GM Zero/GL's Giantslayer! (Inactive)

Game Master GM_Grandlounge

"NPCs? What's an NPC?"

That's what I thought too and figured Lydia was giving our GM an easy way of sliming down the entourage.

Thyste grins. "I'm glad you asked! 'NPC' is short for 'Non-Portrayable Concepts.' Basically, you get a bunch of wizards to devote all their spells for the day to casting a spell that doesn't actually do anything, then record the traces of their randomized magical energy. You do this until a certain magical threshold has been reached, and then you can sell that record to someone for loads of gold. They don't technically benefit from it in any way, but they get to own the record that says that a lot of magic was cast, and people who are really into cryptomancy are super into it."

Ben listens and his chin starts to drop. By the end of the 'explanation' his mouth is fully open but his eyes are rather squinty. At then end he closes it with a click and says, hesitantly.

"Uh, that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. But in a world of mad cultists that think that dying and going to one of the planes of the Abyss is a good thing, I guess anything is possible."

He drawls out the word possible as if the idea is as much a stretch as the work.

"All forms of currency are arbitrary and only of value because everyone has agreed that they have value," Ulretha comments.

"Only might truly has worth."

"Ah, but strength comes in many forms. Take the simple worm for example. If you cut it in half, the two halves may form new worms on their own."

Ben starts to describe nature and their different types of defenses, attacks, and coping mechanisms for as long as anyone will listen.

Knowledge nature: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (4) + 5 = 9

He's no expert but he sure does love to talk. He also passes through the door and circles around to the north side, opening the door there..

Lidia steps forward into the new chamber and peers down at the translucent panel in the floor.

Hildy says, "I can stay behind and watch the door."

The floor panel is a thick sheet of glass. Set directly above Nargrym’s sepulcher (area A9), it allows visitors to view the giantslayer’s sarcophagus and pay respects without entering the sepulcher. The glass is 5 inches thick, and can easily support the weight of the group. Over the centuries the glass has turned a translucent yellow with grime and dust, but with a little effort the glass can be cleaned enough to provide a view into area A9 below. The sarcophagus has been opened and its lid pushed to the side, offering a glimpse of its occupant: a crumpled corpse dressed in a suit of scale mail armor.

Lidia perception check, please.

"Someone has desecrated the tomb." says Lidia.

Perception: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (9) + 15 = 24

"But the place still seems sealed up. We should head down there and check it out and find out how it happened. And if there's still anything worth claiming," Ulretha says. He sees two doors out of the room and goes to the nearer one...mostly because its easier to walk to.

"For now, are we all agreed that we should leave the tomb unmolested? We might be passing up a clue or something, so I'm not sure myself. If we do decide to leave it, I think we should put the cover back on."

"I thought we came here to take the weapons from this dwarf? That's sorta molesting, isn't it? It looks like someone may have beaten us to that. Still, I have no objection to covering the old guy up again."

She kneels down and looks around carefully. "Where's that murderer dwarf who was supposed to be locked in there with him? Shouldn't he be down there in a cage or something?"

Ben also tries to get a peek into the tomb, also looking for a companion.

"Not good. Not good at all. Why does everything have to be so complicated? Oh well, I for one kind of expected it."

Lidia, you notice a large, broken cage in an alcove off to the side.

Lidia points at the large broken cage in the alcove.

"See? He broke out! He's probably the one who rifled the body too." she says.

"This is very strange!" Kioshi says and looks around.

He casts detect magic and looks around.

kn arcana: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (12) + 15 = 27
Spellcraft : 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (13) + 15 = 28

"I wonder if he's been stuck in this tomb all this time. Maybe we should close the door. Can WE get out if someone closes the door?"

Can we? Or does someone have to be on the outside and say the magic words?

"I wonder if he's been stuck in this tomb all this time. Maybe we should close the door. Can WE get out if someone closes the door?"

"Hildy is watching the door." says Lidia. "And even if he did break out of his cage, I think it's safe to assume the dwarfs didn't bury a couple hundred years worth of food and water down there."

"Hopefully, the power of his hatred has not surpassed the bonds of death and raised him as some kind of undead horror," Ulretha comments, sardonically.

"The guy worshipped a demon lord. So I imagine pretty much anything is possible." says Lidia as she stand up again and looks around at everyone else.

"So...I came here to get treasure from a dwarven tomb and that's what I'm going to do. Anyone else here for the same thing can follow me," Ulretha says, then opens the door he's standing next to.

Ben nods and follows Ulretha and his pack, nearly tripping over one of them.

He mutters "Dang things are everywhere."

Kioshi shrugs. ”I will stay in the back Ulretha ... as usual!“

Can we? Or does someone have to be on the outside and say the magic words?

You think you can close it but you would be stuck. You could leave Hildy and/or others outside but should they die you would be stuck.

"This is very strange!" Kioshi says and looks around.

He casts detect magic and looks around.

[dice=kn arcana]d20+15
[dice=Spellcraft ]d20+15

Nothing here jumps out as important magic but like a lot of old tombs, there is a bit of abjuration magic everywhere to guard the place.

