs as well? Is this the only floor we need to clear? We came up a ladder, but I haven't seen any windows yet. How deep are we? Odie, how deep be we?"

Otah gladly responds to the Pent's question. How far down are we DM?

"Burn it first, and you may burn more than you bargain for." Otah warns as his eyes try to locate any foes hiding within the webs. "Wonder why the gnolls haven't cleared them out yet."

Mahdi looks extraordinarily cheered up by the idea of lighting the webs on fire. Never has he felt so close to you, Ami.

He frowns at Otah playing the voice of reason. "...I don't know, at worst we get the spiders racing towards us confused and on fire, and fighting spiders is never pleasant but doing it when they're on fire is, at least, visually appealing... and they die faster.

"Personally, I favor the idea of lighting the webs," Mahdi said, surprising nobody ever. "Cutting them to clear them would be a tedious and sticky business. Fire is... cleansing. If the gnolls left a corridor bewebbed, my guess is they leave the spiders as 'guards' of a sort. Probably toss them some prey from time to time."

At Pent's barrage of questions, Mahdi merely shrugs and sighs. "Well, until we find gnolls to question as you wish, I doubt we have any better way of learning where the 'king' lurks than to keep exploring. Still wish we knew who that unpleasant fellow on the 'throne' was supposed to be-- surely not the Carrion King himself."

He looks back to the webs, fingers twitching. Fire. Fire is ALWAYS the answer.

Aldebert listens to the reasoning of fire. "I'm not sure. Won't the smoke just fill this whole place forcing us back down the ladder for a time? Seems dangerous to me, but then so does going in there with the spiders."

He thinks a while, and eventually sides with his brother. "Yeah, let's burn it. Who knows what's in here, but a little fire will help cleanse the way."

Aldebert steps back and lets Mahdi through to light the fire.

Don't see a spider on the map yet.

Round 1: Initiative 9

Otah is slow to bring his weapon to bear as the spider makes it's presence known.

He moves to engage and strikes at the eight-legged beast.

Horsechopper: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (20) + 9 = 29 for: 1d10 + 5 ⇒ (6) + 5 = 11

Assuming it's possible, of course. Spring attack if he needs to move through threatened areas to provide a flank for an ally.

Aldebert watches the fire burn and waits to see what might climb forth. He sits astride Gretiem in the doorway. Watching. Waiting. Trying to be ready, with his warhammer in hand.

"Still wish we knew who that unpleasant fellow on the 'throne' was supposed to be-- surely not the Carrion King himself."

Pent cocks his head, opens his mouth, then closes it again. "I thought the Carrion King was just the strongest dog. That bloke back there, you think we left the Carrion King behind, on his behind? I don't think so. He escaped like the others, then turned into a royal pain in the arse, nothing more. Who does that? Escapes, then enslaves? That's just wrong."

...

Pent shuffles back and forth, assuming the burning is over as soon as it catches fire.

"Clear? Is it clear then? What are we waiting for? Press on already. We haven't got all day. What are you swinging at Odie? You see something I can't see? Well, of course you can. You're looking into the hall, and I'm back here. Where there's webs, there's spiders. How many are there?"

Also, how deep are we in the mountain? Odie has the answer once the DM provides :)

Ami backs up as the fire is lit and smoke smokes. He keeps Yeen on tight rein in case the fire needs to be fled from.

"Good fire, Mahdi."

For the record the "GM" spoiler is for the GM. So let's put the curtain back in place for the moment. Proceeding out of initiative. The party is 'below' the mountain entrance by perhaps 50-100 feet. I feel like I'm missing something. Should Otah know the party's relative location underground?

Smoke continues to grow, making it difficult to see much more than the doorway. Thankfully the hall isn't so filled as to impact the air too much.

Eek! I might have falsely assumed that dwarves as a race have a sense of depth underground, from back in the old days... My apologies, Otah and DM Lareg :)