Ulretha opens the door to what seems like a reliquary. A nauseating stench of filth fills this chamber. Various items of broken furniture are sloppily piled into curious arrangements throughout the room. Among the piles of wreckage are toppled statuettes of jade and serpentine, shards of clay and porcelain urns, and several crushed drinking steins. The western wall of the room bears several large cracks and a few small holes where it meets the floor.

Thrum. The familiar sound of a bowstring?

Two bolts fly at Ulretha and one lands brutally.

Attack: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (1) + 15 = 162d8 + 2 ⇒ (4, 4) + 2 = 10 plus poison (save Fort DC 17, frequency 1/round for
9 rounds)

Attack: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (20) + 15 = 352d8 + 2 ⇒ (2, 3) + 2 = 7 plus poison (save Fort DC 17, frequency 1/round for
9 rounds)

Confirmation: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (20) + 15 = 352d8 + 2 ⇒ (1, 3) + 2 = 6

After hearing the crossbow thrum and seeing Ulretha stagger back slightly from the impact of the bolt, Lidia steps up quickly and pulls him out of the doorway.

"Who was it? Could you see anyone?" she asks in a tense stage whisper. She looks over his wound, trying to assess how bad the damage is.

Heal check: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (7) + 11 = 18

"Grah! Gorum's mighty finger, that hurt!" Ulretha shouts as the first missile goes wide but the second hits home in a nerve cluster.

Fort Save: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (5) + 10 = 15

He stays in the doorway, searching the space for the person he's about to end with extreme prejudice.

You look around the room to see a pair of heavily modified crossbows bolted to the ground and rigged up to the door. Lidia runs over quickly identifies the bolts as being poisoned. She grabs one of her arrowheads and lances the wounds (I'm using your heal to turn Ulretha's fail to a pass).

Heal: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (9) + 7 = 16 +1 as Blix cast guidance on you.

Fort: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (13) + 15 = 28

Lidia continues to apply rapid aid and with that aid, the poison is cleared leaving minimal residual damage.

Lidia douses the wound with water and squeezes the edges of the wound to extract as much of the poison as she can. Every 15 seconds or so, she touches fresh blood from the wound to her tongue before quickly spitting it out until she is certain the wound is cleared of poison.

"How do you feel?" she asks the gnoll.

Looking past Ulretha to the jury-rigged crossbows across the room and the strange piles of smashed artifacts, she shakes her head and sighs.

"Well, I think we can now confirm that the murderer got free. Clearly he rigged that trap. And I'll bet he's the one who went around smashing all the artifacts and furniture. Until we find his corpse or a tunnel to the surface, I think we have to assume he's still active in here. Somehow. And armed with Nagrym's legendary weapons and armor."

Ulretha grits and shows his teeth as Lidia applies her healing. He doesn't make any noise, however and stares off into the middle distance rather than watching the proceedings.

"Fine. I'm fine," he snaps when she checks in with him.

"Thank you," he says more gently after a few moments.

He works his arm and muscles near the wound to test them then gives a nod before moving deeper into the room. He begins to search the disheveled mess in the room for anything useful or still valuable.

"Did your legends say anything about your ancestor being buried with a pair of magical crossbows?" he asks Umlo as he examines the weapons that shot him.

"Fine. I'm fine," he snaps when she checks in with him.

Lidia glances up at Ulretha and raises an eyebrow.

"Thank you," he says more gently after a few moments.

Lidia lowers her eyes again to the wound and nods, then stops messing with it and puts her waterskin away. A ghost of a smile wafts past her lips.

"Weird, though. I would have been begging to be set free if I were trapped in here, not antagonizing the very fellows that could free me."

Was that room A8?

"Well, let's search the area. Who knows what we might find."

Ben and LB start searching A6 and making their way clockwise around the rooms, searching for anything, hidden or otherwise.

Lidia moves into the room with the smashed furniture and artifacts and takes a closer look at the cracks in the wall and the holes in the floor.

Perception: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (5) + 15 = 20

He begins to search the disheveled mess in the room for anything useful or still valuable.

"Did your legends say anything about your ancestor being buried with a pair of magical crossbows?" he asks Umlo as he examines the weapons that shot him.

This room has been stripped bare of anything of value, desecrated and then fortified.

Umlo says, "No to my knowledge but they look giant based on their size. They could be spoils of war. This construction is too slapdash to have been made as part of the tomb."

For the rest of you, a more detailed examination of the rooms reveals nothing of note.

Ben heads back towards the tomb and stands there for a bit staring. After a while he announces to noone in particular,

"Looks like we age going to have to go in there and look around."

He starts shifting the lid to get better access.

Do we need a rope to get down in there?

My understanding is that the glass panel is a viewing window for the tomb, not a 'lid' that can be lifted away.

After poking around amid the fetid flotsam and jetsam of the ruined reliquary, Lidia returns to the viewing room.

"There's another door in here. It might lead to a stairway down to the tomb." she suggests. She pokes her head around the corner and looks back toward the narrow stairway up. "Thyste? Are you ok?"

Thyste blinks and shakes her head as if clearing a fog with her hair.

"Eh? Oh, sorry. I dozed off for a bit there. Nothing sleepier than going into a nice cave and methodically going room by room solving... yaaaawwn... puzzles... phew."

Sorry y'all, between some personal events happening and what can be summarized as a distaste for dungeon crawls in PbP, I'm having a real hard time getting any of the text to stick in my brain in a way that forms pictures here. Don't mind me!

Another door? I only see rooms in a big circle through rooms A5, 6, 8, and 7. Is it something she sees but Ben does not? Or am I misreading the map?

"Another door? Where?"

Ben looks around in confusion.

Another door? I only see rooms in a big circle through rooms A5, 6, 8, and 7. Is it something she sees but Ben does not? Or am I misreading the map?.

After solving the door puzzle, we entered room 5, with the big viewing window in the floor. Ulretha opened the door to 7 (the reliquary/crossbow trap) and Ben opened the door to 6. We have not yet explored room 8.

”In there.” says Lidia, pointing back toward the stinky reliquary room.

Thyste blinks and shakes her head as if clearing a fog with her hair.

"Eh? Oh, sorry. I dozed off for a bit there. Nothing sleepier than going into a nice cave and methodically going room by room solving... yaaaawwn... puzzles... phew."

”Well, try and stay awake, ok? There might be more of those spider creatures running around. Not to mention a demon-powered murderer armed with super-weapons. Come on, stay up here with me. I’ll pinch you if I see you nodding off.” says Lidia, a slight smirk crooking her lip at the end.

Thyste Fox-Tailed wrote:

Thyste blinks and shakes her head as if clearing a fog with her hair.

"Eh? Oh, sorry. I dozed off for a bit there. Nothing sleepier than going into a nice cave and methodically going room by room solving... yaaaawwn... puzzles... phew."

”Not to mention a demon-powered murderer armed with super-weapons.”

”Well, sure, but Ulretha’s hardly anything new,” she grins. Regardless, she shuffles up to walk beside Lidia.

”Don’t suppose I could swing a piggy-back ride?”

I stated Ben was searching the rooms in a clockwise direction here and I thought that was already done and he discovered nothing from what he said after that here.

”Don’t suppose I could swing a piggy-back ride?”

"Nope."

Kioshi stays in the back and observed the scene.

”Let us check the last room!“ he says and opens the door.

Room 8.

I could point out that Kioshi doesn’t know he’s opening the door ‘to the last room’. From the characters’ perspective we have no idea how large this complex is. I could also point out that Kioshi can’t simultaneously stay in the back and be opening the door at the head of the party. But that would be petty and pedantic of me, so I won’t. ;)

”Careful, it might be trapped like this door was.” warns Lidia.

Ben checking the North (A6) room you find.

Huge stone panels line the walls of this chamber, each depicting a carved scene, but all of the panels have been damaged or defaced in some way. Hundreds of footprints crisscross the dusty floor. Two doors exit the room to the south.

The team more careful now checks the doors for traps and finds none. Kioshi opens the door so the rest of the team can swing in like a breach team ahead of him. (I can make it work, I have Gm powers)

Four statues of idealized dwarves stand against the walls of this chamber, next to stone fonts. A dusty film covers the fonts, and their basins are inscribed with Dwarven runes. A massive stone panel on the room’s eastern wall bears a bas-relief likeness of dwarven warrior garbed in a suit of scale male and wielding an oversized spear. The carved figure is unadorned with the exception of its right hand, which is leafed with silver.

kn relgion: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (1) + 10 = 11
kn relgion: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (5) + 10 = 15

Kioshi analyzes the scene.

"This statue here is of course Torag! But the next ones are less obvious. They are Torag’s younger siblings: Angradd, the Forge-Fire; Torag’s half-sister Dranngvit, the dwarven goddess of vengeance; and Torag’s older brother Magrim the Taskmaster, guardian of the underworld.

DC 10 Perception check: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (15) + 8 = 23

"Hey, and look here. There is a small gap between the stone panel and the wall. This secret door has been left ajar, making it easier to notice!"

Kioshi casts detect magic and looks around. If he sees anything magical then he will analyze it

kn arcana or spellcraft: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (18) + 15 = 33

He then opens the secret door.

Lidia cautiously moves into the room with the statues and the bas relief. She peers around, keeping her back to one of the walls, bow in hand.

Perception: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (11) + 15 = 26

When Kioshi spots the opening in the wall, she cranes her neck sideways a bit to look past him. "Probably leads down to the tomb. Careful." she whispers intently.

"Right, right," Ulretha says as Kioshi explains about the dwarven gods. He knew all of that, of course. He knew all about gods, now, event he stumpy ones.

He's more interested in all the footprints, though he ends up not being able to figure out anything of note about them.

Survival: 1d20 + 12 ⇒ (9) + 12 = 21

When Kioshi spots the door, Ulretha pushes it open and heads inside.

Nice Map Manipulation, GM. I just noticed what you did. It's almost seamless. And I'm glad I'm not crazy, I knew I'd seen A9 at some point but then couldn't figure out where it was.